SDS 022: SEOI PEI – The skin of water listen now

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Hello and welcome to the SuperDataScience podcast. And first off, I want to say thank you. Thank you so much for being a listener on this show. You have helped us grow substantially and really invite very interesting guests. Right now, when a new episode of the show comes out, over a thousand people listen to it on the very first day, and that’s a huge breakthrough for us at SuperDataScience and we couldn’t have done it without you, so thank you so much for being a part of this and that has allowed us to invite some very interesting and diverse guests onto the show.

So what is this concept of Five Minute Fridays all about? Well, just like you, I also follow people around the world. I listen to podcasts because I want to learn. I want to learn about their careers, about how they do things, and how to improve my own life. And one of the people I listen to, whose podcast I listen to, is Lewis Howes. He’s got a podcast called The School of Greatness, and if you haven’t heard of Lewis, or The School of Greatness, then I highly recommend checking it out. He’s got some very interesting guests who he invites onto his show and he shares some great ideas.

And basically on his podcast, Lewis, quite some time ago actually, started this concept of Five Minute Fridays, where instead of inviting a guest, he just shares his own thoughts with the listeners, he shares his own views and ideas, and things that inspired him. And I thought that was a great idea and I wanted to create something similar on our show. So we’re going to try out these Five Minute Fridays, and if you like them, let me know, and we’ll continue, and if you don’t, we’ll do something else. We’ll replace them with something else. Of course, everything is going to be based on the feedback you guys provide, so let me know how this goes.

And today we’re going to start with a very interesting concept. I really wanted to kick off this very first Five Minute Friday with something that you don’t normally encounter, or a thought that you don’t normally come across in our day to day lives. And it’s not necessarily related directly to analytics, and this is something that I wanted to warn you guys about, that probably these Five Minute Fridays are not going to be directly related to analytics, these are just thoughts and ideas that have inspired me to improve my career, improve my life, improve things that I do, and just become a better person in general.

So this first concept that we are going to talk about is called “seoi pei”. And it’s a Cantonese term which, in translation into English, means “the skin of water”. And so what is it all about and how did I come across this concept? Well, the story starts with my friend. My friend is a chiropractor, or a physio, and he has his own practice here in Australia, but he actually lived in Hong Kong for 20 years. And he is a master of kung fu, and he was really exposed to this Eastern culture, and he brought a lot of it back. And whenever I go over to see him, we have these very deep and meaningful conversations, and he shares his opinion on many things that are bothering me, but his opinion is very different to all the other people around me because of his exposure to all of this Cantonese culture, to all this Eastern medicine, to kung fu, and he has these very interesting philosophical points.

And I don’t really remember what exactly prompted this conversation, but basically he was explaining that sometimes, as people, we actually have two sides to our personalities, or two sides to who we are. We have the surface, we have what we want to show other people, and then we have who we actually are deep inside. And hence the term “seoi pei”, or the skin of water, because the ocean, just like that, as well, has the surface and it has what’s deep inside. So it has the skin of the water, or the surface, and it has the actual depths deep down inside.

And a good example is when, for instance, you’re going on a first date with somebody new and you wear your best clothes, you really want to impress that other person, you want to smell nice, you want to have these interesting conversations. So you really prepare for this first date, and then you go and you have a great time, and basically you really do impress this other person. But then let’s imagine that 3 or 5 months later, you’re both sitting on the couch, you’re already dating, and you’re just watching a movie and eating pizza. And you are completely not that person who went on that first date. You are now entirely yourself, that person who you actually are. And so that is an illustration of the concept of “seoi pei”, and not only does it happen on dates, it can happen at interviews, when you want to really impress the people that are interviewing you, but then when you actually join the team, you’re more comfortable being yourself and slowly with time, your behaviour changes as compared to what it was on the interview. And in lots of other situations in life where we have to, for the first time, show ourselves or present ourselves to other people.

And what he was explaining was that, if you find that when you go to these events, or when these times happen, when you are interacting with new people for the first time, if you find that you are being a different person, that might mean that you’re not entirely comfortable being yourself. That you are putting on this mask, or on this show, because the person who you are deep down inside, you know that that person has certain flaws, or certain habits, or certain behaviours that are going to detract other people away from you. And basically what he was saying is that it’s like the ocean. It’s like the skin of water. Yes, you can put on this mask for the first interaction, for a couple of interactions, but later, eventually, people will still find out the real you. They will still look beneath the surface of the water. And that is where all the substance is. That is where the real you lives. And that is what they will eventually see. And if you’re not comfortable with who you are, then sooner or later, if you think that you will detract people just because you’re not comfortable with who you are, sooner or later that will come out.

So basically his advice was that you should be comfortable to present to other people who you are, that surface of the water, and that the depths of the water should be maximally aligned. And therefore you should be comfortable presenting who you are. And if they’re not, that could be a signal that there’s something that you can work on to become a better person.

So there we go, that was the concept of “seoi pei” and that was our very first Five Minute Friday session. So what did you think? Let me know if you enjoy this format, if you’d like to hear more inspirational or interesting ideas that I come across in my life. I’d really like to know your thoughts. You can leave your comments on the SuperDataScience website at www.superdatascience.com/22 or you can leave them if you’re listening on Soundcloud right in the track. And yeah, basically we’re going to do about a month of these and based on your feedback we’ll either continue them or we’ll think of some other format to replace them.

And I really hope you enjoyed today’s episode and maybe picked up something new for yourself. And on that note, thank you very much for listening to this show. Thank you very much for being a subscriber. I really appreciate you and I can’t wait to see you next time. And until then, happy analyzing.