Speaking The Language Of Love And Humanity With Juan Lee
We are divided as a people, and if we want to be united again, we need one thing. That thing is love. In this episode, Chad Burmeister sits down and talks about the language of love with author and teacher, Juan Lee. Juan expounds on how love connects everyone together and why we need each of our fellow men. Learn more about humanity and the language of love in this conversation.
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Speaking The Language Of Love And Humanity With Juan Lee
I'm with someone that's going to help us with living a better story. It comes down to the same thing that I hear over and over again. It's a four-letter word and that's love. It's what America and the world need. We're going to talk with Juan Lee. He is a Transformation Mindset, Author, Speaker and he's extremely motivational. Usually, when I ask guests, "What are the two questions that you want me to ask that are outside of the normal 8 or 10 that I ask?" It's, "Why is love important to humanity? How can I use love in my life?" We're going to leave those towards the middle of the dialogue to get to know Juan first and that's what you're in for. Juan, welcome to the show. Thanks for being here.
I'm fine. Thanks for having me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and your audience.
It's great to have you. You're in Maryland, which we discovered. I drove through a corner of it on my route from North Carolina to Virginia through a bridge in DC and then back to Washington. That was it. A good place, though, is what I can recall and very green.
We get all the seasons here.
For my audience to get to know you, what I like to ask first is, where did you grow up? What are some of the first memories you have as a kid? A lot of times, before we've been influenced by the world is how we live in what our purpose is. We have a passion when we're young. What was your passion?
I'm originally from this area. I grew up in the Maryland-Washington, DC area. I lived in Alexandria. That was the part that I was telling you that you had to go through if you wanted to get to DC without going to Maryland. I was born in Virginia and I was raised in Maryland. I've been here all of but nine years of my life when I was in the military. I spent nine years in the military all around the world. That's me. I'm back home.
I hear people tell stories, "I used to play out in the woods probably the whole day more than most kids are allowed now." Other kids say, "I liked sports cards." Some people said, "I was an IT programmer. When I found the mainframe, it was awesome." What was the thing that you remember when you were younger?
That was a very interesting question because you were specific to the number six. That number holds a really big spot in my life because my mom died when I was six. That didn't have a lot of fun to it but it impacted who I am now. I don't mean there the fact that she passed but it was who she was, what she stood for and what she represented. She had a very impactful life. She lived only until 37 years old. In those 37 years, there is a monument built in her name in her honor in Alexandria. If you drove across that bridge that you were talking about, there is a recreation center off to your left, right before you went across that bridge that's named after my mother. It's impactful to the community and I'm following in her footsteps.
What was her name?
Nannie J. Lee.
3 and 7 are two of my luckiest numbers so 37. There you go. That's neat that she had an impact. My grandfather had that kind of impact on me. He gave me a note when I was in eighth grade and it was handwritten. I still have it. It was the ten things you should do in life. The first two are the ones where it's like, "If you forget all the other eight, focus on the first two, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself.'" Love and love.
It's the ability to take that action that we all need. My message is all about the action. Love is an action that has so many attributes and benefits. It has the answer to every question and situation. It's very interesting because love never fails.
I talked to a woman. We were having a conversation. I'm maybe slightly right of center from a political standpoint. She is extremely on the other left side and she goes, "Why did you reach out to me?" I said, "All of us are created and we're all good people." She is intuitive. She helps people go back and talk to people from past lives. I was like, "That one is a little over my pay grade but still, it doesn't mean I love you any less. Let's talk."
Love: We have that one thing in common, and that's humanity. We are all human beings, and we're all here with a common purpose: to continue.
When I went to Orlando, I met these guys that were amazing, "Would you take my photo?" I was like, "Yes, sure." They were three African-American guys. I was like, "This is awesome. Our country is awesome." We do get along, by and large, in a big way. I go, "Guys, do you mind? I launched this app. It's called 77Pray." They were listening. I told two stories of how my son was healed from prayer and how this other kid named Noah had COVID and double pneumonia. He got on the prayer app and then, magically, he was healed and went home. I was like, "Love is what it's going to come down to. This whole left-right stuff is a joke."
Love is the way of healing and combining. One of the components of love, it's 1 of 3. One of the ones that we failed to realize is that love is the conduit. Love allows us to connect one to another. It has nothing to do with our differences. It actually talks about the things that we have in common. Love connects us. As a result, the thing that we're all connected to by that love is humanity. I don't care what our divide might be or our divisive division, sector, ethnicity or whatever it is. We do have that one thing in common and that's humanity.
We're all human beings and we're all here with a common purpose. That common purpose is to continue this humanity. It's to pour into the next generation those things that will continue this process. We're here because of those who invested in us. We have an investment into the next generation but we have to come together. We have to realize that what you need, I have and what I have is you.
It's the stay in your lane, understand your God-given purpose and then lean into that. It doesn't matter if the world calls it great or lame. When you get in that lane, it's so frictionless. My next book is going to be called Frictionless because life is fun when it's frictionless. I want to put sandpaper on the cover where it's like, "Feel how rough that is?"
Those are the keys of love that make everything systematic. It makes it a smooth-sail but there are so many parts of it that we failed to realize that we have to do. We have a responsibility for this thing. That is that we have to prepare ourselves to have that to give, to flow through that conduit. What we do is we think that love is going to do it by itself. We have something to give to the other person. We have to allow love to grow us up and mature us to the point where we can push down a lot of the differences that we have.
One of the other components of love is that love is a conduit. It's also a choice but the one that I'm referring to here is that it's a chameleon. It adapts. It doesn't need to be seen as the one. It just needs to understand that the value is in us, all coming together and accomplishing this thing called humanity, that this thing called life is what we all are here experiencing. It allows us to be successful in all of our ventures because we know that because we're willing to adapt. That means, "Not only am I going to be successful but everybody around me is going to be successful." That's what it's all about. It does many things and it matches with whatever your situation is.
There's another guy I talked to named Robert. He was in prison multiple times, methamphetamine, married. She divorced him because he was not a nice person and he admits that. He was like, "I was a bad person. She should have divorced me." He goes into prison and he said, "I got to a point where I was literally broken." That's the word he uses. He said, "I had a choice. I could take the razor blade. I can go in the shower in prison and just call it a day." He is missing every other tooth but his love was oozing. He is all about helping other people get through those things. He said, "I could turn my whole life over to God. I chose to do that and then God caused me inside my mind."
He was telling the story in an animated way of, "You got to go make amends with this person. You got to go do this. You screwed that up. You screwed this up. Once I turned it over and I go, 'I can't do this myself,' I have to give it over." The ex-wife who got remarried, they have a kid, came over to the house one day and said, "You're clean. Can you raise our son because I can't now?" He was like, "You bet I can." He was happy as a clam. Now, he is running a church in his home with 3 or 4 people every weekend. He gets eight members of this home church.
I was like, "What a neat experience that he was able to take his deepest, darkest thing and story of being broken and love on other people." What I've realized, my day job is a LinkedIn automation company and some other outreach stuff. What you said is, "To truly love, you have to take action." I'm learning and this conversation is helpful. That's what I do. It's to help people take action, "You've got your story. Let me help you accelerate your story to the masses because your story matters. You matter." That's where we got to go.
You hit the nail on the head because it's that inability to act that people can't see or understand love, in a way in which we all have that thing in common. We have what each other needs. There's no need for anyone to have that lack. Nobody should lack because everybody is unique. Everybody has what is sufficient and necessary for someone else.
Arjun Sen is a friend of ours. He works with Tiger Woods on the PR side of the house and does a fabulous job in many other people. His entire message that he talked at an event we ran was about your fingerprint and how you're one of one in the world of something. If you can define what that one of oneness is, there are people who are willing to pay good money for that one of oneness that you have inside of you.
It's that uniqueness and it's essential that we all realize that first. We've got to understand that uniqueness. One of the things that I realized in my journey because one of the things that I haven't shared with you is I have a learning disability. That was something that was not diagnosed until I was 37 years old. I was at a point in my life where I was extremely depleted and diminished. I was frustrated. I felt hopeless. I realized that this life experience is not about what you don't have. It's about how you use what you do have.
Love: Love has the answer for every question, every situation. And it's very interesting because love never fails.
It was understanding and beginning to realize that, "I'm not to be compared. I'm an original. This original has something to do. It has strength and value." I was able to understand that. Once I began to understand that and put the pieces to this puzzle together, things began to be very simple. Love made it simple. Life began to be simple. I began to follow something that I once was very afraid of and then I began to be confident. I feel assured in who I am because of understanding first who I am and what I have to offer.
Have you heard of a guy named Darryll Stinson? He is a friend of mine. He is the CEO of Second Chance Athletes. He went down a path and then had a slipped disc in his back. He stayed in college sports for two years. He thought he was going to be in the NFL, pushed it with drugs and then thought, "Who am I after sports?" He wrote a book called Who Am I After Sports? He did a TED Talk that I attended outside of Dallas. It's about to reach a million views. Check it out, Darryll Stinson. He talks about, "There are two things about rejection. Think about in our lives that people reject us for whatever reason."
He goes, "I want to reframe rejection. One is projection. Meaning someone else is putting their weakness on you. If they call you out on a learning disability, that's because they have a problem." Six minutes of his TED Talk is about projection and then the other six minutes is about protection because of the NFL thing. If he would have gone into the NFL, he was like, "God was protecting me because I wouldn't have been able to do what I'm actually doing and I love it. I've got a new life." Everything is magical once he gets through that and discovers what his real capabilities are.
I believe that our fulfillment is on the other side of our weakness but we have to embrace that weakness before we can get to it. So much time I know in my life, I was avoiding it. I was trying to hide and mask it because, up until I was 37, I didn't even know what it was. I just thought I was inadequate. Everything in my mind went through my head. It was amazing stuff that I went through. As far as my self-esteem, it was in the trash. It wasn't until I began to confront it and get to the other side of it that I could realize what you were saying is that I don't have a problem. Someone else who sees this as a problem is the problem.
It's like a video game, "I'm a 10 of 10 in these three quadrants and I'm a 1 of 10 in this or 2 of 10. So what? I was purpose-built for that snowflake."
I'm 100% of who I am. I don't even paint. Those are not my strengths. I need someone else to help and support and that means that I need someone else. That goes back to my conduit where I can't do this thing by myself but I know what I can do.
We're all one and interconnected. I got the equation wrong. Thanks for jumping in there. That's huge.
I'm all 100% me and I'm what someone else needs. The fact of the matter is I need somebody else's 100%. I've had these conversations with so many people as it relates to the podcasts. I said, "I'm indebted to you for offering me the opportunity to put my message on your platform because I need you to share my content. It's you that is needing me to provide content to you. We need each other."
Let's talk more about love. We've hit on love a lot. Why is it important to humanity?
It's the system plus success in humanity. We cannot successfully engage humanity and life experience without love. Without it, we destroy it. With it, we prolong it. We protect humanity with love.
Some people would argue and my son would fall into this because he is an analytical engineering thinker going to the Colorado School of Mines, he would say, "What's one person loving on other people? That's just a number. How can one person make the difference?" How would you respond to that?
It's the one person that you don't know you need that makes a difference in your life and in the life of someone else. It's until we understand where we fit into this thing called humanity. We are all connected. Many people challenged the concept and the fact is that life is nothing more than a repeat of itself and that's a system. I don't speak of life. I'm talking about nature. It repeats itself. It's called seasons.
Love: Everybody is unique. Everybody has what is sufficient. Everybody has what is necessary for someone else.
The fact of the matter is that we fall underneath that same category because humanity is a system. We come from those that proceeded us. We are going to proceed with those that follow us. We have to realize and understand that it's a system. Love is that system that bridges the gaps, connects us one to another and allows us to understand that when we no longer exist here, we will have something that we would have invested in humanity that will proceed and follow us into the next generation.
We had someone to the firepit named Dr. Jim Wilder, who is a neurotheologist. I was starting to write a kid's book about making good choices. He was like, "Good luck. I already wrote that book." In the Old Testament, there are 613 simultaneous laws about making a good choice. He was like, "That's all the neurons and that's everything in the universe times 3.14," like infinity basically. It's impossible to make good choices. Typically, people would say, "What would God do? What would Jesus do? When you're making a good choice, what would they do?"
He changed it and reframed this to, "In this choice and decision, how can I optimize it for the end of time?" It has caused me to play a little bigger game because usually, it's like, "I want to optimize for the five years of my life." I was like, "I want to get a place in the mountains. I love to ski. Cool. That's tiny. Go bigger." How do we scale this thing called love to impact countries and worlds and in the future, universe, as it sounds like, with where space travel is going? We've got to get together and lean in on the four-letter word that we opened this call with, which is love.
It's one by one, one person at a time, realizing that we need each other. We cannot expect to continue to walk this divisive walk. We are divided into so many things and areas that it seems like it's impossible but all we have to do is make the choice. Love is a choice. We have to choose not to be divided.
Juan, I got to tell you. Your mom, Nannie, would be so proud of you. I thank God for your mom and for you. Thank you for sharing on the show. If people want to get a hold of you, JuanLeeTheAuthor.com is your website?
That's the website. You can pick up the book there to buy the eBook or you can go onto Amazon or wherever you buy your books from and buy the hard copy. Also, you can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn. By all means, on LinkedIn. You can also find me on Facebook. On Twitter, it's @LoveMadeSimple. On the other ones, it's @JuanLeeAuthor. You'll find them.
Juan, let's get together. I would love to help you with your outreach because we need each other. I pick people who need to scale the message of love and double down on their message. I'm happy to help you do that. It's all part of my nonprofit outreach stuff.
I'm looking forward to it. I would appreciate that. We can have a very good synergy here.
My friend Darryll came out with a new shirt. It's black and white. It says, "You matter." I was like, "Boom. Drop the mic on that one, brother." Everybody matters and that's exactly what you've shared. We all need each other. Let's all figure out what our strengths are and then lean in on each other and help each other. It's love made simple.
There you go. You see how you did wrap it up in just a couple of words.
Thanks for joining the show. It's great getting to know you, Juan. This is the start of a long-term relationship, I feel. Thank you for joining the show.
I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.
I'll catch you on the next Living A Better Story.
Important links:
book – Love Made Simple
LinkedIn – Juan Lee
Facebook – Juan Lee
@LoveMadeSimple - Twitter
@JuanLeeAuthor - Instagram
About Juan Lee
Juan Lee is an author and teacher on the powerful principle of love. For over 30 years, he has studied organized religion to find the elements that unite humanity and share the message with those who need it. Based outside of Washington DC, Juan is a decorated US Air Force veteran and author of Love Made Simple.
