Russell Brand MASTERCLASS On How To Destroy NEGATIVE THOUGHTS & UNLOCK YOUR MIND! | Lewis Howes

We can't spend our life in continual outward pursuit of an external goal because in all likelihood we're pursuing something spiritual anyway, without knowing it. We're looking for approval or connection or power or status or whatever it is. You can't get that. You have to have something that's separate from it. I would suggest, I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness.

Really?

Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

I wanted to start with a question that is around a quote that I love from Jim Carrey. And he said, I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they've ever dreamed of so they can see it's not the answer. I'm curious. With all the fame, success, money, accomplishments you have, what is the truth you want the world to know about what it all means and what fame actually is?

Well, in a sense, you can't really add to Jim Carries quote or the theological precedents of it, which are broad and varied, I. E. The material world is an illusion or the kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and man sees it not. That no material thing can ever make you happy. Like, this idea is, like, culturally reiterated everywhere and assiduously occasionally ignored everywhere. And because, let's face it, we live in a culture that is dominated by economic ideologies, materialistic ideologies, sort of for good and for ill. And there's no question that certain markers of progress are worthy of plaudits, that is Medicine, technology. But they can be, to a degree, false markers of progress. They can mislead us. They can make us, I would say, sort of culturally hubristic about our achievements. And whether it's sort of Mongolian culture, this plain people, or what they called the step people, who could, like, were equestrian archers with levels of expertise that, like, would you only get in a circus now that were sort of were practiced by whole armies or the Jesuit priests that speak like 20, 30 languages, you know, like that. There are historical achievements, moments of greatness that are beyond what our culture values now, that are now neglected, dormant, and ignored precisely because they are at odds with the faith structures that currently define us. We already live in a religious society. We live in a. An ideological fundamentalist society that believes in materialism, wealth, consumerism, and necessarily mobilizes our deeper instincts in order to facilitate the advancement of those systems. That is, you know, any commercial you watch on television that has, like, families embracing each other at an airport or like a sort of a bit of lens flare as a sort of a mother and child look at each other, you know, this is mobilizing what we know to be true. Love is everything. We are all connected. God is everywhere. But those ideas would lead to ultimately to the decimation of many of the cultural institutions that are beneficial to the most powerful people and institutions in society. So those ideas have to be repressed, negated, reframed, diluted and neutered.

Beautifully said. I love the. I love the book, the audiobook that you have. Revelation, Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday life. And I loved the moment. There was a lot of vulnerable moments for you, but I loved the moment where you talked about towards the end of it where you went to a homeless shelter. I believe it was for teens or young boys, young kids. And you were nervous to speak to like 30, 40 random strangers of people who essentially were homeless or had nothing. And you were talking about how your fame really didn't help you in that moment, except for when you talked about a previous relationship and trying to look cool so you could calm your nerves. What does fame do to people if they don't learn to manage it and have some type of spiritual guidance or some type of higher truth? What does it do to people? And how have you learned to manage it at this level from all the different stages you've gone through it?

Fame kind of mimics deeper forms of greatness. Fame can feel like being like. Whenever you think of, like say even a few hundred years ago or even, you know, let's say Oscar Wilde was kind of like a celebrity and like a legit genius and wit. And in much of his writing in particular, he's right for children. He's talking about divinity and the sublime and sort of beautiful, beautiful things. And even with his sort of talk about aesthetics and, you know, being sort of frivolous and glib, he's sort of commenting on his culture's infatuation with superficiality and beauty detached from divinity. Or a figure like Byron, who was sort of like a great celebrity of his age, was like potently connected to the forces and powers of nature, both inner and outer. Fame now is, you know, speaking generally, an extension of commerce. An extent an extension of commerce. I'm not saying there aren't famous people that are great, they're plainly are. Greatness can be an inadvertent factor within fame, but it is not a defining one any longer because greatness so frequently comes at a price, you know, that a lot of people in like a corporate and commercial industries don't necessarily want to pay. And look, from speaking personally, the reason I wanted to be famous was because I Felt insufficient and inadequate as I was. And who knows what choices I would have made if I'd have had access to spiritual principles as a child and as a young man. If people said, look, there's something in you, that you've got gifts and stuff. Why don't you explore those gifts in this direction? You know, So I just naturally. Because in the absence of that, I took the gifts in the dominant direction of our culture. The magnetism of our culture is, you know, if you come from where I come from, Grays, Essex, sort of ordinary suburban town half an hour outside of London, low expectation, beautiful, incredible people. I realize that now, now that I've gone back there and visited. I couldn't see that then because I was too solipsistic and lost in myself and my ambition, my hunger, my drive, my appetites. I got big appetites, drive, you know, like. And for me, what I was kind of taught, look at my school, if you're not good at football or fighting, you're nothing. And like. And in the culture at large, if you're not, if you don't get yourself some power, you're gonna get crushed. You're getting crushed. You're going to a factory or a call center, you're not. That's what, that's what life has in store for. So, you know, for me, it was the. It was the answer. It was the answer to the feeling of inadequacy. It was the answer that my culture offered me. That's what it offers you. It's what it offers all of us. Like, and we're all bombarded with it, but only a few of us are gonna get, you know, gonna get them golden ticket, you know, there's just not enough golden tickets to go around. And those of us that do get it, as Jim Carrey is eloquently articulated, are going to recognize its limitations. You know, we all know there's different category of famous folk we meet. There's people that were, you know, kind of like I was for a while that just sort of face first thrust into it and sort of, what is this? What is this? I'm going to experience this like a gargantuan appetite, a stomach on legs. And then there are other people that are like, you know, that sort of seem a bit more circumspect, like, okay, this is crazy. I'm just going to focus on the work now. I'm lucky that I'm a sort of. I'm heart a comedian and I love, love comedy. And as I've gotten older, I'VE realized that there's some. The divinity in comedy, that comedy is about revelation, that comedy requires that you observe that life is a joke. Life is a joke. None of this is real. Here I am pretending to be me. You're pretending to be you. We've all got our insecurities and our inadequacies. We know the things we've done. We know the mistakes we've made. We know what we do in the bathroom. We know what we do when we're alone. We know the sort of weird things, things we've said to people. You know, like all of this stuff. And we put on this mask and this facade. Fame merely being an amplification of that fame mimics greatness. Fame is bolted on to greatness. A friend of mine said, even in your pursuit of fame, it was obvious that what you were after was God was a kind of like. But the culture doesn't know how to give you God. The culture doesn't want to give you God. The culture doesn't. And what I mean by God. I talk now, mate, about Sesame street values. Sesame street values. This is nothing complicated. Kindness. Be kind to each other. If you're kind to each other, everything else is gonna. It's gonna melt away. That takes care of. Don't judge people for being different. Don't judge people. That all goes out the window just if you devote yourself to the simple principle of kindness. The idea of God for me. The idea of God for me is the same idea as love. That there is a magnetism towards one another. Yes. There is a revulsion, a repulsion, a competition. There is. Everything has its shadow. Everything has its opposite. And beyond opposites, I'm sure. But there is also love. There is this sense. And by love I mean. And etymologists who studied the word love in many languages posit that what we actually mean is union, connection. I love you. I want to be connected to you. I love these shoes. I've got to have them. I love West Ham United. I want them do well as I would do well myself. You know, love, of course, can get confused and intermingled with lust, control, need for approval. All sorts of things can get intermixed with love. But you will know love when you are willing to sacrifice, when you see it as something you serve as opposed to something that serves you. This is. You know, I'm married and sometimes I think with my wife, you know, that my love is about. I want her to take care of me. And I recognize. Oh, hold on a minute, that's not love. That's my codependency, that's my neediness. That's the part of me that's still a wounded little boy. But the man in me has to take care of this wounded little boy, not invite or require that other people do it. Love is when I'm willing to just, you know, again, Sesame street values. When I'm like, I love you. Your. What you want is more important than I. That than what I want. I can't live to those values every day or even all day for one day. I fall short all the time, Louis. I like, you know, becomes about me and what I want and what I care about. And I'm, you know, and because, you know, like, again, many of us are unboundaried and we've lost. We don't have enough. This is why what you are doing with your school of greatness is important. Because we don't have enough. Clear, simple principles that seem universal and perennial, I. E. Applicable everywhere and timeless. Applicable everywhere and timeless. I know we're all different. I know we are diverse. I know we are unique. But most of us have a heart, lungs, kidneys, blood, eyes. Most of us breathe. So is it not likely that there is a kind of universal application on a more sublime level also? That if we are the same organically, is it not likely that the energies from which these organs must surely have evolved are similar to possibly even one, possibly even the same energy? That the same way as we know that we come from a common ancestor, that we come from a common, common energy with a common heart, that our unity is more true than our separation. As the great Terence McKenna says, When the water of illusion drains away, we see that we are all connected. We are all connected 100%.

And you talked about healing the childhood wound, feeling inadequate, feeling insecure, feeling not enough, or all the. All these feelings on your kind of search or yearning for fame. And what is this experience look like, this drive to be more connected to love, to God, to that higher thing? When did you feel in your life the most insecure? And when did you fully start to understand how to overcome your insecurities?

Many of these negative emotions and feelings have like, wisdom in them, don't they? Because even like the, like the most ferocious forms of chemical dependency that I've experienced, crack and heroin addiction are kind of about melt in the boundary of who you are. Look at the idioms around it. Get off your face, get smashed, destroy yourself on some level, again, using inappropriate means. You are trying to transcend and become free of the self. It's a spiritual impulse. I may have to talk people through that more slowly because it seems sort of stupid to think of some hunched drunk or junky slumped in a doorway as being on a spiritual quest. But when you think that spirituality is simply the valorizing of the inner life over the outer life, the need to connect, the need to feel something truthful and real, then anyone that picks up a drink ever or smokes a joint is after a spiritual experience, they're trying to feel better. Man, I felt insecure and worthless a lot of times in my life. It happens to me again and again and again. I'm lucky that I'm an addict because the addiction shows you. It takes you to extremes. So you're confronted with the fallibility of the choices you're making, that these choices won't work for you. I think a lot of people now wrote about that, you know, in, like, the Recovery book are able to struggle along with moderate addictions, moderate addictions to food or sex or success or whatever, never, ever reaching the point of crisis that would facilitate transformation, metamorphosis, real change. Real change. You know that book Revelation I'm telling you about and that moment that you talked about going down to that place in Skid ro, the Union Mission. You know, I was doing a craft thing there with my wife. My wife does crafts and writes about craft and, like, creativity and parenting and in mental health and stuff like that. So we went down there. So I was very much just in an assistant role the first time I went there. Yes, it was to talk to them kids. And I thought, like, I didn't feel qualified and I didn't feel good enough to do it. I felt somewhat ashamed. I felt ashamed of the. Like I think I said in Revelation, like, about, you know, if you're talking to homeless kid on some level, like, because this Union Mission is the only one of their missions that takes families. That's what it is. The others take either men or women or adults or whatever. This one takes whole families. There's a lot of people in there, more than there should be in any civilized nation. And like, when I was. When you're there, you want to tell them, look, this isn't your fault. It's not your family's fault. You're a byproduct of a economic system that simply cannot generate. Well, it can generate enough wealth, but it doesn't. It doesn't distribute wealth fairly from a number of complex reasons. And you at the ass end of that. You know, I can't explain that today. It's patronizing and somehow dismissive and. But more importantly, that day that I went to do the craft, I sort of saw, or maybe even someone told me it. Maybe I didn't have this realization, maybe someone said it to me. They don't know they're poor, they don't have that contextualization. They're just children. They're just children. And it was sort of beautiful and amazing. And since having kids, as I said, I don't do what I used to do a lot me, I love children. I've always loved children I used to get right. And I didn't have kids till like I was 40. So I was very much like if I was around my mates kids or whatever, I'd really play with them and like get into characters with them and do a lot of joyful play. And now I've got kids, I can't be bothered with that. I'm tired, I'm exhausted. But no, I'm not interested, you know. But that day, like I held it down because my wife was doing this stuff with the mums and the kids and I felt the heaviness and I felt the shame of the adults and I was lifted by the joy of the children and. But I held back, you know, like I was just helping them. They were making playdough together and all this kind of stuff and doing these craft activities. And then when that finished, I let myself off the hook a little bit. I let myself be a dinosaur and a monster and be all crazy with these kids and monkey around with them, you know. And like there's one bit where like all these little 5 year olds and 6 year olds and 7 year olds, they pulled me to the ground and they was beating me up and stuff. And I sort of looked up for a moment and all I could see, my whole vista was filled with children's faces and they were smiling and they were full of joy. And this is when I felt God is here. God is in this room. Look at this isn't. There's nothing but joy and love and play and happiness in this lowest of place where people are suffering, poverty, being disregarded, neglected. And the whole room, my whole experience is filled with love. And this is just one moment in time. Of course I know that those children have got whole lives ahead of them and have whole lives behind them. But in that moment there was an absolute realization of something sublime and divine. And for me, this is an important force of important energy that has to be mobilized, valorized, brought to the forefront, exalted in our culture, made the emblem and the driving force and the raison d' etre of the way we live. Not marginalized, neglected to the sideline. So people can plunder the earth and look at the earth as a resource and look at human beings as a resource and fortify systems of elitism. If me the basic idea, the Sesame street values, kindness and love. Kindness and love. Instead of the values, you know, that currently dominate selfishness, greed. This is what's at play now.

Yeah, I love that you talk about Sesame street values. I'm a big Mr. Rogers, you know, values type of guy myself, which are very similar, I guess, in the fact of just be kind to your neighbor and be loving, be generous. I'm curious. When have you felt the most loved in your life and when do you currently feel the most love?

Sometimes I think about my wife when I'm not with her. Because when you're with her, she's just a person. But when I'm not with her, I sometimes think, oh, my God, I found this person. I found this person that just loves me. Doesn't care about anything. She's not particularly. You know, I've known people that are very impressed by aspects of my nature and behavior, you know, and I can speak fast or whatever and say a lot of stuff. And I can be novel. I don't know. My wife shouldn't seem to care about any of that. She doesn't. She just sort of sees me as I am and I feel very at ease sometimes. The greed in me wants stimulation, excitement, plaudits, fanfare, the carnival of life. But I recognize I have been to that carnival and, you know, I've had my turn and like, it's like it that it doesn't work for me. There's never enough for me. For me, it's this. It's the spiritual path. It's the spiritual path. And I think that's true for everyone. But it's not really right for a person that's lived the life I have to be, you know, I feel like spiritual principles are for yourself, not for other people. You know, like, oh, these are the things that I must do. And other people have got to find their path, I suppose. And like, maybe I can sometimes be helpful to people, usually directly, in an intimate way. Hopefully I can be helpful in a broadcast way because indeed, that's what we're doing. But who knows? I'm not sure that I was. I hope I was helped by, you know, people talking on the Internet or on tv, but I can't remember it ever happening.

What Is the thing you love about your wife the most?

My wife, she's un. She's strange in a way that you wouldn't straight away notice. She seems. Because she's beautiful and she's capable and competent, but she's very unusual little person. You know, when you're married to someone and you like, you know them, you know that after dark they turn into sort of the foulest, most impatient person you know, and that they have little ways. What I have in my marriage is a real intimacy, you know, like I have the ability, I don't have to. I can tell she knows everything. She knows everything about me, you know, and like I, I need a sort of authenticity in, in my connections in life. Lewis. Because otherwise it's very, very sort of lonely. So what I love about her, I guess I love her playfulness, her creativity, her willingness to change, her openness to convent, to conversation. There's like loads of things that I love about her. She's weird and she's a, She's a laugh. She's a funny person to hang out with.

That's beautiful. For the younger audience who might be confused about their life, their direction, their purpose, their relationships, and they might be chasing something, they might be looking for fame or power or money, whatever they're looking for, what are three things that you would recommend they prioritize in their chase, in their journey, in their, in their life? What are three things that you wish you would have prioritized that you would share with them so they don't waste their life away or make, you know, bad mistakes?

Live in service of the thing you claim to love, you know, like if you were saying that you want to be an actor to make sure that what you don't secretly want is actually, I just want loads of attention and power and glory and glamour, you know, like make sure that you are in service of acting or music or whatever it is. And that means, you know, like all of us have gifts and we often use these gifts. Like we put the gift to work, like, right, gift, get out there and make me some money. Go make me a star. Imagine if it was like a little bird or a child or something. You have to look after it and take care of it. You know, me, comedy, I have always. This is the. Thank God it sort of saved me. Even before I was switched on sort of spiritually or whatever, I. And even at my most keen and needy, I always really, really loved comedy in a geek way. You know, I watch a lot of stand up comedy, I study sitcoms, I Learn them. I love Monty Python. I love Richard Pryor. I, you know, I know my heritage, I know the line that I'm walking. I study them, study them and observe them. So when I was doing stand up comedy, which I was for years and years and years before I made any money out of it at all, I was becoming practiced and I was in service of comedy. Of course, I also wanted to be a big famous star. I want people to love me and I wanted to have lots of opportunities. Of course I did, but thank you know, what could I do? Man, I had both things. I had both things. Thank God I have both. You know, if all you've got. If all I'd had had been the appetites, the appetites for the plaudits, the prestige and the privilege, I don't know where I would have ended up. So first I say be of service to the thing that you claim to love. Don't think about what it's going to give you, think about what you can give to it.

Okay, that's the first one.

I'll do three.

Yeah, if you, if you've got three, yeah.

Second one is have something away from it. Like, that is not about it. Cultivate your inner life and your spirit. Don't allow it to entirely devour you. The fact is, I think that we are spiritual beings in essence. We're the only animal that we know of on this planet that have these complex in us, these lives of complex inner subjectivity. As far as I know, my dog doesn't sort of go, oh, God, that was embarrassing. You know, I mean, like, he just is him. He does sometimes look a bit embarrassed thinking about it. But like, like, you know, we, we can't spend our life in continual outward pursuit of an external goal because in all likelihood we're pursuing something spiritual anyway, without knowing it. We're looking for approval or connection or power or status or whatever it is. You can't get that as we, you know, we started off with this thematic idea established by your Cary quote there, mate. So you have to have something that's separate from it. I would suggest meditate. Learn how to meditate. Practice meditation. Practice meditation. Find a form of meditation that works for you. Don't try to change the rules and say something. I meditate when I'm on the treadmill or I meditate when I'm gardening. Sit down with your eyes shut. Meditate. You can have like guided meditation. In fact, I do guided meditations on my luminary podcast, above the Noise. You could start there or you could do my On My side channel, Awakening with Russell brand on YouTube. I do guided meditations on there also. But, you know, God, don't stop there. Titch Nhat Hanh Ram Das Mooji, or like great, great teachers, great teachers available everywhere. Meditate, meditate. You have cultivate your inner life away from it. That's the second one. The third one. Do you want the third?

Yes, please.

You're very lovely, aren't you? You're very sort of patient and kind person, sincere and sweet. Well, the third one, I would say, is make helping other people something that is integral to your life so that you don't get. You don't do what I did and become so absorbed in yourself and what you want that when you get. Doesn't work for you because it was. It's meaningless. Like, so, like, if you. If part of your life is helping other people and if you want to go for the black belt in this, then help other people without other people finding out about it. If you can help people privately, no one knows about it. No one knows about the time you volunteer down at the shelter or the thing you do for a particular person that's in need of it. If you can do that, then what you're cultivating there is a relationship with a higher frequency of being because, of course, kindness or, you know, virtue. Now virtue is itself a commodity. There's not a corporation on earth that isn't putting up some flag or another to ally itself to some cause without actually changing its. Its core behaviors and values, just applying the wallpaper of virtue. If you have some virtuous behaviors that are not advertised, that are not known by anyone but you, you know, next time someone calls you out, some little voice in you will go, I do that thing. Nobody knows about that.

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I've always been, of the mindset of, like, show some of the stuff you're doing to help others so that you can inspire other people to be like, okay, that's. I should do that too. Or whether it's a donation or showing up and giving time or some of your resources or talent. But definitely you don't need to show it all the time. I think it's important to show some, to inspire and evoke it and evoke it out of others to be like, hey, listen, I'm doing this thing, you know, I'm trying to inspire you to do something in your life that's a cause for you. That's the way I've approached it as well. But I'm with you on keeping some of it for yourself or not needing to share with others to get, you know, an applause or validation or to be like, you're a good guy or something. Yeah, I love that.

I like that, Louis, because we can create sort of shared values together. Like, you know, by role modeling for one another, you can inspire others, and it's not something you can do alone. You know, this idea that sort of like, sort of fated or sainted individuals are going to save us doesn't work as well as the idea that collectively we can bring about greatness and change. This infatuation with the individual is sort of part of the problem. And I think all of us fall prey to it because it seems so real. What's as real to you as your own thoughts? What's as real to you as your own pleasure? You know, there's legitimate ongoing philosophical debates about whether or not other people are actually even there. You know, the only thing we know for certain is our own existence, so it's easy to fall in that. But if we practice values that appear universal, kindness again, like, you know, the Mr. Rogers or Sesame street values, then we're sort of part of something transcendent, part of something bigger than us. We're not continually furnishing our cell, ornamenting our fragile and transient egoic structures.

What would you say are three skills you wish you would have learned earlier? Whether it be a tactical skill, the skill of making money, the skill of meditation and managing your emotions, the skill of, you know, learning how to connect with people, the skill of speaking on stage. What skills do you wish you would have learned earlier that would have helped you?

I wish I'd learned Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a child. That would have really grounded me, really sort of straightened me out.

Why do you think that would ground you?

Because I think it gives you a respect for your body, and it gives you a respect for other people as well. The thing about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is you learn what you're capable of, but you also see what other people are capable of. So you like, wow, I'm kind of can do all this stuff, but I, oh, my God, look at this guy. I would not have known that. I would not have known from looking at that person that they had those kind of resources. So it creates the perfect optimal state, I would say, of like, I would not want to be a person that's an aggressor or looks to create conflict. But neither of am I so anxious about conflict that I'll bend myself into peculiar shapes to avoid it, you know, like even. And this is, you know, it's had a positive impact, impact on me learning Brazilian Jiu jitsu in my 40s. So if I'd learned it when I was sort of 12, I think. And also there are affiliated values within martial arts. Respect hierarchies that are fair and just and earned camaraderie, physical contact in a clear and consensual and boundaried way. I mean, it's just so full of great values. I think it's like that martial arts in general, but Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, because one I know are like, you know, I like that. Wonderful communities and that awesome also as well. You put aside who you are. You put aside who you are when you enter into it. You know, I do try and use my personality sometimes on the mat, like, come on, hey, charm people a little bit. It's only moderately successful.

Okay, so that's one skill I wish I'd learned.

Abstinence and the principles of 12 step recovery, which of course encompass quite a lot of values. The principles of recovery. Because even before I was a drug addict, you know, so sort of abstinence based recovery. I wish I'd learned abstinence based recovery. Because even before I was addicted to crack and heroin, the way that I was eating chocolate, the way I was watching pornography, the way I was obsessed with girlfriends, the way that I was sort of a clingy little dude, you know, like all of these things, the idea that I can have a connection to a God of my own understanding, that I can be to a degree sufficient that I am. I am not God. I'm not the most important person in the world all the time. And. But also I'm not scum. I like, I don't have to bow and scrape before anybody. I have values, but I don't need to always, as they say in some of the great literature, scrambling to be on the top of the pile or hiding underneath it, you know, like being happy to be just a person among people. Not always seeking to sort of somehow either fate, isolate or separate myself. You know, being happy to be part of a community or part of a group or part of a family. The 12 step recovery. Recovery has so many beautiful principles. The idea of God and the idea that we all have equal access to God. The idea of fellowship, fraternity, sorority, brotherhood and sisterhood between us. The idea of service of one another. The idea of being honest and authentic about who we are. Surrender, acceptance. So I would say the skills of 12 step recovery, yes, that would be the Second one. Okay, the third one. What would be another thing? I mean, I really sometimes, like, every day I think about. I wish I spoke another language. Every day I think, gosh, man, it's.

Funny you say that, because for 20 years, Russell, I've been. At the end of every year, I look back and say, okay, what am I proud of that I created? And what do I regret that I didn't do, that I wish I would have done every year for 20 years has been. I wish I would have learned Spanish.

And Spanish is the one I want.

And for. Because every year I try. Every year I'm like, okay, I'm going to download the latest app.

Download the app.

I'm going to get the book. I'm going to try this new. Someone said, this is the program that'll work for you. You'll be fluent in three months. All this stuff. And it gets so hard for my brain. Within the first few days, I'm like, I'm just not smart enough. I can't figure this out. It hurts. I've got all these other things going on, and I end up giving up on myself.

And every last one I did.

Sorry, which one. Which one? Which app did you try?

Just trying to find it. Like, I really got quite far in. I was pretty pleased with myself. I was just.

Babbel.

Babbel. Yeah, I was doing well. And then it got into this sort of. This area of grammar that was so complex. This is the same as saying this. I was like, what? That's so hard. I can't even. I can't find an equivalent for that in English. And I don't. You. Look, if you've been doing this for 20 years, you must be the same as me. You must be like, you know that you're gonna have to go somewhere where you've got no choice. You've got to go to Argentina or Cuba or Madrid or whatever, and then fully get down with it. Because otherwise.

Exactly. Well, here's the thing. What I realized is I kept losing integrity with myself because I kept wanting to do it. I kept saying I was gonna do it, and then every year I want to do it. And I kept feeling, like, less and less confident with myself. And so I either needed to kill the dream and say, I no longer care about this dream and let it go, say, that's not for me in my life, or I needed to commit to it. And six months ago, I said, I'm hiring a tutor three days a week. I'm making scheduling the time in the calendar. I'm going to make it a commitment. And the first four months were miserable. It was. I didn't feel like I was learning a thing. But now month six, I feel like I'm still not good, but I'm like, it doesn't hurt my brain as much. And I could see okay, you know, in three, five, seven years, I could become a lot better. I could have a conversation and feel proud of it. And it's tough. I get up, you know, I do it at 8am and sessions. But it's like I don't want to feel, you know, not confident and proud of myself by wanting this thing and always putting it off. So, yeah, I think it's either a full immersion or finding a tutor and just saying, okay, three days a week or five days a week, I'm doing this and sacrificing something else. But it's. It's been. It's been powerful for me. I don't know if you're similar to this. When I take something on, I want to be the best at it within a day. I want it to be great. I want to do things that I'm good at. And this is something that humbles me. It's like being in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for the first time, probably. It's like I'm on my back getting pinned every moment, no matter what maneuver I try to do. And you just got to say, okay, I'm here to learn. I know nothing and have a beginner's mind. So it's been a humbling yet powerful experience because I haven't been able to use the skill. But I know it's helping me learn and connecting the dots on things. And it's just. I feel proud even if I never used it, just because I've been doing it. And it's something I want to do. So why don't.

I've got a few questions. One is, how long are your sessions?

They're an hour long, three days a week right now? Yeah.

Why don't you book some kind of trip where you're going to get to use it?

Yeah, I mean, my girlfriend's Mexican, so she speaks Spanish too. So I practice with her and I go visit her and her family. And no one speaks English in her family, so when I'm with her and her family, I'm forced to practice. So, you know, doing more of those trips will be helpful.

I've been in love. When I was a younger man, I was in love with a woman from one from El Escorial near Madrid. And like Like, I went and stayed with her family, and I guess because I feel comfortable speaking English, you know, I feel like such a moron when I can't. Like, when I don't have that, when I don't have language, I feel nude and just helpless, and it kills me, man. I like, I love being able to. I've got little. I've had. The thing is, as well, Spanish a bit like you. I've had points where I've. Hold on. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. And then I don't do anything atrophies into nothing. Then I had another girlfriend who was from Barcelona who just was so magnificent, and she was, like. Worked in Ibiza, and I would go and see her, and I would get a little bit closer to understanding. I'd get all inspired. I mean, I love, like, Spanish people, Latin people. I love the language and the culture, and I really, you know, I'd love, love to. I'd love to be Spanish. You've actually lived with a Mexican person. You need to sort it out. Louis.

I know. I'm practicing, but it's also, you know, your father, your. You know, you're speaking English to your family all day. You're speaking on podcasts and interviews all day in English. So you're not. Even if I went there, I'd still have to run my business and be speaking in English 10 hours a day. So it's figuring out.

Could you and your partner go to Mexico for, like, six months?

Yeah, I mean, she wants me to live there with her. I mean, she wants me to move there, but I'm like, my team is here. You know, I want to. You know, I like doing stuff in person and interviews. And this is the. This is. My mission right now, is to serve humanity.

Where are you? Los Angeles?

Yeah, in la. And so it's. You know, I could do it, and I could go for a couple months, be Mexico.

Anyway, the line crossed us.

I know. I mean, I think there's 70 million people that speak Spanish in the USA as well. So I practice here and there. But definitely full immersion would be the. The fastest way. I just got to either commit to that or, you know, take the long road. So either way, I'm doing the three days a week.

So well done. I didn't mean to, sort of, because I think I was deflecting from my own feelings of envy and shame because I was actually on the walk that I was having this morning. I was thinking you could get a tutor. Like I said, like, I struggle. I'm the same as you if I'm not good straight away and that, you know, that's why, yeah, I do deserve props for the BJJ if I'm not good because I wasn't good straight away and I'm still a beginner at a blue belt, you know, like, I don't like it because I've got a few things that I'm competent at, the stand up comedy or acting or whatever. Like I like to stay in that. And also I gu. When I was being nourished or when I was growing up as a kid, I didn't feel confident to be not good at stuff. I felt very ashamed of not being good at football, not being good at fighting, like those kind of things felt like a bit. Felt like a big deal to not be good at those things, you know. So, yeah, I'm not that patient and tolerant with myself of, you know, and it's a kind of self love, isn't it? To go, okay, we're gonna gently learn Spanish, we're gonna gently learn the ukulele. You have to learn how to be your father, the father to yourself. Don't to just go say, okay, don't worry, we're going to take our time with this. You know, my own kids, I wouldn't be going, get on with it, learn it. You're useless.

Well, I love the. I love the quote or the meme that I see online. I reference this a lot and I'm not a parent, but you might recognize this, these moments. There's some meme or saying that's like, you know, when a child is learning how to walk who falls down a thousand times, the child doesn't think to himself, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. The child just, you know, figures it out and stumbles around and hits its head on the ground or scrapes its elbow and bloodies up and smashes nose or. And then it learns to hold onto the couch, I'm assuming. And it doesn't say, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. After a thousand falls, it just keeps going.

So I think same with the language impulse. You're quite right. I'm torn, Louis. I don't know whether to entirely give up on myself and dedicate it all to my daughters or to just have one last crack at this Spanish with the tutor method that you have described.

What are your thoughts on this? Having a dream that is inside of your soul for years, that you never fully commit to?

You never.

You dabble again. Like, we've done so much in so many things, we dabble but never fully commit to. What does that do to us if we continue on for the rest of our life, never fully going all in on our dreams?

I think it obviously reinforces the idea of incompetence or it reinforces the idea that you are incapable of following through. And I feel like you, we have an obligation to follow that. Or as you say, put it. Put it aside entirely and watch the, you know, look, we all know in the grim economies of our lives, if we were to put aside staring at some goddamn senseless social media platform and give that time to learn in Spanish, we'd speak Spanish by now in four languages. Yeah. So, like, you have to be willing. That's why someone like, you know, Tony Robbins is so sort of, you think, because that man, he just makes those choices. Like, have you ever heard him tell the story about how he, like, learned polo?

He's just like, that's the way to say it.

I want to learn polo. I'm f. Ing Ill. Like, every time I come, whenever I'm walking my dog, I feel like. And I'm friends with Tony and I've told him this. I say, like, whenever I'm walking my dog or anything, I feel like, ah, this is not. Tony. Wouldn't be doing this. Tony be learning something now? Well, you know, you could be learning Spanish while you walk the dog. You know, like, I mean, he's powerful, but he is a. He's a one off, let's face it.

Yeah. I just actually interviewed him again yesterday and reminded me that he learned, I think, to become a black belt, like, while he was on tour for two or three years. And he was like, I did it the fastest time anyone's been a black belt. I had the master come on stage and like, behind the scenes, in between sessions, I would spend 45 minutes, then go back on. I was like, you're an animal. The commitment is unbelievable.

What was that like? What martial art is that?

I think he just learned. I think he learned karate. I think it was what. This was probably decades ago when he was like, I'm gonna learn this, but I'm on tour. And he brought the guy with him to just teach him all day in between on stage.

So the things I most admire about him is that he's the way that he will identify an objective and then not be restricted by sort of our conditioned, either emotional or cultural responses. You know, admittedly, we're talking about someone with some incredible resources. Yes, we are now. But the reason he's got Those resources is because of this ability that he would just go, okay, I'm gonna learn that thing. Never put aside all of the. Yeah, there's not time. There's not this.

He eliminates excuses. He just says there is no room. And he goes all in on his desires. It's pretty powerful.

Tony, you exhausting genius.

One of the things I think that holds a lot of people back, myself included, is when we doubt ourselves, when we don't believe in our own abilities or what we're capable of creating in the future. What do you think are some ways that we can overcome self doubt in ourselves to gain that real confidence? Not fake confidence, but overcome the doubts that hold us back from asking that person out or going after that career opportunity or just saying, I'm going to go after what I want in my life. What are some ways to eliminate that self doubt and gain confidence?

Well, self doubt can be critical, Lewis, because it can be a component of awareness. I feel that the answer must always be the embarkation on a spiritual life. Because it's difficult, isn't it, in this world of personal development that we find ourselves in, for us not to take on the tropes and objectives of a culture that I think at this point we need to be querying, querying and looking to move away from. We've all been deeply inculcated to believe that the pursuit of happiness is contingent upon the attainment of our petty, trivial desires. But real happiness is contingent on being free from those petty, trivial desires. As long as I'm a prisoner to that. Like, you know, see, if someone's like that, doesn't know, you know, don't. Can't pluck up the confidence to ask someone out or can't pluck up the confidence to pursue their dream or whatever. For me, I don't feel like it's my job to operate at that. That intersection. At the intersection of. Well, come on, believe in yourself. You're as good as anyone else. You never know unless you try. You know, I don't think that's my job. My job is like, why do you think you want this? What do you think it's going to do for you? What do you want, really? What do you really want? What do you really want? What is it you are looking for? You know, a friend of mine observed once that in the 1980s, the prominent sort of entrepreneurs were all about zipping about on speedboats and whooshing through the skies in hot air balloons. Intrepid, bold adventurers, the very same tycoons now are all about greenness and ecology and safety and helping, responding to the trends that define a time, this time now, of apparent fragility. I think our job is to look for some truth beneath culture. That culture, in many cases, is not our friend. Culture is here to chain us to systems of tyranny, subtle tyranny. What is freedom, really, if it is only freedom to operate within certain parameters? It isn't freedom at all. I'm not saying I wouldn't rather be a person who's affluent in California than a person that's sort of poor in, I don't know, Tehran or Senegal or poor anywhere. Frankly, it's pretty grim to be poor anywhere in the world. I've been poor in places before, but I don't feel like our job is to train people to bend themselves into a shape where they can succeed within these systems. I think our job is to train people so that they learn to challenge these systems, to create fairer systems that are not solely built upon the fulfillment of individual goals. My friend Adam Curtis, the great filmmaker and genius, says the genie is out of the bottle. Now on individualism, it's never going back in. You're never going to be able to tell people, hey, why don't you forget your own identity? You're just a member of a community, of a collective, of a parish. You know, that's not going to happen now, everyone, nothing is as real to you or I as our own thoughts, as our own dreams, as our own. That's just the way it is now. But perhaps through this, we can attain some meaning. And if I refer back even to my own suggestions, serve the thing you are pursuing. You know, if it's like, you really want to go out of a boy or a girl, why are you looking to serve them? Or do you think they're going to somehow solve or absolve you? You see them as some salve, or if you're after some dream, why Is it because you don't feel like you're good enough or you're worthy? You know, one of my friends said, like, to me that you're like someone who's been up to the all you can eat buffet table, stuffed your face full of everything, and then going to everyone else, you don't need this stuff.

You don't need it.

This cake won't work for you.

You've done it.

But I have had this experience. So, you know, you know anyone that's saying, well, that's easy for you to say, then, yeah, God damn it, they're right. Well, it wasn't that easy to get here, let me tell you. And like so, but what I would say is this is, I would say, I would say this, that you are beautiful, that you are enough, that you deserve to feel content and happy. But you have to be willing to surrender everything. You have to be willing to surrender everything. You have to be willing to accept that what you think you should get might not be right. Where did it come from, that idea? Where did that idea that you know, because if you are meant to be a world class athlete, if you get on and do, you know, I mean, do the Tony Robbins version of get on and do the work, don't let anything stand in your way, believe in it, be willing to suffer, have the discipline, make the sacrifices, then that's all sort of cool. But if the only reason you're becoming a world class athlete, it's because your father told you you're not good enough and that you're cheap and you ain't no kind of a man or woman or then that you need to deal with that. Otherwise you're gonna end up strung up in a hotel room one way or another, you know, because it doesn't like, you know, like you and I both know enough people having experienced the type of celebrity that I experienced, I've met people that, as I'm sure you have, that are in at the apex, the zenith. They have enjoyed it, they've been to Kubla Khan, they've had it. They're in there drowning in riches and drowning indeed. Because it's not real. It's not real. Never lose sight of the fact that we are in limitless space in every direction. Never lose sight of the fact that in the sub particular world the rules of physics as we previously understood them are falling apart. Never lose sight of the fact that our senses are limited and we can only see 0.63% of the electromagnetic range. That we are operating essentially in darkness. That the neural activity that we experience, the consciousness, constitutes our reality is only a tiny percentage of the potential of our own brain, let alone the potential brain of God. Wouldn't it be a coincidence if we were issued with all of the senses necessary to experience total reality? Isn't it more likely that we think of reality as just being the circumference of our sensual world? So there are limitless experiences as yet unheard and unhad. And many of them lay in the realm of many mystery. Engage with the mystery. Meditate, pursue. These spiritual disciplines don't rely entirely on the material path. This is not like, you know, neglect the body or hate the body, love the body. We are in this material world. We are God made flesh. We are having this experience in bodies. But I don't think you can take what this culture is offering you as a solution and think that it will be a solution. You'll be disappointed. The map is not the territory. The map is not the territory. When you get there. It's not like that. It's not like that. So you start where you are. Start with you now.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I have about 17 more hours of questions, but I'm going to ask you about four final questions to respect our time and maybe we can do another follow up in the future with the next book. You have this book revelation. It's hard for me to finish books. It's really hard for me to finish them with, you know, growing up with a learning disability, reading and writing was not my forte, but I finished it and it was beautiful. It was unbelievable. Spoken word poetry and I don't know, I don't know how you do what you do. It's an incredible gift and a talent and people just need to listen, listen to it just to hear how talented you are as a spoken word artist. It's unbelievable. But the way you were able, we had many and many of them people that you mentioned. Throughout there I've had the fortune of knowing and interviewing Wim Hof and all these other individuals. Yeah, I went to Poland, I took 13 guys to Poland last year and did five days with Wim and you know, have had him on many times and had some great kind of spiritual experiences in Poland with him playing the guitar, singing and us jumping in ice rivers and climbing up mountains naked in the snow and crazy stuff that we, that we did together. Our friend Jay Shetty connected us and, and I've done many weeks in India meditating at different places and I'm on a constant journey for myself and that's why I really wanted to have this conversation with you. And there's many things I want to ask you hopefully for another time. But I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Christian Science, but it's a lot about the things you've been talking about and the things you talk about in your audiobook on audible. And one of the things that the founder, her name is Mary Baker Eddy, said back in the 1800s was Stan Porter at the door of thought. And that really stood with me as a child growing up in this religion. I'm no longer really active in the church or anything, but the foundation is still with me of the mindset Stan Porter at the door of thought. And I'm curious, how do you manage negative thoughts when they try to enter your mind? What's your practice beyond meditation and the things you talk about in your book and your YouTube channel, which is. Is incredible. But how do you really navigate negative thoughts that come coming to mind? The thoughts of addiction, the thoughts of lust or greed or fame or whatever. The things that are coming to you that you've tasted, this buffet you've tasted for years. How do you manage that?

Well, it's. What I do is I don't try and do it alone, you know, Like, I think that's a really beautiful piece of language and a lovely experience you just shared with me, mate. And the way that, like, I experience negative thoughts a lot. It's been a lot of fear and, you know, like, all of the things that you've listed. Here's a very practical way that I deal with it. I'm like, I felt like I was looking at social media too long. In particular, like, you know, I'm like, When I do YouTube videos, I feel like I'm justified in checking, oh, how many views did it get? You know, and what are the comments? But I work with people that can handle that. I'm not qualified to handle that sort of stuff because otherwise I get. I go into a point where I'm sort of numbed by it. Like, it's not like that people saying nice things really helps me or the people saying bad things really hurts me. It's like a sort of a numb, dumb stare. And so, like, I sort of, you know, then someone reached out to me. Like, famous musician, she sort of told me I'm, like, looking at stuff too much. And I goes, all right, well, from now on, right? One day, time, me and you, whenever we're thinking about doing that, let's reach out to each other, you know? And, like, so I start doing it with her. Hey, I'm thinking of doing it now. And we talk about the feelings that we have and what it elicits in us when we want to do it and what it feels like to not do it, you know, if you want to know if you're addicted to something, see what happens to you when you stop doing it. Then you will know. Then you will know. I could stop anytime. Stop, then try it. Like, then, oh, my God, I'm ashamed. I'm full of fear. And then, like, similar with pornography, if I don't Want to look at pornography but you know, not judgment on anyone else who does. But like for me, if I think, oh no, I don't like how I feel, how it accumulatively makes me feel, then I make a choice that I'm going to reach out to someone else who's. Sometimes it helps specifically with that thing, you know, like I've done it before with someone like my mate didn't want to like eat no more bad food and I was cool with food at that time. So I was like, well, I don't want to look at porn. So if I'm. When I want to look at porn, I'll check you you with the food, you know, so we do it like and it's not even. That's non hierarchical by the way. We're both sort of people that are just of trying it and trying to improve ourselves together. I also have mentors that evidently you do like, they're further down the path than me and like, you know, for me I tend to use the mentors in with a broader, you know, with a broader strokes. Like, you know, this is how I'm feeling about family, this is how I'm feeling about being a man. This is how I'm feeling about fatherhood, work, whatever it is. You know, I check in with them and then you got to listen to them. Then you already like, see if you, you know, if you have the privilege of access to people like Wim Hof or Tony Robbins and you ask Tony Robbins, what should I do? And then Tony Robbins tells you do it. You know, like, you know, and then like then you're suddenly, you've got Tony Robbins brain there. You're running off of that, you know. Now a lot of the time what Tony Roberts tells you might be unachievable. Okay, all you gotta do is become a black bolt in world record. Oh, f Cking hell. Tell me something easier like, you know, like, or like kind of sort of like with, you know, with Wim Hof or whatever. All these sort of peculiar yogis and genii, we've lost sacredness, broadly speaking in our culture. That's what that book is about. How do you reconnect with sacredness after we've sort of decided all those ideas, they're old fashioned, they don't really work. They don't. Not for me. Or they've become compromised by their own hypocrisy or dogma or whatever it is, you know, like you've got like for me it becomes find it everywhere, Find it everywhere. Find every Conversation. What is the sacredness? What is the beauty of the person that you are dealing with? What is your job in this moment? Are you taking or are you giving? I have to legitimately ask myself these questions all the time because, you know, God, the only advantage that I have over someone like Tony Robbins is, I think, like I'm saying, still in it. Like, you know, I took the Tony Robbins or Eckhart Tolle or whoever, and I thought, my God, these people are, like, in their own ways, transcended masters. Like, so, like, it's like, if you're asking, you know, sort of Maradona about football, like, you know, God rest his soul, like, you know, like, he can't tell you what he does. He doesn't know how he does that. No one knows. That's the, like, the point of it, you know, like. But some of us is like, look, I'm on, like, every day. I know. Like, you know, like, I think I say in that. I certainly say it. Places like, you know, Eckhart Tolle, he lives there. He lives in the awakened state. Moment to moment, fully present, return to the present. Like, you know, he's sort of like, he says, the second he comes off the stage from talking, that experience is done. That's it. You can never be happy in the conceptual mind. Whenever you're thinking anything, whenever you're comparing or projecting, you get. The conceptual mind will always make you unhappy. It can't make you happy. You know, like that and like. So. But for me, I go to those places, Louis. I get there, but I come back all the time. I come back for the chocolate. I come back, you know, I feel, oh, my God. Glory of God, we're all one, right? I'm just gonna have a bit of chocolate or have a wank, you know, like, I can't get out of the mud.

The monkey mind. Yeah, the monkey mind. I hear ya. Two final questions, if that's cool for you. Of course I want people to get the audiobook. It is if you want to be. First off, you're extremely entertaining, and you're wise and you're educational and informative. So if you want to be all those things at once, then get the book revelation. Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life. If you like the School of Greatness content, and you want someone who can share these ideals in an even more funny and entertaining way, then you're going to love this book. And make sure to check out Russell on YouTube, Instagram. I mean, your stuff is really inspiring in all those places. This is a Question I ask everyone towards the end these two final questions. This is called the three Truths. Truth's question. And I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical situation, Russell, where it's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long. You get to live as long as you want to live. And you get to accomplish or be or not do whatever you want to do. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your written and video work with you. Audio, written, video work, all your content that you've ever made has to go with you. Movies, this podcast, everything to the next place, wherever that is. And you only get to leave behind three things you know to be true. Three lessons that you would share with the world. Maybe these would be the lessons you share with your daughters, or maybe this would just be to the world. What would you say would be those three truths?

Oh, no, this is terrible. I'm so devastated even by the framing of the question. I can't cope anymore. I say that you are, you know, I would say you do not spend your life. Don't think that you can medicate yourself with anything external, whether that's something as obvious or drink or drugs or relationships. Know that it's within you. It's within you. You already have it. You're. There's nothing to get and you already have it. I would say that you must learn a spiritual practice and you must learn a bodily practice. If this. That's it. If there's only three things, if you already have everything you need, get a spiritual practice and have a bodily practice, you know, like. And I think that that would be enough. And the fact is, isn't it for all of our. For all of the discursiveness, the grandstanding and rambling, life is simple. It's simple, but there's complexity in the variation. But, you know, the. The fact that these universal truths continue to emerge, Lewis, to me, suggests that there is some value in them. The recurrence of archetypes in dreams and mythology suggests that there is a truth in them. So for me, yes, it would be the. Like that all myth, all story is allegorical. For the psychic journeys of the self is all taking place in the self. This is what's, I think, been misunderstood about, you know, in the sort of critique of fairy tales say, is that you are the. That regardless of your sex or gender, you are the king and the queen and the princess and the. All of those. All of those are energy systems within a human being. The collaborative, occasionally competing energy systems that make up A whole person. So everything is within you that you get to reform yourself and make yourself, and that you need a spiritual practice that is that it's like a set of principles and values. And my one, I suppose I would suggest, would be the 12 steps of recovery and a bodily practice. So I guess I would say do the 12 steps. Do Jiu Jitsu. Know that there's nothing to get. Yeah.

Before I ask the final question, Russell, I want to acknowledge you for the way you show up. I think someone who's lived the life that you've lived and decided to make a change and decided to heal, decided to stand against addiction in many different areas and then be of service to how you can help as many people as possible through showing up in your work, your writing, your teachings. I acknowledge you for that shift because I think it's easy to stay stuck in a pattern that feels good momentarily. But you continue to show up and be a stand against addiction and in service to other people. And I think that's a beautiful gift that you have. So I really acknowledge you for all you're doing right now. I hope we can have you come back on in the future and talk about many other topics that I didn't even get to scratch the surface on. So I acknowledge you for that, and thank you. Of course. Is there anything else that we can do to support you besides getting the book and checking out YouTube and supporting you on these places, your podcasts, which are amazing. Anything else we can support you before I ask a final question?

Yeah, Luminary. Like my. Under the. My podcast is on Luminary. I do two on there. There's under the Skin, where I have amazing conversations with some of the people that we've spoken about. Wim Hof, Tony, but also Jordan Peterson, Edward Snowden, Marianne Williamson. Like, I have, like, deep mad chats on there. And. But. And also now above the Noise, my weekly guided guided meditation podcast. That is my monetized platform. It's like 2.99amonth, if you get it, like, annual. The YouTube stuff I do is obviously free. That. That platform is. That's good stuff. It's important to me. But also, if people can't afford it, there's free stuff on YouTube for sure.

We'll make sure to link all that stuff up and make sure you support Russell because his stuff is very inspiring and insightful, and he's just a funny guy. You know, if you can learn and laugh at the same time, I think that's. That's a powerful thing. That's that's spirituality right there. Final question for you is, what's your definition of greatness?

Greatness. Become you. Become you. Don't become the obstacles. Don't allow the obstacles to define you. The obstacles can be in and out. The obstacles can be your own desire, lust, fear. The obstacles can be a culture that needs you to be. To be commodified, that needs you to be a consumer. Become you. Become who you are. Greatness, this can't be judged by any external metric, although that is where it can be most vivid. We know what a great athlete looks like. We know what a great singer looks like. I suppose the glory of sport is that it eliminates a lot of subjectivity. Either you score the goal or you don't. Either you beat the time or you don't. Art, dance, singing, acting. You know, we can all. We all have our favorites. But when it comes to personal greatness, become who you are. And when you were talking English, this about the sort of frustration around, like, learning and not learning the Spanish, it's like, because you're not becoming who you are, there's something in you saying, learn Spanish, Learn Spanish. And you're going, all right, I've got time. I'm not going to do it. You know, like so. But, like, you know. But we have to be rigorous with ourselves, make sure that we've not got sort of. That we're not got barnacles of conditioning clinging to the hull of who we really are. We have to actualize, self actualize. And in a sense, we're all going to arrive at the same place. We have to be a channel of the peace and of the light. We have to be of service. We accept our flaws and fallibility. If the entrance price is perfection, then none of us can pay it. But greatness, truly understood and truly achieved, is to actualize what it. Who is that you were supposed to be? That there is a teleology, that there is a purpose that we understand with a tree. We would never query that a tree is gonna grow into itself if it gets the right soil and the right watering. Like the. Actualize yourself as. We can identify that in DNA and in the fingerprints. There is uniqueness. Actualize that uniqueness. Recognize where the obstacles are. Find mentors that can guide you past those obstacles. Have a program that's not based just on the actualization of your individualization in a disconnected and remote way. No point achieving enlightenment on a mountaintop. And no one gets fed, fed or clothed. You know, do it in service. Do it in service of a Higher thing. This is greatness, I think, to become this thing.

Russell, appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here, man. Thank you.

Thank you. That was so lovely. Thank you. A lovely conversation.

Well, we just finished this inspiring interview with Russell Brand. I've been in contact with Russell for a few years. We've been trying to make it happen. We finally made it happen. Our mutual friend Jay Shetty made the introduction. So big thanks to Jay for connecting us. And it's cool to see someone who has, I don't know, he probably has 20 or 30 movie credits and different TV shows and a big stand up comedian and lots of different fame, accomplishments and success in the material world. He had a big, obviously a big blowout with his former wife with Katy Perry. There was a whole documentary kind of documenting in the process about her life and the challenges they were going through through their marriage and divorce. He's been through a lot. He's experienced a lot. He's had a lot of attention, a lot of stimulation at his fingertips for the last couple of decades. And I love seeing this side of him where he is just practicing and being. He talked about rigor in the interview where he's just being rigorous on his recovery, rigorous in his connection to a higher spiritual power, rigorous in his relationship with his wife, rigorous in being of service to other people. And I think that rigor and that commitment to a better path, a different lifestyle that is not as stimulating as it was before, I think that is really inspiring to see. And you can notice if you look at just photos and videos of him from 10 years ago, you can notice there's a different energy, a different essence, a peace inside, a calm. There is a greater just knowing. And I think it's also cool that he's just constantly in the process of learning and constantly learning and then sharing, learning and sharing. And that process of when we continue to learn and then when we teach or share someone else, we integrate it. Those things really start to connect in our brain and our heart, in our body. And we start to integrate the things we're learning when we teach it. The fact that he's doing multiple podcasts, this audiobook, his YouTube, his Instagram, all these things, I think it's inspiring for me when I think about my last eight years that has been imperfect and making mistakes and challenges and all these different things. It has been a journey of learning and integrating the lessons that I have while making mistakes. Learning, integrating and then sharing those here on the School of Greatness. So that's something I continue to do. And it's something I'll probably continue to do for the rest of my life and, and as long as we have that rigor. He also talked about accountability. You know, it's really hard to do something that is challenging on your own. It's hard when you've been addicted, when you've been hooked, when you're, you're constantly in that cycle. It's hard to do it on your own. This is why we talk about, and this is why I have accountability for different areas of my life and people that I respect, people that I admire, people that I look up to, people that have control over that area of life and have, have a command over that area of life. That's why I look to those individuals, whether it be a buddy system of texting, whether it be hiring coaches, therapists, trainers and nutritionists, people to support me in the different areas of my life to have better command and mastery over those areas. So I love that he talked about having accountability, having kind of this coaching and accountability, having these mentors. He wrote a whole book called Mentors that is about seeking the models of other people who've been there that you want to aspire to be. I love that he talked about, you know, his relationship with his wife and what love means to him. There's so many different elements that he talked about. And the three keys where he said, you know, if you can live in service of the thing you love, whatever that talent or skill is that you have right now, if you can live in service of it, and what that means to me is go pursue it. Go do that thing that you're supposed to self actualize, that calling inside of you, that dream, that thing that makes you unique. Go do that thing and then try to serve people in that process. And the more you can love something and serve at the same time, the more fulfilled you'll feel inside. The second thing he said was to have something else in your life outside of that main thing that you're focused on. He mentioned meditation there. Making sure that you're practicing meditation on a daily, consistent basis. Not meditating while you're taking a shower or while you're on a bike ride or working out or on the treadmill, but actually doing the hard thing, which is to sit in silence, no distractions, close your eyes, meditate on the things you're grateful for, the things you appreciate, how you want to be of service in the world. Meditate on your breath. We talked about Wim Hof and how he's experienced that with Wim HOF as well. We'll link up WIM Hof interview that we did with him and a whole breathing exercise. We did a whole video with Wim where he demonstrates this process. So if you want to learn the WIM HOF strategies, you can do that as well on the video in the description below. But I think also besides having meditation practice or a breathing or peaceful practice consistently, he was also mentioning to have something else in your life beyond that main thing. For me, what that meant was to have some type of hobby that's different than the main thing. Because we can become obsessed in one thing over and over, we can become addicted to that skill or that talent. And I'm not saying we shouldn't focus our time and energy on becoming masters of something. I think there's merit in that process. But if that's the only obsession we have all day, all night without something else, whether it be a hobby, a musical instrument, singing, dancing, something outside of that main thing, I think is really important. And if you can have multiple things, then that's better. There's a book called Range. The author, I believe his name is David Epstein, who wrote the book Range, where he talks about having a range of skills. And by not just mastering one and putting your attention on one thing, but having a range of skills, you actually become a better, more rounded human being. And that range of skills to will support you towards that one main thing you're working on later in life as well. So focusing on having a range of hobbies, a range of skills, while you're also diving into that one thing. That was the second thing that I really wanted to take away from this. And the third thing is he said, make helping other people a big part of your life. Which goes back into point number one. He made live in service of the thing you love. So if you're a great athlete, if you're a singer, if you're a videographer, if you're writer, whatever it might be, create the thing you love and do it in service of other people, which is to inspire people to entertain, to educate, to inform, to help, to serve. But he also said, make helping other people a big part of your life. Make helping other people a big part of your life. He mentioned how he says you don't have to share all the time that you're helping people, you don't have to talk about how you do it. I said, you know, there's part of our. Part of what I do is I like to show sometimes that I'm here's here's what we're donating to, or here's how we're serving people, or here's how we're helping people. And a lot of times it's just behind the scenes, you know, day to day process. Who can you say hi to? Who can you lift up? Who can you, you know, give a smile to, who might be struggling or going through something challenging in their life? And you don't need to show people or lift yourself up by showing that on a constant daily basis. Just do it. Just be in service on a daily basis. I really like those three things. He also said, find ways to create peace in your life without medicating yourself. And he said that there's, you know, there's spiritual truth inside of us, that we can find the power, the truth inside of us to not need substances to create that peace. And I think all of us are going to go through different challenges, we're going to go through different dark times. We're going to tempted, we're going to feel desires, we're going to feel bad thoughts. And I think it's a part of the human experience. But to be consumed by them and to act on them consistently in an addictive manner is. I don't know anyone who's benefited from that long term. It only kind of makes you feel like, okay, why am I not feeling enough? Why do I not feel secure or confident? The things he talked about, how he's extremely intimidated, insecure and felt inadequate, which drove him to the neediness of attention. And I think that is a recipe for a lot of suffering inside. And I've been there in the past where I needed attention, I needed people to see and acknowledge me. And I think we all need to be seen and acknowledged. But what that really means is to feel connected. Which is what Russell talked about as well, is our whole existence is about feeling connected, feeling connected to another person, a community or something greater than ourselves. And when we don't feel connected, sometimes we go after the addictions to cope, and sometimes we go after the accomplishments of the fame or the status to feel worthy. And I love that he said that you are enough, you are worthy by your existence, by being here. Now, that doesn't mean we should sit around and just eat junk food all day and not do anything with our life. Because a meaningful path is really about doing something that is meaningful to us. The thing we like, the thing we love, the thing that draws us forward, the things we feel called to, even if we're not sure why we feel called to it for me, Spanish is something that I feel called to. I don't, you know, I'm not 100% sure why, but I feel drawn to it. I feel like it's something that I could be of service to if I could learn how to speak the language. And in that process of discovering yourself, of taking action on the things of service and things you love, it'll support you instead of just being idle mind, idle hands and being reactive to try to feel something with the addiction or the different things that society tends to do. So I love all the things that he's talking about. I was a big fan of his book. Make sure you check it out. Make sure you check out some of his other videos on YouTube or Instagram. I think he's. He's obviously a brilliant communicator and he's entertaining and he's able. He's kind of like if Jim Carrey meets Jamie Wheal meets Jason Silva meets Sadhguru, he's kind of like a combination of all these individuals. And he's just inspiring in his process and the way he's able to do everything he does. So I hope you enjoyed this interview. Make sure to leave a comment below of your biggest takeaway and subscribe to the channel if you haven't subscribed yet. We've got a lot of other great content here. We'll link up some videos that you can check out that will inspire you as well, that'll continue to help you on your path to greatness. And thank you so much for being here. If you want to understand how to reprogram your mind and unlock the power of your mind, then make sure to check out this powerful interview with Dr. Joe Dispenza.

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