4 Keys To Achieve Your Biggest Goals [SOLO ROUND] EP 1391

Okay, so if you haven't heard the news yet, I've got a new book out called the Greatness Mindset. Unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. It's coming out soon and I'm pumped to invite you to be a part of the launch team for this book. This is a rare opportunity to get your questions answered and network with other champions of greatness in this exclusive community of conscious achievers. If you're ready to receive early access to the first few chapters of the book, behind the scenes updates from me, plus VIP access to bonus and giveaways, then this is for you. For instructions about how to join this greatness launch team, make sure to go to lewishouse.com/launchteam right now. Again, make sure to check it out at lewishouse.com/launchteam right now. You're likely here for one of two reasons. You know what to do, but you aren't doing it. You've got a dream, but you're not taking action. Or you don't know what to do and you need clarity. If what you're doing isn't working, are you willing to try something differently? Are you willing to... Welcome to the School of Greatness. The Rule of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. I feel so grateful to be in a state of peace, in a state of gratitude, and a state of love with my health, with quality relationships in my life, and to be on a mission to be of service. And our mission is very clear. It's to serve 100 million people every single week to help them improve the quality of their life. We do that in many different ways. Most of you are familiar with the School of Greatness Show, our podcast. We're here in the studio right now. This is a lot of fun for me. Only a couple of times a year do we do these live webinars, these live presentations anymore. So I'm so grateful that you guys decided to show up today. and be here. And this is all about unlocking your greatness this year and helping you really accomplish and set clear goals. That's what this is all about. But a lot of people have fear, fear holding them back from accomplishing what they want, fear holding them back from feeling good about themselves, fear holding them back from taking the actions necessary. I saw something today that said the law of attraction doesn't work if you're not willing to move into action consistently. you know, we can think and dream and visualize and, and hope and have all these different things in our life and in our minds and our, and our hearts. But if we are not in action consistently, then things aren't just going to magically drop on our laps. You know, millions of dollars isn't going to have checks in the mail. That's just not going to happen unless you learn to add value in the world or add value to other people. And you get clear on something that I think a lot of people aren't clear on, and that's a meaningful mission. I want to share a quick story with you. I was just, and it, at a great industry event with a bunch of leaders in this industry, you know, a bunch of New York Times bestselling authors, entrepreneurs who have made hundreds of millions of dollars in their businesses and people who have big audiences and platforms. And there were a few of them that were still struggling with fear of, what if I launch the next thing and it doesn't work out? What if people make fun of me? What if I fail? In this fear, can affect you, whether you're just starting out and you're trying to figure out who you are in this world or launching a career or launching a side hustle or whatever it might be, or if you've already accomplished a lot of results, there's still a fear that can hold people back if you don't learn how to master it early on. And fear has been something that's held me back in different areas of life. It's, you know, held me back from really feeling quality connection and intimacy and relationships. It's held me back from feeling resentful about things when I've launched something and it doesn't go the way I want it. And it's held me back emotionally in different ways. There are other things that I didn't have fear around and that supported me in putting myself out there consistently and taking action. And so it's so today I want us to really identify what fear holds us back. And when you can identify and get clarity around it, and then create a game plan on how to embrace and overcome it. I truly believe you can start creating more great things in your life and you can start feeling more powerful and empowered in the decisions you are making in your life, in your career, in your relationships, your health and everything else in between. So I'm excited. Today we're covering the four keys to overcome your fears and achieve your biggest goals. It's all about how to unlock the power of your mind to break through to the next level of what you wanna create in your life. Very excited for you. And I wanna ask you a question. if you could identify in your mind what your greatest year yet would look like, what it could look like, what it could feel like, what the experiences would be on a daily basis, who you'd be spending time with, who you'd be traveling with, where you'd be working, where you'd be investing your talents in, the activities you'd be doing on a consistent basis, the big dreams that you would have that you'd be in pursuit of, I want you to just imagine and think about it for a moment. And I think when we can reflect on the feeling of what we want to create in our life, when we can reflect and imagine what we want to create in our life, then we can start to have a better idea, a better sense of what it is we truly want. and why we want that. A lot of times we're not clear exactly on what we want, nor do we know why we want it. And I just believe this is the first step is just having a visual imagination around the clarity of what you want and why you want it. And if you don't experience it right now, there's nothing wrong with you. It doesn't mean you're bad or you're a failure. It just means you're at a point in your life where certain things have worked and certain things don't work anymore for you. And that's okay. This life is all about experiencing a richness to it and feeling peace and feeling supported and loved and seen. But if you don't create that for yourself, if you don't support yourself, if you don't see yourself, if you don't love yourself, if you don't create boundaries in your life, if you abandon yourself, if you harm yourself, if you say negative things to yourself and you say negative things about others, then you are responsible for the environment you're creating externally and internally. And you are 100% responsible for why you're not creating the life you want. So that's step one. And I want you guys to be aware of this. Self-doubt is the killer of dreams, and fear causes you to doubt yourself. I'm a big believer that willpower alone doesn't work for long periods of time in every part of your life that you want to improve. Maybe you love health and fitness and you have so much willpower that you can go to the gym and eat clean every single day for the rest of your life, and you've got that switch there. But it's very hard to be extremely disciplined and have willpower with everything, with your spending habits and your investing and your health and your nutrition and your relationships and your emotional connections and your career and learning new hobbies. It's just very hard to do it all on your own. I'm not saying you can't do some of it, but I'm a big believer in having accountability and having that investment in myself. And I know that doing life on my own and doing it from a place of a fixed mindset as opposed to a growth mindset and contribution and service to myself and others is only going to hold me back and going to cause more upset and pain. when pain comes into my life because the adversity is going to come. And I want you to ask yourself, what is the biggest thing holding you back from having this dream desired year right now? When we are aware of the thing that holding us back, that's when we can lean into it and start to overcome it. But you're likely here for one of two reasons. You know what to do, but you aren't doing it. You've got a dream, but you're not taking action, or you don't know what to do and you need clarity. if you're if what you're doing isn't working, are you willing to try something differently? Are you willing to shift something? And it doesn't mean you need to take some extremes. This is why, you know, New Year's resolutions or someone setting a new goal to lose a bunch of weight or they have a bunch of money or do something typically doesn't work for a lot of people when they do extremes. It's more about shifting 1 to 2% consistently every single day and doing that over a period of time. That's the thing that's sustainable. But a lot of us get discouraged because we try to do something extreme right away. After three to five days, we realize how actually hard and unsustainable it is, and then we kind of give up and go back into old pattern. So maybe you started working out, but stopped due to some excuses, or you tried to just be too extreme. You tried to be consistent with building a business, but you didn't get any sales right away, or people made fun of the logo, and so your insecurities got in the way. You started to have doubts. and that doubt crippled you. Again, self-doubt is a killer of dreams in my mind. And so the goal is to overcome the doubt and be secure when you fail. Because failure is going to happen at every level. You're going to make mistakes every day. And especially if you're going after something you want that you care about, you care about it more and it creates more fear and insecurity because you want it to happen. So we've got to learn to shift emotionally and mentally How to still accept yourself when you fail. Accept yourself when people judge you. Accept yourself when they laugh at you. And I know that's hard. That was hard for me most of my life. It's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about this mission and this work. Because I remember feeling so low and insecure and lonely all the time and afraid to try stuff as a kid because I was just afraid of not being accepted. and at the end of the day, I didn't love and accept myself fully because I just didn't know how to. I didn't have the tools or even if I had the tools, I didn't know how to use the tools effectively to support myself. And so that's why it's been a decade of learning and growth and overcoming the fears and insecurities that held me back as a kid because I was just kind of sick and tired of feeling that way, sick and tired of feeling not good enough, not lovable enough, not ready enough, not smart enough, not old enough, not whatever enough. And I don't know if any of you have ever felt that, or maybe you feel that right now, that you're sick and tired of feeling not enough about something. So you're all here at the right place at the right time. And I want to honor and acknowledge you for showing up, because a lot of people don't want to take on themselves. They're resistant to themselves because they're comfortable and familiar. This was me for a long time in my life. you get comfortable, you get set in your ways, you say, I want to protect myself and I'm going to stay in this way. And there's nothing bad and wrong about that, but that's going to keep getting you the results you're getting. And so if you want different results, you got to first look within. You got to first learn what is the fear that holds me back? What is that thing? And believe me, for a long time, I didn't think I had any fears because my ego was so big. I was like, I got it all figured out. But it wasn't until I started to reflect and look within and have breakdown after breakdown in my life where I was like, okay, the common denominator is me. So maybe if I want the world to change around me, maybe I gotta start with changing myself. And people don't want to change. We don't want to change because what's gotten us here is familiar. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, but that's going to hold you back from what you want if you're not willing to grow. And so I'm very excited about this. You know, the stat says that 91% of people do not stick to the news resolutions. This is from ink.com, 91%. don't stick to it. Again, I like a lot of people go too extreme right away and then they fall back and they go off and we release resolutions. So when trying to achieve your goals, research shows, like I talked about before, willpower is not enough. Again, I'm speaking from personal experience. This is from over a thousand interviews on the show in the last decade. The School of Grading is from top performers. This is from research here and people citing this, right? This is just not made up. Willpower isn't a skill, it's a muscle that gets tired the more you use it, right? So you've got to learn to manage it and you've got to create a system and structure to support you doing hard things consistently. There are two types of goals, but one is more achievable than the other. I'm going to talk about the research here. A 2017 study at Stockholm University tracked over 1,000 students, resolutions who made two types of goals. We all know what these types of goals are. Avoidance goals and approach goals. Avoidance is like, I'm going to stop smoking. I'm going to stop eating sugar. I'm not going to drink as much. I'm going to get off social media two hours a day, whatever it is. I'm going to avoid something. Approach goals are doing something new, like exercise five times a week or have a green smoothie every single day, or I'm going to read 10 pages in a book, something that you're going to approach. The benefits of choosing approach goals Studies have found that approach goals were 25% more likely to stick than avoidance goals. So adding something positive is more powerful based on this study than trying to avoid something. Now I'm not saying that you should try to eliminate bad habits. I still think you should. But when you say, I'm going to replace it with something positive instead of avoid something, usually that tends to work a little bit better. After ten years of the School of Greatness podcast, interviewing some of the biggest celebrities, billionaires, world class athletes, academics, New York Times bestselling authors, leaders of their field, musicians, artists, you name it. We've had a lot of different people on the show. If I could find a common denominator of all the people's accomplishing what they want in their life, they were very clear on their meaningful mission. This was step one. and most people are not clear. You know, fuzzy targets get fuzzy results. And a lot of people on their vision or dream board, they put success on the board. They put, you know, more money, more homes, more this, more that. They put things that they want for themselves. And I want to talk about really quick before I move on to finding a meaningful mission, the difference between success and greatness. You know, most of my life, I wanted to be successful. I lived a very selfish life. It was about me and wanting to look good and wanting to be right and wanting to win and wanting to make money and all these different things. And there's nothing wrong with creating that for yourself. But what I realized is I never felt enough the more successful I became because I was always thinking about me. And what I learned is the difference between success and greatness is greatness is about we. It's about including your dreams, your success in the service of other people as well, not just in the service of you, but the service of others. That's when it is more renewable, more sustainable, more exciting and more fulfilling. And so it's just a mental shift, but a lot of times we make decisions based on me because we want to fill ourselves up from something we're lacking. We lack security, we lack emotional stability, we don't feel confident in ourselves. I mean again, thousands of you posted the lack of self-esteem, the lack of confidence, the insecurity, fear, doubt. You were saying these things. So there's nothing wrong with accomplishing and succeeding and winning and making money. All these things are okay. But if it's in the process of doing it, because we feel insecure and we're trying to feel more secure. From my personal experience, from a lot of successful billionaires and athletes that I've interviewed who have been to the top and then it was never enough still, you've got to work on the inner game. You've got to work on the fulfillment. You've got to work on the insecurities yourself. Otherwise, you'll still feel insecure when you have those things. You'll actually feel more insecure and more scarce when you have something, because then you'll be afraid you're going to lose it and you won't be enough. And so step one, we got to find a meaningful mission. It's got to be more than just me. It's got to be about we. Now, if you are like I was stuck on my sister's couch for about a year and a half, it's hard to think about we. When you have no money, when you're in credit card debt, when you're struggling, when you're relying on other people, it's very hard to think about we. And there's seasons of our lives when we gotta think about me. We gotta take care of our basic needs. We gotta take care of surviving and all those different things. So there was a season of my life a couple of years when all I thought about was me. I gotta get off the couch. I gotta make enough money to get my apartment. I gotta be able to pay off my credit card debt. So I think you, there are seasons where you focus more on me and making sure that you're taken care of. But I still believe during those seasons, you can say to yourself, how do I add value? still, how can I be generous still with my kindness, my words, my affection to the people around me, my gratitude for support, so that you're including others in the process of that mission that you have in that time? So meaningful missions come and they can evolve based on the season of life you're in. But your meaningful mission starts where your heart is. And again, a lot of bad things happen when we're not clear on our meaningful mission. and your mission can be more than one thing. Again, it changes with experience and with time. When I was starting out, I was just trying to figure out, hey, how can I develop some skills? How can I get a job? How can I get off my sister's couch? How can I make a little, a few bucks here and there? Let me try a bunch of different things because I don't know what I want. And when you're not clear on what you want, you got to try different things to see where you fit in, what Lane you can go into. And that can always evolve over time. It evolved for me from teaching LinkedIn for many years, to writing a book about LinkedIn, to hosting 20 networking events around the country about LinkedIn, to teaching about it on webinars for a few years, and then realizing, okay, that's not where I want anymore. So it's creating a new vision for my life of what I want to create. And that evolved into writing multiple books and bestsellers, starting the School of Greatness podcast, and after taking care of myself, saying, how can I start to take care of others? How can I include others in a bigger mission? That was exciting for me. So you gotta ask yourself these questions and truly listen to what your heart's desires. And you gotta see what season of life you're in. If you are in a scarcity mode right now, a lack of total debt and you're relying on everyone else just to survive, then you gotta say, how can I get to baseline first? And if you can do it while asking these questions, Even better. But I ask myself this and make sure I'm constantly in alignment with this. What lights me up? What gets me excited to get out of bed in the morning? Knowing what I'm going to do the next day. If money were no object, what would I just love to do consistently, whether I made money or not? Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't do things to make money, you should. But what would you enjoy doing? When I started the School of Greatness podcast, I told myself for one year, I'm going to do this. and I'm not going to try to make money. And I think that allowed me to see, do I actually like this? Do I actually enjoy it? Is it something fun? Would I do it anyways if money didn't come in? And that was a powerful thing. It was a powerful exercise that I practiced, and I realized how much I loved it. And for many years, the School of Greatness didn't make any money from the show itself, but I just loved doing it. It was the thing that I enjoyed the most. So I was willing to do it. I was willing to put in extra hours in time. because I loved it. What would you do all day, every day again, if you didn't get paid? And what caught what causes and experiences excite you? Are there companies out there that you're like, man, they're up to something cool. They're making cool software and I want to get into that business. Is there a media company you want to get involved in? Is there a sports team you want to work for because you really feel an emotional connection to them? What is that mission or cause that you could be a part of in a bigger way and start exploring that? Do you sit at a desk all day? Well, studies have shown that prolonged sitting is associated with an increased risk for obesity, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other chronic illnesses. Protecting your health and wellness can be as simple as pushing a button on an E8 oval-shaped standing desk from FlexiSpot. Compared to a regular desk, the E8 from FlexiSpot is made to meet your individual needs, adjusting to your height, whether seated or standing. Alternating between sitting and standing works to relieve stiffness and pain and ultimately makes you feel better. Flexispot is so confident in their premium materials and craftsmanship that they offer an industry-leading 15-year warranty on the E8. I'm a huge fan of the minimalist design of these desks. I have the bamboo top with white legs and my desk sits in the center of my office and the various attachments from Flexispot provide the perfect cable management and storage solution. It just looks so clean and nice I feel so much more energized during my day when I have the option to both stand and work. Right now, FlexiSpot is offering huge savings on the E8 Oval Shaped Standing Desk with at least $30 off throughout the entire month of February and an exclusive limited time offer of $150 off from the 6th to the 9th only. So go to flexispot.com today and use GREATNESS to get your special offer on the E8 Standing Desk. that's F-L-E-X-I-S-P-O-T.com go to flexispot.com today. Did you know that several industries are heading for a hiring boom this spring like e-commerce and healthcare? Surprisingly, hospitality is one of those areas with the most growth. The hospitality industry needs to hire for service positions, managerial positions and back office operations positions too. And if you need to hire qualified candidates ASAP for any of these industries or any other industry, then you need ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com/greatness. ZipRecruiter uses its powerful matching technology to find the most qualified candidates for a wide range of roles. ZipRecruiter makes it easy to send promising candidates a personal invite so they are more likely to apply. Plus, ZipRecruiter offers attention grabbing labels like Urgent, Trained, Provided, Remote, and more that speak to job flexibility. My company, Greatest Media, is currently hiring. And in my opinion, finding the right team is one of the most important steps in setting your business up for success. We like to ensure our new hires will be a good fit before they even are on the team. So I'm so grateful that I have ZipRecruiter's help with growing our team. Let ZipRecruiter keep your team growing strong, no matter what the industry. And four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. see for yourself, go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com/greatness. Again, that's ziprecruiter.com/G-R-E-A-T-N-E-S-S. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Those are some of the questions that you can ask yourself to start discovering and figuring out, okay, what could my meaningful mission be if I'm not doing what I want right now? Again, if you don't have a one sentence definition of your meaningful mission. It doesn't mean something's wrong or bad. It just means the more clear you can get, the easier and better it will be to effectively take on your time and the activities of your day to day process. So step two is to identify what's holding you back. I want to share with you the three barriers to greatness. Again, these are from all the different people that I've interviewed, kind of coming up with this framework of what holds people back. But there's three fears that cause people to doubt themselves, failure, success, and judgment. and we'll get to the root of this here in a second. Failure. Most people are afraid of failure. When I ask a big room and an audience, they say they're afraid of failure. Most of the reason we don't do the things is we're afraid to fail. I just made a decision one day that I was not going to do the things in my life because of fear. That was Sarah Blakely. She's one of the youngest female billionaires in the world. She created a company called Spanx. and it was funny because her father, when I asked her about how she was able to overcome this, because this is something that holds a lot of us back. She said her dad would ask her the same question every night at the kitchen table when they'd have dinner. What did you fail at today? And when she told me that, I was like, this is a beautiful thing that your dad did for you. He gave you a gift to talk about it and embrace it and to say, okay, cool, what did you fail at today? He actually wanted her to fail every day at something. and realize that this is just the process. This is the process to like getting what you want. The more you can accept the process that failure is going to happen at every level, then the easier it is to keep going when you fail. So I love that. And as an athlete, you know, I just looked at failure as feedback. It was like, okay, we failed today. We lost the game. I dropped the ball. I didn't like it. I didn't enjoy it, but allowed me to say, all right, I got to get better. And here's some information, some data that's going to help me get better. and even if you didn't grow up with a parent who normalized failure and built your risk-taking muscles like Sarah, it's never too late to learn. And if you don't start learning now, it's gonna always hold you back. Again, I'm gonna give you guys a fear conversion toolkit. All you gotta do is go to lewishouse.com/convert. When you go to that link, you can download this toolkit that's gonna give you the step-by-step process to identifying your biggest fear, understanding why it's a fear of yours, and then how to embrace it and overcome it. LewisHowes.com/convert. Now, success is another thing, and I want to ask you guys your biggest fear here in a second once I break down each one of these. A lot of people have a fear of success. So why be afraid of success? For me, I always wanted to be successful. That's something I wanted, so I wasn't afraid of it, but I understood it. to ask these questions. You know, people are afraid of success because they don't know how to keep up the pace once they get there, how to keep up the pressure of being successful once you get to the top. Will I be able to handle that spotlight? You know, whether it be a spotlight with my friends and family or with a bigger audience, what if I achieve the success and I still don't feel fulfilled? Man, I felt that so many times from sports to business where I had dreams that I was driven to accomplish for years, would finally achieve it. And I was like, huh, why don't I feel good still? Why don't I feel fulfilled? And we'll talk about that reason here in a few moments. What if I'm not good enough to succeed again? What if it was luck? What if it was a fluke? What if it was a one-time thing? If you're unable to believe that you are worthy of success and you are afraid of it, why would success come to you? You're essentially emotionally, mentally and psychologically pushing those opportunities away because you are saying, I am not deserving. I am not worthy. Do not come to me. Get away from me. And it may be part of the reason why these things aren't coming to you, because you don't believe you're deserving. You've got to always come back to believing that this is something you are worthy and deserving of receiving. more money, more opportunities, more growth, deeper relationship, health, all these things. You know, some people don't believe they're worthy of being healthy and therefore they stay, you know, physically sick and unwell or obese because they don't believe they're worthy of being healthy. They don't believe they're worthy of having financial freedom and therefore they make poor financial decisions that keep them stuck in emotional debt or scarcity mode. Same thing with relationships. They don't believe they're deserving of love and of intimacy. And so therefore they attract emotionally unavailable people who are unwilling to love them and accept them for who they are. That was me most of my life. I didn't believe I was lovable and therefore I attracted certain relationships where the partners I attracted were unable to show that emotional love and vulnerability, the thing that I wanted the most. And so I had to learn how to heal and address these different things. I had to learn how to face them. And that was not fun. It's not fun to realize that, you know, I was holding myself back for so long in my life. It's never fun to realize these things. But when I started to do it and I started and I let go of the shame and the guilt about my whole life, living a certain way around certain things, I said, okay, what can I do to better? How can I mend these wounds? Then I started to really accept myself for who I was and attract people in my life who were in alignment emotionally, spiritually, you know, career wise, business wise, and also intimate relationships. And that's the key. We just want to make sure we're surrounding ourselves with people that can accept us and support us and want to see us grow in the ways we're excited about. so we got to make sure that we. We learn the art and science of feeling and believing worthy of success. You will. You will squander it every time if it comes to you, and you don't believe you're deserving of it. So that's a practice in itself. And again, what if I become successful? Then my friends don't like me anymore, or my circle leaves me and things like that. That may happen. It may not happen. But if you're worried about it, then again, you'll always be playing small and you'll be holding yourself back from going after what you want in this life. This is your life, your opportunities, and you can't always be worried about what other people are thinking. So what I learned again from the research as a handful of people who recently had a rise of success, massive growth of followers online, more fun, more fame, more money, more opportunities coming their way than they had before. to rate themselves on a self-love scale from 1 to 10. And it is funny because the people who achieved a lot of success, a lot of fame, a lot of money, all of them that I asked this to, maybe there was one or two that maybe did not say it this way, but most of them that I asked this to, from my memory, said that they had less self-love for themselves and less peace after they became more famous, made more money, and accomplished the goals that they were looking to do. I thought that was fascinating to me because you accomplished what you wanted. You had this vision, this dream, this goal, and yet you were happier before you accomplished it. This is a practice that people who are accomplishing success struggle with also. The art of accepting, loving, and having peace within themselves when success comes. So when you see this happening to others and they feel less than, they feel less love for themselves, left peace, and they feel more stressed, then why would you want to be successful? And so this is a practice in the art of learning how to grow. You don't grow into success. Success doesn't happen without growth. And if you're not willing to grow, then you're going to feel less than. Do you understand? So based on the people that I asked, they felt less than, felt less love, felt less peace when I would ask them this question, and yet they had more success. So we must be willing to grow internally as well as the success comes externally. And if we're not willing to do that, then we are, people are going to feel less than. That's just what my experience has been of asking people who have accomplished success on this scale of what they've been telling me. And my own personal experience, when I accomplished more in the past and I still never felt it was enough, I just said, well, I need to make more and accomplish more and keep doing it to feel better. But it's never going to feel enough unless I'm willing to grow. And that's where I'm willing to change and evolve as the universe is changing, evolving and expanding. And so it must, we must be willing to break free of certain things that hold us back from these insecurities and fears. And if we don't, Then we're just going to struggle and suffer more. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to struggle and suffer more, but I think a lot of you came here because you want to have more peace, more freedom, more joy. And I'm assuming, maybe I'm wrong, most of you want to succeed at your goals and feel loved, accepted, and fulfilled at the same time. You don't want to feel less than when you accomplish more. No one truly wants that, I don't think. So how does your vision want to change or evolve as you reflect on what lights you up inside? Again, different seasons of life requires you evaluating your vision, your mission, and seeing what you want to do. And many of us are limited by the opinions of other people. We limit ourselves based on what other people think about us, people judging us, people gossiping behind our back, and all these different negative self-talk of people around us. what if I launch a book and I get all these negative comments? What if my friends and family think I'm an idiot because I'm trying to do something new? What if my peers don't like what I'm doing? What if I post something on social media and it gets negative comments, whatever it might be? The opinions of other people, the judgment, what people are saying to us in front of us, what people are saying to us online that we see, what people are saying to us behind our back, about us is a fear that a lot of people have. And it causes us to play small. It causes us to second guess, hold ourselves back, and it causes us to launch things perfectly so that there can be no judgment. But I'm telling you, perfection does not exist in a world of greatness. It's just not possible. You have to evolve and grow and make mistakes. there was no perfect athlete who plays perfectly every single day. They make mistakes constantly. There is no perfect company or app. Every app that you use probably on a daily basis, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp. None of those companies launched and had what they had right now in the beginning. They had a beta. They had a 1.0 version that probably wasn't that good. and they said, okay, well, here's one tool we like from this app. How do we make this better? How do we evolve this? How do we change it based on what people are saying they want feedback on? And they listen to their customers and their audiences and they continue to evolve, grow and change. That's how they survived and thrived. If these apps that we use today, again, Facebook, Twitter, the biggest apps in the world, if they did not evolve, grow and change based on what people needed and wanted, they would not be around. Just like if we don't continue to evolve and change, we're probably not going to be creating the opportunities we want while having peace and fulfillment in our heart. And that's just a decision we've got to keep making. So you got to be asking yourself this. Am I able to take on life knowing people are going to judge me for everything that I do, knowing that you know, I'm never going to be perfect, knowing that I'm going to make mistakes. Can I still show up and do it? Knowing people's opinions of me are going to be good sometimes. They're going to be nasty sometimes. They're going to like it sometimes. They're not going to like it sometimes. You've got to be willing to accept yourself, knowing that people will judge you in every which way possible. They'll say good judgments about you. They'll say nasty judgments about you. All these things are going to happen. How do I look? How do I sound? are they gonna like me? You want to know that one of the most common things that I hear at the end of every episode, almost 1400 episodes, 10 years, the biggest world champions, Olympic gold medalists, some of the richest people in the world, you know, people who've exited companies for hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, people that own sports, you know, franchises, owners of the NFL teams and NBA basketball teams that I've interviewed from number one New York Times bestsellers who sold tens of millions of copies of books. You want to know what people say at the end of episodes? Most people, was that okay? Did I do okay? Ah, man, did it sound okay? There's always like, and I'm like, dude, you're the number one player in the world. You're the biggest billionaire in the world. You've written more books than anyone else. You've done all these different things. You've got 20 million followers. and you're asking behind the scenes, was that okay? I'm a nobody for a lot of these people. I'm just a, you know, a little podcast host for so many people, right? In terms of their minds at that level, they're probably like, who is this guy? And they're asking me, was I okay? Did I, ah, man, I don't know about that part. Maybe I should have said it differently. I should have added something there. People are second-guessing themselves left and right at the top. I'm telling you guys, they're second-guessing themselves left and right. Not everyone. I'm not saying everyone is like that, but there are a lot of people that still have that little fear of judgment. Oh man, what's he gonna think about me? What's his audience gonna think about me? Is the School of Greatness audience, are they gonna like it? Maybe they took it the wrong way. It's good to have a sense of self-awareness and say, oh man, okay, I know I could be better. No one in the world will ever be a perfect human being. And the faster we can accept that and own it, and the faster we can say, okay, I know I'm gonna be judged, Can I be okay with myself not being perfect? And can I just take it as information to improve? Not to say screw everyone. I don't care about the opinions of others. I don't think that's the way to go about it either. Being super cynical and like defensive about everyone's opinions to say, okay, does that opinion work for me? Does that support me in growing in any way? Can I, can I learn from that? Oh, maybe I can. Maybe it doesn't work for me. Maybe it's just a nasty comment and that's okay too. I do not have to take it personally. So, the step three is taking action. Reflecting back is a great start to moving forward. That is why I wanted to do this in this presentation. As we start this new season of life, this new chapter that you all are in right now, you are here for a reason. You want to get clear on your goals. You want to learn how to accomplish your goals. And a lot of people give strategies and tactics for productivity. That does not work if you still have fear and insecurity. Yes, you can push the needle on things more, but when you accomplish it and you still don't feel like you're enough, then you're just right back to this point. So we must start with the reflection phase so we can start taking action and ask yourself, where did you fall short last year? What is the thing that was a familiar pattern that kept happening last year that you no longer want to fall short on? Maybe you weren't consistent with your goals around your health, your relationships or whatever it might be. So you want to be aware of that thing first. then you want to think about also what wins can you celebrate? Because I think a lot of people I've been to blame in the past don't celebrate their wins. And even if you don't accomplish your biggest goals, you still have a lot of big wins. Maybe you had some tough conversations with people over holidays that you really didn't want to have with friends and family, but you gave yourself the courage to say, you know what? I'm going to have this uncomfortable conversation. I'm going to do it. In the middle of it, it didn't feel good, but in the end it brought you closer together, where you got clear. Maybe you said, you know what, I finally paid off that credit card debt or just at least got it in motion. I started like figuring out the plan and I'm doing the payments. Like that's a win. It doesn't mean you have to, you know, make millions of dollars. You could be moving things forward and that's a win. So ask yourself, how are you building a system of taking action daily to support your best year yet? and do you have a system in place for 10 years? School of Greatness has been around for 10 years. It's been every week consistently showing up. 10 years every week showing up and doing and posting an interview. Most people don't want to do the same thing every week for 10 years. But when you have a mission that you're excited about, For me, it's fulfilling even when it's the same type of thing every week of sitting down and doing an interview. It never gets old for me because I'm always getting to interview someone new and I'm always learning and growing and that's exciting for me. So if you don't have a system of taking action, then it's going to be challenging moving forward. So here are the four things again that we talked about. Number one, lack of meaningful mission is hurting you. from getting what you want. Fuzzy targets get fuzzy results. Clear targets will support you in getting clear, exceptional results. It's a simple principle that we all know, but sometimes we forget because we're just not sure of what to do. And that's okay. I've been there before. Fear of failure, fear of success and judgment. When you identify which one, and some of you said all of them was a fear of yours, which is I've been there at different stages so I can relate and understand. But this is the thing that usually holds a lot of people back is not being clear on their meaningful mission and allowing one of these fears to hold them back. When you can practice these four keys to help cultivate a greatest mindset, when you can implement the meaningful mission. And I'm going to talk about exactly step by step on how to do each one of these. It's going to support you in having that greatest mindset. Now, some of you have been listeners for years. Some of you just started listening to the School of Greatness recently. Either way, it's all there for free. I give it for free. We give this for free. We've been giving it for free for 10 years. And you can learn what I learned from interviewing hundreds of influential guests, over 2000 hours of podcasts and content, or we've put it together in what I wish I had 10 years ago, which is a book that supports me in getting clarity on all these things. And so I want to announce to you the Greatness Mindset. This is the book I wish I had ten years ago, the book I wish I had 20 years ago, and the book that I'm glad I have now because it gives me so much more clarity after ten years of interviews, ten years of mistakes in my own life, ten years of wishing I could have done better and beating myself up and insecurities in different areas and lessons and growth. 10 years of practical application, 10 years of incredible wins and success as well, and 10 years of service of our mission of impacting 100 million lives. We're impacting lives on a consistent basis. We put together as a team the ultimate guide that again, I wish I had. This is a book that I wish I had personally when I was struggling trying to figure this out because it breaks it down chapter by chapter on how to get clear on your meaningful mission. That is chapter three, getting clear on your meaningful mission. We break it down step by step, exactly what you need to do with examples and science based research. Then if fear of failure is your thing, the next chapter is all about overcoming the fear of failure. Step one, mastering and overcoming the fear of failure. Then we go into success. Then we go into judgment, showing you why emotionally and psychologically that may be your failure. We give you multiple exercises and questions to ask yourself to support you in figuring out and identifying it. Then it's all about creating your greatness, goals, and greatness game plan. We walk you through step by step where you can create clear targets for your life and really master those targets by overcoming these fears. so make sure to go to lewishouse.com/tgn2023 right now. I want you guys to pre-order copy. I want you to get a copy right now. And when you do, we're going to give you a bunch of bonuses to support you for getting it right now and getting it before the book comes out. The book is coming out very soon, so it'll be shipping it to you soon. But I want you to go to lewishouse.com/tgn2023 I'm going to tell you some more stuff here. Why? I think this is going to be a game changer for you. Again, the Greatest Minds That Shows you How to Unleash youh Greatest by clarifying who you are, discovering your meaningful mission, stepping into how you can make an authentic, unique contribution in the world. One thing I want you to do right now, if you can, is go and pre-order or copy this book right now. This is the greatest book that we have created of our three books. I'm the most proud of this of any piece of work that I've done. This again, this is the book that I think is going to support a lot of people because it's supporting me. It's helping me get clear. It's helping me get clear what I want to create moving forward. And I truly believe I wish I would have had this 10, 15, 20 years later because I was chasing a lot of the wrong things in my life to fill up something that I was lacking. that I was missing, that I felt like I was insecure about. And none of those things gave me what I wanted to feel when I would achieve them. And so I wish I would have just had someone to get clear on how to create this so that I could have actually had the actions and the lessons and the growth that would have supported me when I felt like I wasn't good enough, when I felt like I wasn't deserving, wasn't worthy, all those different feelings. and maybe you already knew all of it. You know, I'm not saying that I've got all the answers and I've figured out something new. I've just learned a lot from all these great people and tried to package it in a way that I can understand it and hopefully you can understand it if something doesn't make sense. So that's been my intention. In no way am I the guy who has all the answers. I've interviewed a lot of smart people, and as a team collectively, we've put together this package to support you in just having the process. to understand and navigate what you're going through in your life. This is the book to rid yourself of self-doubt. This is the guide, the tools to support you in overcoming that process. You've got to do the work. You can read the book and get no results if you don't take any action. So the book is worthless unless you're willing to actually have the courage to have tough conversations, be consistent with the things you know you need to do, and over a period of time, you'll start to see different results. But this is just a process and a guide. to supporting you. But at the end of the day, this is a game that we got to play. We got to show up and deliver for ourselves. We got to have the courage to have the conversations that are challenging. We're going to have the courage to look ourselves in the mirror and say, did I do something stupid today? Could I have done it better? Okay, let me see what I can do better tomorrow. We got to have the courage to know that, you know what? Some of my eating habits aren't helping me. What can I do to step up a little bit? you know, some of the relationships I'm in right now, the friendships I have, maybe I just don't vibe with that anymore. You know, the conversations we have or the activities we're doing. Maybe we gotta start having those conversations with friends to say, what can we do differently? Or start looking to add new people into my life that are more aligned to my most authentic self, the highest version of myself. And that's what this is about. It's about a journey of discovery. It's about a journey of constantly facing ourselves. I face myself constantly and it doesn't always feel good to look myself in the mirror and say, was that really the best thing I could have done? Could I have done that better? It doesn't always feel good. But once you face it consistently and you improve, it's going to feel a lot better. I think a lot of people lack the, the, the ability to be able to be honest because, again, I've been there. We're afraid. We want to look perfect. We want people not to judge us. We don't want to be looked at as less than or weak or whatever it is. But as I've learned over the years, vulnerability is a stream superpower. And being honest with yourself and others is extremely powerful. It's empowering when we lie, when we hold back, when we self-criticize it's disempowering to you and the people around you. You playing small does not serve you, does not serve the reason you're here on this earth. and you discounting yourself is discounting your creator. You're discounting your reason of existence. I did that for many, many years of my life, and it hurt me. But it's not the time to discount yourself anymore. Now is the time to empower yourself, and empower yourself with good intentions, with good thoughts, and good conversations. And I'm telling you, winter is not gone. Winter is going to come back. It's going to happen again. And the more you can lean into overcoming these insecurities and fears now, the more empowered you will be the next time adversity happens. I remember in 2007, 2008, I got injured playing football. Again, I have this scar here. I got a scar on my hip. They cut open my hip and they chiseled out with a hammer, a chip, a bone from my hip and put it in my wrist. and for six months I was in this cast. It was miserable as an athlete to not be able to use your body and not be able to move. But at least I had an arm and at least I had a leg to use, right? So I had to have perspective at the same time. But for me it was very challenging in that transition. And it was even more challenging because it was 2007, 8 and 9. And if you guys remember that time, the economy was very bad. People weren't hiring at the time. People were stressing out about money like you'd never seen before. People losing their homes left and right. people getting cut from their jobs, et cetera. These last three years have felt like that again. And I remember at that time, I was 23 at the time, maybe 24, going to 24. I remember at the time saying to myself, never again when winter comes will I not be prepared. And I felt physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially prepared in most ways. But I still had fears I had to overcome. I still had to deal with stuff in relationships that I hadn't faced, all these different things that held me back. And I was prepared in lots of ways, but I still have lots of room for growth. No one is perfect. No one's ever going to be perfect, and that's okay. That's not what it's about. But here's what I will say is these next couple of years are going to continue to be up and down. maybe there's some relief, but then there's going to be Challenge and pain. And I just want you guys to be prepared emotionally, mentally, financially and spiritually for it. That's my intention for you. I want you to have the tools, the training to support you. That's what we're here as team great is to do, to support and Empower you to doing the best you can do when winter is here, when things are good and everything in between. that is huge. If you can identify and then create the process of overcoming it, it will set you up for a lifetime of peace and freedom. If you know that tool and you can keep mastering that tool, it's something you've just got to keep mastering. I've got to do it. We've all got to do it. Then it gives you how to create an exact action plan to overcome these fears and the greatness game plan or your goals. that's what it gives you in this book. It's not some groundbreaking new science and research, but it's 10 years of science and research and personal practices put together in a simplified book to support you when times are challenging and tough. You don't need a challenging book to read to try to learn and understand. You need to be as simple as possible so you can take action and overcome the thing that holds you back. So Again, it's coming out March 7th, but my goal is for you to pre-order this today. If you got any value out of this today, and you got to learn that you weren't alone in your fears today, if you got some content that our team put together and you value what Team Greatness did to support in this training today, and you want to support me, and you'd appreciate the podcast, all I'm asking is to get at least one copy of the book. If you want to get 3-5-10-20-50 awesome, do it. If you have friends, family members that you think would be supportive of this guide and this practice, then get a few copies as well. It would mean the world to me. We're trying to get this out there to as many people as possible. And I'm so grateful for everyone here right now. This is the guide to help rid you of self-doubt. And I believe self-doubt is the killer of dreams. And that's why I've been so passionate about working on this book. Really, for the last five years, I've been doing the research intensely on this specific book. Yes, you need the practices and the tools on how to make money and sell and writing and communication styles and master your health and have better relationships and intimacy. Yes, but the thing that holds us back from doing all those things, the root is self-doubt. That's the thing that causes us to play smaller, doubt, doubting ourselves. And the three main causes of self-doubt are the fear of failure, success, and judgment. So when we can answer that thing inside us, what causes us to doubt ourselves, I'm telling you, life will feel richer, more peaceful, more loving, more abundant, and opportunities will flow. You will grow in ways, that you'd never imagined you'd be able to. And this is from my own personal experience, from interviewing a lot of the top people in the world and having friendships with people in the world that I highly respect who are doing things at a high level in different industries around the world. That's been my experience and I want to serve you and giving you that tool. So make sure you pre-order the greatness mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus Channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.