Weekly Update – July 2, 2021

Jul 3, 2021

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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