We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Scott Mason. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Scott below.
Scott, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I spent decades — the majority of my life — running from my purpose. As the child of a dog food factory worker and staff person for the Kansas Highway Patrol, expectations for my future were not high. “You can teach a monkey how to speak,” my debate coach told the class about me, “But you can’t teach it how to think.”
I went to law school in no small part to prove him, and the rest of the world, wrong. I hated it almost immediately. But I stuck with the law for over twenty years, even managing to become successful as both a lawyer and an executive, because I couldn’t imagine being happy, free, or connected to my own unique purpose. Inside, I secretly believed that, somehow, I had been cosmically cursed. I honestly thought that I was condemned to live life in a mental, emotional, and spiritual underworld and that I would never escape.
Eventually, the misery of attorney life led me into my first entrepreneurial venture, as co-principal of a small manufacturing firm. While entrepreneurialism was a better match than law, after a few years, I began to feel an invisible pull toward something else. I liked the business that I ran, but I had joined it because it seemed like an interesting opportunity, not anything tied to the core of who I was.
One night, I was riding my bicycle through New York City’s Central Park. Rain was drizzling all around me. As I heaved breaths out into the cold air, mist covered my glasses. I could barely see. In the physical occlusion, I experienced mental enlightenment. Like a lightning bolt. Every career decision I had ever made — every last one — had been made through a cold, rational calculus: my skills were X; therefore I should do Y. My motive had always been, bottom line, selfish: to get ahead, to succeed, to show others that I wasn’t just a dumb monkey. Not once had I ever considered, in my calculus or in motives, the needs of others, or service to those I could uniquely help.
When I realized what I had done, what I had become, I burst into tears. It was a “soul cry:” tears of horror, shame, and intense regret. Fortunately, I didn’t crash my bike. But those tears opened my mind and my heart to making a change. Putting service to others first, then applying things like skills, experience, and disposition, led me on the path to purpose. To this day, it’s a formula that I use when coaching my clients on finding their own purpose. It worked for me, and I feel tears of joy seeing it work for them, too.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As an attorney who spent decades disconnected from purpose, and stripped of the powerhouse voice that comes with that connection, my mission is singular: to help others who are stuck, like I was, become something more. Using my trailblazing signature program, I work with lawyer-leaders and their teams to heighten authentic connection to their professional lives, build resilience, and set their creativity on fire. Together, we:
• Pinpoint what’s straitjacketing your professional life.
• Obliterate toxic internal myths.
• Uncover innate gifts while connecting to your purpose and values, creating a new framework for the future.
• Electrify your charisma.
• Create an actionable plan to get goals met.
Most professional coaching programs are impersonal and interchangeable. In addition, too many coaches lack the executive experience and imagination necessary to effectively guide their clients’ journeys.
I combine the gravitas of a Columbia Law School degree, 25+ years as an attorney, and C-Suite experience with a trailblazing (and fun) process — rooted in the timeless metaphors of Greek mythology — to take my clients on a unique odyssey that changes lives.
In addition to an e-book explaining my own journey through the lens of Greek mythology, later this year, I am launching the first of a four-book series in which Greek myths are radically reimagined and boldly retold to offer profound new insights into leadership, team dynamics, and professional self-growth. Each volume in the series uses legends from the richest and most dynamic story tradition in the world to provide a unique but powerful lens for finding connection, building resilience, and igniting creativity.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Uncovering my toxic myths. Greek myths aren’t just old stories: they are the sum of an entire society’s worth of hopes, values, aspirations, and dreams. They resonate because they’re projections of the qualities and ideals each of us holds inside. “Toxic myths” are genres of Greek mythology that correspond to individual belief systems keeping us stagnant, emotionally isolated, and creatively blocked. Identifying the genres of “toxic myths” that I had internalized set me up to release them. It will do the same for you. Without toxic belief systems holding you back, you will be ready to move toward professional Mt. Olympus.
2. Visiting the Oracle: once my toxic myths were gone, I had to replace them with something — and you will, too. In Greek myths, the Oracle was a prophetess of the god Apollo. Her motto was “know thyself.” Her words always came true. The Oracle represents the inner voice, our intuition, that if heard, interpreted, and understood, enables you to build a concrete vision for the future — the knowledge of who and what you will become.
3. Building a plan: revelations and insight mean nothing if not followed up with action. My plan-building experience, developed during years as a large organizational executive, helped me understand how important it is for anyone to create an actionable roadmap to turn vision into lived reality.
Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?
In Gene Wolfe’s epic sci-fi masterwork “The Book of the New Sun” takes place in a dystopian future where the Sun is dying and the future seems hopeless. The hero, a member of a torturer’s guild, accidentally comes into possession of a sacred relic, a stone, that heals the sick and can even bring back the dead. He goes on an epic journey to return the magical stone to its rightful owner. Spoiler alert: at the end, it turns out that the stone had no power at all. The powers were within the hero all along. As his powers, untapped, could heal humans, he would someday heal the dying Sun, too.
Too many attorneys (including me, for years) feel like this book’s hero: caught in a profession that tortures themselves and others, living in a world where the light is constantly dimming, believing that any good thing they do merely occurs by happenstance. This book taught me that we each have true light, and immense power, within. It is innate to who we are. We can ignite it within ourselves. And we can ignite brilliance within the world around us, too.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.MyFreedomRocks.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s.scott_mason/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themythslayer/
- Other: https://webdelics-podcast.simplecast.com/
