Progress Over Perfection: Kinesthetic Mastery and Emotional Regulation

SPEAKER_00:
This is The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.

Mastery. It's the key to any growth journey. And the melody of learning to play an instrument offers us a remarkable stage to explore it. In today's episode, we dive into the intricate dance of progress, passion, and persistence. Uncovering how the neuroscience of adaptive learning strikes all the right chords. Through the lens of music mastery, we'll reveal how embracing failure, rewiring limiting beliefs, and tuning into flow states can orchestrate transformational growth. So strike up the band and prepare to compose a symphony of growth guided by insight and fueled by inspiration.

We're joined by actor, musician, and musical educator Patrick Boylan to learn a thing or two about mastery. Discover more when we return to The Light Inside. What do kinesthetic learning and personal mastery have in common, if not the ability to transform the tactile experience of striking piano keys into profound lessons about life's rhythm, resilience, and growth. We're joined today by Patrick Boyland, EdTech founder of Museflow, an educational startup designed to help musicians learn the piano. Thank you for joining us today.

Patrick, we're grateful to look at how fear influences our ability to learn. We know learning an instrument can be very intimidating and somewhat daunting, and fear being one of the number one factors to overcome. So we're excited to look at that today and how your app, Museflow, helps us learn to adapt, evolve, and overcome that fear as we learn an instrument, and how we can also apply those same principles throughout our lives.

SPEAKER_02: So thanks for joining us today. Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Yeah. Those are the biggest things. Those are the biggest barriers. And we try to combat that with a couple of different tactics that we'll get into.

SPEAKER_00: So we'll look at turning that fear into our friend rather than our foe. You know, so often we look at fear as something to run away or avoid, which inherently, from my perspective as a behavioral coach, tends to be one of the worst things we can do. because what do we do? We suppress, we avoid, we push that fear down, and then that creates all kinds of havoc in our emotional programming. So today we're gonna learn how to turn that fear into our friend to adopt a greater degree of adaptation, learning, growth, and mastery. So Patrick, if you would, give us a little bit of background on your history as a musician, an actor, and as an educator now, and how you're applying that to develop this new app called Museflow that allows us to learn the piano quicker.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I started off taking classic traditional piano lessons when I was around eight years old. I asked my parents, you know, hey, I want to take piano lessons. And they're like, you know, it's a lifelong hobby, Patrick, where you're going to need to stick with it. And I said, yes, absolutely, let's do it. And so got into it, realized very quickly, though, that that process didn't really work for me. The classic way that we learn an instrument is your teacher gives you a new skill, whether that's a new note or a new rhythm, and then says, OK, great, go apply that skill to one song that I give you to go home and practice to boredom. Repeat that over and over and over and then bring it back the next week to me and I'll stamp my approval on that. Right. And that didn't work for me. It was boring. I didn't enjoy the repetition of the same phrases over and over and over. No, no, no. It didn't work for my ADHD brain. It doesn't work for 85% of people out there. That's the drop off after high school of people playing instruments. The majority of people play instruments throughout their elementary, junior high and high school days. 85% drop off. And they cite because they didn't feel like they learned anything. They're bored by the process of learning and growing as a musician. and just they're not engaged with the process. That's really it. So boredom, engagement, and they don't feel like they're truly actually learning something, right? And so I'm like, okay, there must be a problem with the way that we learn. Not the way that humans learn, but the way that the system is set up for us to try to acquire those skills. So I took eight years of lessons. I hated every minute of it. My parents had to ground me because I didn't practice. And then at the end of those eight years, I flipped through, my teacher retired, No fault of my own. I was a terrible student, yes, but he just retired, right? And then I went to sheet music my parents had. I flipped through it. I found little phrases, little motifs that I really enjoyed. And I closed the book and then I just started improvising around those phrases, putting that specific phrase into different musical contexts, right? And I kept doing that over and over and over with all these different motifs, these different phrases that I really enjoyed. cut to college, I was the only acting major that knew how to play piano. And everybody just kept throwing music in front of me. And I could sight read those. I could play those at first sight. And I realized at that moment, I had been doing this sort of kinesthetic skill acquisition with the core building blocks of musical theater, the genre. And that's what everybody's throwing music in front of me with, you know, it's musical theater. And I'm like, that's nuts that I learned these patterns that pop up over and over and over and over. Right. In musical theater, I was learning it outside of the context of one specific song. Amazing. Cut to six years ago, I was an actor here in L.A. I'd done some really great roles. I was doing it for five years. doing some great TV, doing some great film, but the gaps between each role were too wide for me to find any sort of creative sustainment, creative fulfillment that was very sustaining. They kept rolling from one job to the next. No, I kept dipping in self-consciousness. My confidence was going all over the place. And it was such an up and down that I was like, no, I can't do it. These swaths of time between gigs were just so big. And I couldn't stand that after six years, after five, six years. My wife was like, why don't you go play piano? You're so good at it. Just go, go figure it out and try. And I was like, fine. And so three months after I committed to that, I had my first job. I was an afterschool accompanist at a school playing for musical theater classes. And then I got a couple of background jazz gigs here in LA playing for dinner service, you know, just playing their pianos that they have at restaurants. And then I got my piano bar. I now play at a piano bar in Hollywood. And that was, I was finally able to like quit my day job, which was, I was waiting tables and I was able to focus on piano and acting. And then it just popped into my head. What if there was a way to teach piano to the populace the way that I taught myself? So I was like, whoa, okay, let me think about that. And I kind of iterated on it and I'm like, well, the best way to do it would be if we want to acquire these skills, these core building blocks of music and how to play them. If we want to acquire those skills outside of the context of songs, then we've got to learn it through sight reading, the act of reading music at first sight. Otherwise, how are we going to deliver those skills to you, right? Okay, great. So we give you a new skill, a new rhythm, or a new note, whatever it may be. And then we give you music you've never seen before that never repeats. so that you just consistently, constantly are playing this flowing music that is always iterating and never staying the same and always changing. And then you have to get four phrases in a row at 95% accuracy at the goal tempo to pass that level. In my mind, I'm like, ostensibly you have learned that new skill at that point. If you can play four phrases of music, which are four measures long each, you can play those four of them in a row at 95% accuracy at the goal tempo, Yeah, great. I mean, that's it at a certain pace, right? And the pace is 72 beats per minute. That's what we've decided on. I'm like, great, you can you have ostensibly learned that new skill and then go apply it to songs. So we teach you the new skill outside of the context of songs first, and then you can go apply it to songs after the fact. It's a whole new way of learning. I love it. Brought it to my friend, Steven Gizzy, who is a music teacher. He's a piano teacher. And he's like, this is genius. I've literally thought about the same thing. But I thought about AI as the way that we generate the music because otherwise it's like not scalable, the idea. You need that infinitely generated music that can be so personalized to like how you're playing. We need that component. Because later down the road in Unit 2 and Unit 3, we're going to get so complicated. The music that we present to you, and for us to have written every phrase, which we have for Unit 1, but Unit 2 is going to be exponentially more phrases that we need. Because the vastness between difficulty within a level is going to be so big. We were like, well, we need AI. And so we're starting to actually work with that. We have a great guy who's working on the AI parts. He's already built a model that can generate music inside of the parameters that we need, specific notes, specific rhythms, all that stuff. So we're working on that. We're training that, building out unit two. We've got three like coders that are amazing. They're like friends of friends or like we've met them randomly. It was just so amazing how it all came together. And so we started building this about a year ago and we have 40 people that are using this and it's kind of humbly. revolutionizing the game.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that background with us. It's interesting to see how you're using gamification in variation to create that stimulation to keep learning.

SPEAKER_02: We think about it in terms of like we've captured and gamified that aha moment. That moment where you yourself recognize that you're actually learning something. Right. I don't know if you kind of can note those moments in your life, but I know I definitely can where I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it. Or, oh, my gosh, I'm actually doing it. I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it. And then boom, you pass that level. Massive dopamine hit and you move on to the next level. It's it's that easy. You know, we don't use like badges or stars or external motivators. We try to capture that internal motivation and that internal. Holy cow. I'm actually learning this. I'm actually enjoying it.

SPEAKER_00: As a closet musician, you know, I know often when I'm trying to learn a new piece or learn a new technique, I'll pick like a specific piece a lot of times and try to work on mastering that one piece. And it becomes very frustrating because you're so focused on perfectionism to try to adopt that specific piece and try to mirror it perfectly. What role did that kind of mentality and feedback play as you developed this in offering variation as a factor in learning?

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, progress, not perfection, right? You know, we hear that all over the place, and that's the case in martial arts. That's the case in any sport. It's all about just one foot in front of the other. Two steps forward, one step back. There's so many different sort of phrases that we can say that say the same thing, right? Progress, not perfection. Because if you focus on that perfection, that goal, that is very tangible, that is so outside of your reach, that's a problem. Because you're setting yourself up for failure. Right. At my piano bar. I am constantly messing up. Constantly! I'm not playing those songs perfectly. What is perfect? I literally sometimes only even have chords. Like little chord symbols. F, C, G, Ab. Like I literally only have those chord symbols and the lyrics. So I'm just making this stuff up on the fly, and I'm messing up constantly, flubbing notes, messing up rhythms. But as long as they're engaged, as long as the audience is still engaged with me, and they're having a great time, that's all that matters. That's all that matters at the end of the day. So that kind of ethos, progress, not perfection, we care deeply about the Montessori technique as well. The Montessori technique is all about praising progress, not perfection. Man, we noticed that was so hard for you. Well done, you overcame that. Not saying, well done, you played that perfectly. There's a difference. Our encouragement is focused on progress, not perfection. It's something that kills creativity. We care so deeply about that because I practiced that myself in my own life at the piano bar. you know, constantly messing up. And kids, we see kids these days, this is the biggest thing that I kind of wanted to talk with you about, it's like, we see kids these days that are entrenched in the traditional ways of learning, literally anything, that when they come across… Repetition and memorization, mostly. And they do it by rote, they don't actually learn the thing, they just learn the act of memorizing. Yeah, exactly. Which they're not learning the thing, you know? So we see it, though, whenever they get something wrong, they clam up. And so that sort of, that primary kind of feeling is a fear of failure that is influencing them clamming up and stopping all progress at that point. And then their hands get sweaty and their heart starts palpitating. That just ruins the entire cycle for them. They can't acquire any skills at that point. You're like, well, they're done. They're done. There's nothing you can do about that. So we care about progress over perfection at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00: Having gotten in and played around looking at the software a little bit and through our prior conversations, looking at how you've broken that down into small modules, we're learning small chunks or that act of chunking, which is breaking that down into smaller reputable acts of learning, reinforcing smaller portions at a time and offering reward and that sense of satisfaction in a greater degree. It's reinforcing to know that you're doing something and getting that feedback instantly.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure. Oh, that's huge, right? That immediate feedback is also very much a part of that.

SPEAKER_00: When balanced, we'll put that note, when balanced. We're not looking at being hyper dependent on that dopamine rush for the sense of fulfillment. Ultimately, it does tend to create that feedback where you do feel good. You do feel some joy in the learning. There is a sense of accomplishment and small victories. We're holding on to those small victories rather than waiting for the big goal to fill that in-game fulfillment.

SPEAKER_02: Right. Yes, for sure. I mean, you got the boss battle. We all have that boss battle. But then at the same time, you've got to have those smaller increments that lead up to that boss battle. At each tier, we have different tiers that are broken up for each level. We have somewhere between two to four per level. And that final tier is that boss battle. It is that cumulative, here's everything that you have learned inside of this level. Usually we'll put that new skill, whether again that's a new note or new rhythm, it will isolate that skill first in the first tier and then we'll kind of expand the musical context from there. Finally concluding the level with a tier that is everything that you know up to that point. So yeah, chunking, breaking it down into very manageable steps. You know, it's an interesting thing because we're realizing there's a lot of people that are self-learners that want to just their autodidacts. They just want to do it themselves. They don't even want a curriculum. They just want an ecosystem of features that they can tailor made to themselves, tailor make to themselves or what they want. Right. And so we kind of have to balance both. We've got the full curriculum that somebody can follow from level zero to level 26. Amazing that gets you a lot. But then we also what we call soft unlock everything so that the progress is still there. You can still see your progress, but if you want to jump around you can. All the songs that we have in our song library, they get soft unlocked. Meaning you can go and play them out of order whenever you want to. They don't get fully unlocked for you. You can play them whenever you want to. They just get kind of pushed to you at the end of each level when you complete that level.

SPEAKER_00: So, we've talked about progressive exposure, you know, that's gradually building up those skills. Most things in life, as we learn in those small bits again, we're gradually progressing that awareness and consciousness of it. So, learning an instrument, as we've talked in our past discussions, is a dynamic process of progressive exposure where we consistently immerse our accelerated skill adaptation by reinforcing neural pathways and fostering muscle memory, especially with the piano. You know, we're talking about developing that memory of performing the act. Would you agree?

SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely. That is exactly what we're doing here. And we're teaching you the act of playing that skill outside of the context of one song, which I think is the key here, right? Yeah. Because if you only learn that one song with that one skill, The sort of accumulation of these skills are not easily combined later down the road, which is the goal for any music education, at least it should be, right? Not sheer rote memorization or sheer repetitiveness or sheer repetition memorization. No, that shouldn't be the goal for music education. The goal for music education should be, here are the skills that you need to go and be a successful musician, which are sight reading, playing a lot of different things in a lot of different contexts. Those are two of the major things. And then, of course, have a sense of musicianship, which we'll get to later. That's the decisions that you make on top of it. But yeah, the whole goal is to teach you those skills outside of the context of one specific song so that you can go apply it. to actual songs when they get presented to you.

SPEAKER_00: So let's look at the role fear plays in that. When it comes to learning a new instrument, fear is the number one factor limiting the rate at which we learn and adapt, you know, and that's pretty universal throughout life. Everything we do, we kind of filter through that fear of some sort. And there again, it's learning to adapt and adopt that fear. So we're embracing it and empowering it rather than allowing it to become a limitation. So emotional regulation often creates a fear of failure that blocks us from exploring new challenges like learning an instrument. For example, a beginning pianist might feel overwhelmed by their mistakes, leading to frustration and avoidance of practicing those sessions. So from your perspective, Patrick, how can piano learners use emotional regulation techniques such as mindful breathing or reframing mistakes as growth opportunities to transform fearful avoidance of learning into motivation?

SPEAKER_02: I don't know if it's the responsibility of the student. I think it's the responsibility of the pedagogist, the methodologist, the people that are creating the learning environments for the student. We need to care deeply about progress, not perfection. We need to care deeply about positive reinforcement because there's going to be, there's inevitably, of course, as we know, failure within the learning process. It's inevitable. That's the only way that we learn. So to frame To have a kid that's afraid of failure is already setting themselves up for success. And unfortunately, I think a lot of the way that we're just built as a species cares. Well, fear is just so much stronger than love or or peace. Right. I don't know. Do you have anything?

SPEAKER_00: Actually, I'm curious, like, do you have that perspective leaning into it? We're ultimately sharing that role of co-regulation and support. We all want to feel validated and heard. We want to feel like we're substantiated in our efforts. So it's that role of community and feedback, healthy feedback and support, encouragement, empathy, all of those wonderful things that encourage us to feel joyful and fulfilled in that learning process.

SPEAKER_02: Because biologically, we're pre-programmed to care more about fear and failure than we are to care about, again, love or joy or, like, peace or comfort. Evolution is not meant to make us happy. Evolution is meant to make us safe and fear is the thing that does that for us, right? So we, as pedagogists, as people that are creating the learning environment for you to acquire the skills to play your instrument, we need to reinforce positive change much more than any sort of negative change. That's one way we combat this. Failure is going to happen. But the cool thing about Museflow is that you've just got to keep going. I watch people play it. One of my good friends, Carter, I sat down with him and he just started going and he was like, oh my gosh, I'm messing up constantly. Oh my gosh, I'm messing up so much. And then what he did and I was like, OK, stop, stop, stop. This is too hard for you. You need to find something that's a little easier or you need to slow down the tempo. There's two spectrums here, complexity or pace. Tempo. You can either adjust one or the other, right? You can go to a lower level or you can lower the tempo. So you pick, what do you want to do? Do you want a lower level or do you want to lower the tempo? And he's like, I want to lower the tempo. I want to keep playing what I'm playing. And I'm like, great. Okay, keep going. So he kept lowering the tempo by 10 beats per minute and he kept going and he got it up there. His accuracy is hovering right around 85%. Kept going, kept playing. Fantastic. Great. He actually started getting up to 95%. Amazing. So we increased the tempo, increased the tempo, increased the tempo. Finally, he was at the goal tempo and he was playing at 95% accuracy. Boom, he passed the level. Amazing. So for us, we cared so deeply about that. What do you call that? That section where challenge meets your skill level.

SPEAKER_01: It's that sweet spot of flow state.

SPEAKER_02: where you are engaged in the activity and your challenge just a little bit, not so much like you're talking about that song that you want to learn or that you tried to learn. It's so far out of your comfort zone that it's so difficult and you get really frustrated and you get discouraged, right?

SPEAKER_00: It's that rush to perfection, in essence, where we're trying to find that end game, that end goal, and we induce that stress of, if I don't perfect it right now, And what do we do? You know, we start to trigger all of those internal responses, all of those somatic responses. You know, our heart rate goes up, our cortisol levels go up, all the stress monitors go up. We're looking then through that filtered enhanced stress, which is kind of an aggravated central nervous system. Right. That's inherently fear triggering. That's inherently triggering insecurity that subconsciously and unconsciously is telling us to back it down a little bit. Sometimes we need to just listen to that response and back it down a little bit. Back it down. Please. We all love a challenge. We do. Sometimes you have to inch your way into challenge rather than diving into the pool and being alright with that incremental growth, with that incremental adaptation. So what we do is we make that process fun for you.

SPEAKER_02: as the pedagogists, as the people that are creating the curriculum. We make it fun for you to enjoy those small little wins along the way so that you feel those. And we emphasize those through positive reinforcement. We noticed really quickly when we were building this that we have three different states for each note. We have a green note, which is perfection. You did it great. You played it at the right time and for the right duration. We also have yellow, which is you played it correct. but you didn't play the correct duration, or number three is red, you got it wrong, completely. The pitch was wrong, the note was wrong, the duration was wrong, right? And so we noticed very quickly that the green notes, when you were getting it correct, when you were playing correctly, the green notes didn't feel like, you weren't gratified enough. Yes. With just this one little green note that shows up in a swath of yellow and red. So what we needed to do was emphasize those green notes just a little bit more by giving you a little pop. a little animation around each green note that you get. There's a little animation, boop, boop, boop, you know? Little bubbles of joy. Little bubbles of joy.

SPEAKER_00: Allow yourself little bubbles of joy.

SPEAKER_01: Allow them, please.

SPEAKER_00: You deserve it. When they pop, it's popping, you know? Sometimes they don't pop quite as big, but there's still value in that.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely. And so that's us all the way down at the core emphasizing positively positive reinforcements. Yeah, that's all the way down at the core. And so, you know, again, it's all throughout our entire entire app is positive reinforcement, caring about progress or overperfection to combat that fear of failure that we've got, you know, because it's inevitable. Again, it's inevitable within the learning process.

SPEAKER_00: So often we paint that process as black and white, which automatically limits our perspective. I love how you've brought the gray scale in there. You have to allow that nuance of gray, that nuance of contrast in context to come into play. So important. But we're not engaged in that black and white thinking. That black and white thinking is either right or wrong. Right. good or bad. You know, we have to allow that nuance of gray. In that case, you know, this is kind of an off step. Mediocrity is our friend because it's that common middle ground that frames our sweet spot. It's that law of averages that sometimes you're at your best. There are days when you're a little bit under the weather or your energy levels might be a little lower. Things that influence it beyond your control. Most everything is beyond your control, so accept that. So, finding that middle ground and bringing us back to that sweet spot again. And we frame mediocrity as such a bad thing, right? Oh yeah, and it's conditioned.

SPEAKER_02: It's all conditioned. It's all conditioned, including your fear of failure. It's genetically, I think, within us to have a fear of failure.

SPEAKER_00: There's a middle to everything. Mediocrity in Latin is nothing more than the middle. Oh, no way. I didn't know that. Nothing more than the middle of something. You're in the middle of something. I love it. The middle is where your sweet spot is. So where do we go off track with that is kind of a rhetorical question today, but just simply knowing that everything can be averaged. Why do we battle with average when everything can be averaged? How wide of a scope is that range of average and how wide that scope opens up, opens our window of emotional and psychological tolerance. The wider we're allowing that window to open, the more that can filter in. The more we try to control and close that down as I bring things in, we're shutting that door on the window of opportunity. That need for control is like a vice that clamps everything out. When we adapt vulnerability, when we adapt acceptance, when we adapt tolerance, we're a little more fluid and squishy and able to move along with things.

SPEAKER_02: So true. Well said. Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_00: I had no idea that Latin… I've been infatuated. Why are we so bent on mediocrity? when it means nothing more than the middle. I had to get to the bottom, you know, what is the root of the word? The middle of something. You're in the middle of learning. You're in the middle of journey. You're in the middle of growth. You're on the middle of the way up this big mountain. As I'm looking at my screensaver here, which part of the journey are you focusing on at any given point? Sometimes we over-focus. Sometimes we're over-focused on the end result. Sometimes we're over-focused looking back on what we've accomplished in evaluating it. Finding that sweet spot in the middle is a centering of the self again. You're bringing all of your somatic processes back online. You're finding that balance and harmony with it.

SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00: It's all mediocrity because you're in the middle of it.

SPEAKER_02: It's all like sorry Sorry, if you think the word mediocre is bad, but it's we love that, you know, it's loaded We know it's so loaded, right? Yeah, so but yeah, you're totally right. Everything's a process Everything is a spectrum Nothing is black or white even a light Yes, it's on or off, but how on do you want it? It could be a slide. There could be a little dial there. How high do you want that light? How bright do you want it? I got one on mine here. You can click through the different settings. It's all a spectrum, you know? And so at the end of the day, your progress is your own. It's very personal. And how much challenge do you want? Again, that's such a personal thing. And I think everybody needs to have that agency within their own learning process. Personalization is going to be the key, in my opinion, to educating the populace better, democratizing education.

SPEAKER_00: To a degree. To a degree, because sometimes we over-personalize. We over-tie our identity concepts to that action in that result. We start to identify things like, now I am a failure. Now I am anxious. I am an anxious person. So over-personalization is when we start to embody those characteristics with the inability to adapt and transform them. I'm cemented in that idea. Okay, fair enough. Does that make sense now? I'm trying to find the center of that, the core gist of that meaning. You know, it's not to say that we don't have personal investment in it. It's not to say that it's completely maladaptive to who and what we are. We just simply have the ability to kind of hold that out and say, it's not the core of who I am because it's available to adapt and change. We do it with our emotions. I am an anxious person. Rather than I tend to be anxious, what do we do? We cement that concept that anxiety is who and what I am at the core.

SPEAKER_02: Right, right. You know, we also talk about it in identifiers too, like people with autism instead of autistic people. Yeah. There's a difference. People experiencing autism. People who tend to exhibit. People who tend to exhibit autism, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: Because we're not again trying to paint that black and white. No, no, no, right. You are not an autistic person. Inherently cemented concept. The old concept becomes one of adaptation and fluidity.

SPEAKER_02: You know, we talked about ego in our previous call. Yes. And I was curious, because to me, that is a conclusion that you're taking on your learning journey. You are saying, I am X, Y, or Z because of the way that I'm experiencing this learning process. Right. So I wonder if there's two things. Number one, if we don't use those phrases in terms of like, OK, we don't come to those conclusions, that would be great if the learning process never allowed us to even form those thoughts in the first place. Right. Again, where we care so deeply about progress, not the final perfection that you're going, which again, then makes you go, OK, well, I can't do it. So I'm not good enough. Right. And then you start hanging on that idea.

SPEAKER_00: Rather than avoiding forming the thought, are we able to have the thought, entertain it? You know, we're talking about a performance art here, performance, you know, and we get hung up on that. You know, we get hung up on that idea of authenticity. He's performing. Everything we're doing is kind of a performance when you think about it. There's a whole sociological principle that's based on that. Yeah, totally. Not diving too far in any kind of concept of authenticity today, but looking at that idea of performing it. We're just carrying out and executing those actions. There we go. That's great. I love that. Where do we frame it? And rather than being able to just simply, I'm only trying to limit this to one frame. Again, what are we doing there? We're fearful of something. We're avoiding something. We're trying to defend against it. We're trying to control it. rather than work within it. Can we take that idea? To me, when we grow and adapt and we develop that confidence, we can say, you know, I really screwed that up. I performed that horribly. You know, that was a complete failure. That's OK. And it's admitting and acknowledging and having that volition, that agency to say, yes, I could do it better, but it doesn't totally own my identity, my personality, my sense of being.

SPEAKER_01: Mm hmm.

SPEAKER_00: I'm able to say I was a failure in that moment, but I can improve and do better. I can look back and see where the faults and deficiencies were. That's the big key, is to be able to look back at those faults and deficiencies and not allow them to define your identity. Yes, yes. You can pull them through your filtered identity and say, I can hold them with an egosystonic view, which is being able to see it from an external or an egodystonic view, which is dystonic being when you're so cemented with that idea of who and what you are, it's overly personalized. Now it is the persona of who I am, the embodiment of who I am. You only can see that sense of self as a failure rather than seeing the failure as an act or action, seeing the verb in it. Yes, right. To paraphrase a great post I read on LinkedIn today, turning it into a verb, just like your goals, turning them into a verb, an action-driven goal. Love it. Not over-personifying the goal itself, not over-emphasizing the end game, but turning it into the ability to act, to fluidly move and evolve.

SPEAKER_02: That's so awesome. Turning it from an adjective into a verb. Yes. That makes it actionable. It's actionable. And that's practical.

SPEAKER_00: Practical is nothing more than practice. Yeah, literally. We theorize practical being simplified sometimes. Would you not agree? No, I agree. That there's a certain social stigma or social kind of dogma about practical being simplification. Sometimes simplification is a practical adaptation.

SPEAKER_02: Right, to distill it down into something actionable. Right, we do think about it as a simplification, yeah. So long as we don't oversimplify it to the point that we delete context. Right. I do also think that there are two people, two, I guess, ends of a spectrum, shall we say. Yes. And one people that think so and care so deeply about the practical side of things. How can you apply certain concepts? And then there's a big group of people that love to theorize. They love to talk about the academics of it all. They like to think about the theory of it all. And they live in that liminal space of like, we don't care how it's going to be applied yet. No, we're just coming up with the ideas. My wife's parents are very different in that regard. You know, my wife's mom is very practical, but her dad is very theoretical and loves to just kind of explore the like, but what ifs of it all, you know? And I love that. I think that totally works well together when you can work well together with those people.

SPEAKER_00: That's a great example of marrying the two concepts. And you can have those inside of you too. Turning the speculation into a part of the setup processes. There again, you're talking processes. The setup is we are getting our dots out there and working on starting to align them with the theory. What dots are we working with is equating back to those notes on the scale. They're just dots. How do we start to organize them? The more we start to learn to become more virtuous with that organization, we start to adopt the language of the dots. The better we can sing it, the better we can convey those emotions, the better we can start those processes and habituate them in a way that becomes productive.

SPEAKER_02: Absolutely. And habituate them not in one specific context. But let's get that inside your body. Let's get it in your body so thoroughly so you can replicate it at any different musical context that it comes up in.

SPEAKER_00: Awesome. So looking at that act or performing. So often we are embodied in those personalizations of the feedback. We're embodied in that speculation of how others are going to perceive us, how we perceive ourselves. that that fear starts to crop up. As a musician, we look at performance anxiety. As a speaker, we often experience performance anxiety, just how we show up in our daily relationships, in our work environments. We're experiencing that same level of performance anxiety a lot of times to the point where we stigmatize the fact that, yes, we are performing as human beings, by and large, most of the time. Where performing is nothing more than executing an action to help contextualize that, hopefully. So as a musician, and particularly with the app, as we're learning piano, share some examples of how musicians and as human beings, we can manage performance anxiety to build adaptive learning habits. And how are you applying this in the app? That's a loaded question.

SPEAKER_02: Performance anxiety is absolutely one thing, and I think one of the biggest things that I can attest to personally, and we've already talked about this a lot, is the sense of ego. It's the sense of self. I know I'm good. I know I'm good at what I do. But there are going to be moments when I mess up. Easily. Especially when I'm playing 400 songs a night to a crowd of rotating 300 people. You're going to mess up. It's inevitable. And so I take those failures in stride. I take those moments in stride and I say, that doesn't define me. That doesn't make me a bad musician because I messed up. No, I'm still a very good musician. I can still effectively communicate the idea of a song to an audience. That's the goal of a musician. I can do that. And I can do it well. So my identification doesn't come from that failure, right? And so we can talk about that and be like, okay, great. So we need to build you a really solid set of those foundations, right? Of number one, those foundational skills that you need as a musician. Great. But we also need to build up your self-confidence too. And so again, that's the sort of like progress, not perfection, praising progress instead of praising perfection. You know, all of those things that we've already involved in the app, it's very much there from the get go, right? And so that's the one thing that I think I would say when it comes to, what was it? Performance anxiety? Performance anxiety, yeah. Anxiety in general, you know, as we learn. It's saying that you're not defined by your failures. It's allowing that to truly sink in and for you to actually feel that. You know, some of the things that I do before I go on stage is I actually start listing off all the things I'm good at. I look at myself in the mirror in the bathroom and I say, you're really good at X, Y, and Z. You're smart.

SPEAKER_00: You're caring.

SPEAKER_02: You're a good musician. There is reinforcement in that, you know. You've got to do it because I know myself. I very much care deeply about failure. I do. I've always been that way. I get really bogged down by that. And so the way I combat that is by certain techniques before I go on stage. Yes, talking to myself and reinforcing that positive stuff about myself, my positive thought processes about myself. And then also number two is I work out. I actually like exercise beforehand and I get all of that adrenaline out before I go on stage so that I can actually… That's a great tip. I can actually be calm.

SPEAKER_00: that stress response a little bit, so long as we don't use that as a maladaptive coping. Well, of course, it can always go bad. Looking at performance anxiety, how, as musicians and human beings, we can start to develop more adaptive learning habits that ease that stress and anxiety a little bit. OK, and how is that hard baked into the app as the third prong of that to kind of tie into and illustrate?

SPEAKER_02: Okay. Yeah. Great. So yeah. And then, and then just thinking about like how we can actually, let me, let me think about this. Well, I've already, yeah, you've already broken my mind. So we got, we got the performance anxiety. We've got a few elements of how we combat that, how I combat that personally. I mean, I'd like to throw it back to you and I'd like to ask you if there's any things that you how you combat your like any sort of performance.

SPEAKER_00: So for performance anxiety, that's a great point. You know, podcasting being one of those things we all tend to there. I'm kind of generalizing, but it tends to be a habit or a common occurrence that we are a little reluctant when we're putting ourselves out there podcasting, speaking our voice. And I've had a lot of experience in that in that, you know, I have some TV background where I've done some TV appearances. I did some guest cooking appearances, which is kind of a very disheveling, somewhat nerve wracking thing, because you're trying to remember all of these cooking processes. The segments are generally a lot shorter. And even though I was a seasoned chef and you're on the line literally every day, figuratively and very literally. and you have that time window of most of your dishes you're executing within 15 minutes, but there's something inherently unsettling about performing in that mode where you're presenting, you're trying to keep all these tasks in order, you're trying to be very mindful to look like you have it all together so it's not kind of distracting, and learning that was a big curve for one, you know, and putting myself out there on TV, that was very unsettling. You have to just kind of go with the flow Drop all pretenses of perfection. You're hyper-focused, for one. In most of those circumstances, whether it be in life, going in and doing presentation, podcasting, you're hyper-focused. You're putting more attention into it than what the average viewer, the average receiver is. Definitely. So dropping some of that hyper focus, giving yourself grace, you know, just like now, it just took a little bathroom break in the middle of our interview, you know, wait a minute here. And not being so hell bent on, wait, I got to do this all right now, or they're going to judge me. You know, if they judge you, no matter who's judging, are you able again to hold that out at a personal arm length? It's not definitive of me. Yeah. It's not my core defining character. Having that healthy boundary to say, with myself first, I'm vulnerable, I'm flexible, I'm willing to acknowledge when I am falling down. I take responsibility when I am reasonably falling down in my action or my ability to interact with it. but having personal grace. Absolutely. God, it's important. Vulnerability, compassion, empathy, and acceptance. The same thing you want back is literally mirroring the very thing that's driving you internally. I love that. You want to be heard, you want to be accepted, you want to be validated, but ultimately not hating even your sense of self on all of those things. You have to be able to hold them out at arm's length with that idea of a self. I had this conversation with my wife. You have to be able to set that concept of self down and literally step back from it. That can be a very foreign and unsettling concept for most of us at any given time to say, but this is who I believe this person to be. These are the characteristics and values and beliefs that drive that. If you can't Set them at an arm's length and honestly, vulnerably, openly, and with complete emotionality, look at it, view it, accept it, and see what comes back. Those are going to be all of the things that end up being what I work with with clients that we repress, we avoid, we defend, and we run away from. That sums it all up. What within those things, in those interactions, are the part that triggers that stress and that anxiety?

SPEAKER_02: I can just say from personal experience, well, here's an example where I identified too hard with a certain concept. And then, thankfully, a good friend of mine was like, Pat, you're being a jerk.

SPEAKER_01: Here's what happened.

SPEAKER_02: So, I was a big white liar when I was younger. I was the youngest kid. I had a lot of self-conscious issues, self-confidence issues. And so, what I did was I tried to fix those things. And we were also a very not rich at all, lower middle class is what I'd say, on a street of millionaires. So we unfortunately had, I have this comparativeness in me. I always have. And so what I ended up doing was just trying to massage my view of myself, the view that everybody else had of me, by just faking it and fibbing all the time. So I made a very conscious decision to just be my absolute authentic self, to carry my truth and my heart on my sleeve, and live most authentically in college. I decided on that. I wanted to live so thoroughly by it, so I got a tattoo of it. I got a tattoo of a whistleblower. Of a guy blowing a whistle. because that's the truth teller in me, right? The person that speaks truth to power, the one that tells authentically and unabashedly what I believe at all times. Uh-oh, getting to a place of like, this might not be healthy, right? Because I was identifying so heavily with this sense of authenticity and truth and like, I don't care what anybody else thinks about me. I'm going to speak my truth just unabashedly to the public. I'm getting into a place of like, okay, you are still living in a society, Pat. You know, you got to pull that back a little bit. And so I was calling out my friends left and right on stupid stuff that they were doing and just being a jerk about it. I wasn't, I had zero tact. I was not being tactful in any possible way. And so, a good friend of mine, thankfully, pulled me aside and was like, Pat, you're being a jerk. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? I know you got that tattoo, but you gotta pull it back, man. You gotta stop so thoroughly identifying with this one specific context. You're losing your friends. You're not seeing that, but you are. So you've got to pull it back. And I was like, OK, honestly, thank you so much for telling me that. Yeah, because I wasn't self-aware enough to be able to recognize that. Right. But that was one of those moments where I like fully identified with this one specific concept and it became toxic, you know. But anyway, yeah, that's it's huge. It's like you've got to take yourself out of these identifiers and say to yourself, no, you're just Jeffrey and Jeffrey is enough. I'm just Pat. And I'm just enough. I'm just Ken. But just Ken is good enough. Just Ken is great. That's kind of what he realizes at the end of that movie, right?

SPEAKER_00: Just Ken is a good thing.

SPEAKER_02: But you're like, you're like, you're that, I think that's so key, right? To like any sort of progress, not perfection attitude. You know, you care about that murkiness inside and we don't care about those identifiers so much. You say to yourself, you are you, and that is great. And that is very much good enough. Just keep being you. We get sums it up.

SPEAKER_00: That's pretty much like a pinnacle of our conversation here today, but I think there's a little more we can pull the juice out of here. We look at that idea of conditioning and reinforcement again. And so often we look at external conditioning, especially, but most conditioning with kind of a discerning eye, I will say, and sometimes a stigmatized eye. Where we reject that idea of learning is conditioning. Our habits and behaviors largely are conditioned. Our belief systems are conditioned. Conditionality is kind of interwoven with everything of life. This is kind of a sidebar, but that idea of unconditional regard. or unconditional love isn't a complete rejection of the conditions that define it. It's a mindfulness of the conditions that foster it. I love that. That's such a great reframe. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it takes certain conditions to experience love. Yes. Takes certain conditions to appreciate and value who and what you believe yourself to be. It takes certain conditions to appreciate what you do as a musician, as a speaker, as a husband, as a brother, as a wife. Throughout life, there are conditions of being human How are we viewing the perspective of those conditions?

SPEAKER_02: I like that. It's internal, not external, right? It starts at the beginning of the process. It's a combination, maybe.

SPEAKER_00: Maybe. Okay, yeah. Internal or external. So often we're ingrained on the internal, the introspection illusion, where we believe we know and see everything about ourselves, that we start to neglect that external perspective. We start to neglect the vulnerability and openness to that external feedback. Totally. Totally. As a teacher, you know, we have to be mindful of our internal perspective, just like with the friendships, our internal perspective and filter versus how we're being perceived. You mentioned it in that feedback from the friend that said, Pat, you're being a jerk. How did that impact you, Pat?

SPEAKER_02: very important. I hold his opinion of me in high regard. So if he thought I was being a jerk, I have to say, oh my gosh, I weigh your opinion very heavily. And I say, OK, I need to fix that. So it made me feel Honestly, like actionable. I applaud you.

SPEAKER_00: That takes great emotional and psychological maturity to hold that out there again and say, I'm not viewing that through that ego dystonic view of protecting.

SPEAKER_02: No, I didn't want to protect that because I knew it was toxic. I knew what he meant. Like, of course, because he was saying it's toxic, you know. And I got it, too. I also understood, thankfully I'm that self-aware enough to be able to recognize, okay, I get it, I just need to be told that this is what was happening for me to actually finally recognize, oh, that was what I was doing. Oh, shoot, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to do all of that stuff. That's not my motivation, but it kind of was, but I wasn't trying to be a jerk, but that's what it was coming off as, and so I had to pull back. You know, because there was no way for me to like reframe that identity, except to truly just like what it kind of felt like I was performing that it was very performative in a bad way. I was doing it all the freaking time. Right. And so I was overemphasizing it. And then so what I just needed to do was. internalize it and say to myself, okay, this is going to be a part of me moving forward, but I don't have to do it all the time. I am tactful now. I actually have a little bit of grace when it comes to my friends, and I don't full-blown tell them that there'd be an X, Y, and Z when I think that, because that's not going to be helpful for them, right? So, it's all within that middle ground, right? It's all within that middle ground now.

SPEAKER_00: We're back to that middle sweet spot again. Progress. That's kind of the nature of life. From my perspective is, you know, we evolve, we adapt. Sometimes we're coming back full circle. You know, sometimes there's a little going on over here and a little going on over here. Yet what we do is tend to line those dots up in a single row. We're getting that kind of staccato that, that, that, that, that repetition mentality. Right. That sometimes lacks that virtuosity. That ability to bring in these musical concepts, man. It's going back to my musical background, especially my time managing artist, you know, submersed in that act of going into the recording studio. I've been submersed in the act of performing. I've been submersed in the act of kind of being the secondary observer in songwriting, you know, so you start to if you're being mindful and open and vulnerable to it. observe it, you learn how to pull those lessons into life. You know, that to me is a part of mastery is not only learning from your own adaptive lessons, but being open to observe and simulate other people's adaptive learning, you know, that feedback. Well, I know how I experienced it. Tell me your perspective on that. How do we merge those two? Yeah. That act of synergy is essential.

SPEAKER_02: Essential. Honestly, it's one of the greatest things I love. I love working with people that think so differently than I do. Yes. Because I love hearing their perspective, because maybe it'll influence mine. It's one of the reasons why I do like to, I like to watch all political television, not just one political television, because I want to hear what everybody is saying, and then I weigh it against my own perspective and my own opinion and my own lived experience. I weigh it against that and I say, do I believe that? If I don't, then that's fine. At least I understand the other person's perspective. That's so key. Stop being so guarded about what you intake. Go outside of yourself and say, okay, other people have different opinions. Other people are going to be living their lives very differently than I do. That is okay. Diversity makes us stronger. And so, we have to accept that in our lives because that's what's going to make us as an individual stronger too.

SPEAKER_00: So often, again, we internalize those patterns, we internalize those beliefs, we internalize those habits. They become neurally imprinted as our default program, our subconscious program and our unconscious program. things we do that we're somewhat aware of in the subconscious, and things that we, for the moment, and I say for the moment with the context there, are completely unaware of, or sometimes infinitely unaware of, you know, some of our internal processes. We figured out that they're going on, yet we're not able to actively monitor and assess them. You know, we don't actively monitor cortisol and dopamine. We see the end outcome. When they're being triggered, we know some of the steps that lead up to that. Some of the precursory notes, per se, that are going to lead to that final composition. Stop it. Stop it. I'm over, over accentuating it. No, I love it. We got staccato. It has become somewhat performative. We got virtuosity. We got, we got composition. Sir, you're too good. When you learn a language, you know how to adapt it and masterfully use it. This is back to my point. As a musician, when you start to learn musical composition, you start to learn musical theory. Yeah, theory. You know the basic language, whether it's music theory, psychological theory, emotional theory, human being theory. No matter what the theory is, you learn the basic structures. Would you not agree? Totally. I fully agree. You learn the basic language and then knowingly know how to apply that and adapt it to create outcome, to create the verb in action that drives it.

SPEAKER_02: I will say there is a major problem in traditional ways of teaching where we learn the theory first and then we apply it. I think it's backwards actually. It can't be. Sometimes we're putting the horse before the cart, so to speak. Exactly, right. Well, putting the cart before the horse, right? The cart being theory and the horse being practice.

SPEAKER_00: However we want to apply it. I'm fluent. I'm able to adapt. I love it. I love it. And again, it's par for the course. Sometimes we're doing both and sometimes we're doing neither.

SPEAKER_02: We call it just-in-time learning. I don't know if you've heard of this concept, just-in-time learning.

SPEAKER_00: For our listeners, relay it a little bit further from your perspective and how you're adapting that to the app and how this applies now.

SPEAKER_02: So the concept is here's a way to engage with the material right off the bat. Go read a little bit of something as your homework and then immediately go apply it. And then let's truly flesh it out in the actual lesson. OK, that's kind of the journey in just in time learning where you read a little bit about it. Here's a little introduction to the theory of the concept. Now go apply it immediately and then let's truly flesh it out after you've applied it. Now, neurologically speaking, we need that practice to be able to let the theory kind of grab onto that practice. Yeah. You learn the motor skill first, and then you are told, okay, that's the letter A. It's like learning to use chopsticks. Same thing. Go just try it first and then I'll teach you a little bit better technique later. But first you need to truly try it first, you know. And so we apply it in Museflow. We say, okay, here's a new concept. Here's the note A. Go play that. Great. That's called A. It's placed here on the staff. This is the quarter note version of it, the whole note version, and the half note version of it. All right, now play it in concert with a bunch of different notes. Fantastic. Now we've got it in the context of what you already know. Now let's go truly work on it, okay? That process of here's a little introduction, go apply it, let's flesh out the theory a little bit more, and then let's truly work on it. Again, you need to be able to kinesthetically play that note first, to then be able to understand the theory, so that you have something to colonize already. Because once you've already like, if you think about it, once you talk the theory first, and then you apply it, that's not how our brains work. Because we've got nothing to really cement that theory onto. You need something to colonize first. You need the land, the map, shall we say. And then you can colonize that. The musical staff, you know, for example. Exactly. You need the kinesthetic approach.

SPEAKER_00: The little lines. Where are we putting things on the line? Where are we connecting the dots? No, you don't, actually. You need the kinesthetic feeling. The felt sense.

SPEAKER_02: The felt sense of playing that note first to be able to cement the theory, too.

SPEAKER_00: You have to understand the feel of the music in order to know where to associate it on its arc and line of journey. You can apply this to language learning too. It's the same with our felt sense of emotion. Ain't that the truth, right? Ain't that the truth? So much of it, we believe, is up here in the thinking mind. Yes, the thinking mind has its constant interaction, but then we often, or sometimes very specifically, we're not trained a lot about understanding and working with that felt sense as a sidebar.

SPEAKER_02: It's so important. It's so important. We're emotional creatures at the end of the day. Humans are emotional creatures, whether we like it or not, for the good and the bad. Most of the time we are convincing ourselves we don't like it. Wild, wild to me. I've always lived in that emotionality. I've always lived in a place of hyper-conscious of how I'm feeling as a performer, like I've got it, right? And I just think throughout my life and the way I was raised, the whole thing, right? So it just kind of blows my mind that some people don't believe that emotions are good. Emotions are what drive us. You just gotta be aware and conscious of them. And you have to allow your body to feel them. You know? You really, really do. Just let it pass by you. They don't define you. Just be the conduit for those emotions. Let it flow through you.

SPEAKER_00: So for a musical context here, this one might only land with musicians out there. So often we're playing in that rigid for four time in life where we're trying to control everything right on a specific beat at a specific time when what we need to do is become more like a jazz player. and play with a little swing time where we're missing a little bit before the beat, a little after beat. We're out of the pocket a little bit, so to speak. We're not looking to control. We're adapting and flowing with the feel to create that sense of connection.

SPEAKER_02: So for the people that don't know music. Being out of the pocket, shall we say, is like there is a certain window for you to be able to play a note in time, right? There's a certain window for it to feel like it's, quote, in the pocket, okay? Here's the thing that some people do, is they play it off time a little bit. So if the beat is here, they'll play a little after the beat. So it'll go, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. And they'll hit right on the beat. They'll play a little bit behind it. Right? And that, ironically, can feel like a pocket. That's the cool thing about it all. If you lock in to a pocket just behind the pocket, it can really feel like its own groove and its own thing. That's the cool thing about music in my opinion. Wherever you want to find that pocket, however you want to play it, that's correct. You can decide how you want to play a piece. any way you want to. Yes, the composer has said you should play it this way. I believe that a crescendo should go here and a decrescendo should go here. I believe that you should play pianissimo right here, very quiet, or very loud, fortissimo here. But at the end of the day, if you're conveying the thought on the page to an audience member or even to yourself, first and foremost, you've got to feel it yourself, right? You're able to do that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: All right, but you can't fake the phone You've got to be able to translate that I'm all about So you might go away off the reservation with that one, I don't know I don't I I had no idea what you said I

SPEAKER_00: We may have just probably lost people that came. I don't know. And again, it's all back to the feeling and just kind of loosey goosey sometimes.

SPEAKER_02: Be adaptive, adaptive, fluidity, acceptance, vulnerability, live in the mud, you know, roll around in the mud, roll around in that mud, freaking feel it and let mud pretty funky. Mud is pretty funky. That's where we want to live, you know, that's where we should live.

SPEAKER_00: We should live in that as you say mediocrity, you know, but Because again, i'm not i'm not when we're truly alive, you know when we're truly creating sometimes you have to create your way out of the mud Sometimes you're inching your way into the mud It's a great analogy. I love that sometimes we're so focused on the mud and the mud so covering that we can't see the force for the trees so to speak so Yes, clear the mud out of the way. Got to clear the mud. So, Patrick, to kind of tie things up today, we've kind of went very broad, which is great for learning, to tie it back into practicality and focus. What are strategies, not only as PUN learners, but as human beings, we can adapt to challenge it and overcome our limitations to learning and growth?

SPEAKER_02: Find systems that work for you. That's what I would say. Again, I don't know if it's really on the… The onus is not on the student. The onus is on the teachers to use techniques that engage a variety of people and try to… Make the process of learning, skill acquisition, make that process intellectually, kinesthetically enjoyable. And try to find those moments of the dopamine hits. Capitalize on that. I really do believe that it's, you know, this is going to be a paradigm shift. Yes, educational paradigm shift. It's going to happen in the next couple of years, I think, or maybe a little later. Who knows? Maybe I might be a conspiracy theorist. I don't know. But my point is, we're making a system for everybody that gamifies the learning process, that engages them in flow state, that cares about progress, not perfection. And we're teaching you the core skills of being able to play piano and later down the road, all common instruments in a fun, engaging way. So again, I don't think it's on the student's job, but the student needs to be able to express to themselves what they need in a learning environment and then go seek those out for themselves. You know, I think that's the biggest thing that we as students need to do.

SPEAKER_00: I would have to agree with that. I think to kind of top it off today, we're all both in that dual role of learner-teacher. Always. Yet, by and large, through our actions, we're predominantly teachers. We predominantly can do it for that feedback. So, how do we adapt and conform that in a way that becomes very fluid?

SPEAKER_02: And I think these apps will pop up. They're happening, you know, and I think teachers are starting to understand that people learn in a variety of different ways. So they're having to adapt their own techniques of teaching to the vast diversity that we're slowly coming to realize, you know. Yeah, I think that's going to be a wonderful paradigm shift in the near future. And I think personalization AI is definitely going to be a part of it. I don't think we can get away from that. You know, we're including it in our app as music generation. We're also going to be adjusting the complexity of the music that is shown in front of you based on the patterns that how you're playing. If we notice a very specific interval or a specific rhythm that you're messing up, we're going to give you more music that exercises that specific interval or rhythm. So that exposure therapy over time, you actually get that more fluent and you raise that meta skill up. Same thing with tempo. We're going to be adjusting the tempo for you. If we notice you're out of that pocket and it's too hard for you, you know, it's too difficult. The complexity of what you're playing is way too hard. We're going to adjust that tempo for you too so that we can slow it down and make it easier for you and then gradually increase the tempo as you get better. That AI is definitely going to, it's already a part of the app, you know. So we're just increasing the amount of AI that's going to be a part of it. but it's gonna be very much in the background, so it's not directly, it's influencing how you're acquiring these skills. We're making it easier for you and allowing you to stay in flow state more. I don't know, my point is that I think these new types of methodologies are going to start popping up. more and more and more. And we're doing it for music education. And honestly, we, uh, we hope that you join everybody who's listening. Well, we'd love to hear your thoughts. I would love to hear what you think. And I would, I would actually love to give you guys a discount code if that's cool. Fantastic. Yes. Are you down with like light L I G H T 50? So the discount code would get you 50% off for life. Okay. Fantastic. Not a lifetime membership, but it gets you 50% off for life. So, whether that's a monthly or an annual or whatever subscription you decide on, it'll knock it down by 50%. And it'll be applied for your entire journey, your lifetime journey in Muselo. So, anybody that wants that, please, let's put that in the descriptions for the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: Put that in the note. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: We're so grateful for that offer. Light50, everybody. L-I-G-H-T 5-0. And please email me. I'd love to hear your thoughts. I want to hear everybody's thoughts on this. We think it's pretty cool. And we're excited to chat more with our users. We've got a really awesome user base right now. And so, we hope that you're a part of it.

SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for sharing this experience with us, Patrick. This has truly been such a fun series of conversations. I'd love to have you come back and chat again soon. Please. I would absolutely love to. I think our conversations are awesome. Thank you. I want to hang on that idea of kinesthetic learning. I think that's such an overlooked practice. And I think maybe we'll revisit that in a future episode to look at kinesthetic learning a little deeper. Love that. Thank you for bringing that nugget. That has been such a learning experience for me. So cool. So cool. Happy New Year, my friend. You too. May the year be full of blessings. Namaste the light in me acknowledges the light in you. I love that. Namaste. Where can our listeners reach out to you, Patrick, and learn more not only about your app, but also connecting with you and learning more about you as a human being?

SPEAKER_02: You can find me on Instagram. You can find, just Google me. You'll find me. I'm out there. Yeah, Patrick Boylan, that's me.

SPEAKER_00: That sounds kind of ominous. We know where to find you. You'll know where to find me. Yeah, it's good to be found, you know?

SPEAKER_02: It's good to be seen. I guess, yeah. I mean, I've been like in the public eye for how many years now? 11, you know? Since moving out here to LA. The Google history is wrought with… Well, we'll help a little.

SPEAKER_00: I'll put a little link in there somewhere. Well, it has truly been good to see you, my friend. So you too. Thank you again.

SPEAKER_02: Let's do this again soon. Couldn't agree more, man. Absolutely. And happy new year back to you. Namaste.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you.

SPEAKER_02: Take care. See ya.

SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we explored the transformative power of embracing failure, adaptability, and vulnerability in the pursuit of personal mastery. Drawing insights from the neuroscience of adaptive learning, we revealed how reframing fear and leaning into discomfort can unlock new pathways for growth. Using music as a metaphor, we examined how mastering a skill, like playing the piano, teaches us resilience, creativity, and the value of approaching learning with fresh, open eyes. Dreaming of learning to play the piano or a similar instrument? Try Museflow today! Visit www.museflow.com and use the code LIGHT50 for an exclusive discount. We hope you enjoyed discovering how vulnerability and adaptability aren't just challenges to overcome, they're essential tools for crafting a more harmonious life. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Besecker.