Common Sense Psychic
And I happened to have read in the summer of 2012, a copy of National Geographic in which the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was on the cover. And that article, that story, just spoke to me in a really deep, soulful way. Like every character in the story came out and hugged me. And I finished the article and I said to my wife, “I’m going to go there. I want to see what life is like, modern day life is like for the people that live there.” One of the biggest most historic, poorest, combative, disenfranchised of all the Sioux reservations on the Northern Plains. And one trip led to two, which has now been 10. And a journal I was keeping turned into a book and a story I wanted to tell. But it all came from stopping, sitting still, and listening to my own voice and wanting to express myself more broadly than just the roles I’d been assigned or taken on in my life. (08:17-09:18)
But what I discovered by accident changed the way I thought about leadership and changed my role. And I’ve since come to be a champion of what if we could create an organization where every voice was a leading voice, where every person led. Wouldn’t that be more powerful and dynamic and healthy than an organization where just a few people held all the cards? (20:09-20:37)
I suddenly had a lot more time, I was able to be more effective by doing less. Which is a really counter intuitive concept for leaders to get their head around. But I freed up time and then I was able to reinvest some of that time in my own well-being. And just over time, spending time just on me. Like I would go to Pine Ridge for five or six days at a time by myself. And while I was engaging with them and learning about them and growing fond of them and thinking about their world, I was really also just there clearing my own head and serving my own soul. And the mere act of making time to do that was extremely powerful. (20:41-21:35)
Now the Common Sense Psychic with Phyllis King. Phyllis brings a unique and down to earth style with her common sense psychic readings and spiritual dialogue with callers and guests. Here’s your host for the Common Sense Psychic, Phyllis King.
[00:18] Phyllis: Well, good afternoon and welcome to the show. I am your host, Phyllis King, and happy Friday. It is November the 18th. Today we’re going to be having a very special guest here, an author, Kevin Hancock. Who’s a businessman, a family man, and has a compelling story about his journey into Native American history and their story, what life has been like since Columbus arrived.
The reason this book resonated so much with me is because I see elements of karma that plays out in American culture. And even in this presidential election. Some of you who are on my news feed, you know that I’ve talked about this in many respects, in terms of when you cause injury to people – whether it’s on purpose or not – that you carry that forward until you do bring it into balance. There are repercussions to our actions, safe to say.
And one of the greatest things in this particular book that really stuck out to me was this letter of apology, which I’m sure we will talk about, and how important apology plays in many aspects of our life. But it’s a fascinating story. This is a businessman who, his business has been voted one of the best places to work in Maine. He’s taken six trips to Pine Ridge, and he had a medical condition – which he can share with you – and what that prompted in him that caused him to go on this quest of sorts, and really begin to take stock of life and learn how to center himself. And the book is, Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse. And Kevin will be here with us shortly.
So we’ll be talking about centering. We’ll be talking about history. Kevin is a history buff, and has done a lot of work in his life talking about history and its value, and really is something you get from the book. It’s one of the types of books that you want to read over and over. There’s so much story in it. There’s so much detail. Really beautifully written. Something I hope you all will look forward to a reading after you hear more from the author. So as I’m waiting for him to get here, I’m going to play a quick little music for you, and then we’ll come back.
[04:33] All right. Welcome back to the show. I am again your host, Phyllis King, happy Friday, as I said. If we can get Pharrell to take his happiness and bring it inward. And that’s what we’re going to talk a lot today about, how do we find happiness? Is that something outside of us? Is it something inside of us?
So many of us talk about this, that’s why you call the show. How do I get there? What am I doing? Right. What am I doing wrong? So my guest, Kevin Hancock, the book, Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse. Kevin, welcome. Thanks for being here today.
Kevin: I’m really happy to be on your show, Phyllis. Thank you for having me.
[05:15] Phyllis: This book just struck a chord with me. People send me a lot of books and I love books, and I love people to tell their story. But I loved how you really dug in deep to Native American history. And I want to talk a lot about that, but it wasn’t Native American history, or was it, that drew you in? What caused you to go down this path to begin with? You’re a successful businessman. You’ve had a longstanding family business in the state of Maine. Your life seems to be all set up. Why would you go looking for trouble?
Kevin: We’re right. And that’s the first sentence of my book. I’m standing at the Wounded Knee massacre site the day before Halloween 2012, and this old, lovely, jewelry maker pulls up and she says, “What brings you here?” And that really was the question of the book for me.
So, in 2010, what really kicked this off for me, in 2010 at the peak of the housing and mortgage market collapse, I found myself here in Maine trying to help lead and run our family business, which is a lumber company, Hancock Lumber, through that collapse. And I began to have some real significant voice issues. When I went to talk, my voice got very broken and weak and hard to hear, and talking made me dizzy and sore and out of breath and not wanting to say very much. And I ended up going to a doctor and then another doctor and was finally diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, which is a rare neurological voice disorder that affects only speech with no known cause or cure. And my voice is pretty normal today because I get periodic Botox injections, which serve as a muscle relaxant and kind of trick my system into functioning semi normally for a time. But often, it would be really hard to hear me.
So that voice disorder made me stop, made me do something that’s really rare and difficult in this day and age, as you know Phyllis. It made me stop, sit still, listen, think, and look inward. And it changed the way I thought about leadership, but it also changed the way I thought about my entire life. And I came to realize I’d just been really caught up in that 24/7 go bigger, better, more world we live in. And that while I loved my role and my job, that wasn’t who I was. But I’d lost track of that. I’d really gotten caught up in my roles and responsibilities. And when the dust settled and the economy got better, I had a growing feeling I needed to serve myself a little bit more.
And I happened to have read in the summer of 2012, a copy of National Geographic in which the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was on the cover. And that article, that story, just spoke to me in a really deep, soulful way. Like every character in the story came out and hugged me. And I finished the article and I said to my wife, “I’m going to go there. I want to see what life is like, modern day life is like for the people that live there.” One of the biggest most historic, poorest, combative, disenfranchised of all the Sioux reservations on the Northern Plains.
And one trip led to two, which has now been 10. And a journal I was keeping turned into a book and a story I wanted to tell. But it all came from stopping, sitting still, and listening to my own voice and wanting to express myself more broadly than just the roles I’d been assigned or taken on in my life.
Phyllis: That’s an amazing story and a summary of how that began for you. Now, you don’t personally have native American ties, or do you?
Kevin: No, none that I know of. No, but I have, and I wrote about this in the book once I started listening more deliberately. I have had a lifetime love affair with the American west, and a lifetime love affair with American history during the second half of the 19th century, when our nations Western expansion and Manifest Destiny ran into the Plains Indians. And once I looked back on what had happened, I could actually trace a series of events going back to when I was a teenager, is that in my view was whispering and calling me there to that reservation. I can now connect the dots that go back almost 40 years.
[10:25] Phyllis: Wow. Now did you have a frame of reference or a tool, a skill set you use to make sense of life, or are you just aligned with bigger, better, more?
Kevin: Well, that’s a great question, too. There was one other event that predated the partial loss of my voice. In 2008, as a gift, my mother had given me a evolutionary astrological reading. I’d never heard of evolutionary astrology, no more than I’d never heard of Pine Ridge. But yeah, but it came on a CD disk from a clinical psychologist and an evolutionary astrologist from Palo Alto, who’s now a dear friend of mine. And when I sat and listened to that reading, it stopped me in my tracks in the deepest of ways. I was like, how could this woman see the deepest personal essence of my own soul? Like the high end of who I was, the low end of who I was.
And that reading really opened me up. The combination of that reading and the loss of my voice opened me up to a much deeper level of self-inquiry, and a much greater awareness of the soul or the heart as the center, over the head or the brain or the external world. And it just set me on a path of thinking and being that was very different than the path I’d been on before. There was nothing wrong with the path I was on before. If anybody looked at it, they would’ve said, well, there’s just a good, traditional, modern-day leader. But the combination of my voice disorder and the reading really helped me move in a different direction.
[11:45] Phyllis: Well, that’s amazing. And I know people do they have health conditions or different life events that caused them to reevaluate. And then the combination of these with seeing this National Geographic article. So you embarked upon this journey and your wife said, have at it, go for it. So you left everybody behind and you went on your way. And what did you expect you were going to find, or did you have an expectation?
Kevin: Yeah. So you have great questions. So, first of all, I was very nervous because here I was a CEO in the “prime” of his career, if you will. Late forties, been at it for over two decades, and really embedded in my local community here in Maine. And then during the book writing experience, found myself taking off every four months, say for a week at a time, to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation, which had nothing to do with any of my roles. And I worried about what people would think, right? I’m like, they’re gonna ask, “Is he having a midlife crisis? Is he losing his commitment to what he does here?” You worry about those things. You really worry about what others expect of you.
But the support I got from my wife and my family and from the company, coupled with the fact that the calling was so strong for me, that I couldn’t resist it or avoid it. But the combination of the two made it all work. And one of the things that I really learned and I’ve come to believe and write about in the book, is that done correctly, being selfish is selfless because when we put more of ourselves in our own life, when we do that, which is calling to us or that which makes us light up or lose track of time, or just be giddy with happiness or enthusiasm, we’re invariably putting ourselves in a state where that’s contagious or infectious and it can’t help, but actually rub off on others.
So going to Pine Ridge, writing a book, becoming an artist, made me a better executive. It didn’t make me a poorer executive, it made me better at what I did. It made me more valuable to the people around me, and I didn’t have to sacrifice in the way I thought I did previously or put all of my things second.
[15:06] Phyllis: Well, I certainly want to talk a lot more about that while in our time together today. But there’s so much in the book. I mean, this is a book that really does need to be read multiple times to really take in all that it offers. For me, I’m curious when you there’s so many stories and quotes and revelations about the pain and the hardship that disenfranchised people experience and how it formulates their view of themselves and what they think is possible. And it’s really quite painful, for me. It was really difficult, many parts of it, for me to read. It’s so sad because so many of us don’t really have a sense of what that’s like to have that type of loss visited upon us. So how did you, I mean, you knew what you were walking into in a sense that what was most startling to you about the people and how they’ve coped with their history?
Kevin: Right. So great questions. First, I knew these reservations, these Northern Plains reservations that were created in the 1870s and 1880s were a statistically very poor, challenged communities. But it’s one thing to read about that or to have an innate knowledge of it, it’s another thing to actually stand there in people’s homes, at the convenience store in their car, and really see the magnitude of it.
We had a national crisis in 2010, the economic crisis when unemployment hit 9% at pine Ridge today it’s 90%, nine zero. Right in the middle of this country in South Dakota, right in the Heartland of this country, the lowest life expectancy in the Western hemisphere is Haiti. Second is Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Men live on average to be 48-ish, women into their early fifties. The median income is less than $10,000 a year.
And I guess the first thing I’d say, your question is so deep, it’s got layers to it. But the first thing I’d say was to stand there and really come to terms with the fact that there are communities in this country that have not yet recovered from what I thought was ancient history, the winning of the west, or what’s more Columbus’s discovery. Or really to even rethink that, Phyllis, then I had to stand there. I majored in history in college and then taught history immediately after graduating. But it was not until I went to Pine Ridge multiple times, as wild as this sounds, that it dawned on me that Columbus did not actually discover a New World. People already lived here. And it really made me rethink how we could take a truth that obvious, that irrefutably obvious, and put it on the shelf. So there was a lot of just processing the reality of what modern day life was like for these people that have been marginalized. Which was the other irony of my story. I was searching for my voice in a community that felt like it no longer had a voice. And the irony of that really was powerful for me, too.
[18:47] Phyllis: So how did you, in your quest, you were answering your call to go and be at Pine Ridge and really rediscover these people and this history. At what point and how did it evolve that you became more centered, that you understood about selfless or selfish versus, and how that’s a positive in life and in business? How did it all come together? How did it grow into where you are now?
Kevin: Right. So it started by accident. So when I had my voice issues, I had no choice but to lead differently, because I often couldn’t say more than just a couple of sentences. So I had to share leadership much more deeply and broadly. Someone would come to me, simple example, with a problem or a question, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to give a long answer. So I started saying, to protect myself only, I started saying something like, “That’s a great question. What do you think we should do?” And guess what I found out? People knew, they had great ideas already. They already knew what to do. And they either just felt that it was the protocol to bring it up the ladder to a boss, if you will, or they just wanted some basic affirmation.
But what I discovered by accident changed the way I thought about leadership and changed my role. And I’ve since come to be a champion of what if we could create an organization where every voice was a leading voice, where every person led. Wouldn’t that be more powerful and dynamic and healthy than an organization where just a few people held all the cards?
So, that’s a roundabout way to answering part of your question in that I suddenly had a lot more time. I was able to be more effective by doing less. Which is a really counter intuitive concept for leaders to get their head around. But I freed up time, and then I was able to reinvest some of that time in my own well-being. And just over time, spending time just on me. Like I would go to Pine Ridge for five or six days at a time by myself. And while I was engaging with them, and learning about them, and growing fond of them, and thinking about their world, I was really also just there clearing my own head and serving my own soul. And the mere act of making time to do that was extremely powerful.
And over time, things just started to kind of naturally balance themselves back out. And I just feel, it’s hard to explain, you know what I mean? I just feel like the center of who I am literally dropped from my head to my chest, and I just feel so much more balanced and whole. And it’s put me in a position to be more valuable for others. Because when we’re off balance, which is so easy to be when we’re off balance on an individual level, it doesn’t make it easier to help others achieve balance. And I found when I calmed down and when I became more centered, everybody around me did, too. It was kind of a weird experience, but that’s how I experienced it.
Phyllis: By the way, if you’ve just joined the program this hour is Kevin Hancock, and he’s the author of Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse. And he is the CEO of a family-owned business, a lumber company in the state of Maine. And we’re talking about his experience giving to himself and learning how to recenter himself. And we’re talking about his exploration into Pine Ridge and the Native American history that is so rich there.
I’m going to take a really quick break. When we come back, I want to talk some more about how they received you, how you were received, what they thought of you when you showed up there, and how that transformed itself over time. And what your goals are with Pine Ridge now, and then also with your company. So I’m going to take a quick break. And when I come back, we will talk more about this.
[24:44] Phyllis: All right. Welcome back to the show. I am your host, Phyllis King, and my guest this hour is Kevin Hancock. And he is the president of Hancock Lumber in the state of Maine. And his book, Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse is an amazing read. Please visit the website, kevindhancock.com, that’s one of the places you can find the book. You can learn more about Kevin and appearances and different things of this nature. There are several videos and such out on the internet that you’ll really enjoy and speaking on topics related to what we’re speaking about today.
Welcome back again, Kevin. It’s just amazing to me, someone like you has such the ability to make an impact in this way, because you have it all, you are living the life that people dream of. And I’m not saying you gave it up, but you moved in a different direction to look for something deeper. And then you brought it back to your organization where now you have a different approach on leadership and people look to you for your progressive views. How has this view of power and what power really looks like and what really is powerful, how has that now shaped your life? And then I want to go back to Pine Ridge after that.
[26:06] Kevin: Yeah. Perfect. So the voice disorder and self-inquiry led me to think completely differently about leadership and to have the goal be the creation of an organizational culture where everybody leads where every voice feels respected, powerful, trusted, heard, and responsible. So we’ve been working now for about a half a decade on organizational systems designed to push power out from the center, rather than collected in. And to make the voice of the employee or the team member stronger through surveys, focus groups, huddles, feedback systems, and more.
And our company really took off after several years of kind of embracing and working at that path or direction. And then when I look more broadly at leadership around the world, Phyllis, whether it’s private sector or public sector, I really think we’re on the cusp of a leadership revolution from the Piscean age to the Aquarian age. If you think about it, the Piscean age that is just ending, was really about that single leader. Whether it was in the family, the one person who spoke for the home, or the church, the one person who spoke for the congregation, or the government, nation, state, or the company, there was one leader who spoke the tribal truth. But I think in the Aquarian age, part of the distress you’re seeing right now around the globe is that increasingly people aren’t good with that anymore, which is overall quite exciting. Everybody wants to have their own voice. They have their own opinion to say what they see or feel or believe. And I think that organizations that embrace the power of everyone, the power of every voice, are going to outperform and out recruit or attract talent, versus those that try to cling to the old model of leadership.
[28:36] Phyllis: Yes. Well, I want to circle back around to that again, about our time together. But I do want to go move on to Pine Ridge and how you were received when you descended and how you made inroads or how that worked.
Kevin: Yeah. It was tricky and it all just flowed. Because you have to keep in mind, the first time I went, I had no idea what would come next. I wasn’t planning on writing a book. I wasn’t planning on building it into a centerpiece of my life. It was like one trip led to two, and it just kept building.
But generally speaking, it’s a bit of a tough community to integrate into because of the long-standing, painful trauma that they’ve experienced. There’s a long history there of people coming from away to remake them. Originally, to remake them as white people, to take the Indian out of them. And then now more in the modern age, maybe a stereotype of people coming there to fix them or save them or do their civic duty. So I think there is skepticism at first. But the advantage I had, as it turned out, was I was there in no formal capacity. And that’s what really made me going there rare.
Rare, most people go there with a nonprofit or with a government agency to perform a task and then leave. But I didn’t have any of that. I was just going there because I loved it there. I loved the story that scene, the landscape, the people, I just loved it there. And I didn’t have anything that I had to do.
People ask me what I do when I go there and I say, well, I don’t do very much. I just kind of go, I just hang out. I just hang out with people there, but. But that in and of itself turned out to be really powerful. And I’ve since thought a lot about it and wrote about it that I think connectivity and engagement in and of itself, just because we’re humans is a powerful, valuable act and in a world where everything is about tasks and performing roles. As funny as it sounds, the sheer act of crossing boundaries, changing tribes, if you will, and hanging out with a group that you have no requirement to hang out with is in and of itself powerful, really powerful. And so over time I broke through.
To finalize that, one thing I love about Pine Ridge is, generally speaking, the community does not really care as much about your head or what you know, or what your title is, or how much money you make. They’re more into your heart, the kind of person you are. And so a very common statement that someone would make once they got to know me over time and kind of pull me into their family or their circle would be, I can see you have a good heart. And I just love that that’s how that community is wired and that it looks first at the heart and second at the head. And I just found that refreshing.
Phyllis: Yes, indeed. And how do they, I mean, they’re so acclimated to poverty and to being dependent upon governmental systems. What does that do to a psyche? And I mean, you’re not a psychologist. But as an observer, I mean, what does that do to a people and how did they maintain their heart driven focus for life under those conditions?
[32:31] Kevin: Yeah, that’s such a great question, too. On the one hand, the heart driven focus for life. So what I do see there, which is really warm and admirable, is that these people, their community that’s been through so much, they still live. They don’t mope around. I mean, people are smiling all over the place. There’s laughing, there’s joking, there’s family, there’s gatherings, and that was really inspiring to see that despite the hardship. There’s still joy and a real commitment to living all of the ways that humans do.
But the other side of that question is really important, too. So this is a community that was intentionally stripped of all of its power back originally in the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, turn of the century. They were sequestered on these reservations, told they had to stay there and that was all they had to do. That the government would bring them everything they needed. We’ll bring you your rations. We’ll bring you your clothing. We’ll build you your houses. We’ll make you Christians, and you just stay here. And I knew that’s how the reservations were set up. What blew me away is that’s still how they function in the year 2016. And you’re now five generations into that’s the way it works. That if you need something you largely often apply to or go to your government to try to get it. And you usually end up not getting it and waiting. And that’s the way the system works.
And the power – this was also where I felt there was a calling here for connectivity – the power that they carry within themselves, that innately human power, your own resourcefulness, your own ingenuity, your own ability to be independent and to tip things in a positive direction, that power lives within everybody there. But as a general statement across the entire community, that flame has not really been re-ignited.
And if I could just tell it kind of a quick story there, not to go too long on one question, but when I looked at the history of their community before the coming of the wašíču – the Lakota term for ‘white people’ – and before the discovery of the gold, which the Lakota called, you’ll love this, the ‘yellow metal that makes the white people crazy’. And before the making and breaking of treaties and the creation of the reservation, when these tribes were free and strong and totally self-sufficient following the buffalo on the Northern Plains, if you look at how their community was structured, virtually all the power in their society went to the individual. And the corporate governing center of the tribe was really small. It was hard even to find. Like the President in Washington would send negotiators out onto the Plains and they’d show up and say, “Take me to your leader”, and nobody really knew what that meant because nobody thought about leadership that way. Which is so interesting and refreshing to think about.
But after the colonization, the conquest, the genocide, the remaking, when they’d been kind of systematically hammered down on these reservations, that spirit of the individual being independent and in control, had really been pounded out of that community in large. And economically, they’ve not been able to get that back.
Now I think a local person living at the reservation might see this differently and talk about it differently. But spiritually, which, which is really encouraging, you can see that power coming back. There’s a lot of momentum towards Lakota tradition, language, ceremony today that was not allowed a generation ago. And that’s really great. But I’m hoping that will build into the economic independence at some point. Because the economic model they’re in is, in my view, a no win game for them.
Phyllis: Wow. And so now as you move forward with your book and you’re out speaking and you’ve changed the model of your own company, I mean, do your employees think you are nuts? I mean, did they trust you? What did they think was going on here?
[37:54] Kevin: Yeah, I think initially there was curiosity, to say the least. What’s going on with Kevin? But I think once they saw that this was sticking, that I was going to Pine Ridge and coming back – not going and dropping out – but going and coming back, and that it was invigorating me, and I was sharing stories about them and learnings that we could incorporate. And then when people read my book, I think the end of the story is it came to be a great blessing for our company.
I mean, you’ve read the book and been really gracious already on this show about talking about how meaningful it was to you. So imagine for me having the opportunity to share that level of intimacy with everybody in our company, 450 people, it gave them a much different view of me than they might have had otherwise. And it’s all been really beneficial for the company and my work back home here.
Phyllis: And do you feel it, do you find that not just your employees, but people in general have been asleep in terms of this subject that they, like you described earlier, that didn’t really even recognize even as a history teacher, that there were people who lived here before Columbus arrived. I mean, do you find that’s prevalent still?
Kevin: I do. And I say so. I think people that, for example, people reading my book, it’s been a really big wakeup call on that topic. And I often hear essentially someone saying, oh my goodness, I had no idea that was the real story of how they got there and what the making of America, what the consequences were for them in what otherwise people might think of as a grand story.
And I think the awareness of what really happened, the acknowledgement you referenced earlier at the beginning of the show, the apology, that I think the awareness of what really happened is an important step in helping to support the entire country – people from those reservations and people who are not – coming to terms with what happened, reconciling, forgiving, not forgetting but forgiving, and taking a deep breath and moving forward. I think it’s an important step in the process of healing.
[40:39] Phyllis: Right. And do you, you said in one of your statements earlier that you’re optimistic and you’ve seen signs that, I’m calling it entrepreneurship but you’re calling it sort of spirit of independence, there’s a power returning. Do you, I mean, do you really see these populations regenerating? I mean, it’s hard to imagine that if there’s 90% unemployment, but you’re seeing signs on some level that these populations are regenerating. I guess that’s the best word I’m coming up with.
Kevin: Yeah. I’ve had to think about that a lot. And there are moments when I’m there where I’m really, I don’t want to say without hope, but really feeling lost about how things ever get better. But the more I think about it, I think it might feel a bit – I don’t want to say crude – but a bit like a cumbersome journey or a bit of a messy journey. But I think you are seeing a big revival in being proud to be an Indian is a source of pride, celebrating your own language, celebrating your own traditions, speaking out.
I don’t agree with everything that’s happening up at Standing Rock with the pipeline protest, but there are big parts of it I love to see. I love to see the tribes of the Northern Plains coming together. I love to see them celebrating who they are publicly, and I love to see them having a voice and being willing to kind of shout it from the rooftop. And I think that those are steps that 50 years ago you might not, you wouldn’t have seen. And that in time, I think those steps can morph into economic independence.
There’s a lot of talk in the reservation communities about sovereignty, their tribal territory, status with the federal government. And I really encouraged my friends at Pine Ridge to rethink the definition of sovereignty a little bit. And not so much just about territorial treaty integrity, but economic sovereignty, returning to a time when the community creates the core of its own economic value. Because I think that’s where the self-worth and the true independence is going to come from. So I think there are seeds that I see, but I also think from the time I’ve spent there, that is not going to be a quick or a simple journey. It’s going to take a long time because the wounds are so deep, and the old patterns are so ingrained.
[43:43] Phyllis: Well, and I think so many of us think, well, that happened so long ago, we should be over that. And all a person has to do is really look at this as personal opinion here, editorializing. But you have to just look at your own life and how your own wounding from your own situation, how long it takes to resolve hurts and things that happened to you over the course of just your own lifetime.
But what I’ve always been struck with Native American culture, what I’m familiar with is the wisdom and the sharing that seems to be inherent, and the philosophy and caring for the earth and that we’re all together, the animals, and all of it just always felt so rich and integrated as opposed to the other, and that everything is separate. And I loved at the very beginning of the book, you share these Indian prayers, which I won’t go into right now, but they were just also delightful and really just realist of a relationship to life that has meaning that is internal. That’s just my own opinion in which I’m never short on giving.
Meanwhile, if you’ve been just listening to the program, my guest is Kevin Hancock. The book is, Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy horse. Kevin D as in David, I don’t know if that’s your middle name, but kevindhancock.com is the website. Please visit the website. You can learn more about Kevin and the book, and you can get the book there. And it’s certainly one that you will read more than once. It’s very rich in storytelling and history. And you took a lot of photos yourself in that book, it looks like.
Kevin: I did. So the book is a unique in quite a few ways possibly, but one is it contains 200 color photos. So the book chronicles, six trips I took back and forth, the first six from Maine to Pine Ridge. And in addition to the written story, I felt the pictures were really powerful, too. And so I ended up putting the pictures in color where they go with the story, which you don’t often see in a book like this. So there are multiple ways to kind of engage it.
[46:01] Phyllis: And the first thing usually a publisher will ask you is, how many pictures are there going to be? So it is a treat to be able to have a book with so many pictures that it says in this day and age of publishing, that doesn’t happen. They are beautiful. And yeah, but it’s a great book. Now, of course, this was your personal journey, your own evolution into yourself and as it continues. But is there a message you were trying to share or that emerged for you that’s something you really wanted to say to people? Or was it just some expression of your own experience?
Kevin: It was both. It was first and foremost a book I needed to write for me, and I was the biggest beneficiary of it, I felt, because I grew while I was writing. Writing is extremely therapeutic. And then when I finished, I felt there were lessons that might be of benefit or interest to others. And so it wasn’t a big leap to decide to share it. So it served both functions. And were you asking me to impart what those messages might be?
Phyllis: Well, yeah, I mean, there’s so much in the book. I mean, if there’s something in particular you want to draw readers attention to.
[47:23] Kevin: Just two quick things. And they’re both things you mentioned to me a few minutes ago when you were sharing your own feelings, which I loved.
The book, I think to me first, is about healing. The toughest question I sometimes get asked, and you can appreciate this because you’ve read it, is “What’s your book about?” Because it’s got so many layers to it. But I was at a talk I gave recently and a woman in the front row said, “Kevin, I know what your book’s about. Your book is about healing.” And it stopped me in my tracks when she said that, because I was like, my goodness, that’s right. The book, I was trying to heal, to find my voice on a literal, but more importantly a soul’s level, in a community that was trying to heal and find its own voice. And so the book is really about the universal subject of healing. Because everyone that lives a life is going to have wounds and going to require healing. And the real message of the book was that healing can ultimately only come by looking inward. That despite all the distractions, and the noise, and the external, and the injustice, and the past hurts, that the healing comes from within. And then finding the time and daring to sit still and look at yourself, versus focus on others, are the prerequisites for individual healing, which leads to tribal and global healing.
Phyllis: So what did you heal in you?
Kevin: Well, that’s a wonderful question that I think I’m still learning about every day and every year. But I would say overall it was finding my own voice. I grew up kind of well-known in our own little part of Maine here, tradition, a six-generation family company, with some kind of built-in expectations of how you are going to act and what you were going to do and how you were going to do it. And I think that while a lot of that was really wonderful and has been great for me, there was a part of my own voice that hadn’t found itself. And finding my identity outside of my public roles and daring to make that leap to just be who I want to be and do what I want to do, and think what I want to think, was just such a… it sounds so simple that it’s not a big deal, but it just did just like, I felt so much lighter. Like I usually feel like I float around now compared to what it felt like before.
Phyllis: Well, and you have a company to run and employees you’re accountable to. But you have another life now in terms of I’ve watched some of your videos on the internet and you’re out speaking, and you’re looked up to as a progressive in leadership now. Do you take that on, or is that just something that you’re kind of doing on the side, or how does that fit into your life at this point?
[50:57] Kevin: Yeah, I do. I do take it on in just like a humanity sharing way. I feel like I had a series of events happen to me for which I stumbled on at first, some learning and awakening, and how the integrated it. That’s the other thing. I haven’t seen a lot of people kind of walking between the two worlds where you’re really going deeply into the spiritual world, if you will, or the planet is one tribe, that kind of world. And then coming back into a corporate business climate like a lumber company in Maine, for goodness sake, and integrating it there. And I think that the two worlds need to be integrated. You’ve got that bigger, better, more go, go, go side of the planet. And then you’ve got that healing, connectivity, one tribe, spirituality looking inward side of the planet. And it’s like the yin and the yang or the male and the female to me, that the planet won’t be, doesn’t get whole without the two sides of who it is coming into balance. And it’s not about one side winning over the other or one side rejecting the other, which is the way it can often feel in politics or on TV. It’s about bringing it into balance. And I’ve just come to feel like I ended up in a position where I’m someone who has a chance to bridge, to integrate the two worlds.
Phyllis: That’s beautifully said. I love the way every word tasted. That you just sort of bring it back full circle. I mean, there is so much, we could talk for probably three hours because there’s so much content here. You know your message, it seems to be – like your reader said, it’s one of healing – but how one really integrates their own life together. You talk about the book itself and the subtitle ‘finding the center of the land of Crazy Horse’, and it’s really an inside job. It’s nothing you do outside of yourself, but we do have to find the balance. But what do you tell friends, family, what do you remind yourself? What is the practice we need to do to achieve just what you described?
[53:29] Kevin: So I think about that on two levels now. The leaders, official or unofficial of the home, the church, the government, the family, the organization, I think leaders need to calm down and quiet down and say last and do less and create more space for everyone else in a safe way. Because I do think leaders are, it’s a real thing. hey have are either given or earned or both, influence over others. And I think leaders have to lead differently in a way that helps everyone else grow and explore. And then on an individual level to me, it’s encouraging everyone to stop, and sit still, and listen to the whispers of their own soul, because they’re there. And if you do that consistently, you’ll hear some patterns or some themes that are speaking to you. And to face that path and just take a deep breath and start walking that way. And I think that being human is a soul’s experience. And we’ve each got a unique soul that is here to find its own voice. And the planet reaches peak performance or harmony when everyone searches for their own voice and is willing to live it. But that’s way easier said than done. And it can be really scary.
Phyllis: Yes, indeed. I mean, courage is a necessary ingredient of something you apparently have an abundance of. Well, the book is, Not For Sale: Finding Center in the Land of Crazy Horse. The author is Kevin Hancock, the website is kevindhancock.com. And what did we miss? Is there anything that needs to be said in our remaining moments here that we missed?
Kevin: I don’t think so. I mean, I could talk to you for another hour because I love your show and what you do. But I think we’ve really laid out the essence of the book, and I would just love to share the book, to share the ideas. It’s not a money-making thing for me, it’s an idea sharing thing. And I would love people to go to the website, check out the book, order the book. I sign all the orders placed on the website. You can get the book on Amazon, too, but I love it when people experience the book like you have, and I really appreciate you giving me a voice today on your show.
Phyllis: Of course. I’m just so glad that this was written, and I thought it couldn’t be more timely given a whole set of circumstances on the planet. But I guess one final question. What’s next? What are you up to next? Where are you? What are you doing? Are you writing more? Are you continuing to make your journeys back to Pine Ridge? What’s going on for you now?
[56:50] Kevin: I do. Yeah, I do keep going back to Pine Ridge. I was just there for the 10th time a couple of weeks ago. I continue to write and then see if that’s going to morph into another book to share or not, time will tell. And then I continue to work on integrating what I’m doing here. But overall, I’m just, I really flipped my life around. And people ask me how I market the book. And I’m like, well, I don’t, I just try to follow it. I just try to make time in my life for the people and the places that the book or the story speaks to, and to be available for those people. And it’s brought me to really fun, amazing, continued growth and learning. So the cool thing is, I don’t know where that’s gonna go. And I’ve learned to become mostly comfortable with that, following rather than trying to chart it all out.
Phyllis: Well, I certainly think there’s some more books to come from you, and it’s amazing. I don’t know if transformation is the right word, but to me you’re right on target. Love the book, love the work. And I think you have more. I think there’s a book on courage. I think he should be partnering with LinkedIn and Google and all those folks, to give him a heads up on what really works well.
Kevin, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you here. Thanks for taking the time to be here and continued success with all of your endeavors.
Kevin: Thanks so much, Phyllis. I’m really glad you found me. It’s a pleasure.
Phyllis: So my friends, the book is Not For Sale” Finding the Center in the Land of Crazy Horse. Visit the website, kevindhancock.com, or the book is on amazon.com. And as you can tell, there’s just so many layers and depth to it, such an important topic. I mean, we talk about spirituality a lot, every week, but we don’t talk about it in the specifics of certain cultures, especially Native American culture and what has been perpetrated on those people.
So when you talk about karma, which is much of my business, it plays a role in how life creates itself. And just wonderful to have a point of view like this and how you can turn it into a positive, dissipate that karma, bring it into balance. Alrighty. So please visit that website, kevindhancock.com or go to Amazon. You’ll love the book, Not For Sale.