Calibrate your inner compass with a sense of gratitude for the peculiar - Lawrence Yeo | S4E1

Lawrence Yeo is a writer, illustrator, storyteller, and the creator of 'More To That', an illustrated long form blog that delves deeper into the things that make us who we are. We discuss the role of confidence, gratitude, uncertainty and many other practicalities of pursuing a creative life.

Lawrence's story in brief

• Lawrence grew up feeling abundant despite growing up poor, and always had a strong sense of curiosity and abundance.
• He pursued a career in finance but knew it wasn't his true passion, so he quit his job to pursue music but eventually became disillusioned with the industry's demands for external validation.
• He transitioned to writing blog posts on Medium, developing a unique writing style that combines philosophical and metaphorical writing with hand-drawn illustrations and graphs.
• He found that his writing reached more people than his music did, and he realised that his inner compass was about how creating art moved him forward as a person.
• Lawrence started his blog, More To That, without a specific strategy or intention to start a business, and it has since grown into a platform offering courses, consulting, and direct support.

Conversation Themes

• Money, creativity, fulfilment, and the idea of 'enough'
• Mindset, framing, and following your inner compass while embracing uncertainty
• The power of storytelling in navigating the nuances of the human condition

Full Show Notes
Visit the Grokkist podcast hub for a full digest of this episode including highlights and links to stuff we discussed: https://grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast/s4e1-lawrence-yeo

Recorded 16 September 2023

Website: grokk.ist/stillcuriouspodcast | Email: podcast@grokk.ist | Socials: @grokkist
Music: Kleptotonic Swing by Tri-Tachyon

Transcript

Lawrence Yeo: 0:00

there's like this nascent fear of someone asking you, what do you do? Because I do so many things, but I guess I'm a writer. And then it's like, well, oh, what kind of stuff do you write? And then I'm just like, uh, I dunno how, how exactly to answer this. Like, every time. so if anything, I would say that fear that you have of that particular question is actually like a good thing The unique threads of everything that you pull together is gonna result in some sort of mishmash is so specific to you. And like it's really hard to describe the end result to anybody really. if anything, your inability to answer that question is probably your greatest asset as a creator. I don't have any neat way of saying what I'm curious about or interested in think that it's something to be quite proud of something to lean into instead of push away.

0:59

You're listening to the still curious podcast with me, Daniel pointer. The show where I met people who insist on relating to the world with curiosity and care and talk to them about the red thread that runs through their life story and which ultimately empowers them to flourish as their unrepeatable selves. The voice you just heard belongs to my guest today. Lawrence yo. I've writer, illustrator, storyteller, and the creator of mortar that an illustrated long form blog that delves deeper into the things that make us who we are. Lawrence creates stories that navigate the nuances of the human condition. I'm a long time reader and admirer of his work as someone who consciously puts curiosity at the center of what he does and who points people towards finding freedom and acceptance in pursuing the things they find meaningful while emphasizing that practical realities of pursuing a life of creativity. Including money and mindset.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:55

if you really had all your time and attention that you wanted to dedicate to what you think you wanna dedicate your time to. Is that actually gonna be as blissful as you think it is? with my music, I quit my job to pursue it, thinking that I needed 40 hours in a week to do this. And then when I had 40 plus hours all available, I'm like, I don't wanna do this for that long. I actually don't wanna make music for 40 hours a week.

2:22

Lawrence describes more to that as a grand exercise in reframing. It's about giving people different lenses to view familiar situations. This superpower to take any situation and view it through a different perspective is something Lawrence remembers having from an early age. He says that while he grew up poor, he never felt poor because he had the kind of family situation that made him feel he had everything he needed. And as a result, he always had a great sense of abundance. Lawrence always knew he wanted to be a creator of some sort. But wasn't sure how he was going to go about it. He took five years to graduate college and was still an undeclared major in his senior year. Eventually selecting international economics and landing a job in investment banking. Can you finance? Wasn't what lights his fire, but he saw it at the time as a way to purchase his freedom and direct his attention to his creative pursuits, such as making music. He then quit his job to pursue music. As you heard. But eventually found himself becoming disillusioned with the craft. Not in terms of making the music itself, but the way the constant demands for external validation tied to a professional career in music was making him become a kind of person. He didn't want to be. Back in finance Lawrence still needed a creative outlet for his curiosity about the human mind. So he started experimenting with combining his facility for writing with his childhood love of drawing. This time, he wasn't focused at all on external validation. He just wanted to find out if he was in love with this way of spending his time. So he took hundreds of hours creating a handful of pieces before publishing anything. Without knowing if anyone would even read them. In doing so Lawrence realized that his inner compass was not about the number of views, his art received, but about how creating art moved him forward as a person. And the time spent calibrating that inner compass would make all the difference to how he approached building his new project. More to that.

Lawrence Yeo: 4:31

When I started it, I already had that strong intention of I'm gonna follow my inner compass I have to not only follow my own curiosity, but the way I'm gonna make this practical is not by adopting someone else's strategies and growth hacks and all that stuff, but I gotta really understand the craft of storytelling and not through what Campbell says about the hero's journey or to study plays and Shakespeare and stuff. No, no, no. I have to understand how storytelling works best in the context of how I view the world, and to calibrate that with my unique interests. I want to do this for a long time. So understanding what makes me feel I could do it for a long time kind of organizes the foundation of everything that I do here.

5:20

With his unique personal style that combines philosophical and metaphorical writing with hand drawn illustrations and graphs. Lawrence quickly found that his writing reached more people than his music did. Though he kicked off his mortar that blog in March, 2018 with no specific strategy or intention to start a business. His first piece travel is no cure for the mind. The one that took a hundred hours proved immediately popular and has since been read over a million times? Fast-forward a few years and mortar that now operates as a business in the creator economy. Offering courses consulting and direct support with the majority of revenue coming from his thinking in stories course. Lawrence attributes, the success of mortar, that to the natural momentum generated by his practice of being intentional about following his curiosity without a grand plan, a spirit, which he refers to as a kind of gratitude for the peculiar.

Lawrence Yeo: 6:19

The moments you'll have the most nostalgia for are those in which you could not have predicted. if having a life that overflows with nostalgia is one of the keys to a well lived life, having, then you wanna put yourselves in a position where serendipity could be a feature and not a liability in terms of what you're doing in your life.

6:37

I'm certainly grateful for the natural momentum and sequence of events that has allowed me to bring you this rich and wide ranging conversation with Lawrence. We discussed the practical realities of pursuing a life of creativity, including mindset and confidence and the complicated triangle of recognition, finances and fulfillment. We explore the importance of being understood by the right people. Unpacking our beliefs and motivations and recognizing when we have enough. All that and more awaits you on the other side of the music in my conversation with Lawrence, yo. On today's episode of the still curious podcast.

Danu Poyner: 7:42

So, hi Lawrence. Welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Lawrence Yeo: 7:45

I am good Danu. I am just excited to talk to you here. I just came back from Korea and, uh, just been getting situated here back in Los Angeles, so it's been nice.

Danu Poyner: 7:55

So you're a writer, illustrator, storyteller, and the creator of'More To That', an illustrated long form blog that delves deeper into the things that make us who we are. And you introduce yourself there as someone who creates stories that navigate the nuances of the human condition. I'm curious what you would say is the most important thing for someone to understand about what you practice and how you put yourself forward in the world.

Lawrence Yeo: 8:21

There's a couple things, but the most important thing is somewhat of a platitude, but at the same time, platitudes have big kernels of truth, which is that curiosity is this sense of being grateful that you don't know everything. Kind of this gratitude for the peculiar, that when you understand that, of course, there is so much to this world that you don't know and that actually that's not something to be afraid of. That's something to be embraced and something to be accepted. Then that really opens the doors to this fresh perspective on not just the world, but also yourself. One of the things I find most fascinating is that the biggest things that make us who we are, we had almost no agency over. So our parents, our upbringing, our culture that we grew up in, these are all things that we've kind of got plopped into. And the error is in asserting that we know who we are and that we are confident in that. I actually view that as quite empowering. Because that reveals that there is so much within you that is left to explore. So much there is to see and so many like nuances to navigate. The key thing also to understand is that by understanding yourself better and what you're curious about and why you're curious about those things, you'll be better able to understand humanity at large. Because I think we are all intricately connected in that way.

Danu Poyner: 9:44

Yeah. Wonderful. I really like the way that you describe curiosity in terms of gratitude for the peculiar and that empowering orientation to it. I guess it comes to what I see when I encounter your work, that concern with both personal and the kind of macro. It's like the classic sociological formulation. We make choices, but not under circumstances of our choosing. I think in your work, you're really able to hold those two thoughts together and capture that excitement and empowering sense of discovery in going through the mysterious that way. I really enjoy the conversational tone of your articles. They're not explainers, but they explain a lot. You make controversial points that invite disagreement, but you're not leading with provocation or a spiky point of view, as some people would call it. It's more of always that invitation to explore, and it feels like having someone doing a walking tour of ideas with you, and you have this distinctive style that mixes philosophical and metaphorical writing with, of course, your hand drawn illustrations and sometimes quite a lot of graphs. It's a really interesting mix of styles. How did that form develop?

Lawrence Yeo: 11:00

So a lot of this stuff comes from prior influences, right? Like you're always influenced by something and that informs the way you express yourself and, in my case, it actually started with drawing for me. I was always drawing stuff back when I was a kid. And, it's funny because a lot of those characters I drew when I was a kid have also found its way into more to that. If my 10 year old self saw my 30 something year old self drawing, he would've been like, you just stayed there, huh? Like, this was the height of your, uh, drawing abilities. But at the same time, when you're a child, like there's just something very pure about that essence that you shouldn't ignore. Just because you did certain things as a kid doesn't mean it's relegated to that period in childhood. Like, there's so much that you can take from that, that you could extrapolate and include into these big adult topics like death or money or identity and these kinds of things. For me, drawing was kind of like one of my entry points into me thinking that I'm a creative person or like understanding that that's a creative act. And then, you mix that in with the writing piece. Now writing was something that I also did when I was younger, but I just didn't think much of it. I created fiction stories and like a notebook, but didn't really expect to do anything with it. And if anything, the creative expression that I thought would be my thing was music. So I was a musician for a number of years and I actually did that professionally. So when it comes to linking an artistic form of expression with a career, I thought music was going to be it. but what ended up happening was that I basically kind of grew disillusioned with the craft, not in terms of making the music itself, but what was coming out from me in terms of who I was becoming as a human being. Basically it just wasn't a good fit for what I wanted to pursue as a career. After that, I'm just working, I was doing finance, and I was just thinking about, well, I know that I want to do something creative, quote but something where I was able to express my true curiosities and, I was just inspired by other writers at the time, not just contemporary writers like Tim Urban of'Waitbutwhy', who's a writer illustrator or Allie Broch, who has this blog called'Hyperbole And A Half', but also just people that are dead. So, philosophers, various psychologists. These were all things that I was into from probably around college onwards, but I started to get more into them as I kind of ventured into my thirties. At that point there was this understanding that, huh, I have this interest in just the mind and how the mind kind of works. And then I also have these abilities. I, I know how to draw to some extent. I know how to write to some extent. Now, what if I were to combine these things together and test not just if it works from an external validation standpoint, because that's why I left music, because I was too caught up in getting my stuff heard and getting that external validation from people. I was in it for the wrong reasons. So this time around when I was gonna do more to that, I thought to myself, well, what if I take that piece down to zero? Because I know that's what made me fall out of a particular craft. And this one, I want to see if I'm in love with it and to see if I want to do this with my time. I actually made a number of pieces before I published my first one on'More To That', just to get an idea of how does this feel? Do I like marrying these things together, drawing, writing, all this stuff. And the answer was yes. I really do. I say that the'Travel is no cure for the mind' piece, which is my first post I published, probably took somewhere around a hundred hours to do. And I had three pieces like that almost done even before I hit publish on the first one. So, I was able to spend that much time working on these pieces without knowing if anyone was gonna read them. That showed me that there was something intrinsically motivating about this particular marriage of interests and abilities. So, that's the genesis of how this all came about.

Danu Poyner: 15:20

You've put a lot on the table there for us to discuss. It might make sense to start a bit earlier and, and pull on the thread that you mentioned right at the start of that answer about the drawing and your child's self and what you said about the marriage of interests and abilities. A lot of us have things that we used to do as children and used to enjoy, but there seems like there's a lot of pressure on our creativity to be useful. And so a lot of us drop those things or consider them childish and, and put them away. that seems like a great shame because really curiosity is something that is never wasted. it's surprising how often things that we waste time on that are not useful, but are just fun, come back to be valuable in other ways later. I'm

Lawrence Yeo: 16:11

Absolutely, and I think there is nothing really wasted when you follow your inner compass. I think that's one of also the most underrated tools when it comes to becoming a creator, is to listen to that inner compass.'cause there's so many forces that are trying to pull on your attention to try to convince you otherwise, right? You have to use your creativity to grow in this way, and I will teach you how to do that and all this stuff. But if you look at your endeavor through that lens, and anything that's not contributing to either some metric driven growth or to money in your bank account or stuff like that is seen as a quote unquote waste. And the paradox of all this too is that people view certain art forms as being valuable when you're a kid, right? Like that's why parents will put their kids on huge wait lists to learn how to play the piano or for this particular art program, right? And we'll be so distressed when they hear that their kid's not going to be able to go to this art thing or whatever. And then by the time they turn, I don't know, 18 or 19, it's like they say, I wanna go to art school. It's like, Ugh. Are you sure you wanna do that or really? There's that interesting dynamic which kind of shows me that when you're young, that it's valued because people think that learning how to play the piano or something could be parlayed into something more practical later, right? Like, oh, it's not the playing piano that's valuable, but it's like what it's doing to your brain and what you're learning there that could be transferred to some other practical career, but the reality is that I think we live in a really interesting era now where. A lot of those things that were not deemed practical in the past, these paths you had to follow are no longer valid in many cases because of course the internet has massively widened the scope of career opportunities and a lot of people don't realize this yet. When you take that into account and when you understand that we're in a landscape now where there is something really valuable about authenticity, however you want to define that, then nothing that you do on your own accord because it intrinsically moves you, is a waste because you don't know how that could connect with something else that you're doing. And now we have all the technological tools for you to be able to express yourself at scale even though it's just you doing it. That combination of the current landscape and also the fact that it's so important to listen to that inner compass, really goes a long way when you bring those two things together.

Danu Poyner: 18:49

Absolutely. When you say listen to your inner compass, that's good advice and it's advice that we all know, but some of us struggle to put it into practice or, or have the courage to follow it where it goes. And, and some of that might be to do with the uncertainty that you mentioned, and there's a sort of comfort that you need to not know where things are going, it seems to me, is that something you find as well?

Lawrence Yeo: 19:13

A comfort in not knowing where things are going. Yeah. It's hard to cultivate that. It really is because our initial impulse is to be afraid of it. Want to have predictability in your life to some extent. At the same time, there is also this keen awareness that predictability lessens the degree of serendipity that could enter your life. one thing that I've kind of realized over and over again is that the moments you'll have the most nostalgia for are those in which you could not have predicted. And if nostalgia is one of the keys to a well lived life, having a life that overflows with nostalgia, then you wanna put yourselves in a position where serendipity could be a feature and not a liability in terms of what you're doing in your life. It's counterintuitive at first because at the way we organize our days, you know, like I knew that, hey, today I'm talking to Danu because it's on my calendar. It was on my calendar for a few days, so I know what's gonna happen. But at the same time, I don't know what we're exactly we're gonna talk about in this conversation, right? Like, all I know is that I'll be talking to you, but I don't know what threads are gonna be pulled. I don't know exactly what tangents we're gonna go on and like, that's what makes it great, right? I'm not saying to just disregard any notion of planning for the future or trying to create some sort of cadence in your life. You can also have that and then keep the contents of how that experience is going to be kind of open and up in the air. When I talk about following your inner compass, it doesn't mean this purely whimsical nature of oh, you have idea A, and just go chase it until you know, you don't know what it'll become and all this stuff, I actually don't work like that. What I mean by following your inner compass in this case is that you have the understanding that what you're creating here, if you are not creating purely for yourself, right? Like, I am not creating purely for myself because I actually do do that and it's not anywhere to be seen. It's in my personal journal, which if you open, it looks like maybe a madman wrote in this. There is no rhyme or reason to what I'm saying. But I have a conversational tone to it. A conversation consists of some sort of empathy. Like I'm thinking about who I'm talking to, otherwise I'm just on the street talking to myself out loud and people are like, Ooh, and kind of like going around me and stuff. You can follow your inner compass while also having a sense of empathy for the person that you are directing your thoughts to. You are creating for yourself writing is a way of understanding what you think. Drawing is an understanding of like what you feel inside. Same thing for making music. But at the same time, if you want to operate within a creative landscape with other people in mind, you're doing this'cause you want to connect with people, you want to resonate with other people, you have to calibrate your inner compass so that it is in alignment with that. A compass that doesn't give you what true north is, is useless, right? It's, it just spins around and around. But if you can calibrate that properly, then you know where you're headed. And part of knowing where you're going is also being in alignment with the people that you want to have empathy for as you're expressing your ideas and your stories.

Danu Poyner: 22:32

There's a preoccupation in the way that you write and the way that you talk, like serendipity and certainty, the tension and the interplay between those, it's systems and spontaneity. It's a really interesting thing because as you say, it's not just whimsically following your compass. It is being prepared to navigate the practicalities of that as well, which are very real and, and material. I first encountered your work when I came across your post about the arc of the practical creator, and it really spoke to me as an incredibly clear and relatable guide to navigating the emotional and financial practicalities of pursuing creative projects of all kinds and just really one of the best things I've ever read about the real nature of creativity. You, you mentioned that you're having a conversation, and so I'm curious, when you were writing those things, did you have the sense of who you were having that conversation with?

Lawrence Yeo: 23:29

Yeah, it kind of fluctuates and changes. I rarely have a specific person in mind, but the way I think about it is if I were talking to somebody that is struggling with the problem that I'm trying to address and one of the storytelling frameworks that I teach is like, uh, when you're thinking about a theme of what you're communicating. It sounds really difficult to put your hand on what is a theme of a piece. But a theme is quite simple. It's the problem that your story is addressing and the takeaway that it provides. That's basically it. The problem is always what brings someone and draws someone into your story, otherwise movies would just have endings and stories would just be epilogues, we want the entirety of the experience. When it comes to the arc of the practical creator, when I think about someone reading my work, I don't want to put them in the position of naivete. Like, I, I like to think that these folks are very intelligent,. So if, if people are going into a creative endeavor and they don't see it as this, just follow your passion and everything will turn out. Like I'm writing for that person who understands that that's not the case. And to understand that there is that tension, like you described between the practicality and the whimsical nature and what are some ways to think about this, knowing that you're hesitant to kind of dive deeper into something, whether it's through your time or whether it's doing some cases, people wanting to leave their jobs. And I wanna address that hesitancy. I I want to take a while here to explain why exactly that hesitancy exists. If you explain something well enough, if you address the problem well enough, then a lot of times the reader or the viewer can start coming to their own takeaway. That's, I think, what I was trying to do with the arc of the practical creator where, I offer a kind of framework here of three stages of someone that's thinking about pursuing a creative endeavor, whether it's full-time or just with the majority of their attention. Like how exactly do you go about that when it comes to balancing your relationship with money and so forth. I wanted the person to understand that pursuing a creative endeavor is not just isolated to how much your creative endeavor resonates with you. There's so many factors you have to take into account, not just the money, but also if you really had all your time and attention that you wanted to dedicate to what you think you wanna dedicate your time to. Like, is that actually gonna be as blissful as you think it is? That's the error that I made. I could write these things because I've, like had error teach me in multiple instances. So with my music, I quit my job to pursue it, thinking that I needed 40 hours in a week to do this. And then when I had 40 plus hours all available, I'm like, I don't wanna do this for that long. I actually don't wanna make music for 40 hours a week. So that's another nuance to address too. So it's like to figure out what creativity even means to you. if you view it as such an important thing, are you going to, actualize that importance through your time by spending so much time on it? Is it through something else? Like how are you thinking through this? Nuance really is a big thing that I address throughout and what's been heartening for me is to see that nuance does have an audience.

Danu Poyner: 27:00

Well, yeah, that's kind of the thought I had when I was reading it. Wow. This is like it's written for me, someone who appreciates nuance. It was also very encouraging'cause it was relatable to my own experience and errors that had taught me as well. And I've heard it said that, what most people need is encouragement, more than advice. And I don't know if that's something, an that resonates with you.

Lawrence Yeo: 27:24

That totally resonates. That's a really good way to put it. People, generally speaking, have a hesitancy just towards prescriptions in general, Do this and then this will solve X or Y. I think people really, really want to have agency Like agency is what drives everything, I would say. you could have all the success in the world, but if that was founded upon prescriptions, you won't be that fulfilled. As opposed to if you directed your own energy to it and your sense of agency and then you had this like wild just ups and downs and like you didn't know if it was gonna work, but you challenge yourself and then you know, it kind of worked and then you're like, I don't know if it's gonna work again. You have all that, but then you kind of are at a place where you're like, this thing, it feels meaningful because I kind of directed myself, but at the same time, You also realize that this is not a solo endeavor. What will take you outta some of those troughs is not someone telling you, Hey, do this. It's actually someone telling you, Hey, I'm here to listen to you, if you ever want to talk about something, like, support you and like be there for you. It's astounding to me how true that is based upon my experience where what you really want is just space for you to communicate what you feel and, not really ask for A to b, to C to D advice. That's basically not what's going to bring a sense of meaning into our endeavors.

Danu Poyner: 28:54

That sense of meaning and that space needed for meaning is quite elusive, it strikes me, because as you say, we need that space, but also you don't want to spend 40 hours making music in that creative space. So this tension between agency and creativity is interesting because if you are pursuing a creative endeavor of some sort, it very quickly gets past the initial stage of agency and into the contradictions of trying to make a living from doing those things, or becoming a slave to your audience or the content creation machine or things like that. You are very confident the way that you talk about following your inner compass, and I would like to know, is that something you had to learn or is that always been in you?

Lawrence Yeo: 29:40

Hmm, that's a really good question. I think a part of it was always kind of in me where I've known for a while that I knew I wanted to do something in the arts. I knew that I wanted to be a creator. I just wasn't quite sure how I was gonna do it. So there was always this notion of I know what I want to do. My inner compass is pretty strong in that regard. I think where it starts getting a little shaky is when I question myself about, okay, well, like what are some of the mindsets that I have to adopt or the processes within myself I have to figure out in order to actualize that. In college as a really brief history, I graduated with a degree in international Economics. It took me five years to graduate cause by my senior year I was still an undeclared, major. At one point I remember thinking like, can I graduate undeclared? To me that actually makes sense because what 22 year old knows what the hell he or she is going to do for the rest of her life, and like pin this on the degree. That was like one example of where I was like, I know what I think is right. I know what I kind of want here, but there's some force here that is making me, okay, I have to do this right? So I was like, okay. I kind of reviewed my curriculum or, or the classes I took and I was like, oh, if I do econ, I could graduate right away.. Another example of this was because I chose my major so late, I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do after I graduated. So one evening I just went into Google and I was like, what makes a lot of money with an econ degree? One of the top results was investment banking. So, yeah, I had, I got like internships at banks and stuff like that. And then I ended up working in finance shortly after. I knew that finance wasn't it, but what I told myself was this would give me the money where I can then purchase my freedom and attention so I can direct to the things I really wanna do, which I knew from years back was being a creator. It was this element of, I kind of know where I want to go, but I feel like I have to do these roundabout things to get to that point because it's only by doing that where I kind of understand myself a little bit better and understand what it takes. One thing I realized is that when you have a desire, it's also filled with a lot of delusions. I think I had a keen understanding of that as well, which is why the practical creator piece, I think it was just an original extension of that. I was never really distracted by too much of the other stuff that money could buy. There was this one exception where like at one point I thought I wanted a Porsche by like 25 each 25 because I got kind of caught up in that banking world. I was able to dial that back pretty quickly because I was like, oh yeah, I remember what money is meant for me to do and if I get that Porsche, I'm really taking some time off of my ability to pursue my creative endeavors with more of my time. I think the final piece on the inner compass I'll touch is like how it relates to'More to That'. It was the one project where when I started it, I already had that strong intention of I'm gonna follow my inner compass. With'More To That'I was like, okay, I know that, I have to not only follow my own curiosity, but the way I'm gonna make this practical is not by adopting someone else's strategies and growth hacks and all that stuff, but the way I'm gonna make it practical is that I gotta really understand the craft of storytelling and not through what Joseph Campbell says about the hero's journey or to study plays and Shakespeare and stuff. No, no, no. I have to understand how storytelling works best in the context of how I view the world, and to calibrate that with my unique interests. And also the fact that I'm gonna use drawings, like how I'm going to tell stories in this way? That was how I approached the practicality element. It's like, I gotta do this so well, that there's something so compelling. Where people would spend sometimes up to 20, like the arc of the practical creators is probably a 20 to 30 minute read. And in today's era of attention spans, the fact that that piece was very popular means something. There's something about the way the story was crafted where it draws people in. That's how I was balancing the practical element. It's like in this way, it's also encased within my inner compass instead of relying upon external strategies. Is there a time in place to also learn from those that have done it well before you or alongside you? Of course. I do not discount the importance of education and to learn from those that inspire you. The caveat here is that you always should take in those lessons with your own worldview. With what resonates with you. Do not take it as step-by-step advice, but always piecemeal everything that you take in and experiment, view it as a period of experimentation rather than a period of pure adoption. Because when you experiment, then you get an idea of, oh, does this align with my natural curiosities, the natural way I want to communicate myself to an audience, or does this feel like I'm like sacrificing my integrity by following this guidebook here? I want to do this for a long time. So understanding what makes me feel I could do it for a long time kind of organizes the foundation of everything that I do here.

Danu Poyner: 35:16

You are very clear and you said, a number of times that you kind of knew what you wanted. I'm curious how young Lawrence, even before college was thinking about what you wanted. Did you have a plan A, or did you have a name for, for what it was that you wanted at that time?

Lawrence Yeo: 35:33

Nah, young Lawrence didn't know anything. Even old Lawrence doesn't really know much. The similarities here, the parallels between Young Lawrence and Old Lawrence, and despite the big identity differences between the two, there was always a sense of, meaning is something that you almost have to assign. Like you get to choose what is meaningful. Like I kind of understood that relatively early. And then second, that family is also at the center of so much meaning in life. Family really helped me understand the art of reframing. Reframing is probably the big theme that I continuously touch with'more to that'. If anything,'more to that' is a grand exercise in reframing, it's just giving people different lenses to view similar situations. The reason why I say family continuously gave me this lens and continues to today is because we grew up poor. Why do I say this? It's because on the flip side, I never felt poor. I always felt like everything was abundant. That's not because I was looking at our small little apartment and then just envisioning it being a mansion, and I'm like, I'm, I'm rich. Right? Like, no, it, it's because I looked at all that, and then I looked at my mom and my, dad and my brother and the community we were around and I was like, I, I kind of have everything I need right here. My mom and my dad also helped to kind of instill that as well. That like, you could take any situation and at a moment's notice, the great superpower is to be able to view it through a different perspective. And it's the driver of everything. Of everything. That's why we could take a look at raw materials from the earth. Then through years and years of compounding and stuff, we have an iPhone. That's how technology works. That's how psychology, everything is an exercise in reframing. I think Young Lawrence and old Lawrence always had a an understanding of that dynamic. So when it comes to the question of what did he want, I think it was more so like to be able to kind of retain that, knowing that there's so many things that happen in life, this journey of life where you go through so many moments of delight, so many moments of sorrow, so many moments of grief, so many moments of joy, this entire journey that what you really want is a mind that could reframe certain situations. even in the moments of delight, right? Like even when you're feeling like you're at the top of the world, just to understand that there is impermanence in everything. If you understand that, then like don't be so alarmed when the next day you wake up and all of a sudden you're really anxious about that success that you were just celebrating.'cause you're thinking like, wait, how do I top that? Or like, do I have to like keep doing that over? The mind has endless capacity to just bounce off of thought after thought. I think what reframing helps to do is to always kind of put it in its place and to, give yourself that sense of agency that you can reframe anything to have meaning. A lot of the time when you do that well enough, then the question of what is meaningful kind of disappears. good indicator of whether you are living a life that's imbued with meaning is if that question no longer surfaces that much. The analogy I like to give here is like, if there is a U F C fighter who like made it to the championship fight and he's stepping into the octagon, the last thing he's thinking is, do I have meaning in my life?

Danu Poyner: 39:13

Yeah. There's something to be said for just action, taking action is its own reward.

Lawrence Yeo: 39:19

yeah. And reframing is a great precursor to action. Reflection prior to action is generally a better route than reflection post action because sometimes you're just reflecting on the things that you're like, oh shit. Like You know, when you're pontificating that long on something you did, it tends to be a worry. Rather than something that you're really happy about. But if you could kind of take a moment to just think about like, oh, this thing that I'm gonna do here, this decision that I'm gonna make, where does this fit in the context of like, where future me may be? Am I doing this to be kind to future me or will this be problematic for future me? You could think about it through that lens before making certain decisions.'cause a lot of times decisions are made at the height of the moment.

Danu Poyner: 40:04

I am glad you brought reframing to the table, because, I can see now with that comment how central it is to your body of work, and the agency and the solace that comes from being able to step outside whatever situation you're in and reframe it, but I'm still very curious, Lawrence, when you adopted that clarity or whe when when, you when you arrived at that way of understanding things, it sounds like you just came into the world with that fully formed. But I don't think that's the case. So, I'm curious how it came to be.

Lawrence Yeo: 40:39

Yeah, definitely not. I can't point to like very specific points in my life where it was like, oh, okay, I have to just look at this differently and I have to just place a whole new lens on the situation. It just seemed to be like this gradual understanding that, all the knowledge that I may gain, all the people that I may talk to, all the advice that I might seek and want, there's a hard limit on what it can do for me. The only thing that could move past that is like we were talking about the realm of action and, I think because I made so many decisions that were dumb and because I just wasn't very specific about where I wanted to take my life in various situations. There is something here that points to where my inner compass is telling me, like why am I so pulled in by norms and the allure of prestige in various moments, because that was also a big factor in my life is like chasing that prestige and that validation. The more I think about it, the notion of following your inner compass, I think I did have to learn a large part of that. I think I had to learn through a lot of experience that, I have to kind of break away from this like, drug of chasing prestige. That was also very embedded as well. I think even a cultural thing, I'm Korean, I don't want to say this as a blanket statement, but there is this huge obsession with prestige in Korean culture. It's no secret that Korea is like the plastic surgery capital of the world. It is like still predominantly owned by four companies, like that control everything there. There's aggregation of prestige and culture. But at the same time, it's crazy because it's resulted in some incredible exports, right? You have one of the most popular forms of music out there. Uh, you go on Netflix, now it's like full of Korean stuff. There has just been an astronomical rise. But at what cost? I think that's the thing too, is at what cost do I want to keep chasing what this culture says is the thing for me to chase? That's another reason why I bring a family too, is'cause my parents kind had this keen understanding, and a lot of my friends tell me this too, like, wow, that was pretty advanced for uh, a Korean parents then. They never really told me I needed to do this or I needed to do that. It was always just driven off of the self. Like I thought I needed to do that, but it turns out that it's not really the case. I had to learn that though. I had to learn that over time and then to grow into that.

Danu Poyner: 43:17

was it important for you to spend time in the world of finance and investment banking to be able to have some lived experience of that kind of prestige so that you could then step away with it with a sense of accomplishment?

Lawrence Yeo: 43:34

Okay, there's two ways you could view confidence, right? The first way you gain confidence is if you feel like you are valued by others. So that's prestige. The second species of confidence is when you know yourself. That can happen outside the domain of prestige. That is the domain of introspection. A lot of time there is this interesting dynamic where we have to go through the prestige route to go to the introspection route and there is this quote by William Blake that kind of relates to this, where he says, the only way for you to know what is enough is for you to first have enough or something like that. I've been asking myself whether this is true or not, in, in the realm of confidence. Like, do you first have to have that like praise and that prestige before you understand that it's not the answer? Because that tends to be the narrative, right? Like another thing I think it was like Jim Carrey said, I wish everyone could be rich and famous. So they know it's not the answer. And then you think, well, it's easy for someone rich and famous to say that. After reflecting on this a lot, and I, and I've written about this also a lot, don't think that narrative is true. it holds true in someone that, where introspection is not a big part of their life, where if you're not thinking regularly about the direction of your decisions in your life, you have to go with the winds of norms. And the winds of norms say that you have to get that prestige first. You have to have everyone say that, oh, I love you, and like, you did such a great job. You got this great job. You are fighting for that job. You did it. then when you understand that you were working so hard for that little moment, and then the rest is like years and years of you working in that, in whatever you were fight, you're going for. Like, then you start feeling that emptiness and then you're like, okay, maybe prestige wasn't the answer here, but if introspection is kind of baked into what you do, then the order can flip. As in like, you don't even need to really experience that prestige because there's something so intrinsically moving about what you're doing yourself. Under the guidelines that like you have your basic necessities met and so forth, you have to also take that into account because the assertion that you know yourself while also being homeless is not a good look. if you know yourself, if you know the things that make you light up or you understand your abilities, then I think the external piece takes care of itself after some time and that's the paradox of status. The people that actually don't really chase status explicitly are the ones that end up gaining the most of it. that's why we see this phenomenon now where people that just dress like they bought something at Old Navy or Gap, with hoodies and stuff are billionaires. Like, there's that phenomenon now of like where their clothes are no longer a status signal. And if anything, it's like what you're not really showing is an indicator of prestige.

Danu Poyner: 46:42

When I listen to you, when I read your writing, you have this very well considered, well constructed worldview that's a composite, of all of the accumulated experience and adventures that you've had. what I hear from you is that you get that by following your inner compass and remaining true to that and following what's meaningful. So then I'm just curious, the chicken and the egg of the worldview, How do you know what to follow? What's the consistent self that drives you through those decisions? if that self is a composite of all the things you've accumulated?

Lawrence Yeo: 47:19

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good, that's a good nuanced question there. I think the trite tthing to say here is that the, the spirit of kind of curiosity moves through all of this, but don't think that's specific enough. There is no real way to bucket my work, to be like, yeah,'more to that' is a, uh, self-help blog or no, wait, it's a finance blog or No way. It's a, it's a philosophy blog. I don't know. It also has some pieces about how to calm the anxious brain. It's a neuroscience blog. I mean, it could be many different things. I think it's just a reflection of the fact that I don't niche down or anything. Like I don't choose one thing and then just stick to it because the blog is aptly a reflection of myself. And if I was just talking about money, that would kind of give the impression that like, money occupies much of my thoughts. And the reality is that so many other things do. My work with money, for example, is not isolated to money because if it was I would tell you about like, how you grow your income or here's what you should invest in and things like that. And am I interested in those kinds of things? Sure, I'm very interested in finance. but in the context of my writing and what I like to think deeper about, I think about our relationship with money. I think about how money ties into other things. so how it ties into our creative endeavors that we've talked about for a while here, how it ties into our perception of value, how it ties into like why we burn out, how it ties to death. Even within the topic of money, there's so many strands here, right? The extension of myself through'more to that'to be an accurate representation of myself. and to not create artifice, not to create all these boundaries because I have to follow it, you know, like this niche, right? Like if I want to build a product or something, I have to have a defined niche and stuff like that. I think the reality is that you don't need to have that because what ultimately is rewarded is authenticity. This is something that I continuously speak on because I still think that it's very underrated. I, I think that people still don't quite grasp that concept yet because it's like, okay, yeah, I'll be authentic. And then next thing you know, it's like there's, I don't know, writing about stuff that, like, they usually wouldn't write about, they're doing like chat GTT threads or something like that. It's kind of like, well that's obvious that that was just a thing that you picked up in the last month or so, but what are some of the things that you really are curious about? And hey, if chat g p t like is something that like, makes you light up and you wanna write about that, then that's completely fine. I'm just saying give people the benefit of doubt when it comes to their intelligence and you want to create things that accurately represent who you are because you wanna write for an intelligent audience. And I think the more that you understand your own experiences, understand yourself, the more you understand that relationship that you have and you kind of like cherish it a little bit more.

Danu Poyner: 50:31

I liked very much what you said about your work being difficult to bucket. one of its strengths is, is it eluding or evading classification in that way. I think a lot of us who live lives that are difficult to bucket, struggle with this knowing what our enduring interests really are because it's very easy to confuse what we think we're interested in with being instrumental about that interest and the way we go about it. That's how you end up chasing chat, g p t, blogs and writing outside your area of authenticity. I think it was really insightful when you were talking about money before and how yeah, you're interested in money, but actually that's the surface appearance of it and what you're actually interested in is that relation to money. And that's much more about how we go through lives and our sense of agency and purpose and how we construct our lives, and how we understand them. And it's not something that we get much chance to reflect on, and to see how the hierarchy of those connections is working when we live lives that are constantly following our interests and seeing connections everywhere all the time.

Lawrence Yeo: 51:45

I think you've raised an interesting point where, so for example, with money, it's like you have all these things that you're interested in on the surface, right? and this is the case for everybody. Like everybody has so many disparate interests. Films to TV shows to like people all, all this stuff, right? it's not enough to take inventory of your interest. I think when it comes to creativity, it's about which specific interests are you willing to also combine with diligence. That's the, uh, differentiating factor here. So with money. Yeah. I'm interested in how vanguard index funds work. I'm interested in dollar cost averaging. These kinds of things, but like, do any of these topics pull me in to be disciplined enough to write extensively about them? Not really. I don't have any further comments to add to dollar cost averaging or something, right? But ooh, when it comes to like how money affects the way we view ourselves and our sense of self worth, I have so much to say about that. There are so many ways I could frame that single topic where I could create story after story, after story after that and spend a lot of time doing that. That's what creativity is. It's not about having a lot of interests, it's about identifying the specific ones and understanding those specific ones don't have to be localized to one domain. You could have specific ones here all the way over here, all the way over here, but whichever ones you are open to putting a lot of your time and attention into.

Danu Poyner: 53:18

Yeah, I would agree with that very much. I like to use the language of the red thread to think about these things. If you follow the red thread as it weaves through all of the big long pages of interests as you've mentioning, it'll, come back to the spool, which is where the tranquil center of, what lights us up comes from. And that's where you'll find the intrinsic motivation to find the diligence to pursue some of those things, as you mentioned. You said before, that you had a moment where you had a real firm realization that you need to get really good at storytelling. And I'm wondering about that moment of clarity and when that became something that you realized that's where you needed to apply your diligence and creativity.

Lawrence Yeo: 54:02

Yeah, so before'more of that', I had a personal medium blog. my first post was like 2015 on there, and I was writing about very similar things I write about now but it just like didn't get much traction. The great thing was that while I was doing that medium blog, I was employed so I didn't have to think about money. And that's one of the great things about being a practical creator in the beginning is like you don't have to think about money'cause your day job is funding your art. It's a patron for your art. That's how I describe it. So I was just using that as a time for experimentation and trying to figure out what I like to write about. What's my voice here? towards the tail end of that personal medium blog, I have one piece where I included a drawing with some of the characters that you see today. I recognized, ooh, I kind of like adding that there and that's pretty interesting. so there was this element of, okay, by adding in that drawing, I'm kind of like anchoring this to that drawing in the form of a narrative to a certain extent. And when I came across that realization about bringing in drawings into this, I immediately started thinking about, okay, what if these drawings were like, I was sitting next to someone, like, let's say I'm sitting next to you Danu and I'm telling you something. And then I say, as I finish up something, I say, okay, just like this, look at this as I'm telling you the story act as visual cues, right? So that means that there's a flow here involved. I'm not gonna just present visuals randomly. They will kind of follow sequential order. And whenever you are thinking about presentation, are telling a story, So I understood that going into more of that, it's like I'm going to really think about this in the form of presentation. If you even look on my site, I have an archive page, which I generally, I consider my stories. And then I have another section that are called reflections. I find this to be a pretty helpful way of thinking through this delineation. The arc of the practical creator is a story. That took me a lot of time to do. Reflections are like when I'm using my writing as a avenue to think, but I'm doing it with like a thinking buddy. it's not pure gibberish like a journal. It's like I'm doing it with someone in mind, but it's like not fleshed out yet. So a lot of those reflections, I just set a two hour timer and I just write, and whatever's done with that, I publish. The thing about the stories was that like, I knew I'm gonna have to work on these stories. And he had to really hone in storytelling because that's how I'm going to get my stuff to a wider audience. because stories are universally resonant and so forth. But in my first year of'more to that', I only published nine posts because getting into that mindset, I was so thinking so much about like, oh, this has to be presented right? And then the perfectionism will get a little bit wild. I was like, oh my goodness, I'm spending so much time on one piece and I don't know if this is really sustainable.'cause I have so many ideas. So I switched a little bit, where I was like, you know what? I'm gonna just work on shorter things and let those out as well. It was nice because then my writing became an avenue to think again rather than just present. I knew I needed to get good at storytelling because I have certain ideas that I want to showcase and I know I'm gonna do it well. but I also understood that in order to do this sustainably and not hate the process of writing and so forth I have to also write often and I have to let my ideas out and get feedback on those ideas. Actually one person told me the arc of the practical creator piece sounded like a culmination of a lot of reflections I was publishing up to that point. Like it was like a way of kind of putting everything together in a certain sense. And that's what stories can also be too. You're putting together a lot of your past work as well.

Danu Poyner: 57:54

And was that how you experienced doing that article, was it a conscious sort of redrafting or re instantiation of all those reflections?

Lawrence Yeo: 58:04

No, it wasn't. I wasn't looking at the reflections and bringing them in and stuff. A lot of my stories, they they're not so methodical like that. They're just more so, like, I've written already about all these different things and it was like this understanding that, okay, now it's time to really take my time with presenting this. And I'm gonna include a bunch of drawings. if you look at my reflections, there's maybe like one drawing per piece, which is like the cover, the very first one. But with like the things in my archive, a lot of'em, uh, have like over 10 illustrations. I think the arc of the practical creator probably had like 50. The thing that I also know is that like when I tell myself, okay, this is one where I'm gonna do a lot of illustrations. Sometimes just coming into the piece with that in mind makes it a story to me. cause I know that there's gonna be many touch points here, and I go over this in much detail in my storytelling course where it's like when you visualize ideas, it's a huge, huge asset for storytelling. Just being able to say, all right, let's take a pause here. Here's a graph that just reflects what I just told you. that is such a powerful tool, and then knowing like when to place them and which ideas to do that off of is huge. Sometimes I will also just start with a graph of an idea. I think the arc of the practical creator started off as the graph, and the arc there. And then I was like, Ooh, there's a whole story here that I can write just purely by walking the reader through these three stages. Given that I've written so much about creativity and money before this, I could find ways to weave that in. it wasn't like this conscious building block thing. It was just kind of this thing that it had floating in the background that allowed me to draft that piece.

Danu Poyner: 59:53

I'm really struck again by the way, that you are able to be patient and methodical and intentional about the way you go about constructing your work and also constructing your life around being able to do that work. That's a quality that's in short supply. And a A lot of us feel rushed and hustled and like we need to be making it bigger all of the time. But I get the sense that more to that' is not that kind of project for you. I'm curious a, when you knew it was gonna work and what that meant to you, and then also what kind of future you're stretching towards with it.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:00:29

Yeah, very good question. so'more of that' had this interesting trajectory where the very first piece I published, for lack of a better word, it went viral and like that travel is no cure for the mind' has been read, I think over a million times by now. So it was a very, very popular post. From, almost from the moment I published it. And then that year I just published only like eight more pieces. I wasn't trying to be like, I gotta capitalize on this and then just like, put out content after content while I have this attention. I think it was a sense of just knowing that like, this is gonna be a long game and whenever I decide to make this my full-time thing, it's not because the numbers in my bank account are telling me that it is. It's because there is a sense that if I just keep doing what I'm doing, I'll be okay because I also have understood that I just really love doing this. When it comes to the question of when did I know it was gonna work, I'm smiling because I didn't really know if it was gonna work, like from a purely rational perspective. I quit my job in January of 2019, about nine months after the first piece was published, I was not making much money from'more to that'. That wasn't the reason why I quit. The real reason I quit was so that my wife and I could go to Korea to spend six months with my family. Family as I mentioned earlier, is such a huge source of meaning in my life. That's gonna take precedence. And knowing that I spent years working in finance, and building up wealth in that regard and being like, okay, like I know what this is for, this is to do what I want to do. So yeah, it's like the real reason I left my job was to be with my family,'cause my job wasn't gonna let me work remote. So I was like, all right, later. and it was there where I was still, uncertain where this whole thing was going. And it's not like I was working on'more of that' diligently there because I was there with my family. there was this sense that I still enjoyed working on these pieces.'cause whenever I would have spare time, I would work on it and work on it, and work on it. And then Covid hit and then I was like, I don't know what I'm doing here, but it was once again, that commitment to storytelling. I was Even if the numbers weren't doing anything crazy, there I felt that growth within me. And I think I also coupled that with the confidence in myself that like, Hey, if this doesn't work out, I'll find something else. That's the practicality element there too, is that like, yes, have confidence in your ability to create great work as a creator, but it's also good to have the confidence that you have some other skill sets and that you have some other abilities independent of this, where you'll be fine and in a paradoxical way, the confidence to be able to do things that are not your creative endeavor actually allows you to put more attention into your creative endeavor, because it frees up your worries about that. I think that's another thing to internalize. I think knowing that it's like, okay, I could make this work. And the other really crucial thing, more creators I think should talk about is their partners. And my wife, she was the one that's telling me to quit my job before I wanted to quit it. Right? Because she's just like, this thing is great for you. This makes you light up, like, spend more of your time doing this. But I'm like, ah, the numbers aren't right yet. Like, I gotta, I gotta have this much stay before I do it. My wife is also a very, very creative person. She's an educator and uses creativity as a vehicle for people to know who they are really. And she sees the value of what I'm doing. So she always encouraged me and knowing that you have a partner you can do this with, like, you understand the importance of one another's endeavors independent of the money and so forth. I have a piece called,'Why We Doubt Ourselves,' which was written for myself to read whenever I doubt myself again. I tell her like, uh, I don't know. I don't know. And then she just says, you're capable, and that kind of points back to what you were saying, sometimes encouragement is all that's needed.

Danu Poyner: 1:04:41

Yeah, thank you for mentioning that, the people we have around us, are so important to the sense of security and confidence that we have as being able to get to the starting gate of following our inner compass. Sometimes I think that can have a huge impact on how far we're able to get with that journey. Confidence overall is such a theme of this conversation. I'm just really admiring of the way again, you're able to go about constructing a kind of holistic life of, many pursuits that are all mutually rewarding and reinforcing and allow you to pursue meaning and design for that nostalgia you can look back on later. Is it kind of working out for you?

Lawrence Yeo: 1:05:22

Yeah, I mean, what's funny with the nostalgia stuff too is that I posted recently that what I realized after being in Korea for two months and like I wasn't really online, I was just like, The moments I'll have nostalgia for are the moments where I'm not on the screen. There's this paradox here where it's like I create things online, but the things that I really remember are the ways that my daughter danced with my parents and the nice drive for my parents' place back to our Airbnb every night. These are the moments of nostalgia. So when you think about that, it's like you want a life that overflows the nostalgia and understanding that even if your work is online, like those things come from the experiences that you're kind of offline in a certain sense and knowing that is pretty liberating because also you don't take this thing like so seriously. Of course, I tip off this balance of clarity but like, you were saying, it's like when there are people around you, the people that you'll experience nostalgia for, that are encouraging you, that whatever path you're on is okay and that you're capable. I think you also understand that the inner compass is not a solitary endeavor. It sounds like an isolationist thing and it's localized to you, but it's really calibrated through the hands of many people and It's never just done in isolation. What you really want to cherish are those people that have kind of helped you calibrate that and not necessarily through the validation from random people you may not know. but at the same time, like that also has tremendous value too because people care about your ideas, people care about your thoughts. that's a pretty mind blowing thing. I think overall my theme is generally just like gratitude, and like just being very grateful for just all pieces of, of the puzzle.

Danu Poyner: 1:07:15

I really like nostalgia as a filter, for just thinking about things. It's like people say, no one dies wishing they'd spent more time at the office. So it's, It is liberating. When we're talking about this emphasis on reframing and mindset and storytelling, and this murky business of shifting identities and modes of expression and finding what's central in that. It's all very relevant to the people I talk to all the time, who aren't able to bucket themselves and don't want to fit into neat classifications, but do go around in sort of quiet fear of being asked,'so what do you do?' So this word that I have, grokkist, kind of encapsulates this way of being, of leading with curiosity and following your enthusiasm. And, I just wanted to ask you if if it's an idea that resonates with you at all, and then how you would map it back to some of the things that you think about if so.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:08:07

Real quick, I have to ask, what's the etymology of

Danu Poyner: 1:08:10

Yeah. grok is, a word that came from a science fiction novel, A Stranger in a Strange Land, which is about a human who grows up on Mars and comes back to Earth. And sometimes it takes an alien to help us understand what it means to be really human. to grok means to understand something intuitively, deeply, to be one with it. It also means to drink. But I sort of constructed as grokkist as someone who, that's their way of being, is to be in the world as someone who is constantly having a thirst for learning and understanding and, and drinking things up that way.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:08:51

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I asked about the etymology of that word. it's a great way to describe someone because you know, that's an interesting thing you mentioned about you, you're so certain that you wanna continues to be learning and follow your curiosity, but there's like this nascent fear of someone asking you, what do you do? Because it's such a difficult thing to phrase and this is something that I come across too. I, I do so many things, but I guess I'm a writer. And then it's like, well, oh, what kind of stuff do you write? And then I'm just like, uh, I dunno how, how exactly to answer this. Like, every time. so if anything, I would say that fear that you have of that particular question is actually like a good thing in the sense of it means that you're doing something that is so unique, like the things that you grok right? the The unique threads of everything that you pull together is gonna result in some sort of like mishmash of a spool or whatever, like you were talking about earlier, that is so specific to you. And like it's really hard to describe the end result to anybody really. if anything, your inability to answer that question is probably your greatest asset as a creator. That's why I think that it's something to be quite proud of and to understand that like, yeah. I don't have any neat way of saying what I'm curious about or interested in is something to lean into instead of push away.

Danu Poyner: 1:10:23

Yeah, thank you. I'm really glad you put it that way, particularly given how much we've talked about confidence, because there's such an internal struggle about those things. Now I'm at this stage in my own journey where I'm just leaving the full-time, work that's been sustaining me and throwing myself into what I'm doing with Grokkist more and more. And I find I still negotiate that fear, and I do it from a place of confidence of knowing myself in that introspective way and having had some external validation and prestige in other parts of my life, but not from this. so I draw on that sense of confidence, but I try and hold onto the uncertainty as well, because, I'm having to write a lot of bios at the moment, and when you are able to nail down your own self story in a sentence, it's good, but it's also frozen in time then, and you've already moved on as a person from what that moment in time was. So being able to sit with that uncertainty and that fear is, is helpful. I think.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:11:24

Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. your ability to be grateful for uncertainty is huge. because our natural inclination, like I was saying, is to fear it, but if you're able to reframe it and it's like, damn, if everything was so certain and predictable, why did I leave my job? Which probably had way more predictability than this.

Danu Poyner: 1:11:49

It's interesting as well, like. When I write, sometimes I hold myself back a little bit and most of the feedback I get is about not going far enough with leaning into the uncertainty.'cause I, I try and, you know, make myself acceptable, and understood to people who are not necessarily who I wanna be understood by. I don't know why I'm telling you this, but it's just something that came up for me when you said that.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:12:17

I have a piece called the problem of what others think, and I started off with a Seneca quote that says, it is the height of madness to be despised by the despicable. And it reminded me of what you just said. Yeah, why do I try to be understood by people that won't understand me?

Danu Poyner: 1:12:32

We'll put a lot of links to stuff on your site, in the notes. Is there anything you would direct people to in particular, to have a look at if they wanted to step inside your world a little bit more?

Lawrence Yeo: 1:12:43

Yeah, I guess thinking in stories, because I talked about storytelling, so I have, uh, thinking in stories.com site. I think that those would be good resources to point people to.

Danu Poyner: 1:12:53

The last question I have for you is the question I ask everyone who comes on the podcast, which is, if you could gift someone a life-changing learning experience, what would it be and why?

Lawrence Yeo: 1:13:05

Yeah. On a side note, I saw this question on your list of questions, and I was like, huh. Such a hard question, but which makes it good. It's good. It's, it's one of those, you've actually had a couple questions here where I was like, huh. I like that. that one's, uh, one I haven't really thought about. Life changing, uh, learning experience. Okay. I think the best way to learn about yourself is just take regular moments, and let's say we completely condense into a learning experience where it's over one week. And you just write out all your thoughts, We can start with your beliefs, your beliefs about yourself, um, your beliefs about your relationship to work, relationship to money, your relationship to your family, everything. And then underneath each one, ask, why? Why do you have this belief? Why do you think this? Why do you think that? When people journal, most people talk about the what's of life. Like, what did I do today? What did I experience, what did I accomplish? But the far more powerful thing to this journal about is the why. why did you accomplish that? Why did you want to accomplish that? journaling about the whys will reveal more about yourself than any what ever can. if people did this regularly, there would be just enormous change in the world. If people understood their motivations and understood their intentions, and took a closer look at why they believe the things they believe, knowing that so much of it has been instilled by conditioning and norms. I don't know. I don't know what the world would look like, but think it would look a lot different than what it looks like now a more positive direction. if I had the opportunity to gift someone that, I would just say, Hey, yeah, for the next few days, what if you just dropped everything and did that and you actually just really took your time with that, because I think that it could very much change your life.

Danu Poyner: 1:15:04

Yeah. I, I really like that answer. You talked about, reflection as a precursor to action before, and it seems like Inventorying your beliefs is a good precursor to reframing them, as well because just the act of putting them all on the table, you can go, huh, where did these come? I can sift through them now and see, is this working for me? Because the belief is also, it's an anchor and an anchor can weigh you down and might keep you safe in one part of your life, but might be causing you suffering in another. So, I really like that answer. You can just inventory your attachments and beliefs and, see what you wanna do with them all from there.

Lawrence Yeo: 1:15:45

Yeah beliefs surface only when circumstances make them surface. you're not thinking about everything that you believe, but if you actually write them all down, you'll be like, wow, there's a lot here and a lot for me to reflect upon.

Danu Poyner: 1:15:57

Thank you very much for making the time to speak to me today, Lawrence, and being a fantastic conversation partner and, reminding me of the importance of being in joyful service to the invisible conversation partners that we're addressing in our various creative efforts. Is there anything that we have not talked about that you want to cover before we wrap up?

Lawrence Yeo: 1:16:21

Um, no, I think we've covered a lot of ground here and just likewise, Danu, it was just really nice to talk to you, Danu and learn more about Grokkist and so forth. So Thanks for having me on.