Lance - Survivor Archetypes: Allowing Curiosity & Wonder

I could have spent this entire episode talking about the many amazing things that Lance already has experienced in his life. He was the first deaf player to play in the NBA. His family escaped polygamy and an FLDS act that his own grandfather created. And the TED Talk he gave in Salt Lake City, where he challenged his audience to think about their thought, patterns and beliefs that they may have adopted without question. But that would have completely missed the point. Instead, today, we get to learn about the person. Lance has become his understanding of archetype and how they help him make sense of our world. We discuss absolutes and abstracts, how conflicting truths can coexist, and the real cost of speaking the truth. We talk about death and rebirth, understanding boundaries and questioning our own existence, what it means to be truly free, and how he has let go of the truth with a capital T to explore the world with curiosity and wonder. To be sure, Lance has had noteworthy experiences, both good and bad, but to spend some time getting to know him as a person is certainly a conversation you won't want to miss. 

Transcript

SYK Episode 123 – Lance: Survivor Archetypes - Allowing Curiosity & Wonder

TOPICS: Absolutes & Abstracts, Simulation Theory, “What’s Your Polygamy” TedX Salt Lake, The price of speaking truth, Conflicting truths can co-exist, Archtypes, Curiosity & Wonder, Deconstruction, Death & Rebirth, Are we brave enough to let something die (systems, self, story) and bravely step into a new consciousness.

MUSIC 

Lance [00:00:04] But if I'm just here, allow myself to live in the abstract. For me, it allows life to remain magical. Yeah, I have gone through despair when I was breaking away, when I did the whole thing. Okay. I have absolute truth. Wait. It's all bullshit. I swung over. There is no God at all. It's all a cosmic joke and I nearly kill myself and have. And to get to a place where I come into the middle of allowing life to be magical and having the courage to admit every day, I have no idea what's going on. 

MUSIC

Brian [00:00:38] I could have spent this entire episode talking about the many amazing things that Lance already has experienced in his life. He was the first deaf player to play in the NBA. His family escaped polygamy and an FLDS act that his own grandfather created. And the TED Talk he gave in Salt Lake City, where he challenged his audience to think about their thought, patterns and beliefs that they may have adopted without question. But that would have completely missed the point. Instead, today, we get to learn about the person. Lance has become his understanding of archetype and how they help him make sense of our world. We discuss absolutes and abstracts, how conflicting truths can coexist, and the real cost of speaking the truth. We talk about death and rebirth, understanding boundaries and questioning our own existence, what it means to be truly free, and how he has let go of the truth with a capital T to explore the world with curiosity and wonder. To be sure, Lance has had noteworthy experiences, both good and bad, but to spend some time getting to know him as a person is certainly a conversation you won't want to miss. 

MUSIC

Brian [00:01:41] What's something about you that people get wrong? They just assume. 

Lance [00:01:45] They assume that. I would say I'm an asshole. 

Brian [00:01:51] They just buy one look. They're like, that guy's an asshole. 

Lance [00:01:56] Well, a lot of a couple of things. One, people who ask me as a basketball player, you know, the tribalism is activated when sports fans watch other teams compete against their teams. Yeah. And just because maybe I got a where I was a little ornery that night or hyper competitive, they see me in that one snapshot and they assume that's how I am all the time. But then there's also with the hearing loss, you know, it's a double edged sword. Being in speech therapy til I was 16 to speak this way. A lot of people don't realize how bad my hearing loss actually is. Yeah. And so I'll be walking around, and sometimes people will then get in my face and say, Hey, you're an asshole. I asked you a question. I'm so sorry. I didn't hear it. Yeah, especially during COVID, people got really activated. But Kobe was kind of a blessing for me with all the facemask, because it really taught me to finally just be comfortable and okay, I'm not able to read people's lips. Just walking through the grocery store. If people are triggered by me just being me and not having any ill intent to be rude, but they're still getting triggered. That's their issue. And I might be able to have healthy boundaries with that, but that that so I would say that's the biggest thing I would usually call out right away. I'm not as I'm not as intimidating or standoffish as people think I am. 

Brian [00:03:19] Okay. Okay. Okay. So I also wanted to ask you about your TEDx talk. Yeah, great talk, by the way. Thank you. I'm curious to know how you felt in delivering it and right after you're delivering this message of leaving the FLDS Church. So in Salt Lake, so you're talking to a bunch of predominant Mormons. So they're not FLDS. They're listening to you leaving about that religion, but you're talking to them about the roadblocks of their religion and how it's limiting their thinking. And how did that come across at the time as being weird? It's like they're not getting this. They're not getting that this applies to them or they are and they're offended by it or. 

Lance [00:04:00] That's a really good question. I can see some people in the crowd getting really uncomfortable, but I also knew if I was going to do Ted BYU. Obviously that's a very different setup. And Ted. Salt Lake City, you know, as you know, Salt Lake City itself, since the Olympics has become very metropolitan. Yeah, that is actually quite liberal. USA Today ranked it was in 2016 the number one gay city in America. And a lot of people don't understand there's a misnomer about Salt Lake City compared to Utah, which obviously is hyper conservative. But yeah, the whole premise of what is your polygamy, really the gist of any experience in any speaker, I challenged you. Can you take your experiences and make them applicable to everybody? Okay. You find a teaching point in all of your challenges and pass it off as wisdom to another and that. Ted talk Brian I probably spent over 500 hours on wow because you know, someone asked me to go do a keynote speech and I have an hour. That's easy because I can ramble, I can go off on tangents, but I can get back on track. But when he got 30 minutes, that's it. And you have to make sure you have the biggest impact possible in 13 minutes. And so all the time that I was spending on that, I was also weaving my grieving process because I was going through a divorce. That's why I was retiring from basketball and I didn't want to be away from my son. He was 15 months at the time and also as a way to really amplify my message on the speaking circuit, because I kept getting pigeonholed, Oh, we already had an athlete come speak to our convention last year, right? I'm like, I'm more than an athlete. And that's another one where people get wrong about me. To answer your question, I actually just happened to be a writer who happened to play basketball as a kid. With my hearing loss and being speech therapy, my parents encouraged me to read and write as a form of communication. And so I was at the elementary school winning the writing awards, and I didn't start playing basketball until I was 14, when my family escaped from polygamy as a way to really blend in and adjust and find new friends. And I grew so much that year. It was just kind of something you did in the mid-nineties with the Utah Jazz and Karl Malone and John Stockton. We were basketball crazy back then. Yeah, all that coming back to the point of I knew I needed an opportunity to showcase that I was much more than just an athlete as a speaker, being able to tap into emotional concepts to trauma and abuse and the inner work that is required for us to come out of that. To our own self actualization, where we are responsible for our own triggers and our own trauma. Instead of projecting it onto the world and expecting some soul mate or anybody else out there to save us. And so all that being said was your very poignant question you asked was, what did I feel when I was doing it? It was really it was me honoring my grieving cycle and the many other open ended grieving cycles in my past that I hadn't closed, like my time in the NBA and how political it got. Having to leave all my friends and cousins behind, we broke away from polygamy. There were a lot of grieving cycles. I didn't know how to really complete and let go and honor. And so the TED process really was a beautiful, symbolic movement of being able to open up, go deep into the layers, and then wrap it back up mostly with clarity. And clarity is the best metric that I strive for as far as success. How do I measure success? Clear clarity that my worth is not attached to an outcome, clarity that my worth is not attached to someone else's perception or limitations of me. Clarity that systems are simply systems that people in power need to emphasize to have other people do their bidding. So systems remain in power. Systems need buy in. If there's no buy in here, irrelevant, they die. And so, like with the LDS Church or any organized religion, the religions really preach. You have to be childlike. And so they're subconsciously activating the child archetype where things are black and white. And it's brilliant for a child because the world is so complex and our brains are just developing that children have to view the world in black and white narratives. They're bad, we're good. Why does something bad happened to me? Well, for me it was God was angry with me because I had been unfaithful in the prior existence. And that's why I had hearing loss as my Sunday school teacher told me. It's ridiculous and absurd, incredibly emotionally and religiously, spiritually abusive, that as a child I was like, Oh, okay, that's simple. I can understand that. Yeah. And so when they have is remain in that child archetype, one of the four survivor archetypes and Carl Jung the child saboteur prostituting the victim. When we're in the child, we're staying in a black and white narrative, us versus them. Our religion is the one true church. They're the bad guys, they're the Gentiles. And they need us to stay in that narrative to keep supporting the system. And so being able to go into Salt Lake City in the heart of the Mormon world or the church office building, all that, even though you could say BYU is now, you've got candidates to hold it. But all being able to really challenge a lot of people, even the what would you call that, the Mormon apologist type or the Mormons who can say, Oh, I just put that on my shelf and I'll leave it to God. Right? Yeah. I can't make sense of it. 

Brian [00:09:30] That nuanced. 

Lance [00:09:32] Mormon. Yeah. Thank you. Then being able to do that. But then I come in and I reaffirm or I clarify their actual history with some subtle things like that. Some more founders of the Mormon faith did declare You need at least two, but actually three. I slept there, three wives. You get the highest degree of glory in the kingdom. And for a lot of Mormons, they think, Oh, no, that's a lie. I'm a the funny thing that was challenging them, but you and I know the most anti-Mormon literature out there is in every Mormon family library. That's your discourses, right? Right. But they've never read it. Right, because that would be too much work to not do their homework. And so what is your polygamy was a whole lot of thing going. And as you see in just 30 minutes, being able to cover as much ground as I did. Yeah. Was important, not just professionally for the speaking circuit to show the emotional intelligence concept and the self-actualization concept of empowerment and accountability, but to also show just the layers of systemic manipulation and oppression that we all go through and how are we going to rise through it. And starting today, Salt Lake City being the opening speaker at 9 a.m. in the morning where people are just coming in with their coffees. 

Brian [00:10:55] Or no candies or a lot of. 

Lance [00:10:56] Coffees. Yeah. 

Brian [00:10:57] No caffeine at all. 

Lance [00:10:58] No caffeine. And to still get a standing ovation right out of the gate. Yeah, it was okay. I did what I needed to do. And that's probably one of the proudest moments in my life, just to just be in such a dark place. And in my basketball career, going through that divorce, the heartache, the heartbreak, struggling to make that new career really get through. And divorce is brutal, is expensive to clean me out. And I do. I have what it takes, which is, am I just living a pipe dream again? And when I deliver that and I saw the response responses, like, I finally found my message, my voice. How can I weave in a spiritual or emotional? And also somewhat religious context in a professional way that doesn't make corporations and others uncomfortable. When I bring up the concept of polygamy and whatnot and being able to weave it all in and so all of it people were triggered, I know not everyone's going to like me, not even Jesus or Gandhi could get everyone to like. I mean, they were assassinated. How could I even hope to have a better batting record average than they did? And so just knowing that for the most part, I was able to deliver the message and people heard it. It was a very fulfilling experience for me and again, probably one of the top five moments of my life, I would say, yeah. 

Brian [00:12:20] It was a great talk. I love a lot. So many of the comments we're talking about, how hard that hit them and how succinct it was and how much information you got into that 30 minutes. And a lot of the one comment was, see where I wrote it down. You shared energy. You shined energy on my broken soul. And I'm like, what could be a higher compliment than. 

Lance [00:12:37] I thank you. I actually don't read comments as a basketball player. You know, growing up in the nineties, as a teenager, growing up with the nineties, with the birth of chatrooms, you learned the hard way. You don't go there. Yeah, yeah. Because most people don't have anything nice to say. So I actually appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. 

Brian [00:12:54] I mean, they, they all have an opinion on how you should play or how you should think, how you should act. But they have no idea what's behind all of it. Right. So yeah, yeah. Thanks for sharing that. So you've mentioned a couple of times I want to go a little bit deeper in it. You mentioned in your TED talk, you left polygamy and you left the FLDS religion and you mentioned now you left some cousins. And we both know it's not as simple as just leaving. You know, you don't just get on a plane. Tell me about that process and what you left behind and how painful that was and what it cost you to say, I'm not doing this anymore. And I heard you say this morning that your family left you or you had some support, that desire. A little bit about that. I'm kind of interested. 

Lance [00:13:36] So there's such a cost to that. That's oh, there is. There is. My family situation is very unique. My father was groomed to be the heir to the oil rig group. But you be your pastor, other connected brethren ruling, all of it. And Rulon Jeffs, we're contemporaries in Short Creek, but they split and Warren Jeffs succeeded. His father and Rulon started his own group, AUP, and he was the most successful, most popular at the time in the seventies when he was assassinated in 1977, 76. I apologize. He had the most money and most influence and was most nationally renowned. He was on the cover of Life magazine in the forties when he was in prison, but he leveraged that to amplify his message and his calling. And why running was successful is that he didn't want his followers dressing like Little House on the Prairie. He told us to dress like normal people and go out into the world and get real jobs and bring all your money back. So the Short Creek Jeffs model of being agrarian and excluded from society, society keeps him impoverished, whereas rule his model was bringing in a lot of money. But he was also clever. And he said that the LDS church, the mainstream church is not wrong. They have the first ten levels. They just don't have access to the final three levels of truth of the gospel. Okay. So he was able to let people when he was converting them from the church, you feel like they had a waste of their life. They were now just getting an upgrade. Okay, you're being sold at a higher level. But he was very clever that way. And with all that money he had, he was making, he was a huge target. And that's why removal the baron went after him or evil. A baron was in prison with my grandfather in the forties and the arrival of Baron was then saying, Oh well, Rulon swore fealty to me in the forties, and so he's now my subject and he owed me all the money. And Rulon said, Yeah, I know I did it. And so he sent his 10th wife, a 16 year old, to Salt Lake City from Mexico. And she sat there and she shot him. And as the medical office, lots of drama there. I don't have to go. I don't have time to go into. But this is before the day and age of cell phones and everything. And Ruland had so many different paths throughout the game out in the West. And so how a 16 year old girl knew where he was going to be exactly at the right time is pretty suspect. And my dad and I discussed a lot of that. By the time when William was assassinated, he actually was starting to learn that a lot of his apostles were abusing their kids. There were pretty shady, disgusting people. And William was about to he was learning about this. And shortly around that time, that's when he was killed. So we have a feeling we don't want to go all conspiracy theory, but the likelihood of there being an inside job of assistance is pretty high. And so my father was the middle child, the ruler for the ruler's 48 kids. He was the closest with all the other siblings. He had the strongest relationships. He was also the theologian, the doctrinaire, the photographic memory. He did recall Scripture. Sure. Just like that. And his second wife left shortly after I was born. So she took her three kids, moved to Australia. So I grew up in a monogamous home within a polygamous society. My older siblings and the youngest, my older siblings remember being in a polygamous family. I don't had all of my other cousins and aunts and uncles living in polygamy, and there was always this feeling of inadequacy because we weren't plural that way, and that because of that, Dad could not be called to the Quorum of the 12 Apostles. You have to have at least two wives to do that. But my father was his uncle owned Google, and his brother succeeded. And when he, Rulon, was killed and only had my father as his right hand man, his theologian. So my father wrote all sorts of manifestos and documents and pamphlets throughout my 13 years growing up, he was the Bruce McConkey of the OC. And so when I was 13, Rulon, I'm sorry. Oh, and finally shared some information with Dad about he was worried because there was some money laundering for the Vegas mob going on. But then also that what Rulon had learned. My father discovered that several of the apostles were sexually abusing their kids for years. And so my father finally said, no, that's not okay, because he was a purist. He believed in rule and always interpretation of Mormonism, which was very much adhering to Joseph Smith doctrine ruling. The bar is very low as far as polygamous cult leaders. But Rulon was the most ethical in that he never brought in new revelation or new doctrine that veered away from Joseph Smith. Rulon was a very strong purist, and by that you could say it is quite ethical not taking liberties with the 13th article of Faith that says, You know what? We get God's revelation tomorrow to basically give us some but get out of jail free card that we can do whatever we want without any accountability. Yeah rule and stuck strictly to Joseph Smith principles. And so my father blew the whistle on that and then it got hairy really fast. And he calls people at the pulpit. We're calling for dads for blood atonement against my father. And so the FBI came and got us out of our home and took us into hiding. And so my parents and my four siblings, the five kids or seven of us went into hiding in the Beaver Mountains. My mom's side of the family did not was not polygamist, was not fundamentalist. So her uncle was Don Rip Finger, former Tabernacle Choir director. And so they put us up in some of the family areas in Beaver, Utah, where we hid out for like four months. Just no communication, no electricity, just propane and all that stuff. And so when I was a 13 year old kid, it was a huge, jarring experience because my cousins had been my best friends and that Blood Brothers community. People want to know why people are drawn. The Colts. Yes, some people are sociopaths and they see opportunities to exploit. Some people want a validation of knowing that they're special. Some people have had something horribly traumatic happen to them and they need something that makes sense and they need to believe, Oh, well, this all set me up for a higher purpose. But I would say the majority are drawn into the sense of community that is so addictive and so consuming. Being able to lose yourself in a common cause and forget about your own issues, your own ego, your own dreams, and being able to give yourself to something bigger than you. We, we we crave that. We seek that. And we want our independence. But we also want to have a sense of community. You can't really have both. Right? And so you can still find a fine line of being your own unique self and contributing to something larger than yourself. But it's a hard place to find that balance. And I will always miss. Growing up in the Montana wilderness. I grew up in Montana till I was seven in one pod, and then we moved to Utah in the main headquarters in the Bluffdale Utah area. And the sense of community being able to fall and scrape my knee and there would be some mom there to pick me up and bandage me up and give me a peanut butter sandwich to send me on my way and to have all these kids around you. And Pine Cone was like running around like Lord of the Flies and everything. And it's just lots of magical memories. And then to be suddenly cut off from my cousins who protected me that way, because when we moved to Utah, we actually did go to a public school and all of name in the eighties were still very synonymous with polygamy. I was the biggest kid as a second grader in the whole entire school, and I had the big hearing aids and they talked funny. So I was actually a huge target of bullying and very shy and introverted. But my cousins, they accepted me and they had to accept me because that was their blood. We were all that. And so the comfort of not having to develop my social skills, of just being able to know, hey, you know what, if I'm annoying people, whatever I say is because I'm in all of that and not only have to work on social nuances as a kid, that's very assuring and comfortable, but it definitely as an adult doesn't serve you. But so at the age of in the eighth grade, when my family moved to downtown Salt Lake, hiding in plain sight in the East High School area, that's when I grew from 510 to 6 four, didn't have any friends. No one knew my background. Family then did join the mainstream LDS church and I'm glad they did because it allowed me to just be normal and just blend in. But that was a tough process because we had to go be interviewed at a church office building. My father was a part of my family, enemy number one, because, again, he had all the manifestos, the recruiting material. So the church knew who he was. And so when he said he wanted to join the church, they're like you here to just secretly convert other people. And so a lot. The scrutiny, a lot of investigation. And I was told by President Foust my interview was with him. You can now let anyone know about your background. So I had to have a very, almost schizophrenic compartmentalize life to completely cut that part of me off. Go into middle school, blame middle school and high school were people, hey, here's this guy, this new kid he knows all about, and he's answering all the questions and Seminary. What's going on? How does he know more than us? I'm like I just to a lot this summer. Having to keep all that quiet and then really just, you know, do my best to keep my head low as I slowly assimilated myself into this new world. It was a lot. And I developed a strain of OCD called Scrupulously, which is composed. I was compulsively praying because at that age I'm going through puberty and going 510 to 6 four. And Jim Carrey's the mask came out at that time, and I saw Cameron Diaz for the first time and my body starts feeling things. And the last the last teaching I got in priesthood meeting in the all group in the the strange strain was that masturbation leads to homosexuality and homosexuality is the greatest sin in the world, which is completely stupid. Now, you and I know, but when you're a kid and you're really believe in the hell out of darkness and all these things. Even though we were breaking away from polygamy, we were still going into Mormonism. And so, therefore, what teachings are not accurate that you absorb as a kid? What are what are we taking with us? But actually, we're the purest. So we're taking all the information with us and then having very little stability in my social network with my cousins there that I remember. The urge came to take care of myself sexually as a kid going into puberty and I ran into the bathroom. I started praying and I said, Please God, don't be angry with me because I really thought this might mean, oh, I might be gay, which no, if I'm attracted to a woman named Cameron Diaz, it pretty much means I'm not. But that's what the OCD kicks in this as well. But what if I am? And so it was a compulsive praying. 

Brian [00:25:14] Well, teenage life is strange enough as it is, right. These hormones that are chemicals that are taking over your body, in your case, you've got these. And you mentioned the truth with a capital T. You've got all these truths that you grew up with, and now you're being handled handed a set of slightly different truths. And you in part of being a teenager, you also have to decide, well, but these truths conflict. Yeah. And so how do you know which one is truth? Because clearly there is still a truth, right? I mean, there's absolutely a truth and everything is still black and white because that's still what you've been taught. Right. So there's no nuance. There's no ability to think for yourself. There's no ability to have the critical thought of like, well, what do you think? You don't look at yourself as a source. So you're looking at these critical thought, these critical truths, and they conflict. Mm hmm. Can you talk a little bit about how you dealt with that? Because. 

Lance [00:26:06] I mean, yeah, it was I was either going to go crazy. My parents, I started seeing this counselor again that I've been fortunate in life is always pushing me outside of my comfort zones. From the early age of having to wear my hearing aids. I hated my hearing aids and being a speech therapy three times a week, being reminded wasn't normal. But when we moved to Utah when I was seven, the bullying was happening. My parents actually put me in therapy because I was having suicidal depression as a kid in elementary school. But luckily that began to put me on and living in a quiet world and having a therapist tell me it's okay to have inner critical thought to ask difficult questions. But that's a scary, nebulous path to begin as a child, as you know, when your frontal lobe wasn't fully developed. And that's where you truly discern fact from fiction, that critical thought, that's not solidified really until we're 21, 22. And so being able to go on, that's rocky terrain as a young child, but then having all of these absolute issues so that me and I still I'm not able to provide for my own self. I'm still relying on my father, who still very much believes in Joseph Smith and trying to make it all fit. It really was becoming a problem. But luckily when the OCD started kicking in, that's when the basketball coach saw me walking down the hall, said, Hey, your toys can play basketball. And like I've never played before, my inner ear and balance was atrocious with my hearing loss, and I'm like, Well, I guess it'll be a good way to blend in and make more friends. And that's why I was able to channel minor options. And my teammates, God bless them, were so patient with me because I was so neurotic, so intense, so high strung, because, one, I have all these neuroses and OCD kicking in and I'm trying to just channel that. But also there's still the narrative that God is angry with me because I. Brigham Young said Black people black is just sat on the fence in the great holy war in the pre existence. And so therefore that must mean I did something wrong to the have a disability. And I was literally playing for my soul that every made or missed shot had eternal ramifications and was a question of how much I was doing for God. Now, as brutal and as harsh, the beautiful question is, if I had had that neuroses and that drive, would it have propelled me as far in basketball as it did that allowed me to become a professional basketball player? I don't know. But I see with gratitude and beauty being able to look back on it. The drive it gave me. And was it always fun? No. I was so intense that I would be myself up over every made or miss shot and apologize and pray to God and say I'm sorry. And I have a lot of heartbreak for that younger man. 

Brian [00:28:49] But doing his best, right? Yes. He's in a tough situation. 

Lance [00:28:54] Yes. And I have so much respect for him. Yeah. How much he was able to hold and endure quietly, silently. My heart breaks for him. But I have tremendous respect and the inner resolve and the inner resources that he had that he didn't know he had defined it, but also being blessed with an amazing coach in high school, Carrie Rupp, who has been very successful in the collegiate arena since he coached me. And that is how a lot of those challenges they were, they were channeled. But again, a lot of my teammates were just like, hey, they're just kids playing basketball because they're having fun. And they would look at me like, Dude, it's just a missed shot or do we lost is okay, we'll get the next one. 

Brian [00:29:39] Yeah. That wasn't your world. 

Lance [00:29:41] That wasn't my world. My world was life and death, like literally blind. I was raised in a world where my father and everyone believed that we probably were going to have to die for our beliefs because the martyr archetype was so strong. My grandfather was literally a martyr, and that is imprinted in my DNA, that ancestral trauma. And so everything is black and white. Everything is life and death. And then coming into another world where, hey, you know, we pick and choose what we want from church and everything. I'm like, That's not how it goes. Basketball was like, We pick and choose what we want as a man. No, that's not what Coach said. This is fundamental basketball. These are this is the right way to do it. 

Brian [00:30:17] You never miss a field. Field throw a free throw. You never. It's the easiest shot ever. You just never miss. Sometimes you do. I mean. 

Lance [00:30:24] Yeah. 

Brian [00:30:24] Did you did you ever act out? Was that ever big? It sounds like most of yours was just all inward. 

Lance [00:30:30] I, I never talk back to my coaches, but I would you refs okay I would do you up that teammates if they like. I remember one time we had a loss and I was very upset because before the game one of my teammates said, hey, if we lose, I'm still going on the Christmas dance with Andy Duncan. And to me, it was a bigger deal and we lost. And I can tell he was just fine. And I directed Adam in the locker room afterwards, and my coach came and said, No, if you ever do that again, hit the road. Jack Yeah. And he held me to the fire. He held me with accountability, and I honor him, and I love him for that. And I mean that. God bless my teammates. I was not the easiest teammate to have, but I can't I wasn't able to articulate. They didn't know I came from polygamy. They didn't know my background. Right. I couldn't just say, hey, guys, I came from a really fucked up situation. I'm dealing with all these neuroses here and I'm sorry I'm taking it out on you. Yeah, I would have cleared up a lot of things for them. No. 

Brian [00:31:24] Maybe when you're 25 or 35, you come out of that right. Not being in the hormones, arranging. And exactly. This game has eternal consequences. And it doesn't matter who you're going out with after that has nothing to do with it. 

Lance [00:31:36] Yeah, absolutely. And so no, I definitely had a lot of pent up, but also to my parents. One day I came home with attitudes. I had a frustrating practice and they grounded me and they grounded me from practice the next day. So I was in trouble with Sam and I was in trouble with my coach. And so I learned very quickly, again, compartmentalize nicely into off the court, cutthroat lands on the court. And so, again, almost schizophrenic. And I didn't learn how to truly integrate. And when I retired from basketball, I had to learn that because a lot of athletes who retire kill themselves depression, food, gambling, addictions, all sorts of things because they think they have to leave the athlete behind. It's about taking the same athlete archetype into a new arena, to a new professional, learning to adapt and pivot. And the athlete is inspiring for people who don't understand sports. The athlete is the one person that we can watch who improvises in real time. Politicians are scripted, actors are scripted, musical acts are rehearsed. Soldiers have to improvise. But we can't watch that. But we admire them. Athletes and soldiers have to improvise in real time, and that's something that people watch and admire. And me learning to take that ability to be flexible and adaptable into the new arena is just something I very much had to learn to do. But it was. It took a lot of work to really then say, okay, I have to break down that barrier. Nice Lance and dark Lance. I have to be able to integrate them, which once you integrate all aspects of who you are, you become less extreme, less volatile. If I can healthily be no, this is the clear boundary. You're not going to go there rather than being the nice guy until I eventually blow up. Because I'm not communicating my needs, integrating them, and finally learning how to set healthy, compassionate boundaries because you're honoring other people and yourself when you're being very clear on your boundaries. And if they have an issue with that, that's their problem. Boundary is a lot of people use to control other people. They overcorrect with boundaries to try to control the room and hold that hostage. If you don't do it, I'm going to leave. But it's no more being able to say no, these are my boundaries and I honor where you're at. But I only go so far. And so really having to learn how to do all those was very much a challenge. But it really did move me out of the volatility. And your question was a poignant one and the 2 to 1. How much should I blow up? I blew up a lot. I did, but it was on the basketball court where it was appropriate to do so. 

Brian [00:34:05] Right, right, right. That's part of the game there. 

Lance [00:34:08] Right. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. 

Brian [00:34:10] Yeah. You can kind of excuse it even to yourself because you care about the game so much. 

Lance [00:34:14] Right? 

Brian [00:34:15] Right. That's how you kind of make this is so important and you do. But you use that as an excuse to behave poorly and that's not necessarily the best thing. Okay. So you've had a lot of crazy things thrown at you in your life. What you already said, what the what you're most proud of. What was that? What's the bravest thing you've done was something that was just so hard for you to do that. Oh. 

Lance [00:34:37] That was a whole the University of Utah fiasco, where I played two years at the University of Utah, committed to University of Utah in 1998, the year they lost to Kentucky in a national championship game. And I only live five blocks away from the Huntsman Center. So it's something you do when you're the hometown kid. 

Brian [00:34:55] If you're lucky. Yeah, if you have the opportunity. That's absolutely right. Yeah. 

Lance [00:34:59] But you get to represent your community. You got to pay back to your community. And at first, that marriage was matures was a beautiful relationship because she was the most brilliant action of mine I've ever played for and a brutal taskmaster who's practices were just brutal. But me with my mindset were I can never do enough. And I was trying to earn my way to heaven as well. If I can make the NBA, God will be proud of me and I'll get to heaven. Who's trying to get me to the NBA Oregon jerseys because he's going to keep Dan Horn. Mike, do you acknowledge Emily to the NBA? Yeah, that's how I'm going to do it. And so in a world where I was taught where I needed a mediator between me and God, my grandfather Rulon owned the I don't I'm not worthy to have a direct relationship with a higher power with a universe or a consciousness or a creation. I call it creation because creation allows me to feel that I am in it as it's happening and I'm not separate from it. Okay. Therefore. Oh, well, I put them on a pedestal. It's very easily in my current wiring and the way my brain works to put Majerus on a pedestal. He's my man, my prophet. And so I hang on his every word. And again, that at first that relationship was perfect because I went above and beyond all the time. I can never do enough because again, I was playing for my soul. Yeah. Sophomore year began to unravel, though. His mother got cancer and he just spun out. And among other things, like fingers, like Lance. Just so there's no miscommunication, I'm going to finish spelling for you. You are a capital C Umt just that kind of stuff was happening. But then he had us on the baseline one day in front of the whole team and anything I ever confirmed could be confirmed by others. And you learn that the hard way. It's just you don't do it. He said, she said game. Yeah, something this big happens and he had us on the baseline and he lined us all up and he's going through insulting us as was his way. And then he looked at me and said, Lance, you know, you're the worst of all. You use your hearing as an excuse to weasel your way through life and you're just a disgrace to cripples. And if I was in a wheelchair and I said, play basketball, shoot myself. And so I had been playing basketball for five years. At this point, I couldn't play with my hearing aids and my very first game in eighth grade, I was ejected because the ref thought I was ignoring him and so I had to learn to keep my head on a swivel player visually, intuitively reading people's body language, quickly assessing where my teammates are and knowing, okay, that's the play we're running, having to do it in just a very different way. But that allowed me to see in a very different way, and that's what allowed me to be a very different player from other people that I could go almost anywhere in my own little bubble and people would try to talk trash to me. I'm like, Save a man, I can't even hear you. Which only made them more angry. All right? It just allowed me to see if I just stay in my own rhythm, in my own pace. The only person that can guard me is me. Because I play in such a different way. And so having to learn those skills with coach up and high school and all that work and then to have your idol, your prophet, just stab you right in the jugular with it destroyed. And people say, oh, you know what? You got to be tougher skinned than that. And that's the thing is, we're still human. Yeah. Especially as a 40 year old man. If someone said that to me, I say, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Indicates I've checked out. But when you're 19 years old, as you know, people, the world expects you to be gladiators, but you're still a human. 

Brian [00:38:27] Well, it is not the first thing and only time he ever said it, right? I mean, this is just that just been piled on to somebody else or this is the last straw kind of thing. So it's absolutely just ignoring one comment. Yeah, I know. I can do that. It was tell you in day out two year. 

Lance [00:38:41] It was two years of it. And that's what emotional abuse is. And I'm not saying that Jerry still love us, but an abusive husband may love his spouse. But does that mean what he's doing to her is okay? No, not by any means. Yeah. And it speaks volumes of the home that he was probably raised, and we can have compassion for that, but it doesn't mean we enable or absolve. Right. But I'm telling the story not as a victim, but to get to a teaching point that integrity has a cost. And I was ready to quit basketball after that sophomore year. And I only got one scholarship offer and that was to go play for Weber State because coach Joe Cravens had at one point been an assistant for cherries at Utah. So he knew what went on behind closed doors. And I was being blackballed by all the other schools and I had an attitude problem, etcetera, etcetera. I was too deaf, but my church was telling them to deaf and so I went and played at Weber and slowly Coach Craven's built my confidence back up. This is before the transfer portal rules, but back then I had the red shirt when I transferred schools and that season, Coach Craven says, You have definitely been over coached. I know what you've been through. I'm not going to say one word to you this season. During practice, you just learn to love the game again. And so there are points about what a gift. 

Brian [00:39:56] What a gift and some fresh air. And that can be for a second. 

Lance [00:39:59] And it was it was beautiful. And I have so much gratitude for Coach Craven. She was too good of a human being to be a college basketball coach. That after my senior year, the next season was a tough year and they fired him. He wasn't political enough. He wasn't cruel enough. He was a beautiful human being. And I love that man. And my junior year, Utah came and played us and I actually had a really, really good game the most all other players that left majors this system, only one out of three players survived his program for years. Everyone who left either transferred and was a bust and just completely didn't do anything or they quit. So there was no challenge to the majors narrative that these players just weren't good enough. It was able to be affirmed. Oh yeah, they just weren't very good and whatever. But when they came and played Weaver, even though we lost, I had a very exceptional game and everyone like, Wait, hold on, Rand. Sorry, it doesn't suck. What's going on here? Yeah, and I had former teammates. 

Brian [00:40:57] And for you guys, why is he over there. 

Lance [00:40:59] Now? Exactly. If he's playing this good, how do we let him go? Yeah, I didn't spread these. What had happened. All my former teammates, the Johnson brothers and then Jeff Johnson, great players, great people. Their parents knew what was going on and they began to tell other people what had happened. And eventually they got to the newspaper. And so after that game, well, the Deseret News came up to me before the game and asked about it. I'm like, I can't open a can of worms before this game. I have to. I have to put up, yeah. Before I cry foul. But otherwise it's just sour grapes, right? I have to back up my talk. And so I did what I did. And then Gordon Monson, when the Salt Lake Tribune came and invited me and he said, I'm hearing some rumors of this kind of stuff went down, is that true? And I had a moment. Their brain was okay, I can break the unspoken rule of the locker room code of silence, which will then trigger word through all the basketball levels to coaches that this is a guy who does not keep secrets and potentially jeopardize my possible professional career because majors had a lot of clout over the levels. Yep. Or I can speak truth. And if I do not speak my truth. One the price my parents paid for speaking truth and what it cost them when they lost everything will have been for nothing. And to all those hours I spent in speech therapy, thousands of hours until I was 16. To learn to speak this way, it will have been for nothing if I die, if I do not use my words to be true. And so I confirmed what happened. The front page of the Salt Lake Tribune a week later matures, resigned. I knew was going to have a cost. It had a huge cost. It followed me throughout my professional career into the NBA. There's a lot of politics. It's a corporate world and there's not much money involved. Of course it's political. 

Brian [00:42:47] Yeah, and it's a good old boys club. 

Lance [00:42:48] Absolutely. Yeah. And so it took me a lot of work to get to the NBA through the back channels, to the minor leagues, to the Development League, playing so well out of my mind at such a high level for so little pay that they could not ignore me anymore. But that did not happen until I was 27 years old. To make the NBA, I still get hate mail to this day, random people sending me messages and I have compassion for them because a lot of people life is hard and they worked hard and they spent a lot of money to have tickets and they got to share a beautiful memory with their son, the 1998 trip to the national championship game. But conflicting truths can coexist. That you can have that beautiful memory and matures can be an amazingly complex human being and also a very abusive human. It doesn't negate what you experienced as a fan of the run. In years, both truths can coexist. It can be true that growing up in polygamy was a very beautiful experience the sense of community and culture. But it was also being driven by incredibly emotionally and spiritually, sexually, physically abusive men who were predators doesn't negate the beauty of the memories of where I grew up in that context. And there are people who have come up to me and challenged me in public. If you don't know me and still want to call me a liar and I can get defensive and retaliate, or I can simply, kindly ask, I understand where you're coming from. If I may. Can I ask you a question like. Yeah, sure. What is it? If what I said was a lie, why wasn't I or the Salt Lake Tribune sued for slander? And then they back away and you can see their brain trying to hold on to a memory. Yeah, I don't get pleasure out of it. I can see the fear because they want some things to be absolute. Because life is so, not that. There's so many nuanced gray areas and contradictions and oxymorons and ironies that way. I'm trying to figure out this. No one knows. I don't. Brian. I don't think the universe even knows what it's doing. I think the universe asked itself a question. Who am I? And we're just an extension about ourselves asking, Who am I? And it's scary. But if you're brave enough, if you lean into it. That's where magic happens when you leave behind systems that profess to have control. Control is just an illusion. Of control is, oh, I have health insurance. I'm going to be great. I'm retired with a great pension. I did everything right. And then my father still gets Alzheimer's and dies. Last year he did everything right. And if we're brave enough to step into that unknown, committing myself and my life and my experiences to be a rich tapestry that maybe is uploaded to some cloud somewhere in the universal construct, given the universe more experience of his own existence through my existence, helping it learn more about itself as I continually strive to learn more about myself. And this whacky, wacky life of extremes of outdated masculinity and false bravado and frontier mentality growing up in the wilderness and us against the government and everything, and all those self-fulfilling prophecies of if the universe is out to get me, so therefore I have to live on the fringe. I have to live on the fringe. I break enough rules that eventually the government will come out, arrest me, completely confirming myself, a prophecy that the government is going to come and get me. And then going into the sports arena, which again by our society's standards is like the ultimate metric of alpha, being able to have these radically extreme cultures that I have been able to swim through that have propelled me all around the world with such a rich context from my background, has given me a very fulfilling life as far as being able to see and break free from systems that no longer serve us and being able to see the unknown as my sandbox. Do I get to decide what it looks like? No, I don't. But I get to play in it. 

Brian [00:46:48] What would you say? It was the first conscious thought that you're aware of or that you remember that led you on that journey of separating the truth with a capital T. However, it was provided to the way you just beautifully described your view of life in the universe and everything. What would what was what was your first realization or first thought you think that started that? 

Lance [00:47:11] It would be when I was 29 years old and I was in Italy and I nearly killed myself. I was no longer in the NBA 28 recession. It hit. So a lot of teams were releasing their 14/15 roster spots to save money. And so the timing was impeccable. Right? I was 28 when I was called up to Cleveland Economy Hits and then they cut me the day before my second year contract went into effect of guarantee and I had worked my ass off to get there. And even though I was seeing how political it was and I was sort of jaded, I still wanted the status I wanted. Hey, you know what? I'm still in the NBA, and that makes me important and all that all that bullshit that I was still holding on to other people's validation and recognition. 

Brian [00:47:53] And it makes a living too. I mean, you've still got to do that too. So it pays better there. 

Lance [00:47:58] It does pay better. And then I went over to Italy for a basketball team. Of course they weren't paying. If you add at the money, I'm all from around the world. The teams never paid and that's about $900,000. Most of these sports franchises, clubs are just funds for organized crime where they live with their money. Wow. 

Brian [00:48:14] That's a strong statement. 

Lance [00:48:15] It is. And so when you sign a contract, that's those are guidelines, that's the most you're going to get paid if everything goes well. And so there it was in Naples not getting paid. I was 29, no longer in the NBA. And I think what was it all for or this is all bullshit. And I was sitting on a windowsill about eight stories up, really about to do it. And the phone was connected to the windowsill and I'd taken my hearing aids. But as the old concrete sort of vibrated and I knew it was my mum and I answered and there was my mum. She knew something was wrong, but it was a definitely a nervous breakdown or a breakdown of the nervous system or whatever. It took me probably 18 months to feel normal again after that, but from there I had a beautiful opportunity with some coaches, mental health coaches, therapist, that because I was so exposed and my brain had been so fried reaching that point of self-destruction, I had a beautiful opportunity now with an open motherboard to really go in and begin to rewire some thought patterns. Asking tough questions to myself last Well, do I actually know the story of God being angry with me to be true? No, I don't. Do I know the story of Joseph Smith finding golden place of being a prophet to actually be true? No, I don't. Instead of using that opportunity to find absolute truth and stability, I took that opportunity to rewire myself, to be brave enough to live in the unknown and be okay with knowing that the more I learn, the more I learn how little I know. And everything I learn. Everything the science uncovers only uncovers ten fold more questions. I'm not saying that we need to stop engineering pioneering, though we need to keep going, but have this humility to know that our human brains are not as fancy and smart as we humans like to think that. 

Brian [00:50:07] We tell a good story. We do. We can tell a good story. 

Lance [00:50:10] Absolutely. But our human brains can't even grasp the vastness of our solar system, let alone our galaxy, let alone the universe. And yet here we are trying to say, Oh, God, looks like this, or there is no God as a lot of Mormons do. They're still in the child archetype and in their anger, in their grieving, they go from absolute truth to absolute truth. They overcorrect. And that's hubris. And life has a way. The Greek myths have taught us of kicking your ass. Whenever you operate with hubris, can you have the humility to step into the humility of saying, I don't know anything at all? Yeah. 

Brian [00:50:46] And which coming from a place where you knew everything and you had truth with a capital T, right. That can be terrifying. Very terrified. What do you mean? I just throw all that away and I don't replace it with anything awesomely. 

Lance [00:50:59] Yeah, yeah. 

Brian [00:50:59] I don't know that either. So let let's put that into question. 

Lance [00:51:03] Yeah. And so I would say the big mid-year thing was one of the scariest things I've had to do. But I would say being brave enough to truly reset the computer that is my brain and step out of the comfort zones of control and the illusion of control that I operated with for so long and be brave enough to step into this unknown universe saying, You know what, I'm not going to put any limits on anything. I'm not going to say it has to look a certain way. And ironically, it turned my world into a magical place. Again, I can say that you get to be surprised where you get to say, huh, maybe, maybe some of the myths that we grew up with actually had some literal meaning to them as far as the archetype of myths that we recognize. The universe communicates through numbers and math, but also archetypes. What I mean by an archetype king, queen, knight, princess, damsel, you know, magician, warrior, athlete, Don Juan, the trickster. When we watch Star Wars, Star Wars is amazing because there's some great screenplay or script, but we as humans recognize the archetypes of some level. Yeah, and that's the universe recognizing itself. You have Luke Skywalker, the reluctant hero. You have Princess Leia. Is she a princess? Oh, she's actually a warrior princess. You have Darth Vader, Icarus. You flew too close to the sun. You have Han Solo, who's actually a rebel. He's actually a lover posing as a rebel. You have C-3PO, the Sky, my favorite one, R2-D2, the magician who could get through any door. We recognize these. And that's the universe recognizing itself and through playing basketball on every continent around the world. Different cultures, not just Christian cultures in their old indigenous languages. They all have these myths of a virgin, birth of a messiah, the Buddha and everything. While Jesus of Nazareth might be the most prominent Messiah archetype, he doesn't have the monopoly on it again, Gandhi, Buddha. But you see these archetypal myths and patterns playing out, and that allows you with my body language, I've been able to recognize these patterns, but I thought I was going crazy. But as I've really stepped into a realizing now I'm recognizing archetypes, interacting with each other as a Greek myth. We're talking about they. Little fairy tales like Bible stories. They were metaphors of what's happening in the human psyche. I learned that when I was playing in Greece, and it was profound for me that when you start to see the world archetypal, you start to take it less personally. But you realize it's personal, but it's not personal. And you see, as a universe, contracting and expanding, learning more and more about itself. And with my hearing loss, recognizing people's language patterns. Oh, but I thought you heard exactly what I was going to say. You heard? As I could have said, I'm like, no idea. Anybody knew what you were going to say. How? Hi, I'm 611. You. Hey. Ha ha ha. Yes, I play basketball. You recognize patterns? Yeah. And so, you know, the child archetype says that's not fair. It has to be in black and white. I need someone to protect me. I need someone to make me feel safe. I need someone to give me the answers, to say something, to give me stability. The victim says, Oh, I need my pound of flesh. Everyone always leaves. Here we go again. Why is this happening to me? Oh, no one's ever going to take advantage of me ever again. And so when I hear all the conspiracy theorists out there and I was raised with conspiracy theorists on the fringes, all I hear is a victim archetype as someone who's going to go out of their way to personally suppress me again as the victim posing as something much more clever. You have this saboteur that says, Why me? I can't possibly do that. I don't deserve that. And you have the prostitute which says just this once for one last time, or if you pay me enough. And those are the four survivor archetypes that are imprinted in the human DNA. And they're brilliant. They help us survive. But it's about outgrowing them and allowing other, more magical archetypes to run the wheel and allow life to come through you. And as I have allowed those studies and explorations more into my life. They don't give me more stability, but they do give me more wonder and magic that allows me to continue to grow and evolve. And when I read, you asked me the very first question, what is something that people have a misconception about you? And even today, when someone wants to talk shit to me because they saw me play basketball 15 years ago, I'm like, Oh, you're still stuck on that version of where I saw it. He died a long time ago. Yeah, he. 

Brian [00:55:49] Died 14 years. 

Lance [00:55:50] Ago. Yeah. He doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. 

Brian [00:55:52] Yeah, he's. You should. 

Lance [00:55:53] Do. Yeah. And it. But that is a scary thing, being able to let yourself die and be reborn. But that is what the universe does when it contracts and expands, that it is a necessary rite of passage and it's painful. Nature does it every four seasons. Dying and being reborn. And we so badly want things to remain the way they are. But that's not how the universe operates. And so we see a lot of people in the political arena as now or in Templeton's, because they want things to go back to the way they were. Never once in my basketball career did I ever saw the ref say, Oh, I'm sorry. 

Brian [00:56:31] Did I hear it raised? 

Lance [00:56:33] Yeah, yeah. Should I run that back? Yeah. It's like, no. Okay. I got a bad call. I got a bad break. What am I going to do about it? I had to adapt to it. But as a history, major empire has lost about 250 years. The American Constitution, 250 out there. Yeah. What are we going to do about it? We go to a temper tantrums and go violent. Or are we going to be brave enough to step into a more global consciousness, letting go of tribal identities that make us feel safe, saying, you know, we're being asked as our technology increases, we're being asked to expand our consciousness as well and have the humility that, you know what? Not only am I not God's chosen religion, I might not also be God's chosen country. And guess what? I'm not also be God's chosen planet. Yeah. So to assume that somehow we're the most advanced civilization out there is completely absurd. Yeah, but. 

Brian [00:57:21] This isn't about humility. It's about power. Absolutely. And the people who are in power are going to fight to keep it. 

Lance [00:57:26] Fight to keep a key to the traditional right. Yeah. And they need people to stay in their outrage, tribal mentalities, buying into the narrative. Yes. Rather than being brave enough to step out and say, you know what, the system as all system has ran its course. Yeah, the bipartisan system does not work anymore. 

Brian [00:57:45] No, but. But what does do that? A complete revolt, you know, uprising. It doesn't come from. Well, which party are you voting for? It comes from we're through with all of us. Absolutely rousing the torches. It's all coming down. 

Lance [00:57:57] I agree with you 100%, but that requires a lot of bravery and courage to step out as well. Okay. Well, if I'm not God's chosen country anymore, then what do I have? Yeah, yeah. Well, are you brave enough to define those metrics for your self? Yeah, yeah. That's the whole message that I'd use is self-actualization. 

Brian [00:58:17] And clearly ask yourself, what did you really have before that was you? There was the illusion that you were in control and the illusion that you had these things you never did have those things. People let you believe you had them. You never did have those. 

Lance [00:58:31] Got it. 

Brian [00:58:31] You've always had. So I have a. Another question for you. You talk about that science and as the way the universe explains itself, and then you added like myth on top of that. And so I've been reading this fantastic book called Sapiens. I don't know if you've read it. 

Lance [00:58:46] I know of it. Yeah. Yeah. 

Brian [00:58:49] You definitely need to read Sapiens. But one of the things that they talk about in there is. Well, let's get that. We add myths. So I would I would question that whether or not and I want to form this as a question, even if it doesn't come out this way. I'm curious to know your opinion on it. When we look at the stars and we see a scale, we assign a meaning to that and we get horoscopes from that meaning and we apply all these things. I would question or I would ask you, does the is the universe really speaking to us, to us through those repeated myths, or is that our human brain adding something that doesn't exist onto a system so we can explain it to ourselves better even though it's probably not right? 

Lance [00:59:34] Greg Excellent question. I operate with the whole metric or the system or the belief, whatever you want to call it, of simulation theory, that as video games become more and more lifelike, which is saved when on someone else's video game and every religion, every belief structure fall can fall safely into that structure. There's room for reincarnation, especially. Oh, my avatar died spinning back up, reincarnated him. Yeah. And so again, this is not me operating in absolute truth to believe it, but it's allowing my brain to go places. Like when I was in Greece and I was asking those questions, I learned some things, but maybe I'm not in the Truman Show, or maybe I am. I am just not losing my mind. Why is this person operating so similarly to my cousin in Montana? But this is the Greek guy who is like no is because they actually have similar archetypes and they move in similar ways. Their body language is very similar. They're very Jupiter. And so I have dabbled with the notion of scale. Scale meaning, okay, our solar system looks a lot like an breath. And so who's to say our solar system is not an atom in the shell of some other being's hand or vibrating on a different dimension? 

Brian [01:00:49] A man in black who knows? 

Lance [01:00:51] I don't know. Instead of getting scared of it, it's just allows me to put things in perspective and say, okay, my problems are tough, my issues are tough, but there's so much more going on than I could possibly ever know about our human brain. Again, we think, if I can't see it, touch it, feel it, it doesn't exist. Right? But we can see gamma rays. We can see x rays. We can't let you feel them. Our vibe, our body vibrates. You can only touch certain wavelengths. And the thing that there is and so many other things happening around us or vibrating around us on their own frequency is absurd. Just by averages, I would say that's more likely than not. And as who was it? Hawkins I believes, you know, statistically speaking, there's probably over a billion other civilized civilizations in the universe that are more advanced than we are, but most of them probably self annihilated with the unbearable weight of their own existentialism and their own insignificance, meaning radical religions probably self annihilated each other before they could get to the galactic consciousness level, which I think is very statistically probable with the amount of billions of billions and billions of stars out there. 

Brian [01:02:09] Right? Impossible. You can't even define that anymore. Even saying it. 

Lance [01:02:13] So someone says all answer. You believe in unicorns. I'm like, If you're telling me there might be like a four legged creature that looks like a horse with some wonky horn, it doesn't have to be a strange horn coming out of his head somewhere in their universe. I'll take that bet. Statistically speaking, yeah. Not on pride, not on absolutes. But just as a gambling man, having been as an athlete, having to take risk. I'll take that bet. Yeah, but what I'm getting at with all this, when the Greeks were doing their astrological, the Zodiacs, what they were implying was different archetypes. So an Aries is the warrior archetype. The fire, the athlete, Mars, the one that goes for blood. Aquarius, the water bearer, is a misnomer. It's ruled by Uranus, who is the God of evolution, the god of technology, deviation and sexual deviation. He's the God of homosexuals, the aquarians, the light. They're actually more than the water bearer, just like they are the ones who bring technology. They're the Prometheus archetype, the fine fire, the for the Romans water and aqueducts was technology. That's why they call it the water bearers. And so they're saying these archetypes are channeled through this matrix, that is. Of avatars that are higher consciousness is playing in this game, this matrix. I don't say that with 100% absolutes, but I like to let it play out. Just out of curiosity and watching things and seeing how of now when people try to do, Oh, your horoscope from enough that I've learned from astrology, I learned from a voodoo sage in New Orleans and whatnot. Your sunshine, your horoscope from the Greeks is a very boring sign, is how you your masculine energy, how you assert yourself into the world. But you have all the other planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. But then you got all the other smaller asteroids like Kyron and Lilith and everything. But there's so many different aspect points that we're talking about, billions upon billions of different combinations. And so when someone says Your horoscope for the week, I'm like, That is very basic and it's very simplistic. And I think a lot of people like to use it to the point you're making. Oh, I just need some little assurances so I can still stay in my basic paradigm structure that you have a lot of people. Like, for example, a lot of religious people love to dabble in the metaphysical or the shamanic arts, right? A lot of Mormons are doing that by now. It's really trendy now, but they still want to stay in their overall belief structure because life is hard, it's not making sense, and instead of them being brave enough to really just reset the whole motherboard as, Oh, I'm going to try to add on shoes here and make things just a little more pleasant for me. But I still have the security of knowing that I am going to heaven when I die. And I get the point you're making is a very valid point. You know something that I have to breathe through a lot when I run my retreats or events or whatnot, and people come to me and they're still trying to hold on, but they want other things to come in and like something for something, you have to let something die for something new to be born. And that's just the way the universe works. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. And are you brave enough to let something go as a tool? As a fee? Yeah. That's usually a heartbreak. And heartbreak is our greatest teacher. Heartbreak forces us to let go of things that no longer serve us and allow new things, new chapters in our life to come through. And it's a very painful thing, but it's a necessary rite of passage. And so to the point you're making, people can say I'm batshit crazy or whatnot, but I will always say with humility, I never talk about matrix or simulation theory or astronomical or astrological coatings and how that's a cipher. And you and I are coded with specific archetypal strengths, but you have societal oppression on top of that too. But some people may have very similar archetypes, and they respond to react very different ways, but they will have very different life experiences. And how they maneuver and adapt to life is again, it's this. I'm not saying everything is predestined. I'm saying we have certain strengths that we're coded with. Yeah. And the Greeks were saying from the time that you're born where the stars are different avatars or archetypes are channeled into your avatar. And those are, they're like any fun RPG video game. Those are your starting strengths. Yeah. And how you choose to develop or where you choose to go is still very much up to you. Yeah. And so when I, when I operate that way, when I allow those thoughts to be in my head as I'm observing the world, it doesn't make it sad. It doesn't. But it also doesn't give me any concrete stability. It does allow me, though, to have more curiosity and wonder saying that that really is how we're working. I mean, wow, hats off to whoever's playing this video game because it's wild. Yeah. Yeah. And so my brain allows myself to go there. And it's not a bad thing, but it's a bad thing when you go into the absolute and you try to pigeonhole people into it. Yeah. And then you emotionally, spiritually abuse them and to get them to buy into you and you're using as leverage for power. That's where it goes bad. But if I'm just here, allow myself to live in the abstract. For me, it allows life to remain magical. Yeah, but I have gone to despair when I was breaking away, when I did the whole thing. Okay. I have absolute truth. Oh, wait, it's all bullshit. I swearing over there is no God at all. It's all a cosmic joke and I nearly to myself and having to get to a place where I come into the middle of allowing life to be magical and having the courage to admit every day, I have no idea what's going on. Yeah. 

Brian [01:08:12] I'd be okay with that. 

Lance [01:08:13] And be okay with it. And it's a hard place to get to again, as you say, especially when our brain, our motherboard, our brain is just like any other hard drive. Our culture is our software that's installed into that hard drive, Mac and Linux, Microsoft, that's our culture and being able to uninstall that and then. Clean up the motherboard a bit because it's a lot of hard work. And so moving out of the absolutes into the gray area is definitely one of the more challenging and I would say is a ten year rebuilding process for me. Yeah. 

Brian [01:08:46] Okay. So I've got a couple of questions for you. And depending on your time, you can answer all of them or whatever. But sure. So I guess I'm one of my ten gentle questions. Is, is understanding human behavior? Does that really help us understand creation and the cosmos or is that just a small piece of it that is really going to be irrelevant in the long scheme of things from the creation and cosmos? So that's a beautiful question. 

Lance [01:09:11] Yeah, I love that question. 

Brian [01:09:12] Because it helps us understand and get by and understand other people, which is all of our existence is all of our creation. 

Lance [01:09:18] Right, right. But again, to the point that people like to say humans evolved into pack animals and I challenge and you're saying that as though that's the end. Where are we going from here? Yeah. Are we brave enough to move out of tribalism? Because there's three levels of human consciousness, as far as we know, individual, tribal and global. And I like to add, the one beyond that is greater a whole what's best for the greater good, and not just humanity, but the planet, but also for the universe. And I sometimes when I meditate or whatnot, my brain lives. We've seen pictures of how the universe actually looks like a brain. And so maybe, maybe our galaxy is like a dark cancerous cell and our higher consciousness is just white blood cells going into this area of the brain in the universe, spinning it up, trying to get it to vibrate to a higher dimension and so it doesn't go cancerous and die. Weird metaphor, but somehow that makes a lot of interesting sense to me that I can I can operate with that. I mean, who's to say I don't know. Right. But it does allow me to make some sense as to why the hell are we even here, brain, huh? Yeah, right. That's like the most logical thing I've been able to land on yet. I'm not saying it's absolutely flat, but I'm saying it allows me to, again, have wonder to be open and say, all right, if all I am is an extension of the universe, giving information about itself, helping a wake up and I die, and the avatar, the ego that is Lance, it does not get to go to heaven and live with my family forever. Right. Because that notion also is flawed, because suddenly we're families are in heaven forever and we're all getting along. Who has the personality change? It's a flawed concept, and so much of our personality is an extension of our culture and so much of our culture is an extension of our geography. Mormon Intermountain West pioneer culture where we had to learn to pull yourself up by the bootstraps. No handouts. Yeah, Lord consecration until it's not any more. Because you know what? Socialism and communism and all that stuff. That was a that's a funny one to go down. But our culture is so much an extension of our geography, which is an extension. It's a part of our planet. And if our souls go off somewhere else, into heaven, if what we're really asking, if I do, I get to be with my family in heaven. What we're really asking is, do I get to take my culture with your culture directly tied to the planet? And what came from those geographical challenges and feuds of fighting over that geography? All of that is what I'm getting to, but I kind of went off on a tangent there, but it all ties in love tangents. Yeah. Yeah. Now, so really the point just refresh me. What is the question? 

Brian [01:12:06] So is, is understanding human behavior actually help us understand where. 

Lance [01:12:10] Consciousness, higher consciousness and cosmos. So what I'm getting at by our tribal consciousness is we're stuck and we're being asked to upgrade. And a lot of people are throwing temper tantrums, having growing pains, wanting to stay in tribal narrative that America is God's country, so to speak. 

Brian [01:12:29] Well, they're programed on Unix, not they're not even on Microsoft yet. They're like, no, no. Yeah, they're back on Unix in Fortran and COBOL and. 

Lance [01:12:37] Right, absolutely. 

Brian [01:12:39] It's a painful upgrade. 

Lance [01:12:40] So call years for survivor archetypes the child saboteur prostitute victim. What the theory is from Carl Jung and where I operate. Those are earthly archetypes, okay? They are directly connected to culture and humanity. Are a brain stem wired? How are we going to survive? Okay. Child archetype is brilliant. As a child comes into the world, I have to has I have to see the world in black and white to make sense of a very convoluted, abstract, nuanced world. Yeah, the victim is like, Oh, okay, well, something bad happened to me. Oh, right. It must be because I deserve it, or the positive is never going to happen to me again, which moves us to empowerment. The saboteur archetype prevents us from biting off more than we can chew. The prostitute archetype has forced us to compromise ourselves to survive in tribal systems. Now, your question set up beautifully. We're. We going from here? Is humanity going to evolve into a higher consciousness, into an advanced civilization that does no galactic travel? I don't know if it will, but in order for us to do so, we have to evolutionarily and consciously choose to evolve past these survivor archetypes which are based around scarcity, which is the world is not a safe place, and we cannot shame our ancestors for that because the world was a very dangerous place when they were coming across the plains and we like to shame them for being racist and bigoted. Maybe they were, but they didn't have the luxuries or the comforts to sit in a chair all day and learn about the world and become woke and empathetic and compassionate. They were just trying to figure out where their next meal was coming from. Yeah, that is not that long ago. We're talking three or four generations ago. Brain or grandparents in the Dust Bowl era. Yeah, those are real challenges. And instead of shaming it, we say I honor it and I honor those archetypes and that tribal mentality for where got us right. It got us to this point. But just like any human habit, a lot of those habits we outgrow and they no longer serve us and we have to let them go and choose to evolve and upgrade ourselves. That's the evolutionary journey of humanity. Where's the ark and people shaming the past? Oh, Thomas Jefferson had slaves and everything. Yeah, that's not a fun anecdote. No one likes it. But if we were enlightened and woke in the very beginning of time, there would be no human error. Yeah. Where is humanity going? What is the story of our species? And it's a beautiful story to watch unfold. Yeah. And are we going to self annihilate or are we going to upgrade? That's where the question is now. Yeah. So your question is a profound one and a very intuitive one. Are we going to move out of tribal mentality and move into a greater whole consciousness? And that's the dilemma right now. Are we going to self annihilate before we can do that? Yeah. And so you see with the Miss Camelot, self annihilation happened before they got to the next level. An Arthur Ashe with a broken heart more than you saw was going to happen. Why did I why didn't you tell me? The Merlin said, if I had told you, you never would have built something so beautiful. And he was too beautiful for the spring flower that comes in spring, the Bellflower for just two days before he dies. The mayfly that hatches for a day after being larva for a year to die for one day. Was it worth it? Of course it was. It was a beautiful thing. Is there every year where the earth replenishes itself? It's a beautiful food. Why did you keep doing it? Because it can. And the universe itself was the greatest food of all. The beautiful for asking, who am I? Why do I even want to do this and that? We use an extension. We have a choice every day as a beautiful fool to say, Why do I keep doing this? I don't know what the end is supposed to be. And the answer is for me because I choose to, because I'm brave enough to stepping into that unknown. 

Brian [01:16:25] You know, you mentioned generations ago, four generations ago and everything else. And I would even I wouldn't even suggest that you don't have to go back four generations to see where they got you and whether or not you're going to move forward and progress from that. Go back to your 15 year old self and go back to your five year old self. You had those same options. Are you going to go forward? Are you going to work through this or is this going to be the end for you? Is this where you stay either cognitively or emotionally or from the eighth floor of a building in Italy? Is this just it? Right. 

Lance [01:16:52] Right. I mean, you name it that you're talking about micro and macro patterns, fractals, right. Again, mythological patterns of has a passage of self-destruction or evolution. Right. And, you know, it's not the strongest or the smartest who survive is those who are most willing to adapt. Right. 

Brian [01:17:10] And yeah. Or I was I had an interview that's coming up this Friday with a gentleman who lives on the streets and he's been living there for 16 years. And he the word he uses is just tenacity. They will just survive because they're just too stubborn not to. And they'll do whatever it takes. Yeah, it's I mean, it's not a it's not a beautiful scenario. No. But that's survival is not the biggest or the smartest. It's just those that are just not willing to let go. Yeah. 

Lance [01:17:36] Yeah. And so it's those who are not willing to let go. It's stubbornness. It's the inability to adapt. Perseverance is the ability to adapt. Yeah. Yeah. That's how I define the different. That's how a distinct well differentiate them. 

Brian [01:17:50] And they could also align with survival or success. Right. You just because you're continuing doesn't mean you're successful, right? 

Lance [01:17:58] Yes. I mean, having those out and prospering. 

Brian [01:18:00] Right. You could have stuck at that 15 year old level forever and survive. Absolutely. 

Lance [01:18:04] But and again, you're speaking of the survivor archetypes. Yeah. They want to survive. It's about surviving or prospering. And I think that's a dilemma. Do you want to move out of Survivor, out of scarcity? And I define patriarchy by one word, and that's scarcity. But there's not enough to go around for everybody. No, the patriarchal systems as there's the triangle and MLMs thrive in Mormon culture because triangle pyramid just they get it. Subconsciously we get the system. Oh, I get. I know how. This works and it's okay. And we were taught to think that's okay because that's the way God designed it, or at least we're told that's how God designed it. But they want us to believe that way again. So we buy into that pyramid system where there's only so much to go around or those at the top to get to have it. 

Brian [01:18:50] But the MLM is a pretty simplistic device. You could say that that same device is also any corporation. 

Lance [01:18:57] Oh, absolutely. 

Brian [01:18:59] Any. Any country? Any government. There are those that are at the top that need those that are at the bottom to keep them at the top. 

Lance [01:19:05] Absolutely. 100%. 

Brian [01:19:06] And they're not willing to level the playing field. They're not willing to share. They are over the top and they want to stay there. And that's what the whole pyramid is about. 

Lance [01:19:13] Well, and so whether it's the Mormon Church or Joel Osteen, these are corporate structures. Right. Very cleverly disguised. Oh, yes. Religious nonprofits. 

Brian [01:19:23] And they're so good. They're so good. Look at all the good that they do. 

Lance [01:19:26] Right. Yeah. 

Brian [01:19:27] Okay. Two more questions for you. One is, are you allowed these questions? 

Lance [01:19:32] I love these questions. It's a great question. Thank you. Normally, you know, people get me on. They want to ask me basketball questions. I'm like, I'm bored already, man. So this is great. I appreciate all. 

Brian [01:19:41] I want to know about you. And these are I. This is giving me a lot to think about. I go back and review these transcripts and think deeply about a lot of the comments, and there's a lot here to work on. So I'm excited about that. 

Lance [01:19:51] When I encounter another philosopher, archetype is always a good time. 

Brian [01:19:55] Exactly right. So when that question is, why do you write catharsis therapy? 

Lance [01:20:01] You write for my wife, for me. If I started, if I allowed my writing to be controlled or measured by capitalistic metrics, I would lose the joy of it. And you're probably savvy enough to know, and I'm sure you probably heard it's pretty easy to be a New York Times bestseller. Yeah, you just have to spend about $100,000, buy a bunch of it yourself from different platforms, and then you can become a New York Times best seller. Right? And I choose not to do that because I want my words and my creativity that came from my own channeling of whatever poetic archetype that I may have been able to express in my own way. When my latest book came out, the new Alpha Male Walking the Path of the Heart, they were the first. Our subtitle was How to Win the Game and the Rules are Changing. But my original title was Walking the Path of the Hearts of my Publisher, and the paperback has given me that and I appreciate that and I acknowledge them for that. So someone commented to me after they read it, I love how you build on the shoulders of Joseph Campbell. And I said, I've never read Joseph Kingdom. 

Brian [01:21:10] It's ubiquitous, it's baked. 

Lance [01:21:11] Exactly. 

Brian [01:21:12] So many things. He saw something that was already there. He didn't come up with it. Right? 

Lance [01:21:16] Right. And so what I'm getting at is this intellectual property is actually not mine. Yeah, it's as you say, it's ubiquitous. Yeah, it's the ethers is creation. 

Brian [01:21:24] Yeah. You just recognize it, it's already recognize it. 

Lance [01:21:27] And when you go into a meditative trance, we go into the zone with the athletes in the zone. Their brain is off. We're no longer aiming. We don't aim our shots. That's when the shots are falling. When you're aiming shots is when you miss. When you're just in it and you're alive and you're feeling it, you just trust that the right, the shot is going to land where it's supposed to land. Then you're on fire. The same thing happens when I'm writing. I turn my brain off, I just let myself channel it. These things come out and I'm able to express them in a way that people say, Oh, I love you both. On Joseph Campbell. And I would say that the to my on the horn is to say, okay, and therefore it confirms to me these words are not mine. They came from the ether. And so with the hearing loss and everything and being encouraged to read and write, I always do my writing at nighttime when everyone else is asleep. But I can tell you my hearing is out and I can just relax and I can just be and I can express myself. So my first book, Long Shot, was published by HarperCollins in oh nine. I actually started writing that when I was three years earlier when I was in France, and I was really frustrated my rookie year professionally and I thought, you know what? For my own catharsis, for my own therapy, I just need to start venting and getting some of these stories out. But also one of my future kids to know who I was as something for my posterity. I had no intention of ever being published, ever. I was just writing it for me. And then when I was called to Cleveland, HarperCollins heard my story on NPR. They said, Oh, they reached out. We want to send a ghostwriter out to get your story. And I said, Oh, I already have 800 pages. Here you go. And they actually down to 250. That was a brutal process. But yeah, I wrote it and I still continue to write for me. If I write with the pressure of it, thinking it has to have some sort of external or monetary success that I'll take away one of my few choice. Yeah. 

Brian [01:23:17] It's a job now. 

Lance [01:23:18] It's a job. And I don't, I don't I refuse to let writing fall into that category like basketball became it. 

Brian [01:23:24] Yeah, well it's a job and you have bosses and their rules and they get more say and it's like, yeah, I'm going to write what I write if I do something with. That's what you say you write for you. And I get that because I write as well, and it's very cathartic and that's part of this podcast. It's so cathartic for me to have these discussions, right? But you also said when you were writing that first book, you were writing for your kids. Yeah. So that those that was your intended reader, you had someone there that was going to benefit from it and you had that clear direction as you were putting those words on the page. It wasn't just to the universe, it was specifically for your kids. What are you writing right now? What are you working on right now? 

Lance [01:24:01] Great question. 

Brian [01:24:02] Or is it even a project? Is it just I'm just writing some stuff. 

Lance [01:24:05] Actually, I am working on a how would I say it? A encyclopedia of archetypes. Okay. By showing by going through the archetypes that we encounter, the computer geek, the damn soul, the athlete, the coach, the teacher, all of them an athlete is a people is that they say it's not the same as a stereotype. I'm though a stereotype. It's an attribute of an archetype. Yeah. So for example, I have the athlete archetype. And dating has always been a challenge because women say, Oh, you're an athlete. I bet all the women just throw themselves at you, so I'm going to make you earn it. So the stereotype actually works against me and I don't get as much action as people actually believe. So the stats are stereotype or stereotype as an attribute of an archetype. And so I'm just kind of working on a collection of archetypes explaining their language patterns, their just societal tendencies. That's just something I've been working on for a while that, you know, I don't know. I'll probably self-publish. I don't know if I'll find a publisher for that one. I've loved self-publishing. Three of my five books have been self-published, and I'm glad I did it that way because, as you said, I didn't have any bosses telling me this is the way it has to look. Yeah, I got to do it my way. So having a balance of published and self-published is actually pretty rewarding, knowing that, Hey, you know what, if I want to and I want to play the game, I can do that as a job. But I still like having the boundaries of it being for me. 

Brian [01:25:44] And you don't think those two processes run into conflict once you've self-published all the publishers running scatter and they don't have anything to do with you or. Now you write the right thing. You just reach out to the publishers and they'll notice and know. 

Lance [01:25:55] Since I've been doing my speaking circuit for the last seven years, I sell a lot of my books and my self-published make me the most money, obviously. Yeah, right. And so a lot of publishers now are like, well, can we publish those for you? My new book. No, I like the money they make me. I'm good with that. They're my babies. And we'll let them keep doing their own thing. 

Brian [01:26:14] Yeah, well, I don't know if you're familiar with the latest Kickstarter with Brandon Sanderson, science fiction writer. He's written 50 novels. They're all science fiction. They're all very well known. Whatever COVID came. And he he had a little battle with Amazon where they weren't going to pay him royalties for a period of time, or they took his book down for a period of time. And he's like, You don't take my book down. I let you use my book, right? It's kind of work. And so he says, Well, maybe I don't use you at all. Maybe I don't use any publisher. So he did this Kickstarter and he had an idea for three novels that he was coming out with. It's just kind of a loose thing. And went out on Kickstarter. $32 million. He pre-sold in a in a week. 

Lance [01:26:52] And. 

Brian [01:26:52] It's like, so tell me why I need the publishers here. Why would I split up with someone else? Because. 

Lance [01:26:57] I mean, the beautiful thing about the way our world is evolving, middlemen are being wiped out. Yeah. Direct, well. 

Brian [01:27:04] Value. There's always a place for value add. It's just they figured out a way to make themselves the middleman without adding a value. 

Lance [01:27:10] You're absolutely. 

Brian [01:27:11] Right. And just an access to a market. No, no, no. We have the Internet. We all have access to our own market. 

Lance [01:27:16] Absolutely. 100%. And also, I was like, yeah, do I need an agent for my literary work? No, I do not, because I can access any publisher if I want to ask the publisher, a publisher working those self-published. And so you're wiping out all of these middlemen who actually are not adding value. You nailed it. And so it's just a wild new world we live in. And it's, again, Wild West in many ways, and we can be uncomfortable about it. But all I see is opportunity. And right now example, like with the inflation and interest rates going up, people are freaking out. But in this window I've been able to secure two separate agreements for hot screen properties because we now have to get clever and creative to find different ways to broker a deal. Yeah, the traditional way isn't working right now, and everyone thinks that's the only way it can be done. It's like, no, let's find a deal that works for everybody. 

Brian [01:28:07] You got to be clever then. Yeah. 

Lance [01:28:09] And that actually has worked out in my favorite because as a solo entrepreneur, a speaker writer one night. Yeah, I make good money here and there, but some nights I make a lot of money. Some months I don't have any speaking engagements and that makes banks nervous. So they don't want to work with me. Right? So right now is a perfect window of opportunity for me in this unknown, scary time. Warren Buffett has a great quote. When people are greedy, be fearful. When people are fearful, be greedy. It's like, no, this is the perfect time for me to make the moves I need to make. And so that's a challenge when people are afraid of these uncertainty. All I see is opportunity. 

Brian [01:28:42] Well, good. I think I think we've touched on most of the questions that I have. So I'm going to ask you one question is what else are we missing? What else do we need to know about you? What is something else that's on your mind you want to talk about? 

Lance [01:28:54] What else are we missing? I don't know, but I feel impressed. Say, losing my father last year to Alzheimer's was one of the most painful things in my life. He was only 69. He chose to go out on his terms. I helped him. He stopped eating, stopped drinking. I was giving him the morphine. That was all. Anyone with him when he passed, I'm losing him, as painful as it has been. It's also been one of the most empowering and liberating things in my life. And one of my drives to the make the MBA and to I've been chasing this hot spring dream for seven years in Montana. My dad happened to leave Montana when I was seven, broke his heart. He loved Montana. I so much wanted to give my parents a happy ending. I so much wanting them to know their sacrifices were worth it. And now that he's gone, there's nothing left for me to fix. My sandbox is even bigger now. There's more unknown. There's no real idea of what this happy ending is supposed to look like. And as we know, happy endings don't really exist. Life goes on. The movies never show is what happens the day after, the happily ever after. And so what I'm getting at is heartbreak is heartbreak is necessary, is essential, is our greatest teacher, but it's also one of our biggest gifts we could ever get. Because the heartbreak that comes, it continues to rip away preconceived notions of how life is supposed to look, and it gives us permission to go live on our terms. So anyone who is listening that has heartbreak, whether it's the loss of religion, the loss of family or death, these are necessary and essential rites of passage to let your heart break, let it hurt, because it is probably the most powerful rite of passage we could ever go through the grieving process. And as you spin up and you let that energy transmute over an old idea or an old story, an old love and old relationship that has died, it cannot be destroyed. It can only be transmuted. So be brave. Be brave enough to step into it and let it hurt. And knowing that is power generating a new or new and even more powerful experiences to come along. And that's just my share and my blessing to anyone that's listening here. 

Brian [01:31:08] Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for coming on my little, silly little show. 

Lance [01:31:12] I've loved it. I mean, the work you're doing is necessary. And speaking archetypal, it's not our job to wonder about the size of our work. It's just our job to show up and do what we're programed and called to do in the creation of the universe. Take care of the rest. Yeah. Don't. Don't cheapen yourself. Don't cheapen your experiences by calling it a silly little show. Thank you. The questions you ask are far more poignant than some of the questions that are asked on the biggest podcast. Those big podcasts, you know, the Joe Rogan Show, people are like, Oh, I'm a free thinker within the office. Listen to the most popular podcast in the world. So it's kind of kind of oxymoronic of you being brave enough to let the world see in real time. Your own healing chronicled through your podcast and through your work is necessary. Whether it's just one person, whether it's 100 or 1000 or 100,000, it doesn't matter. As long as you're showing up and doing what you are programed to do, that's when life begins to work through you, not for you or against you, but through you. And that is when you know you are truly in the pocket and you're living through. 

Brian [01:32:22] Thank you. And it wouldn't work without people like you being brave and vulnerable and telling stories that are deeply personal and meaningful. We could talk about basketball. We can. I mean, there's I think there's another podcast or maybe even a TV show that talks about sports. 

Lance [01:32:40] One. 

Brian [01:32:40] Or two anyway. 

Lance [01:32:41] Yeah, quite a few. 

Brian [01:32:42] But for my guests that come on and they're vulnerable and they are willing to share that, those personal experiences, I think that is what gets to the core of what Mike, what the show is about is to be able to share that and realize and from people from all walks of life. And you mentioned earlier people, we have a tendency to put people into an us versus them. We don't understand them. It's like sit down and talk with one of them. Guarantee you'll never see this. You'll never see a homeless person the same way again. After you listen to the interview this Friday with silence. 

Lance [01:33:13] Absolute. 

Brian [01:33:13] Guaranteed, you'll never see this type of person again the same way because they're not a them anymore. They become an us, right? You have so much more in common with them. 

Lance [01:33:22] Absolutely. You know that it's so easy to other others and call them better them. Yeah. That allows you to stay in your bubble, in your comfort zone. 

Brian [01:33:31] Well, because you're chosen. You're smart. You're the best. I mean, clearly you're the best. Yeah. What are they thinking? Yeah, I don't know. That's a good question. Let's go ask them. I'm dying to know. 

Lance [01:33:40] Yeah. And you know, we grew up in that I saw I grew up in that world, especially where everyone else's day. And all that is is a comfort zone. Yeah. Although it's people. Yeah, it's fear and people want to stay in their bubble. And that's failure to me means you're simply stepping outside your comfort zone, that you're trying something new, that you're taking risk, the real essence of failure, or people who stay in their bubble, that are mediocre, that want things to be encapsulated as they are, and no change forces them to grow. That's called being mediocre, and that is the last thing I ever want to be called. 

Brian [01:34:12] Well, thank you so much for your time. It was. 

Lance [01:34:14] Akiba. 

Brian [01:34:17] Thank you for listening to strangers. You know, if you're enjoying our conversations, please share us with a friend. Continue the conversation by sharing and liking on Facebook and social media, or for exclusive content and detailed show notes. Visit our website at www.StrangersYouKnowPodcast.com where you can subscribe to our newsletter or make a donation to support the show. Thank you for your support.