A Mason's Work

[00:00] so what's your favorite color go ahead answer it you probably did that in like an instant
[00:11] didn't you maybe you've been saying the exact same color since third grade
[00:19] here's the thing right maybe that's still true maybe blue still is your favorite color
[00:27] uh at you know in your 40s but when did you last check when did you hold up
[00:36] something silly like your favorite color up to the plum and see if it still fits
[00:45] or are you just repeating something that like the 12 year old version of yourself actually i don't
[00:52] even how old you are in third grade but you get the idea the the younger version of yourself
[00:57] like committed you to as this thing and now before you know it everything in your house
[01:05] is this one shade of blue like color doesn't matter much but it's the same concept these little
[01:13] preferences that get codified into the edifice the structure of our life one of these things that we
[01:24] do to ourselves that end up creating prisons for future versions of ourself
[01:33] my my mom had uh this brief but uh now forever uh entrenched preference for like chicken art
[01:49] in the kitchen and so everything had chickens on the dish towels and the salt and pepper shakers
[01:58] and the serving utensils all had little chickens which when she had the preference felt great but now as her
[02:13] interest in chickens as an aesthetic has waned she's got all this chicken stuff all taunting her from the
[02:24] various places in the kitchen we do this to ourselves all the time we create these codified structures these
[02:33] preferences uh be it our favorite music or our uh idea that we're good at a thing or bad at a thing
[02:43] i'm horrible at math when's the last time you check that out with your plum when we look at the level
[02:52] and look over time we create these relationships with our preferences with our ideas with our concepts about
[03:01] ourself uh and a lot of those historical concepts that we created so very long ago
[03:07] become the shackles in our present moment and we never test them for the future you may not be great
[03:16] at riding a bike but you're never going to try if you continue thinking you're never going to be great
[03:23] and riding a bike
[03:25] i have a process that i follow for these kinds of things it's easy to start in a place like food
[03:35] or unless you've got challenges with that it might be easier for you to start in a place like
[03:41] reading or something like that or some other downtime kind of activity i try a food that i used to hate
[03:51] or that i think i don't like every three or four years just to check sometimes nothing changes and i
[04:00] still don't like them i am really having a hard time with beats like i've only recently got to a point
[04:10] where i can even perform the test and taste it and see if i can tolerate them yet
[04:17] but other times like kombucha or uh for me it was guinness um i hated that stuff when i was very
[04:28] very young but if i didn't retest it every couple years uh i would have missed this opportunity
[04:35] to find some of the things that i really really now enjoy because the version of me that
[04:43] was dealing with other stuff kind of created this preference and if i don't test it i'll never know
[04:53] sometimes this plum test that you can do to see if these things are still true
[05:02] is something that will help you create better outcomes in your future we're not looking for
[05:09] this huge overhaul of every preference in your life this week's all about these little quick hits that
[05:16] you can do to take these tools that we've been given and try and find just a little bit more
[05:22] space a little bit more room to breathe and some of the ways that we trap ourselves into these
[05:29] kind of troubles is these preferences getting codified into chains so try something old
[05:39] try something that maybe uh you used to think i can't really do that or i'm not good at it
[05:47] you might find that you have a love for languages you didn't know you had you have a love for music
[05:52] or something that you uh or a different preferential style uh go through some of these things over the
[06:00] next couple of days and see if you can find something maybe new that's old
[06:05] you
[06:07] you