START DOING THIS Today To Heal Your BODY & MIND | Lewis Howes

Self-doubt is the killer of all dreams for people. When we doubt ourselves, it holds us back from taking action.

You talk about some of the challenges to getting to greatness and the enemies of greatness. What are those?

Yeah, I feel like these three fears hold us back. Again, I believe self-doubt is the killer of dream. And so the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment, other people's opinions. When we can figure out which one is holding us back the most, those enemies, hold us back from acting courageously. And at the root of each one of those three fears, failure, success and judgment, is I am not enough. I'm not good enough, worthy enough, smart enough, intelligent enough, whatever it is.

Good looking enough, whatever it is.

Good looking enough, all these things. And therefore, if I am not enough, then I cannot take action courageously because I'll never be enough. So we must learn to rewrite the story of why we believe we're not enough in those areas. within those three fears. And when we can start acting courageously, it's all about mending. It's all about creating new meaning, mending, rewriting these stories. When we can do that, then those enemies don't hold us back. So for me, I wasn't afraid of failure and I wasn't afraid of success, but I was people pleasing and I would abandon who I was, my values and my vision to make someone like me. What would be an example of that? Usually intimate relationships. What would be an example of how you would do that? Like if someone would get mad at me, for working late or going on a trip for a business trip or just not doing something that they wanted me to do.

Yeah, not being who they wanted me to be.

They wanted me to be, yeah. I forgot to do this thing, I didn't do that thing and they had an expectation that I did not meet. When they would get upset at a missed expectation that was not communicated. Not like I did something horrible, but they just thought I was gonna do something and I'd do it. And when they would react in whatever way, screaming, silent treatment, name calling, whatever it was, all this stuff, I would abandon myself to make them happy. I would do whatever I could to create peace. But you cannot buy peace. You must be peace. So I would abandon who I was, my value, my vision, to make sure that one person was happy. But they, no matter what I would.

Do, it didn't work.

They would never be happy. And I would do it, and then they'd find something else and something else and something else. And so it would come to a point, I don't blame any of these previous partners. I take responsibility for staying because I lacked the courage to leave. I lacked the courage to say, this doesn't work for me. So I would just abandon myself. And so there was a, there was The fear of judgment where I'm not enough at the root cause of that one fear, the enemy of greatness that caused me to really be less than in relationships, to drain my energy, to be on eggshells, to be worried. And it would bleed into the rest of my life. It would bleed into my mission, it would bleed into my health and all these other things because of that one enemy.

And you weren't being authentic with yourself.

I wasn't being authentic with myself. And I would repeat this partner after partner after partner thinking it was the partner. But really, but really after all these relationships over 15 years and I was like, I guess I, all right, it takes me a long time to learn sometimes.

I'm the common denominator.

I'm the common denominator.

Don't worry, Liz, I've been married and divorced three times. It took me 40 years to figure it out.

You're good. It took me a long time to figure it out. No, it took 15.

You're way ahead of me.

And I realized, okay, it wasn't a fear of success or failure, these other enemies that people have, it was a fear of intimate love, them not accepting me. But really, I wasn't accepting myself. I wasn't fully accepting who I was. And therefore, I was trying to get the approval of someone that I was in a relationship with. And that is a losing game that only sucks the energy and the life out of you. This is what caused me a lot of pain. I literally felt a ball of pain in my chest and then like a tightness in my throat coming and going throughout 15 years. And anytime I was single, I felt peace and freedom. So I had this belief that, oh, when you're in a relationship, you're trapped.

You're going to experience pain.

No, you shouldn't be like that. And my parents, you know, it's all stemming from the model that I had meaning around with my parents and having to re-write a new story around that. So this is one of the, this was my enemy of greatness that it's Mm-. Took me the longest to overcome. Mm-.

And again, it's always gonna be a journey of healing. And now in that same situation, when someone is unhappy with your behavior, how.

Do you respond differently? Well, now I have tools and I have, my nervous system is at peace.

Mm-.

So if someone's, let's say, you know, Martha's never done this, but let's say my girlfriend Martha was to like scream at me or yell at me or, what she's never done, or give me the silent treatment or not talk to me for a day, which has happened.

All the time in my past.

Yeah. which will cause me a lot of stress and just want to fix it. If something like that happened with anyone in my life, I would just sit with it and notice it. I would reflect on it and be like, okay, that's interesting that they're acting this way. And I would try to find a resolution with them and say, hey, that wasn't my intention or I'm sorry or I didn't mean to make you feel this way, but I'm not gonna go out of my way to solve the problem so quickly. I'm gonna have conscious communication. I'm curious about that. I'm gonna have conscious communication and say, all right, I hear you upset or I hear you had an expectation. I'm sorry you feel that way. Let's talk about it. Let's address this. And doing it from a place of peace, knowing that I don't want to ruin any relationships in my life. I don't want to have anyone leave my life, but I'm willing to walk away from a relationship if they're asking me to be out of alignment with who I am.

It's really important.

And I've never had the courage to not be liked before the last couple of years. And now, It's a practice of just being like, okay, if they don't like me, that's okay. I don't need to get them to like me. I don't need to justify something. I don't need to please them overly and go out of my way to make sure they feel, you know, whatever by me. It's being at peace knowing that I am good with me. I love my company. I have my core friends. I don't need everyone to like me. And I'm okay with that. Yeah, but it took me a Long time.

Yeah, it's true.

I don't know if you ever experienced that type of like, I want to please everyone.

Totally.

If you want to upset with me, let me fix this.

That was totally my MO, people pleaser. I was just the worst because I, it was a survival mechanism in my childhood that I had to deal with a very chaotic, unstable, unsafe, scary environment at home. It was unpredictable.

Yes.

And so I learned to try to make everything okay and not, or hide in my room or just, you know, I think that that worked then, but it doesn't work as an adult. No, it really was a drag, and it. And it caused me to be out.

Of integrity with myself, to be.

And suffer internally and.

Yeah. Yeah.

Betraying my own, you know, needs and wants and desires and, you know, really, it was. It was really a form of self-betrayal and to be able to come back in alignment and go, okay, well, that's enough. I'm just enough. The biggest challenge for people is their head.

Yeah. And.

Making the changes in their life, changing their habits, their beliefs about themselves, about what they can do, what they can't do, and they end up often struggling to make the simple changes that are going to have profound effects on their life. I mean, I just see people with this sort of inner dialogue that if they had it broadcast out loud, they'd either be put in a mental institution or they wouldn't have any friends. Or if they said what they said to somebody else, they for sure wouldn't have any friends if you talk to yourself. I talk to them like you talk to yourself. So I think, you know, how did you come to understand that we can master our mindsets? And how did you end up getting your head straight? Because you went through a lot of, you know, when you were younger, you talked a lot about it and abuse and real trauma and then, you know, somehow figuring out how to not get trapped in that place of victimhood and blame and just a loop of not being able to do what you want in life.

Well, I think it started with, I always wanted to be successful my whole life. The goal was to be successful, but I was driven to succeed in order to prove people wrong and to fit in or belong. And so I was committed. I could set goals. I could work hard. I could show up early. I could make these things happen and be successful in sports. And then I did that in business. but for whatever reason, I still didn't feel good about myself once I would accomplish these big goals. This success wasn't fulfilling to me and I didn't understand why. So I just kept going for bigger goals, bigger dreams. So I didn't have the fear of doubting myself. My fear was the judgment of other people needing the people please, needing to walk on eggshells, and really most importantly, judging myself, which I had a lot of shame insecurity and doubt tied to my past. And I created meaning that was hurting me. So there was a wound based on all the meaning that I created from these experiences, lessons, stories and moments. And so for years, I was driven by success and it was working in the terms of I was accomplishing, but I still wasn't feeling good. Yeah, yeah. And I was good on the outside.

But on the inside, I wasn't so happy.

Exactly. About 10 years ago, I started the healing journey. And this is why I love the work that you do, because you talk about healing from the inside out, really, is what it comes down to. When I think about it, our thoughts and our emotions and the meaning we give our memories from the past play a lot into how we feel about ourselves. And when I had you on my show recently, I asked you about a healing journey that you've been on. and one of the things that you talked about, which I thought was beautiful, as 40 years in a medical practice and in the field of pharmacy and healing, you talked about how love, intimacy and relationships and healing that part within you allowed you to feel younger, allowed you to heal the physical elements, allowed you to have more flexibility and mobility, allowed you to flow in your work more effortlessly. and it was, I was forcing a lot of things to achieve success, to fulfill something where I didn't feel like I was enough in my life. Yeah. And it wasn't until I started some empty hole. Exactly. It was a wound. It was a wound. And when you, you know, you talked about this. When you, when you touch a wound, it hurts. And if it stays open for decades, it's going to keep getting triggered and it's going to poke you and it's going to hurt every time that happens, that situation happens, that memory gets triggered. So I had to go through a journey of, of redefining what success looks like for me. And I started to think about greatness. What is greatness? Well, greatness is actually going after your goals and dreams, but making a positive impact on the people around you in the process, lifting others up. We talked about before, being in collaboration as opposed to competition, being in abundance as opposed to scarcity, and finding ways to find joy and happiness and fulfillment in the process. as opposed to blame, shame, beat up, self criticizing yourself, which doesn't do you any good or anyone around you any good. And that's where it started about 10 years ago, this journey. And it's been a journey of really eight years of mistakes, highs, lows until in the last couple of years, I feel like I cracked the code for myself. Where...

Someone gave you the combination?

I mean, I gave myself the combination by by constantly making mistakes and realizing this isn't working. In some ways it would work and I would improve and in other ways I still needed to find solutions. And a lot of it starts with the healing journey and creating that new meaning from past memories. I'm a big fan of Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. He went through horrific experiences in the concentration camp and yet he lived one of the most fulfilling, rich, abundant healthy lives after that. And it's all about the meaning from the events, the memories, and mending the memories. But I wasn't willing to face my shames, my insecurities, and the things that hurt me the most. I could some of them, but not all of them. And so I would have this kind of ball of pain in my chest that would come and go in certain situations. I'd feel my nervous system triggered or reactive.

I feel in your body.

In my body. physically, but it was tied to a memory and an emotion that I had yet to mend and create new meaning around. So step one was really figuring out what is the process or methods or therapies that I could dive into and I've done a lot of them that would support me and don't stop once I feel like I figured it out. Keep diving in and improving. And that's really been the 10 year journey for me. to where I just realized that self-doubt is the killer of all dreams for people. When we doubt ourselves, it holds us back from taking action, from getting into the relationship with someone we care about, from having a courageous conversation with someone, from getting out of a toxic relationship, from launching the book that we want to launch because we're afraid. And self-doubt holds us back. And at the root of the self-doubt is I'm not enough.

Mm-.

And so when we truly believe I'm not enough, it's going to cause pain in some way in our life, resistance. It's going to cause a block. And when we can heal emotionally and mentally, when we can find alignment and harmony internally, then we can start to create abundance externally.

Yeah, it's such a beautiful description of this process you went through. And I sort of, you know, just reminded of what Gabriel Mate said, which is trauma isn't what happens to you, it's about the meaning you make from what happens to you. And we are all meaning making machines, and we often interpret our experience and reality in a way that doesn't serve us. And it may have been right in that moment at that time, but we generalize it to everything. So if we were traumatized by somebody in our childhood, then we feel the fear of being traumatized by everybody and everything. If, you know, and I, I For example, my childhood, I learned that my stepfather was a rageaholic and I learned to people please very young to avoid the wrath and the pain and suffering that went along with what happened. And that people pleasing was probably helpful and adaptive in that situation, but it was a way of living my life and didn't actually help me in the rest of my life. It sounds like you went through a really similar experience.

100%. Yeah. And judgment was my biggest fear. There's three main fears based on the research I've done, the fear of failure, the fear of success and the fear of judgment. I wasn't a, these are the things that cause us to doubt ourselves the most, right? And I wasn't afraid of failure or success because as an athlete, I knew you needed the failure way to success. The greatest baseball players fail 70% of the time, right? They have a batting average of 300 or something and they're the best in the world. Yeah, right. Michael Jordan misses, you know, more than half of his shots that he ever took. He failed. 50% of the time, right? But he still was the greatest by failing half the time. And so I knew as an athlete that you just make mistakes and you readjust to get back on course. So I was never afraid of the failure and success wasn't a thing for me either because I wanted success but I wanted it because I was doing it based on a wound though. I wanted to prove people wrong. So that's why when I would accomplish it, I'd be angry. I'd be angry like 30 to 60 minutes after I accomplished some big goal where I was like, All right, I should be excited, but why do I still not feel good internally? Well, there was a wound that I was creating this from to prove people wrong, to look good, to be right, or whatever it might be, because I was afraid. I was wounded and I was driven based on that wound. And so I would go for more success and it just wouldn't fulfill what I needed.

It was like a big hole in the bottom.

It would solve, you know, money problems, but it wouldn't solve, like, the problem of feeling good enough, feeling worthy and deserving. that's when I started to, like, really dive into when I started having multiple breakdowns in my life, emotionally, mentally, relationship stuff. I was like, okay, I'm the root of all these breakdowns. I got to figure out the solution. And that's where this really started.

And can you talk specifically about, like, what were the kind of breakthrough moments you had in the last eight years? I mean, two years ago, the things that, you know, you, you did that helped you shift the most. Yeah.

I mean. meditation has helped tremendously. And I think being a guy that likes to do a lot and pack my schedule and create and work hard and fill up the plate, that that helps in getting things done, but it didn't help me reflect and figure out what was missing or where I was off in some way in alignment. And so I went to you know, I went to India and studied meditation. I did Dr. Joda Spence's meditation, seven-day meditation Retreat, which was powerful. Those two were really helpful, and it gave me a daily practice of even just 15-20 minutes a day to be in peace, to be in stillness, and to reflect on how did I do the day before and how can I do today? So just having the, that practice has been helpful. But also, I've done a number of different therapy modalities and an emotional coach I started working with a couple years ago. She really guided me two years ago when I felt like emotionally trapped in a previous relationship that I felt like I couldn't get out of. And I was just people please. I was still living in the past of people pleasing and I was giving up who I was to try to make one person happy. This need to be liked by one person that I cared about. And this felt like the final thing that I still hadn't mended or healed because I kept repeating the pattern in relationships.

To over and over the same thing.

And I was the common denominator. And so I found her as a coach. And I just said, I will do whatever you tell me to do. I will do anything you tell me to do. I will meet you once a week. I will do meet you five times a week if I need to. I want peace, freedom and clarity. Because I didn't feel free, clear or peaceful. I felt trapped. And I didn't know. how to go beyond it. And I worked with her for five months intensely every single week. Sometimes four or five hour sessions at a time where I was like, put me through any exercise, put me through any experience, put me through any journaling, reflection, spiritual experience, whatever you want to try with me, I will do it. And my intention is peace, freedom and clarity. And I just kept showing up with that intention and showing up. And I remember being frustrated after many months because I was like, I'm not getting what I want. I'm not getting what I need and it's not working. Mm-. And my desire to have thing, something happen quickly was blocking me.

Yeah.

As opposed to surrendering to a process, trusting a process and continuing to go in. So I just kept trusting. Uh, and eventually there was a moment where this ball of pain in my chest that was there kind of off and on almost every other day. Mm-. Eventually, like all these things kind of started to connect and integrated into my heart. and into my mindset really where I was like, I am peaceful, I am free, I am clear. And it finally resonated with me in harmony to where this ball of pain literally like disappeared and disintegrated throughout my whole body. And I don't know, I've never felt this pain since then. This was about two years ago. I don't know what that is. I don't know where that it wasn't like it was an emotional pain trapped somewhere in my chest.

Yeah.

And then I felt free. Yeah. So it was five months of training and coaching and then practicing stuff and then integrating and then feeling my nervous system flare up in certain scenarios and then breathing through it and practicing again until finally I was in coherence with my higher self.

I mean, you had to rewrite your software code.

Exactly. It's really hard to do. And it took time. Yeah. So there wasn't like this healing thing overnight in one moment. it happened in a moment after a lot of connecting the dots. And then I, and then I keep processing and integrating it because it is a journey. I think healing is a journey. And so that's been a big thing for me over the last couple years. Yeah, it's, I think it's, it's, it's.

Such a powerful story because we know so many of us struggle with childhood trauma, whether it's big trauma with a big T or a little trauma with small T with neglect or just not being loved the way we need it or whether it's actual physical or sexual emotional abuse, we all have something. And some people can have really horrible physical things happen and they seem to manage and they don't make the meaning out of it. And others can have sort of what you think would be relatively benign childhood experience. Maybe their parents just weren't that attentive and they can be highly traumatized. Exactly. You'll have severe mental illness from it. And, whatever the meaning we give it. Yeah. I mean, Viktor Frankl, you mentioned before, he said, you know, Between stimulus and response, there is a pause. Meaning between something that happens to us and how we react to it, there's a pause. In that pause lies a choice. And in that choice lies your freedom. And I think that's a very powerful idea that is not about not recognizing what happened to you or minimizing things that are going on, but realize that you basically determine the quality of your experience by your beliefs and by the meaning you make of things.

And do you want to be free or do you want to hold onto it and be blocked? Right.

And then, you know, we make all kinds of justifications because then we get to blame other people. We get to be the victim. We get to not have to change things. We get to not look at ourselves. But what you did was super courageous. And it's, it's inspiring because you, you have been through a lot. And those traumas that you had when you were younger that you've talked about incest and other things are actually really tough to deal with. I was also a victim of incest. And it's like, it's like, it's.

It messes with your brain.

Yeah, it messes with your brain and how you look at the world. But what you mapped out in your book, the Greatness Mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today, which is out now. Everybody needs to get a copy right now. Pause this podcast, get your copy. It's such a powerful story of how someone who's even very successful could have things that were unsolved.

Yeah.

And that you can actually start to heal those things and change the way you're thinking about things. Because we have a thinking problem and a feeling problem and we don't have a map to sort of work through those things. And your book is an incredible map of how these things can be healed and developed in ways that change our mindsets from somebody who's really stuck and unhappy versus someone who's having the life that they want.

Thank you. Yeah, and for me, I wrote this for myself 10 years ago. I wrote this for myself when I was 21 in transition and confused and not sure about why am I feeling this way? Why do I have so much pain? Why do I feel trapped? Why do I feel emotionally stagnant? Why am I reactive so much? Why do I feel so hurt? Why do I keep abandoning myself? Why do people not understand me? All these emotions that I had, I wish I had the map now that I created for my younger self. And now I have the guide for me 10 years from now when I'm in a new transition, when a new season of life and I'm going through certain changes. And so that's what I really wanted because I think a lot of people don't have a clear, meaningful mission for their life. And this is step one. If we are not clear in one sentence what this season's mission is in a meaningful way, I just think we'll have more stress and overwhelm than we need. We're going to face challenges and adversity, but if we don't know exactly where we're heading, we'll never get there. And so step one for me is identifying, are we in a powerless mindset or a greatness mindset? And if we're in a powerless mindset, how do we move there as fast as possible to greatness? And step one is defining a meaningful mission.

Yeah. So it's so important. You know, it reminds me of a quote from Marion Williamson, our greatest fear, right? And most of us don't lead into our light. We kind of lean on our darkness because it's comfortable, it's familiar, we know how to navigate, and we kind of afraid of actually the greatness that we could have. And your School of Greatness, your podcast about greatness, your, your book, the, the Greatness Mindset is, is, is, is such a beautiful kind of bookmark in, in a way that points to how we can actually embrace that greatness. She says, our greatest fear is not, is our light and our darkness that most frightens us. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. So I think, you know, and she goes on to say, it's not our light, it's our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Who are you not to be that? You're playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We're born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone.

Yeah, I love this. And the reason I love what Marianne says there is because the challenge is most people live either a good life or a bad life. But both of those are hard to break through into greatness. Because when you have a good life, when you've got a good family, you've got kids, you've got a good job, you've got things that are good, you get comfortable and familiar, like you said, it's hard to break through from comfort and familiarity. And people with a struggling relationships call it bad, right? They're still familiar with the bad. And so they stay in the bad. It's really needed that, right? And it's because you're from, and so some people will stay decades in a relationship or decades in a career that is bad and they don't find joy in it, but they stay because it's familiar and it's not bad enough yet.

And most people, I call it any peace syndrome. Not enough pain.

Not enough pain. Right.

Most people don't change because they have any peace syndrome.

Most people are not willing to strive for that next step of greatness because it's familiar and comfortable, even if it's good or bad. And that's very few do. But it's hard to say, I want to take a look, I want to go deeper, I want to work on myself. It's just a challenge, but. a lot of times it takes some type of extreme pain for us to want to open up and say, I need to make a change.

Yeah, it does, unfortunately. But it doesn't have to be that way. It really doesn't. And I think if we all took a moment to look at ourselves and go, you know, where are the places where we are unhappy, where we don't tell anybody what we actually feel, where we doubt ourselves, where we lack self-love where we feel insecure, where we're worried about what other people's thoughts are about us and in our place in the world. I mean, it's so easy to be kind of knocked off center of who you are by all these sort of sub, this unconscious subtext of what's going on in our head and our inner dialogue. And you see the real difference in the mindset between someone who's stuck like that and someone who's achieving what they want and are leaning into their greatness. Like, can you talk about the differences in the mindset?

Yes, there's a whole page I give on 201 of the book where I give this framework between Powerless Mindset and the Greatness Mindset. So if you feel like you're not accomplishing exactly what you want or you're not on the path, because my mission is big and I know it's going to take time. But if you're not feeling fulfilled internally, if you don't feel peaceful, if you don't feel in harmony and alignment with what you're doing, then that means you're more in the Powerless Mindset versus Greatness Mindset. And the Powerless Mindset includes you lacking a meaningful mission. So you're not clear in one sentence, like, what is the season of life and what am I doing?

Yeah.

What's the direction I'm going? Yeah. So you lack that meaningful mission. So I'd ask yourself in one sentence, are you clear on what you're doing for this year or these five years or your season of life? And it doesn't need to be curing cancer or change in the world. Just what is it for you? What is this season for you? It could be an exploratory season. Okay. At least you know that you're exploring. It could be I'm trying to graduate from school. Okay, that's your mission right now until the next season. So just being very clear, a powerless mindset is being controlled by fear. When we have a number of fears that hold us back from acting courageously, it keeps us feeling powerless and a victim like you talked about. So being controlled by fear, crippled by self-doubt, conceals past pains. This is a part of the mindset.

I'm good. I'm fine. Life is great.

This is a part of mindset. There's over 20,000 books on success and mindset. Yeah. Most of them don't talk about the pain of your past. They don't talk about, you know, healing past pain. They talk about here are the seven strategies to be more successful and have a growth mindset. Yes. But I feel like you can't just layer on top of pain. Some point it's gonna, it's gonna topple over. So conceals past pains defined by the opinions of others is a powerless mindset and drifts towards complacency. So when we, We first need to be aware of am I living in any of these spaces? There's no good or bad, right or wrong here. It's just let me be aware of it and see is this supporting me? Is this serving me? And is this serving the people around me? And when we are aware of it, we can start to make a new decision and commitment towards stepping into the greatness mindset. And the greatest mindset includes that you are driven by a meaningful mission, driven by that. not by fear, not by what everyone else is doing, but by your mission. No Olympic gold medalist did it by accident.

They had a mission.

No world champion said, I'm just going to show up and do this by accident. They were clear on their mission and they lived accordingly. They turned fear into confidence. I have an example in the book where I talk about creating a fear list. I did this in my early 20s. I was afraid of a lot of things, but I was But I was scared to even admit it to other people.

You were afraid of, because I think.

People you were afraid. Because that was fear of judgment and.

I didn't want to be looked as weak. Right, right. And by the way, those who don't know what those looks like, he's like six foot five, looks like a brick wall.

Yeah. And you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley. He's a sweet guy. But you turn fear into confidence by making a fear list and you write down a list of your fears and you start going all in on them. This is scary. It's uncomfortable.

It's hard.

I was afraid a lot of things, but I started going all in on them and it turned into confidence. It turned into a power of mine because I overcame it. You overcome self-doubt as well. So you figure out what those insecurities are. You don't live in insecurity. This is the greatness mindset. You heal past pains. That's the greatness mindset. Cause you're not driven by pain anymore. You're driven by purpose and mission and love and abundance and solving problems.

That's huge. Not driven by pain, but by purpose. Yes. That's a bit. That's a very big idea because so much of the suffering in this world is because people are unconsciously driven by their fear and their pain and it blocks them from actually getting better. Exactly.

And the part of it is you can be driven by a purpose to solve problems in the world. And the problem could be the pain you once experienced. You want to make sure that others don't experience that pain. I can talk about that in a second, but you create a healthy identity. Something you talked about in the first three minutes of this show is If people heard the things we said about ourselves, or if we said these things to other people out loud the way we speak to ourselves at times, they would put you in a hospital. They would call you crazy. They'd be like, something is really off and they would medicate you for those conversations. They would cancel you online if you said these things. All these things wouldn't work, but we continue to say critical things to ourselves and put ourselves down and degrade ourselves. which is a unhealthy identity. So we need to create a healthy identity and then they take action with a game plan. This is the greatness mindset versus the powerless mindset. And when we can first be aware of which mindset am I in more frequently? Again, no right or wrong, good or bad, no judgment. But how is a powerless mindset working for you? How is concealing these things working for you? How is being crippled by fear and doubt working for you? It might have some benefits, but there's still a lack of something inside of you. So this takes courage to step into greatness mindset frequently, but that's the decision we need to make. I think that's true.

And I say disease is often the body's best attempt to deal with a bad set of circumstances. And our kind of distorted thinking is often because we needed to do that in order to deal with a really bad set of circumstances. Protect ourselves in a circumstance. Exactly. And then the question is how do you rewrite that? because it's one thing to say, you know, don't have self-doubt love yourself, believe in yourself, have a mission. It's hard to get from here to there. Very challenging. And so you mentioned a few of the ways you did it through coaching, through journaling, through meditation. There's a lot of practices, and I think you go through them in, in.

Detail in the book about how do you sort of break that cycle? I don't think you can do anything hard on your own. I just think it takes support and listing support. and finding whatever modality works for you. I tried a lot of them because I felt like I was really messed up and needed the support. And I continue to have an emotional coach every couple of weeks to support me to maintain peace, to prepare for future challenges that might arise so that I'm ready for these things. I'm a big fan of emotional coaching or therapy, but there are a lot of different strategies you can do. But for me, It's having somewhere you can have accountability, you can process it in a safe space, and you can have a game plan for actually taking action to integrate the lessons and healing, not just reflecting by itself, but taking action to practice the healing journey. That's what it's about.

Yeah. What it struck me about what you said is that there was a somatic piece to this.

Yes.

It was not just in your head.

Full body experience. Yeah.

It was a full body, like, full body. like you can kind of think your.

Way out of it. You can't think your way out of those things. Now it was a it was five months of full body exercises, experiences, catharsis, all these different things. And then a moment when she was speaking to me, my coach, where it finally clicked intellectually in the body, like it finally okay, it makes sense. And I feel it at the same time. That's when the ball of pain disintegrated throughout my body. And I was like, something just happened. Yeah, but it wasn't for me sitting here and just like taking notes and analyzing my my stuff. It was experiencing it. She put me through exercises. She put me through processes. She put me through reflection. She put me through going out into the world and trying things and calling back on it and saying, this is what I experienced, what I learned. And here's the benefit and the problems that came from it. It was facing the most uncomfortable parts of myself The most uncomfortable parts of my fears in relationships in the present and acting on it as a peaceful man, even when I was under stress, it was facing these things. It was not running away or hiding from these things. That it was the hardest thing to do. But the more I did it week after week for months, that's when things started to unlock.

Yeah, it does. It takes it only takes months or years of really unpacking and doing the work and exploring different modalities. And for me, it was very, very interesting, very similar. I had like a, you know, this driving kind of desire to know why I felt this sense of emptiness or lack.

Really. And after all the New York Time bestsellers, after all the success, after all the credibility, after all the. Yeah. Believe it or not.

Believe it or not.

Yeah. So you still had that.

I had this sense of emptiness.

Yeah.

And it was really more around love. It wasn't so much in. success in the world. And it was really this just sense of lack or emptiness or some hole I need to fill. And it drove me crazy to try to figure out what is driving that. What was the original cause of that? And how do I heal that? And it took a long time to unpack it. But once I kind of unpacked, you know, my parents' relationship, my mother's relationship with her parents, because she was a hearing girl in a deaf family, like the movie CODA, and was the parent to them as a daughter. They call it a parentified child.

That's traumatic.

Yeah, for her. And then she did similar thing to me, being very depressed and using me as her therapist.

She repeated the pattern.

Yeah. So I was taking care of her.

It's probably what got you into medicine.

Yeah, for sure. There was some definite side effects that were not bad, but I think it was really It was intellectually something I knew, but until I started to actually feel it on my physical body to go through this real catharsis and just kind of get it, it was like a big shot in the head and a shot in the body to break that cycle. And, you know, like you were saying, it's different for everybody to kind of get there. Sometimes it's, you know, doing medicine journeys, sometimes it's meditation retreats, sometimes it's coaching, sometimes it's, you know, all the above, right? But I think one of the things that's really exciting about your book, the Greatness Mindset, is you really help map out how we get into trouble, why this happens, and how to rewrite that. So how does someone sort of from the perspective of what you've learned and what you've read about, how do you reshape their beliefs and their meaning they make and their identity if they're unhappy?

Yeah, it's interesting. I interviewed a brain surgeon and a PhD in neuroscience, Dr. Rahul Jandial. I'm not sure if you've met him yet. Done over a thousand brain surgeries, but also a PhD in neuroscience. So, studying the mind. The mind and the brain.

Yeah, they're not the same.

And, I said after a thousand brain surgeries and all this work of understanding the mind, what is the greatest skill you think human beings need to Mm-. Learn. Yeah. And it's interesting, he said emotional regulation. So he studies the brain and the mind, but the emotions tied to the way we think.

Wow.

Hold us back. And if we can understand how to navigate the emotions. So the greatest mindset really doesn't work until we start to navigate our heart as well and connect the emotions that we have in our heart to our mind, to our mindset. and putting them in alignment and harmony. So we can think one way, but if we don't feel in alignment, it's not gonna work.

So creating a- thinking and feeling and.

Doing all- They need to be in harmony. And if you're constantly in the past, living in a belief or having a story about something in the past, you're gonna be disconnected. You're gonna be out of harmony and out of alignment somewhere. You're thinking, I'm smart, I'm this, I can do it, but then I don't feel like I can. So we must create harmony with both thinking and feeling. We must learn to heal the heart first. For me, the greatest mindset is about healing first and then unlocking what you can step into. It's not just thinking I'm great or these things, but healing the wound that causes you to feel out of alignment with your thoughts. One of the things that I, which.

Is what we're just talking about.

Yeah, and one of the things I learned about 10 years ago in one of these kind of workshop experiences that I took allowed me to create a new identity with myself. Before, I had the belief that I was dumb, that I was reactive and angry, and that's how I was showing up in the world. And I was, and I felt like I was very, I just felt like reactive, angry, and I didn't feel like I was smart. that was the identity that I continued to say to myself and reinforce, even.

Though the world didn't see you that way.

Exactly. Right. And I created an experience in one of these workshops that allowed me to go through the healing journey. This Workshop allowed me to open up about sexual abuse for the first time and create a new, healthy identity. And what I did from this Workshop was I created a new contract with myself, a new contract around my identity. that I wanted to step into. It wasn't where I was at the moment. It wasn't what I would have been living in the past, but it's what I wanted to step into. And it is what I was becoming on a daily basis. And so instead of being angry and resentful and not forgiving and stupid, which is what I was believing my identity was, I said, I am a loving, passionate, wise man.

That's a good one.

And I didn't fully I didn't fully like experience it yet. So there wasn't like evidence proving it internally yet. But I said, I am a loving, passionate, wise man. And I started to live into that on a consistent basis. When I felt like I'm being angry, I'm going to live into this new identity and I'm going to start showing up as if and embracing it fully. And now I don't feel like I'm stupid or angry or resentful or these things. It took time, but I started to show up as a loving, passionate, wise man and started to create a new healthy identity. And anytime my thinking would say, ah, there's a lot of smart people in this room. I don't know if you really belong here. Like you didn't do well in school. You think people are going to listen to you? I shifted it and said, yeah, but I'm very wise. I have wisdom in other ways. So I'm going to step into this belief, this identity, which I truly own. I felt like I have great street smarts. I feel like I'm great in relationship, understanding people, which is a different type of intelligence.

Much more important, right?

But before, because I did so poorly in school and always needed tutors until I graduated, I thought I was stupid and people would make fun of me because I couldn't do well in school. So I had this identity was unhealthy and I started saying, I'm loving, I am passionate, I am wise. And I would lean into that identity and it would allow me to make a bigger impact.

So you basically kind of change your thoughts. You sort of just. I mean, the power of positive affirmation, I think, is real. But, you know, you gotta heal first. How?

Yeah. How you gotta heal first. Yeah.

You can't just kind of talk yourself.

Into being great because you won't. You still won't believe it if the feeling is about doubt. If you're doubting the belief, you see, you need to really be on the healing journey, whatever it is that's holding you back. Because if your emotions are still going to be reactive and triggered, if someone's. cutting you off in the street or whatever, or if you feel like someone's abusing you or abandoning you or whatever, or if you're abandoning yourself, then this new identity is not going to work fully. It might help you in some ways, but then it's still not going to feel enough. So we must get to a place of I am enough as I am and I'm still in a process of growing and improving. Not saying I'm complacent and I'm not going to work on myself, but I am enough where I am. I accept everything from my past up until now. I maybe don't like it. I maybe regret certain things or I wish I didn't do certain things or I wish certain things didn't happen to me. But if I can't accept it, then it's going to hold me back. So I must learn to accept, to forgive, to take responsibility for things, whatever it is, and own the past so that I can move forward in peace.

It was like to rewrite your belief. You got to rewrite it, your belief history. I can't rewrite your history, but you can. rewrite the beliefs that you formed out of the experiences you had that led to, you know, having maybe time and adaptive response to, you know, the situation where you're in. It might not have been good, but it doesn't serve you now. And we just carry that forward with us in a way that limits us and prevents us from having a great life.

One of the things that, you know, you always hear people say hindsight is 20/20, and there are probably instances that happened in your life 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago that weren't fun to experience in the moment. But now you can be like, gosh, if that didn't happen, I wouldn't be where I'm at now, right? There's probably a number of things you can think of.

Everything.

But then, but then maybe they felt like they're these horrible experiences or drawn out, you know, challenges or relationships or career. It's just like, why am I suffering through this? But then now you're like, oh, I know exactly. So the concept I talk about in the book, where people feel stuck or they feel like they're just trapped in this feeling, is to have future hindsight.

It's to look out- Future hindsight.

Future hindsight.

What's that?

So I started thinking of this concept a few years, about four years ago as I was going through one of those periods of time where I was like, I do not want to be in this experience. I do not want to feel this. I feel like people are questioning me and judging me and they're not understanding me. I feel like there's unfair things happening to me. and I remember feeling really frustrated about four, four and a half years ago or so about what was happening in my life. And I remember talking to a few men who were probably 20 or my senior who gave me some wisdom. They're like, listen, this is all going to pass one day. Mm-. And think of it as a spiritual purging. You're purging relationships that no longer are supportive to you. You're purging your ego. You're letting go of things that, you know, you're an identity that you don't, that you want everyone to like you. This is a healthy thing. And just know it's going to benefit you. And I started saying, and they all said, like, you know, is there anything in the past that has been horrible that you're so grateful now today you actually experienced? I go, yes. so I was like, man, I need future hindsight. I need to see myself 5, 10, 20 years from now and know that this is exactly what I needed for me to do something greater in the future, for me to have more.

Whatever your experience you're going, however crappy it is right now, to reframe it in a way, reframe it as maybe the, the Catalyst for success.

Exactly what you need. And if you, if you said, this is the thing that is exactly going to set me up for my greatness, then you'd be more excited about it. It's still not like fun to be in pain or to experience like people shaming you or questioning you or whatever it is, or a breakup or a divorce. Those things aren't fun and enjoyable. But if you can see the future and say, your future self is going to benefit so greatly for the rest of your life because of this moment, you'll look at it differently. You'll give yourself a little bit more grace and peace. And you'll see that there's going to be beautiful things in the process.

Yeah, it's a beautiful way to think about it.

Future hindsight.

Future hindsight, yeah. So you talk a little bit in the book about the kind of thoughts that you can start to cultivate to attract what you want in life and the dream that you have for yourself in your life. Can you talk about how we do that?

Yeah, I think it all starts with gratitude. I think gratitude unlocks abundance. It unlocks love. It unlocks all the things that you want. It starts with gratitude. for yourself, for everything that you've done to get here. Most of the times we aren't appreciating ourself and what we appreciate appreciates in value. So if we are depreciating the hard work we've done, we depreciate in value. If we do that to others as well, they do as well. So I'm a big fan of gratitude of self, gratitude of others, and acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is a a tool that unlocks relationships, connections and opportunities.

Gratitude.

Acknowledgment. Gratitude and acknowledgment. So when I started getting into rooms, I don't know, 14, 15 years ago in the business world and going to industry events and things like that, not having anything, no platform, no skills, no money, like just young guy trying to figure out life entering in the business world. I would enter these rooms and I would somehow get to the late night dinners with like all the influencers or like the industry leaders. Somehow I'd be invited and I would be there hanging out all night learning from these, you know, masters at the time. For me, I was like, man, these are some great leaders. And I would do a couple of things. I would listen intently and be extremely curious about their success. I would express my gratitude for being there. I'm like, thank you guys so much. I'm so grateful to be here. Thanks for inviting me and including me. And I acknowledge them. And what I saw was possible in them. This is what I was like, you know, 15 years ago, and I still do this today. The end of every interview, I acknowledge my guests for what I see in them. Yeah. And you don't have to be smarter than people or more skilled or have, you know, credentials. People want to be seen. they want to be seen and gratitude unlocks abundance, acknowledgement and appreciation appreciates in value. So when we appreciate ourselves, which is.

An asset that you invest in that actually grows in worth, right? Exactly.

And if you do it towards your thinking or your efforts, your habits, your emotions, and you do it towards others' thinking, efforts, habits, and emotions, It just creates a better bond in life and it creates more fulfillment, more peace, more love.

It's such a simple frickin thing to acknowledge somebody, to tell out what's good in them, what you see in them, they don't even see themselves and you start to ship their way of seeing themselves and their well-being and it creates such a positive feedback loop.

Most people never heard what they wanted to hear from their parents. They never heard I'm proud of you consistently. Or they worked so hard just to get it like a couple times a year on their birthday or Christmas. Most of us craved that as kids and then we crave it as adults. And for whatever reason, human beings lack the courage to look someone in the eyes and say, I appreciate you. I acknowledge you for this gift, for how you show up consistently. I acknowledge you for your efforts here. and when we have the courage and learn how to do that effectively, it's an art. You don't want to make sure you're doing it as a sleazy way to get something, but as you do it generously from a place of appreciation, gratitude, love and peace, true honesty, it just unlocks different things inside of you and the other person. So it's not about, again, success is for me. Success is selfish. It's not good or bad, right or wrong, but it's for me to accomplish success. It's me winning, it's me making money, it's me getting goal. It's me having the credibility or whatever it might be. Yeah, but greatness is about accomplishing your goals and also being in service to the people around you and lifting them up as well. It's impacting people with your journey to success and making sure they're feeling seen, heard and acknowledged also and appreciated. And it's a beautiful journey when we can think and feel in this way differently through gratitude, appreciation and acknowledgement.

Yeah. I mean, those are such simple things and you know what?

They're free. Free. Free. You don't need a master's or PhD. You do need it in human psychology, I guess, and understanding your own emotions.

Yeah, it's powerful. I was thinking about, you know, the sort of range of people out there. There's people who just, you know, are doing pretty good but just have a little bit stuff to work through and there's people who have like really severe mental illness and, you know, personality disorders and severe attachment issues and depression and addiction and Trauma.

And it's really hard to experience depression when you're grateful. Yeah, it's hard to be stressed out when you're focusing on the thing that you're most grateful for consistently. So the more we can step into that. This is why I do this. In the morning, in the evening, I focus on and practice gratitude, not just for myself, but with my part. Martha, and I try to express it as frequently as I can when I'm around other people. Because usually people are stressed and anxious or worried about their problems. But if you can get people out of that through saying, what are you most grateful for? On my voicemail, I've had this for a decade. When someone calls me, I usually like don't pick up, especially if I don't know the number. I'm more of a text guy now. But when someone calls me, and if I don't pick up, they get a voicemail from me that says, Thanks for calling. This is Lewis Howes. If you want a response, let me know what you're grateful for today. I've had that for a decade.

Amazing.

And I always get the most amazing voicemails because people are like, wow, thank you so much for that question and asking me, I'm so grateful for this, this and this. And when people speak with gratitude, it's hard to think about problems or stress or depression. It doesn't mean you still don't have challenges to face, but it unlocks your heart into a peaceful flow and energetic state of abundance. Gratitude is that key to support you. So is appreciation and acknowledgement.

Yeah, it's all true. I think it's changing our thinking. It's hard, but I was doing some research around dealing with really tough mental illness and this attachment theory is just fascinating because it It talks about how to heal it in a very similar way that you're talking about is how do we reparent ourselves?

That's it.

Because you basically said we want to hear what our parents never said to us.

Exactly. And then we beat ourselves up that we're not getting it. One of the strategies and the healing modalities that my coach gave me, Clara, she's amazing. She had me put a photo of my five-year-old self on my screen saver. so I had this photo on my phone for like, I don't know, six months as I was really doing the intense work and I was going back to the really the first painful memories and I had and I got to a place where I was re-parenting myself as an adult to that psychological wound and it was a beautiful and it's kind of weird to talk about it maybe on this type of a podcast, but it was a beautiful experience and to reparent and actually imagine my five-year-old self standing in front of me. Yeah. And saying what I needed to hear back then now. So create and, like, giving myself an emotional hug and imagining what that would feel like and mending that and marrying those two beliefs. So, yeah, it's all a journey. Yeah.

I mean, I. You know, and. And what's really striking is that, you know, when you're talking about it are ways that we can heal a lot of these things through simple practices. But no matter where you are on the state of your mental health, your anxiety, depression, trauma, there is ways to actually work through this. And it's sort of by, you know, reparenting yourself is key. And there are methodology for do this, getting your thinking straight, which is a lot of what you're talking about, mindset and they talk about, you know, attachment theory, you know, creating new metacognitive skills that actually look at our beliefs and attitudes in a different way and change that. And then there's, there's this other part, which is really interesting, which is how do we sort of learn how to work with others through verbal and non-verbal behavior in a collaborative way? A lot of people with trauma are.

Not very good in personal Dynamics or relationships.

They're afraid to go out or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

And so it's sort of exciting that, that you know, we now have the language and the roadmap to actually not, you know, heal these things. And it's not just about like, you know, how to win friends and influence people and how to like, you know, make a million dollars and all these different things. And that could be fine.

Yeah.

I think, you know, you, you really are talking about a much different kind of greatness. 100% Inner greatness. Inner greatness.

It doesn't, you know, there's a lot of people that, you know, who've made billions of dollars who still aren't fulfilled.

Oh my God. Two of the most unhappy people I.

Ever met were two of the richest guys in the world. So, so, and so what is the game then? The game the emotions, the thoughts and emotions that create meaning to the success we have. And if we can't figure out the game of marrying those two thoughts and emotions together, it doesn't matter how successful we are. We still aren't great. We're not great unless we feel great. We can, everyone else can think we are, but if we don't feel it, then what's the point? And I just think it's interesting when you were talking about the attachment styles and attachment theory and everything like that. there's another book called the Body Keeps the Score. Yeah, the body. Right. And it's like, it's. All these emotions are trapped in the body, and we've got to release the emotion to the physical pain or the physical trauma or whatever happened. We've got to learn to release that emotionally, psychologically, both combined. Otherwise it's going to keep traumatizing us. Yeah. And we can be. We can be driven by this fuel of pain, fear and Trauma, which a lot of us do. to go get, you know, the degrees or the sports championships or the money or whatever it might be.

We can be addicted or all these things.

We can driven by that. But usually we need an addiction to numb the pain that we're still feeling inside. And if we just heal the wound, the emotional wound, we don't need the addictions. Or we can minimize those things because we know how to self-soothe yeah, we know how to reparent. the emotional wound. Yeah. And I think that is the whole game of the greatest mindset. It's such, it's such an important book.

At this time because there's just so much unhappiness, so much mental illness, so much loss of Direction, lack of ability to kind of, you know, live lives that are fulfilled and that are meaningful, meaningful, peaceful. It was, you know, as I was researching my book, young forever, you know, it was really shocking to find out that literally, you know, having meaning and.

Purpose in your life It's like the number one factor almost for most people.

-Pretty much. It's more years of life extension by having meaning and purpose than if we eliminated cancer and heart disease from the.

Face of the planet. -It's like purpose and community.

And I think you talked about this, which I think is important to bring up. You talk about greatness and achievement and mission and purpose. But the truth is we don't have to do anything to be enough or to be great. We can just be.

Absolutely.

And once you get to that where you don't actually have to do or make or create or to accept and.

Love yourself, yeah, it's like, it's just.

The coolest thing because then you just get to go on the ride, this crazy life that's called being a human being.

And, well, then you can create and make something from a place of love and acceptance and peace as opposed to, I'm not enough, so let me go. Feel enough by doing something. And I'm not saying we should be complacent and just sit around all day and be lazy. It's about creating a mission that's meaningful for you. It doesn't have to be this huge thing, but what's the thing that's going to light you up and others up around you? Yeah. And doing it from a place of self-love and acceptance and wanting to improve along the way as opposed to, I don't feel good enough. So let me go write a number one New York Times bestseller or do this business or yeah, date this person. So I'm going to feel like I'm worthy now.

Yeah, I ain't coming from outside.

No, it's not. No, I just had a friend.

I don't know if you know him. Colin O'Brady, you know, of course.

Yeah, he just did a darkness retreat.

Yeah, and this is a guy who's been on my podcast who climbed every tallest peak on every continent in the shortest amount of time in history, who rode across Antarctica in a little rowboat to the ocean, which is like 40-foot seas. He sped unsupported across Antarctica as well.

It's crazy.

And he was the first man to person to do that. And listening to his experience of doing because nothing is. Those are all outward accomplishments, right? He literally went into a cave, Darkness.

This was like a week ago, right?

Seven days of nothingness. Like, no podcast, no books, no light, no nothing. And got to sit with himself and.

What was his takeaway?

And coming out of that was this incredible sense of peace and enoughness and gratitude and things that, you know, you wouldn't expect. And I think the first bits were a little bit rough. And then he got to actually get into the bliss of what it was to just be enough and alive and be a human being. And that's really where greatness comes from. It's not from all the things that we see on the outside.

It's like, okay, if you can create from that space of enoughness, then all the other accomplishments are amazing. It's fun. It's fulfilling. As opposed to, I need to create more and more to make myself feel something, you already feel enough, and you're doing it as an expression of enoughness.

If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here. In Unhappy Couples, they missed 50% of.

The positivity that was actually there.

So that's an important thing.

If you catch your partner doing something right and have that habit of mind, you're gonna see that they're.