Russell Brand: The Power of Fame, Fighting Addiction & Spiritual Freedom in Your Life EP 1109

This is episode number 1109 with Russell Brand.

Welcome to the school of greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you.

Discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now, let the class begin. Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman once said, Positive thinking is not about being delusional. It's about learning how to take control of internal processing and knowing it'll shape your external environment. And Priyanka Chopra Jonas said, what you do after failure is how you build a legacy. I am so excited because my guest today is the wise, the talented, the funny Russell Brand. And his career ranges from stand-up comedy and acting to broadcasting and writing. He is the of the Audible original Revelation connecting with the sacred in everyday life, which is extremely inspiring. I just finished it recently and I loved it. And his new weekly meditation podcast above the noise is available at luminary podcast.com. and in this episode we discuss why practicing your values can help you be a part of something bigger than yourself. We talk about Fame and what Fame has taught him in his life. The three different skills that Russell wishes he knew earlier in his life. What happens when you don't commit yourself to achieving your dreams? Why self-doubt can be critical to your awareness, the reality of freedom, and how Russell manages his negative thoughts. And so much more. I think you're going to love this. If you do, make sure to share this with someone who you think would be inspired as well. Spread the message of greatness to a friend. Post it on social media. Make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes and Russell Brand as well. And if this is your first time here, click the Subscribe button over on Apple podcast or Spotify right now to stay up to date. from the latest and greatest on the School of Greatness. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Russell Brand.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. I'm very excited about our guest. We have the incredibly handsome and wise Russell Brand in the house. Good to see you, sir.

Thank you, Louis.

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 Carrey's 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. This idea is culturally reiterated everywhere. and assiduously 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, i.e. 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, the plain people, or what they called the steppe 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, i.e. 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 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 love 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, you know, 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, when if you think of, like, saving a few hundred years ago or even, you know, like, say, Oscar Wilde was kind of like celebrity and like a legit genius and wit and in much of his writing, in particular his writing 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 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 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, for speaking personally, I, 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, Graves, Essex, a 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 it, 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've 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 you. 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 going to. get a, 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna focus on the work. Now, I'm lucky that I'm a sort of, I'm at 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 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, 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 to do well as I would do well myself. 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 like, 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, 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, it 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 a common ancestor, that we come from a 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 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 the most ferocious forms of chemical dependency that I've experienced, crack and heroin addiction, are kind of about melting 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 junkie 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, and I wrote about that in 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 in that moment that you talked about going down to that place in Skid 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 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, it's 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 for a number of complex reasons and you at the arse end of that. And then I can't explain that today. It's patronizing and somehow dismissive. 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. I mean, 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, 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 with the children, and. But I held back, you know, like, I was just helping them. They were making Play-Doh 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 five-year-olds and six-year-olds and seven-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, 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 had 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, an 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'être of the way we live, not marginalized, neglected to the sidelines 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. For me, the basic idea, the Sesame Street values, kindness and love, kindness and love, instead of the values 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 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. Like, when you're with her, she's just a person. But when I'm not with her, like, 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 behaviour. You know, I can speak fast or whatever and say a lot of stuff and I can be novel. I don't know. My wife doesn'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, applause, 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 doesn't work for me. There's never enough for me. For me, 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, oh, these are the things that I must do, and other people have 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 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 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, Louis, 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 come 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 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 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've, and even at my most keen and needy, I always really, really loved comedy in a geek way. You know, I've watched a lot of stand-up comedy. I study sitcoms. I learn them. I love Monty Python. I love Richard Pryor. I know my heritage. I know the line that I'm walking. I 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 and I wanted people to love me and I wanted to have lots of opportunities. Of course I did. But, in fact, you know, what could I do, man? I had both things. I had both things. Thank God I had 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've got to do three. Yeah.

If you've got three, yeah.

Second one is have something away from it 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. Although he does sometimes look a bit embarrassed thinking about it. But, like, you know, 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 Carey 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 and meditate. You can have 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. Tich Nat Han, Ram Das, Mooji, all like great, great teachers, great teachers available everywhere. Meditate. Meditate. You have to 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 it, it 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 it. 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 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 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 on 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 out of others to be like, Hey, listen, I'm doing this thing. You know, you know, I'm trying to inspire you to do something in your life that's a cause for you. Um, that's the way I've approached as well, but I'm, 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, 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 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. Yeah, 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 think, wow, I'm kind of can do all this stuff, but I, oh, my God, look at this guy. Like, 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, 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 am I so anxious about conflict that I'll bend myself into peculiar shapes to avoid it. You know, like, and 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. 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 jujitsu is one I know. I like, you know, I like that wonderful communities. And they're also also as well, you put aside who you 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, I don't charm people a little bit. But 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 encompasses 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 not God, I'm not the most important person in the world all the time, But also, I'm not scum. 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 part of a group or part of a family. The 12-step 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 about it.

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 it, because.

And every year I try, every year I'm like, okay, I'm gonna download the latest app.

I'm gonna get the book.

I'm gonna 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. giving up on myself.

And every last one I did.

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.

Is this Babel?

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. What is saying this? I was like, what? That's so hard. I can't even. I can't find the equivalent for that in. 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 I'm on six, I feel. I'm still not good, but I'm like, it doesn't hurt my brain as much. And I could see, okay, 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, I do it at 8 a.m. sessions, but it's like, I don't want to feel not confident and proud of myself by wanting this thing and always putting it off. 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 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 gotta say, okay, I'm here to learn. You know, 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 use 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.

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 or I'm like, hold on, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. Patrophies into nothing. Then I had another girlfriend who was from Barcelona, who just was so magnificent. And she was, like, worked in a beater, and I would go and see her, and I would get a little bit closer to understand it. 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, Luis.

I know, I'm practicing, but it's also, you know, you're a father, you're, 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 six months.

That's meant to 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 gotta either commit to that or, you know, take the long road. So either way, I'm doing it 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 out of Blue Belt, you know, like it, 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 guess 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 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 you? To just okay, it's okay. Don't worry. We're gonna take our time with this. You know, it's not easy.

For my own kids, I wouldn't be going, get on with it. Learn it. You're useless. Well, 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 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 figures it out and stumbles around and hits its head on the ground or scrapes its elbow and bloodies up and smash its nose, 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. Yeah, maybe 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 dabble again, like we've done so much in so many things. We dabble, but you 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 we have an obligation to follow that or as you say 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, 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? Who's just like, I'm f***ing ill. Like, every time I go, whenever I'm walking my dog, I feel like, 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, oh, this is not, Tony wouldn't be doing this. Tony would 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 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 stage, 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 karate. I think it was whatever, 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, it's-- One of the things I.

Most admire about him is that the way that he will identify an object and then not be restricted by sort of our conditioned, either emotional or cultural responses. 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 will just go, okay, I'm gonna learn that thing. They haven't put aside all of the.

Yeah, there's not time, there's not this, there's not that. 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, Louis, 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 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, that doesn't know, 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 intersection, at the intersection of well, come on, believe in yourself. You're as good as anyone else. You never know unless you try. 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 gonna do for you? What do you want really? What do you really want? What is it you are looking for? You know, a friend of mine observed once that in the 1980s, 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, you know, I'm not gonna be 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 gonna 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 gonna happen now. Everyone, nothing is as real to you or I as our own thoughts, as our own dreams, as our own, but 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 gonna 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 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. work for you. 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. Whether 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 for any reason you're becoming A world-class athlete is 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 whatever, then you're gonna 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. Like I've 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 have been to Kubla Khan. they 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 that 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 you unheard and many of them lay in the realm of 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 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 gonna 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 how you do what you do. It's an incredible gift and a talent and people just need to listen listen to it and 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 the 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 did together. Our friend Jay Shetty connected us 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. 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 there's a, it's a lot about the things you've been talking about and the things you talk about in your, 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 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 incredible? But how do you really navigate negative thoughts that come into mind? The thoughts of addiction, the thoughts of lust or greed or fame or whatever the things that are coming to you that 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 experienced negative thoughts a lot, experienced 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 have worked 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 the 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, it's 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 at a time, me and you, whenever we're thinking about doing that, that'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. 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'm, no, I could stop anytime. Stop then. Let's 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 then 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 gonna 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'm like, 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 sort of trying it and trying to improve ourselves together. I also have mentors that I know 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 a, 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 this is how I feel about fatherhood, work, whatever it is, you know, I check in with them and then you've 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. Do it. You know, like, you know, and then, like, then you're suddenly, you've got Tony Robbins's brain, then you're running off of that, you know, now, like, a lot of time, what Tony Robbins tells you. unachievable. Okay, all you gotta do is become a black brawling world. Oh, tell me something easier. Like, you know, like, you know, sort of like with, you know, with Wim Haf 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, oh, those ideas, they're old-fashioned they don't really work. They're not for or they've become compromised by their own hypocrisy or Dogma or whatever it is. You know, I 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? Like, and I have to legitimately ask myself these questions all the time because, and, you know, God, the only advantage that I have over someone like Tony Robbins is I think, like, I'm still in it. Like, you know, I talked to 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 a 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, it's like, look, I'm on, like, every day, I know, like, you know, like, I think I say in, in, in that book, 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, 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, oh my God, Gory 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 wanna be, first off, you're extremely entertaining and you're wise. and your educational and formative. 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 gonna love this book. And make sure to check out Russell on YouTube, Instagram. I mean, your stuff is really inspiring on all those places. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end, these two final questions. This is called the three truths 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 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'd say that you are, you know, I would say that 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, you must learn a spiritual practice and you must learn a bodily that's it. If there's only three things, is you already have everything you need, get a spiritual practice and have a bodily practice. 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, the life is simple. It's simple. But there's complexity in the variation, but the fact that 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. It's all taking place in the self. This is what's I think been under understood about, you know, in the sort of critique of fairy tales say, is that you are the, that who, regardless of your sexual gender, you are the king and the queen and the princess and the, or 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 and that you need a spiritual practice, i.e. 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 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. Thank you. And 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 podcast, which are amazing. Anything else we can support you before I ask the final question?

Yeah, Luminary, like 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 Med guided meditation podcast that is my monetized platform. It's like 2.99 a month if you get it, like, manually. The YouTube stuff I do is obviously free, but 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, and laugh at the same time, I think that's, that's 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 inner and outer. The obstacles can be your own desire, lust, fear. The obstacles can be a culture that needs you 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 it's 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, no, no, 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 to 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. 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 it is that you were supposed to be, that there is a teleology, that there is a purpose, that there, we understand with a tree, we've never never query that a tree is gonna grow into itself if it gets the right soil and the right water in. Like, 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 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.

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, do me a favor and share this with a couple of friends right now. You can copy and paste the link wherever to this episode or use the link lewishouse.com/1109. Text a few friends, post it on social media, make sure to tag Russell Brand and myself as well over on Instagram on your stories while you're listening. And again, if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button on Apple Podcast or Spotify right now and leave us a review with the part you enjoyed the most from this episode. We'd love to read those reviews and we share them in our weekly Great this newsletter as well to our audience. And if you want to be inspired every week with text messages sent to your phone from me to keep you motivated and on track with your goals every week, then text the word podcast to 614-350-3960 right now. And I want to leave you with this quote from Maya Angelou who said, Be present in all things and thankful for all things. And no matter what you're going through right now, whether you're having a season of abundance or a season of a drought in your life. Or maybe you're struggling in one area, your health, your relationships, or maybe something is really thriving. No matter what's going on, be present and grateful in it all. Everything is teaching us a lesson, and it's our opportunity and it's our obligation to learn what that lesson is, to apply it in the moment, continue to grow and improve our life, to be good to the people around us and make the biggest impact that I can. I'm so grateful for you. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.