“Cheers to You, Oh Wonderful You” with Lance Lindoff – Interview #4

Welcome to my blog series “Cheers to You, Oh Wonderful You”, where we celebrate the ordinary yet extraordinary individuals around us. This series will be used as a space to connect, celebrate, and showcase the incredible people in our lives who ground us, teach us, and inspire us everyday. 

This interview I was joined by none other than my good high school pal, Lance Lindoff.

Lance describes his level of influence comes by networking and his sense of vulnerability and sincerity. He has seen how that influence can easily bring people together, especially as he’s developed leadership skills.

He commented on how not a lot of people can lead and that doesn’t mean that he’s the only one that can lead, Lance just sees it as a responsibility, as the opportunity to steward in his community. Whether with his high school friends, being in an actual ministry with helping, serving, and teaching there, as well as being a teacher in the workplace, the only way a community thrives in Lance’s view is not from pride or self-indulgence, it’s about being self-less.

People like Lance thrive in crisis and he was taught how to deal with situations in crisis. So when Covid struck, Lance saw his friends, partners, and lots of other people sink down, and so amidst everything taking place, he saw the need to create a community to make others feel good.

Lance emphasized how when it comes down to it in a crisis, we need each other. This is a security blanket, we are a security blanket to each other. We can far too easily get used to things not working out, like the “not getting the girl in the end” scenario. We have this cynicism and all of that, and it’s ok to live with that and accept that, but why can’t someone just win? Why can’t we pull together?

So Lance has tried to use that influence and that guiding light he’s gained from his father to just bring people together and even online to not preach negative thoughts, but in making sure that truth shared comes with the care and the grace you can bring somebody. Sometimes people need to know or relearn that they are a human being. Lance commented on how we don’t give people we love enough time to grow and to feel a part of something, hence why he strives to build up within the communities he finds himself in or that he creates.

Lance’s current career path is in teaching high school photography. He has also done graphic design and has gained a strong knowledge in film.

He’s aiming towards getting his masters, specifically in counseling. Lance doesn’t feel that he fits the mold of the typical, traditional teacher who is type A and needs to be in control. In Lance’s words he doesn’t believe in controlling the way things grow. Some people like to have the nice rose bushes, but he has the mindset of, “just let them be wild baby! Give them some water and see what they do!” So that’s what he’s looking at doing with counseling down the road. Teaching is temporary, but he doesn’t feel like he’s done in that role just yet.

One random, fun fact about Lance is that he has his own Easter egg so to speak. He has done a ton of film work and helped on a few music video sets, but in the Netflix show “Lost in Space” is where his random, fun fact resides from.

His cousin worked on the set and they both do a lot of climbing together. The designers for “Lost in Space” took inspiration from a photo of Lance and his cousin, using it in a scene found in Season 2 of “Lost in Space”. There is a set designed around where they were climbing a mountain together in the photo.

Lance commented on how when his cousin showed him the shots of the set and pointed out the one that they had inspired that it was right on the nose and how very bizarre it was, but that’s what happens when you go on hikes with one of the head designers of a show!

Right now one of Lance’s favorite movies is Studio Ghibli’s, “Howl’s Moving Castle” and the Wes Anderson film, “The Darjeeling Limited”. He loves them both for their messages and said how the later he feels is pretentious as heck, but thinks it’s Wes Anderson’s best piece. Lance think it’s such a favorite of his just because of how minimal it is but how real the message is.

And as for favorite TV show, it’s “Sailor Moon”, it’s always going to be “Sailor Moon”, Lance doesn’t care what anyone says. Except for maybe “Glee” not being far behind.

The following is my interview with Lance which was an absolute joy to take part in and I hope you will enjoy and learn from it as I did. 

What has been one failure in your life that later became a win for you?

You know, I think my whole life has been a failure to be frank. I think only now am I realizing that it was all worth it in the end, especially in the last 10 years since being out of high school. For those of you who have seen the Bo Burnham: Inside film on Netflix, it’s very much about being inside, being introspective with the passing of time, along with the inner struggles of living your life through FOMO.

I think the biggest failure of my life is that I’ve missed so many opportunities to just be present. I think that’s my main regret, cause I think I’ve definitely struggled with anxiety of the future and depression of the past, and I’ve been so caught up in that presently. I have now in my older youth been able to recognize that even though I have so many missed opportunities to be with others, slinked away because of insecurity, it’s not just a one time thing, it’s been the same thing many times, and seeing myself in this position of not being good enough to live up to others expectations of me. I never needed to do that, but I was presented the big lie of comparing myself to others and it has been such a tragedy to me.

Because you get to a point where it didn’t even matter, it just didn’t even matter, and the things you thought didn’t matter, mattered the most. I’ve been striving to better understand that your existence is beyond yourself and that you’re not the only narrator of this life.

I keep waking up and catching myself in these positions where I identify as being the failure, a failure, never good enough, so I always gave up on myself in putting myself in feeling fearful or insecure. But life has tried to remind me of this consistently that I was stronger than I thought I was and that my vulnerability and sincerity throughout my life has not plagued me but blessed me throughout my life, and has taken me to a level in my life that I couldn’t before comprehend.

Until recently when I got my teaching job, I started to realize that all of these failures that I’ve done and hidden away, and in not feeling good enough, feeling this imposter syndrome, even past all of that is that I was still able to receive what I needed to get to where I am. A lot of things that I had built towards were all lies, the illusion of failure, and how easy it is to establish those things into your life and build up.

My regret is that I didn’t tell people I loved them enough when I wanted to. Just not letting this idea of feeling like a failure stop me from loving others. I have this painting in my room of myself with my best friend Corey, he passed away from heart failure. We went to church together and we had a very strong bond. But near the end I slunked away and I hid away, because I was ashamed of my harm and my pain.

I was fortunate enough to have that moment where a little voice in my ear said, “You need to go see him.” That was the day right before he died. We had a moment of complete understanding and confidence, we expressed our love and blessed each other on our new journeys. Looking back it’s very methodical, but it was one of those moments where I didn’t let my fear of failure and my past failures catch up with me because we had that moment together where we were there in the moment and we were present.

If that is one failure that has turned into a success, it is to remind me to be present, to focus on the people around me. I’m not very good at it and Covid has reminded me of how isolated people can be. But I’m not scared to be vulnerable with people that I have been uncomfortable in the past with. That’s been my overall success. It’s about the community that we establish.

If you could talk to yourself back when you were graduating high school, what would be something that you would tell yourself?

I would tell him that anxiety is an illusion. I think we both promote anxiety and punish it. It’s like this perversion, like a fetish of anxiety. Like playfully saying, “oh you’re so bad anxiety”, but realistically we have this wacky view of mental illness where we acknowledge it’s there and that we live with it, and it’s great that we have gotten to that point, but we never actively engage with it.

We struggle with it and we promote that struggle, but I would say for myself, and maybe this was something I had to go through to understand, that anxiety is such a painful thing but it’s such an illusion. It’s a real, feeling thing but it’s not reality.

It’s so hard to teach someone that, but now looking back and with teaching kids, we as teachers establish that in our students. We put it into the idea that it’s our identity, like marks are our identity. If you don’t get good marks, you are then not a good person. Which is a big lie! You’re not skilled, you’re not talented, you don’t speak up, you’re not worth the time. That’s a lie! But I can see how that creates anxiety of worth.

I wish I could tell myself to stop believing in that, stop letting anxiety control your life, understand that you are more than enough in this capacity. That is the one thing that I would do. And I’d tell him that the next 10 years are going to be the hardest thing in your whole entire life and you are going to hate it. But at the end of the day it is exactly what you needed.

Maybe also just relax a little more. If there’s a stick up your butt, pull it out. Your idealism is killing you. We’ve been taught that the grey is sinful or too messy or that you’ll be declined, which isn’t true, but we fear the change in ourselves and that is the true tragedy of it all.

If my younger self saw me today they would be horrified and be terrified by what I’ve done and have dealt with, but I wouldn’t be upset at that past self looking at me in horror, not because I’ve descended into madness, but because I’ve started to really understand the human condition. It’s so much grittier and so much harder pressed. I wouldn’t try to preach at this person. I know that my past self would try to preach to me like, “You’re bad!”

Like how dare you not be perfect!

Exactly, I would just give him a big hug and say, “You’re a little stiff bud.”

Who is one person that you can count on to be in your corner that you’re grateful for, and why?

First of all, it would be my parents, just because we’ve had to lean into each other the last few years when we got exiled out of the church. We had each other and loyalty amongst each other. Loyalty that we have experienced privately and publicly, which has been hard but it has been there.

Another would be my cousin Jeremy, who is 10 years older than I, and he has really challenged me in a lot of different things. He has walked a different path than I, being older than I am, but we reconnected in the last few years and we have become as tight as tight can be. I’ve needed that older guidance and that experience. He’s a professor at NAIT. He was able to be that both sensitive human being but also let’s get business done kind of person in my life. I’ve really leaned into that sort of attitude.

Another would be my friend Brandon.

These stable people have really stabilized me and help me to articulate my thoughts in healthy ways, helped me get therapy, and not steering me down a negative path, usually. So I would say I’ve leaned into them, but there’s also a number of people that I can think of who have been there for me in different ways.

But those are the few that I would say have really led me to that next level. Jeremy especially has been quite faithful, even though he is as sassy as sassy can be, but I think he is a big one that has really established and helped me think more dynamically and philosophically. He keeps on encouraging me to get that next step of education and to understand that it’s an incline that takes time. 

Who has played a vital role as a mentor in your life?

There have been quite a few, but I think the most recent one was Janine, we were good friends and I met her when I lived in British Columbia for a little bit. She’s married and she has two kids now. Her and I had a lot of talks, I was at a very low point when I was in BC, a very low point in my life and I felt so raw and had a lot of health issues.

She would be there to take me to the hospital and was always there to just talk about the hard things in life, I was the saddest I had ever been at that point. I was able to articulate with her the rejections I was feeling at the time with getting kicked out of the church and being able to share my life with her was very beneficial. It was a very healthy, platonic relationship. She’s older than me by about five or six years and it was very, very beneficial to have her guidance and her motherly input.

At the time I was amongst a group of other individuals where I was one of the oldest males there and she was the oldest female, she was the one that oversaw everything, and we just got along in a lot of ways. She helped to remind me of my gentle side because at that time I was feeling very aggressive, angsty, and rebellious and she helped to reign that all in for me.

She saw me in some of the worst situations I’ve ever seen and I’ve never broke down in front of someone and felt very gross and raw, and she was just there. And sometimes I still feel that sense of shame being so open and honest in my uncomfortable state, but at the end of the day was she there and I’ve looked up to her and her guidance. She was one of the biggest mentors I had had in a long time and I still look up to her leadership from time to time, even though she lives in Vancouver and I in Edmonton.

She just gave me the best words of advice and she stands out as one of the best mentor figures in my life. I’m more of a feminine male figure so I need those strong women types to help me out with these kinds of things. I think that’s one of the big ones, but there are so many others who have helped me out, but on a more holistic, personal level that’s one of the ones that really stands out to me.

When things aren’t going in the direction you were hoping, what have you found has usually been the right next step for you?

I think when it comes down to when things have been negative and the doors are constantly closing I always have to remind myself about the ideas of perfection and idealism, and I’ve seen so many fragile, weak people lean on these ideas of perfection because they think that will be the ideal.

But the ideal is so much more messy and nuanced. I have found for myself that I lean more into that messy humanity that I have in my life. I find that it’s kind of my trademark that I’m very comfortable not having full control of the situation and being okay to not have full leadership and letting things naturally grow on their own.

At the end of the day we hold onto very little in our lives, very little and nothing is promised to us. Now that doesn’t mean being nihilistic and having the mindset of nothing matters and everything sucks. Because it’s so easy to be bitter and it’s so easy to just surrender and live in this self-victimization. You can have everything handed to you and you have one inconvenience and it’s the end and you just don’t do anything. It’s very tempting to just get into that mode.

I’ve been bitter, angry, resentful, and nihilistic, and it hasn’t served me the way I was hoping it would. I thought if I was to lean into that I would gain an upper hand in life because if I know the true knowledge of life, then maybe life will say, “Now you have understood me and now you will be rewarded.” Right? Like those movies where you must learn and then you gain that self-realization and then you are rewarded. Life doesn’t give a freaking frack whether you have learned everything or not. It just doesn’t reward or punish you.

What does reward or punish you is you, and God, and those other powers that are. There are always going to be powers that are like nature, the laws of physics, these things are here and it’s good that we have them because they stop things from being absolutely chaotic.

Your choice is at most the most essential thing that you can have control of. And that’s very reassuring to me because when life hasn’t gone my way and things have fallen apart, I’ve lost friends and family and so many things, I still have a choice to live or to die. I really do. I have that entire essence in my hand to do what I want to do and be. It goes back to that idea of stewardship.

You steward your soul, so do it wisely and not just say, “I have a small garden and it sucks. I’ve only been given turnips! It’s the worst!” You know, at least you have turnips and at least you have a garden, just enjoy it.

We only have this time, breathe it in, take it all in. It’s so short and so brief. It’s not worth fighting over the ideal. I understand that we want to be the best and there’s so much competition in our lives, but I feel like there’s so much more than that in life that you need to take in before you go.

Because everything is fleeting but it can still be beautiful. Take in those moments cause that’s all you have right? We don’t own anything, and that’s ok, it’s still beautiful in it’s own way. Things may change, maybe I’ll get a more substantial view on life but until then I’m perfectly content with the life I have right now.


Lance in his natural habitat: connecting with & bringing people together.
Photo Credit: Unknown

What are three skills you have developed that you are proud of yourself for?

I think the ability to teach is a huge one. Not everyone’s a teacher, not everyone can bring understanding and wisdom in a more concrete way than is communicated. I think the second one is communication, even if I don’t always have my thoughts properly articulated.

I have seen the value of words and how powerful they are, and how quickly they can manipulate or construct a dynamic in our world. I think that’s two of the big ones, teaching and communicating.

I think one of the biggest ones is networking, I’m an incredible networker. I’m very good at tying webs and developing it into a constructive unit. I know that the power of communication, teaching, and networking are the three essential things to my being, that others have found to be very valuable and that I have found to be valuable.

I see how these skills are meant to not raise me up but bring people back together, because we are so disconnected and we are so distant through technology that somebody’s got to fill that place of technology and if it’s going to be me, a real life person bringing people back together, then that’s a healthy reaction to the world around us. I don’t want to be ousting the doom and gloom of society.

What I’m doing is not marketable, it is not beneficial to me, it is everything to do with retaining that spirit that people feel and cannot articulate has been lost. They supplement it with drugs, with alcohol, with all sorts of things that do not benefit them and do not give them a sense of identity and purpose in their lives, plain and simple. So I see the ability of networking and communicating as some of the best skills that I have attained or naturally developed for the cause of others. If that is the case I’m more than happy and feel very confident in those roles.

That is something I find very interesting about all three skills that you are proud of yourself for developing, is that they don’t just enhance and enable and serve you, they are very outward. So often when people talk about their skills it’s all a big show of “look what I can do, aren’t I so incredible?” And there’s nothing wrong with enhancing ourselves but it’s interesting how the skills you take pride in are very outward based.

I was always think of it in terms of we don’t praise the sun because it takes away, we praise the sun because it gives. There are people who I do believe represent light, not to symbolize angels and demons, I do believe those things exist, but people have a sense of spirit or an aura. We uphold those as peregons in our society because it shows the greatest form of humanity, especially in a day and age where there’s this hidinistic, black void.

Like why do kids feel anxious, or why do people feel so sad and depressed? Because things are constantly being sucked away and robbed of their humanity. I know for myself that at the end of my life I hope my legacy will be in terms of light and what I give away.

If your legacy lives with so many people, you’re doing great and better than most. That’s all I can do because some things get recycled and I hope I can offer some good and light that can be remembered and reused, cause there’s too much darkness. We need to make the choice in who we are and what we give. 

What is something you do that you enjoy that helps you to calm and slow you down?

Recently I’ve been doing a lot of walking, reflection, and introspection. I find that Covid has been really good for that. I have found that to be very beneficial, as well as doing a lot of prayer and meditation. I’ve also done this a few times where I go to graveyards and sometimes, for example I go to Corey’s or my grandparents or others I’ve known, and I go and celebrate their lives quietly to myself because it really brings back that sanctity and that celebration that maybe they didn’t have before then.

For me, I honor them and myself because I’ve come to this place in my life where I know that our mortality, I’ve seen it many, many times first hand, that celebrating those moments and having grounding exercises, feeling my feet on the ground and surrendering myself does such good.

Exercises like taking a piece of paper, writing out something that has harmed you or caused you pain, you then crumble up the paper and you burn it or throw it away, it allows you to really bring yourself to that place where you have projected pain onto something that you can be rid of and give away or bury it and then you celebrate that.

I’ve been doing a lot of that to celebrate, as well as doing a lot of painting and singing. I also love doing projects for people, doing those kinds of things are super fun to me.

What are some key elements in your environment, whether that’s in your home, creative space, or work space, that encourages and inspires you?

I don’t know if you can notice in my room but I have a lot of art. A lot of these pieces are of others, I like to buy people’s art, I like to give away art cause it’s a celebration of the soul and that always inspires me to create more. I don’t know if you have started to notice but I love to create things, it’s something that gives me a lot of passion. Whether that’s in gardening, I love my garden, or painting and such.

I also have a treasure trove of people who have written letters to me and I’ve written letters to them. I love writing letters, they’re some of my favorite things that I’ve celebrated. I like that kind of stuff, it’s so much fun!

Those are the kinds of things that give me inspiration and remind me what’s important. It brings me back to what’s most important in my life and what I can treasure.

What are three reasons that you have had to celebrate lately?

You know I think Covid being over is a hella good thing to celebrate. It’s very somber though, like is it safe or not? It is what it is and we can’t live constantly in fear and let it consume us.

I’ve also been celebrating recently the fact that Mary, my dear partner, and I can be together, we can really start to have that relationship and foster that care into the next season of our lives. I think that’s very powerful because I didn’t think I was going to get loved the way that I’ve been loved by her, but it’s been very cool and a nice reminder that there is no true love, but you sure can choose love.

Another is that I got to reconnect with everybody from my past. For some it’s so nice to see a sense of closure, I think that’s very healing. I don’t think even in high school we really got that, so these are big things for me to celebrate, because that is something I wish that more people could get before they die is a sense of closure in their lives.

To celebrate something that they loved and really loved, and really respected but couldn’t find the words to articulate that until they were older. And that’s what I like to see and that’s what I like to celebrate in myself because I may not have the words to say it but I certainly want to say them.

What is one piece of advice that you find yourself thinking back on and striving to implement the most often?

I think the best thing I always tell myself is to be present. I always ask, “where’s your mind at Lance? Where has it drifted off to? Are you present?” Sometimes my mind has been so self-consumed, like I’ve been in a void far away or hidden. You can hide in your mind or hide where you are even if you’re just in your basement. So I always ask are you present? Because sometimes people will ask where the time has gone, where has their life gone, what happened, did I do anything, and they’re filled with that regret.

So my biggest thing is to be present, which takes a lot of emotional and mental strain, and I get that and there’s a time for peace and rest, but there’s also a time to just be, to be exactly what you need to be and not apologize for that. That’s the biggest thing I’ve been telling myself recently. Take in the moment.

Something I wrestle with is to not fear what’s to come. Don’t regret what was. Just embrace what is. And when you’re lying in bed and you’re feeling anxious because you haven’t done enough or you didn’t get to say goodbye, just remember that you have a soft bed, there are people who still love you, and what is to come you will be ready for it, hopefully. And if you’re not, things will work out in the end. You’re ok.

Don’t worry about being forgotten or things being forgotten, you lived, you cried, you smelled some flowers, and you were just there and that is good enough. I think that’s the hard thing about legacy is trying to retain fame and being known and heard and loved, but it’s like rocks don’t do that, plants don’t do that, and they do what they need to do. They don’t have to worry about existential worry and horror. It’s so wasteful of your energy. Sometimes you need to just welcome what’s to come after and it’ll take time.

Something that kept coming into my head as you were talking is this photo I saw recently that I’ve been thinking a lot about, where there’s two parts of it with a person walking their dog. In the first half of the photo there’s a statement that reads, “is your mind full?” and it shows the person’s brain all jumbled with a million things going on. And in the second half of the photo it reads, “or are you being mindful?” and it shows what the dog is thinking, and it’s taking in the present moment. It’s like you were saying before, like what are we retaining and what are we contributing in this life to make it worthwhile? Or will 5, 10 years pass by and we’ll be at a loss wondering what it was all for and what happened? It’s like Ferris Bueller so wisely put it that you have to stop and look around every now and again cause life moves pretty fast. What are you allowing it to do to you and what are you making of it and who are you being?

That’s the biggest thing. I still believe that even in death life still continues. There are those that have passed from my life that I don’t see as truly gone. Their situation, their story still continues even if they don’t exist in what we deem as existence.

Because I still feel that retention of them and through those they have left behind. I still feel them and they’re still alive in my mind and that sometimes is enough to retain that present mindset and way of living for me.

If we subject ourselves to one teeny tiny box of thought or subject ourselves to technology, to our phones, what do we truly gain? And when others do that I think that is such a tiny lens to look through and a tiny box to put yourself in.

It’s like in Snow White where the Queen asks, “who’s the fairest of them all?” and in the end she turned out to be so ugly even after she had everything in the world but it wasn’t enough for her. We can far too often sum up our existence to one little thing and that’s such a tragedy and yet people will abide by it. We are so small and that is so exciting, that’s a very exciting thing for me to say. There is just so much more to life if we allow it to show us.

What are three things you have been particularly grateful for this past week or month?

I think for the last three weeks it comes back to the understanding that everything will work out. I think there’s this interesting thing about the existence of evil and how things kind of pertain and doesn’t make sense in the grand design, but there’s so much more than that. And I know that things have been designed in such a way that have such a great degree of pattern and retention to detail that we don’t fully understand.

But I’m just excited and thankful that I may not know what the heck is going on but I’m thankful there are boundaries set up so we don’t just fly into the sky or we cease to exist and that through all this weirdness that I can still have a retention and consciousness.

I’m also just grateful for the help and support of others and being brave enough to ask for it. I’m grateful that I can be vulnerable in a place like Canada, in North America where I can ask for help and I’m not ridiculed. I don’t feel like I’m imprisoned by this pride or this toxic masculinity that has been instilled in us in some capacity. I’m thankful I never lived up to that cause in the end it doesn’t even matter.

I’m thankful that my Dad and I came up with this thing in our Sunday service to ring a bell three times, like how people who overcome cancer to show healing. My Dad and I did that last Sunday and I was asked to go up there and ring the bell. As I rang the bell, I was in tears. I could just feel how Covid has robbed us of so many things.

This is the biggest thing of our time, of our generation, how we’re not defined by great world wars but by disease. For some people the plague lasted all their lives but for us we have the technology to uphold these things. But it’s still robbed us greatly and we have a greater population to rob, and it’s still robbing us like in China and India. And we don’t know the severity of what’s happened in our lives, we really don’t quite understand it all fully.

I’m just grateful that everybody that I personally knew, give or take a few, were not lost to this thing. I’m also just grateful for today and that we have the opportunity to keep on living and that we can survive and go on. The world will keep turning. Right now I’m thankful my friends survived and I’m thankful that I can retain, have a sound mind, and a good, strong body. That’s all I can say, I’ve got a small garden, I’m going to use it. 

Lance, as we come to the end, I want to say how much I have appreciated your insight and your perspective on things, it has been a great teaching moment for me throughout this interview, so thank you.

What do you feel have been key factors in shaping who you are today?

The tragedy and beauty of it all is that two things have stood up to me in my life. A lot of it has to do with the death and loss in my life: my friends, the loss of my church and church community, the loss of Corey, the loss of family and things, I’ve just had a lot of death and loss in my life. But these key things have not necessarily defined me in the negative sense of the word.

The rejections, the pain, the heartaches, and disappointment have given me an idea of compassion and retention for those around me. We have very limited time and unfortunately I’ve felt very alone in that walk because not everyone has gained that understanding. I think it’s so sad when people can get away scott free from such things because you will never understand the growth you could have been given.

That’s such a luxury that you have and I’m so happy that you have had that, but I was never the most popular, I was never the strongest, the brightest, the big He person in society and such. I had people say things like I was anointed, but I didn’t believe them because I never thought I was, I know I’m just a man. I am. I’m just a man in a very confusing world like many others are struggling in their own personal identities.

The situation I have undergone is I have walked through and with death, I’ve been a gatekeeper for many who have left this Earth and I’ve said goodbye for others with my father and I carry a lot of that weight with me. But then at the same time I see the beauty and the importance of just being together.

I know my purpose because of these things, I just do, I haven’t second guessed myself. I feel loss but I know what my hands are good with and I know where I need to go next. That being said, career wise I have no idea where I’m going but my identity is not defined by that.

I was never really good at anything but now I am everything I need to be, that doesn’t make me better or worse, that is just entirely up to my interpretation of the world around me. I’m grateful that my failure has defined who I am and has created this person who can serve, that can bring unity.

I don’t want to be bitter and my failure to create this void of toxicity because I’m bigger than that, I’m better than that. When I go, that will be it and that will be ok because I know I’ve planted a lot of trees as I’ve gone along. I wish more people would see their failures as the greatest thing that can be given to them. They just haven’t learned it yet.

It’s about having the eyes to see.

Absolutely! We’re so blind sometimes, but it takes time. It’s all in the process.


A treasured tattoo on the back of Lance’s leg.
Photo Credit: Lance Lindoff

What do you feel have been some key habits in shaping who you are today?

I would say checking in with myself in the sense of recognizing who I am, what I belong to, what I’ve done, what I’ve contributed, coming back to all of that. Doing surrender exercises that give things away that don’t give you a sense of worth or understanding, you can’t hold onto these, you have to give them away.

It’s not about not caring about anything or being unaccountable, it’s the fact that these are weights that are burdensome, they’re too heavy, they make you feel like trash, and are not useful to you, give it away. Something else can handle it better than you can, and it’s not because you’re weak, it has everything to do with you handling too much, you are so strong and this is slowing you down, you can use your time better.

I also have a tattoo on my leg that reads, “You are known. You are loved. You are enough.” And I try to recite those three things daily in my life, I also try to remind other people of that subconsciously. I say it to Mary, to my students, to my parents, because every little bit of that is something I have had to hear or be shown in my life specifically to continue being the human I need to be or what I was created to be.

Because if you aren’t known, you feel like you need to scream louder. If you aren’t loved, you will love harder than you should and you will go to people that will not love you the same way you deserve to be loved. And if you don’t feel enough, I’ve seen too many people end their lives because they never felt enough. Those are three things that human beings need. It’s true food for thought.

Also learning to listen, getting into the habit of listening. This might be a little hypocritical, but I used to be so ashamed that I listened more than I talked because I didn’t feel like I had the best words to say. But really at the end of the day, not a lot of people have a lot to say and the skill of listening has been kind of distant.

We see nowadays the idea of educating yourself from people who have never listened and that’s the tragedy. If you don’t stop to listen to what’s being told and what’s being expressed or even listening to what your body needs, you get lost in translation and that’s when things start to mess up.

Even if you feel you know the answer, that’s not the problem, the problem is you’re not listening and not being in a place of compassion. You’re not a safe space. Get into the habit of listening because sometimes it’s so easy to talk over someone and not acknowledge them and their humanity or your humanity.

I think you’re already practicing this right now Steph, you’re trying to listen. And that is a habit that not a lot of people get into and some people make their whole careers out of it. Go to therapy, go to therapy!

Our society is so dependent on listening but there’s not enough people to spread it out. We pay professionals to listen to us, we’ve made it a resource that someone pays for, when it is like water, like liquid gold, yet it is the rarest thing we have in humanity. That is why people are so sick, why they’re so hurt, and there’s lots more than that, but that is one of the biggest things.

I’m also not saying we shouldn’t get help, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m just saying that not a lot of people are getting the help they need, because not enough people are listening to them.

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Thank you for taking part in and reading my interview for my blog series, “Cheers to You, Oh Wonderful You” with Lance Lindoff.

What is one thing that you have been grateful for this past week?
Comment below and share this blog post if it has been of value to you or could be to someone else.

Also, if you have someone in mind that you think I should interview for this blog series, please let me know by contacting me either through my work email: stephanietracy26@gmail.com or my work Facebook page: Stephanie Tracy Writes. 



About the Author 

Hi there! I’m Stephanie Tracy, a freelance writer, blogger, and copy-editor for hire. I specialize in physical and mental health, parenting, and self-development. I create engaging, inspiring and useful content to help businesses progress in making their viewers into customers. When I’m not writing, you can find me happily playing with my toddler, walking in the park with my family, or indulging in a movie marathon with my husband.