95% of Successful People Share These SAME HABITS w/ Thomas DeLauer EP 1406

Self-love is discipline. Exactly. Self-love is structure and discipline and organization of thoughts and emotions. If your thoughts and emotions are all over the place, there is a wound that you have yet to heal. It doesn't mean you're still not gonna be thinking about stuff and strategizing for the future, but if it's emotionally stressed and triggered, that means there's a wound that you have yet to. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis 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.

What is one thing that comes just top of mind right now of all the people that you've talked to? What is a common denominator, a trait that people can try to emulate?

Well, there's two things I want to talk about around that. And I'll get to your answer there in a second. But I want to talk about the beginning of success. What do successful people have in common? And I want to define success and greatness, because I think there are two different things. I think success is about me and accomplishing goals and dreams that serve me. I think greatness is about we. It's about including others in your dreams and being of service in the impact of going after your dreams on other people around you as well. It doesn't have to be changing the world, but it can be changing the world around you, your friends, your family, family or communities. And most of my life, I wanted to be successful. I wanted to make money. I wanted to get a good looking girlfriend. I wanted to be popular in school. I wanted to accomplish goals as an athlete, all that stuff. It was about me, me, me, self-centric and I accomplished a lot of those goals. And I was never fulfilled after accomplishing them. I never felt like, man, I've arrived. I feel happy. I feel fulfilled. I feel joyful. I accept myself. I never accepted myself still after accomplishing all these different goals from sports accolades to money and a business and all these different things. And it wasn't until I hit 30 years old when a number of different things kind of occurred in my life that got me to reflect a number of challenging instances. I had a business partnership breakdown. I had a intimate relationship with my girlfriend that broke down. And I just kind of felt like I was reactive in the world. So all these things kind of came together to make me realize and look in the mirror and say, and ask myself, who am I really and why am I going through so many breakdowns when I look successful on the outside? That's when I had this kind of awareness from learning from a lot of people that success is selfish, it's for you. Greatness is including others. At that moment, I shifted from being, wanting to be competitive, wanting to be the best, wanting to be right, and wanting to be number one. That was my whole first 30 years. When I hit 30, I said, how can I lift others up? How can I win and others win around me? How can I collaborate as opposed to compete? And I think we see certain people that are extremely successful and they are really competitive and they win a lot and they're right and they make a lot of money, but we don't see what's underneath that sometimes. And it's the ones we truly are inspired by and are and admire. Those are the ones who seem to have a level of peace, seem to have a level of love in their life. They have a healthy family relationships. They've taken care of their health and they're also impacting people around them in a positive way. Those are the ones I believe are truly great that can elevate beyond success into service as well. And that's when greatness happens. And so to answer your question about what do the great people have in common? The first thing that they all have is a meaningful mission. I think it's really hard to accomplish anything great of service if you're not clear on a meaningful mission. Not talking about goals and dreams. Goals and dreams are great for you, but it needs to be a meaningful mission to include others. They all have that in common. And that is the foundation behind every decision they make, behind their behaviors, their thoughts, their actions, and honestly their identity, their identity is shaped around their meaningful mission. So the step one is just getting clear on what your meaningful mission is. Now, if you're 20 years old, you may not know what you want to do for the rest of your life. So this is seasonal as well. This could be you're in college and you just want to have a, you know, you want to finish school with great grades, you want to be healthy, you want to have great friends, and you want to have skills to get you ready for the next thing. It could be, you know, when I was broke on my sister's couch after playing Professional football and got injured. I couldn't think past how do I just get off my sister's couch and make enough money to have my own apartment? So my mission was like, I need to get some skills to just make some money so I can live on my own. That was the season of life until I felt secure and safe enough to dream differently and bigger than that. But that is step one is discovering your meaningful mission. Now, a lot of people, when they get clear on that, they still have doubts and insecurities that hold them back from taking action and actually accomplishing it or pursuing it. And what I realized from all the interviews I've done and my own personal mistakes and lessons and experience is that there are three main causes of doubt. And I think doubt is the killer of dreams and there's three main causes of that. The first is the fear of failure. When you ask people if they're afraid of failure, most people raise their hands. The second one is the fear of success. And I never understood people being afraid of success because I always wanted to succeed. So I wasn't afraid of it. But when I ask a room of people, Are you afraid of success? A lot of people still raise their hand. And what I realized is that people are afraid of the weight of success, the pressure, leaving their friends and family to go pursue the success, people judging them. Now you have money or success, people wanting more from you and pulling at you. Can you trust people? All these different things and pressures that come with success. The third fear that holds you back is the fear of judgment, the fear of other people's opinions. This might be your parents judging you for taking actions on something you really want to do, and so you don't do it to keep your parents happy. It could be friends, family, society, whatever it may be. The opinions of other people holds people back from pursuing what they want. and at the core of all three of these things is a little thing called I am not enough. And most people don't feel like they are enough. They don't accept themselves. And if we don't accept ourselves for all the crazy stuff we've been through from our childhoods, and everyone's got different stuff we've been through, different traumas, whether it be big trauma, little trauma, different shames, guilts, things we're not proud of, if we can't come to a place of acceptance of where we've been, not saying it's okay the things we've done if we're not proud of them, but at least have compassion for the person we were at that time, forgive ourselves, accept where we were, and improve upon it. Then it's going to be really hard to have the authentic confidence to pursue the meaningful mission. And I think that's what a lot of people lack. They lack the authentic confidence. We can put, we can fake it. but there still might be something missing. We can achieve, but there's still like, I know I'm still guilty of this. I still feel shameful. I still feel insecure. And so it's not until we can learn how to cultivate the inner peace, which I believe is the biggest currency, until we can get that inner peace, then we can have the presence and the poise and the grace to pursue what we want authentically. And that's really been a lot of my findings from just personal mistakes, from learning the lessons the hard way over and over again, and then just researching with all these interviews.

And even a fear of being authentic. That's a huge one. I think that's a real one too.

Are people gonna accept me? Yeah. Because most, you know, I never thought people would accept me if they truly knew who I was, most of my childhood. And a lot of that was conditioned from just playing sports and having, you know, kids and society and whatever it might be, people picking on you and making fun of you for the littlest things. So if they actually knew my shame, my insecurities, my guilts, my fears, would they actually accept me or would they use it against me and make fun of me more? You know, it was a fear of like being alone, being like never accepted. And that's one of our biggest fears. And so how could we be fully authentic if we already made fun of stuff that is like little things? And it takes a lot of emotional courage to put yourself out there authentically and be criticized, judged, and potentially made fun of by people. It takes a lot of courage. It's extremely challenging and that's why a lot of us put masks on. We fake it and try to make it that way. But I think it's really hard to fake it until you make it. I think you must face it and embrace it and then you can start to make it in a way through your authentic expression. So that's something that I think people should think about. But it takes a lot of emotional courage to be authentic.

I mean, you essentially faced, whether you realized it or not, your worst possible fear, because so much of your stock and validation was wrapped up in yourself as an athlete. 100%. You literally encountered probably the worst possible thing that could happen where you are unable to do that anymore. So you had to face facts with, I no longer can seek, whether you realized it or not, validation from this avenue.

And that was my whole identity.

Your entire identity was wrapped up in that. That is so common for young people, regardless, right? I'm just now at the age of 34 getting to a point where I'm starting to no longer wrap my identity around that. So it's easier said than done, but did you realize that you were head on facing probably what is inadvertently your biggest fear?

It was. Man, I knew, I felt stuck. I felt like, not like it wasn't depressed, but I felt like, who am I if I don't have this? skill to lean on. It was a crutch, it was something I was good at, and now I can't use that as a tool of connection, of validation anymore. So I'm 23, about to turn 24. I hadn't graduated college yet because I left early to go make professional football. I really didn't learn anything in school. Very little things that I remember from classrooms. you know, I learned from interacting with people and sports teams and things like that, but I don't remember much from school itself. And I think because I was, it was so hard for me to pay attention, it was so hard for me to read and comprehend. I would read a page and I don't remember anything I read. So I'd have to read it over and over again. 15 minutes would go by and I'd be like, I'm just gonna give up. I was very poor on testing. So I just, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't. grade well. So my confidence was low in school. That's why I put all my focus on sports. So when it ended, I was at a point where I was like, who wants me on their team in life if I can't provide this skill? And I didn't know what my skills were. And I went down a path of seeking out people that I was inspired by, people that had talents that I was afraid to acquire. and I started getting mentors early on. I started reaching out to people on social media, on LinkedIn and using these tools to connect with people and ask them questions. And they kind of coached me like I was using life as a sport. They would coach me and say, okay, for the next three months, I want you to try this. For the next year, I want you to do this. Whatever they told me to do, since they had already accomplished these certain things, I was like, okay, they know what they're doing. I'm gonna follow it 100%. One of my biggest fears was public speaking. I could not stand up in front of a group of five peers and talk for a minute without stuttering, stumbling, sweating, feeling insecure, feeling like they were gonna laugh at me. So I met someone who was a professional public speaker and I said, what can I do to overcome this fear? He said, Join Toastmasters. It's a public speaking class and do it every week for a year. And I was like, done. And that's what I did, every week for a year. And it was the most embarrassing feeling probably of my life, standing up and giving my first speech because I hand wrote the entire speech. I had to give a five minute presentation and I gave it in front of an audience of people that were 10, 20 years older than me, all better professional speakers. I could not look up at anyone's eyes the entire speech. I had to stare down and read word for word because I was sweating and I was so scared about how I looked. The opinion of other people was my big fear. Not failure and success, but it was really judgment. And I remember doing that first one and being like, okay, I'm still alive. You know, it's like you emotionally feel like you're gonna die, but I was still alive. And I said, all right, I've gotten over the hump of starting it. Let me just show up every week. And by the end of the year, after every week training, and filming myself and watching the films and getting feedback and getting coaching and trying new things and taking risks. At the end of the year, I got a standing ovation from everyone. I didn't need notes. I didn't need any props. I could just stand in front of people and connect with them. I started getting paid to do public speaking after that year. So what was my, one of my biggest fears became a superpower today. something that I get paid a lot of money to go do, something I get requested to do all the time. If I had not faced the fear and the insecurity all in, something I talk about in the book, I want people to write a list of their fears, their biggest fears. I call it the fear list. You make a list of your biggest fears and you start going all in on them until they become a superpower. And when you do that, you will become way more fearless. when you do that. So I did this for public speaking and I did this with so many other things over the years that supported me and kind of just having this tool belt of emotional skills and belief and confidence that I could take on anything, knowing that I will embarrass myself, that I'll feel embarrassed, and that's okay. And I'm still going to be alive and survive and it's going to help me. when I get through that embarrassment and know that it's going to be a skill and a superpower and not a fear of mine that holds me back. And I think a lot of people aren't willing to embarrass themselves enough because it just doesn't feel good.

Yeah. But anything that's worth working for oftentimes doesn't feel good. I know, man. It doesn't feel good to go to the gym. It doesn't feel good to maybe eat something healthy when you have something delicious like pizza or sandwiches or whatever.

Right?

So it's, it's. easy to forget that, yes, all these things we have to work for. And everything you've talked about directly also translates into people that are at this pivotal point of making a decision about their health too. Like you talk about the fear of success. I can't tell you how many people I have talked to, myself included when I went through my transformation, I was afraid of losing weight because weirdly enough, I was worried about what my group of peers would think about me if I suddenly started eating healthier and if I got better than them at being able to just feel comfortable in my own skin and be confident. And they've talked to a lot of people that way where it does hold them back. They are comfortable in their social circle. They don't want to be the one that breaks out of that because there's a level of comfort there and there's that fear of becoming successful within their own actual diet and health. Sometimes it's happening unconsciously. You don't really realize it's going on and you start wanting to make these, you know, you know that you need to make a change with your health, but there's this pressure that you're feeling and this fear throughout doing it or the fear of failure of failing a diet.

Yeah.

Like, not saying that everyone should go on a diet or should automatically like change their lifestyle, but the people that really need to, they're aware of it. You know, it's like you don't look at someone that's, morbidly obese. You know that that person that is morbidly obese looks in the mirror and knows that they're morbidly obese. And you know that they're most often they're not living their life like a total slob. Usually they are making the best steps that they can. They're not like, I'm not a glutton. Like, I'm not going out and stuffing my face, like trying to be this way. But they realize that, well, if I start making this, like, concerted effort, like, I put myself under a lot more scrutiny. Like, what if I do it wrong and I fail? Then where do I end up? And that holds so many people back. And a lot of times it's just doing it. Like some form of changing your life, whether it's nutritionally, whether it's mindset. The first step is, what do we always say? Minimum viable product. I don't care. Just make one step towards it. One step towards it to face that fear.

How long did it take you until you faced the fear of starting to eat differently and train differently, starting to lose the weight that you had on. How long did you have the weight on before you started to make that decision?

Yeah, I mean, I was overweight for a couple of years. So, although I can't say I have the experience like people have been overweight all their lives, it was long enough for me. And what the catalyst was for me was I had gone through the drive-thru at Jack in the Box and I was parked in a parking spot stuffing my face with jack-in-the-box tacos. And I was on the other side of town thinking that no one would see me, thinking that people, like an idiot, thinking like, oh, I'm hiding here stuffing my face. And an acquaintance of mine, not even a close friend, drove by on the road and he saw me, looked in my windshield and saw me eating. And he nonchalantly waved like, oh, there's just Thomas just doing his thing. Whereas, like, in my mind, I thought it was gonna be this, I got caught, like, Massive fear, like, oh my gosh, but...

He's gonna tell everyone.

It was so nonchalant for him that it made me internalize and realize, wait a minute, like, what I think is a giant deal to people about how I live my life now is actually not. And that actually made it worse because the fact that it was so nonchalant and so just, there's Thomas eating tacos, it made me realize, this is how people see me. Like, what could be worse than this?

Wow.

So I liken that to like, if you're living in the status quo and you're really wanting to break out, like, what could be worse than that? Like, and not saying that your life isn't good or decent living where you're comfortable, like, sure, you can have comfort, you can have good things, you can have good family, you can have a good support, but the risk of failing is oftentimes much less than staying where you are.

I know.

And that's what it was for me. Like, I was comfortable. And then when I realized that like, wait a minute, This is life, this is what people see me as. Well, that sucks. Something needs to change.

Yeah. Is that when you started it? That was it. Really? Yeah.

It was like a moment in the box. It was an acquaintance.

Yep.

It was literally eating one of those.

Translucent tacos that are so greasy that they're practically see-through. So good, though. Yeah. What happened? Was it a quick thing, like a huge transformation and discipline right away where.

You'Re extreme, or is it a slow build? It was slow. It was slow. In fact, you know, I went into intermittent fasting first before I ever did any low-carb or keto because for me, I'm an all-in type of person. So it was easy for me to just say, you know what? Just like don't eat, do this and kind of like develop a system. Then I realized it worked. And it was, yeah, so I mean that was, and it wasn't even this aggressive change. And that's what I try to instill upon people too and like exactly what you're articulating. It's like you don't need to just like flip this switch and become a different person overnight. It's like these little steps, that little step, it didn't hit me hard in that moment. It hit me hard about a month later, where I actually texted that friend and said, Hey, thanks for-- Wow. And he's like, Dude, I barely even remembered that.

What?

I was like, I've never seen you. 'Cause it was just life to him. So it's so crazy the little things that happened in life that, like, that was life changing. Like, who knows where I would've been if that dude in the green Toyota.

4Runner didn't just be like, what's up, Tom? You remember every detail about it.

It was that life changing for you.

Wow, man. It's cool.

It's wild. And it's like, how old were you? I guess I was, see, it would have been 24?

24, wow.

So, you know, fortunately, like I've mentioned before, like I was young enough to bounce back, right? Like, of course, it would be much harder now and I recognize that. But, you know, I look at, when you look at different people that you've interviewed and yourself included, like bringing it back to health, weight loss, things like that, if you had to put a number, not throwing anyone under the bus, so we don't say any names here, what percentage of people that are really achieving a level of greatness, what percentage of people make a concerted effort on their health?

Well, I don't think you can truly be great unless you are healthy, personally. So you can succeed and have accomplishments, but I don't think you can be great. You can have money in the bank, but I don't think that's great. if you don't have quality health and quality relationships. And again, I don't think we all need to look perfect like you, you know, with the six-pack, but I think it's at least being, you know, having a reasonable hold over your nutrition, your health, your movement, taking care of yourself, your emotions, all the energy inside of you. And I think, I think a lot, so I don't look at people as great unless they are in the journey, in the process of consistently working on the relationships and the health. Again, they don't need to be perfect, but they're in the journey.

Yeah, no, no, not suggesting that what percentage of people are logging every calorie they consume or practicing a specific style, but the fact that it is within their scope, their daily scope.

100%. I think that, yeah, the ones that are truly great are focused on that and relationships. There's others that I've interviewed who are extremely successful and accomplished, but I may not look at their full life as like, wow, they've got it all figured out. You know, it might be certain areas of greatness, but I really look at like the whole human being wellness as great.

Well, it's interesting because if you look at the blue zones, for example, and people rein on the blue zones because they, you know, for whatever reasons, I think the nutritional aspect of the Blue Zones is one of the smallest aspects of it.

It's the community.

It's the community, the activity.

The purpose.

The overall just holistic look on lifestyle. Like the holistic look on health. Like it's like they don't even realize they're doing it. So it's like when you liken that to people that have achieved a significant level of greatness, it's like it's just part of who they are.

Just like being. Yeah.

So it's like you could say someone that's living in Okinawa, Japan is like, well, they eat sweet potatoes, they eat fish, they eat tofu. And so that's what I got to eat. And you know what? There are some common denominators with the different blue zones that follow that sort of Mediterranean kind of flair that I think makes sense. But I think it's a perfect storm of that along with, you know, the community, the walking. And it's so funny because like the journals put such an emphasis on what they're eating. And it's like, how come the journals aren't putting the emphasis on the community and the love and just the general activity and how they live their life.

Yeah, and you're integrated in society from childhood to, you know, grandparent. You know, you're not just left to go be in a home by yourself or something. You have community with you, you have friends, you have family, and you have activities that you have purpose tied to it. And I think that's important.

Yeah. Well, and speaking of purpose, you know, it was just on your podcast and we kind of did a two for here or however recording. And if you haven't checked it out already, check it out, assuming it probably has aired by now. But you asked me about my level of sort of feeling of purpose fulfillment, level of almost greatness, if you will, like in how I see myself on a scale of one to 10. And I probably conservatively answered a six and a half, you know, I'd say, possibly closer to a six sometimes, right? It's like, and that was an interesting question. I'd never been asked that. And if I had, it's been...

I said the scale of self-love and inner peace. Yes. Okay, you said like a six and a half.

Yeah, and it's like, you know, the level of self-love, my level of self-love is, it probably is around a six and a half. And I say that not to be like, hey, like, don't do what I say, because I don't love myself all that much. I say that to let my audience know, people that are watching this video that yes, like on the surface I'm in great shape and I have success and this and that, but like I'm working on my self-love in a different way and this level of validation that you get from different things. And when you look at yourself in the mirror and you see that, you know, it's okay to accept the number that you're at. And I wanted to ask you and save this for this video, like when you ask that question to highly successful or highly great impactful people. I'm sure you've seen it across the board, but would you say that more often than not, like people are answering on the higher end, on the lower end?

A lot of people shock me and they answer not necessarily on the low end, but they answer lower than I would expect. And one person, he said it publicly on here, his name is Emmanuel Acho, he said, I think he, Before he kind of got more famous and more financially successful and more platform and more audience in the last couple of years, I said, Where were you at on the scale before things took off for you in those areas? And I believe, off the fact check, I believe you said he was like an eight.

Yeah.

Right? And then I said, Where are you now after financial success, massive audience and platform, connections with celebrities and all this stuff. And I believe he was like a six or six and a half. And I was like, that's really interesting. Before you accomplished a lot of things and become well known, you had a higher sense of self-love and inner peace. After, in the last couple of years, it went down. And I was asking him about it and he was just like, you know, there's a lot of pressure that comes to this. There's people coming after you. There's criticism. this and that. And I criticize myself more. I check everything I'm doing to make sure it's all okay and kind of a little bit more like stress or worry around things. And I think that's what caused it to go down. And he may be back to an 8 now. This was many months ago. But I think that's why there is a fear around success for people. That when you accomplish more and you become More successful yourself, healthier, happier, more financially abundant in great relationships. You build platform, you do something worthy of speaking about. Now there's other people looking at you and they have the ability to criticize you more. And that can be a fear for a lot of people. And that could be a weight. It could be a responsibility that people don't want. And I get it because I didn't want that pressure for a long time because I didn't know how to manage it and navigate it. and I don't know if you were to ask me what my number was because I've been thinking about it. And I would say I'm probably around an 8.3 to 8.7 range consistently. And the only reason why I believe I'm there is because for the last two years, I have been doing therapy and coaching on my emotions and healing my heart from different rooms, wounds of my past. every two weeks for the last two years. It has allowed me to have a lot more self-love and peace consistently. It has allowed me to have tools and courage to stop abandoning myself from things that make me feel less than internally and allow myself to love myself and expand more emotionally and externally. I don't know if I would be at an 8.2 to 8.7 range consistently if I wasn't having emotional accountability, support, coaching, and putting myself in positions that are kind to me. So that's why I would say I'm with that.

Do you think that people, given the right circumstances, can achieve these things without accountability and external help? And that's not a loaded question. People that are monks, for instance, they can go periods of solitude and meditation and if you were to ask them, they might still be nine and a half or a 10.

I think you can improve a lot on your own. I think you can. But there's a quote out there that's like, if you wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go together. And so can you live alone? People in the blue zones have community, they have support, and there's something to that that allows them to live longer. Obviously there's nutrition involved, but they're not like extreme CrossFit athletes. They're just walking around and having good lives. It allows them to have more peace inside and live longer. We were talking about in our interview on my show about managing stress and how emotional stress is one of the biggest, a big cause of inflammation. And inflammation causes more fat and more obesity and all these different things. So I think you can do a lot on your own if you haven't experienced a lot of emotional wounds in the past. I think if you've experienced different emotional wounds, whether big traumas or little traumas, I just think it's going to be easier to have guidance, support, community. It doesn't mean you have to pay for a therapist or a coach. There's free support groups, there's accountability buddies, there's friends you can talk to. to. And there's a lot of different resources and books and free guides online or YouTube videos and things like that that give you frameworks and tools to reflect, to practice things. It's one of the reasons why I created it with, with the book, the Greatness Mindset was what's a framework for someone like me that I could understand it, that it doesn't feel too out there, that it feels like if I was 21 and in my peak of being an athlete, smashing my head against other guys every day. What is a framework that would support me in becoming a better athlete, performing better, achieving more, and also feeling better about myself? And so that's why I spent the last really 10 years of research to create these frameworks so that I can understand it at 21, at 30, and now at 40. And hopefully in the future, I'll still be able to use it as a tool for me.

That's great. I mean, with self-love, I feel like there's a misconception.

Yes. It's not self-love and eat whatever I want.

Well, that, but also even self-love, meaning like, I love myself so much that it's going to soften my discipline or it's gonna soften my self-love is discipline.

Exactly. Self-love is structure and discipline and organization of thoughts and emotions. It is and again, if your thoughts and emotions are all over the place, you haven't, there is a wound that you have yet to heal. It doesn't mean you're still not going to be thinking about stuff and strategizing for the future, but if it's emotionally stressed and triggered, that means there's a wound that is causing you to feel emotionally stressed and triggered that you have yet to mend and resolve in a harmonious way. You've yet to reclaim that part of your life that was wounded. and so therefore it drives you to achieve and accomplish and do things from more of a neurotic standpoint as opposed to a peaceful, abundant, loving standpoint. So you can still create great results on the externally, but may not feel good internally. And that's why I think there's a way where you can bring those together and feel good internally and have inner peace, but still be disciplined and organized and structured and have a schedule because that is self-love. It's being creative within structure. It's having freedom and organization. And I think that is the true self-love.

You just described the different regions of the brain without even realizing it. That's what's interesting. What makes us unique as humans is this prefrontal cortex, right? That's like, it makes us, we have an enlarged prefrontal cortex and it's only getting bigger based upon the research, right? So it's like, and sometimes you think about, oh, well, animals wouldn't have to worry about this and animals are so, well, yeah, exactly, because they're not combating this prefrontal cortex all the time that's driving them to, they have their biological innate need to succeed and be dominant, but they're also doing it with, for lack of a better way of saying it, a lot of, less artificial concerns, right? Artificial concerns that we sometimes create for ourselves that are fabricated based upon our previous traumas, our childhoods, our fears, whatever. And when you just describe that, you're talking about, okay, my strategy, my discipline, you're talking about them, talk about my love, and I talk about my compassion, I talk about my emotion, I talk about what drives me to do things as just innately. I mean, that's the way that I've kind of described it in videos before is, When you start to understand neurochemistry a little bit, and when I say a little bit, I mean, I'm no Huberman or Atiya here. I know a little bit about the brain enough to know that the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex, the control centers, the hypothalamus, all this stuff. If you start thinking of your life in these different regions of the brain, there's an awareness that comes into play. Like, okay, it's okay. I'm in prefrontal cortex mode. I'm in strategizing mode. But then I'm gonna leave this prefrontal cortex mode here, and I'm gonna go amygdala for a minute, and I'm gonna really think about what I need to do to be there for my family and be. And if you start understanding that, it's like segmenting your life in a way to ultimately create harmony. And if you look at the orchestra, it's like, okay, you have the wind instruments, you have, you don't look at all of them and say, okay guys, all of you play.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you're like, okay, wind instruments, you play this. Okay, drums, you play this. Horns, yeah, yeah. And then together it creates harmony. But without that intricate focus on each section of the orchestra, you cannot create an orchestration of art. And it's like our brains are the exact same way. So people think, well, I don't have.

Time to get healthier to work out right now. It's like, you don't have time not to. Exactly. You know what I mean?

You don't have time not to, otherwise.

You'Re gonna die young.

Yep, okay, we don't have time for the drums. There's gonna be no drums in this episode. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's, you know, you can't, it's not something that you just say, we can do without. And it's like everything you're saying is just my brain is thinking this and saying like, okay, well this is awesome. How does this also parlay into like physical greatness? Because what is, you're talking about greatness as a whole. What is physical greatness? And like, if I were to ask you, like, could you define physical greatness?

And there's no right or wrong answer.

Just for all this novelty here.

I think it starts internally with peace, because I don't think if you are physically strong and shredded, but you're emotionally stressed, that's part of the body as well. So for me, physical, I would say it starts with, it starts with the thoughts in my mind. since our thoughts impact chemically our emotions and ourselves. So it starts with having great thoughts. It's being standing at the door of your mind and being a bodyguard of the critical thoughts that tend to come in consistently from ourselves or from others or society and being a guard and being a porter and saying, I'm not gonna let you pass. And I'm gonna only allow the thoughts that will support my greatness physically because they all affect my body. So let's start with the thinking of having great thoughts. Loving, kind, compassionate, generous thoughts. Abundant thoughts. Obviously, you wanna make sure you're protective and you're not naive and all these different things. Discerning thoughts, yes. but not self-critical thoughts which only hurt you. Instead, learn to be a great coach, not a great critic. That's the key. So start with the thinking, then it would be the feelings. I really believe that our feelings can impact a lot of our decision making. We feel bad, we eat poorly. We feel bad, we make poor decisions. We're reactive. We hurt ourselves in relationships. We do poor actions. So we want to feel good. I'm a big fan of meditation or just being in quiet for periods of time and breathing and just practicing breathing. But breathing and meditation is hard and doesn't really work fully unless you learn to heal. And that's why a lot of the book is about the process of healing and the research on healing emotions and finding the meaning from the traumatic moments, experiences, events that happened and finding meaning. It doesn't say it doesn't mean that they were okay, that they you want you wanted to experience those things, but just finding the meaning so you can be at peace about it and be able to move from that space. Once you get your emotions in a harmonious environment consistently, then it's about taking care of the nutritional things and the physical things within the body. And I think if you can work towards being the best in all those that you can on a daily basis, understanding that life happens and stuff happens, and it's not about being perfect, giving your best and having structure around that, that's what I think is physical greatness.

It's a really good way to put it.

Yeah.

And it's, it goes right in line with, I mean, pretty much every successful physical, I don't even want to call them athletes, but people that just have success with their overall physical health. They're in great shape, they can do whatever. They have no problem being able to also migrate from being a triathlete to deciding to be a weightlifter to just with no validation being sought out in any one category. There's also, and that comes with emotional physical freedom, right? Because they're not getting wrapped up in one thing.

They are free. And you can't flow unless you feel free. You know what I mean? It's hard to flow. When I think of great athletes, like the person that comes to mind when I was thinking about physical greatness is Usain Bolt. The guy is a freak athlete, but he's got so much freedom before and after his races, and he's got so much love and joy in his heart. You can see it in the way he's just loose and he's having fun, he's joyful. And I think that allows you to be an incredibly physically gifted individual with the skills and talents that you have with your body. But you need that peace and harmony internally so you can have joy and love externally with your activities and your body.

That's so dang true. And with nutrition, It's so nitpicky at times that I feel like it's difficult for people that are on the outside looking in, you know, maybe they're watching our content and they're trying to learn, they're trying to do them. And it just seems like it's so the opposite of this freedom that we talk about because they're like, oh, you're telling me to confine myself to this, to that. But in an odd way, there is a freedom that comes with that, too. There's a freedom with accepting that you can eat a certain way or a freedom that accepts what triggered you to make these decisions or the freedom to understand why you're seeking comfort from food. It's actually the opposite if you look kind of deep enough as interesting and woo-woo as it gets. I've thought long and hard about that as people that are really... they don't want to put themselves in a box with a specific diet. I want to enjoy my life. I want to enjoy the food. and that is perfectly acceptable, but understanding what it takes to have the freedom to make a better decision.

Exactly. And enjoying certain types of foods might limit your physically. Yeah.

That's an abundant mentality that is being overlooked at that point. Okay, what is this holistic look that I can look at this? If I make this decision, although it seems like I'm putting myself in a box, making this decision is actually allowing you and warranting you the ability to be freer tomorrow.

Absolutely. And it's asking yourself, does this decision, will my future self be proud of this? Yeah. Does it serve myself in a year, five years, 10 years? If I make this decision now, and what if I did this every day, would this serve me in 10 years? And when you think about it that way, and I love your mantra that food is fuel, I love having that as well. It's like, if you can think about these things, you can think about yourself, we'll support you in the future. hopefully you can start to make better decisions.

Yeah, 100%. When you really understand that food is fuel, it's not surface level. Food is fuel for everything. It fuels your emotions and it fuels how you look at things. It is as close to the definition of different colored glasses you could put on your face as you could possibly imagine. Because what you eat could absolutely change outside of sleep, the dynamic of how you look at anything. If I go and eat eat something that's causing a bunch of inflammation in my body, I might look at a situation completely different and that could literally change my life because it could cause me to react in a different way. And that comes with like being restricted and when you have the freedom to look at things larger, it just makes more sense that way.

Absolutely.

Alright, so before we wrap up, I want to ask you one really solid question. All the people that have been on your channel and on your podcast, all the content you've consumed over the years. What have you taken to heart as the most important critical piece of health information mentally, physically, nutritionally, anything?

I mean, it might just be because it's top of mind that the last couple of years I've had so many different neuroscientists and therapists and research around healing that the best stuff I've gotten over the last couple of years is about learning how to heal the emotions, learning how to heal wounds. Because I feel like that allows you to, you know, when you said stress, what did you say? Stress is like static. Yeah. And it's, it's like the inflammation is static, is what you said. And so it's hard to get information passed through static. Right. If it's in your body. And I think emotional trauma. even if you don't think you've been through emotional traumatic stuff, asking yourself what could have been that and learning how to mend those wounds will get rid of a lot of that static and that allow you to just be more effective and efficient with your nutrition, your workouts, and the way you feel about yourself. And when you feel better about yourself, you make better decisions.

100%. That's a good answer.

Yeah.

Well, Louis, where can everyone find your book and where can everyone find you?

The Greatness Mindset. You can get it on Amazon or on my website, greatness.com and the School of Greatness podcast, anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Cool. Well, right on my man.

As always, see y'all tomorrow.

Amen.

Thanks, brother. You bet. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience. Make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration, from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.