EP54 Chief Bob Lucido – Spirituality/Prayer as a Way of Life

EPISODE 54

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:13.2] KC: Welcome to the Business of Life, Keith Callahan here, your host and pumped up to share today’s episode with you. Today we have on a good friend of mine Bob Lucido, Chief Bob Lucido. He has been a friend to me, a mentor to me, business partner. So many different levels of the relationship that we’ve had. We’ve known each other for about 10 or 11 years now and had been really excited to get Bob on the show because of the influence he’s had in my life.

He played a crucial part in helping me to identify, create, and live the life that we’re realizing right now. There was a period in time where I was what’s called a student of his. He’s a chief, a Lakota Sun Dance Chief and I wanted to learn that spiritual path, I wanted to dive deep into that spiritual path and I wanted to do it because I saw the type of man that he was and I saw the change that was potentially available to me and he saw something inside of me.

We made a commitment to one another, a student, teacher commitment. Did that for many years and so many different levels of the relationship that we’ve had like I said, it really started out with that student teacher then became business partners working together through Beachbody and now really close friends with those other two relationship still there. So the business partnership and the student piece, especially with the spiritual path definitely still there and still strong.

One of the things that I really want you to focus on during this interview is we dived deep into spirituality and to beliefs into just living a spiritual based life, living a spiritually centred life and I think the most important thing and this is how we wrap up the end of the podcast and I really want to start with it is, it’s important to understand that when one of the things that I really got from Bob and what I think that you’ll be able to get from listening if you really listen closely is that he’s not really talking about tools or techniques to fix little parts.

Like to get a little bit happy or to stop this pain, stop that pain. What he’s really talking about, really teaching about is a spiritually based, a spiritually centred way of life. So putting the spiritual things first and you’ll hear that quote come up during this interview. So I’ll stop babbling, we’ll get Bob and I on. This is the first of a two part series so go ahead and get Chief Bob Lucido on.

[INTERVIEW PART 1]

[0:03:31.3] KC: All right, so sitting at Chief Bob Lucido’s conference table in his office. Bob, welcome to the show man.

[0:03:41.0] BL: Hey, glad to be here, thanks for having me.

[0:03:45.3] KC: This is my second time doing a face to face podcast like this. First time that we’ve got the video camera rolling. So Bob’s been doing some, or a lot of video work and actually we should touch on that today when we’re talking too, the work you’ve been doing with that.

[0:04:04.1] BL: Sure. Yeah.

[0:04:05.0] KC: Yeah, we got the video camera rolling and a couple of cameras rolling. Bob’s son Brandon is filming away, we’ve got all these lights around us and we’ve got the whole set. Then also Austin Banak, a friend of ours in the background listening on. Yeah, I wanted to start by, prior to you and I jumping on, I did a formal introduction and explained to everybody how we know each other and history together and all that.

But I think, the piece that I really want to start with is two questions and I’ll focus on the first one with, in your words, you’re a Sun Dance chief, a Lakota chief and I was wondering if you could sort of just give us like a big picture of what that bulk means to you and how you would define that to somebody else, like to somebody listening?

[0:05:01.1] BL: Yeah, good question, good place to start. If you were to ask me to define myself as a person, I really would start with my spiritual base and my spiritual base, my personal connection with spirituality is through the Sun Dance. I’ve started Sun dancing when I was 18 years old with Chief Leonard Crow Dog in Rosebud, South Dakota.

For those who don’t know what that is, the Sun Dance is a ceremonial way of life, the center of a way of life for the Lakota people and center of really Lakota spirituality. For myself I’m not Lakota by blood, I’m Mohawk by blood through my mother’s side but in my late teens, started to get very active in that part of my personal heritage, my personal family background and long story short, found myself on the Rosebud Lakota reservation at Crow Dog’s Paradise and met Chief Leonard Crow Dog, again, long story short, started to participate in the Sun Dance ceremony.

I’ve done that every year since it’s been a little over 30 years now and about 10 years ago, my personal connection and commitment to the ceremony was recognized in honored by chief Crow Dog who gifted me with a war bonnet and the war bonnet is the symbol of being a chief or whatever that means, it’s really a symbol of honor and a symbol of recognition of an individuals, commitment and connection to the way of life and commitment and connection to the continuation in perpetuation of the way of life and a recognition of leadership within the circles of the extended families who participate together.

So that’s kind of the short story of where that comes from. I think that some people hear that word and don’t quite understand what it means, being recognized as a chief or being honored with a gift of a war bonnet, it’s not like being a king or a president or a political position necessarily, although there are that side of things as well. But for me, what it is, is a recognition of my role and participation in the ceremonial way of life and also the recognition of leadership of our own group.

Because what it’s grown in to is what started with me, just sort of being an individual as a teenager connecting with my own personal roots, my own family and heritage roots and my own also spiritual awakening has now also blossomed into, as you know, an extended family and we now have a group working together on common goals of spiritual growth, spiritual awakening, personal growth, personal awakening. Spiritual connection and our Sundance camp being at the center of that. I don’t know if that quite answers the question but…

[0:08:19.9] KC: It answered it great and I’m like, I knew that when you and I got talking together, I would have all kinds of stuff. I think that for me, one of the things that I really recognized and honored in you was you came into this Lakota way of life, like the traditional Lakota way of life not as a Lakota though, right? So you came in there and that’s really a big piece, it’s a big piece that you’ve honored and respected and when you got gifted — so Chief Leonard Crow Dog, your mentor and a man that I have to say thank you to you because of the doors that you opened, I’ve gotten to spend so much time with him.

And I remember, I’ll just do a quick note here and then I get to the point where I remember that one Sun Dance when I had the ability to just me and him almost the entire Sun Dance when he needed somebody to drive him around and he’s just a magical, powerful man to be around. It was just a life changing experience to me. When your mentor asks you and puts the bonnet on your head, what was that like? What was the experience like for you and taking on that — what did that mean to you?

[0:09:47.9] BL: Great question. I think the way I would answer that is it came as a sort of a validation and a recognition of the commitment that I had been building to that time. I had been Sun dancing and working and praying and learning for probably 20 years consistently, committed to my own personal growth and connection and learning but also and just as importantly in preserving, perpetuating and continuing.

Making sure that I was doing my part in really honoring, protecting and then as I say, taking that responsibility of passing on and making sure that what I was blessed with, being shared with that was then passed back on, blessing others with the ability to also find that connection. Because for me, what this part of my life has been is really the part that I believe has directed everything else that’s happened in my life.

It’s the center, it’s the core center of who I am as a human being, how I see myself as I fit into the world that we live in and as I understand my own personal purpose for being here and having a life at this time. And so receiving that honor, I don’t even know if I really have words for it to be honest, it’s just one of those things that’s just so huge that I don’t know if there’s any words to really capture it. Other than saying that obviously a huge validation and in some ways really scary to me because it was like, “Wow, okay.”

All of this commitments that I’ve been making internally are now externalized. Really cements in the personal commitment and connection and sort of validating what I had already been doing but then also taking it to another level. It’s one thing when you commit within yourself to anything really but especially to a spiritual endeavor but then once it’s spoken out loud or once it’s put into a physical form which is in some ways what happens when something like that is gifted to you or handed to you.

It’s not only a recognition and an honoring of what you’ve done but just as importantly and maybe more importantly, it’s a driving force for where you’re going and really defining your commitments, responsibilities and connections that give purpose, direction, and drive to where you’re going forward in your life and that’s really what it’s been for me.

[0:12:38.6] KC: It leads — I love how when things just flows. So the second question I wanted to ask was about, you made a transition from being a full time attorney with your own private practice to being a full time Beachbody coach and I wanted to ask about that and I didn’t plan on it lining up just like this but I remember that just at the exact time, it was basically you, me and Kai Rose had started P90X and it really came through a prayer and I remember you voicing a big part of that was that you had this energy coming in, you had this responsibility coming in.

You had a vision for yourself. The physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, all of that for a spiritual warrior and that sort of was the time that Beachbody started as well. I’ll sort of preface with that. But for you, making that transition because it’s not a normal transition right? Somebody doesn’t leave a law career. Somebody doesn’t go to law school for all these years and then — I used to say, when we first started, sling shakes and DVD’s, it’s not a normal fact.

[0:13:59.5] BL: That’s exactly what you used to say.

[0:14:04.5] KC: Yeah how did like, for you again talking, I guess this is less for me but for everybody listening, what was that transition all about in your life?

[0:14:14.1] BL: Well great question, I think you’re right, great time for it too because it really wasn’t that time of my life that was really sort of a perfect storm going on for this transition to happen. Little bit of preface for those who don’t know, I practiced law for 20 years before bumping into Beachbody. I was an environmental litigator and I first went off to law school, again on a prayer or in following a prayer and it’s kind of — as we continue on, I think people will see that that’s kind of a continuing theme in my life. And I specifically went into environmental law because I was drawn to law as a career and I always am trying to make everything in my life kind of all go into a single path, at least in terms of the driving direction of it.

Let me just explain that a little bit. If I define myself first and foremost through my spiritual commitment and through my commitment to holding on to perpetuating continuing a certain spiritual connection, all of which is for me anyway, sort of defined and driven by my participation in the Sun Dance way of life then that also has to drive what you do every day when you go to work. And so originally, for me, trying to bring those things together, I really had this vision, I was going to go save the Earth kind of thing and become an environmental litigator. Well I did that and really what happened…

[0:15:49.3] KC: Did you save the Earth?

[0:15:50.5] BL: No I didn’t. That was the problem. I became the environmental litigator and what I found after 20 years of doing that is really what I did is I just kind of put myself right in the middle of this sort of bureaucracy, I worked for the state for 10 years with the Eepartment of Environmental Protection as basically an environmental prosecutor.

Then I was in private practice for about 10 years doing compliance work basically, trying to get potentially bad actors to make the choice to be in compliance with environmental laws rather than be clashing with them. But that was very frustrating for me and the reason why is that it always still felt like I was living a dual life, I had two worlds going on. I had my spiritual life, my spiritual connection, which I really always see as sort of first and foremost defining me.

And then I had my day to day work life which was put on a suit and tie, become an attorney, live in a court room, live behind a desk, live in that world. Doing my small part, yes, trying to move things forward but not reaching any kind of fulfilment or satisfaction for myself in terms of who I really believe I am and who I really believe I’m supposed to be here and what I’m supposed to be doing. So I wasn’t able to line those two worlds up.

As I said, it was just sort of time of a perfect storm because as I was coming to that realization with what I was doing with my legal career at about that same time, I was just turned 40. That was right about at the same time that the bonnet came into my life and that deeper level of connection and commitment and then also Beachbody was knocking on the door with as you said, this story of P90X coming to me, you and our friend Kai.

And what happened is in receiving the bonnet, I made a deeper connection to myself as well as to a way of life and to the Sun Dance family, [inaudible], the larger group, the extended family, to carry on and to continue and perpetuate, participate at a certain level. Which also made me ready to sort of draw a line in the sand and cut some things out that weren’t resonating with that. One of them was what I was doing as an attorney. Another was…

[0:18:27.1] KC: At that time, was it scary? When you were thinking about — understanding that the piece of the law work that you were doing wasn’t for your highest good, that’s probably simple way to put it?

[0:18:42.2] BL: yeah, it’s a great way to put it. Well, maybe a little bit scary, more so though, it was exciting because a major sort of transition and transformation was happening for me and it was happening on many, many levels, career levels, spiritual level and physical level too.The other thing of this perfect storm is that I looked at myself at 40 years old and I was 70 pounds heavier than I am now.

I was in no way the physical picture of what I had always seen and followed as spiritual warriors and leaders of this way of life that was so special and important to me. I know I had to get that part of my life in shape and in order as well and the gift, the blessing that was brought in that did that for me was P90X.

[0:19:33.8] KC: Totally out of left field.

[0:19:34.3] BL: Totally at a left field, right? In fact, I pushed against it, I laughed at it at first. I was like, “There is no way I’m working out for TV and there’s no way that that’s going to work,” but it did. It gave back to me the physical piece of the puzzle. I got physically fit again, I started to feel good in my skin again, I felt good in my body again, I felt healthy and strong as a physical human being again.

And sort of re-enlivened, reinvigorated and then again this sort of perfect storm thing that was going on. That was the exact time that the bonnet came in and this deeper connection to that side came in and lo and behold, turned out that this company, Beachbody that had produced this amazing fitness program, P90X, that I had just fell in love with because the transformation it did also had a business opportunity.

When I sort of looked under the hood and kicked the tires on the  business opportunity, I was blown away at the potential that it offered because what I saw was exactly what I saw in the P90X program, sort of a turnkey, follow the direction, step by step program, built and designed to get results. Built and designed to build success, scientifically put together, taking all the guess work out of it and I had just lived what that kind of a system could do with your physical transformation.

And I just knew and I just trusted and again it was an answered to something I was ready and willing to make the jump to and I made the jump. For me, it was very, very exciting to make that shift because it really was, it was killing me on many levels to live this dual life. And it was showing up physically, there was a reason why I was 70 pounds overweight, I wasn’t really happy with where things were going, I wasn’t happy with the day to day life because of this duality.

The opportunity to become a Beachbody coach was really one of the pieces of the puzzle that I think I had been waiting for 20 or 30 years of my life and that was an opportunity to bring my day to day sort of job life, you know, what I do to put food on the table and keep a roof over my family’s head in complete alignment with my definition of myself as a spiritual person and my sort of core definition of myself.

Because the driving principle of the company is helping people help themselves and in Beachbody, as a Beachbody coach, you’re helping people transform their lives physically with fitness and health but what you find and I had experienced this myself is that what happens when you lose 70 pounds or get yourself physically fit, then there’s emotional benefits, there’s spiritual benefits, there’s psychological benefits, all of this other positive things come in when you open that door.

For me, in my background, in what I see the Sun Dance way of life being or my own interpretation of it, it’s all about being committed to your own personal growth, being committed to your own spiritual connection and growing that, building that, strengthening that mind, body and spirit.

So the work that I had been doing for 20, 30 years in that realm, and again the things I really define myself as, were able to come together with what I would now be doing in my sort of day to day job life because Beachbody brought in a piece of that puzzle which is helping people help themselves on the physical side and on the nutritional side.

Then, you add in the opportunity to help people also build businesses and free themselves as I had freed myself from what I call the chains of the nine to five world. One of the things that was keeping me down from being the — or at least the practical spiritual level that I wanted to be as a human was this being chained to this nine to five world that was limiting my ability to do those things.

The Beachbody opportunity allowed myself to free myself from that, gave me the blessing to be able to bless others with the ability to free themselves from that. So all of a sudden, what you see creating is just this circle of helping people help themselves on all kinds of levels, that’s what I get to do as a Beachbody coach, that’s what I do as a Sun Dance chief and worth my goal as a human being is to bring my life all in line to make sure that what I’m doing 24/7 non-stop is always in alignment in reverberation with that.

Beachbody in a big way was a big part of the puzzle that allowed me to bring that unanimity to what I do as a human being. So yeah, it was scary as hell to jump out of a 20 year career. I’ve got a family, I’ve got four kids, a home and all of this stuff and you walk away from a career that took 20 years to build to replace it with anything would be scary. But for me anyways, what gave me the impotence to really make that jump was the excitement about the ability to pull those worlds together.

And here I am six years later and can attest to the fact that what I hoped would happen with that jump has happened a thousand fold over. I have been able to sort of bring those two sides of life together in a really beautiful way and now they feed into each other. Feed into each other and grow each other in a really big and amazing way and it’s allowed me to sort of move forward on what’s really the sort of the bigger dream and vision for my life, who I believe I am and why I believe I’m here in this lifetime.

[0:26:00.1] KC: As you’re going through it and describing, usually I have what I call an initial question and an elaborating question. But we were talking before, I was like, “I don’t think I’m going to have to ask too many for you.” I’m going to jump over to a couple of quotes that the work that you and I have done together over the years, quotes that really stuck with me and want to touch on those.

But before I do, I feel like the gift that you have right now, if there’s anything we can get out of this podcast. If there’s any gift, there’s so many people out there that have really lost that connection with the natural world, that have lost that connection with the divine, that have lost that connection with the spiritual world and yeah, I want to — I know that bringing up a couple of these quotes, I think it will help to open up the doorway to just maybe give people a little bit of a glimpse of what’s possible, right?

Because we’re all, we’re stuck up in our mind and in our society and the go, go, go, the push, push, the do, do, do. We’ve sort of pushed that, as a society, aside right? A little bit. So just wanted to preface with that, but one of the quote that I want to start with is I remember when we were in a ceremony together and one of the ways of teaching that I’ve always loved about you and the spiritual path and just a good fit for me, it’s not like — at least with the men, it’s not like cushy, lovey teaching all the time. It’s like, “Do it.”

[0:27:52.3] BL: It’s real!

[0:27:55.6] KC: But it’s very direct and real, right? One of the things you had said to me after I did something probably not in the best manner was, “Always put the spiritual things first.” And then you elaborated on that a little bit later, it was, “Always, put the spiritual things first and then everything else in life will get taken care of.” I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about that statement and that elaboration on.

[0:28:22.5] BL: Yeah, I think that’s such a big concept we could dig in to that one for hours but to sort of kind of nut shell is that it’s kind of what I was talking about before, this is for everybody. And for me, it was connecting back with my own personal family heritage and finding my way into the Sun Dance way of life and reconnecting with that for me.

But it can be anything for everybody, and I just encourage everybody to have some kind of spiritual connection. What is the spiritual tradition that your family or community or connection or whatever it is that you connect with? And connect and participate and really bring that in as the driving force behind everything you do in your life because of that principle that you just said. Do the spiritual things first, make sure that your life is in alignment spiritually, first and then all of those other things will come in to place.

I think the story that I just shared a few minutes ago is really a great example of that. For 20 or 30 years, I spent a great amount of my time, energy, resources, and focus, growing and building who I was spiritually first, building that spiritual foundation. Sort of going through and drudging to through the rest of what was going on and although it was a 20 or 30 year path for this switch to happen for me with sort of Beachbody coming in, replacing the legal stuff and allowing me really to step in fully to sort of 24/7 activity level of alignment with who I believe I am and what I’m here to do spiritually.

It was because of the focus on the spiritual first and I think that when we make that switch in our daily life then all of the things that sort of bring anxiety into our lives or that we perceive as being in the way or blocking sort of fade away because it really is our own attention that we give to those things, that allow them to come in and to block and allow them to come in and sort of bring chaos in the place of spiritual order in our life.

And all that means quite simply is slowing down a little bit. People listening may be saying, o

“Okay, what does it mean? To have a spiritual focus, what does it mean when you say spiritual stuff first?” It simply means to slow down and find your own center. Simply means to slow down and everything that you’re doing and it’s that sort of walking meditation idea. Can you just be in a prayerful space? Whatever that means for you, can you just be in a centred space? Whatever that means for you.

If you practice, meditation or practice. Chanting or praying in any format, whatever it means for you individually, can you start there? Can you pull yourself into that place and maintain that place? What happens most often, as for all of us right? That’s part of the personal air bus, part of the path, spiritual enlightenment right? When you can hold it 24/7 100% of the time then boom.

[0:31:48.8] KC: You graduated.

[0:31:49.0] BL: Yeah. As human beings, we’re struggling to get to that point and I think you’re absolutely correct for all too many folks out there, it’s been lost completely and there’s a complete disconnect. And so a crucial component is to just simply kind of slow down and just bring that in as a center because I like to explain it like this, it’s kind of like tuning an instrument with a tuning fork.

You hit the tuning fork and it hits that vibration and it’s the perfect note that you want to tune the instrument to. Then you bring the two instrument into tune with it and you’ve got that alignment. Well as spiritual beings, as human beings, I believe that we’re really the same way and that sort of reverberation of the tuning fork is out there and it’s always reverberating and that’s the sort of spiritual center or chi or chi or whatever you want to call it.

That sort of divine essence of all of life in the universe and as human beings, we’re kind of moving through life and we allow ourselves to get out of tune for all kinds of different reasons. When I say, “Make the spiritual things first and everything else will come into focus,” it simply means that if we’re focused on tuning in to that vibration and allowing ourselves to slow down, allowing ourselves to come into that, that once we hit that, once we come into alignment with that reverberation, all the other pieces are going to come into place.

You can’t play the guitar until it’s tuned but once it’s tuned, it will make beautiful music. As human beings, I think we’re the same way. If we’re out of tune then nothing’s going to work, you’re not going to play a song right? Once you’re in tune, you have the ability to create that beautiful music, you have the ability to create that beautiful song which is really the expression of our life.

I think that as human beings, we all have that, we all have a song that we’re here to sing or to share with the world and of course that’s, I’m not talking about that practically speaking, that we’ve all got a song to sing. But our life, we have something to bring, something to offer but we can’t get there and we can’t offer it and we won’t be at peace with ourselves and we won’t be free of anxiety or anger or frustration or any of this sort of negative or lower base things until we bring ourselves into it attunement space.

That’s really what I mean by that and that’s just something I’m sharing that’s been passed to me and that’s been so important to me in my own life that I’ve seen play out, I know the things work best in my life, thinks, synchronicity’s has happened and out of the blue happens and things line up and opportunities come falling into your lap when you focus on getting into that attunement and spend your time and energy, resources and focus on that first. Does that make sense?

[0:34:55.4] KC: Yeah, I think that’s my first elaborating question. So somebody, whether their practice is yoga or church or whatever their practice is right? Their spiritual practice. One of the things that I really learned from you directly was, it can be worded a few different ways, but like time and intensity. The amount of time you’re putting into something, the intensity or the focus or the discipline with it.

And what would you say to somebody that is — they go make a quick prayer and then god doesn’t responds or it doesn’t work. They go to the yoga class and their back is still tight tomorrow. For something like for that type of — with the time and intensity or the way you always worded it was the hours and the days in the art, or the hours and the days in ceremony. Like the cumulative benefits.

[0:35:57.3] BL: Right. And again, me saying that I’m passing on something that was shared with me. But that’s such an important principle and here again is why I love the connection for me anyways, why it works so well, the connection between what we do as Beachbody coaches and my own sort of beliefs in the spiritual realm. It’s the same thing. You can’t eat a good breakfast and then go through the rest of the day eating crap and whatever you want and thinking that your nutrition plan’s going to work, right? You got to be focused on it all day long.

Same thing with your fitness. You see results in those areas when you bring in consistent, long term, continual focus. And the same thing is in your spiritual practices and in your spiritual growth. So yeah, it’s not enough to sit down and make a prayer for five minutes in the morning and then, “I’m done,” kind of thing.

[0:36:50.9] KC: “It didn’t work!”

[0:36:51.3] BL: Yeah. It’s about bringing in a different focus into your daily life minute by minute, hour by hour and for me, I’m constantly checking in on my attunement. I love that tuning force, validated.

[0:37:06.9] KC: It’s the attunement back to where your mind, your heart and your energy, like where it all is.

[0:37:14.1] BL: Right, and for anybody who is a musician out there, if you play an instrument, you don’t tune it and then think you’re going to play it for the next month, right? You tune it every single time you pick it up. I play guitar, I’m not very good at it, but I know that every time I pick up my guitar, the first thing I have to do is make sure it’s in tune.

As human beings, we have to be doing that all day long too and just keep checking in with ourselves, “Where are we? Did I just participate five minutes of road rage because somebody cut me off and am I now completely — is my whole system completely bonkers because of where I let myself go and how do I bring myself back?”

And that’s sort of simple example but we have examples of that, it happened to us all through the day, every single day. And in leaving out the understanding that the key to everything is just keeping that focus back. Because if we get really good at bringing that focus back, bringing that attunement back, then just like we were talking about in the previous question, everything else seems to take care of itself.

We call the synchronicity’s or out of the blue or these kinds of things but really, what it is, is that we brought ourselves into attunement and once we’re in tune, all of those things that are meant to be coming to us can flow into us in our lives. All of those opportunities, all of those awakenings, all of those “aha moments”, all of those inspirations, all of those intuitions, all of those things are allowed to come in.

Whereas when we’re in the out of tune state, for a lack of a better description at this point, we’re actually repelling those things away from us. Again, it’s the instrument that’s out of tune, you can’t hope to play a nice sounding tune on that but once it comes into tune and everything falls into place.

[0:39:09.7] KC: If I don’t have belief or faith, can any of it happen?

[0:39:14.3] BL: Belief and faith are the key really. I’m going to keep the same analogies going just because I think they work. That would be like saying, “Well if I have a guitar that has no tuning pegs, can I still tune it?” Probably not. I mean you may be able to figure a way to sort of gerrymander it and force it but not in any kind of real meaningful way.

Faith and belief are the corner stones or the keys to opening the doors for that to be able to flow and that’s why I say, especially when you’re talking about spirituality with people, you got to start with where you’re at. Start with what you’re familiar with, start with what resonates with you. I’m a believer in that it’s all the same anyways, there’s different ways to talking about it, different ways about going about it.

I don’t think there’s any sort of one best way kind of thing. It’s more about doing some real personal evaluation. One of the things that we do in the Sun Dance way of life is something called a vision quest where you take time to be quiet, to listen to the voices both within but then also to the spiritual voices, the universal language to help get direction about who you are individually.

What are your dreams, visions, and passions and all of that? So that you can begin to at least have an understanding of where you are, to be able to move forward from that place. And what you see, again my personal opinion, what all of that work does is built in belief and faith. I believe that for myself, I’m always, I’m building and deepening.

[0:41:07.6] KC: So you’re starting with the belief but then you’re doing the things that return that belief, right? You’re going through your spiritual practice and you start with belief and faith and then you see a miracle happen, deepens the belief, deepens the faith and it’s sort of like climbing up the stairs.

[0:41:28.3] BL: Yeah, I think the way I look at it is that faith opens the door. Faith is the first step and then belief builds once you — and obviously they go together but I think in the very beginning…

[0:41:41.6] KC: You can’t believe, right? You can have faith.

[0:41:43.1] BL: You could have faith because you’re trusting someone else right? Someone’s sort of pointing — you’re looking at somebody saying, “Well I want to be where that person is. Why is that person believe so deeply, how did that person get there?” I think the first is a leap of faith saying, “I’m going to start this new practice, I’m going to start this new way of thinking with faith or trust.” Faith an trust sort of go hand in hand, “I’m trusting that that’s going to bring me somewhere.”

Then belief builds by the actual experience just like you’re saying in you’re actually — belief and faith build and compound upon each other the more you participate, the more you do it. If your thing’s going to be yoga then maybe the first day that you go, you’re going to come home and you’re not going to believe it that it’s going to do anything for your because you’re sore as hell and hurt and you’re…

[0:42:40.6] KC: You’re angry.

[0:42:43.1] BL: Right? But you extend that over and you do it every day for months and years, it builds on, okay? The same thing, if you’re going to pick up a meditation practice or if you’re going to pick up something like the Sun Dance way of life, whatever it’s going to be, the belief is going to be grown and compounded based on the time, intensity, focus, and real action that you bring into it.

The way I see it and in my own personal experience has been is that what happens is as the belief grows deeper, so do the confirmations. The confirmations come quicker and bigger and drives the belief. And the belief grows and they become bigger and quicker and you just get the snowball going until you come to a place, and I really do believe that all people who truly commit to whatever spiritual path or spiritual essence in their life, come to a place of not being able to not believe.

So much confirmation and compounding comes in through that continual process that — and I think that’s where it then flip flops. Faith opens the door, belief builds it and then belief gets you to a place to true faith, which is an un-quivering knowing, that there’s just a deep knowing because of the experience that has come through.

I mentioned before, that’s where those sort of communication back and forth between us as human beings and the divine essence of this huge universe that we live in, there’s a communication. In our dreams and our visions and our intuitions and the synchronicity’s that we see. We have all these words to kind of describe in a way but it’s really that open communication that opens up.

And in my experience, the more you do the practice, the deeper you get committed, the more dedicated you are, the more you do the work and the more belief gets driven and then you do ultimately come to that place where it’s not that it’s hard to believe anymore, it’s hard not to believe.

[END OF INTERVIEW PART 1]

[0:45:06.7] KC: All right, we’re going to cut out there and then pick it back up next week. So a week from today with the second part of this series and yeah. So we’re going to cut out there and just to really hammer home the points, remembering and keeping in mind as you’re thinking about this and as we’re thinking about the words, the philosophies that Bob has shared.

It’s really about living a spiritually centred life regardless of what path it is, whatever you’re following, really honing in and tuning in to that spirituality. So hope you’re enjoying this as much as I am. Again, just super grateful to Bob for taking the time and sharing like this. All right, we’ll wrap up there and see you guys next week and see you on the next episode or two between these two interviews. All right, peace.

[FINAL MESSAGE]

[0:46:09.7] KC: Hey, Keith here, and today I have a free gift for you. Listen this free gift is a list of the 12 most influential books that I’ve ever read. These are the books that have helped me to create the mindset, learn the philosophies, learn the skills to really create this big, beautiful, life that we’re living now.

I read a crazy amount of books, I really do. I’ve probably read thousands of books and these are the top 12 books that – they’re the ones that I go to, they’re the ones that I work with over, and over, and over again. They are highlighted, outlined, dog-eared. And I put this list together for you because I want it to be a shortcut.

I don’t want you to have to – you don’t have to go out and read the thousands and thousands of books. These are the 12 that I highly recommend. I have a detailed review for each book, explaining why I recommend them, why I like them, when I worked with them in my life, what part of my life they helped me to improve.

So I put this together for you, and made it super each for you to get this list. All you have to do is send a text to the number 33444 and then in the body of that text, type in “12books” with no space. So that’s the number “12books”. Again, send the text message to the number, address it to 33444 and then type in “12books” as the message and just send that. And that’ll get you setup to receive those top 12 most influential books that have had the biggest impact on my life.

[SPONSOR MESSAGE]

[0:48:13.7] KC: Today’s episode is brought to you by our sister podcast, All About Beachbody Coaching. So All About Beachbody Coaching really allows us to do this podcast without having all those annoying commercials in the beginning for you. So All About Beachbody Coaching, the Beachbody business that Amy and I run, actually funds this podcast.

So yes, it does cost money to run this podcast, we do not charge you anything, we don’t throw in commercials or anything like that, it really is, it’s funded by our business and by our other podcast, All About Beachbody Coaching. And for me, I’m just eternally grateful for this opportunity because it’s allowed me to really create the life that I love to live.

It’s given me the opportunity to do what I want, when I want, with who I want, and even deeper than that, it’s allowed me to help others to create the same for themselves. It’s allowed me to help hundreds of other people become part time or full time Beachbody coaches, to leave that corporate 9 to 5 job and create passive income in their lives.

And really there’s nothing like that. It’s cool when you have success, it’s so much more rewarding when you help others. So I mention this or a few reasons, the first reason is, that’s actually the way that I work with people and mentor people. I don’t do anything outside of Beachbody coaching because I know that it’s such a powerful life changing tool.

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Alright, much love guys. Again, that is the All About Beachbody Coaching Podcast, our sister podcast.

[0:50:40.7] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to the Business of Life Podcast. Apply what you learn today and you’ll be one step closer to creating the life you love to live.

[END]