November 20, 2021 • 43 mins
Bronkar Lee, driving force and instrumental human, shares his insights and outlook on living a "fabtastic" life. www.instrumentalhumans.com
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Bronkar Lee (00:01):
I'm putting this puppy out
Intro Voice (00:07):
Welcome to a place where we're thinking together
and thinking deeper about who weare. In this world, welcome to
the Billosophy podcast. Hello,and welcome to Billosophy 101. I
am William Forchion. And today,my guest is
Bronkar Lee (00:27):
I am Bronkar Lee, I am a instrumental humans coach
and a keynote speaker and amusic producer.
William Forchion (00:36):
Okay, I'm just gonna say Bronkar and I go back
a little bit. And I will saythat Bronkar... That list could
keep on going for the whole 20,30 minutes that we have. Because
Bronkar Just seems to do it all.
He was dropped on this planetwith skills. And then he took
those skills and turned theminto mastery. So, Bronkar, tell
(00:56):
me a little bit about whatyou're doing right now.
Unknown (01:02):
Oh, man. Well, right now I'm talking to my man,
Billosophy. So right now I'mreally focused on. So I'm the
president and founder ofinstrumental humans, and
instrumental humans is a programwe, well, consist of multiple
programs, we do a lot ofcoaching, we do one to one
stuff, we do group coaching, wedo corporate trainings, all
(01:24):
types of things. And really, ourmission is to amplify your
health, joy and power, so thatyou can put a vibrant, energetic
signature on life. And the waywe do that is we really focus on
the most valuable resource thatwe all have, which is our
energy, and how do we manage ourenergetic bandwidth, and extend
(01:44):
it into the things that reallymatter to us. And there's three
main pillars to our program,which is learning develop, then
it's apply and integrate, andthen sustain and maintain. And
so under all three of thosepillars, we choose how much of
our energetic bandwidth weextend into each of those, and
they all work in a symbiotic wayto ultimately make us
(02:08):
instrumental humans andinstruments of influence in the
world.
William Forchion (02:11):
He and for the, the podcast audience here,
you're not seeing the imagethat's, that's before me, I get
Bronkar right here in themiddle. And there's a couple of
guitars, there's condos, there'ssaxophones, there's a mixer over
there, there's, I mean, you'vegot a lot of instruments laid
(02:34):
out behind you before me. Ininstrumental humans, how much of
that is about the instruments?
Bronkar Lee (02:43):
Well, we use, I use music as a metaphor for the
coaching. So basically, myrelationship to music as that
music as a tool, and I use thattool to enhance the quality of
an experience that we'recreating with our, you know,
participants, attendees, andeverything I use on the music
(03:05):
side has a very specificpurpose. It's all consciously
engineered to open a new doorwayof possibilities inside of the
thinking of a participant, it'sused to, to tell a story or to
compliment, it's all usedspecifically. So I might use,
you know, hand pans and nativeflutes and some soothing sound
(03:30):
sounds like that to set the tonefor a visualization or a
meditation session that we do.
Or I might use, you know, somesaxophone and drums to like rev
up the energy and get usenergized, and especially in the
virtual medium that many peopleare using these days. It's it's
really, I think people arefiguring out and learning how to
(03:52):
sleep with their eyes open whilestaring at the screen. So so so
it's good to use some of thesetools to shake up the energy and
get us in that. That mindset ofexcitement of growth and
receptivity,
William Forchion (04:08):
Your career...
How did you get from where youwere to where you are? I know of
your career you had you had goneto the clown Conservatory in San
Francisco. I know you went offto Switzerland, and you come
from a drumming background. Howdo you get from that you were
(04:28):
drumming in bands or streetdrumming? You were doing all
kinds of stuff. How do you getfrom there to where you are?
Bronkar Lee (04:39):
Well, the first thing is there's not a direct
path. And my philosophy is thatlife happens in the detours. And
so it's a series of detours thathave led me to this moment right
here. It is a plethora ofincredible mentors like
yourself, who inspired me to getinto the circus arts and and
(05:00):
explore the possibilities oftheater and character work and
all of that realm, which, youknow, led me down a one specific
detour that, you know, helped meto cultivate my awareness of,
you know how to be with anaudience how to create an
emotional connection, when it'sone person on stage and 1000
people in the audience. And so,you know, that detour was was
(05:24):
one profound experience that Ihad. And then I pulled those
skills that I learned andacquired on that path into my
tool belt into my backpack whenI'm on my hero's journey, as
everybody's on their own uniquehero's journey in their lives.
And then, you know, I'm overhere doing doing music and
touring with bands and learningall of these skills over here,
(05:47):
how to how to collaborate withother people how to perform with
other people, and then I'mpulling that in my backpack, and
then there's the, you know, thecoaching, and the keynote
speaking, and all of thoseskills just come in. And so it
all kind of now is synthesizedtogether to create the current
version of me.
William Forchion (06:06):
Okay. And the current version of you, I mean,
I, every time I hear more aboutyou, I get my mind blows,
because like, this guy doeseverything. And, and I don't
mean that in a demeaning way. Imean, this guy does everything
at an amazing level. And you doyou your mastery of things. How
(06:32):
is it that you pass? I mean, youhave? How can you possibly get
to where you are? Because youhave mastered so many things,
when I hear you play the sax, orI see you juggle, or I hear you
play the hand pans, yourbeatboxing everything is
stellar. And I know from my fromwhere I come from, that takes
(06:54):
practice. How do you get there?
Bronkar Lee (06:58):
Yeah, does well, there's so there's a couple of a
couple of things I want to shareon that. There's, there's one
thing that is more of aphilosophical answer, which is
that everything in life ismusic. And everything is is is
rhythm. Everything in life has atempo, and a cadence. And And
(07:22):
now every person and peoplelistening to this podcast or
consuming this content, may notconsider themselves to be a
musician, which is true. Not allof us are trained musicians. But
every single person, every humanon the planet, is undeniably
hard wired. For rhythm andmusic. We are all musical
(07:43):
beings. In other words, ourheartbeat and rhythm we breathe
in rhythm, we converse inrhythm, we drive a car in
rhythm, text, email, we dobusiness in rhythm, we keep time
in rhythm, everything in ourlives has a rhythm to it. It's
just cultivating an awareness ofthat, and how timing plays a
(08:04):
huge role and has a hugeinfluence on us. And how we show
up, when do we show up iseverything right at what we do
matters for sure how we do itmatters. And also when we do it
matters. And so the tempo oflife that having a an awareness
of just the fact that life is asymphony, and life is music,
(08:26):
that's a huge philosophy that Ithat I unpack personally, in my
coaching style, instrumentalhumans, but also just for me,
with all the mentors, I've hadan amazing influences I've had
on me. Now the other element isinside of kind of the the more
nuts and bolts less, you know,less abstract and woowoo as the
(08:48):
as the musical terms go, butmore concrete, which is the
skill acquisition side of thingsthat how we actually learn and
how can we accelerate ourlearning tempos, and acquire
skills at a rapid pace. Andultimately, my belief is that
the more skills we have, themore tools we have at our
(09:09):
disposal, the greater our impactis amplified in the world. When
we have the tools to build ahouse, we can build a house,
you're right and the knowledgeto use them obviously, when we
can play, you know, instrumentswe can we can Serenade, right?
When we have communicationtools, we can build rapport, we
can be instruments of influencein the world. And so my belief
(09:32):
is that the more and the moreskills that we acquire, the
greater our impact can be on onthe world. And so I actually
wrote my first book, it's calledBold achievement method. And
that book really unpacks alearning methodology that that I
created with my amazing wife andsanity goddess Cindy. We wrote
(09:54):
together with the support ofplethora of amazing humans,
including yourself, you are onthat on that bogie train. And
yeah, this was several, almostfive years ago now. But but so
that really unpacks amethodology that gives us kind
of this magical algorithm toaccelerate our learning tempos
(10:14):
and life. And so that's a that'sa big part of the nuts and bolts
side of learning and developingourselves.
William Forchion (10:21):
You mentioned there are learning tempos and
life. And there's a thing thatpopped up a little while ago.
Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, that popped up and went,absolutely. smashed. It was a
(10:51):
viral video that happened. Tellme a little bit about that.
Because there's some learninghappening right there.
Bronkar Lee (11:01):
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Thanks, brother. Well, thatvideo, obviously, that was me
and my son, Elijah, when he was19 months old. That was an
accidental viral video. And itwas, you know, it just kind of
really took off it actuallystill going viral. Now. It's
got, I don't know, 250 millionviews or something. It's crazy,
right? It keeps gettinguploaded. We're like, what the
(11:22):
heck, man? You know, and it'sfunny because we didn't try to
make a video a viral video,we've, you know, poured our
heart and souls into so manyother videos that, you know, got
a couple 100 views. And then allof a sudden this thing just went
went Ultra viral. And we'relike, what the heck? What have
we been doing wrong? Oh, yeah.
It's, it's the kid we got. Youknow, that's, that's us just
(11:44):
connecting and I think that'sthe the pureness of music have
rhythm, and intentionalityunderneath it to simply have a
connection moment with anotherbeing. And that is, that was
obviously before Elijah couldspeak, you know, English, which
is our native language. Beforehe could speak English, he could
speak rhythm, music, and if youlisten to babies talking, they
(12:09):
babble they hum, humming is sopowerful, before they can really
start to connect and, andformulate words by by putting
consonants and vowels together,they are humming and they are
singing and beatboxing andbabbling. And so to me music and
be boxing specifically, butsinging and using our voices as
(12:33):
instruments is some of the most,you know, primitive
communication available to us.
And quite frankly, all humansare entitled to tap into that
you don't have to get a degreein music, you don't have to have
some fancy academic tell youthat you are good enough that
you are validated to be a quoteunquote musician, you are, you
(12:55):
are entitled No person is notentitled to tapping into to the
rhythm.
William Forchion (13:05):
So the the music and the rhythm thing,
there's another thing you do youdo a lot of, you're now doing
meditations. And you sent me onea few weeks ago, that was just
really just apropos for the timethat we that I needed it. I
asked me for a little somethingand you gave it to me. The other
thing you have the hand pans?
(14:16):
Tell me a little bit about thehand pan.
Bronkar Lee (14:18):
Well, first of all, just to address. So yeah, it was
it was a very, very naturalinstrument for me to pick up.
The reason is because again, andthis is back to the learning and
development that I'm not, youknow, special in this realm. It
just happens that I'vecultivated a previous skill set
that is transferable into thisinstrument. And this applies to
(14:42):
all people, all people anybodylistening to this. One way that
we can accelerate our learningtempo is to find the
transferability and skills thatwe've previously acquired, and
how can we take the knowledgethe wisdom that we've already
cultivated and then put it intoThis next iteration of ourselves
(15:02):
and morph into that nextiteration, leverage what we've
already got. And so for me, thehandpan was that it was
basically, you know, handpan isliterally like made of, of
stainless steel. And so and youplay it kind of like a drum. So
it's to me, it's like a home ora Jim Bay, a piece of hand
(15:22):
percussion, combined with asaxophone. And they come
together to synthesize and makethis instrument. So for me, I've
training in both instruments.
And so it was like, all of asudden, it was the marriage of
those two things comingtogether. So I was able to
transfer all of my knowledge ofbeats and the mastery of the
mechanical body with moving myhands and fingers in a way to
(15:43):
drum. And then also my sense ofphrasing and melody, from
saxophone. And so all of thatjust went straight into the
handpan. And so that's why itwas such an effortless
transition for me was I'mbringing all of this, all of
these skills with me, and thenallowing myself to then lean in
and create a relationship withthis new apparatus.
William Forchion (16:07):
But then you take it to the next level, when
you start looping it and youstart throwing in other
instruments, and you start to dosome multiplayer tracks and
things like that. That's not Imean, to me, I like I get it.
But it's not intuitive to me.
And so just did that just cometo you. Did you feel that right
off the bat? Or where does thatcome from?
Bronkar Lee (16:28):
Yeah, again, it's a synthesis of multiple skills. So
I've been, you know, I've beenlooping for years, you know,
close to 20 years at this point.
So doing live looping with, youknow, guitar, beatboxing
different instruments. And somoving into pulling the hand
pan, and there was was a naturalprogression. Again, I call this
recombinant innovation. And therecombinant innovation is where
(16:50):
we're combining multiple things,skills or tools that we've
acquired, and putting themtogether synthesizing them
together to create a superskill. And we all do that on
different levels, consciously orunconsciously. But there's a lot
of examples I could give rightnow, just for the sake of the
interview, I'll just stick withwith this one, where I'm taking,
you know, handpan, I'm takingbeatboxing I'm taking various
(17:14):
percussion, instruments, bass,whatever there is that I've got.
And then I'm blending it alltogether to create that, that
real time band or symphony,that's basically putting those
different skills together bypartnering with technology,
which is a big thing for peoplenow, especially, you know, how
are we embracing? What is moderntechnology? Because at one
(17:35):
point, the the African Jim Baydrum was modern technology,
right? Currently, it's notmodern technology. But what is
modern technology, okay? virtualplatforms and, and microphones
and cameras, and being able tocapture this interview our
energy and our connection, andthen be able to, you know, share
it with, with with people in theworld. And so the same thing
(17:57):
with the with the live looping,it's like, okay, I'm taking a
primitive instrument, orprimitive from our perspective
now, like a Jim Bay, or thehuman voice, and I'm blending
those things together with thiscool technology that allows me
to record in real time, and thenput it all together for this,
this multi dimensional real lifeexperience. I call it the
(18:21):
Fantasia effect. Because as youknow, I worked for Disney for a
long time as well on theircruise ships. And, and so it's
all about blending the visualwith the audio, and then you get
that that Fantasia effect whereyou can see it, and you can feel
it and hear it.
William Forchion (18:38):
Right, right.
Wow. Wow. So also as a as acreative, most creatives are
innovators. Where do you? Whereare you going next?
Bronkar Lee (18:50):
Yeah, man, I'm on a detour right now. Honestly, you
know, my main focus right now iscoaching. You know, we're
really, you know, been beefingup our coaching programs that,
you know, instrumental humans.
And so we've got some leadershipprograms that we do instruments
of influence. We've gotindividual coaching that we do,
and then group coaching that wedo with, you know,
(19:12):
entrepreneurs, solopreneurscreatives, I've been working
with, you know, beenfacilitating things like this
for, you know, 15 plus years.
But now it's become the focalpoint of our of our business.
And so and so now, it really is,how can I take everything that
I've learned, and then put ittogether to create really
(19:35):
valuable curriculum that's goingto enhance the quality of other
people's lives? I look at it asI'm giving a gift to each
listener or each audiencemember. And at the end of the
experience, I think about what'sgoing to be inside of that gift
when they open it up. And foryears as a performer and not to
(19:57):
say that all performers are likethis, but for me as a performer
A lot of my career was based onI want to be, I want to be good
enough, talented enough, amazingenough to get the validation
from the audience. Right, right.
And one day I something flipped,and I was just I changed. And I
was like, Oh, I'm not reallyhere for that I'm really here to
(20:18):
help to heal, to inspire toempower. And once that became my
beacon, my North Star thatchanged everything, suddenly, I
wasn't paralyzed by perfectionby needing to be absolutely
perfect. And to deliver anoutstanding show of world class
performance. Suddenly, it waslike, Hey, I'm here to inspire
(20:39):
people. And I started looking atthat gift. And when people open
that gift up what's inside, andI didn't want there to be a
picture of me in there. I didn'twant people leaving, saying,
Wow, that guy was so talented.
Wow, he was so amazing. I didn'twant that I wanted them to open
it up and say, Oh, here's atool, there's a little tool that
(21:01):
I can use for myself. That'sright, I remember he said that
thing, and it inspired me. Andnow I'm going to go build this
cool thing, where I can, youknow, connect more deeply with
my family, or I can serve myclients in a greater way. Or I
can, you know, be aninstrumental, you know,
influence in the world andamplify my impact. And suddenly,
they have a tool in theresomething in there for them. And
(21:24):
then they have that gift. And sowhen that changed for me, that
was everything. And so now everyopportunity I had to present or
to speak, or to perform, it isalways about giving that gift.
And I found that through thecoaching programs and that work,
we could do deeper dive andcreate real transformation and
people and support them to put amore vibrant energetic signature
(21:46):
on their lives.
William Forchion (21:48):
Know what you just laid out there. What you
just said in that moment, youhad just there was I was like,
Okay, well jump on that notethat that you had you just
dropped out way too muchinformation for me to be able to
rebut or respond in any way thatis humanly possible. Because
(22:10):
there's so much there and inwhat gifts do you have? What
gifts do you bring to this asopposed to what can I take away?
And that's because as aperformer having performed for
so long? That's was that can becrippling? What What am I? How
am I gonna? What am I gonnatake? What are they gonna give
me? As opposed to what do I haveto give them and then you'll
(22:31):
hear from me a lot about justshowing up being there.
Sometimes the gift is you showedup when they needed you. That's
really great that you're this iswhat you're doing now. Because I
know that really resonates withme. That just seems to me. And
and I was I was going to ask youa question about how you're
navigating through the pandemicwith a lot of with not a lot of
(22:53):
performance opportunities. Butwhat I want to share right now
is something I was inspired byyou many years ago and wanted to
do something. Coffee, coffee,coffee, and early in the
(23:14):
morning, it fills me and gets mego crazy know that. For those of
(23:49):
you who are listening, a fewyears back, Brian Carr and his
lovely, brave partner wife,Cindy lived in Oakland,
California, and I just wanted todo something with them. They are
such gems and such beautifulpeople with such wonderful
talents and gifts. And so I wasworking to produce a television
(24:11):
show with them. And this was forthe pilot teaser that we shot
for that. And every step of theway. Braun Carr and Cindy just
created magic, and also the factthat they trusted me and my
vision to work on this project.
Yeah, which as the way things goin the world of art, sometimes
(24:31):
you create things and they don'tdo what you expect them to do.
But they open doors to otherthings. And you're talking about
detours. I used to always say mylife was made up of a bunch of
mistakes. And I like detoursbetter because by saying it was
a mistake is saying that thatthe all the work that I did up
into that that shift happenedwas for not that turn that I
(24:51):
made that right turn that I madeall the steps getting to that
right turn. We're empowering Toget to the right turn, just led
me on a path that I didn't seeat the time. So can you speak to
that?
Bronkar Lee (25:08):
Yeah, well, first of all, I, you know, I think,
you know, when we frame it assomething like, you know, it's a
series of mistakes, you know,that's, that's a certain type of
language. And that to me is justlife, you know, the, the
mistakes or the mistakes. Andthen ultimately, I believe the
(25:28):
what really matters is how wechoose to react to those, how we
choose to learn from those, whatwe choose to do with those
opportunities of the mistakes.
And it comes into really havingan awareness that life is full
of moments. And, you know, oneof my one of my mentors, Brian
Hoyer always said, highinvolvement, low attachment. And
(25:50):
so it's all about being engagedin the process, but not, you
know, attached to that outcome.
And so I find the creativeprocess is very similar to that.
And, you know, for, for me,actually, and, you know, we were
just today having a reflectionmoment, on a project that we had
(26:10):
done, or over the last maybe twoand a half, three years, and it
just didn't pan out, like wethought it was going to. And so
what we, what we did was weanalyzed it, from not being
emotionally attached to it, butkind of looking out, or up and
down on it or out from it, youknow, and saying, alright, what,
(26:30):
what, what, what worked aboutthat, and then how can we
improve? And so by asking thesequestions, you know, in life,
we're going to get the answersto the questions we ask. So the
key and my coaching style is,how do I, how do I influence or
guide or steer participants,attendees to ask better
(26:53):
questions, to ask the questionsthey're really seeking the
answers for. And so that'sreally unlocking it from within.
And so when we can share thatperspective, then they can start
to look at it from inside ofthemselves, you know, in a
different way. And I'll makethis parallel two really quick,
is that this comes back to eventechnical instruments, like
(27:13):
aside from these massivecreative endeavors of producing
shows, or, you know, movies, orwhatever it is, it's like, just
learning to play the saxophone,which is, which is a technical
skill. It's just me and theapparatus. There's nobody
watching, there's nothing else.
Ultimately, what happens whenyou play a saxophone is every
single person, the first thingyou do is you create this
(27:34):
horrible, honking squeakingsound on the horn, that sounds
like there's a goose dyingoutside, you know, and it's just
a horrible sound. And so whatyou do is you get over that
fear, because it scares you, andyou're like, Oh, my God, I'm not
scared that this hog is gonnahurt me, I'm scared that
somebody is gonna hear mesqueaking, and they're gonna
(27:55):
judge me on this. So what you dois you got to get out of your
own way, right, you got torewrite the narrative of the
internal dialogue, you got toget out of your own way. And you
got to give yourself permissionto fail forward, or to lean into
that and to embrace that squeakzone, right, and then
ultimately, the sound of asaxophone for anybody. Whenever
the next time you listen tosmooth jazz, or you're on hold
(28:17):
on that call or your departmentstore, and you hear that smooth
jazz, just say to yourself, Iknow that that smooth saxophone
ain't nothing but a refinedsqueak. Thing is the process of
refining the squeak. It'sharnessing it, embracing it and
then channeled into somethingbeautiful, and that's everything
in life.
William Forchion (28:42):
I'm going to take a moment right now and do a
little bit of a plug honeybadgerI'm using their protein drink in
my my smoothies in the morning.
I'm using their vegan onebecause I've actually went vegan
last year and was looking forways to enhance my diet because
the best way to do anythinginnovative is to take care of
yourself. So my nutrition is areally big thing. Also, in the
(29:03):
mornings on my toast, I reallylike side Hill Farms, Maple
Apple drizzle. And if you'repurchasing from these folks
drinkhoneybadger.com orsidehillfarmsjam.com Just let
them know that you heard aboutthem on Billosophy. Alrighty,
this is not... believe it ornot, they're not sponsors. I
(29:24):
like their product. And I thinkthat people should know about
it. That's why I'm putting themup here. They have not paid me
to put anything here. I justwant folks to know that there's
some really great stuff outthere and there's some really
great people that are making it.
Just like all the guests that Ihave on my show. Like today I
(29:45):
have Bronkar. I want folks...
the reason why I do this isbecause I believe in these
products and I believe in thesefolks, and I'm going to keep
talking with Bronkar who is justan amazing human being who is
creating just a healingvibration in the universe. And,
and I, I can't shout out hisname enough, I met this
(30:08):
gentleman... oh my goodnessyears ago probably 2003 Maybe.
And I was like this guy issomething he just had a an
energy about him and I justwanted to be around him just
wanted to hang with them and hetook a class from me a movement
(30:29):
class and then called me up andsaid, Hey, how can I do this for
a living? And I'm so happy tointroduce him some folks and
give him references and the resthe did on his own because he is
a magnificent person. And and soI'm so excited to be
reconnecting with him yet again,here on philosophy 101. And
before we move further Bronkarhow can people find your stuff?
(30:55):
Your your music, yourmeditations, you had a
meditation app out a bit a whileback, I saw it I'm downloaded.
How can people get get ahold ofyour healing vibrations? Your
energetic vibrations, yourinspirational vibrations are
your coaching and your yourteaching?
Unknown (31:15):
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for Thanks for asking, buddy. So
instrumentalhumans.com is thewebsite that's
instrumentalhumans.com And thathas information on, you know,
keynoting, coaching, mindset,music, all of the all of the
above. So yeah, there's a lot ofa lot of ways we are really into
(31:35):
building community and creatingspace where people can, you
know, have legitimatetransformations. And so that's,
that's, that's really the bigmission. And I just, you know,
I'm so lucky and fortunate tohave amazing people around me
that are just so talented andawesome. And, you know, building
other building in other waysthat I'm not, you know, skilled
(31:58):
at and, you know, so yeah.
William Forchion (32:01):
And, and you also have a YouTube channel that
people can get to check out someof your videos and hear some of
your stuff.
Bronkar Lee (32:07):
And I do I do have some video content there. The
best way for people isinstrumental humans calm
instrumental humans, okay. Yeah,cuz that's kind of our central,
our central hub. And so weactually have some other
platforms that we're hostingvideos on primarily hosting our
videos on. So we have, you know,some different membership sites,
we have some different, youknow, all kinds of different
(32:29):
things that we're doing with thecurrent videos, you know, for
that, so that's the best thebest place to,
William Forchion (32:35):
okay, if you could go back to yourself, your
younger self, and give them someadvice about the life that you
have lived. Now, if you can goback to your younger self, what
would you say, to your youngerself,
Bronkar Lee (32:48):
I would say do exactly what you're doing. Do
exactly what you're doing. It'sit's a process. So you know,
whether there's things that I'mproud of, or not proud of.
There's thing you know,preferred choices, less
preferred choices, all of thosehave said led me to the moment I
am, you know, when one exampleis, you know, my, and I work
(33:10):
really hard, you know, many ofus have deeply encoded patterns,
and some conscious, someunconscious, II. And for me, I
didn't know my biologicalfather, until I met him when I
was 28 years old. And so for 28years, I had a void in me that I
was missing something that I wasthat I was empty somehow that I
(33:34):
and I had a victim mentality,why did this happen to me? Why
isn't this person here, and Iand I had this, this
frustration, this anger, thisaggression, this, this
emptiness, and, and then when Ifinally met him, and I've
cultivated a relationship withhim since then, and now I'm in
my 40s. And, you know, we are intouch and stuff like that. But
(33:56):
now, the way that I show up andparent for my two boys, is I am
so engaged. And I believe that alarge reason that I'm so engaged
with them, is because I didn'thave that in my life. And so my
mission is now to really show upand be a rockstar daddy. And so,
(34:20):
if I hadn't gone through that,that, you know, that particular
you know, issue pattern,whatever you want to call it
struggles, strife, adversity,whatever it is, then it wouldn't
have it wouldn't have instilledthings in me that now I'm
extremely passionate about. Andso I think that maybe these you
(34:40):
know, there are less preferredexperiences in life. There are
there are mistakes and mistakes,and they're also just epic
failures. And I've had somemassive failures. But those
failures have almost every timebeen the greatest learning
lessons of my life. And ifanybody listening right now can
reflect on some of yourfailures. like those are
(35:01):
probably those failures haveprobably become fuel for your
fire. Right? And and whether youcould have avoided those or not
whether you had advice orsupport or whatever, it's like,
you know that that moment orthose moments where that was
that was learning that was reallife learning. And that has made
you who you are today,
William Forchion (35:22):
right? Well, I say, you know, some of the
Billosophy that I used to laydown a lot and still do lay down
is that there is no failure. Ifyou can learn from it, it's not
a failure. So if you live pastthat moment, you haven't failed,
because you've learned from it,whether you learned not to do it
again, or to do it differently,or to do it, something you if
you gain something from it, thenit's not a failure, the failure,
(35:44):
if you pass on, and you cannotadd any more information to it,
then maybe it's considered afailure. But you won't consider
that because you're not here todo that. So there isn't any
failure. And I really likedthat. The other thing you
mentioned about is some of thethe trauma of not having that,
that dad until you're 28,knowing that data to your 28.
(36:05):
And there's many of us who arewalking around with traumas, and
they're not the big, you know,it's not like the big car
accident or the buildingexplosion, there are micro
traumas that we carry in ourlives. And the others, that you
mentioned about what your theway your parents and your
children, traumas that arepassed down by our ancestors,
(36:27):
with our parents had situationsin their lives, and raised us in
a way that they wanted, whichwas a result of that trauma. And
their parents did that withthem. And that gets passed on.
And there's a systemic or afamilial way of passing it down.
And one of the things I'mworking on now, and this is
something that's come to me inthe past few months, is how to
(36:47):
release those traumas, identifyand release some of those
traumas, then it may be not evenreleasing, but identifying if
you could identify, man, Ireally missed that father figure
in my life, and start to processthat and go beyond that, oh, my
feelings are hurt to otherthings, we can get to some
(37:07):
really great growth as humans inthat process. And I don't mean
just growing upwards andoutwards, I mean, just filling
ourselves. If there's a pocket avoid in us, then we're not
filling that void. And if we canremove some of those voids and
fill our fill ourselves, whatcan we, you know, imagine who we
are, who we become, not justwhat we can do, but who we can
(37:30):
become? So that was I know thatthat a question. That's just
just hearing you say that justreally inspired me to speak to
on that.
Unknown (37:39):
Well to parlay on that.
That's it. That's it. That's agreat, great point, rather, um,
you know, we start to questionthe things. So we identify it
first, as you mentioned, so weidentify, we have that
awareness. And then we start toquestion it, we start to say,
well, what is this all about?
Why is that thing there? What isit trying to say to me? And now
how can I work with it? Right?
How can I use that becausepossibly, that's a tool. Like in
(38:01):
my case, you know, now I havethe ability to connect with
other people, I've had some ofthe most powerful conversations
in my life, by sharing my storyand my situation with other
people. And suddenly they'veopened up and we've done some
real powerful work andreleasing, you know, some of
that pent up energy around thosethings. And it's, it's, it's
(38:23):
then becomes a, a tool that wecan use as a bridge of
relatability with other people,and a teaching, a teaching tool
for us to convey, you know, aconcept or an idea to share that
vulnerability that then buildstrust builds rapport,
William Forchion (38:42):
ie, okay, if you could just drop a wisdom
bomb right here, bam, you have amoment to just lay it out. What
would that wisdom bomb be forall the listeners out there that
just, you know whether they cantake with him for this moment,
or for the day for the week forthe month was for the rest of
their lives? What was the bomb?
Do you have for our velocity oneon one listening audience,
Unknown (39:03):
no pressure, no pressure, I would say one of the
biggest philosophies that weteach instrumental humans is
really looking at our, you know,our bodies, and our minds, as
instruments. And when we canstart to have an awareness that
we are instruments ourselves,our mechanical body, our, our
(39:26):
minds, our emotions, our energy.
And we start to have anawareness that we have this
internal Symphony here, and tolook at ourselves as being the
conductor of our symphony. Andhow are we choosing to keep our
symphony in tune our internalsymphony in tune? And as we can
focus on the self, and selfcare, self preservation,
(39:47):
maintaining all of our Symphonyinside of us all our
instruments, then we can show upand make beautiful music with
the world. We can connect withthe people we love. We can, you
know, have our impact amplifiedin the world, we can lead in a
greater way parents in a greaterway, do business in a greater
way, whatever that may looklike. But it's starting with
(40:10):
that with that self, and reallylooking inwardly, to
recalibrating our internalinstruments first. And the same
thing happens just to deepenthat metaphor, is if you think
about if you've ever seen asymphony before, the first thing
that happens is the, you know,there's a bass note played, and
then the lead violinist comesout, generally, she or he plays
(40:32):
a single note on the leadviolin. And what they're doing
is retuning their instrument.
And then the people around sheor he start to retune their
instrument, but what they'redoing is they're they're
retuning their individualinstruments first, before they
come together to play. And theydo this every single time they
(40:52):
play. These are professionalsthat have been playing every day
of their lives for the last 20years. And they do this every
single time they sit down toplay. So the question for the
listeners now is how often areyou retuning your internal
instruments? And are you in tunefor peak performance? Are you
running sharp, intense,overwhelmed and stressed? Are
(41:15):
you running flat? decompresseduninspired low energy, we got to
hit that sweet spot get thatGoldilocks effect place that
Goldilocks locatiom right therethat to be right in tune so that
we can broadcast that kind ofenergy and vibration to the
world.
William Forchion (41:34):
Man, there you go. Bam. Okay. Okay. Wow. That
is wow. Simplifying it that way,is brilliant. And, and I imagine
that folks who engage inInstrumental Instrumental humans
(41:55):
get a lot more of that thosewisdom bombs to work with. Or
tools to work with?
Bronkar Lee (42:00):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
It's always it's alwayshappening.
William Forchion (42:05):
Wow, I gotta gotta sign up.
Bronkar Lee (42:09):
Come on over, man, you got to get up in here, bro.
William Forchion (42:11):
Oh, I Do I Do yo Bronkar, it has been a
pleasure to just sit with you.
Again. It's just a pleasure tobe in your presence. It's a
pleasure to just to have yourenergy and engage in this this
medium. And I'm so glad that youcould be on the Billosophy101
podcast. And I hope that I hopewe can talk again sometime in
(42:33):
the near future.
Bronkar Lee (42:36):
Yeah, brother, thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be here. Andthank you for anybody that
listened today. Thanks forshowing up and giving your your
energy and your time, which areyour most valuable resources. So
hopefully you got some value.
William Forchion (42:52):
Definitely, I definitely do. And for my
podcast listeners, as I end eachand every episode, please move
forward with passion andpurpose. And remember, each
morning and each night say toyourself look into the mirror
and know I am enough. Let me trywith me right now. I am you
(43:18):
know, alrighty. Be well. Staywonderful. Have a great day.
Intro Voice (43:32):
Thank you for listening to the Billosophy
podcast. Keep checking in as wewill be regularly releasing new
episodes.
I'm putting this puppy out
Intro Voice (00:07):
Welcome to a place where we're thinking together
and thinking deeper about who weare. In this world, welcome to
the Billosophy podcast. Hello,and welcome to Billosophy 101. I
am William Forchion. And today,my guest is
Bronkar Lee (00:27):
I am Bronkar Lee, I am a instrumental humans coach
and a keynote speaker and amusic producer.
William Forchion (00:36):
Okay, I'm just gonna say Bronkar and I go back
a little bit. And I will saythat Bronkar... That list could
keep on going for the whole 20,30 minutes that we have. Because
Bronkar Just seems to do it all.
He was dropped on this planetwith skills. And then he took
those skills and turned theminto mastery. So, Bronkar, tell
(00:56):
me a little bit about whatyou're doing right now.
Unknown (01:02):
Oh, man. Well, right now I'm talking to my man,
Billosophy. So right now I'mreally focused on. So I'm the
president and founder ofinstrumental humans, and
instrumental humans is a programwe, well, consist of multiple
programs, we do a lot ofcoaching, we do one to one
stuff, we do group coaching, wedo corporate trainings, all
(01:24):
types of things. And really, ourmission is to amplify your
health, joy and power, so thatyou can put a vibrant, energetic
signature on life. And the waywe do that is we really focus on
the most valuable resource thatwe all have, which is our
energy, and how do we manage ourenergetic bandwidth, and extend
(01:44):
it into the things that reallymatter to us. And there's three
main pillars to our program,which is learning develop, then
it's apply and integrate, andthen sustain and maintain. And
so under all three of thosepillars, we choose how much of
our energetic bandwidth weextend into each of those, and
they all work in a symbiotic wayto ultimately make us
(02:08):
instrumental humans andinstruments of influence in the
world.
William Forchion (02:11):
He and for the, the podcast audience here,
you're not seeing the imagethat's, that's before me, I get
Bronkar right here in themiddle. And there's a couple of
guitars, there's condos, there'ssaxophones, there's a mixer over
there, there's, I mean, you'vegot a lot of instruments laid
(02:34):
out behind you before me. Ininstrumental humans, how much of
that is about the instruments?
Bronkar Lee (02:43):
Well, we use, I use music as a metaphor for the
coaching. So basically, myrelationship to music as that
music as a tool, and I use thattool to enhance the quality of
an experience that we'recreating with our, you know,
participants, attendees, andeverything I use on the music
(03:05):
side has a very specificpurpose. It's all consciously
engineered to open a new doorwayof possibilities inside of the
thinking of a participant, it'sused to, to tell a story or to
compliment, it's all usedspecifically. So I might use,
you know, hand pans and nativeflutes and some soothing sound
(03:30):
sounds like that to set the tonefor a visualization or a
meditation session that we do.
Or I might use, you know, somesaxophone and drums to like rev
up the energy and get usenergized, and especially in the
virtual medium that many peopleare using these days. It's it's
really, I think people arefiguring out and learning how to
(03:52):
sleep with their eyes open whilestaring at the screen. So so so
it's good to use some of thesetools to shake up the energy and
get us in that. That mindset ofexcitement of growth and
receptivity,
William Forchion (04:08):
Your career...
How did you get from where youwere to where you are? I know of
your career you had you had goneto the clown Conservatory in San
Francisco. I know you went offto Switzerland, and you come
from a drumming background. Howdo you get from that you were
(04:28):
drumming in bands or streetdrumming? You were doing all
kinds of stuff. How do you getfrom there to where you are?
Bronkar Lee (04:39):
Well, the first thing is there's not a direct
path. And my philosophy is thatlife happens in the detours. And
so it's a series of detours thathave led me to this moment right
here. It is a plethora ofincredible mentors like
yourself, who inspired me to getinto the circus arts and and
(05:00):
explore the possibilities oftheater and character work and
all of that realm, which, youknow, led me down a one specific
detour that, you know, helped meto cultivate my awareness of,
you know how to be with anaudience how to create an
emotional connection, when it'sone person on stage and 1000
people in the audience. And so,you know, that detour was was
(05:24):
one profound experience that Ihad. And then I pulled those
skills that I learned andacquired on that path into my
tool belt into my backpack whenI'm on my hero's journey, as
everybody's on their own uniquehero's journey in their lives.
And then, you know, I'm overhere doing doing music and
touring with bands and learningall of these skills over here,
(05:47):
how to how to collaborate withother people how to perform with
other people, and then I'mpulling that in my backpack, and
then there's the, you know, thecoaching, and the keynote
speaking, and all of thoseskills just come in. And so it
all kind of now is synthesizedtogether to create the current
version of me.
William Forchion (06:06):
Okay. And the current version of you, I mean,
I, every time I hear more aboutyou, I get my mind blows,
because like, this guy doeseverything. And, and I don't
mean that in a demeaning way. Imean, this guy does everything
at an amazing level. And you doyou your mastery of things. How
(06:32):
is it that you pass? I mean, youhave? How can you possibly get
to where you are? Because youhave mastered so many things,
when I hear you play the sax, orI see you juggle, or I hear you
play the hand pans, yourbeatboxing everything is
stellar. And I know from my fromwhere I come from, that takes
(06:54):
practice. How do you get there?
Bronkar Lee (06:58):
Yeah, does well, there's so there's a couple of a
couple of things I want to shareon that. There's, there's one
thing that is more of aphilosophical answer, which is
that everything in life ismusic. And everything is is is
rhythm. Everything in life has atempo, and a cadence. And And
(07:22):
now every person and peoplelistening to this podcast or
consuming this content, may notconsider themselves to be a
musician, which is true. Not allof us are trained musicians. But
every single person, every humanon the planet, is undeniably
hard wired. For rhythm andmusic. We are all musical
(07:43):
beings. In other words, ourheartbeat and rhythm we breathe
in rhythm, we converse inrhythm, we drive a car in
rhythm, text, email, we dobusiness in rhythm, we keep time
in rhythm, everything in ourlives has a rhythm to it. It's
just cultivating an awareness ofthat, and how timing plays a
(08:04):
huge role and has a hugeinfluence on us. And how we show
up, when do we show up iseverything right at what we do
matters for sure how we do itmatters. And also when we do it
matters. And so the tempo oflife that having a an awareness
of just the fact that life is asymphony, and life is music,
(08:26):
that's a huge philosophy that Ithat I unpack personally, in my
coaching style, instrumentalhumans, but also just for me,
with all the mentors, I've hadan amazing influences I've had
on me. Now the other element isinside of kind of the the more
nuts and bolts less, you know,less abstract and woowoo as the
(08:48):
as the musical terms go, butmore concrete, which is the
skill acquisition side of thingsthat how we actually learn and
how can we accelerate ourlearning tempos, and acquire
skills at a rapid pace. Andultimately, my belief is that
the more skills we have, themore tools we have at our
(09:09):
disposal, the greater our impactis amplified in the world. When
we have the tools to build ahouse, we can build a house,
you're right and the knowledgeto use them obviously, when we
can play, you know, instrumentswe can we can Serenade, right?
When we have communicationtools, we can build rapport, we
can be instruments of influencein the world. And so my belief
(09:32):
is that the more and the moreskills that we acquire, the
greater our impact can be on onthe world. And so I actually
wrote my first book, it's calledBold achievement method. And
that book really unpacks alearning methodology that that I
created with my amazing wife andsanity goddess Cindy. We wrote
(09:54):
together with the support ofplethora of amazing humans,
including yourself, you are onthat on that bogie train. And
yeah, this was several, almostfive years ago now. But but so
that really unpacks amethodology that gives us kind
of this magical algorithm toaccelerate our learning tempos
(10:14):
and life. And so that's a that'sa big part of the nuts and bolts
side of learning and developingourselves.
William Forchion (10:21):
You mentioned there are learning tempos and
life. And there's a thing thatpopped up a little while ago.
Yes, yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Yeah, that popped up and went,absolutely. smashed. It was a
(10:51):
viral video that happened. Tellme a little bit about that.
Because there's some learninghappening right there.
Bronkar Lee (11:01):
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Thanks, brother. Well, thatvideo, obviously, that was me
and my son, Elijah, when he was19 months old. That was an
accidental viral video. And itwas, you know, it just kind of
really took off it actuallystill going viral. Now. It's
got, I don't know, 250 millionviews or something. It's crazy,
right? It keeps gettinguploaded. We're like, what the
(11:22):
heck, man? You know, and it'sfunny because we didn't try to
make a video a viral video,we've, you know, poured our
heart and souls into so manyother videos that, you know, got
a couple 100 views. And then allof a sudden this thing just went
went Ultra viral. And we'relike, what the heck? What have
we been doing wrong? Oh, yeah.
It's, it's the kid we got. Youknow, that's, that's us just
(11:44):
connecting and I think that'sthe the pureness of music have
rhythm, and intentionalityunderneath it to simply have a
connection moment with anotherbeing. And that is, that was
obviously before Elijah couldspeak, you know, English, which
is our native language. Beforehe could speak English, he could
speak rhythm, music, and if youlisten to babies talking, they
(12:09):
babble they hum, humming is sopowerful, before they can really
start to connect and, andformulate words by by putting
consonants and vowels together,they are humming and they are
singing and beatboxing andbabbling. And so to me music and
be boxing specifically, butsinging and using our voices as
(12:33):
instruments is some of the most,you know, primitive
communication available to us.
And quite frankly, all humansare entitled to tap into that
you don't have to get a degreein music, you don't have to have
some fancy academic tell youthat you are good enough that
you are validated to be a quoteunquote musician, you are, you
(12:55):
are entitled No person is notentitled to tapping into to the
rhythm.
William Forchion (13:05):
So the the music and the rhythm thing,
there's another thing you do youdo a lot of, you're now doing
meditations. And you sent me onea few weeks ago, that was just
really just apropos for the timethat we that I needed it. I
asked me for a little somethingand you gave it to me. The other
thing you have the hand pans?
(14:16):
Tell me a little bit about thehand pan.
Bronkar Lee (14:18):
Well, first of all, just to address. So yeah, it was
it was a very, very naturalinstrument for me to pick up.
The reason is because again, andthis is back to the learning and
development that I'm not, youknow, special in this realm. It
just happens that I'vecultivated a previous skill set
that is transferable into thisinstrument. And this applies to
(14:42):
all people, all people anybodylistening to this. One way that
we can accelerate our learningtempo is to find the
transferability and skills thatwe've previously acquired, and
how can we take the knowledgethe wisdom that we've already
cultivated and then put it intoThis next iteration of ourselves
(15:02):
and morph into that nextiteration, leverage what we've
already got. And so for me, thehandpan was that it was
basically, you know, handpan isliterally like made of, of
stainless steel. And so and youplay it kind of like a drum. So
it's to me, it's like a home ora Jim Bay, a piece of hand
(15:22):
percussion, combined with asaxophone. And they come
together to synthesize and makethis instrument. So for me, I've
training in both instruments.
And so it was like, all of asudden, it was the marriage of
those two things comingtogether. So I was able to
transfer all of my knowledge ofbeats and the mastery of the
mechanical body with moving myhands and fingers in a way to
(15:43):
drum. And then also my sense ofphrasing and melody, from
saxophone. And so all of thatjust went straight into the
handpan. And so that's why itwas such an effortless
transition for me was I'mbringing all of this, all of
these skills with me, and thenallowing myself to then lean in
and create a relationship withthis new apparatus.
William Forchion (16:07):
But then you take it to the next level, when
you start looping it and youstart throwing in other
instruments, and you start to dosome multiplayer tracks and
things like that. That's not Imean, to me, I like I get it.
But it's not intuitive to me.
And so just did that just cometo you. Did you feel that right
off the bat? Or where does thatcome from?
Bronkar Lee (16:28):
Yeah, again, it's a synthesis of multiple skills. So
I've been, you know, I've beenlooping for years, you know,
close to 20 years at this point.
So doing live looping with, youknow, guitar, beatboxing
different instruments. And somoving into pulling the hand
pan, and there was was a naturalprogression. Again, I call this
recombinant innovation. And therecombinant innovation is where
(16:50):
we're combining multiple things,skills or tools that we've
acquired, and putting themtogether synthesizing them
together to create a superskill. And we all do that on
different levels, consciously orunconsciously. But there's a lot
of examples I could give rightnow, just for the sake of the
interview, I'll just stick withwith this one, where I'm taking,
you know, handpan, I'm takingbeatboxing I'm taking various
(17:14):
percussion, instruments, bass,whatever there is that I've got.
And then I'm blending it alltogether to create that, that
real time band or symphony,that's basically putting those
different skills together bypartnering with technology,
which is a big thing for peoplenow, especially, you know, how
are we embracing? What is moderntechnology? Because at one
(17:35):
point, the the African Jim Baydrum was modern technology,
right? Currently, it's notmodern technology. But what is
modern technology, okay? virtualplatforms and, and microphones
and cameras, and being able tocapture this interview our
energy and our connection, andthen be able to, you know, share
it with, with with people in theworld. And so the same thing
(17:57):
with the with the live looping,it's like, okay, I'm taking a
primitive instrument, orprimitive from our perspective
now, like a Jim Bay, or thehuman voice, and I'm blending
those things together with thiscool technology that allows me
to record in real time, and thenput it all together for this,
this multi dimensional real lifeexperience. I call it the
(18:21):
Fantasia effect. Because as youknow, I worked for Disney for a
long time as well on theircruise ships. And, and so it's
all about blending the visualwith the audio, and then you get
that that Fantasia effect whereyou can see it, and you can feel
it and hear it.
William Forchion (18:38):
Right, right.
Wow. Wow. So also as a as acreative, most creatives are
innovators. Where do you? Whereare you going next?
Bronkar Lee (18:50):
Yeah, man, I'm on a detour right now. Honestly, you
know, my main focus right now iscoaching. You know, we're
really, you know, been beefingup our coaching programs that,
you know, instrumental humans.
And so we've got some leadershipprograms that we do instruments
of influence. We've gotindividual coaching that we do,
and then group coaching that wedo with, you know,
(19:12):
entrepreneurs, solopreneurscreatives, I've been working
with, you know, beenfacilitating things like this
for, you know, 15 plus years.
But now it's become the focalpoint of our of our business.
And so and so now, it really is,how can I take everything that
I've learned, and then put ittogether to create really
(19:35):
valuable curriculum that's goingto enhance the quality of other
people's lives? I look at it asI'm giving a gift to each
listener or each audiencemember. And at the end of the
experience, I think about what'sgoing to be inside of that gift
when they open it up. And foryears as a performer and not to
(19:57):
say that all performers are likethis, but for me as a performer
A lot of my career was based onI want to be, I want to be good
enough, talented enough, amazingenough to get the validation
from the audience. Right, right.
And one day I something flipped,and I was just I changed. And I
was like, Oh, I'm not reallyhere for that I'm really here to
(20:18):
help to heal, to inspire toempower. And once that became my
beacon, my North Star thatchanged everything, suddenly, I
wasn't paralyzed by perfectionby needing to be absolutely
perfect. And to deliver anoutstanding show of world class
performance. Suddenly, it waslike, Hey, I'm here to inspire
(20:39):
people. And I started looking atthat gift. And when people open
that gift up what's inside, andI didn't want there to be a
picture of me in there. I didn'twant people leaving, saying,
Wow, that guy was so talented.
Wow, he was so amazing. I didn'twant that I wanted them to open
it up and say, Oh, here's atool, there's a little tool that
(21:01):
I can use for myself. That'sright, I remember he said that
thing, and it inspired me. Andnow I'm going to go build this
cool thing, where I can, youknow, connect more deeply with
my family, or I can serve myclients in a greater way. Or I
can, you know, be aninstrumental, you know,
influence in the world andamplify my impact. And suddenly,
they have a tool in theresomething in there for them. And
(21:24):
then they have that gift. And sowhen that changed for me, that
was everything. And so now everyopportunity I had to present or
to speak, or to perform, it isalways about giving that gift.
And I found that through thecoaching programs and that work,
we could do deeper dive andcreate real transformation and
people and support them to put amore vibrant energetic signature
(21:46):
on their lives.
William Forchion (21:48):
Know what you just laid out there. What you
just said in that moment, youhad just there was I was like,
Okay, well jump on that notethat that you had you just
dropped out way too muchinformation for me to be able to
rebut or respond in any way thatis humanly possible. Because
(22:10):
there's so much there and inwhat gifts do you have? What
gifts do you bring to this asopposed to what can I take away?
And that's because as aperformer having performed for
so long? That's was that can becrippling? What What am I? How
am I gonna? What am I gonnatake? What are they gonna give
me? As opposed to what do I haveto give them and then you'll
(22:31):
hear from me a lot about justshowing up being there.
Sometimes the gift is you showedup when they needed you. That's
really great that you're this iswhat you're doing now. Because I
know that really resonates withme. That just seems to me. And
and I was I was going to ask youa question about how you're
navigating through the pandemicwith a lot of with not a lot of
(22:53):
performance opportunities. Butwhat I want to share right now
is something I was inspired byyou many years ago and wanted to
do something. Coffee, coffee,coffee, and early in the
(23:14):
morning, it fills me and gets mego crazy know that. For those of
(23:49):
you who are listening, a fewyears back, Brian Carr and his
lovely, brave partner wife,Cindy lived in Oakland,
California, and I just wanted todo something with them. They are
such gems and such beautifulpeople with such wonderful
talents and gifts. And so I wasworking to produce a television
(24:11):
show with them. And this was forthe pilot teaser that we shot
for that. And every step of theway. Braun Carr and Cindy just
created magic, and also the factthat they trusted me and my
vision to work on this project.
Yeah, which as the way things goin the world of art, sometimes
(24:31):
you create things and they don'tdo what you expect them to do.
But they open doors to otherthings. And you're talking about
detours. I used to always say mylife was made up of a bunch of
mistakes. And I like detoursbetter because by saying it was
a mistake is saying that thatthe all the work that I did up
into that that shift happenedwas for not that turn that I
(24:51):
made that right turn that I madeall the steps getting to that
right turn. We're empowering Toget to the right turn, just led
me on a path that I didn't seeat the time. So can you speak to
that?
Bronkar Lee (25:08):
Yeah, well, first of all, I, you know, I think,
you know, when we frame it assomething like, you know, it's a
series of mistakes, you know,that's, that's a certain type of
language. And that to me is justlife, you know, the, the
mistakes or the mistakes. Andthen ultimately, I believe the
(25:28):
what really matters is how wechoose to react to those, how we
choose to learn from those, whatwe choose to do with those
opportunities of the mistakes.
And it comes into really havingan awareness that life is full
of moments. And, you know, oneof my one of my mentors, Brian
Hoyer always said, highinvolvement, low attachment. And
(25:50):
so it's all about being engagedin the process, but not, you
know, attached to that outcome.
And so I find the creativeprocess is very similar to that.
And, you know, for, for me,actually, and, you know, we were
just today having a reflectionmoment, on a project that we had
(26:10):
done, or over the last maybe twoand a half, three years, and it
just didn't pan out, like wethought it was going to. And so
what we, what we did was weanalyzed it, from not being
emotionally attached to it, butkind of looking out, or up and
down on it or out from it, youknow, and saying, alright, what,
(26:30):
what, what, what worked aboutthat, and then how can we
improve? And so by asking thesequestions, you know, in life,
we're going to get the answersto the questions we ask. So the
key and my coaching style is,how do I, how do I influence or
guide or steer participants,attendees to ask better
(26:53):
questions, to ask the questionsthey're really seeking the
answers for. And so that'sreally unlocking it from within.
And so when we can share thatperspective, then they can start
to look at it from inside ofthemselves, you know, in a
different way. And I'll makethis parallel two really quick,
is that this comes back to eventechnical instruments, like
(27:13):
aside from these massivecreative endeavors of producing
shows, or, you know, movies, orwhatever it is, it's like, just
learning to play the saxophone,which is, which is a technical
skill. It's just me and theapparatus. There's nobody
watching, there's nothing else.
Ultimately, what happens whenyou play a saxophone is every
single person, the first thingyou do is you create this
(27:34):
horrible, honking squeakingsound on the horn, that sounds
like there's a goose dyingoutside, you know, and it's just
a horrible sound. And so whatyou do is you get over that
fear, because it scares you, andyou're like, Oh, my God, I'm not
scared that this hog is gonnahurt me, I'm scared that
somebody is gonna hear mesqueaking, and they're gonna
(27:55):
judge me on this. So what you dois you got to get out of your
own way, right, you got torewrite the narrative of the
internal dialogue, you got toget out of your own way. And you
got to give yourself permissionto fail forward, or to lean into
that and to embrace that squeakzone, right, and then
ultimately, the sound of asaxophone for anybody. Whenever
the next time you listen tosmooth jazz, or you're on hold
(28:17):
on that call or your departmentstore, and you hear that smooth
jazz, just say to yourself, Iknow that that smooth saxophone
ain't nothing but a refinedsqueak. Thing is the process of
refining the squeak. It'sharnessing it, embracing it and
then channeled into somethingbeautiful, and that's everything
in life.
William Forchion (28:42):
I'm going to take a moment right now and do a
little bit of a plug honeybadgerI'm using their protein drink in
my my smoothies in the morning.
I'm using their vegan onebecause I've actually went vegan
last year and was looking forways to enhance my diet because
the best way to do anythinginnovative is to take care of
yourself. So my nutrition is areally big thing. Also, in the
(29:03):
mornings on my toast, I reallylike side Hill Farms, Maple
Apple drizzle. And if you'repurchasing from these folks
drinkhoneybadger.com orsidehillfarmsjam.com Just let
them know that you heard aboutthem on Billosophy. Alrighty,
this is not... believe it ornot, they're not sponsors. I
(29:24):
like their product. And I thinkthat people should know about
it. That's why I'm putting themup here. They have not paid me
to put anything here. I justwant folks to know that there's
some really great stuff outthere and there's some really
great people that are making it.
Just like all the guests that Ihave on my show. Like today I
(29:45):
have Bronkar. I want folks...
the reason why I do this isbecause I believe in these
products and I believe in thesefolks, and I'm going to keep
talking with Bronkar who is justan amazing human being who is
creating just a healingvibration in the universe. And,
and I, I can't shout out hisname enough, I met this
(30:08):
gentleman... oh my goodnessyears ago probably 2003 Maybe.
And I was like this guy issomething he just had a an
energy about him and I justwanted to be around him just
wanted to hang with them and hetook a class from me a movement
(30:29):
class and then called me up andsaid, Hey, how can I do this for
a living? And I'm so happy tointroduce him some folks and
give him references and the resthe did on his own because he is
a magnificent person. And and soI'm so excited to be
reconnecting with him yet again,here on philosophy 101. And
before we move further Bronkarhow can people find your stuff?
(30:55):
Your your music, yourmeditations, you had a
meditation app out a bit a whileback, I saw it I'm downloaded.
How can people get get ahold ofyour healing vibrations? Your
energetic vibrations, yourinspirational vibrations are
your coaching and your yourteaching?
Unknown (31:15):
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for Thanks for asking, buddy. So
instrumentalhumans.com is thewebsite that's
instrumentalhumans.com And thathas information on, you know,
keynoting, coaching, mindset,music, all of the all of the
above. So yeah, there's a lot ofa lot of ways we are really into
(31:35):
building community and creatingspace where people can, you
know, have legitimatetransformations. And so that's,
that's, that's really the bigmission. And I just, you know,
I'm so lucky and fortunate tohave amazing people around me
that are just so talented andawesome. And, you know, building
other building in other waysthat I'm not, you know, skilled
(31:58):
at and, you know, so yeah.
William Forchion (32:01):
And, and you also have a YouTube channel that
people can get to check out someof your videos and hear some of
your stuff.
Bronkar Lee (32:07):
And I do I do have some video content there. The
best way for people isinstrumental humans calm
instrumental humans, okay. Yeah,cuz that's kind of our central,
our central hub. And so weactually have some other
platforms that we're hostingvideos on primarily hosting our
videos on. So we have, you know,some different membership sites,
we have some different, youknow, all kinds of different
(32:29):
things that we're doing with thecurrent videos, you know, for
that, so that's the best thebest place to,
William Forchion (32:35):
okay, if you could go back to yourself, your
younger self, and give them someadvice about the life that you
have lived. Now, if you can goback to your younger self, what
would you say, to your youngerself,
Bronkar Lee (32:48):
I would say do exactly what you're doing. Do
exactly what you're doing. It'sit's a process. So you know,
whether there's things that I'mproud of, or not proud of.
There's thing you know,preferred choices, less
preferred choices, all of thosehave said led me to the moment I
am, you know, when one exampleis, you know, my, and I work
(33:10):
really hard, you know, many ofus have deeply encoded patterns,
and some conscious, someunconscious, II. And for me, I
didn't know my biologicalfather, until I met him when I
was 28 years old. And so for 28years, I had a void in me that I
was missing something that I wasthat I was empty somehow that I
(33:34):
and I had a victim mentality,why did this happen to me? Why
isn't this person here, and Iand I had this, this
frustration, this anger, thisaggression, this, this
emptiness, and, and then when Ifinally met him, and I've
cultivated a relationship withhim since then, and now I'm in
my 40s. And, you know, we are intouch and stuff like that. But
(33:56):
now, the way that I show up andparent for my two boys, is I am
so engaged. And I believe that alarge reason that I'm so engaged
with them, is because I didn'thave that in my life. And so my
mission is now to really show upand be a rockstar daddy. And so,
(34:20):
if I hadn't gone through that,that, you know, that particular
you know, issue pattern,whatever you want to call it
struggles, strife, adversity,whatever it is, then it wouldn't
have it wouldn't have instilledthings in me that now I'm
extremely passionate about. Andso I think that maybe these you
(34:40):
know, there are less preferredexperiences in life. There are
there are mistakes and mistakes,and they're also just epic
failures. And I've had somemassive failures. But those
failures have almost every timebeen the greatest learning
lessons of my life. And ifanybody listening right now can
reflect on some of yourfailures. like those are
(35:01):
probably those failures haveprobably become fuel for your
fire. Right? And and whether youcould have avoided those or not
whether you had advice orsupport or whatever, it's like,
you know that that moment orthose moments where that was
that was learning that was reallife learning. And that has made
you who you are today,
William Forchion (35:22):
right? Well, I say, you know, some of the
Billosophy that I used to laydown a lot and still do lay down
is that there is no failure. Ifyou can learn from it, it's not
a failure. So if you live pastthat moment, you haven't failed,
because you've learned from it,whether you learned not to do it
again, or to do it differently,or to do it, something you if
you gain something from it, thenit's not a failure, the failure,
(35:44):
if you pass on, and you cannotadd any more information to it,
then maybe it's considered afailure. But you won't consider
that because you're not here todo that. So there isn't any
failure. And I really likedthat. The other thing you
mentioned about is some of thethe trauma of not having that,
that dad until you're 28,knowing that data to your 28.
(36:05):
And there's many of us who arewalking around with traumas, and
they're not the big, you know,it's not like the big car
accident or the buildingexplosion, there are micro
traumas that we carry in ourlives. And the others, that you
mentioned about what your theway your parents and your
children, traumas that arepassed down by our ancestors,
(36:27):
with our parents had situationsin their lives, and raised us in
a way that they wanted, whichwas a result of that trauma. And
their parents did that withthem. And that gets passed on.
And there's a systemic or afamilial way of passing it down.
And one of the things I'mworking on now, and this is
something that's come to me inthe past few months, is how to
(36:47):
release those traumas, identifyand release some of those
traumas, then it may be not evenreleasing, but identifying if
you could identify, man, Ireally missed that father figure
in my life, and start to processthat and go beyond that, oh, my
feelings are hurt to otherthings, we can get to some
(37:07):
really great growth as humans inthat process. And I don't mean
just growing upwards andoutwards, I mean, just filling
ourselves. If there's a pocket avoid in us, then we're not
filling that void. And if we canremove some of those voids and
fill our fill ourselves, whatcan we, you know, imagine who we
are, who we become, not justwhat we can do, but who we can
(37:30):
become? So that was I know thatthat a question. That's just
just hearing you say that justreally inspired me to speak to
on that.
Unknown (37:39):
Well to parlay on that.
That's it. That's it. That's agreat, great point, rather, um,
you know, we start to questionthe things. So we identify it
first, as you mentioned, so weidentify, we have that
awareness. And then we start toquestion it, we start to say,
well, what is this all about?
Why is that thing there? What isit trying to say to me? And now
how can I work with it? Right?
How can I use that becausepossibly, that's a tool. Like in
(38:01):
my case, you know, now I havethe ability to connect with
other people, I've had some ofthe most powerful conversations
in my life, by sharing my storyand my situation with other
people. And suddenly they'veopened up and we've done some
real powerful work andreleasing, you know, some of
that pent up energy around thosethings. And it's, it's, it's
(38:23):
then becomes a, a tool that wecan use as a bridge of
relatability with other people,and a teaching, a teaching tool
for us to convey, you know, aconcept or an idea to share that
vulnerability that then buildstrust builds rapport,
William Forchion (38:42):
ie, okay, if you could just drop a wisdom
bomb right here, bam, you have amoment to just lay it out. What
would that wisdom bomb be forall the listeners out there that
just, you know whether they cantake with him for this moment,
or for the day for the week forthe month was for the rest of
their lives? What was the bomb?
Do you have for our velocity oneon one listening audience,
Unknown (39:03):
no pressure, no pressure, I would say one of the
biggest philosophies that weteach instrumental humans is
really looking at our, you know,our bodies, and our minds, as
instruments. And when we canstart to have an awareness that
we are instruments ourselves,our mechanical body, our, our
(39:26):
minds, our emotions, our energy.
And we start to have anawareness that we have this
internal Symphony here, and tolook at ourselves as being the
conductor of our symphony. Andhow are we choosing to keep our
symphony in tune our internalsymphony in tune? And as we can
focus on the self, and selfcare, self preservation,
(39:47):
maintaining all of our Symphonyinside of us all our
instruments, then we can show upand make beautiful music with
the world. We can connect withthe people we love. We can, you
know, have our impact amplifiedin the world, we can lead in a
greater way parents in a greaterway, do business in a greater
way, whatever that may looklike. But it's starting with
(40:10):
that with that self, and reallylooking inwardly, to
recalibrating our internalinstruments first. And the same
thing happens just to deepenthat metaphor, is if you think
about if you've ever seen asymphony before, the first thing
that happens is the, you know,there's a bass note played, and
then the lead violinist comesout, generally, she or he plays
(40:32):
a single note on the leadviolin. And what they're doing
is retuning their instrument.
And then the people around sheor he start to retune their
instrument, but what they'redoing is they're they're
retuning their individualinstruments first, before they
come together to play. And theydo this every single time they
(40:52):
play. These are professionalsthat have been playing every day
of their lives for the last 20years. And they do this every
single time they sit down toplay. So the question for the
listeners now is how often areyou retuning your internal
instruments? And are you in tunefor peak performance? Are you
running sharp, intense,overwhelmed and stressed? Are
(41:15):
you running flat? decompresseduninspired low energy, we got to
hit that sweet spot get thatGoldilocks effect place that
Goldilocks locatiom right therethat to be right in tune so that
we can broadcast that kind ofenergy and vibration to the
world.
William Forchion (41:34):
Man, there you go. Bam. Okay. Okay. Wow. That
is wow. Simplifying it that way,is brilliant. And, and I imagine
that folks who engage inInstrumental Instrumental humans
(41:55):
get a lot more of that thosewisdom bombs to work with. Or
tools to work with?
Bronkar Lee (42:00):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
It's always it's alwayshappening.
William Forchion (42:05):
Wow, I gotta gotta sign up.
Bronkar Lee (42:09):
Come on over, man, you got to get up in here, bro.
William Forchion (42:11):
Oh, I Do I Do yo Bronkar, it has been a
pleasure to just sit with you.
Again. It's just a pleasure tobe in your presence. It's a
pleasure to just to have yourenergy and engage in this this
medium. And I'm so glad that youcould be on the Billosophy101
podcast. And I hope that I hopewe can talk again sometime in
(42:33):
the near future.
Bronkar Lee (42:36):
Yeah, brother, thank you so much for having me.
It's an honor to be here. Andthank you for anybody that
listened today. Thanks forshowing up and giving your your
energy and your time, which areyour most valuable resources. So
hopefully you got some value.
William Forchion (42:52):
Definitely, I definitely do. And for my
podcast listeners, as I end eachand every episode, please move
forward with passion andpurpose. And remember, each
morning and each night say toyourself look into the mirror
and know I am enough. Let me trywith me right now. I am you
(43:18):
know, alrighty. Be well. Staywonderful. Have a great day.
Intro Voice (43:32):
Thank you for listening to the Billosophy
podcast. Keep checking in as wewill be regularly releasing new
episodes.
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