#245 ‒ Overcoming trauma, finding inner peace, and living a meaningful and fulfilling life | Lewis Howes

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. This podcast, my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay. Here's today's episode. My guest this week is Lewis House. Lewis is a New York Times bestselling author and entrepreneur and a former professional athlete. He's best known for his work as a motivational speaker and host of the podcast the School of Greatness. Lewis is also the author of several books, including the School of Greatness and the Mask of Masculinity. His new book, titled the Greatness mindset, is out March 7 this year. In my conversation with Lewis, we really talk about Lewis's story, the traumas he went through as a child, and ultimately the lessons he learned throughout his life as he worked through those traumas to improve his emotional health. Lewis's story is one that I think a lot of people will relate to, and while the details are obviously unique to Lewis, just like the details are unique to all of our stories, I think some of the takeaways are very common. For example, in Lewis's case, he endured a lot of hardship as a child and in some cases, many more hardships than a lot of people would endure. And he channeled that into a lot of success, driven by inferiority and things like that. But what he figured out, and luckily figured out early in life, was that ultimately these accolades and these pursuits of success left him feeling unfulfilled. This podcast really talks about that journey. As many of you listening to this podcast probably understand, I place just as much of an emphasis on emotional health as I do physical health. And even though more of our podcasts talk about the physical side of health, cognition, different diseases, physical robustness, et cetera, it doesn't mean that emotional health is any less important. And I think Lewis's story is such an important one, I'm very grateful for how he's able to open up in this episode. And I'm hopeful that any of you listening who have some unresolved issues. This episode might provide the encouragement that you need to address those to reap some of the benefits of improved emotional health. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Lewis House. Lewis man, thank you for making time to sit down. I feel lucky that I'm going to be one of the sort of first people to get to talk with you on the heels of your book coming out. Because we're recording this in January. Your book is coming out at the beginning of March. I know that you're going to be talking to a lot of people, and I've been thinking about this as I read your book. Given this is the first time we're speaking, not the first time we're speaking, but the first time I'm having you on my podcast to talk about it. I also want to talk about things that precede this book in particular, and I could think of no better way to start talking about it than to really go kind of more deeply into your story, because I think your personal story is what is at least the substrate for three of your four books. I think your first book was really kind of about optimizing LinkedIn. We'll probably not get too much into that, given that I don't use LinkedIn too much, but it'll probably come up as part of the others. So remind me, you grew up in, was it Ohio?

Yeah, small town in Ohio, near Columbus. But then I bounced around. When I was 13, I left home. I went to a private boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri. I begged my family, my parents to send me away for about two months in the summer just because there was a lot of turmoil, inner turmoil, and my environment turmoil. And I begged them to send me away. They didn't want to send me away. Most kids get sent away for being bad. I begged my parents to send me away.

Sort of funny, our daughter is half joking and she's in eighth grade saying she wants to go to boarding school for high school. And I'm like, yeah, that's not going to happen. We have the rest of our lives to be away from you. We're not going to do it during high school. You're going to stay with us.

I hear you, man. It was actually like it transformed my life, though, because there was so much discipline, there was so much organization. You had to wake up at 6am it wasn't like a military school, but there was definitely strict rules and guidelines. And that organizational feel gave me structure when I felt like I didn't have structure in my life necessarily. So it was extremely transformational but if you want to keep your daughter home, then keep her home.

I think she might be wanting to go because she thinks they'll have less stringent rules about phone time or something.

Yeah, right.

Remind me, do you have siblings? I know you have a brother. Three older.

Three older. I'm the youngest of four. Older brother, two older sisters.

Okay, what was the relative differences between ages there?

My brother is 11 and a half years older than me. And then it's kind of a three and a half, four year gap between each one of us.

And so that probably means you didn't play with your brother much growing up.

No, I mean, when I was eight, he went to prison for four and a half years. So I have a few fond memories from five years old till about eight before he went away, of him being essentially like a hero of mine. You know, an older, bigger, older brother, an older teenager who was very gifted and talented in a lot of different ways, extremely intelligent. He skipped a couple of grades in school because he was so intelligent and gifted. And so, you know, he was kind of like a hero of mine. And When I was 8, he went away to prison. He was sentenced 6 to 25 years.

This was for. He was caught selling LSD or some.

He sold LSD, a sheet of LSD, to an undercover cop when he was like 18 in college. It was an unfortunate event because back in the. I guess this is the early 90s, it was the war against drugs in America. It was like they were just cracking down on anything and giving extreme cases in jail, jail time to make an example for others. And so he got six to 25 years, and it was kind of devastating. I didn't grow up knowing anyone that went to jail or going to prison. You know, I grew up in a small town and it wasn't like there were bullets whizzing by my neighborhood every day. So it wasn't like something I saw unless you saw it in the movies. And you see that in the movies when you're a kid and you're like, oh, these are really bad people. These are people that kill or rape or murder and all these different things. And I was like, that's not my brother. You know, he didn't do those things. You know, he did something illegal at the time, but he. He wasn't bad like that. So it was very confusing in a lot of ways. Very traumatic for my parents and my siblings. We had the opportunity to go visit essentially like once a week. There was visiting hours, visiting room. And that was kind of interesting because I don't know many 8 year olds that go to a prison every single weekend for three to four hours and sit in a room with 40 convicts and their families. So every week we would drive a couple hours to the prison for essentially four years. It was a wake up call on just different cultures, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, different experiences. And it was also a wake up call for me because, you know, I had a lot of judgments from, I guess, movies and TV and things like that about convicts. And I actually met a lot of them. You know, they were extremely friendly, they were kind. You know, a lot of them were with their families, reading the Bible. They'd been in there for a long time and they transformed in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but the ones that I were meeting, it felt like, man, these are actually good guys. At least the way it came across. It was a dark time in a sense, because our whole family was just like overwhelmed by the trauma of it, the shame and the guilt. And I couldn't really have friends during that time. Being in a small town, everyone knew on our neighborhood and so none of the parents on my block wanted the kids to hang out with me. So it was just kind of a confusing time for me because I felt lonely and insecure and never really accepted myself. It was just a confusing time.

You know, it's interesting, you said you had judgments and stuff about what prison was or wasn't like. I mean, that's actually kind of a remarkable insight because when I think about what I did or didn't know when I was 8, I can't imagine it was much of anything. This strikes me as a very complicated introduction of factors that. Because again, I think there's also something you don't understand when you're eight, which is there's a difference between doing something wrong and breaking the law.

Yeah.

You know, there are a lot of people who do things that are wrong and awful, but they're not breaking the law. And as a result of that, there's no consequence. Right. At least there's no legal consequence. Similarly, there are a lot of things that are against the law that are really not morally particularly wrong. And yet there's an enormous consequence that requires a certain level of maturity that wouldn't be expected of an 8 year old.

I just think it was like, you know, you hear stories about people in prison and on the news and you just see that they did horrible things. And so I was like, oh, wow, okay, my brother, he committed a crime, but I don't feel like he's a bad guy, you know what I mean? He wasn't like trying to hurt people intentionally. He was just trying to make money as a college kid and someone asked him for some weed or something and he sell a little bit here and there on the side to make some extra cash. And then they're like, oh, do you have lsd? He was like, no. But it was all part of a bigger thing to like get a bunch of guys to go to jail. So it was just kind of part of a scheme, an undercover scheme. It was his first time and he had six to 25 years on his first offense.

Do you remember what the impact of that was on your parents?

Oh, it was devastating. It was devastating. Again, my dad was a pretty well respected life insurance salesman in the community. Again, a small town. He was a part of Rotary. We had exchange students living with us since I was five. We had like seven different exchange students live with us from around the world for six months at a time. He was trying to be a part of the community with Rotary. He was giving back to the community. His, he knew everyone in the community. He was like the life insurance guy in our small town. And so it was kind of devastating. I can imagine the impact it had on him and his business and his reputation. I can imagine the guilt and shame that my parents had from asking themselves, where did we go wrong? Did we do something wrong? Where he strayed away. In some ways, he was extremely gifted and talented. He was one of the top violinists in the country under 17 in national competitions. As a classical violinist. He was a savant, was a prodigy. He was like second chair, first chair at 16 in the Columbus Symphony. As a 16 year old. He just did things with the violin classically that people couldn't do. He was a mutant in the violin and one of the crazy, you know, the beautiful lessons that came from this. And I think all these different tragedies in our life are challenges and adversities. You know, Hindsight is always 2020 and sometimes it's hard to have future hindsight now, now that I've had so many different challenges in life and I see the meaning of them later. Anytime I'm in an adversity now, I try to think about, man, this is going to be so meaningful in my future. It's going to give me so much more power in my future to serve others and more wisdom. When he went to prison, he got sent to a prison with these special facility that had a prison band. And because he was so gifted in the violin, he Got sent to a specific prison that allowed this kind of curriculum.

And.

And it's kind of like a Hollywood movie in my mind, because he goes to jail, he joins the prison band. He's a classical violinist, white kid from Ohio, and he joins the band with everyone who's not white. He's the only white kid. They're all playing hip hop and funk and blues and rap and R and B and jazz. And they all teach him the culture of a different style of music for four years. So he gets a master class from other inmates who are talented and play and sing with their heart and their souls with so much musicality and passion from pain and trauma. And they pour their hearts out in this band. And we got to go watch him, actually, a few times. It was so inspiring to watch prisoners, inmates perform like they were free men. It was incredibly inspiring to witness every time. And after he got out in four and a half years on good behavior, so he didn't have to serve the full 25. And he, in the last 20 plus years, has completely transformed his life. Goes all over the country and all over the world to perform and teach at schools. He was a professor at Berklee School of Music, one of the most prestigious colleges in the world of music. He played with les Paul for 10 years in times Square. He played at Les Paul's funeral. This is like one of the icons of jazz and invented the electric guitar. He again, has transformed his life to be of service and find meaning from that experience. And he would have never been the greatest jazz violinist in the world had he not gone through that four years of, you know, challenging education of being an inmate in prison.

So you mentioned a moment ago that from as young as when you were 5, your parents and your family would have exchange students. I know you wrote about this in, I believe, your second book. You had a really traumatic event occur when you were five. Something that remained a secret for at least 20 years.

25 years, yeah.

Was that related to someone that came as an exchange student or was that unrelated?

It was unrelated. Yeah. When I was five, I was actually abused by a babysitter's son. He was probably like 16 or 17. Both my parents were working, and they'd worked till, you know, 5, 6, 7, or whatever. Because when I was younger, they didn't really have the financial abundance until I got to be like, 16. My dad finally started to get commissions coming in that were more than just kind of scrapping by month to month. So both my parents were working while they had four kids, and they Sent us to babysitters after school. And so that was an unfortunate event that for 25 years left me feeling with a lot of pain, a lot of insecurity, a lot of shame, a lot. I didn't think this ever happened to any other boy. I didn't know of any one other boy. I never heard of a man that I watched on TV or an athlete talking about sexual abuse. Growing up in the 80s and 90s. No one ever spoke about it. You heard about it from women in some cases, but I never heard about it from a male perspective. And so I thought I was for 25 years that I was the only one who'd been sexually abused in the world. Essentially I was uneducated and unaware and I was left with a lot of shame and self doubt that caused me to put on and project a certain personality type that I wasn't. An inauthenticity for me to protect myself. So I wore many different masks to try to fit in, to feel accepted, to feel like I belonged in my peer group. I remember just always kind of feeling like angry, triggered, reactive when I felt like I was being taken advantage of or abused in life, whether it was actually happening or not. When I felt like it was happening, I was on the defenses. And in some ways that drove me to accomplish goals and generate some success in sports and then eventually in business. But I remember I would have these big goals in athletics. You know, I wanted to be an all American athlete. I was a two sport all American athlete. I wanted to be a professional athlete. I made Arena Football League and was a pro athlete. I wanted to go to the Olympics. And I was on the USA Handball team for almost nine years. We never qualified, but I played against a lot of Olympic teams. And I remember accomplishing all these sports goals and still not feeling fulfilled and joyful and happy inside. It was kind of like, all right, I succeeded. But I never felt like it was enough, so I needed to go bigger. I did the same thing in business for many years. I would accomplish goals, I would make money, I would get the accolades and things like that. And it still didn't feel like it was enough. And it wasn't until I was 30 years old, a decade ago now, when I started to have multiple breakdowns in my life. I was driven and fueled to prove people wrong, to look good, to win and to get acknowledged and to be kind of the one standing on top. That's what was fueled by, because I thought that would bring joy, peace and fulfillment. And it just left me feeling more and more angry and upset, the more successful I got. And it wasn't until I was 30, I had multiple, let's call it, breakdowns in life and an intimate relationship, a business partnership. And then I was also just kind of reactive in life when I'd play sports, I got into a bad fight one time on a basketball court. Kind of all these things came together at once where my best friend said, I don't want to hang out with you anymore if you're going to keep reacting like this. This is a guy that I played college football with and knew for a decade at that time, he was like, I don't like the way you're reacting. It's not fun anymore. What are you doing? Why are you getting so triggered? And that was a big wakeup call where I thought I didn't need additional coaching or support. I thought I kind of had all the answers at the time. I had a massive ego, thinking that, you know, what else can I learn? I'm in the personal development space. I've made money in business. I feel like I've got the answers. People just need to understand and accept me. I started to take the advice from him and other friends, and I went to therapy. I went to a lot of different emotional intelligence workshops, and I've been in the journey of trying and testing lots of different healing modalities over the last decade that have been extremely powerful and inspiring. In one of these workshops I took 10 years ago, I opened up for the first time about being sexually abused. And that was the catalyst for me starting the journey of reflecting back on just all the little T and big T traumas that I had faced, whether I thought they were a big deal or not. Just allowing myself to reflect back on the different psychological stages of my life, that wounded me. That created a scar, that created a type of open wound, and it was extremely healing. Terrifying at the same time, but extremely healing. When I started to open up about this in this workshop, and then went through a process of telling my family one by one, and then close friends one by one, and then eventually, about a year later, opening up about it publicly on my podcast. And that was about nine years ago when I opened up about it. And I remember thinking to myself, before I did this kind of episode, talking about sexual abuse, as a man, I remember thinking, my life is over, my career is over, my business is over. No one's going to buy anything from me ever again. You know, everyone's going to make fun of me publicly, and I'm going to be shamed But I just felt like it needed to come out of me and if it could help a few men who had been through something similar, then it was worth losing my credibility and my business and everything. And what happened afterwards was an extremely beautiful experience for me. For weeks I just got essays from men opening up about for the first time about the traumas that they went.

Through through sexual abuse.

It was kind of like an emotional hangover reading these essays from men because I didn't realize how much trauma men go through in their childhoods. And the stats are one in six men have been sexually abused. It's one in four women. The challenge for men is there has never really been a safe space until really the last few years for men to be able to open up and talk about it again. It's traumatic no matter your man woman who you are. But there's been more of a availability to talk about it for women over the last decades. And I just never felt like there was a space for men. And I think more men are opening up and talking about it. More people are talking about mental health in general and just healing trauma. It's been a beautiful journey over the last 10 years to continue to heal, to continue to grow and reconnect and reparent that five year old version of myself, the 10 year old version of myself, the 18 year old version of myself and talk about and talk to myself in a meditative psychological state of how proud I am of that five year old for overcoming this, for how proud I am of the 8 to 12 year old who didn't have friends for 4 and a half years because he was facing challenges with my brother in prison and for all the different stages of life that I felt like I was unsure, uncertain, unclear. And being able to go back and have those conversations has been extremely healing experience.

What do you think it was, Louis, that created that crescendo when you were 30? It's not an unusual scenario, right? Which is these traumatic events occur very early in life, but they don't. The maladaptive side, because I sort of describe what you've explained, is there were positive and negative adaptations to that experience. The positive adaptations were the things that actually gave you discipline and gave you drive and probably enabled you to reach a lot of your potential. But unfortunately it came with these negative adaptations that we'll call maladaptations. And that's what increased your temper and probably created emotional distance between you and others and an inability to connect with people. The thing that I find interesting is it took 25 years for that volcano to erupt. What do you think that was about? Why do you think you were able to enjoy relative successes until you weren't? It was sustainable until it wasn't.

I love we're having this conversation because I don't really talk about this as much. Most people don't ask me this stuff. So I'm glad we're talking about it because I was really good at putting on a mask of the athlete, mask of the know it all mask. Like I've got it all figured out. I can take care of this kind of the success mask of like using success as a mask to protect myself. And I think it's really hard to transform when things are good and when things are bad. Like we get familiar with good, we get familiar with bad or low level stress. It becomes familiar. It's really hard to transform unless some type of event occurs. Maybe it's someone close to you has a near death experience. Maybe you go through a divorce or breakup or your business bankruptcy, or you lose your job, whatever it might be, you get really sick, something happens, you lose a grandparent that you're close with and you start asking yourself like, why am I doing the things I'm doing? There's not enough time left. You start looking at life differently. And I think for me it was kind of a perfect storm of events that occurred. A business partnership broke up. Like I almost got in a fight with my business partner at one point in the middle of Times Square. I felt like I was going to punch him because we were just not able to communicate. And it was kind of like months and months of frustration and, you know, resentment and all these things. And again, I was immature and had a big ego.

And if I remember correctly from the book, this was a 5050 partnership where you were doing 80% of the work.

That's my perspective at least. Yeah, I was bringing in the revenue. I was the one doing the sales. So I felt like the only reason we're generating revenue is because I'm doing the work, that work.

So it wasn't that you didn't have a legitimate concern. The problem was you weren't able to effectively say to your partner, hey, listen, this doesn't feel equitable to me. How does it feel to you? Should we reconsider things?

Exactly. I didn't have the emotional tools to communicate maturely. Really is what it came down to. I didn't have the tools to communicate my frustrations peacefully and with gratitude. And it's funny because after I went through this transformational Workshop and started practicing these tools and learning them and practicing them, integrating the healing. I then later went back to this business partner that I didn't speak to for months and had a meeting with him and just thanked him. I just said, hey, I'm so grateful for you, I appreciate you. And I was able to sit with him for a couple hours and find peace and actually then sell the business to him in a peaceful way. But I didn't have the emotional tools on how to communicate effectively before then. And afterwards he was like, what happened to you? Like, how did you communicate like this? Like, I was so relieved because I thought you were to come here, you know, get arguing and all these things. And I had the perfect storm of events. I was in an emotional up and down intimate relationship. I was in an emotional up and down business relationship partnership. And I was using the frustration as an outlet with basketball and sports. And I would kind of take all that aggression out on others in sports. That's what I knew, that's what I did. In football, you take all your anger out on someone else. You inflict as much pain on them as possible, but in a legal activity, but you just spear them in their chest, in their head as hard as you could. You could hit people on the head back then head to head. And there was no foul. So you just head to head as hard as you can. Which probably caused a lot more brain trial. I mean, that I needed. And at that time I was like, I can only do this through basketball. And then for me, I kept getting in more and more like kind of tiffs and shoving matches and eventually into a fistfight with a guy.

And this is literally just playing pick.

Up basketball, pickup basketball in fricking Beverly Hills. It's not like we're in the mean streets of Compton where there's bullets whizzing around or something. This is just hanging out, having fun with a bunch of 20 something year olds playing pickleball on probably one of the nicest looking pickup basketball courts you can find. But for whatever reason, when I felt like someone would give me a little like elbow to the side or they'd say something to me, I felt like they were abusing me. It felt like I was five years old. The psychological child in me felt like this is an act of abuse. They could take it farther and farther and I could do everything in my power to protect myself physically, emotionally, psychologically. Because I never want that feeling of being powerless again. I never want the feeling of being taken advantage of again. And so it was a Pattern that would repeat in different scenarios. And again, like you said, that fuel of needing to look good, wanting to be right, proving people wrong, like building myself up to protect myself, allowed me to be so consistent, so driven, willing to work unlimited hours to get results. But it left me feeling extremely empty, lonely, insecure and not free inside. I still felt like a prisoner internally. And so all these events came to a head around the same kind of few months. And that was the wake up call. I don't think I would have woken up if just one thing happened. But it was all of them at the same time.

So really it's these big three things. Your best friend saying you shouldn't be playing basketball with us anymore, business partnership.

And the girlfriend situation.

Your business partnership and the blow up with your girlfriend. So when you finally confront this harsh reality, how do you then take the action? How did you even figure out what this workshop was? Did someone recommend it to you?

A few people recommended it to me kind of before this. And I was like, nah, I'm good.

And what was it called?

It's called Mastery and Transformational Training. And it's an emotional intelligence workshop in Los Angeles. And there's a bunch of different. These workshops out there. They're kind of like five day workshops that essentially have a bunch of different scenarios, games and exercises to show you how you react in life. They're essentially designed to see how you are and create a mirror of real world scenarios in a small group setting with games, activities, one to one dyads, meditations, and all these different things. So you go back into the different events that caused pain, stress, overwhelm the things that keep you from being your most joyful, authentic self. Now what is holding you back from giving your fullest self, from being the most loving human being you can be, from being your childlike joy as an adult? What robbed you of your joy?

What.

What took your joy away from you, who hurt you, essentially, is what it's learning about. And everyone goes through their own journey and their own experience. But for me, it was extremely powerful.

Well, actually, that's kind of interesting, Louis. That's a bit counterintuitive. I can totally understand why for you, that was the journey. Was that the explicit journey for anybody who joined that? In other words, was anybody who came to that workshop also put through a framework of anything that today is not happening for you that should be, is probably tied to some, for lack of a better word, contamination of your true self as a child? Or was that kind of more your.

Journey, some type of Belief. I think everyone goes through the same exercises. And some of them didn't resonate with me. I was like, okay, I got nothing out of it. But for other people it was like the biggest eye opening experience. And then other exercises, I was like, oh my gosh, this really impacted me in a big way. And it was a big breakthrough. And they're all designed to show you how you show up in life currently, what's working for you, what's not working for you, and what are tools that you can use moving forward to be a better version of yourself. It's essentially what it is through leadership training, through emotional intelligence, language, things like that. I got a lot out of it because again, I think I had so much pain I was holding to for 25 years.

And did you talk about it there for the first time?

I talked about it there for the first time. And I remember like, no girlfriend in the past knew. My family didn't know. I didn't tell any friends because I thought if people knew this about me, no one would love me, no one would accept me, no one would be my friend. And that was one of my biggest fears, was people not accepting me. But really what happened was I never fully accepted myself. I wasn't able to forgive, find meaning in that experience and lots of different experience that occurred in my childhood. And so I was just filled with so much shame about these things. And I thought if any of my like buddies knew these things about me, my college football teammates or high school basketball teammates knew this, they wouldn't want me on the team. And all I wanted to do was learn like how to fit in and belong. But I never learned how to belong to myself. And I think that's something a lot of people over the last 10 years of me doing the research I'm doing and you doing the research you're doing. A lot of people from my experience don't know how to fully love and accept themselves with all the mess and all the stress and all the things they've been through. And I'm not saying you need to be proud of the things you've done. There's many things in my past that I'm not proud of, but I can find meaning and accept and have compassion for the 11 year old that would steal candy bars, you know, almost every day for a year and a half and be like, okay, that's where I was in my life. I'm not proud of it, but I can have compassion for the tools that I had, the stress I was going through and Then I stopped it and I transformed in a certain way. So I love that person and I heal that person inside of me so that I am not in shame of all these different stages of my life. Because I don't think shame supports us in service. It doesn't help us serve and give to the people we care about closest to us, to our communities, to our platforms. Whatever we're creating in the world, it holds us back. For many years, I couldn't sleep at night. I would just sit up at night for about an hour, hour and a half, just ruminating. And it wasn't until after I started the healing journey where I was able to fall asleep within minutes. You know, it hasn't been a perfect journey over the last 10 years, but it's been a powerful journey of constantly healing.

Do you remember what it was in the moment you were about to talk about this that gave you the comfort that said, in this moment I can do something that has seemed so taboo. Was it in part, Louis, because they were strangers? I mean, did that make it a little easier in that moment?

Yeah, it was part of it. This workshop was like two weekend workshops. So I did like a four day workshop that kind of gave you some basic tools and understanding. So we're kind of all on the same page of understanding the language and tools and leadership, distinctions of accountability, responsibility, ownership of your life, things like that. It wasn't until the second weekend, which was like a week and a half later, where it got extremely intense. I mean, people are opening up and extremely vulnerable and crying and really sharing different things that had occurred. So once other people started to share how messed up their life was, it gave me permission to be like, oh, wow, other people go through stuff too, and way worse scenarios than I've gone through in certain areas. And I remember this was probably like the halfway mark of this weekend workshop and the first couple days of it, the trainer, the facilitator of the workshop said, okay, we've gone back and addressed a lot of the different things that have caused you to guard your heart, that have caused you to be more analytical in your mind and be less peaceful and not own your peace and own your love and give your love generously to others. A lot of people just guard themselves, right? He said, now we've addressed these different scenarios. We've addressed your mom, your dad, different scenarios from childhood. We've done these different exercises and games. Then we have reflection and journaling. Time to start integrating these things. And he said, now we're not going to go back into the past anymore. We've done enough. We're going to start creating a vision of the future. You want to create the who you want to be, how you want to show up in the world, what you want to create, the type of relationship you want to have, the type of dreams you want to manifest. And we're going to start building tools into developing how to create that and getting clear on the vision you want for your life. And he said, but before we do, if there's anyone who has yet to clear of their past and talk about or address the things something they need to talk about, it's kind of like now is the time or forever hold your peace because we're moving forward. We're not going back anymore. Let's go on with our lives and start creating a powerful vision we can live into. And the room is kind of silent. And I remember just thinking to myself, man, I feel like I've been going all in on this workshop. I went all in, talking about, like, challenges with my parents that I had about, you know, my brother going to prison and what that felt like about being dyslexic my entire childhood and being in special needs classes until I finished college. You know, just like being picked on, being picked the last in sports, team, all these things that were just kind of the painful memories. I was like, I talked about all of it. And I go, but why have I still not talked about this one thing? Like, why have I yet to talk about it? And for whatever reason, I go, it just kind of hit me. I go, I don't know. If I don't talk about this now, I'll probably never speak about it in life, my life. I'll probably keep it to my grave. And I think it was just the environment, the setting again. Other people were opening up before then. It gave me the courage in that moment. And I don't think I would have ever had the courage to speak to my future wife, my parents. I don't think I would have told anyone because I didn't have the courage emotionally. And I remember standing up. There's probably 40 people in the room. I remember standing up and kind of walking to the front of the room. I didn't even, like, raise my hand. I just stood up and walked to the room. And this is what I remember. I remember looking down at the carpet and walking through this story for the first time, reliving it like I was in the bathroom being sexually abused by this man. Almost like I could go to the scene 25 years prior. I Could see the room, the mirror, the bathroom. I could smell. I went back there and I was so ashamed that I couldn't look up at anyone's eyes. So I just stared down at the carpet. And I walked through this kind of story step by step. And I just said the whole thing. And I remember walking back to my seat, sitting down and just erupting with tears. I just started bawling and I didn't really cry that much. I was conditioned not to cry as an athlete and as a man. And I just bawled. I was bawling so much. And it was so beautiful because there was two women on the sides of me. They're crying, they're both hugging me and embracing me. The whole room is like starting to cry. And I'm just like, my life is over. That's what I thought. And so I run out of the room. I get so scared. I ran out of the room and I left, I left the event. I went outside to the, you know, out of this kind of hotel conference room. And I went outside this kind of back alley of this hotel. And I'm putting my head on my hands like on the wall in this back alley, just like sobbing. And I was just like, I'm never going back in there. I'm done. I'm going home. Like my life is over. And one of the most beautiful things that happened in my life, it was a beautiful moment, was I felt this tap on my shoulder as I'm kind of like crying on this wall. And I turn around and it's probably a 55, 60 year old man, big guy, and he's looking at me in my eyes. He's probably my same height, eye to eye, staring at me, crying. He said, you're my hero. I will follow you anywhere. I remember this vividly. He said, you're my hero, I will follow you anywhere. And I had everything wrong about you again. I was kind of showing up with an ego and, you know, thought I knew it all and all this stuff. And he goes, I had everything wrong about you. And he goes, let me tell you something. I'm in my late 50s, I've got four kids, I've been married for 25 years. My wife doesn't know, my kids don't know. No one knows. This happened to me when I was 11. For many years, it's still the deepest secret that I have. You're the first person that knows. Thank you for having the courage to open up and give me permission to, to start talking about it. I'm going to Go tell my wife tonight. I'm going to start the healing journey. Thank you. And I was like, I'm just kind of in shock. I'm still, like, emotional. I'm a wreck. He's hugging me. We're crying together. And then one by one, probably like 12 or 13 men come out of the room, and they all come and give me a hug. And not everyone had been sexually abused, but a few other guys had been. And they all came to me and said, this happened to me when I was eight. This happened to me when I was 13. This happened to me when I Was seven. These few of the guys kind of said, I've never told anyone. Thank you for opening it up. So this is back in 2013, 10 years ago, when I did this, and I was kind of like, wow, okay. Other men have experienced this, and they started talking about it, and it was very therapeutic and very healing for us to experience it. The weekend, you know, I go on over the next few days and finish the event and have a powerful experience of just catharsis and healing and then sharing these vulnerable moments with other people who had similar experiences, which was extremely powerful. But I remember thinking to myself, like, I can't tell my family. Like, these are strangers. I never have to see them again. Like you said, what's my family going to say? What are my friends going to say? Are they going to be as emotionally available and courageous to be able to receive this information? That was a fear and concern of mine. But eventually I ended up telling them all. I reached out to a therapist friend of mine afterwards, and I said, hey, this is something that happened. And I started to open up about it, but I'm terrified to tell my family and friends because I don't think they'll accept me. And I said, what's a process I can use to connect with them, to see if they're available to hear it? And this friend of mine said, ask them all a question before you share with them. Ask them this question. Is there anything I could ever say or do that would make you not love me? And based on their response, if you feel like they're receiving of it, then you can open up and talk about it. And so I did that one by one with my family and then my friends. And, you know, it brought me closer to all of them. They started to open up about things that I didn't know about them, things that they went through I had no clue about. It brought us closer together, created a stronger bond of intimacy and connection. And that was really the journey was like, wow, I've been missing out my entire life. 25 years of true intimacy and real, authentic connection because I'd been hiding myself from so many people. And it doesn't mean you've got to reveal all your darkest secrets to everyone right now and publicly. I'm not saying that's the case, but I do believe that we are missing out on something extremely beautiful. And we will never be peaceful and fully free, internally or externally, until we can accept the things of our past that we're most ashamed of and afraid of and insecure about. We will always be a prisoner in our heart and mind until we can face it and accept it and embrace it.

Prior to this moment, what was your relationship like with your parents and your siblings?

I had a challenging relationship with my parents. It was kind of interesting. I mean, I loved my parents. I had some great moments with them, but I begged them to send me away because I just grew up in a lot of a stressful environment. My parents were kind of explosive with each other growing up. They should have probably never been married. They got married when they're 18. They didn't have the emotional tools, things like that, until later in life. So they stayed together because of the kids and then just kept having more kids. But they probably shouldn't have stayed married. That's probably not what should have happened. And so I just grew up in a lot of uncertainty and fear. And I don't blame them. You know, they were doing their best. But it's one of the reasons what made me want to leave. Because I was the youngest, all my other siblings were out of the house. Now I was 13, and I was just like, I don't want to be in this stress. I want to be in a peaceful environment. So subconsciously it was like the thing that wanted to drive me away. And I was also doing kind of bad things that is 11, 12 year old, just stealing and just hanging out with people that weren't the best people that were influencing me to do bad things. But I wasn't accepted by like, other people in school. So I just found anyone I could cling on to that would accept me. And I was just like, I don't want to be in this environment. I don't want to live this life anymore. I want to be around good kids, good people. My parents were great. They would show up to all my sports games. They were extremely supportive. They encouraged me to follow my dreams. They taught me a lot of great lessons. But their modeling of a relationship was not a good model. For me. So that caused some underlying stress. So, again, I had a great relationship, but also I didn't want to be around them, but I loved them. Kind of dynamic. And I was away from them for five years. You know, I only went home for, like a couple weeks in Christmas and breaks, and here and there they would come out and visit and watch games, but it would be for a few hours and then they're gone. So I really lived alone with roommates from 13 to 18. And my siblings were all older. They were off to college doing their life. So we had a good relationship, but I just didn't see them that often. And I remember at 30, I was like, I want to reconnect with my family more and build stronger bonds and stronger relationships. And so that allowed me to start that process.

And your brother, obviously, by this point, he's long since back from prison. Sounds like he's got his life completely back together. Were you guys close? You know, the age gap of 11 years, you know, by that point, for all we know, he's got a family. He's kind of moved on. You're the little brother. Let me rephrase this question. I guess when you think about your siblings and your parents and your friends, were you most concerned with who in that group of having that discussion?

Probably more my friends, to be honest, because I still wanted to, like, belong in society beyond my family. You know, your family's got to kind of love you and accept you no matter what. At the end of the day, they're stuck with you, essentially. So I knew that, like, okay, I told my family first, and after I told them, I was like, in my mind, well, they have to accept me. And after what my brother went through, of course they're going to accept me no matter what. But my friends, will they accept me? And that was probably the scarier thing to talk to them about. But all of them were extremely, like, supportive and, hey, I got your back, and open and loving. And again, it just brought me a lot of inner peace, which I never had, I didn't have because I was being inauthentic to who I was and to accepting myself, to fully loving and being acceptance of myself. And therefore, others didn't know who I was. And so they weren't able to fully accept me because I wasn't able to reveal who I was. And I think that was the challenge that I was facing with that I was always putting on a mask. Listen, I was a happy, fun, loving guy. I was the same as I am now. But I just Wasn't as vulnerable, but I was fun. I would, like, play, you know, all these different things, but I just felt like something inside, like I wasn't revealing, and it was eating me up constantly.

You know, I know you've had one of my best friends on your podcast, Paul Conti.

Oh, man.

Paul was probably one of the first people I met in medical school. So we went to med school together, and we've been largely inseparable since. And as you know, Paul's sort of what I would consider one of the experts on the topic of trauma. One of the things I'm curious about, as you think about the line between trauma, which would be probably net negative. Again, I describe these things as some positive, some negative, but that's probably a net negative versus adversity. Some positive and some negative. Probably a net positive. Where do you draw that line? And I don't necessarily just mean in your life, but I mean, like, as a person thinking about their own experiences, where does one draw that line?

I try to think of adversity and trauma as, where can I find the meaning in both of them and how can I find the useful tools that could come from them? Before, I think I was just afraid of trauma and more embraced adversity. You know, the challenges of overcoming being down in a sports game or getting a minor injury and fighting through it, Playing with a broken wrist for 14 games as an athlete, which is something I did, playing with three broken ribs, it was kind of like, that's the adversity, and you just got to tough it out and overcome adversity. Those are also kind of traumatic events, too, like breaking bones and just living with physical wound trauma. But I looked at it differently than the emotional trauma, the psychological trauma, which really shaped my personality and my identity. And as you know, Dr. Joe Dispenza says, your personality becomes your personal reality. And that became part of my personal reality based on these emotional and psychological traumatic wounds. It became my inner world, and then a reflection in my outer world of how I react. And so I really look at the. Now that both of these events, adversity and trauma, can be extremely beneficial if we find meaning. And usually it's harder to find the meaning from traumatic experiences and things that no one wants to go through. You don't want your enemies to go through, loss of people close to you, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, horrible things that happen in the world, mass shootings like these things. We don't want to happen ever to anyone. And it's hard to find the meaning. But I'm Sure. As you know, Man's Search for Meaning with Viktor Frankl and Edith Egger, who I've had on a couple of times, who was a Holocaust survivor. When she talked about watching her parents go into the, you know, the gas chamber in Auschwitz and the trauma that she faced for so many decades, it wasn't until she went back there herself and was able to face it and forgive herself because he essentially told the truth to the officer. And when the officer asked her, is this your sister or your mom? And she said, my mom. And so she watched her mom go and be executed. And if she just would have lied and said her sister, maybe her mom would have stayed alive. And she had to, like, relive that facing it and find forgiveness in herself. For the teenager that was fearful, insecure, didn't have the tools, wasn't to be able to navigate such a traumatic moment, she was able to find peace and meaning from that and use the meaning to be of service to others. I don't think any one of us are going to get out of this life without experiencing some type of little T, big T trauma. And they can all be extremely overwhelming feelings. And I think it's our mission and our goal to figure out what is the meaning from it. How could I benefit from it and serve others in this meaning as well?

You don't have kids, do you?

No, not yet.

Do you think you want to?

Yeah.

Yeah. So when you think about having kids, even though you don't have them, I'm sure you can appreciate there's a very protective nature that comes up. I think every parent looks at their kid and thinks, I want to shield them from the bad things that happened to me and I want them to have wonderful experiences. And yet, of course, there's always a fear that if we take that to an extreme, we deprive them of something.

Yeah.

You know, for me, and I've talked about this with Paul, I feel like that's a litmus test for me of the type of adversity that is character building and valuable. Maybe not getting picked for a sports team, it hurts in the moment, but it also produces a lot of good 100% versus the sexual abuse when you're five. It's just hard to say. I don't think any parent under any circumstance could say I'd be okay with that happening to my kid. Even if on the other side of it, it's going to become a huge part of their defining characteristic and it will make them a wonderful and empathic person. You just couldn't imagine them going through that as that child. And so I'm just kind of curious as you think about what this means for the lumps and bumps in life.

Those experiences could have ruined me, you know, had I not had supportive people around me 25 years later to encourage me to talk about it, to go get support, get coaching, go to therapy, try workshops. Like, I feel like I've done so many different therapeutic experiences in the last decade and tried it all. And I'm like, I'm always coming from a beginner's mind now since that 10 years ago workshop, because before I thought I knew it all, I thought I had all the answers and it didn't give me a sense of peace. Now I go into stuff just like you do with how can I learn? How can I learn from anyone about something? And how can I come into it with a beginner's mind and be open minded? You know, I would never want my kids to experience what I experienced and I would never want any kid to experience this. I don't think there's any good that comes from it. I honestly don't think I had to find meaning from the traumatic experience. I had to. I got to find meaning so that I could have peace in my heart. And I realized if I didn't create peace in my heart and find meaning, then it would have ruined me. I probably would have gotten in more fights, I would have been more reactive, I would have blown up my life. And that's what was starting to happen. I was accomplishing more and more. So I was becoming more well known and I had more to lose. And if I didn't learn the tools of emotional regulation, of healing, of effective communication, and it doesn't mean I'm perfect and I've got it all figured out. But if I didn't learn how to use those tools, then I probably would have done a lot more damage to myself and to people around me because I would have been unwilling to process. And so for me, it was the meaning behind it all that supported me and having more compassion and empathy because I didn't have that before I discovered the meaning again. I don't wish it upon anyone. I don't wish trauma upon anyone. As Jordan Peterson says, you don't want to protect your kids. You want to create a safe environment where they feel loved by you and accepted, but you want to allow them to be vulnerable because that's how they get stronger. That's how they can develop courage when challenging things happen when you as parents are not around and they can have the tools to take on the adversities of life. It's like a balance. And I'm sure you've got more wisdom than me of. I see myself with my kids as wanting to give them so much love and acceptance, but also putting them through the most adversity I can in safe containers to give them tools of overcoming and learning how to do it on their own.

Yeah, I think my wife and I kind of talk about it. You know, we have three kids, so 5, 8 and 14. The mental model I use is that of the immune system. It's really well known at this point. It was once speculated, but I think it's generally completely accepted that if you took a child when they're born and put them in an environment where their immune system is never challenged. So for lack of a better word, you just put them in a bubble and you think, well, they're never going to get sick. It's true, they won't get sick, but something worse is going to happen, which is their immune system will turn on themselves and they will develop ravaging autoimmunity.

Really?

Absolutely. So an unchallenged immune. Because remember, the immune system is. I mean, I'm probably biased because I studied immunology, but the immune system is one of the most remarkable systems in the body. This idea of selection, negative and positive selection, meaning how do we develop a system that is so good at recognizing self from non self, and you go through thymic selection with the T cells when you're an infant and all of these things. But it's a potent system. I mean, it's a very potent system and it has remarkable killing capacity. That's what keeps us safe, I mean, especially from viruses. You know, we really don't have good drugs to combat viruses the way we do bacteria. But nevertheless, when children are put in a position where they do not have enough exposure, and we see this with food allergies all the time, it's not a coincidence that we're seeing nut allergies go through the roof as kids are having less and less exposure to nuts when they grow up. So at the one end of the spectrum, you put your kids in a bubble and they don't get sick, but something worse happens, which is their immune system attacks themselves, so they end up with ravishing autoimmunity. At the other end of the spectrum, if you make them eat fecal matter all the time and you put them in an environment that is the most filthy, also their immune system can't do enough and they're just gonna be so sick. And in fact, the reality of it is that's how we used to die prior to the advent of antibiotics and things like that. And when we had no sterilization, our life expectancy was literally half what it is today, largely on the back of infectious diseases. So there's this happy medium where your immune system has to be honed to be strong enough to know what is Lewis and what is not Lewis, so that it always attacks not Lewis, but not so tuned that it's always having to be on. And then you're overwhelmed by this. That's kind of how we think about it with kids, which is it's pretty good when they don't make a sports team once in a while. It's pretty good when they finish last in a race and they're embarrassed about it because they didn't train that hard. Or it's pretty good when they blow a test. These things are really good. But at the other end of the spectrum, for me, and this really comes from discussions with Paul and a few others, it's something that you said in your story that I think really resonated. The thing that we really want to avoid is children having a feeling of complete, complete helplessness. If I were trying to articulate it, I suspect that perhaps the most traumatic thing about your experience as a child was the total helplessness. And I think the helplessness and the shame then kind of compound each other. And I think that's the thing that is the root of all evil. And it's not just sort of sexual abuse. I think children can experience that all the way. I mean, did you ever take the adverse childhood event score, the ACE test?

No, but I should. I never heard of it.

It's very interesting. So we have a lot of our patients take it if it's something that we think is interesting and relevant and potentially germane to their care. It's a standardized test of 10 questions. It's simple. Yes or no. For example, have you been sexually abused? Did you grow up in a household where your parents were divorced? Did you grow up in a household where one of your parents physically assaulted the other? Did you grow up in a household where you were physically. All of these things, you just keep going, going, going. You know, it's funny, one of the things is not. Not. Did you grow up in a household where a parent went to prison, which I think effectively would be true for you, because an 11 year old sibling is effectively a parent.

Yeah. 11 year older. Yeah, he was 18. Yeah.

I mean, so if you go through the ACE and we'll link to this in the show notes for our podcast as well. Yeah. So if you go through and fill out the adverse childhood event score, there's a basically a histogram that shows for people who have 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9, 10, 10 out of 10. What is the predictive value of this on both physical health and emotional health later in life? And it's probably not surprising that the more you score on that, the worse your emotional health, meaning the greater the likelihood of anxiety, depression, suicidality and these things that probably doesn't come across as a big surprise. What I think comes across as a bit of a surprise, admittedly there are confounders here, is physical health, meaning the higher your ace, the worse your physical health as you age. And again, I suspect there's a component to that that's probably confounded by socioeconomic factors that factor into this. Right. We're going to see higher ACE scores in lower socioeconomic status and therefore that's going to also confound health status. But I can't believe that that's it. It has to be that, at least in my experience, looking at this in a small but relatively controlled environment, that people aren't able to take care of themselves, which is a big part of health, if they have so much unresolved trauma.

That's what I was going to say. I think if you live with a higher score, meaning you've experienced more traumatic moments as a kid, I think, and you haven't learned how to heal and navigate them in a healthy coping mechanism way, processing the trauma, healing and being on the journey of consistent healing. You know more than me. You've been studying the immune system for a long time. Your immune system is so under attack if it's in fight or flight, constantly reliving the past traumatic events that you haven't healed yet. So if it feels like it's still a 5 year old, 8 year old, 12 year old in these moments and you're stacking all of them on your body and your immune system at once, connecting the thoughts like Paul Conti talks about to the immune system consistently, you do that for a long period of time. Like your body probably just can never fully process it probably can't build the strength and recover and get rid of the bad cells the way it needs to with that much trauma. And when I feel like we learn to create the environment of peace and harmony and alignment in our heart connected to our mind, then the body will Start to follow. Obviously we got to take the right actions and do the right decisions of our nutrition and our movement and things like that consistently. But I just feel like there's a lot less pressure on my heart. And I used to feel a lot of pain in my chest. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago physical pain, really physical, like sharp chest pain that would come and go and it wasn't related to working out. I remember the moment two years ago I did a five month intensive therapy coaching experience. So I did lots of different modalities over the last 10 years. 10 years ago really helped me kind of process the sexual abuse. And I practiced that for a few years and I really felt peace and free around that experience in life. I processed other stuff with my parents at different stages in the last 10 years. And I really felt like I did a lot of good work. But I was still having this chest pain and this kind of like throat clenching, almost kind of like someone was strangling me at different times. Not 24, 7, but when there was a trigger, an emotional response to something happening externally, I'd feel like a clench, like someone was strangling me or someone was like pressing a weight on my heart. And it was kind of this chest pain. It was like. It's like I couldn't breathe fully. And this was happening on and off because I still hadn't healed a lot of things in intimate relationships. I was still afraid in intimacy with romantic partners over the last 10 years. And it wasn't until the last relationship I was in that again, it was kind of like a perfect storm of events happening over and over again where I start to finally recognize and have the courage that I was abandoning myself. And I was repeating this pattern of abandoning who I was, my values, my vision, my identity, my beliefs, to please one person that I thought I loved and was in an intimate relationship with. In order to make them happy and keep the peace externally with that partner. And partners in the past, I would change who I was to make them happy. And this was a pattern after multiple relationships that I realized, oh, I am at the center. I'm the common denominator of all these previous relationships of why they're not working out. I'm choosing based on a wound, I'm staying based on a wound. And I'm abandoning myself on who I truly am based on wounds. And so two years ago I said, enough is enough. I don't feel stress or pain around the sexual abuse. I don't feel stress or pain about being picked on as a kid in school anymore, all this stuff. Like I felt like I was able to process that, but I still didn't have the courage to be 100% who I was in intimacy. And I'm so glad I found this therapist. She's more of a coach, but she does therapy work too. And for the last two years, every two weeks I do a session with her. And for the first five months I was going pretty much every week. I was doing five, six, seven hour sessions on Saturdays, individual sessions and joint sessions in the relationship that I was doing as well. I was like, this is either going to work or we got to get out of this thing. We got to figure out how to find harmony together in the previous relationship. And after five months of doing this, there wasn't any improvement. We weren't aligned on our values. It was so far, me and the previous relationship, our values when we start doing these sessions together in couples therapy. And it got to the point where I just was finally like, I can't live like this. I can't be in a relationship with someone and change all my values and beliefs to make them happy. It doesn't work for me anymore. But I was repeating that pattern in previous relationships and I was attracting people that didn't have the same shared values, vision and lifestyle. For whatever reason, there was a wound that I was doing this from.

And why do you think that was? I mean, do you think that you were finding somebody that had a hole that you felt you could fill or.

Yeah, 100%, yes. I felt like, okay, they need me. There's something I can do to support them and help them them and feel needed in some way. And it wasn't even conscious, but as I reflect back of it, it's an unconscious thing that I was repeating. There was a pattern that I was following from the model of my parents relationship. Obviously that had to be in there as well. And I was trying to fix my parents through the relationships I was in. I was trying to find a way on my 5, 8, 10, 16 year old self because they got divorced too, on how could I make it work. And they were never just aligned. And so that was the challenging thing.

And Louis was there in this five month period, even though that seemed like the relationship was not come to make amends. Were you experiencing changes in you? Were you growing as a response to this therapy?

Well, here's the interesting thing. You know, I feel like I have the opportunity to meet so many interesting people to interview on my show that I'm interviewing Paul CONTI I'm interviewing Dr. Ramany on narcissism. I'm interviewing all these different therapists and experts on neuroscience. And I'm starting to. I'm doing my own therapy. I'm interviewing people about trauma, relationships, healing, and all these things are starting to connect the dots after about five months. And there was a moment where I went away for a weekend to go to this, like, kind of business mastermind with probably some people that you know in the industry, with Tony Robbins and a bunch of people at this kind of private mastermind event in Florida. And the person I was dating at the time, she was supposed to come, but the day before, she got mad at me for something, was like, I'm not going. And I remember going to this event and feeling so much love from people, just feeling, like, accepted, feeling loved, feeling celebrated for the person that I was showing up as. And yet I wasn't able to experience that at home and in this relationship. And I was forcing it and trying to make it work and changing who I was to bel fit in in the relationship. And I remember texting the therapist at the time, being like, I can't do this anymore. I don't know what to do. And she texted me back and said, you're starting to lift the veil. You're starting to realize and see the things that aren't working. Whereas before, I was just trying to make them work, and I was giving in and abandoning myself to please one person. But I was abandoning who I was. I wasn't pleasing myself, and I was letting go of my authentic, highest self. And so over the next month, we go more and more deeper into therapy together, individually and together. And there was a moment where I was doing it with the coach therapist, and she was talking about my parents, and I was like, I just don't want to feel trapped. I want to feel free. It was kind of this whole thing was connecting the dots from, like, 38 years of life and my brother in prison and watching my parents be trapped in a relationship, in a marriage, and be unhappy. And I was afraid of being trapped in all these different things. And for whatever reason, after five months of doing this, she said to me, louis, you're free. You can walk away at any time. You don't need to keep forcing things. You are free. And for whatever reason, it just somehow connected in my heart where I actually understood the concept. Because I didn't understand the concept. I didn't believe that I could be free internally, even if things weren't working out externally. And I thought I Had to do whatever it took to make it work. I thought I had to go all in even harder and sacrifice who I was to just please one person when we just weren't aligned on our values and vision. And that's okay. And I lacked the emotional courage to walk away. I lacked the emotional courage in every relationship before this to walk away when I knew we weren't aligned and we weren't a right match. And in that moment, all the pain that was in my heart, I could feel the pain this whole time somehow, like, disintegrated. I don't know how to explain this event other than there was a pain in my chest for on and off throughout my entire life. And then it disintegrated. And I haven't felt this pain in the last year and a half. It comes with, like, a ball of energy that, like, you kind of felt like there was, I don't know, disintegrating throughout all my body. I felt like I could breathe and I had peace internally for the first time. And I believed it and I owned it. And the fascinating thing that happened after this is I started showing up for myself and I didn't abandon myself again over the next, I don't know, few weeks of the relationship. Then I got cleared. I was just like, no, this is my value. This is my boundary. This is what I'm creating. She didn't like that. She didn't like me not giving in and not giving her what she wanted all the time. She wanted me to be the person I was being, to give her what she wanted. And I was like, that doesn't work for me. And here's my boundary, and here's what I'm willing to do, and I'm not willing to do this. And it became so clear to me that it was time to walk away. And I had so much peace. Even in the chaos of her not liking me, ending the relationship, I was never okay with hurting someone that I cared about before this. And so I would just kind of give in and mold to try to make it work, abandoning myself in the process. And so it was such a beautiful thing getting to interview Paul Conti and so many other experts as I was living this moment and as I was experiencing this physically, emotionally, and connecting the dots mentally and tying it all back to the childhood stuff. It was like, wow, for the actual first time, I feel pain free in my body. And it wasn't because of something I was doing physical. It was psychological and emotional trauma and wounds that were still hurting me that I hadn't faced and fully addressed. And as my coach and therapist says, healing is a journey. It doesn't always happen overnight. There was a moment when the pain went away, but it didn't mean there weren't tremors, some PTSD feelings that I had to keep breathing through and practicing and integrating these lessons. You know, other moments that I was like, okay, am I going to go back into fear and how I used to be, or am I going to lean into courage, lean into owning who I am and not abandoning myself. And every time I kept stepping into the emotional courage, speaking my truth, being real to myself and to the people that were upset with me and just saying, well, I'm sorry you feel this way, but this is my vision and we're just not a good match. It gave me so much more confidence, peace, courage, energy, freedom that I never fully experienced in intimate relationships. And it has been a complete game changer in every area of my life since. Integrating these lessons and being consistent with it, when I feel a sense of like, oh, okay, I could go back into that old way of being, but I'm just going to show up, know that it may be a little disturbance, but I'm going to be okay, I'm safe, I'm okay, and I'm going to be able to manage it. It's been a beautiful journey, but it has taken a lot of emotional training and consistency. I mean, I did an eight hour therapy session one day on a Saturday to just say, I'm all in. I'm committed to peace and freedom. And what I've realized is that it's truly hard to live a fulfilling, rich, abundant, joyful life, peaceful life, unless we are willing to face the wounds, the fears, the insecurities, the shames, the guilt, all that stuff that has held us back. The more I interview these experts who study this much more than me, and the more I experience it firsthand and see the actual results. Personally, I'm just convinced that when we face the emotional traumas, psychological traumas of our past and we own it and we process it, we will be free.

One of the things I take away from this story that I think is really important for anybody listening to you is that. And you've stated this, but I think it's worth reiterating. These are not digital switches. So Digital, it's either 0 or 1. So it's not like in 2013 you went to this workshop when your life was about to implode. You obviously had a very powerful experience there and you reveal perhaps the greatest of the teas in your bag of teas. But then you went to one and it was all good. No, it's actually. It's much more analog. Right. Analog is like, it dials and it dials up and it dials down, and it dials up and it dials down. The reason I think that's important is it can be very discouraging, I suspect, when you make progress and then you take a step backwards. Right.

Yeah. I thought I did a lot of the work, and then I was like, well, why am I still repeating this pattern in intimacy and relationships? And I was like, I healed this, I healed this. But why is it still coming up? You know, life is interesting and funny in that way, where every new season or every new chapter, every new stage of life. Sure. When I have kids, I'm going to need to face things courageously that are from childhood still or from different wounds that I had. I'm going to have to face and show up and have the courage and be able to sit in discomfort when my kids are crying or when my kids are sick or when they're afraid. I'm going to have to learn how to become a better emotional leader and lean into these things that held me back in the past and have that emotional courage. And I think as we build our business, I'm going to have to do things I've never done before and step into that emotional courage in relationship, in children, all that stuff. As we age, everything is going to have to have more and more courage.

It's funny you mentioned aging. You're obviously young enough that I guess you're not at that point where you're thinking about mortality much. Or are you? I mean, how much do you think about that?

I think about it every day, multiple times a day. My father just passed away a year ago, and when I was 20, 21, he got into a car accident that caused traumatic brain injury. The car that he got hit by came on top of the windshield and the bumper of that car came through his windshield and hit him in the forehead, splitting his head open. He was on a trip in New Zealand with his then girlfriend at the time, after my parents had been divorced. Years later, he was cut out of the car, was cut open. They had to airlift him to a hospital in New Zealand, and he was in a coma for three months, asleep. And so this was another traumatic event that happened to someone close to me, someone I cared about deeply, a mentor of mine, someone that was there for me in a lot of ways for many years, probably four or Five years. I was really angry and upset and afraid because he was, in a lot of ways, a big mentor and a teacher of mine and supported me to chase my dreams. He encouraged me in every way possible to go after my dreams. He gave me a lot of lessons when I was a kid. Some things I didn't understand until later. He never celebrated my birthday, and when I was a kid, it upset me. And then when I was probably like 9, 10, 11, I was like, dad, why don't we ever have a birthday? For me, there's all these other kids that have birthday parties, but I never have a birthday party. And he said, I never want you to be limited by your age. Most people I see make an excuse that they're too young to try something or they're too old and it's too late, and I never want you to have that excuse. And so he gave me a lot of meaningful lessons. And I was like, well, we can still have a cake, dad. You know, we can still have a party and just not celebrate the age. And so when he went through his coma, it was extremely traumatizing for our entire family. It's kind of like my brother going to prison, like that type of experience where it was this uncertainty, this fear, this loss. He got out three months later, came back to the usa. He couldn't speak for almost a year. So he could barely walk, couldn't speak. It was so hard to see again another hero of mine who didn't have the ability to live his full personality and his life. And for many years he did different therapies. Physically, psychologically, all these different things. He eventually was able to talk again. He was eventually able to write some and function minimally, but he could never work again. He stayed in home pretty much 24, 7. Sometimes he could get out and walk a little bit, but he had so many different broken bones and ammonia and collapsed lungs. And the brain trauma was so intense that essentially he was physically alive, but mentally and emotionally, he had died. And so that was another hard thing to witness. My father, who was a hero of mine and a big inspiration in a lot of ways, not perfect and made a lot of mistakes, but it's still a big inspiration. Unable to have a real conversation with him, every time I'd see him, it is, hey, son, where'd you go to school again? What sport did you used to play? Oh, that's right. You played football. Or sometimes get me confused with my other brother and call me Chris. It was the same conversation on repeat for 17 years until he just Passed a year ago. And again, I don't wish that upon anyone. I don't want anyone's father or loved one to go through a traumatic brain injury, car accident, and to have them physically alive, but have to take care of them like a 5 year old. Change his diapers, take care of him, you know, make sure he's not burning himself on the stove. He couldn't drive, he couldn't do any of these things. It was such an emotional sadness to have that loss and see him physically unable to live the life that he once had. When that happened, I got so clear that I was going to do whatever it took. If I had any dream inside of me, I was doing it. There was no fear or failure. It was just, I'm doing it and if I fail, I'm fine with it because I. I don't want to die regretting that I didn't do that. At least go for it. So shortly after that and went and tried out for professional football teams and made a pro football team because that was my dream. Then I got injured two years later I had this dream of playing the Olympics and I moved to New York City. I figured out how to make money and moved to New York City to play with a handball team and learn the sport of handball and try to make the USA team. I made the USA team. A year after that I traveled the world with the USA team. While I'm building a business and doing it digitally and virtually running webinars and things like that all over the world to pursue a dream that I'm not getting paid to do just because I knew this is something that I wanted to do and at least give it a shot. Playing in Spain and Israel and Luxembourg and Canada and Mexico and Uruguay and Argentina and Brazil, all over the world. Paying for my own travel to represent my country where USA across my chest. Be able to sing the national anthem and play against Olympic teams on a pursuit, pursuit of trying to make the Olympics. We never qualified. Just because the dream didn't come true doesn't mean it wasn't a dream come true. The experiences, the lessons, the growth, the adversity I faced, the injuries I overcame all these things. And my dad never was able to watch. He was alive, but he never came to a game. He didn't really understand what life was anymore. So for 17 years, I went after everything in these last 17 years because I knew that this could happen to me at any moment. I knew that my life is not guaranteed today, tomorrow. And it gave me a lot of courage to Say yes. I wrote a book before I was 25, and I almost flunked out of English in high school. But I was just like, I don't care if I'm embarrassed. I'd rather be embarrassed and give it a shot than be regretting that I never tried this. And I let the dream die inside of me. I really believe self doubt is the killer of dreams. And people hold on to their insecurities and self doubt so much that they really never launch the dream or even try for it. And for me, the results are irrelevant because it's about the things I learn about myself, the people I meet, the connections, the moments that are meaningful along the way. And I know you hear that all the time, but for me, it became so real when my father had this accident. And I had to learn how to accept it after four or five years, when it was just like kind of a suffering depression around my father, hoping he'd recover, hoping he'd get back to who he was. I had to learn to accept it that he sometimes isn't going to remember who I am, that he's going to have the same conversation on repeat, that he's going to frame, forget. He lost a lot of his memory, so he just forgot about childhood stuff, that he would never call me again, that we would never have a meaningful relationship. And I had some great moments with him and some great conversations in the last few years before he passed. But it was essentially a really Sad time for 17 years. And it was almost like I didn't get to grieve emotionally until last year. His death, even though physically he was alive, he was kind of mentally and emotionally gone. And so I feel like these last two years, therapy, the process of death, my father going through this accident 17 years ago gave me so much clarity that I've got to take care of my body, I've got to take care of my mind, I've got to take care of my emotions, that it could all be gone at any moment. And I want to be proud of the actions I'm taking. And that doesn't mean I've always been perfect, but I want to be proud knowing that I went after the dreams. So I think about death daily. I reflect on it, I think about it, and I appreciate my life every day.

You know, just this morning I ordered one of those calendars that is a week calendar for your life. I'm sure you've seen these calendars.

Yeah, I saw you having the guy on. Bill Perkins.

Yeah. So Bill Perkins, who's an amazing guy and, yeah, we got talking about that on the podcast, and I was like, you know what? I'm such an analytical guy, and I feel like I know this, but there's no substitute for the reminder every single day. And so actually, just this morning, you know, by coincidence, I ordered the calendar, I set my life expectancy at 88 years, and I plugged my birth date in, and it's already filled in the boxes that are, you know, because I'm basically 50. So it's filled in the first 50 times. 12 boxes is. So I'm more than halfway there. Basically saying, this is what 38 years more of life looks. But to your point, look, it could be one month. We don't know.

Never know. My dad went on this trip not thinking he was going to get in this accident. And it's funny because my friend Nas Daily, I don't know if you've ever seen this creator online. Nas Daily has worn one shirt for the last, like, seven years. And it's a shirt that has, like, a battery, and it says, like, 33% life. And that's how much life he's lived. And it shows you how much life he has. Every day he looks in the mirror, he wears the same shirt as a reminder to live his full life today.

And is it a shirt that he changes every year and reduces the percent?

Exactly. Every year it changes into a new shirt. He's got, like, 20 of them for the year, and he wears the same thing. He just doesn't wear anything else. In every video, it says the same thing.

Wow. One final thought just before we wrap up. I know we don't have all day, as much as I'm sure we would enjoy that. You've made a very compelling case for how different modalities of therapy have changed your life. What do you say to someone who's listening to us or watching us right now, who says, I can really see how in Lewis's case, that was necessary, but I don't think it's necessary for me. I don't imagine I would ever need therapy. I mean, I never went through the horrific things that he went through. And, yeah, my relationships aren't perfect. I can be a little reactive. But there can't be any upside in talking about this because there's nothing to really talk about. I'm sure you encounter this all the time. How do you make the case to somebody like that? Or what's the case that you make?

I feel like I've tried a lot of stuff, and I'm sure I could Try a lot more. From emotional intelligence workshops for years to I went to India and studied meditation to become a meditation instructor for many weeks. I took a bunch of guys to Wim Hof in Poland and did like a private thing with him, jumping in frozen rivers and doing the whole breathing and meditation and ice training and mindset training. I've done seven day meditation retreats with Joe Dispenza. I've tried lots of different things. And I've done coaching, I've had therapy. I've done all these different things. And here's what I say. You know, I try to think of, in a practical sense, as an athlete and studying the great athletes and interviewing a lot of world champions, from Kobe Bryant to Novak Djokovic to Olympic gold medalists. All the great athletes who get to the top have coaches. They have coaches in their field of expertise to support them in winning their sport and becoming the best when they win. They don't say, I've got it all figured out. You know, I'm at the top. I've got it all figured out. I don't need coaches anymore. They actually go and hire more coaches that are specialized in different modalities to improve the nutrition and mobility and strength training and whatever it might be. They hire more elite coaches when they're at the top to continue to sustain that and get better. They don't say, I've got it figured out. And for whatever reason, in the matters of emotions, love, relationships and understanding our own emotions and how we interact with triggering events in the world, I don't really remember being taught how to navigate that as a kid growing up. Sure, I was taught as an athlete in a coaching environment how to overcome stressful situations and set goals and work with a team. But when it came to love, when it came to intimacy, when it came to running a business, these aren't things that I learned in school. Some of the things transferred over, but it wasn't really there. And coaches and therapy and workshops have supported me in developing more tools that help me overcome my fears and insecurities and become a better, more authentic version of myself that allow me to have more peace and more abundance. And I think there's a lot of people that live a really good life, even if they have stresses and they're not perfect, but they live a good life. But I think that holds people back from living an abundant, joyful, peaceful life and being willing to just try new stuff. And it doesn't mean everything I've tried works for me. And it doesn't have to work for you either. You know, there's a lot of people that talk about psychedelics and mushrooms and all these things, and that doesn't speak to me. It's not something that calls me in my life at this point. Maybe in the future it will. So be willing to try stuff. Listen to your friends and family when you're listening to you on your podcast. You've got a lot of great recommendations for these things. Learn from the experts. Paul Conti is another great person. Learn from what he's doing and just try stuff. Maybe some of it works, maybe some of it doesn't. But what I will say is do not wait until things get to the perfect storm in your life. Unfortunately, that's what it takes for a lot of people to start doing the work on themselves. But do your best to just be a constant learner and growing and developing in your emotional journey.

One last thing, you've used the word peaceful many times today. You continually talk about a peaceful life and a peaceful transformation. And I don't believe that that's sort of a coincidence or something. So tell me why that is and what that means for you.

I don't know if transformation is peaceful. I think it can be very stressful and overwhelming, and it can feel a lot when you're in the transformation of reflecting on a previous identity of who you are. Challenges, pain. It can feel overwhelming, could feel scary, messy, all those different things. But I think inner peace is the greatest currency. I think in a world that we've been going through the last couple of years, stress, overwhelm, COVID isolation, economic crisis that's happening now, war, all these different things, mental health being talked about more than ever. I believe inner peace is the highest currency that human beings can cultivate and can manifest and develop. There's a lot of wealthy, rich people, financially who have very little inner peace, and they suffer emotionally and the relationships are at risk and their health is at risk. There's a lot of wealthy people that die young because of the stresses and the traumas that they have yet to heal. Inner peace, for me, is the greatest currency. It's the thing that I think a lot of us want. It's the thing we seek, we desire, but a lot of us just haven't been taught the tools. And so for me, I want to have inner peace so that I can take on the problems and the pain and the stresses that are outside of me with more poise, with more grace, with more mature leadership qualities, as opposed to reactive, frustrated, stressed, anxious, overwhelmed qualities. And the Great coaches that I've had were able to face adversity, challenges, stress, multiple personalities of teammates with poise, with calm because they had inner calm. And those are the people that I respected the most because they were able to navigate situations in life that were chaotic with grace. And I think that will support you in anything in your marriage, your relationship, your family, your friends, your community, your business online, your platform, your career, and really just navigating your own life. So for me, inner peace is the greatest currency and I think we should all be seeking to develop it.

Well, Louis, thanks so much because we didn't really talk that much about your book. Let's tell folks the title of the book when it's out and anything else you want to talk about.

Yeah, the Greatest Mindset. I'm excited about it. This is 10 years in the making, really for me. This is a culmination of all the research from experts like yourself. Paul Conte is in there, a lot of different experts, from neuroscientists to doctors to world class athletes and kind of tying all the same things together, but said in different ways on how to get clear on your meaningful mission so that your life has a lot of purpose and a richness and an excitement to it, to heal the different things of the past that have hold you back. And some of these things have actually helped you get to where you are, but it's not helping you get to where you want to be in an abundant renewable energy way. And so figuring out how to do that in the process that I've learned over the last decade to really setting clear what I call greatness goals to help you make a bigger impact on the people around you. And you know, for me I always wanted to be successful, but I realized that success was very selfish and me centric. And when I hit 30, I said how can I make everyone else win around me? And greatness became the thing I wanted to achieve more. Because greatness is about me pursuing my dreams and impacting those around me in that pursuit as well. Well, it wasn't about competition, it was about collaboration. That's why I made a show that was about lifting others up and shining the light on others. And so this has been a 10 years of research of helping people get clear on what's holding them back, on the main cause of their self doubt and the supporting on the frameworks on overcoming that and living a more abundant life.

Well, congratulations on getting it to the goal line. As a first time author, I know it's very difficult.

You know, the challenge yeah, and I'm.

Sure folks will be really happy to pick this up and have sort of a codified, distilled version of a lot of the stuff we've talked about and more because there's more in there than obviously we haven't scratched the surface of really the book. I think we've made the case for the book and now really the question is, can you go there and find the resources? So thank you, Louis.

I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

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