Why You Suffer and How to Finally Stop | Peter Sage

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At Venture Global, we think about what can be done. Not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

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If you look at the lowest level of consciousness, what I call the victim mentality, it's a level that I call to me. I would have the house, the car, the body, the money, the whatever, but everything happens to me. All stress comes from life not fitting your pictures. And the friction that that causes is really where most people get stuck. A lot of people have the premise that in order to create the life they want, they've got to try to fix the outer world. And that's where a lot of people fall down because one of the universal truths that I found in the work that I've done is that outer world follows inner world.

He is a serial entrepreneur, a keynote speaker, and one of the most sought-after coaches in the world on human behavior and personal transformation. We have the inspiring Peter Sage in the house.

There is an energy that is intelligent that if you know how to tune into it, it can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. If I believe that I live in a hostile universe, I'm separate, therefore I'm only focused on myself. And so many people are standing in front of the mirror and they're angry because it's not smiling back. I'm curious, why do most people suffer today? I would have to say if I was going to give one overarching answer, it would be—

You've been coaching people for a long time about how to unlock their greatest potential and how to get rid of feeling stuck and suffering in their life. So I'm curious, why do most people suffer today?

Oh, great starting question. And I would have to say if I was going to give one overarching answer, it would be that all stress comes from life not fitting your pictures, meaning that the outer world doesn't fit the pictures of what you think the inner world says it should look like. And the friction that that causes is really where most people get stuck. And so if you imagine that a lot of people have the, the premise that in order to create the life they want, they've got to try to fix the outer world to fit their pictures. And that's where a lot of people fall down, because one of the universal truths that I found in the work that I've done is that outer world follows inner world, not the other way around. And so if you're working on the outer world without trying to realize it's a reflection of your inner world, you're always going to get stuck in a loop.

So it's like there's two worlds that we're living in, the inner world and the outer world, and In order to create an outer world that is beautiful, abundant, and really giving us what we desire, what needs to happen on the inner world first?

Albert Einstein said something very profound. He says, "You cannot solve a problem at the same level of consciousness that created the problem." That sounds smart. It sounds like something that Einstein would say, but how do you pay your mortgage with that on Friday? So let me share with you a framework that will give people some context to try to make sense of that, which hopefully will help. Cool. So, you know, if you take the word consciousness, the 13-letter hard problem in science, yeah, science doesn't know how to address consciousness. They still think it's a byproduct of brain function and it isn't. Consciousness is not a function of the brain as much as, you know, a television doesn't write and produce its own programs, right? The brain doesn't produce consciousness. A radio doesn't write music, it tunes in. So if you look at the lowest level of consciousness, what I call the victim mentality, It's a level that I call to me. There's 4 levels, I'll break it. To me? To me. And the reason for that is because the mantra of that level of consciousness for people that operate there is that I would have the house, the car, the body, the money, the whatever, but everything happens to me. It's the quintessential victim mentality. And you only have to go to the savanna to understand that victim isn't a place you want to be. Nowhere in the universe is the concept of victim supported.

So this is the lowest level of consciousness.

Victimhood. Victimhood. Correct. And the challenge with that is that there's a lot of attraction to it if you share your story and get significance or what we call secondary gain from your story, because what it really does is prevent you from requiring courage to move to the next level. Mm-hmm. And that next level is what I call by me. And by me is the achiever level. And it's where most people in personal growth tend to operate from. We realize that to me sucks. Nowhere is to me rewarding me with something other than short-term significance for sharing a problem. And you've heard the term misery loves company. Well, no, misery loves miserable company. It's not a place you want to go. So Yeah, Vince the victim isn't a character I want to play. But moving into the achiever world, that's where the hustle is. That's where by me is, you know, if I am going to get the house, the money, the life, the goals, what have you, it's going to happen by me. And so you get out there and you start wrestling reality. You start tackling the outer world. You start getting up early, doing your morning routine. And to be honest, the vast majority of personal growth is catering for what I call low buy me to high buy me. It's like, you know, I already know you want to achieve. You're not lazy. See, in the original days, the early days, you know, you've had Tony on, for example, in Tony's earlier days of personal growth. Yeah, it was really attracting the to me to buy me market. All right, stop watching infomercials at 2 in the morning. Pull your thumb out of your ass. Go set some goals. Go get them, cowboy. I'll teach you how. Yeah. The problem is that there's not a lot of money in the victim mentality wanting to escape from to me to buy me, because they're quite happy, a lot of them, being in to me. Yeah.

Some people are very happy.

Hard work.

Exactly. They're very happy being unhappy. In fact, if you solve their problem, they'll resent you for it because now they've got to find another problem to be able to hold on to. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, significance for being a victim and something else.

Significant certainty. Yeah, you name it. You know, that they will wrestle you if you try to take their problems away. And that's fine. Some people have to hit their head on the sidewalk to learn how to tie their shoelaces, right? You can send them love, you can hold a space, and it's tough if it's someone you care about, your family member or what have you. But you really have to be able to understand that one of the first rules of coaching is that if you want something for somebody more than they want it for themselves, you're wasting your time. Yeah. So most personal growth caters for, yeah, the low buy me to high buy me, how to 10x, how to hustle more. You want a BMW, you want to go to a Porsche, yeah, or you're in a Ford, you, you want to go to a Lexus. It's the next level. The challenge with that, if I was to put it into characters, you know, we know Vince the victim is not a place you want to go, so Alan the achiever is who shows up.. But when you're wrestling the outer world without doing the work on the inner world, Alan the Achiever pretty soon becomes stressed out Simon.

Yeah.

Which leads to burnt out Barry. Yeah. Right. And maybe heart attack Harry.

Uh-huh.

Or if you avoid that, what normally happens is you drop back down into to me to catch your breath, realize that's not who you are, get back on the horse. So your business fails, you get despondent. Yeah. You go into victim mode for a few short while, or you have a relationship breakup, you go into victim mode for a short while, then you realize you shake You shake it off. It's not who you are. You get back on the horse. But that cycle tends to repeat for a lot of people. And that's because there's a third level of consciousness. And the third level is the level of through me. Through me is where life starts flowing through you. There's far less effort. Synchronicities happen. Deals line up. Doors open as you touch the handle. You're not having to shoulder barge them in by me. And it's a very different way of being able to operate. And we've all had situations, moments, glimpses, phases where that tends to happen. But how do you engineer that is a great question, which I'll dive into. But through me is a far more effortless way of living. Now, if you go to somebody like Dr. Joe, who I know you've had on several times. Dr. Joe's market in personal growth centers around what I would call low through me to high through me. People understand there is a quantum field, there is an energy that is intelligent that if you know how to tune into it, it can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you to help you open the doors, to line up the meetings. See, in By Me, if you want to get a certain sales target, as an example, you make 50 sales calls and you hustle. In Through Me, you end up meeting somebody in a lineup in Starbucks who turns out to be a 50-client customer. It's that kind of energy. Yes. Which people would call luck if you're in to me. Yeah, yeah. Chance if you're in by me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But as Dr. Joe says, if something happens once, it's an incident. If it happens twice, it's a coincidence. But if it happens more than twice, it's a pattern. And patterns are based upon laws. So how do you understand that? We know the laws of the physical world. We've reverse engineered that through observation. Starting with, yeah, Copernicus, getting into Galileo, into Newton. And we know now the physical laws so well we can repair the human body or put somebody in orbit. But what are the laws that govern the inner world? That's where through me operates. And people that go to a Dr. Joe week-long advanced retreat, you're not going to get people from by me go there because they're too busy being busy. People that already understand that, low through me to high through me, great. My market, the one that I've spent most of my career working with, is I'm the guy that gets people from buy me to through me. That's the jump.

Because once you start realizing there's a different level from buy me to through me, that's when things start to unlock.

Absolutely.

And there's levels within through me.

Yes. Oh yeah. There is a fourth level. And this original model comes from Michael Beckwith. Okay. And I searched for years to find out where this original model came from. And I was with actually Michael a little while ago in Bali. We were speaking at the same event. Yeah, he's great. And he says, yeah, it came through when he was teaching in class one time.

But I've— It probably came through him too.

Exactly.

It's how it works. And what's the fourth level?

Fourth level is what we call ASMI. It's above my pay grade. It's really where a lot of the spiritual masters arrived at and taught from. And it's really what you would call nonduality. It's about oneness. And so the questions become, how do you move through the levels? I'll give a short insight. So to get from to me to by me, from victim to achiever, what have you got to give up? What have you got to replace it with?

Yes.

Well, the first thing you have to give up is blame. Blame doesn't work in any area of life. I don't care if you are sat at the traffic lights and somebody hits you from behind. The moment you start blaming, your frequency drops to a point of victim. Taking responsibility for everything, no matter what, is a very hard pill for people to swallow. So it's a lot easier to point fingers. As I said, it releases you from the obligation of being able to embrace courage to move forward through your insecurities or fears. Wow. To go from— and what do you replace it with? Personal responsibility.

Yeah.

And that's pretty simple.

So victimhood is really about being in a state of blame or lack of responsibility. Yeah. Or even if something happened that you didn't want to happen, then maybe you felt like it was not supposed to happen. There's still a level of how can I respond from a place of, okay, this happened to me, this is not fair, whatever it might have been. I was abused, I was neglected, I was— someone stole from me, whatever it might be. I got fired. Okay, this happened. Maybe it wasn't fair. But it's what I'm hearing you say is, is learning to interpret it a certain way, take responsibility for the energy or the actions you're in right now and create a vision from a place of responsibility moving forward rather than staying stuck in that victim mentality. Is that what I'm hearing or is there something else?

100%. Okay. And there's some skills required to develop to be able to do that, which I'm happy to touch on as well. To go from by me to through me, what have you got to give up? What have you got to replace it with? Well, the first thing you've got to give up, and some people aren't going to like hearing this, is the need for control. I didn't say control itself, but the need for control. And most people are trying to control so many things that are uncontrollable in the outer world, hence the amount of stress that usually comes up. What do you got to replace that with? Trust, faith, knowing, pick a word. In what? In all fairness, something bigger than you. Most people I've worked with that are depressed are depressed because they're too focused on themselves. And that can be tough when everything's against you because you're in survival mode. It's natural. But generally speaking, gratitude and depression don't live in the same room.. And if you can focus on something to be grateful for, and there is always something to be grateful for, but if you can give up the need for control and replace it in something that's smarter than you. Again, let's go back to Einstein. He said one of the most powerful questions you could ask or answer in your lifetime is do you live in a friendly or a hostile universe? Let's look at that through the lens for a second. If I believe that I live in a hostile universe, everything out there with teeth is after me. I'm separate, therefore I'm only focused on myself. Therefore it's all about the egocentrism. It's all about how do I protect? How do I safeguard? How do I conquer? Whatever it may be, go out and get. If you are with somebody and you break up and you live in a hostile universe, your self-talk is going to be, "I'm no good, so they left me," or, "Why did this happen to me?" If you look at life through the lens of a friendly universe, somebody leaves you, so, "Well, thank God they went, so they made room for somebody who's right." If this is happening for me, then there's something here to learn. And asking questions like, "Look at what I've learned," rather than, "Look at what I've lost," is a different shift between a life on antidepressants and a life of possibility.

Yes.

And so What was Einstein really pointing at? Because the reality, Lewis, is that we don't live in a friendly universe, nor do we live in a hostile universe. We live in a self-reflecting universe. Two men sat behind prison bars. One saw mud, the other saw stars. Same environment, different interpretation. So if you are able to develop the skills of how to look at life through the lens of, you know, through me rather than by me or to me. Yeah. And one of the key skills to that is asking better questions, and people underrate that as an actual skill. So your brain is a loop-closing mechanism. It's going to find answers if you pose questions to it. It's what it does. It's like a faithful Labrador. If you get a stick and you throw a stick, you're like, gotta go catch it, it's gonna go get it. Yeah. Now what most people do is they throw lousy sticks, right? You throw a question and, you know, you get this moldy stick and you throw it in the swamp and the Labrador comes and drops it back on your clean carpet. Yeah. You ask the question, why am I not good enough? Why does this happen to me? Yeah. Why am I unlucky? Your brain's going to fetch the stick because you're a schmuck. Because your teacher said you weren't good enough, because your elder brother got all the attention, whatever it is, the mind's job is to rationalize and justify. That's what it does. Not based on truth, based on trying to close the loop. The brain doesn't like to live in the space of a question. That's what makes cliffhangers or page-turners, right? Because we need to know what's happening next. So you learn to ask better questions. Again, if you're in Through Me, you're asking questions, as I say, instead of why is this happening to me? It's like, okay, what can I learn from this that serves me? What's great about this I've not noticed yet? What could make this fun for me and something that's boring? Just asking better questions. Why? Because questions are the steering wheel of the mind. Questions direct focus. And so learning how to be conscious about asking questions rather than be trained to ask the wrong questions. And this is where another powerful concept comes in that helps you stay in through me versus by me. The whole aspect of by me is competition. It's effort, it's force, it's go wrestle reality to the ground to try to make it fit my pictures. Through me is where you move your center of gravity from control to observation. You're allowing something smarter than you to do the heavy lifting because your frequency is aligned with what it is that you want, not focus on what you don't want. Right. Again, life is a self-reflecting universe, and so many people are standing in front of the mirror and they're angry because it's not smiling back.

Mm-hmm. Right.

And so what do they do? They try a short-term fix in the outer world. They get some lipstick and they draw a smile on the mirror hoping that that's going to work.

Interesting.

But you have drama at the dinner table, you solve that. There's drama at the gas station. You go to work, there's drama there. You're in the genre because you haven't fixed the smile on your own face. Hence, outer world follows inner world. That makes sense. Absolutely.

Host unforgettable backyard barbecues with savings from Whole Foods Market. Get the good times going with made-in-house chicken or pork sausages and ready-to-cook kebabs for hassle-free flavor. Grab tasty flatbreads and their new balsamic chicken salad in the prepared foods department. Keep things fresh with organic red cherries, strawberries, and peaches at their peak. And stock up on bug sprays and sun care must-haves. Make your summer sizzle at Whole Foods Market.

At Venture Global, we think about what can be done, not what's usually done. Through innovation, Venture Global is not only building some of the largest the largest energy facilities in the world right here in the United States, but delivering American energy at a fraction of the cost in a fraction of the time. So while others are busy talking, we're busy building. That's Venture Global. That's unstoppable energy.

It's smart to always have a few financial goals, and a really smart one you can set— earning cash back on what you buy every day. And with Discover, you can. Get this, Discover automatically matches all the cashback you've earned at the end of your first year. Seriously, all of it. And we trust you to make smart decisions. After all, you listen to this show. See terms at discover.com/creditcard.

What's the, what's the thing we need to let go of to go from by me to through me?

So let go of the need for control. Yep. And replace it with trust, faith, or knowing in something smarter or bigger than you, i.e., a friendly universe.

Friendly universe. And then from through me to as me, what do we need to let go of? Or maybe it's step into.

Well, to let go first, you need to undo or let go of what I would call the illusion of separation. What do you replace it with? Unconditional love. If you let go of that, and again, you listen to any of the spiritual masters regardless of the traditions or genre or background, that's essentially what they were pointing out. We are all one. In as me, I see myself in you, I see myself in the rock, the tree, what have you. Duality dissolves. Again, above my pay grade. I'm nowhere near there. I'll stick with by me to through me to help people. Yeah, there's gurus out there that'll address the other stuff.

Why does most self-help and personal development not work in today's modern society?

Because they're addressing the wrong things. They're addressing how do you do better in buy me? And trying to do that is saying, right, if you're in buy me, and Tony says this beautifully, he says, success without fulfillment is failure. And so most people are trying to get to the top of success mountain by elbowing their way through the crowd. They get to the top, they sacrifice, they miss their daughter's recital, they sacrifice their health and they get to the top and they want to jump off because they don't like the view. Why is that? Because they were taught that if they succeed enough through achievement, then they'll feel happier. And the challenge is that it doesn't, that you're running east looking for a sunset. And what are you doing? You're blaming your shoes. Oh, if I get a better personal trainer, if I learn to run faster, or it must be the diet, let me try this. So if I just get that edge, then I keep— I can run faster, I'll finally get my sunset running east. And of course it's a different paradigm. You're not going to do that. So understanding fulfillment, it's what I call the curse of the white rabbit. Sounds a little Hollywood for where we are here, but I'll explain it. If you get the concept of a dog track. People are familiar with the Greyhounds. They open the trap and they run around and people bet on who's going to win, right? Not my scene, but for the purposes of metaphor, it should serve this quite well. And any achievers listening to this, this is going to be an eye-opener. So why do the dogs run? They run because they're chasing a mechanical rabbit. The question is, do they ever catch the rabbit?

No.

What if they run really fast?

No. They just speed up the rabbit.

Speed up the rabbit. What if they have a better trainer?

Speed up the rabbit still, yeah.

Sleep in a better kennel? I mean, it's no, right? So the reason the dogs don't catch the rabbit is because by design, they can never catch the rabbit. Now, replace greyhound with entrepreneur or achiever. Replace rabbit with the goal you think is going to make you happy. Now, if you look at the dogs at the end of a race, you ever see a greyhound at the end of the race? They're ecstatic. Why? Because they got to run. That's what greyhounds are born to do. Entrepreneurs, we are built and born to build businesses. That's what we do. But if we're linking our success to catching the rabbit, I mean, you just imagine at the end of the race, the greyhound turns to his friend and says, hey, listen, I ran 3 races this week, won 2 of them. Still haven't caught that damn rabbit. I quit. Yeah, yeah, right. No, they get to run. And so if you are building a business in order to catch the rabbit, your next quarterly goal or your shareholders report or whatever it may be, and you think, when I get there, and of course, have you noticed that the rabbit always just seems that little bit ahead? I'm almost there, right? What happens when you do actually get your goal? How happy are most people for how long?

They're not actually happy. Maybe a day or two, but then it's like, oh, What next?

100%. That's the curse of the white rabbit. And why are they relieved at least for a short while? Why? Because they're no longer chasing. So I say, when I get my first million on my first Ferrari, I'll be happy. I was 25, I bought my first Ferrari for cash and I was happy for about a week. And make my first million, then I'll be happy. What happened? You make your first million, and you're not happy. And then you finally realize why. Of course, answer's simple. It's because I need $2 million in case I lose the first.

Right, right, right.

Oh, it shouldn't be a Ferrari, it should be a McLaren. That will make me happy. That goes on forever.

Yeah. Or now I'm hanging out with people that make $10 million and now I'm at the bottom of the rung.

I've worked with people worth $700 million who are on antidepressants because they're not a billionaire.

Really?

Oh yeah.

Come on.

That game never ends. Yeah. It's the curse of the white rabbit. So how do you break that? Well, understand that in order to do it doesn't require a new hack, a new 10x this, a new ice bath routine. All of that's outer world stuff. Outer world follows inner world. That's just buy me hacks on how to run faster east to find your sunset. Instead, if you realize ultimately, and some people just, they're not ready to hear this, but they will at some point. You break the curse of the white rabbit by understanding the reality that you already are that which you seek.

What does that mean?

What are you really after? For the Ferraris or the money or the body or the house or whatever?

What are you really after? Probably a feeling for most people.

A feeling. There isn't a feeling that at your age or most ages, by the time you're 20, your brain doesn't neurologically understand or hasn't experienced at some point.

You know how to create it.

So what you're really saying is that in Buy Me, and this is kind of the curse of Buy Me, the White Rabbit, is that when I achieve a certain level that I have internally arbitrarily set as a point, I will then give myself permission to feel a feeling that I could actually feel now. But I'm refusing to do that because my rules for what has to happen for me to have that permission are set in some sort of achievement criteria externally.

Instead of just being now.

So here's a great analogy. Let's say you win a round-the-world trip. You entered a competition, you're in a waiting room, you got bored, you're online, you entered something, and a month later you get a notification, you've won an all-expenses round-the-world trip, dream trip, 20 different destinations, everything on your bucket list, the Northern Lights, the pyramids, Antarctica, you know, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, all of these things. First class. You've got jets, you've got cruise ships, you've got everything. You are so excited and you can take one person with you. And obviously for you it would be Martha, right? But you call your friend and you say, oh my goodness, you're not going to believe this. Yeah, we're emotional creatures, we're designed to share, we experience emotion through connection. So you call a friend or you're talking, I've just won this amazing round-the-world trip. Yeah, I'm just looking through the itinerary. And before you can get to the second place that you're going to, your friend cuts you off and says, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's your final destination? You're like, well, I'll get to that. But yeah, we're also going here and we're going there. Well, no, I don't care. What's your final destination? You're like, well, I haven't even looked that far ahead. I just want to enjoy the trip. That's life. So many people are trying to race to what they think is a final destination that'll make them happy. When I get this house or that car or this status or that amount of followers or this many likes on my breakfast or whatever crap that goes on. You already are that which you seek. And when you realize that, if I can give myself permission to be happy now, and what is happy? Don't complicate it. Happiness is a byproduct of thinking happy thoughts. Case closed. So if I can give myself permission now, I can go and chase the dream, build the business, you know, do what have you from a very different place of giving more of who I am to the world and the venture and everything else. Rather than give less of me because I feel less than until I've got it. Does that make sense?

What would you say then is the biggest block to unlocking the science of manifestation for most people?

The biggest block is most people don't believe that there is an intelligence that's non-physical. Now, without getting into labels, because the mind loves to label, it's like someone says, oh, look, that's a tree. That's not a tree. That's what we call a tree because the mind likes to take a label so it can feel smart about understanding something. But there's certain things that are just above our pay grade. But if I try to simplify it down a little bit, we are human beings, which is the perfect encapsulation of physical and non-physical in one beautiful package. But the real essence of who we are is non-physical. What makes Lewis Lewis? Well, it's not your body. You've got a different body now than 20 years ago. You can have a different body 20 years from now. Yeah, that's non-negotiable. That's part of the rule set. And you can put on creams and take vitamins, but, you know, at some point you're going to look different downstream, right? That's just part of the game. But the real essence that makes you you is not physical. It's the non-physical. It's your personality, your sense of humor, your dreams, your goals, your aspirations, your values. All of that is what makes you you. Now, if I was to take that out of you and put it in somebody else, it would be you with a different body. Yeah. So the essence of what makes us us has to be non-physical. So break down the word human being. Human relates to body, physical. We have a body that runs on a rule set, then we abide by it and look after it and take care of it. It'll last us quite well, but it's got a time limit. Whereas being is non-physical. You can't put being in a box. So if you identify more as your body, a center of gravity, we've got these two things, physical, non-physical, one package. If you take your associations to who you think you are and you put that center of gravity over to the body, I am my body, I'm my physical self, and I identify in the physical world. The outer world. Your body has a nervous system that is hardwired for comfort, which is useful when you're standing too close to a fire. Yes. Now sitting on an ant's nest. But if you identify with that, you're going to make the rookie mistake of thinking that life is a comfort-centric experience. And the journey to emotional maturity, one of the greatest days in a human being's life, is the day they wake up to understand that life is actually a growth-centric experience, not a comfort-centric experience. And so if you identify as the physical version of you, you're going to seek comfort by design because that's what your nervous system is wired for. If you understand that the real essence of who you are is way bigger than a body, the non-physical version of you, the You with a capital Y— let's call it our soul. That's hardwired for growth. Everything in nature grows so that it can contribute or it's taken out of the food chain. I didn't make that up. Look out of your window. Yeah. It's two rules of nature. So if you identify more with you trying to carve your legacy out in the physical world, you're going to be calling problems problems rather than opportunities or challenges. You're going to be struggling and fighting an inertia that is designed to give you challenges and problems because that's how you grow. We know that in the gym. Yeah, how do you grow the body? You push it past its comfort zone. Yeah. Whereas how do you grow spiritually? Through the challenges and problems we have. So if most personal growth is focused upon you trying to take on the outer world, to chase some rabbit that you think is going to give you fulfillment, which it isn't, Why? Because the reality is you can never, underline never, catch the rabbit of fulfillment by running on the track of achievement. Not because you're not a good enough entrepreneur or a good enough hustler or a good enough person, but you turn up the speed of the— The game by design is designed that you can't do that.

You can never win. It shouldn't even be about winning. It's like, and if that's the game you're playing, you'll never be able to win because there's always something else you need to chase.

Exactly. There's always something that comes after and you go to your grave exhausted. Rockefeller, famous for saying at the end, how much more money do you need? Just a little more. Crazy, right? That's not the game you want to play.

Is that what he said at the end? Yeah.

Now, I wasn't there. I mean, that's what you hear. And I had a business mentor, bless me, he's passed away now. I've had 3 main business mentors. Gentleman called Peter Thomas who founded or co-founded EO, the Entrepreneurs Organization. Yeah, beautiful soul. And Dan Peña, who I've known for 35 years now. Dan is the king of buy me. You want to hustle and buy me?

He is the definition. Buy me is my middle name, right?

Yeah, I love Dan for that. We go back a long, long way.

But he's had a lot of success, it looks like, from the outside looking in.

And I've got a whole video on what I learned from Dan on my YouTube channel, which explains, because he's actually in through me because that's his That's his passion. That's his natural gift for being able to give. But it's being able to take the low by me to the high by me. And then another gentleman called Errol. Errol is a plutocrat by every definition. I knew Errol for 15 years. I never knew him earn less than about $1 million a day.

Say it again. He only what? He made $1 million a day?

I never knew him earn less than about $1 million a day.

Every day he was making $1 million.

$350 million a year would be an average year for Errol. And he sold his last business for $3.6 billion in cash. And he's passed away now earlier, but Errol was never really happy. It was always, what's the next deal? We lived together a couple of times. He taught me a huge amount in business. I was very grateful for him in business. He was a fiend on 50 and 0 in terms of businesses he built. I was with him when he started the $3.6 billion business he sold. And I learned a huge amount vicariously, but I also learned who I don't want to become with money. No criticism to him yet. Now he's not here to defend himself, but he'd probably agree as well that his level of fulfillment just wasn't there. His level of significance through, look at me because I'm really good at doing this and this is a goal that I can—

That was high.

This is a lane I can swim in better than anyone. I get it. But imagine getting to the end of the game and realizing you were playing by the wrong set of rules. Because I've never seen a hearse with a roof rack.

You've never seen a what?

I've never seen a hearse.

What's a hearse?

A funeral car.

Okay.

With a roof rack. You're not taking it with you. Yeah. The only people that tried that were the Egyptians and what happened? Yeah. We dug it up and stole it.

Yeah, of course. Eventually someone else takes it from you.

Yeah. So what is life really about? It's about who do you become in the process of achieving? I'm a great believer that the two organizing principles around setting goals are as follows. Firstly, if you have any idea how you can achieve the goals you set when you set them, they're too small. Why? Because otherwise you're focusing, by me, on how you can manipulate things in the outer world to line stuff up. And life doesn't work in straight lines. Yeah, there's no straight lines in nature. You see a straight line, it's man-made. So life is non-linear. The river of life bends. Every river bends regardless of topography. Every river bends. So if you're in bai me and you're sailing down the river of life towards your goal, right, I'm heading north, and then the river suddenly bends east. What are you doing, bai me? I'll tell you. I've seen so many people do it. And by the way, I come at this because in my 20s, I was the buy me king. I was working 130 to 133 hours a week. I was falling asleep at stoplights. I was an asshole to work for. Because everything was about how do I get over the, how do I achieve enough to get over the insecurities as a young man that I felt that I wasn't good enough, which is the primary fear we have. So if you are going down the river and all of a sudden it takes a left turn, What do you do? Most people in By Me take a shovel off their back and start digging a channel through the bank to try to go through the straight line. In Through Me, you surrender to the wisdom of the current. You go with the flow. Okay, if this has happened, what do we do next? You free up the energy of resistance and channel it into what's the next best move. So rather than fight the current, you're using your energy to position yourself better in the current. Makes sense? Yeah. Yeah. So most personal growth fails because it's really teaching you how to run east looking for a sunset, how to catch the rabbit of fulfillment by running on the track of achievement, and how to run in straight lines towards your goals and go through them with energy, persistence, determination, desire. Hence burnt-out Barry, stressed-out Simon, heart attack Harry.

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If someone is living in a life of insecurity or self-doubt right now and they're trying to gain significance by achieving a goal, what happens when they create from a space of insecurity or self-doubt?

No amount of outer world validation is going to cover up an inner feeling of emptiness. It has to start from within. And when people understand you were born good enough, I mean, look at the biology of it, Lewis, 400 million to 1, right? When you look at the egg and the tadpole, right? 400 million. You made it. Why didn't you want to be here so badly? It wasn't to work 40 hours a week for somebody to retire with a cheap watch to say thank you for wasting most of your life. No, you came here to give a gift, the gift of you. Yes, the gift of something, level of uniqueness. That doesn't mean to say you've got to be an NBA champion. No, we all have a way to be able to give. We all know, we all have the favorite grandma or auntie that just had something about them. They weren't driving Ferraris, they had an energy about them that made them give the best of who they were to us. And so, you know, when it comes to how do we How do we reconcile that? How do we look at life saying, "Was I born good enough?" When you realize that no matter what you've done, no matter what you've not done, you are worthy of love. Nothing to defend, nothing to conquer, nothing to prove. And when that becomes your ground of realization, which can't happen into me, is still trying to be earned in by me, and you start operating from a level where you accept your own greatness without having to go and tick boxes for it, you show up with a different energy. You walk through life up to something. And yeah, there's been times where, hey, I know what it's like not to be able to afford rent. I was born on a low-cost housing estate. My parents had nothing. And up until very recently, I got absolutely wiped out financially. I don't judge my self-worth by tying it to my net worth. And if you do that, you are never going to have enough money like the $700 million guy to feel worthy.

Why do most people tie their self-worth to their net worth?

Conditioning. We've been told by society that the more money you have, the more successful you are because they can benchmark it. That means that you are better than fill in the blank. It's the keep up with the Joneses. I was happy with my BMW until next door neighbor bought a Lexus. 'Yeah, now I don't feel as— whatever.' And so if you really want to know what all the Joneses are saying, they're saying they wish that you would quit so they could quit.

All right, stop competing.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll share another, um, concept that I think could help a lot of people here. I realized that one of the, the biggest— yeah, ankle weights on human potential is people living in what I call GOOP. And GOOP is a nasty, sticky, smelly, horrible substance that drains the life force. And GOOP stands for the good opinion of other people. And so many people make decisions through, consciously or unconsciously, the filter of GOOP. So how do you get rid of that? Well, may find this useful. I firmly believe that we all star in a movie called the movie of our life. And I know that you star in the movie of your life, Lewis, because you're the only person who's in every single scene, right, of your movie. Yeah, right. So if we realize that we star in the movie of our life, that means that by definition other people can only play one of two roles. At best, they may be a supporting cast, a spouse, significant other, best friend, you know, co-worker, you know, you're close to, what have you. But the vast, vast majority of people in your life are nothing more than film extras in your movie. Now, what is the definition of a film extra? Somebody you're not currently thinking about if they're not in your current scene, right? So to, to set that tone. So you may be thinking of your partner when they're not in this scene, for example, as a supporting cast. But the vast majority of people that most people suffer from goop for are film extras. Now here's where it gets interesting. Most people are walking around seeing themselves as the star of their movie, thinking that other people see them as the star of their movie. Of course they don't, because they're not starring in your movie. Whose movie are they starring in? Yeah, there's Yes. Which means by definition, we appear as only one of two characters in everybody else's movie. At best, supporting cast. But the vast majority of people you will meet in your lifetime, you are nothing more than a film extra in their movie. Now, how do you translate that into getting rid of Goop? Simple. You understand that the reality is most people don't care enough about you to bother to even give an opinion. Why? Because they're too busy being worried about what they think you're thinking of them. Yeah. In other words, everyone's walking around in this bubble of self-importance thinking, I wonder what everybody thinks of me and my bubble of self-importance, not realizing that they're walking around in their bubble of self-importance thinking, I wonder what everyone's thinking of me, my bubble of self-importance. And when you burst your own bubble and see it for what it is, the freedom that comes with that is refreshing. That frees up life force rather than you trying to run around as this chameleon, this adaptation machine. Or if they don't like me this way, I'll be this way. If they don't like me this way, I'll be that way.

Yeah, it's letting go of the character that you've been playing.

Yes. And a lot of that is driven by patterns. You know, I work alongside, you know, as a trainer for Robbins Research for Tony for 15 years, and I learned a huge amount from Tony. But he said one thing that was so powerful that it was in a leadership meeting one time. He came out, it was almost a throwaway comment, but it had such an impact on me. He said, if you want to get good at working with people, get good at spotting patterns because there's only so many of them. And I looked at that. So let's look at perfectionism. That's a classic buy me pattern as well. Any perfectionists watching here will probably understand what that's like. Now, the thing with perfectionism is that it sounds very altruistic. It's like, you know, oh, I— who doesn't want to be perfect? I just want to make sure it's the best it can be. It's almost like a self, you know, acknowledging I'm doing the right thing. But there is no perfectionism. Perfectionism is the lowest standard because it's unattainable. Evolution hasn't finished. So if nature isn't perfect yet, why do you think we should be? So what really is perfectionism? I'll tell you. The real language is, "I'm scared of screwing up-ism." So it's got to be right, otherwise it has its basis more in fear of rejection. Like shy. Shy's a racket because, "Oh, I'm just introverted. I'm shy." No, you're not. You're running a pattern that says, "Please don't let you discover me because I'm scared of your judgment." That's the reality. Now, I'm not judging them for that. I'm just saying address what the real thing is. Because what you're really looking for is the inability to handle rejection. Classic to me pattern. So you learn how to handle rejection. Why? Because if somebody rejects you, there's a difference between rejecting a person, rejecting their idea, their concepts. And you realize that all people can ever do, Lewis, is project from their own model of the world onto you. Somebody comes up and calls you an asshole, Is that about you or about them?

About their interpretation of something.

Yeah, exactly. They're having a bad day. Yeah. You look at that with compassion and understanding. This person's in so much pain, so much chaos or whatever's going on that they've got to express their frustration to people they don't even know in ways that are potentially offensive or damaging. You hold compassion for that rather than judgment or reaction, right? And you've got a different way of engaging in life.

You've been around a lot of wealthy people. Who do you think are happier, millionaires or hundred millionaires and billionaires?

The wealth is not the issue. The number is not the answer. Again, 700 million antidepressants. And when you understand what money is, it can give you an insight. See, the two things that most humans stress about the most are money and time. And the only thing that— the only place in the universe they mean anything is in the mind of a human being. Nothing else keeps track of it. It's like we say time, people say, oh, I don't have enough time. Well, how do you run out of now? It's like you try to manage time. You can't manage time any more than you can manage the current of a river while you're swimming in it. It's the only area in life whether you're born in a slum in Gugulethu in Cape Town or in Beverly Hills down the road, it's the only area we've all been treated equal, is we get 24 hours in a day. So trying to manage time is, you know, manage your priorities, manage your focus, but don't think you can manage time 'cause you're commoditizing it. You don't go to Walmart and buy 3 hours 20 minutes on special offer for 2 hours and 10. It doesn't work that way. Money is the same thing. It's conceptual. The only place it means anything is in the mind of a human. You and I are on a desert island with $1 million in cash and the economy had gone, we'd set fire to it to keep warm. Yeah. It's pieces of paper with dead people printed on it. It's shiny stones and hard rocks. So the concept of money was created as a way to try to level the playing field in the bartering section. So if you've got goats and I've got chickens and I want goats and you want chickens, then we're in business. But I want goats and you don't want chickens. We need a way to figure it out.

So money— And you find someone else who wants a goat and you did this and it's like, all right, let's just trade something.

Yeah. Just a lot easier to do it that way. So we created the concept of money to help solve that kind of problem. There's other backstory to it, but to simplify it, let's leave it there. But it's still a human construct. So I did an experiment. My dog, got a Jack Russell. Yeah, I've got two, but my boy's called Archie. And I did an experiment. This went kind of viral on social.

Archie the achiever?

Definitely not. No. Archie the daddy's boy. Achiever when it comes to chasing balls. Yes, that's what I mean. But I got a ribeye steak. I put it on a plate. I got €1,000. I live in Spain. €1,000 in cash and I put it on another plate. I said, "Right, Archie, listen to me carefully. Do you know how many ribeyes you can buy for €1,000?" Right. I'm going to give you one shot, one choice. We know where this is going, right? And it was a fun way to kind of make a point. Of course, straight for the ribeye. But if you think that money is a measure of your success, no, money is a measure of how much value you add. Because the only time you ever receive money is by giving something of value for it first. You wouldn't walk in the gym. You're in shape, you know what it's like to be a professional athlete. You walk into the gym and you go to your personal trainer and you say, hey, look, these machines look a bit tough. You know something? Give me the strength. I'll go lift the weights. Doesn't work that way. You lift the weights, you get the strength. You sit in front of the fire on a cold night and it's dead and you say, hey, negotiation time. Give me some heat. I'll go fetch you some wood. Doesn't work that way. Yeah, so most people say, give me the money and then I'll be happy, give me the money and then I'll feel this. No, go add value, go give your gift, go be of service, and you'll look over your shoulder one day and realize that money starts showing up. But you cannot— and this is a, a bigger conversation— I talk about the number one rule of coaching being that if you want it more for somebody than they want it for themselves, you're wasting your time.

Yes.

Number one rule in personal growth, you can never rise above the opinion of yourself.

What does that mean?

It means that we have a financial thermostat. And if your financial thermostat, like a room thermostat, there's a program invisibly running in the background that monitors the current temperature, that if it drops below, the heaters kick in, if it goes above, the air conditioning kicks in. So if your financial thermostat's set for $50,000 a year and all of a sudden you drop to $30,000, the, you know, the heaters kick in. You get motivated, you're up early, you're hustling, you're getting out there, you're doing something, you're following up on sales calls, you're figuring it out. You suddenly go to $100,000 a year and you're now comfortable, but that internal programming is running that says too hot for you up here. Air conditioning kicks in. So what happens? You stop following up on leads. You don't get as motivated. You're not getting up as early. You're not putting as much time in and you self-sabotage. And we see this played out in every lottery winner example you can give. Yeah. Right? So your financial thermostat governs your ability to attract, earn, keep, retain, be a custodian of money.

So how do we increase our financial thermostat? To earn more?

Well, the trap, as you alluded to earlier, is that if you have your self-worth to your net worth, you're caught in a negative loop. Because unless I earn enough, I'm not good enough. But if I'm not good enough, I'm not earning enough because my frequency now is matching a lack consciousness, a poverty consciousness, a scarcity mindset. The people that I've seen that are constantly happy, whether they're millionaires, billionaires, centi-millionaires, deca-millionaires, or broke, are people who have an abundance mentality, a prosperity consciousness, and it isn't linked to money. Money is one of the aspects. Again, it's almost a, a strange concept that we created. Hence self-worth and net worth shouldn't be tied. But I mentioned earlier about gratitude and scarcity can't live in the same room. So if you want to create an abundance mentality and you don't have money, stop trying to focus on money to trigger the feelings of abundance.

What should we focus on instead?

What do you have an abundance of?

Love, joy, presence, curiosity, friends.

Yeah. Oxygen. If you're struggling. I mean, yeah. I mean, focus on something that you're grateful you have more for. And a contrast frame here is a powerful tool to use. Most people use contrast frames the wrong way. For example, let's say You're working at a new job, temporary position, and the boss calls you in on Monday morning, says, "Hey John, we've been watching you. We've been impressed. You're a team player. You're not a clock watcher. You've been going the extra mile. We're going to give you a permanent contract and a 10% pay rise." How do you feel?

Better.

Yeah.

Happy. Great.

Thanks. So 12:00 comes, you're in the staff canteen and you're chatting with Susie and she's all happy too. Say, "Hey Susie, how's it going?" "Oh, great." "Are you really happy?" "Yeah, I've had a great time." Boss called me in this morning, give me a permanent— she does the same job as you, by the way, right? Yeah. It says, yeah, give me a permanent contract and a 20% pay rise.

Now you're not happy.

We had nothing before, now you only have 10%. So you're contrasting it to what she got rather than contrasting what you didn't have before. Contrast frames are okay. When I was in, yeah, Pentonville, I mentioned earlier, 6 months in jail, and I would be helping the prisoners And I would give them Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. And I would challenge them not to cry with tears of gratitude for the fact they were in Pentonville and not Auschwitz. Wow. Reframe. Yeah. Everything's reframable. And that was a powerful lesson for a lot of them. And some people committed to to me don't want to change. That's okay. Your job is not to change anyone. We have no right to change anyone. I've got no right to walk into somebody else's movie, grab the scriptwriter's pen, and start altering their scenes. That's, you know, even if you love them and you can see that they're self-harming, they're self-sabotaging there, and you want them— you can see the problem, you don't get to do that. All you get to be, Lewis Howes, in this world, which is what you're doing with this podcast, which I love, you get to be the example and you get to be the invitation. You can't be the invitation without being the example, right? But you also cannot be the imposition.

You can't push.

Nobody changes because you tell them to. Yeah, why? Because it triggers the primary fear that we all have, which is the fear we're not enough. Yeah. And ultimately that we won't be loved. So if you try to argue with anyone or even help them by saying, yeah, oh, I've got a great way that you can, you know, get out of this problem, what most people hear isn't 'Oh, here's somebody trying to help.' What most people hear is, 'Oh, I'm not good enough doing what I'm doing now, and you're trying to fix me.' And everybody will push back against that. And family member or stranger or work colleague, doesn't matter, because it triggers that primary fear, which is the fear we're not enough. And most people do almost anything to avoid that, including stay in their victim story so that, you know, at least they have some certainty that they know how, you know, how bad things are.

Yeah.

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What is the thing that you learned the most when you went to jail for 6 months?

Well, again, I'll give you some context for the audience as well.

Yeah, people know what happened.

Yeah, yeah. I was in a litigation, a business deal with a multibillion-dollar company, arguing over a multimillion-dollar deal that we'd done years before. And it was a contractual dispute. I thought they were just bullying me. I didn't want to stand for it. I was the little guy. They were the big guy. They had bigger muscles in the financial legal playground. And I stood my ground. I'm like, "No, I've done nothing wrong." And to try to put pressure on a settlement, they issued a contempt of court application saying I breached a freezing order they'd put on, which was like financial handcuffs to try to put pressure on me. And I hadn't. And I read it and I looked at it and it was clever. You'd expect it from a $100 million law firm. Representing a multi-billion dollar company. And I thought it'd get laughed out of court in 5 minutes. They sold it to the judge. He gave me 6 months inside as a civil prisoner. Never been arrested, never been accused of a crime, still no criminal record. Yeah. With anything connection to that, it was like, wow, I go from 50 staff, you know, helping, you know, hundreds, thousands of people to in jail, lost everything.

Wow.

And that was 9 years ago. And including hundreds of thousands of legal debts that they piled on top of me. No credit rating. I came out, lost nothing, lost my wedding, lost, you know, business, lost everything from literally that quick. And here's an interesting lesson that I'll share with people again as a framework I think will help, especially if people are going through their own version of that right now. Not in jail, but losing loved ones, business failure, divorce, whatever it may be. We all face our challenge. And one of the biggest things I mentioned earlier about turning your mindset around, identity is a key factor. The questions you ask, you know, the focus you have, the by me or through me positioning, a lot of it comes down to identity because People in personal growth learn things. They read the books, they go to the seminars, they watch the podcasts. There's 3 levels that that lands at. And here's why most people keep running the rinse and repeat cycle. The first level is the intellectual level of understanding. It means it makes sense. People listening to this in English, it makes sense. But if you only keep it at the intellectual level, then knowing and not doing is the same as not knowing. Smokers know they shouldn't smoke. It's not they don't see the warnings on the packet. You can't construct one logical argument as to why somebody should smoke. So why do they smoke? It's not because they're not unintelligent. So it's because it hasn't gone to the second level of understanding. Intellectual level means nothing. The second level is the emotional level. That's where we call the penny drops. So now all of a sudden, you're a smoker, you know you shouldn't quit, but you do it anyway. Why? Because it just stays at the intellectual level. But now you go to the doctor and he says, that, uh, that chest scan we just did, you have one more cigarette, you could suffer a fatal stroke. Now, you didn't suddenly become smarter. No, you didn't suddenly get the warnings into focus. No, you went from an intellectual to an emotional understanding, and that is where behavior starts to change. Behavior doesn't change at the intellectual level. Or your daughter comes running up, 6 years old, and says, Daddy, Daddy, I don't want you to die. Please stop smoking. I want you to walk me down the aisle when I'm older, and I don't think you'll make it if you smoke. Like, right? It's like, whoa, no cigarettes in the bin. But the intellectual— sorry, the emotional level only triggers behavior change. It doesn't guarantee it. We've known people that says, "I'm done, I've quit." And then they fall back. And then they fall back. Why? Because it never went to the third level. The third level is where it changes your identity. See, if you are emotional and you throw your cigarettes away and your identity is, "I'm a smoker who's quit." Another thing Tony Robbins said, Very powerful. He said that the strongest force in the human personality is the need to remain consistent with how you define yourself. In other words, right there, identity. Yeah. So if I'm a smoker who's quit, identity wins over time every time. So I'm a smoker. Now I'm using willpower to quit. Well, that's got one direction. At some point, willpower falls down. Willpower's not on demand. I've got all the willpower to hang on to a branch on a tree over a cliff, but you come back on Tuesday, I'm not there.

Right? Yes.

So that identity side is if you change your identity from I'm a smoker who's quit to I'm a non-smoker, I offer you a cigarette, you're a non-smoker, what's the response?

No, thank you.

I don't smoke. It's effortless. I'm a smoker who's quit, somebody offers me a cigarette, there's that push-pull.

You're questioning it constantly.

Yeah. So when I was going to be set to send down the 6 months out of the blue, into the most violent prison in the UK as the only non-criminal.

Man.

I immediately had to check in with my identity because it would have been so easy at that point for me to go in as a victim. Courtroom shenanigans, yeah, big scary law firm pulling stuff behind my— all of this kind of stuff, right? I could have justified that. And the thing with Toomey is the mind will always justify it. It's his job. But that would have sent me down a pathway that I'm— that's a tunnel with no cheese. No. Yeah. All right. So I chose a different identity in that moment. I chose to be a secret agent of change. I'm like, I've spent a quarter of a century at that point helping people with their mindset. If the universe is going to find the only way to smuggle me into jail without ever being accused of a crime, my gosh, to be able to help people that would never normally watch this kind of podcast and be able to go and help them, then bring me back out without even having a criminal record. I mean, hey, genius. Tired, but let me go do my work. Wow. Why? Because life as a growth-centric experience is going to have graduation events. If you're a health coach, expect a health challenge so that you can prove to people you can walk your talk. You're a relationship coach, expect a problem so that you can actually live what it is that you teach others. Otherwise, you've got no right to do it. So I went in as a secret agent of change.

Now, is this right away or was this after a couple of days?

Oh, no, no, no. Walking down the steps. Really? Immediately.

You weren't in shock? You weren't like, "I can't believe this is happening to me." 25 years of training.

I mean, if I couldn't walk my talk at that level, I shouldn't be there. Wow. So yeah, it would probably take an adjustment period for some people. But no, I knew because that's a slippy slope to climb back from if I go down victim.

Wow.

So I went in and I didn't get upset. I got excited.

Come on, you excited to go to jail?

I went in smiling. Why? Because I knew it had to be. I had to reconcile it as if I live in a friendly universe or I don't. Pick one. Wow. You can't be a fair-weather sailor. Uh-huh. Yeah, good sailors aren't made on calm seas. Uh-huh. And I had a set of skills that I went in with. And anyway, long story short, I ended up getting a lot of the prisoners off drugs, stopping suicides. I redesigned the intake system to reduce violence between the wings. It's now being used in prisons all over the world. I actually won a national award for the work that I did inside in the midst of losing everything. And every 2 weeks I wrote to my students telling them what I was doing by hand, how I was coping with it. Were there times I was upset and depressed? Absolutely. Yeah. I'm not superhuman. There was times where I woke up at 5 in the morning because my body was trained to wake up at 5 and I can't move because my cellmate doesn't wake till 7. You don't want to upset your cellmate. Just sitting there. You know?. And that's hard because you can't move your body to try to change your emotions. And there was times I doubted myself. There was times I was, but how do you, where do you live? Where do you visit? Uh-huh. You know, if you live in the gym, you can visit McDonald's once in a while. It's not going to do a lot. But if you live in McDonald's, you visit the gym once in a while, it ain't going to do a lot. Yeah. Right. So I wrote every 2 weeks and when I came out, my students said that they'd learned more from the 11 letters than traveling around the world for the last couple of years following me on stage because it was real.

Wow.

I'm breaking down how I'm doing suicide interventions. How do you stop somebody committing suicide permanently? Not just in the moment. You can change anybody's mood in the moment, but permanently when they go back to their cell and think the same depressing thoughts that cause them to be suicidal in the first place. There's a lot of suicides in that jail, by the way. And yeah, I, yeah, I put it all down. And when I came out, private letters, never meant to be for the public, they said that they'd learned more from those letters and it would help a lot of people if I shared them. Wow. So we put it into a book and called it The Inside Track. Yeah. And I'm so grateful because I look back now and I think that even though obviously it was tough, running a marathon's tough, so why do people do it? Because you get a medal at the end, you feel proud of yourself. But there's times at mile 17 that you question yourself. There's times that I was questioning myself. Of course. But that book has helped so many people, changed the life of pretty much everybody that's read it. I'm getting emotional again, sorry. And to look back and see now that one of the greatest adventures I ever had the privilege of living and knowing that if you trust the universe to have your back, as dark as it can see at the time, I wrote a sign and put it on the inside of my cell door. It was a quote from Napoleon Hill. Said every adversity carries with it the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. And I read that sometimes hundreds of times a day. I had to. And the problem is most people are so busy moaning at the adversity, they never take time to water the seed. But if that river suddenly bends left and you're panicking because your goal's over there and now it's going this way, if you surrender to the wisdom of the current, if you go with the flow, say, okay, The milk is spilled on the carpet. Bitching about it's not going to put it back in the bottle. I free up the energy of resistance to what is. Yeah, because unless you've got a DeLorean and you're Marty McFly, you're not going to change it. No. So you free up that resistance and channel it into what is the next best move. Okay, I'm in prison, I can't change that. I've lost my business, I've lost my wedding, I've lost this, I've hundreds of thousands in debt, I've lost everything. What's the next best move? Well, I'm clearly here to serve. Let me go to work. Mm.

Man, this has been powerful. I want people to get a copy of the book. It's called The Inside Track: The Ultimate Guide to Conquering Adversity. It's about the 11 private letters that you wrote while you were in jail to your coaching students again over the 6 months. And I think it's going to inspire a lot of people. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I wanted to ask you, or is there something you want to say?

Actually, before you do, I'd actually prepared a gift. Okay. For everybody watching. Okay. Because I'm, and by the way, this is coming out a third of a million in debt, no credit rating. I got excited about that. Why? Never climbed out of a hole that deep before. Let's see what happens. Okay. And I went to work because I've got a high conscious, I've got an abundance mentality. So I knew eventually the outer world would catch up. This is what I teach. I'm doing very well now. Yeah. I'm back on my feet. Things are going well. We're helping thousands of people a week. I'm really proud of what myself, the team, and the universe, if you want to call it as help. So I want to get this book into as many hands as possible. And so I prepared a gift for every reader. So if anybody wants a copy, either the PDF or the audio, and it's my voice on the audio, petersage.com/Lewis, put in your email and you can have it. No free plus shipping, no here's a funnel on the back end to get more money, none of that. I just— absolutely free. My only recommendation is please don't treat it like you didn't pay for it. Otherwise, if you don't pay, you don't pay attention. Yeah, of course. So, I want a copy of that because it's changed the lives of pretty much everybody that's read it. If I can help the people that are your tribe in a way that helps them, you learn one thing out of that that can get you into a life of more of through me and less of by me or to me, I've done my work and that's why I'm here.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

So, people can go to pierresage.com/lewis. Check out that. You'll get it for free, audio or PDF version. You've got different programs on there as well people can check out. And your YouTube, Instagram is @therealpetersage on Instagram or YouTube. I know you had a couple cups here. I don't know if you had an example you wanted to share for something or did you have a talk about it already or?

It kind of sums up a lot of what we've shared. Okay. Yeah. And kind of brings it full circle. So this is an example that people can see visually. So if we take a glass of water like this, The stuff in the glass, the water represents the content of people's life. It's your job, your business, your money, your no money, your friends, your religion, your hobbies, your ways. It's the stuff of your life. And the glass represents the container. It's the context. It's how you hold it, how you look at it. What most people spend most of their life doing is trying to stir the stuff in the glass. In your 20s, you're stirring it like mad, right? You're trying to figure out who you are. Yeah, what do you like? What food do you like? What sex do you like? What people do you like? What job or career do you like? So you're constantly stirring. Now, in your 30s, there's a bit more of a pattern to it. You're still trying to change things, but there's a bit more of a pattern routine. You kind of know your preferences and who you are and what you like. 40s, still stirring. 50s, still stirring. 60s, 70s, Higgs plate. I say one day in your 30s you wake up and say, my life's so transparent and boring. So you go to a personal growth seminar and you realize what's been missing. You need some blue in your life, right? Transparent, boring, see-through. Blue, blue's where it's at. So what happens? You go out, you sell your clothes, you get blue clothes, you drive a blue car. Now you find blue friends, all of that kind of stuff, and you're still staring and trying to change everything in your life in order so you can see it to be happy. What happens after a while? Curse of the White Rabbit. Blue's just feeling—

I mean, red. I need green.

Yeah. Yeah. Whereas if you were to simply take a different way to look at it and you were to put the water in, same stuff, what instantly appears to change in terms of how you see things in your life. Mm-hmm. See, most people are spending their time, effort, money, resources, goals trying to change the stuff in their life. And while that's fine, we're here to create. We're born to create as human beings. We're born to go and experience and do stuff. But if you're trying to do it in order to change the color of what's in the glass without changing the color of the glass, you're going to be on a hamster wheel to nowhere, running east, looking for that sunset. Mm-hmm.

So we got to learn how to change context, context, not the content.

Again, ask better questions. Raise your level of consciousness. Outer world follows inner world. Again, two men sat behind prison bars. I know this one. All right. One saw mud, the other saw stars. The environment is exactly the same. What you choose to do with that environment is everything. Yeah. Yeah. I was on the ocean earlier this year and involved in something called the World's Toughest Row. And the reason I chose that was because I mentioned graduation event. Well, the Olympics is every 4 years. And so I wanted to choose my next one rather than actually have it chosen for me by the universe. And so I signed up for the World's Toughest Row. It's an extreme endurance event, rowing unsupported across the Atlantic, same route Columbus took from the Canaries to Antigua.

Okay. And 2 months, is that what you said it was? 2 months?

How long? 2 months. And that just to set the scene. I mean, a marathon, 3 hours as a pro, 4 hours plodding, 5 hours you could walk it. Ironman, 14 hours. Ultramarathon, probably a week. Toughest sporting event on TV, maybe Tour de France. Televised, 21 days crawling across the Pyrenees. We're talking somebody has to be rowing at all times. It's me and my best friend. So 2 hours on, 2 hours recovery, 2 hours, 2 hours, 2 hours. For 20 months? 24/7 for just under 2 months.

Oh my gosh.

It's the most extreme endurance sports event on Earth. Nothing comes close. 25 times more people have summited Everest than have ever rowed an ocean. Wow.

So this is like 2 oars or is this like—

There's no sail, there's no engine. I'm not even allowed to hold up a t-shirt to dry because they class that as wind assistance. Oh, come on. And everything's gotta be arms and oars. Wow. And—

Is there a boat next to you or is there a boat like—

Nearest safety boat's usually 4 or 5 days away.

Oh my gosh.

So everything's self-sufficient. Holy cow. It's, yeah, 2 years of training and including ocean navigation, survival, yeah, equipment. Wow. And I've never rowed. All the food's on board. Dehydrated. We've got solar panels to power a desalinator to get fresh water to put in the powdered food.

How big is the boat?

Beefed up canoe.

Okay.

Wow. And after 4 days, we had our first storm, 11-meter waves, 35-foot, terrifying. I was on the satellite phone to Nadia, my partner, crying. I was terrified, Lewis. You can never train for something like that. I'm not a rower. I'm not a—

Yeah.

And I share this as an example for people because there was two reasons I wanted to do this. The first is I wanted to see if I'm still qualified to teach. I'm comfortable now. I'm back. I have back on my feet, all that kind of stuff. So again, where do I sit on my own totem pole of self-mastery? Because I firmly believe if you can't master your mind, you'll never master your life. So you can't engineer in a classroom being 1,000 miles offshore, nearest humans in the International Space Station, the nearest land's 5 miles underneath you. You're hallucinating through sleep deprivation. You've got salt blisters all over your hands and your backside. You're exhausted and your alarm goes off at 4:00 AM for you to go row backwards in the dark in a raging sea for 2 hours.

Wow.

That's when your mind's going to give you every excuse, right?

Get out of here. Just make it clap.

I don't want to go to school. The day. So I want to find out where I sat there because if I'm not qualified to teach, fine. And authenticity is my highest value. I need to know. And that's okay. I've had a good run, but I can't stand on stage in front of my students and tell them how to do stuff if I can't still do it myself. That's rule number one. But the other reason is everybody has their own row. Traumatic divorce, stage 4 diagnosis, business catastrophic bankruptcy, whatever it is. I mean, Lee, my partner, my best friend and I rode with, we were lucky. We just got the Atlantic. So how could I use— and we video diary the whole thing on my YouTube— how could using what we were using for our mental tricks and, and everything else and reframes and how to, yeah, be appreciative of the, the rain because the rainbows were there and all of the other stuff and being grateful that we had hands rather than, yeah, hands that were hurting, how could we translate that or for other people for what they're always— that was the other big reason that I did But the last lesson that I want to share, and we'll come back to your questions, that I think sums up a lot of the journey, it was that there was one point we had to go under the boat. We had a rogue wave snap our rudder, carbon fiber, 6 times stronger than steel, and it slammed the boat. Lee was unconscious twice, by the way, on the— I rode solo for a week. Oh. Yeah, because he got slammed and hit his head on the side of the boat. Another story. But I had to go under the boat in a raging sea to try to fix the rudder. Holy cow. And before I went out— and there's no option otherwise because, you know, you can't steer a rowing boat, that's it, it's game over. So I recorded a video to my partner on my phone in a tiny little cabin. Yeah, I've got a tiny little— I can't even stretch my legs. And it was to say, look, if you find this video but you don't find me. And I want you to know that, A, I love you, but B, this was my decision.

Wow.

Yeah, I don't blame Lee. Yeah, he didn't bully me into going under the boat. This is my decision. And I think I'm going to be okay because I live in a friendly universe. But hey, we all have a final scene in our own movie. Yeah. And it was the closest I've ever come to drowning, by the way. I was being lifted out of the sea 2 feet, slammed 2 feet underneath, trying to get under the boat. So I was throwing up seawater. I was in a fetal position back on Lewis Howes. And there was one point where I actually thought it was going to be the end. But when you realize that even though we star in the movie of our life, every single one of us, when it comes to the human, not the being, but the human, has a final scene. That's non-negotiable. So what do you want your final scene? What do you want to be able to say if you're lucky enough to be able to choose the last words that come out of your mouth? I'd want it to be like, wow, that was spectacular. That is a movie that I would pay to watch again. And of course, what does a great movie have, Lewis Howes? Has everything. Comedy, tragedy, romance, heartache, fun, adventure, abundance, scarcity. It has everything. Nobody pays good money to go to a cinema to watch James Bond rescue a kitten out of a tree for 90 minutes. That's not the movie you want. Yeah, and so many people are trying to live in this narrow little band of not too much risk, not too much failure. Get out and swing the bat. Yeah, yeah, go film the movie you were born to film. And if you're sitting in victimhood, that's never going to be the starring role that you were born to star in, right? Get out and play.

It's been powerful, Peter. I want to acknowledge you for the journey you've been on and how you continue to serve at this level, even with the challenges you've been faced. And, uh, it's really inspiring, man. So congrats on everything. And excited for people to get the book, The Inside Track, and check out all your work, PeterStage.com. Two final questions for you. This one's called the Three Truths. So imagine, you know, you spoke about the last moment, last day, potentially. Imagine you get to live as long as you want, but it is the last day, the final scene for you. And you've gone on the adventure of your dreams. But for whatever reason, all of your work has to go with you. All your content, your message, this interview is gone, but you get to leave behind 3 lessons to the world. And this is all we would have of your content. What would those 3 truths be for you?

Oh, beautiful question. The first is to understand you were born good enough. Nothing to defend, nothing to conquer, nothing to prove. You know, no matter what you've done, no matter what you're not, you're worthy of love. Stop trying to earn it. Second, stop waiting for approval from the outside world, from your partner, from— stop waiting for approval for you to walk your truth. If you feel this is your decision that is right to make, stop looking for agreement. That'll hold you back. You're starring in your movie, nobody else's. Third, understand that the sooner you can swap your need for significance or your need for certainty for growth and contribution as your highest values, your life will change forever.

That would be it. The final question, Peter, what's your definition of greatness?

Oh, I should have expected that. I would say getting to the end of your movie and being happy with your performance. It doesn't have to be a billion-dollar company or an impact to the world or a thumbprint on humanity. No, you'd be the best mom you can be. You gave what you did for your kids and allowed them to do what they do. Greatness is you walking your truth. In conjunction with letting go of more fear and embracing more love. And if you can do that, that's a great life.

Peter, thanks so much, man.

Appreciate you. My pleasure. Thank you so, so much.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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