Transcript: E24 – Star Wars and Your Hero’s Journey

00:00 Trefor the conversations that we’re interested in having, the topics that we’re interested in talking about, we return home, but we kind of return home a little bit of a stranger.

00:16 Rob Hi, welcome to the Book of Boba Fett Season Two. I’m your host Rob Dale along with my good friend Eric Deschamps and Boba Fett. Oh my god, but we have someone in studio. We have Boba Fett sitting here. It is. I don’t know where Trefor is. Where’s Trefor? I don’t know where Trefor is.

00:39 Eric Far more interesting. Oh, it’s Trefor.

00:43 Rob Oh, I’m a Mandalorian no more. This is the way. If you are, welcome to the Living Richly podcast. Yes. I’m here with, wish we were launching here with Eric Deschamps and Trefor. Listen, listen, I love you. I appreciate you. But yeah, sorry, dude. Wow. If you’re only listening on, if you’re listening on Apple or on Spotify or Google or some of the other different podcast platforms, you may not appreciate as much as what we’re going on. You’ve got to go to YouTube to really capture this. You might want to watch the opening on YouTube. You still might not appreciate it, but you’ll at least understand a little bit. It is the original airing of this episode is Star Wars Day. Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you. Now you may not be listening to it on that day, but that’s the day that we have released it. In which case, shut it off and wait. No, no, no, no, no. Okay. Keep listening. Keep listening. Because the principles that we’re going to be talking about today are all about Star Wars. They are timeless and they are relevant. Whether it’s, I mean, let’s face it. Every day is Star Wars. Every day is Star Wars. And so, yeah, so certainly for us as geeks, we’re going to get talking about that, but maybe just again, Star Wars Day. Talk about,

02:19 Rob you’re all old enough. You were there. You saw the, uh, 1977. I was six years old. Yeah. I was 10. My family, my parents took us to a drive-in theater. The one that used to be where now Canatec park is for those of you that are local to the Ottawa region, that drive-in is now gone, but we were there. I remember my brother and I, we were young in our pajamas. We were in the station wagon. We were lying down on the roof of the station wagon with pillows and blankets. And, uh, dad had the speaker up so we could hear it to see this movie that was coming out that had real mixed sort of predictions around whether it would work or not. And as a, as a six year old boy fell in love with Star Wars and I’ve been a huge fan ever since. And I’ve managed to brainwash two of my three children. Uh, my son, uh, I thought I knew a lot about the franchise and trivia and lore and the rest. And he is just next next level. I mean, he, he knows everything. Star Wars. Absolutely love

03:17 Trefor the franchise. What about for you? Yeah. I mean, same like as a kid, seeing it going like it was breathtaking. There was nothing like it before that. Like it really was a genre breaker in a lot of ways and then set the standard and the story was so compelling, right? Like there’s just, and the notion of the force and lightsabers, let’s face it, pretty cool. Pretty cool.

03:41 Rob What about for you? Uh, for me, I, so I don’t remember the first time I saw it in the, to describe it the way that you did. We’re going to have to ask you to leave.

03:48 Eric I have a great conversation about the importance of Star Wars.

03:53 Rob If you go back to, uh, the episode of which I tell my story, I do talk about the fact that I have very few, uh, memories and I’d love to have those memories. I don’t have those memories. Now you’re just making us feel bad. You don’t feel bad. And I can’t make you feel bad. You can only choose to feel bad. And, uh, so I remember though, that was pretty impressive. But to your point, how this, the story of this and I, what I do remember, one of the memories I have of that, uh, time in my life was at Christmas time, I got one of my Christmas gifts. See, um, amazing focus. Do you see how he just talks, just continues talking? He’s very used to this. This is very easy. You’re doing so well by the way. One of my Christmas gifts was the, uh, the entire movie on record. Oh wow. So it was an vinyl, it was an audio version of the entire movie. That’d be worth something today. So not just the soundtrack, like not just the music. Wasn’t the music. It was the actual, you would, you would put this record on and listen to right from the opening scene to the end of the movie. You had to turn it over halfway through. I don’t remember at what point. Probably had to flip it over a few times to listen to the whole thing. Yeah. Um, and so to the point that I used to, then when I would watch the movie, I could, you could, because you just all the lines, you knew all the lines because I would listen to this thing every single night. This was be my come over school and I’d listened to star wars again. They, this, I wish I still had it. We’ll have to put that in the show links to see if I can find it. That would be an amazing. So, so, and so, so if I tell the story and, and yeah, it can get caught up in the story of, of this incredible epic journey in this first movie. No idea that, I mean, we, you knew at the end of the movie that there’s going to be a sequel,

05:48 Rob but the notion of just the movie stood alone on its own. Now I’m curious. 40 plus years. And you think like a franchise that has gone the distance 40 plus years. And I get that not everyone is a star wars fan. I don’t get you, but I get that you may not be a fan, but 40 plus years, they’ve been attracting fans across multiple generations. And a franchise that continues to, to, to grow now under Disney and, and John Favreau with the Mandalorian and, and a Soka that’s coming out. And I mean, it’s a, it’s a phenomenon when you think of the longevity of this franchise,

06:24 Rob very few movie franchises have achieved that type of longevity. Right now, do you remember who you’re, who was your first, when you first, as a, as a young boy, who is your favorite character? It had to be Luke with us with Chewbacca right in tow. Yeah, absolutely. Just cause you, which is horrible impression, but he does that all the time. I do that. Yeah. Right. But I think it was the Wookie because he was so cool. Yeah. For me, that was just, he was just the ultimate cool, you know, kind of guy or whatever. What about for you? Hands down, Boba Fett. Oh yeah. Okay. He’s pretty quiet in the first. Yeah. I was going to say that he’s kind of a short part of the movie.

07:04 Trefor Really? Yeah. It has virtually no lines, but it was just such a powerful carrot, like such a, but still so much presence in it. Right. Like it was incredible. And probably like for me, maybe the great coup in my life was the fact that I was able to organize it. So Carrie and I got married on May the 4th and she didn’t know. Yeah. So it was like, she knows now, she knows now. It was probably like, she’s finding out on this podcast. It was probably like 15 years later before she went, Oh, did we get married on time? Like maybe the, so, oh, so also happy anniversary,

07:39 Eric honey. But back to star wars day. All right. And listen, we probably, I mean, we could probably talk about the franchise. We may have some of our viewers and listeners. It may be another podcast

07:54 Rob for us. Analytics have shown the drop off rate already. You may be wondering why we’re talking about this. Well, it is star wars day, but there is a point to all this. Trev, why don’t you

08:03 Trefor introduce our core topic today? So it was really about what struck us about star wars was this notion of a hero in it, but an everyday hero, right? Like Luke Skywalker is nothing special. He’s just this kid doing this stuff, little whiny, maybe at the beginning, but the, but he, he goes off on this journey and it is full of every twist and turn and it’s, and it’s incredible. But, and, and so the notion for us was about each of us actually becoming the hero in our lives and our journey. We talked before about, right, that critical notion and Eric, you spoke to it like so beautifully about radical self-acceptance, just accepting us. Right. The hero actually takes it one step further, right? Heroes are people we admire for their achievements, for their courage, for their values, for things they stand for. And there is a point where we can move from the self-acceptance. I, okay, I accept me. Fine. Fine. I accept me.

09:08 Eric That sounds a little more like reluctant self-acceptance than radical. I don’t know.

09:13 Trefor There’s some work to be done there. I think there’s some work. It’s a stage in the living journey. Not everyone’s at the same. Hey, I am where I’m at. Right. But it’s that move to appreciation of ourselves for the courage that we’re showing in our lives, for the things that we are doing, for the things that we are choosing to stand for. That’s when we kind of become the hero with no arrogance, no hubris, but to go to recognize I, the hero doesn’t have to be someone outside,

09:43 Rob right? It can be me. Well, I love that because I mean, we often think of heroes in terms of folks that perform really heroic acts. They throw themselves into an icy river to save a drowning dog, right? Or they put themselves in harm’s way. And that truly is heroic. I mean, those and those heroes show up all the time in real life, but not all of us will have the opportunity to do that. I think everyday heroes are the folks. For me, what I think is truly heroic is when someone musters up the courage to be their most authentic self, as opposed to being a version that society is telling them to be, or that their family’s telling them to be, or friends are. When you strike out and say, I’m going to, while remaining within community, it’s not about disconnecting, but while remaining connected to the people that I love the most, they’re most meaningful to me. I am going to define myself and live as my most authentic self. I think in many

10:42 Rob ways what we’re saying today, that is heroic. And I’m so glad you said that and you gave that definition. And there seems to be right now in some circles, this almost this kind of push back against calling some, you know, these authentic self moments, heroic, right? It’s, it’s stopped we’re watering down the word heroic or hero that a hero is the person who runs into the burning building to save the child. It’s the action. It’s the hero in every action movie. It’s Arnold Schwarzenegger. And there seems to be this kind of this push back against when somebody, you know, somebody stands up and, and, you know, basically announces that they’re, you know, kind of comes out of the closet, you know, kind of declares who they are. Oh, that’s so heroic. And other people go, that’s not a rogue. But I love that you use that language because it is, it’s so difficult for most of us to define ourselves and to truly show up as our authentic self that it is a heroic act for that individual. And I think for us to embrace that language,

11:52 Rob not to be, ah, we better not use that anymore. Let’s find something else. It is a role. And I think that’s the notion behind a man by the name of Joseph Campbell. I’ll get you, I’ll turn it over to you, right? To talk to us about that who came up with this model that actually the star Wars movie is based on. Harry Potter is based on. Lord of the Rings is based on the matrix. But tell us about this, this hero, a thousand faces, a book written by Joseph

12:18 Trefor Campbell and the model that came out. Yeah. So he, it’s interesting cause this is a, you know, he’s a, he’s a researcher. He’s a professor who started looking across all the myths throughout time, across geography, across culture. And basically quite, quite, quite astutely went, wait a minute. It’s only one story. It’s only one story. And he calls it the mono myth, right? That single myth, that single story. And he was also drawing on Carl Jung’s work about the, you know, kind of all of the connections that are playing out, right? We talk about the subconscious, but it’s also like the super conscious, right? It’s that thing that connects all of us across cultures that we’re able to tap into as well. And he said, there’s, there’s something going on here. And so he started to, to basically look at all of these and realize that there’s, it’s a one single model of the hero playing out. And we’re seeing it over and over in different way shapes or forms. And, and it’s really quite potent. Like you go through and you read it. And so his book, you mentioned, right? It’s the hero of a thousand faces. The, he’s got a few others as well. There’s some great online resources. Some of his talks are get a little cryptic every once in a while. I really got to slide down. So a big part of it, he’s a philosopher in many ways. Right? So some of his stuff is pretty heavy. Yeah. Absolutely. And you know, so he basically says, listen, there’s this one story and then he breaks the story down and you know, there’s like 17 pieces in the original version and there’s variations of it, but there there’s kind of three core concepts to it. One is kind of the departure from the norm, right? Right. I’m living my life. I’m doing my thing. And we get in essence invited to live a richer life, a deeper life, a more complete life, to leave our comfort zone, to leave what we know. Yeah. And to depart and to step into this. And so there’s a bunch of steps in there. The second is really around this initiation. And this is where we start to acquire and discover new skills, new ways of living, new ways of acting, right? And all of a sudden we’ve got these new tools that we start to use and we encounter different, you know, trials and tribulations as we figure out how to use these

14:41 Rob things and we’re going to mess it up and we’re going to fix it. So it’s like the first stage, the hero commits to a change. Right. In the initiation stage, this is the transformation

14:54 Trefor of the hero. Exactly. Yeah. They re-equip themselves, you know, not just in skills, but it’s a transformation of self, right? And then the third is the return. As you come back. And it’s not just like, okay, I’m back everybody. I had a nice trip. We’re back transformed. I’ve got slides. And we realize that because we’re transformed, what we come back to, the experience of what we come back to is also transformed. Right. Now we’re showing up differently.

15:28 Rob Our cert, we’re returning or engaging with the same context, people, circumstances, but because we responded to the invitation, left the norm behind, we were transformed. Now

15:41 Rob we’re showing up differently in all of those contexts. And isn’t that the message of living richly right from beginning? This is what we’ve been talking about. This is what it’s about.

15:50 Trefor This is why all of you should be Star Wars fans, right? Because it’ll drive the message home. But why don’t we do like, let’s do this. So we thought, you know, we can connect the dots here for you. And so here’s what we’re going to do. That’s right. We’re going to give you the model and we’re going to align it to Star Wars. Basically scene by scene, section by section in under 60 seconds. We’re going to try. So we’re going to take, we’re going to take the collective works of Joseph Campbell and the core work of George Lucas. We’re going to synthesize it and we’re

16:21 Rob going to act it out in under 60 seconds. And if we can’t do it in under 60 seconds, cause Steve is going to be a Steve you there. I wasn’t sure. He’s a bit of a Trekkie. Yeah. He might’ve transported somewhere. Beat me up, Scotty. If we can’t, he’s going to be keeping time. If we can’t do it in under 60 seconds, then we’re going to pull out the

16:44 Trefor lightsaber and cut off one of Trefor’s hands. I think that’s fair. He brought it up. That escalated very quickly. It fits in with movie. All right. I’ve got, I’ve got the timer. Okay. We got the timer. So Rob, you’re going to start us off and we’re going to go piece by

17:01 Rob piece. Okay. Ready? Set. Go. Ordinary world. Luke Skywalker is a humble farm boy on Tatooine. Call to adventure. His uncle Owen buys two droids and one of them R2-D2 reveals a secret message from Princess Leia and then takes off into the desert where Luke meets Obi-Wan Kenobi,

17:17 Trefor who tells Luke about his Jedi heritage. Refusal of the call. Obi-Wan says Luke should come with him to Alderaan to rescue the princess, but Luke refuses and can only go as far as Mos Eisley.

17:25 Rob Crossing the threshold. Luke realizes the stormtroopers are searching for the droids, so he runs back home to warn his uncle and aunt, but they are dead. So Luke decides to go with

17:35 Trefor Kenobi. Tests, allies and enemies. Enter Han Solo and Chewbacca. Fly them to Alderaan. On the trip, Luke starts to learn some Jedi moves. The approach. Instead of finding Alderaan, the planet has been destroyed, they find the Death Star, are captured, but have an adventure,

17:50 Rob avoiding capture. The ordeal. Obi-Wan shuts down the tractor beam so they can escape and the others rescue Princess Leia, Kenobi fights Darth Vader and sacrifices himself. The reward. The gang escapes and Luke has saved the princess and the Death Star plan so they can put things right in

18:07 Rob the galaxy. The roadblock, but the Empire let them escape so they can find the rebel base. Now they have to race against time to destroy the Death Star before it reaches the rebel base. The resurrection. At the last minute, Han rescues Luke and Luke uses the force to hit the highly unlikely, fully avoidable, single weak point of the immense Death Star, destroying it in a spectacular and

18:27 Trefor highly unprovable explosion. The return. Luke and Han return to the rebel base and get medals, but Chewbacca never got one. Stop. There, exactly one minute. Oh, sorry. I wasn’t done. Exactly one minute, 32 seconds and 40.4. So Trefor, which hand are you most willing to part with? I’m going to listen for the sound of one hand clapping. Either one’s fine. Okay, so we’re in the dark side now, right, baby? So there is a great summary and there’s a great page. It’s called the wookie pedia. It’s so good. But it’s really interesting because you can take, and actually there’s lots of websites out there where you can go and look and you say, here’s the matrix, right? And each step as you go, you can see each of the pieces of the story because it shows up over and over. And so, you know, the reason this is fun for us at one level is because it’s Star Wars. The reason it’s so meaningful for us is because this monomyth, this invitation to leave our regular lives, to discover more about who we are, to allow ourselves to be transformed over time, and then to return changed,

19:47 Rob is the invitation to all of us. Right. It’s the invitation to all of us. Eric, a long time, one of the episodes early on in- Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Oh, we can just land the episode right now. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, you talked about the notion of being the hero of your own story rather than a character in some- About authoring your own, right? You shared that, I believe, on the episode where you tell your story. And if you haven’t listened to those early episodes where we do share our stories, do encourage you to do that. Very specifically, I’m mentioning Eric and take some time to listen to Eric’s story. But you talk

20:34 Rob about that, about learning to become the hero in your own story. Right. I think there’s two sides of that. One is to show up authentically as you are, as opposed to, and I think some of the language I used is to show up as the central character in your own story- Right. Thank you. As opposed to an extra in somebody else’s. And I think when you don’t define your life, when you don’t get clear on who you are, what you want, what matters to you, and start pursuing that deliberately, not perfectly, but deliberately, you do end up living as an extra in other people’s stories. You’re influenced primarily by other people’s values, other people’s priorities, other people’s expectations, other people’s choices. And that is an exhausting way to live one’s life because those expectations and stories and scripts that other people have for us, or that we perceive they have for us, they will take whatever we throw at them and still want more. This is about becoming, again, getting clear on who am I and how do I want to play the story. So what’s interesting is you get to both hold the pen and write the script. You get to write the story and you get to be the central character in it as well, which talk about, that just sounds a lot more fun to me, a lot more engaging, a life that’s a lot more fulfilling. And that’s not that it won’t be influenced by other people. There’ll be other characters as part of it, but your choosing, again, it’s the difference between what we’ve used this language many times, but it’s a difference between choosing or coasting, deciding, over drifting. When we talk about being the hero in your own story, it’s truly about choosing and deciding, again, not perfectly, but deliberately and intentionally. Perfection doesn’t show up anywhere. No. And if it does, we need to

22:19 Rob challenge it because it’s not going to serve us well. So let’s go back to those three components of the hero’s journey, departure, initiation, and return. And let’s look at that from the context of, again, as we talk about this idea of being the hero of our own story. And as we look at it from the context now, so we’ve looked at it from the context of Star Wars, we recognize that it’s found in all of these epic stories. We believe that it’s absolutely central to the living richly story. How do each of these components, as someone is maybe one of our, someone is listening to this episode, they are now converted over to the Star Wars way, but they are now, I know our job is now done if that’s the case, but- This is the way. So how does one know, okay, so what are some of the characteristics or some of the things that would maybe stand out for someone who is at

23:15 Trefor the departure stage? Let’s go through each of the stages on this. If you’re listening, you’re at the departure stage. There you go. This podcast is your invitation. Right? Because that’s what we said right from the beginning is this would be an invitation for others and for us to actually help find others who are also on this same kind of, recognize that I think we’re all on it whether we know it or not. We’re all being invited to it. A hundred percent. And the question is what are we doing with that invitation? So I think first is recognize it. You’re already doing it. You’re already doing it. The fact that it’s the mono myth means we all have a place on this. The question is,

23:54 Rob do we know it? And are we ready for whatever our next step is in this? And if we’re clinging to Tatooine, we’re saying, no, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go. The universe, we say this in so many episodes, right? The episode, the universe will be like, okay, I’ll just bring another

24:10 Rob situation and keep inviting us to depart. Listen, you think again, if we think of the Star Wars story, just as we write, Luke gets invited, Obi-Wan asks him to join him on this mission to Alderaan to save the princess in response to R2’s message. And he says no. And it’s not until he realizes that his uncle and aunt have been killed that he agrees to go. And isn’t it interesting that often it takes pain. It takes hardship. It takes tribulation before we respond to the call. I know that was my story. Years and years and years ago, this was back in church days. I was a much younger leader and already aware that things weren’t good and I wasn’t good. And I was, I was bound to that hustle culture. And I was trying to earn, prove to myself that I was worthy of something. I don’t know, trying to prove all kinds of things. And I remember having a dream and it was one of the most vivid dreams I’ve ever had. Almost a vision. It was so real, so vivid. And I was walking through this beautiful like opening in the woods and there was this beautiful log cabin in the dream. And I walk up and as I get closer to the door, I know I’m being invited to go inside and I sense a presence with me that was invite, a benevolent presence at the time. You know, I must be God, right? Inviting me to go in. But as I get closer and closer to the door of that cabin, the fear is palpable because somehow in the dream, I know that what’s inside that room is pain, is my past, are my hangups, are my demons, are all the things. And I remember backing up and the benevolent presence tells me it’s okay. I am going to walk you through. We’re going to go in there, but there’s a door on the other side. We’re going to walk through it. And we’re going to get, we’re going to deal with some of this stuff and you’re going to walk through the other side and be free. And in the dream, I refuse. I had the dream at least three more times. Each time I had the dream, same outcome. I refused. Joseph Campbell is quoted as saying, the cave you fear to enter holds the treasures you seek. And it’s not until I read that years later that I understood that actually it wasn’t that I was being invited to relive the pain or go back to it. But I was being invited to face it and I was too afraid. And it would take significant things happening to me before I was finally willing. It took pain to finally crack me open where I had the willingness now to do the work, face it head on. And now the, if I had a do over, if I could get them all again, I would have gone in the first time. Right. But I think pain often is the tutor. Pain is the guy. Pain is the motivation. We get sick and tired of being sick and tired. We reach a point where the pain required to, how do we put it? The pain, we often don’t do it because of the pain required to change seems significant, but we come to realize that the pain of staying the same outweighs the pain required to change. So we’re finally motivated

27:18 Rob to leave what we know and embark on that journey. And you talked about, when we were chatting before we began recording, you talked about the notion of we often become the thing that we feel.

27:32 Rob Let me go ahead a little bit. Can I just say it the way that you wrote it was that often when we refuse the invitation to be the hero, we actually can become the villain. We can become the villain.

27:43 Trefor Yes. So this is a Joseph Campbell thing, not a Trev thing. As Trefor always said. No, not on this one. So that invitation will continue to come, but there’s a point in time. In the initiation phase, you face your trial, your villain, Darth Vader, that presence of Vader. And we all have a Darth Vader. And the risk is that if we keep getting invited, but refuse the invitation, the risk is that we become what we most fear, that we become the villain in our own story. And so you go, yeah, yeah, that’s a monomyth story thing. Uh-huh. So how many people do you know who, for example, had a difficult father or mother and said, I’m never going to be like them? And grow up to become them, right? To carry those same traits as well. And it’s not a simple linear equation, but there’s a risk that if we refuse to go on the journey, we become the villain in the story rather than the hero in our story. Right. And it’s a scary idea.

29:00 Rob And whether it, I mean, whether it’s, you see it as becoming a villain or it’s, it’s, it’s like the, the darker parts of you begin to be more prevalent, more pronounced. And that instead of breaking, perhaps the generational cycle of shit passed down from grandparent to parent to you, to kids, what I find, you talk about heroic. I think one of the most heroic acts is when each of us can face our own darkness, recognize where it’s come from, where we learned some of it, and make a decision to break the pattern so that the pattern actually stops with us. And now we can actually be more intentional about heroic, like passing on more noble virtues, the better parts

29:47 Trefor of ourselves to our children. To do that requires a set of new skills and capabilities. The initiation. That’s why if we don’t do it, if we don’t go on the journey, the transformation doesn’t happen and the patterns continue. Right. The patterns continue.

30:03 Rob I had someone tell me, like I get this all the time where we talk about, well, you know, as, as we get older, we get wiser and I stop and go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oftentimes we just get more stubborn. We often get more, I don’t know, entrenched in our ways. Age does not guarantee maturity. Age does not guarantee wisdom. As a matter of fact, for the average individual who is refusing the call, not responding, not wanting to make those changes out of fear, out of resentment, out of whatever reason, out of apathy, who knows? There’s all kinds of reasons where they’re not answering the call and choosing not to leave and follow Obi-Wan. Right. I think over time, to your point, the darkness just gets more entrenched. And I think there’s a lot of old, miserable people. I think a lot of folks, what’s the quote? I’m going to forget the author, but most people go to the grave with the song still in them. They never found expression. Thorough. Yeah. Never found expression of it. Right. So I think this notion of responding to the call is that transformation begins with a willingness to leave. We did an episode just recently on dealing with uncertainty. Answering the call is the ultimate uncertainty. You’re responding to an invitation with actually often very little information about journey, destination.

31:29 Trefor What do we call it? A trip itinerary. There is no trip itinerary. Right. Well, and this cycle of this monomyth is something we do over and over and over. So it’s not like you only get one invitation. Right. You get invited, you go on the trip. Right. You go live this out, you arrive transformed, and then it’s off to your next one as well, right, as we go. I think the earlier ones probably almost always started with pain. Over time, I think what we do develop as wisdom does start to show up is to recognize that I don’t have to wait for pain to go on the journey. Right. And

32:07 Rob that I’ll be okay. I had just a couple of circumstances happen this week where in the past I know I would have interpreted this as a bad thing. I would have interpreted it as what the hell, right? And it was almost like, Oh, interesting. That’s happening right now. Yeah. And, and, and then literally the thought was, I wonder what I’m being invited into here. Right. So to your point, I think, I think you’re right. I think as we lean into it more and more, we learn to read the signs, we, we recognize the invitation sooner and require less pain, less discomfort to make the shift,

32:40 Rob right. Or to leave, leave home. Right. So it requires less pain to, to, to leave home or does require a lot of pain to leave home. Uh, the, the change embracing those new skills. Well, that’s easy. Let’s skip to, let’s skip to step number three, cause I feel this one, like, it’s just like, it just happens. Common sense. Transformation is so messy. It’s such a messy, I love that you use that word messy. It is, it is a messy, hard process.

33:10 Trefor Uh-huh. Yeah. It requires that we look at ourselves with, uh, we get more and more candid, I think in what we see in ourselves and what we’re doing. Uh, but I think there’s, uh, there’s another part. And if I, if I think about it in terms of star wars and the use of the force, there’s an opportunity to connect to the spiritual, right. The something beyond the power beyond. So you know, they use that notion of force. Um, but I, I think that’s actually becomes a sustaining resource that you get to apply to your circumstances. It’s not like, oh, I’ve got

33:48 Rob magic now that I can use. It’s like something to tap into. But, but let’s be fair as kids, didn’t we all want to force grip our teachers? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s true.

33:58 Trefor The, it wasn’t on the album.

34:04 Rob Teachers are the real heroes. They are. They are. They are. I’m being joked. I’m joking around, but they are not the heroes. They are. They are. They’re not the villains. I don’t know

34:13 Trefor about the teachers I had when I was young, but teachers today certainly are. You just don’t want bad comments in our feed. That was a good save. You fell in a hole when you were trying to gag. It’s like, Robert, continue. Just continue. Teachers, they will mess you up. The, uh, I think it’s that connection. Over time, we’re able to tap into deeper, more meaningful resources that sustain us as we go through. So even if you look at, I don’t know, Luke’s use of the force in the first movie compared to later movies, like all like it’s orders of magnitude, like there’s a depth of connection there. And I’m not trying to overdo it, but it’s like there’s an element here of tapping into something bigger to sustain us while we’re going through things that are difficult. There’s a requirement to face the things we fear to go in the cave that we fear to tread. Sometimes not even for, not for treasure in the conventional sense, but that treasure is actually really discovering self, right? To see yourself in a renewed way, a transformed way. And I think in that sense, to see our value more clearly as an individual, right? And I think that’s a beautiful thing to do. And it, what’s interesting is it also comes with a community. Other people start to show up to, to, to be part of the story and always with a mentor, right? And so it was only one Kenobi in it. And so for me, I will tell you that the fact like as a coach, there are days I’m like, I feel like I get to be that Obi-Wan Kenobi resource to somebody to help them, not to do it for them, but to help them see themselves, provide guidance like that. That in some ways, like that is what we do is kind of that mentoring role. And I think that’s a little bit of what we’re trying to do with this, right? Is to be able to share what we’re seeing and learning so people can act, so you can act, so you can take action in your life and move things forward, right? So there’s these interesting elements that are central in that initiation phase where we’re learning new things. We’ve got support from community and mentor. We’re going to face some scary stuff, but there is, there is something of great value

36:28 Rob waiting for you. Yeah. I can totally relate to the, the mentoring role that sometimes we play in people’s lives, the Obi-Wan, but I have to admit that after watching the prequels, I said, I’d rather be Yoda because he’s so bad. You’ve seen him with a lightsaber. Like a pretty incredible, means I don’t think so. Oh, come on. The one dark, darkest moment in Star Wars history was Dar Jar Binks. They should have turned him into a Sith Lord. That would have redeemed that. It would have been great. But, but think of not only Luke’s growing connection to the force from movie to movie, right? When you track his journey from a new hope to empire, to return of the Jedi, his, his, his, his ability with a lightsaber and his connection to the force, his access to, to, to the force and his ability to wield it, it grows tremendously. But there’s also a massive change in demeanor and maturity. He goes from the, the young whiny teenager who doesn’t want to do his chores and write a new hope. And, and it gets all pissed because he can’t go hang out with his friends and he’s got to go out and work on the moisture evaporators while his friends are in town. Like, uh, to, uh, uh, to facing off with Darth Vader in the cave, uh, on empire strikes back where he’s got a sense now of who he is, but he still thinks he can out muscle and out hustle this thing, uh, and realizes, no. Um, uh, and then we see him in return of the Jedi square off for the last time with Vader and with the emperor and adopts very much the mantra of his mentor Kenobi when he, he, he, rather than hustle or muscle his way through, he approaches that final battle with non-resistance, with acceptance. Um, and that’s what ends up winning the day. It’s, it’s powerful to watch. Again, you talk about transformation, uh, right? He learned new skills, he learned new abilities. He mastered something that was new to him over time, but he became the best version

38:31 Rob of himself. He became something. He was not the same Luke that started this. And that’s, and that’s transformation. That is, that’s what we talk about the difference between change and transformation. Uh, what we saw, you see in this story and the other, again, it’s star wars day. We’re focusing on star wars. I think of even Nero in the matrix. Right. See, you see near or a matrix day. There should be, but you see Neo, Neo, Neo, Neo was a, a Roman emperor. He’s pretty nuts. He burnt down Rome, didn’t he? Yeah. Wasn’t that him? Neo, uh, for another episode. Uh, you know, you see that same thing. He was Neo at the beginning and Neo after transformation is complete. They’re there. You show up in the confidence of who you are, right? Luke shows up in the confidence of who he is. We, as we go through our transformation on our own journey, can begin to show up in the confidence of who we are, which can affect the people around

39:33 Rob us. Take Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, who at first is a ranger hiding from his past and hiding from his future. And again, goes through this tremendous transformation through those three movies, uh, and, and, and ends up as the return of the king takes his rightful place on the throne. And yet you see the transformation in his nature. And I’d say this is true of Luke and star wars. It’s true of Neo. It’s true of Aragorn. Uh, it was, it wasn’t an arrogant confidence. It’s a quiet strength and confidence flowing from with nothing to prove. Yeah. You, you, you, when you think of them in the later story, it’s a quiet strength. It’s a, a confidence that comes from a deep place, but with it felt like zero arrogance. Like it’s right. We’re not talking hubris here. This is not the type of action hero we’re advocating for. It’s when you get clear on who you are and you do that work, you engage in that work of transformation, the strength that you end up with, uh, is a strength that comes from deep within. It’s not about proving anything. Uh, it’s about showing up now as you are and knowing I’m exactly where I need to be doing exactly what I need to do being exactly who I need to be in this moment. Uh, and that’s, I mean, you want to talk heroic. It doesn’t get much more

40:49 Trefor heroic than that. Absolutely. I mean, it’s so transformative. If you think in the matrix, when remember Neo says, you’re telling me I can stop bullets or I can dodge bullets, right? And he says, I’m telling you, you won’t have to. Right. And so at the beginning, it’s all about, look how fast I am, right? Look at how fast I can fight when he’s writing, uh, you know, having that incredible fight scene. And then it is dodging some bullets, but not totally successful. And then at the end, it’s like, doesn’t have to, right? He just, he realized he’s had a different order, a different place where all of a sudden the, all this energy I’m, I’m putting into dealing with these problems. I actually don’t even have to. These are not even problems for me anymore.

41:32 Rob Right. And so that’s that transformation season very differently, right? You see all the other characters moving at hyper speed and he’s like almost in this very calm state of tranquil movement and he’s just like watching things happen. And isn’t that a great image of what it means to be grounded and centered and knowing who you are and following your compass where you’re not in this, this, this frenetic activity and, and stress and busyness that, right? Most of the population we’ve that was my life for so long, just noisy and busy and distracted and cluttered.

42:11 Rob And all of a sudden now you start to realize, Oh, it, it fits so well into we’ve all read untethered soul. Uh, and, and, uh, that, that whole premise of how, when the energy, you know, you see this energy come into just, you use, you just use the example just a moment ago with some, some things that have went on in your life this week. Oh, that’s interesting. And that’s what Nero is almost doing. And Neil was almost doing there is kind of looking at, Oh, this is interesting. All this going on around me. Right. And it’s being the, when we talk living richly, this whole, uh, the model of what we’re talking about is to get to that place in our lives where we can allow energy, good and bad, to be able to just simply flow through and say, Oh, that’s interesting. What, what am I to learn from this? And to not be driven or, or, or controlled by our circumstances, uh, but to be

43:04 Rob that again, to be the hero of our own story and in control of our own story. I think of, uh, I just, as you were saying that, like again, we think of, if we just use these three, uh, movies and again, you can track this and so many others, but I know those, these, those three movies or, or series of movies are meaningful to all three of us. Uh, another major transformation is in the belief of self believing in oneself. Think of how Luke doubts himself, the famous scene where he can barely move rocks. And then, uh, Yoda, uh, brings them to his, uh, um, uh, X-wing that is now, uh, is there on Degaba, uh, his home planet and he crash landed, uh, right. Luke crash landed and, and it’s in the bog it’s in, it’s sunk under the water and he encourages them to try to, to, to, to raise it just with the force. And he tries and you see some movement and then he gives up and he falls on the ground on his butt. And again, he’s all defeated and I can’t, it’s too big. And then Yoda looks at him and says, you know, you’re going to judge by size. Are you? And that famous scene where we see the power of this little, this little creature who, who lifts that ship right out of the water or Aragorn coming to believe in himself when there’s so much self doubt, uh, in the first two movies or Neo who, right. Remember the scene where he’s being encouraged to leap from one building to another and, and they’re trying to talk him into believing in Morpheus leads the way and just boom and does the leap. And then he’s like, almost again, trying to hustle. Yeah, I can do it. I can do it. I’m like, I think I can, I think I can. And he runs to the edge. He jumps and you think he’s going to do it. Nope.

44:40 Trefor He comes crashing down. And what, and they say, and what does it mean? Nothing. Nothing. Everybody falls the first time. Yeah. Right. Right. And it’s like, I love that he fell the first time.

44:49 Rob They didn’t make him super hero. He wasn’t actually like, we’re so used to seeing. So I think one of the significant aspects of transformation is this coming to actually truly believe in yourself. Not again, not arrogance, not hubris, but think of how many times we talk ourselves out of greatness. How many times we doubt ourselves and talk ourselves down from doing great things. And when, when, when you begin to experience a transformation, if we go back to, it starts with radical self-acceptance. And then we talk about, and once you accept yourself in that manner, then self-care, radical self-care, putting yourself first comes more naturally. And then what follows is radical self-actualization. Somewhere in there, belief in self is awakened in a way that just wasn’t present before. And you begin to believe actually in your ability to do hard stuff, right? And to respond to the invitation without having so much pain,

45:46 Rob a need to motivate you. It’s so important. It’s so that notion of going back to the radical self-acceptance to begin to, to your point to believe in yourself. I, I, I shared with our team just this week, a, a short, a video of a motivational speaker. And she talks about, she’s sharing this story of how she could look at it. And she even talked about the badges that she could wear, but her identity as being somebody who was on, on social assistance, somebody who is in an abusive relationship versus also somebody who is, uh, you know, the CEO of, uh, of a, an incredibly successful company and all of this. And she talked about the three sentences that she shares, that she says to herself every day. She looks in the mirror and we’ll post the video. Post a link to the video on our show notes. Uh, but, uh, she gives these three statements, sentences to herself. I’m proud of you. And she’s looking at herself in them. I’m proud of you.

46:43 Rob I forgive you and I’m committed to you. So she goes even further than that. When you watch the video, she says like, I am proud of me. And she, she does this daily. And then she would write seven things. I’m proud of you for, I forgive you for seven things. Right. I commit to you. I commit like to myself two and seventh, and she’d do a different seven every day. Talk about transformation. Imagine doing that for 30 years. There’s a new skill in initiation that will transform you. Right. Right. It’s just incredible. It’s just incredible. The last part, let’s, uh, let’s spend a few minutes, uh, before time gets away from us. Cause we know we could talk about

47:20 Trefor this all day long. Uh, the return. So the return is interesting because we return and everyone else sometimes, you know, there are times where everything else is the same, but we’re not. Right. Right. And there are also times when we return to not what we hoped we would return to as well. So if you remember Lord of the Rings, when, when they return back to the Shire, uh, there’s actually all kinds of negative, bad stuff that’s played out there, right? There’s other forces that have showed up there. Like, uh, we left and when we come back, that place can have changed as well. I think the other thing, uh, you know, in terms of how it shows up quite tangibly for us is our relationships tend to shift. How we connect and interact with people will be transformed as well because we’re different. The conversations that we’re interested in having, the topics that we’re interested in talking about will have shifted as well. And for some people, that won’t be okay. Right. And those relationships will change or go away or be, or, or be shifted in some way, shape or form. We’ll find a new way to interface. And so we return home, but we, we

48:38 Rob kind of returned home a little bit of a stranger. And like we don’t quite fit in, at least not, not like the way we used to. And, and often the struggle is, uh, the, the mistake we can make is, wow, people have really changed. And in reality, they probably haven’t changed much. If at all, what’s changed is your inner world has changed. Your character has changed. Your viewpoint has changed your perspective. And that doesn’t make you better. It just makes you different. And you start showing up differently then in those same circumstances, contexts, relationships. And many of them will survive that. And you’ll be able to bring back the blessing or the boom, the boom, or that, or like you’re, we’re the grail, right? Like you, you can bring something. And again, I’m not talking about going back and being all preachy about it and saying, I’ve got my shit together. Now you need to, I think that’s hubris and arrogance. And often that’s not well received for an import, like for all kinds of reasons, but just people are attracted to, they notice what’s changed. You’re different. And, and so you’re able that, that blessing you bring back in many ways can, can be a blessing to many others. But I think part of, uh, uh, a very real reality to like a very present reality that you just mentioned is many things will survive that change and you’ll be able to influence them. And you may have to renegotiate how you, right? How you fit in there. Some relationships and some things won’t survive the change because you have just changed too much and you no longer, and that’s okay. Um, we, we, we have to be willing if we hold on, right? What’s the saying that you can only fill a cup that’s empty, uh, right? That, that I can’t grab on to anything if I’m to the new thing, if I’m desperately holding on to the old thing, like often there’s a, there’s a, um, coming to terms with necessary endings, I think is a really important part of this to say things. Some things will, will, will evolve as a result of our transformation. Some things may come to a natural ending and that’s okay. That’s okay.

50:45 Rob That in itself sometimes is an invitation into now the next adventure. You know, the, the first part, to just go back when we, we, and we’ve talked about this, we talked about this in the ritual, when we create the rituals, uh, when we, when we, uh, went through that episode, yeah, when we went through that episode, we talked about that. The danger is, is that we create rituals and then we go back to others and say, you have to follow our rituals, right? You have to do what I did. This is how I did it. This is how you have to do it. And no other way is right. Anytime you hear you must, you should, you have to be, be, be weary. Like you probably should be a little suspect. So when you, when you come back, the return is not to return and say, this is what I like. So, uh, Hans was not supposed to take the same journey as Luke, right? And was not going to be the Jedi

51:34 Rob that Lucas, uh, right. Is not supposed to, he was going to go and, uh, go off with Leah and, uh, have a child who would become sort of like, uh, Darth Vader’s grandson and the new and the new

51:47 Rob antagonist in a new series of movies. And not sort of like his grandson, no, his grandson, um, but yes. Uh, and, and how that, how that, uh, so you want to show up and recognize that that, you know, that the change is going to be there. You want to come into that knowing that again, by knowing who you are, you don’t feel the need to now prove it by telling other people how they

52:11 Trefor need to be on 100%. When, when we return with the gift, whatever that is, what we get to do is offer the invitation to others. And if it’s not an invitation, if it’s a thou shalt, that’s not an invitation. And we need to recognize that most people when offered the gift will refuse it. And that’s, that’s part of it as well. But our job is only to invite. It’s just to invite other

52:40 Rob people, like people need to choose. And often the invitation is the way that we offered is simply by living fully into the transformation that we’ve experienced. And it’s not often a verbal invitation or something like an invitation that comes to us in the mail. It’s we, it’s by living intentionally and deliberately and fully as best as we can, uh, right. As intentionally as we can into this new life, this new expression of life that others will notice. And those that are ready, those that are ready will notice and respond and go, tell me about what’s going on with you. This is the way this is the way.

53:21 Rob This is star wars. And you are the hero of your story, of your journey. And we encourage you to, to take that journey. And, uh, one of the things that I want to encourage you to do, you know what, you might even take some time over the next few weeks after listening to this episode, and you know, maybe go back and revisit one of these, uh, uh, series that we’ve talked about, whether it’s the star wars, the, uh, maybe the original movies, uh, or, or, uh, you know, the matrix or one of these and look for, watch it with a different perspective, watch it with a different lens, watch it, not just to enjoy the story, but to watch it to, to, to, to pick out these pieces that we’ve talked about and, and then ask yourself this great exercise, ask yourself, hey, what, what is going on here? And how does this parallel into my own journey? Uh, what I’m learning now, what a great thing to do. And if you do that, we’d love it if you’d leave a comment and tell us about that experience for you. And because we are, again, I recognize that this episode may, you may be listening to this on a different day than on may the fourth. Uh, but as I’ve already mentioned, star wars is every day is, uh, and so, and every day, what I, one thing I would love you to do is leave a comment in the show, in, in the, wherever you’re watching or listening to this episode about your first experience with one of these epic, uh, trilogies, uh, what it was like and what happened for you in the moments that you first began to enjoy that while you’re there, why don’t you take a moment to subscribe to the channel? Uh, you could like the episode. Those, uh, doing just that simple gesture, uh, helps us with all of us. You understand these, algorithms of these different sites. It helps us to be able to pick up more, uh, traction when you take that moment to like, and subscribe to each episode. Uh, so encourage you to do that.

55:19 Rob And your community is just waiting to be discovered. Uh, if you are benefiting from these conversations, from these episodes, from the podcast, share it out, share it out on your social media channels, make a comment about what’s perhaps, perhaps is really resonating with you. There are other people that you’re connected to. I can almost guarantee that will raise a hand and say, you know what? Me too. Uh, and there’s, uh, what you’ll notice about all these, all three of these movies that we’ve discussed today that follow this model, uh, all the heroes were not self-made. They were made, they, they found themselves, they found their true purpose, their true calling in

55:58 Trefor the context of a community. So, uh, share it out and, uh, let’s see what happens. Every one of these movies follows the same story arc of every myth ever told. Every legends. There’s a pattern, right? And so we’re going to include in the show notes. Well, we’ll put in a simple model of Joseph Campbell’s, uh, hero’s journey that you could literally print it out and watch the movie and kind of go here. Oh, there we go. We moved, we moved. And Rob, I love the idea of saying, where am I in this movie? Yeah. Right. What would be the parallel for me about where do I find myself? All that will be in the show notes along with links to the books and everything else that we’ve, uh, talked about here today. That’s at

56:37 Rob living richly.me slash act. All right. I’m going to see how in sync these guys are with me in, in just a second here, but, uh, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to, uh, listen in on, uh, this episode. And on behalf of, of all of us, may the force be with you. That was awful. Why do, why did we ruin it?