Do This When You Feel UNCERTAIN About the Future with Lewis Howes

There was never any external certainty. You've had rented certainty. You've convinced yourself hypnotically that you're certain because you had a job and you had this. None of this. You walk across the street and get hit by a bus. Right. There's so much that can happen. So we hate uncertainty so much and we want it so strongly. But if we link it to our job or to an income or to a person responding the way we want to, then you're going to live a very fearful life. If you train yourself to feel that internal certainty, which is what you did, and anticipate as much as possible, and, you know, no matter what, I'll find the way, that is a different identity.

Yes.

You've gone to a level of not just how to deal with things, but the identity is, I'm the guy that will find the way for my kids and for my family. Right. And that is freedom.

You said something to me seven, maybe seven or eight years ago. It was in Fiji. We were at a mastermind with you and Dean graziosi. There's about 20 of us there. You said many things to me over the years, but this. I remember the line you said. You said, winter is coming. You said it while you were barefoot on the beach in Fiji with the sun on our faces and the ocean breeze and this beautiful resort that you have. And you said, winter is coming. And it was maybe a year before COVID Right. Or a year or two before COVID Year and a half, something like that. And you said, winter's coming. It may be a year, maybe eight years, but it's coming.

Yeah.

And I remember taking that very seriously, you know, as seriously as you can take a time on the beach with Tony Robbins hanging out in the sun. But I remember saying, I need to continue to prepare.

That's right.

For winter.

That's why I was telling everybody that.

Yes. And I felt ready when Covid came.

That's awesome.

I felt ready because for years before that, I'd also been doing the work. And I was like, let's go.

Yeah.

I was telling my team this earlier this week. I was like, when you stay ready, you don't have to get ready.

That's right.

And this is. A lot of athletes say this as well. And I think it's being ready for the uncertainty or the winter, whatever is coming. It's coming.

And it happens for everybody. Listen, call it extreme stress for a moment. You just call it that. Extreme stress. Who's going to experience in their lifetime?

All of us.

Everyone. All of us. I Don't care if you're the most God fearing, loving human being. I don't care if you're religious. I don't care if you're smart as a web. I don't care if you're the richest person. No one escapes. Massive, massive stress. And what does that look like? It looks like your house burns down. Like here in LA or.

A year ago, my friend's house was burned down.

I know. I. I was here when it happened as well. So I, I actually helped. I put in $6 million. I'm not patting myself on the back, but I, I just couldn't see. People just not have a home. They had a 14 day pass. Yeah. So I worked a bunch of organizations, but I. My home had burned down 20 years before in California.

Here, really.

And it was when there was no, you know, no AI, no place to put all your stuff. Pictures in the cloud. I lost everything but my family, which is the most important thing. Right. But there's a journey that it takes you on if you deal with extreme stress. Like what else Your house could burn down. You get robbed, somebody steals from you in your business, Covid happens and the government shuts down your business against your own will. You're in a place where you lose your job. I mean, somebody dies in your family, someone tells you you have a tumor, all of us are gonna experience something like that or for someone in our family. So when that happens, what do you do? You either use stress or stress uses you.

Yes.

And the way you stress is, you know, the whole phrase. They'd say, you know, when you're going through hell, keep going. If you keep going, three things happen. Number one, you discover how strong you really are. It's the only way you're going to find it is to push through it. And then each time you do it, by the way, you get stronger. Stronger. Second, you figure out who your real friends are, not your Facebook friends. Because when all hell's breaking loose, no one sticks around except real friends. And then the third thing, most important thing is it gives you like almost a little immunity to future stress because it's like a vaccination of it almost. I remember I dealt with this friend of mine, Captain Coffee was his name, and he was a pilot and, you know, young and, you know, you know, looks like, you know, top gun kind of guy. And in Vietnam, he got shot down and he got locked up for seven years in a Vietnamese prison, literally in isolation, on a floor, cuffed to the ground and upside down so that when he peed the acid would run down his back. They beat him, they interrogate him, and everything could do. And I remember this is decades later, I said to him, he was dealing with the irs, and they were. It took him three years to get his money back. Some guy when the IRS was, just got some problem about him. But it was brutal what he went through. And I was like, how do you deal with this? He goes, tony, after being with the North Vietnamese in prison, so do you think the IRS can get to me? So there's great value in that process now if you make it through those steps now, that internal certainty inside you just builds and builds and builds. And then what happens is life has got a different experience because it's some part of you goes, God's guiding me. Or, I've always found a way in the past. I'm gonna find a way again. And so you don't go through all those fear stages that make you make the wrong choices in relationships, in business or anything else. And that's part of the value of decades.

Yeah.

You know, it's like you're how old now?

42.

42. You're not the same man as you were at 32.

No.

We all think we're men when we're 20. Right. But you become a man basically in your 40s and 50s, in my experience, most people. Cause you've lived enough life, and you find if you're growing, you see the patterns you've not seen before, and it frees you.

Speaking of life, we're here in this amazing home again, a friend of yours who's built one of the biggest builders in the world. We're here in Bel Air. But you grew up a few miles from here in North Hollywood, or at least I think you were born there in North Hollywood area.

Yeah, we're in the San Gabriel Valley. Dora Zeus, out where the smog is.

But a few miles from here. You were raised or you were close by in California, and a lot of people have heard your story. You said it many times, that you're. Your mom was abusive in certain ways, although she loved you a lot. But she was abusive and you had.

You know, she used alcohol and prescription drugs.

Yeah.

When that happened, she was a different human being.

Exactly.

Unfortunately. But. But I left from the anger part in the middle of it. The anger disappeared, and I didn't need that because anger fuel will run out. And I got into the excitement of becoming more.

Let's go.

Right. And it's like, this is. This is my juice.

Yes.

Right. It's always I tell people there's, like, two types of motivation. There's willpower. There's what I call push, and I got a lot of that. I know you do, too, my friend.

That drive.

Yeah, drive, that push. That push is invaluable. But there's a limit to willpower, no matter how much you and I both have burnout.

Yeah, yeah.

But pull motivation is very different. Pull is. There's something so magnificent, you want to serve more than yourself. You want to create, you want to make it happen. Then it pulls you through those times. And pull is way more powerful than push. And push. Pull does not wear out. And so I discovered pull on that trip, and I also discovered this part of me. So I always tell people, it's like, there's Tony Robbins guy. I created him. He's always me. But I shaped and created this mfo, right? I decided who I'm here to be now, and I created it through incantations. Again, not affirmations, but saying it, feeling it, envisioning it with such intensity for hours and hours. And I didn't stop after that. I'd go on runs, and I'd do this over and over again. Your identity is the strongest force you have. The strongest force in any personality is to stay consistent with your identity. If you think, you know you're a loser, you find a way to lose. If you're Lance Armstrong and you say your core belief, your identity, not just your belief, is, I am a guy that finds the way to victory. Identity is the force that controls you. And when you enhance your identity, you enhance your whole life. Otherwise, it's like a thermostat. You set it at 68 degrees. If the temperature drops to 65, you're okay. But there's a place maybe 60 degrees, where all of a sudden the brain goes that, hey, you're supposed to be at 68 degrees. And the heaters kick on, and you got to make it better. You've been there. It's not good enough. But what people don't realize is if you think you're at 68 degrees, that's your, you know, comfort zone. That's what you've. It's not your goal, but it's what you're used to. And you get to 70, 78, 80, 88, 90 degrees. All of a sudden, in the middle of the night, your brain goes, what the hell are you doing up here? You're not a 60. You're not a 90 degree or a 68 degree, and you lose your drive, right? The heaters Stop. And if that's enough, the air conditioners come down and bring you back to where you are. So all of my work has changed the identity. If I came to you and said you don't smoke cigarettes, great. If I said to you, would you like a cigarette? No, you wouldn't say, what brand is it?

No, no, no, no.

Because you go, I'm not one of those. I'm not a smoker. That's different. That's an identity belief. Identity beliefs are the controlling force of your life.

Yes, but if you've never tasted abundance, again, you didn't taste abundance. You were living in scarcity. Emotionally, you know, maybe spiritually, financially, all these different things. You didn't have the resources. If you don't have a taste of abundance, you weren't living in this $165 million home. You weren't even coming here and visiting it. But if you can't taste it, how do you make your identity shift to become that abundance?

Proximity is power.

Yes, it is.

You have to get yourself in the environment. When I was in the banks, I would. One of the things I would do every night is I CEOs office, which I had to clean up and everything else. But I read all his documents, which totally inappropriate, but I want to know how he thought what he was doing was going on. And when I was there, he had pictures on the wall and, you know, he had this boat and he had different things there. It was like, wow, that's. That's an interesting life. That's an interesting way of being. And then gradually I got the chance to be around people where I got to coach some people that were just unbelievably successful in terms of movies, business, life. And they're much older than me, 25, 30 years older than me. And they're like, man, you helped me with this thing. I don't know how you do that. You're just a kid. But I wasn't stupid enough to thought my ego, I'm helping him was like, let me suck out of their brain everything I can. But I got in proximity. That's the first piece. And I saw. But that's not enough. You can get in proximity and go, I'll never have this. Yes, right.

And be defeated. Yeah.

The thing that saved me was when I worked for Jim Row, the advice he gave changed my whole life. He looked at me and he said, tony, here's what I want you to remember the rest of your life. You need to become more valuable. Not valuable, what you think is valuable. What serves those out there, and you got to give what people need. He says you need to find a way to add more value to people than anybody else in the marketplace. If you become more valuable, you're going to add more value, not the value you want to give the value they need, he said. You will never have to worry about money for the rest of your life.

That's a dream come true.

That's amazing, Sam.