The SUCCESS HABITS That Will Guarantee Powerful RESULTS | Lewis Howes

Get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. You're either gonna grow or you're gonna die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And so if you have good habits, you're gonna keep growing.

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When you control from the inside, Like we're in control of ourself, we're in control of our world. So it doesn't matter what happens, you figure out how to get to where you're going. The goals don't change. Sometimes the methods of getting there do.

But.

I have never, I think probably I had great teachers. I had a half a dozen phenomenal mentors, and I think I was raised the right way. You stay in control regardless. you know?

Yeah.

What would you say are some of the habits that you have that people wouldn't expect that you would have? Maybe they would expect certain things like waking up early or journaling or, you know, getting eight hours of sleep. But what are some habits that you do differently that maybe are unexpected in the personal growth space?

I study every day. Every day. I've studied every day now for 60 years. I started to study this book in 1961 and I read it every day. Same book, Think and Grow Rich. I have just here behind me, I've got the Laws of Success, the original ones that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1928. And then he came up with this in 1937. And the man that gave it to me, he said, if you'll study this every day, he said, you,'re going to have a wonderful life. And he pointed out Napoleon Hill spent his whole life studying the lives of 500 of the world's most successful people. He was mentored by Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. And he said, since he spent his whole life putting this together, he said it would be a prudent move on your part if you spent the rest of your life trying to understand the ply, what he is teaching and Right? You know, that just seemed to make some sense to me and that's what I started to do and I've never stopped.

If there was only one principle inside of Think and Grow Rich that you could only live by and only talk about and you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else inside the book, what would that one principle be?

Persistence. He said in the book, he said, There may be no heroic connotation to the word, but the quality is to the character of the human, like what carbon is to steel. See, I think the trick, Louis, is get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. Because you're either going to grow or you're going to die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And some people think they can just hold it where they're at. but they can't do that. You're either going to go ahead or you're going to go backwards as creator disintegrate. And so if you have good habits, you're going to keep growing way back, I think around 1938-39, Albert E. N. Gray worked for the Prudential and he wrote the Common Denominator of Success. It's a great article. And he said, the common denominator of success is informing the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do. And he was speaking one time, a young guy said, why do successful people like doing these things? And he said, they don't. That's why they've turned them into habits. I thought that was beautiful. That's why they've turned them into habits. They don't like doing them. You see? And of course, a habit is something we do automatically without any conscious thought. It's part of our paradigm. We're programmed.

What do you think are the three most difficult habits to develop that actually will support us for the most growth long term if we can take these habits on?

One of the things I think the most difficult is repetition of studying the same thing. I have a book here on my desk. It's in a book holder.

And.

When I went to visit Earl Nightingale way back in 1968, no it was earlier than that, it was around '66, and I saw he had this bookstand on his desk and I asked him what it was. he said it was a book holder. And I said, why do you have it? He says, because I want to read those two pages every day for the next month, maybe two months. I said, really? The same thing. And he said, yeah. He said, then they'll become a part of me. And he said, that's really the success. The secret of success is the repetition of an idea. You see that in sports. You play ball. I mean, It's definitely part of your game, you know. How many plays would you have in your head? Whoo.

Well, a lot of different plays, but in football, there's really only like nine different routes a receiver can run.

Yeah.

As part of the tree of running a route. But there's so many different variations within plays that that one receiver could run. and then another person could run in tandem with that.

Yeah.

So you have to, there's a massive playbook that you go through at the beginning of the season and you've got to remember a lot of different things. But if you typically know the route you need to run and what other people are doing around you, then you can figure it out.

But it's repetition that enables you to do that, isn't it?

Over and over and over and over. You see, same route over and over.

That doesn't just apply to football. I think that applies to life. And if a person will really understand that, it's through repetition that you program your subjective mind. And it's your subjective mind that controls your behavior. Doesn't make sense to some people, but if they would study it and start to understand it, they would start to do it.

What's the most important thing on those two pages that you have open in front of you?

Most important thing here, read it to you. The lesson to be learned from the practical aviation of the present day is that of triumph of principle over precedent, of working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experiences to the contrary. With such a notable example before us, Can we say that it is futile to inquire whether, by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are the back of external and visible conditions? And then, by bringing these unseen causes into a better order, make practical working reality of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams? They were talking about the Wright brothers. He said there was a secret they got off the ground because nobody knew how to fly and neither did they until after they got it in the air. But he pointed out that it was principle over precedent. And we let precedent control us too often.

What's the difference between principle and precedent?

Well, precedent, you're letting something that has happened in the past control you. The principle is that there's always a better way. Doesn't matter what you're doing, better is a beautiful word.

What's something in your life that took a long time where you were holding on to the precedent of something for a while. Maybe it was months, maybe it was years, decades, that eventually the principle finally started to fly and you had a breakthrough. Is there an area of your life you can think of?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Just as soon as you said it, yeah. You see, when I started in this, when I first got this book.

I.

Was such a loser. And I mean in every everywhere you look at it. I went to high school for two months and I didn't quit. They kicked me out. They didn't want me there. And I was kind of happy because I didn't like it there anyway. I held dumb jobs. I never had a half decent job. The idea that I could even get a good job never entered my mind. I had such low self-esteem. I didn't understand that at the time. I didn't even know what self-esteem was.

And.

Letting go of the fact that I didn't have a formal education, that I never had any business experience. The man that gave me the book, he said, none of that matters, Bob. That's the past. He said, let it go. Well, I had a difficult time letting that go because. we're programmed that if you don't go to school, you can't get a good job. That if you're going to earn a lot of money, you've got to be really smart. Well, you see, I didn't think I was very smart and I didn't have any formal education. That's a hard thing to let go of. But through the repetition of studying this, over and over and over. And as he pointed out to me, Edison had grade three. And he pointed out different people that had no formal education. And I finally made a break, left it behind. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but I let it go.

What would you say are some deciding factors that can help someone with their self-esteem? Because you and I are very similar where my childhood, I didn't have much confidence in myself or esteem because I was in the bottom of my class in school because I had tutors and special needs classes because I just wasn't able to understand it and comprehend that well and felt awkward and goofy in my life. What are some things you think people that in their teens or even in their 40s and 50s who don't have confidence yet, what are the things we can be doing differently to gain confidence, to build self-esteem? Because I think this is one of the key factors of success is believing in yourself. It doesn't matter if the world believes in you, if you don't believe in you.

What can we start to do to change that? Well, I think a person has to start to study themself. Most people know very little about themself. They think they're their body. You're not a body. You have a body. and you have a marvelous mind. And when I first started to study this, I thought, you know, studying the mind, that's for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists. And the man that told me, he said, no, it's not. He says, that's for anybody. That's for little kids. And so I think as we start to understand something about our mind and something about our higher faculties, See, we're all programmed to live through our senses. We go by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch. Well, I've got a little dog at home that you can see here, smell, taste, touch. All the animals in the world, they're completely at home in their environment. They blend in. They operate by instinct, which is perfect. We had instinct removed and we had higher faculties put in our place. in the place. And if we would study these and gain an understanding, your self-image would automatically start to improve. You have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory and intuition. Those six faculties will give you the ability to create your own environment. See, we're totally disoriented in our environment. where all the other little creatures are completely at home in theirs. And we're disoriented in ours because we can create our own, but we don't know that. School doesn't teach us that. School is more interested in the development of your intellect than in the development of awareness. A person doesn't earn $100,000 a year because they want $100 a year. they earn 100 a year because they're not aware of how to earn 100 a month. Awareness is really the key. And when we become aware of who we are and what we've got working for us, you know, marvelous things start to happen to us. And that's really what happened to me. I never went back to school.

I.

I built a very successful company. It operates all over the world. I didn't do it myself. I have a tremendous team of people. I've got just an absolute genius of a business partner, a woman who's an attorney. I mentioned to you before, you should have her on sometime. You'd be fascinated with her. She's that interesting. It was a group of people. We've attracted a phenomenal group of people in our company. And we're operating now in 91 countries.

Wow.

Teaching this information. I don't know another company that teaches what we teach. Like I think Tony Robbins has probably done more for our industry than any individual. The secret has probably done more for it as much as Tony has, the movie. But there's. I don't know anybody else teaching what we're teaching. And what we're really doing is teaching people how their mind functions and.

How.

To expand their understanding of how it operates.

What are the six faculties? Again, you shared this before, which I. Which I love. And I think if people really understood this, Perception. Help them build their self image.

There's perception, the will, imagination, memory, reason, and intuition.

Which one is the hardest for people.

To- I don't think any of them are- Awareness. They're all equally valuable. You take your imagination, think of this for a minute, Louis, nothing is created or destroyed. Look here, here's a little cell phone. What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it. Well, when I was a kid we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a phone because we didn't have any money for the first reason, but the second, not everybody could have a phone. We were not aware that there was an infinite number of frequencies. Today there's, what a zillion phones, because there's an infinite number of frequencies. This phone is on its own frequency. Yours, it's on its own frequency. If I have your number in here and I hit send, you and I connect We're on the same frequency. Won't matter where you are, we can see each other, we can communicate. Because we get on the same frequency. Well the good that we desire is already here, it's on a frequency. The way to build this has always been here, we weren't aware of it. But somebody took their imagination and went off into no place. What they were really doing is going on to a higher frequency. and if you'll stay on that frequency, you'll attract everything that you require. That's why Dr. Werner von Braun, when President Kennedy asked him what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a man to the moon and then bring him back safely to Earth, von Braun said, the will to do it. The will is the mental faculty that gives you the ability to hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions. See, if you take your imagination, do it. You have goals. Take your imagination and then take yourself there. See yourself already have completed the goal. And then hold that picture with your will. When you go there with your imagination, there is a place. Whatever it is you want, you went there with your imagination, there is a place. You stay there in your imagination. You will attract everything that's required for the manifestation of that picture. You saw Brady doing it last Sunday.

Yeah, it's a machine.

Yeah.

Absolutely phenomenal.

So holding the imagination, the picture that you want in your mind, and then attracting it on the steps to get there.

Yeah.

You see, we don't work toward the goal, we work from the goal. You get the goal in your mind. Our problem is we measure everything on the physical. And you look at the physical and you say, well, I haven't got it. yet. If you think your conscious mind, if you get an image there of your goal, you've already got it intellectually. If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me. But if you have it, you can share it with me. You can share with me the idea that you've got in your mind. So you've already got it there, haven't you?

Right.

As you get emotionally involved with that idea, You've got it also on an emotional level. You've got it there. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. The only place you haven't got it is physically. Now, there's a period of time must elapse for that idea that you have intellectually and emotionally for that idea to move into physical form. We understand how much time. Pardon?

How much time does it usually take?

We don't know. We don't know. That's the only thing we don't know. is the gestation period for an idea. We know what the gestation period is for wheat. We know what it is for a carrot. We know what it is for a baby. Moment of conception is about 280 days. We didn't always know these things, but we do now. We don't know what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and that's what an idea is. But it grows by exactly the same law. And so if we hold that idea in our mind, it must by law manifest in form. It moves into form. Now that is called the perpetual transmutation of energy. It's one of the laws of the universe.

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There is something that I that you shared Just a moment ago, that reminded me of an interview I did with Joe Dispenza recently, where he said, we're really good at remembering the past and actually building a story in our mind about something traumatic that was actually way worse in our mind than it actually probably was in person. We're really good at remembering these stories. But what we need to do, he said, is to remember the future. and when he said that, it kind of triggered something different. It's like what you just shared. It's like have an idea of the future of what we want to manifest and hold on to that idea and remember the memories of the future as opposed to holding on to the memories of the past so we can move into that as opposed to be stuck in the past.

That's totally what that is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's.

That's. And it's hard.

Why is it so hard? Why is it hard for us to hold on to or. Maybe not hold on to, but keep in our minds and imagine the idea of a greater future for us as opposed to constantly being stuck in the past. Why is that hard for so many of us?

Because we're programmed to go the other way. You know, what language do you speak?

I barely speak English.

How about Russian?

Privyet, cag de la. That's all I know.

Well, the point is, You were raised with the English language.

Yes.

You don't know another language. I was raised with the English language. I don't know another language. I was working with people over in Kuala Lumpur a number of years ago and they had a little boy, four years old, that little boy could speak four languages. They thought nothing of that. There's people speak many more than four languages. Because that's the way they're raised. We're the product of our environment from the time we're born. But prior to that, genetically we're programmed. You're genetically programmed at the moment of conception. You get all mom's DNA and all dad's DNA. And God knows how far it goes back on either side. Well, that is programming. That's in our subconscious mind.

And.

That'S called a paradigm. That's what it is. It's a program in our subconscious mind. Now here's the crazy part. you have programs in your phone or in your computer. The people that write the code for these programs are really smart when it comes to writing code. They really know what the hell they're doing. The people that wrote the code for our biocomputer had no idea what the hell they were doing. They don't. They did not. They were writing a code For my subconscious mind and for yours, that's our paradigm. And that probably controls our life to an enormous degree. It did with me until I was 26. Now I was fortunate when I met Ray Stanford and he got me into the Think and Grow Rich book and that led me into God knows what else. I have been working at changing that program since I was 26. I'm 86 right now. so I've been at it for a long time, and I work at it every day. Most people don't even know that they have the problem, so they stay stuck their whole life. Listen, you interview some pretty interesting people. I watched the interview here a billionaire a while ago.

Which one?

I forgot. I forgot who it was.

Anyway, Ray Dalio, Charles Koch, it was.

A pretty interesting interview anyway. But the point is, anybody can become a billionaire if that's what you want to do. You say, well, wouldn't everybody know everybody wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put all my energy into that. Now, does that mean I don't want money? No, hell, I earn all kinds of money and I probably want to earn more, but that's not my focus. We are programmed to live a certain way. And rarely do we change that. Now, I change it and I teach people to change it. But most people don't. Stop and think of how few people are really well off. 3-4-5% maximum, if that. and 95% are struggling. And these are, some of these are really bright people. You've got people that have a doctorate degree in commerce and finance and they're broke. How the hell could that happen? Well, they never learned how to earn money. They learned how to count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn it. School doesn't teach us how to earn money. It's absurd when you stop and think about it.

When you were growing up, you were really poor, right?

Extremely.

Extremely poor. We had no money at Thanksgiving for food. It's part of why last year I started feeding when I was 17, I started feeding families because I was fed when I was 11. And I've fed two families, literally. And it was so moving. I said, I'm gonna double it. I went to four and then to eight. And then it was like a game to see could I reach more people. And then I started with some of my employees. And then eventually I got to million people a year, then two million, then I started matching my foundation with two million. So for 12 years, I've fed four million people a year. And then when I was writing this book, I'm interviewing, if you can imagine, all these people who started with nothing and are multi-billionaires at the same time Congress cut food stamps called SNAP now, but it was food stamps originally, by $8 billion. So it's equivalent to give you an idea of every family that's being supported, giving up all their meals one week out of every month for 12 months. so I decided I wanted to do something about it. So I got a $5 million advance for the book. I gave all the money to Feeding America. And then I said, if I want to feed 100 million people, what I got to do is I run a much bigger check. And now I'm so, we did 102 million people last year, but now I'm going to do 100 million again this year. And I got a plan to feed a billion people over the next 10 years. So I'm, it's, it's so full circle from where I began. It's crazy.

And it's, it's, it's an incredible privilege to be able to make a difference like that. How is why is it important to be thinking of giving and contribution in order to generate wealth? When people say that, well, I don't.

Have much to give.

I'm barely making enough to pay my rent, my food.

How can I have the mindset of.

Giving in order to build wealth?

What would you say? -It's the only... You never get beyond scarcity. You got to start beyond it. You got to plant your feet. And you know, so many people say, well, when I'm rich, I'll get some money. If you don't give a dime out of a dollar, you're not... I can promise you, you're not going to give 10 million out of 100 million, not a trillion years. So if you, but if you start, what I always believe is it transforms you. When you, I had a group of kids that I went to, like when I was 31 years old, I was invited to this grade school in Houston, Texas. And I, each grade did a little mini assembly for me of what they, how they used my stuff, you know, at that year. And at the end, I was really emotional. And I was like, you guys asked me to come inspire you, you've inspired me. And so at the end, I was really emotional. And I was like, you guys asked me to come inspire you, you've inspired me. And.