Your challenge can be your gift. It’s a powerful statement that has come up in this conversation between Rodney Flowers and his incredibly insightful guest. In this episode, high performance coach Mandy Barbee Lanier challenges you to bring your gifts forward instead of diminishing them. In the game of life, you don’t have to be a Tom Brady to win. In fact, by constantly measuring yourself against someone else, you’re doing the world a disservice by depriving it of something new, something unique, something that’s truly you. Are you a waterboy or someone on the bench? Well then, this episode is going to make you want to be the best waterboy or bench warmer there ever was. Listen in and get ready to play on the next level!
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How To Bring Your Gifts Forward And Win The Game Of Life With Mandy Barbee Lanier
I have a very special guest, Mandy Barbee Lanier with me. She is a transformation and healing expert who has helped hundreds of clients across the globe to overcome anxiousness and thrive in business, health and life. By combining the power of imagery with their innate capabilities, she empowers men and women to regain a positive sense of control and alchemize pain into strength, healing trauma through the use of imagery and embodiment. She is obsessed with cocreating massive, lasting, and positive changes with others using practical actions and fun natural techniques. We have her with us to share, to teach, and for us to learn how we can become game changers that we are thriving to be. Let’s welcome, Mandy Barbee Lanier to the show.
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
I’m excited and I’m holding that energy down a little bit. I’m not expressing how excited I am for the sake of the show because we had such a wonderful conversation before starting the show. I want the readers to know that they are in for a treat because your level of depth and breathe in the work that you do is so meaningful and powerful. I know as a person that has played sports before, a person that realizes life is a game, and it’s all about how we play it and the mentality that we have as we approach the challenges, the opposition, the resistance that we face in life. Having a deep game IQ of who we are and how we relate to this game and the intentions of the game. It is the game changer. You have some specific and unique ways of thinking, ways of being, and philosophy around the way we think and operate. I don’t want to give it away because I want you to be able to share it with us. I’m excited about the conversation because it’s going to be very deep and powerful.
I got grounded again by the compliments that you gave me because I do dwell a lot in appreciation and excitement personally. I’m expelling that energy constantly of excitement but your words took me back down a couple notches into my reason for being as well. You hit the nail right on the head. I’m grateful that you can see it and appreciate it, and that you are sharing me with your readers because I see the exact same in you.
Bring Your Gifts Forward: What does being enough mean to you? You need to define it if you want to appraise yourself.
Thank you by the way. I appreciate you bringing up your mission. That’s something that the readers need to know about you as we prepare for this conversation. Why don’t you give us a little bit about who Mandy Barbee Lanier is and what you are all about?
First of all, I’m a words of affirmation person. That’s why I’m also constantly pouring words of affirmation on others and it’s coming from that sincere place but you’re boosting me up, Rodney. I appreciate it so much. One of the things that jumped out with what you were saying about me that was reminding me of the conversation that we were having before the show is it’s the aspect of knowing ourselves and a way of being in the world. Especially through 2020, for me personally, I’ve been cycling over a couple of different themes. One of the things that jumped out at me is if someone has felt like the world’s beat on them or if their experience has been one that’s hard, and maybe up until a certain point in their life, maybe even this very moment, things are challenging.
I was noticing how much in my experience what contributed to the shame around that experience and the meaning I assigned to my own experiences is the way that I felt beat up. I knew that I was doing it largely to myself. I do have a lot of privilege in who I am and who my identity characteristics are. In not being able to express more of my goodwill, I felt like for a long time, I only had myself to blame. I see this in a lot with the people because I am quite literally obsessed with what I do. I work all the time. It’s a cycle of sleep, repair, restore, work, and then come right back to it again. I love what I do. I feel like it is truly my reason for being here. A lot of times, the interactions that I have with people in the world are through my practice or my business or through work in some way. Not surprisingly, people that I run into sometimes have experienced the same thing, and that they’re holding themselves back.
A good person who’s reflecting on their produce for input to output ratios, a good person who has a mind of service or a deep desire to alleviate the suffering of other people, you could call it a lot of things, empathic people, good-hearted people, people who want to serve others and do good. They are naturally more likely to self-criticize, then maybe if we were drawing distinctions, somebody who didn’t have that same orientation. This is a self-fulfilling type of a lack in the experience, which I see is holding so much goodness back and that’s part of what compels me. I feel like I’ve cracked the code. Even after I was helping other people to find that inner peace and that experience of self-love, I finally came into it rather elate myself. That is a game changer.
I’m going to go off a tiny tangent. I’m also this theme of we don’t like ourselves oftentimes because we’re trying to like ourselves before we even know ourselves. Sometimes we’re afraid to know because of shame, experience, getting rejected, fill in the blank. These beliefs that there’s something wrong with us. They hold us back from looking behind the curtain to see. We were afraid to know, “Do I want to know or is it going to be worse than I thought?” We can’t love ourselves until we know ourselves. That’s one of the things that was jumping out at me from what you shared. There’s so much shared lens going on between us.
We can't really love ourselves until we actually know ourselves. Click To TweetOne of the things that have come up for me as you were sharing is the idea of being enough. Who knows what that looks like? Does anyone know what being enough looks like? I think as individuals that it’s based on someone else’s opinion. We’re always evaluated, assessed and judged based on what someone else thinks this is or X or Y, your blog, social media followers, at work is your boss or your supervisor, at home is your spouse or your kids, your bank account, the car you drive, the house you have. It’s all of these things that we are measuring ourselves against. When we look in the mirror, we’re trying to put a check in the box on meeting all of those things. What I’m finding is we don’t have a measure within ourselves that indicates we reached the level of enough for ourselves. We keep reaching and reaching.
I don’t ever think it’s possible to completely satisfy the demands, assessments, and ideas that society, your boss, your bank account, and all of these things that are placed upon you. They’re never ever getting to a place of satisfaction individually, emotionally, spiritually even, potentially because of these measures. That’s what was coming up for me when you were explaining the situation and the experience because we’re always reaching for enough. Here’s the other side of that. I think here, you, I and the readers are enough for the moment. I believe when you hear a lot of experts talk about living in the moment and then what it means to live in the moment. Let’s forget that there was an expert that said that, but having the awareness to live in the moment. Why that is important is that’s all you have.
I feel like because you are present in the moment, you are enough for the moment. You’re able to take a breath in the moment and that breathe leads to the next moment. That was enough because you were able to take that breath, which gets you to the next moment. It’s who you are in these moments. What you’re delivering, giving, and contributing in those moments is what makes you enough because that’s what the universe did at this moment in time. We’re always striving for something in the future, negating the moment, which becomes a sabotaging, cycling, reciprocal experience that holds us back if you will.
That brought tears to my eyes. I’m seriously going to lose it right now. This enough for the moment, I’ve never heard anyone say that before. It’s an interesting cure for the misapplication of our awareness, the misapplication of our conscious choice, and what we’re deciding that we’re constantly grading. It’s constantly grading ourselves against a criterion that is not real. It is a phantom. It’s like this cure for, “Am I enough?” There’s a lack of specificity in that statement, “Enough for what?” We have to finish that sentence if you want to appraise yourself. That’s what sometimes I’ve found when I’ve been playing around with people in my practice. It’s like, “What do you want? What is going to be enough?” Measure it. Put it on paper. Define it. Go ahead and give yourself a yard stick so that you’ll know if you never reach it, you can decide, “I concluded. I’m a failure.” We then start to play with it a little bit and we realized that it’s crazy.
Mastery (Robert Greene)
This brings me back to one of the most profound shifts in my own experience. It was almost two years ago when it was this shift in consciousness around something like this where I was called by a coach. They suggested an idea and I was playing around with it. I was like, “Would it be enough for me if I was never the enough?” At that time, I also had a lot of mistaken definition of success, which is no longer relevant for me anymore because of going down a process like this. I said to myself, “Would I be fulfilled? Could I be happy if I had a self-sustaining practice that was doing absolute good for every person that it touched?”
I lived a very modest life out in a suburb, completely unknown to anyone beyond the people that I personally, intimately met and interact with. I was like, “Yeah, because all of that other stuff was never happiness for me. Can you allow yourself to go down this journey without worrying over your status?” We’re talking yardage like where you are on the field. Just play the game, then all the pressure came off right then in a permanent way. There’s still fear embodied and there are still trauma loops running. We can unhook all that stuff. It’s not easy but it’s easy with the right tools. I can see you experiencing that a little bit.
The feeling of scoring feels good. There’s no feeling like scoring. When I score, I could dance. I could make the touchdown. It’s the satisfaction of overcoming the opposition. I want the readers to understand that I don’t have to have the million dollars to experience that. It’s a result of being able to experience that.
Allowing yourself to celebrate whatever it was.
I do have a financial goal. It’s a big goal. That goal is not so much that I want to reach that goal because I can say that I have that financial gain. It’s more so to drag me to play the game the best that I can and realizing that I’m playing the game at a level that will allow me to experience that level of result. I place a carrot in front of myself, whether they give me a drive and a why to play the game. Going back to what you said. If I had a sustaining business that helped a lot of people see the light, no one knew me, and I was in the suburbs living a modest life, will that bring me happiness? Yes, because the joy that I get of being on this show, doing the work that I do, knowing that my voice and the words that I speak, and authenticity that I give is going to help someone play the game, get off the bench, run the route, reach for something more than what they currently have brings a level of rewards to me.
There’s an intention and a purpose that I get to support, have the responsibility and the privilege of supporting that intention, that purpose of life, to sustain life, to contribute, to bring forth my gift. That alone is enough to do this. I live in a society where in order to keep my lights on, to eat, and to have the essentials of life, it costs money. Do it for money because I want to keep my lights on. I want to pay my bills and there’s a certain quality of life that I want to obtain and live by. What drives me is the ability to influence the way an individual plays the game.
It’s that emotion. It’s that reward that I’m after. That’s what pushes me. In my opinion, that should be the goal for everyone in this lifetime. Everyone has a position to play in this game. Everyone has a level of contribution. As you bring forward your contribution, that’s going to bring forward a reward and an outcome to the game, to your team members, to the people that are around you. For the readers to know where we are, I’m going to provide a little bit more context as compensation. We’ve been talking about warriors and what it means to be a warrior. You can take on a title of a warrior but the meaning of that in depth significance of being a warrior and knowing another warrior is that those warriors have done work together. They know each other on a different level than a non-warrior.
That’s what it takes me back to the game and my teammates in the game. They are playing with me. They are feeling the hits, the bumps, the bruises. They have to take the ice baths and the cold showers. They have to get the massages and soak in the tub. They have to rub the alcohol and all of those things on it. They know what it’s like to play the game. Out of all of that pain, the suffering, the bumps, and the bruises, they get up, and the next day, they’re going to do it again.
When you know what your values are, you become willing to sacrifice yourself for them. Click To TweetI’ve been having this picture while you’re talking about the water boy and the person that paints the lines on the field. Because of what you’ve shared, it reminded me of what dark days it can feel like when you’re training an entire season but you’re the third string quarterback and nobody knows. You don’t get to shine until there’s this opportunity for you to shine. All the work that you’re doing in the darkness, in the dark mornings, behind the scenes, off the camera, it’s never being rewarded by what people get to praise back on you. When your moment comes, that’s what you said about bringing that gift forward, I love that. There will be a time where that gift is the most critical linchpin of the entire thing. If we don’t keep a picture of that in our minds, we will become too depressed, too sad, heavy, or slow to do that work in the dark days. What you’re doing is you want to make sure people don’t feel alone because their effect isn’t visible yet, and the crop is still underground.
Mandy, you’re bringing a lot out of me. It’s not about the shine. It’s about being ready when your time has come. He’s worked even though he may feel is done in the dark. All of our work is done in the dark. We were born in the dark. If you are doing it for the shine, then you’re going to feel like, “When is my time coming?” That’s what you are after. All you want is somebody to shine the light on you and say that you are good. When you know that if your name is called, you have to be ready. It doesn’t matter whether your name hasn’t been called over the last ten games. That moment in time when they call you could be the moment of time that you save someone’s life, that you make a difference for somebody, that you saved the world, that you become the next president, that you create a vaccine that’s going to relieve a pandemic, that you do all of these things right.
You have to be willing to put the work by the purpose of winning. Supporting the team. If that’s where you are, if you’re on the third screen, you’ll be the best third screen player that you can be. You never know when you’re going to be bumped up. I believe in giving yourself the opportunity of possibility. I believe that when opportunity meets preparation, what was seemingly impossible can happen because you’ve been putting yourself in the right place. It’s playing the game in the right light with the right heart. It’s having a love for the game and not love for the fame.
You talked about your big financial goal. I bet that you have a how vector to that goal because you could get it in a lot of ways. I’m blessed to be able to see that heart of you because we get to spend time together. It’s obvious. If you don’t do it the right way, who cares? We can all get a lot of things in a lot of different ways and sacrifice everything that we are in the process of doing that. If we don’t know who we are, we won’t know if we’re sacrificing it. We’re chasing values that culture assigned. I think of it like we’re shopping for groceries for somebody else before we buy our own. We’re checking the list off of what everybody else told us in that list. I thought of it because you inspired me.
I don’t even know who does that who shops for groceries and everybody else’s shopping list gets above ours. It’s a never ending refilling shopping list and we keep trying to fill it. It’s like, “What are your values?” A lot of times, values get assigned through organizations. They seem hollow and we become disenfranchised from the idea of values. We don’t see those values being carried out, or the values are stated but they aren’t being expressed. What we think we know what our values should be and this whole find your values prospect, that is sister work with know who you are. When you know what your values are, you’re willing to sacrifice. It almost becomes second nature like a child. You’d sacrifice yourself for your child.
Bring Your Gifts Forward: If you are picturing yourself against Tom Brady, you’re also depriving the world of what is unique, of what hasn’t been yet.
I believe that getting to that space of knowing who you are, developing and adopting certain values and ways of being has a lot to do with not only knowing who you are but trusting who you are. The trust is the hardest part. As a player, you rely on a lot of feedback in terms of the evaluation and how you’ve been playing the game. You have your own feedback. You have your own thoughts about yourself. What happens over time is we’ve taken on those thoughts about ourselves. We’ve executed and they’ve been proven wrong. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve come up short of ourselves. We get the feedback from someone else that says, “You should do it this way or that way.”
What happens is we got to be careful of finding that balance of constructive criticism from other people but maintaining a level of trust within ourselves. We can get so in tuned and wrapped into the evaluation of what someone else says that is the only thing that we would rely on. You might have heard of trusting your gut. You have to be able to trust your gut in the game. Sometimes trusting your gut does mean going against what the coach, the mentor, or the society says, and what someone else feels you should do. You have to be a player that has enough experience to understand that gut feeling. When you get it, trust it.
Trust it when you’re developing your values. Trust it when you’re developing the persona of who you are and what you want to be, the game that you want to play and how you want to play it in the world because at the end of the day, all of these things that are around you in terms of constructive criticism and feedback are support mechanisms. They are not the end all be all. You have to know how to use the tools and when not to use the tools, and how to take all of that, master it, trust it, and then produce a result because at the end of the day, you are responsible for how you play the game. I’m dealing with that now. I’m going to be completely honest. I have a mentor.
First of all, there’s a good book that talks about this by Robert Greene called Mastery. I’m going to plug that book. I highly recommend it. It was on my list of January’s books that I’m reading. It’s going to be on February too because I haven’t gotten through it. It’s a very large book. There comes a point in time in your apprenticeship and there are multiple layers of apprenticeship, you go from one level to the next in life. You play at this level. You master it and yet there’s another level of apprenticeship. You’re always in some level of apprenticeship and you’re learning at this level. It’s good to have coaches and mentors at each level. As you go through these apprenticeships, these levels, you start gaining confidence. You start gaining what I call The Game IQ.
They are skillsets that you’re learning. There’s talent that you have, but then there’s this game IQ. That’s what separates good players from extremely great players or champions. One that I will use as an example of this is Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, or Magic Johnson. These players had a tremendous level of game IQ. If you study these guys, they have talent but it’s their IQ that set them apart because they knew certain things about the flow of the game. They could put themselves in certain positions that produced a positive beneficial outcome. We have that same ability.
A lot of that game IQ is trust. It’s what you look at. For example, Michael Jordan, some of the moves that he made and some of the things that he did, he didn’t know he was going to do them. We talk about trust. You don’t know it. You’re just trusting in how you feel in the game to do a certain thing and that is going to come out the way they’re supposed to come out full-circle in that moment. Responsive intuition is when you trust in yourself and trusting in your ability to produce a result. That’s what we call power.
Bring your gifts forward instead of judging and diminishing them. Click To TweetLet me tell you a story. I can tell a great story about when you try to trust yourself. This will be a cool point and counterpoint to what you shared. It is a personal story. I wrote about it. I did a podcast myself and I literally explained because I was separating myself from humanity at a certain time because I didn’t have good boundaries. I didn’t know how to have peace and be in connection at the same time. I was putting all of my value in achieving things. I want to be by myself and I wanted to achieve a bunch of stuff that nobody could argue with, namely myself objectively so that I could value myself. Mountain climbing, perfect. There’s a picture of me on top of the mountain. I took that picture with my iPhone.
What mountain is it?
That’s Mount Hood. That’s the first mountain I ever climbed. I’ve climbed a lot of mountains. You got to learn to climb rock, ice, and in the Alpine in order to navigate mountain terrain successfully. I had such a thirst for doing this sport. It’s a solo sport. It’s an isolated sport. Even when you’re on a rope team, that’s that warrior thing. Your lives are in each other’s hands literally because if the other person slips and doesn’t place the protection right, both of you are off the mountain. It could be. You’re talking about game IQ. I was having so much relationship there with people who have a healthy relationship with risk and can feel when to push versus when to pull back. I resonated with your example, but I was so thirsty to climb because I wanted to achieve big things.
There’s also this aspect of beauty that you get to touch, feel, see, and hear in the pristine that quieted these places. Very few or sometimes zero people might have ever been in that exact spot on earth. Maybe no foot has ever trod there. It’s a cool type of experience that is way more powerful to me than anything we could buy, than any material gain. I was so desperate to have this acumen, to have this ability to get through the mountains. I was trying so hard. I was fit and I have a great relationship with risk but maybe a little bit too much comfort with it. I wasn’t aggressive like ego forward, but I ignored my gut. I’m that type of person that my story is about pushing too close to pain, being with pain too close, with fear too close, or with sadness too long before I addressed it like it mattered.
When we’re talking about mental health, a lot of us are walking that line now. We can manage. We’re coping okay. On the surface, everything looks normal but inside, it’s not okay. I’m in the mountains. I’m being that good soldier. I’m a team member. I’m learning how to climb a rock. I’ve done a lot of work. I’ve been training to do this moment. It’s my first time that I’m on the lead. I was with one of my very best friends at the time, somebody who I formed this relationship through rock climbing. I got off the ground. I was placing the protection and I was about 35 feet up. I was disconnected from my body because I was afraid, but I thought that was how it was supposed to feel. Because I was so out of touch with my gut and trusting that my gut was telling me, and I was used to pushing beyond it, I actually fell.
Bring Your Gifts Forward: We’re quick to nurture somebody else who’s hurting, but then we expect ourselves to always be showing forth as this big persona of success.
My first time lead climbing, I took a lead fall. My feet brushed the ground and I hit my heel. I fell about 35 feet free fall. The rope barely caught me on one piece of protection as I was coming into contact with my partner. By all measure, anyone hearing this story might think that I’m not safe to climb with. I am going to endanger other people’s lives. It took me a long time to approach lead climbing again, mostly because I was terrified that I was a hazard to the people around me and to myself. Not out of ego or brazen seeking of accomplishment did I risk hurting myself, but it was from not having that connection being formed to listening to when it’s a healthy fear or when it’s a healthy pain like, “Do something about this,” versus being brave and moving through.
The whole soldiering on idea, once I finally did come back to lead climbing, I realized over months what the problem was and why I allowed that to happen but it was scary to trust myself again. I could tear up now because when you’re the one making the decisions and calling the shots, then you injure yourself and you see it go wrong, it’s like we’re burned twice. We don’t want to trust ourselves again. I would love to hear your thoughts about that.
Experience is the best teacher. You survived. You’re still here. For me, that means you have to get back up and try that again. You get back up with so much more than you had before the fall because now you have that experience. You have to get over the fear. That’s just a story you’re telling yourself. That’s a mental trick. The opposition is playing on you to prevent you from getting back into the game. This is a beautiful example of what happens when you’re in the game. You get the opportunity to learn how you operate. This is a true example of game IQ because it’s what it comes down.
Things happen in life. We labeled them as opposition and resistance. That’s what it is. I label it as that because it’s something that is tangible that I can point to and say, “This year, I’m stopping.” It’s healthy to do that because I can figure out that’s my mountain. How am I going to climb it? What skillset do I need to climb, or what mentality do I need to get over it? When you have climbed that mountain as a lead climber, you learn certain things about these experiences. It can be life or death situations but they give you the knowledge and the education that you need in order to navigate them. Have you ever seen the movie Free Solo?
I have.
Free Solo will have you biting your nails. This guy is climbing a mountain with no rope at all. He can’t make any mistakes at all, but he’s done. He’s doing it while being filmed if that’s not enough pressure for him because people are watching him. The level of trust in himself, not anyone else, he’s on this mountain. He’s on El Capitan, one of the largest pieces of land in Yellowstone Park by himself. That level of calmness, awareness, trust, confidence and groundedness, he has to be grounded because fear cannot play a part. He’s several thousand feet off the ground. He can’t freak out because he knows there is no safety net. There is no room for error in this game. You don’t score and you don’t play again. This is a playoff at its finest. This is life and death. You either got to play and win or you’re not going to play at all ever. His level of groundedness and calmness as he faced multiple levels of opposition as he’s making this climb, there are different challenges.
Your challenge can be your gift. It can be the legacy that you leave. Click To TweetI remember watching the movie and there are certain spots that he gets to where there’s a certain way that he has to make this turn, these clamps and have this grip. If he doesn’t do it that way, it’s game over. That’s it. There are multiple areas where this mountain is challenging him. We all have that level of ability to ground ourselves, trust ourselves, beat on the door of risk, and balance it out to the point where we can experience success in the climb. It wasn’t the first time that he had climbed this mountain. He’s done this over and over. He’s climbed a mountain with ropes. Let’s be real. He’s done it with ropes multiple times, so he understands it.
That’s something to be said because a lot of times we want to throw ourselves into some things, master it, and get the light shined on us. If that doesn’t happen, we feel bad about ourselves. I’m like, “Come on. How many hours do you have in it?” You’re sabotaging yourself. It’s small baby steps. I get it. You want to be a Tom Brady. You want to be a star. In order to be a star, “There’s a level of experience that you had to have in this game.” If people feel like they can’t get that, they don’t even get in the game, “I’d never be a Tom Brady. I’d never be this.” That third screen guy can be a hero. You never hear about him, but he’s working his tail off every single game because you never know when that opportunity may present itself for you to be the star.
Something that reminds me of is if you are picturing or comparing against Tom Brady, we’re also depriving the world of what is unique. What hasn’t been yet? You’re never going to be Tom Brady. You’re going to be something else if you allow yourself. That’s where that social pressure. We want to conform but we want to be Lady Gaga. Which one is it? You don’t get to be Lady Gaga without breaking conformity. She risked, then everybody cheers. It’s because she was moving fearlessly in the direction of permission. You don’t get to be Tom Brady without sacrificing maybe everything else. Those are two themes that jumped out. It’s like, “I’ll never do that.” I’m not speaking harshly. I’m speaking to myself right now. Risk everything with no guarantee of outcome, and then see where you land. Nobody’s going to say, “If you do this and this, you’re definitely going to be Tom Brady.”
Horton Hears a Who!
You can’t go into the game playing small. You want to go into the game giving it 100%. I think that’s what you mean when you say risk everything. That means play your heart out. Leave it all on the field. If you’re going to go for something, give it everything that you have. It’s not give everything you have to be Tom Brady. Give everything you have to be Mandy Lanier, to be Rodney Flowers, to be whoever you are. That’s what the world needs. That mind trick that I will never be Tom Brady, we don’t need that. I can go read about Tom. If you become him, I’m going to say, “I don’t even want to read about that.” I want to read about what’s your journey. Tom Brady and all these other things are examples of what’s possible.
That’s what I’m striving to be. I want to be an example of what’s possible, but I’m going to do it in my own way. How the universe is going to manipulate and articulate, how I maneuver through my journey, that’s my story. That’s the Rodney Flowers story, the Mandy Lanier story, whomever story. We got to afford ourselves that opportunity to allow our journey, our story, to manifest this stuff, to develop, to create. That comes with let me give my opportunity in life, my possibility in life 100% of me. I don’t want my story to be developed without me giving 100%. I don’t want to deprive my story and my legacy based on me not giving it everything that I had to give.
Have you ever read that book Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss?
No, I haven’t read that.
I’ll plug that book. It is my favorite book, maybe of all time. It’s about this elephant who finds a little dandelion with a tiny little creature called a Who on it. Only Horton with his huge ears can hear the Who. There’s this whole plot of devastation of a field of these flowers that somebody who came in, who didn’t appreciate this tiny little Who that lived on this whole world on a little dandelion, they just destroyed it and they said, “You’re crazy because nobody can hear that and they don’t even exist. We’re going to take it all away from you.” He spent days or maybe years going through and trying to find this precious little world that existed. I don’t know. I was inspired because this is something that comes up for me a lot is it’s easy to see the big stories.
For somebody who might be battling with depression or anxiety, our story is in the little emotions, the little day-to-day. Maybe that battle is that small on a dandelion. It’s a whole universe down in this tiny problem. If you spent your whole life working this one problem, would you allow it to matter? How would you feel if somebody else were treating themselves that way? The water boys day in and day out like you brought up. Why are we so quick to discredit our small problem, our small contribution that looks so insignificant to us?
I wonder what we reflect the same judgment or lack of appreciation if that was that person’s struggle. I think we’re quick to nurture somebody else who’s hurting, but then we expect of ourselves to always be showing forth as this big persona of success. Where’s the happiness in any of this? What’s the real question? What are you seeking? Maybe you can get it big but, “If you want it bad, you get it bad.” That’s one of my favorite quotes. How can you want it in alignment with what you truly desire with respect for yourself?
I think we have to address all things. The best players are well-rounded players. They have the ability to look at their game and address all the imperfections in there, even the little ones.
You said we’re all on the team. We’re all on the game.
We all matter, we all are significant. We all have a purpose and a role to play. Tom Brady has a team that he leaves to the Super Bowl and the team wins the Super Bowl. I’m going to tell you this. The water boy is the champion on that team. The coach is the champion. How many times have we seen games where the star player got taken out? He got hurt but the team was able to march on because of the guy that was second screen, the guy that was third screen, the guy that was able to come in. It’s all about being able to support the mission and bringing the mission forward. That’s what you want to do.
You want to heal your anxiety, heal your financial situation, heal your relationships, heal these things. They are important because it allows you to play the game. If you’re playing the game, you’re playing it to the best of your ability. You support the mission, the intention, and the purpose. When we had that mentality, that’s where we get it right. That’s why we get up in the morning. That’s why we do what we do. There’s something else that’s happening in the locker room. What we see is over. Those guys won the championship. That warrior spirit, that ability to do work together, accomplished that work, and that comradery that they’re experiencing in that locker room, that’s also happening. That feeling of accomplishing that together with a team, realizing that you contributed, that you played a part, that you are a part of something bigger than yourself and you were able to do this as a team.
You went through the struggle of the season, sixteen games and then the playoffs. You made it through the process of elimination, things that took other teams out. You and your team were able to survive and accomplish them. That’s true reward, that feeling. We all have that. That’s where we are even in this pandemic, in the social injustice that we’re facing, and the challenges that we’re facing. We need each other, Mandy. We need your work, this healing, this transformation. We have to get rid of the things that are causing people to not get on the field, to stay on the bench, to play small, to be afraid of getting hit, to be afraid of taking that opportunity, to run through the gaps, to take the ball and lead and score. People are afraid to face the unknown, the uncertainty, and playing life. That’s what we are. This is life.
I feel everything that you’re saying. Bringing the gifts forward instead of spending our attention or our awareness to judge and diminish those gifts. That’s definitely a huge theme that’s come out from our conversation that has deeply affected me. It reminds me of another part that is so important to remind each other. I love how connected you are with your purpose. It’s special too. It’s such a huge treat to spend time. You’re so clear and you’re so motivated and inspired that it’s inspiring as well. I’ve been on the brink of tears our entire conversation because I’m so in love with your message, and totally aligned with your purpose. I’m grateful that you have had me as your guest on this show.
I’m grateful for this opportunity to share with you, to be with you, and to experience you. The goal that I have out of this show with you is that other people get that connection with their purpose. The game I’m playing is to inspire people to play their game because I believe that’s what we need. That purpose that you’ve outlined for me was driven by me being an inspiration for people in the darkest time of my life. That was something that drove me to get up every day and sacrifice everything to go 120. I still do that to this day because my mission is to be an example of what’s possible.
What I’m saying is it’s possible to thrive and to overcome in the darkest situations that you may find yourself in where this anxiety, where this is financial trouble or this relationship, whatever it is, there is always a way out. Even if it’s to overcome for the sake of someone else, being able to see you overcome that will inspire them, that is always a possibility. We have to get our minds off ourselves and on our team, on the mission, on the intention of life. When we can do that, we make ourselves useful players of the game. That, my friend, is a game changer. Mandy, as we wrap up the show, how can people connect with you if they wanted to learn more about you?
Bring Your Gifts Forward: We need to view our adversity through the lens of value and appreciation instead of diminishment and marginalization.
Thank you so much, Rodney. I’m most active on Instagram but that’s, @MyPalladiumMind. My Palladium Mind is my brand. There’s a story there. Palladium is precious, malleable, catalytic, and lustrous. Those are the qualities of mind. If people want to get something extra, visit Bit.ly/cicada000. Cicada is one of those insects from the South. It’s the beginning of a journey that I started taking pretty much in the summer but it launched in October. It’s a twelve-minute audio that I recorded. It’s my show. Cicada is the sound that the acronym makes Calm, Confident & Deliriously Happy. That’s my show. It will help people be on my site.
I am obsessed with helping people to transform lifelong issues in weeks not years. I do this with people all the time. Google doesn’t even let me say it but it’s permanent because when you do embodiment work and you can heal and release trauma loops, that shit’s permanent. I want people to be freer in their experiences. I also am passionate about making healing accessible globally for everyone because a lot of these modalities that we’re all touching, we’re using altered states of consciousness to create healing. Anytime we are in a healing state, we’re using an altered state of consciousness, which is basically open source how your body runs and heals itself. Keeping power in people’s hands is something that’s fundamentally very important to me and that starts with information. Also, a lot of modalities that do employ altered states of consciousness like trance are indigenous and ancient modalities. It’s not really about business. It’s about freedom. Even though it’s a business site, it’s a way of interacting with the world. I’m a servant to others’ freedom. That’s what I want to convey.
Thank you, Mandy, for sharing that. I too am aligned with who you are and what you represent in the world. You are a light. You’re beautiful. You do have a purpose. I see you out there playing your game, playing to win. We need you. You all play well, so keep it up. Thank you for coming on the show. If there’s one more thing that you could share with us, I know we’ve talked about a lot, what will be that one thing that you would like to leave with us that would help us bounce back from adversity, dominate our challenges, and consistently win at the game of life?
As simple as possible is you can use your consciousness a lot of ways. You can appreciate something or you can judge it. You can feel curiosity about something or you can judge it. If we view our adversity through the lens of diminishment or marginalization instead of beginning to see it through a lens of value and appreciation, that’s the one thing. When you talked about that book Mastery, it made me think if you have this deep experience about something like anxiety, a lack of feeling worth, or feeling lower than low, you have mastery of that. It’s something that culturally we don’t value. You have a well of knowledge and I want people to appreciate mastery in all directions and dimensions. What are you feeling?
You said something that is so powerful. I want to remind people. Your challenge can be your gift. If you’re dealing with that challenge for a long period of time, you have developed some level of coping, and being able to deal with that. That’s the mastery and that could be the gift that you need to set the world on fire, to save someone’s life, to be a game changer, or a difference-maker in someone else’s life but your idea of habit is doom, gloom, diminishing, and victimized. If you could change the narrative and say, “I’ve been dealing with this for five years and I’m not dead yet, how did I do it?” Now, you can start a podcast, write a book, become a speaker. You can do all kinds of things to let the world know this is how you get through it.
Pride in it, whatever it is. Thank you for that.
I can keep going with you, Mandy. There’s so much here. We’ve only unpacked a small portion of who you are and what you have to give your gift. Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me. It’s my pleasure.
There you have it, folks. This is another successful episode. If you’re not inspired by now, I suggest you go and seek some help because there’s so much here for you to inspire you, to help you understand the role that you play in life, and that we need you in this game that we plan. It has a place for you, has a place that’s going to bring you a lot of what you’re looking for in life. The love that you’re looking for, the networking that you’re looking for, the comradery that you’re looking for, the sense of accomplishment, the sense of purpose that you’re looking for. It’s all there. That challenge that you have that you’ve been dealing with, it could be the gift that you feel like you don’t have. It could be an opportunity that you feel you don’t have. It could be the thing that you can provide as a purpose or a contribution to life. It could be the legacy that you can live and lead.
We have to evaluate the environment around us. Look at it through a lens of opportunity. Look at it through a lens of supporting the sustainment of life. Look at it through the lens of being able to serve. Look at it through the lens of being a player in this game of life and having that profile that makes you first screen, a star in the game. What is it about you and what you have experienced could be a game changer in this thing called life? Until next time. Peace and love.
Important Links:
- Mandy Barbee Lanier
- Mastery
- Horton Hears a Who!
- @MyPalladiumMind – Instagram
- Bit.ly/cicada000
- https://www.PalladiumMind.com/game-changer-mentality
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/get-up-book/
- http://RodneyFlowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
- https://RodneyFlowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
- Is Life Knocking You Down? Read Rodney’s inspiring story – Get Up! I Can’t. I Will. I Did… Here’s How! https://rodneyflowers.com/get-up-book/
- Recognize Your Positive Potential – Essential Assertions by Rodney Flowers https://rodneyflowers.com/essential-assertions-book/
- Get Access to Rodney’s Daily Inspiration in your Inbox Today https://rodneyflowers.us9.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=01f76a038256f77a6fbc93590&id=307d726734
About Mandy Barbee Lanier
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