776 I Was Sexually Abused (How to Heal from Trauma)

I was five years old when he raped me. Now, that may sound like a shock to some of you to know that I was sexually abused. And this entire episode is going to be an episode where I share openly about this experience, about the trauma that it faced, how I learned how to heal from trauma, and how all men and women can explore this more, whether this has happened to you, whether this has happened to a friend of yours, or whether this is happening to someone that you don't even know it's happening to or happened to, and how you can address it and look for the signs for the people you love in your life. Again, I was five years old when he raped me. The only other memories I had before that vivid experience was my first day at kindergarten, where I was coloring in an outline of Clifford the Big Red Dog.

Dog.

The other memory that I have was taking brownies to preschool for classmates on one of my birthdays.

And.

What I experienced after one school day with the teenage son of my baby center, I will never forget. Now, I don't have any other memories before this of my older brother Chris playing his violin, my dad throwing me in the air or playing catch with me. or my mom holding me as I cry to sleep. I don't have any other memories. And in fact, my first sexual experience was with an older man that I didn't know at five years old. I wish I'd remember the moments of me playing with my older siblings. I wish I remember the moments where I see photographs of myself as a young boy with long golden locks and a big smile with a huge open heart, loving and playing with everyone. I wish I had those memories, but I don't. You see, I loved people and I still love people and all I ever wanted to do was have people love me back. And for 25 years, I lived in anger, resentment and defensiveness and it showed up big time, especially in sports. I was very reactive. I needed to win at all costs. I needed to be right. in relationships, in other areas of life. And no one knew what happened or why I was that way because I was so ashamed of it.

And.

I thought if anyone ever found out about this, no one would ever love me. And to say I felt extremely lonely growing up would be an understatement. There were many days I told people I wish I were dead due to the shame that I was feeling. and I never understood why this would happen to me. An innocent child who just wanted to love everyone else. Why would someone take this innocence and abuse it sexually, emotionally, physically? And it wasn't until 25 years after that day that I started to open up about it. And facing it was one of the most uncomfortable and emotionally challenging moments I've ever had. but it changed my life forever. And in this episode, I want to talk about what happened, the weight I carried for so long, and the lessons I learned along the way. And before I dive in, I want to say thank you. Thank you for listening to this. Thank you for being a part of this community, whether this is your first episode here on the School of Greatness, whether this is your 776th episode, We just crossed 100 million downloads the other day. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking this journey with me, for being a part of this experience with all the people that we've had to interview, the world-class leaders and some of the greatest athletes and thinkers and influencers of our time we've had on this show. And you've been a part of this journey with me. And I've always been committed to you. the listener. I've always been committed to your growth because I'm constantly growing. I'm going through different challenges and adversities in my life and sharing them with you. I'm not perfect in any way and I constantly open up about the mistakes I make, the lessons I learn, and how I can improve in my personal life and how you can improve as well. So thank you guys so much for being here. and I'm gonna get into this in just a second. I wanna thank our sponsors today who have supported the growth of this show and we could not do it without them. Again, a big thank you to our sponsors and for everyone who's been a part of this journey. This is a sensitive topic. This is one that a lot of people get emotional about because it's some of the darkest trauma that people face. and one in six men have been sexually abused. At least one in six men is the statistic. And for me, that's scary. One in four women have faced sexual abuse in some way, and one in six men. Now, for me, it was a very challenging 25 years. You are as sick as your secrets. as what people say, you know, different people talk about, you're only as sick as the secrets you keep. And I remember I wasn't able to sleep well ever for 25 years holding onto this secret. I would have lots of nightmares, nightmares all the time. And I didn't know why I was feeling this. And the reason I wanted to talk about this was because I just watched this documentary Leaving Neverland. And I watched the special with Oprah, who interviewed the men from the documentary and the filmmaker. And if you haven't seen Leaving Neverland, it's an unbelievable four hour docuseries on some of the young boys who were sexually abused by Michael Jackson. And it's heartbreaking and it's, you know, it's controversial. Diehard fans of Michael Jackson are saying this isn't true. But everything these young boys who are now older men were talking about through this four hours, it was like I was nodding my head the entire time because everything they said I could relate to. You know, Michael Jackson never forced, it's not like when you're sexually abused, you're as a child, you're not like forced and slammed against the wall and tied up. Although that's happened as well. I've heard people say that as well. Typically, it's more manipulation. It's more of a manipulation to get you to do something. And that was the case for me. So I never felt like someone pinned me down and did something, you know, horrible against me, against my will. It was a manipulation.

And.

Later, when your brain develops and you're older and you realize, like, wow, that was really messed up. You know, that was a horrible thing that happened. It starts to play with your psyche. It starts to play with everything, your emotions, your heart. You know, my first sexual experience was with a man when I was five years old. And I'm a straight person. You know, I'm straight. And my first sexual experience with a woman was when I was 13. It was my first kiss. and I remember just always having different challenges and difficulties. And sexual abuse shapes the way you think your desires and my anger and need to prove everyone wrong. And as the man talked about, they were, you know, they were depressed. The men in the documentary were depressed most of their life. They were driven to prove people wrong, but they were depressed. And for years, they wouldn't know why they were depressed. They just thought this is who they were. And I remember saying to this myself, like, I just said, people just aren't gonna understand me. This is just who I am. No one can change me. They're just gonna have to deal with it. And I remember being a very loving person for those that know me in my past. I was always a fun loving guy. I smiled a lot. But I just had like these dark moments, really dark, depressing moments. I always felt alone, always felt like no one would ever understand me. But I never thought it was shaped around the sexual abuse that I faced. That was something that I stuffed down. That was something that no one could ever learn about. Because if they knew about this.

No.

One would ever love me. If people truly knew what had happened to me, I wouldn't be a real man. I would be weak. I felt so ashamed. I felt guilty. I felt insecure, all these things. and that's why I said, I'm gonna keep this secret to my grave. No one will ever know this about me. And this month marks the five year anniversary of me opening up about my sexual abuse. I did an episode, it's the second most downloaded link on my website, and the title is what Sharing My Childhood Rape Taught Me About Being a Loving, Vulnerable, Free Man. And when I did this episode five years ago, I got hundreds of essays from other men who opened up to me about their sexual abuse experience. And my whole life, I thought I was the only one. I had no clue that other men had faced this, which made me feel even more less of a person and more insecure and all these different things. And I remember, to give you a quick recap, Everything in my life was going well on the outside. I was making lots of money. I was growing my business. It was making millions of dollars. I was, you know, I just moved to LA. I was felt like I was getting all these accomplishments. Things were happening. My dreams were coming true. But on the inside, it was never happy and never felt fulfillment. And I never felt the true sense of love for myself. and I never felt like I could truly love another person fully. And I didn't know why. And I remember I started having all these breakdowns in my life. I had a breakdown with my business partner and had started having lots of arguments. I had a breakdown in my intimate relationship with my girlfriend at the time. Just very up and down and emotional. I had breakdowns with friendships, like everything was breaking down to the point where I just got started to react more and more to anything that wasn't my way. I was more and more reactive. If it wasn't the way I wanted it to look, the way I wanted it to feel, the way I thought it needed to be, I would get defensive. It was almost as if everything was a personal attack against me in life. If someone cut me off on the street, it was a personal attack against me and my identity. if someone disagreed with me, it was an attack against my knowledge and my insights. If someone beat me in a sports game, it was a personal attack on my athletic abilities. And so I was always under attack. And when you are emotionally and physically under attack all the time, it's fight or flight. You feel like, man, stressed, overwhelmed, anxious was was always in my mind and in my body. And I just thought, this is who I am. No matter how much personal growth I did, how many books I read, how.

Much.

Tony Robbins events I went to, all these things, I just thought, okay, yeah, they give me more tools to be successful, which I was really good at doing. I was really good at achieving my goals, proving people wrong, being successful, making money. All these things were happening. But I wasn't really good at being fulfilled and feeling loved. Huh. And when we don't feel loved, we don't feel like we matter. When we don't feel like we matter, we don't feel enough. And bad things start to happen when we use that script in our mind over and over again. When we read a book with a page in front of us that says, you don't matter, you're a loser, you're a weak person, You're not a real man because you were raped. You are a loser. It's hard to unwind that script internally, but externally, I was saying, I'm the man, I'm confident, I'm powerful, I can take on anything in my life. But true greatness doesn't come from achieving all external success and results. It comes when you can fulfill your dreams and pursue your dreams with your passion and have inner peace at the same time. that's the piece I was missing, inner peace. So there was a moment where I started reacting a lot. I was playing a lot of pickup basketball to kind of get my frustration out because that's what men do. They play sports to get their frustration out. That's how what I was taught. And I was playing a lot of pickup basketball, and it was almost like, for all the men who are listening, it was almost like I was picking a fight every time I was going out. It was like I wanted Someone to say something to me. I've never been to a bar. I've never been in a bar fight, but maybe men who've been to bars could relate to this where it's like you go and you kind of stick your chest out and you kind of like bump, you like walk without moving and you kind of bump into people's shoulders and you almost like want them to hit you and to be like, what? What are you going to do? That was my mentality. It was like, how can I pick a fight without hitting someone so that I get off the hook if they hit me. And there was this one day on a basketball court where, you know, the perfect storm happened. And there was an older guy who was guarding me, bigger guy than me, and things got heated. You know, it was a physical pickup basketball game. Things got heated. It came down to the last point for both teams, and. He got really mad. He thought I fouled him too hard, which maybe I did, but we were both fouling each other pretty hard the whole game. And he headbutted me. And it was almost like everything exploded in that moment that he headbutted me. He headbutted me, and I just couldn't hold back the anger, the rage, the frustration anymore. And I just let loose. I just unleashed, like, the greatest UFC fighter you've ever seen and kind of went unconscious with what I was doing. so much frustration, so many years of hurt and anger was building up inside of me. And in no way am I proud of anything that I've done in this situation. You know, I don't, I've only been in two fights in my life. One when I was a teenager and one when I was 30. And I'm not proud of any of them. And I don't, I don't condone that in any way. But for me, what that did for me was a big wake up call. I remember the guy, you know, I was fine. The guy was fine at the end. There was a little bit of, you know, some bruising and scarring and some little bit of blood here and there on both of us, but at the end of the day, we were fine. But I remember my friend was there and one of my best friends and a guy I've known for a long time and he said, you, know, Louis, I don't really want to hang out with you anymore. I really don't like your behavior. I don't like your attitude. I don't like how you're acting. And I don't want to be around you if this is who you're going to be. And that was kind of the wake up call, you know, the fights with my business partner, the, you know, up and down emotionally with my, my girlfriend at the time, the, the stress I was feeling in the, the fights, the physical fights I was getting in right on the basketball court. But when my best friend says, Hey, I don't like the person you're becoming, it was a wake up call for me. and I think sometimes we need to go through a big breakdown in order to set ourselves up for a potential breakthrough. We need moments in our life to fall apart in order for us to pick ourselves back up. I didn't have the awareness any other way. I just thought, you know, this is who I was. I'm successful. I'm winning in life. So no one judged me.

Right.

And I was so protective of that. But this was that wake up call. It was the moment where I said, oh, wow, everything could have gone wrong here. What if something happened where, you know, I really hurt this guy or he hurt me and I have everything to lose in this moment? You know, what if I, whatever, something happened bad? What if someone had a knife and stab, whatever? It's like, what if something really bad happened? Man, I would have done it, lost everything I've been building for because I just got angry and reacted. This is so horrible. And I remember for the next couple of weeks, I went to a depression. I remember I didn't want to talk. I was trying to get out of the relationship with my girlfriend. I didn't want to see anyone. I was ashamed of myself for this fight. I was just like, man, I don't want to do anything. And for almost two weeks, I watched about 80 episodes of a show on Netflix. It was a show called Weeds. I don't know if anyone remembers that show. And I literally laid in bed for almost two weeks and watched 80 plus episodes back to back to back, barely ate anything, just said like, wow, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? I didn't wanna talk to anyone. I didn't wanna leave. I felt angry and I didn't feel like anyone would understand me. I felt alone. And the interesting thing is I always felt alone my entire life. so what happened was my friend Matt said, you gotta. You gotta pick yourself up, man. You gotta change. You got to see what's happening inside of your heart and really figure this out. You know, you're 30 years old. It's time. It's time to make a change. And I said, you know what? You're right. I'm going to do whatever it takes to figure this out. I started talking to therapists. I started journaling. I started reading more books. I went to Tony Robbins. I went to other people's workshops and conferences. There was one event that I went through that was a five day emotional intelligence workshop in Los Angeles called Mastery and Transformational Training. That changed everything for me. And I won't go into the story too much, but in the first two days of the workshop, we really focused on addressing the things from our past. the things from our past that hurt us, that affected us, from parents to relationships to school, whatever it may be, we addressed them and we started processing to heal, to move on. It was kind of like a group therapy experience, different exercises and games to reenact these experiences in your life.

And.

Nothing really clicked for me until one moment where the facilitator of the workshop, his name's Chris Lee. He's been on this podcast, I think 13, 14 times now.

He.

Said to me, Louis, you just look really angry. And I'm thinking to myself, man, I'm like a fun loving guy. I felt like I was a happy guy. He goes, you just look really angry. He's saying this in front of the whole group. There's so much anger inside of you. He just kept saying it over and over. And I got really mad at him. I was like, what? I was like, screw you, I'm not angry, which is kind of funny. And he said, shortly after this, he said, we've addressed everything from our past, and now we're moving forward to focus on our future, the life we want to create in our personal lives, our relationships, our health, our career, finances. We're going to focus on the vision for our life moving forward. But before we focus on the vision of our life moving forward, we must address everything from your past and heal and process. So if there's anything that people that you guys have not shared yet that you want to share, now is the moment. Otherwise, we're moving forward. And I thought to myself for a second, I said, you know, I talked about my parents going through a divorce in this workshop. I talked about, you know, my brother went to prison for a few years selling drugs to an undercover cop and the stresses of that. when I was eight years old. I talked about feeling picked on and bullied and made fun of in school, being in the special needs classes. I talked about all that stuff, being picked last on the playground. I was just like, man, all this stuff that hurt me, I talked about it. And then that memory flashed through my mind. One of the first memories I've ever had was a moment where a man sexually abused me. And I said, why in 25 years have I never shared this with anyone? What am I so afraid of? And I kind of just got the courage, whatever it may be, because my best friend said, he was like, I'm not, I don't want to hang out with you unless you figure this out to, I just knew that everything in my life was breaking down and falling apart. I was just like, there was no other way to go except for through the pain and through the experience that I just said, if I don't say this in this group of 40, 50 people right now, I may never say this to anyone. This will die and stay inside of me for the rest of my life. And I just said, okay, I want to figure out what's going on, and I'm willing to do the work. So let's see if this has anything to do with it. So I got the courage. I stood up. I walked to the front of the room. and I couldn't look anyone in the eyes because I was so ashamed of what I was about to say. I just felt like no one would accept me or love me if they truly knew this about me. So I put my head and tilted it down towards the carpet while the people were in a semicircle seated on chairs facing me. And I walk through the entire story. I walked through the entire story when I was five. I was out of my babysitters and she had a teenage son who was probably 16 or 17. And he manipulated me, took me into the bathroom and sexually abused me. And I won't get into the details here, but I walk through detail by detail from what the bathroom looked like, the smell, the taste of the experience, the everything from how I was positioned, every detail. And I remember talking pretty calmly, actually, but I still couldn't look up in anyone's eyes. And it wasn't until I walked over to my chair, I sat down, that I erupted and started bawling more than I've ever cried in my life. I just could not control. It's one of those, like, couldn't breathe, uncontrollable, hyperventilating types of crying while I was just screaming at the same time. I just couldn't. It was like my body was releasing 25 years of trauma and pain in a moment. And there were two women on either side of me who were just hugging me. They were crying. The whole room was in tears. I think people just in shock to see someone that looked like me, a 6'4, jock looking athlete, big, strong, you know, guys guy, stand up and share that he was sexually abused. From my memory, I don't remember any other person that kind of looks like me or, you know, was this successful business person, former pro athlete, who has openly talked about being sexually abused. I'm sure I've seen it in different places. I know Oprah has done different shows and episodes about this, but I never really saw where one person kind of just opened up and talked about this. And so I felt like no one had ever done it. You know, I felt like, I don't know, it just didn't happen to people. And I remember sprinting out of the room. I was so ashamed of myself, felt so guilty, I sprinted out of the room. And I was like, I'm not going back in that room. I was crying. I was outside this kind of conference room. I ran outside to get some fresh air. And a couple minutes pass, and one of the most beautiful things in my life happened next. One by one, the men from the room came out, gave me a hug one by one. They looked me in their eyes and they said, you are my hero. They were like, I trust you more than ever now. Because you were vulnerable and because you opened up and shared, I trust you with my life. One guy was like, I will follow you anywhere you go. And I was just like, what? It was crazy. Then something crazier happened. A number of the men from this group opened up to me for the first time about their sexual abuse story. There were 40, 50, 60 year old men in the room who said, I've been married for 30 years. I've got five kids. My wife doesn't know. This happened to me when I was 11. And I just said, wow, this is a serious problem that most men never open up about this. They don't have one person they feel comfortable sharing with. You know, women, it happens more frequently for women, one in four women, women face sexual abuse and this happens more frequently. The stigma for men is that you can't talk about these things because they're not allowed to happen. In general, I feel women have more of a safe space to share their trauma, where it's more acceptable to share with a girlfriend, a family member, to go to therapy to talk about this. It's more acceptable in society. Whereas most men, at least in the American society, were never taught that you're allowed to share your feelings or traumas or past experiences that have affected you in general. Obviously, there's some men that do and are more open and have more loving opportunities to share, but most men have been conditioned through society and through other boys that it's not okay to open up about this. Again, I was five years old and I didn't know anything. Really, my brain wasn't developed and this was my first sexual experience with a man I didn't know. Shame, guilt, insecurity, fear, anger, loneliness. So much came up for me my entire life and it would fuel me to prove everyone wrong. It was my fuel. And in this documentary, Leaving Neverland, they would say again that abuse doesn't have to be this thing where you're forced and chained up and all this stuff that we think. It can be ways of manipulation. And that's just what happened to me. And I remember after this, with all these men coming up to me and hugging me and saying, I trust you and accepting me and saying, I love you, it set me free. It gave me a sense of freedom that I never felt before. And I remember afterwards I said, I need to keep diving into this. I need to tell my family. They need to know. So I started telling my family one by one and it terrified me because I didn't want them to look down on me. But what it did is it brought us closer together. When I opened up about my vulnerabilities, they started opening up one by one about things they'd been through that I never knew. It was crazy. And I said to myself, well, my family has to love me, but there's no way I could tell my friends, right? But I said, man, this feeling is still controlling me. It's still holding on to me. And I don't want it to have power over me anymore. So I'm gonna do whatever it takes to overcome this fear by diving through the fear, by going into the fear, by experiencing the fear face on, full steam ahead and doing whatever it takes so the fear does not cripple me anymore to be reactive and to be angry. I don't want this. So I started telling friends one by one, one by one. And I remember the first time I told my friends, I was like, this was not easy process. I would stutter, my lips would quiver, I couldn't look them in the eyes. I would shake, my heart would beat. I was scared, scared because I wanted to be accepted by my peers, my friends. And one by one, it got a little easier, a little easier. And I was able to heal and process a little more. And after about three, four, five months of this, I felt like, wow, I feel a lot better. I feel more peace. I feel accepted for who I am, what I've been through, experiences I've had. People don't shame me. They're not outcasting me. They're accepting me. and some of my friends said, you need to share this publicly on your podcast because my podcast had come out about six to eight months prior. And they were like, you should share this publicly. And I was like, hell no, I am not going to ruin my reputation to the world about this because then no one will love me except for a few people. And I caught myself in that moment. I said, huh? Well, there's more work to do, Louis. There's more things I need to dive into. And this is an opportunity. This is became more than an opportunity for myself. It became a duty, became a mission. It became a destiny for me to serve other men who have been through this. And that's why five years ago, I did this post and did this interview, my friend Jonathan Fields interviewed me and kind of facilitated the conversation. Glennon Doyle Melton, she kind of guided me on the process of well, to teach me kind of how to post it out there publicly so that it didn't offend people, so that it was supportive to people, that I was in service to people, and all these things. I posted it and I remember being terrified. when I posted it. But the next day, I woke up with hundreds of emails from men sharing their stories for the first time. And that's when I realized this is a much bigger issue. And Oprah did this special the day after this documentary came out about sexual abuse. And she said, I've done 200 plus shows on the topic of sexual abuse over the last 15, 20 years, because it's one of the most important topics that we need to cover because of how often it happens to men and women. And she said this documentary, this four hour documentary told the process more about sexual abuse and how it affects individuals in all of their life in four hours than she had done in, you know, 200 plus episodes. And she did a beautiful job interviewing the men who were in the film who'd been sexually abused by Michael Jackson. and I wanted to recap this and just talk about it. You know, I wrote a book about, it's called the Mask of Masculinity. That was another step for me, kind of talking about how men can tap into their vulnerability. And tons of women have read it and it's helped them understand the men in their life. Tons of men have got it. It's helped them transform as well. and the book wasn't about sexual abuse or anything, but I share my story in the book and talk about the different traumas we face that keep our hearts locked, that make us frustrated, that make us wear masks to try to fit in and be accepted. So I thought this was important for me to recap it since so many people are talking about this, and it's been five years since I did a full episode on this. My life has transformed in the last five years. Now again, I'm not a perfect human being. I still make mistakes. I still revert back to frustration and reactiveness at different times and defensiveness and all these things. I'm a human being. We all are. But man, the last five years, it's the first time I've been able to sleep at night without having nightmares. And I fall asleep quickly within five, ten minutes. It's the first time I've been able to feel inner peace. It's the first time I truly feel when I accomplish something that I can receive the moment as opposed to say, okay, yeah, but I need to go do the next thing right now. It's still not enough. It's still not enough. I finally learned how to receive and celebrate the moment and appreciate the moment as opposed to constantly tell myself, I'm never good enough. and if you're a man that's been through sexual abuse in any way, you can go to 1in6.org, it's a great organization, I know the founder, and.

They.

Have weekly chat-based support groups facilitated by counselors, it's all anonymous, they have a 24/7 help line of chat, They have information that you can learn about. And if you're a man who's experienced sexual abuse or assault, you have to remember you're not alone. And they're here to support you in the path to a happier, healthier life. And I want you to walk around, if you're a man, if you're a woman, if you're any gender, I want you to walk around today and see the men that you walk by. Maybe you're in a line in a coffee shop or you're driving in your car. and just know that, you know, one of every six men that you drive by or walk by, one of them have probably gone through some type of sexual abuse when they were younger. And you just never know who it is. They might be the most successful person in the world. They might be depressed and down and out. They might be somewhere in the middle. You never know. And that's why it's important to always have compassion and love for people. that's why it's important to never judge too quickly. That's why it's important to ask questions, connect with people in their eyes. Listen. Listen to people's hearts. We've all gone through different challenges in our past. We've all gone through different traumas. Maybe it's not sexual, it's emotional, it's manipulation, it's physical abuse. Maybe it's whatever. We've all gone through hardships and challenges. and the best way that I've learned. I'm not the expert. I'm not a licensed therapist. I'm none of those things. I'm not a doctor. What's worked for me is all I can share. And my life is a billion times better when I started to share my shame. When my shame left my body was the moment I started to talk about it. It was the scariest thing I've ever done emotionally. but it was the moment that I started to set my own self free. That I took my power back. I forgave myself. I forgave the man that sexually abused me. I forgave everyone in my past for all the different traumas I faced. The bullies, the kids that picked on me, everything, parents, all that stuff. And when I forgave everything, shared my shame, and kept sharing personally for me is I needed to keep sharing it because I still wasn't set free fully. It still had a grip on me. I still was insecure about it. I still quivered when I talked about it. So for me, I wanted to share it more and more to friends and then publicly. I'm not suggesting you share your shame publicly. I'm not suggesting you need to go to shell your friends, your family. I don't. think you need to do that, but I think you need to do for yourself whatever you need to do in order to set yourself free. Maybe that's talking to a therapist. You can go to 1in6.org that's the number one I n the number six.org and talk to someone there. For me, it doesn't matter the process of how you do it. It just matters that you set yourself free and you open your heart because you were born to be a loving, passionate considerate human being. You were born to love other people and you were born to fall in love with yourself. Not in a cocky, egotistical way of like, I love myself, I'm the best. But you're a unique human being created from love. Your soul, your spirit, your heart is bursting with love. It's oozing out of you in every pore of your body. Every cell of your body has love in it. and our shame and our guilt and our anger blocks it from receiving love, from giving love, and from feeling that love. And the way that I found peace, my inner peace, is accepting myself fully for what I've been through, who I am, my experiences, fully accepting myself. sharing with others and seeing that others accept me too. And even if they didn't, it doesn't matter. It's knowing that I accept myself and I'm here for a reason. Because I matter and so do you. You matter so much. You are so loved. Whether this has happened to you or not, I want you to remember how loved you are, how beautiful you are, You're a unique human being. There's only one of you that will ever be created in a lifetime, in millions of years, there's only one of you that will ever happen. You will never happen again. And I want you to know that you're here for a reason in this moment of time, this moment of our life, you are here for a reason. Even if you feel like you don't know why you're here, why things have happened to you, there's a reason. It's your duty to discover that reason. It's your duty to go through the pain, to process the past, to heal. Because when you finally heal, that's when you can start loving yourself and moving forward in a powerful, positive way. If this episode resonated with you in any way, please let me know. Send me a direct message over on Instagram, Lewis Howes over there. You can email me, lewis@greatness.com, check those emails and share this with a friend. You know, share this with a friend who maybe has gone through this. You don't need to share it publicly with them. It's more private subject right now for them. But share this publicly and let your audiences know that if they've been through something, they should listen to this. They should share this. Have a conversation with someone about this. I want to know your thoughts on this. Check out the documentary leaving Neverland and the interview with Oprah that she did. I think she's had a lot more experience doing these types of episodes. She's done 200 plus of them. I can only share my personal experience and what I've done over the last five years to process this. Check those out. If you're new here, please subscribe. I promise they're not all this emotional. They're not all like this. We have Billions come on talking about building your business. We have world-class athletes. We have spiritual thought leaders. We have lots of incredible guests come on here to help you optimize your life in every way. But I just know that the outside results and success, money, fame, followers, health, none of that matters if you don't have the inner peace. You know, it's nice. but it's not the complete package. And if you want the complete package of life, you've got to learn to master inner peace. And that starts by healing the past and accepting yourself fully for who you are and all the things you've been through. If you want to, if you want to listen to my first time opening up about this publicly, I'll link to that as well. But the, the title is what's sharing my childhood rape? taught me about being a loving, vulnerable free man. And that it's one of the most downloaded episodes we have. It was five years ago. This is a powerful topic, very powerful. And I want to continue to be a resource for people. I want to continue to talk about this publicly because it's happening all the time, which is unfortunate to young kids, young boys and girls. And I want to prevent this from happening. I wish no one ever has to go through this. And if you're a parent, I wish that you never have to go through this as a parent for your children. It's just not a fun experience. It's not a fun experience to have that memory in your mind for your whole life. And I want to free people from that pain and that trauma. I accept it. I appreciate it. I'm grateful for it now because it makes me compassionate. It makes me care deeply about other human beings. feeling loved. And so I look at it as a blessing and I'm so grateful for my experience through sexual abuse. If you would ask me six, seven years ago, I'd probably said I'm not. But it's weird that I am now. I think because I'm at peace about it, I feel okay with who I am and I'm grateful because I know I wouldn't be where I'm at without being at peace and overcoming that challenge. So, you are only as sick as your secrets. Make sure you start sharing them. Set yourself free, my friends. You deserve to be free. Again, share this with your friends. If you enjoyed this, please leave a review. Rate this podcast over on Apple podcasts. You know, the more ratings and reviews we get, the more people find out about our show, and I want to be a resource of good for people, so please do that. you are born in the image and likeness of love, of light, of peace, of passion, of power. It's time to reclaim your power back. It's time to take ownership of your life and everything that's happened in it. Be the owner of your life, not a victim of your life. No matter what happened in the past and what happens moving forward, when you take ownership of your life, you set yourself free. It doesn't matter if something was unfair or shouldn't have happened, or was a horrible experience, there's lots of bad things that happen. But you get to decide the story you want to tell. You get to decide what you're going to read about the story of your life. you get to change the way you see your life and lead your life from a place of peace, of power, and of pure love. I love you all very much. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.