8Harnessing the Postive Anchors of Food & Drink with Caroline Hobkinson

About

Harnessing the positive anchors that surround food and drink, explores and brings to life the new rituals that we can establish in liu of old ones that we might have released while at home. From the perspective of food artist and anthropologist Caroline Hobkinson we unpack the power of rituals that provide us with new anchoring, grounding and navigation.

In this episode we explore the notion of food and drink rituals from the perspective of anthropology, with guest Caroline Hobkinson. We unpack the concept of enhancing rituals that serve, anchor and ground, that we can make our own, which become fundamental to purposefully navigating our days.

The power of the mind and it’s perception are opened up. This altered mindset of mindfulness, savoring experiences to be truly present - even to the unpacking of the dishwasher.

We share with you the Unusual Ingredients project and you are invited on the next show to experience sound, accompanied by certain ingredients, which will modulate and enhance each ingredient.

The headline is that our mind and experience are all open for coaching, coaxing, and exploration. We can choose the experience that serves our higher creative intention.

Unusual ingredients is a multi-sensory project bringing to life the relationships between sound and flavour through live musical events and an album.

Drawing on the latest gastrophysical research into sensory perception, our music uses exact sonic frequencies and musical gestures calibrated to enhance the mouthfeel, flavour and provenance of each ingredient. Think Willy Wonka mixed with electronic music and cutting edge cross-disciplinary science. Unusual ingredients is created by musicians Jacob Thompson-Bell and Adam Martin, and food artist Caroline Hobkinson.

You can reach Caroline at:

www.carolinehobkinson.com or https://unusualingredients.co. on Instagram @caro_hobkinson.

You can get your own kit for the Willy Wonka ingredient sound experiment, the Lockdown kit https://unusualingredients.co/album . The kit for the five ingredients is 10 British Pounds, $13 including postage.

The ingredients are:

Popping Candy Coffee Sweets Seaweed Bubble Gum Stopper Candy Honey lozenge

If you would like to experience this sourcing your own ingredients, visit Spotify to look at the Unusual Ingredients playlist.

About Caroline Hobkinson

Caroline Hobkinson is an anthropologist exploring and investigating the interrelationships between Tech, Food, Art and the Senses.

Born in Cologne in 1979, trained at Central Saint Martin’s where she gained a degree in Fine Art and SOAS where she earned a master’s degree in the Anthropology of Food, she has been creating events and sculptural installations, in galleries, museums and public spaces worldwide. She has published and co-authored numerous research and academic papers on the neuroscientific workings of eating and conducted anthropological qualitative research into food and drink habits and rituals.

Operating within the intersections of technology, food and the senses Caroline has been giving numerous interactive talks and lectures on the subject of food and eating rituals for Unilever, Disney, Barilla, Space 10 and many others and her work and research has appeared in numerous publications. She has recently co presented a 3-part series on multisensory aspects of cheese, due out in summer 2020.


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Transcript

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Welcome and join me today on the Hi Hello Sura podcast, where I decode and deconstruct the stories, secrets, and skills of the creators of our time. If you are looking to challenge the status quo and get new perspectives, join me as I share with you practical advice that you can use to impact your life and help those.

Today.

Hey there. And welcome to the hi. Hello Sura show. I'm your host, Sura Al-Naimi. On this episode, we explore how to navigate between creativity and order. We unpacked. Firstly, why this is important to begin with and what each mindset is characterized by how, how it's represented and then how we can stack and flow between one state of being into.

It was worth mentioning that I recorded this session with my guests back in mid February, and our model for discovery drew upon the walk of Jordan Peterson, who coined the term. Chaos versus order with chaos representing creativity. So I want to take a moment to bring that up in case there was a sensitivity to that term.

And just to clarify that that is the bath place or the model for navigation for this conversation. So without further ado, we'll get into this. So today is a real treat. As I mentioned, I have an amazing guest. Her name is Heather Paulus. Now Heather is a behaviorist and psychologist, and she has been working with animals for over 10 years.

She has worked with an array of animals. Such as cats, dolphins, Alvin's horses, killer whales, and wolves to name a few. She's the founder of an organization called tech apology, which uses technology to train people on how to train their paths, both in person and virtually pain-free and fear free. So without further ado I would love and I'm excited to welcome my guest, Heather, Heather, welcome to the.

It's great to be here. Thanks Sarah. So today we have such a treat for you. We got into this magnificent conversation a couple of weeks ago about creativity and as on entrepreneur giving bath to these beautiful ideas. And then, you know, what happens when we give birth to something, you know, how do we actually sustain it and bring it to life and actually have it live and make big impacts on the.

You were mentioning this predisposition to creativity, this creative mind, the state of being, and then, you know, where you came across a stumbling block in the sense of, you know, how would this oldest magnificence equation, how do we set up the systems that enable it to live and breathe in the world? And so I really want.

To hand it over to you and just bring some of this concept to life and intuitively whatever you felt you wanted to list our listeners to hear. Sure and jump in anytime I have a ton of thoughts on it. Of course it's a lot of doubts. Um, so when we're thinking about creativity in the entrepreneurial world, we have to take a step back and how the world is itself.

So Jordan B. Peterson, clinical psychologist, and public figure from Alberta, Canada has, um, divided in what he calls chaos and order. And I'm sure we can think of it as right. Brain left brain game yang, whatever we want to think about it. Very binary, correct. One or two. So, or in the computer world one or zero.

Now with this, we can occupy one of the spaces, but there's a full spectrum. So you can occupy any variety of space. You can be highly chaotic, or we can say creative. We can be high orderly. And within those spaces, we move on this spectrum depending on how much work we do in each field. So for those who are high in order, They might be highly conscientious.

They might be highly industrious. And we celebrate these people in the business world, computer scientists, those who are typically quote unquote successful they're high in order, they're able to control their lives. So they get very high in that work space or that celebrated on some may know in that realm.

They might not be very adapt with. Or the unknown. So when things happen, somebody gets sick, something changes in the company, there's backlash in the media, something of that nature they find or can find that's very hard for them to adapt to. So there's benefits to being on both sides and we're not necessarily in one or the other.

So again, Jordan B. Peterson said it in a way that I really liked, we are the process in which navigates between the two human beings. So we're constantly navigating between chaos and order and we can shift and move throughout the spectrum. So that's what I found fairly interesting about. Now where I have discovered and what I have thought a lot about is how we move along the spectrum, because I'm sure you'd agree very much that we can be chaotic, orderly.

Correct. Absolutely. But how would you also agree you don't want to be labeled one thing for your whole life? Correct? I mean, for me, if I stay in one state that. It's not fulfilling. So, so if you say you're highly creative, but now you want to start a business and now you have to manage that business. Do you want to be pegged as the highly creative?

Who can't get their business off the ground? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that's what I'm finding a lot with individuals that they start a business and that they are one area or another, or they're within a team and they, they tend to occupy one mindset or. And, you know, as you know, expansion and contraction are equally important, so flow through innovation or any creation process.

And I loved how you said in our conversation earlier, you said it's like breathing in and breathing out. You need both, you can't get attached to one or the other they're both necessary. Which do you prefer? Would you prefer breathing in breathing out? So as the right brain and left brain, there are two ways in which we view the world because we have developed over time to need both ways to view the world.

The right brain is what adapts us to chaos the unknown. That's how we think on our feet when we're fearful. That's how. And then the left brain, the orderlies, how we react to what we already know. So we need both. And we, even with brain damage, you can see the brain tries to connect, but we can work with one of the other, but not efficiently.

So here's an example of how we move between the two. You can do it through self or others. So if you're moving on the spectrum, think of it in this way of self. That is the entrepreneur who is super creative and has been living in that world of creativity and chaos. They're highly adaptable, often known as, um, enthusiastic or extroverted.

So they want to navigate towards the orderly side. How do they do that by themselves? A good guest for you. How do they do that by themselves? Oh, this is a trick question. I'm here to find out. No, no, you nailed it right there. So you're they go to learn? They read they, they employ education. They want to learn what they don't know.

So that might be somebody who's trying to get better at their finances, or they might look Sonata, podcasts, and learn how to do accounting. They're trying to move to that spectrum. Correct. The other way they can do it is through the. So now learning from another is not quite cause that's still self you're still trying to do it yourself, but by employing in other, so you can hire somebody, you can have a business partner, you can be in a relationship with someone who's very orderly.

That's where they come up with my better half. Correct. So through the other, they're actually finding another person to fill that piece that they do not feel. Now there's positives and there's dangerous to that as well. So let's talk relationship since if you are a highly orderly person, but you some might call you maybe introverted, correct, or very intelligent.

You kind of keep yourself more. That's someone who's in the self. So someone who's all in cell. Lives in the world of ideas as Adam Robinson, a chess master, and co-founder at Princeton review says he lived in the world of ideas. He was, uh, he had a huge amount of success and he found later on in his life, the meaning of life was others, but he never lived in that realm at all.

It was all about himself. So, uh, Nishi, when he wrote the book, thus spark czar, and two-step. You have the wiser and stroke who goes up to the mountains and he's wise, and he learns all these things. He learns that God is dead and all of these wonderful Epiphanes, but he's, he says he's full, he's heavy with knowledge.

He must come back down the mountain and share it with others. So those who are on one spectrum and self eventually find that need or that lack of other connectivity. And they have to come shit. Those who live in the world of others need to find that balance itself, where they expand themselves to the, that they're drained.

They don't have any self-reliance if somebody moves or doesn't want to be friends with them anymore, what do they do? So here's kind of our way. So here's what we're saying here. You can navigate between chaos and order and the way you do it is through self versus other. So that's what we're kind of talking about today.

That's interesting. So somebody who is in the wild order can gradually get more into the wild of chaos or creativity or adaptability. So chaos by definition, it's nature, the feminine it's building something new, stepping into the unknown. How many times do we hear in the world of entrepreneurship? You have to have to jump into the unknown.

Take the leap. Yeah. That's chaos. It's not a negative thing. It's a beautiful, wonderful thing. The unpredictability, but it creates, it builds something new. So that's, and so then when we talk, so that sort of defines that arena. And so the beauty of that is, as you mentioned, is the inception and then the arena that it doesn't possess and its innate quality, is it doesn't it doesn't maintain it.

It's not sustainable to live in either realm completely. So if you imagine, I think we had drawn, um, like an infinity sign, correct? Exactly. You can think of the two poles as being highly chaotic, highly orderly. We know people like this, correct. The ones that are just with the wind spontaneous. They're the starving artists.

They're the, they they're genius. They have beautiful things. They're often like. But they can't find their car keys every five seconds. Correct. So there's a lot of wonderful things about them and they, and it's not a bad thing. It is not a negative thing. Those who live in a highly chaotic world are highly adaptable.

They're highly, um, they're usually highly empathetic. They realize the world of people. So, and then on the other end, you have the person who's highly orderly, but one thing goes wrong and they don't. It's like does not compute, you know, we have those people too, that if there's a, a death or a sickness or something goes wrong in their world, they cannot adapt to it.

So those are the two poles now where we are the closer we can get. To the middle. That's rare. Think about you're Elon Musk. You know, he is very he's high at orderly, but he's also very creative. He's a visionary, but he also executes. Now he does that by employing a lot of others, but he also has a high sense of self he's, very balanced.

That's how you can think of the middle of flowing between the two, if you will. And it's. Well, I have two questions from that. One is what inspires somebody to, and we've covered that a little bit, but what, what inspires somebody to shift out from one state into another? What is it that would, yeah. What would inspire somebody to even think, oh gosh, like I want a piece of that, that realm.

So let's talk about from both rooms. So we have. Somebody who wants to shift. So now we have two ways you can, that shift comes from necessity. So nobody knows they need to shift or want to shift until something happens. Correct. So maybe you are the high order, conscientious, wonderful professional who had a 20 year marriage and that person left them.

Their whole world is shaken to the core. And now they have to get a handle of that chaos. And so that's high ordered a chaos. So say you're entrepreneur, you're highly creative and you want to start a new business. You've worked maybe for a corporate job or something of that nature, but now you want to shift into your idea, your relevant.

But now you realize that you have taxes, you have to pay employees. How do you do, how do you set up the LLC? You've never even thought of these things you can't eat. You don't even know how many accounts you have let along a savings. So you have to find that world of order, because you can have a wonderful idea, but if you don't have order and you're not able to structure and create these systems, you can't create a busy.

So, if not all is lost, there's two ways to find that you can employ the cell for other, but very good question is how do you know when to shift life will tell you because it's out of necessity that makes that, that really rings true. That really, really does ring true. So when we think about shifting and I think we talked about making incremental steps into another arena, can, can you bring that to life?

So incremental steps, would I? And this is how my thought on it. If you're going to do an incremental step, that's a lot, that's very much through self because Rome wasn't built in a day and I'll give you an example. Myself included, I've always been a highly chaotic and highly, uh, creative and adaptive person.

And I went to get my MBA. So I went through business school. So we're learning. I started to learn basic code. I'm starting to learn a little more of the math and science part of the world. And it was very important for me. When I opened my business in 2018, it was very sink or swim. And thankfully being in the world of other and people, I had a lot of wonderful advice and connections and people that I trusted.

So here's something interesting. If you live in the world of other and you know yourself, you've done that work. Then you can trust when you're making a good or bad decision, or you can employ the world of the other to help you make that decision. So who hasn't called their parents is say, Hey, let me run this by you.

Am I making an awful decision? Well, you trust most people trust their parents enough that when they say, yeah, right. You know, I've known you most of your life. And this just doesn't seem like it. So that's when they trust the other to kind of give them a little bit of feedback. Now, the trusting the self is just as important because a lot of people abandoned themselves.

So the incremental work that you do on yourself every day, whether it be on your piece of mindset and meditation, that's going to be on adapting the case. Now the peaceful work that you can do in order to have a higher handle, an order is going to be your math, your science, you're learning a skill slowly, but surely and chipping away at it.

It's like learning chess or learning a musical instrument and realizing it's that process. It's not going to happen overnight. You can't be a highly creative and then become highly orderly the next day. So you have to understand the process is going to take awhile. And as long as you know that, and you built your trust in yourself in the other, then you can start employing them to help you move in that direction.

There's a lot of people out there that will say they'll help you, but if you haven't taken the time to trust these opinions and to know who your connective web is, you could be led astray and not move up the spectrum. You can be moving backwards or off-roading, if you will. So we have an awareness of that.

There are these different realms of existence and that there is this desire to flow between them. Or sometimes there is a necessity. So now let's think about, you said it takes time to shift or to acquire a new skill or a mindset. So from your perspective, All the, all the wonderful humans that you train to try and have pets, is that, um, is there an intersection or is that something that you can share with our listeners so that they can start to meet those small steps in the right direction?

You know, in terms of principles or leading, if they want to acquire something new? Absolutely. I'd say the first step, and this is cliche is identify know where you stand. So that's step one, know where you stand and even if you're not correct on where you stand, you think, you know what you're saying? You find that's not the case, which happens.

Sometimes we think we know where we are and we're actually on a different planet, but that's a little bit, but know where you stand. If you're highly creative, if you're highly orderly, it's usually not hard for you to. Come to very few times, do people say, oh, I am very adaptable. And then they're not, you know, that, you know, basically where you're at.

So identify then number two. Where do you want to be, make an aim? It can go, where do you want to be in your life and your business? So that doesn't mean you're not going to say I want to be more towards chasm, more towards order. You're going to actually say, where do I want to be? You give, uh, a goal a direction, then you can start to see, okay.

So let's do an example. I would like to build my business within five years. What is that going to take? I'm going to need to get it out there through marketing. I'm going to need two employees because it's going to be very difficult. I'm going to need to make a budget. I'm going to need to do a press report.

So you're going to start creating these steps. If you create these steps very easy, but you're having a hard time with visualizing the creativity part, the marketing part, the employing other people are. How do I tell my story part? What do you think you need help? Where do you need? What end of the spectrum are you missing?

Probably the chaos. You need that adaptability if you're orderly, but you can't find that creative piece and you would like to get your company out there and you're finding you're running into those creative roadway. Maybe you need a little more chaos in your life. You will more creativity. Now, if you are trying to get to point B in your business and you're just running into the, I don't know my accounting, I don't know.

What's the difference between a financial planner and accountant or CPA, whatever it may be. And you can't find your phone charger to even make the call to your friend about that, then maybe it's the orderly party. So by creating a goal, you're going to start seeing where your bottlenecks are and by create, knowing where you stand currently is going to help you so that when you're moving down the scale, you have a reference point.

This is where I was. This is where I am now. Are you closer to your goal? Yes. Then you're going the right way. You're doing the right thing. Are you not closer to your goal then? Maybe you should try something to. So once you identify where you are and assess why you all are there, um, you know, this feels like it's in the realm of habit creation or are there some, are there some agnostic of where you're going?

Are there some principles you can share with the listeners so that they can start to, you know, take action on. So I'd say for the highly orderly, and this is from I'm, I'm not in the realm of highly orderly, but I'm getting closer to it. So I'm starting to understand and, um, through talking with highly orderly people, um, I attract them and I'm attracted to them, um, historically, because that's the other piece of the puzzle for me.

Now, if you're high orderly, what you can start to do to balance out. And again, it depends on your goal. I can't get. Yes, of course. Yeah. Well principles. Yeah, because, because then somebody can apply it. Whether somebody could apply this, whether we're talking about order or chaos or whether it's in another realm of their life and they can just start to apply it.

I would say, number one is really know the self. So know yourself, have that point a now for high orderly people who are not very well at adapting, I highly recommend something along the lines of meditation, yoga, connecting in that way that you can start to Stoicisms and other great ones. So the religion might be another great one if they're all the same thing, arguably, but.

To the same place of acceptance calmness peace presence. So that's something, a high orderly person who's not very good at adapting can start doing in their lives to create that. Now someone who is in the highly chaotic realm, they can do something along the lines of furthering their education. So small step programs or something of that nature, doing a, um, Higher learning or a school program or a linea.com.

You can do it online. But those programs that keep helping you and keeping you accountable, you can also do something like, uh, getting on an exercise program that holds you accountable because that creates schedule. It creates. Um, accountability as well. So anything that creates more ordering your life, you can download Google calendars and set reminders each time.

So anything that gets you on a routine or a schedule is going to get you closer to that acceptance of order. And that's a start now here's another element it's not wrong to employ. But there's a danger to it. It's a caveat you can, so know what you do well. So if you do something very well, but you are just terrible at another element, then it's time to bring somebody else in and you don't know what you don't know.

And as you learn, you might find, I am the worst at this. I need to hire somebody to do. I am not going to look at my stocks. I am not going to meet my own accountant. I did not know that I was supposed to be taxed as an S-corporation. I had no idea. I don't have enough time in the world, but I w I was able to listen and pick that up within other people.

And know when I was weakened something. And I could trust the person that was put in my life. So you can employ others to move you along the scale. So again, whether it's as it's a life coach, whether it's a tutor, any of these people are a way for others to help you move along the scale. Now, of course, that's going to be a little bit of your budget or whatever it may be.

And I am a high proponent of if somebody is good in their. Hey then to do it. You want them to keep doing what they're doing? So that's something, another way you can move on the field for those who get a little worried about, I can't take this on alone. Right, right. No, that makes a lot of sense. And it relates back to, I think we talked about this, but in innovation, there are different creative thinking styles.

And within that we identify what our specific creative thinking style is and that of our teammates. And that's where we are able to better collaborate with one another. And also that to understand. You know, this is where I'm playing to my strengths and this is where I'm, over-relying on my thinking style and it's time to employ, uh, partnering with somebody else or shifting gears, you know?

So within that we have, um, clarifying Ida team developing and implementing. And so within that realm, if I find myself. Particularly strong, for example, an ideation and clarifying, but lacking energy or motivation in development. And in implementation often I will partner with somebody else who, you know, their energy rises there so that we can get to the fruition of a project.

It can be manifested and seen in the world and also maintained. So, uh, that, that really. And that's, that's a great point. So you're, so you said, say you're an ideator and now you want to connect and employ somebody, um, employ another who's strong in another sense. So the argument I'm making here is that is a great way to do that, but I am saying that it is possible to move to if you see what you respect and what you like about that person, what helps them complete you?

It is possible. It's not. But it's possible for you to adapt and learn a part of that to bring you closer to that center. I guess the whole point of this and people might think that's great, Heather and Sarah, that's awesome. This sounds very complicated, but wonderful. But like why, why talk about this? And here's the point of it all in my opinion, the point of it is.

Is that people who are, have found that balance of being able to flow through ordering chaos have longer sustained success. Those who find success through either end of the spectrum of high order, high chaos, they can find a short burst of success. But those who overwork themselves, they're insist in their order.

They get sick, they lose it. They burn out. It's not sustainable. Those who are, who are highly chaotic and they have no order in their lives. It's not sustainable. They're going to make a very grave error somewhere. So the closer you can get to the middle, which takes work, self growth takes work. There's no short.

But that should be celebrated, that if you can identify that and celebrate that there is no hack, that there is no shortcut that it's the constant incremental movements on that scale you make every day. Sometimes you'll make leaps sometimes bounds. Sometimes you'll feel like you're moving backwards.

You're not gonna feel. And sometimes you have to take a step back to take two steps forward. So my argument is the sooner we can realize this and the sooner we can appreciate the role we play in each other's lives and not look at it as weaknesses and not be ashamed of who you are and what you've been through.

As long as you're making a forward movement towards the goal you've set for yourself. That's what I believe is the truth. Amazing. Thank you, Heather. Thank you so much for sharing with us today. And, uh, if our listeners wanted to ask more questions or get in touch with you, what is the best way to get in touch with you?

So, um, you can go to techology.com for your listeners specifically, if you go to typology.com/hi. Hello, Sarah. Then you'll have a special little greeting for your members only club. Absolutely. And, um, also if you I'm on all the social medias, but most, probably the most on Instagram, topology, or Facebook technology on animal training.

Amazing. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for the time and thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me as an absolute pleasure. Thank you listeners for joining us today. I will have all of Heather's information in the show notes. And if you enjoy the episode today, please do not hesitate to rate us on the mediums that be until next time.

I'm your host, Sura Al-Naimi