866 The Journey of Living through a Loss

This is episode number 866. How to live without regret. Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Louis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. [Speaking of the danger] Thomas Campbell said, To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. And William Penn said, They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. This is an interesting episode that I think many of you will find extremely powerful. We've had so many amazing people on. to talk about this subject about loss, about how to live without regret, about the powerful lessons from losing loved ones. And I've talked about this many times where I haven't really lost that many people close to me. You know, I've lots of different friends from all over the world and different experiences of my life from sports to business to family and travel and all these different things I've done. I'm 36 years old. You know, I've interviewed over 500 plus people on the podcast. And I've been having these conversations about loss because I haven't really lost someone really, really close to me. I've lost some friends and grandparents, but I haven't, like, lost someone in a shocking way. And I wanted to dive into this topic a little bit more because I think sometimes we forget how sacred life is. We forget how valuable this moment is, this present moment that gives us the gift of being, the gift of experiencing joy, love, of friendship and the ability to go after our dreams. And we forget these things. And this episode, it's really about remembering the power of all of this. And we talk about the five regrets of the dying and how we can use them as a tool for living our best life. We talk about how a parent's legacy can influence your work and future relationships, what death can teach you about the heart's resiliency, how processing the spectrum of emotions is its own journey without a handbook, and how death can bring clarity to your life, intentions, and a better understanding of who you are and who you want to be. We've got some incredible people in this episode. Bronnie Ware, author of the top five regrets of the dying. We've got Grant Cardone, New York Times bestselling author who built a billion dollar portfolio. Lindsay Sterling, the violinist, singer, songwriter and YouTube sensation Chris Giliberti, New York Times bestselling author of the Art of Nonconformity and Whitney Cummings, who's a comedian, actor and producer, author who's appeared in multiple television shows and films, multiple standup comedy shows as well. And each one of them has a specific experience to talk about this process of how they became more of who they are through the experience of death from someone close to them, through the experience of loss, how they overcame these experiences, what we can learn from these experiences and so much more. I am excited for you to dive into this because I feel like this is something we don't talk about enough. It's something that we're afraid of. And the things that we're afraid of usually cripple us and have power over us. And I don't want them to have power over you. This is something that we're all going to experience. And I want to bring a little bit more peace, a little bit more understanding of the things that sometimes we can't understand. And that's what this is all about. And I really hope you find value out of this and please share it with a friend. If you know someone who's lost someone recently in their life, please send them this link, lewishouse.com/866 or just copy and paste the link on the Apple podcast or Spotify or wherever you're listening to this podcast episode. And share with me On social media, what yout Think, @LewisHowes. I would love to know your thoughts. And without further ado, let's dive into this episode on how to live without regret. You said there's top five regrets, and we can share those quickly. The first one is, I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life that others expected me. And I think so many people live what their parents want them to do, or their friends, or society, right?

Society, yep.

We see that a lot, and it's sad. We were just talking about this with another guest, Robert Greene, who's on, who's like, most people, they wake up at like 27 or 30, and they realize, like, I'm down a path that I don't want to do. Yes. They have like a quarter-life crisis or something, and they're like, what do I really want to do?

What did I want to do as a child?

Or wake up at 50 or 60 and say that. Yeah, it's even worse.

Yes.

That's even worse.

But it's true, it happens a lot.

So that's the first regret, the second one is I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Now, I'm curious about this because I actually believe in working really hard on a greater purpose.

Yes.

A purpose to impact the people around you, your society, your community, and to spread a message.

Sure.

And so I go back and forth when I read that, I'm like, what does that mean? Not work so hard. Does it mean like just chill out all day and relax with your friends and, you know.

No, I mean- you- gotta make a.

Living, you wanna make an impact, you wanna achieve certain things, right?

Yes, yeah. But it's also about working efficiently, which I'm sure you do. And it's about leaving space for other areas of your life and not making work your whole life. so it's not about working so hard that you don't put all of your passion into what you love doing, especially if you've done the work and you've got yourself onto a path where you're doing your life's work. And so, of course, we're passionate about it. We want to bring that message out and share it and give it our best love. But it's not our whole life. And we need to actually turn off from work sometimes and say, okay, well, now I'm going to spend time with relationships, with friends, with family, with movement, with nature.

Adventure, play.

All of that, because all of that nourishes our soul as well. And the more we can find space or create space for those other areas, the more heart we bring to our work anyway, and the more efficiency we bring to our work.

That's right.

Because it's all well and good to work a 60-hour week, but if you're really only doing 10 hours of quality.

Work, And if your health is suffering or your relationships are suffering, you're missing.

The juice of life. And that's not success.

I agree. The third regret is I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. Do most people not express themselves?

Not to the depth that they'd like to.

Why is that? They're afraid of what other people think about them.

Yeah, the vulnerability. And sometimes just the communication channels haven't been developed enough so they don't actually know how to. It's not so much that they They don't want to. Certainly there were a couple of patients in there who really wanted to, but just didn't know how to start the ball rolling, even with their families. And, you know, a gentleman in his 90s died feeling like his family didn't even know him. Wow. And he wanted to, but he just couldn't start the ball rolling to open up to that level of vulnerability.

Do a lot of these individuals write letters of their feelings and then, like, leave them behind when they're gone?

Well, some did, but no, not many. Not many. I mean, I had to pass on messages a lot. and I think other carers sometimes play that role as well. But what I found was with my patients, I ended up being their main carer. So I would go in for a day or two, and that's what happens. When someone's homesick, they get three or four different carers over the first week or two, and then they say, I want Bronnie, or I want so and so. And so you become their main carer. And so, you know, there were times they'd say, I want you to tell my son this, and I'd say, well, you're still alive, you can tell him yourself. Come on, you can do it. or I would facilitate a start of a conversation sometimes and then silently leave the room.

Sneak out, yeah. That's good. Okay, so wishing we had the courage to express our feelings. How do you think we can express our feelings now while we're alive and healthy and well so that we don't regret that? What is the process to expressing ourselves better?

Well, I think it's how to avoid all of the regrets, and that is to face the fact that we're going to die. and then we're unlimited time. And the more we can actually bring that realization into our belief systems and our conversations and our, and society's beliefs, then the more courage we have anyway, because we realize, okay, I don't have all the time in the world to do what I want to do and to say what I need to say and everything else. And so to find those levels of vulnerability, it takes courage all of any form of regret free living is going to take immense courage. But when you use death as a tool for living and you say, I'm on limited time, you do find that courage because not only do you realize you've got to say this stuff or you're going to regret it later or you're going to leave it too late, but you also just end up not caring so much what people think of you because they're going to die, you're going to die, we're all just doing the best we can. And you really do let go of the opinions of others when you face death completely, like when you courageously, yeah. And it doesn't mean you don't stop loving, but you stop caring about all the superficial stuff. And so you do learn to be more courageous because you realize, okay, this may or may not be received how, if you're expressing some really deep vulnerability, it may or may not be received how you'd love it to be received, but it's better than Not saying it, it's better than dying with the regret of having not said it inside.

Right, not sharing, yeah. The fourth one is I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. People lose out of touch with their.

Friends a lot, you think?

Well this was before social media.

Yeah, and now you can check in and yeah, yeah, and even checking in through social media and letting people know that you're there is fantastic, but it's.

Never going to- It's still superficial.

It's at a level, right? It's not the same as having a face-to-face conversation or a good laugh with your old friends or even a phone call is better than a social media thing or a text. But yeah, it was a deep regret because friends become your family in so many ways and they hold a lot of memories for you as well. A lot of the fun memories that you may not necessarily have shared with your family. I mean, some families are entwined and their brothers and sisters are their best mates, but most of us have, choose our own family of friends. And so, yeah, friends can really bring home memories and do reminiscing because...

Nostalgia and yeah, reflecting.

Dying people want to live as long as they can and they want to reflect and they want to do some storytelling and some giggling and some reminiscing about the good old days. And if you lose touch with your friends, you're there with maybe, you know, a loving hearted carer and your adult kids or your young kids, whatever, or No one.

You're just reflecting to yourself, having a conversation about the glory days or something. Yeah.

As opposed to someone who's saying, and then you might be only be able to handle a 10-minute conversation every few hours, but that 10-minute conversation can just, you know, I've seen people just lying there with tears of laughter in their eyes and they're just like, oh, I can't talk anymore, just give me a rest. But they're just so happy because they've had their friends visiting. and sharing those memories.

That's nice.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I wish I'd let myself be happier. Why do we not allow ourselves to be happy?

I think a lot of it's probably worth. You know, we don't realize we deserve to be. We're shaped Again by the opinions of others. Don't want to look a fool. Don't want to be too silly and childish when that's actually. great medicine to be like that. It's about the opinions of others and and just realizing we actually are allowed to be that just because someone says we're this and this and this and this doesn't mean we're any of that.

Yeah.

And so, you know, you're, you know, something I used to cop as a kid, you're never going to you're a dreamer. You'll never amount to anything, you know, stuff like that.

You used to hear that?

Yeah, all the time from particularly from my father. And that's encouraging.

Oh.

That'S like 1%. That's okay though, that's okay. We healed as best we could. But I did take that on for a long time because whenever I'd have these dreams, I'd think, well, I'm never going to amount to anything. And I was a singer-songwriter. I started playing when I was 35, wrote my first song. And I'd be up on the stage and I'd be playing and I just, that's all I'd hear in my head. You know, you're a dreamer, this is never going to amount to anything. And I'd just shake and just dream of walking off the stage. And then eventually I, you know, did my own healing and realized, well, that's his stuff, that's his regrets. And it's really got nothing to do with me. And if I'm not going to dream, I'm not going to ever get anywhere. You've got to be a dreamer.

Yeah.

You have to dare to dream. And it's only the dreamers that really make huge, significant, beautiful change in the world that shake, shake up things. That's it.

That's it. Yeah, I want to take a moment right here and let you know about something that for me has been helpful in getting my message out into the world. That's been helpful in making sure I don't have any regrets in my life that I get something out that serves people. And many of you know that I have an online business where I have many different courses that I've created. I've taken my wisdom, my information, and brought it to the world to build a business for myself. And what I use exclusively is Thinkific. Now, Thinkific is the best platform to create, market and sell your own online courses. Whatever it is that skill set you have, that talent you have, that gift you have, you can record them in video courses and use Thinkific to share this with the world and build your own business as well. It's something I've been using All my mastermind members, I recommend to them. I recommend to my audience online, and they're an amazing partner for me. And if you're already sharing or want to share your expertise with the world and you don't want to regret any of these things that you're not holding this back, and you want to make sure you package that into an online course. It's an incredible way to scale your business and make a bigger impact on the world to get your message out there. And whether you've got a book or a blog or you're training people one-on-one or group coaching, building an online course is the best way to reach a broader audience, to build revenue, and make a bigger impact. And I've looked at a lot of different softwares and online course platforms, and for me, Thinkific has the highest integrity, they have the best platform, and I love working with them. Super easy to use, and they have incredible support. And I know from experience that you might not know where to Thinkific put together an exclusive offer for you today. You can get started with their free plan at thinkific.com/greatness. And you can get more than $300 worth of additional training at no cost. You'll get all the tools to get started building your course. Plus you'll learn step by step how to refine your topic, outline your content, and start selling your course to the world. get it all for free today at thinkific.com/greatness. That's T-H-I-N-K-I-F-I-C.com/greatness. Make sure to check it out right now and let me know what course you want to get started with today. And now let's get back to this episode.

Yeah, it's cancer. And so the internal organs are shutting down.

Now.

And wow, man. Within 10 hours, let me see, from the time I had the conversation with her the next morning, got her in the Honda, drove her home, put her in the living room for, you know, a couple hours, let her sit in her lazy boy. I said, okay, where do you want to finish this? She's like, in my bed. Took her to the bedroom, you know, just. About 11 o'clock that night, finally. And she said, About 30 minutes before she finished, she's like, I'm scared.

Wow.

I said, what are you scared of? You got to hold it together, right? Because, and she says, I'm scared I can't die. She wasn't scared of dying.

She was scared she couldn't.

I said, dude, you can do this. You've done everything you needed to do. You did a great job.

Wow.

You don't owe anybody anything. Just rock on, man.

Wow. She was afraid that she couldn't die. Like she would drag on or-- yeah. And just kind of be on her deathbed.

She wasn't scared of dying, Don.

Yeah.

She was scared she couldn't.

Wow.

So.

You were there? Was your whole family there? Oh yeah, dude.

I was right there with her. Had my hand on her. No doctors in the room.

While she passed?

Yeah.

Wow.

So, she was my bud, man.

Wow. Yeah.

God damn.

What was, I don't know, what was the greatest lesson she taught you?

Oh shit, man, she was just, She was a very negative person. Like, I have a lot of that. Like, the second Ron Seco said, he says, oh, Grant, you're a positive person. I said, dude, I am not a positive person. Like, do not, no one should confuse me with a motivational person. 'Cause I'm not a positive person.

Why aren't you?

Because, Because I understand that people die.

Yeah.

Like, I understand that life is hard and that there's evil. I know there's evil. I confront. Like, that's what people don't like about me, dude.

Like.

Who says, okay, you're gonna die. It's hard, man.

It's really hard to be that honest.

Dude, my dad died when I was 10. My older brother died when I was 20. So by the time I was 20, I'm like, oh, people die.

Wow.

Then you start getting used to it.

I know. Not just your grandparent or something.

No, no, I see, I know, I know, there's people I know today that have never had a death in their family. They've never experienced it.

Yeah.

And then they're shocked when their dad dies. I'm like, what'd you think was gonna happen? Or their dog dies. I'm like, guys, you got a dog. It's a great Dane. It's got a life of 11 years.

Yeah.

Hopefully it dies before you do. My kids already know, like my seven and nine year old, they already confront the issue of me as a body not being around. on one day.

Yeah.

So my mom taught me a lot, man. She taught me, you know, she taught, tried to talk me out of most everything I ever did. Because she was negative. She was a mother. And it's a mother of- She wants to protect you.

Make sure you're safe.

A mother's 50% negative. Has to be.

Right.

You know, you're gonna get a cold. Put your shoes on. Don't go out in the rain. So, I had to learn how not to listen to that 50%.

Wow. Was there anything that she taught you in the end or any regrets from what you had done or what you hadn't done or a promise you made to yourself after she passed where you're like, you know what, I haven't been doing what I really need to be doing here, here, here. Is there anything like that for you?

Mm, you know, not with her, you know. I mean, I told her when I was a kid, got clean from drugs. I said, one day I'm gonna buy you a Jaguar. I never bought it for her. She called me one day, she was a funny lady. She said, some football player had bought their mom a house. And I was wealthy at the time. I was living in La Jolla down south of here, and I'd done well, and I was still single. She's like, so and so bought her mom a house.

Where's my car?

I'm like, you'll end up broke too. You ain't getting a house.

Right.

She didn't want a house. I mean, she didn't want any of that stuff.

Yeah. What does she want?

She didn't have a lot of dreams. I don't think she lived way below her potential.

Yeah.

And that's why I understand women. You know, my mom was a.

She.

She was a 50s housewife, and my mother lived for her children.

Yeah.

And so part of this, I think, is part of my hardness and. the way I prioritize things. I know my mother made a mistake putting her kids first.

Wow.

That was a mistake for her.

Wow. What should she have done?

She should have put herself first. Not us first.

Why?

Because she was more worried about five little kids than her own dreams. And I just, when I watched my dad die, left her to run everything. He died suddenly and she never dated again.

Wow.

She was 40. Let's see, I was, I guess she was 38. Never went on a date.

Wow.

She had a stepfather and she's like, or stepmother and she's like, I'm not giving my kids a stepmother. Everything now was about the kids. It's not enough for a human being. You can't be happy just living for kids that are gonna move out. you know, so.

What advice would you have to women about following their dreams? Dude.

All people, men and women, they should be more greedy about their personal dreams.

Well, what if they say, well, I've got these five kids and I've got this responsibility and.

Yeah, you do, but you also have responsibility yourself. If I can't take care of me, how can I take care of somebody else? This has always been my battle cry. Like, I have to take care of me. And how can I help anyone? I'm broken. I'm messed up. You know, I'm coming out of a treatment center for drug addiction. I didn't need to help anybody else. I needed to get on solid ground, you know? And I needed to make sure I wasn't going back to treatment. And then I needed to clean up the mess that I made. I needed to do this for me because, and that has been my contention now for many years, like just keep slowly taking care of your neighborhood until you're in another zip code.

My third album was writing all about loss. My best friend and my keyboard player, who I'd toured with for years, he passed away suddenly. And then my dad was also going through cancer, and he passed away right as I was finishing the album.

Oh my gosh.

So the album was bookended by the most extreme depression and sorrow that I had ever felt and loss and like, I just didn't know you could feel that. And so that album was heavily charged with a lot of hard things. And one thing that was so exciting about this album was like, I don't know, loss, I feel like it changes you. And I had come to accept that like this was a new version of myself and that kind of the rose tinted glasses Lindsay had left and died with them. And I was like, I just don't think I'll ever be the same again. 'Cause it had been years. You know, it's now been three years since all of that happened. And it took about two years to come fully out of that depression. And I realized it was right about the same time, a few months before I started this album, that I was like, I started to feel myself again. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's not that I was gone. It's not that I disappeared or I died with them like a part of me. It's, no, I was just covered up for a while. And that's why I decided to call this album Artemis, because the moon is such cool, It has such a cool symbolism of hope and the fact that you look at the moon, sometimes it's big and bright and it glows and it can light up the night. And other times you look up and you can't even find it and it looks like it might not even be there anymore. And that was like me. I was like, oh my gosh, I wasn't gone. I was just covered in shadow. And I think that through our lives, whether it's a hard relationship or a depression or loss or grief, whatever, we sometimes metaphorically get covered by those things. And you might think that, you're not there anymore, but it doesn't mean that you're not still powerful and full of light and love and that you won't come back to full light. And so I wrote this album from a place of like, oh my gosh, I'm still full of light. And that's what the album's about. That's what the story's about.

Yeah.

I like it. Thank you.

I'm so excited to share that message. You mentioned loss again. I've, you know, part of my, I feel like I'm a pretty balanced human being where I take on all my fears. Every year I write a list of my fears and I try to overcome them.

I love that.

From whether it be public speaking, to salsa dancing, to singing in public, to all these different things, I'm like, okay.

What is emotional fear for me?

Ooh, yeah.

Right?

Uh-huh. I interfere, not like spiders or snakes, but like, what's a thing that I would be embarrassed by or afraid or feel insecure about? And then I try to conquer those every year. I've never lost someone close to me, except for grandparents who were, you know, it was their time. Right? I've never had a sudden loss. And it's a fear of mine. Yeah. Because I have a lot of great relationships. Mm-. And I know a lot of people. Mm-. And I know it's just a matter.

Of time where someone that I know-.

It's part of life. It's part of life. Yeah. And I don't know if it's gonna be, you know, in a few years or 10 years, but it's gonna happen eventually.

Yeah.

Someone is gonna die. Yeah. And it scares me. So, and I'm not saying, like, I want this to happen now, 'cause I don't wanna- Of course not, no. But how do you, how did you handle it when you had two very close relationships in the same, you know, in a very close period of time pass away. How would you, how did you handle it? And how are you gonna handle it in the future when someone close to you passes?

I don't think it gets easier. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I lost my best friend, then I lost my dad. And it's not like, well, I've been through this once before.

It was scary.

I got this.

Yeah.

No, I think loss will always be extremely hard. But I learned that the heart So resilient. I said when I lost my best friend, it was the first time I'd ever felt that kind of pain. And I just thought to myself, I will never be whole again. And then my dad died and I was like, I will never recover from this. They were the two most important, most prevalent men in my life. And so, you know, but the heart heals. The most amazing thing about it for me, I think, is my, I'm so grateful that I'm a very spiritual and a very religious person because I've always believed in angels and I think my belief in angels has given me so much grace through this. Because as hard as it is, it's amazing that that pain just gets farther away. I always miss them, but it taught me to live in the moment with people because that's the thing you regret more than anything. It's just, wishing that you could relive some of those moments and realize how special they were and tell people how special they were. With my best friend, he passed away suddenly and I was like, oh my gosh, I never had a chance to say even goodbye. I never had a chance to really tell him what he meant to me. And that was devastating. But I believe in angels and since then, I feel like I have had some of the most beautiful experiences where I know they were close to me and I know they were guiding my steps. And it's like, I don't think they're far. I think that sometimes in a way that they're able to be with me more than they ever could have before. And they're a part of my adventures still. And I believe I'll see them again, like 100%. And it just makes you remember how finite this life is. If you have a belief in an afterlife, like this life is just like a glimpse.

So my brother made a tragic choice. That's what happened.

Yeah.

Okay. And it was very. It seemed very impulsive. And there. I mean, like, looking back, we can kind of identify maybe some signs or something, but at the time, none of us had any idea. Right.

What's been coming up for you this last eight, nine months? in this process. You know, you've been working with someone on this. What do you feel like has been coming up for you? Is there any lessons that you've learned from this? I haven't lost a family member that close to me, so I have no context of how you're feeling and I'm not gonna act like I do know how you're feeling, but I can assume that there are people listening who have lost someone very close to them who can relate completely to what you're feeling right now. So I'm curious what the lesson is you're gaining or what you're learning about yourself in this process.

It's a tricky thing because, you know, in my books and in my blog and all this, I write prescriptive. I try to write prescriptively. And here are the steps. And if you want to travel the world, here's how you get the frequent flyer miles to do it. If you want to start a business, here are the eight steps. This is what, you know, is so new to me because I don't know that there are eight steps. I don't know that there's like, here's lesson number one, here's lesson number two. Like I have like sometimes moments of insight. or whatever. But I don't know. I feel like it's not like a hierarchy of lessons. It's more like a cobweb or something. And somehow maybe they connect, but I don't quite see what they are. So this is like, I feel like this is the new quest, which is not something I ever would have set out to predict or imagine. It's not what you set out to predict or imagine. Go for it. I'm not even really describing it in very descriptive terms because I don't necessarily know what's going to happen at the end or what the outcome is. But I feel like somehow, somehow I have to be better because of this. Somehow I have to, to, you know, honor my brother, maybe learn some lessons that he wasn't able to learn. And I don't necessarily know what all those are.

Right, right.

But I feel like that's, that's what I have to do.

Yeah. What do you think is the best way to honor him?

I don't know yet. I don't think it's going to be like, I don't think it's going to be something you could package. Sure. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's not like there's a foundation. It's like one day I'm going to come out of this, I'm going to start a charity, you know, and I'm going to like the rest of my life, I'm going to raise money for this charity. That's too packaged.

Yeah.

Okay. So it's deeper. I don't know what it is, but it's not something that I could just say one sentence, Here's how I'm going to honor my brother. the goal is to figure that out.

What's your vision for yourself during this process? Have you thought about that or are you just kind of like one day at a time?

No, I'm actually not very good at one day at a time. I think that's a very good strategy. I'm very future oriented, which is kind of frustrating in a situation like this. Because, you know, one, the situation with Ken, my brother, I can't change that. nothing in the future could ever change that. And then also not just that situation, but just sadness and anxiety in general, it's kind of hard because I want to be able to like point to the one-year plan and the five-year plan, the 10-year plan. That's what I've done. That's what you're good at. That's what I've, yeah, that's really good at that. Yeah. So now it's like, that's kind of taken from me.

And you feel like you don't have.

A one or 10-year plan? I feel like I have a good one-year plan.

I don't feel like I have a.

Good 10-year plan now. And why is that upsetting to you? Or why does that bring you anxiety? because it's brought me comfort in the.

Past to have it.

And so now I don't have it. So now you're forced to live in the moment.

Yeah.

Or be more present, it sounds like. And not have a plan, not have a future mapped out for you.

Maybe so. Huh.

It's all new.

Interesting.

Okay. What's so scary about living in the moment or not having a plan?

I don't know if it's scary, it's unfamiliar. Uh-huh. Okay. You know, for, I mean, that's why I had the quest. I could always say, I'm doing this. I was doing lots of other stuff too, but then I had this anchor point.

Right.

You know?

Right.

And if you always have something planned, if you always have something that you're kind of working toward, then you don't necessarily have to answer all these difficult day-to-day questions.

What's the most difficult day-to-day question?

Well, the different, I mean, the questions of, of like, what's going on in our minds? Like, why am I sometimes unhappy, even though I have a great life and great success in lots of different ways, those kinds of questions.

Why do you think it is at the end of the day? Have you thought more and more about this?

I'm just kind of delving into it now. I mean, it's really, it's good to have this conversation with you because I can say honestly, I have not had this conversation, certainly not in any kind of public setting like this at all. I mean, the limited conversations have been like with very close friends and probably not this therapy session. There's not usually a microphone and a headset associated with fit. So that's why sometimes, like, I don't know exactly how to answer. Sure.

Okay. Well, what do you think has come up for you in these sessions? The reason I'm sticking in this is because it's fine. I wanna, I wanna, you know, I love to have clarity too. Yeah. You know what I mean? For me, I'm a solutions type of guy. And so I'm trying to uncover, you know, what it is, because I think actually a lot of people are gonna be appreciating this process. You know, if you can't, if you're not watching this, you know, Chris, a little uncomfortable. But I think it's important because I don't think you're alone, man. I don't think you're alone. I think it's a lot of people. Maybe they have the success you do, maybe they don't. But they're at a crossroads where they're not sure what's going to happen the next three, five, ten years. They don't have a plan figured out. They're at a crossroads. They're uncertain. They're feeling like flat.

Yeah.

And I think this is more people than you think.

Sure.

Feel this way. Sure. you know, obviously you have your own emotions and your own feelings and your own, you know, life that you've experienced, but I think people are feeling a similar way that is really powerful. And so I want to keep talking about this. I don't know. I want to keep, I want to keep diving into this.

Yeah. I'm not necessarily uncomfortable in having this conversation. Sure. It's more that I'm uncomfortable in, in the situation. You know, that's what sucks. Yes. You know, actually, I, I want to be open and transparent about this because I realize a lot of people have struggles. and for me, like, so we've said I've had different struggles and over time and now I had this situational tragedy. I guess my point for me is I'm tired of accepting it. Like I'm tired of accepting that, accepting that I'm always going to be anxious or I'm going to be sad or it's this complicated thing because to get through something like this, you have to make your peace with it. That's something that I'm kind of learning at least. And the counseling.

Is this the peace with your own flatness in your life or the peace with your brother's death or...

I don't know, because it's all connected. It's all like I haven't found a way to separate it. So I think you have to kind of like walk through that. You know, I went on a trip recently and it was a great trip. Like I went around the world, had a lot of really fun experiences. And so the trip was great. Situational, everything was fine. But I was also almost every single day I cried. And so kind of came back out of that and, you know, went back to my little counseling session. I told that story and and she said, that's great. I was like, what do you mean? She's like, I think we're going to be able to work through this now because you're not coming to peace with it, but we're actually acknowledging it. We're trying to acknowledge it. But I guess what I said about accepting it is maybe I feel like for a while, as we said before, I kind of sweep it under the rug or put it aside. And I guess it's just come to a point in my life where I have to do something about this. I have to. and I don't know exactly how I will resolve that, but somehow I need to. What do you want to feel every day? If you can make a declaration like.

This moment moving forward, this is how I want to feel. Purposeful. Okay, what else? I mean, that's good.

Start with that. Purposeful, joyful. Sure. Purposeful, joyful, fulfilled, satisfied.

Yeah, those are good words.

Okay. Yeah, I think that I'd like the top two first. Purposeful, joyful, but not sadness and anxiety. Yeah, not to excess, you know? Like, I think it's important to feel a range of emotions. It's kind of like we said before, like if you're always a winner, like maybe you're not trying hard enough.

Right, right, right.

So I actually want to try for some stuff and not, not, you know, achieve it. But yeah, I think it's the sustained nature of it. Yeah. That is problematic.

How did the end for you when he passed?

With my dad. Oh, it was-- Were you in a.

Good place, do you feel like, or-- no, not really.

I mean, you know, I don't-- you- know, I think that death is such a defining part-- you- know, it's interesting because-- and I don't know if anyone wants to hear about death, but all the things that I'd been working on for so long kind of click into place when a death happens, you know? Working so hard on boundaries, working so hard on saying no, working so hard at reducing the amount of things on my plate, working so hard to not do things out of of obligation. You know, I spent so much time doing that. And as soon as I lost my dad, it was like, I'm not doing that. Nope, I'm not going on a hike with that person. It just, everything becomes so clear what's important and what's not. So it's interesting.

It's sad that it needs something like that to happen for us to course correct our life.

Or just me. It could be me and what I needed. You know, and you know, I think that, and I don't know how that tool is helpful. Don't kill your dad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To emotionally make the progress you need, but it was something that was a little bit like his passing kind of was just a really big part of things clicking into place and in a weird way, I think it's the gift he would have wanted to give me in a weird way. And he had a stroke, both my parents had strokes, which is a big part of why I got so into neurology and had to understand it really quick because I was all of a sudden in ERs looking at brain scans and people talking about the prefrontal cortex and I'm like, I have no idea what that means and finding out what part of the brain You know, affects what. And so I think that ultimately he gave me this incredible gift that as a side effect of something kind of tragic.

Wow.

When did he pass?

About a year and a half ago.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, almost two years ago. And it was interesting because you really find out who the people are around you when someone in your life passes, 'cause grief makes you boring and makes you unable to give anything. And you really find out the kind of people that can show up and tolerate you grieving. really calls out your circle because it's.

You realize-- I mean, the fun one, the entertaining one.

Like, are you still my friend if I'm just staring at the wall like a zombie crying for six days? Like, am I still someone that you wanna be friend, you know, be around? So that was, the tectonic plates really shift in your life when something like that happens. And I had just started dating the person I'm with, and the way he handled it, I think is really what made me understand. What great partnership is and-- what he handled everything. Like, he just went into handle it mode. And I was like, okay. So I feel grateful that I think it's like the very-- a lot of the damage that my dad, I feel like I got from him, him passing at the time that I had started dating Miles, gave Miles the opportunity to step up and show me who he was. And kind of-- it was kind of kismet. It was sort of this, weird divine thing where I was able to sort of him passing is how Miles was able to step up. I was able to kind of undo the cycle kind of thing through it. It was pretty surreal.

Do you feel like you got to say everything you wanted to say to him?

No, that's okay.

You feel at peace about everything or you wish you would have?

I'm so not this person, but I'm gonna be this person. I did do ayahuasca a couple months after he passed, like six months, because the grief was just, I didn't know what to do with it.

Strong, yeah.

Yeah, and I think that because I'm such a keep moving to get out of your feelings anyway, I really didn't want to run from it and for the grief to manifest in other ways. Other ways, yeah. You know, I didn't want that energy to come out and like the workaholism or the codependence or whatever. And I actually think what happened for me with ayahuasca and why I think it's a helpful tool is I didn't hallucinate on ayahuasca. I kind of realized that I was hallucinating every day. And on ayahuasca, I kind of saw things clearly, and I was able to take on a lot of the things that I thought were weaknesses from my dad as strength. And I was allowed to sort of accept the things in me that I got from him and alchemize them into positives. You know, it's like he was always working and too much and would. I was like, I was just trying to find ways to. use what I thought were weaknesses of his and make them strengths and accept the parts of him that were in me. You know, I don't wanna be like my dad. I don't wanna be like my mom. That's all we say. Maybe they had good things about them. Maybe we're just seeing them wrong or maybe we're just so wrapped up in our own judgment and blame that we can't see it. You know, my dad had a very skeptical take on people. He always called everyone liars, thieves, and worms is what he would say. And it's so negative, but I don't know. I found myself overcompensating the pendulum swinging too hard and trusting too much and.

Being-- Going all in.

All in, trusting everybody. Yeah, sure, manage my money. Sure, I'll come stay at my house. Sure. And I just, I didn't have enough of that sort of what I call like healthy skepticism and healthy boundaries and a healthy sense of like seeing red flags, you know? So I kind of, it helped me stop like divorcing myself from this story that My parents were so messed up and I want to be totally different than them.

Do you feel like you do things to make your dad proud?

Oh my God.

Still?

Oh God. You're so good at this. When my dad passed, I had somewhat of an existential crisis because I realized so much of my engine was to try to impress him.

Just him.

When he passed away. When he, I think more my dad, my mom, not so much. My mom is more like physical stuff, like body appearance stuff that I've had to sort of work through.

You got a great combo.

It's a whole other thing. Yeah, real doozy. Real one, too. They were made for each other. You know, my-- and I realized when my dad passed, I did have-- felt like I was sort of in a free fall because I was like, Do I even want to do comedy? Like, the person that I was trying to impress is gone. Like, I don't even know why I'm doing any of this.

Wow.

And I-- I canceled a bunch of projects I was doing. I checked out of a lot of things. I had to sort of completely revamp my priorities and figure out what I wanted.

What's the priorities now?

The priorities now are, you know, for me, I, and this probably sounds gross, but I'm big on making money because it is freedom. And I didn't have that growing up. So I do try to make decisions based on it being lucrative enough to be able to help a family member out if they have an issue. You know, my family, a lot of my family members don't have health insurance and they didn't go to college, you know? So for me, it's, I take a lot of pride in being able to earn so that I can help people, you know, that just, I don't have cars and, like, that's not my thing. And shoes and clearly clothes is not my thing. I like to be able to, you know, give people the ability to sleep at night because they're not stressing out about money, you know? So I do make a lot of.

Decisions based on earning.

You're not making millions at the comedy store every week. I really know that, that $15. The night you saw me, I made $15. You know, so I work for free a lot because stand-up is like bodybuilding. You're in the gym for a year making nothing, and then you get your special or whatever. So I definitely, once my dad died, I got a little more mercenary about the way that I spent my time because I worked for free for so long and continued to until my dad passed. And then just really high quality, like, is this gonna move the needle or not? And after that, the first thing I did was Roseanne, which did not end as planned.

God, isn't that crazy? It was so big.

Yeah.

Like the launch and the show was so big. Yeah. And then one tweet ruins it all.

I don't think it was one, I mean, There was, I found it.

It seems like one tweet was what, ruin thousands of people.

-Extensively, yes, exactly. It was one, the tweet that broke the camel's back, but there was definitely more before that I hadn't seen and that was my mistake. I didn't follow her before and, you know, like my dad said, ask people questions. I didn't ask enough questions and I didn't do enough research and, you know, but I did, you know, at the time, it was like, we're gonna reach a bunch of people that we wouldn't reach normally. And I think that Hollywood, we forget, we're in this echo chamber and we are talking to such a small number of people and this is an opportunity to talk to people to more people, you know? So I think that since my dad passed, I've just tried to be a little more big picture in the things that I take. I don't take jobs anymore to impress people. I don't take jobs anymore because there's a celebrity involved who might, this person might think is impressive. Like, I don't have those sticky motives anymore. It's like, do I want to do it or not?

There you have it, my friend. I hope you enjoyed this powerful episode about how to live without regret, powerful lessons from losing loved ones, and the journey of living through loss. It's not an easy experience. It's challenging, it's messy. There's a lot of uncertainty, a lot of questioning. But I hope this brought you some relief, hearing some stories and some strategies and tools that some other people have used in their process of loss and their journey again. If you know one friend who might be experiencing some type of loss in the last couple years, who had a challenging time, just send them a text. If they lost a parent, a friend, or anyone close to them, send them a text with this link, lewis house.com/866 and ask them to listen and reflect back to you the biggest takeaway they got from this episode. Share it on social media as well. you can always tag me @LewisHowes. And if this is your first time here, please subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple Podcast. We have episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all about how to improve your life, how to take your life to the next level, and really how to create a life of your dreams. We have so many amazing people on from around the world who share their stories, their insights, their expertise and their lessons. And I hope you continue to join us on the journey. Please leave us a review over on Apple Podcast. I don't care if you leave a one star or five star review. I would just love for you to share your thoughts on what you got out of this, the value you gained from this School of Greatness podcast. So please let us know over on the School of Greatness and we'd like to share this with our internal team and with the broader audience as well. These reviews get more than $300 worth of additional training at no cost. You get all the tools to start building your own course. Plus, you'll learn step by step how to refine your topic, outline your content, and start selling your course to the world today. Again, get it all for free today at think epic.com slash greatness. T-H-I-N-K-I-F-I-C.com slash greatness. I don't want you to regret not doing something that you know you want to do. If there's something inside of you that's been burning in your life, in your heart, that you want to do, that you've been thinking about, that you're afraid to do, now is the time to do it. You don't want to regret. You don't want to regret not saying something to someone. You don't want to regret not doing something for someone. And you don't want to regret not doing something for yourself. Whether that's launching your book, starting that business plan, you know, asking that person out on a date, whatever it is, now is the time to do it. You never know If tomorrow is guaranteed, all we have is now. Now is the time to get started and start pursuing the life of your dreams. As William Penn said, They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. And Thomas Campbell said, To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. I love you so very much. so much. I hope you feel that we are here for you, that we support you, and that we believe in you. I believe in you, and I believe you have so much to live for. And I can't wait to see what you create in the world. Now is the time to create it. As always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.