Slay Dragons, Chase Lions, Tame Wolves: The Path from Inner Work to Outer Impact
The Full Listener's Guide
Most of us spend time and energy chasing self-improvement, reading books, building habits, trying to become our best selves. But what if self-actualization isn’t the endpoint?
This week, Jamison Price joins us to walk through a framework years in the making: dragons, lions, and wolves - three metaphors that map the journey from self-discovery to service.
You’ll learn why the treasure you’re seeking is often guarded by something you’re avoiding, why real strength requires the pack, and how to become someone who’s dangerous to darkness and dependable in the light.
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Shared-actualization is the missing step - Maslow’s hierarchy ends with self-actualization, but the real goal is learning to forget yourself in service to others
Dragons guard your identity - The treasure in the cave isn’t success or status, it’s who you actually are versus who you’re pretending to be
The lone wolf dies - Individual mastery only matters when it serves collective flourishing; the pack is weak because the wolf is weak
Integration over elimination - You don’t kill the wild wolf or the wise wolf; you tame them both and learn when each is needed
5 Big Ideas
1. Maslow Stopped One Step Short: Shared-Actualization
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs ends with self-actualization - becoming the fullest version of yourself, realizing your potential. And that’s critical. But Jamison argues there’s a transcendent step beyond it that Maslow left out: shared-actualization.
The point of becoming deeply self-aware isn’t to fixate on yourself. It’s to gain the capacity to forget yourself in service to others. The point of discovering your full potential is to direct those potentialities outward, to build a better world by giving them away.
As C.S. Lewis put it: learning “not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less.”
This is the paradox at the heart of the framework. The most selfish thing you can do is be selfless. Why? Because serving others - once you have the capacity to actually serve - is the most fulfilling thing a human can experience. But you can’t serve from an empty well. You can’t give what you don’t have. That’s why the dragons, lions, and wolves come first.
Self-mastery isn’t the end. It’s the preparation for what comes next.
2. Dragons: Face What’s Hidden in the Cave
The dragon is what you face within - your shame, your addictions, your secret life, your fractured identity.
Jamison’s insight: “The dragon guards your treasure. And that treasure? It’s your identity.”
Most of us avoid the cave because we’ve convinced ourselves the dragon isn’t there. Or we know it’s there but hope no one else notices. Meanwhile, every day we avoid it, we’re training ourselves in cowardice. The dragon doesn’t come out to threaten others. It stays in the cave, guarding what’s rightfully yours - the person you’re meant to become.
For Jamison, the dragon was the gap between who he said he was and who he actually was. Outwardly productive, impactful, helpful. Inwardly insecure, angry, dishonest. He was performing transformation while avoiding the real work. And it came at a cost.
His turning point came when his brother had the courage to call him on his patterns - not with judgment, but with love and a lifetime of relational equity. That conversation forced a choice: keep performing or start transforming.
The lesson: You can’t become who you’re meant to be while hiding who you actually are. And self-awareness - the ability to see the dragon clearly - is the foundational movement pattern of transformation. Just like hip extension in athletic performance: if you don’t have it, everything else breaks down.
3. Lions: Chase the Threats Before They Become Crises
The lion is what you face without - the external threats to your family, your community, your culture.
The metaphor comes from 2 Samuel: David kills a lion that threatens his sheep, which gives him the confidence to later face Goliath. One of David’s mighty men chases a lion into a pit on a snowy day and kills it. The pattern is clear: lion chasers become giant slayers. And giant slayers become kings.
This is the paradox of the modern world. There are no real lions anymore. Which means you have to go looking for the threats. You have to develop the discernment to see what’s actually dangerous and the courage to run toward it.
Jamison’s insight: “Until you choose to face the dragon, you don’t have the capacity, the character, or the courage to chase lions. You’re not the person who does those things.”
Every day you don’t face the dragon is another day of training yourself to be a coward. And when the lion actually shows up - when something threatens what matters to you - why would you suddenly become brave? You won’t. You’ll default to the level of your preparation.
The modern challenge is that threats come slowly now. Decrepitude. Isolation. Purposelessness. Mediocrity. You can passively exist your entire life without facing anything. But that passive existence makes you a liability to your pack instead of an asset. The opposite of chasing lions isn’t safety - it’s becoming the kind of burden other people have to carry.
4. Wolves: Tame Both, Not Just One
The wolves are what you must reconcile within - the paradox of strength and restraint, wildness and wisdom, fire and calm.
You’ve probably heard the parable: there are two wolves inside you, one good and one evil, and the one that wins is the one you feed. Jamison challenges that. His reframe: Don’t try to kill either wolf. Tame them both.
Without the wild wolf, you’re harmless. Sterilized. Ineffective. You might be pleasant, but you can’t protect anyone when a real threat shows up.
Without the wise wolf, you’re reckless. Dangerous to yourself and others. All fire, no restraint. You burn out or burn bridges.
The goal isn’t elimination. It’s integration.
This ties directly to the lion-chasing concept. If you’ve only fed the wise wolf - if you’ve suppressed all intensity, aggression, and wildness because people told you it’s toxic - then when a real threat reveals itself, you’re not answering that call. You’ve sterilized yourself out of effectiveness.
But if you’ve only fed the wild wolf, you’re a liability. You can’t be trusted. You’re not part of the pack; you’re the threat the pack has to manage.
The harmony of both is what makes you who you’re supposed to be. Being gentle is only gentleness if you have the capability to not be gentle. Meekness isn’t weakness. It’s strength under control.
5. The Pack Principle: The Lone Wolf Dies
Rudyard Kipling wrote in The Jungle Book: “The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”
Jamison’s addition: “The pack is weak because the wolf is weak.”
If you haven’t done the inner work - if you haven’t slayed your dragons, chased your lions, tamed your wolves - you can’t be a net positive to your community. You’re just consuming resources without contributing value. You’re a liability.
Everything we know about longevity and fulfillment points to the same reality: what matters most is relationships. Not performative relationships where you take selfies together, but relationships where you’re mutually strengthening each other. Where you can both contribute to and benefit from being part of something bigger than yourself.
This is where shared-actualization comes full circle. The whole point of the dragons, lions, and wolves isn’t to stand alone on a mountaintop as a self-actualized individual. It’s to become someone your pack can actually depend on. Someone who protects, provides, and cultivates in community.
That’s the integration: You do the work so you can forget yourself in service. You become dangerous to darkness so you can be dependable in the light. You face what’s inside so you can chase what’s outside. You tame both wolves so you can belong.
The lone wolf doesn’t die because he’s brave. He dies because he’s isolated. And isolation - no matter how “self-actualized” you are - is a death sentence.
3 Reflection Questions
What dragon have you been avoiding? What lie or secret are you building your identity around? What would it cost you to walk into that cave - and what would it cost you NOT to?
Which wolf do you over-identify with? Are you all wildness with no restraint? Or all wisdom with no fire? Where do you need integration? And what would change in your relationships if you had both?
Who in your life has earned the right to call you on your patterns? Have you given them permission to do so? Or are you surrounding yourself with people who only affirm the version of yourself you’re performing?
1 Key Takeaway
Stop treating self-mastery as the destination.
The work you do on yourself - the dragons you slay, the lions you chase, the wolves you tame - isn’t so you can stand above others. It’s so you can stand with them. Not so you can prove your worth, but so you can protect what’s worth fighting for. Not so you can boast, but so you can belong.
This is the path from inner work to outer impact. From self-actualization to shared-actualization. From becoming your best self to giving your best self away.
Jamison puts it this way: “The world doesn’t need more people chasing comfort. It needs more humans willing to live awake. People dangerous to darkness, dependable in the light.”
That’s the standard. And the only way to get there is to do the work no one sees. Face what’s hidden. Chase what threatens. Integrate what’s fractured. And show up to the cave, the pit, and the pack again and again until you become someone your people can actually count on.
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