That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Case Kenny

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Gaby welcomes Case Kenny to the pod to talk all things joy! He talks about his journey to meditation, why he thinks it's so valuable for everyone and the pitfalls of talking about it in the wrong way. Case embraces mindfulness, but also looks at it in a very unique way. Hear him talk to Gaby about how he approaches making time (and space) for himself and his head! (he's also started playlists for meditation now - with a mizture of music depending on your mood. Find out more in the ep!) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kate Kenny, thank you so much for joining me. I honestly hand on heart. I think your feed on socials is one of the most important. And I know that sounds very dramatic, but I really think it's one of the most important ones. I tell everybody I know to follow you because you speak. No, this is honestly, it's not, it's, this isn't me sucking up to you. I just think you speak sense.

You, you talk totally honestly from the heart. and it hits. It really, really does. It resonates with everybody. So thank you. That's it. Okay, bye now. Well, thank you.

It genuinely means a lot. I mean, that's the mission. I feel very drawn to it. I also think it's very important, and I'm privileged to be able to do that for a living. So thank you. I take it and try it, but it means a lot. Thanks.

So you started out in advertising and in tech. When was the moment that you think? thought, hey, you know what, I'm going to do a podcast. I'm going to do music and mindfulness. I'm going to cure people's heads. What happened? Yeah. So I'm 36 now when I was like 29. To your point, I was working advertising. I had maybe like a 12, 11, 12 year career in that. I was running a sales team. You know, I'd worked my way up the ladder, account executive, sales manager, sales director, regional vice president, really great. You know, at a certain point, I really liked who I was in my career. I felt very confident. You know, I very much identified by being a being successful,

making money, closing deals, being that guy, which was great. But at the same time, I felt like, a soulful case, partner case, friend case, fulfilled case that I had no idea who I was, you know, very much, you know, a victim of my own overthinking and like unfair self-judgment. And I just didn't like the fact. They didn't like the fact that I didn't really know who I was, didn't like the fact that I felt like I was different versions of myself to different people. And I was just like, ah, I just don't like this. I want to be the same guy. I want to make decisions that are true to me, yada, yada.

And the result of that, it was like, I'm going to start a podcast in order to force myself to have perspective on life, to be able to sit down. I saw podcasting in 2018 and still do, but particularly in 2018 when it was less, you know, diluted. I saw it as a really vulnerable way to express myself. and to do a show where I didn't really have guests, because I didn't want people to come on the show and tell me what to think or try to inspire me.

I wanted to force myself to know how to think and inspire myself. So I would just do these episodes 15 to 20 minutes each where I would just force myself to find a why and have perspective and say, here is why I think this, here is where it comes from, here is what I believe. And, you know, the result of that, the rest is history, I suppose, because really what I realized in that process was I was practicing a really practical form of mindfulness,

and then I was putting relatable human language behind it. And, you know, mindfulness is a muscle. You can't help but grow. And I feel like from 29 to 36, I've completely changed who I am, as a man, as a character, as a partner, as a friend. And, of course, my career ended up leaving that job to do this full time. But, yeah, I mean, it was really a very, like, meta thing in that the podcast became the means.

And then I realized how much people related to it. You know, I kind of live in La La Land where people are so grateful and nice to me. And it just really encouraged me at a certain point when I was doing it parallel to my job, to leave the job, to do it full time, started writing on Instagram, released a couple books, started speaking and doing all this kind of stuff. But it really just started with that desire of mine to be the same person on the inside as I am on the outside and just to be more at peace with myself. Well, what's so rare, though, is you actually going out and doing it, because there are a lot of people that will think, I'm feeling stagnant, oh, I feel this in my job, I feel that in my job, I feel this in my relationship, but I don't know what to do.

But the fact that you actually stepped out and you did that is quite, it's quite a rare thing. There's fear, a lot of fear. I know you talk about fear in your notes and in your books and journaling and all of it, and in your podcast. But people have a lot of fear in the way of doing that sort of thing. How did you throw any of those doubts and fears away? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I'd be remiss to say that I still don't have fear or question marks or uncertainty. But I think it was more just like a rebranding.

Like people are so afraid of starting over because we always think, oh, starting over means I did all this work. I invested all this time in a job and a career and a relationship. And now I'm starting over, which means I throwing it all. the way and I'm all way back to zero. I never really saw it like that. I always saw it as like when you start over, you're by logic, you're getting closer to who you're supposed to be, not further away from it. And I think most people think that starting over means all of a sudden you're way further away from who you're supposed to be, the job you're supposed to be working, the relationship you're supposed to be in. But to me, I said, well, clearly I'm drawn to this thing and I'm not drawn to

the job any longer. So leaving the job means I'm now closer to doing the thing I'm supposed to be doing. So it felt like progress in a big way. It didn't feel like a step back. And I think that just that just motivated me. And, you know, yeah, leaving a job that, you know, paid me well. And I invested 12 years in was certainly a big risk and a big jump. And, you know, I think I owe my quote success to quite a few variables, luck, timing, stubbornness. I'm very stubborn.

I, you know, kind of refuse to quit on a lot of things. But yeah, I think it was that idea that kind of reframing of what it means to start over. I saw it as a great thing. I saw it as progress. And if I'm making progress, why would I doubt myself? Again, I'm going to go back to the word fear, but people fear change.

And I think change can be a really exciting thing. For you, what do all your friends and your family make of this? Because it must be, you know, this is the kid who, like you say, for 12 years you were doing this, you're 29, you've reached, you know, you just said all the levels that you'd reach. What did your friends and family make of it? Family very supportive, as hopefully any family would. I grew up in a pretty creative environment.

Like I attended Waldorf School, which over here growing up is like a learn through play kind of hippie kind of vibe. I'm all for that. That's a sort of school. Yeah, I get that. I love that. Yeah, it's like Waldorf Montessori. It's a very, you know, no tablets or math and science for a while. And so I've always been very creative.

My family's always very encouraged that. I actually majored in Chinese in college. Chinese. Chinese. So, like, my parents, like, were very supportive of non-traditional case in many senses, even though then I graduated and ended up in advertising and not using Chinese. But they were very supportive. I think a lot of people around me, particularly in my career, were, like, because it was

very, like, in ad tech sales, you can make a lot of money, but it's very high-strong. It's very Taipei. It's filled with a lot of machete, like a lot of like macho dudes and stuff like that. So, you know, some people, because I basically went for being a sales guy to sharing my feelings for a living is kind of how I brand myself. And they're like, what are you doing? Like, why are you wasting your time on that? And there was a time where, you know, I was running a team of like 15 people and I was traveling twice a week. And yet I'd be like, I got to go back to my hotel to record a podcast.

And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, where's the upside on that? You know, it wasn't devastating or anything like that. but I think I had to handle a little bit of that, you know, and I think lost a couple people who, you know, I used to be close with in my career. But for the most part, like my close friends, they got it. And as is with the irony of most life and success and creation,

it's like some of those people, I remember some of the people who used to like ignore me in my career, people that I would like call on to try to get them to buy my services. I've gotten DMs from them over the past couple of years. And I was like, you've never used to talk to me. And now, and I think it's a good thing, right? Hey, Case, like, I recognize your name and I saw that that was your message.

I'm like, I love the message. Keep sharing. And I'm like, that's, that's great. So, you know, I've got nothing bad to say about anyone ever or like, you know, it's part of the process and people, by and large, have been so supportive. Yeah, it's funny because that was the next thing I was going to ask you. There are always people, when you become famous, I'm going to just use that term. I hate the word famous.

I hate the word celebrity, all of that, but you become known. And I suddenly had this picture of some of the people who were there going, what are you doing? Going to the hotel room and now saying, oh, hi, he's my great friend. But that's their story, not yours, not yours, of course. Can we just talk about the word mindfulness?

It's very interesting. I think, I don't know if it's the same in the States, but here, still you will get people when you say mindfulness or meditation, they just go, no, no, that's not for me. But if you say, take a moment and take a breath and look at the door handle and they'll go, oh, yeah, I can do that. And then I'll say to them, but that's mindfulness.

No, no, no, no. It's sort of a, I don't know what it is. Why do people become sort of slightly freaked out by it? They don't want to accept it or don't want to learn. Yeah. I mean, very much a topic I'm also very passionate about. So, like, I think about my 20s, I was the same way. Like I would think about mindfulness and I would think it's for other people because when I heard the term mindfulness, I would hear it alongside of things that I didn't understand.

I would hear mindfulness and then I would hear people say, I'm attracting abundance. I'm manifesting vibrations and frequencies and chakras and energy fields and all the stuff, which is very valid. But at the time I didn't, I was like, what is that? It can't be possibly be for me because I can't touch that. I can't define that. Not for me. Regular guy, not for me. What I've come to realize, of course, is that there's many types of times.

of mindfulness, there's the esoterical, spiritual energy, mindfulness, which is great. I'm not so much drawn to that, to be honest with you. And people recognize this because I use very simple, relatable language. The type of mindfulness I'm drawn to is two things. And it's completely made me realize how practical mindfulness is as a category and then how we can create habits that bring it to life. So when I think about mindfulness, I think of mindfulness is two things. The second of which I think that is really the glue that brings it together.

Mindfulness, by and large, we could agree is the practice of being present. Physically, emotionally, it's the act of radical non-judgment of how you feel, sitting in those feelings, accepting them, and just being present. And we could bring that to life in many different ways, from meditation to yoga to a silent walk to therapy. Fantastic. The definition number two that I always add to it, that I think really makes mindfulness something that,

should excite us and energize us and lean into is mindfulness is listening to yourself what i just said the more important mindfulness is learning to talk to yourself that is being able to decipher through all that rumination and put uplifting optimistic human language behind it that's why i do my little quotes on instagram because it's how can i put human language behind things that we're so apt to make more confusing for ourselves by using words like manifest abundance or now through the proliferation of social media and like therapy language, narcissists and attachment styles. Very valid stuff for sure, but I want to simplify it and celebrate it. So that's why I'm a big proponent of like journaling and the simplicity of human language to celebrate optimism to help us evolve how we think about

ourselves. So listen to ourselves, talk to ourselves. And now it's like, okay, well, I've written down my standards. I've written down my beliefs. I've written down the things that I want to manifest, for instance. It's real. It's tangible. I can touch it. I can. I can. tattoo it, I can reiterate it. To me, that makes everything that you described less relevant anymore. It's like, I don't understand it. No, I do understand it because I wrote it. I can touch it. So that's why I'm so big on like the written form of mindfulness. I always, all my quotes on Instagram, I handwrite. Some people think I use like a font or a tablet. I literally have pieces of paper, write it in a red pen, take a picture of it with my phone, post it on Instagram. To me,

that is bringing mindfulness to life. So that's my diatriate. there I feel very passionately about it. I'm so pleased. And I totally hear you and I totally get it. It's interesting you use a word judge. And I think as a society across the world, there are a lot of people who are very judgmental and I think social media, for me, as I'm concerned,

in my mind, your social media is absolutely for the good. We both are aware. And I've done a book about spreading joy. This is all about reasons to be joyful. I'm about being in the moment. but there is a lot of there's a lot of judgment out there and there's a lot of negativity out there

you're trying everything you possibly can to make people not be negative and feel more present and feel more joy and be more aware of themselves but judgment gets in the way and people are so judgmental these days I feel more than ever I don't know I just maybe because of social media

it's a big part I mean, I can throw quite a bit of research at you that supports the upside of being optimistic and non-judgmental. But for one, like, the proliferation of judgment is very skewed. Like, I did an episode recently on the podcast about how it's like 70% of conflict and negativity and pessimism and doom saying on internet comes from 3% of users.

And it's a very small subset. What? It's a very vocal group of people. Say that again. That's just blow me. my mind. Say that again. Yeah, it was 70% of conflict content on social media comes from 3% of the users, which isn't so much surprising because we know that generally in statistics that plays out, like the small vocal minority creates a majority of the perception of that

topic. So it's very easy to get bought into the idea of you open up social media and the algorithm is fed by negativity because negativity begets comments and comments and so on and so forth. So it's very easy to be like, well, the whole world is negative, but really it's 3% of those people or, you know, three, five, time, whatever. It's a small subset that is doing it. So realizations like that certainly can help us pump the brakes a little bit on giving into this doom saying negative perception of life. Like even diving into that more, there was this article published by the Atlantic that was kind of, at least in the U.S., but probably by and large in the Western world, it was talking to.

about like how we've gone through these evolutions of of community in the you know mid-1900s we are very driven by community especially with the second world war come together boost the economy fight evil love your neighbor build a family right it was it was somewhat utopian for a certain amount of time from then we went into this very individualistic society very capitalistic do what you got to do it's all about you take over get rich you know be selfish now we've gone back to the community side, but it's the negative community side. We are joined together by pessimism and negativity. People form these enclaves politically, economically, socially,

by gathering around things that we perceive to be bad and wrong and broken and negative. And certainly we should never ignore the things that truly are bad and wrong and negative and broken and need to be fixed. But there is this cohesion of people gathered around doomsaying and negativity and pessimism. and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. If we believe the world truly is broken and negative, we are going to find support of that. And social media certainly boost that.

So in the face of all that that I just yapped about, I think it's so important to try to the best of your ability to find a source of optimism for yourself. Whatever that may be, you know, for me, thinking about optimism is a topic that sometimes we get wrong. We think that optimism is forced positivity about life. And when that's the case, it could become toxic, it could become overbearing and forced. Optimism doesn't have to be about positivity.

It should just be about possibility, the possibility of change, and then we'll go from there. So, you know, a lot of my work is around encouraging people to explore potential and explore the flip side of what we've come to assume or what we know, whether that's past relationships and all we've ever known is pain and breakup, whether it's frustration in our family life or whatever, trying to find a sliver of hope, a silver lining of support of sorts that we can expand, use mindfulness to define, and then use that to give us some more hope and faith in our lives. May I just, I've screenshot some of my favorite things that you've said. And I just, there's something, there are certain ones, and I share them on my socials.

But there is something about this, that if you're not into chasing wild dreams and manifesting magic, out of thin air, I'm not for you. And I, I, it's interesting because I'm always, I, my big thing is, my, my, I was very lucky. My parents said, follow your dreams, but don't hurt anybody in the process. I say to my kids, follow your dreams. Don't hurt anybody in the process. And I always have this conversation with, with people who are older. And, and everyone says, oh, no, you've got to be realistic.

You can't follow your dreams. Yes, you did the same face that I, yes. your reaction was the same as mine. Yeah. It's strange when people, it's as if they close down. They just say, no, no, you shouldn't follow your dreams because then you're going to be disappointed.

Yeah. Yeah, I get it. Like, right? Everyone's operating from their own perspective. And a lot of time, that's perspective of regret because they never went after their dreams. It's a perspective of insecurity. They're unsure if they are capable to, you know,

pressure that they're too late to start. And so they're going to just reinforce. that with what they say and how they judge other people. So yeah, I mean, I, I, you know, clearly by my example, I'm big on just going for it and going for it when you're young and in your 20s and 30s and you can, you can't afford to mess up. And we, I mean, we did live in such an interesting time. Like, I hate to be that guy who says anything is possible. But I mean, through the internet and through the technology and changing times and just appetite for things, I truly do believe anything as possible. If you would have told me when I was 28 doing my sales job that sharing your feelings

for a living could give you a career financially, creatively, I would say absolutely not. That's ridiculous. You have to have a job. You have a 401k. You have to have a structure to be able to be promoted. I mean, you could figure anything out, truly, truly, truly. You know, for me, that's writing books and speaking and creating products and things like that. you can absolutely, I just think we need to think about being more hybrid in this day and age. You could be an entrepreneur and a musician. You could be an author and an entrepreneur. You could be someone who inspires and also someone who makes good business decisions. And I love surrounding myself with those kinds of people, people who think outside the box, people who aren't afraid

to challenge assumptions. I mean, those are my kind of people. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, everything you're saying, I feel like saying hallelujah at the end of each thing you're saying. So you were talking about the books. Let's talk about. the books now. So how did the books come about? Because you did that you had the podcast hugely success, one of the most successful podcasts ever in the history of mankind. But let's talk about the books, because how did that then happen? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I've done almost 700 episodes of the podcast. So I've done a lot of thinking. I've done a lot of talking. So at a certain point, you're like, you start to notice things. You start to notice what people really want more of, what they gravitate

towards and eventually with with that book that we're talking about that's bold of you um you know i just i've done so many episodes where it came down to the fact that we're using the wrong words to describe ourselves we're allowing ourselves to become victims of certain labels instead of free to express ourselves without a label right i'm talking about labels like you're too much you're too loud you're too quiet you're too eager you're too whatever on either end of the spectrum and most of my episodes came down to the fact that just because someone told you that you're one way. Doesn't mean you are. Just because maybe you have that loud voice in your head telling you that you're asking for too much or you're not ready or doesn't mean those things are true.

How can we use mindfulness to free ourselves to explore the opposite of that? And I called it that's bold of you because it's a bold thing to challenge yourself in the face of past experiences, which we're very tempted to allow to define us. It's a bold thing to sit with someone who misjudges you and for you to say, that's okay I know who I am those are bold things so it's basically a book about inventing and reinventing yourself and it all came from things that I've written talked about on the podcast and I'm just energized to talk about like I again optimism obviously oozes from my veins I didn't want to write a book about what's wrong with the world I want to write a book about what's right about you and how tapping into that could potentially solve some of the

larger issues so yeah it's a celebration of oneself and how to use mindfulness and mindful practices to figure out who that person is so that other people won't tell you who you are. I love that. And then the music. So the music as well is using the two hand in hand, music, not music for mindfulness, but music in a different, use music in a different way. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, usually if you hear the phrase music and mindfulness, you're like, oh, cool, some like ambient, like really calm spa music. Not the case for me. I mean, I, again, talking about being stubborn. I pretty much only listen to house music,

dance music, drum and bass, EDM, house, whatever genre you want to qualify, but very upbeat, right? 130 beats per minute,

a lot of drops, a lot of builds, DJs, right? Late night club sets. I've always been drawn to dance music, particularly because of the flow, the structure of dance music. It goes break and then build and then drop,

break, build, drop. So it's very like euphoric and melodic and it makes me feel. There's something about dance music that brings, even more feelings out of me. And anytime I'm writing,

I'm always listening to dance music because it makes me feel alive. It makes me feel vulnerable. So, you know, a couple of years back, just for fun. I don't make any money from these things per se, but I started teaming up with different DJs, like big DJs, like Martin Garrick's and Griffin

and the smaller DJs here in Miami and Chicago to have them play a set, right, a 60-minute, 90-minute set. And then in the interludes, I would come in with a little bit of mindfulness. So in the place of a DJ set where maybe the DJ will talk about his next track or talk about his upcoming tour, I would come in in the break and the build and talk a little bit about consider something. And it just became a cool way for me to bring a more uplifting form of mindfulness to people

who maybe only know mindfulness in the form of meditation, which is fantastic. But meditation is usually about calm and being static and not moving. My form is you stand up and you move and you feel energized and you get your heart rate up and for me I think a lot of people gravitate towards that maybe a more ADD crowd, maybe a more distractible crowd but for me I just like doing that I like my girlfriend here in Miami she's a DJ

so music is inherently a big part of my mindful practice and occasionally I like to encourage people to try the same I think it's great I'm all for that keep keep moving keep and you think when you move, people think, oh, you can get lost in your thoughts, which is wonderful, and then you bring them back into the moment.

I just think what you're doing is fantastic. Okay, here's an invitation. Can you come over to the UK, please? Come over here. We're going to do a show. We'll take over, I don't know, the Palladium. Let's just do it there.

With the guys who do this, we'll do a live show, we'll do a Q&A, we'll get audience questions, and then we're going to end with everybody dancing. I think that would be really cool. Are you coming? Come over to the UK. I'll probably be over there next year, honestly.

We should talk about it and do it. I'm actually being completely serious. Case, I think you're fantastic. Thank you for the post that you do on Instagram, because I know they help a lot of people. I love that you seem to, you write the things that I have in my head. So thank you for that. And I look forward to you coming here and us doing that show because it's going to happen. See, it's manifesting.

You and I will be on stage together and we're going to help a lot of people. I love it. Well, thank you so much. And thanks for, you know, supporting the mission. No, I think it's fantastic what you do. Thank you very much. Thank you.