Calibrate your inner compass with a sense of gratitude for the peculiar - Lawrence Yeo | S4E1 - Still Curious

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lawrence Yeo (00:00):
there's like this nascent fear of someone asking

(00:02):
you, what do you do?
Because I do so many things, butI guess I'm a writer.
And then it's like, well, oh,what kind of stuff do you write?
And then I'm just like, uh, Idunno how, how exactly to answer
this.
Like, every time.
so if anything, I would say thatfear that you have of that
particular question is actuallylike a good thing The unique

(00:24):
threads of everything that youpull together is gonna result in
some sort of mishmash is sospecific to you.
And like it's really hard todescribe the end result to
anybody really.
if anything, your inability toanswer that question is probably
your greatest asset as acreator.

(00:44):
I don't have any neat way ofsaying what I'm curious about or
interested in think that it'ssomething to be quite proud of
something to lean into insteadof push away.
You're listening to the stillcurious podcast with me, Daniel
pointer.
The show where I met people whoinsist on relating to the world

(01:06):
with curiosity and care and talkto them about the red thread
that runs through their lifestory and which ultimately
empowers them to flourish astheir unrepeatable selves.
The voice you just heard belongsto my guest today.
Lawrence yo.
I've writer, illustrator,storyteller, and the creator of
mortar that an illustrated longform blog that delves deeper

(01:28):
into the things that make us whowe are.
Lawrence creates stories thatnavigate the nuances of the
human condition.
I'm a long time reader andadmirer of his work as someone
who consciously puts curiosityat the center of what he does
and who points people towardsfinding freedom and acceptance
in pursuing the things they findmeaningful while emphasizing

(01:50):
that practical realities ofpursuing a life of creativity.
Including money and mindset.
if you really had all your time and attention that
you wanted to dedicate to whatyou think you wanna dedicate
your time to.
Is that actually gonna be asblissful as you think it is?
with my music, I quit my job topursue it, thinking that I
needed 40 hours in a week to dothis.

(02:12):
And then when I had 40 plushours all available, I'm like, I
don't wanna do this for thatlong.
I actually don't wanna makemusic for 40 hours a week.
Lawrence describes more to thatas a grand exercise in
reframing.
It's about giving peopledifferent lenses to view
familiar situations.
This superpower to take anysituation and view it through a

(02:35):
different perspective issomething Lawrence remembers
having from an early age.
He says that while he grew uppoor, he never felt poor because
he had the kind of familysituation that made him feel he
had everything he needed.
And as a result, he always had agreat sense of abundance.
Lawrence always knew he wantedto be a creator of some sort.

(02:57):
But wasn't sure how he was goingto go about it.
He took five years to graduatecollege and was still an
undeclared major in his senioryear.
Eventually selectinginternational economics and
landing a job in investmentbanking.
Can you finance?
Wasn't what lights his fire, buthe saw it at the time as a way
to purchase his freedom anddirect his attention to his

(03:18):
creative pursuits, such asmaking music.
He then quit his job to pursuemusic.
As you heard.
But eventually found himselfbecoming disillusioned with the
craft.
Not in terms of making the musicitself, but the way the constant
demands for external validationtied to a professional career in
music was making him become akind of person.

(03:39):
He didn't want to be.
Back in finance Lawrence stillneeded a creative outlet for his
curiosity about the human mind.
So he started experimenting withcombining his facility for
writing with his childhood loveof drawing.
This time, he wasn't focused atall on external validation.
He just wanted to find out if hewas in love with this way of

(04:02):
spending his time.
So he took hundreds of hourscreating a handful of pieces
before publishing anything.
Without knowing if anyone wouldeven read them.
In doing so Lawrence realizedthat his inner compass was not
about the number of views, hisart received, but about how
creating art moved him forwardas a person.

(04:23):
And the time spent calibratingthat inner compass would make
all the difference to how heapproached building his new
project.
More to that.
When I started it, I already had that strong
intention of I'm gonna follow myinner compass I have to not only
follow my own curiosity, but theway I'm gonna make this
practical is not by adoptingsomeone else's strategies and

(04:44):
growth hacks and all that stuff,but I gotta really understand
the craft of storytelling andnot through what Campbell says
about the hero's journey or tostudy plays and Shakespeare and
stuff.
No, no, no.
I have to understand howstorytelling works best in the
context of how I view the world,and to calibrate that with my

(05:08):
unique interests.
I want to do this for a longtime.
So understanding what makes mefeel I could do it for a long
time kind of organizes thefoundation of everything that I
do here.
With his unique personal stylethat combines philosophical and
metaphorical writing with handdrawn illustrations and graphs.
Lawrence quickly found that hiswriting reached more people than

(05:31):
his music did.
Though he kicked off his mortarthat blog in March, 2018 with no
specific strategy or intentionto start a business.
His first piece travel is nocure for the mind.
The one that took a hundredhours proved immediately popular
and has since been read over amillion times?
Fast-forward a few years andmortar that now operates as a

(05:53):
business in the creator economy.
Offering courses consulting anddirect support with the majority
of revenue coming from histhinking in stories course.
Lawrence attributes, the successof mortar, that to the natural
momentum generated by hispractice of being intentional
about following his curiositywithout a grand plan, a spirit,

(06:15):
which he refers to as a kind ofgratitude for the peculiar.
The moments you'll have the most nostalgia for are
those in which you could nothave predicted.
if having a life that overflowswith nostalgia is one of the
keys to a well lived life,having, then you wanna put
yourselves in a position whereserendipity could be a feature
and not a liability in terms ofwhat you're doing in your life.

(06:37):
I'm certainly grateful for thenatural momentum and sequence of
events that has allowed me tobring you this rich and wide
ranging conversation withLawrence.
We discussed the practicalrealities of pursuing a life of
creativity, including mindsetand confidence and the
complicated triangle ofrecognition, finances and
fulfillment.
We explore the importance ofbeing understood by the right

(06:59):
people.
Unpacking our beliefs andmotivations and recognizing when
we have enough.
All that and more awaits you onthe other side of the music in
my conversation with Lawrence,yo.
On today's episode of the stillcurious podcast.

Danu Poyner (07:42):
So, hi Lawrence.
Welcome to the podcast.
How are you?

I am good Danu.
I am just excited to talk to youhere.
I just came back from Korea and,uh, just been getting situated
here back in Los Angeles, soit's been nice.

So you're a writer, illustrator, storyteller, and
the creator of'More To That', anillustrated long form blog that
delves deeper into the thingsthat make us who we are.
And you introduce yourself thereas someone who creates stories
that navigate the nuances of thehuman condition.
I'm curious what you would sayis the most important thing for

(08:16):
someone to understand about whatyou practice and how you put
yourself forward in the world.

There's a couple things, but the most important
thing is somewhat of aplatitude, but at the same time,
platitudes have big kernels oftruth, which is that curiosity
is this sense of being gratefulthat you don't know everything.
Kind of this gratitude for thepeculiar, that when you
understand that, of course,there is so much to this world

(08:43):
that you don't know and thatactually that's not something to
be afraid of.
That's something to be embracedand something to be accepted.
Then that really opens the doorsto this fresh perspective on not
just the world, but alsoyourself.
One of the things I find mostfascinating is that the biggest
things that make us who we are,we had almost no agency over.

(09:05):
So our parents, our upbringing,our culture that we grew up in,
these are all things that we'vekind of got plopped into.
And the error is in assertingthat we know who we are and that
we are confident in that.
I actually view that as quiteempowering.
Because that reveals that thereis so much within you that is

(09:25):
left to explore.
So much there is to see and somany like nuances to navigate.
The key thing also to understandis that by understanding
yourself better and what you'recurious about and why you're
curious about those things,you'll be better able to
understand humanity at large.
Because I think we are allintricately connected in that
way.

Yeah.
Wonderful.
I really like the way that youdescribe curiosity in terms of
gratitude for the peculiar andthat empowering orientation to
it.
I guess it comes to what I seewhen I encounter your work, that
concern with both personal andthe kind of macro.
It's like the classicsociological formulation.

(10:06):
We make choices, but not undercircumstances of our choosing.
I think in your work, you'rereally able to hold those two
thoughts together and capturethat excitement and empowering
sense of discovery in goingthrough the mysterious that way.
I really enjoy theconversational tone of your
articles.
They're not explainers, but theyexplain a lot.

(10:29):
You make controversial pointsthat invite disagreement, but
you're not leading withprovocation or a spiky point of
view, as some people would callit.
It's more of always thatinvitation to explore, and it
feels like having someone doinga walking tour of ideas with
you, and you have thisdistinctive style that mixes
philosophical and metaphoricalwriting with, of course, your

(10:52):
hand drawn illustrations andsometimes quite a lot of graphs.
It's a really interesting mix ofstyles.
How did that form develop?

So a lot of this stuff comes from prior
influences, right?
Like you're always influenced bysomething and that informs the
way you express yourself and, inmy case, it actually started
with drawing for me.
I was always drawing stuff backwhen I was a kid.
And, it's funny because a lot ofthose characters I drew when I

(11:21):
was a kid have also found itsway into more to that.
If my 10 year old self saw my 30something year old self drawing,
he would've been like, you juststayed there, huh?
Like, this was the height ofyour, uh, drawing abilities.
But at the same time, whenyou're a child, like there's
just something very pure aboutthat essence that you shouldn't
ignore.
Just because you did certainthings as a kid doesn't mean

(11:43):
it's relegated to that period inchildhood.
Like, there's so much that youcan take from that, that you
could extrapolate and includeinto these big adult topics like
death or money or identity andthese kinds of things.
For me, drawing was kind of likeone of my entry points into me
thinking that I'm a creativeperson or like understanding

(12:04):
that that's a creative act.
And then, you mix that in withthe writing piece.
Now writing was something that Ialso did when I was younger, but
I just didn't think much of it.
I created fiction stories andlike a notebook, but didn't
really expect to do anythingwith it.
And if anything, the creativeexpression that I thought would

(12:24):
be my thing was music.
So I was a musician for a numberof years and I actually did that
professionally.
So when it comes to linking anartistic form of expression with
a career, I thought music wasgoing to be it.
but what ended up happening wasthat I basically kind of grew
disillusioned with the craft,not in terms of making the music
itself, but what was coming outfrom me in terms of who I was

(12:48):
becoming as a human being.
Basically it just wasn't a goodfit for what I wanted to pursue
as a career.
After that, I'm just working, Iwas doing finance, and I was
just thinking about, well, Iknow that I want to do something
creative, quote but somethingwhere I was able to express my
true curiosities and, I was justinspired by other writers at the

(13:11):
time, not just contemporarywriters like Tim Urban of
'Waitbutwhy', who's a writerillustrator or Allie Broch, who
has this blog called'HyperboleAnd A Half', but also just
people that are dead.
So, philosophers, variouspsychologists.
These were all things that I wasinto from probably around

(13:32):
college onwards, but I startedto get more into them as I kind
of ventured into my thirties.
At that point there was thisunderstanding that, huh, I have
this interest in just the mindand how the mind kind of works.
And then I also have theseabilities.
I, I know how to draw to someextent.

(13:52):
I know how to write to someextent.
Now, what if I were to combinethese things together and test
not just if it works from anexternal validation standpoint,
because that's why I left music,because I was too caught up in
getting my stuff heard andgetting that external validation
from people.

(14:13):
I was in it for the wrongreasons.
So this time around when I wasgonna do more to that, I thought
to myself, well, what if I takethat piece down to zero?
Because I know that's what mademe fall out of a particular
craft.
And this one, I want to see ifI'm in love with it and to see
if I want to do this with mytime.
I actually made a number ofpieces before I published my

(14:33):
first one on'More To That', justto get an idea of how does this
feel?
Do I like marrying these thingstogether, drawing, writing, all
this stuff.
And the answer was yes.
I really do.
I say that the'Travel is no curefor the mind' piece, which is my
first post I published, probablytook somewhere around a hundred
hours to do.
And I had three pieces like thatalmost done even before I hit

(14:59):
publish on the first one.
So, I was able to spend thatmuch time working on these
pieces without knowing if anyonewas gonna read them.
That showed me that there wassomething intrinsically
motivating about this particularmarriage of interests and
abilities.
So, that's the genesis of howthis all came about.

You've put a lot on the table there for us to
discuss.
It might make sense to start abit earlier and, and pull on the
thread that you mentioned rightat the start of that answer
about the drawing and yourchild's self and what you said
about the marriage of interestsand abilities.
A lot of us have things that weused to do as children and used

(15:42):
to enjoy, but there seems likethere's a lot of pressure on our
creativity to be useful.
And so a lot of us drop thosethings or consider them childish
and, and put them away.
that seems like a great shamebecause really curiosity is
something that is never wasted.
it's surprising how often thingsthat we waste time on that are

(16:05):
not useful, but are just fun,come back to be valuable in
other ways later.
I'm

Absolutely, and I think there is nothing really
wasted when you follow yourinner compass.
I think that's one of also themost underrated tools when it
comes to becoming a creator, isto listen to that inner compass.
'cause there's so many forcesthat are trying to pull on your
attention to try to convince youotherwise, right?

(16:31):
You have to use your creativityto grow in this way, and I will
teach you how to do that and allthis stuff.
But if you look at your endeavorthrough that lens, and anything
that's not contributing toeither some metric driven growth
or to money in your bank accountor stuff like that is seen as a
quote unquote waste.

(16:51):
And the paradox of all this toois that people view certain art
forms as being valuable whenyou're a kid, right?
Like that's why parents will puttheir kids on huge wait lists to
learn how to play the piano orfor this particular art program,
right?
And we'll be so distressed whenthey hear that their kid's not

(17:15):
going to be able to go to thisart thing or whatever.
And then by the time they turn,I don't know, 18 or 19, it's
like they say, I wanna go to artschool.
It's like, Ugh.
Are you sure you wanna do thator really?
There's that interesting dynamicwhich kind of shows me that when
you're young, that it's valuedbecause people think that
learning how to play the pianoor something could be parlayed

(17:37):
into something more practicallater, right?
Like, oh, it's not the playingpiano that's valuable, but it's
like what it's doing to yourbrain and what you're learning
there that could be transferredto some other practical career,
but the reality is that I thinkwe live in a really interesting
era now where.
A lot of those things that werenot deemed practical in the

(17:58):
past, these paths you had tofollow are no longer valid in
many cases because of course theinternet has massively widened
the scope of careeropportunities and a lot of
people don't realize this yet.
When you take that into accountand when you understand that
we're in a landscape now wherethere is something really
valuable about authenticity,however you want to define that,

(18:20):
then nothing that you do on yourown accord because it
intrinsically moves you, is awaste because you don't know how
that could connect withsomething else that you're
doing.
And now we have all thetechnological tools for you to
be able to express yourself atscale even though it's just you
doing it.
That combination of the currentlandscape and also the fact that

(18:43):
it's so important to listen tothat inner compass, really goes
a long way when you bring thosetwo things together.

Absolutely.
When you say listen to yourinner compass, that's good
advice and it's advice that weall know, but some of us
struggle to put it into practiceor, or have the courage to
follow it where it goes.
And, and some of that might beto do with the uncertainty that
you mentioned, and there's asort of comfort that you need to
not know where things are going,it seems to me, is that

(19:11):
something you find as well?

A comfort in not knowing where things are going.
Yeah.
It's hard to cultivate that.
It really is because our initialimpulse is to be afraid of it.
Want to have predictability inyour life to some extent.
At the same time, there is alsothis keen awareness that
predictability lessens thedegree of serendipity that could
enter your life.

(19:33):
one thing that I've kind ofrealized over and over again is
that the moments you'll have themost nostalgia for are those in
which you could not havepredicted.
And if nostalgia is one of thekeys to a well lived life,
having a life that overflowswith nostalgia, then you wanna
put yourselves in a positionwhere serendipity could be a
feature and not a liability interms of what you're doing in

(19:55):
your life.
It's counterintuitive at firstbecause at the way we organize
our days, you know, like I knewthat, hey, today I'm talking to
Danu because it's on mycalendar.
It was on my calendar for a fewdays, so I know what's gonna
happen.
But at the same time, I don'tknow what we're exactly we're
gonna talk about in thisconversation, right?
Like, all I know is that I'll betalking to you, but I don't know

(20:17):
what threads are gonna bepulled.
I don't know exactly whattangents we're gonna go on and
like, that's what makes itgreat, right?
I'm not saying to just disregardany notion of planning for the
future or trying to create somesort of cadence in your life.
You can also have that and thenkeep the contents of how that
experience is going to be kindof open and up in the air.

(20:40):
When I talk about following yourinner compass, it doesn't mean
this purely whimsical nature ofoh, you have idea A, and just go
chase it until you know, youdon't know what it'll become and
all this stuff, I actually don'twork like that.
What I mean by following yourinner compass in this case is
that you have the understandingthat what you're creating here,

(21:04):
if you are not creating purelyfor yourself, right?
Like, I am not creating purelyfor myself because I actually do
do that and it's not anywhere tobe seen.
It's in my personal journal,which if you open, it looks like
maybe a madman wrote in this.
There is no rhyme or reason towhat I'm saying.

(21:24):
But I have a conversational toneto it.
A conversation consists of somesort of empathy.
Like I'm thinking about who I'mtalking to, otherwise I'm just
on the street talking to myselfout loud and people are like,
Ooh, and kind of like goingaround me and stuff.
You can follow your innercompass while also having a
sense of empathy for the personthat you are directing your

(21:47):
thoughts to.
You are creating for yourselfwriting is a way of
understanding what you think.
Drawing is an understanding oflike what you feel inside.
Same thing for making music.
But at the same time, if youwant to operate within a
creative landscape with otherpeople in mind, you're doing
this'cause you want to connectwith people, you want to

(22:07):
resonate with other people, youhave to calibrate your inner
compass so that it is inalignment with that.
A compass that doesn't give youwhat true north is, is useless,
right?
It's, it just spins around andaround.
But if you can calibrate thatproperly, then you know where
you're headed.
And part of knowing where you'regoing is also being in alignment
with the people that you want tohave empathy for as you're

(22:29):
expressing your ideas and yourstories.

There's a preoccupation in the way that
you write and the way that youtalk, like serendipity and
certainty, the tension and theinterplay between those, it's
systems and spontaneity.
It's a really interesting thingbecause as you say, it's not
just whimsically following yourcompass.
It is being prepared to navigatethe practicalities of that as

(22:53):
well, which are very real and,and material.
I first encountered your workwhen I came across your post
about the arc of the practicalcreator, and it really spoke to
me as an incredibly clear andrelatable guide to navigating
the emotional and financialpracticalities of pursuing
creative projects of all kindsand just really one of the best

(23:14):
things I've ever read about thereal nature of creativity.
You, you mentioned that you'rehaving a conversation, and so
I'm curious, when you werewriting those things, did you
have the sense of who you werehaving that conversation with?

Yeah, it kind of fluctuates and changes.
I rarely have a specific personin mind, but the way I think
about it is if I were talking tosomebody that is struggling with
the problem that I'm trying toaddress and one of the
storytelling frameworks that Iteach is like, uh, when you're
thinking about a theme of whatyou're communicating.

(23:49):
It sounds really difficult toput your hand on what is a theme
of a piece.
But a theme is quite simple.
It's the problem that your storyis addressing and the takeaway
that it provides.
That's basically it.
The problem is always whatbrings someone and draws someone
into your story, otherwisemovies would just have endings

(24:11):
and stories would just beepilogues, we want the entirety
of the experience.
When it comes to the arc of thepractical creator, when I think
about someone reading my work, Idon't want to put them in the
position of naivete.
Like, I, I like to think thatthese folks are very
intelligent,.
So if, if people are going intoa creative endeavor and they

(24:33):
don't see it as this, justfollow your passion and
everything will turn out.
Like I'm writing for that personwho understands that that's not
the case.
And to understand that there isthat tension, like you described
between the practicality and thewhimsical nature and what are
some ways to think about this,knowing that you're hesitant to

(24:54):
kind of dive deeper intosomething, whether it's through
your time or whether it's doingsome cases, people wanting to
leave their jobs.
And I wanna address thathesitancy.
I I want to take a while here toexplain why exactly that
hesitancy exists.
If you explain something wellenough, if you address the
problem well enough, then a lotof times the reader or the

(25:18):
viewer can start coming to theirown takeaway.
That's, I think, what I wastrying to do with the arc of the
practical creator where, I offera kind of framework here of
three stages of someone that'sthinking about pursuing a
creative endeavor, whether it'sfull-time or just with the
majority of their attention.
Like how exactly do you go aboutthat when it comes to balancing

(25:40):
your relationship with money andso forth.
I wanted the person tounderstand that pursuing a
creative endeavor is not justisolated to how much your
creative endeavor resonates withyou.
There's so many factors you haveto take into account, not just
the money, but also if youreally had all your time and

(26:00):
attention that you wanted todedicate to what you think you
wanna dedicate your time to.
Like, is that actually gonna beas blissful as you think it is?
That's the error that I made.
I could write these thingsbecause I've, like had error
teach me in multiple instances.
So with my music, I quit my jobto pursue it, thinking that I
needed 40 hours in a week to dothis.

(26:23):
And then when I had 40 plushours all available, I'm like, I
don't wanna do this for thatlong.
I actually don't wanna makemusic for 40 hours a week.
So that's another nuance toaddress too.
So it's like to figure out whatcreativity even means to you.
if you view it as such animportant thing, are you going
to, actualize that importancethrough your time by spending so

(26:46):
much time on it?
Is it through something else?
Like how are you thinkingthrough this?
Nuance really is a big thingthat I address throughout and
what's been heartening for me isto see that nuance does have an
audience.

Well, yeah, that's kind of the thought I had when I
was reading it.
Wow.
This is like it's written forme, someone who appreciates
nuance.
It was also very encouraging'cause it was relatable to my
own experience and errors thathad taught me as well.
And I've heard it said that,what most people need is
encouragement, more than advice.

(27:21):
And I don't know if that'ssomething, an that resonates
with you.

That totally resonates.
That's a really good way to putit.
People, generally speaking, havea hesitancy just towards
prescriptions in general, Dothis and then this will solve X
or Y.
I think people really, reallywant to have agency Like agency
is what drives everything, Iwould say.
you could have all the successin the world, but if that was

(27:47):
founded upon prescriptions, youwon't be that fulfilled.
As opposed to if you directedyour own energy to it and your
sense of agency and then you hadthis like wild just ups and
downs and like you didn't knowif it was gonna work, but you
challenge yourself and then youknow, it kind of worked and then
you're like, I don't know ifit's gonna work again.
You have all that, but then youkind of are at a place where

(28:08):
you're like, this thing, itfeels meaningful because I kind
of directed myself, but at thesame time, You also realize that
this is not a solo endeavor.
What will take you outta some ofthose troughs is not someone
telling you, Hey, do this.
It's actually someone tellingyou, Hey, I'm here to listen to
you, if you ever want to talkabout something, like, support

(28:30):
you and like be there for you.
It's astounding to me how truethat is based upon my experience
where what you really want isjust space for you to
communicate what you feel and,not really ask for A to b, to C
to D advice.
That's basically not what'sgoing to bring a sense of

(28:53):
meaning into our endeavors.

That sense of meaning and that space needed
for meaning is quite elusive, itstrikes me, because as you say,
we need that space, but also youdon't want to spend 40 hours
making music in that creativespace.
So this tension between agencyand creativity is interesting
because if you are pursuing acreative endeavor of some sort,

(29:17):
it very quickly gets past theinitial stage of agency and into
the contradictions of trying tomake a living from doing those
things, or becoming a slave toyour audience or the content
creation machine or things likethat.
You are very confident the waythat you talk about following
your inner compass, and I wouldlike to know, is that something
you had to learn or is thatalways been in you?

Hmm, that's a really good question.
I think a part of it was alwayskind of in me where I've known
for a while that I knew I wantedto do something in the arts.
I knew that I wanted to be acreator.
I just wasn't quite sure how Iwas gonna do it.
So there was always this notionof I know what I want to do.

(30:01):
My inner compass is prettystrong in that regard.
I think where it starts gettinga little shaky is when I
question myself about, okay,well, like what are some of the
mindsets that I have to adopt orthe processes within myself I
have to figure out in order toactualize that.
In college as a really briefhistory, I graduated with a
degree in internationalEconomics.

(30:22):
It took me five years tograduate cause by my senior year
I was still an undeclared,major.
At one point I remember thinkinglike, can I graduate undeclared?
To me that actually makes sensebecause what 22 year old knows
what the hell he or she is goingto do for the rest of her life,
and like pin this on the degree.
That was like one example ofwhere I was like, I know what I

(30:44):
think is right.
I know what I kind of want here,but there's some force here that
is making me, okay, I have to dothis right?
So I was like, okay.
I kind of reviewed my curriculumor, or the classes I took and I
was like, oh, if I do econ, Icould graduate right away..
Another example of this wasbecause I chose my major so
late, I didn't know what thehell I was gonna do after I

(31:06):
graduated.
So one evening I just went intoGoogle and I was like, what
makes a lot of money with anecon degree?
One of the top results wasinvestment banking.
So, yeah, I had, I got likeinternships at banks and stuff
like that.
And then I ended up working infinance shortly after.
I knew that finance wasn't it,but what I told myself was this

(31:28):
would give me the money where Ican then purchase my freedom and
attention so I can direct to thethings I really wanna do, which
I knew from years back was beinga creator.
It was this element of, I kindof know where I want to go, but
I feel like I have to do theseroundabout things to get to that

(31:49):
point because it's only by doingthat where I kind of understand
myself a little bit better andunderstand what it takes.
One thing I realized is thatwhen you have a desire, it's
also filled with a lot ofdelusions.
I think I had a keenunderstanding of that as well,
which is why the practicalcreator piece, I think it was
just an original extension ofthat.
I was never really distracted bytoo much of the other stuff that

(32:13):
money could buy.
There was this one exceptionwhere like at one point I
thought I wanted a Porsche bylike 25 each 25 because I got
kind of caught up in thatbanking world.
I was able to dial that backpretty quickly because I was
like, oh yeah, I remember whatmoney is meant for me to do and
if I get that Porsche, I'mreally taking some time off of
my ability to pursue my creativeendeavors with more of my time.

(32:37):
I think the final piece on theinner compass I'll touch is like
how it relates to'More to That'.
It was the one project wherewhen I started it, I already had
that strong intention of I'mgonna follow my inner compass.
With'More To That'I was like,okay, I know that, I have to not
only follow my own curiosity,but the way I'm gonna make this
practical is not by adoptingsomeone else's strategies and

(32:58):
growth hacks and all that stuff,but the way I'm gonna make it
practical is that I gotta reallyunderstand the craft of
storytelling and not throughwhat Joseph Campbell says about
the hero's journey or to studyplays and Shakespeare and stuff.
No, no, no.
I have to understand howstorytelling works best in the

(33:18):
context of how I view the world,and to calibrate that with my
unique interests.
And also the fact that I'm gonnause drawings, like how I'm going
to tell stories in this way?
That was how I approached thepracticality element.
It's like, I gotta do this sowell, that there's something so

(33:40):
compelling.
Where people would spendsometimes up to 20, like the arc
of the practical creators isprobably a 20 to 30 minute read.
And in today's era of attentionspans, the fact that that piece
was very popular meanssomething.
There's something about the waythe story was crafted where it
draws people in.
That's how I was balancing thepractical element.

(34:01):
It's like in this way, it's alsoencased within my inner compass
instead of relying upon externalstrategies.
Is there a time in place to alsolearn from those that have done
it well before you or alongsideyou?
Of course.
I do not discount the importanceof education and to learn from

(34:21):
those that inspire you.
The caveat here is that youalways should take in those
lessons with your own worldview.
With what resonates with you.
Do not take it as step-by-stepadvice, but always piecemeal
everything that you take in andexperiment, view it as a period

(34:43):
of experimentation rather than aperiod of pure adoption.
Because when you experiment,then you get an idea of, oh,
does this align with my naturalcuriosities, the natural way I
want to communicate myself to anaudience, or does this feel like
I'm like sacrificing myintegrity by following this
guidebook here?

(35:05):
I want to do this for a longtime.
So understanding what makes mefeel I could do it for a long
time kind of organizes thefoundation of everything that I
do here.

You are very clear and you said, a number of times
that you kind of knew what youwanted.
I'm curious how young Lawrence,even before college was thinking
about what you wanted.
Did you have a plan A, or didyou have a name for, for what it
was that you wanted at thattime?

Nah, young Lawrence didn't know anything.
Even old Lawrence doesn't reallyknow much.
The similarities here, theparallels between Young Lawrence
and Old Lawrence, and despitethe big identity differences
between the two, there wasalways a sense of, meaning is
something that you almost haveto assign.
Like you get to choose what ismeaningful.

(35:55):
Like I kind of understood thatrelatively early.
And then second, that family isalso at the center of so much
meaning in life.
Family really helped meunderstand the art of reframing.
Reframing is probably the bigtheme that I continuously touch
with'more to that'.

(36:16):
If anything,'more to that' is agrand exercise in reframing,
it's just giving peopledifferent lenses to view similar
situations.
The reason why I say familycontinuously gave me this lens
and continues to today isbecause we grew up poor.
Why do I say this?
It's because on the flip side, Inever felt poor.

(36:39):
I always felt like everythingwas abundant.
That's not because I was lookingat our small little apartment
and then just envisioning itbeing a mansion, and I'm like,
I'm, I'm rich.
Right?
Like, no, it, it's because Ilooked at all that, and then I
looked at my mom and my, dad andmy brother and the community we
were around and I was like, I, Ikind of have everything I need

(37:02):
right here.
My mom and my dad also helped tokind of instill that as well.
That like, you could take anysituation and at a moment's
notice, the great superpower isto be able to view it through a
different perspective.
And it's the driver ofeverything.
Of everything.
That's why we could take a lookat raw materials from the earth.

(37:23):
Then through years and years ofcompounding and stuff, we have
an iPhone.
That's how technology works.
That's how psychology,everything is an exercise in
reframing.
I think Young Lawrence and oldLawrence always had a an
understanding of that dynamic.
So when it comes to the questionof what did he want, I think it
was more so like to be able tokind of retain that, knowing

(37:46):
that there's so many things thathappen in life, this journey of
life where you go through somany moments of delight, so many
moments of sorrow, so manymoments of grief, so many
moments of joy, this entirejourney that what you really
want is a mind that couldreframe certain situations.

(38:08):
even in the moments of delight,right?
Like even when you're feelinglike you're at the top of the
world, just to understand thatthere is impermanence in
everything.
If you understand that, thenlike don't be so alarmed when
the next day you wake up and allof a sudden you're really
anxious about that success thatyou were just celebrating.
'cause you're thinking like,wait, how do I top that?

(38:29):
Or like, do I have to like keepdoing that over?
The mind has endless capacity tojust bounce off of thought after
thought.
I think what reframing helps todo is to always kind of put it
in its place and to, giveyourself that sense of agency
that you can reframe anything tohave meaning.
A lot of the time when you dothat well enough, then the

(38:50):
question of what is meaningfulkind of disappears.
good indicator of whether youare living a life that's imbued
with meaning is if that questionno longer surfaces that much.
The analogy I like to give hereis like, if there is a U F C
fighter who like made it to thechampionship fight and he's
stepping into the octagon, thelast thing he's thinking is, do

(39:11):
I have meaning in my life?

Yeah.
There's something to be said forjust action, taking action is
its own reward.

yeah.
And reframing is a greatprecursor to action.
Reflection prior to action isgenerally a better route than
reflection post action becausesometimes you're just reflecting
on the things that you're like,oh shit.
Like You know, when you'repontificating that long on
something you did, it tends tobe a worry.

(39:39):
Rather than something thatyou're really happy about.
But if you could kind of take amoment to just think about like,
oh, this thing that I'm gonna dohere, this decision that I'm
gonna make, where does this fitin the context of like, where
future me may be?
Am I doing this to be kind tofuture me or will this be
problematic for future me?
You could think about it throughthat lens before making certain

(40:01):
decisions.
'cause a lot of times decisionsare made at the height of the
moment.

I am glad you brought reframing to the table,
because, I can see now with thatcomment how central it is to
your body of work, and theagency and the solace that comes
from being able to step outsidewhatever situation you're in and
reframe it, but I'm still verycurious, Lawrence, when you

(40:24):
adopted that clarity or whe whenwhen, you when you arrived at
that way of understandingthings, it sounds like you just
came into the world with thatfully formed.
But I don't think that's thecase.
So, I'm curious how it came tobe.

Yeah, definitely not.
I can't point to like veryspecific points in my life where
it was like, oh, okay, I have tojust look at this differently
and I have to just place a wholenew lens on the situation.
It just seemed to be like thisgradual understanding that, all
the knowledge that I may gain,all the people that I may talk

(41:01):
to, all the advice that I mightseek and want, there's a hard
limit on what it can do for me.
The only thing that could movepast that is like we were
talking about the realm ofaction and, I think because I
made so many decisions that weredumb and because I just wasn't

(41:22):
very specific about where Iwanted to take my life in
various situations.
There is something here thatpoints to where my inner compass
is telling me, like why am I sopulled in by norms and the
allure of prestige in variousmoments, because that was also a

(41:44):
big factor in my life is likechasing that prestige and that
validation.
The more I think about it, thenotion of following your inner
compass, I think I did have tolearn a large part of that.
I think I had to learn through alot of experience that, I have
to kind of break away from thislike, drug of chasing prestige.
That was also very embedded aswell.

(42:04):
I think even a cultural thing,I'm Korean, I don't want to say
this as a blanket statement, butthere is this huge obsession
with prestige in Korean culture.
It's no secret that Korea islike the plastic surgery capital
of the world.
It is like still predominantlyowned by four companies, like
that control everything there.
There's aggregation of prestigeand culture.

(42:27):
But at the same time, it's crazybecause it's resulted in some
incredible exports, right?
You have one of the most popularforms of music out there.
Uh, you go on Netflix, now it'slike full of Korean stuff.
There has just been anastronomical rise.
But at what cost?
I think that's the thing too, isat what cost do I want to keep
chasing what this culture saysis the thing for me to chase?

(42:50):
That's another reason why Ibring a family too, is'cause my
parents kind had this keenunderstanding, and a lot of my
friends tell me this too, like,wow, that was pretty advanced
for uh, a Korean parents then.
They never really told me Ineeded to do this or I needed to
do that.
It was always just driven off ofthe self.
Like I thought I needed to dothat, but it turns out that it's

(43:11):
not really the case.
I had to learn that though.
I had to learn that over timeand then to grow into that.

was it important for you to spend time in the
world of finance and investmentbanking to be able to have some
lived experience of that kind ofprestige so that you could then
step away with it with a senseof accomplishment?

Okay, there's two ways you could view confidence,
right?
The first way you gainconfidence is if you feel like
you are valued by others.
So that's prestige.
The second species of confidenceis when you know yourself.
That can happen outside thedomain of prestige.
That is the domain ofintrospection.

(43:55):
A lot of time there is thisinteresting dynamic where we
have to go through the prestigeroute to go to the introspection
route and there is this quote byWilliam Blake that kind of
relates to this, where he says,the only way for you to know
what is enough is for you tofirst have enough or something
like that.

(44:15):
I've been asking myself whetherthis is true or not, in, in the
realm of confidence.
Like, do you first have to havethat like praise and that
prestige before you understandthat it's not the answer?
Because that tends to be thenarrative, right?
Like another thing I think itwas like Jim Carrey said, I wish
everyone could be rich andfamous.
So they know it's not theanswer.
And then you think, well, it'seasy for someone rich and famous

(44:38):
to say that.
After reflecting on this a lot,and I, and I've written about
this also a lot, don't thinkthat narrative is true.
it holds true in someone that,where introspection is not a big
part of their life, where ifyou're not thinking regularly
about the direction of yourdecisions in your life, you have

(44:58):
to go with the winds of norms.
And the winds of norms say thatyou have to get that prestige
first.
You have to have everyone saythat, oh, I love you, and like,
you did such a great job.
You got this great job.
You are fighting for that job.
You did it.
then when you understand thatyou were working so hard for
that little moment, and then therest is like years and years of

(45:19):
you working in that, in whateveryou were fight, you're going
for.
Like, then you start feelingthat emptiness and then you're
like, okay, maybe prestigewasn't the answer here, but if
introspection is kind of bakedinto what you do, then the order
can flip.
As in like, you don't even needto really experience that

(45:40):
prestige because there'ssomething so intrinsically
moving about what you're doingyourself.
Under the guidelines that likeyou have your basic necessities
met and so forth, you have toalso take that into account
because the assertion that youknow yourself while also being
homeless is not a good look.
if you know yourself, if youknow the things that make you

(46:03):
light up or you understand yourabilities, then I think the
external piece takes care ofitself after some time and
that's the paradox of status.
The people that actually don'treally chase status explicitly
are the ones that end up gainingthe most of it.
that's why we see thisphenomenon now where people that

(46:24):
just dress like they boughtsomething at Old Navy or Gap,
with hoodies and stuff arebillionaires.
Like, there's that phenomenonnow of like where their clothes
are no longer a status signal.
And if anything, it's like whatyou're not really showing is an
indicator of prestige.

When I listen to you, when I read your writing,
you have this very wellconsidered, well constructed
worldview that's a composite, ofall of the accumulated
experience and adventures thatyou've had.
what I hear from you is that youget that by following your inner
compass and remaining true tothat and following what's

(47:05):
meaningful.
So then I'm just curious, thechicken and the egg of the
worldview, How do you know whatto follow?
What's the consistent self thatdrives you through those
decisions?
if that self is a composite ofall the things you've
accumulated?

Yeah.
Yeah.
No, that's a good, that's a goodnuanced question there.
I think the trite tthing to sayhere is that the, the spirit of
kind of curiosity moves throughall of this, but don't think
that's specific enough.
There is no real way to bucketmy work, to be like, yeah,'more
to that' is a, uh, self-helpblog or no, wait, it's a finance

(47:43):
blog or No way.
It's a, it's a philosophy blog.
I don't know.
It also has some pieces abouthow to calm the anxious brain.
It's a neuroscience blog.
I mean, it could be manydifferent things.
I think it's just a reflectionof the fact that I don't niche
down or anything.
Like I don't choose one thingand then just stick to it

(48:05):
because the blog is aptly areflection of myself.
And if I was just talking aboutmoney, that would kind of give
the impression that like, moneyoccupies much of my thoughts.
And the reality is that so manyother things do.
My work with money, for example,is not isolated to money because

(48:26):
if it was I would tell you aboutlike, how you grow your income
or here's what you should investin and things like that.
And am I interested in thosekinds of things?
Sure, I'm very interested infinance.
but in the context of my writingand what I like to think deeper
about, I think about ourrelationship with money.
I think about how money tiesinto other things.

(48:48):
so how it ties into our creativeendeavors that we've talked
about for a while here, how itties into our perception of
value, how it ties into like whywe burn out, how it ties to
death.
Even within the topic of money,there's so many strands here,
right?
The extension of myself through'more to that'to be an accurate
representation of myself.

(49:11):
and to not create artifice, notto create all these boundaries
because I have to follow it, youknow, like this niche, right?
Like if I want to build aproduct or something, I have to
have a defined niche and stufflike that.
I think the reality is that youdon't need to have that because
what ultimately is rewarded isauthenticity.
This is something that Icontinuously speak on because I

(49:35):
still think that it's veryunderrated.
I, I think that people stilldon't quite grasp that concept
yet because it's like, okay,yeah, I'll be authentic.
And then next thing you know,it's like there's, I don't know,
writing about stuff that, like,they usually wouldn't write
about, they're doing like chatGTT threads or something like
that.
It's kind of like, well that'sobvious that that was just a

(49:56):
thing that you picked up in thelast month or so, but what are
some of the things that youreally are curious about?
And hey, if chat g p t like issomething that like, makes you
light up and you wanna writeabout that, then that's
completely fine.
I'm just saying give people thebenefit of doubt when it comes
to their intelligence and youwant to create things that
accurately represent who you arebecause you wanna write for an

(50:19):
intelligent audience.
And I think the more that youunderstand your own experiences,
understand yourself, the moreyou understand that relationship
that you have and you kind oflike cherish it a little bit
more.

I liked very much what you said about your work
being difficult to bucket.
one of its strengths is, is iteluding or evading
classification in that way.
I think a lot of us who livelives that are difficult to
bucket, struggle with thisknowing what our enduring

(50:52):
interests really are becauseit's very easy to confuse what
we think we're interested inwith being instrumental about
that interest and the way we goabout it.
That's how you end up chasingchat, g p t, blogs and writing
outside your area ofauthenticity.
I think it was really insightfulwhen you were talking about
money before and how yeah,you're interested in money, but

(51:13):
actually that's the surfaceappearance of it and what you're
actually interested in is thatrelation to money.
And that's much more about howwe go through lives and our
sense of agency and purpose andhow we construct our lives, and
how we understand them.
And it's not something that weget much chance to reflect on,
and to see how the hierarchy ofthose connections is working

(51:38):
when we live lives that areconstantly following our
interests and seeing connectionseverywhere all the time.

I think you've raised an interesting point
where, so for example, withmoney, it's like you have all
these things that you'reinterested in on the surface,
right?
and this is the case foreverybody.
Like everybody has so manydisparate interests.
Films to TV shows to like peopleall, all this stuff, right?

(52:05):
it's not enough to takeinventory of your interest.
I think when it comes tocreativity, it's about which
specific interests are youwilling to also combine with
diligence.
That's the, uh, differentiatingfactor here.
So with money.
Yeah.
I'm interested in how vanguardindex funds work.
I'm interested in dollar costaveraging.

(52:26):
These kinds of things, but like,do any of these topics pull me
in to be disciplined enough towrite extensively about them?
Not really.
I don't have any furthercomments to add to dollar cost
averaging or something, right?
But ooh, when it comes to likehow money affects the way we
view ourselves and our sense ofself worth, I have so much to

(52:49):
say about that.
There are so many ways I couldframe that single topic where I
could create story after story,after story after that and spend
a lot of time doing that.
That's what creativity is.
It's not about having a lot ofinterests, it's about
identifying the specific onesand understanding those specific
ones don't have to be localizedto one domain.

(53:09):
You could have specific oneshere all the way over here, all
the way over here, but whicheverones you are open to putting a
lot of your time and attentioninto.

Yeah, I would agree with that very much.
I like to use the language ofthe red thread to think about
these things.
If you follow the red thread asit weaves through all of the big
long pages of interests asyou've mentioning, it'll, come
back to the spool, which iswhere the tranquil center of,
what lights us up comes from.
And that's where you'll find theintrinsic motivation to find the

(53:41):
diligence to pursue some ofthose things, as you mentioned.
You said before, that you had amoment where you had a real firm
realization that you need to getreally good at storytelling.
And I'm wondering about thatmoment of clarity and when that
became something that yourealized that's where you needed
to apply your diligence andcreativity.

Yeah, so before 'more of that', I had a personal
medium blog.
my first post was like 2015 onthere, and I was writing about
very similar things I writeabout now but it just like
didn't get much traction.
The great thing was that while Iwas doing that medium blog, I
was employed so I didn't have tothink about money.

(54:23):
And that's one of the greatthings about being a practical
creator in the beginning is likeyou don't have to think about
money'cause your day job isfunding your art.
It's a patron for your art.
That's how I describe it.
So I was just using that as atime for experimentation and
trying to figure out what I liketo write about.
What's my voice here?
towards the tail end of thatpersonal medium blog, I have one

(54:45):
piece where I included a drawingwith some of the characters that
you see today.
I recognized, ooh, I kind oflike adding that there and
that's pretty interesting.
so there was this element of,okay, by adding in that drawing,
I'm kind of like anchoring thisto that drawing in the form of a
narrative to a certain extent.
And when I came across thatrealization about bringing in

(55:08):
drawings into this, Iimmediately started thinking
about, okay, what if thesedrawings were like, I was
sitting next to someone, like,let's say I'm sitting next to
you Danu and I'm telling yousomething.
And then I say, as I finish upsomething, I say, okay, just
like this, look at this as I'mtelling you the story act as
visual cues, right?

(55:28):
So that means that there's aflow here involved.
I'm not gonna just presentvisuals randomly.
They will kind of followsequential order.
And whenever you are thinkingabout presentation, are telling
a story, So I understood thatgoing into more of that, it's
like I'm going to really thinkabout this in the form of

(55:48):
presentation.
If you even look on my site, Ihave an archive page, which I
generally, I consider mystories.
And then I have another sectionthat are called reflections.
I find this to be a prettyhelpful way of thinking through
this delineation.
The arc of the practical creatoris a story.
That took me a lot of time todo.

(56:09):
Reflections are like when I'musing my writing as a avenue to
think, but I'm doing it withlike a thinking buddy.
it's not pure gibberish like ajournal.
It's like I'm doing it withsomeone in mind, but it's like
not fleshed out yet.
So a lot of those reflections, Ijust set a two hour timer and I
just write, and whatever's donewith that, I publish.

(56:30):
The thing about the stories wasthat like, I knew I'm gonna have
to work on these stories.
And he had to really hone instorytelling because that's how
I'm going to get my stuff to awider audience.
because stories are universallyresonant and so forth.
But in my first year of'more tothat', I only published nine
posts because getting into thatmindset, I was so thinking so

(56:52):
much about like, oh, this has tobe presented right?
And then the perfectionism willget a little bit wild.
I was like, oh my goodness, I'mspending so much time on one
piece and I don't know if thisis really sustainable.
'cause I have so many ideas.
So I switched a little bit,where I was like, you know what?
I'm gonna just work on shorterthings and let those out as
well.
It was nice because then mywriting became an avenue to

(57:15):
think again rather than justpresent.
I knew I needed to get good atstorytelling because I have
certain ideas that I want toshowcase and I know I'm gonna do
it well.
but I also understood that inorder to do this sustainably and
not hate the process of writingand so forth I have to also
write often and I have to let myideas out and get feedback on

(57:37):
those ideas.
Actually one person told me thearc of the practical creator
piece sounded like a culminationof a lot of reflections I was
publishing up to that point.
Like it was like a way of kindof putting everything together
in a certain sense.
And that's what stories can alsobe too.
You're putting together a lot ofyour past work as well.

And was that how you experienced doing that
article, was it a conscious sortof redrafting or re
instantiation of all thosereflections?

No, it wasn't.
I wasn't looking at thereflections and bringing them in
and stuff.
A lot of my stories, theythey're not so methodical like
that.
They're just more so, like, I'vewritten already about all these
different things and it was likethis understanding that, okay,
now it's time to really take mytime with presenting this.

(58:26):
And I'm gonna include a bunch ofdrawings.
if you look at my reflections,there's maybe like one drawing
per piece, which is like thecover, the very first one.
But with like the things in myarchive, a lot of'em, uh, have
like over 10 illustrations.
I think the arc of the practicalcreator probably had like 50.
The thing that I also know isthat like when I tell myself,
okay, this is one where I'mgonna do a lot of illustrations.

(58:48):
Sometimes just coming into thepiece with that in mind makes it
a story to me.
cause I know that there's gonnabe many touch points here, and I
go over this in much detail inmy storytelling course where
it's like when you visualizeideas, it's a huge, huge asset
for storytelling.
Just being able to say, allright, let's take a pause here.

(59:10):
Here's a graph that justreflects what I just told you.
that is such a powerful tool,and then knowing like when to
place them and which ideas to dothat off of is huge.
Sometimes I will also just startwith a graph of an idea.
I think the arc of the practicalcreator started off as the
graph, and the arc there.
And then I was like, Ooh,there's a whole story here that

(59:33):
I can write just purely bywalking the reader through these
three stages.
Given that I've written so muchabout creativity and money
before this, I could find waysto weave that in.
it wasn't like this consciousbuilding block thing.
It was just kind of this thingthat it had floating in the
background that allowed me todraft that piece.

I'm really struck again by the way, that you are
able to be patient andmethodical and intentional about
the way you go aboutconstructing your work and also
constructing your life aroundbeing able to do that work.
That's a quality that's in shortsupply.
And a A lot of us feel rushedand hustled and like we need to
be making it bigger all of thetime.

(01:00:14):
But I get the sense that more tothat' is not that kind of
project for you.
I'm curious a, when you knew itwas gonna work and what that
meant to you, and then also whatkind of future you're stretching
towards with it.

Lawrence Yeo (01:00:29):
Yeah, very good question.
so'more of that' had thisinteresting trajectory where the
very first piece I published,for lack of a better word, it
went viral and like that travelis no cure for the mind' has
been read, I think over amillion times by now.
So it was a very, very popularpost.
From, almost from the moment Ipublished it.

(01:00:50):
And then that year I justpublished only like eight more
pieces.
I wasn't trying to be like, Igotta capitalize on this and
then just like, put out contentafter content while I have this
attention.
I think it was a sense of justknowing that like, this is gonna
be a long game and whenever Idecide to make this my full-time

(01:01:11):
thing, it's not because thenumbers in my bank account are
telling me that it is.
It's because there is a sensethat if I just keep doing what
I'm doing, I'll be okay becauseI also have understood that I
just really love doing this.
When it comes to the question ofwhen did I know it was gonna
work, I'm smiling because Ididn't really know if it was

(01:01:33):
gonna work, like from a purelyrational perspective.
I quit my job in January of2019, about nine months after
the first piece was published, Iwas not making much money from
'more to that'.
That wasn't the reason why Iquit.
The real reason I quit was sothat my wife and I could go to
Korea to spend six months withmy family.

(01:01:54):
Family as I mentioned earlier,is such a huge source of meaning
in my life.
That's gonna take precedence.
And knowing that I spent yearsworking in finance, and building
up wealth in that regard andbeing like, okay, like I know
what this is for, this is to dowhat I want to do.
So yeah, it's like the realreason I left my job was to be
with my family,'cause my jobwasn't gonna let me work remote.

(01:02:16):
So I was like, all right, later.
and it was there where I wasstill, uncertain where this
whole thing was going.
And it's not like I was workingon'more of that' diligently
there because I was there withmy family.
there was this sense that Istill enjoyed working on these
pieces.
'cause whenever I would havespare time, I would work on it
and work on it, and work on it.

(01:02:38):
And then Covid hit and then Iwas like, I don't know what I'm
doing here, but it was onceagain, that commitment to
storytelling.
I was Even if the numbersweren't doing anything crazy,
there I felt that growth withinme.
And I think I also coupled thatwith the confidence in myself
that like, Hey, if this doesn'twork out, I'll find something

(01:03:00):
else.
That's the practicality elementthere too, is that like, yes,
have confidence in your abilityto create great work as a
creator, but it's also good tohave the confidence that you
have some other skill sets andthat you have some other
abilities independent of this,where you'll be fine and in a
paradoxical way, the confidenceto be able to do things that are

(01:03:22):
not your creative endeavoractually allows you to put more
attention into your creativeendeavor, because it frees up
your worries about that.
I think that's another thing tointernalize.
I think knowing that it's like,okay, I could make this work.
And the other really crucialthing, more creators I think
should talk about is theirpartners.
And my wife, she was the onethat's telling me to quit my job

(01:03:44):
before I wanted to quit it.
Right?
Because she's just like, thisthing is great for you.
This makes you light up, like,spend more of your time doing
this.
But I'm like, ah, the numbersaren't right yet.
Like, I gotta, I gotta have thismuch stay before I do it.
My wife is also a very, verycreative person.
She's an educator and usescreativity as a vehicle for
people to know who they arereally.

(01:04:07):
And she sees the value of whatI'm doing.
So she always encouraged me andknowing that you have a partner
you can do this with, like, youunderstand the importance of one
another's endeavors independentof the money and so forth.
I have a piece called,'Why WeDoubt Ourselves,' which was
written for myself to readwhenever I doubt myself again.

(01:04:30):
I tell her like, uh, I don'tknow.
I don't know.
And then she just says, you'recapable, and that kind of points
back to what you were saying,sometimes encouragement is all
that's needed.

Danu Poyner (01:04:41):
Yeah, thank you for mentioning that, the people we
have around us, are so importantto the sense of security and
confidence that we have as beingable to get to the starting gate
of following our inner compass.
Sometimes I think that can havea huge impact on how far we're
able to get with that journey.
Confidence overall is such atheme of this conversation.

(01:05:03):
I'm just really admiring of theway again, you're able to go
about constructing a kind ofholistic life of, many pursuits
that are all mutually rewardingand reinforcing and allow you to
pursue meaning and design forthat nostalgia you can look back
on later.
Is it kind of working out foryou?

Yeah, I mean, what's funny with the nostalgia
stuff too is that I postedrecently that what I realized
after being in Korea for twomonths and like I wasn't really
online, I was just like, Themoments I'll have nostalgia for
are the moments where I'm not onthe screen.
There's this paradox here whereit's like I create things

(01:05:42):
online, but the things that Ireally remember are the ways
that my daughter danced with myparents and the nice drive for
my parents' place back to ourAirbnb every night.
These are the moments ofnostalgia.
So when you think about that,it's like you want a life that
overflows the nostalgia andunderstanding that even if your

(01:06:03):
work is online, like thosethings come from the experiences
that you're kind of offline in acertain sense and knowing that
is pretty liberating becausealso you don't take this thing
like so seriously.
Of course, I tip off thisbalance of clarity but like, you
were saying, it's like whenthere are people around you, the

(01:06:23):
people that you'll experiencenostalgia for, that are
encouraging you, that whateverpath you're on is okay and that
you're capable.
I think you also understand thatthe inner compass is not a
solitary endeavor.
It sounds like an isolationistthing and it's localized to you,
but it's really calibratedthrough the hands of many people
and It's never just done inisolation.

(01:06:46):
What you really want to cherishare those people that have kind
of helped you calibrate that andnot necessarily through the
validation from random peopleyou may not know.
but at the same time, like thatalso has tremendous value too
because people care about yourideas, people care about your
thoughts.
that's a pretty mind blowingthing.

(01:07:06):
I think overall my theme isgenerally just like gratitude,
and like just being verygrateful for just all pieces of,
of the puzzle.

I really like nostalgia as a filter, for just
thinking about things.
It's like people say, no onedies wishing they'd spent more
time at the office.
So it's, It is liberating.
When we're talking about thisemphasis on reframing and
mindset and storytelling, andthis murky business of shifting
identities and modes ofexpression and finding what's
central in that.

(01:07:36):
It's all very relevant to thepeople I talk to all the time,
who aren't able to bucketthemselves and don't want to fit
into neat classifications, butdo go around in sort of quiet
fear of being asked,'so what doyou do?' So this word that I
have, grokkist, kind ofencapsulates this way of being,
of leading with curiosity andfollowing your enthusiasm.

(01:07:58):
And, I just wanted to ask you ifif it's an idea that resonates
with you at all, and then howyou would map it back to some of
the things that you think aboutif so.

Real quick, I have to ask, what's the etymology of

Yeah.
grok is, a word that came from ascience fiction novel, A
Stranger in a Strange Land,which is about a human who grows
up on Mars and comes back toEarth.
And sometimes it takes an aliento help us understand what it
means to be really human.
to grok means to understandsomething intuitively, deeply,

(01:08:32):
to be one with it.
It also means to drink.
But I sort of constructed asgrokkist as someone who, that's
their way of being, is to be inthe world as someone who is
constantly having a thirst forlearning and understanding and,
and drinking things up that way.

Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's why I asked about theetymology of that word.
it's a great way to describesomeone because you know, that's
an interesting thing youmentioned about you, you're so
certain that you wanna continuesto be learning and follow your
curiosity, but there's like thisnascent fear of someone asking
you, what do you do?
Because it's such a difficultthing to phrase and this is

(01:09:15):
something that I come acrosstoo.
I, I do so many things, but Iguess I'm a writer.
And then it's like, well, oh,what kind of stuff do you write?
And then I'm just like, uh, Idunno how, how exactly to answer
this.
Like, every time.
so if anything, I would say thatfear that you have of that
particular question is actuallylike a good thing in the sense

(01:09:37):
of it means that you're doingsomething that is so unique,
like the things that you grokright?
the The unique threads ofeverything that you pull
together is gonna result in somesort of like mishmash of a spool
or whatever, like you weretalking about earlier, that is
so specific to you.
And like it's really hard todescribe the end result to

(01:10:00):
anybody really.
if anything, your inability toanswer that question is probably
your greatest asset as acreator.
That's why I think that it'ssomething to be quite proud of
and to understand that like,yeah.
I don't have any neat way ofsaying what I'm curious about or
interested in is something tolean into instead of push away.

Yeah, thank you.
I'm really glad you put it thatway, particularly given how much
we've talked about confidence,because there's such an internal
struggle about those things.
Now I'm at this stage in my ownjourney where I'm just leaving
the full-time, work that's beensustaining me and throwing
myself into what I'm doing withGrokkist more and more.
And I find I still negotiatethat fear, and I do it from a

(01:10:47):
place of confidence of knowingmyself in that introspective way
and having had some externalvalidation and prestige in other
parts of my life, but not fromthis.
so I draw on that sense ofconfidence, but I try and hold
onto the uncertainty as well,because, I'm having to write a
lot of bios at the moment, andwhen you are able to nail down

(01:11:08):
your own self story in asentence, it's good, but it's
also frozen in time then, andyou've already moved on as a
person from what that moment intime was.
So being able to sit with thatuncertainty and that fear is, is
helpful.
I think.

Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.
your ability to be grateful foruncertainty is huge.
because our natural inclination,like I was saying, is to fear
it, but if you're able toreframe it and it's like, damn,
if everything was so certain andpredictable, why did I leave my

(01:11:45):
job?
Which probably had way morepredictability than this.

It's interesting as well, like.
When I write, sometimes I holdmyself back a little bit and
most of the feedback I get isabout not going far enough with
leaning into the uncertainty.
'cause I, I try and, you know,make myself acceptable, and
understood to people who are notnecessarily who I wanna be

(01:12:11):
understood by.
I don't know why I'm telling youthis, but it's just something
that came up for me when yousaid that.

I have a piece called the problem of what
others think, and I started offwith a Seneca quote that says,
it is the height of madness tobe despised by the despicable.
And it reminded me of what youjust said.
Yeah, why do I try to beunderstood by people that won't
understand me?

We'll put a lot of links to stuff on your site, in
the notes.
Is there anything you woulddirect people to in particular,
to have a look at if they wantedto step inside your world a
little bit more?

Yeah, I guess thinking in stories, because I
talked about storytelling, so Ihave, uh, thinking in
stories.com site.
I think that those would be goodresources to point people to.

The last question I have for you is the question I
ask everyone who comes on thepodcast, which is, if you could
gift someone a life-changinglearning experience, what would
it be and why?

Yeah.
On a side note, I saw thisquestion on your list of
questions, and I was like, huh.
Such a hard question, but whichmakes it good.
It's good.
It's, it's one of those, you'veactually had a couple questions
here where I was like, huh.
I like that.
that one's, uh, one I haven'treally thought about.
Life changing, uh, learningexperience.
Okay.

(01:13:25):
I think the best way to learnabout yourself is just take
regular moments, and let's saywe completely condense into a
learning experience where it'sover one week.
And you just write out all yourthoughts, We can start with your
beliefs, your beliefs aboutyourself, um, your beliefs about

(01:13:46):
your relationship to work,relationship to money, your
relationship to your family,everything.
And then underneath each one,ask, why?
Why do you have this belief?
Why do you think this?
Why do you think that?
When people journal, most peopletalk about the what's of life.
Like, what did I do today?

(01:14:06):
What did I experience, what didI accomplish?
But the far more powerful thingto this journal about is the
why.
why did you accomplish that?
Why did you want to accomplishthat?
journaling about the whys willreveal more about yourself than
any what ever can.
if people did this regularly,there would be just enormous

(01:14:27):
change in the world.
If people understood theirmotivations and understood their
intentions, and took a closerlook at why they believe the
things they believe, knowingthat so much of it has been
instilled by conditioning andnorms.
I don't know.
I don't know what the worldwould look like, but think it
would look a lot different thanwhat it looks like now a more

(01:14:48):
positive direction.
if I had the opportunity to giftsomeone that, I would just say,
Hey, yeah, for the next fewdays, what if you just dropped
everything and did that and youactually just really took your
time with that, because I thinkthat it could very much change
your life.

Yeah.
I, I really like that answer.
You talked about, reflection asa precursor to action before,
and it seems like Inventoryingyour beliefs is a good precursor
to reframing them, as wellbecause just the act of putting
them all on the table, you cango, huh, where did these come?

(01:15:25):
I can sift through them now andsee, is this working for me?
Because the belief is also, it'san anchor and an anchor can
weigh you down and might keepyou safe in one part of your
life, but might be causing yousuffering in another.
So, I really like that answer.
You can just inventory yourattachments and beliefs and, see
what you wanna do with them allfrom there.

Yeah beliefs surface only when circumstances
make them surface.
you're not thinking abouteverything that you believe, but
if you actually write them alldown, you'll be like, wow,
there's a lot here and a lot forme to reflect upon.

Thank you very much for making the time to speak to
me today, Lawrence, and being afantastic conversation partner
and, reminding me of theimportance of being in joyful
service to the invisibleconversation partners that we're
addressing in our variouscreative efforts.
Is there anything that we havenot talked about that you want

(01:16:18):
to cover before we wrap up?

Um, no, I think we've covered a lot of ground
here and just likewise, Danu, itwas just really nice to talk to
you, Danu and learn more aboutGrokkist and so forth.
So Thanks for having me on.

All Episodes

Calibrate your inner compass with a sense of gratitude for the peculiar - Lawrence Yeo | S4E1

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Calibrate your inner compass with a sense of gratitude for the peculiar - Lawrence Yeo | S4E1