Praxis
The podcast where practice makes purpose…
Praxis
The Practice of…Practice
Welcome to Praxis! In this very first episode, I share why I’m launching this podcast and what you can expect in the episodes to come. I’ve always been fascinated by the practices people commit to—whether physical, mental, or spiritual—that help them find purpose and transformation in their lives.
To frame our conversations, I introduce The Hero’s Journey—a timeless storytelling structure that reflects the challenges, growth, and breakthroughs we all experience. I’ll be using this as a lens to guide my questions with future guests, uncovering the struggles they’ve faced, the wisdom they’ve gained, and the practices that keep them grounded.
Whether you’re searching for inspiration, refining your own daily rituals, or simply curious about how others navigate their personal journeys, this podcast is for you. Join me as we explore the power of practice and transformation.
Subscribe and stay tuned for upcoming conversations with guests from all walks of life!
Welcome to Praxis, the podcast where practice makes purpose. I'm Mikey and I'll be interviewing people about the practices that reveal and create purpose in their lives. Welcome to episode one, the practice of practice. My name is Mikey and I thought in this first episode I would introduce myself, kind of lay the foundations of the purpose of this podcast, define parameters about what I mean by practice and introduce you to a bit about me. It's interesting that I've actually been putting off recording this episode for the past week or so because I was hoping that would be perfect and I would get the editing perfect. No issues with sound. I would be an instant star, user of GarageBand or whatever it is. I would know how to edit, I would know how to do all the wizardry that goes into making a really successful podcast. But you know, I just need to sit down and do it and I think that probably, in a nutshell, is what my podcast is going to be about.
Speaker 1:I want to explore what practice is in people's lives, why they do it. You know what is the point of practicing something, what it brings them, does it change their worldview? Does it connect them to something greater, something deeper? So what do I mean by practice, so a dedicated activity that allows you to develop some sense of deep satisfaction and hopefully leads to mastery. For me, a practice allows depth and it allows a sense of achievement over time, a sense of achievement over time. So this could be a musical practice, writing something to do with physical activity, it could be intellectual, it could be community-based, it really could be anything that you dedicate time to and you don't do it just when it feels good, and I think this is what separates a practice from a hobby. So you know, for example, other morning I do Wordle on the New York Times app and I do connections, but that's not a practice. It's everything done with in well, sometimes a few minutes, but there's no sense of mastery there. It doesn't lead me to anything greater, it doesn't give me a sense of purpose. I enjoy it, but I would not count that as a practice. For me, a practice also contains fundamentals that you return to all the time. So, for example, if you are a piano player, you will never stop playing scales to warm up, you will never go over the fundamentals of notes, of notation, all the stuff that goes into being a really great piano player.
Speaker 1:Now these practices could also be spiritual and I want to talk about my own personal practice, which is meditation. So I've meditated pretty regularly for about 20 years, ever since I was about 18 or 19. And some years I'm better than others, some days I'm better than others, but I always return to it because I feel like it's worthwhile. It's something that I invest my time into. I read about it, I listen to podcasts about it and I always think there's another layer deeper. You know, I don't ever complete meditation. I don't get a certificate at the end of a 12-week course and I'm like yeah, that's me, I am a master meditator, I've got nothing else to learn.
Speaker 1:Meditation is a practice that I return to pretty much every day not all days, pretty much every day and it gives me a sense of purpose. It helps me to know myself in a way that other things might not. So, for example, I really enjoy going for runs. I've run a couple of marathons and I do put a lot of time into running, into training, but for me that's not a practice, because it doesn't really connect me to anything greater. It doesn't connect me to anything deeper about myself. Okay, it could challenge my boundaries, it could challenge my physical prowess and for some people running is their practice and hopefully I will interview some runners in the future. But I return to meditation every day because I know that it is really good for me and I know it's a practice and not a hobby, because I do it even when it doesn't feel good, even when I don't want to do it.
Speaker 1:I think in our society you know Western society we always look for the quick fix. We're always looking for the magic pill that will solve our problems. You know, sometimes that's a good thing, but we really want instant gratification and a practice does not let you have that. When I meditate, sometimes it is painful, physically painful Sometimes. I, you know, sometimes I get a dead leg, sometimes my leg goes to sleep. Mentally it can be challenging, but over time I have gotten better at it. Over time my mind has settled and I know it's worth it. You know, people often assume that meditators are in this kind of spaced out bliss state, like I don't know Avatar Last Airbender when he goes into Avatar state, whatever it is. But that's just not true. That's what you see on the outside, but on the inside, you know, I'm trying to remove distractions from my thoughts, I'm trying to detach myself from my thoughts, and it is something that takes time, it takes effort, and I don't do it just when I want to. I set aside 20 minutes a day, first thing in the morning to do it. It's part of my regular schedule and that's the sort of practice that I'm going to be looking at with other people, people who have dedicated years to developing mastery in a practice.
Speaker 1:Now I want to introduce you to something called the hero's journey. If you're familiar with this great, if not, that's fine too, because it's something that I want to hinge my questions on the structure of my interviews. Because, again, this is something that I'm fascinated by, and once you know a little bit about the hero's journey, you will spot it all over the place. So, essentially, the hero's journey is the mono or meta myth, and there was a writer, joseph Campbell, who wrote a book called the Hero with a Thousand Faces, and his theory was that all stories that we tell, whether that's oral history, whether that's film, books, TV shows, whatever it is, all stories essentially have the same pattern. Right Now I'll give you a very brief kind of overview of that pattern and then I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:So the hero's journey we start with the hero, often male, but not always. We start off with the hero in the ordinary world it's called, where daily life is kind of predictable and you know what's going to happen one day to the next, one day to the next. Then you get the call to adventure, which is an event or a sign that sparks something in the hero that they want to go for something greater. This leads them to crossing the threshold where they have to leave their home, their comfort, their comfort zone. They have to leave all that they've ever known behind. Comfort zone, they have to leave all that they've ever known behind. And along the way they will meet allies, so friends, helpers. They will often meet a mentor who is older and wiser. They will often gain some sort of weapon or tool or power to help them and they go through a series of trials that will test their abilities as a hero. They will then have something called the dark night of the soul, where they are defeated initially by the bad guy and they have to do a lot of soul searching. They have to figure out who they really really are. And when they've cracked that, when they've unlocked their true self, their true purpose, that when they've unlocked their true self, their true purpose. Then they go on to defeat the bad guy. They get the girl. Then they go home, back to the ordinary world, but as something greater, more evolved, more enlightened.
Speaker 1:Now that's a very brief overview, but once you know that pattern, you will see it in so many films. You'll see it in things like the Lion King, star Wars, harry Potter, even the Bible, and there are common themes like the hero having a tense or absent relationship with their father figure, for example. So if I look at one example of a story which is super serious and, you know, very highbrow the Lion King movie. So we start with Simba in the ordinary world, at Pride Rock, and then the call to adventure is his dad showing him kind of the elephant cemetery. His father dies as well.
Speaker 1:Again, again, a tense relationship with the father. Then he has to leave. He goes away, he's um. He departs pride rock. He goes and lives with tamerman and poomba um. He grows, discovers who he is, has a dark night of the soul with rafiki, where he talks to his dead father in the sky, mufasa, who gives him all this advice. Then eventually he returns to his dead father in the sky, mufasa, who gives him all this advice. Then eventually he returns to Pride Rock, defeats the bad guy, gets the girl Nala, and then they go back to Pride Rock and the cycle begins again when they have a child.
Speaker 1:Now that's a very, very quick, brief overview, but you'll see the pattern in so many stories and the point I'm trying to make this quite long-winded point is that we are the hero in our own lives. Now, a couple of years ago there was a bit of a meme about being or having main character energy. Now it's not really about that, because I think that kind of diminishes the role of other people in our lives, and obviously other people family, friends, mentors, colleagues or strangers are essential to our lives. This is slightly different. It means that we all have our own personal journey to go through and for those people who engage in a practice whether that's art, yoga, music, long distance running, community organisation, activism, writing, whatever it happens to be there will be common threads of this going throughout. So that is an introduction to my podcast. I hope you stick with me. I've lined up some really great guests over the next few weeks and I'm excited to see where this goes.