Thinking on Serendipity & Making Life Work for You

This is the 23rd episode of Thinking on Thinking

Divya: Hi, I'm Divya.

Kahran: Hi, I'm Kahran.

Divya: Welcome to the 23rd episode of thinking on thinking. Today, we talked about a lot of different things. We started from the premise of, life always works out, or, things always come together. And we explored how we have migrated, that belief in our lives, and how that might be related to psychology, how we see the world. And then we made some offshooted discussions to a bunch of other things, including some m nuclear physics. We hope you enjoy.

Kahran: so there was this exhibit I saw at the Singapore Museum of, art and science that was about how, like, things attract. Like, did I tell you about this?

Divya: No.

Kahran: Oh, it was super cool. So it was, this artist had done this interactive exhibit on the wall where people could walk up to it and you could touch the wall, and when you did, it caused disruption, and everything would float apart. So what was on the wall was these, like, particles that were all a color, and they were just floating around. Okay. and the wall is, like, two stories high, and it's maybe. I would say it's kind of like a hexagon sort of shape. Like, you're standing in the hexagon, and it's the half hexagon. you kind of feel like you're in a semi enclosed space. Right. And maybe, like, six people could easily interact with it at once. and all of these particles are different colors. And what starts to happen, is the particles of the same color will start to gather together if you leave them alone. and then as soon as you touch them, they will fly apart, and, like, chaos will, like, erupt, and then slowly, over time, it'll gather together. And what the artist is trying to illustrate with this is the notion that, like, attracts, like. Right. That, like, things will. Things will come together in the universe. There's. That whole exhibit is a little bit talking about how, it's, like, improbable, I guess, that, like, matter would have all found each other because the universe is so big, except that, like, matter attracts each other. Do you know kind of what that idea is?

Divya: Yeah. Yeah.

Kahran: Okay. You might have to explain it. Okay. Is it just gravity? Yeah.

Divya: I mean, like, yeah, of course.

Kahran: Oh, I guess. Yeah.

Divya: If you think about it, even though it takes millions of years for a, hydrogen cloud to actually coalesce into a star, one on the, like, universe scale, that time is not too long. And ultimately, even though you have so few hydrogen atoms that maybe you begin with, like, you know, one atom or two atoms in a cubic meter, which is, like, insanely low. Right. But over time, because of the minute gravity that they all exert on each other, they keep coming together.

Kahran: but that would attract all kinds of matter, not just certain, like, I.

Divya: Mean, there is only hydrogen and helium in the universe. If you think about it broadly, that's just all that there is.

Kahran: Oh. And where does everything else come from?

Divya: Oh, okay, so initially, when the universe began, there were only protons and electrons and neutrons. So, like, the initial matter that formed was just hydrogen atoms and helium atoms. and then it's because of fusion reactions that took place that in the stellar core is. So when, if you might have heard this code, we are made of stardust.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: It's because we are literally made of stardust. It's when a star, like, you know, collapses and a supernova explosion happens is when the heavier metals, like carbon and iron, and all of that gets, like, you know, thrown out in the universe, which can serve as fuel for the next stellar disk that needs to be formed.

Kahran: Oh, so, and fusion reactions happen inside of stars?

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: Oh, so in the beginning, there were. The fusion reactions were only between hydrogen.

Divya: And helium, or hydrogen and hydrogen and hydrogen. Yeah, hydrogen and hydrogen would form other hydrogen and helium.

Kahran: And then over time, the entire periodic table was built, basically, yes. Oh, that's so crazy. I never realized that. Yeah. Despite all the years of chemistry and physics I took, that was never explained to me in that way. wow. So, like, there's constantly more potentially more kinds of matter m being formed in other stars we haven't yet discovered.

Divya: Other kinds of matter hasn't.

Kahran: Like, I don't know what number is. What's the highest number on the periodic table?

Divya: I think we are at. We have made 200 something right now. but, so, okay, so there are two parts to this thing. one is when. How much of nuclear physics do you know?

Kahran: Some, I remember, like circles, like,

Divya: Yeah, yeah, electron orbitals. But I'm. I don't mean that, I don't mean atomic resistance. I mean nuclear physics. It's just the nucleus. Okay, so in nucleus you have two things, right? You have your protons and you have your neutrons. M. there are two different forces that are at action there. Of course, gravity exists, but gravity at that smaller scale is negligible. You can just.

Kahran: I remember this. Yeah, yeah.

Divya: Right. so you have two forces. Electromagnetic force, which is repulsion between two, like, particles, which is protons, and strong nuclear force, which is what is binding different, the neutrons and protons with each other.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: Okay.

Strong nuclear forces can keep only nucleus of a particular size together

So which is why, like, while hydrogen will have like, most common form, isotope of hydrogen, as just a proton and an electron, the most common form of helium has two protons, but also two neutrons to balance out the force.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: So there is like, you know, two neutrons keeping the two protons together. but now, if you think about, like, of course this is a very, very oversimplified, definitely not quantum mechanically correct way analogy. But if you think about it, right, like, you keep assembling these balls together, right? Strong nuclear forces work only at very, very close to distances. Like literally at nuclear distances. They are not effective at atomic distances also.

Kahran: Okay.

Divya: so, strong nuclear forces can keep only nucleus of a particular size together. So if you think about, like elements beyond lead.

Kahran: Yeah, right.

Divya: On the periodic table, almost all of them have nuclei so big that, like protons on one side of it and on the other side of it will have stronger repulsion than the attraction force going to be able to keep them together with.

Kahran: Oh, and that's why they're usually found in, ion form.

Divya: That's why they are radioactive. Ions are chemical. this is nuclear physics, right? So you have to think about it in terms of radioactive isotopes. So almost everything out after lead, you don't have a stable isotope of them.

Kahran: Oh, what about, what about like the, aren't there noble gases after lead?

Divya: There would be one, which is radon.

Kahran: Oh, and it's not stable.

Divya: Radon is a radioactive gas. Noble gas. Okay. So there is chemistry, which involves reactions between different elements. Right. this is where youre electrons and the SPDF orbitals that you mentioned, they come into picture, right. and that is where noble gases are non reactive because their orbitals are fully filled. It's not exactly true for the higher order noble gases like xenon. And all because, you have some empty orbitals, like they have not been seeded yet, but you have one empty orbital. should I get into this?

Kahran: Why do you have an empty orbital?

Divya: so think about if you remember how your periodic table was filled. you have like, you know, one s, then two s, two p, three s, three p, four s, then 3d.

Kahran: Yeah, yeah, I remember that.

Divya: So you are running like now. Suddenly one of your orbitals from the previous generation is running in the current generation.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: Correct. So, like you might have a four series running, but you haven't filled the four f, right. so like the f orbital, series is called lanternite, lanthanides and actinides. Okay, like start with lanthanum, the first four f, and then five f is actinum. If I'm actinium or something like that. really, it's been years. but, because of that, like, you can actually make compounds out of xenon also. they're not particularly stable, but, yeah, so that is one part of it. And then nuclear physics is about how stable is the nucleus of the atom itself. So generally, when we are doing chemistry and chemical reactions, we assume that the atom is never going to change. They're just going to combine in different forms. Now.

Kahran: But that's not actually a safe assumption. Like, in real life, that's not what happens. Oh,

Divya: I mean, like, in real life, that does happen. Most of the elements that we are surrounded by are not radioactive. They have what we call them stable isotopes.

Kahran: Yes.

Divya: So hydrogen has three isotopes, right. Which is basically one proton, one electron is your hydrogen, then one proton, one electron. And, one neutron is deuterium. And then you have one proton and two neutrons. That one is not stable.

Kahran: Oh.

Divya: Because inherently neutrons are also not stable. Neutrons have the tendency to decay into a proton and an electron.

Kahran: Oh, I think I never learned nuclear physics. I only ever learned it from chemistry point of view. Entirely fascinating to me.

Divya: okay, so, like, because of, how these, like, how the structure of the nucleus is, and I might be getting some stuff wrong. Also, again, it's been almost a decade since I've, like, officially learned this stuff. But, because of how the structure of the nucleus is beyond lead, we have not found any element that is stable. And, like, when you're thinking about most of the elements after lead, you have to, almost all of them end up decaying into lead and something else. Because lead is the last stable one. So they will keep losing neutrons and keep, like, you know, going one step back in the reaction until they arrive at a stable space. there is some hypotheses that some nuclear physicists have, which is, like, there might be islands of stability further on down the periodic table. So maybe, like, you know, at some point at 300 or something like that, you might have an island of stability where you find, like, four or five elements. But there is a. It's one of those things that, like, it's non falsifiable. You can't tell that it's never gonna happen.

Kahran: Yeah, but it's also very difficult to say because we would find elements of that if things beyond that were decaying to that.

Divya: yeah.

Kahran: Do things naturally occur at higher periodic t. Oh, we don't know. Because they decay so quickly.

Divya: Yeah, we don't know. Like, especially the later elements, most of them stay around for like, ten to the power minus ten or -15 seconds or something like that.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: so you're basically making them in these, like, you know, large hadron collider type places, and you just have them for, like, basically a blip in time. So, like, to answer your question, we could have more elements, but the chances of that are pretty.

Kahran: Was that my original question?

Divya: You were saying that, like, you know, there might be a part of universe where, like, different, like, different elements that we have never found might be happening.

Kahran: Got it. Yeah. Yeah.

I had not learned most of that, I feel

well, I. Thank you. That was really interesting. I had not learned most of that, I feel. Yeah, I think. If I remember correctly, our physics teacher was part of the national guard. And, he got called up halfway through the year, and so we had substitutes for the rest of the year. And so we just didn't learn. which. It's funny how that happens, right? Your random events impact your life. Anyway, so, yes, there was a cool exhibit I saw in Singapore, which kind of, I felt like was kind of around this notion that we wanted to talk about, right? That, like, things attract. Like, I thought about commenting about how that was a really great, explanation, of nuclear physics that we used there, but, I'm not sure we'll keep the whole thing. I don't know. So, anyway, whatever. I think it was interesting. It was super interesting.

There was this other notion that I kind of first thought of. That once you put yourself out there, things happen

There was this other notion that I kind of first thought of. Even for some reason, this notion just made me feel a little bit nervous right where it's like, oh, why do I feel, like, hesitant about thinking about this? And I was like, well, it feels like a secret you shouldn't talk about with everyone.

Divya: Do you feel that way about this notion that things would just end up happening?

Kahran: Yeah, exactly.

Divya: A little bit. Like, So last year, a friend of mine was thinking about starting, consulting, and she asked me very earnestly, like, you know, how will I get people? And I was like, just start talking to people and it will just happen. And she just looked at me very weirdly and she was like, that makes no sense. And I did not expect that answer from you. and I was like, yeah, I don't say that a lot, but somehow it almost always ends up happening that once you put yourself out there, things just start sort of working out for you. Or, like, things just start in a hokey way. One would say, oh, the universe conspires you to give you the thing that you want. And, like, I can't say that with a straight face, but, one of my friends had said this quite well, and I think that was the notion that you were also alluding to, that your brain, like, goes into the confirmation bias and selection bias process the moment you start biasing it. and if you can bias it towards the right things, which is also why, like, you know, having a positive attitude towards things and, like, a growth mindset versus having a fixed mindset, why that changes your life so much. Right? Because your brain is going to pick up on patterns regardless. So if you give it the right patterns to feed off of, that is a way better path than anything else.

Kahran: So.

Divya: Yeah, but I agree, like, it feels a little hokey to say no. What kind of illogical things are you believing in?

Kahran: well, I think both of those things you said were quite interesting there, so I'll come back to the first one in a second. But I think for me, the reason why it feels like a secret, it's not so much that it feels hokey. It's like, at least for me, I feel like there's a part of the way that you can manipulate yourself and manipulate the brain that it's kind of uncomfortable to think about. We like to believe that we have all these notions of free will and that we're always making independent decisions. And so it's kind of uncomfortable to acknowledge where it's like, oh, yeah, if I do just acknowledge out loud the thing I want, it's more likely to happen. And it's like, why would that work? And part of that is because then you start to tell your brain that, like, oh, this is the pattern of things that I want. And then when you start to see things similar to that pattern, or you start to understand what the signs are of things that lead to that pattern, you start to just gravitate towards those because you've acknowledged, this is what I want. And in your example, once you start to talk to people more and more, you start to pattern match on saying, oh, these are the kinds of conversations I want. Then you start to understand, oh, these are the kind of people I want. And then you understand what to say to those people because you're always getting these feedbacks around, this is good behavior, this is bad behavior. I think we've talked about in earlier episodes around children and growing up. And I think in those contexts, it's really right. you're always getting feedback on, are you behaving in the right way.

If you don't combine intent with action, I want turns into I wish

Divya: Yeah. I also like, as you were speaking, I was also thinking about this thing where it can also backfire if you don't combine it with action. Like you said, two things. One is you set your intent correctly, and then the other is then you actively take actions towards it so that you can iterate and you give your brain a chance to pattern match. In between are your wants. On one side are, I must and on one side are, I wish. And if you combine it with action, it starts moving towards I must. But if you don't, then slowly I want turns into I wish.

Kahran: Right. So, like, if you, if you want to do something and you don't do it, you're going to feel like people like you don't do those kinds of things.

Kahran: Right.

Divya: I, like you are saying that there might be an identity mismatch there.

Kahran: Well, you start to create an identity mismatch is what I'm saying. And so then it becomes an aspirational identity.

Divya: say, like, give more examples. Like, you know, something more elaborate.

Kahran: Okay, so, I mean, at a really basic level, right? It could be like, oh, you know, I wish I was in a different career path, right? And that comes from, like, I want to do a different kind of work, right? But when you don't do that work, then it becomes like, oh, people like me don't do this work. Right. I do the kind of work I do, right? And so it becomes, oh, I wish I was in a different career path. maybe at a more complicated but tangible level, I would say even something. I mean, for me, often, you know, like, cooking examples come to mind, right? And I think, like, I have, wanted to make some more complicated cakes in my time, but I've looked at them and I've just, like, shied away from them for various reasons at different points in time. But now it's kind of become this thing where it's like, ugh, do you know, do I really, even really want to do it? I don't know. I wish I could do it, but, like, right m. Like, I've convinced myself that, I just don't need to do those kinds of things, right? even as I'm telling this to you, I'm like, oh, because my husband likes to bake those, right? Like, I don't really even need to. I'm like, oh, and it's not really worth, like, how much cleaning up you have to do. Like, there's so many. I mean, and, easily I'm saying these, right? I make complicated things all the time that you might use, like, five different pans and three different pots. But for some reason, this has become a thing where I'm like, oh, yeah, I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it enough times. I feel like it's become a thing where I'm like, oh, that's not part of me now. It's something I wish I was.

Divya: It's almost like there have been enough broken promises that you no longer consider that a reliable intent.

I have this weird notion that admin tasks take long for me

Okay, so this is, like, not directly related, but recently, I've mentioned this to you, but, like, a friend of mine has been working with somebody who is holding multiple roles and, like, is really successful in what he does and is, like, a genius level person.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: And there was this one time when I was talking to my friend and he was just talking about how this guy just takes two minutes to do any admin task, and he, like, you know, instantly replies to mail, and I'm sure he gets a lot of emails, but he just has zero overhead on his brain when he's thinking about doing admin things. And something about the way my friend was just describing this situation to me, I realized that I have always had this weird notion in my mind that admin tasks, of course, take long. I'm not the kind of person for whom they would happen quickly. And somehow that conversation just made me question, but why? Why would a two minute thing take you half an hour? Just like, where is that coming from? And something flipped. And now, yeah, really, admin tasks do just take me two minutes to do, because I'm just not thinking about them in that manner. And, like, as you were speaking about it, it's just like, it was a lifelong practice where I wouldn't do it, and then I would have convinced myself that, this is how long it is going to take me. For other people, it might not, but for me, it will take me this long.

Kahran: That's funny. Yesterday I almost, I went to have lunch with them, with a friend. And after lunch, I was right by this museum that I'd been wanting to go to called photographica, which is, I think it's originally from Sweden, and then they've opened this New York one. And then I don't know what happened. I was just like, oh, do I even have time? Maybe I should go home. Like, I really need to do some work. And there's also like, well, I want to cycle home, and I really won't have time. And so I was like, oh, maybe what I should do is I should look up, is like, what exhibits are happening. so I'm literally standing outside the museum, right? I, like, look up what exhibits they're showing and whatnot, and I conclude that there's this exhibit opening on the second, and it's like, $35 this entry. So I'm like, oh, I might as well go in two days. I don't know. And I was just thinking about that when you were talking. And I think sometimes part of what makes tasks feel longer is when you do a lot of research around tasks, right? Like, I think when you're saying about admin tasks, particularly, I have that notion, right. Because sometimes I'll just end up like, oh, like, you know, looking up how to send some letter before I'm going to send it, right? Like, who I need to now. You put so much unnecessary. You aren't planning to deal with it right now. You're just looking up stuff around it. So then you have create, invested more time into the, So I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting notion to me because I think sometimes it's part of, like, building up the enthusiasm, right? Like, I realized I'm sometimes like, I'm, often like, a minute or two late to talk to you. And part of it is like, I feel like I need that, like, that almost, that feeling of, like, oh, my God, I'm running late where I'm like, oh, like, now I, like, have enough motivation to, like, drop whatever I was doing. It's very interesting.

Divya: Oh, no, maybe I should message you five minutes early. Be like, I'm already here. Yeah, it's very interesting how, like, sometimes when we are thinking about these things, it's almost like you're walking on a very thin edge. If you don't do things, like, perfectly in one direction, you will slip. And if you don't do things perfectly in the other direction, also, you will slip.

Kahran: Interesting. and when you say these things, you mean like your brain.

Divya: Or behavior? You can say behavior like, yeah, my brain, I guess.

Kahran: I don't know. I mean, I also think, like, one has more resilience sometimes than we think, right? Or maybe I would say more resistance to building new patterns. Like, I tried all sorts of addictive substances, and, you know, luckily, I've, like, never become addicted to any of them, right? Like, my father is a smoker. Most of my family were smokers at different points in time. And, like, I smoked a lot when I was in India because it was just, like, culturally what people did. We would, like, go out for smoke breaks. and I'm a terrible sucker for doing what everyone else is doing. but I've never, you know, I've never had that feeling where I've woken up and wanted a cigarette in the morning, so I don't know. Right. Like, I feel like, yeah, sometimes, you know, you do have to worry about, like, building bad behavior patterns really quickly and whatnot. And sometimes, like, you have more kind of resilience. I think maybe it also comes from what you think about. Right. And maybe come back to the notion I was saying a few seconds ago, if you feel like part of your identity is a certain kind of thing, it's going to be really hard for you to build a bad behavior pattern if you feel like that's not part of your identity.

Divya: Yeah, that part actually, like, I think, I mean, works in the reverse also. It can also really stop you from engaging in good behaviors, which is what you were saying. Sometimes, like, it just slips away from us and goes into, ah, I wish I could do this, but can people like me really do this?

People who perceive themselves as lucky are more lucky, studies show

Have there been things where you felt, like when you were. Which seemed pretty hard, but then once you set your mind to it, things came together and, like, you know, life found a way in your words?

Kahran: I mean, I kind of had decided, that summer when I was living in Rochester and was, like, cooking a lot and writing, the summer of 2015, that one of the things I wanted to was spend more time with my family in India, while they were, like, still, you know, in good health and whatnot. And I ended up moving to India that year in a way I could have never really expected. but it happened. Right. and, you know, I felt like my relationship at that point was untenable, and that also resolved itself in a way that I, at that point, couldn't have imagined. Right. So, like, at that point in my life, I felt like, you know, you do always get what you want, but it's often in a way you couldn't have predicted.

Divya: Interesting. I was recently listening to somebody's interview, and they said something similar. They said, life will always work out. It might not work out in the ways that you want it to work out, but it will always work out because tomorrow will always come.

Kahran: Yeah. Right. So I think that's kind of an interesting way to think about it, and it's just maybe broadening your. Your view of what is, acceptable. I don't know.

Divya: I think it might also be another thing. So, like, both you and I have a fairly optimistic disposition. and so it might be that, like, we are more likely to think that life will work out.

Kahran: That's what I was kind of thinking about, but not being able to articulate a second ago. Yeah. That, It kind of depends on what you're willing to accept. And if you brought in your purview of saying this is, you know, this is my acceptable or this is even my delightful range, then it's a lot easier to be delighted.

Divya: I mean, there is, there have been studies on that also, right? Like, that people who perceive themselves as lucky are more lucky.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: And it's just very interesting. I think their study is, with them sort of asking people to count the number of, vowels or number of ands in the headlines of a newspaper or something like that. And one of the, articles on the newspaper contains the snippet of this newspaper has this many ands in headlines. And people who, like, rated themselves as very lucky in life were the ones who were way more likely to find that line than the ones who didn't.

Kahran: Well, that kind of goes to, you know, even what, I don't know if you know this, but, like, when girls start school, I know in the us, I'm not sure if this is true everywhere, but they tend to be at par with boys in mathematics schools. But as they grow, go up through school, girls start to drop behind and, Right. So the kind of contention, the theory in contention that I've heard at least, is like that people start to hear and ingest these myths that like, oh, girls are not good at school, right? So I think similarly, if you start to believe like, you're someone who's lucky, right? You're going to put in that kind of effort to feel like you are lucky, right? And sometimes being lucky does mean paying attention to unexpected things and, you know, searching a little bit harder or whatever. Like that is how you make your.

Divya: Or even like subconscious stuff, right? Like your brain might not even know what you are thinking about and what you are talking about or doing. one of the things that came to my mind when you were talking about how, girls have similar ability of mathematics when they are younger in the US, but, like, it drops off later on. There was a study done on women where they were given scars, like they were given prosthetic scars. And they were told that, what they are trying to study is the effect of, like, you know, facial deformation on how people perceive you during interview, etc.

Kahran: Etcetera yeah.

Divya: And then they said before the women, like, they showed the women the scar, and then before they were about to go, they said, oh, we will just do a touch up. But then in the touch up, they would remove the scar. so, like, the women have gone normally. But the interesting thing was that those women really did report a lot of discrimination based on their facial features and appearance. And they attributed a lot of it to the scarring of how people, they even found out things that the interviewer said that were pointedly about their appearance. While there was nothing wrong with their.

Kahran: Appearance because the scar had been removed.

Divya: Yeah.

Kahran: They just thought they had the scar.

Divya: Yeah. And this was like one of those, like just looking at. Do people actually get impacted by their own perceptions of how others might see them?

Kahran: Yeah, I think we actually talked about that in one of our first few episodes. Right. But it, I mean, yeah, it's definitely true. Right. Like how you're perception of what you think other people think of, you just can shape your, your experience of things.

There is a common notion that you should focus on one thing

Divya: one other thing that I have recently been thinking about, and as we were just talking about this idea of like, setting intent and then like, letting your brain find the patterns, was this, this is a very common notion that you should focus on one thing and just work on that one thing. But both of us are not the kind of people who will just focus on one thing. And while I've always experienced the benefits of not focusing on one thing, I've rarely been able to articulate. And I think this is one of those things that is the benefit of working in multiple things. You give your brain three or four different things that it can pattern seek at all. and then whatever matches, matches.

Kahran: M that's interesting.

Divya: Right? It's almost like letting things slow cook and you have like four burners and you just leave all of them on and like, slowly it all gets like.

Kahran: Richer in flavor and you, and it's like that notion you were telling me about a few days ago with those twelve questions.

Divya: Yeah, yeah.

Kahran: Who was it? Who that was Finman. Yeah, yeah.

Divya: yeah. Richard Finman. Like, he had twelve problems that he was constantly thinking about. And whenever he would come across a new insight, he would try and match it to all of them and see if something new comes up anyway. And like, I'm not even saying something that active, although I am trying to incorporate that more in my life now because like, that just feels amazing. But even beyond that. Right. Like, I'm sure that sometimes when you have been thinking about, I don't know, stuff that you're working on on your investor side, and then you might be thinking about stuff that is happening on, like, you know, your idea for a restaurant side and then something around joyous and then something in your personal relationship. And there is always like, some cross pollination that can happen.

Kahran: I think so. I mean, I don't really so much think about things in that way. I more find, like, that I'll give myself, sometimes almost like random data points. Right. and then I'll find, that I'll kind of like, revisit things and have made progress on them, if that makes sense. Like, for example, I'm like, there's a scene I'm, like, trying to rewrite for this play that I've been working on. And like, I know I have, like, the broad strokes of what it's going to look like. And like, whenever I keep going out to places and like, doing things, like, sometimes, like, I'll think about different parts of it, but I'm not, like, actively sort of thinking about it. Like, I'm just kind of like, Right. And I know at some point I'll sit down and I'll have done some more work on it. I just. But I tend to not so much like, like, I don't sit down and be like, oh, I'm thinking about this thing sometimes.

Divya: Have you never done that?

Kahran: I mean, sometimes, but usually when I, like, in an active form, like, I'll be like, oh, I'll write about it or I'll brainstorm about it.

Divya: And then, like, I think I want to add more of that. Like, that is what I'm almost, like, taking away from this conversation. So my sister has been doing this thing where, like, every, week she's taking out 30 minutes, just talk herself about things that she's doing and she's wanting to do. It's just like 30 minutes or an hour. Like, it's just a strategy time.

Kahran: Yeah.

Divya: It's not anything else.

Kahran: Yeah. I mean, I find that because it's, it's. I like to be in an activity when I'm doing something. Like, I'll do something else. Right. So, like, I will, like, there's, like, some places I like to go for a walk or I've been, like, going for more, like, meditation because I'm like, I'm a big one for group activities, right. and so, like, you know, those give you, like, space for at least, like, finding the thoughts, right? If not, maybe like, actively engaging with them, but sometimes actively engaging with them too.

Divya: Depends on when you are finding these passive thoughts, where do they come from? Now that we're like, you know, already in the hokie territory, I guess.

Kahran: Usually, I remember something, like seeing something, thinking about something, or something caught my attention. Usually I remember that something caught my attention, in a certain way.

Divya: Do you talk to yourself?

Kahran: No. Sometimes. I mean, sometimes, but not in those moments. It's not that. I'm like, oh, remember when we saw this thing?

Divya: Wait, when you're brainstorming with yourself, you do not talk to yourself.

Kahran: But, well, I'm not brainstorming then.

Divya: Or like, wait, without talking to yourself, ideas come to you generally?

Kahran: Yeah. Like, like, for example, I remember I was, walking. Yeah. I don't know, I think I sat down on this bench and this guy, like, was taking a picture, above me. and then I was, I don't know, he just like, reminded me of someone. Sometimes it's hard, right? Because I think I was thinking about them, and then I was thinking about, like, a mutual friend of ours who also writes poetry. And then I was thinking about poetry, and then I was thinking about how I could apply for that, the summer writing program.

Divya: This is so interesting. Not that you can make random connections, because, like, of course, everybody makes random connections, but I'm just, I think what you said earlier, that you were like, no, not always, is the interesting part, because I think that when I'm doing creative work, sure. I don't think I have an active dialogue with that part of myself, but almost every other thing, like, especially for cognitive problem solving, I'm almost always talking to myself in some way, shape or form.

Kahran: Oh, like, what if we try this? No, what if we try this? Like, what if we do it this way?

Divya: Yeah. Or like, this wouldn't work and this would not work because of this. And then one can try that. And there is that study. Like, basically how I talk is also how I internally talk.

Kahran: Interesting. I don't know, maybe I'll try that sometime.

Divya: Maybe like there is an inner voice in your head and it's just such a big part of your life that you don't even recognize that it is. It could be that. Yeah, probably not, though.

This was a really fun episode. I feel like we covered a bunch of topics

Okay. This is like a really fun episode.

Kahran: M. Yeah, I think it was interesting. I feel like we really kind of started from one place and covered a bunch around around it.

Divya: But it was an interesting competition. Yeah. Especially with an aside in nuclear physics. Who knew?

Kahran: Okay, this was fun.

Divya: Bye bye. This is super fun. Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking and thinking. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes.

Kahran: If you are interested in today's topic or any of the topics we've discussed, please get in touch with us. You can reach us on our website, Joyous studio.