Welcome back to The Real Brian Show! We're excited to have Mangodroplet back in this episode, now fully transplanted in LA, joining our regulars, Tony and Brian! Steep a nice cup of tea, sit back and relax, and join us for another Superhero Friday ride with The Real Brian crew.
Welcome back to The Real Brian Show! Before getting started, I'll just take a quick moment to apologize for not communicating about no episode last week. It was on both our radars to blast something somewhere, but it got away from us! Brian made a trip to Vegas for HxGN Live (Hexagon International Conference) and will have some stories to share, and for good measure we're also throwing in the usual frivolity from Captain Influence.
Finding relief from stress in Vegas might not be exactly how you're expecting! Generally, the whole "let's go to Vegas for the weekend" bit is more specific to the casinos or endless nighttime entertainment. But in the case of our own Real Brian, the relief likely came on the heels of anticipation. Between extended alone time, dealing with crabby and rude drivers, and preparing for HxGN Live, stress bubbled up to the surface in the form of heart palpitations and a general uncertainty of health (and thus feeding back into the stress).
I don't usually qualify my posts, but I do recognize that talking about stress is very personal and provokes in us a feeling that no one really understand what we're going through. I just want to share some of what I've learned about stress over the last 20 years as my own symptoms have changed since childhood.
Stress manifests in different ways for everyone, and because of that... sometimes it's really hard to tell what's wrong or that you're even stressed out in the first place. When I was younger, my stress took the form of incredibly painful sores on my tongue. Any time I would get over-emotional (excitement, nerves, embarrassed, anxious) I could feel the sores start to come back. And then it would take forever for them to go away.
It's interesting because even as I'm writing this I'm only realizing that it was one of the contributing factors toward a strive for balance, melancholy and stoicism. I still come up against strong emotions, but there's an aspect to stoicism that changes my perspective about receiving these emotions. Sometimes it's unhealthy (suppression) and sometimes it's limiting (not getting excited about things), but until I experienced grief (which was totally new) I found that I wasn't surprised by my emotions. The lack of surprise was a considerable help in managing stress.
At the beginning of my grief, these tools were helpful. But at a certain point, my reactions stopped maturing and it became mostly suppression - which then began to manifest in TMD. Three years later... I'm definitely suffering the long-term effects of not adjusting my dose of stress relief accordingly.
So Brian is totally correct when he says that this is a cyclical process and we keep learning and keep adjusting. And he's right that I was going to say as much! This is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating aspects to human nature, because we expect consistency in how we anticipate things, but it is so easy to neglect the third parties that feed into our circumstances. Society changes, people change, we ourselves change... and thus circumstances are constantly in flux. We recognize pain and stress, find a way to deal with it - we focus in and make sure it won't happen again - only to be shocked by another aspect of that experience which causes us stress.
Stress relief is multilayered and transitory. It is a theory that can be applied, but also must be applied appropriately, with varying degrees of emphasis, and then adjusted and tested for every future use. Otherwise we'll just end up being frustrated that the old methods to relieve stress don't work and find ourselves in a vicious cycle of being dominated by our circumstance.
The most difficult aspect of stress relief, for me, has been trying to find the motivation to dig down deep for the root of my stress AND make the necessary adjustments to relieve it. Sometimes it's easier (or it SEEMS easier) to just push through. But the long-term effects can be incredibly damaging. So I'll leave you, at the end of this long-winded diatribe, with a little encouragement to take the time to deal with it when it comes up... don't let it get out of hand, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.
What do Star Wars, LeBron James and mind over matter have in common? We talk about them all in this installment of the podcast! It's time to talk mind over matter with Brian and Tony!
Since the majority of the conversation in this episode is specific to the new Star Wars movie Solo, I'll let Brian and Tony lead the way on that excellent discussion! My personal reaction to the movie was... too predictable. But, like Brian points out, that was likely due to lack of character depth in Kyra's character. Or, maybe not. If they'd gone more in depth into the character, it might have been more predictable.
To be clear, I don't mind predictability. I don't like last minute, where-did-that-come-from twists that make no sense. I like a healthy balance of mystery and shock, where we can understand character arcs without actively wanting to predict the outcome of the movie. When the movie moves too slow, I find myself tagging characters and saying, 'Next they will say [this] and do [this].' Great premise... execution was lacking.
But that brings me to what I do want to discuss. I read an article this week about Kelly Marie Tran (from The Last Jedi) that broke my heart. One might argue that it was more apt to break because it is made of ice, but I like to think that it warmed up just enough in order to tear and bleed... feeling the pain for this actress who probably entered into the Star Wars franchise with eager anticipation of joining an epic story.
So here's what Star Wars, LeBron James and mind over matter really have in common.
LeBron on what it’s like to be an athlete in the social media era and how he deals with criticism pic.twitter.com/xFxxwPevyZ
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) June 3, 2018
Later in this same interview, he says: if the stuff that goes on in social media bothers you... just delete it.
Well said. Just delete it! I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my phone a couple months ago and am loving the freedom that comes from not being attached to notifications or cultivated news feeds. My dad used to always say, and I know a lot of dads say this, but what goes IN to your mind will undoubtedly come OUT of your mouth. If we're serious about our craft, about delivering quality or excellence, and we only listen to the LOUDEST source of feedback... we've no guarantee about quality feedback.
Mind over matter is this concept where we can use our mind to conquer physical problems. It's become more common to use it in terms of controlling pain, but historically it has roots in the evolutionary growth of the mind. What is most interesting to me, in this regard, is that sometimes physical problems are visibly evident, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are the words said to us (or not said to us) that become "like" physical pain. Sometimes it's a digital blockade of terrible people on social media. Sometimes it is an illness preventing us from playing in an important game (Michael Jordan's legendary flu game).
In all cases, we have a choice: either we let something get us down... or we rise above. Good for Kelly Marie to delete her social media stuff, people don't deserve to have a peek into her life and she owes no one anything. With the dawn of the social media age, we as a people have yet to fully adjust to the large-scale impact words of this visibility have. We are like children, unable to help ourselves from abusing a new toy.
It's just a great reminder that when something hurts, stop giving it the power to hurt you. Regain control, do what you do, and fall back in love with the passion that brought you to where you are.
We live in a great time for television, and who better to help us navigate the crystalline waters than our beloved Podcast Overlord?! We're excited to welcome Kevin back to The Real Brian Show and catch up on his podcasts, his current watchlist, and what he's looking forward to this summer.
Listening to Kevin and Brian chat brought me back. Way back. When I first started listening to podcasts, it was The Fringe Podcast and The Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. That was it. But The Fringe Podcast was my gateway drug to a whole new world, one which led me into getting behind the mic myself. Along that road I had the privilege and the pleasure to meet and work with Kevin. I've never met anyone quite like him, and I highly doubt I ever will. He likes what he likes and isn't afraid to come right out and say it, disregarding what anyone else thinks! He can rally and inspire a fandom in ways I've never seen before and I think it's due to this unashamed passion for the stories he invests in.
As it goes, our time podcasting together came to an end and as I've sort of sidled out of the whole television-podcasting realm, I'm now struck with strong nostalgia for the old days. Kevin made talking about television fun and always had the acuity to remind us that it's just a story and that we're supposed to be having fun! Even when Arrow let us down, it was having a chance to get together with Kevin and Brian every week that made doing a podcast worthwhile (not to mention our incredible listeners).
I learned a lot from Kevin by working with him. I learned about etiquette and presence, about the importance of commitment and the necessity of passion. I'm sure at times he wished I would grow up, or settle down, or reign it in (Brian and I have a tendency to... take details and talk them to death...). But Kevin is cordial, pleasant, an incredible friend and an incredible inspiration. So it is with great enthusiasm that I encourage you to go check out Tuning into SciFi TV to witness the breadth of his genre-tv knowledge and his insightful, yet often whimsical, analyses. Check out the links below for more opportunities to see what Kevin is up to!