Lewis Howes: This ONE Skill That Turns Failure Into Greatness

If your dream doesn't scare you, it's probably too small of a dream. There's a quote that I like that says, create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe. Oprah Winfrey said that. And in my book, the School of Greatness, I say you become what you envision yourself being. This in my book that just hit our 10 year anniversary on the School of Greatness book. And this is a book that I wanted to really capture some of the key lessons that I'm talking about here in this video and I distilled it into the book from some of the great minds that I had on this show. You become what you envision yourself being. Now, some of you might know my story, and if you're new here, you probably have no clue what had happened to me. But when I was in my young 20s, I had a dream of playing professional football. I actually accomplished that dream by going to the Arena Football League. And I was working my way to try to get to the NFL. But in an early game in that season, I broke my wrist. I was in a lot of pain. I played the entire rest of the season with a broken wrist. And afterwards I had surgery. That surgery left me in a full arm cast from my shoulder to, to my fingertips in a 90 degree position for the next six months. But I took a bone out of my hip, put it into my wrist, and it took a long time to heal. Now I got the wrist, the, the cast taken off of my wrist on my arm after six months. But it took me another year just to be able to straighten my arm, to be able to use it to build the strength. And during that year and a half time, I was living on my sister's couch trying to figure out what am I going to do with the rest of my life. My dream of playing sports is over. This was the only thing I had planned to do growing up in school. I didn't have a backup plan. I didn't do well in school. I struggled. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. I didn't know how I could become anyone else than the identity that I built myself into being, which was an athlete and going to play professional. Now playing in the Arena Football League, I wasn't even making that much money, so I was only making $250 a week. This is not enough to live off of for, you know, month a month, let alone have savings for the next year or two. So I'm on my sister's couch, I'm Struggling financially. I'm in credit card debt with three credit cards. I've got student loan debt that I have to start paying off. I have no job. This is in 2008, when the economy crashed, the housing crisis crashed, and they weren't hiring people with master's degrees, let alone someone who barely graduated college. And I didn't have any skills. I didn't know how to develop skills. I had zero confidence, and I wasn't sure what my future entailed. I can tell you right then that I wasn't clear. I wasn't confident, and I didn't know what to do next with my life. And every day felt scary. Eventually, a few things happened. I started finding mentors. I started seeking wisdom and advice from people who had overcome challenges and obstacles. I started reaching out to people in the community in Columbus, Ohio, where I was living on my sister's couch and trying to find professionals who had accomplished certain things in their careers or their businesses. I started trying to find a way to add value to people. And little by little, I started to build some relationships with some key individuals in my life that gave me some wisdom that essentially became coaches to me in a time where I felt hopeless, helpless, and really, I didn't have any confidence in myself. But that confidence that I lacked. Those coaches also saw potential in me. They saw potential for me to want to learn. They saw a potential for me to work hard. They saw a potential for me to create goals and work towards steps to accomplishing those goals. And because I had that willingness to learn, the willingness to be coachable, the willingness to work hard, to set goals and try to overcome these challenges, they were willing to give me some time to coach me up, to help me and inspire me a little bit. And all I did was start taking action. But early on, all of them said, what's your vision? What's your vision? What's your dream? What's your goal? And the key is, you've got to have a clear vision. And once I started getting clear on this vision, things started to unlock for me. And you don't have to have a vision for the next 40 years of your life right now, but you need to figure out what you want to do for the next season of your life. And so for me, that vision was, how do I make enough money to get off my sister's couch? That was one dream, one vision. And I started getting clear on, okay, I want to get off my sister's couch. That was a vision. That was a goal, and it was a dream. I also in 2008 saw handball on the Olympics for the first time during the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And that planted a dream in my mind, a vision. I want to go learn handball, I want to play handball at the next level, I want to make the USA national team, and I want to go to the Olympics. That has been a 17 year vision and dream and journey that I've been on, that I'm still working towards and still on today. So that vision and dream and goal, I didn't accomplish it overnight. I got off my sister's couch, thankfully in the next year, but I didn't accomplish other goals or dreams overnight. All these things take time. Take time. Getting clarity on of what you want and why you want it, and then taking time to creating a game plan, to taking the steps to accomplishing those goals and dreams. I'm still taking steps, I'm still on the path for the Olympic journey, which has been a 17 year journey, but I got off my sister's couch much sooner. But again, I didn't have the clarity on how to get off my sister's couch. And you don't need to know how right now to accomplish your dreams, but you do need to know what you want and why you want it. So I was clear that I wanted to get my own apartment. I was clear that I wanted to make a certain amount of money. And then I got clarity on why I wanted those things. So the action step for you right now for this first part is to write your dream in one clear sentence. What is it that you want? And it can be a dream for the next few months, the next few years, or even longer. Write it down, one clear sentence. And why? Set a specific timeline to make it real. You know, for me, I wanted to get off my sister's couch within the next year. So I wrote the date of when I wanted that to be, wrote it down, and I was like, okay, what do I do next? Same thing for the Olympics. I wanted to get there within four years. That didn't happen. So I reimagined the dream every four years. I set the goal for the next four years. It's been 17 years later, and I'm still excited about that dream. So I keep reinvesting to find ways to make it happen. The next thing is to create a vision board or a phone wallpaper that reminds you daily of who you're becoming. This is so Easy now with A.I. you know, we used to cut out, you know, newspaper clippings and magazines, but you can literally create a vision Board through AI right now. Within moments, you can say, use this one photo of me and put it in this way and this way and all these different things, and it can make this beautiful wallpaper for you in minutes. So create a vision board or a phone wallpaper that reminds you of who you're becoming and want to become on a daily basis. This is like a visual mantra for yourself. It's like you see it, and it psychologically and spiritually triggers you into taking the actions, to building the habits, to setting the boundaries, to creating who you need to become by visualizing that future version of you. And then the next thing is to spend a few minutes each morning visualizing how it feels to already live that vision. Because here's the interesting thing from all these interviews. I'm almost 13 years of doing the School of Greatness every single week, interviewing the most inspiring people in the world. We have learned over and over again through neuroscience, through research, through inspiring stories, through anecdotes on this show, that when you live a joyful, happy life and you are just grateful for your life, you're excited, you bring joy, enthusiasm, positivity, and you act as if you have a won the gold medal, you have accomplished the business success, you're in the marriage of your dreams. When you act as if it's happened already now, the vision you dream of is already you're living it, and you wake up with joy. Man, do you attract that thing so fast to your life. I'm telling you, it is like this magic tool that when you just show up fully expressive, excited, grateful, it's like you already won the lotto. It's like almost as if life. People want to be attracted to you. They want to find opportunities for you to get that even more. Your goals, your accomplishments, the things you're looking for. It's like the. The world starts putting it in your place and starts providing it for you faster. One, because you're clear on what you want, and two, because you're so grateful and excited to be alive. And so everyone around you says, let's give it to them now. Let's get them there faster. And it is an amazing feeling. You can practice this daily of just, I am grateful to be alive and visualize how it feels to already have the vision in your mind. The greatest people in the world didn't start confident. They built confidence. And there's a difference. They weren't handed opportunities that created them. They didn't wait for the right moment. They became who they needed to become in order to create the moments in their life.