Episode 237 – Lance Powell

Richard Matthews: [00:00:00] And every comic book hero

has an origin story

it’s the thing that made

you into the hero

you are today

And were you born a hero?

Were you like bit

by a radioactive spider

that made you want to

get into

people build their leadership

skills and stuff like that

or do you start

in a job and eventually

move over to becoming

an entrepreneur

Lance Powell: the penultimate

latchkey kid if that

was a superhero name, that was probably my name early on.

You know both parents were out

doing whatever they were doing

and so from the time

that I was

maybe 6 until 17 ish

I learned the world by myself

learned to figure out

the mechanics of the world by myself

luckily I had a great group

of friends in my neighborhood

that we all glued together

secretly I didn’t know I had a spy

network of moms

making sure that I was okay

I would not identify myself

as a hero from my youth

but I think friends would you know

there were points in times where

in elementary school

a buddy of mine and I were known

as Batman and Robin

our [00:01:00] job is to go around

to all the bullies to get

them to stop picking on all the kids

As I got older

I want to be happy

I want my friends to be happy

I want people around me to be happy

and anything that’s counter to that

I’m going to go confront

and I think just being

the latchkey kid that I was with

no one suppressing my whims

That just became

a normal mode for me to operate from

That freedom

gave me the flexibility to like

discover the world on my own terms.

​

Richard Matthews: [00:02:00] Hello, and welcome back to The Hero Show my name is Richard Matthews and today I have the pleasure of having Lance Powell on the line.

Lance are you there?

Lance Powell: I’m here nice to see you Richard.

Richard Matthews: Awesome, glad to have you here. And so just for, always start the episodes off. People always wonder where we’re at. So we are up in Yosemite in California, right now visiting my dad.

And Lance, I think you said you’re coming in from Los Angeles is that right?

Lance Powell: That’s correct, yup.

Richard Matthews: Awesome. I know we were just talking before we got on here. We got to, get you up here to, Yosemite and see this place, cause it’s gorgeous.

Lance Powell: It sounds like I’m missing all of California, which it sounds like you’re traveling through every spot I need to see.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely.

Richard Matthwes: That’s one of the nice things about [00:03:00] traveling and working is you get to see all the cool places. So what I want to do before we get too far into our interview though, is I just want to go over a brief bio or introduction for you and then we’ll get into your story.

So Lance Powell, is a former executive in the art and science fields of video game and film post production. He now leads Tula, a transformative and practical program to unlocking the human, full potential and self realization. And I know you said you got your start actually in the video game industry is that right?

Lance Powell: Yeah, I started in games in 92 fell into it, you know, those days when you could actually do that there was a division I was working for another company they moved to Oregon, I grabbed the newspaper of all things, and I was rifling through and I saw this little tiny square box that said Activision Studios is looking for someone to come into customer support.

And at that point in time I was working for Symantec in Q.A. and went over to the Activision Studios. They had just come out of chapter 11. So there’s only 40 people, [00:04:00] boxes everywhere. And yeah, that kind of began the entire thing. The whole journey it almost didn’t happen, by the way, it almost didn’t happen because I was wearing a suit and tie.

And one of the producers comes out before the rest of the team met me and he goes, oh, yeah you can’t do that. Take that off and I’m like I’m 20, you know, I’m like take one off and he’s like this you all just take the whole thing off. They can’t see you wearing a suit that you won’t fit in and so first lesson learned.

Richard Matthews: That’s Funny. So what I want to do, what I want to start off with is what you’re known for now, right? So, I want to know what your business is like. Who do you serve? What do you do for them?

Lance Powell: Okay. So Tula is the company I started a year ago. It’s focused on three primary areas, which is a corporate clients, which is transforming leaders a community which is called Concord Forum which is for men to come together to activate themselves into the highest potential and then a group [00:05:00] called AFPA, which is the allies for black americans, which deals directly with generational and cultural trauma.

Richard Matthews: Man. So you guys have your fingers in all sorts of stuff. And I guess my question then for is I want to find out how you got that point where you started Tula and you’re running the organization you’re doing now, we on this show, your origin story, right?

And every good comic book hero has an origin story. It’s the thing that made you into the hero you are today. and were you born a hero?

Were you like bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into, people build their leadership skills and stuff like that? Or do you start in a job and eventually move over to becoming an entrepreneur?

Basically, what’s your story?

Lance Powell: Wow, the penultimate Latchkey Kid, if that was a superhero name, that was probably my name early on. You know, both parents were out doing whatever they were doing. And so from the time that I was, maybe 6 until 17 ish? It was like pre-rain and I learned the world by myself learned to figure out [00:06:00] the mechanics of the world by myself.

Luckily, I had a great group of friends in my neighborhood that we all glued together. Secretly, I didn’t know I had a spy network of moms making sure that I was okay. But, you know, it was air and, but by.

Richard Matthews: The 80s were a good time, right?

Lance Powell: Man, the best, you know, it’s like responsibility and freedom, and we’re at 80s is like what peak masculine. And so that concept, I was absorbing a lot of, and I would say. I would not identify myself as a hero from my youth, but I think friends would you know, there were points in times where in elementary school, a buddy of mine and I were known as Batman and Robin. Our job is to go around to all the bullies to get them to stop picking on all the kids.

Junior high school that continued on, me and my friend went to different schools as I got older. It was really kind of the same thing. It’s the, you know, I want to be happy. [00:07:00] I want my friends to be happy. I want people around me to be happy and anything that’s counter to that, I’m going to go confront and I think just being the latchkey kid that I was with no one suppressing my whims, you know, that just became a normal mode for me to operate from.

So I don’t know if that’s a superpower necessarily, but. That freedom gave me the flexibility to like, discover the world on my own terms.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. So how did you go there into the video game world and then eventually into starting Tula?

Lance Powell: So, I really fell into the game world. This is at a point in time when the industry was going into a second generation, right? The first generation would be the late 70s, early 80s, you know, the one man show out of his garage, making Pac-Man I was part of the second generation. I was building pipelines and processes and, you know, look development and the technology and really honestly just fell into it that the transition from that to Tula was out of real deep need.

When COVID hit[00:08:00] I was in very, you know, it kind of spun me out, you know, we’re wiping down mail we’re protecting our, you know, the elder people in our community and it was the first time in my life where I felt depression and stress, just like crushing. And it was my first experience. I reached out to my partner and I said, Hey.

You know, what does depression feel like? She goes, yeah this and this. I’m like, okay, I’m depressed. I gotta change my change everything and it got me down into a road of deep discovery that deep discovery turned into activation.

Activation became what? So everything I’m doing right now is out of, you know, born from the past, transformed during COVID, and then expressed post COVID.

Richard Matthews: Interesting. So you have this world in the video game, in the video game scene and you start of all the stresses and one of the COVID brought to and then learning how [00:09:00] to overcome those yourself and being able to, you know, take that same sort of like lifelong pattern of being able to help other people overcome those same things.

Lance Powell: Yeah, it’s you know, the journey itself is through your own psychology and the experience. Once I, prior to all this, I was in complete denial that anything like this was possible. I was in a state of you know, when Bruce Lee said the word, you know, you’ve got to happen to your chi. I always thought she was something abstract.

When people’s talking about, you know, the spiritual journey, I always thought that was abstract. It wasn’t until I was in a state of depression and stress where I was like something’s got to change and it was during that point where I started having a couple of different experiences. Those experiences activated my curiosity and that became a complete deep journey into the mind body relationship.

What is awareness? What are the mechanics of spirituality? Who’s [00:10:00] talking about it? How wide does it go? How deep does it go per culture? You know, can you collapse everything that seems similar and basically Tula became a practice of broad based spirituality into a vertical and then I gamified my process to. You know, get deeper into the mind get deeper into the body.

And as that, as I started coming towards the end of that, I started expressing it with different friends, getting them into a practice, walking them through certain mechanics, and as I saw that they would experience the same level of deep programming that I was, it really made me go, this is very powerful.

This is something I need to really hone in on and turn into a skill set because I don’t want to be suffering, you know, from my own psychology. I don’t think anybody else does. And it gives you a very clear roadmap of, you know, the kind of origin of your experience up to the sense experience and then all through the [00:11:00] psychology that gets created along that journey.

So, to kind of sum it all up, you know, it was born out of necessity and now I’m giving this to other people because it’s a clear path to mind stability.

Richard Matthews: What’s interesting to me is I experienced something similar, right? I for a long time, you know, I had a solid upbringing with my parents and my family and my faith and all those kinds of things.

And so, like, I didn’t have a lot of, I don’t want you to call it like mental trauma or things that I had to work through. But one of the big things that I took me forever to unlock was the mind body connection that you were talking about.

And I always, I struggled for a long time being, you know, thin and scrawny and not very muscular and not being able to do a lot of the things that I want to do and having my body sort of being a limiting factor in the things that I wanted to do.

And it was started a couple of years ago, started really focusing on trying to fix that part. Of my life, and a peak performance gentleman that like went through and did like really extensive, like deep level, [00:12:00] like blood testing and genetics And some other things that just like, you know, help unlock some of those things and help started getting like the foundation fixed.

And then this year earlier, I like just a fitness essentially and martial arts space. And he specifically teaches, he uses martial arts as a skeleton to teach calisthenics and breath work and meditation how to create that mind body connection and create the energy and the pathways and everything to be able to just put yourself into performance state whenever you want and those kind of things.

And I can’t say that it is that caused the massive growth that our company has experienced, but I can tell you like, I started the training with him. And you can see on our like graph for our business that starting the training on the whole building the mind body connection and are the graph is like, it’s a straight up.

It’s a straight up shot, growth where for years. It’s been and it wasn’t until I started really focusing on building that mind body connection and unlocking the potential in my own body and, like, really pushing that and that it’s made just a humongous difference in the outcomes that we’ve been able to create.[00:13:00]

Lance Powell: You know, it’s first off, congratulations. That’s a huge shift. I think one of the things that it’s just really blind to us is that we are you know, we’re meaning making machines and we get bought into the meaning of certain experiences and we create these fantasies out of those experiences and then we believe the fantasies.

You know, I can’t do, I’m not strong enough to do. You guys are better than me, right? And so all of those, you can imagine it’s like a tiny parachute attached to your back while you’re sprinting. And our psychology, the older you get, we just kind of pile them up and they slow us down dramatically in the form of doubt and uncertainty and aggression and a bunch of different psychological effects that come out of there.

The reality is, as you’re pointing out, clear all that stuff out and you’re frictionless and that.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. It’s crazy.

Lance Powell: It’s absolutely crazy. And one of [00:14:00] the things I find the most interesting is like, get into this deeper with people is we’re so beholden to our story, you know, Oh, that thing really happened.

Oh, that thing’s really important to me. Oh, that thing. You know, they really did these things to me. You know, it’s that personalization of the experience that is impacting people’s ability to move forward. And when we think about from the time that we wake up in the morning to the time when we go to bed, how many encounters during the day from like reading texts on our phone and looking at the news and, you know, just having a cynical conversation, how those kill momentum, kill your ability to move forward.

And so I really start a lot of the practice now getting to the origin point of your experience and going, this is your origin point, not the sensory base that we get connected to because that sensory base is what’s impacting our ability to move forward.

Starting from the origin, it allows us to witness everything [00:15:00] without taking it personal. And once we get to that level of our experience. There’s nothing that can stop you, you literally become unstoppable because there’s no psychological you know, mechanic that is adding it’s weight to you, there’s just nothing there. So you’re able to move efficiently.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, like so it sounds like I sort of accidentally stumbled into a lot of the you teach like systematically because that’s which is kind of, which is fascinating because like I know. So there was a couple of things.

One of my good friend now, said to me earlier this year, it was about the same time so it was like three months, not three months, three weeks before I started doing like the physical training. And he goes, if you want to, grow this year, and I was like, yeah, he’s like one one piece of advice.

And I was like, what’s that? He’s like, say yes till it hurts and then fix the pain. So it was a mixture of, like, taking that sort of, mindset of just say yes till it hurts and also like really fixing that whole mind body connection. And realizing that, like, you can you know, to use your terminology become frictionless.

[00:16:00] And do so much more than you think you’re capable of. And like the limits that I would have placed on myself a year ago versus the limits I’d place on myself today are astronomically different not even in the same world.

Like, and I’ve had to expand my thinking and my goals and the team and just like everything we’re doing is just completely next level compared to where I would have and even like, I don’t know it’s my baseline higher than what I thought my dreams were capable of a year ago, which is interesting.

Lance Powell: And sorry go ahead.

Richard Matthews: I’m going to say, it’s interesting because it’s not, I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s not like a lot of things changed. It was it was just a couple of small unlocked everything if that makes sense.

Small things like in your mind and in your physicality your thinking and just the way that you the world. And it just, changes.

Lance Powell: Absolutely. It’s interesting, right? The way that I look at the psychology now is there’s the barriers that [00:17:00] we create from own experience, right? They’re rooted. A lot of them are rooted in the childhood. There’s the barriers that we are handed to from the, you know, older people in our communities, our parents, our teachers and whatnot.

There’s a cultural hidden barriers. And so all of these have impact. You know, if you think about being a you know, if you’re a minority stepping into a space that’s not minority, your mindset is I have to behave or I have to operate a certain way, you know, if you’re stepping into a corporate situation and you’re new to the corporate experience, well, then your mindset is, well, I have to behave a certain way, right?

And so these mechanics starts to play into the experience, but we’re making it all up. You know, there’s nothing that is that was said you have to operate these ways. So it impacts our ability to move forward our ability to be powerful our ability to like make a statement because we’re held back by our parents saying well, [00:18:00] you shouldn’t do that today.

Maybe do some more research and do it tomorrow, right? We’re letting other people’s influence affect our ability to move forward.

Richard Matthews: Oh, that’s the thing that really strikes me about that, that’s one of those things that’s so powerful. I don’t want people who are watching this to miss that key. So one of the things that, I had someone, I was a guest on someone else’s podcast recently, and they said like, what’s the one piece of advice think you’ve learned over the years that you would like pass on or something like that.

I don’t know if that’s exactly the question, my answer and the thing that I really think, people should pick up on is that everybody is wrong.

Lance Powell: That’s right.

Richard Matthews: Like everybody is wrong about almost everything and, you know, it doesn’t almost yeah, everyone’s making it all up and even when they’re like this, you know, you talk about like really tactical things like this thing when you’re marketing to these people works really well in this way.

I’m like it works well for them and their situation. What they’re doing is like, there are no rules. Not really, right? You know, it’s not, there’s not really a, like, this is how fast you can grow your business or this is how fast you can run, or this [00:19:00] is how high you can jump or any of those things like all of those things are, they’re wrong.

You don’t actually know what the capacity of your capability is right? And like the best metaphor I’ve ever heard for it is potential is like you’re in a box and you can see the edge of your box. And that’s the, that’s your visible what you know you’re capable of. And your actual potential is some other box that box is inside of, you can’t see it. You don’t know where it is. You don’t know what the edge of the that potential is.

And the only way to find out is to push the limits and to test it. And you realize when you start doing that, you can run faster, you can jump higher, you can hire more people, you can build faster. Everything that you thought was a limit is not a limit.

Lance Powell: It’s interesting.

Richard Matthews: I don’t know how to say it other than that, but.

Lance Powell: What does it say is that the, you know. The things that we think are our superpowers are actually our blockers as well. So that part right there is really took me a minute to really understand that I kept trying to [00:20:00] process this experience through the logical mind that was one of the reasons why I didn’t have the experience to begin with because my logical mind couldn’t connect to the concept of spirituality.

You know, I kept trying to put it into this like mystical other realm that doesn’t make sense because science doesn’t know what it is. And the reality is that logic itself, the thinking that you’re a logical person, thinking that you’re a rational person means that you’re trying to put something that requires an experience.

Right, it required you can’t do it for knowledge. It’s not a third person experience It has to be a first person direct hand experience for you to go. Okay, now I know how that works I touch fire now. I know fire’s hot right and so our entire industry is based off of logic and so we’ve got wings of people who come out of university in their IQ.

And that is the very barrier to having deeper experiences. You’ve got to remove the concept [00:21:00] of being a logical person for you to see the other box. Otherwise you’re inside of a box, inside of a box, inside of a box, inside of a box.

It’s nuts. Like, and one of the most real experiences for me recently has been like, one of my mastermind members, her name’s Liana. She’s fantastic. You can find her episode. If you’re listening to this, she’s, I interviewed her a number of years ago. She’s been, I call her my business big sister.

And for years now, anytime I come up with something that I’m like, I’m going to do this, or, we’re going to do this, or we’re going to make this change, whatever. She always responds with something along the lines of, how would you do the same thing ten times faster? how would how would you do the same thing with ten times less resources? Right, or she always asks me that question.

And she’s like, even if you don’t, can’t find the answer, if it’s not a possibility, she’s asking the question it’s that same, like, whatever limits you think you have. You probably don’t, right, you probably don’t. And you don’t know until you start actually like pushing on them and testing them.

And that’s where you [00:22:00] realize you’re like, you know, logically you can’t do it 10 times faster, right? But that’s that limiting, like IQ belief you were talking about and like all box you in there and you realize like, you know, if you extend beyond those things, you find solutions that blow you away.

Absolutely. And it’s, you know, what’s interesting is the limiting beliefs that we hold on to. Those are the barriers, right? Those are the energetic resistances that require identification and, you know, some form of integration. And the more you do, the more you can see, right? Just think of all these experiences that we accumulate over time as a box.

You know, they start from youth, and then we make them more complicated as we get older over time. And once all the boxes are gone, you’ve got nothing but a clear view. You’re just like, Oh, okay. I didn’t need to be in any of those boxes.

Richard Matthews: So you might be able to help me with a theory. That [00:23:00] I’ve been, I’ve talked about a few times on this podcast. So people who are regular listeners might recognize this. I have been asked a number of times since we started traveling. So we started traveling in 2016. How we’ve managed to grow our business as much as we have over the time that we’ve been traveling.

And so business growth from 2017 till today, which is. You know, what is like eight years or something like in the, you know, like high two digits like and manage all of that. And the whole team and everything. And we’ve dramatically decreased the amount of time we put into the business, right?

My average workday is four hours a day, four days a week. And people like, how can you manage that kind of business and the kind of creativity and everything that’s required to do that? Well, and I’m like, I’ve never really been able to put this into words, but I have a theory. And I think what you just said might have some on it.

And so my theory is that when you live a, the traveling where we called it a sticks and bricks life, right? You live in a regular sticks and bricks built home. You have, your life can be, can become [00:24:00] very routine very easily. All right our experience, like my wife and I’s experience when we were living in six and bricks home, it was like, you know, every Wednesday night we went to grandma’s house for dinner. Every Tuesday we went to gymnastics with our kids. And every Saturday we did, we went out to a new restaurant or something like that. But it was like you could, our life was clockwork. And so our experiences were clockwork and, it was similar.

And when we started traveling, one of the things that happened was all of your experiences change regularly. And like, you have to shrink your routines down to, like, what fits inside your household. And then everything else, like where you get gas and where you buy groceries and where you’re having dinner and who you’re meeting with and like everything else is just, it’s constantly new and changing.

And so you have two pieces to that. One is that you’re, you get really comfortable with not having a route, like a rote always in that creative, mind state because you’re dealing with new things all the time, new inputs, new outputs and all that stuff. And then the second part of that is you’re constantly doing that first thing is that you have a whole plethora of experiences, new foods, new friends, new places you’ve been, new things that you’ve seen.

And so you’re building like a whole [00:25:00] huge box of experiences that you never would have had I always tell people it is like, if you want to be the most interesting man in the world, right? You have good friends, good food, good sex, good experiences, like all that kind of stuff, like be live life.

And so like to your point, the theory I’ve had is like, I don’t know how you take the sort of forced experience of traveling. That allows you to that allows you to do that and give the same output to someone who doesn’t have the same traveling. And so like I don’t know what the word would be but like it sounds like you’re talking about the same kind of thing is like, you know. How do you add new experiences to unlock your capabilities?

Lance Powell: Interesting. It’s so first is really interesting question because one of the things that we get into in conversations is, you know, what’s an experience? And what’s a moment? A lot of people remember covid you know, the 1st years of covid. Everyone said time just flew by, you know, it just 2020 happened and then all of a sudden it’s 2023, you know, you [00:26:00] blink and the thing that really comes out of that is experiences create new memories, right?

They, you know, you record them, they’ve got an emotion into it, they kind of get absorbed into the body. And that stimulation allows you to feel like you’ve done something really amazing in the day. If you don’t have new memories if you don’t have moments, then time just feels like it’s just going and going and nothing stinks and nothing really clicks.

And so now it’s about. Getting out, having moments, having experiences, because if you don’t, time’s just going to feel like it’s slipping by. So, part of what I want to touch in on is, the more you clear your mind out of the limiting beliefs, the clearer you can see, you know, kind of end to end of your mental spectrum.

That means there’s nothing blocking your view, nothing that’s going to impede your ability to move forward. And so you can optimize your workflow [00:27:00] just from clearing out your psychology. So in one way, your eight hour workday can go to a four hour workday just from doing that because you’re more efficient.

You know, the answers come to you a lot clearer. There’s no doubt or uncertainty kind of slowing you down, making you kind of flip flop between what you want to do and something else. But that last piece that having those momentary experiences is living life. Like the actually having an experience is by its definition living life.

So yeah, regardless whether it’s good or bad, you know, it’s an experience. When we’re gone our playback is going to be all these experiences not these non moments that we didn’t turn into an experience so I don’t know if that answers your question but it.

Richard Matthews: So the thing that struck me about that was of one of my metaphors that I’ve been using for people describe what it feels like to sort of live the way that we do, like, a lot of people you’ve seen like the sine wave for a sound machine, right? It goes up and down and it seems like a lot of people are trying [00:28:00] to compress the sound waves. They were trying to keep everything as close to normal as possible, minimize the bad experiences. And it also minimizes the good experiences. Right?

And so like everything fits into flatline routine, you end up with a flatline life and what’s interesting for like for us is like, if we go back just the last eight weeks like we’ve had multiple breakdowns like we a water broke on us. We had to get that fixed on the side of the road we had the awning on the side of our RV ripped had you know, the shit tank actually like literally blocked up and I had to hire a plumber. There was an actual literal shit storm in our life we had the sink pipe like, half.

So like, we had to like put a bucket under it to catch it. So I can tell I could the sink, and, like, you know, that’s just like some things and just in the last eight weeks, but like at the same time we’ve been to 14 different States. We got to see our family all over the country and we get to do things that other people just don’t get to do. And so like my kids, like my son is 14.

He’s been, you know, all four of my kids, actually, they’ve been to 48 different states. He’s been on the battlefield of [00:29:00] Gettysburg. He’s been to all four corners of the United States. He swam in the, you know, the Rio Grande and he’s jumped off of waterfalls in Yosemite. And you know, he’s on his second novel that he’s written with his friend and he’s training AI, how to write. In his specific languages and stuff like that. And I was like, and he’s 14, he’s got more accomplishments than most, adults, and you get the very high amplitude experiences that go along with the very low amplitude, like the shit that happens.

And I think a lot of people aren’t willing to have, they aren’t willing to have the kind of experiences that allow them to have experience life, right? And to your point, like you have experiences. And COVID wasn’t necessarily a positive experience, but it was an experience. It’s a part of who you are and who you become. And I think people are they’re afraid of experiencing life because some of life sucks. Have to, you have to learn how to take all of it because, you can have fantastic experiences and really shitty ones.

All of those turn into stories and allow you to connect with other people, and to build an exciting [00:30:00] life that’s, you know, that’s fun and interesting to live, but also fun and interesting to tell about.

Lance Powell: You know, I find growth is always on the other side of the pain, right? It’s integrating the wisdom and going okay, well that really sucked in the moment. But I learned something from it and I can spot it in the future when we don’t spot it you know, we’re at the mercy of whatever that pain is. We reject it and it becomes part of the subconscious process, right?

So yeah, even though you’re avoiding it, it’s still having an effect on you know, even though you don’t think you’re go into the thing that’s causing you pain, the very thought of thinking about it is causing you a reaction, right? That you become a no when all you have to do is just go try it, see what the experience is like, and then come out of it and go. Okay, well, it kind of sucked, but, you know, and now I know I’m not going to attach anything to that.

Richard Matthews: Wasn’t that bad..

Lance Powell: Right, wasn’t that bad. You know, it’s, even if it was

Richard Matthwes: Temporary.

Lance Powell: Wisdom is forever, [00:31:00] right? And so that’s the two mechanics that should be really at play, which is like, pain is temporary, but wisdom that you’re going to get out of the experience is forever. If you don’t take the wisdom, every time this thing. Life is a sine wave, right?

It’s going to come back and you’re going to reject it, but you’re going to suffer from the mental effects of it every time it comes back until you deal with it directly. So it’s more like let’s go enjoy yourself the things that cause you pain look as a moment to learn from and grow through it and when they come around again, you’re not going to be affected by it you know, because.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Like I can very practical example of that exact thing one of the recurring problems with, you know, our particular RV is one of the slides, it’ll snap the bolt that for whatever reason that it was just poorly designed. And so it’ll snap the bolt 1st time that happened was a, it was an ordeal. Right, and it took hours and hours to figure out what the problem was and hours to fix and had to hire someone to come out and take a look at [00:32:00] it and figure out what’s going on.

And what I did with that first experience when it first broke the first time, several years ago, I was like, the guy who was fixing that was like, explain to me what happened and why it happened. And how I can fix it in the future for when it happens and he showed me how all the mechanics worked and where it was and like, where the flaw in the design was. It’s not like I can get the RV rebuilt to fix the flaws. Like it’s going to break again in the future. And I was just like, I was like, sell me like a whole box of the parts that you used to fix this.

And I bought a whole box of parts from them and it’s broken probably six or seven times since then. And now it’s not even a thing. Like when it breaks, I just go out there takes two seconds to fix it, put it back together and we move on with our day. It’s like extremely practical example of that exact thing. But it’s like the pain is like you, it could be that painful every time. Right? Where it’s multiple hours of your day and you have to hire people and you have to call them out and you do those, or you can just learn the lesson. And like learn and prepare for it because it’s going to happen again.

Lance Powell: Absolutely. It’s interesting, it’s like anxiety, right? Anxiety is a it becomes chronic when we don’t deal with it directly. [00:33:00] So anxiety is something that it has this, it’s almost like something’s trying to enter your body and in the very, you know, reaction to like keeping it at bay. In the very reaction to keeping it at bay that becomes the chronic trigger. You’re not letting the emotional state run through you. You know, basically saying, no, I can’t deal with you right now. And it’s going to stay there until it finds a distraction.

It’s like, Hey, an hour later, like we’re still anxious. Two hours later, we’re still anxious. My partner was going through this and she said, well, what should I do? I said, let it in. Like, let it roll through you. It’s just an emotional state that wants to come in and go out. And she’s like, you’re not going to be that easy. Like, yeah, just give it a shot.

She’s like, I don’t want to feel the experience of it. I’m like, what do you think is going to happen? She’s like, it’s going to tell me something that I don’t like. I’m like, yeah, it’s an emotion, right? That’s what their whole job is and tell something that you don’t want to hear.

And so she did it and the emotion kind of rolled right through and she was like, Oh, I’ve got to take out the [00:34:00] trash. And I was like, cool was it worth the two hours of. You know, trying to keep the anxiety at bay because it took you half a second to like let it in, let it pass, and now you’re not affected by it. And so we,

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: We tend to do that for everything in life when we’ve got, you know, you’re a six year old kid, you’ve got all these experiences that happened to you. You know, you’ve got your parents broadcasting what you can and can’t do because you’re going to get hurt if you climb certain things, right?

These rattle around in our mind and they’re just other people’s projections or other people’s concepts. And so when we get to a point to where we’re just like I’m going to have this experience I’m going to grow past it. I’m going to learn and get some wisdom out of it and I’m going to move forward and when it comes around again to your point I’ll know how to handle it and I won’t be bothered by.

Richard Matthews: Won’t be bothered by it’s just a thing.

Lance Powell: It’s just a problem.

Richard Matthews: And it just a thing.

Lance Powell: It took me a million years to like learn that, you know, it took me a real, it took up to COVID to learn that and so, yeah. [00:35:00] Right. And so it,

Richard Matthews: Mine was traveling.

Lance Powell: When you’re dealt with things that are put in front of you that you’ve gotta deal with, and no one’s there to save you, right?

It’s just like. Face it or continue to suffer. I really realized that facing it was the wisest choice.

Richard Matthews: That’s probably one of those things that, like, when people ask, like, how do you manage to be, like, to be creative and do the things that you do? I’m like, it’s because we’re forced to. You know, when your fuel pump dies on the side of the road in the middle of the desert, like, your options are die or fix the fuel pump.

Lance Powell: Right it’s pretty easy.

Richard Matthews: It’s pretty easy. You know which one you’re going to do you’re just going to deal with it. Right. and so, and that’s just regular life, and you get to the point where you’re so good at that. That like, everything that, pops up, you’re like it’s not even it’s not even a thing. Like, You just deal with it and move on. And so like my I mentioned trip out here, the water pump for our, gas for the engine died, like while we were driving and it barely took five hours out of our day.[00:36:00]

It was like, and we were done and on the road, we still made it to our destination that day. Like we missed like one thing that we had to reschedule, but like, it’s the kind of thing that I know five years ago would have derailed us completely.

Lance Powell: Right.

Richard Matthews: Right? Like days and like major issues and all sorts of things. And it, like, we’ve got so much practice at dealing with things that are really hard for people who don’t have the kind of experience that we have now that it’s like, you know, and it’s a very limited to, like, the type of traveling that we’re doing, but, like, it just gives you a set of powers that you’re just like, oh, it doesn’t really matter what happens.

Like we can deal with and how to translate that same mental fortitude and skillset into like your business world and into your relationships and into everything else because like it’s the same skillset. And so you can do all sorts of cool things that way.

Lance Powell: You know, it’s interesting. It’s everything you’re describing. It’s one tool, right?

Richard Matthews: Yeah, it’s one tool.

Lance Powell: Right. It’s one tool for all of it. And [00:37:00] it’s just expanding your awareness around the experience. That’s the whole concept of gaining wisdom. It’s, you know, expanding your awareness about what happened and integrating the experience.

Those two mechanics, if we just take those on the world itself would be in a different space.

Richard Matthews: So that’s what you teach people how to do, specifically, is like, you teach them the mechanics behind, what we learned the hard way of like, by just logging through it.

Lance Powell: It’s teaching people that there’s more to the experience than what we experience, right? So, you can look at it from like, you know, we wake up in the morning. We smell the coffee. Our eyes are open to our environment. We’re listening for the various sounds outside. We’re plugged directly into our sensory experience. Not knowing that there’s three layers before that. And if we can learn how to zoom out a little bit and plug into these layers, then we’re going to have a more authentic experience.

We’re not going to [00:38:00] be kind of whipped around by our emotions. And so, for me, this is precisely what I’m teaching, which is, you know, well, awareness expansion is the utility. What the reason why you’re expanding your awareness is because the psychology that you’re holding onto is just regulating the nervous system, right?

So it’s causing all these. You know, subtle vibrations that feel uncomfortable that, you know, that we’ve ascribed names to like anxiety and worry and concern and confused and uncertain and don’t know. And, you know, it forms all the different behavior patterns. So your awareness is really just kind of zooming back and going, why did I just do that?

Why did I just say that? Why am I reacting the way I am? Because of what they just said it’s becoming aware of the behavior pattern that’s tethered into the behavioral response and then having the techniques in order to remove it.

Richard Matthews: I’m going to say one of my favorite that I have, I’ve got plastered up and various places and I [00:39:00] tell my kids all the time, is between stimulus and response there’s choice. And one of the things that I tell my kids all the time is like, your goal for anything is to learn how to expand distance between stimulus and response so that you can understand the choices that you’re making, right?

And why you’re making them and so if you understand the choices that you’re making, that’s how you gain mastery of anything. Right? Because what a master does is they understand the stimulus and the responses that they want to have to those stimuli and all the decisions that they’re making, and so they’re able to expand it to as much as they need to so they can master every decision and then compact it down to the point where they don’t even have to think about it anymore, where stimulus is it’s already predetermined choice that they’ve made, right?

It’s like, you know, when you talk about martial arts and other things like when, you know, when someone throws a punch at you and you see them just like automatically just they’ve made all those decisions already. They’ve been through that whole process. That’s what mastery is. It’s mastering all the decisions between stimulus and response.

That’s essentially what you’re teaching people how to do is how to zoom out and see everything that’s happening between stimulus and response.

Lance Powell: That’s right.[00:40:00] It’s interesting, it’s the judgment is like the lower form of the experience what you’re describing right judgment is this is good, that’s bad, but it’s very binary you know, yeah, I like those people. I hate those people. I’m confident today. I’m not confident right now, you know that level of kind of lower conscious state of judgment is what experience discernment is the higher form of that response, which is I’m going to choose my outcome by experience that I want to have in this moment.

And discernment is really the tool of just becoming aware of what’s happening and before as you’re saying the response kind of bubbles up and kind of whips you into a direction it’s going. No, I really like that I’m gonna go do it again, or I didn’t really like it. But thank you I’ll you know, i’m gonna pass next time I’m, not judging it I’m just, it’s not for me, you know, and having that level of discernment is a superpower because everyone outside our walls right [00:41:00] now are functioning out of judgment.

And judgment is that lower conscious state is it forces the mind to not only rely more on prediction instead of experience, right? The predictive nature is what is crafting the illusions, right? Well, if I go over there, those guys aren’t going to like me. Well, how do you know? You know, you’re guessing at it, right?

Richard Matthews: That’s the 10 at the bar, right? Who no one approaches, right? Because everyone’s afraid they’re not gonna say anything. And if you had the guts too, you’d be the only person that said hi to her all night.

Right, it’s that same same stuff.

Lance Powell: Absolutely. And so, you know, mind mastery is, it’s an elusive word because we equate our brain to our mind. And there are different processes, right? Mind is the operating system. Brain is part of the hardware. Body is part of the hardware. The awareness of self is like root level access to the entire program.

And so, and then [00:42:00] perception is another layer that we just can’t even get access to. It’s just, it’s blocked off.

Richard Matthews:Perception we only experience reality through perception. Like, so you have no access to life without it.

Lance Powell: I feel like I would describe it like this, that, you know, as you back away from the senses, as you zoom out, you come across the ego, which is more like a behavior algorithm, right? It’s a bunch of assumptions that are turned into these stress waveforms. And our mind gets kind of wrapped up in the pathology of those waveforms, right? It’s like, oh, I’m stressed. Oh, I’m angry. Oh, I’m whatever. But you zoom one, we’re one letter back and you’re at the awareness level, right?

The kind of observer of your experience, which is just detecting stuff. Then you back away from that, and there’s perception. Perception is perceiving awareness. You can’t go back from the awareness level. You can hit the perception part, right? You can perceive what the [00:43:00] senses are doing. You can perceive what you’re thinking. You can perceive stuff.

But there’s no way to zoom back into that out of that perception layer, right? and so you know, you’ve got access to the ego. You’ve got access to the awareness. You don’t have access to the perception and all those are finally crafting your experiences to whether you’re going to talk to the teen whether you’re going to take her home, right?

Because the ego is going to get wrapped up in I can’t she’s too hot.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: We’re not hung up on to any of that psychology, or she’s just a person to me, we’re just going to go walk over there and say hi and see what comes of it, right? And the perception part is a part that’s observing the whole thing not from the awareness level of detection, perceiving everything that’s happening.

And teaching people how to like get into the awareness part and to really understand the perception part plays a huge impact into how you’re going to go about your day and you know get into your engagement.

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Now back to The Hero Show.

Richard Matthews: I’m doing a terrible job of going through my actual like questions for the interview. Hopefully my listeners will be okay with that because it’s really fascinating. So how does all of that impact ability to access or get into what is commonly known as like the flow state or the performance state and being able to just outperform normal human beings.

Lance Powell: Okay. Very good question. So the way I like to describe it as a visual, right. Visualize the awareness as a sphere. It’s like a [00:46:00] 360 degree fear. That’s sensing outwards broadcasting, looking all directions out.

The ego is the layer on top of the awareness and it creates a structure that starts to kind of mask out what you what the awareness is able to see right? So think about the persona masks are the masks of the ego. It’s like a filter for your awareness.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell:The structures that get built up over the ego are the barriers that get built up over time block awareness, his ability to view all the way out to a clear goal.

And so the things that are blocking it about the various psychological, you know, components that we’ve picked up over time that fears, the uncertainties, the discomforts, the, you know, anxieties. Those are what’s blocking your ability to get into flow because the second you want to drop into a project, what do you do?

You’re like, okay, well, I don’t know how I’m going to start. I don’t know what the end looks like. I don’t know. Right? So all [00:47:00] these things start to build up and what’s happening. Awareness is trying to see a straight line to the goal. Right? It’s just like let me get to the goal.

The ego is putting up all the barriers and so you’ve got to identify the barriers remove the barriers and that right there will get you into the flow if you into permanent flow remove all the ego barriers and you’ll be in permanent flow.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. And so that. You get all the things out of the way and then you can just drop into that flow state or drop into the form of state basically whenever you want.

Lance Powell: That’s right.

Richard Matthews: A metaphor earlier about the mind being the operating system and the brain being the hardware. And a friend of mine who teaches he teaches a lot of cool, interesting similar to what you’re talking about. And he uses the same metaphor to describe the mind, as, your body is your hardware and you can upgrade that to like certain points, you can exercise and do those kinds of things.

But then you can also upgrade your software and other as well, which is what you’re talking about essentially, it’s like upgrading your software you know, in this case, removing barriers, removing things that are there. And he’s [00:48:00] like, and if you thinking about it your brain and your body and your mind and all that it’s a you can run programs.

And he’s like, so you can train your body to have certain responses to certain things. And so, like, one of the things that he talks about, and he teaches people is he teaches people how to program a flow state or how to program a performance state.

So, like, before you go to get on stage or you speak to your company or whatever it is that you do for your work, you can train your body to enter into certain states. And you know, flow state’s a good one, but there’s lots of others that you can put into. And a lot of it is like when you realize that, like, you know, it’s essentially that kind your body is, you’ve got your hardware and then your brain is your software.

You can learn to write your own programs. And I thought that was really fascinating. I love of metaphor to, you know, program yourself and be able to operate it. Well, better than most people who aren’t aware that they have the ability to program themselves.

Lance Powell: So that gets the whole level of awareness, right? Which is what are you aware of when it comes to the body, right? The body’s going to have a performance and performance you know, things that you need to become aware of. You know, if [00:49:00] you’re a sprinter and you want to up your sprint time, you’ve got to become aware of what’s keeping your ability to go faster.

Typically we would do the kind of bulk work, which is, well, I’ve just got to do more squats. I’ve got to, you know, eat healthier. I’m going to get more rest. Right? But there may be some psychological impacts that’s slowing you down as well. And so the way I like to look at it is exactly that. You can install new programs, which is very powerful.

And you can remove old programs, which is very powerful. Because we typically don’t have a very clear picture of what’s slowing us down. So just the effect of becoming aware of the mental processes, what the mind’s utilities are, becoming aware of awareness’s properties, and what those do, and expanding your awareness around all those different components gives you a much more realistic and deeper experience. And you can go out into the world and do just superhero like things.[00:50:00]

Richard Matthews: Which is very true. I have one other question on that, and it is the community aspect of that self governance for lack of a better word that one of the things that I’ve noticed is that we tend to operate in one of the two binaries either all individual or all community. Like, you know everything for the community, the sacrifice of the individual or everything, but the individual sacrifice of the community.

And in this world where we’re talking about making yourself better one of the things that I’ve noticed is that your community has a big impact on your beliefs and you’re limiting beliefs and those kinds of things. And so like, one of the best examples of that you know, the very famous story of like the four minute mile and before someone ran it, the whole community of human beings were like, we can’t run a four minute mile.

And someone did, and it shifted the community knowledge of what our barriers were. And then now, if you don’t run a four minute mile, you’re not even competitive. And so like, that’s a famous story, but you see that all the way down on the macro level with the people that you choose to be around and the programming that they’re putting around you.

And so like what are your [00:51:00] thoughts on that and how you navigate the community aspect of bettering yourself?

Lance Powell: Interesting, right? Words have insanely powerful influence over our ability to move forward. And we end up programming and programming each other just through conversation, right?

Think about like a five year old kid who wants to climb up on top of a, I don’t know, a fence. And you know, they’re excited about it. They know they can do it. They’re excited to go do it and the parent says hey get down you’re going to hurt yourself, right? If the kid gets to the top and does hurt themself now they’ve got it programmed in the mind.

I can’t do risky things because i’m going to get hurt, right? So the mom or the parent themselves is actually planting the idea that you know, you could hurt yourself and the second that you do that gets locked in if you get to the top and you don’t hurt yourself then you’re like, okay, you’re full of shit and I can take risks. And that programming starts to set in.

And so think about the words that we start to accumulate over [00:52:00] time our parents tell us what we can and can’t do teachers tell us what we can and can’t do. Coaches tell us what we can and can’t do, you know, you’re not fast enough to run the you know to be a wide receiver, you don’t have the hands to be tied in, you know, all these program the mind and the more we encounter it, the screws get a little tighter.

Uncertainty starts to go up a lot more. And so think of this in the, as a macro and across society, this is the way that we communicate to each other. You go to a bar, you’re talking with your friends. You say something really interesting, they’re like, oh, you’re full of shit, or you don’t know what you’re talking about, right?

That level of programming we do to each other all day and all night. And because our psychology is wrapped up in the ego, right? Our egos are what gets hurt, right? The ego is like, oh, I guess I can’t do that. Oh, I guess I shouldn’t do that. And this is the reason why.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: The ego needs to be tamed and needs to be tamed our lifetime but, you know, it’s the language effects [00:53:00] of a society or the kind of cultural effects that are keeping people from being great.

It’s keeping you from being motivated to do the changes that you want, because you’ll be seen as crazy or weird, right? It’s the, you know, if I make this change from this career to that career people are going to question me and second guess me on what I’m doing. And so we retreat, we fall back into our safe, comfortable spot.

And we don’t grow beyond it. So I am with you that as a societal layer, we do a lot of damage to the people next to us just in the way that we communicate. And if we were to change the language of the way that we communicate, right? You can still say you’re an asshole. You just don’t need to use that word asshole.

You can use other language to describe, hey, you’re being difficult. Right.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: That right there will change people’s ability to, like, move forward because the psychology won’t pull them down. It’ll either be neutral or pull them up.

Richard Matthews: [00:54:00] Yeah, it’s interesting to me because we have if you go back to almost any scripture, particularly the Christian scriptures, they talk about truth into people’s lives.

You realize that like, that’s not a metaphor that’s like, it’s like a, it’s a real thing, and you can dramatically change someone else’s life and their outcomes by the words you choose to use when you speak to them.

Lance Powell: Yes, absolutely. It’s, you do any affirmation?

Richard Matthews: I have, yeah.

Lance Powell: Right. So that’s installed?

Richard Matthews: I do all sorts of crazy little weird thing. Where I, have all the, you know, I’m currently working on a particular goal I have it everywhere. So like, on my phone, the top little bar of, apps I replace with an image that just says it has one of the affirmations on it.

And every time I pick up my phone, I read it have for almost a year. And same kind of thing. It’s on my desktop. I even had my wife paint it onto my big toenail, so when I’m in the shower I see it on my toenail.

So like just little things. And so you’re constantly reminded thing that you’re working on, you’re installing programming, and in my case, it’s putting [00:55:00] myself into, essentially future pacing my own mind. Of like, hey, this is where you’re going to and all the things that are required to be there.

Lance Powell: So, yeah, that’s right. It’s interesting, right? Because, you know, people tend to avoid affirmations.

And, you know, especially people who haven’t been doing a lot of growth work, they look at the word affirmation is like, okay, it’s a little bit, but it’s the, it’s really, you’re installing programs.

Richard Matthews: You’re speaking the truth in your own life.

Lance Powell: That’s exactly right. And the more you repeat it, the more it’s going to turn those screws in that positive direction until you become it.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. you know, I love your examples. You talk about with children, too, because, like, one of the things that my wife and I have spent a lot of time working on because we’ve got 4 children and we live crazy life is probably the easiest way to say it is, like, we teach them how to navigate danger safely and not to avoid it entirely.

And so we have a lot of like simple rules that we follow you know, things like when they’re on the [00:56:00] playground or when they’re, you know, climbing on rocks and stuff like that, you can do almost as long as you can do it yourself, right?

Like, if I push you up the side of the rock, now we’ve pushed you beyond your capabilities and into my capabilities and that’s when you’re going hurt. And so like my littlest one is four. She hates it when I’m, she’s like, can you help me climb up there where my big brother is? I’m like, no. You can try to get up there, like whatever you want to do to get up to the top of there, you can get up there.

Then you’ve built that capability yourself. But if I put you up there, then you’re operating on my capability, which she doesn’t like because she wants to get wherever her 14 year old brother is but it’s, the same kind of thing. It’s like, we’re just teaching them how to navigate danger to, push their own limits.

And you know, all sorts of things, you know, that all fall into that category of like all of our kids, you know, they slice the vegetables. With the very sharp knives, like for dinner, right? And so they know how they work and how they operate and they’re not curious about them because I know when they get to use them and what those kind of things.

And it’s like, there’s just a lot of things that as a parent and when you start to realize like, everything that we’ve been talking about, how it works on yourself, how you have to modify it and use the same kind of things to help your kids have [00:57:00] a better outcome than you did. All right. And that’s what your goal is as a parent, right?

My parents gave me significantly better outcomes than they had. And like, my goal is to do the same thing and better outcomes than we had and a lot of that is like, when you start to unlock these things that we’ve been talking about in yourself, you’re like, how do we pass those? Like so that’s their baseline programming is what it took us 40 years to get to.

Lance Powell: Crazy, right? One of the things I’ve seen the super ego concept right is the projection of the parents, you know desires or whatever it is onto the kids and kids are modeling themselves off of the parents, so there’s like a two way dynamic of I’m learning through someone telling me how life is supposed to be right through their experience not me experiencing it myself, but through their experience.

And that creates a one style of experience but then kids model themselves off the parents. So they’re going to watch you and really study you way more than I [00:58:00] think parents give credit for because as we get older, the one thing I’m finding with a lot of my clients is they’re still blocked, whether they’re 50, 60, 70 they’re still blocked by their parents programming, right?

So think of it as entitlement, justification, perfectionism. You don’t learn those, you’re taught those. And those are your mode of operating, then that’s how you’re going to communicate. And that’s going to be the kind of extent of your experience until you remove it. And so it’s really like kids are far more intuitive and brilliant than I think we tend to let on because we see them as just little people, but they’re studying everything that we say, everything that we do and every way that we treat them.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, they’re kids are superhuman is where and, like my goal as a parent has been like, how do I just keep them from, how do I minimize my impact on our superhuman abilities?

Right, that’s like the goal is how do I just let them continue to be superhuman as [00:59:00] long as possible?

Lance Powell: Yeah, it’s interesting is that the short answer to that is let them experience life on their own. Don’t let others tell them how the world is supposed to be. And don’t put a lot of rules on them other than, you know, come to me if you hurt yourself, right? Because if we’re modeling ourselves off of our experiences and people around us, you know, that creates one style of experience.

But if we’ve got to learn on our own, as to your point, your kids are trying to navigate the world on their own by their own capabilities. Right? When you’re doing that you get a more natural perspective. Your psychology is not getting wrapped up in, well, I didn’t do it right because my parents expected it to be perfect.

It’s like, well, you still got it done, you know, but it wasn’t to their specification.

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: And so, yeah it’s almost leave them alone and let them figure it out. And that’s a better way to go about the world.

Richard Matthews: We do a lot of enabling [01:00:00] like that’s the word I would use is they have their desire, whatever it is that they’re trying to do. And we just like provide the tools necessary for them to figure out what they want to do with it. And too, you’re putting it like, don’t come to me. If you get hurt kind of thing, like my oldest now, like he knows enough about first aid and other stuff that he doesn’t even come to us when he gets hurt.

So he just, he was on with his life. It’s just the thing, right? He spends fire professionally. Like he did performed weddings and block parties and stuff like, and he’s a fire spinner at 14 and people are like, how did you. Get a kid who spins fire. I’m like, we just let him follow the things that he wanted to follow and didn’t tell him what he could or couldn’t do with it.

And it was like, cause he started practicing and like several years for actually lit anything on fire. And I was like, listen, I got one rule. You want to light it on fire you’re welcome to light it on fire, but you need to be able to do a four minute performance without dropping it or hitting yourself. And I was like, and I was just. It’s just a simple limit that ensured that he did the right practice so that he could, you know, cause it’s about how long they stay on fire is they stay on fire for about four minutes.

And I was like, so if you can do a four minute routine without dropping [01:01:00] it on yourself, you can light it on fire. And that was two years ago. And now he’s a professional fire spinner.

Lance Powell: Awesome. Bravo, because that’s exactly the way to do it, right? Which is like, give them the conditions, right. But let them figure it out. I had the exact opposite. No one gave me any rules and any barriers. And it was all figured out.

But you know, I credit my parents for that. You know, they’ll, my mom will say something like, Oh, well, I should have done more for you in this area. And I’m like you did fine. You let me figure it out. And I can’t thank you enough for that. If I had someone tell me about it and how it was supposed to be, maybe I’d be shy and insecure and wouldn’t want to do it.

And so, I’m not the world. And that’s because I was jumping off roofs at six.

Richard Matthews: Yeah, yeah. I remember doing that. I remember, like, one of my early memories was we lived in a two story house. And I remember calling my mom outside particularly, and I was like, Hey mom, come out and she comes out like from the [01:02:00] garage and I’m on the roof and I jumped off in front of her. She was very angry about that, but like, yes, I was doing the same thing.

Lance Powell: Okay, right. Right?

Richard Matthews: Yeah.

Lance Powell: Something happens when we get older, we’re like, okay now we have to be, do the security.

Richard Matthews: But it’s interesting when I look at jumping off the roof now, I’m like, if I jumped off the same roof now, I’d probably break something. So, like, and I need to, like, for my children. We don’t bend the way we did when we were little.

Lance Powell: That’s right. Yeah, it’s like, you think about all those experiences that get accumulated over time. I remember when I told somebody, I said, Oh yeah, I passed 65. I’ve been letting stuff go. And I passed 6,500 things. And they’re like, that’s impossible.

You don’t have 6,500 things. I’m like, okay, maybe there’s like 30 percent that I didn’t connect to. So, but the other amount I did connect to and all of that psychology is like the stuff that you accumulate over time [01:03:00] that starts at a very young age that inhibits your ability to move forward. It’s a lot of stuff to clear out and it really kind of paints a very clear picture of how, like when it starts how deep it goes.

And the kind of thickness of the construct of the ego that gets accumulated over time, the older we get, the more it appears consecrated, you know, that it’s just stone and you’re unbendable and unmoving person. So, for me, the more you can get. Kids, the tools on how to navigate the world, how to utilize discernment, how to expand their awareness. We’re going to have a very amazing future. But if we don’t do those things, you know, stay in the same path.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. And, like, I, the thing that I just want to drive home for people who are listening to this, you know, sort of meandering conversation we’re having about this topic is like, they’re whatever you think your limits are they’re just not true. And I don’t know [01:04:00] how, like, to your point, you’re like, it’s just something that you have to experience.

Like it has to be a first person experience no matter how much, you know, Lance or myself tell you your limits that you have on yourself, on everything to like how healthy you can be to what your body composition can look like to, you know, like just like what you can accomplish during the day, how much time it takes you to accomplish those things.

All of them. are false. All of the things that you think that are your limits, they’re all false, and you can get 10 times more work done in half the time of someone else. You can have the body that you want. You can have the life that you want. You can have anything if you’re willing to do this work that you’re talking about, right?

Be able to clear out those things and learn how to understand like how you’re, how it works. And I don’t even know how to tell I don’t even know how to tell people like what because it’s been crazy to me because I thought for the longest time that I figured out. And then when you start to like peel back the layers and you get in deeper into it and realize you’re like, I haven’t even started like, tapping into our own and what capable of.

And like, when you like, really start looking at it, you [01:05:00] realize that like human beings as a species haven’t started, like we’re barely scratching the surface of our and so like, on an individual level, you, practically, you don’t have limits.

Outside of the, you know, the important ones from society like, don’t murder people, like but outside of those kinds of things, you don’t practically have limits on your life. And anyone, anything that you do have is stuff that has been programmed in that you can take out.

Lance Powell: Absolutely. Just to add on top of that, you know, when you think about the predictive nature of the mind and think about what prediction is you’re making it up. It doesn’t matter if you’re 99.99 percent accurate, you’re still we, right? And so what I find is that people tend to get hung up on their, you know, I’m really good at guessing. I’m really good at predicting.

It’s like, yeah, but you still have in any moment you have a 50/50 chance of being correct or incorrect. And you’re doing some modeling some predictive modeling and if you’re correct great you 50% of the time you’re going to be correct but you’re still [01:06:00] making it up and so letting people know that if you’re thinking about what’s going to happen.

Instead of just going into the experience and letting it happen then you’re making it all up, right? And that level of it starts to click when people start to go, well, what about how I feel about this? It’s like, is it true to you? Or is it an assumption, right? Cause an assumption and prediction of the same thing here you’re still guessing at what the outcome is going to be.

And if you’re buying into the psychology of a guess. Well, then you’re going to have a really interesting life full of fears and uncertainties and, you know, missed moments and opportunities because you thought that you couldn’t do certain things when you could have, and you just predicted, you know, your way into a spot where you didn’t.

Richard Matthews: Yeah. One of my the other questions that Liana asks me regularly in our mastermind group is, is it true time you say anything, it’s like, I’m going to do this or I feel this way or whatever. She always, is that true? [01:07:00] Right? Or, and it’s basically, it’s hitting on that question.

And so like, you’re assuming things that you don’t know, right? It’s like, unless it happened in the past and you like this is the thing that happened. And when I tried to climb a tree, I fell out of it. You can say, I fell out of that tree, right? That’s true. I fell out of the tree. But if it’s in the future, always an assumption.

Lance Powell: Right, right.

Richard Matthews: Cause you don’t know. And so, like, I’ve started to operate my life that way. And even in, like, with our business, like, we’re getting into levels of business that I’ve never been in before. And it’s like, all of my staff knows. I’m like, I just so you’re aware, I have no idea what I’m doing here, right?

So we are learning together, like, how to navigate this stage of our business. And I was like, anything I tell you that we’re going to do, there’s a 50/50 shot. It’s all going to go crappy and we’re going to have to figure out how to fix it.

And I and it’s like, but that’s okay that’s part of the process. Part of the process is failing and learning and getting the wisdom from it and going forward. And so like, for me it’s like, I have, cause I know we’re going to fail at things. And so I want my staff to be aware that we’re going to all up and move [01:08:00] forward. And like, cause that’s the only way that you get better and stronger, those kinds of things.

But like that sort of attitude runs through everything in your life and you start to realize that like. I’m making this up and you know, you want to learn to cook. You want to learn to do martial arts. You want to learn to run a big business. You want to learn to travel full time, whatever it is, you can do it. You’re going to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, move forward, realize like it’s, everyone’s making everything up.

Like that’s, no one has it figured out. That’s where that whole, like, you know, everyone’s wrong about something. That’s been a huge, is everyone’s wrong. so, you know.

Lance Powell: I used to be afraid of failing, right? And being afraid of failing is it prevents you from doing the things that you want to do. And as I started understanding that failure is part of wisdom, right? You fail you learned you don’t do that same mistake, right? That is growth. Yeah, so you know people do avoid failure out of fear of failing that’s the very barrier that needs to be removed, which is I’ve got [01:09:00] to try so.

Richard Matthews: We call that in our household the great succotude, you know, because one of the things that with children is children are constantly learning new things and they want to like experience things and they want to pick up skills or whatever it is. And like, we talk regularly about like, you know, whatever you want to start doing, you have to go through the first stage of learning something new, which is we lovingly call it the great suck attitude where you’re going to suck at it and you’re going to fail and it’s going to suck, and you’re not going to like it and it’s not going to be fun.

But that’s part of like how you get good at it. And, I know that the message is starting to sink in got. You know, I got a 14 year old and a 10 year old and we got two littler ones. And like, our 7 year old is like, she’s struggling learning to read, but my two older to both learn to read. And like, we’ve had that discussion several times about the great succotude of learning to read. And eventually it just clicks and you get it. And my 14 year old was like coaching my 7 year old the other day. And he’s like, it’s okay like, he’s like, I know it sucks and it’s hard and you’re going to get there. He’s like, I was there know, and like, he just coached her all the way through the whole kind of the whole, it’s like same thing.

Cause he remembers I had the same thing. It’s like, eventually it just won’t be hard. Like you’ll just figure it out [01:10:00] and it clicks. And they do the same thing in like their life. And they realized like, oh, and like, now I know like when one of my younger kids starts picking up on a new skill, my older kids would be like, they’ll celebrate failures together.

A cool thing because I didn’t get there until I was in my 30s. And I’m like, man, how do we get that attitude into that’s where all of the greatest are made is when you are okay with just with being with failing and moving forward and learning from those things.

Lance Powell: Absolutely. It’s the, you know, I wish I could identify where the origin of fear of failing really came from, you know, because everyone has it and the people who break out of it are achieving great things.

But it’s that pattern itself that I find is keeping people from being, you know, their greatest expression of themselves. It’s the, you know, lack of commitment is really you’re pushing your, you know, you’re not willing to commit to the thing because you know, in the back of your [01:11:00] mind, you’re afraid of failing.

Right. And so, you know, commitments, responsibility, you know, whatever it is, it’s people who don’t take it on don’t want to fail. They don’t want to be seen as someone who couldn’t pull it through. Not knowing that, Hey, just trying is showing effort and people want to see effort. They don’t want to see you just walk away from, you know, not putting your time in becoming better at whatever it is you’re trying to become better at, you know, nothing’s going to explode if you fail.

Richard Matthews: For the most part unless you’re working on bombs that might explode if you fail there. But outside of that, so I know, you know, we’re getting to almost an hour and 20 minutes here. And I sort of knew this would happen because we’ve talked before I’m like, man I’m not we’re not gonna get into any of the questions we’re just gonna like meander down this wonderful path.

But I do I want it we got to put a wrap on the interview. Maybe we’ll have to have you come back on and we’ll at some point. But, I do want to go through the last couple of questions I generally do with my guests because I think they’re fun. So the last one I always ask people is I call it the hero’s challenge.

And the hero’s challenge is just to help me get access to [01:12:00] stories that we might not otherwise find on our own. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network who you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine. And why do you think they should come share their story with us here on The Hero Show?

Lance Powell: Wow. Yeah, I think there’s a gentleman by the name of Travis Roche, who I think is outstanding. He is gotta be pushing late 30s right now, but he’s in all of the boardrooms with all of the infrastructure billionaire companies who are trying to make a difference in the world.

He is someone that I do a lot of peer work with. And so we come from roughly the same angle of viewpoints and dimension. And he’s a very deep thinker and creative thinker and a mover and shaker. So that would be someone who I could think of that would be really fantastic.

Richard Matthews: Not everyone says yes when we ask, but you always find cool people when we ask that question to come on and share their stories. And then the [01:13:00] last one here is in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people at the end who are cheering for, you know, the works of heroism.

So as we close our analogous to that is where can people find you or can they light up the bat signal, so to speak and say, Hey, Lance, I would love to get your help to help break down my own barriers. And really be able to operate at peak performance anytime I want. So, and more importantly, then where can they find you is who are the right types of people to reach out and ask for your help.

Lance Powell: Okay, so you can find me on LinkedIn. Everything’s kind of focused there for the time being and I’m looking for anyone. There’s three categories businesses who want to do performance improvement who want to improve their leadership who want to improve the skill sets of their employees And who want to craft their personas so that, you know, kind of to some of the things that we’re talking about, we’re not suffering from the things that are you know, keeping us from being great.

The men’s Conquer Club or Conquer Forum is it’s just starting up. So this is for men who want to fully actualize in their life. Fully actualized [01:14:00] means kind of everything we’re describing. Completely understand the mind body relationship, get full control over the axis of the mind and its utilities, get full access and control over the body.

It’s basically a super deep dive into you becoming enlightened. And then with AFPA, it’s for anybody who is looking to understand the cultural and generational traumas from the outside. Unless you happen to be black, then come on in and you know, we can talk about it from the inside, but you know, either way, it’s a two way conversation and anyone there is welcome.

So you can find me doing all those and I’m looking for anybody who’s in any of those spaces. My primary demographic tends to be roughly between, let’s say 25, 28 and about 55, somebody who’s open-minded, who is looking to transform their life and to understanding how they under work at a very deep mechanical level so they can grow themselves.

My whole kind of shtick on this [01:15:00] planet right now is empowering people to democratize mental health and their self realization. That to me are the two greatest things I can do on this planet.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely. And, you know, as someone who new to that world myself. The power that you are capable of unlocking in yourself is it’s next level. Worth doing the work. It’s worth exploring. Especially if you are what would you if you’re questioning, you don’t think like they’re, very driven, which is a lot like where I came from.

Realizing that there is definitely a very strong connection to body and your mind and your spirit and all those kinds of things and how you can leverage those to perform at a high level, or to really do whatever you want in your life it’s worth exploring.

So take the time to reach out Lance Powell on LinkedIn.

Lance Powell: That’s correct.

Richard Matthews: Hoping to make sure there’s a link to that in the description. I said we’ll have to invite you back on and actually go through the hero questions. But this was a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and talking with us today, Lance.

Any final words of wisdom for our audience before we [01:16:00] hit this stop record button?

Lance Powell: Yeah, I think just to kind of piggyback on what you were just saying. The mind is way more powerful than we give any inch of credit for the spiritual journey is meant to be embraced and utilized as a path of discovery, self discovery and expanding your awareness.

There’s no greater gift you could give to yourself on this planet than going and understanding how you operate. So that you can go be more effective and efficient and collaborative and caring and giving and loving, et cetera, in the world, when all those things are, when all these psychology is removed and all the various sheets are removed, there is nothing stopping you from being your absolute most powerful.

Richard Matthews: Absolutely. Yeah, yep.

I love it.

 

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