How To Heal Your Past To Love Yourself & Thrive In Relationships EP 1369

So I think when you become a parent, especially your children or your teachers, and you start to realize the little mini events that happened over the course of your life that you never heal.

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 to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. In this episode, we discuss topics that include sexual abuse and trauma that might be triggering to some audiences. Please be advised. What's been a thing that's held you back from your most peaceful, loving, calm self, when the world happens. And I really look at like when events happen in the world, if we are triggered by them and it really affects us in a big way and we clench up, there might be something there. There might be a wound or something we haven't healed yet. What's the biggest thing you've had to work on to help that healing journey? Which is a journey.

Yeah, I mean so much. So I, probably three years ago or so, I started realizing that I just had a lot of stored trauma and emotion in my body. And I was somebody that didn't even know, I didn't even know I had anxiety. I didn't think I saw people with anxiety and depression and I was like, I don't know what that's like. I don't know. That's not me. And then one day in therapy I told my therapist, you know, sometimes I can't take a full breath. And I started having some weird back pain in certain areas. And then she's like, oh, I really want you to notice that and look at that. And then it would show up more and more and more. And I realized that, no, I've had anxiety my whole life. But as a former athlete, I just didn't pay attention to it. I didn't pay attention to anything that could slow me down or that could delay my greatness and whatever I was trying to accomplish. Come to find out I did have anxiety. So then you have to go into the anxiety and you have to figure out where it is in your body and where it's coming from and what is it? And as I was, you know, writing my last book, I started sharing a lot of stories about my life in an attempt to help other men feel like they're not alone. I didn't have anybody ever model vulnerability to me. My dad was emotional. He was sensitive, he was kind, he was Italian, but he never showed me vulnerability. I didn't know the things that were causing him stress or anxiety. And I didn't have anyone to talk to about the things that hurt me and caused me pain when I was young. And so as I wrote these things and I wrote about these things, a lot of stuff came up for me in terms of, oh man, Sexuality.

Being.

10 years old and finding porn for the first time before my body was ready. And what that did to me in terms of the neural pathways that it carved in my brain and the comparison to feeling like, oh, I'll never measure up or I'll never be that thing that I saw when I was 10. To sexual situations that I was put in before I was ready. And even at 20 years old, having my first real sexual experience at my first time not being consensual, having that taken from me in a way that I didn't realize until three years ago was a gross violation of boundaries because I didn't believe that men could get sexually assaulted. Because what are we conditioned as men to believe? Like, if she wants sex, you better be ready. There was no talk about not being emotionally prepared. So all of those things were in my body and I had no clue. I had no idea. And so over the last three years, as I've been healing, so much has been coming out. And learning that I, that I need to love myself enough to listen to the things that my body is saying, to the things that my soul is saying, to the things that I need that I've never done before. So, oh yeah, and a lot of other stuff. I think when you become a parent, especially your children are your teachers. And you start to realize the little mini events that happened over the course of your life that you never healed as they play out in front of you with your children. So as an example, I learned that I was never really played with. Nobody ever got on their knees and looked at me and played with me. There was no work, there was just like just me and that adult. Because I didn't know why it was so hard for me to play with my kids for the first couple years.

Cause that didn't happen to you. You didn't see that moment.

I had no idea what was wrong. I was like, wait, why can't I get on the ground with my kids? Like why am I always worried about what's happening elsewhere or on my phone? What is this thing? And I realized, oh my god, that's because It wasn't their fault. Nobody was really on the ground playing with me. And these things inevitably come up, especially when you were the dad of a little kid. And two little kids at that. And then marriage. A lot of stuff comes up.

I mean, you're in- Married, what, 12 years married?

10 years? We just celebrated nine years. So we're on the journey to 10, together for almost 12 now. But you know, you're in a loving, passionate, Amazing relationship and you know that that person is a mirror and that person if you're doing it right, I believe will bring up all of the stuff that you haven't looked at that.

You haven't resolved yet.

Yeah, or or resolved or looked at just it will just all come up inevitably and it's not their job to fix. It's your job to fix. So I guess that's my answer to.

Your question if you could you know, I saw Me and Martha saw you a year, about a year ago in Cabo as we were kind of a few months into our dating experience. And we had talked with you and your wife and you were synchronistic. It was crazy. Because we had just, we were sitting down for dinner and we're like, you did a post or something on Instagram that we both saw. We're like, oh, it was such a beautiful thing that you were talking about. I think it was with your wife, your relationship, you guys were on a healing journey, something like that. And it's like, man, that's really beautiful.

And then like 20 minutes later, you.

Walked down in Cabo and we're like, What is happening?

You're a powerful manifestor.

It was cool because then we hung out for a couple of days a little bit here and there talking about our experience and your experience. At the time, it sounded like you guys had gone through some darkness in the previous years individually and then not darkness but some challenges in the relationship and the marriage where you were questioning things and there's friction and now you're on a starting the healing journey. I'm curious, what is the biggest lesson you've learned about marriage since starting that healing journey eight, 10 years into marriage that you didn't do in the first few years of marriage?

What we, those first few years, didn't do right is that we expected the other person to do the work for us.

What work? Give me an example of what you expected her to do for you.

So one of the things that Emily says is, that I love and I quote her all the time, is the greatest activism is self-activism. And my wife is a sage, so I just, you know, she's my muse in so many ways. and I was really struck by that.

Because.

You can't really show up for anything in this life if you haven't done the work on yourself first. And when it came to me and Emily, early on there were expectations that maybe one of us had for the other. And when that wouldn't be met or when something would happen, she would be upset or I would be upset. And so then you share it with another person and then you expect them to change.

You share.

It with your partner and then you expect them to change. But in reality, what has to change isn't just the behavior. one, it's your part in it. So a great example of this is there's this thing that happens when you're married and you have kids. And if there's any traditional gender role in the house or whether or even if both couples are working or if both people are working and you have kids, there is this thing that inevitably happens which is who's more tired?

I'm more exhausted.

Who's more tired? There's dishes to be done, there's laundry to be done, toys to be picked up. Toys to be picked up. The kids have to go to, if they're going to school or whatever it is.

Logistics and travel.

And there is a business in running a family, right? And then you have your business outside of the family. But for many women who stay at home or who have given up their dreams or sacrificed to be able to stay at home and be with their kids, oftentimes men don't see the amount of work that goes in to just managing the household, just being the CEO of the Baldoni house and the kids. And oftentimes some women, and I can use my wife as an example, don't always see the other side of it, which is the work and how hard it is for the man and all of the hours that we're putting in and all of the, you know, and being away from the family. And we had this conflict for a few years early on because I was like, you know, I was in the middle of my TV show, was building a company. I was directing movies during the hiatus. Like, I wasn't taking a break. And...

When you had kids, when you first started having kids.

We just first started having kids. And at the same time, I was really missing my kids and my wife and being at home. And yet I would get home and I was exhausted. And there was still stuff to be done, and there was conversations to be had.

And.

She was tired and I was tired. And inevitably there's conversations like, well, okay, but I was out working all day and she's like, yeah, but I did 5,000 things today. And we kept missing each other. We went to therapy about it. We talked about it. And in doing our own work and unpacking for me masculinity and for me looking at the system itself, looking at, okay, what is it in me? What is it about my socialization that makes me feel like I have to not just be an actor on a TV show. But I have to also go build a business and go direct movies and go do this. Where is this drive for success, for being the best coming from? Why do I have to do all of it? Why do I then have to write books? Why do I have to do TED Talks? Why do I have to be such an overachiever that I have to be the best at whatever it is that I'm doing? And I have to have the most impact and heal the most people. Like, what is that? and I had to go into that thing and ask myself, what's really going on? Where is this all coming from? And part of it was it was absolutely a trauma response for me. I absolutely wanted people to love me and to like me. I wanted to be seen because I didn't feel seen when I was a kid. And the only place that I felt like I could be seen is if I was in the top of the mountain. If I had the money, if I had the cars, if I had the house, if I had all of it, that was where I would get respect and be seen and be valued and be loved. When in reality, where I was really seen and valued and loved was right at home. But my conditioning, my socialization, all of it was like, no, go, go, go, go. Now, it's not to say it was all a trauma response, but a part of it was. And the other part of it was, I believe that's part of my work as a soul here on this Earth. is to help people recognize their innate enoughness. Just like yours is what yours is. And then she had to do her own version of that. And what we found one day in a conversation was I with a bleeding heart in tears told her how.

I.

Didn'T feel she was acknowledging the way that this system is hurting me too. Because all of these things that I'm doing out there that are paying the bills, all of the providing that I'm doing and the protecting is taking me away from my children. I don't get to be there as often as she gets to be there. For the first four years, I experienced a lot of milestones via FaceTime. and nobody really talks about that. And for the first time she had compassion for what it was like for me as a man to be walking through the world feeling like if I don't reach the top of that mountain then I am not enough. Because I believe the way masculinity works is that it tells us that our worth is tied to our productivity. We stop being productive, We don't have value. Nobody wants us anymore. We won't be any good to our children or our wives or our friends. We won't be invited to places. We don't have money. We can't provide. What are we? That's why we're seeing so many men our age and older taking their lives. They don't have a job. They lose their job. Something happens. They don't feel like they have value. Boom, we're done. Because masculinity can be taken from them. And so she looked at me in tears and I'm like, I would love the chance to stay at home. I'd love the chance to be able to like be a stay-at-home dad and be there with my kids. Now, being fully honest, when I've done it, it's way harder than my job.

Well, it's not your natural state.

I am so much, I get so much more tired Doing that job, getting on my knees and playing with my kids and having conversations with a four-year-old all day long than I do at the other job because there's a part of that other job that's also fulfilling something in myself.

100%, yeah.

And when she was able to see and understand that, it changed the dynamic. And when I was able to see and understand how hard her job really is, putting myself in her shoes, looking at me out in the world, having conversations with adults and having fame and all of this while she's at home and the world doesn't recognize what she's doing as valuable. The world doesn't congratulate mothers the way it congratulates fathers. Otherwise mothers would be considered the top prospect for employers, but instead they're at the bottom. Who's the top? Fathers. A man who's a father of a child is a hirable man. We want that guy. But a woman who's a mother, well, you don't want to hire her because, well, what happens when there's a doctor's appointment or the kid gets sick? Well, she's going to have to leave work. But we've conditioned our men to believe that, like, oh, well, a dad won't do that. A dad will stay committed to the job. We want the qualities that come from being a father. We don't want the responsibilities. that come. So it was this combination of these two things that changed our entire relationship and that happened fairly early on. I did my own work, she did my own work and then we came together and we shared honestly without needing to change the other person and when we had empathy and compassion for each other, it blew the doors wide open.

What would you say to the, if you could go back to yourself, obviously you don't want to change anything but if you could go back to yourself, the day before you got married. And you could have a conversation from this standpoint right now, you, to that younger version of you. And you could only share three lessons of like, hey, these are three things I really hope you start doing from day one before the marriage begins. Knowing what you know now on how to create more harmony and peace and connection and conversation and alignment in the marriage. Not that you've had a bad marriage, but I'm just saying to just eliminate some of the frictions. What would those three pieces of advice be to your younger self before marriage?

It would be, the first thing would.

Be.

To do your own work. To really do your own work. To excavate and dig up the things that have happened to you because they are 100% influencing the way that you love. 100%. to really meditate on those things. It's not the other person's job to fix you.

100%.

It's not the other person's job to heal you. It's the other person's job, as we talked about earlier, to hold space so that you feel safe enough to do that work on your own. And it's really hard when only one person does the work, because I know you know. Very hard as we've talked about. And when both people do the work, it's amazing. It's Emily and I, we keep saying it's getting better and better. We never imagined that we'd have a marriage like this with this much love and compassion and empathy and fun and joy and like safety. Because so many of us didn't get safety when we were kids. We don't know what safety really feels like. the world doesn't feel safe. So when you have that safety in a marriage. Oh my God.

That's beautiful.

Doing your own work is number one.

Okay.

Two is loving the person the way that they want to be loved, not the way that you want to be loved. That requires empathy and sensitivity. requires listening and being observant and thinking about what that person needs versus what you need. And that's not how we're raised. That's not what we see in the movies. That's not what most of us saw from our parents. The third thing that I would say to myself Enjoy it. Relationships, marriages, I believe when you do those first two things are meant to be enjoyed. Enjoy each other. Like find time for fun. We get lost, man. We get lost in this like desperation and need to be seen. from the other person sometimes. But like, I think when we see ourselves, then it makes it much easier for the other person to see us and then just have fun. And that's the next phase for Emily and I is we're really learning to have fun. Because when you do as much work as we've done, when you have kids and there's businesses and all this stuff, you can forget. So it's making time. Enjoy it. It's making time to carve out fun. The other night we went out under the moon and moved our bodies and just sat there for a second and just marveled at how magical this universe is and how small we are and just that. I had to read a script and give notes on something and it was in between things and she was like, she pulled me out of it and we just went and we just looked up and just sat there in silence. And silence can be so filling. when there's like a container of love and safety. It just like, it just fills you up because you know that the person you're with has your back and you have theirs and you're together and connected in a way that like nobody will ever understand.

It's beautiful, man.

Yeah.

Why do you think most relationships, you know, you've been married again, you've been together for 10 years roughly and you've been around a lot of people who've been in relationships, who've gotten married, who've gotten divorced, who've stayed married but suffer in the marriage who've thrived in marriages. What do you think is the number one reason why people fail in relationships? What's holding them back?

The best advice my dad ever gave me about marriage and relationships was that he told me that there were times in their marriage and they're still married and have an amazing marriage. There were times in their marriage him and my mom, where he didn't wake up feeling like he was in love with her. He didn't wake up with the warm and fuzzies, and he didn't know if it was gonna work. And now he didn't tell me this until later. He was married. This goes back to the vulnerability thing. What could that have done for me if I knew? Which is why I put it in the book. But he said that he had to wake up every day during certain periods and seasons of their marriage, 40 years now, and choose to love my mom. He had to choose it. And that really struck me because love is a verb. Love is an action. Love is a choice. And I think the number one mistake people make is that they choose to stop loving. I think that there are a lot of relationships that could make it, but one of the two makes a choice. And we've been sold this idea, this myth, this mirage of what love looks like. And I think we have to choose. Just like we choose discomfort, right? We have to, we choose these experiences. We choose to go to the gym. The gym's not fun. but I know I'm gonna benefit from going to the gym. And love is very similar. You're gonna change two people. You're not gonna ever be the same person you were yesterday. And my wife is gonna have moments where she is just on her own journey way over here, and it's not my job to follow her. It's my job to be on my journey with whatever that looks like. But every day, the thing that brings us together is that we're both choosing each other. And I think that we forget to choose. I think we forget that love is a choice, and love is a verb, and love is an action.

Do you think love is enough?

No. I don't think love is enough.

What else do you need to have a thriving relationship?

I think that love, love, there's a quote in the Baha'i writings, Abdul-Baha, and I'm going to butcher it, Abdul-Baha says that that love is the force that binds the planets and the stars. It's like the thing, if scientists could have strong enough microscopes to keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going, they would just find love. It's already there. So they keep looking for the thing that's originating the thing and it's already there. you can't understand it, you can't touch it, it's love. But there are scientific principles in addition to love that give the world order, right? That create the atoms and the molecules that move. And I think it's the same thing in relationships. Like you can have love, but there's lots of different kinds of love. So you need to have the building blocks of a healthy relationship in addition to the love. And I think if you have those things, if anything, it allows the love to grow and to thrive and to survive. Because there's a lot of things out there that are drowning out love. I mean, look, I have great friends who were married and got divorced. They loved each other and they did certain things in their marriage that wasn't okay. Boundaries were crossed. But they found a way to love each other in a different way after they got divorced. that's still love. It's just a different kind of love. It's a love after boundaries were crossed and things that happened that shouldn't have happened and that love has to change. So I think that the necessary ingredients are the three things we talked about, you know, doing the work, reciprocation, safety, honesty, communication. Like you need all of those things in order for a marriage and a relationship to really work. So no, love is not enough. And yet, and yet, love is all you need. If that makes any sense.

It's both. It's not enough, but it is what can keep it together.

It's not enough, and yet it's everything.

Yeah.

And yet it's everything. I actually believe that the number one ingredient for a healthy marriage. And this is where, you know, I'm sure I'll lose a lot of people who are on this journey with me, but I believe that it's putting God in the middle. I believe that there are so many forces that are trying to distract us and take our attention in this world. And in the Baha'i faith, when you get married, you put God in the middle. Because the idea is that you are two entities, but when you come together, there's this third entity that's formed, kind of like the sperm and an egg, individually, right? They're just a sperm and an egg. But they have the capacity to be more, and it's when they come together, this new life is created, and it's very much the same thing with marriage. So I believe that it's like putting God in the middle. You're coming together with an intention of this marriage is going to be of service to humanity. It is our love for something greater than ourselves that brings us together.

That.

It allows the marriage, the space to thrive, and for that love to thrive.

I'm curious, I'm gonna ask you a question that may not make sense for you, but, 'cause you don't like to measure things.

It's not that I don't like to measure things, Louis. It's that what I'm trying to do is not compare myself to like the end all be all. I hear you. I hear you. Yeah.

Because this is measuring you versus you.

That is, I do like to do that.

Okay, so what I'm gonna do right now, on a scale of one to 10.

Yeah.

Let's call it the self-love peace scale. 10 for you being ultimate peace and self-love. You don't beat yourself up, you don't speak nasty to yourself, you don't get anxious, you're in peace and you have ultimate self-love out of 10. One being you're in constant chronic suffering of, you know, how you talk to yourself and you don't feel self-love. Where are you currently on that self-love slash peace scale? In this moment.

Probably a 6.5.

6.5. What was the moment you were the lowest in your marriage and the moment you were the highest on that scale? Can you remember the lowest days, weeks, months, a year and the highest point? What's the point?

Yeah, I think, well, I think I'm at my highest point now.

6.5.

I mean, then I'm measuring 10 by, you know, I look at like the prophets of God, I look at, you know, the, I look at the.

The.

Folks who are, you know, I spent 10 years telling stories of people who are dying. and being with them as they went to take their final breaths and telling, you know, and learning from them. And there's something that happens to somebody when they're at the end. And I've learned from the dying in a lot of ways. And their families and the decimation of the ego. that happens when you have no place to go except to submit and to accept and love yourself. So I look at that as like one day, hopefully, you know, I'm very old, I'm on my deathbed, and I'm like taking account of my life and I've reached the point and that's, I'm not there. I'm not, I have a long way to go in terms of healing still and...

But what if you didn't have a long way to go? You're telling yourself you have a long way to go, but what if you surrendered and allowed yourself to heal?

Yeah, and that's... And be whole now. And if we could do that, if I could just snap my fingers and go, boom, I am whole and I'm ready and I'm healed, I would do it in a heartbeat. It's a daily practice for me. That's where meditation and prayer comes in. that's where a lot of this work comes in. It's where, you know, even the love I'm getting from my children and like the way they look at me and the love that comes in. The relationships and how I'm healing the relationships in my own family and like getting closer to my parents now at 38 years old than I ever have been. That's where that comes in. But at the end of the day, it's a self-love thing. It's a recognizing that who I am is enough thing. So where I am is a 6.5 today, which is why I'm like, I'm not a 10. I could say I was a nine, but I still know that I have a long way to go. I've been, oh man, I've been in the cycle of addiction, I've been in the cycle of self-loathing and just, and, and, and, and, My wife and I call it this inner critic. It just constantly reminds me that nobody's gonna care. I'm not enough. I've been, I know what it's like to be in that darkness and just to pretend to be something that I'm not.

You still have that inner critic now?

Yeah. But I'm learning what that inner critic really is. And I'm learning how to love that inner critic, which is really just little me.

Yes.

Little me that didn't get the love that he needed, wasn't seen the way that he needed to be seen, wasn't safe in the way that he needed to feel safe. And I'm learning how to have compassion for that little boy. Because that's all it is. It's just learning how to love that part of ourselves, learning how to love the, as my old therapist, who's just now a friend, Brad Rudey would say, our horrible rotten selves. It's learning how to love that part of ourselves because we're not that. That's not who we are, but that's how we felt at some point in our lives. And that's what shows up. So when I look in the mirror and I see the parts of myself I don't like, which is what I did for my entire life, I would look in the mirror and I'd be like, oh, my shoulders aren't big enough. Or like, oh, my nose is too big and all this. And I would just find all the things that were wrong with me. that's just a boy that wanted so desperately to fit in and to be liked and to be seen and he thought that if I looked a certain way he would be or that the girls would like him or all of those things. Now I wake up in the morning and I write down the things I like about my body.

Oh, that's beautiful.

I literally write down the things I'm grateful for and never in my life have I ever said I'm grateful for my legs because I can stand up and carry my children up the stairs. where I can get on my knees and play with my kids. It was always like, oh, I want strong legs so I can run a 4:40. I want strong legs so that I can dunk or so that I can look good in a bathing suit or whatever it is. It was always about an outcome, which is why I'm trying to remove myself from so much outcome thinking. And so now it's like, that's what I'm working on. Oh, no, I'm a good looking man. I'm beautiful. I'm okay. Like I just had a skin cancer scare, so I had a huge scar. I have a huge scar on my nose. I had basal cell carcinoma. It came out of the blue. I saw this dot and I had a weird feeling. And because I'm doing so much work in my body, I could feel that there was something wrong. I went to my dermatologist.

He said it was nothing.

Something wasn't sitting right. I could feel it. I was thinking about it at night. It disappeared. I went back. He obliged. He took a sample and it turned out to be basal cell carcinoma. So we had this huge chunk taken out of my nose. And I was so devastated for a second because I was like, But I'm an actor. I'm not going to be good looking anymore. And this. And I had to really walk myself back to the point where I'm like, oh, but this scar now is actually a sign of maturity. It's a sign of growth. It's a sign of listening to my body. Self-love. Self-love. I love myself enough to go in. And so now I look at it, I'm like, oh, oh, I'm grateful. And it's just, it's the spin. And that's what I'm working on. It's when the critic comes in, how.

Can I spin that? You know, it's interesting you talk about the critic and the spinning. I've learned over the last, I don't know, a handful of years to be the coach that I always wanted, the positive coach.

Yeah.

In sports, I had some really, I would say, challenging, toxic, whatever you want to call it, coaches that, that led by fear and screaming and had the same and putting you down. Like, no matter how perfect you were in every play, if you missed one, then it was like an attack that you, you know, and that never worked for me. That always made me feel more anxious, more stressed.

And I feel that with you talking about it, because I know the exact. It's awesome, man.

It was not fun. It made me feel like no matter how good I am on this field or court, no matter how perfect I am, it's never gonna be enough if I mess up once because I'm gonna get screamed at. But then I had coaches that were so loving and gave me the encouragement and gave me the words and also allowed me to make mistakes and didn't punish me or things like that and allowed me to learn on my own but also guide me that I still think about today. I called one of them this morning actually. called a coach of mine from 25 years ago, called him. And there was just a great leader, right? Not perfect, you know, he's flawed too, but overall beautiful coaching in a positive way, not criticism, but coaching in a positive way. Thinking about that spin, I was telling you right before this that I went to a seven-day meditation retreat with Joe Dispenza, and you asked me, did I have any kind of like out-of-body mystical experiences? and I said no. And I take it back halfway because I didn't go out of my body, but I had an experience that just came up for me. Because for most of my childhood, I was putting myself down, right? I was a critic in my mind and my heart, putting myself down. I'm not enough. Whatever I create is not good enough, all that stuff. I'm stupid, I'm not smart enough, I'm not talented enough, whatever it was, constantly. And I've been doing a lot of the healing over the last few years as well about letting that go and rewriting the story from the memories of the past. Yeah. And something beautiful happened on one of the last days of this retreat where I had, my father passed away earlier this year, and I had a visualization during this process, in one of these five hour meditations. And there were some beautiful moments from my childhood with him, and there was also some scary moments, right? But I had this process where it In my mind, I went back to all the memories of my mind from as early as I can remember with my father of like playing catch in the backyard and him taking me to the ball games and him tucking me in every night and saying he loved me, all these different things he did and just going through every age that I can remember up until my last memory with him of him being there for me. It was just a beautiful experience. And I just embraced, okay, here are all the blessings and all the good things that happened from my childhood until now. And then something crazy happened. For whatever reason in this meditation, I went back and did it over again with me standing here now, going back to visiting my younger self. I get it kind of chills thinking about it because I went there and the whole time I always had this critic inside of me, but there was always a voice that was like, Keep going. I remember going to school and getting in trouble in elementary school. and going to the principal's office and saying over and over again, I wish I were dead. I wish I were dead. I would say it over and over again. I wish I were dead. I don't know why I'm here. When I always felt like something was wrong with me. So I had this inner critic, but then there was like this voice. It was kind of like this voice that was like, just make it another day. Just treat it, you're gonna figure it out. And for whatever reason, I went back as myself now, and I was there and it was like, I saw all the moments where I felt like I was alone and afraid and scared. I'm getting it too. And from five years old, from my first memories of sexual abuse until now, and I just flashed through all these moments with me running next to my younger self. Like when I would train alone because no one would hang out with me. I was just like throwing a ball against the wall for hours or running in the backyard alone. I was there with me. The adult version of me now is there with me as a child now. And I had this experience where I was just like, you know, lifting him up and putting my arm around him and hugging him and saying, you, got this, keep going. And I was like, huh, I wonder if that was that voice.

It was.

It was my future self telling me to keep going because you never know where you're gonna create, what you're gonna go, what you're gonna do in this life. And it was this beautiful experience of my father and then my self.

So when I asked you, you had a crazy experience.

That was it. Yeah, yeah.

But it wasn't like- you- said no?

But I didn't have this like-- that is it. That was it. No, it was powerful. But it wasn't like Martha had where she left her body and transcended space and time.

You did leave your body. I did. You did transcend space and time.

It was crazy, man. It was a beautiful healing journey.

That is healing.

It was huge.

That's what it is. So I don't believe that there's space and time. It's a construct of this world. Our souls are not bound by that. In the Baha'i writings, we're told that to understand death, we have to look at birth, right? Number one, for every spiritual law, there's a physical counterpart. But to understand how we could have an existence outside of our bodies after this life, God gave us the sleep state.

To experience it. The field.

Every single night. Our body, our temperature drops, our breathing changes. We get as close to death as we do, like over the course of our lives, every single night, and then we travel, we dream, right? And there's a lot of this kind of stuff happening. My wife had a very similar experience where she was with herself the moment her dad died. And I believe with all my heart that we can go back, we can time travel through meditation, through prayer, and be there and heal the traumas and the parts of ourselves that need healing. And if you remember the voice, why couldn't that have been you?

It could have been me.

And that's like a whole, I mean, we just want to do a whole other. But like, this is where this is like, this is where we're going. And it's a really exciting time to be alive because this is.

It's very exciting. And, you know, as a storyteller, as a writer, as a director, you tell stories, right? And we, our whole memory is stories. And a lot of times, the memories, we tell the story 10 times bigger than it actually was. And sometimes we think 20 years ago something happened that didn't happen.

Oh, yeah.

But we've embellished the story to be bigger or more painful than it was sometimes.

Or because it was big in your body.

At the time. And now we explain it with different terms and different things and we make it even grander, right? and what if we could go back and tell that story in a different way and find meaning from the story in a different way? It doesn't mean that we want that thing. It doesn't mean we want it to happen again to us or to others or that it was okay or these events were fun to experience. But what if we could go back and tell those stories in a different way, all those moments of trauma or pain or wounds and rewrite those stories now and tell them in a different way where we don't get a trigger response where we don't feel like, You know, this happened to me. Just so we can have more peace and harmony now. As opposed to living in the past.

We can, and I think we 1,000% can. I've experienced that completely, but I think that also we have to be patient in those moments. Because I don't think that different experiences have different wounds.

Yep.

And healing is a deeply uncomfortable, nobody talks about like the painful parts.

Painful, man.

And we need to normalize that. We need to normalize that like, oh, okay, well we know that there's gonna be pain in the gym. No pain, no gain. Right? Well, it's the same thing with healing. In some ways it's the same thing in relationships. and as men were taught, oh, let's go into the pain in all these areas, but we kind of disregard it in these areas. Like we have enough pain in these areas, but like, no, I don't want to have, I don't want to deal with discomfort in my marriage. I don't want to deal with discomfort. I'm fine. I mean, for a lot of men, this conversation is already too much because, well, we're not allowed to be broken. We're not allowed to have traumas or pains or things that need to be healing. We don't even go to therapy. There was like a number of men, it was like a crazy, what was it? 68% of men don't go to the doctor even though they know something is wrong. I think this was a health line statistic. So we have to even get to the place where we understand that like there are things that need to be healed and make that mainstream.

Physically, as well as emotionally. Emotionally and physically.

Like there is a whole conversation that needs to happen where we invite men in and say it is okay that that happened to you and that you have pain there. It's okay that you have anxiety. It's okay that you are sad. Because the only acceptable thing that as men were allowed to feel is anger. That is a socially acceptable feeling. But what's underneath the anger? All of that stuff. Okay, so let's just say that every person, every man in the world then understands that okay, I didn't have a perfect life. I'm still good. There's some stuff I gotta heal. I have some underlying anger issues. I have this, I have this, whatever it is. It's not just gonna happen like that. I mean, you've been doing, you've been on this journey for years.

10 years. It took me 25 years until I started opening up about the sexual trauma. And then it's been a 10 year journey. Yes.

That's unlocked new healing. And then we did a seven day retreat. I keep doing that. In that seven day retreat. somewhere probably day four or five, you had this amazing experience where you were able to go back and rewrite your history. That didn't happen like that.

Right, it's a consistent process.

It's a daily practice, which is why I said I'm at a 6.5. Because I am, I don't know yet all of the things that are coming up and that I'm uncovering. I've been really surprised. And then there's things where I've like absolutely done that and I've healed. And then there was things that, I'm not quite there yet, that I still have a little bit of a trigger with.

What's the thing that you feel like if you could let go of surrender or release would take you to a whole other level, spiritually, emotionally, physically?

For me, between the ages of 10 and 13, and the discovery of porn, the situations that I was put in with specifically another boy that I write about in the book. And then what then porn did to me and what it gave me and how I was so mesmerized by these images and by these things while feeling so terrible about myself.

Shame and yeah.

Shame and like, you know, hadn't hit puberty yet and these other boys had and I was being put in these situations. So there's a lot of, as I've gone into my work, there's this 10 to 13 period of my life.

It's so funny you're saying that, yeah.

Where I am currently on the journey of loving that boy and reminding him that he's exactly where he needs to be, that his body is perfect. and then it's exactly where it needs to be. Because, you know, look, our, our, that root chakra is our life force. That's our creativity. That's not just about sex and like relationships. It's about it's everything. And when we have wounds there, it affect a lot of other areas. So that 10 to 13 area. And then there's also, there's also a period of around 16 that I'm going in and really, really looking at. And, you know, there's parts of myself that I'm healing that have to do with how I treated other people.

Sure. How you react to situations.

I know, even like being in relationship with other girls, you know, and 17, 18 years old and feeling like I had no power anywhere in my life and finding ways to feel powerful with women. and with girls and taking advantage and hooking up with girls that I didn't like and care about and going in and reconciling and forgiving myself for not being the best guy in my teens and 20s and understanding that, oh wow, I was doing those things because I felt like I wasn't enough. I felt like I didn't have power. I felt like nobody cared about me and that made me feel good. That made me feel powerful. So going in and even Taking account and forgiving myself for the things that I've done is also a part of it. Not just the things that happened to me. I think it's all of it. So yeah, but I could just list a hundred things. I could go and list all the things that I'm working on. But that 10 to 13 and 16 age range, I'm definitely going into right now.

So interesting you're saying that. I'm going to show you afterwards on my phone, on my screen saver on my phone is a photo of me when I was 11. yeah.

Inner child work.

Yeah. Well, I started at five.

Yeah.

And from five to, you know, 10. And now I'm on 11 to 13 as well. Because I. I feel like that was a massive breakthrough in my life from probably 11 to 12 and a half. There wasn't, you know, again, and our memory does tricks on us, but I remember always feeling like I needed to steal something out of a store, like a candy.

Right.

I wasn't stealing, like, a bank or something, but, like. a pack of gum or a candy bar or something, right?

Yeah.

It kind of gave me that power. Like I'm doing something, I knew it was wrong, but I felt like, okay, there's somewhere I can control something, right?

Or attention.

Who knows? Yeah, to brag about it, all these things. All these things that, you know, I was doing. And in my, you know, kind of therapy coaching, that's the stage that I've been working on the last, you know, three, four months is like, forgiving that, that version of myself, healing that. It's one of the reasons why anytime I go out to, to eat, I feel like I need to pay for everyone. Oh, yeah. And pay. Like, I can't. It's hard for me to let anyone pay for a meal. It's like, I always want to pay and I always over tip, and I'm like, I just want to pay back.

Yeah.

Me stealing candy bars when I was 10 or 11. Right. And, and I got in trouble one day. I I stole twenty dollars from one of my dad's clients at his his house, my dad's client's house. He took me to like a client trip and the guy caught me stealing it. And it was probably the most shame I've ever felt, stealing $20 from like a dad's friend.

A friend of your dad too.

And it was a breaking, it was a point where I was like, okay, am I gonna go down and go worse or like never do this again? And I was like, I never want to feel this again. I'm never stealing anything. And if I think I've stolen something accidentally, I'm like, how do I pay like 10 times more? So in a way, like learning that, you know, and feeling that much pain at that time in shame and embarrassment on my dad and like what I could have done to his business or whatever, made me say, okay, this is not the path. And when I hit 13, like everything started to shift. So those years were really, you know, meaningful for me too.

I mean, that's what this book is about. I mean, middle grade boys, like we don't have Who do we talk to? Who do we have in our lives at 11, 12, 13, 14 when we're going through these things? I mean, most kids don't feel safe enough to talk to their parents. We don't feel safe enough to talk to advisors or teachers. Most people don't have older brothers to talk to, and if they are, they're not telling them the right things. So who do we have? And so that's why I wrote Boys Will Be Human, because I didn't have that person at 11 or 12, just like you didn't. And what if we had, what if somebody would have told me that all of the things, you know, all of the things that are gonna happen to me, all the things that nobody talks about, you know, doesn't, nobody prepares us for what life's gonna be like.

Yeah, there's a lot of moms that listen to this show and that play, the reason why we bleep out all swearing words is because moms emailed me early on and saying, can you make sure there's no swear words, 'cause I play the show for my kids. to listen to these conversations in the car to school and other places. So I know there's a lot of moms that listen. What do you wish every mom knew about raising a young boy into a healthy, conscious man?

First of all, I want every mom to know that they are amazing. I think mothers, mothers, I know that I'm sure there's a lot of people that say, Mothers get all the credit. I think mothers don't get enough. Mothers are so important. I believe that we learn empathy and compassion and sensitivity and kindness, all of these like quote unquote feminine attributes, which are really not gender specific. We learn them from our mothers normally. I want mothers to know that they don't have to turn their boys into hard men. A lot of moms are like, I don't know how to raise my boy. He doesn't listen to me. I don't know what's happening to him at school. He just shuts down. And I just want them to know that it's really hard to be a boy. There's no section at the bookstore for boys. There's no material for young boys because we just say boys will be boys. We can't change them. There's nothing we can do. They're just going to become who they are. And I just disagree with that completely. I want moms to know that your boy is sensitive and sweet and empathetic. He has all those things, but the world's telling him he's not allowed to be. So the more that a mom can create a safe container, a safe space for that boy to feel all the things he needs to feel without trying to fix him, the more I think that that boy will be willing and able to share the things that are happening in his life with her. Because it's really hard to be a mom of a boy. You don't have the life experience of what it's like to go through what we've experienced. It's also really hard, by the way, to grow up and be a girl. It's just hard to be a human being. Let's just be real. But men and boys don't have a sense of community where we can share about the vulnerable things that happen to us. And so we feel like we're alone. We feel like we are the only person that's happening to. I'm the only person that gets an erection in third period when I'm in eighth grade. Nobody else does. And so I'm ashamed that I'm embarrassed. I wasn't even thinking about a chick. It just happened. Nobody else gets erections except me. And then you feel shame. You name it. We just go through it. And so I want moms to know also I want them if the boy does have a father or if the mother is married to a man, I really think it's important for men to read this book. Not just moms. It's written in a way where it's like an amazing companion piece for men and their kids and for mothers and their kids to read together because it creates uncomfortable conversations and it asks you, it prompts you through my stories of really embarrassing things that have happened to me to maybe share things that have happened to you. And those, that is where trust is built. The sharing of vulnerability, putting that in the table, saying, Hey, son, I remember this thing happened to me and then suddenly the kid's looking at his dad in a whole new way. Wait, you're like me? You're not this impermeable superhero that doesn't have feelings? You know what that's like and then you're closer. I mean, relationships are like that. Marriage is like that. That's why leading with vulnerability is so important. And it's also important, equally as important, to not punish those who display vulnerability. especially if you are a man in a relationship with a woman, to be really mindful if you are vulnerable, maybe that woman's not used to it. Maybe that's a new thing. Maybe it triggers something in her. But don't just not do it again if she punishes you for it. And for women to be really mindful to not punish their men for being vulnerable. And mothers, when a boy comes to them and says, Hey, Mom, I'm really scared or this happened to me to not just brush it off because you want to create a strong man. I don't believe that strength and sensitivity are mutually exclusive. I think that real strong men are sensitive.

I love it, man. Boys will be human. A Get Real Gut Check Guide to Becoming the Strongest, Kindest, Bravest Person youn Can Be. I want people to get this for, it's really for parents to read to learn more about kids. Is that really, or is it for boys to read also?

It's really written for boys, but we have a separate book.

It's hard for boys to read anything.

What boy, what 12-year-old boy is going to the bookstore to pick up books? However, I keep hearing from the people that have bought it that the boys are gravitating towards the book.

That's great.

They're picking it up and I'm getting messages from moms and the book's been out for five days saying, I've never seen my boy read anything. And he's just, and he's wanting to read it because I think we're starved for someone to talk to. We want to be seen. We want our experience to be validated and we want guidance. And I don't give, I'm not an expert. I just share what happened to me and what I've learned. Well, you've got expertise in your experience.

Got expertise in my experience. That's great.

Pick up the book.

You can go to anywhere on Amazon or manenough.com or social media for you, Justin Baldoni, everywhere. What's the main place you hang out? Is it Instagram? Is it TikTok now?

I see you on TikTok a lot.

I don't a lot.

Well, see you creating some cool content over there. Yeah, honestly, I just am, I'm trying to detach from all of it. I know, man. But, I guess, but yeah, Instagram and TikTok are the things that I'm doing now. Thank God I have help.

I hear you, man. Yeah, I hear you, man.

Trying to get off that screen as much as I can.

What if you could share one thing with every boy in the world? hypothetical scenario. And this is the only thing you can share with young boys. What is that message that you would want to say to them?

You're enough. Nobody can take your masculinity away from you. No boy can take that from you, no girl can take that from you. You can't be emasculated. who you are as you are is enough. You don't have to prove your enoughness to anybody. You're good, you're beautiful, you're sensitive, you're.

Kind.

You'Re human, you're enough.

Sounds like something you needed to hear too, Michael.

I wrote this for me. Right. This work is for me.

A 12-year-old version of you.

10, 12, 15, 38. Yeah, exactly.

It's the same thing I tell myself every day.

That's beautiful, man. I love it.

Make sure you guys pick this up. Again, Boys Will Be Human, check it out. Grab a copy for your friends as well. I think you'll find a lot of value from this, so make sure you guys check it out. Very honest, real book. Justin, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for your constant growth, your constant development, and you being willing to share and reveal these things. on your own show, Man Enough, but also here in other places. It's really beautiful to see your journey and how you keep evolving. And I think it's something that I hope we all do, myself included, continue to evolve and grow and develop as human beings. I think the more darkness we experience, that's when we can develop the best. A photograph, if taken out of the darkness too soon, doesn't look good.

It doesn't fully develop.

So we've got to learn that our pain and our challenges are here for a reason to give us wisdom. and to blossom into something beautiful. I'm sure there's some quote in your Baha'i Faith that says better than that, but I think that's part of why we go through challenges, is to find the meaning and the wisdom later in life to be of service in a greater way. So I really appreciate you showing up and being of service to young boys, to men, to moms, to help their boys grow, develop, and heal from their challenges as well. It's really beautiful, man. I really appreciate it.

Let me give you that quote. Ready?

Give it to me.

Calamity is my providence. Outwardly, it is fire and vengeance. But inwardly, it is light and mercy.

I love it. Beautiful, man.

I love the bywriting.

It's beautiful. Final question. I asked you this before, but I'm curious if it's changed. And so if people want to hear your previous three truths, we'll link it up.

That was so long.

We'll link it up in the descriptions so you can go back and listen to that episode and those three truths. But again, another hypothetical question. If it's your final day on earth many years away, you get to accomplish everything, you see your family grow into however they're supposed to be, and you live a life at a, you know, you get to a 10 on the scale. All these things happen for you.

The 10 on the healing scale.

Yes, exactly. But for whatever reason, it's your last day, we don't have access to your books and your work and your content anymore for whatever reason in this hypothetical scenario, what would be those three lessons you would share with the world, those three truths that you would share if you can time travel right now into your future and share that?

Oof. I felt that question. Meditate on your mortality.

We.

All know we're gonna go somewhere. We have a one-way ticket and we can choose to pack for that trip or not. And I think we need to meditate on that and not delay, delay, delay. delay. I want to be prepared, so I'm going to develop all of the attributes, because I know that's what I'm going to need where I'm going next. Number two, you know, a lot of people say like, treat others the way you want to be treated. This is just coming to me now. Who knows if I'm going to feel this way in five years or six years, but what's coming to me now as a second truth is, treat yourself the way you want others to treat you. And as somebody who has been really mean to myself, for the first six, seven years of marriage, my wife would say, Be kind to my husband. She'd hear me talk about myself and she'd say, Be kind to my husband. And it got me. I think As much as we want to be nice people and good people in the world, I think we have to be kind and good to ourselves. Otherwise, it's performative and it's not real. And the third, Abdul-Baha in the Baha'i writings says, if a man has ten good qualities and one bad one, to look at the 10 and forget the 1. And if a man has one good quality and 10 bad ones, to look at the 1 and forget the 10. And I believe we have to start to see the good qualities in people. I think we're living in a time and in a culture where the one bad quality that people have defines them. We heap onto that. oh, but they did this thing so they can't be a good person, or they did that, or that happened.

And.

I think we are disregarding that we are all beautiful and also broken and in need of love. And many of us haven't learned to love ourselves or haven't had the love that we need to grow like we talked about in those relationships. And I think that we need to start focusing on the good in people, because when you see the good attributes in people, you see God. And if we see God, then life is complete.

Those are beautiful. I think they're different than the last time.

I'm sure they are. I can't ever say the same thing twice anyways.

Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

Humility. Humility. Oh man, appreciate it.

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 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.