This is a YouTube video titled "The SECRET To Manifesting & Achieving YOUR DREAMS! | Derek Hough & Lewis Howes" recorded in October 2021. It features a conversation between Derek Hough, a professional dancer and TV personality, and Lewis Howes (referred to as Lewis AI in the transcript), discussing personal growth, the emotional lessons Derek has learned beyond his external achievements, and the importance of self-worth and sustainable motivation. The dialogue explores themes of success, love, emotional expression, and finding joy in serving others rather than just winning or achieving.
Chapters
If you are in a field by yourself with no clothes, no possessions, no trophies, absolutely nothing, just you by yourself, you're enough. You always have been and you always will be no matter what. Because I always felt like I had to have something to be enough. I had to achieve something to be enough. And I think you all can relate to that. Realizing that was such a huge shift for me because then I started doing things not because I wanted to win or be the best or because I wanted love. It was just because I think you.
Got to have a dream.
The School of Greatness.
Really?
Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.
You've been successful since pretty much the moment you came into the TV Hollywood scene. You've accomplished, you've won awards, you've been judging on massive shows, you keep accomplishing. But there are certain lessons emotionally that you've learned, especially over the last few years, that have helped you elevate as a human being. What would you say are a couple of the lessons that you've learned the most in the last few years that have really helped you with your inner world? Not just the accomplishments and the success from the outer world. And then I want to talk about how you've accomplished your success as well.
Dude, well, first of all, it's a pleasure being here, man. I'm here. This is the School of Greatness. Finally, man, we made it happen. It's amazing, man. So, I don't know, for me, to answer your question, Something that I've learned along the way, you know, my whole life has been a competition. Yeah. My entire life. Yeah. Even from growing up. I mean, I had four sisters. I was the only boy. And so, you know, competing for attention. Like, you know, hey, look at me, look at me. And then, of course, becoming a competitive dancer, it was always about judging, being judged, and becoming, wanting to get the best. And then being on Dancing with the Stars, you're being judged in front of millions of people, and there's this pressure, and there's like this, feeling a desire of wanting to win and be the best. One thing I realized along the way that really, really helped me tremendously and transformed my whole life experience was realizing, and it actually happened to me when I was in my apartment in Los Angeles. I had won Dancing with the Stars for the third time. I was a world champion Latin American dancer before Dancing with the Stars. Won all these big competitions. Peaked, you know, in that-- As a ballroom dancer, right? As a ballroom dancer, yeah. Traveling around the world, you know, peaked in that, and then I'm on the TV show, and I've now won it more than anybody else ever had, like three times, and I'm feeling like super depressed. Really? And I'm like, and I felt super lonely. I felt just in a dark place. And I was like, what the heck is going on, man? I feel like I should be, like, buzzing right now. and what I realized, I had this massive emptiness looking at all this hardware, all these trophies, because I realized that my whole life, I really felt like success equaled love. I felt like achievement equaled love. And in order for me to get love, I had to become something. I had to be good at something. I had to be the best, and then I would be worthy of love. And when I realized it was like, wow, that's not the case. That's not the case. Because once you, we all know once you achieve something, you're just like, all right, what's the next thing? Yeah. So you never really fully feel resolved or feel. Did you feel loved at all when you accomplished those things?
For a second. 10 minutes, right?
Like that. God, we're very similar, man. Dancing with the stars, like, for a good example, it's like the biggest high, you know, like, there's like confetti everywhere, screaming, you know, everybody's happy. You're on Good Morning America, you're on your private jet, you know, Good Morning America, you wake up the next day and for the longest time I had this such a huge and negative association with New York because every time I'd.
Go there for GMA, I was so depressed.
On the show or afterwards?
After the show. So you'd be celebrating on the show.
And then you're like, okay, no one cares anymore. And then I was just like, ah, that way, you know. But what helped me throughout that whole journey was realizing that Somebody told me this actually, they said, Listen man, if you are in a field by yourself with no clothes, no possessions, no trophies, absolutely nothing, just you by yourself, you're enough. That's it. You're enough. You always have been and you always will be no matter what. And that struck a chord in me because I always felt like I had to have something to be enough. I had to achieve something to be enough. And I think you all can relate to that. deep fear of all of ours, you know, am I enough?
And.
Realizing that was such a huge shift for me because then I started doing things and, you know, performing or creating not because I wanted to win or be the best or because I wanted love, it was just because I wanted to do it for the joy of it and for the love of it. while realizing that I didn't have to do it in order to receive love or to feel loved. Not just from other people, but for myself. And so that was a huge shift for me. And it's interesting because after that shift, I can look back at my career and I can think, oh, so many things just accelerated so much from that point.
When was this point?
This point was right after I danced It was actually when I danced after I danced with Sean Johnson. And actually we became second that year. And I remember feeling really deflated, really disappointed because I was like, sure we had it in the bag. But it was so good for me because it got me to that point realizing, you know, why am I doing this again? Why am I doing this? Why am I dancing? Why am I performing? This all just seems so pointless and frivolous and used, like, who cares about any of this stuff? And then I realized the importance of it, you know, not just for me, but just bringing joy to people and, you know, I was in the hospital with my mom, actually she had fallen and hurt her head and there's somebody next to her and I was really constantly giving up the whole thing. I was just like burnt out. I just didn't enjoy it anymore. And she was just like, I just love watching you on the show. It just means so much joy. I look forward to every week. And I was like, man, I'm being so selfish right now thinking like, oh, I'm so over this and I'm so done, I'm so burnt out. And because I was thinking about myself, you know, I wasn't thinking like, oh, how can I bring joy to somebody else? How can I bring joy to others? And it's so much more of a sustainable energy. Because up until that point, it was all about me. I was like, I want to be the best. I want to be get good.
That's exhausting.
And it was, by the way, it worked.
It did work.
You got results. for a certain amount of time, but it's temporary. That's not sustainable. That's not a sustainable energy to think about you. It might work for a little bit of time, but a sustainable energy and a sustainable thing that will get you through the longest time is how can I serve this person? How can I give my talents or the things that I've trained for? How can I uplift somebody or how can I give something? And man, I just like, My batteries just got like rebooted. I just had this like copious amounts of energy and you know started going on tours and creating these opportunities, creating tours, creating, you know, show concepts and just creating all this stuff and then just so many things started to grow from that and it's pretty cool, man. It's pretty neat.
And we were talking beforehand about you've always been like the positive guy. Like every time people around you are like you were like the positive, hey, everybody's happy, everything's good. and I would say I'm a very positive person as well. I'm always coming from a place of gratitude and appreciation and positivity, but sometimes there are things that will trigger us or affect us or that make us feel angry, but you mentioned that you never really allowed yourself to feel anger. And I think that's great to come from that as a baseline, but when something happens or you go through an experience that really triggers you or makes you angry, what have you learned about allowing yourself to express a wider range of emotions?
In general. It's interesting you mentioned about a wider range of emotions because there's a great analogy with like a pendulum. And you can imagine something hanging here and swinging side to side and you have a range of emotions. You have this side which is like, we'll call them the negative emotions. Anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness, resentment, all these things. Then this side is all the positive stuff. Happiness, joy, love. The thing with the pendulum is.
