113 Marques Anderson: From NFL to Ancestral Cyborg: Building Platforms For Global Sustainability

What type of ancestor do I want to be?

This is a powerful question Marques Anderson asked me in our conversation.

Marques Anderson is a former NFL player. He is the founder of the World Education Foundation and Urban Matrix One. He is also the podcast co-host at Ancestralcyborg.com. He is a thought leader, keynote speaker, and cyborg-anthropologist.

We talked about

How he uses his somatic wisdom to make congruent decisions
Why the choice of leaving the NFL into the world of futurism wasn’t a difficult one
The exact moment when his passion for the NFL left his body
The importance of being brave enough to lean into a new identity
Using breathwork to achieve desirable qualities instantly
How to integrate both the intellectual and somatic life to be in flow
How to use precise language to create a powerful narrative to build his ideas
The 2 indigenous practices that are relevant to bring disparate cultures together
How to leverage technology to transform our fragility to naturally and subconsciously rebuild the earth
Marque’s personal practice from visualization, movement, meditation to properly focus his lifeforce in harmony with the earth

Please enjoy my conversation with Marques Anderson, the founder of AncestralCyborg.com

Wisdom Quotes

"I would ask questions and I would listen to my heart. And if my heart actually was beating fast, I knew it was something that I shouldn't actually move forward with. But if I asked that same question and my heart was slow and there was a contentment around it, then I knew that I could move forward and explore that."

"I really kind of lean on indigenous wisdom that I've been able to pattern over the years of the relationality between ourselves and other things."

"Over the course of building a trust with someone who is fascinating to you and that you glean wisdom from, you start to formulate new perspectives about what's possible, not only for the business aspects, but just kind of the emotional transformation that you may be making during that time. Having community and kinship is so important to the pivots that you make."

"When physiologically all of the passion just left my body, I knew that I needed to make a transition. I knew that, okay, that was a sign for me that I shouldn't be here."

"I think is really about a self evaluation and being critical with who you are and what you want to be. And being brave enough to make those hard decisions, to be brave enough, to know that things are gonna work out if I actually get into my alignment, um, and also brave enough to really suppress the ego. I think having the bravery to kind of break out of those mental models to where you can create a new you. It's really important to give yourself that in order to do that effectively."

"The way that I get in flow now is getting into nature. Because nature is so robust that you have to submit, right? It's almost like a forced submission. Nature is a way that I can really get in contact with what is important"

"Language is the coding material for our world. If we can get the language, then we can create the narrative that can actually build the thing."

"There are no things that are happening moderately in technology that haven't been ideated or performed in some way before in the past. And we can use the current language almost as a Trojan horse to start bringing in some of those ancient practices into where we want to go in the future."

"Personal transformation needs to happen before the technological aspect, because technology is only a tool. It's a representation of who we are."

"Ancestral intelligence is indigenous protocols and artificial intelligence. It asks the question of how we get into a place where we're naturally subconsciously building with the earth."

"From the natural aspect, I'm always right where I need to be."

"What type of ancestor do I want to be?"