Good Life Project - Lance Allred | Masculinity Reimagined

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

Lance Allred was born legally deaf in a polygamist commune in rural Montana. When he was 13, his family escaped and eventually came out of hiding in Utah, where for the first time, he had to step into a world that he had no experience navigating. Lance had always loved writing, but at nearly 6’4” in middle school, and looking for a new way to belong, his height caught the eye of the basketball coach. The game became his life and he'd eventually become a star athlete that led to college, then years playing all over the world in the pros, including a stint in the NBA. But, underneath it all, Lance never left his love of writing, and he began to share his inner life in print, authoring a number of books and eventually leaving the game to speak to and train leaders. In his newest book, The New Alpha Male, (https://amzn.to/2Ub4d6W) Lance turns his deeply reflective, insightful, and honest lens on the role of masculinity, how his experience of it has changed dramatically since becoming a dad and what he leads with now. In today’s conversation, we explore all of this, including a really beautiful moment where the truer, deeper reason for this book, and who it’s really written for, comes out. You can find Lance Allred at:Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/lanceallred41/Website : http://lanceallred41.com/Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Lance Allred, was born legally deaf in a polygamist commune in rural Montana. When he was about 13, his family escaped and eventually came out of hiding in Utah, where for the first time in his life, he had to figure out how to step back into a world that he had no experience understanding, let alone navigating. Lance had always loved writing, but at nearly six foot four in middle school and looking for a new way to kind of fit in, to belong, his height caught the eye of the basketball coach and the game quickly became his life. He would have to learn how not just to play basketball and really figure out the rules of a society that he had not lived in until then, but also how to immerse himself in this game that

became the center of his life and communicate with his teammates without being able to hear them. Becoming a star athlete eventually, it led Lance to college, then years playing all over the world in the pros, including a stint in the NBA. But underneath it all, Lance never left his love of writing and profound self-inquiry behind. He began to share his inner life in print, authoring a number of books, eventually leaving basketball to speak and train leaders. In his newest book, The New Alpha Male, Lance turns a deeply reflective, insightful, and honest lens on the role of masculinity in his own life, how his experience of it has changed dramatically since becoming a dad, effectively moving through a breakdown in his own life, and what he is sort of here to do and how he describes the role of being in his male

slash masculine body and psyche now. In today's conversation, we explore all of this, including a really beautiful moment about where the truer, deeper reasons for this book lie and who it's really written for. That sort of weaves its way out in the conversation. And it's a really powerful moment, I think. So excited to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum.

Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Talk about someone who has interesting things to talk about. Yeah. Most people think I want to talk about basketball. I'm like, oh gosh, there's about a million other things I'd rather talk about than just basketball. Well, obviously, you know, we'll touch down there, but there's, um, yeah, there's a whole lot of different, they're like different sort of like vignettes that I want to kind of explore with you. Um, you know, starting out with when you were a kid, because you, I grew up just outside of New York City, pretty conventional upbringing. You had pretty much anything but what I would call a conventional upbringing.

Oh yeah. The man. Well, I mean, it's all about what is weird, what's normal. Obviously, when you grow up in that world, it's very normal to you. But as I travel the world for, gosh, since 2005, playing professional basketball and now speaking, you look back and you say, yeah, I definitely had a pretty non-standard upbringing growing up with 400 first cousins running around the wilderness like lord of the flies and all that but there was some magical things about it too just a sense of living in the forest in the wilderness of montana where there's just all that wild out there in your backyard to go off and explore and dream as a kid. And those are memories I would never change for anything. And the sense of community, of having everyone there so invested in a dream just as you are.

But the dark side of it is, yeah, there's also, when you grow up in a religious cult, and let's call it what it was, it was a cult, you have a lot of abuse of power. You have a lot of emotional abuse, spiritual, psychological abuse. My story is just one of many, but I was told by my Sunday school teacher when I was five that God had made me deaf as a form of punishment. And so you have these very warped internal narratives of your self-worth and who you are and how you're appearing in the world. And what is the world around you is the world a scary place or is a safe place i grew up in a world where i believed i might very well have to die for my religious beliefs that we were ready for the government to come in at any moment and take

us out um we had that kind of paranoia and level of distrust of just life in general. And so with that, there's also the truth that because I was born in this religious community, they didn't think about things like RH factor. And my mother was a negative. I was a positive blood type when I was born. But when I was inside her room, her body was killing me off as a parasite because it was recognizing my blood as a different type. And so I'm very lucky to be alive. But when you're raised in a polygamous commune, their whole medical practice really is, oh, just trusting God, Jesus is coming again. And so I had the 80% hearing loss, and I'm very lucky to be alive because of the RH factor. And because of these oversights where religious minds refuse to integrate and marry with science. And but you know, on the other hand, you have the scientists completely cutting out magic that the universe is that we're here for a reason that this is all magical it's not just some mindless accident and i think einstein said

it best i mean religion without science and science without religion is dangerous you have to have a marriage of both the humility to know that the more we learn in life, the more we learn how little we know. And bowing to that and having some awe and wonder to the vastness and the power of the universe. But I grew up on the other extreme where science was all devil work that I was trying to get rid of religion. And so there were those negative aspects, to answer your question in a very long-winded way, that throughout my travels around the world, swinging back and forth through the death of religion and the pain and heartbreak of seeing those illusions fall apart, swing into the opposite where I was very angry at my upbringing and chose to throw all of it out with the bathwater

because, you know, I would do the whole thing. Yeah, I don't believe God exists, but the real question is what God are we even talking about when people say they don't say that God doesn't exist? And learning through lots of bumps and bruises of my travels around the world, of getting kicked around enough times, of learning to have the humility to say, you know, I'm just a simple human being. I don't know anything. And I have the humility to acknowledge that.

And so that upbringing with religion and my hearing loss and my ability to watch people and their body language, I've always lived in a very quiet world. And so it's always forced me to be introspective and just analyze human behavior in general and cultures. I'm fascinated with culture and I love to talk about it and explore it. And my upbringing from a very extreme radical culture definitely paved the way for that. At the same time, you grew up in a culture that also really isolated you from every other culture and created a sense of fear around

interacting with anyone who was in some way perceived as being other yes you know so it was like the early days were very on the one hand you become ultra fine-tuned and perceptive you're sort of picking up all sorts of cues that i'm sure a lot of other people miss because you have to that's how you survive so you have this extraordinary sense of perception. And at the same time, it's always perception contained by this one very narrow defined universe and never outside of that. And you're like fiercely discouraged from ever even wanting to explore outside of it. Absolutely. And that's how all structures of power maintain control. And I grew up in a world where very much the pattern of othering was just what you did. And that's what makes us so special.

And we other others to make ourselves more important than we really are. And I grew up in a world of othering, but also conspiracy theorists, people who say America is God's greatest country, but also we can't trust our government. So no oxymorons there. But the funny thing about it all is that when someone is spouting out a conspiracy theory, what they're really doing is they're making themselves more important than they really are. That the government will go out of their way to single me out and oppress me. That the government a simple human being. And so we create these self-fulfilling prophecies that the government can't be trusted. So we have to live on the fringes of society

where we're no longer adhering to the rules of the land, becoming outlaws and criminals, thereby inducing the government's wrath to come and penalize us for breaking the law, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that the government is always out to get us. And so that narrative becomes a vicious, vicious feedback loop in a culture like that. But another point that I love to bring up with people is how quick we are to look at another culture or cult or group and label them as a crazy cult. When really I see cult behavior all over the world. It's everywhere. A cult is any organization that does not allow you to leave with your dignity intact. And number two, cult mentality is hearing and seeing only the things you want to see and hear. And so by that definition, it can be a corporation where you have your talking points, where you're always toeing the line,

you have your, your cliche cultural values and principles. But at the end of the day, there are these unspoken agreements that everyone knows exists that if you break them, there's hell to pay, even if they're not clear guidelines, but basketball teams or sports teams and their fans in general, that I've come across so many sports fans that it's amazing how they will shame a player who leaves their team and burn their jersey and scream betrayal. But when the team and the general manager trades that player away, it's like, oh, okay, well, the powers that be, they're the guys in charge. So obviously, they must have all the answers and they must be smarter than everybody else. But that's the whole

premise of marketing sports teams is that you have to sell the idea that you are smarter than everybody else to be making these big decisions about rosters and players and so therefore all the fans who have been paying thousands of dollars over the years are so invested in a brand or an idea or a tribe that for them to cut their losses and say, oh, yeah, I'm done being a Knicks fan. They then would have to look back and say, man, I spent thousands of dollars, maybe millions of dollars being a Knicks fan. And now what was that all about for? And so the inability to cut their losses and walk away, that's another sign of cult mentality. When my father blew the whistle on child abuse and money laundering,

we went into hiding when I was 13, I saw so many aunts and uncles who would clearly say, oh, no, no, no, no. If I leave now, then all the years of working for the dream, for the commune, it all would have been for nothing. So people's inability to cut their losses is exploited in cult structures. And so these things I'm very privy and I'm very sensitive to. And it has nothing to do with rationale or logic at all. It's pure emotion. And it's also very much imprinted in our evolutionary

coding survival for pack mentality, tribal mentality. And people get the immediate reward of knowing that they're safe by seeing everyone around them agreeing to the same unspoken contracts, but also the spoken invisible rules, but the rules that allow us to believe that our team is the best team, Kobe versus LeBron. You know, I had someone ask me the other day, well, how do people decide which polygamous ruler to follow? And I just said, easy, Kobe or LeBron. What team do you want to be a part of?

And so I'm fascinated with human behavior and human psychology, because again, as you noticed and you said, I had to learn to watch human language in a very different way. And so that upbringing for sure, it paved the way for a very non-traditional life that I live now that allows me to be a teacher in many ways, to go into these corporate settings and start to get people to actually be more reflective and question why are they really doing the things they're doing to make money or is it to belong? All those things.

And those are healthy questions we should be asking. Whereas people in a power or in the status age where we have the tech bro world has run amok with stats. And I'll tell you something about stats as a basketball player stats informed us, but they did not drive us that we could scout someone on film and look at their stats and have an idea of what we could expect for the game. But most often, if they're a good team, they were going to throw wrinkles at us and come out with a very different strategy. And so that forced us basketball players to learn how to adapt and be flexible. But you have so many people in power gobbling up the stats from

the tech bro era to try to solidify control, thinking that we can control life and we can control the world around us. But as you well know, right now, we're talking about this while we're in quarantine, because we have the coronavirus, which is something that we humans and hubris thought, oh, we live in America, we are exempt from any plagues. Because we've been living so long spoiled with all this vaccinations that we've beaten Mother Earth. now it's like oh crap we're getting a slap in the face and we're being given a slice of humble pie really by saying yeah the stats are great and everything but life's going to continue to throw curveballs at us and do we be angry because we thought we had things under control or Or as basketball players, we say,

okay, our opposing team's running a different defense against us. They're going zone now. Do we want to be angry about it and say that's not fair? Or do we say, all right, we have to adapt and we have to adjust and we have to flow with it all? Yeah. I mean, it's so many kind of interesting points there. I'm like you, I'm fascinated by human nature. I'm also fascinated by what people will do in the sense of belonging. You know, I've always believed that Maslow's hierarchy is actually probably better expressed as a diamond and not a triangle. And that, that middle level, you know, where it's like, which is belonging.

Really, that's sort of like, that is the centerpiece that allows you to move up or down. And that is a base physiological need as well. And it's also, it's the root of both sustenance and growth. So it's really the starting point to move up and down the triangle. But, you know, what's fascinating to me also is that the comparisons that you just made with, well, people look at this and they say, well, oh, that's a cult. It's so extreme. It's so different than anything that's out there in the world. all around us, anywhere that people crave belonging and that there is a power structure that people want to sort of like build around that, around access to belonging, access to access, access to identity, access to agency. That's all around us. Sport is a religion. If somebody leaves

basketball or football or baseball, that's called heresy. That's not an athletic term. That's a religious term. It's such a fascinating comparison that you make there. When you can really look all around and all these things that you think are, quote, normal, and just the way that we behave, it's really not all that different. It isn't. It isn't. I love your diamond design of thought there. And I think that's a very accurate way to put it. And the need to belong, I think I like the diamond, how it implies the need to belong can send us in a negative way or it can send us in a positive way. And I love that. I think it's a brilliant thing. Thank you for sharing that with me. Always something new to learn. My mind's already chewing with that one.

And I can imagine already the fact that you think about those kinds of things. You understand when I say that we've had enough of a power hold in the information internet age where people are thinking that their brain is in charge, that the brain has all the answers, that stats, left-brained analysis is what's going to control the world. But we're going to see a rise of the philosophers again. We have to, there has to be a balance of the masculine thinking versus the feminine thinking. We have to recognize that the philosophers are just as crucial to the advancement of humanity and society as are those who are in the analytical brain building or drawing up the numbers or the actual constructs. But the philosophers are the ones that are moving just the collective consciousness of humanity forward into more evolution, asking questions like, well, where

do we actually want to go as a human race? And what is it that we're actually trying to achieve? And so I'll be honest, as scary and stressful and difficult as COVID is, having traveled all over the world, there was one day when I was in Venezuela, they thought I might have Zika virus because my eyes were sealed shut. Having the humility to acknowledge that that's part of life.

When we sign up to be guests here on this planet, viruses and disease and illness is part of the deal. And having the humility to say, I'm just a guest here. In this dimension, in this vibration, in this scale, in this universe, among all the parallel or perpendicular universes theorized by so many scientists. I'm just a guest here. And do I want to throw a fit thinking it should be my way? Or do I have the humility to bow to Mother Earth and say, all right, this is part of the deal.

And whatever happens to me or my family, I have to have some humility and surrender to it. It doesn't mean that I become reckless and say, laissez-faire, go out, do whatever I want to do and roll the dice. No, it's, I'm going to be responsible. I'm going to take all precautions. I'm going to have the humility to listen to science and also the humility to bow to nature and walk a heart-centered way, which is masculine and feminine, which is what we athletes have to do on the court. When you're passing the ball, it's a feminine act. When you're shooting the ball, it's a masculine act. If you're always passing it, you become easy to guard.

If you're always shooting it, you become easy to guard because the defense knows what you're going to do. And so when we're out there in the real world, always trying to be masculine or always playing passive, you become easy to guard. But getting heart centered is learning to walk both, knowing when to do a beautiful dance between masculine and feminine. And in a time like this, learning how to surrender to something greater than ourselves and say, OK, I now see how the game has changed. The refs are now calling the game differently in the third quarter

than they were in the first half. Do I want to throw a fit and say it's not fair? Or do I want to win the game as an athlete and say, okay, I'm going to adapt to the new rules. And the new rules right now is we're quarantined. We got to stay in here. We're in a tighter, constrictor space, but in that beautiful space of constraint, that pressure, that's where new ideas, new problem solving arises. And so that's the part of me with full respect, not making light of all the people dying, all the hospital workers that I'm so grateful for putting their lives at risk.

It's our job as the people staying home to ask the big question. Okay, where do we really want to go back to the status quo and that our economy is going to pick up right where we left off, despite the fact that so many people don't have jobs and mortgage and rent payments are going to be back owed and everything's just going to go smoothly? Probably not. So it's a great time for the philosophers to step forward and say, OK, what a good opportunity for us to begin to ask tough questions as a human race. What really is important? What really matters? And what are we actually trying to achieve here in this lifetime? And so the fact that your brain already is, as I can tell with just a few questions you've

asked, the philosopher archetype is very strong. It's a beautiful time for philosophers to really step up because philosophers have been shamed for the last couple of decades now in our stat-driven society to say they're not really doing anything. No, it's the philosopher's responsibility to always keep pushing the morality of humanity forward. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

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Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Yeah, I love that. One of the things that occurs to me also from you sharing that is I 100% agree. I think we need the scientists, we need the statisticians, we need the philosophers. And I wonder also if another category that's really important is the artists, the artists or the mystics, you know, because you got the data, you know, then you've got the philosopher. And the philosopher to me is the person who continues to ask questions.

You know, they inquire into themselves and they ask us to inquire into ourselves. And then the artist is the one who shows up and says, I see a future that maybe nobody else sees yet, but I'm going to push you slash invite you to maybe step into it with me and see how that feels to you. They're the ones who are responsible for changing the way that we see the world. You know, they're the ones who help shatter the current paradigm. They move us beyond the questions. Not that one replaces the other, but I think there's this really fascinating dance. And I'm really curious to see who steps into these roles as, you know, the, and I do agree with you. I do believe that there has been an escalation of the value of the person who asks intelligent, broad, sweeping, deep questions. And I think the artists are also going to rise into a place of importance as well. And I think it's, I think that they have to

for so many different reasons. We kind of jumped into the deep end of the pool here, which is, which is a lot of fun. Let's just fill in a little bit of space here. Many people will know your background, but many others won't. And you have referenced basketball in a lot of different ways. And you mentioned that you did end up, your family ended up leaving when you were 13 or 14. You found your way into basketball, which became a passion. People can't hear listening to your voice, but you're, from what I know, almost seven feet tall. This was something that you stepped into. I'm guessing half passion, half coping mechanism, because this is another

curiosity of mine. You're emerging from a world that has been very cut off from the outside world. You step into sort of like a new universe with a profoundly different value set. And like you said, when you leave that initial world where you belong because you followed these values and these rules and you step into this different world, now it's up to you to figure out, okay, so where is my place? What are the new rules here? Where is my place? So I'm curious whether basketball was purely a passion for you, or whether it was a place to belong, or whether it was also a coping mechanism, or just all of the above or something else. You're very sharp. This is quickly turning into my favorite interview of all time. All of the above that you just mentioned. And a fourth one too, which was fear. And I'll go into

them. Breaking away from polygamy at the age of 13, I grew from 5'10 to 6'4 at the eighth grade. So when we came out of hiding, when my father blew the whistle, we had to go into hiding for I grew from 5'10 to 6'4 at the eighth grade. So when we came out of hiding, when my father blew the whistle, we had to go into hiding for about six months. And then we eventually settled in downtown Salt Lake City in the middle of plain sight where no one would think to look for us for a while. And I started going to school and the basketball coach saw me walking down the hall. It's like, hey, you should come play basketball. I'm like, well, I don't have any friends.

It'd be a good way for me to fit in. And I'd never played basketball before, but hey, I'm tall, let's give it a shot to answer all your points you're making. That I went from a world where my cousins were my tribe and they had my back unconditionally without question until we dared to rattle the paradigm and question authority.

And then suddenly they all disowned us. And so I went from having this blood buzz around me all the time to suddenly it's gone. And who am I? What tribe do I belong to? And I grew up in this very tribal society. And so basketball, to the point you sharply noticed, was a very smooth segue for me to transition from such a cult world into basically my mini cult that we have this team, but we have a sense of belonging. And then suddenly all my teammates have my back, even though they don't really know me. With my inner ear imbalance, again, I was so unathletic as a kid. I couldn't play basketball with my hearing aids in. And so when I started playing without the hearing aids, it took a lot for my teammates to have patience with me and learn to communicate with me and

figure out how to communicate with me. But because it was a team construct, we were all sacrificing for each other for the greater whole of the team. They were able to have that much more patience with me. So that sense of belonging, of feeling like I wasn't just some tall, gangly kid with a speech impediment and hearing loss. I was in speech therapy until I was 15. I was very shy about how I sounded when I was a kid.

I sounded like I talked like I saw. And we talk in the back of our mouths, deaf people talk in the back of their mouths because you feel that reverberation in your skull. So you feel like you're actually making a sound. That's why deaf people are speaking back there. But it wasn't until I got the digital hearing aids, thank God for digital, right? I finally started to hear a little bit of the diction in the front of the mouth. And I was like, oh, that's where the party's at, in the front of the mouth, not the back. And all that being said, before that point, yeah, I was very socially awkward and shy, but basketball allowed me to go through this huge metamorphosis of trauma, really,

of having your world completely rattled and torn apart and taken out from under you as such impressionable age of an adolescent boy, to have basketball allow me to begin to channel a lot of these neuroses that were forming for me to take all this intensity and focus on something that could take my mind off of the grief and loss of the loss of my cousins. And with that, I started to notice, hey, you know, I have some certain skills. Yeah, I'm tall and gangly, but I have some certain skills that other people don't have. And it's nice to be good at something. And so the love of the game began to form too, that I actually saw something I could be good at, that I can invest my time in, that I knew wouldn't be for nothing.

And then there was also the truth of fear, that even though we were no longer in the polygamist denomination, when you're a kid, you have all these stories buzzing in your head that you are raised with a very angry and broody God, that everything is conditional love, and also the story that God made me deaf. I had this work concept of God and love. And so there's this fear that I have to do something superhuman with my life. And then I'd be worthy of love. And if I didn't achieve something remarkable, then I wouldn't be worthy of love. But I don't think you have to be a kid like me growing up in polygamy. I think you just have to be anybody, but especially men who grew up in a Western culture where we were told that

you have to achieve all of these status markers. And then you're an alpha right then you're worthy of love then the most beautiful girl will love you it doesn't have to be my background i think so many men were raised in that especially those who grew up in the cold war era where it was basically a huge pissing contest between usa and russia to see who could have the most nuclear weapons. And so it's like, okay, most nuclear weapons, most trophies, most money in my bank account. And so that fear that I think drives a lot of men still, but our society and those old constructs, they're dying. The world is asking us to evolve.

As we have become more global, as we become more internet focused, the walls and barriers are dissolving. And yet we're still saying, oh, well, I want things to go back to the way they were. And that's not possible. You can't have the best of both. You can't have it both ways.

And a lot of men are killing themselves. We have veterans killing themselves, but we have a lot of men killing themselves in America, but we don't talk about that stuff because we have men that did everything that society told us to do, did everything their father told them to do so their father could be proud of them. And then we finally get that trophy, that job. And we're like, wait, why am I still not happy? Why, why do I still feel that there's something missing?

Because we're not taught, we weren't taught as boys to learn how to be intimate with ourselves at all, to actually sit and learn to be intimate with ourselves at all, to actually sit and learn to be comfortable in our own skin. And I'm not saying be lazy and be entitled, because entitlement is just a mask of shame. When you have the people swinging to the other end, just checking out, saying, oh, I'm going to be lazy and not do anything, and show that I act like I don't care.

They do that because the pressure's too much because they think it's either extreme, ultra hyper masculine achieving, or else finance got to check out entirely. But there's a heart centered way that says I'm going to live and be brave enough as a new alpha male to decide for myself in self-actualized leadership of my own life to say I'm going to decide for myself what are my metrics of success. Clarity is what I strive for every day. People think it should be happiness or something like that. Happiness has been misconstrued by Hollywood to be something that is not. It's really just a dopamine high. When you watch that romantic movie and you get that dopamine release and you feel good and we

think that's happiness. No, it's an altered state of chemical in our brain. What I really think we should be looking for is clarity. Clarity to say that I'm brave enough to go out and strive and fail and keep getting up every single time because I know that my worth is not attached to an outcome. That my worth as a man is not attached to an outcome. This is me, a man who got to the NBA and saw that my self-worth is nowhere to be found, who nearly committed suicide a year later in the 2008 economic recession. I lost my job

because I still kept thinking I had to get back there. The pain of the story that says my worth as a man is attached to this outcome was so painful I wanted to check out. And then you're also talking to a man who lost a marriage that I thought marriage had to look a certain way that I saw my society do, that I saw my parents do. But the happily ever after died pretty quickly. The movies never show us what happens the day after the happily ever after. Life goes on. And so through it all, learning like, you know what, what I strive for is clarity,

clarity to have the presence in myself, in my heart, in my mind, in my gut, all three matter athletes use all three instinct, intuition, and analysis. Learning to use all three of them in a beautiful blend that is heart centered gives us the courage and the wherewithal to say i'm going to show up every day authentically and bravely unafraid to fail because i know in that failure there's growth and in that failure there's more clarity shining through because with each failure more and more of the facade of the standards of success that we were raised with continue to die away. And all we're left with is ourselves.

Now, being brave enough to ask the questions, what do I really want out of life? And how will I choose to measure my own worth as a man? Kind of went off there, but yeah. No, I mean, you actually filled in a lot of gaps and a lot of really interesting ideas. I mean, the idea of clarity as a sort of a dominant aspiration, I think is fascinating. And it also, you can trace that back thousands of years. You know, when you look at ancient meditative practices, when you look at Buddhism, when you look at a lot of a lot of Eastern philosophy, you know, those practices were largely designed to remove illusion. You know, the Sanskrit word for illusion is Maya.

You know, and a lot of it was about let's develop our minds through a series of practices that allow us to see more clearly. You know, people talk about discernment and I'm, and I'm a huge fan. I'm fascinated by being able to have higher levels of discernment, but there's no discernment until there's clarity, you know, or, or maybe more accurately discernment is only as good as the clarity that precedes it, right? Because we can't make a good decision unless we see what's the context of that decision really clearly. So I love that that's become this central focus for you, that that's sort of like the thing you wake up and strive to get better and better at.

And it's fascinating to me that you talk about the philosophers, and this is really hearkening back many, many, many generations in societies to the thing that humanity used to find ultimately important. Absolutely. That humanity was brave enough to go inward and ask these questions, not operating from the illusion that we're separate from the grid of all that is. All we are is we're moving through an energy grid. And yet we have this illusion that God is somewhere far away, that Mother Earth is some foreign thing that is just here and we're walking on it and it's

some lifeless thing like no it has a conscience just like we do and being able to be inwardly reflective enough to say i'm just one piece of energy moving through this entire grid and energy connects through energy there's a there's a chain link how it all keeps moving back and forth and the thing that we're separate from it is a complete illusion and yes there is importance in self-actualization and there is importance in wanting to explore who you are as a unique individual and being. to surrender and see just how insignificant I am, I began to see just how important I truly am in the greater whole, as a contributor to the greater whole. And so once we let go of the false narrative

that we are alone and separate, trying to find out who we are but being willing to bow into it and lean into it you begin to see the beautiful role you can play to contribute to the advancement of the greater whole i know it sounds oxymoronic it would have sounded oxymoronic to me when i was in my internal narrative of pain of trying to say f everything i'm going to go out there and live my life how i want to live it and everyone else can just and even god is all a joke i didn't want to hear something like that but it's the beautiful marriage of learning to keep your balance of who you are as an authentic person while having the humility to see the authentic person that you really are behind the cultural mask that we were coded or conditioned to wear.

But that person that who you really are, it's a person that needs to show up to contribute to just the essence of humanity itself. That's what I would tell. That's what I tell a lot of gentlemen when I'm talking to them or working with them. It is important. And the necessity of philosophy and the necessity of people being able to be brave enough to challenge the illusions that we are separate. That somehow, yes, the Western American logic is that we're going to continue to blaze our way. But with it, here's the problem. Blaze our way, achieving all these amazing things.

It's great that, yes, we have technology moving. But with it, we keep feeling more and more alone. And so when we get our trophies and we get our possessions, we still feel alone because we believe we are alone and that we're separate from it all. But instead learning to come back to heart centered and saying, all right, I am a unique individual person as I am loved and unique. And I am just one of many moving parts. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary.

Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun on january 24th tell me how to fly this thing mark walberg you know what's the difference between me and you you're gonna die don't shoot if we need them y'all need a pilot flight risk the ability to hold that duality yes you thing that occurred to me also, you mentioned that you had this year where you end up playing for the Cavs. But shortly after that, 2008, 2009, economics hit the team, you end up let go. And I guess shortly after then playing in Italy, and that's when just emotionally and personally, everything falls apart. you break down and come close to attempting suicide. And one of the things that I wonder about that moment is, you know, you leave the church, the cult at the age of 13 or 14. You enter the real world. You're functioning and operating and rising up as a person of status and stature in that world.

You're achieving things that so many would like to achieve. But until that moment when you're 28 or so, I'm wondering if on the outside, you had adopted the behaviors of sort of like being a part of this world, but it wasn't until everything fell apart some 14 years later that the deeper shift, the more nuanced shift in the way that you truly saw yourself, the way that you truly saw the world around you, the way that your values about yourself and people around you and your relationships were sort of deconstructed and gave you the opportunity to rebuild them to finally match sort of like the world that you really want to fully participate in oh man that's a deeply matched

the world that i truly wanted to participate in was the hyper-masculine world where X plus Y equals Z and everything is measured on outcome alone. Losing sight of grace, losing sight of the necessity of feminine and flow and humility, understanding how those are all essential aspects of our humanity. What makes us human is our ability to feel and operate with from multiple emotions at once, masculine and feminine, and dance with them. But the world that I was living in was a world of, all all right we broke away from polygamy people that sell my father people discredited my father all right i got to show them up i got to

make them a crow and i move into the hyper world of sports where there's direct competition people right in your face trying to make you lose your job, trying to embarrass you in front of thousands of people. And if you win or you lose, your job is pretty much in question every single night. So it's hyper, hyper masculine world of metrics where your worth is measured on a stat sheet. That people think they can measure your heart and worth as a human being by looking at numbers. But here's the catch. You can't quantify heart.

You can't. You can't quantify human intuition and chemistry, knowing who's going to work well together or not. Even though big corporations love to think they can with their stat sheets and you cannot. Underneath it all, though, I was so afraid to show my essential self because before I started playing basketball, I was a kid who won writing awards in school. And that wasn't cool to do, right? Back in the days that we grew up. And, but that's who I was as a kid. My parents always encouraged me to read and write as communication skills. And so the ability to express and write, and I love how you talk about the artist and the poet. The poet is the artist who can write down the unknowable and make it understandable. And that is an essential archetype that makes me me.

But a part of me that I hid, that I wore a mask over for years because I didn't want my teammates in the locker room to know that I was at home writing poetry and doing all this stuff because that would mean I was weak. And so there I was, this modern- day gladiator with a bleeding heart. And all I did was put armor on it for years. And I thought, okay, but when I get to the NBA, oh, it will all be worth it. And then this deep wounding that I have, this feeling of inadequacy or fear to show who I really am would dissipate and I can be more authentic.

And it was all illusions. And when it all fell apart, I'm like, what was it all for? Just sound and fury. And in that near attempt of suicide, it was, I still recall it was so much lucidity it was like I felt my brain split in two that the crazy hyper logic mind that's always going always going just like died and the other part that is just tapped into the creativity, the creation of all, the part that chooses to remain connected to the necessity of all that is and what will always be what came is what came forward for me in that moment, thank God, and kind of took control of the wheel. But it took me about a year to really recover from that, what doctors would call a nervous breakdown.

And my friends didn't recognize me anymore. And it took a lot of work to rebuild my brain basically, having to rewire the motherboard of, okay, being aware of major blind spots that we all have. And culture is one of our biggest blind spots that culture dictates so much of how we internalize information and how we logic it. And logic is a huge blind spot. And if you see everyone around you agreeing to the same way we process information, then we think it's logical, but to another culture, it may be completely illogical.

So you have all these cultures that I played in around the world that are saying their values are the best values and everyone else is being illogical and irrational, but rational is being able to see everyone's different logic and bring them together and help everyone find a win-win. software system that was installed in my brain and having to uninstall it and do open source like Linux or something with other people helping me figure out what the hell I'm going to do here and be brave enough to start typing in my own values and metrics and algorithms with which how I want to process the world now to live in the world that you so beautifully put that I want to live in. Because even in our world today, there are many universes happening.

And they're clashing because now we have alternative facts. We have all these narratives, these paradigms. We call them paradigms or narratives, but really they're emerging to be universes that we're looking at people saying, what universe, not just what world, but what universe have you been living in? And it is a literal question because the universe they're choosing to operate in, while many of us are being asked to shift or move into another universe or world that we want to live in, many others are staying behind and throwing fits, trying to ask nature and evolution to stop changing, which is the most ridiculous ask ever, because that's not how nature and evolution works. We adapt or we die. But that moment of my brain really short-circuiting and the hard drive frying, it really is, I know it sounds metaphorical, but it really is the best way I can describe it

because it feels pretty accurate because I think our brains are just a much more complicated processing system that can process a lot of emotions. While computers that we know aren't very emotionally intelligent yet, but we have the ability with our hearts and our brains to process multiple emotions at the same time. But with that breakdown of my brain, it took me about two years before I really became somewhat grounded again. But that's when I fell in love with the love of my life. And I still have another story that, oh, I'll get married and then I'll be really happy. And that world fell apart too. And so those two huge deaths of dreams within seven years of each other, 2008, 9 and 2015, the divorce. It's a lot of loss. But that is the toll we pay for clarity

is loss and heartbreak and so many people are trying to find the stats out there to help them avoid heartbreak but heartbreak is our greatest teacher and that's where clarity starts to shine through and over the last 10 years, I've worked through that continually being brave enough to say, all right, how am I going to choose to show up in this world? And where do I find the world that I want to live in? It was a 10 year journey before I started to write the book, The New Alpha Male, that came out with Sounds True a couple weeks ago.

That was 10 years. I think to a philosopher or the people who understand the necessity of process, you can't rush timing. You can't rush timing. You can't force timing. As much as people with the information and data, they're like, we can just keep pounding and penetrating through and make things be what they're not. But the great basketball players in the moment when they're in the zone, when a basketball player is in the zone he is so in a beautiful balance of masculine and feminine passing and flowing shooting when he knows when

to shoot never aiming his shots he's not in his head he's in his entire body and he's letting his heart guide the way and he's not forcing it he's not aiming it he's not forcing it. He's not aiming it. He's not trying to make it to be what it's not supposed to be. He's just in it where everything is, understanding and respecting the process of timing and flow. That's when we see the greats ascend in their peaks, when they're not in their head analyzing. When you're analyzing all the time, you fall a step behind on the basketball court. You have to have the trust to trust your body, your heart, and your instinct and intuition to just be in the flow of it all. And that's when you have true power because you have surrendered the illusion that you actually are in control. That makes a lot of sense to me. The way you describe these sequential losses, and then you being brought to your knees a number of times over and reexamining and reexamining, some of the language that you've repeated in our conversation too is heart-centered, is really an exploration of masculine, feminine. What's interesting also is you haven't said male, female,

you've said masculine, feminine, as if there's an understanding that these are qualities that exist in all of us and how we choose to marry them and bring them forward in the world is not preordained. But it's something that we really need to actually examine. And part of that is deconstructing the age-old model. One of the things that you shared is that second big moment

of being brought to your knees was when your marriage fell apart. And at that time also, you're a father to a young son. So in this process of re-imagining, how do I want to bring myself to this world? How do I want to create myself? And how do I want to bring myself to this world? How do I want to create myself and how do I want to create the world around me and what is the role that I want to play and the set of values? experience your life as much as thinking, I've got this tiny little boy here who's going to look to a certain extent to me to try and understand how to be in the world. And I want to see if I can get as close as I can to some answers as soon as I can so that I can model something that I hope might be helpful to him. Great question. Becoming a father was the amazing experience to realize that my son is just a mirror and he's just a living extension of me. It was like someone had taken a piece of my heart and just put it right outside of me and I could see it and I could see him walking around.

And he's now in my life and it's like I've known him all my life, but he's only been in this incarnation for six years, but I've always known him. And it forced me both to answer your question. It's like, well, okay, how does his experience force me to reexamine the world I want to live in? And what world do I want to have for my son? But also, it forced me to question, okay, I no longer get to make it all about me. That even in the pain of a loss of a divorce, I couldn't even

go, even though I've been working on the wiring, even if I wanted to, I couldn't go to the point of despair where I just want to check out and commit suicide because I'm responsible for somebody else. And he is responsibility number one. I don't get to be myopic like that anymore. And with that, there's been the beautiful dance of my son continuing to help my emotional intelligence and my emotional growth by me helping Simon learn to just sit and breathe and express what he's feeling. I mean, I got a six-year-old kid telling me, hey, dad, I'm pretty frustrated.

I feel really frustrated that this is happening right now. And I'm like, dude, that's a big word for a six-year-old kid to be throwing out there. And I never would have been able to articulate that. But frankly, not a lot of us grew up in homes like that, especially, again, during the Cold War era where we were given permission to be that emotionally intelligent, to learn to define your feelings and learn to get in your body. And I'm always telling Simon, take a breath. Let's get in our bodies, man. Let's get in our bodies and just ground ourselves and get back to center. And those are skills that as a basketball player, I learned that I get to apply

in real life that when you're a basketball player and you're afraid that you missed your last three shots and now you're playing in fear, you're living in the past. But the way to be the best teammate is to have accountability saying, you know what? I missed three shots. They probably weren't the best shots, but that's what was supposed to happen because that's what happened. I accept it. And I choose to be in the moment. And now I have the ball. I'm here. I'm present. Is me taking a shot the best thing for the team right now? Or is it the pass? Wait, they're backing off me because I haven't hit the last three shots. My shot is the best shot we're going to get on the shot clock cycle. I have to shoot it.

I have to keep showing up and I have to keep flowing in it. And that comes when you're able to just breathe in the chaos of a basketball game. And everyone's around you is losing their mind. And the fans are just batshit crazy, throwing beers and things everywhere. And you're like, I choose to be present. I choose to be in my body, trusting my body. And those are skills I've been able to share with Simon, but he helped me have the permission to really integrate them into my real world to the point you're talking about. I used to say, I have integrity. I'm the same person everywhere I go, but I live two compartmentalized lives. There was Lance on

the basketball court and there was Lance in the real world with my family and loved ones. But now it's, okay, basketball is dying. I'm retiring to be with my son. I'm going through a divorce. I can't just leave that dark feminine Lance that could slit someone's throat and go for the jugular and win the game. The Lance that people love to cheer for, but my family didn't ever want to come off the basketball court, is saying, okay, that's a big part of who I am. I can't just let that part of me die. But so many athletes do when they think they retire.

And that's why, one, obesity, violence, suicide, lots of issues for athletes when they retire because they're not learning how to integrate these two worlds they were living in. And they're leaving essential parts of who they were thinking they have to shame them. They're that hyper competitive, but also I call it the dark feminine.

The dark feminine is like a black widow energy that you don't automatically go and look for confrontation. But if someone comes into your space and they think they can disrespect you or violate you, the Black Widow energy is, oh, you think you're smarter than me? All right, I'll let you play with this fire. And then when you light yourself on fire, I'll step over your burning courts. That's the best way I can describe. That was more of the energy that I played with on the basketball court where we had a lot of players trying to force things and be something they weren't. But I learned to be cerebral as a basketball player because I wasn't the most athletic guy.

So I learned to do many, many things. And that was a very feminine act by learning to be very fluid and so that was a part of me that i had to learn to integrate into my world that was now consolidating into one as i was retiring from basketball and being a father to simon truly helped me do that and i wanted him to see how healthy it is to live in full authenticity that we have a lot of men who still haven't learned how to balance masculine and feminine that are rising up in social media

as influencers who were just really angry dudes who were just spouting misogyny and everything saying we need to go back to the power of the man. The women are trying to rise up and take our power. That's just a lot of fear.

And those are men who have been playing a very one dimensional game of hyper masculine. And they don't have enough skill sets that the universe has thrown them a curve ball, but because their game is very one-dimensional, all they could do was dunk, so to speak, that the defense has adapted. And now they can't get close to the rim and they can't dunk it. And they never took the time to develop the bank shot or the jump shot. I know I'm speaking of metaphors here, but that's basically what we're seeing,

that these guys are getting benched and they're upset. And rather than them having the humility to say, I should probably start developing other skills for my game of life. They're now throwing temper tantrums on the bench, cussing coach out saying this isn't fair. That's not how basketball works. And that's not how the world works. Who those who are willing to adapt are the ones that survive. And so for Simon, I want to help Simon understand the beauty of being cerebral, being multifaceted, masculine and feminine. And he has been a wonderful opportunity for me to take so many of my basketball experiences to see

how I can apply them into my life as a father and teach him as my son to help him be a better player of life, not just athlete, but in the game of life. And that's allowed me to be a better teacher and it's what I do for a living now. And so much of it is due to my son. At first glance, when I looked at the book, it looked like, okay, so you wrote this for sort of a general, a mass popular audience. And then the more I learned about you, the more I started to think, and the more we're in conversation, the more I start to think, oh, no, this is actually a bit of a love letter to his son. And then the more I think

about it, even a little bit more, it feels like you didn't write this to him. You wrote it with him. I did. I did. Oh, wow. Man, you're a sharp dude. It really is. It's a love letter to my son. And everything, all the pain and all the loss of my life that I hope it gives him not only a better start at life to take my experiences and learn from them vicariously, but also have the coping skills for when life hurts. That is the best thing I can do for him as a father to help him have as many skills as possible to maneuver through this game of life in a heart-centered way. And it was a love letter to my son. And it also was me figuring out many ways, again, to be cerebral to meet as many people as I can where they're at. I can't simply be on a mountain speaking to all these people

trying to show the world how smart I am. People don't care how smart I am. That's one thing I tell people all the time. We try to throw stats and be the smartest guy in the room. People want to know if you simply care and if you've actually have walked through fire yourself and what price you've paid as a human being to show your humanity in this world. And so instead of me trying to be the smartest guy, this book was just a lot of Trojan horses to meet as many people where they're at. But at the core of it, yeah, it's a love letter to my son. And thank you for saying it so beautifully and eloquently. That means a lot.

And it helps me feel seen and heard in my own way. So thank you, Jonathan. That means a lot. Yeah. This feels like a good place for us to come full circle also. So we're hanging out in this container of good life projects. So if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? To live a good life. To live a good life is being brave enough, being brave enough to hold the heartbreak of life in one hand

and in the other hand holding gratitude for those experiences and the clarity they give us and holding them in your heart at the same time. Because we think we can only feel the one emotion at once, and we always have to be happy or sad. You can be both at the same time. You can walk in beauty, which is understanding and seeing and holding the heartbreak and the loss you've had in your life and choosing to be a teacher through those experiences and not a victim

and seeing how those experiences have given you so much clarity and that's where your gratitude comes in thank you Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com.

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share it with people and have that conversation. Because when ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change takes hold. See you next time. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple watch getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple watch series 10 available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum compared to previous generations, iPhone tennis or later required charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hit man. I knew you were going to be fun. January 24th. Actual results will vary.