If You Don't Own Your Future, Someone Else Will with Lewis Howes

When you see somebody where your heart feels full, someone who truly cares—

There's a beast inside of me. I have learned how to tame the beast. I've learned how to calm the beast. That was one moment where I said, you know, I'm going to take full ownership of my life.

Uh, if you understand the definition of reciprocity, this man lives it, breathes it. I'm just really happy to hang out with my friend, Mr. Lewis Howes. What does it mean to own your future? At this time of your life, not a year ago, not 5 years ago, but what does it mean to own your future?

It's interesting because over the last few years, 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. 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, 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 about 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.

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 who say, I want to focus on my future and owning my future, but Lewis, you don't understand?

I think it's, you know, I love 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 he'd 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 pressure. 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.

Yeah.

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.

But my question to you is, I know your past.

Yes.

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 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 where I was like, okay, I really want to throw this and scream right now. And Martha was in the room. There's nothing she did or said. I was just kind of in a frustrating moment of stuff happening. And I literally remembered the future. I remembered 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.

I used to just react in 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. It's because I truly believe it's because I've been on a healing journey.

Yeah.

And I, for the last 2 years, over 2 years now, almost every 2 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, you know, I've got lots of them. 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, 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.

Yeah.

If we scream or we fall off the track, we're not perfect. We're human beings. We're going to be out of integrity at times. But I, I— what has worked for me is having an emotional coach and knowing that every 2 weeks I'm gonna 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.

If I would have remembered the man that I've been working to be and the man I want to become, the father I want to continue to to be better in the moment. I have goosebumps. That is something I hope every single one of you heard and take away because we all get red. We all get in the moment. And I feel like we're in the red, man, we go right back to the person we've been running away from.

Yeah.

That's owning our past, not owning our future.

Yes, exactly.

And I love what you said. You took a moment. Is this the person I want to be when I look in the mirror? And that is a practice. Thank you for me. And I hope all of you, that is a practice I will be more on because I haven't gone red like that In a really long time. In fact, I didn't even know it was still in me, Lewis.

There's a beast inside of me, and I have learned how to tame the beast. I've learned how to calm the beast. But that doesn't mean that if I see something unjust, that in my mind I can think crazy thoughts and think, I want to go destroy this person, or I want to go defend this, or I want to go unleash my power and will against something, or I want to go destroy something. Like, I have these thoughts. And, you know, in some ways I'm glad there's a beast inside of me for if I ever need to protect myself physically. But we go through these— the beast comes out when there's a lot of emotional or psychological wounds or responses or pressure, and we don't need that physical or reactive beast to come out.

I would bet to say you have, and, and I think myself and everybody listening right now or watching right now, is It's good to have that beast, especially if you tame it, because the power of that beast is why when someone says, oh no, podcasts are hard to do. No, I don't care. I'm going to have a top podcast in the world. The beast came out, but the beast came out in a polite, elegant, I'm not giving up.

Yes, loving way.

Right? Like when you go through and you say, hey, relationships are hard, but the strength, the tiger in me, I'm coming out and I'm going to do what it takes to attract an amazing woman and have a really great relationship. This beast come out in me, I'm going to write a book and travel all over the world, do whatever it takes to make it a New York Times bestseller so I could change lives, to get people a new mindset. I think it's not just taming it. I think we have the beast, and I think we all do, is how do we use that as fuel, not the thing that can hurt us? We all have that beast, whatever you want to call it, that inner hero. It's just how do we spend the right energy? How do we point that, that arrow in the right direction and unload it for a bigger future rather than dragging you backwards? You can't own your future by seeing what happens. This is not a time to play small. It's not a time to blame. It's not a time— it could be the last president, could be the current president, could be the next one, but blame has never solved anything. So I want to ask you a question. Do you remember a moment in history? Maybe it's always been this way for you, where you decided to take complete ownership for your future, meaning if stuff goes right, that's on me. I did this. But when it goes wrong, it's not the partner or the relationship you're in or the government or the president. There's no way you've had the success you've had in all areas of your life without you being in complete ownership of your outcome, even if someone screws you over. Was there a moment? Was it a slow ride? I'd love to hear that.

Well, I think when the last recession happened in 2008, when I was on my sister's couch, you know, recovering from an injury in football, I was there for a year and a half. And I remember my sister, after about a year and 3 months on my sister's couch, she gave me an incredible gift. She said, Lewis, you got to start paying rent and you need to go get a job. And at that point, for a year, year and 3 months, I was kind of moping around, just like mooching off of her, just getting free food, living for free, not taking ownership of my future. And that was a great gift she gave me where she was like, you need to either pay rent or you need to move out. So you got to get a job. And I remember applying for jobs online. This was back in Craigslist days, 2008. So I was applying for jobs on Craigslist, and I found a job opportunity. I was like, I think I could like this job. And I got an interview. And I remember opening the door to go out of my sister's house to head to this interview, for the job interview, and I could not take a step outside Of the door. I had the door open. I was looking out at the car that I was going to take to go there, and I couldn't take a step on the steps to go down into the sidewalk, into the car, because I started to see the future of me taking this action. I started to see like, I'm going to land this job. I had a big ego back then. So I was like, they're going to love me. I'm going to get this job. It's going to be easy. And then I'm going to work really hard. I'm going to climb this ladder in this career. I'm going to work my way up. You know, You know, it's gonna be awesome. And I just saw 5 years flash by and I was like, this is not really what I want my future to be. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't the exact vision.

Yeah.

And that was the moment I took full ownership. I was just like, I'm gonna overcome all the fears, I'm gonna learn these skills, I'm gonna get more mentors, and now I've got to figure out how to make money on my own. That was one moment where I said, you know, I'm gonna take full ownership of my life. And I remember saying to myself at that time, I will I will never feel vulnerable in another recession again. And so I prepared myself for 2020, and I said, this is going to happen. And when I was with you and Tony, I think the year before it was, uh, in October the year before, I think in 2019, we were in Fiji, and, and you and Tony were saying, you know, winter is coming. We didn't know it was going to happen that quickly, but it came. And, and I remember saying, okay, I'm ready for this.

If I don't own my future, someone else will.