What does radical self-reliance mean? How does it help you discover, exercise, and rely on your inner resources? In this episode of Reclamation, the Reclas: Tonya, Justin, and Neva share their thoughts on radical self-reliance and what it means to them. The Reclas talk about their experiences with it, including going to the Burning Man for three consecutive years. Tonya also shares how they grew from this experience as a family, with the phenomenal principles of the Burning Man. Join Tonya, Justin, and Neva in today’s episode to know more about radical self-reliance.

Hello everyone and welcome back to Reclamation. We are so glad you’re back with us here. We love having you and we love the reviews and the feedback and we thank you so much for being on this journey with us. We love what we do and we’re so excited to be back here with you.

Today’s show is all about radical self-reliance. Another layer of the Recla experience comes off here because everything that we do is around this dominion space, the personal responsibility space, and the lengths to which we’ll go to dissect this human experience. This is what we live for. We geek out on it. We’re a little bit odd over here at the Recla house, but it works for us. 

So this concept of radical self-reliance starts with the personal power concept from my first book, W.A.R., and then it built and as a family, where it really cohered was in 2017, we went to Burning Man. Justin and I had gotten tickets and we were going to go and at the last minute decided that of course, Neva would go with us and she was seven.

Bing.

Amazing how the universe works when you’re ready to receive. For me, it’s just that. It’s at the core of who you are, knowing that nobody’s coming to save you, how do you survive? Burning Man was a prime example of that. We figured, “Hey, we got this.” We had military experience, but we’d never done it with a seven-year-old. And it was quite the experience because the place that we camped at, really everybody was doing their own thing and we were this awkward family who had never Burned before and doing things out of the minivan, it was quite the experience. It was literally, what are you going to do? Get in the car and leave?

The hottest summer on record.

The hottest summer at Burning Man eve and what are you going to do? We agreed to the experience. We agreed to get through it. It was a phenomenal microcosm of life because nobody is coming to save you. When you have relationships and you build relationships as we did at Burning Man, which made our second year at Burning Man even better because we had established a relationship with a camp, things came up to the next level. And so it was a beautiful experience of complete radical self-reliance in all things. For me, that is the sole purpose of life I think is how do you function as an individual? That means in a relationship with others because you might not need a relationship in your own self-radical reliance. That may be something that you don’t require. Not everybody does. For me, it fills me, but it can only fill me because I had to pull back everything else that was preventing that from happening.

So a couple of points there. One, if you don’t know what Burning Man is, I realized we didn’t set that container well, but the point of this episode isn’t really about Burning Man, so you can go and look it up. It’s a festival. It’s a lot of fun. Neva, from your vantage point, your Dad and I had that military experience. We had the government agent experience, we had a lot of experiences and to some degree, we played the survival struggle game in our adult years. You come at it from a very different perspective. So a lot of what your Dad’s speaking to is peeling back the layers. Well, those aren’t necessarily layers that you had acquired. So for you.

Thank goodness.

We were busily trying to keep her from having to carry ours. So for you, what is that concept? Because as a kid, you are taught in most environments that your parents or some adult will always save you. So how did you internalize that?

You know I have a great story to follow up that question. It just happens to fall in perfectly. I think at the start of our first Burn, I wanted to set expectations for what I thought it was going to be like and so I remember we came across this kid’s Thunderdome, and it was basically this dome where a little, they had a big version…

Big Mad Max folks.

Yes. They had a giant version for adults where there was… What’s the word I’m looking for? They were suspended in the air and they were basically beating each other up in the air and it looked really fun. They made a mini version and unfortunately, the kids didn’t get to fly, but it’s cool and they gave us these, I don’t know what you call them, whatever.

Sticks.

Yeah, that word. I made a friend and she was three and I was seven or eight, and we started talking and stuff and we were about to go in to fight each other. She’s three years old and I’m towering over her.

Be honest. To be fair, she was five.

She was five.

Well, to me, I thought she was three. I was towering over her like two feet look at her and I go, “Okay, we’re not going to fully beat each other up.” She’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” And I’m like, “Okay. So we’ll just hit each other and that can stop.” We go in. This little five-year-old girl, now I realize she’s five, goes at me, she hits me in the throat quite a few times. I’m sitting there, I’m literally breaking down and this little girl is beating me up. People are staring at me and I don’t know what to do. I’m like, “Dude, we had a pact.” She’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to do that.”

At the last moment when she strikes my throat, just full-on, I looked down at her and I didn’t know what to do and I just froze. I left, I broke down crying and I was like, “Ella, this five-year-old old girl beat me up.” That’s because I set expectations for what it was going to be like. And that’s something you learn at Burning Man. If there’s a cool vehicle you want to go get on, you go get on it and you just go for the ride and just not setting those expectations is what makes a good experience and it will literally kick you in the butt if you’re not careful.

I love that. So along with self-reliance, she’s talking about this ability to, or the willingness, to say it’s okay to be in it for the experience because I think underneath that message, which was so beautifully illustrated, is this concept of control. When we try to control outcomes, then we don’t get there. When we control or manage ourselves as Justin was pointing out, that’s the secret. So if you take the brilliance in what both of them just said and lay them on top of each other, that is exactly what has to happen. We have to first be able to manage ourselves and then be willing to be in the experience of the flow of things. And so we’re going to take a quick break.

For those of you who’ve been listening to our podcasts through Reclamation, or any of our other shows on the Superpower Network or through our other channels, thank you, thank you, thank you so much and we appreciate you sharing those. That’s step one on the path to unlocking your superpowers. If you’ve been listening to those for a while now, then we urge you to go into step two. I know a lot of you are in step two. You’re loving the I Am Series. You’re watching those videos each week. We’re hearing from you and we know it’s working in your lives. That’s where you get to learn with us and implement some of these techniques into your own existence to have a better relationship with your family, to have a better impact on the world. Those of you who’ve been in the I Am series, go ahead and look at step three.

I want to skip ahead and say those of you who are in step three in our programs, kudos to you, shout out to you. We know how hard you’re working. We see you diving in. We see you getting real with yourselves. We see you peeling back those layers and that is a courageous walk and so we celebrate you. For those of you who are in step two, that’s what you have to look for. That community of people who are really truly walking this walk, lighting up their paths, and then sharing that with others. It is just a brilliant sight to behold, so thank you. All of you’ve had the courage to honor us with your trust on that walk. Go to superpowerexperts.com if you want to know more about that experience. We’re going to cut to a break. We’re talking today about radical self-reliance and we’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.