How To ACTUALLY Achieve Success, Happiness & Abundance (Not What You Think!) | Lewis Howes

So to the point about doing this for a long time, you've done this for a long time and your story is really motivational. I'm curious, just like what has kept you going for so long? The question people always ask me is like, when are you going to be done? When are you going to be done writing, doing the podcast? How much can you dissect life? What has kept you going for so long? You've spoken with so many people. I'm sure you've learned so much. What keeps you hungry to learn more and continue to define greatness for yourself.

Did you ever play baseball growing up? Sure did.

How long did you play for?

Oh, man, I played before I switched.

To lacrosse and became a lacrosse bro. Probably 10 years, 10, 12 years.

So I played, you know, from the earliest I can remember, probably five or six years old. T-ball then coaches pitch. I don't know if you ever did coaches pitch. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah. Lobbed you the ball. Then it was like Little League, and then. all right, now you got the AAU teams, you got the select teams, then you got, all right, middle school baseball, high school baseball. And I remember going from my, at the end of my junior year, playing baseball. I was a third baseman pitcher.

I loved it.

But I also started to fall in love with track. And so my junior year, I started to do track and baseball in the same season. So our pitch and then I go out and run in the track meets, like, right afterwards or in the next day or whatever. And I remember just having a new love for this, this thing called track and field. And I was pretty good at high jump. I was All-State, all that stuff, my junior year. And then I, at the end of the baseball season, I just realized, like, this is, I'm finished with this season of life. Like, I just didn't want to play baseball anymore. And I went all in on track and football and basketball and just said, you know, I had a great run at this season. And I had a mission, which was to be a great baseball player and have fun. And I did that. And now the season has ended. So I can't tell you when I'll be done or when I'll be finished, because I don't think I'll ever be finished as a human being. And 10 years into doing a podcast every single week, writing books, you know, and speaking about how to optimize your emotions, you talked about sharing your feelings for a living. It's kind of what I've been doing as well, but by expressing all the different emotions that I've experienced, what's worked for me, what hasn't worked for me, and figuring out more tools and strategies to optimize the way I think, the way I feel so that I can deliver better results in life, so that I can enjoy and experience life to the fullest so I can feel fulfilled and accept who I am in this life at this season. So I'm ten year I just finished my ten year anniversary of the show. and I feel like there's, I don't know when I'll be finished. I think it's gonna be, in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just getting started. I made a ton of mistakes and figured things out, and I feel even more of a beginner now than I was 10 years ago. The more I know, the more I realize I don't know. Yet I feel a lot of peace now. I feel a lot of fulfillment and peace, not because I've accomplished so much, but because I've healed so much. And I think there was a difference for me between success and greatness. And I always wanted to be successful. I'm sure you did as well, Case. You probably wanted to win and be successful and be competitive. The drive that we have as young guys growing up. But I realized through a lot of hardship, a lot of loneliness, a lot of sadness, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, resentment, that success was a selfish endeavor. doesn't mean it's bad and wrong, but success on itself is about me. It's about me wanting to accomplish goals and dreams, it's about me wanting to look good, me wanting to be number one, me wanting to make money, me wanting to be on the COVID of magazines and be praised by people. All these things, it's about me. Success is selfish in a sense. Again, it doesn't mean it's wrong or bad, it's just a more selfish endeavor. And I realized from being successful in sports for so long at every level, high school, college, professional, Olympic level, that I still didn't feel enough. I still didn't feel lovable. I still didn't feel good enough. I still didn't feel smart enough, talented enough, whatever enough, no matter how much success I got in sports. and I was still kind of resentful and angry and insecure. And so when I transferred my sports mentality and mindset into business, I said, well, let me try to figure out this business world. I have no clue what I'm doing. Let me go transfer success from sports into success in business. And I did that. It took a number of years to kind of figure things out. But then when I was figuring it out, I went all in like an athlete in business. and generated results, quote unquote success in the external world. And it still didn't feel enough. I still didn't feel lovable. I still didn't feel like I was accepted in society. I still felt judged. All these things. I was still living in fear and insecurity. So it wasn't until 10 years ago when I said, all right, success hasn't worked for me. It's gotten me external results, but my feelings, like you talk about, Don't feel good still. So what am I missing here? And it's when I started to go down this journey of greatness and realize that the greatness is much different than success. It includes you accomplishing your goals and dreams. It includes you winning in your life, but it also includes making everyone else win around you. It also includes empowering the people around you closest to you in your communities, in your audiences, and being in service to others on your journey to success. And I think that's where I've gained the most peace, the most self-love, the most joy, harmony, fulfillment from switching from success into greatness. And because I'm in that state of mind, in that state of being in congruency with my heart and feeling peace internally, I feel like there's no end in sight for this season. And I'm clear of what I want. I have a meaningful mission that's to serve and impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. That is my mission. And I think that's really step one for a lot of people is getting clear on what their mission is. And if your goal and mission is just for you, I don't feel like it will ever feel enough because I did that over and over again and I accomplished so much. and I was almost angry after I would accomplish my big goals of 5-10 years. I was almost like upset because I thought I would feel something different. And because I focus on impact, service, helping others, solving problems, all these things, it makes it more renewable, the energy to get up every day and do what I do consistently. So I don't feel the end is in sight anytime soon. Again, I'm on a mission. And maybe once that mission is accomplished, I'll reevaluate in the off season like I did that junior year in baseball and say, do I still want to keep playing the next season? Or is this time to reflect and think about a new transition? So that's what I think about right now.

I think so much about everything you just said about reinvention, about, you know, challenging these finish lines that we've been chasing and chasing and chasing. That is just incredible. And when I think about hosting a podcast, for instance, super, super practical, switching your barometer for what you're doing from you to other people, how that comes back to you. I always say I do the podcast for me as much as I obviously do it for other people. Every single day when I sit down and I do it and I've done it for five years straight and you've done it for 10 years straight, you can't help but grow yourself. When your goal is to impact other people. So I know it's like sometimes you can get sappy and be like, you help other people and you help yourself, but it is undeniable when you pivot in that sense. And I'm curious for you, two men talking about these topics. And you obviously talk a lot about masculinity. You wrote a book on the Mask of Masculinity, which I love and I think is so powerful. Within the context of being a man, a lot of my listenership is mostly women, but I think talking about masculinity here will be really helpful. you know, a success. I'd say you ask any man, they want to be successful. I want to be successful. And then they could break that down, the why and the impact and things like that. But I think you ask any man what their goal is, they'd say, you know, I want to be successful or I want to be happy, things like that. You're, you're challenging that in a sense. How do you think men should approach their lives? That is such a broad question. But, like, how can we challenge ourselves as men to not be so bullheaded and just focused on success and place all the other things behind success. Oh, once I'm successful, then I'll be grateful. Then I'll be, I don't want to say, people wouldn't say, I'll be kinder, but like, I'll be softer, like these things that come with success or so we assume, what advice would you have for men or how do you think about masculinity and success going hand in hand?

Well, I think it's defining what success looks like. And usually we want to be successful because we want to feel respected, we want to feel worthy, we want to feel light, we want to feel celebrated. But at the core of all those things is we want to feel loved and enough. We may not say that. That may sound like a wussy thing to say or whatever, but at the end of the day, I felt so alone internally for so much of my life. I felt so insignificant that I wanted to be significant. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to belong to other groups. You know, friend groups, School groups, Sports team groups. business groups, like we want to belong and be respected as men. And again, there's nothing wrong with that. But if we're doing that to fill a hole of we don't feel enough, if we don't feel lovable, we feel insignificant, so we're driven to do that, it will never fulfill that hole of not feeling enough. And so step one is learning how to heal appropriately. This may sound weird. Again, most of my audience is women too. So I think women can relate to this and can really hear this. But step one for men and women is about healing and healing all the parts of our past that we don't want to face, all the shames and insecurities that make us feel triggered or make us feel painful. you know, you talk about your feelings and your emotions. Our emotions are a byproduct of all the memories and experiences we've had up until now and our interpretation of them. This is something you talk about. Our emotions are a byproduct of all the events we've had and all the memories and the meaning we place on those memories. So if there is something that happens in the world where we feel like, oh, someone's taking advantage of me or someone is abusing me, or someone has frustrating me, or there's an unfair thing that I'm seeing that happened, an unjust thing, where someone's rejecting me, or someone's upset at me, and we have a nervous system reaction, our nervous system responds, and we get triggered, and we react, we shut down, we get emotional, whatever it might be. Again, there's no right or wrong here, good or bad, that just means there's a wound that's open somewhere inside of you. and someone just poked it. They just said, boop. And you went, ah, I don't like that feeling. That doesn't feel good. I'm going to feel emotional in some state. Emotions aren't bad. But if they hold you back from a mission, if they hold you back from having joyful energy, of being generous, of being kind, of being giving, of being loving, of opening your heart, then it makes you feel less. It makes you close down. It makes you less if in relationships, in life, in your career, in your dreams, whatever it is. So again, this is not about good or bad, right or wrong. It's about what is useful, what is helpful, what it creates abundance financially and love in your life and health in your life, the abundance of these things. So step one is addressing the areas of your life and the memories that you have painful meaning tied to. and learning how to tell yourself a new story around these memories. I think it's, you know, for years, 25 years, I had the memory of being sexually abused that would just kind of play in the back of my mind, right? And I didn't tell anyone. So this concealing of a past pain, of a past memory, of a past shame, of an insecurity that made me feel angry that this happened. lack of forgiveness was like poison in my body, running through my veins when I felt like someone would cut me off on the street, in the car, right? It would make me triggered because I felt like I was being taken advantage of and abused. It wasn't until, so again, it doesn't mean I'm bad or wrong. It just means that's how I would react. It would pull energy away from being loving, being generous, being kind, being vulnerable, all these things, being more effective as a human being. to get the results I want in my life. And it wasn't until I started to face the pain, face the shame, and reveal them. I'm not saying you need to reveal them publicly, but being able to reveal them to the people closest to you. You'd be able to talk about them until they no longer have power over you. That for me is step one, healing. You talk about this, I see you talking about healing before you get into a relationship. I think if you're extremely wounded from a previous relationship and you are so on edge and so triggered, it's going to be hard to generate a healthy identity going into the next relationship. I'm not saying you can't make it happen. And healing is a journey. It's not like you're healed at a certain moment and you're perfect. You've got to process and integrate these things. But healing is step one. And it's really identifying, am I living in a powerless mindset or am I living in a greatness mindset moment to moment, day to day? Again, there is no judgment, no right or wrong, good or bad here. What is supporting you on accomplishing your mission you have in life for this season? This could be three month season, it could be year, it could be 10 years. So let me break down first what a powerless mindset is versus a greatness mindset. who this new mindset, you know what I'm saying? And we want to tap into that new mindset more frequently. Now, just because I'm aware of these things doesn't mean I don't fall back into powerless mindset states of being every once in a while. And I have to catch myself and reintegrate and practice and get coaching and keep evolving and updating my. My beliefs around this. But a powerless mindset, a mindset that holds you back from Joy, abundance, prosperity, freedom, peace, clarity, and ultimate unconditional love is when you are in a powerless mindset. So what does this include? Six things. Number one, you lack a meaningful mission. Speaking about men, men without a meaningful mission are dangerous. They are dangerous because when we don't know what we're going to do in life, what direction we're heading, we start to do things that aren't healthy for us or good to other people. We start to wander, we start to pick up the scraps of life, people, vultures come after us and try to pull us in a certain direction because we are not clear on our mission. So when you lack a meaningful mission and even just saying, I'm not sure what I want right now and I'm in a season of exploration, cool, that's your mission. But if you're just like, I have no clue, I'm just depressed and unsure and I'm not even going to try to figure it out, that is a dangerous time for a man. So when you lack a meaningful mission, you are powerless mindset. You are allowing something else to control your direction. Again, it does not mean right or wrong, good or bad. It is just less effective. Number two, you are controlled by fear. In the greatest mindset, I talked about a number of processes and how to identify the biggest fears in your life and how to walk through them and overcome and embrace them. But when we are controlled by fear, if you were afraid of so many things, you wouldn't put your book out there. You wouldn't be consistent for five years every week on your podcast if you were controlled by fear. Maybe there was fear that you have, but it didn't control you. You learned to manage it and play with the fear. But if you were controlled by it, you're never going to launch the book. You're never going to ask the girl out. You're never going to break up of a toxic relationship because the fear controls and consumes you. Number three, you're crippled by self-doubt. I believe, Case, that self-doubt is the killer of all dreams. And when we can get to the root of why we doubt ourselves, that and we can heal that root, then we can move past self-doubt and have the courage to act accordingly. Number four, we conceal past pains. Again, for 25 years, No one knew that I was sexually abused when I was a kid by a man that I didn't know. I was so afraid of this and I concealed it. I kept it to myself and it left a sense of resentment, anger, frustration, unworthiness, not enoughness inside of me. So every time I succeeded, it still didn't feel enough. And that is a pain that will cripple you. And anytime you are unable to speak about something to someone you care about, because you're so afraid of past pain, it just holds you back. I'm not saying you're right or wrong, good or bad person, it holds you back. I know this from years of experience, it is not fun. When you're defined by the opinions of others, it's a powerless mindset. Again, other people have control over your mindset when you're defined by their opinions. And when you drift towards complacency, then you're in a powerless mindset. So we just want to be aware and say, am I allowing any of these six things to consume my mind, my energy, my feelings and emotions on a consistent basis? And I'm not saying you're going to be perfect at this, but it's being aware of this. And if you want to step into greatness mindset, it's being driven by a meaningful mission. So I'm very clear my meaningful mission is to serve 100 million lives weekly and help them improve the quality of their life. I make decisions daily that support and serve the mission, not support and serve my success. Now, my success may help the mission as well, but everything that I achieve success in, I say this is in service to this meaningful mission. So it takes the pressure off of me, allows you to stay humble and also be able to celebrate yourself at the same time. You turn fears into confidence. I do not know if you have done this fully yet, but for me in my twenties, I was afraid of a lot of things. And I decided to create a fear list. I wrote down all these fears that I was afraid of: public speaking, salsa dancing, reading and writing publicly, writing a book, all these things that I was afraid of. And I said, the only way I can build confidence is not thinking these fears, are gone. It's actually going all in like Batman, living in a bat cave and actually embracing these fears one by one. So I went to Toastmasters every week for a year and fumbled my way and humiliated my way until I got more confident. I did salsa dancing four times a week for a number of years and traveled the world salsa dancing in the scariest nightclubs where the best dancers in the world who I didn't speak the language. and allowed myself to feel humiliated until I gained confidence and overcame the fear. Same thing with writing a book. I wrote my first book before 25 and I almost flunked out of high school English. So all these insecurities, I said, I gotta go all in on these fears until the fears disappear. And that allowed me to step into a greatness mindset more frequently. Overcoming self-doubt. Again, self-doubt's the killer of dreams. So I had to figure out what is the root cause of my self-doubt. I'm happy to talk about that in a minute if you want. Heals past pains. I really think healing is step one. When you can start to heal, then you can get clear on your meaningful mission and what you need to do next. But I was not willing to heal my emotional memories. I was holding on to them for so long. And it wasn't until I started to heal them, I started to feel peace and freedom inside, which gave me more energy in life. Creates a healthy identity. 10 years ago, case, I used to, I don't know if you ever did this as a kid, or if any woman listening or watching right now can resonate with this, but there used to be a very nasty, critical coach in my mind, almost daily that would say, you,'re stupid. I can't believe you made that mistake. what an idiot, what a dummy. God, that was the dumbest thing you've ever done. I can't believe you said that. What a reject you are. I used to say this on repeat, probably daily, for most of my life. Even when I would succeed, I would beat myself up and say, I could have done it better. It wasn't perfect. And if we recorded these things, Case, if someone took a voice recorder and recorded our thoughts, and played him out into the world, they would probably put us in a mental institution. And if we said these things to our best friends, our family members, our kids, you're an idiot, you're a dummy, what a loser, I can't believe you made this mistake, we would probably have zero friends and no one would love us. But for some reason, we think this is normal and it's okay, but it's not normal and it's not okay. And so we must learn to create a new healthy identity with self, 10 years ago, case, I made a contract with myself, a literal written contract with a new identity. And I told myself, okay, I've been living in frustration, anger, you know, kind of like mental states of like sort of depression and anxiety. And I feel very stupid. That was kind of my identity. I was saying to myself consistently internally, And so I said, I need to create a new contract with myself, a new healthy identity that I actually believe in. Not some lie, not some affirmation that I am a certain thing that I actually don't believe I am, but what is something I could fully believe in that I am, maybe I'm just not fully there yet. And I said, okay, instead of being angry, which I was, I was resentful and angry when I would get triggered because there was a wound, when I started to heal that, I said, I am loving. And when I would get kind of down on myself and just lay in my bed for days sometimes and get kind of like sad and depressed and in mental states, I said, you, know what? I'm passionate. You know, I'm passionate. And when I used to say, Man, I'm really stupid, and I was in the bottom of my class, and I used to think that I wasn't as smart as everyone else because of my grades in school, I said, I'm wise. So I said, I am a loving, passionate, wise man. And I wrote it down and signed it and framed it as a new contract for a healthy identity. Because the old identity I was living in was getting me external results, but it wasn't helping my feelings. So I started speaking and being a loving, passionate, wise man. And now I embody that daily. And again, it doesn't mean I don't have frustrating days and moments, but I feel harmony and peace in my heart because I step into a healthy identity. So the greatest mindset is creating a healthy identity with self and really taking a look at all the things that you say negative about yourself, being a better positive coach than a negative self critic. And the last part of the greatest mindset is taking action with a game plan. and I just think a lot of people have goals and dreams and hopes and desires, but they don't take consistent action. You're really inspiring because you've been doing this for five years every single week. You take action with a game plan. You follow through, and when you follow through consistently, you build confidence and self-esteem. You don't do it by thinking your way through things. You do it by acting with a game plan. and so if you want to identify which mindset you're in, take a look at page 201 in the book. There's a graph there that shows you that, and then it teaches you how to overcome these things and step into the greatness mindset.

That's amazing. That. Thank you. Well, thank you for breaking that down. It's. You say so many things that I think so often. A couple reactions to that, and, and I, I really appreciate that. I mean. First of all, the word healing, right? I think it carries with that a lot of connotations, particularly for men. I think if you ask any men, hey, do you need to heal? They're like, oh, what is that? Like, should I go get some crystals and align my frequencies? Like, what is that about? I think a lot of men are very averse to that. And a lot of the words you used, I kept track of here that I think are really important. You use the word conceal about how easy it is. You talk about the contrast, the duplicity of being human. How easy it is for us to conceal past trauma, past pain, past insecurity, present insecurity, all these things. We put it in a pile altogether, a big smoothie, and we just let it sit there or we just drink it constantly where they're all muddled together. And you said the word not-enoughness and I love that. I have a quote in my book that I said, It's so much easier for us to identify our not-enoughness than it is to identify our enoughness. Again, our human capacity for these things and of course we choose what is easier, right? We choose to conceal and we choose to highlight our not enoughness. So like everything you say is so freaking good. And I love what you talk about, about building a positive relationship with yourself centered around the greatness mindset. Of course it's action. It's action. You can't think yourself into being a better, more compassionate, more powerful person. And I love the way you just described everything. I'm curious question for you. So I lead a lot of these guided journaling sessions. I do them in so I was fairly frequently. And the exercise I always close with, I talk a lot about like, what do you want in life? And I say how a lot of people choose to identify themselves by adjectives, right? I want to be successful, I want to be happy, so on and so forth. And I challenge people to say, okay, we're going to put that by the wayside for a second, and we're going to define ourselves by verbs with the exercise called I'm the kind of person who. And you literally just say, I'm the kind of person who, and you complete it with as many verb statements as possible, who does what he says he's going to do, who, verb, verb, verb, verb, verb. And again, the idea there is you're using verbs to back into a feeling, an emotion, a state of centeredness that you aspire towards. I'm curious for you, if you had to answer that just off the cuff, Lewis Howes, you're the kind of person who, what would you say according to that?

I would start with my contract, who is loving, passionate, and wise, who is generous, to strangers and to friends and family who goes above and beyond to help people solve challenges in their life and feel that they are loved, worthy and enough. I am someone who is a positive force for good, that empowers other people to win around me. I'm someone who believes in win-win. and that nobody wins unless we all win. And also the only way I win is when others are winning around me as well. I'm someone who is a stand for greatness in everyone. I'm a stand for everyone's masterpiece. Even when it's uncomfortable for people to hear it, even when people may not like me because I'm calling them on their or I'm calling them up out of their, and it's confrontational. I'm a stand for people to open their hearts, to experience more love, to experience more healing and experience more harmony.

Such great answers. And it's like, I think a lot about your ability to verbalize things, right? Talked to a lot of men. I'm a huge proponent of journaling. Journaling, frankly, is what got me into the wellness industry is what made me build journals and journal myself and of course and do all these things. And it's like, if you can't verbalize an intention or a mission, how do you expect to follow through and do it? Like I talked to a lot of men and I'm saying like, when was the last time you sat down and journaled or asked yourself a question and answered it? It's like, it's so powerful to be able to state your intention, to state your mission to do these things that I think we underestimate, whether it's our wiring or our psychology behind having a thought and outputting it with words or in writing, I think it's the most powerful thing you could do in life to be able to verbalize these things.

Here's an interesting story for you that I think you'll resonate with and women listening will resonate with. A little over five years ago, I wrote this book called the Mask and Masculinity, which was a journey of kind of me discovering more about why me as a man struggled so much and suffered so much internally. And about the masks that I wore, the, you know, psychological masks that I wore to protect myself, fit in, belong, be seen, be celebrated, be successful and all these things. These masks would serve a purpose. And sometimes they were helpful, but most of the times they were more harmful than helpful. and studying with a lot of the different therapists and neuroscientists and researchers around emotions, men's studies, things like this, and using myself as the guinea pig of all the mistakes and challenges that I've faced in my life with these masks. And when I was going around the country doing like a little speaking tour around it, I was getting, you know, hundreds of people to show up to these these talks. And it was typically 50/50 men and women. And at one point in every talk, I would ask the women in the room, I would say, Ladies, raise your hand if once a week you get together with a girlfriend or girlfriends, or your sister or your mom, and you talk about your feelings, your challenges, your insecurities, your shame, your body issue, thoughts and challenges, your career challenges, your marriage challenges, or whatever it might be, anything. And you just talked and allowed yourself to process and process your feelings. And most of the women in the room raised their hand once a week that they did this. And I said, how many of you keep your hands up if you do this every day? You're on the phone with a girlfriend every day, your mom, your sister, and they all kind of laughed and kept their hands up. Women in general, at least in America, tend to do this. on a regular basis, they get together and they communicate their feelings. I said men in the room, you know, put your hand up. If once a month you get together with another one man or a couple men and talk about your feelings, your insecurities, your shame, your self-doubt your body issues, your marriage issues, you know, where you feel pain in your, in your, in your thoughts and in your heart. And maybe two out of, like, hundreds of guys would raise their hand. And I would instantly kind of a joke and call out to them. I say, are you guys a part of a kind of a mandatory church group that does this once a month and they kind of laugh and yeah, we are. And I say, okay, now men, raise your hand if you do this once a year with guy friends and no hands go up. And I go, Raise your hand if you've never talked about these things. And most guys' hands did not go up. And I said, Ladies, What would it feel like if you only were able to talk about these things once a month? They were like, it'd be really hard. And I go, what if you only talked about it once a year? They're like, that'd be insanity. And I said, what if you never talked about these things? And kind of people would joke and they were like, what? I'd probably kill myself, kind of joking. And I go, well, there's no wonder why men kill themselves more than women. I just had two friends die. in their 40s in the last month. And one was by suicide, the other one, I'm not sure if it was yet. We don't know the results yet, but he had a lot of heart issues. And I just saw him a month ago and he had a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress. And again, I don't know if that was related to it, but the sadness of the emotions was evident. It was overwhelming for him a month ago and for the last couple of years. Again, I do not know what happened and how he passed, specific details, but I know his heart played a big issue in his pain. I just said to women, just imagine. Most of the men in your lives never talk about these things and they never heal. I know healing is something that women talk about more and express more and still have a lot of room to work on themselves. but a lot of men never emotionally or mentally heal, and therefore they just carry the emotional burden and they are constantly wounded and reacting based on wounds that are not healed. So that's why they might get angrier or might have what's road rage or might get in more fights or might want to attack people or might want to do harmful things in the world. Like you see all these mass shootings, from men, if they had love in their hearts, if they were healed emotionally, they probably wouldn't want to go hurt other people because they would learn to love themselves from a humble, kind, generous place, not from a narcissistic loving place. And when we can learn to heal first and being a state of a healing journey, because it's not a destination, it's a constant process of healing, that's when we can open our hearts and be more loving to ourselves and other people. And when we are in a state of an environment of emotional harmony. I'm not saying that every day is going to be perfect and you're not going to deal with stresses and challenges and responsibilities of life. But when you can emotionally and mentally learn to accept and love who you are, all your shame from your past, all the things you did bad and wrong, all the things that people did bad and wrong to you, I'm not saying you have to like these things, but learning to accept and create new meaning, as Viktor Frankl said in Man's Search for Meaning, he became one of the happiest, most joyful people in the rest of his life after he was in the concentration camp and experienced horrific trauma. The meaning he gave to the trauma for the rest of his life allowed him to find peace and harmony and get rid of the poisonous emotions that caused him to feel sick. He was able to release that and open his heart to love and joy. And I'm just saying you could go through little trauma or big trauma and you can decide to give it meaning and go hurt others, or you can decide to give it meaning and make sure no one else has to experience that type of pain again. And that is the difference between a hero and a villain. The hero feels the same type of abandonment, trauma, pain, and wants to make sure that no one else in the world experiences that type of pain. The villain experiences the same type of abandonment, wrongdoing to them, pain in some part of their life, and wants to burn the world down. And you've got to ask yourself, what type of person do I want to be? Do I want to allow this pain and anxiety and frustration and sadness to drive me? Or do I want to overcome this and create new meaning and see how I can be of service to others? And that is what the greatest mindset's all about.

Yeah, that's so powerful. And yeah, I mean, I think for men in particular, like, of course, like the average man who's been through things, who has a big heap of unexamined things in their life, I think if you were to ask them, they would say, yeah, of course, I don't want to. I don't want to be the villain, but we let our robot mode. you know, aversion to call it awkwardness, get in our way of actually doing that. Like I think about my friends and I, for instance, like back to your comments about men sharing their feelings with their fellow men, you know, anecdotally in friend circles and something more structured, whatever it may be, we just don't do it because we're afraid to take that first step. And I remember my friends in Chicago, I've got like three really, really good buddies there. And we never really used to be feelings guys until like, I don't remember who exactly started it, one of us, we just became, I love you guys. We just started saying, I love you to each other, and it literally broke the seal. It sounds like such a silly little thing, but it literally was the Band-Aid ripping off saying, I love you to your friend. It literally provided that. And now, my friends, we will take pictures of our general entries and we'll text it to our group. We'll talk openly, like it's a really beautiful thing. And it started with a small step. But before that, I think we were all like, oh man, I don't want to be the one to do this. I don't want to be the one to do that. or recognizing the fact that maybe we need some help, maybe we need some outside thought process within our friends or therapy or whatever it may be. It's just like that first step, you know, you talk about human aversions. We have such an aversion to that first step because it makes sense. What if we're rejected? What if we're made fun of and it makes it even worse? Like that could be crippling. So of course, like it all makes sense. We had to put ourselves in that position though.

Here's another quick story for you that I just got. I just got a text message. a couple weeks ago from a friend of mine who's a big Hollywood producer, but he's made his mission in this season of his life to really give back to men in prison, to help men heal in prison. And he does incredible work with men who have been wrongfully convicted, but also men who are really, who did horrible things, extreme murderers from their past. He works, he'll see all of them. And he wants to help all of them heal. I think there's over 2 million men incarcerated in America. and I went and did a couple of trips with him because my brother was in prison when I was younger, so I visited a prison a lot for four years when I was a kid to visit my brother. And a year and a half ago, I did a virtual Zoom to, I think it went out to all the prisons, a part of this certain program, so they have cells in the cells, they have some TVs in a lot of the prisons. So anyone who had a TV had this programming happening during the pandemic. And I did a live kind of a Zoom feed to these, this, the prisons around the country. And, I was talking about the mask of masculinity, the masks that hold men back and cause them to do harmful things and take actions and behaviors that could get them into prison, that could get them in doing something that would be unlawful. And my friend sent me this text with a screenshot of a handwritten letter from an inmate. And he said, Here's a six-page letter from Pelican State Bay Prison from a 21-year-old that's been in solitary confinement for two years. Solitary confinement is 23 hours a day in essentially a little cell by yourself. You have one hour outside in fresh air. He had a swastika tattooed on his chest when my friend met him. And he said he dropped out of the white gang he was in in prison. And when he asked him why, he said, Lewis Howes and the Mask of Masculinity. And then I had him send me this letter, a screenshot of this letter. And he said he'd read the book four times after I did this thing. He got access to the book. He read it four times. and started to just reflect on how he wore certain masks to protect him, to fit in, why he had to like act tough, to fit into a gang, to be accepted. And then you just start taking actions to belong, to be accepted, to feel loved, to feel enough. And those actions cause you to go to jail or cause you to hurt people or break the law to go into prison. And so he was able to reflect on all the things that he was conditioned and trained to do, all the things he concealed, all the negative behaviors that he had from his life. And I'm not trying to toot my horn from this book or something, but it's a beautiful story for me to realize that there are just so many men suffering from not feeling comfortable to talk about their feelings and emotions the way you talk about it. And when you do that, you're gonna have to go some other way. You're gonna have to be extreme toughness, extreme, like whatever it might be. And that could just lead to things that could cause more harm. And so I think it's amazing the work that you're doing because you're giving permission to men to open up and express their feelings. And I think that's what everyone gets to do more of.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I mean, your story is just, such a reflection of one impact, again, about what we're talking about here. And yeah, I mean, it is an incredible thing to just unburden yourself of these things that you've let control you. And I want to segue for maybe about 10 minutes here, and then we'll wrap it up. I want to talk about relationships a little bit because I think we act out of fear and insecurity in relationships and droves and volumes. I think about men, for instance, and I think a lot of the behaviors and the issues and the sticking points we face in relationship comes to a lot of the things that we're referencing here, insecurity, self-doubt, lack of a mission. We think that a relationship is a threat to these things that we've let guide us. And, you know, I think a lot of myself in my twenties and like issues that came up because of me in relationships and the one that I come back to is, you know, seeing a relationship as a threat to my independence, as a threat to my masculinity, right? And obviously getting older, doing this, doing a lot of introspection, maturing, I realized very simply that the right relationship supercharges your independence because your commitment together gives you that confidence. And it's really helped me rethink the purpose of a relationship, the purpose of a partnership, not necessarily marriage, whatever, with the purpose of commitment between two people. So I'm curious for you. you know, not necessarily men or women, like what is the purpose of a relationship? What is the purpose ethereally, energetically, emotionally, physically? What do you think the purpose of a relationship is if you had to define it? Like why should we even get into a relationship?

Well, I think first, a relationship by itself is not what I want. A conscious relationship is what I think we should be looking for. And in a conscious relationship, it's two people on a healing journey who are committed to helping the other person become the best version of themselves. I believe that's what a conscious relationship is. A lot of people unconsciously get into relationship based on sexual chemistry and attraction, not based on spiritual connection and alignment. I've raised both my hands for doing this for most of my life. where I would just be sexually attracted to people and I was like, oh, I want to be with this person. I desire this person. Or something draws me to them, whether it was a trauma bond that I was unconscious of or something that I wanted to fix in someone or whatever it was, was drawn to something sexually, chemically. And when I made decisions based on sexual chemistry or attraction, that's when It all went wrong every time. And when I made a decision on spiritual alignment and chemistry spiritually, that's when I've had the most peace and harmony in my life, in my current relationship with Martha. And I did things differently in the beginning of the relationship. I first said, Hey, there's not going to be any type of sexual experiences happening here until we get committed. And I want to get to know you spiritually and make sure we are in total alignment of our values, of our vision and our lifestyle together. And if we're not, then we can be good friends or we can hang out or whatever, but I'm not going to commit to someone anymore like I did in the previous 15 years of my life based on sexual attraction. I am going to do it based on spiritual alignment of values, vision, and lifestyle so that there is more harmony. It does not mean there is not going to be challenges or disagreements or some friction, but I want to minimize as much friction as possible so that I have more peace, harmony, and energy in the relationship, and therefore I have more energy in my mission and in my life. Because I used to feel drained in relationships before, and then feel exhausted in my mission, exhausted running my business and exhausted at the gym and working out, just drained because I was putting so much energy in trying to make a relationship work that was not a conscious relationship, that was not in alignment with values, vision and lifestyle. And a lot of that is just me lacking the courage to communicate those things and me giving in and abandoning myself to try to please one person because I had a fear and a wound around judgment, around abandonment, around not being enough. That's why everything goes back to healing. When I finally was able to heal and understand physically, emotionally, and body healing through experiencing healing, not thinking healing, experiencing healing, when I was able to do that, I could recognize the relationship in front of me was not the conscious relationship that I envisioned. And therefore I could remove myself from a relationship consciously, give myself space and time, and then explore a new relationship experience from a conscious level, a level of what does it look like to be in a conscious relationship? How are we going to communicate with each other? How are we going to communicate to self in a conscious way? How am I going to communicate with the other person in a conscious way? How are we going to commit to one another consciously? What does commitment look like? How can I feel free in a commitment in a relationship while being in congruence of our agreements in all these different areas that support conscious relationship? Me wanting her to be the best version of herself. Me wanting me to be the best version of myself. Her wanting me to be the best version of myself. Her wanting herself for that. and us wanting the relationship to be a beautiful experience that impacts and serves other people as well. So for me, the purpose is not getting into a relationship. It's defining what a conscious relationship is and entering that in alignment together.

Yeah, that's so great. I mean, and the reason you're able to do that, the reason you're able to then evaluate the strength of a relationship based on the vision, values, and lifestyle to what you're saying is because you spent the time to actually define your greatness mission for yourself to decide what the greatest version of you looks like or what an evolution of yourself looks like. If you haven't done that, then again to the idea here, where I call it living in the gray of life, it's what you called the opposite mindset. Powerless mindset.

Yeah.

Powerless mindset, right? That's living in the gray. That's when you're not living. I stay away from living your truth because I don't really know what that means sometimes, but you're not living things that are true for you. we're doing these things and obviously talk a lot about relationships and I really try to highlight the things that I've seen get in the way of moving past a relationship that isn't working, no longer staying in that state of unknowing. And I find just a lot of the time, rather than defining, rather than living consciously, challenging ourselves consciously, finding a partner who does the same is we're borrowing other people's ideas, metrics, timelines, definitions of love, happiness, success, all these different things. And I think for a closing question here, you talk a lot about the opposite of greatness, which I think is just powerful contrast to motivate you to live a mindset that is defined by greatness. I think a thing that gets in the way of a greatness mindset certainly is comparison. Comparing yourself to other people, comparing yourself to other people from a place of lack. and then being rushed, being in a hurry, borrowing their definition, borrowing their pressure, borrowing their timeline, so much so that we haven't taken the time to be conscious ourselves. How can we look to other people, social media? How can we be human and be inspired by other people rather than viewing what they have, their lifestyle from a place of blame or unworthiness? How can we stop comparing ourselves so unfairly?

I want to answer that in a second. So remind me of that, but I wanted to add one more thing to relationships that I think could be really helpful, specifically for women listening or watching. When I consciously decided to commit to Martha, my girlfriend, you know, we spent months kind of dating and exploring each other and, you know, hanging out, traveling, and just experiencing life together, getting to know each other's friends and family, all these things. I've witnessed a lot of her, right? I didn't know all of her, but I experienced a lot of time with her. Before I said I'm going to commit to you, I said the only way this works for me in a conscious relationship is with total acceptance. That means I get to totally accept who you are now, knowing that you may never change who you are. You may stay this way forever. Can I fully accept who you are? It doesn't mean I have to fully like everything, or I might not be a little frustrated with something here or there. I may not be a preference of mine, but can I fully accept who you are as a human being, your decisions, your actions, and your life? And I had to think about it and really consciously say, the only way I think a conscious relationship works is when you empower others to improve and grow, but when you accept them for who they are at all times. And I chose to accept her, which to me meant there's no reason I should get angry and upset at you or lash out at you at any moment. And that's not something that is going to work for me. You know, it's one of our agreements. It's because I accept you. So if I didn't accept you, then I would get angry and upset and frustrated or triggered. But I've chosen to accept you. She's an act, she's like a big celebrity in Mexico and a big actress, done tons of movies. And she's also done kissing scenes, right? And movies. And I've seen some of them. and I had to ask myself if she continues to do this because it's art for her, am I okay? Is that something I can accept and be okay with? And I said to myself, yes, because I don't want, I want her to fully accept who I am. I know I'm not like this personality that's easy to be with sometimes because I'm traveling and I've got opportunities, I'm meeting people and I'm doing events and, you know, there's people around me and I've never had a partner who accepted who I was. so I felt like I had to minimize myself to make them feel safer or protected. And I just said, I fully accept you, but in only way for this to work is you got to fully accept me. Now, yes, acceptance is number one and agreements is number two. We've got to create agreements around certain things to make sure that we are in alignment and so that we have acceptance, agreements and then alignment that way there should be no There should be no massive upsets. There can be friction and disappointments and letdowns, but because we accept each other, I know this is going to happen and I've already accepted it. And if there's a friction or a breakdown, we create a new agreement on how to handle this in the future. And then we get into alignment. And because we do those things, it creates a lot more harmony. And again, My goal is to create peace and harmony in my home and in my relationship, because there is not peace and there's challenges and stress in the world. And I don't want to be at a war in the world and a war at home. I want to have peace and harmony. So I put more time, energy, and effort into making sure I fully accept, we create conscious agreements, and we are in alignment so that I feel peace when I'm at home. that's just something I wanted to add there because I think a lot of people don't accept their partner for who they are.

Yeah, that's great.

And they want to change them. And that is when people get resistant and frustrated because if you don't feel accepted for who you are and you have to change to make someone happy, it's, you're not going to be happy. I did this for a long time. It didn't work. It made me miserable. So you want to accept the person you're choosing. Otherwise, do not choose them. and you need to make sure you ask all of these scary, courageous questions before you commit to them and see and be discerning, okay, are they honest with me? Are they telling me the truth? Are they following through on what they said they're gonna do? Like take the time to get to know someone, otherwise you might get frustrated later. Don't wait a year or two years into dating someone and then ask him, oh, what do you think about money and relationships? What do you think about kids? What do you think about marriage? What do you think about? and what do you see yourself doing? What are your priorities? Don't wait to have the courageous conversations. Like, scare someone away within the first couple of weeks with just being honest and vulnerable. And if they can't handle it, they don't accept you. And wait till you find someone who is more accepting. So that's just something I wanted to add there that I think a lot of people make a mistake around. And I say a lot of people, meaning myself for most of my life, I made that mistake around and had to learn the hard way over and over. But in terms of comparison, I used to compare a lot and I suffered because of it. 10 years ago, I made a conscious decision to stop competing with people. And I made a conscious decision that I don't need to be number one, I don't need to win, I don't need to be right. I like winning, I like being successful, I like growing and accomplishing. But I'm not going to do it to beat out others anymore. And I said, I'm going to switch competition for collaboration and celebration of others. And when I went extreme, I didn't make a show about me. I made a show about others. I didn't call it my name. I called it the School of Greatness. And I pointed the spotlight on others for the last 10 years. And this is really like the first time, except when I had two other books, where I've been like, all right, now I feel after a decade of pointing the light on everyone else that I feel ready to also put myself out there independently as well, to also go out and do press, to also do solo stuff and do more of this because my audience wants more of it from me. But I just wanted to completely figure out a way to ensure that my ego was not running my life. And I said, it's gotta be about celebrating others' success, about collaborating with others and not competing with others. And when I started to do that, I also rose in my, you know, opportunities, my revenue, my money, my, you know, audience. These things lifted with others because I was pointing a light on them. and I think I'm still like a competitive guy, but I don't do it from a place of I need to win. I do it from a place of like, I want to give my best and. And I want others to win around me. So it's a. It's a constant journey, and I created kind of an extreme challenge for myself to support me in killing my ego, not killing it, but navigating it. in a healthier way because I think it's important to have in some aspects, but making sure that I don't turn into some, you know, egomaniac. And so that's been the mission for me is like the exercise in humility, service, celebrating the others, collaborating with others and constantly practicing that.

Yeah, that's amazing. And I, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people can benefit from hearing that. It is a checking of the ego, of course, but as a man, it's about choosing when you're ego is powerful and compassionate and when it's detracting and unfair. And I think a lot about, for me, comparison and just anything, anything that is, you know, detracting from my ability to highlight my enoughness rather than not enoughness is just coming back to the question of is this person, is this thing, is this, this, this circumstance that I'm looking at and comparing myself to, is that in between where I am and where I want to go, who I am and who I want to become? And if you ask yourself that, The 99.9% of the time the answer is no. No, it's not in between. It's not preventing me. It's not detracting me. It's not influencing me. And I think as a man, you could ask yourself that question and you could fire up. You'd be like, no, it's not. I need to come back to myself and I need to act. I need to define and I need to follow through. And I find a lot of power in that and tapping into masculine attributes and being a man and being masculine in that sense, but not acting on urges, not being Mr. Robot mode. So I really appreciate that answer. And I appreciate this interview. I want to be respectful of your time and wrap it up here. And this was amazing. Listening to your knowledge over 10 years and how you've defined the greatness mindset. I want to talk to you in 10 more years and see how that's evolved because I'm sure it'll evolve. You've taken all these chapters and put it into the mindset today. I can't wait to see what it is. 10 years from now genuinely, because I think that is such a gift in life to not only be so committed to something, but committed to leaving room for more and evolution and different or simpler, like where wherever your life leads you. So thank you so much for coming on the show. I'd love to hand it over to you to promote yourself and the book and let everyone know when it's out, where they can get it and, you know, go nuts with the band self promo. I appreciate it, Case.

It's been fun to watch your journey as well. I mean, the book, the Greatest Mindset, you guys can get a copy on Amazon or anywhere books are sold, Barnes & Noble bookstores. If you get a copy, just feel free to share with me on Instagram and let me know. I'd love to reshare some of those stories and just connect with you guys. School of Greatness podcast at Lewis Howes.

Anywhere on social media and greatness.com, you.

Can check out all my stuff. Awesome. Well, thanks, sir. Thanks for being here, Lewis. I appreciate you. My man. Thanks, Case, for having me. Awesome. If you are ready to unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today and and you want the tools and strategies to do that, then make sure to click this box right over here to get a new copy of my book, the Greatness Mindset. It's out right now. Again, click this box right here to get a copy of my book.