Upstream Problem, Downstream Playbook (Part Three)

By Lawrence Funderburke•April 15, 2025•17 Minutes

Hype first, then comes the hope. This word has many noteworthy synonyms, including a longing, yearning, urging, aspiring, or wanting for something better and brighter. A better opinion. A better option. A better opportunity. A brighter day. A brighter future. A brighter outcome. And financial education can provide a ray of hope to those who are stuck or stranded, sometimes through no fault of their own, at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. Miss the mark here with high-need populations, and they might not ever take the chance of climbing out of their economic hellhole. For those of you who have a disdain for (or distrust of) organized religion, please keep reading. This is an illustrative example, not a proselytizing sermon. Hope can’t survive without faith. In fact, hope and faith, along with vision, are inseparable tenets but not interchangeable terms. Hope expects (where both greatness and excellence lead the way in a purposeful life); faith believes (when the odds of success seem insurmountable or unattainable); and vision imagines (what could be in spite of how bad things have been). We’re told in Romans 11:1, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” This famous Bible verse has spiritual and practical applications. Why? Because life can’t be lived — eternally or internally — without some measure of faith-inspired and vision-guided hope. Literally and figuratively, it can push or propel those who’ve been beaten down by life across the financial success finish line. Here’s the problem for most of them: Hope is in shorter supply than money.

Rydell Gibson, a mentor and close friend of mine from Sacramento, shared these two faith acronyms with me over 20 years ago. Obviously, I’ve never forgotten them, nor his prophetic declaration over my life back when I played with the Sacramento Kings. He told me, “Lawrence, your assignment in life will be to instill hope into the hopeless.” He added, “You have the rare gift of helping people see their future lives from a present lens.” As I write this article, tears are swelling up in my eyes. I didn’t quite understand what Rydell meant back then, but I clearly do now. In his F.A.I.T.H acronym, “for all individuals there’s hope,” the key word is all. Everyone needs hope to express a given level of faith. Without it, life becomes a meaningless activity or uninspiring voyage. Here’s what I’ve learned while working with (and being a former member of) the scarcity class. Hope deprived is hype denied. Hype runs out of gas — to achieve better and brighter economic outcomes — when hope is missing from the picture. That’s why it is incredibly dangerous to get at-risk communities fired up about a financial future that can’t be seen or experienced up close and personal. This is the classic case of a gimmick trap, which was highlighted in the previous article. Gassed up, with no place to go. The result? Another letdown, and potential meltdown, is added to their disappointment ledger account, as lives and legacies hang in the balance.

If you’re in a leadership position — personally, parentally, pastorally, professionally, or philanthropically — I would highly encourage you to do (if you haven’t already) a comprehensive study into the cerebellum. What the mind expresses, the body experiences. Through the cerebellum. It’s located below the occipital lobe and behind the temporal lobe. Among other functions, the cerebellum coordinates the motor system, notably balance, coordination, and posture. It is also faced with the task of error prediction as well as overseeing (or being overrun by) fear responses. And when trauma gets trapped or stored in the body, the mind follows rather than leads. According to renowned psychiatrist and celebrity brain coach, Dr. Daniel Amen, “doubt shuts down the cerebellum,” as in not being able to operate or perform in an efficient manner. What’s fascinating about this area is that it occupies roughly 10 percent of the brain’s volume but requires 50 to 80 percent of the neurons. But for some reason, the cerebellum doesn’t garner a lot of attention. One more point: a doubt-ridden mind, hope’s antithesis, produces a deflated body and defeated soul. Did you get that? Let’s look at some real-world examples of doubt’s effects on the brain, belly, and body.

Enough of the technical stuff. Inside and outside the world of sports, I’ve witnessed collective doubt firsthand for over three decades. It can negatively impact a family, work group, classroom, community, or even basketball team. Duke Blue Devil fans, I’m not picking on your legendary program. But I’m still a bit shocked by your team’s epic loss to the Houston Cougars in the 2025 NCAA Final Four Tournament. Like most viewers, I assumed the game was over and Duke would win comfortably. I turned the TV off when the Blue Devils were up by six with about a minute to go in the game, and with a chance to extend their lead by eight points. “No way they’re gonna lose,” I thought. “Game over.” I didn’t know Duke had lost the game until I returned home from church the next day and my son Eli blurted out as I walked through the door, “Dad, did you know Houston beat Duke, 70-67?” I replied, “Bad joke son. Try again.” He was telling the truth.

For the next hour, I watched dozens of replays of the last few minutes of the game. Missed free throws. Questionable inbound passes. Careless, unforced turnovers. A short-arm shot — at close range — by college basketball’s best player. So what happened to the Blue Devils? As doubt crept in, player struggles picked up. Like clockwork, body language matched, really synced up with, the mental state of Duke’s players. And as the error predictor, their individual cerebellums mirrored what their collective minds expressed. Fearful thoughts (“What if we lose this game?”) Rigid movements (“I’m not sure about making this pass.”) Stunned looks (“Can you believe we just lost?”) Whatever inputs have the most tag-team partners in the mind before an action is taken, the cerebellum carries them out in proportionate fashion, even if the signals are mixed. Telling each other in the huddle with lukewarm enthusiasm, “We got this victory,” didn’t work for the Blue Devils. Why not? Allow me to speculate as an observer and former player who also unfortunately faced similar circumstances as an Elite Eight participant in 1992 with Ohio State. Decades have since passed, but that sick feeling in missing out on a trip to the Final Four is still there. As the second overall number one seed behind Duke that year, we got beat in overtime by the Fab Five, aka that team up north. Our consolation prize? Coulda, woulda, shoulda regrets regarding that lost opportunity.

Duke’s reversal of fortunes on that fateful day in San Antonio, Texas, likely produced the following conditions in the players and possibly coaches, too: With their stomach in knots, Duke looked (and probably felt) unsure about the outcome. Their lung capacity and muscle endurance took a huge hit, likely the result of mouth rather than nose breathing, which impacted their nitric oxide and testosterone levels. They were tight, not loose, a telltale sign of shaky confidence, rising doubt, and amplified stress (yes, excess cortisol in the bloodstream). I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Their defeat was set in motion long before the game actually ended. That moment got the best of them. The Duke Blue Devils paid the ultimate price by losing out on a chance to play for (and likely would have won) the 2025 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship.

Let’s move from the court to the classroom and discuss how we can help at-risk youth knock down their success shot in life under pressure. Meet three of the students that LFYO has had the privilege of working with in our Financial Life Skills Mentoring Initiative. Aliases are given to protect each child’s identity. First up is Raina, a Hispanic female with a pleasant disposition. She’s a polite, calm, and quiet student who “disappears” in group settings. Very seldom does she speak, let alone participate in class. Raina is often confused about what to do in an activity, how it should be done, and where to start first. Michael, of Appalachian descent, has faced tremendous difficulties in life. His parents have battled emotional safety, housing stability, and job security challenges. Michael freezes when he’s introduced to new experiences. He pulled me aside one day to share, “Mr. Fundy, I have trouble reading and spelling. Can you help me?” The last student we’ll highlight is Shanice, an African American student from a broken home. Her mood dictates how she’ll perform in class. She has trouble looking me in the eyes, which might have something to do with deep-rooted daddy issues. Shanice rarely smiles and needs constant motivation to keep her mind from drifting.

When you make plans, you have to look ahead. When you look ahead, you have to be held accountable to achieve a desired state of beneficial outcomes. The gap between today and your future is how you leverage or develop your potential right now.

All three students — Raina, Michael, and Shanice — struggle with their future outlook. One of the best ways to inspire hope-deprived students is by helping them develop an upgraded vision filter. Our financial apps assist vulnerable youth in revamping their visual forecasting skills while making adult-related economic decisions through fun-friendly games. They’re given a glimpse into their future world, where experientially, they have the insight and incentive to influence right now. This is a key pillar of our empowerment protocol and wealth-building initiative for at-risk communities. Observational intelligence, along with navigational aptitude, allows LFYO participants to look ahead, plan accordingly, and act decisively. Life, really the semblance of a productive one, is not left up to chance. These students can now hold themselves accountable and responsible for achieving favorable outcomes down the road. Plus, we also help students excel in their core school subjects by offering each participant a customized game plan to dream big, ask questions, organize thoughts, follow instructions, formulate strategies, analyze data, make decisions, evaluate choices, overcome setbacks, control impulses, manage emotions, and achieve goals, among 100 other skill-building exercises that are specifically designed to improve cerebral lobe development. It’s not a capability issue with our at-risk youth; it’s an accessibility problem. Here’s a simple formula: [Access x Excess] + Process = Success. Why should at-risk students settle for less when more is available?

In closing, lives and legacies transform for high-need populations when their collective mindset improves. And nothing changes downstream without an upstream game plan — targeted cerebrum and cerebellum development. (The cerebrum, aka the cerebral cortex, consists of the frontal lobe, parietal lobe, temporal lobe, and occipital lobe, or roughly 80 percent of what we know of as the brain.) I suspect the cerebellum‘s primary objective is to protect the body, even at the expense of the brain’s wellbeing. My rationale? PTSD, a condition that I battled and overcame several years ago. The easiest way to explain PTSD is that your brain-body connection is often working in reverse order. What seems sensible to someone with this debilitating condition, notably erratic behaviors and intrusive thoughts, is quite illogical to those not affected by the disorder.

With PTSD, the body is usually in control of the mind. I’m certainly not an expert, but it appears that traumatic memories can get stored in acetylcholine receptor sites housed in visceral tissues of the neuromuscular system. If this sounds confusing, does the term muscle memory ring a bell? And once bad memories get stored or trapped in the body, especially at an early age, hope will have a difficult time leaving the feeling runway. “The dream of _________” will likely be permanently grounded, while that nightmarish scenario becomes reality. Seeing a parent die from a drug overdose (emotional trauma). Watching someone in the neighborhood get shot over a trivial matter (environmental trauma). Getting evicted from section-eight housing for the third time in a year (financial trauma). The world of generational poverty ain’t no joke, which millions of innocent children experience on a daily basis here in America. Hype is good, hope is better, but what’s the best approach to close the wealth gap? In the final installment of this series, you’ll find out.