Is that all there is to appearing on a podcast?

Another thrill ride on the roller coaster of expectations

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash.

One of the most plaintive songs to capture the sense of disillusionment of the late 60s is Is That All There Is, which was a hit for Peggy Lee in 1969.

In one verse, Lee speaks about seeing clowns and dancing bears at a circus, but “I had the feeling that something was missing, I don’t know what. When it was all over, I said to myself, ‘Is that all there is to the circus.’”

I had a similar experience when a podcast that featured me as the guest went live last week. To be clear, everything about the experience was wonderful, and I think the podcast has some great stuff in it.

But I got another lesson on how my ego can send me spiralling into reactivity and judgment, even when it appears I’m getting exactly what I most desire; how I fall asleep on myself, and fail to summon the awareness that I have a choice: be the victim to my past conditioning or choose what serves.

A few weeks ago, performance coach Karl Morris asked me to appear on his Brain Booster podcast. Karl has been a mentor and great inspiration, so I was honoured. As a coach to major champions such as Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell, Karl played a role in my decision to jump into coaching in 2015.

I was excited when the podcast went live Friday. Click here to listen. But when I listened, I thought Karl was as insightful and perceptive as always, but I sounded uptight. I repeated ‘so’ over and over. I rarely finished a thought before rushing into another.

As the day wore on, I felt disappointed and low. And where were the loads of congratulatory emails and texts from my friends?

That night, I had arranged to meet a friend for a beer. I launched into my tale of woe, about how I turned what should have felt like a personal triumph into a day of hand wringing. I told him that I used to feel the same way when I was a news agency music critic and freelance golf writer many years ago. I’d write what I felt was amazing stuff, and the response was crickets.

“That’s the way it goes,” said my wise friend, a film producer. “I try to take the position that I create something and just release it to the universe. I can’t control what happens. I just let it go. Otherwise, I think I’d go nuts.”

Like I had all day. Thank goodness for wise, good friends. I gave myself some credit for having the good sense to release what I was thinking and feeling to my buddy. I listened to a snippet of the podcast on Saturday morning and, of course, it was fine. I was fine.

The irony is funny; Karl and I had discussed at length how it’s easy to get sucked into attaching our self-worth to our golf score, and ride a roller coaster of emotion.

“We can never fill the void of value with our performance … if we cross that line that our value as a person is determined by what it says on a score card,” he said. “It’s too much pressure for any person to deal with if your value as a person is on the line.”

I know. I know. And yet …

On Sunday morning, I listened to a Sam Harris commentary on his Waking Up app that seemed perfectly timed for me. Harris talked about freedom, namely freedom from one’s ego and its desires and compulsions.

“Freedom is not a matter of changing experience, or any of the things we crave,” he said. “Freedom is just the end of separation. This moment of life without I. It’s the presence revealed in the absence of yourself.”

Karl, Sam and my buddy were largely saying the same things.

Getting around our egos is, of course, a key part of the work that we all face in liberating ourselves from our ego and its preferences, judgments, and desires—for acknowledgement, likes, and even congratulatory texts.

This is the challenge—to let go of our past conditioning and experience each moment as being enough, as it is.

Rather than ask is that all there is to a circus, to a glorious sunrise, to appearing on a podcast, I think the better question is: Can I be grateful and accept what is?

***

In writing this, I thought about interviewing Peggy Lee around 1987 when she was in Toronto for a show. Although she was only 66, she was in poor health. (She died in 2002 from complications from diabetes and a heart attack.)

Lee said she developed her trademark sultry voice when she sang in a noisy club in 1940. I don’t have a copy of my story, but I recall her telling me a similar story that I found on her Wikipedia page.

“I knew I couldn't sing over them, so I decided to sing under them. The more noise they made, the more softly I sang. When they discovered they couldn't hear me, they began to look at me. Then, they began to listen. As I sang, I kept thinking, 'softly with feeling'. The noise dropped to a hum; the hum gave way to silence.

“I had learned how to reach and hold my audience—softly, with feeling."

It was yet another example of a performer discovering her own brilliance. As I learned from Karl Morris years ago, the key to accessing your innate talent is “not to swing the way, but your way.”

In researching Is That All There Is, I was surprised to learn that Randy Newman produced the song, composed the orchestral arrangement, conducted the orchestra, and played piano.

I was already a fan, but this nugget deepened my respect for Newman, known for his sardonic Short People and brilliant soundtracks, including soundtracks such as Toy Story and Pleasantville.