8 SECRETS To ACHIEVE Your Most AMBITIOUS GOALS Today | Lisa Nichols & Lewis Howes

When the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two different directions, you ain't going nowhere.

When you align-- I call it, yeah.

When you align the tongue in your mouth to go in the same direction as the tongue in your shoe, now we can move.

Don't pursue the things. Pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come, I promise you.

Awareness plus action equals transformation. Please don't skip that plus action part, because action is the antidote for despair.

See, some people, you haven't pushed non-negotiable yet. You're still optional.

I really would love to be successful.

And so you- I wanna be successful. I wanna be successful. I wanna make money. I wanna be healthy. I wanna be healthy. But it's not non-negotiable yet.

Let me just tell you, you can't take the elevator to the top. All right. It ain't none but stairs. If you've been feeling stuck with no sense of purpose in your life, this video with Lisa Nichols will break down the secrets to how to achieve your dreams and change your life. I love your message, I love your insights, I love your wisdom, and I also love your story. And I want to dive into it before we begin the process of how to be abundant. Because you didn't start out abundant, right?

No, not at all.

I'm curious now, growing up, who was the most influential person in your life? and what was the biggest lesson you remember them teaching you?

My grandmother, my father's mother, my grandmother Bernice, and she taught me that she prophesied over my life, meaning she spoke life into me when I didn't see it for myself. And she said several things, but one of the key things was she said, Baby, as you grow up, you're going to impact lives and they're gonna write about you. I have no idea how she knew. And many people are gonna talk about you. She said, Do yourself a favor. Take everything they've written about you and put it in a file cabinet. Don't read it. She said, and when you get old in my age, sit in your favorite rocking chair, grab a cup of tea and be entertained by who they thought you were while all the time you knew who's you were. And she just instilled this sense of humility like you are a servant leader and I don't care what they call you, expert, guru, master, you. are a servant leader, you remember that? Because they'll say a lot of things. And so she has been my anchor. She's long since deceased, but she's been my anchor. And that was just one of the most powerful things. And then she also said, Baby, you can get all the knowledge in the world. She said, But only time will give you the wisdom that I have. I was like, Whoa. I was like, I think she just grandma checked me. And so I still to this day, with all the knowledge that I've acquired from great books like yours and great books like Stephen Covey's and great books from Phil Jackson, 11 Rings and Howard Schultz onward. All these great pieces of work, I still sit at the feet of seniors. I still sit, my spiritual mentor, I sit at her feet once a quarter. I sit at people's feet when they're 20 years older than me or more, because they have something I don't have, which is wisdom, time. So she anchored me in two things, which both leave me in humility.

Wow. Okay. What's the wisdom you have from all your time so far?

Don't count the number of times you've been knocked down. Get attached to the number of times you get up.

I'm gonna get these truth bombs all day.

Right, right, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I love it. I'm curious now, because you didn't start out with a lot of money and with a lot of abundance mindset, did you?

Right. It wasn't just not a lot of money. It was one thing to be fiscally broke. It's another thing to be emotionally broken. Two very different things. And I was broke and broken. And in 1994, I had to go get on government assistance just to feed my newborn baby. I had to get on WIC, women, infant and children. And I still say it. And, you know, I say it often. I'm interviewed, I was interviewed 155 times in five months for my previous book, no Matter what. and it still hits me in the same place. I was ashamed to stand in line with all the other mothers, some fathers, to get free butter, free cheese, free milk, free pasta. But at the same time, I was grateful that there was such a service to help people like me that I knew this wasn't where I was going to stay.

Right.

But it was where I was in that moment. I wasn't committed to take up real estate there, but it was my current address and broke and broken. It kind of hit the, I felt like I hit the bottom. Sometimes you feel your back on the bottom, like I think that's the bottom, right? And then there's always a deeper bottom. Yeah, right, right, right. So when I was getting food stamps, I thought I was at the bottom.

Mm-.

And then you went to the ATM. I ran out of Pampers for my son Jelani and I went to the ATM to get money to go buy Pampers and it said insufficient funds and I had $11.42 in the bank.

What's the minimum you take out 20 bucks in the ATM?

Exactly. You need 20 in to get 20 out. And I had $11.42 and so I went home and I had to wrap my son Jelani for two days in a series of different towels. that. That was my rock bottom. And that was because as a parent, all you want to do is provide. That's it. It's simple. I just want to provide safety and food for my baby. Somebody else was providing my food and I didn't even have Pampers. And I remember on the second day of wrapping my son in the towel, Louis, I put my hand over his stomach and I said, Don't worry, Jelani, with tears streaming down my face. I said, Don't worry, son. Mommy will never, ever be this broke again. And so you talk about having financial resources. I realized that I needed to first believe that I could do something different. That wherever my mindset was, my bank account was going to follow. So I needed to change my mental zip code.

What was your mental zip code then?

Scarcity, lack. I was born and raised in South Central LA. I grew up between the Harlem Crip 30s and the Rolling 60s. I had three fights a week to get home from school. My highest grade in school was a C plus. In 12 years of school, my highest grade was a C plus.

And so if you ever tell this.

Story to anybody, don't forget my plus. Don't forget, y'all don't forget my plus. It's very important to a C student, to A student. I was a C or D student. All right, all right, all right. So to an A student, it doesn't matter, like plus, plus, whatever. But to a C student, The plus matters, man. I get it. So I struggled. Everything in my life was about a hustle. Everything, nothing was easy except the love for my family. That was easy and effortless and graceful and bountiful. But everything else outside of that, it was a hustle, get or get God. It was the environment I grew up in. And I'm not saying that you have to grow up in that rough environment to have an amazing future. People always say, well Lisa, I didn't have it rough. Could I have a, listen, I would have traded my background in for anybody. Like don't think I chose that so I can have this. And so I didn't know abundance. I didn't know abundance existed. I didn't know abundance could happen to people who look like me. A woman, geographically, from my neighborhood, I didn't know abundance can be that. I didn't see it around me. I didn't know abundance can be for someone that was in my culture. Everything was about survival and hustle. So, so many things. And spiritually, I didn't know that someone who loved God, who had a spiritual foundation, can also have prosperity without being perceived as greedy. I mean, everything in my environment said not me. Everything said not me if I listen to the sound effects. Right. And sometimes you just got to turn the volume down and listen to your heart. Right.

So what was the conversation you would tell yourself during this time when you were in this scarce zip code?

Someone like me can't have it. Them over there, that guy right there, he comes from the right family. That girl right there, her skin color is the right complexion. That I'm full figured, a mocha skin, full lips, round hip, kinky hair girl. Nah, not me. Not now, I get other things. I get a bountiful family. I get great children if I want. I get closeness to God, but I don't get abundance. And I realize that so much of that conversation was embedded in me before I was five. I mean it just comes with the territory. I would watch my grandmother make a dime go in 20 different directions. And I never wondered about having 21 dimes. I just wanted to grow up and make my dime go in 20 different directions to be like grandma. And so, so much is cultural inheritance. gender inherited as a gender, as a woman, you're not raised to make millions, you're raised to either get a good job or get a man with a good job. Especially in the 80s and 90s. Absolutely, absolutely. And that's how we were raised spiritually. You're taught, in my background, my religious background, now I'm spiritual, I'm not attached to a religion at all. But growing up in the Mount Tabor Missionary Baptist Church, it was, money is the root of all evil. Well, who would want a lot of that? And that good- who wants evil? Exactly. who wants evil. And if that's what you say, then I learned that I don't need it. And Sister Brown, I watched Sister Brown. And Sister Brown was the most Godly woman in the church. And she was always selling fish dinners and, and barbecue dinners to make sure she had enough money. And so unconsciously, I wanted to be like Sister Brown because that woman can pray the heavens down. And so then again, I'm looking at that. And then in my neighborhood, it was the moment you get a little extra, you give it away. You give it away still to this day. I kid you not. I want, one of my last opportunities, I don't call them challenges, opportunities, is I'm in the top 1% earners in America. And I say that humbly, I'm grateful. And my job now is to learn how to keep it and grow it, 'cause I love to give it away. And I know it's a learned behavior. It's a learned, and I give it away to good things. I just put $82,000 and revamped my grandmother's whole house 'cause I knew she wasn't gonna move. She's gonna listen, that's where she's gonna rest in peace. She's gonna stay right there. She's been at that house since 1968. She's not going anywhere. So I just redid the entire house, gutted out the entire house and spent close to $100,000 doing it. And I'll do that over and over and over and over again because I also was taught, Give it away. So now I'm going to people who are more powerful in money in terms of, I know how to make a lot, I know how to keep a lot. Now I learn how to grow a lot.

Yeah.

You know, and being willing and being humble enough to say, that's where I am. I got the first two down because money is three levels. How do you earn it? How do you keep it and how do you grow it? And so, you know, I had a conversation for a long time in many different ways. And then it's the conversation as a woman, if I make so much, it's going to be hard to be dateable. That big D word, you know? And so as an African American, you're unapproachable now. Exactly. And men are taught, as I taught as a woman about money, you're taught as a man, be the provider. Well, you know, it's kind of hard to provide for a G like me. You know, when I come in, I go, How about we just put it together? 'Cause I'm kind of cool on the provision thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, and so I realize that men have to also feel comfortable with the fact that that's an 80s conversation. And in 2015, she might make 16 now. 2016, right. You're on the book tour. You're still-- Oh, yeah. I started the book tour, and I have like, you have to, at every moment, tell me the date that we're living inside of right now.

I feel you. I feel you.

Right, you know, you just-- I'm just recovering.

I'm finally this night.

Tell me there's something on the other side.

There is. Recovery is true, right? There's a clear voice. There's sanity. There's a healthy body. There's your freedom of time. So, I'm curious, what was this moment then that you realized, okay, I need to shift the way I'm thinking, the conversations I'm having, how I'm showing up, who I'm being in every moment, from living in the scarce environment that I've lived in for 20 something years to all of a sudden shifting into an abundance mindset and way of being. What was the moment to experience the thought, the idea, the catalyst that broke that?

I like how you say a moment. Like I got a, oh, the ceiling opened up and the lights came in and the angels came.

No.

Maybe it was over time.

Right. It was, there was a moment when, there was a moment when suffering became too painful.

There you go.

So mine didn't necessarily come in a glory moment. It came with $11 and 42 cents and watching my baby wrapped in a towel. A towel? I felt like I was being unfair to him. See, because 30 days before the towel, I'm really telling my stuff, 30 days before the towel, his father called me and when I answered the phone, I never forget, I said hello. He said, Lisa, I'm in LA County Jail. Well, I don't do jail and I don't do people in jail and I don't do people who have a possibility of going. So how did you get there? Because I met you in corporate America and you were a professional. How you got there is his business, I don't know. But now I'm a single mom of a son whose father is now in prison. Boom, boom, boom, rock bottom, rock bottom again. So 30 days later when I had my son wrapped in a towel, I was done. I was just done. You're sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was done. So, you know, the concept of bankrupt is there's nothing left. That's the concept of bankrupt. So I like to explain it. I was bankrupt in my mess. I was bankrupt in my chaos. And I was bankrupt in every sexy. Because my excuses are sexy. By the way, I've been a linguistic specialist for years. I could talk my teachers into doing things right. I mean, that's just been my gift. My father used to say, Lisa, please. Promise me you will use your powers for good. And so I was bankrupt in all of my excuses. So if you ask when, it was probably about three hours after I told my son we'll never be here again on day two of being wrapped in a towel in 1994. And then I said, how? The next question was how? If I'm done with this, I'm not even sure what that looks like. I just know over there are a bunch of abundant thinkers living an abundant life, having abundant memories with a surplus of everything. Because abundance is to be an overflow of the things that you have. Abundance is just about overflow. It's about overflow. That means that if there were a saucer under this cup, abundance would be everything. This tea flows over into the saucer and I can feed you from my saucer because I have filled my, filled my cup up enough. I use my cup for me and I feed you from my saucer. And abundance is saying, I have a saucer in my relationships filled with great experiences. There's a saucer in my health and wellness. I have so much bountiful health and vitality that can show up for you. There's a saucer with my spirituality that I can pray for you. I can forgive the perceivably unforgivable and love the perceivably unlovable. And then there's a saucer for my finances and that in every area, because abundance is a 360 experience. See wealth. is singularly focused. Wealth is about your money and your possessions. That's wealth. Okay. But abundance is 360. I have a lot of very, very wealthy friends who are miserable, unhappy, who are not abundant. Yeah.

They're wealthy.

Yeah. They're wealthy. They're not abundant. And they understand that. And they come to me and go, Lisa, help me with my relationships with my family or whatever. Right. And so I I I had to learn something different. I. Lewis, I didn't know what I didn't know. And so that became the moment when I said, what do I need to know to have something different? What do they know that I don't know? And how can I get it? And I became a hunter.

So what was the first discovery?

That there's a mindset that comes with abundance. That they think differently. They don't just do something different. There's not a hookup. First of all, what camera do I look into? Is it that one?

Anyone. Anyone.

There is no such thing as a hookup. I am still waiting on mine. and if you know where it is, my phone number is. So there was no hookup. There's no hookup. Like it's not true. Like you got a 297 million chance in one to win the lotto. And within five years, the people win the lotto in more debt than they were before they won the lotto. So that ain't even a hookup, right? And so I realized that I needed to change my mindset. I needed to learn something different. and I needed to know it at a cellular level. All that stuff I just told you about, my color, my gender, my, I had to unlearn. People are, we're information junkies because we got all kind of access to information online. And we're learning all this stuff, but we're not implementing anything. I'm sorry, I might step on a few toes. That's what I do. And so I realized that I had to, at a cellular level, first, before I went to get any more information, I had to be willing to divorce and evict some belief systems that I already had, that they had taken me as far as they can take me and now they're holding me back. It's almost like you wear a size 11, you have 11 foot and you tried to fit it back in a size 7 shoe. You passed that a long time ago and that's gonna be a very uncomfortable day. I was in discomfort. I was very uncomfortable with my thinking. And so, I started diving into books. The first book I dove into was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and it disrupted me. It disrupted everything. I didn't know. It was like a double door opened up and then a wall opened up. I'm like, what do they know that? Like, why nobody told me that? Like I felt like I was out of a club and really you are. I'm just gonna tell you, abundant thinkers think a certain way and they don't go around trying to convert you. Like people like you and I go, let's open it up to everyone. But here's what I know about the human spirit is that the human spirit has a power choice. And most people don't want to choose this kind of thinking because it costs you something.

It costs.

What's the cost? The cost is you got to get up earlier. You get up earlier than the average guy. Your day, what you do in a day is what some people do in a week. What you do in the mornings or some people do in 12 hour day, you got to be willing. What you're willing to do on your book tour to get on the New York Times, some people say, I got to do all that. I don't want to do all that. That's a lot of work. Okay, great. Then have your life. Like you have to, you sign up for your life experience. There's no way like you were, when I realized that I that was a culmination of all my decisions. That's like straight with no chaser. That's like getting it with no cookies and milk. I was a culminate, you're a culmination of all your decisions. And then when you up level your decisions, and that's even harder at times when you go, God, why am I always single? You're a culmination of your decisions, you're a culmination of your actions. Why can't I keep any money? You're a culmination of your decisions, your life. So I wanted to make better decisions. 'Cause my son being wrapped in a towel, me having $11.42, me being overweight, me, my son's father being in prison, I couldn't shake it. I was a culmination. My life experience was a culmination of all my decisions. And it was undoubtedly a hot mess. And so I went, well, let me go learn from somebody whose life don't seem like it's a hot mess. And then let me adopt some of their behaviors. And I began to hunt. I went to conferences. I, and I was scared the bajibas out of me these conferences. I'd never been to conferences before. I went to entrepreneurial conferences. I was the only, I was one of four women at an 800 person conference, and I was the only woman of color. So it was all older white men and me. And I was like, okay, well, they, they're not afraid of money. Seems like they're talking money and business and corporations and ROIs and PPMs and term agreements and no abla espanol. I don't know what that mean, but I am not leaving. until I figured this out. And I went to the same conference. When I say do what other people won't do, and you'll have what other people don't have, I went to the same conference, Louis, 42 times. I told you I was a C student, so it took me a minute to get it. And I kept getting sponsored back to the, I didn't even have the money to go to the conference. I started volunteering at the conference. I would be on stage teaching because they loved the way I spoke. Then I'd get off and I'd help clean up because I had to pay my dues to be there. I was okay. I ate my slice of humble pie every day because I was bankrupt. See, some people, you haven't pushed not negotiable yet. You're still optional. I really would love to be successful. And so you want to be successful.

I want to be successful. I want to make money.

I want to be healthy. I want to be healthy. But it's not non-negotiable yet. Because the moment the rubber meets the road and you feel a little skin and it gets a little tender and a little blood may show up and you don't want to give blood, you don't want to give sweat, you don't want to give tears. Let me just tell you, you can't take the elevator to the top.

It ain't number stairs. I'm curious, you talked about self-care in a recent tweet, the importance of self-care. I'm curious, what is just the definition of that for you? Self-care, because a lot of people think like, okay, is it getting your nails done if you're a girl? Is it getting a massage? Is it the way you think about yourself?

What is self-care for you?

Yeah.

So, first of all, I think self-care is a reflection of the worth that I believe I have. So, a lot of people and I did this for a long time. I wasn't in self-care but I realized my lack of self-care was connected to my lack of self-worth. So I believe to the flip side of that, self-care is acknowledging your self-worth, acknowledging your value to yourself, acknowledging first to self, and then your value that you have to the people around you. Then self-care is your responsibility to your future. It's so much bigger than nails done. It's so much bigger than massage. though those are nice. Self-care is saying, I want to be responsible for my future, meaning I want to give my body, give my mind, give myself what I need so that I'm playing the long game that recognizing self-care is recognizing this is not a sprint. This life is a marathon. You know, I always say that your, your, your, your job is to identify and, and, and and. And have the courage and the tenacity and the resiliency to own your purpose. Your body's job is to get you there.

Snap.

That right there.

So what I'm hearing you say, it's your body's job to have the energy, the clarity, the focus to sustain the marathon of life so that your purpose can be fulfilled and bring it to life.

Like you. You have your. You have a responsibility to your body and your health and wellness. if you believe your purpose is important or you're still discovering it, you want that dash between your birthday and your transition day to mean something, take care of your body. Take care of your body, take care of your mind so that you can. Every morning I get up and I have the same gratitude prayer every morning. God, thank you for giving me a mind that's sane and sound and logical. Thank you for giving me a body that follows my command.

That's right there.

And if you don't think about it, you're like, what has to try telling your hand to move and it doesn't move. Try wanting to run to a goal.

And you can't do it.

And so every day, not one day goes by, I'm grateful and I share my gratitude for my mind thinking logical thoughts, being able to rationalize and my body following my command. Your body is your instrument. It's your tool. It's the first person, the general in your army.

What happens when we live in a state of irrational thoughts or overly emotional thoughts? Especially, you know, there's a lot of people during this time that are freaking out from the pandemic and coming from an illogical, irrational place with the social justice movement that are coming from, whether it's justified or not, it's not what I'm saying, but coming from an emotional charged energy.

Right.

What are we saying to ourselves when we come from an emotional or irrational state of mind with our actions?

Well, it's first, it's important to understand that forward moving individuals, leaders, abundant thinkers, change agents, and when you think of the Nelson Mandela's and the Dr. Martin Luther Kings and the Cesar Chavez and the Mahatma Gandhi's and the Mother Teresa's and you think about the Michelle Obamas, you think about those people, the Barack Obamas, you think about those people, they recognize that emotion and logic cannot coexist and make a logical decision. That logic must lead emotion and longing has to follow. So you make your decisions from logic and information, in fact, not longing and emotion. You allow longing and emotion to fuel a logical decision. Does that make sense? So don't be without emotion. Don't be without feeling. But every time you did something and it was just feeling that led, just emotional lead, you probably said, oh, I should have did something different. I shouldn't have did that. I'm so sorry. I was so angry. I'm so, like, you're always apologizing if it's just out of emotion. And by. By no means am I saying don't be full of passion, but also make sure you're full of logic.

Uh huh. So don't just, don't just be this. I'm outraged by this thing, whether it be a relationship or justice or whatever. This isn't fair. You know, just getting out there and chanting your feelings. That's not enough. Actually, it's not enough.

It's not enough in any form, whether it's social justice, whether it's a relationship, whether it's, you know, a business, a service, it's not enough. You have, when you have logic, in fact, you have Logic, in fact, included gives you more of a chance to have longevity and impact. And so, yeah, I know people recently have wanted me to be more emotional sooner than what they saw. And I found myself saying on social media very boldly, I choose my path. I found my stillness. I went into a place of stillness and some of the social injustice. I went to stillness first so that I can think about my movements. Because again, a leader, a leader, a gladiator, a change agent, a change maker, all the things that I consider myself to be or I aspire to be at the next level, I want my dash to mean something. You are not only responsible for your words and your actions, you're also responsible for your reactions. Now that's game changing. And so to those individuals who are driven by emotion, I say absolutely allow emotion to be the gas in your car, but make sure logic and information are at the steering wheel.

Oh, if you're emotional at the steering wheel, you're about to crash somewhere.

Exactly. Something. You're not making the best decisions while you're inside of traffic going 100 miles per hour.

Did you feel a sense of, what I'm hearing you say is that maybe you weren't posting or talking about your feelings of Black Lives Matter or the social injustice that was happening quick enough and that some of your audience was pushing you to say, where's your stance or why aren't you speaking up? Or is that what I'm hearing you say?

Right.

Well, I responded immediately, but I said I responded, when I responded, I said, I'm praying. I'm praying for George Floyd's family. I'm praying for his his children. I'm praying for his, the community. I'm praying for every mother of every child, every black male child slain, every black male daughter slain. I'm praying for them. And I got some backlash. Not a lot, but some backlash saying, you know, why are you just praying? We've been praying for so long. And so people were angry that I wasn't passionate enough. I wasn't publicly passionate enough. I was passionate. And, you know, I'm a black woman. I was all day angry. I was hurt. I was disappointed.

Yeah.

My grandmother's 91 years old. Why is she still why are we still here? I have every emotion everyone else had. But because I need to be responsible for my thoughts, my actions, and my reactions because I'm gonna have a few million come with me, I wanted to make sure that I was doing something that was gonna be long led. But before all of that, Louis, one of the reasons why I couldn't talk was because my son, 25 year old, 6'2, 220 pounds, was driving 20 hours across the country from California to Seattle during the initial part of a lot of the protests. And so my baby's on the road in a car behind the wheel, huge African-American male. So I couldn't even talk until he told me he got there safely. And that took a few days. And so I was a mother so I was, I was blown away with how scared I was. I couldn't sleep.

Wow.

I couldn't think straight. I was calling him at three in the morning because he would tell me, Mom, we're going to get to the hotel, the next hotel, about 2 A.M. or 1 A.M. so I, I'm up, I'm on the phone, like, are you there yet? Are you there yet? And so that I got some backlash. I got more support than anything, but. I realize that, and in moments like this, Louis, where the woman sometimes wants to just speak out, I have to stop and go, hold on, is that going to do with the highest good for everyone? And I'm not saying watering down my conversation. I have no desire on any level to water down my belief system, to water down my opinions, but I do have the desire to make the strongest impact. And so, you know, what you do sometimes isn't popular, but I never started doing transformational work or to be a transformation is to be popular. If I am any form of celebrity, if I am, it's a byproduct of doing hopefully good work in the world. But I'm not, I'm not doing things to be popular. I'm doing things to be impactful.

That's good. Hey, it's Lewis here, and I would love to connect directly with you. Text me the word YouTube to my number 614-350-3960 to receive weekly inspirational messages from me. And for anyone listening who's maybe they're starting out or maybe they're growing an audience of, you know, of some size, whether it's 10,000 followers to 100,000 to millions, what do you say to them about? Because at some point, they're going to get pressure feedback about something that people don't like about them. What advice do you have for people who are leaders or want to be leaders? And with that type of leadership comes some type of following or fanship. What advice do you give to them for not allowing the pressure of your audience to dictate your decisions or make you feel bad about who you are?

Well, I'm gonna tell you what my grandmother told me, and she starts every statement with baby, baby. Other people's opinion of you ain't none of your business. So, and that doesn't mean you don't care, but it means you got one job, do you. But you need to find out what does that look like and feel like on you. You are a unique, unrepeatable miracle. That's what you are. Unique, unrepeatable. And the moment you try to carbon copy somebody else, you're gonna be a failure of yourself. And so find out who you are, what's your belief system, speak to inspire, not to impress. Like all day long, like speak to inspire and speak to disrupt, to disrupt for forward movement, forward moving conversations, disrupt for forward moving mindset. Be willing to be unpopular at the cost, at the possibility that someone's gonna grow on the other side of it. See, my grandmother also says, and many people have heard me say this, your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block. I was just talking to a beautiful group of coaches, all white, all look like they were probably over 40, right? And this one gentleman said something beautiful to me. He said, Lisa, he said, I want to talk to black people as a white man because I'm afraid of finding out that the white people that have been in my life all my life might be racist. He said, I don't know what I'll do if I find that out. So I find myself wanting to talk to black people so that I don't find that out. I said, here is that moment when your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block. You have to be willing to be inconvenienced with new information in order to have an impact on the future. When you live like that, all of a sudden, your mind is at the highest level of consciousness. Doesn't mean you're the smartest, doesn't mean you know everything. Let me be super clear. But it does mean you're always reaching for the highest level of service. That might come with some bumps. That might come with some bruises. As my doctor said when I broke my right ankle, Louis, in three places, he said, Miss Nichols, this will get better and you will be stronger. However, It's going to hurt first because I have to re-break your leg. Oh, I gotta re-break your leg in order to fix your leg. And so I always pull back to that experience because in order for me to get to a healed leg, I had to break it first, meaning I had to walk through some pain. So if you are leading a group of 10, 10,000, 20,000, 10 million, be willing to lead even when you're not popular. Leaders lead, even when it's uncomfortable to lead. You don't choose convenient leadership, you choose leadership. You don't choose leadership that won't cost you anything. You choose leadership. And if you don't want it to cost you anything, then sit down and don't leave.

Be a follower.

Because it's always, it's always, the path is already made. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. There's no judgment on a follower. But if you choose this path, I'm a unicorn. I'm a gladiator. I'm a change agent. I'm here to disrupt. I want to make this world a better place between my birthday and my transition day. Okay, then be willing. Someone's always going to have this. This little thing right here.

It's down always.

This little thing right here.

Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Your job is to wake up, look in the mirror, and say, Today I am enough. I'm smart enough. I'm bright enough. I'm chocolate enough. I'm mocha enough. I'm cream enough. My hair is curly enough. My hair is straight enough. I woke up enough before you check any response on social media. You first like you and then everybody else's like is optional.

Oh.

Like and the only like. And I'm not saying disregard other people, but I am saying you are whole and complete and everything you touch, you have to touch it from a whole and complete, even what you don't know. Even in your ignorance about something. Right now, I'm educating more of my white brothers and sisters about having conversations across color lines. How do you want to do that? What are some things to say that can keep you in that safety net of connection? And that's what I should be used for. And that's what everyone's asking of me. Give us some insight. And in that, you're whole and complete in your ignorance about that conversation. That doesn't measure your wholeness.

Right.

Right.

And to follow up with that follower leadership point, I guess in some ways throughout our entire life, we're all following something or collaborating with and following someone else's opinion or advice or teamwork, and we're all leading other people at different stages of our life as well, whether it's one person or, you know, millions of people. So we're always got to learn. I want to talk a little bit more about relationships because I feel like for my success, my growth has all been about relationships and building quality relationships. In the process, I've lost, I would say, a lot of friends from college to after college. You know, it's like a lot of people don't understand it. They don't get it. And when you try to connect with them and educate or just lift them up and say, Hey, this is possible for you too. It's almost scary for them. A lot of judgment happens, a lot of negative talk behind your back, jealousy, things like that. Have you lost a lot of relationships over the years from family to friends? And how do you handle a situation when someone that you're very close with no longer wants to grow, wants to learn, wants to be in this abundance mindset? What do you do in that situation? Do you just cut them out? Do you add new people to your life? How does that work? So, because I know you have great relationships and you're constantly connecting with people.

I do and I nurture them. Yeah. And there's probably just a few years between us. Just a few. But they've taught me something.

Yeah.

And I'm happy you asked that question because I've been looking at that lately. And so there are three types of... I talk about this in a deep dive this in the book. there are three types of relationships. There are life-giving relationships. Now, I'm going to speak to friendships and I'm going to speak to romance, man.

Sure. Of course. Because, yeah.

What we talk most about are relationships. What many people think most about is money. Those are the two anchors that just kind of consume a lot of energy.

Yeah.

Right. There are three types of relationships. There are. And I'm happy to answer the friendships that I've lost and what I've done. But I want to kind of give this context because I think this is going to be a liberator for someone. Someone came to this podcast just for this. This is your nugget. Everything else is bonus. This is it. There are three types of relationships. There's a life-giving relationship and that's the friend or the romance that lasted one day to two years. And they were in your life just to remind you you still got it. that you were and you know that friend you made and it was like, Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow for like six months and then they're gone. Yeah. And because you can't even sustain it. It's too combustive, you know, it's too demanding, it's too chaotic, it's too, it's the turbulent, the joy is high and the turbulence is high. Yeah, exactly. And so it was, it can't, it can't exist past two years, but that's called a life-giving relationship and some are gonna last for one day. they're a stranger that passed in your night. And it was delicious.

It was one good night. Right.

Or two. And. And. And with no judgment on that. That's just life. They're life-giving they're there to remind you. Stay in the game. That fire you had in your belly when we played or skated or made love or sang. Keep that fire in your belly. That's a life-giving relationship number one. Relationship number two. it was a lifetime. No matter what you do, someone's gonna bury the other person. Friends, romance, it's just meant to be lifetime. They can get on your last nerve. Y'all ain't going nowhere. Right. And then this third type is the type that there's the most disruption in, the most chaos in, the most sadness in, the most Discord in, and it's the relationship we're in the most of. It's 80% of our, 80% of our relationships are in this category and probably about 99% of our chaos and discord is in this category. And that's called a purposeful, I hope y'all writing this down by now, that's called a purposeful relationship. And a purposeful relationship is a relationship that was brought together to serve a purpose. Whether the purpose was to birth a business, to grow each other up, to have children, to learn how to love madly. There's a purpose. And that relationship lasts anywhere from three years to 15 years to 25 years. It can be a long time. However, where the Discord comes in, where the sadness comes in, where the disgruntledness comes in, is that once you know what I'm gonna say once, it's a purposeful relationship full of purpose. Purposeful. Once the purpose is fulfilled, the relationship will forever take a shift. It won't necessarily be over, but it is in the beginning of its decline. Now, can you stay together for a lifetime after the purpose is fulfilled? Yes, you can, but it will have a flat line. It will just have a flat line. And then most people, a lot of people, the relationship ends because something just isn't right. Because someone's saying, why can't we just go back to the way it used to be?

Right. Well, we learned it.

We used to be serving and fulfilling the purpose. It's already for. Isn't that beautiful, juicy, great content? It didn't even come from me. I learned it years ago, and I adopted it to save my own life. And so in that context, I do have friends that have been with me for years, and I have friends that have moved on and they were purposeful. And that was the only thing I could give it to find peace because there was this gap, there's this hole, there was, I wish I would have got them. But let me share something with you, Lois. I realized that my job in my friend's life and in my family members life is not to rescue them. Now this is where the distance in our years comes a little bit. I realized that I can have all this information in your beautiful book. I can have all this information in what I wrote in mine. And when I show up to them with them, they just want their girlfriend. They just want their home girl, right? They just want their niece. They just want their cousin. They just want their daughter. They don't want me to rescue them, right? That I had to retire from the converting business because I at converting people. They are going to be who they want to be in this to no disrespect to them, but no one drugged me to this place of awareness. So who am I to drag them? And I know we get excited because we see the light. And the reality is all your job, all my job, all your job, all your job, all your job is to be the light. Not try to pour it on people, but to be the light so that we get to serve them again from our soul. Tosser. Yeah. And they pick up on it. Last night I had a book signing.

But they've got to want it.

And when they're ready, in their time, last night I had a book signing. And I don't know if my family's gonna be watching this, but if they are, I'm grateful. More people from my family showed up to my book signing last night than any other event in the history of my business. I've been doing this for 21 years. any other? I've been inviting them.

Why now?

I don't know. I didn't ask them. I was just grateful. I didn't even ask. And then today I got a text from my cousin who I grew up with, six months difference, my ride or die. She's the one I got in trouble all the time with, right? Ride or die. Never interested in coming to my work. And it would kill me to see her like that. kill me to see her suffering, kill me to see her struggle, kill me to see her not happy. And today she sent me a text and she said, I'm gonna read your book because I'm ready for a change. I read it like three times and then I texted my friend. My cousin. My first cousin. And I text her back. I said, nothing would make me more happy to support than to support you in your journey. let me know what I could do.

That's awesome.

When you're ready. When you're ready.

Yeah.

And so I stopped trying to convert my friends because I was driving our friendships away. It was a hard lesson learned. And then I started thinking my work was so big and so, so, so meaningful that they would understand if I didn't have time. And I realized people don't care about what you're doing for the planet. Right. You need to nurture this of course. So I let some die on the vine. So their relationships that you've let down on the vine because you didn't invest enough in it, you thought the plant would live without water. I thought the plant would live without water because I was watering everyone out here, but I forgot to turn the water back around to my friendships. And so if they died away, I am 100 as responsible as my friend.

Yeah, of course. What do you think is the most purposeful relationship you've been? The one that's- Are you gonna turn.

Around and ask me the most life-giving one too? I gotta check this question out.

Sure, both of them.

Right, right, both of them. Purposeful relationship that I've been in. I'm gonna tell you three. So one is with a girlfriend of mine. who taught me to trust other people. Her name is Denise. Did you not trust people before? I don't know if I distrusted. I didn't just didn't try to trust. I was queen of, I could do it. I could do it. Don't worry about me. I'm good. Don't worry about me. Which we don't think that's lack of trust. We just think that's, I'm a superhero. You see this on my chest? I got this. I realize if I don't, I think it was a part of no trust, but it was unconscious. I would never say, I don't trust people. I just said, I got it. I got, don't worry about me. You're good, don't worry about me. I'm good, I'm good.

Sure, sure.

So she taught me how to trust. And my ex-fiance, who abused me, taught me how to fight for my life without fighting with words. I fought without fighting. I fought, I grew up like this. I grew up like this. And I had to learn how to fight with strategically. He made me realize how much I wanted to live and how much I had to live for and how willing I was to go out of my norm to make sure I was around. So and My son doesn't fit in purposeful because he's a lifetime. But my son has taught me, I had a consultant come in my company and fraud my company.

It's the worst.

Cost me several hundred thousand dollars, but that's money's just dirty paper. That was the easy part. The feeling of betrayal.

The emotional part, yeah. The ego in the way, the resentment.

When I told my son and I'm crying, I couldn't fake it. My son knows me so well. He's 21 now. He can look at me and go, Mom, something's wrong. And I was trying to fight it off and he's like, Something's wrong. And I just started bawling and crying. And my son took my hand and said, Mom, let's just pray. And we're not religious. We're spiritual, but he was raised praying. And my son started praying for us. And then he did something that rocked my world. He started praying for the guy. I never, I thought about doing a lot of things to this man. Praying was not one of them. Praying was not one of them. I'm just telling you. My son prayed for him and my son prayed for his children.

Interesting.

My son cracked my compassion wide open. I started bawling even more, but I started crying for a different reason. I started crying because I had no compassion. passion. I had no forgiveness in my heart at that moment. It's hard to when you feel like someone deliberately and intentionally hurt you. But we do hard things every dang day. We're athletes on top of life athletes. We're athletes. Athletes sign up, get dressed, and go out to hurt.

Exactly.

I mean, there was many days I played football. I was allowed to physically hurt people.

There are many days I've made a.

Personal phone call to Earl on the side. Earl, on the side of the track. I knew when I did 800 breakdowns, I was gonna make a direct line call to Earl.

Yeah, exactly.

And I signed up for it. So we know hard. As hard as that was, I wasn't entertaining it. So my son is the other person. He's a lifetime relationship, but he taught me, like in that moment, and that was recently, that was in the last 12 months, he taught me, I don't care how much you're hurting, still open up your heart to compassion. Don't ever stop forgetting where they might be that would cause them to live in that kind of dark place, mom. It's not your job to leave them there, mom. Shine your light on them even if they don't know it's your light. Even if they violated you, you still live in the light. Living in the light is not optional. When you choose the light, stay in the light, you never ever take the train down to darkness because someone betrayed you. You don't ever leave the light. that's what he said basically. That was powerful at 21, you know, Mom, let's pray. And I'm like, wow, he's praying for him. And so amazing. And then I'm not telling you life giving relationship, you know, it was romance for me. It was romance. It was at a time where is this PG or is this R? What is this?

PG 13. Some kids listen. Okay, moms share this with their kids.

All right, all right. Yeah, man, I'm good. I can do PG 13. I wasn't going too far, but thank you.

We can bleep stuff.

No, no, no, no, I think not. Maybe. There was someone in my life, and still is, he's a great friend. And it was at a time that I didn't see myself through the lenses he did. he saw me far more beautiful than I saw myself. And it speaks to a bigger picture that sometimes you have to borrow someone else's lenses and look at yourself through their lenses. He was significantly younger than me and that was a big thing for me because I felt like, and he was phenomenally beautiful. He was African-American and French, just a delicious blend. that's all I'm gonna say. Everyone over 21 knows that look and what it means. And I would look at him and literally lose my breath.

Wow.

I would lose my breath when I would look at him. And I would watch him look at me and lose his breath. And I kept wondering what he saw. It was the craziest thing. I kept wanting to go, go behind him and look at me like, you know, I don't know if you understand, but I just wanted to see what he saw.

Sure.

And I was, I was 78 pounds heavier than I am now. Oh, I haven't been in this body long, so I'm still, I'm still getting used to being under 210 pounds.

Wow.

So for him to see me so beautiful then. Where'd my napkin go? Where'd you sit it? Here we go. You got me there.

You got yourself there.

Yeah, well you opened the door. I'm grateful.

I want you to stay in this moment because, you know, I'm curious how, for it sounds like to me for a long time, you know, this is our first time connecting.

Yeah.

But it sounds like to me for a long time. Yes, I hope not. Sounds like to me for a long time you were living in abundance in a lot of areas of your life, but except the health category.

Absolutely, absolutely. 100%, 1000%.

And how were you able to navigate that process, the conversation where I don't see myself the way this man sees.

Me and other people see me.

My body isn't showing who I'm being.

Right, it was incongruent. I'll say it, it's a grown folk conversation. It was incongruent with who I knew myself to be. It was what I call my Kryptonite. It was my Kryptonite.

We all have it.

Right, right, right. A lot of people's Kryptonite you can't see. You could see my Kryptonite. And I wore it well. Sometimes I had some bad outfits.

I mean, even in the book cover, you don't even look like yourself right now.

Right, right. I was still in the work. They needed a cover shot and I'm like, okay, I'm in this work of transformation. you can take it now, but that's not who you're gonna see when the book comes out. And I was committed to keep going.

You've never been this weight, I mean, in the last 20 years or...

When I ran track. Literally. At my book signing last night, I had five people from my high school, and they said, you are...

But they've been back in high school.

Right, hello now. What? Right, right, right, what? So, it's all over Facebook now with my high school track members. They're going, Lisa, this was you running track. I know. I mean, actually a little smaller than I was.

You have to change all the videos on your side. I know. I looked at the videos before and.

Then there's a video.

I know. Of like, you with the party in the background. I was like, wait, who is that?

Right. Who is that lady? Is that like a fan girl? I was like, oh, wait, that's her.

Right, right, right.

You can say fan fine girl. So you know how many videos I have out? Oh, so many videos. So many to recognize. But no one's gonna recognize.

No one's gonna recognize me.

And so, but how were you able to? That's the question.

How was I able to navigate through it?

And feel like, I was congruent. I know what you're gonna say.

Feel congruent. Feel like you weren't a liar or.

Weren'T like... Well, what I said was, I'm still in the journey with my health. I'm not gonna... Man, I don't wanna...

Now is that a mask or something that you just continue to say for 20 years?

No, it was... I thought my weight was just weight, just...

I'm not saying it's bad or wrong.

No, no, no, no, no. I appreciate the question. No, I love the question. I didn't know what I didn't know. That's number one. So my truth was my truth based on what I knew up until that moment. So for years, I would say I don't know how to lose the weight because I couldn't be consistent. But for years, I just made it about what I ate and what I did and I never let it be emotional weight. Like when I realized, I don't say I lost weight as much as I say I released it because I wore a jacket, a 78 pound jacket, and I didn't know why I was wearing the jacket.

78 pounds?

Yeah.

Why would you. Oh, you mean, I thought you meant literally.

No, that was the weight.

I thought he meant literally. I was like, literally.

But I didn't mean, like, on top of the way.

No, it was the weight.

Like, this is who I am. And. But you lost 78 pounds. I released 78 pounds, and it took me 11 and a half months to release it. That's great. And so. But what I didn't realize was that there was an emotional weight that preceded the physical weight. And I put the jacket on 21 years ago for a reason. And I never looked at the reason.

What was the reason?

You are all in my business. Like for real? For real, for real. Absolutely. So I told you my son's father went to prison. And when he went to prison, I put the jacket on. I never acknowledged that I was wildly, madly in love with him and that I saw myself with him for a lifetime. And so I put a jacket on almost immediately after he went in. I didn't put all 78 on immediately, but it slowly came on because I actually didn't want to be attractive to anyone else. And I wanted him to come home. And after 10 years, it was a 10-year mark, I realized I'm not gonna date him again because in my opinion, he was institutionalized or whatever. And I was never a fan of prison. Never a fan of people in prison.

Never a fan of- My brother was.

In prison for four and a half years. Right, right. I never was a fan. I didn't go visit him for the first eight years. I only went to visit him when my son said, Mom, I want to touch my dad. Now, I let him talk to his son every single week, every week. I was all about fostering the connection. And I realized that I unconsciously was trying to hold myself and stay unavailable.

Protect yourself.

Protect myself until he came home. And on December 12th of 2014, I called him after leaving the Steve Harvey Show. And on the Steve Harvey Show, I was supposed to coach a woman on relationships, which I got, I could do that.

Relationships, money.

Got it, got it.

Got it.

At the last minute, she didn't show up or she canceled. And the woman to replace her, they asked me to coach her on weight loss.

Ooh, zing.

And to drive home the point that you open with, I sat in the green room keenly aware that I wasn't qualified to coach her. I would be incongruent if I did. So in the green room, I'm having a slight meltdown. Not good for the.

Couple million people are going to watch me be incongruent.

Well, not good for the expert coach to have that.

Exactly.

And I wasn't willing to be incongruent. I wasn't willing. I wasn't willing. I never opened up health and wellness as a deep dive conversation. I never. I said there are four quadrants of your life that you need to master. I talked about all four and I said in the fourth quadrant, I'm in that. I'm living that. I'm working through that. The health quadrant. The health quadrant. So here we are at the only focus on this quadrant. And so I committed to her that I would take the journey with her.

Ooh, interesting.

I put myself out there. I bust myself out. I exposed myself. I said, I can't coach you. Talk about accountability.

Oh, I said, and Steve's sitting there.

Steve's probably sitting there looking at me like this.

You sure what you're about to take off?

She's over there and he's looking at me like, what are you doing?

Yeah.

And I said, I can't coach you. I'm over 200 pounds. I don't qualify to coach you. But what I do qualify to do is walk with you. And I said, so let's do it together. Every Sunday I'll meet you on the phone. I said, and how about we come back here in five months and I commit in five months, I'll be 47, 45 pounds.

Wow, that's a ballsy commitment.

I feel, you know, play big or go home.

Of course.

And so I did that and I went home and I sat still and I said, what do I do? And I started sitting on why did you put the jacket on? And I tracked it back, tracked it back. Oh my God. Because before then, I was an athlete 13 years. I mean, I was, I did track, I swam competition, I was a state champion and city champion and freestyle and swimming. I did water ballet for seven, five years. And so why did I put the jacket on? I looked at it and so it was because of him and because of my emotions around him. So I called him and we talked for an hour and a half and I told him everything. I told him how much I loved him and I waited on him. I told him that I released him at 10 years, but I didn't know how to release the weight and that I've been waiting, you know, I just said everything. He cried, I cried, we cried. I sat with my son. I told my son, I cry, he cry, we cry. And then I was okay to take my jacket off. And then people asked, what'd you do? Then I did everything I've been hearing for the last 20 damn years do.

I just did it.

You ate better, you worked out.

I was consistent. I ate smaller meals. I didn't work out for an hour a day. I didn't do that because an hour a day would cost me two hours a day in time. And two hours a day would cost me around about $40,000 in money. And time was my highest commodity. Right. And so I consistently agreed to work out 15 minutes a day. And because 15 minutes I can do, and every win built on the next win. Every day I completed my goal, which built momentum. I did it. It was just 15 minutes, but I did it. So I was consistent. The length of time wasn't my big deal. It was the consistency. Traveling on planes. I was on the road 321 days.

Oh my goodness.

The same year I lost the weight.

Wow.

The same year I lost the weight.

It's not easy to lose weight while you're traveling.

No. Eating all the junk food. No, no, no. And so, I ate smaller meals. I made my meals in the morning while I was at home. I stayed home for 90 days. I didn't travel, wouldn't travel for 90 days to jump start my weight loss, because I had to get off 45 pounds before... Five months. And so, I was radical. I made all my meals, small meals, and I set them aside. I look like all the little athletes like you. All athletes make meals, and then I worked out. I slept in my sweatpants. Sweats sometimes. I took a shower and got in my sweats so I can get out of bed.

That's the old track days. That's the old high school college workout days.

Go home, 5 a.m. wake up.

Right, right.

I can't even think about getting dressed. I'm gonna wake up dressed. Yeah. And then I didn't use any weights and I didn't go to the gym. I used my body weight. I used my car. I had enough of it. I jumped jacks, jump jacks, and lunges. You need. And crunches. I just said, said everything I have. I just believed what every trainer said. Everything you have is right here. So that when I did start traveling, I was okay. Yeah, I conditioned myself. You have the tools to use in the.

In your hotel room or whatever. Oh, listen, let me tell you, I got radical.

I was lunging through the airport. Sure. Yeah. I don't care if people see me.

You can call me crazy.

15 minutes. You gotta get it. You can call me crazy. I don't care if you call me crazy. Yeah. Do you understand? I'm fighting for my life now. Yeah. And so I went. back to Steve Harvey in five months and I wasn't 45 pounds lighter. I was 57 pounds lighter. There you go. And she was 56 pounds lighter. And then it became a big conversation like thousands and thousands of women began to follow me.

Interesting.

And so I publicized my workouts. I wasn't trying to be a workout guru. I'm not that. People still tell me, let's do a program. I'm not the teacher. I'm the Yeah, I'm clear. Y'all go follow that.

I mean 10 years after I mastered it.

I don't even need to do it. I just need, I'm the student. Watch me as a student. I got ugly workout pictures of me online still on Facebook. I got, you know, early morning, you know, crazy shots. And then people want to do shows with me, television shows with me. I don't want to make any money off of it. This was for my liberation. This is so I can tackle all four quadrants. Do you know how powerful I feel today? Do you know? Right, I'm completely in the line. Thank you. Amen. so hopefully humble and grateful, of course, you know, but now, now, now game on. Yeah. Game freaking on now. Now, game freaking on now. Now I'm going, man, I, I built a multi-million dollar business, wrote seven best sellers, traveled the world. All of that carrying two over 210 pounds. All of it.

Almost as big as me.

All of it, right now. What do I do?

Now?

Watch out.

And what is the price you had to pay to get to a place of removing the band-aid and shedding the weight and shedding the psychological, you know, pains that you were holding on to that held you back from the next level?

So if anyone can relate to me on this one, I just want you, whenever you see this, I just want you to blow up the chat box, blow up the any way you can reach out to us. I realized, and if this is you, just let me know that I'm not by myself. And we like to use on my campus, Yana, Y-A-N-A, meaning you are not alone. So y'all just Yana me. Just let me know. I, you know, I'd already made millions when I lost the weight. I had already been on Oprah, Larry King, Steve Harvey. I'd already been on all that. I've already been international for years. I'd already written, I had six best sellers, right? So I can't tell you that it stopped me from being any form of successful in the external world, in the external world, in the hour, I don't know. I mean, like, who's past Oprah, right? Like, I didn't know. What it cost me was who I knew myself to be in the dark of the night, that who I went to bed with, When I went to bed by myself, it cost me the fear of saying, if I die in this big body, I would have played myself short. It had nothing to do with you, Lewis. It had nothing to do with the world. It had nothing to do with the secret. I felt like I'd already done everything I've been serving big. It had to do with, I dare me, leave this planet and let myself down.

Wow.

Like this. It was all me. It was before I die for me. I want to see me the way I know myself to be.

So this wasn't a look yourself in the mirror and ask myself, have I done enough with my skills and talents for the world? Because you were doing that. You were showing up every day, 10, 12, 16 hours, working hard, serving for 20 years. It was, am I going to be happy with myself if I die right now?

Listen. Can't nobody grind harder than the sister. If you grind equal with me, let's do it. But like Will Smith said when he.

Was being interviewed once, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm about to die on the treadmill. I'm gonna die on the treadmill. I'm gonna die on the treadmill. So I had no wonder. There's no more time anybody can give. I was opening the doors and shutting the doors. I would turn the light on in the morning. I would turn it out at night. I promise you, no, it wasn't that. It was, I know that I can touch more of me for me, not for anybody else. I had no guilt if I left this planet and I had only done what I did, only one kind of, I'm cool, I played full out for you, but I didn't play full out for you.

Oh, man. That's a strong-- but you knew that for 20 years. You knew that.

I didn't know it for 20 years because for the first seven or eight, I was getting the response I wanted. Women liked me. I didn't get that.

Men liked you for your skills and your intelligence.

Women didn't feel intimidated by me. I went for years with women just kind of like, what's up? Who she think she all that? And I was trying to make them like me, trying to dim my light so that my light wouldn't be too bright for anybody, right? But I didn't know I was doing it. And then in the relationships, when women say there are no good men in the world, I say, I don't know where you've been. I have dated some of the most amazing men on the planet. I just wasn't ready to get married or they weren't ready. I was in this crazy journey called, I'm gonna touch the world. And they're like, woman, you running too fast for me, I gotta go. But I met amazing men, but I met them inside of that body, that body. And so there was a false illusion of victory. You gotta hear what I'm saying, Lewis. Because so many of us are living in that right now, these hollow victories. I mean, it's a hollow, it's called a Pyrrhic victory, P-H-Y-R-R-I-C, named after General Pyrrhus. When General Pyrrhus won two wars, he turned to one of his generals and said, I can't afford to ever win again. And when his general said, why? He said, because in winning these two wars, I've lost my best generals and my best friends. They're all dead.

Oh.

And so from that was derived the phrase pyrrhic victory. And a pyrrhic victory is when the cost of the victory actually outweighs the victory itself. We see it in all the entertainers that we call successful, then they commit suicide, or all the people we call successful, and then they binge out and they go on an alcohol binge, whatever that thing is. You see it in their lives, it also can happen in ours. So for me, my pyrrhic victory was about 90 pounds. It gave me what I wanted, but the cost. So the cost for me was every time I looked at myself on video and it's only man, when your body is not the way you know it can be, and then you get popular and you get some form of celebrity and everybody wants to take a picture with you, and then everybody wants to post a picture with you of you, you get all these reminders. This is who you are. So I would, and I would bling it out. And then I just got tired of dressing it, blinging it, compensated for it. I got tired. I said, I'm done. And it was so crazy because when I lost the weight, I stopped wearing big earrings. I stopped wearing big necklaces. I was like, I don't want to.

Wear none of that stuff.

And then it was like, whoa. All that was a part of the costume so that you can feel comfortable with what you saw. And so, yeah, it was a journey. And again, this is wait for me. Is it finances for you? Is it relationships? Is it being nice? A lot of people say yes. They say yes when they want to say no so they could be liked.

I'm gonna ask, yeah, I'm gonna ask you an unpopular question.

Go for it.

The self-love movement of loving yourself as who you are in this moment and accepting yourself for who you are. I truly believe that we need to accept ourselves. We need to accept our past, what we've been through. We can't hold on to pain forever and we can't hold on to the baggage of the past and we've got to accept where we are. But I'm always trying to improve where I'm at. And if I'm not fully happy with something, take a look in the mirror and ask myself, okay, what are the sacrifices, the prices I need to pay right now to see those improvements? It's going to take time and energy. You got to give something else up to get what I want. What are your thoughts on the self-love movement of, you know what? It doesn't matter if you're this or that, if you're broke or if you're 100 pounds overweight or if you're sick, you know, just love yourself and it's all good. What are your thoughts on kind of that vibe?

So.

I have a very clear opinion on it. I could not take Lisa to her next level of greatness in her body until I learned to just accept. I could not hate my body the way it was. and then do good for my body.

Ah, so you can't hate yourself and then do the work.

No, no, no. So I do align with it. I do align with it. However, hold on. Wait for it. Wait for it.

Right.

So, so number one, love, self-love is the soil. Self-love is the soil. So have your soil. But please, brother, sister, plant a daggone seed, then plant it and water it and give it some sunshine so you can do something. daily. So trust. Self-love is the soil in which you plant future contribution seeds in. And then daily grind. Hashtag the treadmill. Daily grind is the life in the water required to be of some use and some. Some possibility for those of us witnessing your life. So don't mistake self love with don't mistake complacency with self love. So self love says I'm whole and complete and enough with where I start, but hold me accountable to where I'm going.

Oh, so don't stay where I'm at right now and just be okay with it forever. Are you okay with where I'm at now? Accepted. This is what I've gone through. This is my challenges. This is my story. This is my problem. This is okay, now that I'm aware and I own the moment, what am I gonna do moving forward?

I'm enough in this moment. However, shame on me if I'm here in five years. Shame on me and shame on everyone around me who allowed me to do this sweet talking, this sugar sweet talking, whether it be self-love or whether it be I'm just standing still. When the secret came out, everybody was like, I'm going to sit and wait and manifest my life. What are you going to sit and manifest your life on that couch? All you're going to get is a big dent in that couch. And now you mad at the secret.

And mad at me.

No, no, no, no, no, no. Awareness, awareness plus action equals transformation. Please don't skip that plus action part, because action is the antidote for despair, Jon Bia says. Action is the antidote. anything that's not working in your life, you have to be in some form of action. Not thought, not thought team, not just thinking, not just talking, but action.

So people can out think.

They're like, oh, I've really been working on this. What you've been doing? I've been analyzing. No, you ain't been.

You ain't worked.

Strategizing, thinking.

I'm strategizing and communicating. Hold on. Action is the antidote for despair, Joan Byas says. Lisa Nichols says action is the prescription. for success. At the bottom line, self-love is the soil. Self-action is the path to progress and movement for you and those witnessing your life. And when you remember that your life doesn't just belong to you, that's. See, see, this is huge.

What does this mean? Your life doesn't belong to man.

Man, man.

And this is huge.

The man.

People need to bookmark this. They need to put it on repeat.

Man, let me just tell you, if my life just belonged to me and I knew it to be so, I wouldn't have done half the things I've done with all the discomfort it brought me, with all the inconvenience it brought.

Donuts all day, ice cream all night.

All the Pyerig victories, all the time lost. I'm talking just about the time that I have had to surrender. The chill time, the bubble bath time, the time that I've surrendered so that my life could be of contribution. Man, your life just doesn't belong to you. Your life belongs to those people who are going to cross your path. And because they crossed your path, not anybody else's, but because they cross your path, you inspired them to want to be a better person. You inspired them to want to express love in the way that they hadn't thought before. You inspired them to look another man, another woman in the eye. You inspired them to listen with open ears and an open heart because they crossed your path. Oh, your life doesn't just belong to you. You don't get to come in and leave without being responsible for those that you impact. And when you understand that, you're like, hold on. My life is, my life literally sends waves out into the universe. As a matter of fact, it sends waves to my cousins. It sends waves to my siblings. It sends waves to my lovers. It sends waves to the people around me and it impacts the way they choose to show up in the world. When you recognize that, then the question becomes, so what are you sending out? What are you doing with all your power? You're powerful. You're powerful. And leaders don't get to forget their power. See, I tell people, see, you don't get to have selective amnesia about the impact you have on the world. You are powerful. You are a unicorn. You are a gladiator. you are a change agent.

And.

And the more you own that, and then you do the healing required. See, I had to do the healing required to own that. Oh, that's a. That's like a dichotomy. So a leader has to heal, and a Healer has to leave.

What was the biggest thing you needed to heal? And what do you still need to heal now?

So much. No, I'm serious.

Yeah.

I had to heal not feeling like I was good enough because of my mocha skin, my full lips, my round hips and my curly hair. Feeling like, because I felt the calling on my life to help humanity, but I didn't think that I was qualified as a black woman to help humanity. I didn't feel like I would be listened to by humanity. I thought black America would listen to me, but no one else. So when I see myself in Croatia and in Kazakhstan and in Kyiv and in Ireland and in Kenya and in Dubai, I'm literally, whenever I go, I still go, Wow, I needed to heal my image that because I struggled in school, because I am to this day functionally disliked, functionally Because I didn't graduate college, that I wasn't qualified to be of any great impact. I can be of local impact to a bunch of little Black kids, but I wouldn't be of local impact to Black educators. I wouldn't be regional impact, and I sure heck wouldn't be national impact. Who am I to think I could be international impact? hecto. No little old me, South Central LA Harlem, Crip 30s, my neighbors kicked out of college because I didn't have the money. I didn't think that. So I struggled with the. I am. I am the right person for this assignment with all that I have and all that I think I should have had. Yeah, I'm the right person. I also struggled with Feeling like people would love me forever, meaning that I was worthy of long term. Like I would hear about people who have 25 year friendships and people who and I hadn't experienced that early in my career. People of my past had been were.

A part of my past.

I had and and this world of transformation was all these new people in it. you know, because it wasn't the climate. It wasn't the conversation that my friends were having. So I needed to find the people that were having the conversations like me, like you. I need to find the Jack Canfields. I need to find the Marcy Shymas. I need to find the Reverend Michael Beckwiths. I need to find. I need to find them. But I didn't know any of them a long time. And so I began to miss. No one knows me.

The.

No one knows Lisa Shantae.

The old me.

Yeah.

No one knows that.

They know me in the last two years.

Yeah. Yeah.

And no There's no one there for my bridge. For my bridge. And so I begin to wonder, will I ever have long-term friends? Will I have long-term relationships? For a long time, that was a very silent worry of mine. Like, I want someone who just knows my history. I can leave the table. I would always say this to my friend, I want to leave the table. And if the waiter come, I want someone at the table to know what I eat. I go, it's just that simple. It was just that simple. And then I worried about love. As my career grew, I'm going to talk about the more successful Lisa. As my career grew, I began to feel like it was harder to find someone that could hold my light without dimming my light. I need I needed someone to be a container for my light without asking me to turn my light down. And that was a long journey. I'm 54 years old. I'm proudly 54 years old. And I've just entered into the love of my life just two years ago. And I'm grateful for every relationship. that helped me get there. Every relationship gave me something. Either gave me a gift or gave me a lesson.

Wow.

And I'm grateful for them.

And.

I would never do this, but I'm one of those weird people that I think it's an anomaly what can be done. I could throw a party and literally invite my former relationships and they would all come and we would have a great time.

That is something to be said for right there.

That's how clean they are.

That's how- I wish I could say that about the past relationships I was in. I would like to be in that space, but I don't think they want to see me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's how clean I left them. Because one of the things that I made sure is that we left the relationship leaving each other's dignity intact.

That's nice.

And that was a priority for me. And so in the onset of the relationship, I'd say, I don't see an end to this. Like, I would love for this to last. And if it doesn't, Can we make a commitment to honor one another's dignity and leave our dignity intact? Because we may not be, we may be Mr. or Mrs. Right for each other, or we may be Mr. and Mrs. Right now for each other, and either is perfect. And so I opened it up with that. And so literally, if I had a party, my girlfriends all want me to, I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. But that, so that was a thing. And then the last thing I just have to say, because I struggled, between my love of my child and the love of my career.

That was a fear.

That was a pull. I felt like I didn't know. No one ever said they had both. Everyone talked about they having to choose. Everyone talks about having to choose between my career, my family, everyone talks about being out of balance. And so I adopted it. And so I started with a fear that somehow my son would suffer because I was living my dream. or somehow my dream would suffer because I'm a mother. And so my son, my son at 18, I remember, I don't know if you remember, they have the phones where you can put your, your Faye five in the phone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Early on.

And my son, when he was 18 or 17, he was talking to his cousins on the Faye five. And we have a very close-knit family and my cousins. My nephew said, why am I not in your faith five? Why are you only, why am I.

Not in your faith five?

And my son said, I don't have room. And he goes, Show me your faith five, man. Show me your faith five. And I could hear them in the background and he's showing my nephew his faith five and I can hear my nephew go, Dude, your mom? What is that about? And he goes, We cool like that. My son said, We cool like that. And it was my first sign that I didn't have to choose, that I made them both work. And so anyway, you asked the question, what were the three things? Those were the three things that I struggled with.

You know, I'm a big believer in visualization. And obviously in the Secret, that's something that was talked about. I haven't watched the Secret in 10 years when it came out, but I mean, this is something I practice as an athlete. to visualize my results before the game would happen, to see myself scoring the touchdown in the track meet. And I'm sure you did a lot of similar things. How important is visualization in abundance, but then also how important is taking action?

Right. So I have five visualization exercises in that book, just because it's so important. Visualization is a gift to your heart and your soul. It's a gift. Because if the idea is the seed. Visualization is the fertilizer. It's the fertilizer because when your thoughts are connected with an emotion, see you would visualize yourself winning and you would feel all the emotion that came with that. And all you're doing now is you're not chasing a foreign emotion. You know the feeling and now you're just doing what's necessary to get back to that feeling in real Exactly. And so what a good friend of mine, Vishen, the CEO of Mindvalley, who you know, I did a visualization with him. We were in Bali and he said to me afterwards, I never get emotional.

He doesn't get emotional.

Right, right, right. Well, he was like, I cried. I got emotional. He goes, I figured it out. It's visualization, a good visualization. brings in emotion. He was like, that's how you do it. And so I, I love doing visualizations because, and, and it's real important in the visualization. You can't see it over there. You have to see it right here. You gotta feel it right here. Like I am. It's all I am. I am. I am in my dream home. I am in my dream relationship. And then unpack what that looks like. But most importantly, unpack what it like. And when you have that emotion in this moment, all of a sudden you stir up something that I don't think will ever go back to sleep. It'll go, okay, let's go get that. And what it really does is it sets up a state of cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is when you see something in your mind and you see yourself in a way that your behaviors are not currently leading to, so your mind becomes disrupted and it goes, okay, can we get there?

I'm not there right now.

I'm not there right now. And that's not comfortable. Your mind wants to literally be congruent what it thinks is what you're doing, what it thinks is what you're doing. And so when you set up a constant and abundant thinkers like you and I, we do it unconsciously. We're constantly keeping ourselves in a state of cognitive dissonance, meaning, okay, what else? And I'm seeing Lisa over there and I'm going, okay, let me go. While being grateful for my now. It's not in that I'm gonna be whole and complete when I get over there. I'm whole and complete now. I just know I'm supposed to be over there. So let me do what's necessary to get over there. And let me evict any behaviors or characteristics that are stopping me and let me adopt any new ones that I need.

Right, right. How does someone discover their unique calling? Because you talked about that in the book, discovering your unique calling. What if people are like, I don't even know what I want. I know I want to be out of the place I'm in. I want to be abundant, wealthy, healthy, great relationships.

Right.

But I don't know what my purpose or calling is right now.

I think that people put too big of a notion on purpose in that they think that it has to look like a Nelson Mandela or a Mother Teresa or Oprah or you or I. And a lot of times what you're really good at is right in front of you. What you're really great at is right in front of you and to recognize that your calling and your purpose can change. That it can change. You have a long life life time. It's not going to be the same calling the whole time. And so allow yourself to evolve, allow your purpose to evolve. What's that thing you do effortlessly that you give no credit to? Because you're, you're, you're just looking past, oh, it can't be that because it's not hard. Well, how about it doesn't have to be difficult? How about the fact that you're a great listener? How can you take that and use that and expand it and, and don't compare yourself to someone else. Comparison, I think Benjamin Franklin said, comparison was a thief of all joy. When you look left or right, people are always comparing me to Oprah Winfrey or Iyanla Vanzant or Les Brown or Tony Robbins. I said, listen, if you want me to give you Oprah or Iyanla or Tony or Les, I'm always going to 1000% fail you. But if you're ever interested, I do a damn good Lisa Nichols. I do a good Lisa Nichols. And so when you look at what are my gifts? What are my unique gifts? I knew very early on I was a gifted speaker. I wasn't certified as a gifted speaker. I haven't passed any courses as a speaker. Matter of fact, the last time I took a speech class, I got a D minus. And my speech teacher told me, Ms. Nichols, I recommend you never speak in public that you get a desk job. That was in my freshman year of college, the last speech class I took. So a lot of times, your gift and your purpose, you've discounted discounted it, either because someone else discounted it or what's more common is you don't know how to monetize it.

Yes.

And sometimes the greatest gift you have to give is not for fee, it's for free. You watch people like you and I and go, well, why can't I get paid for it? Well, not every gift you're supposed to get paid for. Nelson Mandela did not get paid for leading 27 years when he got out of prison. He got paid after that, but he was a great leader while he was in prison. And Martin Luther he was a, he, he got paid from the church, but his right, his fight for civil rights, that was a free one. And he paid the highest cost. And you can go on and on and on to the, some of the greatest leaders, Mahatma Gandhi. It wasn't a paycheck. Right. And so, and I'm not, and, and I know we're scaled down to our version, but don't get attached to having.

To get paid for your gift.

Right.

Yeah. I started this podcast as a way of, I'm gonna do this for free for a year. I'm not going to take any sponsors. I'm not gonna I'm not going to sell anything. I'm just going to create and facilitate great conversations. And that's it. And now the money is coming in because of how it's impacted people's lives.

And your intention was in the right place.

Yeah, but I wasn't like, how can I do this right now to make money? It was, how can I serve the maximum number of people?

That right there. That when people live in a place of servant leadership, my grandmother said when I was 24, if you leave and how you can serve the most people. When I sit with my team, I go, how can we serve more people? How can we serve? Last year, we were able to touch 30 million people. And that's all our question. Now, as we serve, our platform gets broader. But how can we serve? Don't tell me how we can make more money. I'm not interested in that. I'm sure how can we serve more? Because if I do the right thing for the right reasons, everything I need will be a byproduct of that. Exactly. So I think we get caught up in, you know, society allows us to have us, has us looking at possession. And so we begin to measure our joy and our abundance on possessions. I have a friend who's worth, he's worth $14 billion. How do you even write that? I had to write it down so.

I could see it.

How many zeros is that? Right, right, right. A lot. He's worth $14 billion. I checked my email on my phone before we started and he's on my phone asking me, please come visit me because he's lonely. He's rich, but he's not abundant. He flew from Canada to come to my house for New Year's just to be around people who were celebrating and wanted nothing from him. And so don't pursue the things. Pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come, I promise you.

Is there a big struggle right now? besides the health, is there like a psychological or belief that you're still limited or have some limiting beliefs around? Or is it just all timing? It's just like, you know, it's all happening. It's just going to take the time it takes.

And, no, I mean, I really want to find an answer for you because I believe that when people are on a platform of leadership and, and we, I'm not saying I'm a superhero at all, but sometimes people tend to give us a cape. I believe it's important for you to understand what we're still working with. So I want to work hard to find something for you. You know, I believe that everyone, the person looking at me and looking at you right now, they deserve that. There's no arrival place for me. I am a constant stream of motion and acceptance and growth. And now, I said 17 years ago, Louis, I want to live on white sand beaches and I want to have blue clear water 17 years ago.

Wow.

With no indication of how I would get there with no indication that it would happen. And so when this occurred, this was the day I moved, this was the day I moved. The day I pulled my truck up to the house, we just walked right across the street and took a picture.

And.

I've lived there now for six months. And I would just watch the water out of my window, but I didn't give myself permission to go in the water.

Why not?

You asked me what I'm still working on.

You asked what I'm still working on. I'm still working on this.

And so I began to process myself. Why are you not-- you- can't get any closer?

You can't-- you-'re 30 feet away, yeah.

And-- oh, by the way, and you're on quarantine. So ain't nothing happening. Like the beach, it's empty, it's quiet.

You don't-- no one's gonna look at you. No one's judging you.

No one's-- you- can wear your bathing suit. You can even wear your two-piece, right?

So.

So I start processing. What is going on? Why? And I realize that I. And I'm looking for another picture. I've traveled all around the world, right? I've been on every continent that can be populated by humans.

Right? Right. I mean, like.

And then I realized that a lot of times I'm at Resorts and. I don't get in the water.

Right.

I was once in Jamaica and I was in the presidential suite. It was mind-blowing. It was probably 5,000 square feet of space at the top of this hotel. And on my balcony, there was a jacuzzi on my balcony. And if you look out, out onto the beach, you would see this cabana bed sitting out in the water. And I would look at it every day, like, wow, that bed is amazing.

Wow, that bed is-- you- wanna lay in it?

I never went down to the bed, but I wanted to lay in the bed. But I only looked at the bed from the balcony. That bed is amazing. Get this, the last day, three hours, before I'm to leave for the airport, I go down, I walk on the beach. I walk to the cabana bed. I just want to see it up close. There's a sign at the edge of the cabana bed. It says, this space reserved for Lisa Nichols.

Shut up. I did not say that.

It came with the presidential suite.

Oh, the whole time it was yours.

The whole time. And I never got in it.

Oh, man.

Because I assumed from the balcony, it couldn't be for me. And so on my birthday in May, I finally gave myself permission to go and get in the water. It was a liberating day.

Wow.

Wow.

And the reason why I realized I wasn't in the world.

Four months later.

The reason why is because I, the fact that I had this life had already blown my mind and I didn't know, could I participate? Because I've always watched other people on TV who didn't look like me, who didn't come from my neighborhood, who maybe wasn't dyslexic. who surely didn't get kicked out of college. So I began to go unconsciously, Louis, still working. You asked me, am I still working on stuff? I'm gonna be honest with you. Please, y'all, don't judge me. We all working on our stuff. That still, when I bought the house, moved to the Bahamas, got the great family, did the work, I still go, oh, you get to get in the water. Now, get in the water is my story. What's yours? So I talk my family, my bonus family, and to getting in the water with me, I just got to show it to you.

Wow.

Put them in the water, too.

Wow. What a beautiful family.

My bonus kids, my man.

Wow.

So I'm still working to now, I worked hard to get here, and now it's to take it in and enjoy it. That's my work.

This is powerful. And I had a question for you about this. We're like brother and sister because I'm a functional, I love how you call it functional dyslexic because that's how I am as well. And I was in the bottom of my class all through school and no matter how many tutors I had and.

Yeah, I get it.

It was just graduating high school was a huge success for me.

My brother from another mother.

Exactly. And you talk about, you know, I'm hearing you talk about owning your, how you feel and finding your joy. and a lot of people, I do this as well, and a lot of people do this where we, we have a lot of good things happen, but then we don't celebrate it because we know other people are suffering or are struggling. And then we have bad things happen and we say, oh, but other people have it worse. And so I should be grateful for what I have, this comparative joy and comparative suffering. How do we own the moment, it's quarantine. Who cares if everything is working well for you and the world is crumbling? Should we own it or be embarrassed by our success? And when things are horrible, should we own it and be in our suffering or say, you know what? We have a lot of things to be grateful for. What do you think about this?

So I love Benjamin Franklin's statement. He says, comparison is and will always be the thief of all your joy. So that's number one. that, that when you have a false sense of worth because you're stepping on someone else's breakdown, like, oh, I'm better than you. That's a false sense of worth. Or when you are minimizing your greatness because someone is greater. My girlfriend Susie has this great story. She talks about she and her girlfriends were on a yacht in San Diego and they got their martinis, they got their glasses, the sunshine and music is going and they're on there. I don't know, they're 55 foot, yeah. Right. And it's nice and they're sailing through San Diego. She said, and she had her shades on laying back and all of a sudden this shadow comes over her face and she opens her eyes to this 155 foot yacht and the ladies up there and the ladies up there drinking and she kind of looks down and goes, hello. And she said she felt 100% complete and whole and happy until So that yacht came, right? And she said, the woman didn't try to take her joy, she handed her joy to that woman, right? And so comparison will always steal your joy one way or another. The false sense of grandizing you on someone else's neck. I always say, can you be as tall as you need to be without.

Standing on my neck?

Like, can you do me that favor? Can you stand in your greatness without standing on my neck?

Neck.

Right. And so that's that. That's every time you say, but we're not as bad as such and so you just put your foot on someone's neck to stand just a little bit taller.

Right.

And so. And then the other part to that. So when you're feeling great and when you're feeling joyful, what I like to do is I like to show awareness. I want a hundred percent of my joy. I want a hundred percent of my Bliss. I want to be able to share it, but I want to share it with awareness. So to me, that's one of the things.

What does that mean with awareness?

I'll give you an example. So listen, I'm a C student, so I'm always gonna give examples.

Hey, I'm gonna compare myself to you. You're better than me.

And I'm gonna always give examples because I needed examples when I was a C student.

I hear you.

So it looks like this. Not everyone is having the same experience that I'm having, and I honor that, and I celebrate that. and I want to celebrate the fact that right now I am in the most fulfilling relationship I've ever experienced. I want to celebrate the fact that I. I found love in a way that I never even knew love existed. And I understand everyone is in a different place, and I honor that. I just wanted to give light and celebrate where I am right now. And so it's compassionate, a compassionate celebration.

Yeah, right?

So if you can celebrate with compassion, I don't want to minimize my light. I don't want to dim my light. I don't want to turn my light down. I don't want to walk in the room and go, hold on.

Let me turn my light down.

Because your light isn't bright. No, that's my life. I want to bring it in the room. But I want to honor you, and I wanna. I want to acknowledge your light may not be the same wattage as mine. And so it looks like that. Like everyone's in different places right now. I just want to celebrate where I am. I want to expose it. I want to say it out loud. And so you do that. The other side is when life is hard and life is, you know, it's hitting you.

You've lost all your money. You're going through divorce. You're gaining weight in two weeks and, you know, everything's down.

Yeah.

So I think one, you got to watch out because you can be a dark light vortex. So you come in and you shine your dark light. You pull everyone into your dark light and all of a sudden everyone's swirling with you. I go, watch out. Watch out, make sure your swirl is not the toilet bowl. Like make sure so you're not swirling with someone inside misery. And so there's a responsibility. And to me, I sandwich ugly stuff. I sandwich the ugly. I'll do the sandwich effect. I don't have a better name for it. Do the sandwich effect. I grew up on sandwiches as a child.

So sandwich effect.

Sandwich ugly with possibility. This is how it sounds. It's not gonna always be this way. But right now, I feel like I'm in the darkest place ever. I feel miserable. I feel angry. I feel lonely. I feel frustrated. I'm always feeling like I want to scream. And I know that I am not taking out real estate in this location.

Oh, I know you're just renting it.

I know that this is a rent and not even a rent to own that if this is a stop sign, I'm gonna do a rolling stop. I don't even want to fully stop here.

Give me the ticket on the way.

Man, but I sometimes I left my door buying the ticket. I'm gonna get a ticket. I'm all right with it. And so you sandwich it. If you got to share hard news. I was just on the interview just now. I told you all white leaders and they said, teach us. And I said, okay, I'm gonna share some news. First, I want you to know that we are going to get through this. that we are going to be a better human race because of this, that you are to be celebrated because you signed up for this call. Now, this might hurt a little bit. And then I gave them insight. And then on the back end, I said, I'm honored to sit here with you as your sister. I'm honored to co-create what a future looks like. I'm honored to be on the planet at the same time as you. This is the beginning, not the end, more to come. sandwich, right? So if you're gonna deliver some dark energy, put it in a sandwich. Make sure you sound you a possibility. Even if you don't know what the possibility is, just say, I know there's better to come. It's my Birthright. It's my Birthright to have joy. It's my Birthright to have abundance. It's my Birthright to experience healthy love. That's my Birthright right now. I am not having that experience, but I'm going to hold on to the that it's my birthright.

How do we remind ourselves and actually believe in abundance for ourselves when all the evidence points in the other direction of scarcity, lack of, not worthy of, like, how do you convince yourself? How do you trick yourself? Is this a hack? Is this a, okay, I say this in front of the mirror every day, but I'm not making any money and I'm still.

Right, right, right. So I'm gonna be honest with you. For me, it's a part of a spiritual practice. It's a part of understanding that your mind can't contain all the things that are happening in the universe right now. Like and if you think that all that's happening in the universe is happening between your ears and you understand it, then that's a very ego-centered and a very limited universe, right? And so my faith, that's number one. My faith is, you know, having faith in what you can't see, right? So I'm not looking at all the physical evidence. I'm not looking at that. because physical evidence is just a manifestation of people's decisions. So people are helping that there is a whole universe conspiring on my behalf that I do good. I believe in good. I want to bring good. So the universe is setting things up to support me because I'm operating in alliance with the calling on my life. That's how I know. Like, I know. Like, I know. I'm not asking for permission to believe that. I'm not asking for the way my day is going to confirm. See, I woke up with that awareness and then my day started. So, there has to be a part of you that's not triggered by what's happening. There has to be a part of you that's sitting in the what you know. I know, like I know, like I know, like I know. I'm not asking for permission to be used in this universe. I'm letting you know I'm going to be used in the universe for the highest good. Now, today is a bad day, but I'm gonna be used for the highest good. You got to stand on that. you got to let your knowing be like a pole that goes through the center of your head, Louis, all the way down through the center of your body, all the way down to the center of the earth. And no matter what happens, riots and outbreaks and, and, and quarantines and pandemics, you still got to say, hold on. This is impacting my life experience is not impacting my life purpose.

Yeah. so.

When you operate like that, then you stop reacting, and your emotions are not in a reaction State. Your emotions are in a. Okay, that came. Okay, how do we operate with it? Okay, that came. And you'll still spin out. Like, I spun. I I. When they told me I couldn't get on the plane, I was like, okay, hold on. But then. I begin to search for my grounding.

Yes.

I begin to search for my center. I begin to search for my calm. And so you have to know where to find those things and how to go back and get them. You have a right to be upset, to be scared, to be frustrated, to be angry. You got a right to feel all those feelings. Please feel them so you know what they feel like. What you don't have permission to do, if you say you're a leader, a unicorn, change maker is to take up real estate in that feeling, to do a lease option by what you, what you don't get to do is stay in that state of emotion that moves you out of the, out of being impactful. And so, it's an, it's ongoing process.

Why do you think it's easier for people to stay in, I guess what's the, the terminology is like misery loves company. Why is misery easier to stay in than growth? You achievement, you know, consistency of positive things. Why do you think that is?

Because low vibration is the first vibration that if you're walking on stairs and it was 15 flights of stairs and you saw a party on the fifth flight and no one's at the 15th flight, you're like, why isn't no one at the 15th flight? Because the fifth flight was easier to get to. It requires less work. It drains your energy. It drains more energy but requires less work to think on a low vibration. Every single one of us that are in a forward moving conversation right now, we didn't land there accidentally. So you can slip into toxic conversation. You can do nothing and be average. You can do nothing and be average. That's why it's crowded. I'm not judging anybody, but average is crowded because it's It's level one. There's no elevator required. There's no stairs required. It's level one. There's no average, right? And so toxic thinking and non-growth thinking-- Gossip.

Right.

Gossip and hating and just constantly reliving and re-putting new energy into anger. That's at a lower level. Think of those of us who are about forward moving conversations. We have to climb. I have to be quiet for 10 days, Louis. I have to be quiet. Do you understand the challenge of that?

For you, Lisa, yes, I understand.

Yeah, I have to be quiet for 10 days. And then when I did my first Facebook Live, and if you go back in my May, you'll see it. I went back into my first Facebook Live. I've never cried. I've never cried on Facebook like that. I've never cried, I've cried on stage like that, but I've never, I had so much emotion But I had already made my way to conscious thinking. And now I gave myself permission to speak. And even at that, I felt the pull. I felt the pull pulling me back into-- whew!

Man, I can level one.

Man, and I just kept going, no, no, no, no. Not on my watch.

No, no, no. Hold on.

Not on my watch. Hold on. But when I tell you on my ankles, on that first Facebook Live that.

I did on my-- All the negative comments are this-- the negative comments-- the.

Judgment-- all the hurt, all the fear that I had for my son and just angry that I'm still fearful for my son to drive. And so all of that, all of that was coming up. And so you ask why do people do it? Because it requires less work. And we do it in we're communal people. So we love to do things and we love to get people to co-sign with us. and negative thinking is cancerous. And so it spreads effortlessly. If you do nothing to cancer, it's going to spread, right? But if you do nothing with positive thinking, it doesn't spread. You have to get up and shovel and scoop and plant and pull up the weeds and plant new seeds and get the water and water it. you got to do all this stuff for positive. So, yeah, people decide, I'm just gonna hang out here in the negative world. And then they watch successful people and wonder, why can't I have that? Well, let me just tell you something. Your mindset is birthing your life experience. You cannot have a life in a castle with a mindset in the doghouse.

Oh, dang. that's the truth right there, Lisa.

You can't have a life. I wanna have a life. I wanna live it.

Say that one more time. You can't have a what?

You can't have a life in the castle with a mindset in the dog house, in the dog pound. Like you, you, right. You can't, you, you, it's incongruent. You ain't congruent. When the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two different directions, you ain't going nowhere.

When you align, call it, yeah.

When you align the tongue in your mouth to go in the same direction as the tongue in your shoe, now we can move.

Let's talk about the four E's. What is this principle of the four E's that you talk about in your book?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I like to break up my life in quadrants and I help my students. I do a lot of coaching. I do personal development and professional development coaching. And no matter where you come to me, whether you come to me for personal development or whether you want to turn your passion into profit and this professional development and business development for entrepreneurs, we go over the four E's because abundance is holistic. It's a holistic experience. So the first is enrichment of self that you are only going to go as far as you think you're worthy. I can push. You can push. You can. You can have the greatest product. But if you don't feel worthy, you will work hard to sabotage that relationship. You don't know you're doing. You don't know you're doing. You think these are the things I need. And you're driving that guy away. You're driving that woman away because your self-worth says they weren't gonna stay forever anyway. Or self-worth around money. You have a cap that you feel like you're worthy of a million dollars. You will always get to 999,000 and you will stop because your self-worth says it. So enrichment is number one.

What's a good exercise or process that we can follow on a daily basis, maybe something simple to enhance our enrichment.

Absolutely.

Worthiness.

Absolutely. I did this for six months, every single day, right after I brushed my teeth. And it's the I see you exercise. And you get in the mirror now, it is not necessarily really simple because you're dealing with yourself.

Of course.

And as complicated as you are, will be the definition. Well, the mechanics of it are simple. The mechanics are very simple. Yes, I appreciate that distinction. You get in the mirror and you complete three different sentences. You want to write this down. The first sentence, you look at yourself and you say your name. So you say, Louis, and you complete this is I'm proud that you. And find seven different things every day to celebrate yourself for. Seven different. Each day you can do the same thing you did the day before. but each day do seven different things to be proud of. The second sentence is gonna knock you down a little bit. It's gonna come from your gut. Louis, I forgive you for and cut the shackles to blame, shame, guilt, regret and anger. In that sentence, you cut those five shackles. Not the first day, maybe not the third day, but by the 21st day, by the 13th day, you'll feel some relief. So, Louis, I forgive you for and go back five years, 15 years, 20 years. Do that. Forgive you that for that thing don't nobody know about. But you go ahead and cut those shackles, because if you can still think about it, it's still in your energy space. Yeah. And then the third sentence is, Louis, I commit to you that before you make a commitment to anybody else throughout your day, you make seven commitments to you. So the first sentence is, I'm proud that you. You're celebrating yourself first. We are under celebrated as a, as a society. We look for acknowledgment. They interviewed 100 executives that all made over a quarter of a million dollars and said, would you like a 5% raise next year or would you rather be told thank you more often? 100%. 100% said, keep your money. I'd rather hear thank you. So we're under-celebrated. But first, celebrate you. Be the example. When I was on Oprah, when she said, what do you do? I said, I recognize that I'm the example of how the rest of the world is supposed to treat me. And it's my to give the world the best example of how I like to be treated. So celebrate yourself, forgive yourself, cut the shackles, and then commit to yourself before you commit to anyone else. That right there, powerful. That right there will begin to fill your cup up to get to your saucier.

I love that. Where did you start to learn that process? Was that something you just started to practice yourself and started looking in the mirror and trying different things?

You boy, you asked the question. I was in a relationship engaged to be married and it became abusive. I was emotionally abused and then he picked me up and threw me three feet across the room and choked me until I passed out. I don't tell a lot of people that. And I was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder. And my mother asked me to go to the doctor, strongly recommended I go to the doctor, drug me to the doctor. After the assessment of me in Manhattan Beach, my doctor said that I was clinically depressed. And I said, How did I get here? Me? That don't even fit with my name. I was head cheerleader at my high school. I was the captain of the track team. I'm always the person to get people going. It didn't fit. How did I get here? I don't know if you've ever found yourself saying, How did I get here?

Get here?

I was sitting on the table in the doctor's office saying, how did I get here? And when she wrote me the prescription, she handed me the prescription and I read the prescription and it said Lisa Nichols Prozac. It was like I was looking at a foreign statement, my name and Prozac. And I asked her, I said, can I try something for 30 days? Because I I realized I was just sad. I lost me. I had lost me in him. I had lost me in being a mother. I had lost me in being the mother of a son whose father was in prison and trying to hide that shame and then trying to make this man happy and then beginning to fend for my life. I lost me. So I needed to discover me. I needed to remind myself who I was. And so I just realized I didn't celebrate me. I was beating myself up. I was really mad at me and I was showing up for everyone else. So I just made up these sentences and I did it to rescue myself, to turn my crawl into a walk. And I ultimately was able to turn my crawl into a walk and my walk into a run and my run into a sore. But it started as a crawl. So I don't offer the how I got to that exercise often unless someone asks.

Thank you very much, darling. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, I'm opening up. I've long since learned four things. To me, this is the road to true freedom. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to protect. I have nothing to hide and I have nothing to defend. That your perception of me after I tell my truth is actually none of my business. My perception of me, that I go to bed as whole and complete as I woke up before I check how many likes I have on Facebook, that I like me first, and every other like is bonus.

There you go.

Like it. That was a long road to get to. Long road.

Sure.

Long road. Yeah.

We probably have to constantly be reminded of it, you know?

And then when I get in that place, and then when I, when I live like I'm forgetting, you have to have accountability partners stashed in the corners of your life. And you have to give them an assignment on your high day. You have to give them an assignment on your high day. If I look like I'm slipping, well.

My ego's in the way.

Get in my face. Get in my face.

Right.

Get in my face and remind me of the man, of the woman I said I wanted to be. Don't let me off the hook for the 2020 version of me.

Because we're humans, it's gonna happen. As long as we're breathing, we're gonna.

Be out of Integrity at some point. Come on. Your Humanity's gonna get in the way.

Your ego or ladies, your She-Go is.

Going to get hooked. Exactly. Absolutely. Your resentment, your smallness, your smallness. It all fits in smallness. I'm human. And so I I'm. The best thing I did was to keep people around me to help. me accountable to the woman I said I want to become. Sure.

That's great. I love that. That's why I have a lot of people from the Midwest who, who work with me on my team, support me, keep me grounded.

Right, right, right, right, right. Like, don't get too Hollywood. Exactly.

Don't get caught up in the lights and the cameras and the dad gone headset. Exactly. Exactly.

Absolutely. Okay. Enrichment. That's the first part. The second part is enchantment. Relationships are going to Define the quality of your life when you're on your bed and your last days, you're going to want to know who's going to be around you. Bottom line, you're not going to care about another podcast. You're not going to care about another sponsor. I'm not going to care about another book or the freaking New York Times best. It matters to us now. But the relationships in your life are going to determine the quality of your life. And so mind your relationships. And so in the book abundance now, I teach you how to, how to heal broken relationships that matter to you, how to get back level set. I give you this this great tool called, it's a conversation to heal a broken experience. So it's called a communication charter. I use it in my company, I use it at my house. And so just is about how do I keep great relationships? And then the third area is engagement, work engagement. You're going to spend so much time in work and we're so emotionally attached to our work and most of the time people are attached in such a dismal way that why would you have that dismal energy around something you're going to spend so many hours in? So I teach you how to shift your energy towards your work so that you no longer look at it as your work. Now it's no longer your GLB. Like everyone in my community, all everyone in my tribe, they no longer say they have a job. They say, I have an investor. And when you look at your job as your investor and you really rename it as your investor. Yeah. And it's Investing in your breathtaking future. It has the capacity to buy anything you want for your future. If you mind your money, right? Right. It can buy your freedom. And all of a sudden, you start treating your investor better and you're more excited about going. Matter of fact, you're great. You're grateful for your investment. I feel like work. Man, my investor was LA Unified School District. That was a hard place to be when it was a job. I'm just telling you. But as an investor, for three and a half years, I wrote myself a check. and I put in the memo line funding my dream. I didn't even know what the dream was. I wasn't even clear. I just knew whatever my dream was, it was gonna cost some money and I needed to pay and I need to have some money to pay and that if I was going to ask other people to invest in me, I had to be my first investor. Who am I to ask someone to put money my way when I didn't put money my way? Right. So I wanted to, I wanted someone for them to match. Just match my investment in me. I got 10 in. Can you put 10 in? I got 20 in. Can you put 20 in? And so when Look at your job, your work engagement as an investor into your breathtaking life, all of a sudden there's a different energy around it. And then the last one is money endowment. And to recognize more than the Dr. Seuss family and the Disney family and the McDonald's family and the Lawrence Welk family has a right to an endowment. When you get the understanding, and I really unpack it here where you kind of go, what? Like I'll make you do a couple of Scooby-Doo looks in the book, like, ro-ro-ro. when you look and go, I can do an endowment, like I, like, because we think it's for them. Remember, I started this conversation with abundance is for those people over there, especially when it comes to an endowment or a living Legacy, like in your book and the creating a legacy to recognize that. Wait a minute, there's a Lewis endowment and a Lisa endowment and a Don and John and Tanya endowment and fill in the blank here endowment. And I need to live my life. to set up my endowment. All of a sudden you become responsible for generations to come, responsible for changing the trajectory of your family's life. That's some bold stuff. When in your lifetime you do a needle point move for your family. In my lifetime, I was able to do a needle point move for my son. Like he's a Nichols child. He's one of many Nichols men. But that's a Nichols man who now knows what it feels like to to cook in Italy and in Tuscany and in Florence and in Venice and in Rome. That's a Nichols child who knows what it feels like to go surfing on the Gold Coast of Australia. That's a Nichols child who understands what it feels like to stand on the tallest mountain in Africa, like his life. I asked him this morning, I said, Jelani, can you, when you get married and have children, can you stay in California so Mommy can really see her grandchildren? He goes, Well, Mom, that's kind of restrictive. It's restrictive to stay in big California. It's like, Mom, it's kind of... 'Cause he knows the world. Yeah. His paradigm shift has occurred. He won't ever live like another, and he'll take everything he's learned and expand the Nichols male child experience. So in my generation, in my lifetime, I was able to change our family experience for him. And so I believe that we have a right to look at our legacy. and create a living legacy and then create a legacy.

How important is the thoughts that you say in your mind quietly every day and the words you speak out loud every day? How important are they together and which one is more valuable if you could only choose one? Negative thoughts but positive words? Positive thoughts, but negative words, or do they both need to be in alignment towards your mission and purpose?

Well.

So I'll start with this. Your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head. I'm gonna start with that.

Can we just speak for like 24 hours on this? I love this.

Right. Your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head. So if you said nothing but thought everything, your life is going to show up to make your thoughts true. So you have one job. You have one job in your life for you to make what you think about life true so that you're not wrong. You don't want to walk around wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You want to be right about the life you see. So you're going to work hard, work hard to produce the life that you talk about in your mind. Whether that life is no one loves me, I'm all alone, you can be in a group of people and you will think, I'm so alone.

And.

And you will feel alone and things will show up to co-sign your loneliness just because you're looking for that. And so if you start with. I'm gonna say the mind. Like, the mind is that thing. The mind is the core engine. It starts all things. It shuts all things down. When I start thinking something different, like, hold on, stop. I want to think something. I shut down that behavior. I shut down that outcome. When I birth something. I birth it in my mind. I focus on my mind. I see myself there in my mind. Before I got on with you, I was doing guided visualizations. I'm recording them. So people, and I mean, they're juicy. And I'm saying, see yourself here. Because if you can see it, and then the, the key is evoke the emotion as if you were there.

Yep.

Right.

And that's why people are, who are sad all the time are sad. because they're thinking of things that make them sad. And then the emotion follows the thought. So I'm gonna say everything starts with your thought, Louis. But let me just say this, when you speak, you speak your future into the world. You speak your future, whatever you say, whatever falls off your tongue, when you say, I am, right? The unconscious mind says, and you are so, whatever comes on the other side of that. And so you ask me a hard question, which one is most important? It starts with the thought. I think the thought is that that's where everything originates. And then you add a whole lot of turbo boost to it with your tongue.

Yeah.

When you align the two, and then you add to it, like the B12 of action. Action is like, action is like, that's the nitro. That's the nitro. Like, right. And I see so many people, they think it, they write it, they Journal it, they talk about it, and they do no action. And I go, you understand that the action is that. That's like, that's like putting the flower in the Sun because it requires Sun. And so. Yeah, yeah.

I had, this is a beautiful explanation. And I had a Navy seal on, I don't know, six, seven months ago. His name is Chad, and he, he talked about as a seal. He used the tongue as a rudder in a boat. He said, what you speak is going to lead you down, you know, the ocean or the river or wherever on the boat you're on. And so he never says anything negative out loud because it's so powerful. And the Navy Seals, you talk about how powerful it is. No matter how much pain they're experiencing in hell week and all this stuff they're dealing with, they never allow the tongue to speak something negative. Otherwise, they'll ultimately quit and give up.

Right, right, right, right.

It's too painful. to deal with what they deal with.

Right.

To then say, oh, I'm hurting, I'm tired. I can't do it.

Right, right. Don't, don't, don't speak that. Don't speak that into the universe.

You just.

Because whatever you speak feels like it expands. Of course.

Right.

Energy grows where energy goes. It expands. So speak life, speak possibility. There is not one dark situation that doesn't have a glimmer of light. It doesn't mean it's going to be convenient to see.

That's true.

And most of us are looking for convenient light.

Yes. Oh man, I want to speak for like five more hours with you, but I want to try to finish with a few final questions here.

Yes.

Even though I don't want to finish this. We'll have to come back on. Yeah, we'll bring it back on.

Let's do this again. I promise it won't be as challenging to get me in the future. I promise, my friend.

I want to talk about for a moment purpose, because I feel like right now we're seeing a lot of people with scattered purposes, especially with everything that's happening in the world over the last three months, six months. I'm seeing so many big influencers go through divorce who were publicly had great relationships. I'm seeing people's businesses go under because of they were in the events business or whatever, and they weren't able to adapt and shift. I'm seeing people scattered with their purpose and unclear.

Right.

How can people let's speak to this because I think it's two different questions one is how to truly figure out what your purpose is because I think it's seasonal youl know what your purpose was when you were 10 is different now. I agree it's seasonal so it's hard for it's a very broad question and I don't want to set you up with that because I think it's unfair when people ask you that for me, but if you know you think I know my purpose is like I know I'm meant to go do this thing I think I'm supposed to go after this. I feel like maybe I should try this thing, but I'm afraid. How would you coach someone who knows what they're supposed to do, or at least they think they do until they figure it out and it's not it or it is it? How do you coach people or encourage people to actually do it, to actually overcome that final hurdle of fear, whether they're afraid of failure, afraid of success, afraid of judgment, whether they've got a really good life and a really good job, but it's just not there. It's not pulling them to their ultimate purpose. Where do you, where do you share in that line?

So one of the first things I do is I ask them to please, let's quantify and give life to what does it cost you to stay still? Oh, so, you know, i'm a straight, no chaser kind of girl.

Right?

I'm not just going towards something. We also have to realize that to the same degree that you asked the weight loss, why did I do it? Because what would it cost me with all my success? What would it have cost me to stay in that 220-pound body? What's the cost? And so when I saw that, that's why I responded. If I didn't give myself this, right, I was very clear with the cost. so number one, I would say, what does it cost you? And I, and my students know me. I do this in my, in my workshop, my trainings for my, my Platinum level students and my coaches and students that are getting certified to be a Lisa Nichols trainer. And I, I ask them hard questions. What does it cost you to stay in that mindset? And they have to list it. And I say, what part of the price have you already paid? And they just get visceral. They're like, ah. and I say, so how long? I don't know. Whatever you want. How much longer do you want to pay that price?

Right.

Two years, 10 years, two months.

Or are we PIF? Are we paid in full now? Are we PIF?

I paid in full and I'm cheap paying.

Exactly. And so I use this metaphor that if you went to the store and bought a dozen eggs and you went home and you scrambled all the eggs and you cook the eggs and then you took the empty carton back to grocery store and you said, I'd like.

To buy these again.

The cashier will go, but you already bought them. Why are you buying it? Why are you paying for it again? That's what we're doing. We're paying for the same behavior over and over again. And so one, get clear that you're PIF, that you're paid in full for not being in action. Like, I've already paid it. I've been three years of wanting a dream and not have whatever your reasons are, right? Number two is, Let's talk about everything that happens if you fail. Let's just unpack that.

You go back to where you're at now.

Yeah, you'll-- actually, you never are back to where you are now because now you got some kind of lesson that you didn't have.

Experience. Yeah.

Right, you got some kind of experience. So what happens if you fail? Okay, great. So what lessons can we pull out of that? So now let's agree to if we fail, let's fail forward. So then let's define what does failing forward look like? so then we get very descriptive on what does failing forward look like? What will I do with the lessons? What will I? I'll document four to six things I did right and I'll document two to three things that I can improve upon and I'll implement them all on the next go round. So then we take out all the possibility and I even go as far as saying, so what if people judge you? I unpack it. What do people judge you? Let's say they like they talk really bad about you on social media for like a three days. Like it goes a while.

Well, then what happens?

Well, on the sixth day, I get up and do it again. So all of a sudden, I take all the. All the juice out of the. Out of the. Out of the balloon of all. We just deep dive into the darkness of your Illusions. Deep dive into the darkness of your mind. So, like, what? Okay, well, my. I'll lose this money. Okay, you lost. How much? Forty thousand. Okay, all 40, 000 gone. So now what? I don't know. Okay, well, let's. Let's. Let's figure out a plan, because you already lost. We lost the money. Let's let's now I can start saving again. I can do whatever. Okay, great. So then every all these big possibilities are now just situations. Then I go to so what can we do to eliminate the possibility of that occurring? So now we go into strategy. So I'm real big on strategy. I'm real big on milestones. I believe that you should not set a macro goal without setting several micro goals. So I live in micro goals. my number that I want to generate this year, I don't ever look at that after November of the year prior. After November 2019, I don't really look at it. I look at every monthly goal because that's my milestone. I know that goal and I know that goal is tied into my annual goal. So I don't have to worry about it. So I'm seeing if I'm on track, all track, all track, because I can handle that. That's palatable, right? So then a lot of times entrepreneurs set like big bodacious goals. and you have a release of endorphins when you first said it, but then it goes away because you don't even know how you're gonna get there.

Yeah.

And so I'm real big on my, like just on my campus, I'm real big on three things, a strategy, right? Milestones and accountability.

Yeah.

By when dates, by when, by who, right? And so make it doable, make it so you could see it, set it up in 90 days. And so I think that purpose, comes with a plan. And oftentimes we live, we leave purpose so big and so ambiguous that it feels difficult to touch. And so if you're supposed to inspire millions, okay, great. So for August, how many are you gonna touch toward that million? We're gonna get to millions. We're gonna get to million. But are we touching 5,000? Are we touching 50,000? And then by November, Did you grow your social media platform by 3% or by 30%? Like less something trackable and measurable so that you can see that purpose being fulfilled. So you can trust your picker. So many of us haven't had enough indicators, haven't had enough evidence that we've done it the way we thought we would do it or better, that now you're starting to pull back on trusting your picker. Well, you need evidence. If the court of law sends a man to prison because of evidence or lets a woman walk because of lack of evidence, then why not use evidence in your life that you're ready for such a time as this? But you have to set it up in such a way where you can see the trackable evidence.

What do we say to ourselves when we don't do self-care? What are we saying about how much we are worth to ourselves when we don't, when we delay that for months and years of taking care of ourselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not important enough to put at the front of my own line. You always are going to have a line of people to serve things to do. And you got one job to stand at the front of your own line. You're saying that I, you're training other people how to treat you. by the way you treat yourself. And so you are saying, you're saying that I still need to heal in the area of feeling important enough to prioritize my self-care.

Yeah.

You also may be saying and can be saying, I still need to learn how to fall in love with myself enough to take care of me. the way I take care of others. And that's so many people. You take care of those around you far better than you take care of yourself.

Yeah. Yeah.

This is beautiful. You, you shared last time. I want to see if your three truths are the same. So at the end of every interview, I ask people what their three biggest truths are. If this was their last day on Earth many years from now, and all of their content was, I had to go with them to the next place, and there was no more videos or books or anything of your message. but you could share three lessons to the world or three truths. I'm curious if your three truths have changed in this season, so I'll ask you, what are your current three truths?

You are greater than your circumstances. It's your birthright. It's your birthright to have joy and abundance. and love and fairness. And it's your responsibility to leave this planet a better place than it was before you came by your contribution. And those probably are all different, 'cause I'm a woman. I change. I mean I I change I change.

The last last time was You get a thousand do overs every 999 you get to press reset. Most valuable thing is to nourish people around you who love you and make your dash dance. Those are in alignment. Yeah, those are in alignment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. And the last question, which I'm gonna ask you here in a second, before I do Lisa, I want to acknowledge you for being an incredible human being of spreading positive energy. You talked about like our life is not for us, it's for other people as well. And every action, every word, every intention you set creates a ripple and you've made a powerful impact on me. You know, I know Ben is watching and listening, our producer, it's made an impact on him and the millions of people that are listening and watching right now. This is going to impact in such a profound powerful way. I acknowledge you for your consistent growth. the consistent effort and energy you take to work on your health and maintain and improve to having the relationship you want, everything. I acknowledge you. You're amazing and I'm so grateful we're friends and you're alive.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the acknowledgement. I'm a reflection of you, brother. We are blessed enough to find like unicorns like each other so that we we don't have to walk this planet alone wondering about our sanity because we play out in the universe. We don't play outside the box. We realize that there was never a box in the first place. So thank you for making the journey feel good. I'm always grateful for the company I get to keep while I'm here and while I'm up to what I'm doing. So I'm your sister in service, your sister in possibility. I want to find excuses to play together and call it.

Exactly. Exactly. I appreciate it.

You've always been a safe space. I love the space you create. It's judgment free, it's ego free, and it's full of intention of service.

And it's, that's the place I want to spend time.

I appreciate it. We'll do more of these for sure, frequently in the future. My final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Currently being willing to lift others as.

You climb.

Being willing to lift others as you climb, being willing to speak even if your voice shakes.

If you want more greatness in your life, then you got to check out this video right here.

Mental resolve.

I think that everybody needs that because when you have goals and dreams, there will be resistance. An airplane cannot fly without the resistance of air. Walt Disney filed bankruptcy seven times and had two nervous breakdowns.