The Practice Ground | A Self-Improvement Podcast with Ken Li and Kari Watterson

What if self-doubt isn't always something we need to overcome? Impostor syndrome is usually framed as a confidence problem: something to conquer so we can finally believe in ourselves and move forward. But what if some amount of doubt can actually make us better learners, encourage us to prepare more thoughtfully, and remind us to ask for help when we don't know what we don't know? In this episode of The Practice Ground, Ken and Kari explore a different way of thinking about impostor syndrome...

One woman. So many different ways to be inspired by the way she lived. In the days following Dolly Parton's passing, tributes from around the world reflected the extraordinary range of what she meant to people. Artist. Songwriter. Businesswoman. Philanthropist. Storyteller. Trailblazer. Beloved by family, friends, collaborators, and generations of people who never knew her personally. Someone who seemed unmistakably, unapologetically herself. In this episode of The Practice ...

A good quote may make you stop. A great one might make you do something differently. In this episode of The Practice Ground, Ken and Kari each share a quote that has been guiding them lately. More than just words they find inspiring, these are ideas they’ve been putting into practice — and discovering what can happen when something that resonates begins to change the way we live. The quotes we’re presently living by Kari: Paraphrasing a principle she’s taken from Indiana football ...

What if a habit you've been trying to break isn't a failure of discipline — but a sequence you've become very good at repeating? In this episode of The Practice Ground, we take the cue-craving-response-reward framework from Episode 3 out of theory and into practice. Ken volunteers a habit he's wanted to change for some time: after late-night tennis, he often finds himself stopping for a burger, fries, or another favorite fast-food meal. As we unpack the habit, we discover that the craving isn...

What if struggling to stick with a habit isn't only about willpower or discipline — but how well the habit has been designed? In this episode of The Practice Ground, Ken and Kari explore James Clear's four-stage habit loop from Atomic Habits — cue, craving, response, and reward — and what it can look like to deliberately design and train that sequence in real life. Ken turns the conversation into a case study, asking Kari to deconstruct her experiment with running: Could she design the sequen...