Reflective Practices and Living Intentionally with Dr. John Miles, PhD

Why do we do the things we do? And, more importantly, why do we keep doing them? Taking the time to reflect – to slow down, look back, and ask ourselves whether the path we’ve been on is the one we want to stay on – helps us be the person we truly want to be.

In this conversation with Dr. John Miles, a writing professor and academic assessment specialist (and my former boss), we talk about the importance of reflective practices to help us move from living on autopilot to living intentionally. 

Since John and I are both trained in rhetoric and writing, we’re obviously big fans of writing shit down. So we focus specifically on the value of journaling as a reflective practice. And/but we also talk about:

• Navigating distraction in the digital era
• Celebration as a form of reflective practice
• Recognizing that what we do is not who we are (but it’s a part!)
• Reevaluating goals as we grow and evolve
• Figuring out our strengths and limitations as a pathway to career satisfaction
• Consciously using tools and practices instead of just doing them for the sake of it

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References, Resources, and Links

Note: book recommendations include affiliate links. If you buy a copy, I’ll get a tiny commission, and that would be super cool.

Wofford College – where I was as an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of Digital Pedagogy (best title of my career thus far!)

Reinhart University – where John is the current Provost and VP of Academic Affairs

Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller.

Sherry Turkle – scholar focused on the impacts of technology. Reclaiming Conversation is one of her more famous books.

Kathleen Blake Yancey. Reflection In The Writing Classroom.

Ironman. The ultimate triathlon event in which participants swim 2.4 miles, then bike 114 miles, then run a full fucking marathon (26.2 miles). It’s bananas.  

DiSC Analysis. Very business-oriented personality assessment.

Habit Tracker. An app I used to use for, well, tracking habits.

The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Thích Nhất Hạnh. Vietnamese monk and prolific author.

Transcript

Note: this transcript was generated by AI. Please forgive any malapropisms and misspellings. It’s the robot’s fault!

[00:59] Hello friend.

[01:01] I’m going to provide a little bit of extra historical context for today’s episode, in part because our guest, Dr. John Miles, is someone who played a really important role in my career trajectory.

[01:18] When I graduated from the University of Texas with my PhD in English with a focus in rhetoric, I got a job at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina as an assistant professor of English and the Director of Digital Pedagogy.

[01:35] And it was my job both to teach courses focusing on writing in digital spaces. I taught a class on podcasting. I taught a class called Writing in Digital Environments. And it was also my job to help faculty incorporate technology into the classroom.

[01:53] So the intersection between writing and technology have always been really interesting to me. I am super glad I got out of academia before AI. AI was a thing, but I wanted to have a conversation a little bit about technology and very much about writing and reflective writing practices specifically.

[02:14] And John hired me at that job and I worked with him in the Center for Innovation and Learning to help implement a portfolio program for first year students.

[02:27] And so it just kind of made sense that if I was going to have a conversation about reflective writing practices that John would be the person I tapped. He is now the Provost and Vice President for Academic affairs at Reinhardt University in Georgia.

[02:41] So we have both kind of evolved in our careers and life paths and that’s something that we talk about. And John was both the person who hired me at Wofford and also someone who was really incredibly supportive when only three years later it became very clear to me that it wasn’t a good fit and they needed to move on.

[03:03] And John was also my running coach at the time. I am a long distance runner and you’ll hear us talk about how I have had a goal of trying to run a half marathon in all 50 states, which is something I am reevaluating.

[03:19] But when I was at Wofford, John, who is an Ironman triathlete, he is a yoga instructor as well, and just a genuinely lovely, kind, thoughtful human. He helped coach me. I ran a triathlon! I did. Did a triathlon while I was in South Carolina. I did one and then realized I don’t like swimming.

[03:43] And so I didn’t make myself do it again! But, yeah, John coached me. And we have very different approaches to kind of running metrics and goals, and you’ll hear us talk about and laugh about that a bit.

[03:58] So I wanted to give you that context as well. And at one point, I bought him a T shirt that said, “Suck It Up, Buttercup.” And that comes up as well.

[04:07] So it was really nice to have a very meta conversation 10 years after John hired me. He hired me in January of 2015, and we had this conversation in January of 2025.

[04:21] And so it was both a conversation about reflective practices and a conversation that involved a lot of reflective practices about how we’ve both changed and evolved over the last 10 years.

[04:33] And ultimately, it’s a conversation about, like, carving out that space and the intentionality to really look at what we have done and to ask ourselves, like, why did I do that?

[04:43] What did I get out of that? What do I want to recognize and learn about myself through the process?

[04:52] So the first little bit of this conversation is a little bit more academically focused because John has been teaching for 25 years.

[04:59] But it’s also a conversation about career change and general life goals and how we evolve as people.

[05:09] So it was a really lovely and meaningful conversation for me.

[05:13] I think those are all of the pieces of information you need to get what we’re laughing about.

[05:19] We had a pretty good time recording this, and I did do quite a bit of judicious cutting to help us not go on too many academically specific tangents. But the fundamental invitation of this episode is to really think about our own learning and thinking and how we evolve.

[05:40] So I hope it provides some inspiration for whatever you’re going through in your life right now and whatever changes you might want to implement.

[05:47] There’s some practical tools as well as just thoughtful conversation about being human and getting to show up in our lives in the ways that we want to instead of just being on autopilot all the time.

[transition music]

[06:09] You’ve been. You’ve been teaching 20 for 25 years. What would you say is, like, central to your core philosophy around teaching? Like, what’s your. What’s your deal as a teacher?

[06:21] John Miles: What’s my deal as a teacher? That’s a really good one. Well, the first thing is about me is I will. I will give feedback on anything.

[06:27] Like, if it is a draft, it doesn’t have to be finished. I mean, we. We students know. They come in my office, sit down, we talk a lot, and I’ll give feedback and feedback.

[06:39] Yeah.

[06:41] And that is really comforting for some people and very frustrating for others because they just want to do it once and be done.

[06:47] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Oh, man. I’m just hearing so many analogies for life in that right now, and, like, how I live my life. I think that’s been a big lesson for me that just, like, life is all a second, third draft.

[07:00] Like, there’s not.

[07:02] John Miles: Yes. Yeah. I mean, it’s process, right? I mean, it’s process and becoming, and that’s the same thing.

[07:09] I think you’re right. I think there are so many parallels when you talk about students resistance to. To just, like, settling in for a little while, you know, sitting with something.

[07:21] And I see the same thing with the people that I supervise. You know, like, they want a decision. They want to do something one time, and we’re like, whoa, wait a minute.

[07:31] We need to back up here and talk about what’s going on. But, yeah, it’s. People don’t listen either.

[07:36] Cate Blouke: No, no. And I think one of the big growths for me as a human is to not take that so personally.

[07:43] John Miles: Oh, man. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Because it’s not. I mean, I didn’t. Like, most of. It’s not even intentional.

[07:54] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[07:55] John Miles: People are just, like, so distracted or so into their own stuff that when you. When you’re talking and you feel like you’re talking about serious things, it’s only because you think they’re serious.

[08:07] You know, not everybody does.

[08:09] Cate Blouke: Maybe you could. So I remember this. I don’t know if this is, like, colloquialism, but there’s something about, like, you’re supposed to tell students something like, six times if you actually want.

[08:19] John Miles: Oh, yeah, that.

[08:20] Cate Blouke: Is that true? Is that a. Like.

[08:24] John Miles: I think yes. I think, you know, everybody. Something. I think. I think one of the things my president says all the time is you have to say it seven times. He says seven, but you have to say it in three different genres.

[08:37] Tell them you need to, like, post it on a. Post it. Like, send an email about it, and then send an Announcement in their email or something like.

[08:46] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[08:47] John Miles: You got to do it three different ways because people are just like, they’re locked into the way they receive any kind of communication.

[08:53] So if they’re clicking off emails, they’re not paying attention, you know?

[08:57] Cate Blouke: Right.

[08:57] John Miles: So, yeah. He’s so patient with people, which is a. He needs. He needs it. Being a president.

[09:04] Cate Blouke: Well, I mean, we all need it. I just, I’ve been immersed lately in reading about digital minimalism, about Sabbath, about, like, all these different flavors and genres of people talking about the importance for carving out space because we are so completely inundated by information and distraction and places to put our attention, and it’s so hard to hear yourself think.

[09:38] John Miles: Yeah. You’re never doing just one thing.

[09:40] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[09:41] John Miles: Almost. Almost never. Right. You know, one of the things that. That I’m glad, you know, I am. I’m old. I’m older, you know, I mean, old is relative.

[09:55] Cate Blouke: Now that I’m in my 40s.

[09:57] John Miles: Yeah. I will be 50 and less than. In less than four months, I’ll be 50 years old.

[10:03] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[10:03] John Miles: And one of the things that I’m glad of is that my kids didn’t have devices when they were little.

[10:11] Cate Blouke: Right.

[10:12] John Miles: There was no. You could just stick an iPad in front of somebody. And I’m not suggesting I wouldn’t if I had them right. You know, to get some space and time.

[10:20] But if you just think about your training, that mediated experience from a very young age now, and being intentional about how you use it is so hard.

[10:32] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[10:32] John Miles: Because it is built to make you not do that.

[10:35] Cate Blouke: Yeah, no, absolutely. Like, I just finished reading Cal Newport’s Digital Minimal.

[10:42] Digital Minimalism.

[10:46] And, you know, it’s. I’ve heard this so many times, but it’s just really sinking in that, like, all of the free social media, app, whatever, like, it’s all designed to be addictive.

[10:58] John Miles: Yep.

[10:59] Cate Blouke: It is. By design. So for me, in that there’s like a lot of grace for myself around. Okay. Like, no wonder this is hard for all of us. Like, oh, yeah.

[11:11] We are surrounded by these things that are demanding our attention in ways that are neurologically addictive.

[11:20] John Miles: Yes.

[11:21] Cate Blouke: And like, I’m in my 40s and it’s hard.

[11:24] John Miles: Yeah.

[11:25] Cate Blouke: How do you expect teenagers and 20 somethings whose frontal lobes aren’t fully formed.

[11:30] John Miles: Yeah.

[11:31] Cate Blouke: Have the wherewithal to be like, I shouldn’t do this all the time.

[11:34] John Miles: Yes. No. Yeah. I mean, I think that’s. That’s dead on. I’m just. I’m reading a book now. It’s about AI Right. So, like everything now is about AI. Right. And so what.

[11:43] What I’m reading about is it’s the same concept that every book about a new technology is about in the beginning. Right. And AI is not new, but like an emerging changing technology.

[11:54] And that is. It’s going to do really good stuff, it’s going to do really bad stuff. We need to make some rules around it.

[12:00] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[12:01] John Miles: And we’ve never done it. I can’t remember who said this a long time ago, but they were talking about the digital age and they said one of the things that emerging technologies have never had is a moral reckoning.

[12:11] Right. So we never. We were never like, these are the rules. Like, let’s all agree on them if it’s collaborative or if it’s from the top. But like the fact that we have these technologies that are making.

[12:22] Making people not care or care too much and there’s no guardrails at all.

[12:30] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[12:30] John Miles: It’s shocking. You know, one of the things we do and have done since the beginning is there’s no screens at meals. We eat together at a table when we can, but we always sat together at a table.

[12:42] And there are no screens at a table. There are no screens in your room.

[12:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[12:46] John Miles: You know, there has to be space set aside for you to not be. Because it’s so easy to pick it up or turn it on or whatever, you know?

[12:55] Cate Blouke: Yeah. What have you seen? Because you’ve been teaching. You’ve been teaching for 25 years. Shit’s changed.

[13:02] John Miles: Yeah.

[13:04] Yeah. You know, when I started teaching, it’s so fascinating because I think about place so much. I started teaching in. In very small rural North Carolina, and I taught in a.

[13:16] A single wide mobile classroom that had 30 desks in it, but there were 10 rows of three desks facing one long wall. Right. There was no screen.

[13:29] There was a chalkboard. And I mean, you know, this was 1997. You know, there were computers, but I didn’t have one. There were no. There was no such. I didn’t have a laptop.

[13:43] I didn’t have anything. So students had. The only distractions they were doing were things that were their own making. Right. You know, they were like scratching shit into desk or whatever.

[13:53] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[13:53] John Miles: Digging holes where they shouldn’t be. But one of the things that.

[13:56] Cate Blouke: Paper notes.

[13:57] John Miles: Yes. And I want to say, you know, they weren’t not distracted.

[14:03] Cate Blouke: Right, Right.

[14:04] John Miles: Like we’ve always been distracted. Right. But in Sherry Turkle, you know, talks about the fact that it’s a screen now, but it used to be a newspaper you know, or something that, you know, gets between you.

[14:14] So, one, I mean, I think the thing that has changed two things. One is access to in a way that I could not have imagined, and an inability to figure out how to teach people how to use the technologies that are emerging at the time they’re emerging.

[14:31] Because I don’t know if it’s resistance to people. It’s not my own resistance, but, I mean, I remember Wikipedia being the end of everything, right? Like, at being at. At conferences and people talking about this thing that, like, how are we going to know what’s true?

[14:46] And I’m like, I don’t know that that’s the problem with Wikipedia, but. But I think it’s really hard to be critical when you’re in that. In that space of emerging technologies.

[14:57] But it’s really easy to just say, I’m just gonna not do it. I’m just gonna, like, I’m gonna tell my students that’s bad, and we’re gonna go on about business as we.

[15:05] As we should. And you do it outside the classroom. We’re not gonna do it in.

[15:09] But I think it’s a different class. You know, I taught a class last semester. We had a. We had somebody get sick, and I took over a writing class, you know, and I forgot the rules that I had to have.

[15:20] Like, you can’t have a screen open, because if we’re talking. If you’re writing, you should have a screen. But if, like, we’re talking, why do you have a screen open?

[15:28] Cate Blouke: Right.

[15:28] John Miles: Because if I have this at my. I mean, I have tabs open other than you, Kate, and I’m in stores or anything, but, like, that’s what I’d be doing if I was sitting in a class.

[15:38] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[15:39] John Miles: You know, so I think that the difficulty of keeping people in a moment has always been hard, but it’s even harder.

[15:47] And the difficulty of saying this is really important. You should take time to read it, you should think about it, and you should write about it. That’s never been easy to convince people to do, but I think it’s even harder now because we have tools that allow us not to ever have to do it again if we don’t want to.

[16:02] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[16:04] John Miles: So I feel like I’m in this. You know, I don’t mean to say I have some kind of privilege, but I do have. I do have some kind of privilege because I was here.

[16:12] Like, I saw computers happen.

[16:14] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[16:15] John Miles: You know, I saw them come in, and it was like, oh, shit, what are we gonna do about it? And it’s the same thing. Like I have, I have people right now who are saying the way to do this right is to have people write everything in class because you can’t know if they’re writing.

[16:28] And I was like, that’s not the answer. You know, I don’t think that’s the answer. I know it goes against everything I think about what writing is, but, you know, I think we’re gonna have to change what we think writing is.

[16:42] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[16:43] John Miles: I mean, it’s gonna be hard. It’s hard for people. It’s hard.

[16:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah. There’s some threads I wanna pick up and I wanna pick up one of the things that I wanted to bring into this conversation in the first place, which was this idea of metacognition and reflective practices.

[17:01] Reflective writing practices, specifically, because I know that that’s been an important part of your teaching agenda as an educator.

[17:11] So what is metacognition?

[17:16] John Miles: Well, you know, I should have looked up the definition, but I think was basically thinking about your thinking, right. Like you’re able to take the time to think about what you did, the choices you made, and whether or not you would make those choices again or to argue for why you would make those choices again in anything.

[17:39] And I’m going to tell you a little bit of history. So I got into this a long time ago just from a scholarly perspective because it was right at the beginning of the portfolio movement.

[17:52] Kathy Blake Yantcy, writes book on reflection, writes a ton of reflection stuff. And so I, I, it, I had never heard of it. Right.

[18:00] Cate Blouke: That wasn’t a part of my educational curriculum.

[18:02] John Miles: Right. None at all. Like nobody cared. Right.

[18:05] Cate Blouke: So yeah, no, and like the teacher was the arbiter of what you did. Like you got a, like. And then if you were upset about it, you could go talk to em and they’d tell you what you did and what different.

[18:15] Right. But it was like outsourced cognition. It was like, hello, teacher, what did I do? What do I do to get a different grade?

[18:22] Not really me looking inward about like, what choices did I make?

[18:26] John Miles: Yes, yes, yes. So that’s how I got into it, right. I read all this stuff and I thought, you know, it’d be really good.

[18:32] And we developed a, you know, I was at the University of Mexico at the time. We developed a large scale portfolio assessment around reflection using a reflective, a reflective letter, we were calling it, about the outcomes of the course and about the writings and sort of making this case.

[18:47] Right. So we, we get it all set up, you know, and we do this assessment and we realize that nobody knows what they’re doing.

[18:56] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[18:56] John Miles: Because nobody’s been taught how to.

[18:59] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Like, you say the words portfolio and reflection letter, and I imagine listeners are like, okay. Like, I think I know what that means. Right. But.

[19:08] John Miles: Okay, so you, in a class, maybe you write four essays, right?

[19:11] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[19:11] John Miles: At the end of the class, you take two of those essays and you make an argument in your reflective letter about why those two essays demonstrate that you’ve. You’ve. You’ve achieved the outcomes or goals of the course.

[19:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[19:23] John Miles: And how. With examples. Right, Right. So it’s. It’s a. You know, it’s a structured reflection on what you’ve done, both what you’ve done and what you’ve supposedly learned.

[19:34] Right. By doing. But, you know, the first time we did it, we thought we’ll just tell them to do that.

[19:39] And they were awful. Nobody knew what they were doing.

[19:42] And then we got really structured with it, you know, like, outcome one paper, one, tell me what you did. You know, and really, it got better the more people practiced it, you know, that makes sense.

[19:56] It does. It does. Right. And so to say, you gotta teach them this. The actual important thing is the reflection.

[20:04] Cate Blouke: Right.

[20:05] John Miles: Right. The essays themselves are great. Like, you’ve done all that. That demonstrates one thing. But the way you transfer all of this in their lives or. And into their next classes and whatnot is they can actually take stock and say, I can look at my writing as evidence for learning.

[20:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[20:24] John Miles: And that is. That is hard to do. It’s hard to teach. And it’s not. It’s not linear.

[20:32] Cate Blouke: No. Yeah. And I just. I mean, because what interests me about this is not so much the academic portion anymore, but just the, like, idea of the value of reflective practices and writing, specifically.

[20:48] Because, like, I’m. I am an English teacher and, like, you know, but what I appreciate about that is that it is hard. Like, it is hard to take stock and figure out what we’ve learned or how we’ve grown, and especially if we don’t carve out the time.

[21:05] Right. All these things are tied together, you know, and it’s the big. It’s January of 2025, and a lot of folks for New Year’s kind of do the, like, year in review, and what did I learn and what has changed?

[21:21] Right. And I guess, like, why does that matter?

[21:24] John Miles: Yeah. Well, you learn something about yourself.

[21:29] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[21:29] John Miles: Right. And I think it, you know, I think there’s an intentionality. I think. I think what it can do is breed intention.

[21:37] Cate Blouke: Right.

[21:38] John Miles: It can grow intention And I think just imagine if we. If we took the situations, if we took our year in review, right? And we decided, okay, I had the goal in 2024 to get in shape.

[21:52] That was one of my goals. Right.

[21:54] Because, you know, I’m a recovering triathlete. I don’t do that anymore. I don’t have the time for it. But I decided. I was like, listen, I can’t have that.

[22:04] Cate Blouke: What’s your new definition of being in shape?

[22:07] John Miles: Well, I need to be in shape for life. Right. And longevity. Right. And so I walk more than I run. I lift weights more than I do anything else. But that was hard, and I grieved.

[22:19] I didn’t know how to grieve it, and I did.

[22:23] But, you know, I don’t think that was a good enough goal. That’s what I figured out when I was trying to figure it out, like, to be. To be. To get in shape again.

[22:31] Right. And so I think reflection. I think you have to start with goals, good goals.

[22:37] Right.

[22:38] Cate Blouke: And then what makes a good goal?

[22:40] John Miles: Well, that it’s measurable. Right. But also that it’s wide enough that you’re not saying. So I have four for this year.

[22:50] Cate Blouke: All right.

[22:51] John Miles: Right. And I’m trying every day to write about these at night. You know, sometimes I’m doing it in the morning for the last day. But I want to feed my body well.

[23:02] Right. I want to feed my soul well.

[23:06] I want to feed my brain well. And I want to feed my relationships well.

[23:13] Cate Blouke: I love those sound very lofty and not measurable. Ja. Miles.

[23:17] John Miles: But I can say. I can say yes. So, yes, they do. I. I do have a hard time with.

[23:24] With what it means to be healthy. Right. It used to mean one thing. It doesn’t mean now. But if I can come. If I could say, okay, today I ate in a way that was intentional for health, you know, that’s what I’m thinking about.

[23:38] And not to. I don’t like. I don’t sit around and think about the fact that I ate potato chips. Like, I don’t really. Like. I’m not that hard on myself, really.

[23:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[23:46] John Miles: But. But I do every day think about, okay, what do I do? And not being too hard on myself for it. The decisions I’m making are crafted by the intentions that I have.

[23:55] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[23:55] John Miles: We are so automatic that reflection makes you stop and quit being automatic to start to develop the practice of having whatever it is you’re reflecting on. Like, you run races, right?

[24:13] When you run a race.

[24:15] I shouldn’t say you when I Used to run races when I was.

[24:17] Cate Blouke: Yeah, I mean, I do, but where are you going with this?

[24:21] John Miles: But when I would finish a race, I would take stock. Right. Like, I had a goal, I did all this training. Now it would be stupid in my mind to not do anything with that information to just go on to the next race.

[24:35] Right.

[24:36] Also, it puts.

[24:39] Cate Blouke: Finish your thoughts. Because I’m. I have a different perspective on this. I love it.

[24:44] John Miles: You do, you do. And I think it’s. Yeah. My perspective. I think it’s like you need to figure out what you did right and what you did wrong. That’s what I.

[24:50] Yeah. You know, and so if I did. If I wanted to run a 3:30 marathon, and I didn’t run a 3:30 marathon, I wanted to know why. Right. And that’s a kind of reflection, you know, to think like I did all this practice, what happened, you know, was it mental, was it physical?

[25:05] But would have been better is if I’d have known along the way, you know, there were some intentional things I needed to do in my training. Right. That did that.

[25:13] So, yeah, I think it’s a. What you want to do is be present. Right. In your experiences and your choices. But if you’re not reflecting on what you do, how are you going to become more present?

[25:25] Right. Because you’re just sort of being automatic.

[25:28] Right. You’re just sort of falling through it.

[25:29] Cate Blouke: I just. Because it resulted in a lot of laughing. Like, I don’t like it. So I want credit. Like, I want credit is why I track my, like, running and whatever data.

[25:44] John Miles: Right.

[25:45] Cate Blouke: But I don’t ever do anything with that information because I’m not actively trying to get better or faster or whatever. I know, I know this is. This is a point of humor and contention between us, but I do do a lot of reflecting in my life on like, other.

[26:03] John Miles: Yes. I. Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. 100%. And, you know, and I. It’s all. That’s all changed for me. You knew me at a time when I was.

[26:13] Cate Blouke: I was pretty sure you were an iron man.

[26:15] John Miles: Yeah.

[26:18] Cate Blouke: You were like full on.

[26:20] John Miles: Yeah. Yeah. You know, and there’s a lot of data. Yeah. Lots of data. And you know, and I think it’s. It’s easier for me now, you know, really process. But it’s easier for me now.

[26:31] I do. I want the credit too, Kate. Like, that’s how I feel right now. Like, I want. I just want to know that I did it. Yeah. And that’s one of the things, too.

[26:40] I should say this right? One of the Things I never been able to do is celebrate.

[26:46] Like, I’ve just always been. You do something, you go on to the next thing. Right? Like, you’re just doing it. Like, why. Why do we need to talk about this and celebrate this?

[26:57] And one of the things that’s changed that is I married a woman that likes to celebrate everything.

[27:02] Cate Blouke: Yeah, go, Brenda.

[27:03] John Miles: Yeah, she’s very good at this.

[27:05] But, you know, I’m getting there. And I think that’s part of. I think that’s part of my personality, but it’s also part of. It’s a. It’s a sort of cultural norm.

[27:15] And it might be around masculinity, it might be around business culture. I don’t know which one it is, but, like, I should just be doing stuff, you know? And now I’m doing stuff because I think it’s going to make.

[27:27] I have a goal. Like, it’s not to lose weight. It’s not to do X. And I, like, you know, I walked 25 miles this week, if that’s what I did.

[27:36] Like, that’s a long way to walk.

[27:37] Cate Blouke: That is a long way to walk, you know?

[27:39] John Miles: Like, that’s a long. And that’s important for me to be able to say, you know?

[27:43] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[27:44] John Miles: But, yeah, I think it’s.

[27:46] Yeah, it’s interesting. I still have the shirt that says, suck it up, buttercup.

[27:52] I just put it. I just put it in the pile to donate because it’s so small, but I do, you know, I think I probably made a ton of mistakes coaching, training, raising kids with that.

[28:09] With. Without that celebratory part. But I think that celebration is a kind of reflection.

[28:15] Because you’re saying. You’re saying, hey, it took a lot to do this.

[28:21] You know, I’m gonna pause and I’m gonna think about how hard that thing was I just did. You know, I’m gonna celebrate that, and then I’m gonna figure out if I’m gonna do it again, you know?

[28:32] And you may not make any other changes than that, but you’re exactly, like, you’re taking time. You’re sitting with it, and you’re saying, I did it.

[28:39] You love metals.

[28:41] Cate Blouke: I do. I was just thinking about that. I was like, yeah, I haven’t run a race since maybe I’m currently looking at my last metal. And I was listening to you, and I was like, yeah, I think that’s why I like metals, because it’s just this, like, tactile thing that’s like, I did something hard.

[28:59] John Miles: Yeah, I got a little.

[29:01] Cate Blouke: I got a Little shiny object to be like, look at, look at that. You achieved something.

[29:06] John Miles: Yes. Yeah. You know, and that could be. That could be really, really bad. Right.

[29:12] Cate Blouke: You know, like, how dare you?

[29:14] John Miles: If that was. No, no, no, no, no, no. I don’t think it’s bad for you because it’s purely celebratory. But I mean, if that’s the only. You know what I’m saying?

[29:20] Like, if it’s reductionist in that way. Right. But it’s not for you. You enjoy the whole experience.

[29:26] Cate Blouke: Well, sometimes. No, I mean, I, I will admit, like, I have been guilty of, like, just doing the race to get the medal, to get the state checked off the list.

[29:34] And, and like, that’s not rewarding, you know, and part of my reflective practice has been thinking about that. Like, so I had a goal of trying to run a half marathon in all 50 states.

[29:51] I have now hit 26 states. I’ve been working at this goal for like, 12 years, and I don’t know if it’s still a goal anymore. I’m actually at a little existential crisis about it because, like, I’m old and travel’s expensive and I don’t know if I actually want to do this anymore.

[30:09] But you’re reflecting on that.

[30:11] John Miles: Yeah, yeah. Like, and goals change.

[30:15] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot that’s really interesting is that like, goals change, we evolve.

[30:23] John Miles: Yes.

[30:24] Cate Blouke: And something you touched on briefly was that, like, grief process of when we change. Even if it’s like, you know, for me, I’m. I’m in, in the midst of this right now of, like, not sure if I want this to still be a goal anymore.

[30:38] Feeling sad, feeling relieved, not really sure who am I without this goal? Everybody knows I’m trying to do this thing.

[30:44] John Miles: Yep.

[30:45] Cate Blouke: Right. And you know, in this, in this instance, it’s fucking running half marathons, which is a little cuckoo bananas.

[30:53] But that happens in all areas of life. It’s not just the, like that.

[30:59] It’s something we can all relate to.

[31:02] John Miles: Yeah. You. You touched on, you touched on the thing, right? You’re talking about what makes you you.

[31:08] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[31:08] John Miles: Right. And what you, what I should say, what you think makes you you.

[31:13] And if you don’t reflect on that when it’s gone or it changes, it’s fucking hard.

[31:22] Right. Like, everybody knew me to make this personal. Like, everybody knew me as a triathlete. Right. I mean, it was on my bio for a long time. It might still be.

[31:33] I don’t know if it still is. I Probably need to change it. But, you know, a lot of my life, apart from my work and my family, was being a triathlete, whatever that meant at that time.

[31:44] Right.

[31:45] And you convince yourself that that’s part of who you actually are, and it does become part of your. I mean, it’s a lot of time, you know, but that’s not that important.

[31:56] It was important to me at that time. It’s not important to me now.

[32:01] And that’s a hard process. And I think there is, you know, egos caught up in that. There’s all kinds of other things caught up in that. But I think you’re exactly right.

[32:09] I mean, like, who you were when you made that goal is not who you are now.

[32:13] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I mean, and that was a big part of my departure from academia was. That was a huge piece. Was like, I had. I spent eight years in graduate school. I spent three years as an official college professor.

[32:28] And that last year was a whole long process of like, do I leave? If I leave, who am I?

[32:34] Who am I without this identity of this job?

[32:39] John Miles: Yep.

[32:40] Cate Blouke: And I think that’s a huge reason that I see in clients, that I see in. That I saw in colleagues who expressed envy for my decision, you know, is that we get so tied to these aspects of our identity, and it can be really, really hard to let them go.

[33:00] John Miles: Yeah. And I think it becomes very easy to live unintentionally.

[33:05] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[33:06] John Miles: You know, and just be like, this is what I’m supposed to be doing maybe. You know, but the hard work is pausing, saying, I don’t know if this is what I should be doing, and let’s talk about why.

[33:21] And let’s start to get down into what. What is the goal? Right. Or is it feeding my soul in any way to do this? And I have, you know, I have made a complete 180 on, like, one of the things I used to say all the time.

[33:35] And that was, I never derived any of my meaning from what I did.

[33:39] Cate Blouke: Right.

[33:39] John Miles: I just did work because I needed a vocation.

[33:42] Right. And I have to make money. But now I actually feel like you better be doing something that you kind of like.

[33:48] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[33:49] John Miles: And that you derive some meaning from, because it should be part of who you are.

[33:55] If not, you’re just sort of a cog in a machine that’s working, and you don’t know why you’re there anymore.

[34:00] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[34:01] John Miles: You know, so I do. You know, watching you go through that was. Was very interesting and enlightening in some ways because you, you know, we’ve Known each other for a decade, which is weird.

[34:14] But in the conversations with you over time, your happiness has gone through the charts from where you were.

[34:24] And you can tell you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing or should be doing at this moment.

[34:29] Because it’s true, though, because.

[34:32] And you weren’t fully. Kate.

[34:34] Cate Blouke: Yeah, I was trying.

[34:36] I was trying real hard. I was, like, doing everything I can do to be, like, all right, like, what. What levers do we got to tweak here to make this work?

[34:45] And it just wasn’t.

[34:47] John Miles: Nope, nope, no. Sorry to do that. But yeah, yeah, you can see it.

[34:54] Cate Blouke: Like, it’s great. You want. Hey, you get the prize. You’re the first guest to make me cry on my own podcast. I love it. This is amazing because I talk about it all the time on here, about how I’m a big crier and it doesn’t happen much, but.

[35:07] Yeah, like.

[35:09] But that was just really beautiful to hear reflected back to me because, you know, the. The job I got with you was, like, all of the components that I thought I wanted in a job.

[35:22] I. I had worked real hard.

[35:26] I landed my dream job.

[35:29] It wasn’t what I wanted, and I couldn’t fucking make it work, like, in spite of all of my best efforts, you know, and. And it was a big lesson for me in, like, letting go of control and, like, stepping into the flow of life, of acknowledging when something isn’t working.

[35:56] Yeah.

[35:57] Right.

[35:59] And, yeah, I just think that.

[36:05] I don’t know that I believe that we’re all supposed to, like, follow our passion when it comes to careers, but I do believe that we all deserve to, like, be in careers that leverage our strengths.

[36:17] John Miles: No, I think that’s so good.

[36:20] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[36:21] John Miles: And it takes some time. You know, it takes some time to figure that out. And I think there’s. You know, I spend all this time looking at data. Right. Because it’s my job.

[36:31] But, you know, one of the things that. I was giving a presentation to our board of trustees, and I was talking about this generation of students, which I always find very interesting.

[36:40] But the. The. The gen. This generation of students will change jobs six times. Change careers six times is what they say. And, you know, the people are, like, shocked by this.

[36:50] And I think, well, well, wait a minute. I’ve changed jobs five times or four times.

[36:57] You know, like, it’s really not like, if you think about it, if you’ve been working for. I’ve been working since I was. I’ve been working for 27 years, basically. Right.

[37:06] Yeah. 27 years, basically. And, you know, I’ve done four or five things and I’ll probably do two or three more.

[37:17] But back to what you were saying too, though. I think when you talk about needing to. When you’re doing something that, you know, leverages your strengths, I think it takes a lot of people a long time to figure out what their strengths are.

[37:28] Cate Blouke: Yeah. And what their limitations are.

[37:31] John Miles: Yes, yes.

[37:32] Cate Blouke: Like, that’s been a big piece for me. Right. That like, there were a lot of ways in which being a college professor leveraged a lot of my strengths. But, like, being in South Carolina and being a college professor, like, didn’t align with my limitations.

[37:51] John Miles: Yeah.

[37:52] Cate Blouke: I remember having a conversation with my sponsor at the time about, like, just because I’m really good at something doesn’t mean it’s like, right for me.

[37:58] John Miles: No. Oh, yeah.

[38:00] Cate Blouke: You know?

[38:01] John Miles: Yeah.

[38:02] Cate Blouke: And a huge component of my development of the last few years in learning more about my neurodivergence and like, just really understanding, like, what works for me and what doesn’t.

[38:15] Um, I think the sweet spot of career is one where you get to, like, leverage your strengths and not over tax your limitations.

[38:25] John Miles: Yeah. Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of. There’s a lot of good. Well, first of all, that’s like purely reflective, right?

[38:33] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[38:34] John Miles: Like, like, that’s been a long road to where you are.

[38:39] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[38:40] John Miles: This works. This doesn’t. Why is this not working? How are we doing this? Do you know which is. Which is hard work. And not a lot of people want to do it because it’s unlimited.

[38:50] Cate Blouke: Usually it means I have to look at my limitations. I’m like, ah, this is the shit. I don’t. Like, Like, I, you know, I. And believe me, like, I’ve been in this cycle for years of like, slowly figuring out what my actual energetic bandwidth is by over taxing it and having a meltdown.

[39:07] Like, it’s not a fun process. Says.

[39:10] Right. Every.

[39:12] John Miles: But you have a process, Kate.

[39:14] Cate Blouke: You know, I’m a goddamn academic in my soul, in some.

[39:18] John Miles: Yeah.

[39:20] Cate Blouke: That many years of college. And not have it be part of your identity.

[39:23] John Miles: Yeah. Yeah, no, agreed, agreed. I, I mean, you know, I think that, I think that that’s. That’s good. Your limitations. We, you know, I have a colleague of mine who talks a lot about, you know, we did this.

[39:39] We did this disk analysis. Right. Are you familiar with this tool?

[39:42] Cate Blouke: Yeah. What is it? I’m familiar. What do they, what do they stand for?

[39:47] John Miles: I don’t know. There’s like a circle and you’re supposed to do it right. There’s a circle and I am at the top left of the outside of the circle. Which means like if there’s a problem, I’m going to figure out how to solve it.

[40:07] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[40:07] John Miles: And I don’t want you to get in my way. I want you to help me. Right. Which I think are two different things. But we could talk about that too. But most of the team that I work with is at the bottom right of it, which is they like to contemplate things.

[40:23] Cate Blouke: Oh yeah, that’s very academic.

[40:25] John Miles: Yeah. And I’m like, you know, let’s do something and if it doesn’t work out then we’ll just change it.

[40:32] Cate Blouke: Oh, that’s the hard piece that so many of us don’t wanna.

[40:38] John Miles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, you know, and I’m like, I’m pretty okay with change.

[40:45] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[40:45] John Miles: You know, it’s very, it’s very hard. But, but the thing about that, the one thing I will say too, the thing about that disc assessment, you start talking about what your strengths and weaknesses are and what they say is, you know, you should really work on your strengths a lot.

[40:59] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[40:59] John Miles: Right. Because working on a weakness is not going to give you a lot of headway.

[41:05] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[41:06] John Miles: Right. You need to recognize them. Right. And figure out how to, how to avoid them or find people that help you lift you up in that way on your team or in your life.

[41:17] You know. But that just resonated with me when you were saying like, I think that’s really important and I’m working on it. I think I’m pretty good at what I do.

[41:28] But I think part of the thing that makes me pretty good at what I do is I am not afraid to be the one in the room that says if we don’t do something, not doing something is not the answer.

[41:38] Or asking the question. If you’re sitting in a room and you’re doing these seven things, why is that the answer?

[41:46] What do we need to do to fix this?

[41:49] But, and that’s really hard. It’s really easy for me to do on external work problems.

[41:56] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[41:57] John Miles: Not really easy for me to do on myself.

[42:00] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[42:01] John Miles: And if I could do that to be like, why, what are we doing here? Like why, why are we, why are we doing this thing?

[42:08] Why are you doing that? And take the time to think about it, that’s, that’d be better at it, I think.

[42:14] Cate Blouke: Yeah. I think like reflective practices often aren’t something that we’re taught unless we start picking up self help books or happen to be at a university that taught portfolio learning. But then it’s a whole other, like, learning and step of how to then apply that to life outside of a classroom.

[42:33] Which is one of the things that I think college is woefully unprepared adults for is, like, how to apply any of this outside of the classroom. But.

[42:42] Agreed.

[42:45] John Miles: So, you know, you. One of the things you. I don’t know if you remember this. One of the things you introduced me to was habit tracker.

[42:55] Cate Blouke: I didn’t know I introduced you to. That sounds. That sounds accurate.

[42:59] John Miles: Yeah. And I did find out that, you know, that was not. That’s not the way I could do it.

[43:06] Cate Blouke: Okay.

[43:06] John Miles: Right. Like. And this is, you know, I think, important for reflection because, you know, there are lots of ways that your apps and your watch and everything else will remind you to reflect.

[43:17] Right. But as you might disregard, like a text message or a phone call, you can just disregard that, too.

[43:24] So there are. I. You know, I think I really, truly believe that you need to write things down.

[43:32] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[43:33] John Miles: I think you.

[43:33] Cate Blouke: I do, too.

[43:34] John Miles: Yeah.

[43:35] Cate Blouke: But I want to hear you, as the professional in the room, tell us why.

[43:39] John Miles: Well, I don’t know that I’m professional, but we’ll just. I’m working on it.

[43:46] Cate Blouke: Kate, you’re more credentialed than I am at this point.

[43:48] John Miles: Well, okay, whatever. But. So, you know, I think you need a structure and time for reflection, and I think you need to be dedicated to the practice.

[44:00] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[44:01] John Miles: There are some people, I think, who could thrive with a blank piece of paper in a journal and just go at it every night. And they will reflect and they will think about what they did, and then it will be this pattern of behavior.

[44:12] I am not one of those people. I need a structure. So I’ve created a structure. But I think there are lots of. You can buy them, you know, There are lots.

[44:22] Cate Blouke: Oh, yeah. There’s a whole industry of, like, different journaly things that you could buy, but.

[44:27] John Miles: I don’t think you need. Here’s what. Here’s what I would suggest. I mean, do you want me to tell you what I would do?

[44:34] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[44:34] John Miles: Yeah. I think you need about three or four things to think about every day, and I think you need to write some examples of them every night. And then I need.

[44:42] You need to think about it. Right. What do I want to do? You know, what is a good thing this year or this time?

[44:51] And I don’t really. It could be one, I guess. You know, I do four, because it’s just easy. But just taking the time and allowing yourself a structure to write things down because you remember them, it’s tangible.

[45:06] And back to an earlier piece of our conversation. It’s pretty cool to see that like I did this, I wrote all these things down. Maybe I’ll look at them and think about what they mean instead of, I clicked 47 times in a habit tracker and it just tells me you’ve done this for 365 days.

[45:29] Well, you know, I could probably just lie about that. Right? You can’t lie about writing on the paper because you write it on the paper. You know, you’re holding yourself.

[45:36] It’s holding yourself. I shouldn’t, shouldn’t say you’re holding yourself accountable to the practice.

[45:40] Right.

[45:43] And that is life is a. You know, you know, I, we built programs talking about teaching as reflective practice. There’s books written on that. Right.

[45:52] I mean, I think it’s, the more you see, I think it’s funny you talked about the self help industry and those sorts of things, but the more you see the mind, whatever mindfulness is, whatever, like being present, whatever that means, whatever all those words mean.

[46:07] But I think being intentional about what you do and when you’re not intentional about calling yourself out on it and saying, what did I, why did I do that? Like what if, especially if it’s outside your values or outside what you want to be like, why are you doing that?

[46:21] Not based on some system of like overlord thinking or whatever, but just you yourself saying, I want to be, I want to be healthy, right?

[46:31] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[46:32] John Miles: And I want to be able to get off the ground when I’m 65 and I’ve done enough damage to my body in various ways that that might be harder for me than other people.

[46:41] So I’ve got to change that. So did I do that today?

[46:44] Right. Did I do the things that are going to lead me to that? And if I didn’t, why?

[46:49] And if I did, why? And just keep asking, as my friend says, keep asking why four times.

[46:56] You know, you write something down, you’re like, oh, why? Why that? Ask why? Ask yourself why four times. And then you’re reflecting. So what she says, okay, because I was talking to people about doing this discussion because I was, you know, trying to prep.

[47:09] But, but it is, it’s so funny how when I take, take the time to look in almost every aspect of my life, I track what I am doing by writing it down.

[47:20] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[47:21] John Miles: And I go back to it.

[47:23] Cate Blouke: Yeah, yeah. And that going back to it piece, I think is super important.

[47:27] Um, I I’ve, like, dabbled in journaling my whole life. Um, but in 2020, I picked up the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and started doing morning pages really concertedly, which is just like three pages every day of writing whatever the fuck’s on your mind.

[47:48] And it. And it was incredibly helpful.

[47:51] Julia Cameron says, like, burn them, throw them away. You don’t care about them. She does not actually encourage you to go back to them. And I often didn’t because I had the instructions that didn’t tell me I didn’t have to do that.

[48:03] John Miles: Right, right.

[48:04] Cate Blouke: But, um, even if even without going back and looking at them, you know, writing about my emotional state. So there are studies.

[48:13] 20 minutes of writing about your emotional wellbeing or your emotional state of being for any consistent amount of time has really positive impacts on processing hard emotions. But writing the same shit down, like, complaining about the same shit for, like, a month or a month and a half, like, I’m gonna notice even if I wasn’t going back and reading it.

[48:35] John Miles: Right.

[48:36] Cate Blouke: Last year, I created a structure and a framework for reflecting on what the fuck’s been going on in my life.

[48:45] Also akin with some of the other stuff we’ve been talking about. I do a digital detox at the end of every month. And I started, like, reading what I wrote for the last month and being like, okay, like, what.

[48:54] What happened this month? What was going on? Was it what I wanted to have happen? Like, what. What is up?

[49:02] And that’s been really powerful.

[49:05] But I’m gonna. I’m gonna take your little idea, like, what are the things on a daily basis? Like, what are. What are my intentions this year?

[49:13] And am I leaning into those on a daily basis?

[49:17] Not in a, like, habit track, because, like, I meditate every day. Like, cool. But, like, what am I actually getting out of that?

[49:23] John Miles: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think. I think I want to change what I said earlier.

[49:28] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[49:29] John Miles: Because. Yeah. This conversation made me figure something out. Right. So it. Is it. In an educational setting, you need goals that are measurable.

[49:40] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[49:41] John Miles: That you can track.

[49:43] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[49:43] John Miles: Right. In that way, like, you did this. You. You did it 75 times. That, you know, whatever. That means something.

[49:51] I think that you need some. Like, what you just said just, like, made me realize having the goal to meditate every day is a great goal, but asking yourself why you do that every day is the reflection of it.

[50:09] Right. Just be a check mark and, like, what. What happened? You know, like, if you’re reading Thich Nhat Hanh, when you read his stuff, all he talks about is how hard meditation is.

[50:22] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[50:23] John Miles: So just meditating is a goal. And for some people, that’s a really worthwhile and deep goal because you’re like, I am taking time out to do this, and I’ve never done that in my entire life.

[50:34] At some point, maybe that goal should be, I want to meditate every day. And then after I meditate, I’m going to figure out what happened during that meditation, or I’m going to do guided meditations for the next five weeks on X, because I’ve been really struggling with it or, you know, like.

[50:52] Like using it instead of just doing it.

[50:56] Cate Blouke: Ooh. Using it instead of just doing it.

[51:00] I needed to hear that today.

[51:04] And I’m thinking, when I’m thinking about, like, okay, so, like, I’m super tracky motivated. Right. And I’ve talked about this on the podcast before of just, like, I will do duolingo every fucking day because I get a badge and a streak and whatever.

[51:21] But there’s a difference between doing it to just check the box.

[51:26] John Miles: Right.

[51:26] Cate Blouke: And when I’m actively trying to do new lessons and learn and not just, like, do the quick little lesson to, like, get my daily lesson off.

[51:34] John Miles: Right. Yeah. So your podcast title, right?

[51:39] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[51:41] John Miles: Yeah. I love it. But I think what you just said is part of what schooling does to people.

[51:51] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[51:52] John Miles: Right. Because our education, I use. That’s not education. That’s schooling. Right. But the. Like, you were probably very good at school.

[52:00] Cate Blouke: I was so good at school. That’s why I stayed in it forever. I didn’t know what else to do with my life. I was like, I just. There’s rules, there’s structure.

[52:07] I know how to. I know how to get my prize at the end of the tunnel.

[52:10] John Miles: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think. Yeah. Another time we will talk about the fact that I was a horrible student. Yeah. But I think that I can remember, like, one of my biggest struggles as a.

[52:25] As a teacher are teaching people like you.

[52:30] Cate Blouke: Why?

[52:31] John Miles: What do they do? It’s very hard to say to someone who’s figured it out.

[52:40] Cate Blouke: Right.

[52:41] John Miles: Who will do everything you ask to take a minute to step back and say, why did I do this? Right. Because it sounds like criticism.

[52:53] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[52:53] John Miles: You know. Yeah.

[52:55] Cate Blouke: 100%.

[52:56] John Miles: Right. Can you talk to me about. Can you talk to me about this choice here? Well, I did it. You know, it’s not a. Like, I did it and it’s good.

[53:04] Cate Blouke: That’s what you’re supposed to do.

[53:05] John Miles: Yeah.

[53:06] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[53:07] John Miles: So it’s, you know, and so if you think about it. The people who need to reflect the most are probably the people who have been good at things for a long time.

[53:17] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[53:18] John Miles: You know, and I will also say I was thinking about this when I was on a walk yesterday. It is cold as hell in Georgia right now, you know, and I went outside and walked my poor little dog.

[53:29] I put his sweatshirt. I put his little sweatshirt on. But I was thinking about this. You know, I have.

[53:36] I have come to terms with my anxiety and. And my issues around some mix of anxiety and ADHD for my whole life.

[53:45] And figuring that out in my mid-40s was probably the best thing that happened to me. But I think being a little anxious makes me take stock more. It makes me reflect more.

[53:57] And I think if I’m asking myself, am I doing it right? It’s probably not the right question.

[54:03] Cate Blouke: Ooh, what’s a better question?

[54:06] John Miles: Why am I doing it? Yeah, you know, like, am I doing it right? Like, what are the measures by which I can even understand that anyway, you know, but, like, if I’m taking time to do it, why am I doing it?

[54:20] And not to be, like, not to be late stage capitalist about it, but also, like, what am I getting out of it? Like, what, meaning what? Feeling what. What. What am I getting in my soul, in my mind, in my body?

[54:37] Yeah, that. That makes me need to do this more in this way or need to do it differently. I think that’s part of, you know, my anxiety will ask that question all the time, you know, because mine is more or less about letting myself down more than it is about letting other people down, which is, you know, its own little.

[54:58] That’s.

[54:59] Cate Blouke: Oh, I know, I’m familiar. I like that. I mean, as my little recovering perfectionist type A student, like, yeah, I was always looking for the right way to do it.

[55:12] John Miles: Yeah.

[55:12] Cate Blouke: And I was always looking for the right way by someone else’s metrics. And that was a big part of why leaving academia was, I think, really important for me, but also really hard, was that, like, I had.

[55:28] I had done everything right. I had ticked the right boxes, I had gotten the right job, and it wasn’t fucking working. And I had to redefine what was right for me.

[55:38] And that’s, I think, a goddamn ever evolving process.

[55:45] Because, like, this is something that is very annoying is that, like, I change. Like, I figure out parts of myself and then, like, my goals change, my, like, interests change.

[55:58] And, you know, I’ve had a really nice morning meditation and journaling practice for a long time now. And just this week Was reflecting on how, like, why am I doing it this way still?

[56:13] And part of my fucking ADHD is that when I do something the same way for long enough, it ceases to have meaning.

[56:20] John Miles: Oh, yes.

[56:23] Cate Blouke: And so, like, I need to switch it up. And so, like, this is. I’m treating this as, like, a little synchronicity from the universe because I was just thinking about, like, what if I started doing it at the end of the day instead of first thing in the morning.

[56:32] John Miles: Yeah.

[56:33] Cate Blouke: And, like, you offered a lovely little, like, treat for me to chew on of, like, okay, I’m gonna try it that way. And. And I just. Yeah. To sort of circle back to the very first place that we started.

[56:44] Right. This idea of, like, drafts and feedback and, like, trying things with the understanding that I’m not supposed to get it perfectly on the first try.

[56:58] John Miles: Yep.

[56:59] Cate Blouke: My body’s, like, clenching around.

[57:02] That’s my big. One of my big, like, life evolutions. Right. Is. Is letting go of that idea that, like, I’m both supposed to get it right on the first try and that there even is a Right.

[57:16] On the first try.

[57:17] John Miles: Right, right, right. You know, I think there’s, you know, with many, many years of yoga practice under my belt, many, many years of yoga teaching under my belt.

[57:28] I think you nailed two things. One, when something becomes automatic.

[57:35] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[57:37] John Miles: It’s very hard to reflect on it. Right. Because you’re just doing it. And the meaning is the doing of it. It’s not what. Why you’re doing it.

[57:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[57:51] John Miles: Anything you just do out of habit is. Is in. I think it’s inherently not reflective.

[57:58] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Because you’re on autopilot. Like, that is by definition what habit is. Good habits, bad habits. Right, Right. Like taking my meds at the same time every day. Great habit. We want that on autopilot.

[58:10] I don’t need to, like, reflect about that.

[58:13] John Miles: Yeah. Oh, yes. That’s such a good point. I think we. I think somebody could listen to this and think that. I think you should reflect on everything that you do in your life, and I do not.

[58:23] Cate Blouke: Our brains would.

[58:25] John Miles: No, I do not think that. Yeah.

[58:26] Cate Blouke: No, I think that’s.

[58:27] John Miles: That is. That is probably, you know, that That’s. That’s probably diagnosable in some way. Yeah.

[58:33] Cate Blouke: I think that’s a recipe for life.

[58:36] John Miles: So. But I do think. I do think you need to figure out things that are important to you or things that you want to change or things that you want to learn more about.

[58:45] Like, any practice that has meaning. It’s small.

[58:49] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[58:50] John Miles: Because if it’s too big. You can’t get. It’s too hard. Yeah, we do. We ha. I, like, I have to do a bunch of shit every day.

[58:59] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[59:00] John Miles: You know, like a lot of shit.

[59:02] Cate Blouke: Yeah. Like dishes, laundry, brushing teeth.

[59:06] John Miles: Yes. Yeah. And I don’t care. I like, I don’t sit and reflect about brushing my teeth and think I’m doing this, do I do that? You know, I don’t do that, you know, but I am thinking while I’m brushing my teeth, what am I going to eat, how many cups of coffee I’m going to have today, whatever, you know.

[59:21] But I do think it is.

[59:22] Yeah. I think small and meaningful and I think there is, there are lots of ways in which I’ve gotten a lot of things wrong in my life. But now when I am busier with work than I have ever been in my life, I think I am more intentional about being a dad, being a husband, being a friend and being good to myself and like, if you can’t turn it off and take care of yourself, like.

[59:51] And that’s hard, you know, it’s real hard. Yeah, it’s hard for people who, you know, I see my daughter, who is a high achiever, you know, and. But I’m seeing her shift a little bit, you know, at 22, and it’s fun to watch a human grow from a little itty bitty thing to this whatever she is starting to see it in, you know, my, my 17, soon to be 18 year old.

[01:00:25] And I, I really, I think I was a good dad. I think I’ve been a good dad, but I think I’ve been a better dad in the last four years than I ever was because I didn’t have a lot of time to do anything else.

[01:00:35] And I devoted my time to, to my relationships in ways that I never had, you know, and that’s, that’s been good. Like, that’s, that makes me what I think is happy.

[01:00:46] I’m not sure I know what that is, but what I think is happy.

[01:00:50] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[01:00:51] John Miles: So. Yeah.

[01:00:52] Cate Blouke: Yeah.

[01:00:54] Well, John Miles, it has been an absolute treat to have you on. Um, my favorite question to ask at the end of a long and yummy conversation is what brings you joy?

[01:01:10] John Miles: Oh, you know, that took. That is a question I ask at the end of every interview I do for every job. Like, what do you do that brings you joy?

[01:01:20] I think what brings me joy is being with people that I love and sharing space with them and time with them and understanding that that is a choice and we’ve made it together.

[01:01:39] That brings me joy.

[01:01:41] And it’s sappy and whatever, but I love Brenda Miles and I love to be with her. She makes me happy.

[01:01:54] She makes me very happy.

[01:01:58] So yeah, my family brings me joy, Kate.

[01:02:01] Cate Blouke: I’ve gotten to see that and it has been beautiful to witness.

[01:02:08] Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please help me grow the podcast by subscribing, leaving a review, and sharing it with anyone you think would benefit from hearing it too.

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[01:02:34] Until next time, remember that I believe in you and that you are fucking awesome.