Ep 171: Becoming the Sound Engineer of Your Self ~ The Mixing Desk Approach

Transcript

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Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn.

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Truth and Transcendence, episode 171.

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I'd like to talk to you today about the mixing desk approach to self-awareness and self-development.

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So if you've ever been into a recording studio which I think many of us have at one time or another you'll have seen the mixing desks they have there which can have anything up to 72 different channels.

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So you've got this big, wide desk with 72 different channels and each one has got a kind of a dial thing that you can push up and down, so you can push it right to the top or right to the bottom.

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So when somebody's mixing a piece of music, what happens is each instrument, each voice and sometimes different examples of the same instrument are each recorded on a different channel.

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And sometimes there are other pieces of sound that are brought in to other channels that are not actually recorded fresh in the studio, that are just kind of piped in, and more and more of those these days that are just kind of piped in and more and more of those these days.

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And then the sound engineer who's mixing the piece of music will go through the track or the album, turning up and down these different channels according to what they think is going to work best for that particular piece of music.

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And as they're doing this, they don't judge one channel or another.

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They don't say that channel is a bad channel or a wrong channel or an unethical channel or an immoral channel or a foolish channel.

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They simply listen to the quality of the sound and mix it in as they feel will work best.

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Now this can be applied to ourselves.

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So if we think of ourselves, if you imagine that you have a kind of internal mixing desk of up to 72 channels maybe many, many more actually we do have many, many more, but up to 72, or, if that sounds overwhelming, think of maybe 10.

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And if you imagine that each quality or characteristic or skill or virtue about you is one of these different channels, and if you look at them and you say, right, which ones are currently turned up really high, which ones are turned up kind of medium and which ones are really turned down as low as they possibly can be, I express myself in my life and how I'm actually living my life and the impact I'm having on other people and the impact that's having on my endeavors and my projects and my business and everything else.

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And if we then think about, well, if I want to grow and develop and expand, are there some of these channels I'd like to turn up a bit?

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Are there some I'd like to turn down a little bit?

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And are some of these channels things I'm just trying to pretend don't even exist?

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They're just not there.

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A bit like if the sound engineer tried to pretend there was no piano recorded.

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What piano?

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We didn't record any piano.

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There is no piano.

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That would just be insane in a recording studio.

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If you think about it.

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That would just be madness.

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But we do it to ourselves all the time.

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We're constantly either squashing or discounting or ignoring aspects of ourselves and judging them.

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Now, it's all very well to say, well, we're judging them, and you might think, well, so what?

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Why does that even matter?

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But the thing is we are actually wired for authenticity.

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This may not be something that you consider to be true, but I consider this to be true.

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We're wired for authenticity with ourselves, at the very least with ourselves, let alone with other people.

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That is good for us.

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We are, then, congruent within.

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We don't have internal aspects of us fighting with each other or trying to hide from each other or trying to be ignored or discounted.

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When we are doing that on the inside, when we are pretending that certain things on our mixing desk don't exist, or when we're deciding that one part is much better or more important than another, what we're actually doing is we're creating an internal battle, which then manifests in a kind of internal fracturing and that creates stress and unhappiness and confusion and overwhelm and all sorts of other things.

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Now, this is a particular dynamic.

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We have all done this to some extent.

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I would actually be bold enough to state that I know I've done it.

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I know I still do it some of the time.

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However, I found that it's very, very helpful to come back in and go okay, I think I've got 10 channels on my mixing desk.

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Maybe I've got more than that.

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Maybe I've got 72.

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Maybe I've got 138.

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Maybe I've got an infinite number that I'm never, ever going to fully understand all of them.

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Are there some that I'm trying to pretend don't exist?

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Am I actually fracturing myself, fighting myself by pretending, trying to pretend don't exist?

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Am I actually fracturing myself, fighting myself by pretending some of them don't exist, by judging some of them as bad, by judging some of them as good, rather than simply saying they exist.

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They have a different quality to them, to one another.

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How about turning up some of them, turning down some of them?

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How about some of the ones I've been trying to ignore, allowing myself to recognize that they're there, playing around with them?

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What happens when you mix this one with that one a bit more?

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What happens when you turn this one down a little bit and turn that one up?

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What happens?

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What's the difference in quality of how I'm resonating within and how I'm loving myself within and how I'm going into alignment with all my different aspects?

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And how does that then create a different quality of sound vision, manifestation, the way I'm actually showing up in my life, and how does that then make a difference to how I'm showing up in my endeavors, in my relationships with other people?

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Because, guaranteed, unlike with the mixing desk with the sound engineer, if the sound engineer leaves one of the channels on a low setting, that channel is not going to hit him in the back of the neck later by turning itself up.

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That won't happen in the sound engineer box where they're doing all of that work.

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They're in control of that mixing desk.

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But within us, of that mixing desk, but within us, every single channel of our internal mixing desk is almost like it's got its own energy.

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It wants to be recognized, it wants to manifest.

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So if we ignore it and turn away from it, it will turn itself up and it will do it exactly at the time that we don't want it to.

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We will find ourselves in a situation suddenly doing something or behaving or conducting ourselves in a way that doesn't work and that will surprise us.

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And again, I think most of us have had that experience Now.

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That happens when we've been discounting or ignoring aspects of ourselves, when we've been discounting or ignoring aspects of ourselves.

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But when we open up, when we embrace the whole mixing desk, play around with it, and this, of course, is why coaching and group work and all sorts of other experiences are so useful.

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It's one of the reasons they're so useful.

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It's because we can play around with the settings on our mixing desk in a safe environment, surrounded by people who support us and who aren't trying to kind of box us or cause us to conform to a minimized version of ourselves, a mitigated version of ourselves, and we can do this on our own at home.

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I've had great results with myself and with clients.

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Let's say, you turn on the video and then you communicate to the video recording using elements of the mixing desk that you don't like.

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You just put those out which might be talking too loud, talking too quietly, in a high-pitched voice, too much arm movement, not enough arm movement.

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These are just very, very basic examples voice, too much arm movement, not enough arm movement.

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These are just very, very basic examples.

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Or even using wording and terminology that we think could be offensive to people, literally put it all out on a video, watch it back or tape record it and listen to it back and see really what it's like when you let it out, when you let it out of its box.

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So this conversation is really about self-acceptance and play, playing with those different aspects of ourselves, playing with the mixing desk and almost turning it into a dance.

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I'm going to bring more different aspects of myself to bear.

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I'm going to do it consciously, I'm going to play around with it, I'm going to have a bit of humor about it.

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I'm not going to take it over seriously.

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So have a have a go with this mixing desk metaphor for yourself.

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Explore and find some, some new channels that you may not have been aware of, look for channels that you've been ignoring or suppressing, and look for channels that you've been over emphasizing because you like them or because you think other people like them, and experiment with it and have fun.

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And maybe next time you listen to a piece of music, tune in and notice when a particular instrument it fades in, fades out, when an instrument occurs just for a second, just once in that entire piece of music, or when there's a recurring theme that runs through, and just tune into the creativity that created that beautiful piece of music and think about applying a similar kind of creativity to your own self-awareness, self-acceptance and your own growth and expansion and self-expression.

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Thank you for listening, thank you for watching.

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Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.

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Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend.

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If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about Transformational Coaching, pellewa and the Freedom of Spirit workshop on beingspaceworld.

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Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.

Ep 171: Becoming the Sound Engineer of Your Self ~ The Mixing Desk Approach

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