Advice For Every Season Of Life w/ Tom Bilyeu, Natalie Ellis, Lewis Howes, and Alex Hormozi

When the compelling future won't work anymore, when you're tired and you're just. You're covered in blood, man, you've just been really going at this, and you're at that point where you want to give up. That's when I remind myself that there are people that want me to fail. There are people that knew this moment would come. There are people that are cheering for my demise, and I will not let them win. I won't let them be right.

What if I slow down? You know, am I going to lose that momentum? What if I do want to work a little bit less and spend more time at home? Will that mean that I'm not going to be as successful? Will my business still work? What if I want to have another baby and I'm still constantly going between? Will I lose momentum or can I do this?

When we have memories of the past that keep us stuck in the present and in the future that doesn't serve us, and instead of remembering all the negative from the past, create new meaning, heal that past so you can start having the space, the clarity to have a vision of the future and draw it closer to us.

Now, the problem mind, right, will always find new things to look at because it wants to keep you alive, right? Because that's its objective, but it doesn't want to keep you happy. And so if we can just simply break the connection of the underlying assumption that whatever happens, whether it's the dollar or the yen or AI takes over the world. Because I. I genuinely think I'm like, well, if AI takes completely over everything, I'm like, then my 401k doesn't matter too much.

Own your future, because if you don't, someone else. When you say the dark side, what do you mean by that?

So I believe that every emotion that we are capable of has an evolutionary reason for existing. And the. The dark side is a place. You want to spend as little time as possible there. But it is that really acute thing when the compelling future won't work anymore, when you're tired and you're just. You're covered in blood, man, you've just been really going at this, and you're at that point where you want to give up. That's when I remind myself that there are people that want me to fail. There are people that knew this moment would come. There are people that are cheering for my demise, and I will not let them win. I won't let them be right. And so evolution gives you that wind. Now. It's a very corrosive energy. And so people have to be really thoughtful about how much time they spend there. But in the hardest, I mean, when people say in the darkest moments, the dark energy is going to be the thing that gets you back out. And so you want every tool at your disposal. You want love, you want optimism, you want hope, but you also want anger, righteous indignation, hatred. Like, you want all of that. And then it just becomes, all right, be careful when you use what tool, Right? So that's where I think people go wrong, is they realize how powerful the dark side is. They spend too much time there. It begins to dominate their personality. No one wants to be around them. They can't have loving relationships. They can't do what I call broadcasting and receiving love, which is way more rewarding. But in those acute moments, very powerful.

Yeah. I think people feel alone because I still have those feelings today. Like, those emotions still come a week ago. Tackling new things. I don't think they ever go away. I think you learn to dance with them, or you learn to partner with them, or you learn to learn from them.

I agree. I think, honestly, like, there is a point at which you get into business and you realize death is always like, an inch away. Like, keeping a company alive is. Is very, very difficult. And so it is an adaptive response to be like, can I do this? Should I be doing this? And to have that gut check. Now, the difference between the people that end up pushing forward and the people that don't is they understand it, that this is part of the game. That that's an evolutionary voice in my brain that is trying to make sure I don't get eaten by a tiger. And it was interesting. One of my employees was asking me the other day, he's like, given AI and the level of disruption, how do you keep moving forward? And it's like that question is the difference between an entrepreneur and somebody who's not is, like, such a good. You can be in this incredible uncertainty. And by the way, no, like, I'm trying to build the next Disney, okay? And I understand that the odds of my Success border on 0%, but the ability to keep moving forward in the face of that is. Is how you end up building something. It's also how you end up crashing and burning spectacularly, by the way, which is why people cannot value themselves for accomplishment. You have to value yourself for sincere pursuit. So I'm like, look, I'm going to learn something in this. No matter what my value is to myself is all predicated on my willingness to Learn and to try things and to move forward in uncertainty and all that. So I, I'm not trying to get rid of that voice that is worried. I'm not trying to get rid of the voice that's paranoid. I think it's really important. And Ray Dalio has a quote. He built the largest hedge fund in the world for people that don't know him. Incredible, incredible guy. And he said, if you're worried, you don't have to worry. And I think it's good that people have a part that not only worries but that questions themselves. Because if you're questioning yourself, you're going to stay honest, you're going to stay very clear headed.

Okay, I love what you said, the value of sincere pursuit. Because that's, that's the, I mean it was Winston Churchill said, right. The definition of success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. And that's just the easier way to say what, what you're sharing. You know, I know you mentioned it before and I want to get to some questions on kind of brand marketing compared to what you're doing now. I just think it's, it's intriguing. But what, what would be one thing you kind of touched on before? What would be one thing that's reoccurring that you worry about in the invisible that no one would think with your success, your relationship, starting a new business even you have feel like there's zero chance it's going to work, but you're going all in anyway. What's one thing that maybe you would never have thought you still would have pop up as a fear or a worry that other people wouldn't know about you?

It's interesting, there's two things in there. So the thing that I constantly worry about is I'm just not smart enough to solve these puzz. And so I've literally structured my entire company, the culture and everything to hedge against my limited intelligence, which I for most entrepreneurs is going to be a far smarter strategy. We all admire people like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs that seem like they can almost be dictatorial and clamp down on people because their ideas are so right that it's just like, you know, they're a once in a generation mind. I recognize myself, I'm not a once in a generation mind. So I have to create a different structure where we become a super organism and we're all trying to learn. And so people are critiquing me and they're criticizing my approach that helps me refine my approach and so that's. That's worked really well. And so I think people think I'm trying to be modest when I say that I'm not impressed with my level of intelligence. And I'm just saying empirically, like, I've. I've hit too many roadblocks. I've not been able to think my way out of a problem. I've had to rely on other people too many times to be overly impressed with my intelligence. But that thing where I can orchestrate a group of people, I can intoxicate them with certainty, I can get them moving in a direction, know when to pivot. I understand psychology, all of that. I can emotionally regulate. I can build culture. So I'm not saying that I haven't gotten to a point where I've built my skill set into something that's formidable. I have. It's just that I'm very realistic about what my skill set is. So that's something I think about a lot. And then on the other side is when. When I think about what is it about me that would surprise people. It's really that to this day, I am still convinced that I am just smart enough to realize how smart I'm not. And it bothers me a lot. And so that is something that I really have to. I have to contend with that on a daily basis of, like. Because I can paint the picture of how I've addressed it, but the reality is it really bothers me. It really bothers me. And so, yeah, I deal with that on the daily.

Something I've really been going through since giving birth to my daughter, which was a year ago, is this fear of losing momentum. I came back after my maternity leave probably a little bit too soon, to be quite honest. Emotionally, I wasn't ready. And I tried to sit back in the seat in the business I'd always been in, and something wasn't clicking for me. And I felt like it just started eroding at my confidence. I started to wonder, am I the person that could run this business? Can I take it to where it's going to be? The sleepless nights, I was waking up with no energy, and I was questioning, will I ever feel like myself again? Is this just my new identity? I don't have the same motivation and drive and energy that I used to. And as I work through that, I'm still dealing with, what if I slow down? Am I going to lose that momentum? What if I do want to work a little bit less and spend more time at home? Will that mean that I'M not going to be as successful. Will my business still work? What if I want to have another baby? And I'm still constantly going between will I lose momentum or can I do this? And it's also really interesting because for the last decade I have, I've done the steps, I've executed enough to be able to trust that I can do it the last year. It's brand new to me to be a mum and an entrepreneur. It's brand new to me to be juggling both. And so I don't have that past history of doing it that's keeping me going. And so on a daily basis I'm constantly questioning, am I doing enough? Do I still have what I had? Have I changed? It's an ongoing process and I hear that a lot and I think probably that's something our identity probably continues to change for the rest of our lives. And as you enter these new growth stages, I've heard that it's hard before, it gets easier. And so I feel like I'm riding those waves right now.

Yeah, I watch my wife go through it all the time. You and Lisa are friends and you chat all the time. You know, she had, she has her hairstyling business that's extremely lucrative and fantastic. And now she has two children. We, we have two young children, three and a half and, and eight months old, both with allergies. I know you two talk about that. Life threatening allergies. So she cooks for them and manages them and she can't just let them go to school because if they, you know, my son picks up a cheese it and takes a lick of it, he could die. Or eggs or, or sesame and pea protein and everything you could possibly imagine. And. But I watch her struggle every day. Natalie, because she loved being an entrepreneur, she loved what she did for a living and she loves being a mom. And she's still. And we get to talk about it every day. She's still navigating the middle and, and it's three years in and simultaneously because she's made the choices she did as an entrepreneur and before I met her, she gets to have the choice of deciding or juggling between the two. And if you're listening right now and you're like, well, that's kind of mean, Dean. I don't feel like I have a choice right now. I think all of us are here for different reasons at different times in our lives and maybe this is a little spark to say, I just want to make a shift. And as Natalie said earlier, and I'd love for you to share, because I'm sure you're going to go down the road of helping moms. I just know that that's. I know that's got to be your future. I see that smile. My wife wants to do the same thing. My wife wants to help moms with kids with allergies. That's specific to her, but it doesn't have to happen overnight. Like, you don't hear a podcast like this and go, screw it. I'm quitting the job. I'm. I'm. I'll figure it out. And then add stress to yourself. It's a pivot. It's Kaizen at its best. Right, Kaizen, how do you run a thousand mile race one step at a time? Like, it's the reason we do podcasts like this is just hopefully you listen today and you're disturbed enough with where you are that you decide to make a shift. And that shift is exploring. It's investigating, it's understanding. It's, you know, you can measure twice and cut once. It's why, you know, Natalie does what she does and help inspire and share and teach. It's why Tony Robbins do what we do, we inspire, we teach. You follow someone that aligns with your soul and learn from someone who's already been there. The greatest thing about this industry is not only will you end up in it, but on the way in, you can learn from somebody who's already done it. Right. Is that something you'd love to do, is help women or new moms or moms juggle the two?

Yeah. I was tearing up as you were saying that, because I just thought back to. I remember we had Tony Robbins on our podcast about six months before I got pregnant with my daughter. And I was continuing to go between, when's the right time to have kids? I love my career. I love what I do. I have momentum, and I feel this deep calling to be a mom. And I know that's what I'm here for. And I said to Tony, tony, when am I ready? Can you just give me the magic answer? When's the right time? And I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, the problem is you're thinking in terms of years and probably months right now. You need to be thinking in terms of decades.

Yeah, that's a game changer.

And that changed everything for me because I thought about it and I thought, what do I really want my 30s to be about? And the answer was so clear. It was mothering, it was having my babies. And bringing them up. And yes, I want to do that alongside having a business and knowing that's the theme of this decade, it allows me to give myself so much grace for the season I'm in knowing that this decade is about being a mother. And yes, I'm doing all the other things outside of that, but that's my priority. And so everything I'm doing is going to be built around that. And if I know that's my priority, then what have I got to feel guilty about? You know, I cancel that team meeting because my baby needs me, or I take that week off because she's not well. That's my priority. And so the decisions become easy. And I think where it gets really, really challenging for moms that are trying to balance and juggle it all is they aren't really allowing themselves to have the priority be the priority. They think they've got three to four priorities and they need to be showing up at 100% on each of them. And that's why they feel so stretched and strained. And one thing I've really started to do at the end of the week is first check in. Am I proud of how I showed up as a mum this week? And if my answer is yes, then I'm winning. And if it means that I'm not, I didn't crush it with my goals the way I wanted to with my business, that's okay. You know, if we're growing a little bit slower in this season, that's okay. But if my priorities are off, that's where the misalignment internally is going to come from. That's where the guilt's going to show up. But right now I'm very happy to say I don't have that mum guilt because I know where my priorities are. And I'm not saying for any moms listening that that needs to be your priority. You know, when my kids are in school, things are probably going to change a bit for me, but I just want to have that. I want to give myself that permission slip to just be where I am. And I have a mastermind, actually for CEO mamas because I need the support myself. And so I was like, how can I just bring more women together? And it's interesting because now I'm one year out and I'm still so new into the postpartum journey, but I have a lot of women in there at the three to four month mark and they turn up to the call so frustrated. You know, maybe they're even six months and eight months and they're so frustrated because they're not making progress in their business. And I just take a minute to remind them, you're probably not sleeping very much right now. Your baby needs you constantly. You probably don't feel great leaving your baby. Your hormones are all over the place, and I just lay all the cards out on the table for them, and they look at me and they're like, that's a lot, isn't it? I'm juggling a lot. Like, yes, zoom out 10 years. This is a blip. This is a season. This is a point in time. You are not going to regret taking that extra month at home. You are not going to regret working those fewer hours for the next few weeks. Just have grace with yourself.

I've had an emotional coach guide me through a healing journey. Guide me through really looking at the details of where I felt triggered or where my nervous system would be reactive as opposed to responding out of love to. And over the last few years, I've had different words of intentions for each year going into the new year. And this year is all about authentic ownership. So I love that this is about owning your future, because this is the year of authentic ownership for me. And when I think of own your future, I think about remembering your future. A lot of us have memories of the past, and those memories keep us stuck in the past. If we haven't created new meaning around those memories. I know you had a very challenging childhood. We've talked about these things publicly and privately, about how they affected us. And when we have memories of the past that keep us stuck in the present and in the future, that doesn't serve us. So I love this idea of owning the future and truly remembering the future of who we want to be in the future and drawing that in closer. Now. That's what I think about when I think of owning your future is about remembering. And instead of remembering all the negative from the past, create new meaning. Heal that past. So you can start having the space, the clarity to have a vision of the future and draw it closer to us now.

Man, it's so good. And if you don't mind, I want to again. I love being with a friend because I feel like I could just be me and ask some serious questions here. I love that because I just shared something the other day. Sometimes we're under pressure, Louis. When things aren't going perfect, the old version of us can come out.

Yes.

Right. So I'm a parent. I hope you get to be a parent today that we can't wait Just so that's another story. My wife, who you know dearly is like when. Right. So anyway, we can talk about that on another podcast. But I want to tell you something. I'm a parent of a 16 year old, 14 year old, 3 year old and a 5 month old. This past weekend, I did something special for my daughter. I have this amazing relationship with her and I want to raise you and I have talked. I know the relationship you had with your dad. Sorry you lost your dad. I. I remember all the emotions and some of the deep conversations and we compared some things and. And I know about the learning disability we have. We have so many things in common and sometimes that's when we look at it, right? Those problems become our strength, our wind, not an anchor. But you got to switch it, right? The other thing I wanted to share though is sometimes I decided to parent differently than my father. And I grew up mostly with my dad, divorced parents since three, mostly with my dad. My dad being the youngest of 12, this will get someplace, I promise everybody. And then we get to some business stuff. But being the youngest of 12, my dad was physically abused, mentally abused, never got help. Old school, Italian and, and raised me differently. I was always nervous and he screamed a lot and would break stuff and very violent. I'll leave it at that. This weekend I've parented different. My daughter's whole life. She's 16. I the most. I'm so proud of this woman. I'm proud of her values, I'm proud of her character. She's in 10th grade. She made varsity. She's pitching for the varsity softball team.

Wow.

It's great.

Puts her heart into something. She does it. But there's a couple things. 16 year olds, I just ask her a couple things. One, read a book a week or read two hours a week of a book. I choose. And keep her room clean. The other night I got her. So I'm gonna. It's all gonna land here. The other night I. I surprised her and her friends and got a. I got a box for her and her friends of the softball team to go see Taylor Swift. They had the time of their life. The next morning, I just asked her to make sure her room was clean. And before she left, she left. The room was an absolute disaster. And it happened to be one of these weeks. Louis. I put in seven days. You know, you're in the middle of it, you're promoting your book, traveling all over, you're jumping on planes, you barely sleep. I just had one of those weeks and I was at my wit's end. And something triggered in me, like my dad would, that I didn't appreciate it. I did all this for her. I asked her one thing, to clean her room. And I called her, and I literally unloaded on her using swear words, profanity, anger, exactly like I got treated three days a week. I have not done, Louis. I don't know if I've ever done it before. The only reason I'm sharing that is I now. We went to dinner last night. We made up. I told her about my past. I told her we are bonded deeper. And I gave her my word it would never happen again. She was wrong. But I told her, don't you ever let any man talk to you that way, Even your father. Right.

Wow.

But I wanted to share that for a reason. And I want to get to. The real question I had is because I have not seen that version of me. I work on personal development every day. I'm with you three or four times a year. We're working on. I'm partners with Tony Robbins. I've written multiple books on it. I listen to personal development every day. Your book is literally slated. I started it this morning. I freaking, absolutely love it. This is what I do. I live it, I breathe it. And still under pressure after a tough week, after a trigger and a snap, I unloaded on my daughter like a jackass. Like I hated as a child. So as you share focus into the future. That was a long question. I apologize. But I wanted to get to it.

Yes.

Focus on the future, not the past. Sometimes the past is sticky, like Velcro, and pressure can bring it out. What advice can you give to people? Say, I want to focus on my future and owning my future. But, Louis, you don't understand.

Well, I think it's really. I think it's really inspiring how honest you are about that and how you kind of unleashed and were the. The worst, quote, unquote version of yourself emotionally on this phone call with your daughter. But how you also reconcile about it. I think it's. You know, I love the. The thing about Wayne Dyer where he used to tell a story. I don't know if you remember this story, but he used to tell this story about, you know, an orange, and he would take it out on stage, and he would talk about this orange and say, when you squeeze an orange, when you apply pressure to an orange, what comes out of the orange is orange juice. And when you apply pressure to a human, what comes out of the human is what's inside. And, you know, that might have been there in your past, that, that anger and frustration. And it came out in that moment because you had a ton of. And it sounds like it's the only time that's happened and it just might have been. You also got like punched in the face by your son. You were like beaten up, you had a black eye. So it was like you have all this pressure happening at once. And I think that's just hard to manage and it's hard to expect that we're going to be perfect under pressure.

Absolutely. And, and by the way, my, my three year old jumped off the couch. I didn't get beat up. My older son. But, but my question to you is, I know your past only because we're dear friends and we don't have to go there today. But I know the disability, you know, learning disability. I know the relationship with your dad. I know the insecurities that no one saw. How do you not let that come out in your life when you're the orange being squeezed?

There was a moment where, I don't know, about a week and a half ago in the middle of my book launch where I had a, a moment similar to that where I was like, everything was coming apart. It felt like internally because I couldn't control the externals and things weren't following, they weren't happening the way I wanted to. And I remember I had my phone in my hand and there was a moment in me where I wanted to throw it against the wall. And I remember having this moment. I was like, okay, I really want to throw this and scream right now. And Martha was in the room and there's nothing she did or said. I was just kind of in a frustrating moment of stuff happening. And I, and I literally remembered the future. I remember the future. And I was like, what is the highest version of me? What would he do in this moment Now I had to have a moment of clarity to stop myself, but I wanted to because that's what I used to do in the past.

So good.

React, anger.

This is what I wanted.

And, and, and I think the reason why, the only reason why I didn't throw the phone, yell and explode doesn't mean I wasn't frustrated and kind of like huffing and puffing, but I wasn't explosive is because I truly believe is because I've been on a healing journey. And for the last two years, over two years now, almost every two weeks, I have an emotional coaching session with a trained emotional coach. I like you. I can go to the gym and Have a great coach guide me in workouts. I can have a nutritionist coaching me. I can have a business coach, which I've got lots of them. I can have all these different coaches in life. But a lot of us don't have emotional coaches and we can read and listen to podcasts and go to events and all these different things, which are all incredibly helpful reminders and tools. But I truly believe the emotions and the way we think are running in our body and our minds constantly. Our nervous system is always on, you know, on guard. And if we don't have a coach guiding us or some accountability or some something beyond books and podcasts and tools and events that are all awesome, then there might be moments where we react. And again, this doesn't make us bad or horrible. I have compassion for myself. I have compassion for you. If we're screaming, we fall off the track. We're not perfect. We're human beings. We're going to be out of integrity at times, but what has worked for me is having an emotional coach and knowing that every two weeks, I'm going to get to process, I'm going to get more tools, I'm going to get to have catharsis. I'm going to get to calm my nervous system and continue to own and remember my future of what my vision is and keep that closer to me now. And that process of consistent emotional coaching has worked for me. Now, I, like you, have done many meditation retreats, I've done many workshops. I've done, you know, cold therapy. Everything you can think of, I've probably done it. And they all work great. But it's the consistency of the emotional coaching for me upstream.

How do you get people to get out of that uncertainty mode so they can make clear decisions?

So I have a couple mental exercises that I actually go through for this. And so I try and reframe reality in a couple of ways. One of them is I try and play out the absolute hypothetical worst scenario. And so the worst scenario is I die. Okay? Then I won't be worried about it because I'll be dead, right? It won't affect me. Okay, so like one degree less than that. It's like, okay, well, what if I go like, I'm reduced to that? I have absolutely nothing. It's like, okay, well, real talk, there are homeless kitchens and there are places that I could crash and eat and whatever. Like, okay, so I probably won't starve. So I actually probably won't die in the actual worst case scenario. And when you look at People for subjective well being in poorer countries, there's often people who are happier on average than us in the US and so I think I reframe it as like, well, what problem are we solving? And so if it's like, well, I'm worried about AI, is it going to take my job and will I lose all the money? It's like, well, you'll probably be just about as happy and unhappy as you are right now. Because all of those things presuppose a single assumption, which is that your circumstances dictate your mood or your happiness. And so if, and all you have to do is listen to, you know, anybody who's made lots of money, whatever the thing is for you, they got the Grammy, they made the movie that whatever it is, right? They all get there and they're like, it didn't make me any happier, it.

Didn'T change the thing.

And so we ask these questions about what if all these circumstances change? But, but it has an underlying assumption that because the circumstances change, I'm going to become less happy. And that's what our fear comes from. But if we disconnect our circumstances, because if Viktor Frankl in the Holocaust. And I think about these examples because like, I try and think of hypothetical extremes or like the millions of people who've been slaves in general across countries, across time periods, they all somehow actually managed to have kids, survive, you know, like, and keep doing. And don't be wrong. I'm saying it's horrible, but I use it as an example of how bad circumstances can be. And yet humans continue to survive. And so the problem mind, right, will always find new things to look at because it wants to keep you alive, right? Because that's its objective, but it doesn't want to keep you happy. And so if we can just simply break the connection of the underlying assumption that whatever happens, whether it's the dollar or the yen or AI takes over the world, because I genuinely think I'm like, well, if AI takes completely over everything, I'm like, then my 401k doesn't matter too much, right? So I worry about these things that in the hypothetical extreme that I'm also worried about wouldn't matter. And in my opinion, I'll probably be just as happy or as unhappy as I am right now or as I have evolved in my awareness, which will be disconnected from outside circumstance. And so that's, that's.

But why I asked you because I know so many times that we've had conversations, you have mental models or framework around certain Thinking. Because that. That is so powerful. Thinking about the worst case scenario. And if that actually did happen, would you be happier or. Or less happy? And the fact of the matter is, I don't think it changes at all.

I'm going to give you one. So everybody who's listening to this right now, you remember when you were younger, you were poor and you had nothing, and guess what? You still probably think about that as the good old days.

Yeah. True story.

And so, like, why are we so afraid of going back to a scenario that in the future today we might be in the good old days?

Yeah.

And it's like, it's a weird mental frame.

No, the crazy part about it is if you're living in a future that could go wrong, you're preventing yourself in the present from being all you can be.

Yeah, totally.

Right. And if you live in the present saying, these might be the good old days, you will take more risk. You will have more courage to move forward. You will make bold, uncomfortable decisions in the moment rather than sitting on your hands hoping things don't go sideways.

One of my buddies, my closest friend, is a philosopher. I know that sounds ridiculous, but yeah, that's like, pretty much what he does. And he gave me this frame called the frame of the Veteran. And so imagine you lose all your money, right? So it's a terrible thing.

Right?

Actually, let's go, let's go, let's go. I'm going to go micro really quickly and then we'll scale it up. So let's say you're in traffic, right? And you hate traffic. Traffic sucks. Okay, well, if you've. If you, if you're not in traffic normally, and then you're in traffic, it's terrible. But if every time you got in the car from here until the day you die, there was always traffic, what would happen? You just get used to it. Yeah, Right. And so you become a veteran. It's just something that, like, this is just how it always is. And so if you can. If your mind can mentally weather itself to get to that point, then it means that you can apply that same frame to this moment that's inconvenient. I had this shirt that I liked a lot, and my cleaning person, like, messed it up and it sounds ridiculous. And I thought about this and I was like, well, if every time. And it just shrunk too much, that's all it was. And I was like, well, if every time I washed a shirt, it always had this level of shrinking, I was like, would I really care? I was like, well, no, I guess not. I was like, okay, I'm done with it. And that was it. But, like, I just remember that was the first time I ever used the frame of the veteran, because he had just told me, and then I just got to apply to immediately. And so I just give it a shot if you're, like, really stressing about stuff.