An Inspired Chat with Scott Mason of Upper West Side

Scott Mason shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Scott, thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Wow! Talk about starting an interview off with a bang!

When it comes to who I respect, who I want around me, or who I want to be inside, qualities that come purely by accident of birth carry no weight whatsoever. Like looks, athleticism, nationality, or how much money your parents have, IQ is something granted by providence, not earned. How much of it you have means nothing.

Can any of these things be developed and improved? Of course. But what do you do with your intellect — or any other of life’s random gifts? That matters infinitely more. By all accounts, Hitler’s IQ was very high. But did it add to his value as a human being? The ruin he brought on his own life, his nation, the world, and entire populations of innocent people pretty much speaks for itself.

The same is true for energy. Hitler was a very high-energy person. So what? The world would have been much better off if he’d had less. As with intellect, what you do with a physical quality — one that is often out your control — matters far more than how much you possess.

Integrity, along with its amazing but rare sister, ethics, is the only one of these things that practically all functioning adults can learn, apply, and control. Being a person of integrity occurs through a lifetime of small actions (and a few big ones, too), many of which are not easy. A person who lives with integrity is a person who has truly done something extraordinary.

And the fact that integrity, especially from our leaders, has become something so many people have stopped demanding, or even view as a joke, proves my point. To be human is to be imperfect. But to live with integrity — to put in hard work, to become something that is so often against our basic nature: THAT is something that truly matters.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am the Myth Slayer: an attorney, professional speaker, author, coach, and YouTuber whose mission is shatter the stories people tell themselves that keep them small — so that they can experience careers and lives worthy of Mount Olympus.

Too many ambitious lawyers and other high-performing professionals feel trapped in careers that look successful on paper but leave them drained, directionless, and disconnected from any deeper purpose or legacy. Their lives and the teams they lead all suffer because of this. I hold a mirror to their faces, then shine a light, so they can see all the possibilities and power they have inside — and then act.

It’s my belief that Greek mythology is the most powerful personal and professional tool ever created. To understand Greek myths — truly and deeply take in their meanings — is to learn how to BECOME a living myth. You can forge a future that no one can ignore. You can command the room. You can change everything.

I take my clients, and audiences at speaking engagements everywhere, on an epic journey to fight the monsters inside, think like a hero and, ultimately, emerge with the creativity, impact, and charisma of a Greek god. Life’s too short to be anything less!

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
What a question! I was an avid reader, and the more fantastical and outrageous the subject matter, the better. And I was a writer, too: by junior high, I was already writing books on mythology, the escapades of my pet dog, and bizarre races of humanoids with hair on their faces. I let that go once I realized that being good at at least one physical activity gave me much more cool-kid cred.

I was also unapologetically empathetic and emotional. I found stoic personalities boring and hard to connect to — and impossible to become. I had a lot of feelings and the skills to express them vividly … oops! It took me decades to work my way back into that one.

Finally, I always found stimulating, silly, and story-filled conversations — with bizarreness a huge bonus — to be incredible ways to kill time and get in good laughs. No wonder I loved Greek myths so much. Once I started law school, and later work, I had to leave those chats behind for ones that were more “appropriate.” Thank goodness I eventually discovered a way to be “appropriate” by my own definition. Life is too short to only talk about things that aren’t a little bit out there.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Entrepreneurship is tough — and the coaching and speaking businesses are even tougher than most. There were MANY times I wanted to give up!

Just getting a toehold in my business took so long that, for years, whispers telling me to give up showed up practically every night. Everyone wants to be a speaker, but what gave me that “it” factor — why should anyone care about what I had to say? Coaching is important, and it WILL help high-achievers reach profound personal and professional heights, but many, many people have a hard time seeing themselves experiencing those benefits — so how could I convince them of their own possibilities? Figuring out how to do those things took ages, and I sometimes felt despair just hauling my mind through the learning curve.

All of that was made worse by the framework that my coaching and speaking business operates in. Greek mythology is not a common lens to examine leadership, personal development, or professional growth through. This was all the more true because the frameworks and methodologies I developed were completely new — not derivatives of anyone else’s thinking at all. For a long time, no one seemed to understand anything I was saying. Learning how to communicate my message — and committing to it, no matter what — took time. And during that time, trust me: I OFTEN thought I should just throw in the towel. Thank Mount Olympus I never did.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
The idea that the entirety of human experience, and the value of individual humans, can or should be measured by arbitrary metrics — things like KPIs, productivity stats, actuarial tables, or spreadsheets … or, just as insidiously (and evil), by academic frameworks and other dissertation-style constructs.

Numbers and intellectual scaffoldings have their place. But they are also totally reductive. Because of that, it’s no wonder people are angry. Something is profoundly wrong when the supposedly smartest people in a society– those allegedly with the ability deal with complexity the best — cannot see that their very ways of thinking have become insufferably simple.

Yet here we are. The chattering class’s lockstep persistence in shrinking things of inconceivable complexity (the infinitely varied ways humans think, feel and behave, the future potential of every living being, day-to-day social interactions, and more) to data sets and social/cultural narratives – no matter how impressive they seem — completely wipes away the humanity of everyone. Even worse, they rank suffering and heirarchialize pain … then push solutions that are empty, mechanical, and don’t speak to those they are supposed to help.

Smart people complain that the movie “Idiocracy” is coming true. What they get wrong is that they are the ones creating it.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
My life commitment is bringing the transcendent, awesome power of Greek myths — and their message about our roles in life, our deepest struggles, and what lies on the other side of our inner narratives — to the many people who desperately need those stories’ light. Trust me, no one on earth told me to do this, especially this way. In fact, when I finally wrapped my mind around my message and began to share it, many around me politely (and not-so-politely) told me that I really should stop. But I have persisted. And I intend to share even more.

So, yes, this is what I was born to do. It took me decades to figure it out, and even more time to accept it. But none of that is what has made me someone who can ignore what others tell me to do, even when it’s scary, even when it hurts.

The secret is 𝑏𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑔 what you were born to do. Doing it isn’t enough. Only when you literally 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 that thing you were born for, will you do it, no matter what. So “be” the myth of your own making. Then, what other people tell you becomes irrelevant.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.myfreedomrocks.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/themythslayer/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Myth_Slayer