Episode 19 features author Kurt Sussman, who has spent a lifetime practicing martial arts, learning philosophy, and sharing both with anyone who is interested.
We discuss those teachings and dive into the origins and principles of his book “Out of My Mind… And Intending to Stay There” A Battle Plan for Life.
During the episode we cover:
- Teaching
- Mortality
- Philosophy
- Martial Arts
- Conflict Resolution
- Balance
- Video Games and Skipping to the End
- Taking Risks
- Evolution
- Hobbies
- Martial Arts
- Self-Observation
- Being original
- And more
Mentioned and Helpful Links from This Episode
Agent Palmer’s Review of Out of My Mind… And Intending to Stay There: A Battleplan for Life.
Music created and provided by Henno Heitur of Monkey Tongue Productions.
–End Show Notes Transmission–
–Begin Transcription–
00:00:00:21 – 00:00:23:41
Agent Palmer
Previously on Agent Palmer dot com. I have some thoughts after finishing season one of Amazon Prime’s upload. A track by track look at Harry Chapin’s Greatest Stories live album, and I believe, Ryan Lynn to still be somewhere between the traditional and the digital. This is The Palmer Files episode 19 with author Kurt Sussman, who has spent a lifetime practicing martial arts, learning philosophy and sharing both with anyone who is interested.
00:00:23:45 – 00:01:03:47
Agent Palmer
We discuss those teachings and dive into the origins and principles of his book, Out of My Mind, and intending to stay there. A Battle plan for life because we could all use a little help. Let’s do the show.
00:01:03:51 – 00:01:25:10
Agent Palmer
Hello, and welcome to the Palmer Files. I’m your host, Jason Stershic, also known as Agent Palmer. And on this 19th episode is author Kurt Sussman. I know Kurt when he worked in it when I was attending college, working on my undergraduate, being the busy body I was back then. Kurt, who was in charge of more than just computers, was always around to give me a hand when something needed more power, more lights, or more sound.
00:01:25:10 – 00:01:47:48
Agent Palmer
But as things happened, we drifted apart. Then when I came across his book, I thought that maybe it would be good to reconnect. And after I read the book out of my mind, I acted on that thought to have him on the show. And here he is. Now, I don’t usually do this, but the first line of Kurt’s bio from the back of his book is amazing.
00:01:47:53 – 00:02:19:34
Agent Palmer
With a lineage of warrior ship reaching back over 500 years to his ancestors, knighthood in medieval Germany, and a lifetime of martial arts study and training. Kurt Sussman has been empowering individuals to reach their potential. For most of his life, unquote. And that’s not only what you get from his book, it’s what you get from this episode. A deeply philosophic, learned person who wants to nudge you along, but only in ways that can make things easier or better and never to change who you are, unless that is what you want.
00:02:19:39 – 00:02:42:28
Agent Palmer
His book is as conversational as what you are about to listen to, and if you’re interested in it, I encourage you to seek out a copy. Kurt is the real deal out, only to survive and help give you a fighting chance at the same. And perhaps with a little practice, you’ll find some happiness to. So if you want to discuss the episode as you listen or afterwards, you can tweet me at Agent Palmer.
00:02:42:28 – 00:03:08:52
Agent Palmer
You can tweet the show at the Palmer Files, and you can tweet Kurt Sussman at ounce of inspiration. That’s Aussie off inspiration or O z off inspiration for my more international listeners out there. You can see his website with links to both of his books on Kurt sussman.com. That’s cool. Dot amazon.com, which also includes his blog Ounce of Inspiration.
00:03:08:57 – 00:03:30:25
Agent Palmer
Don’t forget, you can see all of my writings and rantings on Agent palmer.com, including my review of Out of My Mind, written and published before Kurt and I recorded this episode. And as usual, all of these links and those mentioned in the show will be available in the show notes. So without further ado, let’s get into it.
00:03:30:30 – 00:03:51:34
Agent Palmer
All right, Kurt, I’m going to start with the big question you wrote out of my mind and intending to stay there a battle plan for life, which is basically like a self-help book. And I’ve known you for a long time. I didn’t know you wanted to write a book, but you always wanted to help people. So where does that start for you?
00:03:51:38 – 00:03:54:04
Agent Palmer
Have you always wanted to help people?
00:03:54:09 – 00:04:15:47
Kurt Sussman
Well, I guess, I’ve always been a teacher, and ironically, I’ve had scores of jobs, and I never pursued teaching. But whatever job I ever had, I ended up teaching it. So that was kind of the same way with this. And, I’ve always been an avid reader and writer, and I think that my thought process is so fast.
00:04:15:47 – 00:04:29:15
Kurt Sussman
Sometimes it’s, just better to get it down on paper and, this is not the first book I’ve, I’ve written, so, yeah, I’ve got a lot of writings all over. This is just the first one that, saw the light of day. Maybe.
00:04:29:20 – 00:04:42:26
Agent Palmer
And it’s got a lot of different philosophies. You know, you’re pulling from eastern. You’re pulling from Western all over again. Have you always been interested in philosophy, I guess?
00:04:42:31 – 00:05:14:41
Kurt Sussman
Yes. I would say, Jason. As a young boy, I grew up with an older brother who, had kidney disease. And so being faced with mortality at a very, very young age made me really, you know, have some existential questions. And I was I was raised Catholic. And so I was very inquisitive as to why would something so traumatic as the loss of a sibling when you’re 8 or 9 years old?
00:05:14:53 – 00:05:27:27
Kurt Sussman
Why is this okay? What’s what’s going on here? And so I think that’s what started me. And, when it got to a point to where my mom couldn’t answer for me, I had to go seeking elsewhere.
00:05:27:32 – 00:05:35:47
Agent Palmer
And where did you go first? Because obviously you didn’t just go to the philosophy section of the library, just pick out 20 books.
00:05:35:52 – 00:06:00:32
Kurt Sussman
Yeah, I, I think that, yeah. See, I grew up in, you know, the 60s, late 60s, just outside of Cleveland, Ohio, and at that time is when the Vietnam War was ending. You know, the the shootings at Kent State University happened, and I was about 20 minutes or so, maybe a wave wave from there at the time.
00:06:00:37 – 00:06:28:41
Kurt Sussman
And, so there was a lot of civil unrest. But there’s these veterans coming back from the east, from Okinawa, from, you know, Korea or from Vietnam. And they brought with them martial arts. And so it wasn’t for the philosophical reasons. I think life made me feel small. And this new thing called martial arts gave a promise that maybe the little guy can win.
00:06:28:46 – 00:07:01:53
Kurt Sussman
And so I was attracted to that. You know, maybe I, can survive this. And so after, you know, over 50 years in the martial arts, now that’s what, you realize it’s it’s all about conflict resolution. So that’s where the largest bulk of, you know, my my inspiration comes from is from martial arts and from, you know, famous martial artist Bruce Lee or some of the samurai warriors, and how they use martial principles to resolve conflict.
00:07:01:58 – 00:07:31:26
Agent Palmer
Now, you’re you’re still practice. Is it practicing? Is that the right way? Yes. Okay. Sure. So you’re still practicing martial arts? Yes. You’ve got to be it. Is it is it something within martial arts that keeps you going? I mean, I can’t think of. I mean, for me, the closest thing I have and it’s not remotely close is like, I picked up the guitar at, like, 13 or 14 and then I stopped playing, and then I picked it up again, and then I stopped playing.
00:07:31:26 – 00:07:53:35
Agent Palmer
And then recently I picked it up again. But I’ve not done anything consistently for my entire life now. I mean, you’re older than me, but for my entire life I haven’t done anything that consistently. So it is it like what keeps you involved in it? Because I can I can see how, you know, you can fall out.
00:07:53:35 – 00:07:54:31
Agent Palmer
Maybe.
00:07:54:36 – 00:08:30:07
Kurt Sussman
Sure. I think that everyone has facets to themselves. There’s something physical, there’s something creative, there’s some intellectual and, perhaps, something just just for fun. That different aspects are different facets of ourselves. That as we exercise them, as we, practice them and build skill or just actually play with them, it balances us and I and I think that, I play a guitar as well, and I’ve done that as well as martial arts for nearly all my life.
00:08:30:16 – 00:08:54:51
Kurt Sussman
And I think that it’s more like you say, you know, I’m still doing it. I don’t look at it as, a steady upward curve model. It’s more of a sine wave. Everything is ups and downs. You know, there’s times when I don’t play the guitar for maybe weeks or months, and then I pick it up, and then I’m playing every day for hours.
00:08:54:51 – 00:09:30:35
Kurt Sussman
So I run into an old friend, and I play, so, but it’s but specific. It’s interesting that you mentioned martial arts because, one of my influences, was Joseph Campbell, and he, studied mythology. He was a foremost expert on mythology. And he, like young, believed in archetypes that, you know, the hero is an archetype, the warriors an archetype, you know, and and when parents would come to me and say, I think I want to get little Johnny into the martial arts, you know, is that is the time, right?
00:09:30:41 – 00:09:48:58
Kurt Sussman
I would say, well, whose idea is it? Is it your idea that you want little Johnny to come to a martial arts class so that you can go out and do something else? You need a basically need a babysitter or I you know, I want little Johnny to have discipline. And I would think to myself, well, here’s an idea.
00:09:48:58 – 00:10:17:40
Kurt Sussman
Why don’t you have some? And maybe it would, rub off on them and, you know, all the time I will see very young children and they’re mesmerized, and they’re just kicking and punching, and they’re they’re exhibiting the behavior of that archetype of the warrior emerging. And I say, that’s when it’s time you that’s when you have to feed them, give them an avenue to pursue that.
00:10:17:49 – 00:10:34:53
Kurt Sussman
And I think that was me. I was always very athletic and, building that, that archetype or building that persona. I didn’t realize it came with so much philosophical, for lack of a better term.
00:10:34:58 – 00:10:42:28
Agent Palmer
So you you’ve been practicing for this long extended period of time. How long have you been teaching?
00:10:42:33 – 00:11:08:41
Kurt Sussman
Boy, I well, I, I used to run schools for a living. That’s what I did for my livelihood. Now it’s back in the 90s. But, I was teaching before, so I was. I was teaching in high school, in the 70s, you know, and my, I have to say that my beginning roots. Because people will always look up what’s, you know, who’s this instructor and who is this instructor’s instructor, and what’s the lineage?
00:11:08:41 – 00:11:37:06
Kurt Sussman
And I don’t care anything about lineage. My roots were, you know, as I said, my older brother had, kidney disease. And so we, you know, we had a lot of health as well as financial crises. And my parents didn’t have money to send me to karate school. So, I just, would find people that that did go and I’d say, hey, you go to taekwondo classes, let’s fight.
00:11:37:11 – 00:11:58:16
Kurt Sussman
And if you take me out, show me how you did it. And if I get the best of you, I’ll show you how I did it. So I had a pragmatic approach, but it’s, it’s a very effective one. Until I eventually got the skill to where I felt I was probably black belt level, but I couldn’t say that if I hadn’t earned one.
00:11:58:21 – 00:12:20:25
Kurt Sussman
Kind of like, you know, a college degree. So, you know, I was in my 20s and I went into a traditional school after having trained for, about 17, 18 years on my own and work my way through the belt rank and then ended up teaching for three and master until the point that I realized, yeah, I don’t need to do this.
00:12:20:29 – 00:12:48:13
Kurt Sussman
A lot of people don’t realize that Bruce Lee had an instructor for two years. That’s it. And he never had a belt. He never had a rank. But nobody I, I shouldn’t say nobody, but very few people dispute the fact that he was a master that changed the world and continues to change the world, and he did it without, needing any belts or accolades.
00:12:48:18 – 00:13:09:50
Agent Palmer
So that that takes care of a lot of the eastern philosophies. At what point and how do you get into the Western philosophies? Because, I mean, you mentioned a lot of both within the book. So is it just picking up more reading, like you’re interested in philosophy? So you’ll you’ll see, you know, a little bit of this, a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B.
00:13:09:55 – 00:13:53:16
Kurt Sussman
And. Yeah. Well, I think that it was, it was almost, like a play that was unfolding that I wasn’t, I was maybe an actor, but I wasn’t the playwright. And I don’t mean to get, you know, theological or anything like that. Because, that’s not the way I see it. But, I, I grew up in the West, and I was steeped in Western religious philosophies, but was left, like, kind of unsaid, satisfied, and then through the eastern martial arts in the way that they would say, you know, an ounce can deflect 1,000 pounds.
00:13:53:20 – 00:14:18:31
Kurt Sussman
And they also believed in, like the, the ancient Daoist believed in, a concept called wu Wei, which simply means, it’s an example or an explanation of the yin and yang and we see the yin and yang symbol as a static kind of a cool 2D logo. But I don’t think that that’s how it was intended.
00:14:18:31 – 00:14:44:34
Kurt Sussman
I think it was their way with the means they had of of explaining that everything is a duality and it’s an interplay of that duality that gives rise to either. For instance, I grew up believing, you know, some things are good, some things are bad. We got to get rid of all the bad. Then we can be left with the good, the end.
00:14:44:39 – 00:15:14:01
Kurt Sussman
And it doesn’t work that way. You have to have the bad because it defines the good. And in martial arts, you seek out opponents that are better than you. So that you take the lumps so that you can see where the chinks in your armor are, and then you have something to work on. And that approach, you know, is common to life, because life is all about conflict.
00:15:14:01 – 00:15:58:19
Kurt Sussman
Whether it’s feeding your family, getting a job, finding a mate, everything is conflict resolution. I saw a sign outside of, church one time, and it said a diamond is just a little lump of coal that didn’t crack under the pressure. And I thought, yeah, that’s good. See, I think my stage of the game, I’ve come to realize that we think that our life is the summation of everything that’s happened to us, and nothing could be further from the truth, because our life is really a summation of our reactions to what happened to us.
00:15:58:24 – 00:16:21:59
Kurt Sussman
Now, if somebody throws a punch at me, I could say, I need to sue this person, or I can learn how to effectively deal with that and use his energy against him. And I wasn’t hurt a bit. What changed my approach? That’s it. And so we’re in such a litigate of nature, I would say, I don’t know if that’s the right word.
00:16:21:59 – 00:16:45:48
Agent Palmer
No, I mean, that’s yeah, that’s just I mean, it’s just it’s one of those things where, like one of those random factoids I know is like New Zealand is the least, litigated country in the world, which and they also are one of the happiest. And it’s hard not to put those two things together, like somebody slips and falls.
00:16:45:53 – 00:17:10:49
Agent Palmer
You go over and see if they need help getting up, not, oh my God, you’re going to sue me. And right, there’s there’s a direct correlation there between like, oh, well, they’re nicer, they’re happier. Like it’s not oh what what’s going to befall me now. Like, am I going to lose my house because somebody fell like, that’s, it’s such a and it’s not even Western.
00:17:11:01 – 00:17:38:46
Agent Palmer
That’s, an American thing, right? Yeah. I don’t think anywhere else that that happens. I think Canada, I think Europe, I think they’re less that they’re more forgiving. Overall, as a society, because we’ve put these things on platforms. Right? Like we’ve seen people, the, you know, the one that comes to mind is the lady whose coffee was too hot at McDonald’s, and she sued McDonald’s and won.
00:17:38:55 – 00:17:44:05
Agent Palmer
And we put her on the front page of every newspaper, and we made her a celebrity.
00:17:44:10 – 00:17:44:30
Kurt Sussman
Yeah.
00:17:44:32 – 00:18:11:12
Agent Palmer
No, I don’t think any other country would do that, would celebrate that kind of a thing. So we end up in this place where we’re giving priority to the wrong things, so all we can do. And I think your book does a great job of this. All we can do is what we experience and what we can control, and we can control our reactions.
00:18:11:12 – 00:18:14:08
Agent Palmer
But it’s it’s on us like, yes.
00:18:14:17 – 00:18:15:04
Kurt Sussman
If that’s right.
00:18:15:04 – 00:18:41:43
Agent Palmer
If if hundreds of thousands of us take control, then maybe we can change the society. But that’s that’s a lot of ifs, ands or buts. Start with yourself first. Right. And and your book and look I, I’m going to go there right now the self-help nature and your. It’s not self depreciation necessarily but your honest approach like hey if this works stop reading.
00:18:41:43 – 00:19:04:31
Agent Palmer
It’s page 37. You’re done. You’re like, I’ve helped you move on. Like, I love that nature of this book because, I mean, I wanted to know what was next. So I kept reading, but like, I get where you’re going with it, but I love the it’s this conversation we’re having is basically what you it’s your book, right?
00:19:04:31 – 00:19:19:29
Agent Palmer
Like your book is so conversational that it felt like having a cup of coffee with you and I. And I like that because you’re not talking down to me. You’re not talking above me. You’re not trying to sound holier than thou. You’re.
00:19:19:34 – 00:19:21:37
Kurt Sussman
And I’m not trying to fix you.
00:19:21:41 – 00:19:40:32
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I you’re just, here’s some nudges and the right the big, I mean, the two big takeaways I, I took from it. Well, actually probably three, we could talk about them. One were the, challenges, as you know, everything’s a challenge. It’s not, it’s not.
00:19:40:32 – 00:19:43:25
Kurt Sussman
A conflict or. Yeah, or a problem.
00:19:43:36 – 00:20:04:59
Agent Palmer
The second was the childish things getting back to things that make you happy, right. And the third, which now I’m blanking on, is, is. Oh, no. The third is that, you know, all of this advice because, I mean, that’s what it is, but it’s, it’s it’s suggestive. Right. It’s not. Right. Authoritative.
00:20:05:03 – 00:20:32:04
Kurt Sussman
And as in, here are the rules. You must follow them or else somebody. Yeah, it’s there’s no punitive nature. You know, I, I often revert back to, to nature as a model because nature is consistent in that it doesn’t have an agenda. It it’s not trying to say, well, you’ve got the right last name, you’re good looking, so we’ll take care of you, acknowledge the rules are the same for everybody.
00:20:32:09 – 00:20:59:31
Kurt Sussman
You better find shelter. You better find food, find a drinking source and not get eaten. And that’s, that’s true of everyone. And, you know, I think, my my first point is, stop whining. And because people say, you know, why is this happening to me? And I say, why don’t you ask, Why? Why is this happening to me?
00:20:59:36 – 00:21:21:46
Kurt Sussman
And it’s that different tone is a more accepting tone, and it makes you pay attention instead of shy away from the lesson. That might be right there in front of you. Watch. Watch a Rocky movie. You’ll learn more about philosophy and, personal success than by, you know, a lot of other conventional methods. But,
00:21:21:50 – 00:21:45:24
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I mean, you say that, but then a lot of people go watch Rocky movie and don’t want it like that. They want to challenge the bad guy, and then they want to beat the bad guy. They don’t want to do the montage. They want to listen to the song. They want to listen to eye of the Tiger, but they don’t want to actually do the montage, which is not, you know, every Rocky montage is not a day of training.
00:21:45:24 – 00:22:05:13
Agent Palmer
It’s like weeks and months of training and. Right. No, no one wants to do that. And that’s, that’s that’s a cultural I mean, that’s a cultural thing, right? Like, I mean, that’s not universal. That’s not everywhere. But here in America where we are recording this like everybody wants to skip to the end, like, oh, I just want to beat him.
00:22:05:18 – 00:22:08:31
Agent Palmer
Right. Where’s the cheat code? Where do that? I win.
00:22:08:36 – 00:22:30:04
Kurt Sussman
Right? And I and I think that, one thing that is that is missed and, I was just actually yesterday watching, a clip on YouTube with Sylvester Stallone and how he came up with that theme and he liked it, the whole idea of the underdog. And there was this, this one boxer, and his name escapes me.
00:22:30:08 – 00:22:56:44
Kurt Sussman
But he fought Muhammad Ali, and he was a he was a nobody. He was just a brawler. His name was Tex Cobb. And no one expected him to win against the greatest boxer of all time. But what he did is not only did he go the distance with the greatest fighter of all time that could not beat him, but he knocked him down.
00:22:56:49 – 00:23:16:55
Kurt Sussman
He survived. And that was the theme that life will beat you down and it doesn’t care who you are. And it’s not how hard you hit that matters. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. And so for the people that say, yeah, well, I want to rush to the end, I don’t want to put it in the work.
00:23:16:55 – 00:23:42:01
Kurt Sussman
I say, well, fine, you know, we need compost. You know, for the earth. And there’s plenty of it out there. You know, you you have to be willing. You have to be willing to be wrong. You have to be willing to look at yourself. You have to be willing to say, yes, I’m a flawed human being, but I’m here for a reason, and I’m going to find out what that is, and I’m going to keep going.
00:23:42:01 – 00:23:43:32
Kurt Sussman
And till is revealed.
00:23:43:41 – 00:24:14:47
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I like the video game analogies because you take any like especially like the, the, the RPG games, right, where like you’re a character and you can die and you can make mistakes. But as the gamer controlling everything, when you die, you change the way you play. So you cannot die where you did. And maybe you, you know, progress in the game a little bit further and then you die again, and then you make adjustments and move forward.
00:24:14:51 – 00:24:27:51
Agent Palmer
But it all builds like in a video game, as in life, like by the time you get to the boss, you’re prepared for the boss. If you just jump to the boss from level one.
00:24:27:55 – 00:24:28:44
Kurt Sussman
You’re in trouble.
00:24:28:44 – 00:24:52:11
Agent Palmer
You have I mean, yeah, I it’s it’s one of those scenarios where is it possible to do. Yes. I mean, look, on YouTube, it’s possible to beat any video game as a level one character. Is it easy? No. The people that do it have tried and tried and tried and found like this 1 in 1,000,000 chance and way that like you have to do stuff in the right sequence.
00:24:52:16 – 00:25:03:20
Agent Palmer
But even that took layers upon layers upon layers of education and mistakes and missteps. All of life. Is that building like you?
00:25:03:24 – 00:25:24:38
Kurt Sussman
You know, that’s that’s the truth. And, I think that when you bring up that notion of video games, that’s an important one. Because we all know the video game obsession and role playing games and like that, and people love that, but they don’t apply that, that same mentality to life. They’re like, well, I want to win always at life.
00:25:24:48 – 00:25:55:39
Kurt Sussman
I want to have a great career with a great income and the right partner. And, you know, two cars and all. Like this. But I want it to just happen automatically. I don’t want to have to get knocked down and knocked down and knocked down. And if it’s too hard, you know, a lot of people say, well, this isn’t fair, but those same people will go to a video game that they get killed a million times, and they keep coming back for more.
00:25:55:44 – 00:26:27:10
Kurt Sussman
Wow. If they would just apply that same, principle to their life, you know, it’s just an interplay of light and dark, good and bad. And it’s like when when something comes at me and it looks bad, my first thought is, ooh, what’s the good on the other side? Because it’s there. It has to be. We live in a binary existence, and there has to be a polar opposite or this wouldn’t exist either.
00:26:27:10 – 00:26:46:33
Kurt Sussman
And I think in the book I use the analogy. And in that mind, I believe, Alan Watts is the first one that said that, you know, if you have two things, you have, you have a wave like an ocean wave and you have the trough, that’s two things. And if you took one away, how many are you left with?
00:26:46:38 – 00:27:05:22
Kurt Sussman
And we would say 1 or 2 minus one is one. But the answer is zero because you took away what defines the other. It’s just like binary code. And the computer world ones and zeros, you take either away, you have nothing.
00:27:05:27 – 00:27:30:49
Agent Palmer
Yeah. So and it’s not I there are certain aspects of this where I think first and foremost, we’re on the right track in that people don’t learn from the right things and, and they play the games, they do the role playing games. And, you know, they’ll sit around and play D&D for a few hours and one of their characters will die, and they’ll all have a good time and go home.
00:27:30:53 – 00:27:58:28
Agent Palmer
But they won’t apply the same thing as in you can learn from failure to their, you know, to, to work. They work a 9 to 5 in a cubicle and it’s just like, oh, I just gotta keep my head down and don’t take any risks. Well, over the weekend, when you were playing a made up character, you took all the risks in the world and you succeeded 60% of the time.
00:27:58:33 – 00:28:18:55
Agent Palmer
Is that not a better existence than keeping your head down and taking no risks at all? And then there’s the other part of it, which is the technology side, which is, yeah, for those of us who have any kind of technology inclination and who get even further deep into it than just, I know how to do, you know, turn on a computer.
00:28:19:00 – 00:28:38:27
Agent Palmer
The binary state of everything is so paramount, and it’s so easy to see how everything works. But even sometimes we don’t take that to the next logical step of, well, let’s apply it to life. Right. If that’s.
00:28:38:27 – 00:28:38:48
Kurt Sussman
True.
00:28:38:50 – 00:28:41:19
Agent Palmer
We kind of leave it at the office, so to speak.
00:28:41:19 – 00:29:03:21
Kurt Sussman
Yeah, we we complain with the with the best of them. Even on a on a good day. That’s absolutely true. I think that the really kind of the basis of the book and it is in three parts. And the first is like the let’s face it, if I go out in the, in the wilderness with no tools, my eyes are survival are pretty slim.
00:29:03:21 – 00:29:27:19
Kurt Sussman
I’m not going to fight a tiger and come out on the winning end of it. You know, wild animals have advantage over us in so many ways as far as adaptability, which is why we evolved so, you know, so they tell me evolved brains. And I look around me sometimes and I’m like, I wonder where they are. Yeah, but you’re here.
00:29:27:22 – 00:30:09:46
Kurt Sussman
You’re right. And, but we also developed language, a very sophisticated method of communicating with our tribe, giving us a social advantage over our environment. And I think that we internalize that as this internal chatter. And then what happened is we started believing that that internal chatter is us. And so when that mind is saying, well, you knew this was it was going to happen because you’re just, a piece of shit and this just happens, you know, and every time you should have known you were going to win, you should have known you were going to get the girl or you weren’t going to get the job.
00:30:09:46 – 00:30:32:40
Kurt Sussman
And we’re listening to this little four year old chattering between our ears. And then we give it the keys to the car of our life and wonder why it goes off the rails. And I say to people, oh, you were talking to yourself. Oh, who was talking? And they say, well, I was. And I say, well, then who was listening?
00:30:32:45 – 00:31:00:47
Kurt Sussman
And then they looked at me kind of puzzled, and I said, you are aware that you can be aware and not thinking, not having a stream of verbal thought in your mind. And that’s that is the first thing we take that internal dialog as gospel. Whatever it’s saying, it’s not an interpretation of life, it is a statement of truth.
00:31:00:52 – 00:31:26:15
Kurt Sussman
Perfect examples. Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for meaning. Yeah, I’ve I’ve read a lot of different books, and Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor and lost his entire family in the Holocaust. And he was like, that’s that’s I just want to die. But a lot of people may not know him, might not know that he was a psychiatrist when he went in.
00:31:26:20 – 00:31:55:37
Kurt Sussman
And at one point he thought, oh, wait a minute, if I could survive the Holocaust, man, I could, I could help somebody through anything. It would make me a better psychiatrist. Now all of a sudden he attached a different meaning to the suffering, and the results were totally different. So the first thing is challenging your your your internal dialog, challenging your thought process.
00:31:55:44 – 00:32:07:54
Kurt Sussman
Try to, step back and identify when you’re being ineffective. And and that’s a big step. And if you’re willing to do that okay, the bumps and bruises are going to start. Yeah.
00:32:07:54 – 00:32:33:41
Agent Palmer
But then I’ll say this. The I your book did a great job of, articulating the noise because like, I’ll be reading a book, any book, and my mind will start to wander like I’m still reading. Right? But like, I’m reading the reading the words on the page, but my mind is like, well, tomorrow you’ve got that meeting at ten, right?
00:32:33:41 – 00:32:53:02
Agent Palmer
And you got to take out chicken for dinner to defrost, and then we should start making a list for things you need to go to the store for. And it’s like, and then I’m three paragraphs down like I still was reading, but my mind was elsewhere. Yes. And it’s like, yeah, all right.
00:32:53:02 – 00:32:53:45
Kurt Sussman
Well that’s it.
00:32:53:49 – 00:32:55:23
Agent Palmer
I know I have to stop control.
00:32:55:23 – 00:32:56:00
Kurt Sussman
It has.
00:32:56:00 – 00:33:23:10
Agent Palmer
Yeah, yeah. You just have to just feel all right. I’m, Well, I’m going to go back to the last thing I remember reading, and I’m going to. Yeah. Try and shut you out. And it’s it goes to the second line. Well, it goes to the second point of my takeaways, which was the going back to the childish things and the things that make you happy because, yeah, when I, I mean, I picked up the guitar again recently and I’m making an effort to do to do it on a regular basis.
00:33:23:10 – 00:33:45:08
Agent Palmer
But like, I don’t think when I’m playing guitar, like, I mean, you would, you would assume or or whatever that I would have to think about like, oh, what are the chords in this song? What are the lyrics? If I want to sing what have you? I don’t have to. I can just be with my guitar and just play.
00:33:45:13 – 00:33:47:39
Agent Palmer
And it is.
00:33:47:44 – 00:33:48:42
Kurt Sussman
Meditative.
00:33:48:43 – 00:34:11:21
Agent Palmer
Yeah. It’s like a Zen experience because I’m not thinking about what I have to do tomorrow or what I have to do next. I’m barely even thinking of the next chord. If I am at all. It’s just I’m there. I’m in the moment. I’m doing that thing. And, you know, I. I mean, you do a great job of articulating that.
00:34:11:23 – 00:34:33:07
Agent Palmer
Like, why did we give these things up? Right? Like I had, in a previous guest on this show, Ryan is an illustrator who went back to illustration and he’s like, why did I ever leave this? And it ended up turning into something, monetarily successful for him. But I think he was burning the midnight oil when there was no money in it.
00:34:33:07 – 00:34:52:34
Agent Palmer
So I think he would still be doing that even if the money wasn’t there. And I go to the same thing where it’s like, why did I ever stop playing guitar? Like I didn’t not enjoy it. I always enjoy it, but it’s just I stopped playing.
00:34:52:39 – 00:34:59:19
Kurt Sussman
Yeah. It’s probably, yeah, probably. People told you to grow up and start doing something that was going to make you money.
00:34:59:24 – 00:35:21:17
Agent Palmer
I mean, it’s it’s definitely possible. Although I feel like that. Look, I started this podcast with no. Oh, like, I understand what the directions are, right? Like, I can point people in the direction. I think I’ve said it on this show before. Like, if you want to do a show that will be monetarily successful, you have to chase trends.
00:35:21:22 – 00:35:46:20
Agent Palmer
You have to do it this way. You have to do it that way. I am not doing that show. I am doing the show I want to do. And yes, you know, I’ve fielded for years and maybe this is kind of like built up my tolerance. And also my, not ignorance, but I can ignore these things for years.
00:35:46:25 – 00:36:17:55
Agent Palmer
The certain people around me would be like, so how is things going to be like, oh, good. You know, the blogs just chugging along and they’d be like, you making any money with it? And I’d be like, no, okay, why are you doing it? Because it’s, I mean, I, I, I enjoy it like like I’ve, I guess I don’t have to worry about people asking me if I’m making any money from the podcast because I had a blog for much longer and got that question all the time and just kept going.
00:36:18:00 – 00:36:44:28
Agent Palmer
And yeah, there’s a a fine line. I think a lot of people have trouble with, which is I can do this for me as long as no one else cares about it. Like I can publish my blog and never get any feedback, but also not have anybody ask me about it. Like, well, you know, you’re making any money, but then the moment somebody puts that into your head, you go, I mean, I mean, you have choices, right?
00:36:44:28 – 00:36:54:27
Agent Palmer
Like you can be like, no, I’m going to do this for me or no, I’m going to try and make money out of this. And the moment you try and make money out of this, you’re not doing it for you anymore.
00:36:54:32 – 00:36:56:11
Kurt Sussman
That’s right, and that’s right.
00:36:56:24 – 00:37:14:02
Agent Palmer
I mean, that’s why I’m doing this show. It’s it’s for me, like, I like my listeners. I, I have a few dedicated fans and I do do it for them as well. But if I’m not doing it for me first, you’re not going to enjoy listening to this.
00:37:14:06 – 00:37:43:29
Kurt Sussman
That’s right. That’s right. I, I’ve said to people, in, in about every class I’ve ever, taught that, you basically find what you love and you fall in love with it, and you do that and that love that that, that light, that energy or frequency attracts people just like moths to a flame or. Well, maybe a flame is a bad, bad example.
00:37:43:29 – 00:38:04:36
Kurt Sussman
Maybe a porch light would be a better example. Yeah. But, I and I believe that and I think that, I think our culture, you know, has to put a price tag on it. Well, if there’s something monetarily. Hey, you know, the more you have, the more you own, the more that owns you. And, that’s that’s true.
00:38:04:44 – 00:38:29:31
Kurt Sussman
And it’s not saying that, you know, it’s better to be steeped in poverty. I’m not. I’m not saying that. I’m saying always. I don’t care where it is. Balance is the key. But somewhere along the line, we we lost sight that this, you know, this voice that’s acculturated to materialism and wealth and prosperity and abundance. We have to listen to it.
00:38:29:31 – 00:39:07:13
Kurt Sussman
It’s the boss. We got to do what it says, and I’m saying, no, you got to shut him up. You’ve got to realize that that might be the source of a lot of your problems. Maybe you need to sit down and play the guitar. And that’s why I. You know, one of the techniques in the book is have a jar of, you know, scraps of paper that just write down little activities that you love, you know, and if you’re, if you’re a workout nut like me, it might be 50 pushups or it might be play ten songs on the guitar or whatever and catch yourself identify.
00:39:07:25 – 00:39:20:23
Kurt Sussman
You have to identify when you are ineffective and you can, you know, you’re ineffective and you know, it’s like, yeah, but, my my mind told me to do that. It’s like, yeah, well, how did that work out for you?
00:39:20:28 – 00:39:44:51
Agent Palmer
So yeah. And and there’s a part of me that also wonders, like what happened to the concert left of a hobby. Yeah, right. Like, because I mean that it’s you’re talking about this on the periphery because you’re talking about it in, in a context of just getting out of your own head. But do people still have hobbies like it?
00:39:45:06 – 00:40:06:01
Agent Palmer
So if whatever you call my blog, in my podcast, if you don’t call it a hobby, then you’re going to ask me if I’m making money. But if I said, these are my hobbies, you wouldn’t first go, well, are you making money off of it like, no. My hobbies playing video games. I don’t make money off of it now.
00:40:06:03 – 00:40:31:07
Agent Palmer
We live in a society where you can jump on Twitch and stream playing video games. So now is it just that any time a hobby, quote unquote, has a monetary avenue, it immediately stops being a hobby and it’s just like, well, why aren’t you making money off of it? So if I play a video game and play guitar, I should have a Twitch stream so I can play both of them.
00:40:31:11 – 00:40:35:15
Agent Palmer
And make money. Like, that’s that’s almost where we’ve become like.
00:40:35:20 – 00:40:36:03
Kurt Sussman
I write.
00:40:36:08 – 00:41:03:56
Agent Palmer
Reading is a hobby for the both of us. Nobody’s telling me I need to make money reading button. Right. But but I can. But like, people can see the line of like, well, you can just stream your video game, so why don’t you make money doing that? Like, no, no, it’s a it’s a hobby. Like, it’s so weird to me that we made that turn that we did we put we planted our flag in the ground and went.
00:41:04:00 – 00:41:10:08
Agent Palmer
There are no hobbies anymore. You either make money or you sleep. Like what? What?
00:41:10:13 – 00:41:46:38
Kurt Sussman
Yeah. So I would say to that, how happy are you? You know, because I think more in terms of frequency, like when I’m vibrating at a low frequency, I’m very depressed or I’m down or I’m ill or whatever. And when my frequency is light, I’m inspiring and I, you know, I’m giving and I’m teaching and like, and I think that, everyone has to find why they’re here and what makes them balanced and achieve the highest frequency in the most amount of light.
00:41:46:43 – 00:42:07:07
Kurt Sussman
And that has nothing to do with money. And sometimes you can take something that you love and you go and you do it for a living and well, that’s, I guess, what they would call prostitution. So, you know, maybe it’s not always the best idea. Maybe it’s supposed to be a hobby, maybe it’s supposed to be. It’s just for you.
00:42:07:16 – 00:42:27:19
Kurt Sussman
I play the guitar and I play the guitar. I’ve played in bands, I play in coffeehouses, and. But I play for me. I don’t play for anybody else. Not because I’m hiding or I don’t want to. It’s just because when I’m playing something that I want to play, you know, I’ll get goosebumps or something. Oh, that sounded great.
00:42:27:19 – 00:42:47:17
Kurt Sussman
And it’s a great activity, you know, again with, with with the book, I am I mean, I want to get to the, to the point to where, you know, you first have to interrupt that impulse that everything has to, as you say, make money or be serious. You know, you can’t be having fun. That’s not a job my age.
00:42:47:28 – 00:43:11:21
Kurt Sussman
When I was young, I first had my job. You know, we made $0.20 an hour and were paid in potatoes or, you know, whatever. And it’s like, yeah, we grew up in that, that, you know, kind of, American culture that it’s like the shittier you job is, the more successful you were. And it’s like, and then they retire and then they die.
00:43:11:32 – 00:43:34:58
Kurt Sussman
I know so many people that have had, jobs at, big companies and they, they say, I hate my life. And this happened to me just recently, a friend of mine, and he was working at a job and he hated it. And he’s like, I’ve only got three years to go and I get to retire. And he used to come up here to the the lake and go fishing.
00:43:34:58 – 00:43:56:49
Kurt Sussman
And, I said, well, you can come up here any time. He says, this is the only thing that keeps me sane is seeing that little bobber floating. And I ran into his wife a couple of years ago, and she had told me that he died of a massive heart attack in the middle of the night, and he never did retire.
00:43:56:54 – 00:44:18:53
Kurt Sussman
And I think it’s I think it’s so tragic, you know, and so, you know, I, you know, first I say, well, this idea of balance, well, in martial arts, all I have to do to my opponent is throw him off balance. If he’s off balance, he cannot attack me. He’s no threat. Nobody’s a threat when they’re off balance.
00:44:18:58 – 00:44:53:35
Kurt Sussman
Now, you can take that a little bit further. You know, intellectually and emotionally and inspirational. And the same is true. So we need to strive for balance. And we know even though we don’t often admit it when we’re off balance. So I say, like there was, a man who was, a writer speaker. He was on YouTube and he said, how many people in here think that your thoughts, your emotions and your behavior have something to do with your life or how your life turns out?
00:44:53:40 – 00:45:17:40
Kurt Sussman
And everybody raised their hand, of course. And he said, okay, well, your thoughts really are formed by what you did in the past. And so you’re thinking about, oh, why did I do that? And what, you know, I should have become a doctor, I should have. So and then your thoughts, then your emotions follow that and then your behavior just falls in line with that.
00:45:17:40 – 00:45:40:25
Kurt Sussman
So you’re basically reliving your past and expecting it to get better. And I’m saying, no, you’ve got to interrupt that cycle. You’ve got to first recognize it, interrupt it and throw in like if I think, oh, you know, woe is me or whatever, I can reach my hand in a jar and pull out. Oh, I got to play ten songs on the guitar.
00:45:40:36 – 00:46:12:44
Kurt Sussman
And that might seem illogical, but what it’s doing is it’s interrupting a pattern and that interrupting of a pattern. All of a sudden I realized I forgot to be miserable. And that’s the key. It’s like, So I had more control than I thought. But the last part of my book or the in the last and maybe half of it, you know, I try to introduce to people the, the idea which is variation in and it’s, you know, it’s more it’s more common.
00:46:12:44 – 00:46:37:35
Kurt Sussman
I’ll say in Asian culture that the idea of, say, destiny or fate, you know, that there’s a reason why you’re here. I heard a guy say, do you know what your pancreas does? And the person said, no, I, I really don’t, he says, but do you know that you can control your pancreas as good as the guy who knows everything about a pancreas?
00:46:37:40 – 00:47:05:26
Kurt Sussman
And it’s I thought that was really, really interesting. And, I, you know, one of the, authors I do like to read is, Eckhart Tolle. And, you know, I believe it was him that said, when you can look at your present moment and say, nothing needs to change, everything is perfectly in order. When you need nothing to change, everything changes.
00:47:05:30 – 00:47:47:08
Kurt Sussman
But we’re so busy trying to change what our future is going to be so that we don’t have the same past. And that’s kind of like the wake driving the boat, which is totally illogical. And we’re, we’re we’re not living now. And I also say that, you know, in science, it was it’s gotten to the point now to where we realize that reality as we interpret is, has been, kind of an interpretation of a limited computing device sitting on our shoulders and at the subatomic level, these Newtonian physics, these linear things like time, they don’t hold weight anymore.
00:47:47:17 – 00:48:12:59
Kurt Sussman
They are not true. Things exist. Totally contrary to how we thought. Things blink in and out of reality and we don’t know where they go. They can be in two places at the same time. And you know, all of a sudden everything starts to break down and it’s just this narrow slice of our reality to where we want everything to be logical and linear.
00:48:13:04 – 00:48:42:46
Kurt Sussman
And it’s not. It’s not that way. One of my recent posts, I say you’re as much a product of your past decisions as you are echoes from your future self, because that takes the whole idea of time out of it. Because that’s what quantum mechanics says is that you take time out of it. You can say that this ball hitting, this billiard ball produces this effect.
00:48:42:53 – 00:49:11:01
Kurt Sussman
You could also say it’s equally valid to say, this ball was destined to go in this pocket. So that ball had to go into motion to hit that ball. So whether or not that’s true or makes people feel like, oh, so I have no control, it’s just fate that is immaterial. If you just would, behave that way, it’s like I’m just going to keep my eyes open and pay attention.
00:49:11:06 – 00:49:20:20
Kurt Sussman
As simple as that. You’ll find that you will be much more effective than all the planning in the world will produce.
00:49:20:33 – 00:49:41:30
Agent Palmer
Obviously, this book is a culmination of a lifetime of learning and a lifetime of teaching. Yeah. Was it inevitable? Like did you just kind of start writing it and then realize it was a book? Did or did you sit down and go like, no, I’m, I’m going to I’m going to collect all this stuff that I keep saying over and over again.
00:49:41:35 – 00:50:05:27
Kurt Sussman
I think in reality, there’s probably a little of both, but I’m, I’m pretty much of the mindset that I’m not the author. I’m the pen. I it’s like I can tell I’m kind of like the radio, not the station. And when all of a sudden I tune and I hear the tune coming, I grab a pen and a paper and put it down.
00:50:05:32 – 00:50:24:41
Kurt Sussman
And there’s there’s people. I just, I was watching one of those music competition shows. I think it was last night, and, the guy said that, he wrote the song in his dream. He had a dream of this song. He says, cause the finished product wasn’t as good as it was in my dream. But it was.
00:50:24:56 – 00:50:56:47
Kurt Sussman
It was pretty close, and I thought that was that was fascinating. So I’m wondering what mechanism did he employ to make himself dream that dream? Yeah. And, that’s impossible. So, you know, it’s like when I boil it down to its essentials, when I try to be effective in martial arts saying inspiring, I might be and I might not be, and then will come all of the, afterthoughts of, oh, you know, I should have done this more.
00:50:56:47 – 00:51:12:06
Kurt Sussman
I should be practicing this more. I’m such a piece of crap, you know, or how I do it. It’s like, well, let’s bar I can’t lose. And I don’t mean that, you know, like, grandiose or something, like.
00:51:12:09 – 00:51:14:12
Agent Palmer
It’s not an egotistical.
00:51:14:17 – 00:51:37:43
Kurt Sussman
No, it’s not egotistical at all. You’re either going to reveal an area in, in my defense that needs tightening and it’s like, oh, thanks. I didn’t know I was open there. Now I’ve got something to practice with and now I have something to focus on or I’m going to knock you out and and then I win there too.
00:51:37:43 – 00:51:59:04
Kurt Sussman
So, you know, it’s like, I don’t I don’t need anything to be any certain way for me to be happy. And I think that, it gets back to what you were talking about with video games and like that, it’s like if you just realize, hey, you’re okay. You’re allowed to be weird. You’re allowed to be different.
00:51:59:09 – 00:52:23:57
Kurt Sussman
You’re allowed whatever channels play on your radio, you have every right to let them play, turn the volume up, and anybody just want to hear them, let them go somewhere else and listen somewhere else. But the last thing I’m going to do is tell someone else, you know, what channel then they need to listen to. And, it even, informs my martial arts teaching.
00:52:24:02 – 00:52:50:42
Kurt Sussman
People say, well, what style do you teach? I say, I teach your style. I train people from long range combat all the way into close range and grappling combat and expose them to everything and find out that they have a propensity for for something either being equally good in all ranges or, being specifically focused on one range or whatever.
00:52:50:51 – 00:53:14:02
Kurt Sussman
And essentially what happens is they develop their own martial art. I will say that a good analogy is we all know how effective a cobra is. We all know you know, Rikki tikki, tabby and the mongoose against the cobra, you know, the epic battle. And I say, well, have you told the cobra that it needed to fight like a mongoose?
00:53:14:06 – 00:53:48:33
Kurt Sussman
And the mongoose had to fight like a snake? Both of them would be inept because they have to be who they are and find their own nature and not society’s nature, not, you know, and in the martial arts, there’s some so much bullshit that it’s just like you know, tracing back. Well, I can trace back my lineage, and it’s like, I would rather have one flawed original than a million perfect photocopies, because every time you try to photocopy, it degrades.
00:53:48:33 – 00:54:15:08
Kurt Sussman
Yeah, I create originals. I see, you know, you be you. Do you, That’s it. And it’s okay. It’s okay to be you and you. I think that we have our flaws because that’s our work. They’re not. And and I don’t consider them flaws. I mean, sure, sometimes I do, because I’m human. Sometimes I’m like, wow, man, I should have I should have done this, or I should have done that.
00:54:15:08 – 00:54:19:45
Kurt Sussman
But then I say, oh yeah, knock that off, you know, well, do something else.
00:54:19:45 – 00:54:46:43
Agent Palmer
But it’s interesting you bring that up too, because, originality, individuality, depending on which, you know, is starting to come back where, it should, I mean, it I don’t know if it’s going to stay, but, like, I’ve been unemployed for a while and a couple times, actually, recently. And, you know, everybody’s got some advice for the unemployed guy, right?
00:54:46:52 – 00:55:22:13
Agent Palmer
Right. You know. Oh, just, send out five, applications a day. You’ll be fine. It’s like, well, I can’t find five jobs I’m interested in every day, so that’s not realistic. And, like, oh, when you write your cover letter, you got to do it. This with this formula. And it’s like, well, if I do it with that formula that you got off the internet, am I not just writing the same formula that for the other guys, you know, wrote off the internet and, you know, so I attempt to do it all myself to come across as honest and original as possible.
00:55:22:17 – 00:55:45:58
Agent Palmer
But that doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. I just have to make sure I’m being honest to myself and, you know, look, there’s there’s there’s a lot of people that are worse off than me, and there are a lot of people that are better off than me. I don’t care about either of them, really, like I am.
00:55:45:58 – 00:56:13:56
Agent Palmer
Am I doing well? Yeah. I’m doing well. All right. I mean, that’s that. That’s good. I’ve the one time I was unemployed for about three months. I wasted the opportunity. So the next time I came, became unemployed, I was like, no, this is why I picked up the guitar. And I’m, I’m I’m happy I kept it up. But the second time I became unemployed, I went, I’m aware enough to know that I wasted that last opportunity.
00:56:14:01 – 00:56:40:08
Agent Palmer
And it’s not like, yeah, you know, I have these impact, full, constructive, creative hobbies, right? I, I launched this podcast while I was unemployed and I kept doing the blog while I was unemployed, but I was like, that’s. And that some of that’s good. And like, you know, the whole chicken soup for the soul, some of that’s good for me, but not all of it.
00:56:40:13 – 00:57:02:55
Agent Palmer
So I was like, I’m going to pick up the guitar again like this. Yeah, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to use this time that I’m given because you can only look for a job for, so like for so long, you you can’t look for a job 24 seven at a certain point when people and people do pay attention to the details, you can’t send in an application at 3 a.m..
00:57:02:59 – 00:57:22:57
Agent Palmer
Why are you up at 3 a.m.? Especially if you know it’s for a 9 to 5 job. That’s that doesn’t work. You can’t like I, I’ve done networking, but I at a certain point I can’t call people at four a am like there are times I won’t even call people after dinner, really, just because I feel like that’s that’s your time.
00:57:23:11 – 00:57:45:22
Agent Palmer
That’s when you get to play guitar or video games or run or whatever you want to do. So I was like, all right, I’ve got this time. And last time I didn’t do much with it, okay, I read books, but like, I’ve always been reading books, like, yeah, now it’s time. Let’s let’s pick something else up. And it was like, well, I don’t need to pick up something new.
00:57:45:35 – 00:58:01:41
Agent Palmer
I can go back to something. And I’ve got guitars all around my house, like I, I have a guitar collection. So the fact that I got away from it is almost disheartening. I love them enough to have more than one.
00:58:01:46 – 00:58:02:13
Kurt Sussman
Right?
00:58:02:13 – 00:58:28:48
Agent Palmer
And I wasn’t picking them up at all. And now it’s like, I’ve got it again. It goes back to balance too. Like it’s not just balance on a whole. It’s balance in, in within things as well. I’ve only been playing like acoustic stuff like crazy. I feel like I should probably pick up my bass or pick up my electric, like I should find a little bit of balance with this, because variations good.
00:58:28:53 – 00:58:54:42
Agent Palmer
It’s not bad. Like, I’m never going to get sick of playing the acoustic guitar, but I shouldn’t only play the acoustic guitar. I have more skills than that. It’s like I enjoy reading biographies, but I also enjoy reading fantasy and spy fiction and like, I don’t read just one type of book. I shouldn’t be limited to playing one type of guitar, and that variety is for me to choose.
00:58:54:47 – 00:59:18:58
Agent Palmer
I mean, it’s not. And again, when I’m choosing for me and not for income and not for like, what other people may perceive. I mean, I look back on my blog and I review every book I read. I didn’t choose any of those books based on what would make the best blog post. Right. You know what I mean?
00:59:18:58 – 00:59:26:27
Agent Palmer
Like, I those are the books I am reading that that that’s the end of it. Like I’m interested in this book. I’m going to read it.
00:59:26:27 – 00:59:46:06
Kurt Sussman
Yeah. I think that, an interesting point to make is that when people are busy telling you, well, well, you can’t do that. You, you’ve got to go out and you’ve got to do that, and they’re trying to fix you, you know, society tries to fix you. And the people that are trying to fix you the most are the people that are the most lost.
00:59:46:11 – 01:00:08:55
Kurt Sussman
If someone is totally content in their own skin and, and with who they are and where they are right here, right now, the last thing they want to do is change you. And so the idea of what do you do for a living or that’s just a no, that’s a has no emphasis. I say, what is a wolverine’s hobby?
01:00:08:55 – 01:00:32:20
Kurt Sussman
You know, I mean, it does what it does. I do what I do. And people say, well, how do you know it’s right? And I say, because that’s what I’m doing right now. And I think that there’s never a problem right now. Problems only exist in the past, in the future. You know, either something you that you regret or something that you fear might happen.
01:00:32:25 – 01:00:55:10
Kurt Sussman
Yeah, I succumb to that just like every other human being. But I guess my teaching style, my writing style is like, hey, you’re okay just the way you are, and you didn’t make yourself. So you just showed up with these skills and these traits. And, if you don’t do them, you’re kind of, you know, being disrespectful to the universe.
01:00:55:10 – 01:01:18:29
Kurt Sussman
The guy that brought you around to begin with. I mean, I kind of, I kind of look at it that way. And, it’s really just a matter of, being able to be more content. I mean, it’s so funny that I’ve had I had a young guy call me years ago. He says, I just wanted to say thanks.
01:01:18:29 – 01:01:37:53
Kurt Sussman
And I said, for what? He said, for something you said to me, I was in college, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing with my life. And I was thinking, oh, my gosh, I don’t know. And I’m paying all this money for college and I have this student debt. And then I heard your voice come in my head and say, you don’t have to know.
01:01:37:58 – 01:02:05:00
Kurt Sussman
Just keep your eyes open and watch for the road signs. And I thought to myself, I don’t ever remember saying that, but it does sound like something that I would say. So I probably did. And he says, yeah, all right. I’m just going to kind of relax. And you know, and when you do, you come back to the now whenever you’re whenever you’re really upset or dissatisfied or you’re not here, you’re somewhere else.
01:02:05:05 – 01:02:30:52
Kurt Sussman
And that’s, that’s a big problem. And I and so he just relax and I guess I’m right where I need to be. He said he had to take, a business elective and he took economics. Didn’t know what it was, but within the first week realized that was his career path. And he says, I wouldn’t have seen it if I was stuck in my head thinking about what I was supposed to do and what would make me the most money.
01:02:30:59 – 01:03:00:11
Kurt Sussman
Well, now he’s got a multinational corporation that does mergers and acquisitions and stuff that I don’t even understand, and I have a lot of stories of that, and I realize that I don’t take credit for that, but I do realize that I if anything, Im a catalyst and I am a catalyst to other people. And I’ve, life or nature has put me in that role many times, enough to know that’s what I’m supposed to do.
01:03:00:16 – 01:03:08:18
Kurt Sussman
And that’s probably why you and I are talking.
01:03:08:23 – 01:03:42:22
Agent Palmer
First, let me get a little fact checking out of the way. I was wrong when I said the least litigious place and happiest place in the world was New Zealand. They are among the happiest and they are less litigious than the United States. But they aren’t the least. And honestly, that might have been the case. But all I can find is that the Netherlands is near the top for least litigious, and although you don’t get many results that way, you get most and have to find out the least, as in most litigious societies.
01:03:42:22 – 01:04:15:33
Agent Palmer
And then who’s at the bottom anyway? I was not correct there and I wanted to let you know this this isn’t a regular thing. Me fact checking myself, but I was curious myself after listening back. Now there isn’t much to say to sum up this episode that I haven’t already said near the end in my conversation with Kurt that you just listened to, it kind of just got wrapped up during the episode, which will happen, I suppose, but there are a few loose ends to tie up first, it’s not that I don’t care about other people, it can come across that way.
01:04:15:33 – 01:04:38:52
Agent Palmer
If you were working out or doing something that took your attention away at the wrong moment, it was in context to knowing yourself. I know myself and I can only control myself. If I’m good, then I’m good and I don’t care about anybody else. That’s that’s the thing. It’s not that I’m not a caring person. I do care enough, in fact, that I’m reiterating something.
01:04:39:04 – 01:04:59:47
Agent Palmer
So you don’t think I’m a monster? I am not a monster. Also, as much as process and origins come up on this podcast, balance is a theme that has come to prominence, or at least I’ve been noticing it appear more in each episode that I’ve been recording. Some of it is physical, some of it’s mental, some of it is work life.
01:04:59:51 – 01:05:20:28
Agent Palmer
Whatever kind of balance it is, it’s getting mentioned, and I think you’ll be hearing as much about balance and process as you are origins in the future, because it’s important. But this was a heavy episode. There were a lot of important things, a lot of philosophy, and I don’t want to keep it so heavy all the way through.
01:05:20:28 – 01:05:47:19
Agent Palmer
So on a lighter note, I mentioned during the episode that I’ve been playing a lot of guitar, especially the acoustic, and I wanted to leave you with a short playlist of songs that I’ve learned, and I really enjoy playing The Weight by the band, Southern Cross by Crosby, Stills and Nash, A Higher Place by Tom petty, Highway of Heroes by The Trews, up on Cripple Creek, also by the band Weed Kings by The Tragically Hip.
01:05:47:28 – 01:06:10:11
Agent Palmer
Sweet Baby James by James Taylor and signed by Tesla, which is a cover I enjoy those for what they are. They aren’t chosen for any other reason than I’m playing them on my guitar, and I enjoy doing that. If there’s a common thread aside from the band being in there twice, it’s not on purpose. So if you find one, let me know.
01:06:10:16 – 01:06:29:43
Agent Palmer
Thanks for listening to The Palmer Files episode 19. As a reminder, all links are available in the show notes. And now for the official business. The Palmer Files releases every two weeks on Tuesdays. If you’re still listening, I encourage you to join the discussion. You can tweet me at Agent Palmer, the show at The Palmer Files, and Kurt at Ounce of Inspiration.
01:06:29:43 – 01:06:59:06
Agent Palmer
That’s Ounce of inspiration or O Z of inspiration. For my international listeners out there. You can see his website with links to both of his books on Kurt sussman.com. That’s cool. Sussman.com, which also includes his blog Ounce of Inspiration. Plus, as always, don’t forget you can see all of my writings on Agent palmer.com, including my review of Out of My Mind, written and published before Kurt and I recorded this episode.
01:06:59:06 – 01:07:40:06
Agent Palmer
And as usual, you can find all of these links in the show notes. Send email to the show at the Palmer Files at gmail.com. If you have any feedback on this or any previous episode, or if there’s a topic or guest you’d like me to consider, you can also hear more of me in the meantime on our liner notes, a musical conversation podcast with host Chris Maier and my other gig as co-host of the podcast digest with Dan Lizette.
01:07:40:11 – 01:08:04:03
Unknown
ABC.
01:08:04:08 – 01:08:04:58
Unknown
All right, Kurt, you have.
01:08:04:58 – 01:08:07:28
Agent Palmer
One final question for me.
01:08:07:33 – 01:08:16:42
Kurt Sussman
Yes, I do. Jason, I’m curious, how you found out about the book that I wrote and what prompted you to read it?
01:08:16:46 – 01:08:49:24
Agent Palmer
So it’s going to sound like really pie in the sky here. I think it was just the universe. I go on Facebook maybe once a week, maybe. And I don’t use it as a way to grab information. I mean, Twitter’s my main thing, but it was one of those times I happened to be on Facebook. And when you load up Facebook, you get, you know, you see a few posts and I just happened to catch that you had put out your book and I was like, oh shit, Kurt.
01:08:49:27 – 01:09:12:30
Agent Palmer
Kurt wrote a book I should probably read I like, I’ll put it on the list. So what ended up happening was I put it on a list and I was like, or in my Amazon wish list. And, you know, I didn’t think anything of it at the moment. Like, I mean, it came out, I probably hit it around that time and it sat on my Amazon to read list.
01:09:12:35 – 01:09:30:28
Agent Palmer
And then I was going through my wish list one day, trying to order some more books, because I usually order books in bulk, like I order like 6 or 7 books. And then when I get through and I’m reading like the last of them, I’ll order another batch. And I just so happened I was like going through. And I was like, oh, that’s right, Kurt wrote a book.
01:09:30:28 – 01:09:53:53
Agent Palmer
And then I read the, the, synopsis because I just hands down like somebody I know wrote a book. Like, I want to be supportive. So I put it on the list and and it still has to grab me. But it also has to grab me at the right period of time. And I was like, this is like, I’m not averse to reading self-help books, but I, I’m interested in the way you were.
01:09:53:58 – 01:10:13:13
Agent Palmer
You framed everything in the blurb and stuff. So I ordered it, and then it was just a matter of like when it comes up in the rotation, because while I while it’s, you know, I have a rotation for ordering books, I still have a lot of books in my house. I still haven’t read yet. And it’s like, well, I’m reading through the Terry book stuff, I’m reading through the Len date and stuff.
01:10:13:13 – 01:10:38:24
Agent Palmer
So where am I? In the reading? And it was just like, no, I’m, I’m going to pick up Kurt’s book. And I read it and it was it was odd because I don’t think I’ve spoken to you in like, I since I left King years, like, I mean, I mean, I, I very much left college and kind of put it behind me.
01:10:38:28 – 01:10:48:37
Agent Palmer
And it’s not really anything personal, right. It’s just kind of like I, I was, I was on a trip and I was going forward and I didn’t look back.
01:10:48:42 – 01:11:10:22
Kurt Sussman
That was then. This is now. So you kind of, solidify my point in, in that you didn’t call up Facebook and say, hey, put this, book that’s being published in front of my face because I’m going to be logging on it at, you know, on Friday at noon. And I want to see it and be inspired to now it just clicked into place.
01:11:10:27 – 01:11:35:02
Kurt Sussman
And so a lot of times people say, so you’re totally powerless and you just have you’re at the whim of all the cosmic tumblers. I say, no, you are the cosmic tumblers. So you just let them do their thing, and that’s you doing your thing. And it’s all it’s all interlinked. So it happens when it’s supposed to happen and it won’t.
01:11:35:02 – 01:11:55:42
Kurt Sussman
You can’t make it happen. And, so it, it always intrigues me, when it all falls into place. When I got the call from you that, you wanted to do this podcast, I thought. Yeah. Okay. Well, I certainly didn’t think. I wonder if Jason’s doing the podcast. Maybe I should, find him and, see if he would want it.
01:11:55:42 – 01:12:00:23
Kurt Sussman
Nah, I don’t I don’t do that. And, apparently you don’t either, so that’s good.
01:12:00:37 – 01:12:04:41
Agent Palmer
Yeah, I, I took I took what the universe was giving me.
01:12:04:45 – 01:12:06:01
Kurt Sussman
Yeah. Cool, cool.
–End Transcription–
This transcription was processed by PalmerTech 3.1 and may contain errors for HUMINT (human intelligence).