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  • Weekly Update – July 2, 2021

    I’m giving you an update for the past two weeks, because this is my first weekly update, and I want to get you more up to speed. Hope this is entertaining and helpful.

    News

    I’ve been categorizing my content produced over the past year+. Here are the basic categories I’ve come up with so far:

    • Art
    • Influencing and Marketing
    • Meditation
    • Music
    • Philosophy
    • Psychology
    • Random Fun Stuff
    • Writing and Creativity
    • Yoga and Spirituality

    This is all a work in progress, but you can find lots of content on my website currently.

    I created a new page for my Influencing and Marketing journey.

    I’ve now been kicked out of 7 piano groups! I wrote a blog post about the one that bother me the most: Attack of the Piano Justice Warriors. I’ve been running that as an ad, and someone shared it privately and their share has gotten laughs and comments that I can’t read. So frustrating.

    I changed the name of my Facebook group “Radical Acceptance Through Meditation” back to its original name of “Awareness, Equanimity, Mind & Body”.

    You know, because it’s NOT New Age, self-help, self-care, group hug, we-live-in-community, trauma-informed, we-can-do-better, there’s-no-I-in-we, social justice, soothe-my-activated-nervous-system BULLSHIT.

    I did a 1-hour standing meditation for the first time. Highly recommended. Two rules: (1) Eyes closed, (2) Feet planted to the floor.

    Instagram Posts

    YouTube

    You can find a bunch of my videos on YouTube. I try to upload the good ones. You might find that useful if, especially if you don’t have an Instagram account.

    A few blog posts:

    Michael, why do you like provoking people? Don’t you have anything more fruitful to do?

    No, I have nothing more fruitful to do. This is the most important work I can think of. You might find the following content revealing: (Read more)

    I Just Love Invalidating Innocent OPs

    In an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy group on Facebook, somebody asked: “How do I persuade my mind that something isn’t really a threat?”My reply: “Easy. Just expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of and learn from experience that it’s not a threat.”This was denounced as invalidating, glib, “a command”, and I was accused of assuming the poster hadn’t made any effort to do anything. (Read more)

    Authenticity vs. External Results

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been working non-stop on sharing my ideas about piano playing, meditation, and being creative. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve made a few friends, lost tons and tons of friends, and learned a lot about how to create content. (Read more)

    Medium

    I’m on Medium.

    New podcast episodes

    #31 – What’s the Deal with Michael Korman?, with David Servias

    Cancel culture in the world of collaborative piano! David Servias sat down to interview me about trouble brewing in some of the Facebook piano groups. (Listen)

    #32 – Blame isn’t the Problem

    When you get sufficiently advanced, spiritually speaking, you’re likely to view blame as a problem. As in, you shouldn’t do it. But, this is a misunderstanding. In this episode, I revisit the Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Dynamic, as well as Nonviolent Communication. The key phrase here is “it’s about function, not form.” (Listen)

    Offers

    Imperfect Practice

    An 8-week program for musicians, artists, and writers who get in their own way and aren’t creating as much as they should be. (Learn more)

    Answering the Critics about No Problem

    “Why would I pay so much money for your course when there’s all this free stuff out there?”

    Because you like the stuff I put out. You have a sense there’s something I’m talking about that maybe isn’t captured by all the free stuff. Maybe there’s some good free stuff out there. Do you know where it is? I don’t know. I don’t pay a lot of attention to it.

    If the free stuff is working for you, by all means keep doing it.

    But, if you like the stuff I’m doing and you want to take the next step with me, here’s my offer. (Read more on Instagram)

    Here are some of my favorite tweets from the past couple weeks.

    • “What did you learn from the experience?” What an awful question. The verbal echo of an “experience” isn’t a measure of what the organism actually learned.
    • “That which hinders your task is your task.” —Sanford Meisner
    • If you don’t make it clear to someone that your love is CONDITIONAL, they’ll put you on a track you DON’T want to be on. Then, you’ll suffer for every mistake their mother made.
    • You have imposter syndrome because you’re acting like an imposter.
    • It seems to me that the best metric of YouTube success is watch time, rather that views. Watch time, after all, translates directly to “moments of consciousness”. That’s real impact.
    • I made a Twitter app this week. Yes, folks: this tweet is being tweeted by my app.
    • What if, instead of being someone who provides solutions, you had a reputation as someone who understands the problem?
    • Since pandemic, nonstop sharing re piano/meditation/creativity. Made/lost friends, learned lots. Still finding right folks. 15 products so far. Authentic>$$. EASY>hard. Yet, authentic=scary. Learned marketing to sell piano info. But, as hard as piano!IG no.michael.here
    • I have a policy of not liking friends’ Facebook pages unless I’m truly interested independently of our friendship. Those fake likes are hurting you more than they’re helping you. They destroy your confidence, poison the algorithm, confuse you, and annoy your friends.
    • Big ideas get both 1-star and 5-star reviews. Most of these ideas never see the light of day because the 1-star reviews are so scary. They’ll be the first to appear when you start speaking. But, you have to burn through the 1-star reviewers before you get to the 5-star reviewers.
    • Carrying around a notebook while I walk. I have my best ideas while walking, not while sitting at the computer. I wish I had a podcast app that let me take notes.
    • I know that if I get cooking with my thinking, if I start posting the stuff that gets me fired up, I will get kicked out of the group. That’s an absurd burden to put on group members. What do you think that does to the quality of the group?
    • I will always disagree with you (as much as I can muster, anyway). The difference is that I will never try to cancel you.
    • Outrage culture happens because people have a blank spot in their minds where they should be seeing a human being. Instead, they see a cartoon character.
    • Envy is based on the delusion that pleasure is a limited resource. You believe you don’t have pleasure because I’m hogging all the pleasure for myself. Maybe it’s true that I’m depriving you of that particular strategy of obtaining pleasure, but what if you found another one…?
    • I would rather choose between 10 ways that I loved of playing the piano than run away from 9 out of fear.

    General themes in my Instagram stories (follow me on IG if you want to see this stuff…I don’t feel like typing anymore)

    • Cancel culture, piano
    • David Servias’ awesome group: Teaching and Learning Piano
    • Meditation is not about relaxing or relieving stress
    • Not your job to make other people feel loved and appreciated
    • Katie (@katie.sula.exists) has blocked me on all platforms. I’ve been posting a bunch of stories about that. There’s a highlight on my profile.
    • It’s about intent, NOT impact
    • Teachers, have respect for yourselves. Kick your students out if they don’t follow instructions.
    • Kids want firm boundaries
    • Deliberately provocative
    • Collaborative piano jokes
    • Kids punished you for being weird
    • Two types of anger

    Hope you have a good day.

    —Michael

  • Two collaborative piano jokes

    Number one

    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Accompanist.
    Accompanyist who?
    DIE YOU @#$_& NAZI!!!!!

    Number two

    Knock knock.
    Who’s there?
    Accompanist.
    Accompanist who?
    Nevermind.
    .
    .
    .
    Later that day, in the collaborative piano FB group:

    The disrespect some people have for our profession is mind-boggling. Can you believe I showed up AT THEIR DOOR and they still didn’t pay me!?

    For those not in the know…

    “Collaborative pianist” is the politically-correct replacement for “accompanist.” The only thing collaborative pianists hate more than being called “accompanists” is when people mispronounce “accompanist.”

  • My Cancel Culture Demands

    “Michael, isn’t it a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

    Yes, of course people will stop attacking if I shut up. What’s your point?

    “No one’s asking you to shut up, Michael. Just be tactful.”

    1. What is “tactful”? It’s not like there’s a rulebook somewhere.

    2. I’m trying to express something. Even if I knew what would trigger the mob, you’re telling me I should be more concerned about the mob than about what I’m trying to say? I’d rather speak out of love than out of fear. Much more fun that way.

    3. If I don’t speak out of love, people won’t hear me, because I’m not saying the things I’m trying to say, to the people I’m speaking to. That’s because holding back.

    Here are my demands:

    Demand 1: To the people who are tempted to join in the mob: think long and hard about what effect you might be having. You want to join a mob, mob’s commit violence, people in the mob don’t feel responsible. That’s how mobs work. There’s going to be one target (who has no power…that’s why you have a mob), and that person can’t fight back.

    You may think you’re just voicing your support with a group you believe in. But, I’m asking you to zoom out a little bit and look at what the MOB is doing. Do you really want to lend your strength to THAT?

    Demand 2: To the people who are running these groups: you are the one who’s responsible for targeting individuals. The mob doesn’t do it. YOU are listening to the mob and making a decision as an individual. It’s between YOU and ME. You made the decision without taking the responsibility for the admission process into your group.

    Be more explicit about what your group is about.

    If there’s someone in the group you don’t like, it’s your responsibility. You shouldn’t have let them in in the first place. Let’s have a conversation in that context.

    Change your rules.

    If I don’t like your rules, I can decide to leave. If I like the rules, maybe I’ll follow the rules.

    The passive-aggressive BS has to stop.

  • I Just Love Invalidating Innocent OPs

    I Just Love Invalidating Innocent OPs

    In an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy group on Facebook, somebody asked:

    “How do I persuade my mind that something isn’t really a threat?”

    My reply:

    “Easy. Just expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of and learn from experience that it’s not a threat.”

    This was denounced as invalidating, glib, “a command”, and I was accused of assuming the poster hadn’t made any effort to do anything.

    Of course, none of that was going through my mind when I wrote the comment. Instead, I was trying to provide information about how the mind works, for someone to do with as they see fit.

    It got me thinking: is it irresponsible to drop free information like that, without concern for how it might be interpreted?

    It certainly is true that someone might take the info and run with it in the wrong direction.

    But, I don’t see any strong reasons to believe something bad will happen. I mean…it might…but it could go the other way, too.

    So, I tend to err on the side of making things available.

    It seems a bit paternalistic to do it any other way.

    I can think of many times in my life when I’ve said “huh? you withheld that in order to protect me? that’s not right.” I can’t think of my times I was glad somebody withheld info, and I can think of many times I was glad they just put it out in the open.

    The Professional Rescuers of Facebook

    On Facebook, there are a couple things going on:

    1. There are SO MANY answers to questions. There’s a lot of wrong information out there, and it needs to be balanced out with right information.
    2. It’s not only the person who asked the question who reads the answers. There are onlookers. And, the people complaining aren’t the ones looking for the info. They’re professionals and rescuers. If I’m sitting down one-to-one with somebody, that’s a different situation, because I can tailor my response based on how they’re receiving it. But, on Facebook, with the hit-and-run culture…

    (Frasier : Well, Lilith, what brings you to Seattle, the constant rain?

    Lilith : I’m here for a convention, and I happened to hear your voice on the radio. I kept hoping you’d introduce Pearl Jam’s latest hit, but much to my chagrin, you were doling out worthless little advice pellets from your psychiatric Pez dispenser.)

  • Authenticity vs. External Results

    Since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve been working non-stop on sharing my ideas about piano playing, meditation, and being creative.

    It’s been quite a ride.

    I’ve made a few friends, lost tons and tons of friends, and learned a lot about how to create content.

    I’m still trying to figure out how to attract the kind of audience that would benefit from what I’m doing. Also, still trying to figure out how to package things in a way that they would recognize as being what they need (I’ve made about 15 products so far).

    I’m not making as much money with this as I’d like to be making. But, I’m not interested in rushing that. The last thing I want is for people to misunderstand what I’m doing and pay me for something other than what I’m actually offering.

    “Authenticity” is more important to me than external results (such as “money”). That’s what I teach, anyway. You’ve gotta find ways of doing things that are EASY. Otherwise, even if you get some success, you’ll feel horrible trying to replicate it.

    This is hard for me because I have a long history of driving people away when I become more authentic.

    When I decided to learn about marketing so that I could sell my piano course, I had no idea learning about marketing would be just as hard as learning to play the piano.

    I’m sharing this information in case you relate to it. If so, follow me on Instagram (@no.michael.here). That’s where I tend to publish things first, before anywhere else.

    —Michael

    P.S. I deleted all my Instagram followers recently, so if you used to follow me, you might not still. But, you can re-follow. Listen to my podcast episode about why I did this.

  • #32 – Blame isn’t the Problem

    #32 – Blame isn’t the Problem

    Self-Defined Human
    Self-Defined Human
    #32 – Blame isn’t the Problem
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    When you get sufficiently advanced, spiritually speaking, you’re likely to view blame as a problem. As in, you shouldn’t do it. But, this is a misunderstanding. In this episode, I revisit the Drama Triangle and the Empowerment Dynamic, as well as Nonviolent Communication. The key phrase here is “it’s about function, not form.”

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