Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Are Your Quirks Pointing You to Your Joy?
Something has been nagging Ang. She just couldn’t let go of a listener's question from The Besties’ live guest spot on Dr. Kimani Norrington-Sands' @liftingasweclimbconsulting; “How do you know what your joy is?” A spark of insight surfaced during her Morning Writing and, of course, she took it to her bestie, Les.
Most people have felt at some point that they don’t quite fit in; do you tend to see a bigger goal or wonder why risks are ignored when it’s an obviously bad decision? The feeling has a consistent thread across various groups (family, friends, or colleagues, etc), time, or circumstances. Well, Ang thinks that it’s more of a knowing than a feeling, and that it may be a clue to where your joy is. As always, Les is willing to indulge her pal’s hypothesis.
In their signature style of mixing humor with insight, The Besties discuss the possibility that the feeling may be a gateway to uncovering what truly brings you joy. This episode is a celebration of the quirky and unique aspects of who you are.
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So what you said is you know, when you find, when you believe that you are the odd person or the weird one in a group of people and you used the hospital lounge in my example of a group of doctors yeah, she said that weirdness about you may be where your joy is be where your joy is.
Speaker 2:Hi there, this is Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. I'm Angela and and I'm Leslie. That's my bestie, leslie. We are two free-thinking 60-something year old women and we encourage you, we invite you to think deeply and act boldly. If you are an inquisitive older woman, or if you love one, or if you want to become one, please hang with us. You'll be glad you did. You'll be glad you did. Okay, I'm being silly right now, but listen. So Leslie and I were just talking about this.
Speaker 2:Just having one of Angie and Leslie typical weird. Anyone else who walks in the room would think what the hell are they talking about?
Speaker 1:And it's so odd that, yeah, this is a weird conversation and I said listen.
Speaker 2:I'm hanging in there.
Speaker 1:I'm like thinking about it, I'm like OK. In other words, this is so good. I should have just said get out of here.
Speaker 2:This is so good. This is so good because, as I was explaining this, which I'll tell you in a minute as I was explaining it to Leslie, you know, when you know someone else so well that I'm like, if I look at her, she's going to be so confused, and I was thinking to myself should I stop?
Speaker 1:I was down in the chair kind of listening and when she looked up I said so what now?
Speaker 2:And I was like I was thinking to myself, I wasn't looking at her, I was thinking to myself I should stop right now and check in, cause she is not, she is not tracking. And I was like she's not tracking. And then, almost a second later, she said what would you say now? What are you talking about? Ok, so here's what I shared with Leslie. Ok, I have been going to walking to the coffee shop in my neighborhood every day this week so far. Neighborhood every day this week so far. And a few times I actually recorded because something came up when I was doing my morning writing and I wanted to share it. And I've been talking about walking in joy because I walked to the coffee shop and this is where I do my recordings. So this morning what came up when I was writing?
Speaker 2:One of the things is that the thing that makes you feel weird, like either you don't fit in the group that you're in and it could be a group, it could be several groups.
Speaker 2:It could be your family, whatever group that is, your church, your friend group, whatever it is, and your friend group could be your high school friends, or it could be your college friends, or it could be your new friends, whatever that you are absolutely already aware of. That makes you feel like, oh, I don't quite fit. There's something about me and this group and I'm kind of the weird one in the group, somehow something. And I'll tell you what one of those things is for me. And you know, as I'm thinking about it, where this thought may have come from is when we were on Dr Kimani's Dr Kimani Norrington-Sands we were, we did a live with her a few days ago it's probably over a week now and one of the things that came up is people not knowing where their joy is, like people not being able to identify. You know she'll ask what, what, what brings you joy? And they can't answer it.
Speaker 2:And so I've been thinking about that and so I've been thinking about that and I realized that that's probably more often more common than not. And then I was thinking about well, how did I come to know what it was, and how do I kind of know, when at least I'm scratching at it?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:And that's what hit me when I was writing. It's when it's the thing that makes you different. Either you think you're, you're, you're different, or people tell you that you're, you're different and I can't really say more than that because it's so kind of it's such an individual thing. But I'll tell you a little bit about one of mine, and I say one because it's not, it's, it's not only one thing for me, there's not only one thing that makes me weird, but let me put the sentence together about how you said it and how it hit me.
Speaker 1:So I responded the way I did.
Speaker 2:Okay, with what you're talking about, ann but then right after you said what you talk, what you're talking, I started synthesizing it yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I did because you know I go with you.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna ride or die and you said what you said. I said, I think I get it.
Speaker 1:I think I get it, I get it, I think I get it, you see, you put me on the crazy train and then I just go along and then now all of a sudden, I'm the conductor of the crazy train. Jeez, okay, go. So what you said is you know, when you find, when you believe that you are the odd person or the weird one in a group of people and you used the hospital lounge in my example of a group of doctors yeah, she said that weirdness about you may be where your joy is.
Speaker 2:That's what I said. That's what I said, and why did you start saying Wait a minute? Said that's what I said and why did you start saying wait a minute?
Speaker 1:you may be right about that well, what I believe is that at 62 years old, if I'm in a setting where I think I don't exactly fit or there's something weird about me not the group, but it's me I'm intelligent enough and certainly adaptable enough that if I felt that it was worth changing and altering to be more cohesive and fit more in that group, I would have changed already. Ah, okay, and what I'm thinking is the fact that I am holding on to this weirdness or these quirkiness about myself is because there is some gain, perhaps a place of joy or a seed of joy or fulfillment.
Speaker 2:Or you can't do anything about it because that's who you are. You couldn't change it if you wanted to.
Speaker 1:Right, but we're speaking specifically about joy.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, yes, and, and, yes, and you know. For me, your joy comes from knowing who you are, what your gifts are and knowing what your needs are.
Speaker 1:And not feeling pressure to get rid of them or change them exactly using your gifts and getting your needs met.
Speaker 2:So it is one in the same. It is one in the same. And when you just said that, the reason why I said, well, maybe this is just who you are, it's because that is, that is your natural way of being, so you couldn't change it if you wanted to and the more that you know what, yeah, the more that you know what that is but even if, even if you try but that's kind of why I call it kind of this weird thing, because you've been trying all this time to not be like that- because you know it's weird.
Speaker 1:You know it's weird, you know, you know, there's this term called. Now I'll get a little technical. Do you know that term regression toward the mean?
Speaker 2:Of course, you do I almost can see the picture of it, because it's a graph, right, I guess it could be a mathematical term.
Speaker 1:I think, I believe, because we're talking about a mean. It's absolutely a mathematical term, I think. I believe, because we're talking about a mean. It's absolutely a mathematical term. So what it really means is that entities try to fit into the average. You know, the outliers are not comfortable being outliers. Yeah, that is a bell curve. Let's not get too technical. We don't want to drive nobody away.
Speaker 2:It is a bell curve. That is where they fit and where they don't. Yep, so right.
Speaker 1:So it's almost like this set point yeah, and, and so many systems have it weight hazard, metabolism and all of this stuff there's a set point that when you deviate and when you move away from it, everything tries to pull you back. So, yeah, yeah, like like you were saying, perhaps you cannot make that change.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you what is so cool that you just talked about a system, because one of the weird things about me is that I think, in terms of systems, I'm a system thinker, I'm a system thinker. And that has a lot of different. That has some. There's a kind of dictionary meaning of that. I'll just kind of do the Angela meaning of it, right.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:I think, in terms of the whole. I think how do these things fit together? What affects what? What are the inputs, what are the outputs? What's the kind of store inside the store Meaning? What is the whatever, the money, the water, the thing that is inside the system that gets affected by input, outputs, whatever right, feedbacks and all. I not only think that way, but my ways of kind of making sense of the world I can. There are a lot of models that are used in systems design designs, than in quadrants or than in kind of these much more typical ones. Let me, let me click down, let me double click to try to make it a little simpler.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make it clearer.
Speaker 2:Okay, as best as I can. So actually, this came up when I was talking to my therapist a few months ago and we just started going into this thing. So you know, we know about a pie, right we how we use that, that, um, that that a pie is analogous to. There's a whole, there's a sum of these parts yeah, the distribution. Right and that you know if you, if you take something out of the pie, there's there are fewer left in the pie.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:There were eight pieces and now there's seven. If you take one out, blah, blah, blah, right, what I mean? There were eight pieces and now there's seven. If you take one out, blah, blah, blah, right.
Speaker 2:But we were describing something and the pie couldn't contain everything that I was trying to describe, and so when I started to use the pie but I said oh, oh well, but that's like having like blueberries and and and strawberries on the pie, right, or that's like having, and I forget what we were describing, but my point is that I keep it was impossible for me to stay bound in this very kind of standard pie thing. Yeah, I needed more to describe what was going on in my head when you see systems designed.
Speaker 2:there are these really weird, uncommon graphical depictions of systems that are very different than the, are very different than the quadrant, the curves and so on that we typically see. Yeah, let me say it a different way. This may help too. My thinking is more in line with a poem than it is with a, just a narrative. That's not helping. I'm getting cold. No sadly. I think, I think in pictures, I think in pictures, and then I translate the image that I see into words.
Speaker 1:Ok, OK, that's clear. Yet, yes, you leave room for in, for adding pictures and taking away, and then within that model you also group things different differently at different times, so it could have one grouping. You see why.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:All of you guys see what I have to go through for 47 years.
Speaker 2:So, so, so, so what I did right? So take it home. Systems thinking. I was thinking about that the other day because I was trying to understand some concepts that were in my head and I'm like you know if I had more experience with the discipline of systems thinking. There's an actual, you know, people study it and you know.
Speaker 1:Yes, we had an expert on our guest.
Speaker 2:Yes, that was right, change management that is a type of system. Okay, absolutely. And I was thinking, man, if I got some more knowledge about how some of these systems diagrams could be developed, I could probably translate some of what I was thinking into these systems diagrams and be able to understand it myself more, maybe to be able to explain it more, and things like that. And so that was the weird thing about me that I've always known. As soon as I've always known, I've had this kind of weird way of thinking about things. I'm saying we're, in the best way possible, different, unique, all of those things. And when I learned about systems and systems thinking and systems design, maybe two decades ago, I knew that. That spoke to me, I knew it. I knew it, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then when I was coming home from Virginia a week and a half ago, it was was a four hour drive and I was like, oh well, let me get an audio book and learn a little bit more about systems design. And so I found a book on, you know, audible and I listened to it and it was so helpful. It was so helpful and joy again, it's a deep well of fulfillment. This is not a happy, spiky thing, it's a deep well of fulfillment, and when I spent a little time understanding some more about systems design, it felt so good. It made me feel less weird, um and I'm going to change that language a little bit it made me feel like I make sense, because this thing is study the world over, this thing.
Speaker 2:Right, that's what I was thinking that there is in fact an audio book that's accessible that you can pull up and learn more about this in a formal way like a primer these systems are used to describe um, um, famine and um and why renewable energy works or doesn't work. It's used to understand any kind of financial systems, economies it's used in all kinds of ways. Global warming it's used in all kinds of ways. And so to kind of see myself in something that totally gets me, Mm, hmm. I got some joy from that.
Speaker 1:I got you know, yeah, that is, that's joyful.
Speaker 2:That's joyful, and so what I was saying in my recording my video today while I was walking to the coffee shop is that if you allow yourself to slow down and pay attention, because you know you'll be lying if you tell me that you don't know where you show up weird, leslie, I know where you show up weird because I know where you show up weird, all right.
Speaker 1:Where do I show up weird Must.
Speaker 2:I, you really want everybody to know. Everybody already knows. Okay, okay, you show up weird um a little nervous.
Speaker 1:I'm like listen, let me tell you why I'm nervous with with you disclosing this, because you make me share personal things before I'm ready to share personal things, and if you disclose something that I thought was still personal before I've been convinced, I'm going to come out there and get you.
Speaker 2:That's all I'm going to say. Where do I?
Speaker 1:show up weird.
Speaker 2:I think everybody's going to know you show weird, you really like a lot of structure. You really that's not weird To who?
Speaker 1:It's not weird at all.
Speaker 2:You really like a lot of structure. You, Okay, you really like a lot of structure, you okay. Like when we're watching, when we're even trying to decide what we're going to watch on TV, which is really rare that we, you know we don't want to spend our time together watching a show, right. But there've been a few times over the years, right, and if the characters are not, oh, oh, oh, don't do that time travel stuff don't do flashbacks and going back and forth.
Speaker 1:I don't like that. I don't follow it. I don't like it. I want a linear storyline. If they go back to their childhood, I won't recognize the characters. I'll say, like what is going on, turn this off. That's true. That's a true story. I'm like I watched an hour and a half Then they started going back. Turn it off. I'm like that for sure, absolutely. Oh my gosh, don't try to twist and turn my head. I was with you up until.
Speaker 2:She'll get a headache. If it gets too weird, you get a headache. And the other part of that is listen. If you're a good guy, be a good guy. If you're a bad guy, be a bad guy, don't make it.
Speaker 1:Don't start getting all. Yeah, yeah, psychological.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no, don't do that, Don't pull me in, and then you're evil, I'm not, I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it. And so so I tend to like really quirky, like indie films that you know, where they're very complicated characters and so on and so forth. That's not this one, that's not so. To me that would be something that's quirky. Let me say quirky instead of weird. That would be something, um, quirky. And I think, if you kind of allowed yourself to, um, I'm gonna say, admit that, not not because it's you know again for anything but nothing like that.
Speaker 2:Identify it. How about that? Identify it. If you could and I'm going to push people because I think it's already something you know I would invite you to investigate it, to look at it, to pick it up and say, oh hello, you've been around for a while. I know you, you're a part of me. That's interesting, why are you a part of me? And just kind of scratch at it. It would indicate to you what are some of those things that bring you joy. That is the message.
Speaker 1:You know what I think is also. I'm going to let it sit right there, because that is the message. Yeah, that's good, punto. What I also think would be helpful in identifying some of those inner joy pockets when people are having difficulty with it is to have someone like you or someone who knows them and someone who is good at identifying similarities from disparate information.
Speaker 2:Right, right.
Speaker 1:You know it's a game I play every day, the New York Times Connections game. Are you familiar with it? You get 16 words and you have to find groups of four and put them together. So one of the things that you do for me is that you identify certain traits about me by watching what I look at on television, by listening to the things that I talk about, to commenting on relationships that I'm in or whatever you know, and then you say, well, you're this, this, this, this, this person.
Speaker 2:You know because I got it from all these places I'm like, okay, okay, yeah, it's, it's so the other. The other thing that I'll say that is so exciting to me about this systems way of looking at it is sometimes we think that so many things are random that there's no order to chaos. It's just kind of chaos, but even chaos has some rhyme or reason to it, Because even if it's the opposite of something, right, it's the it's. It's connected to order Disorders, connected to order order. Sure.
Speaker 1:It's a it's it's polar opposite exactly, there's a connection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So if you know what it's not then, then you know that it is something we won't get into that.
Speaker 1:I'm following you, but not everybody. It's a little Listen my people know me.
Speaker 2:My people know, but not just that they get it.
Speaker 1:This is a natural conversation that you and I have. We only press the record button, I think we need to get a life. We need to get a life.
Speaker 2:No, this is our life, baby, and I'm very happy with it, but it's 11 pm at night.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, and you know it's funny, I know.
Speaker 2:One of us has to be in the awards heaven.
Speaker 1:Not me In eight hours from now.
Speaker 2:Not me, and I'm sitting here talking to you about systems and Venn diagrams and this Speaking of Venn diagrams. No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:Omari told me something funny today. He was describing someone and he's like mom, you know how people say like, oh, you have these Venn diagrams. And where you meet in the middle, he says well, I heard something funny because someone said you're not a Venn diagram, you're the circle. You are it, you are the entire, you are the entirety of the thing, yeah.
Speaker 2:I thought that was cute. The entirety of the thing. Yeah, I thought that was cute. That is so like intellectual humor.
Speaker 1:It is, it really is. I'm glad that I could bring it to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, all right, les.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Les people think that we've lost our minds. We got to cut it.
Speaker 2:I'm okay with that. I'm a little cuckoo. Thank you for watching. We'll see you next time on Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn Ta-ta.
