Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms. This is the Flex
Speaker 1: and Frooms catch up podcast. Flexi who is the philosopher
Speaker 1: who said an unexamined life is not worth living?
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you. Do you remember Plato? Socrates is
Speaker 2: one of them. Yeah, one of the boys.
Speaker 1: Never get my utube teacher told me that, and I thought, actually,
Speaker 1: I'd prefer to not think about it, and my life's
Speaker 1: pretty good anyway. I was at a party recently and
Speaker 1: the person who was hosting the party was inviting everyone in.
Speaker 1: It was like a relatively small gathering, so I would
Speaker 1: have assumed that they knew everyone's name. But people were
Speaker 1: coming in who they'd met once or twice, and they
Speaker 1: started doing this thing that I found quite grating. And
Speaker 1: I realized that I found it greating because it's something
Speaker 1: that I do, something that I don't want to do,
Speaker 1: but I can't help myself. And that is you've seen
Speaker 1: in the wild Flexi getting people's name wrong. So I
Speaker 1: struggle with people's names. I hate it because it's the
Speaker 1: most pedestrian bad thing to be bad at, and it
Speaker 1: seemingly has a very obvious cure, which is to pay attention.
Speaker 1: But trust me, I'm paying attention, and I'm definitely like
Speaker 1: when I meet someone i'm thinking about, I'm paying full
Speaker 1: attention to them. I think I am at a party,
Speaker 1: like if I have a conversation, I'm not like looking
Speaker 1: over your shoulder, sorry if I have before my usual
Speaker 1: usual thing. But yeah, this person kept getting everybody's name wrong.
Speaker 1: So they would do a thing where they go for
Speaker 1: the sab and they'd be like Lily, like my name's Lillian.
Speaker 1: They're like, okakay, I mean that's that's close enough, or
Speaker 1: like Lucy and he'd be like, my name's Lillian.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was watching this unfold, thinking, King, get it together,
Speaker 1: please get it together, like it's not that hard. And
Speaker 1: then I had to. I had like a raven moment,
Speaker 1: so I was like far out, that's me in a man.
Speaker 2: So what about that situation meant that you couldn't like
Speaker 2: sympathize with them because like, oh damn, I do that too,
Speaker 2: Like got you, King?
Speaker 1: I sympathized the first few times, but then I was like, King,
Speaker 1: what I do when I have had this bad of
Speaker 1: a strike, right? Is I just stop with the names?
Speaker 1: We just say hey you hey, you like yeah, which
Speaker 1: is dangerous as well. But I think once you've tried
Speaker 1: one method, you have to accept defeat and be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to like hurt some feelings today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd rather than have to someone has to like constantly
Speaker 1: correct you more than once.
Speaker 2: Do you reckon? Do you reckon? This person was just
Speaker 2: like not self aware or just a bit of a
Speaker 2: scatter brain, because I can imagine once you do it
Speaker 2: a couple of times you have to, you would double
Speaker 2: down and be like, I'm just I'm just a person
Speaker 2: who gets names wrong. That's me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because then you don't want to make it feel
Speaker 1: like you only forget some people's names.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, like I do it to anyone. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll do it to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I could feel his brain ticking over every time,
Speaker 1: so I think he was trying. But then also he
Speaker 1: wasn't really pulling it off.
Speaker 2: So what's the moral of the story. Don't try unless
Speaker 2: you can get it right.
Speaker 1: The moral of the story is I still want to
Speaker 1: learn to be better at names. But the moral of
Speaker 1: the story also is charisma gets too fast. So if
Speaker 1: you can just play dumb but also like really pay
Speaker 1: someone attention.
Speaker 2: I think it's why charisma playing dumb.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, charisma is getting away with playing dark?
Speaker 1: Got charisma? Isn't playing dumb with a little bit of
Speaker 1: a charisma and like looking people in the eye and
Speaker 1: like paying them attention in other ways, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: get around this very stupid.
Speaker 2: So this guy's biggest flaw was that he wasn't charismatic.
Speaker 1: Don't make me say it trying to do it in
Speaker 1: a polite way. No, I want to know, like an
Speaker 1: example of when you've seen your behavior reflecting in someone
Speaker 1: else and you've made you think twice about how it
Speaker 1: makes other people feel.
Speaker 2: The situation reminds me of a friend that I used
Speaker 2: to have, and she is what I would describe as
Speaker 2: a textbook extravert, like extravert in every circumstance, and back
Speaker 2: in the days, I really used to appreciate that behavior
Speaker 2: because I only looked at it as overwhelmly positive to
Speaker 2: be a person who walks into a room, lights it up,
Speaker 2: gets excited, makes jokes like how could that ever be
Speaker 2: a bad thing? But because we were part of a
Speaker 2: group of friends, she was never my close, close friend,
Speaker 2: but we always hung out a lot, a lot, a lot.
Speaker 2: So after years and years of being her friend and
Speaker 2: recognizing that she wasn't just a textbook extrovert, she was
Speaker 2: just obnoxious. And it took a little second because I
Speaker 2: really like this, This would have been like high school.
Speaker 2: Coming out of high school. I really emulated her behavior
Speaker 2: because I was like, she is so cool, she's so
Speaker 2: like confident and loud, and she says what she wants
Speaker 2: and she'll like talk to anyone. But she just was
Speaker 2: not self aware, so she could never see even if
Speaker 2: it wasn't appropriate, she would do it anyway. We could
Speaker 2: be in a beautiful restaurant. I'm not talking five star dining,
Speaker 2: just a really considered environment where someone's coming up to
Speaker 2: you asking for what you want. She wouldn't stop talking.
Speaker 2: She would like, wouldn't acknowledge anybody around her, would you know,
Speaker 2: point at people across the way and be like, wait,
Speaker 2: I love that outfit, And I just I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's because that transition from high school to you know, adulthood,
Speaker 2: you actually asked to gain a bit of sentience about
Speaker 2: who you are outside of just being a person with friends.
Speaker 2: You're like, wait, who am I when I'm not accountable
Speaker 2: for the people around me? Who am I when I'm
Speaker 2: just myself, and so I really had to challenge the
Speaker 2: part of myself that was like which part of myself
Speaker 2: is extroverted for joy and which part of myself is
Speaker 2: extroverted for like control, because she could not help but
Speaker 2: control every environment that she was in, and it was
Speaker 2: like militant in the way, and she couldn't take any
Speaker 2: feedback and she wouldn't like nothing could pass through. And
Speaker 2: it was interesting though, because I thought I was the
Speaker 2: only one who noticed. And that's the hardest thing about
Speaker 2: when you become self aware about your behavior, You're like,
Speaker 2: surely nobody else knows but me, right, So maybe in
Speaker 2: your situation, you're like, surely nobody knows, or this person's situation,
Speaker 2: I mean, they might have been like, surely nobody knows that.
Speaker 2: I don't remember names, Like surely nobody's clocking this, but
Speaker 2: everybody's clocking it, everybody. And so in this instance, with
Speaker 2: these friends, I never said anything. When that group eventually
Speaker 2: like disbanded, as high school groups do, when you pick
Speaker 2: your little subgroups. That was the thing. Oh, you know,
Speaker 2: she's just so hard to be around. She's not self aware,
Speaker 2: I said. When you have your own insecurities, part of
Speaker 2: you is like, oh my got everybody knows, but other
Speaker 2: part is like nobody knows, it's just me on the inside,
Speaker 2: and affirming that the things that you don't like about
Speaker 2: is off people see. I was like, I need to
Speaker 2: start making sure that the person that I'm presenting is
Speaker 2: the person that I'm comfortable with. And so then I
Speaker 2: had to make sure that like, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk to you the same way that i would speak
Speaker 2: to my mum, the same way I'm speaking to a
Speaker 2: boss because I don't want there to be confusion about
Speaker 2: who I am. And to this day, I'm sure that
Speaker 2: girl never really understands like what happened? Like how did
Speaker 2: you all remain friends? And I didn't like, why am
Speaker 2: I on the fringe? And who are we to tell her?
Speaker 2: It's very sad.
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