Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - Unlock The Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today with Lewis Howes #346

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS REFERENCES TO SEXUAL ABUSE What determines your success in life? Is it talent, opportunity, fate or luck? They can all be factors, but none of them determine your destiny. What does, according to today’s guest, is your mindset. Lewis Howes is a best-selling author and host of The School Of Greatness podcast. He was recognised by the White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in America under 30. He’s also author of a brand new book, The Greatness Mindset: Unlock The Power Of Your Mind And Live Your Best Life Today. Lewis firmly believes that we all have greatness within us but he says that the main enemy of greatness is the lack of a clear, meaningful mission. He believes we can all overcome our fears, self-doubt and rewrite the stories of our past to propel us into a brighter future. He is someone that most people would consider successful but this wasn’t always the case. It wasn’t until Lewis hit his 30s – around 10 years ago – that he faced his biggest fear. For years Lewis had stayed silent and felt shameful about the fact he was sexually abused as a child. He shares the extraordinarily moving story of how he finally opened up about this, and started his journey of healing. Of course, he was scared to do so like so many of us are, when it comes to talking about deeply personal experiences. In this episode, Lewis talks beautifully about the need for us to intentionally face our fears, the importance of letting go of guilt and shame, the particular struggles that men often feel when it comes to expressing their emotions, and the incredible power of forgiveness. This was a really powerful, raw and honest conversation. I hope you enjoy listening. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore or https://fblm.supercast.com. Thanks to our sponsors: https://www.vivobarefoot.com/livemore https://www.calm.com/livemore https://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Show notes https://drchatterjee.com/346 DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

You can eat perfectly, do the perfect workouts consistently, and still feel sick. Get eight hours of sleep. You can get sunlight in the morning. Do cold and hot showers. You can do ice baths. You can do saunas. You can do meditation. You can do it all. And you can still suffer and be unhealthy if you don't learn to process the emotional and mental traumas and triggers that cause you to react in unhealthy ways. Hey guys, how you doing? Hope you're having a good week so far. My name is Dr. Rangan Chatterjee, and this is my podcast, Feel Better, Live More. What is it that you think ultimately determines your success in life? whether that be with respect to health, happiness, or in your relationships.

Is it talent, opportunity, fate, luck? Well, these factors can play a role, but none of them actually determine your destiny. What does, according to this week's guest, is your mindset. Lewis Howes is a bestselling author and host of the School of Greatness podcast. He was recognized by the White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in America under 30. He's also the author of a brand new book, The Greatness Mindset, Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today. Now, Lewis firmly believes that we all have greatness within us, but he says the main enemy of greatness is the lack of a clear, meaningful mission. Now, Lewis is certainly

someone who most people would say is very successful. But this was not always the case. In fact, it wasn't until Lewis hit his 30s, around 10 years ago, that he faced his biggest fear. For years, he had stayed silent and felt shameful about the fact that he was sexually abused as a child. And in our conversation, he shares the extraordinarily moving story of how he finally opened up about this and started his journey of healing. Of course, he was scared to do so, like so many of us are when it comes to talking about deeply personal experiences. But in this

episode, Lewis talks beautifully about the need for us to intentionally face our fears, the importance of letting go of guilt and shame, the particular struggles that men often feel when it comes to expressing their emotions, and the incredible power of forgiveness. Now, if you are someone who struggles to forgive, or if you think that something simply cannot be forgiven, I highly encourage you to stick around until the end of this conversation. It is really, really powerful. I have to say, I really appreciate how honest and how vulnerable Lewis was in this conversation. He has a quite incredible life story to share. I hope you enjoy listening.

And now, my conversation with Mr. Lewis House. I thought the best place to start was with one of your personality traits. When I watch you online, when I listen to your podcasts, one of the most endearing things is that you believe that every single person has the ability to achieve their dreams. Is that realistic? Yeah, if they believe they are worthy and deserving of achieving it and if they're willing to do what it takes.

So I believe it's possible, but that needs to happen within each person. And so I see people as a masterpiece and usually they don't see that in themselves. And I learned to see that in others because I struggled with the same problem for many years. I was very insecure, very unsure of myself, uncertain, didn't have peace in my heart, felt unsafe in the world, and just was like confused of who I am. And I think a lot of us experience that at different times.

journey of kind of overcoming insecurity, self-doubt, and learning to believe in all the parts of me, even the parts of me that I'm the most shamed of or the most afraid of or have pain around. And so learning to accept those things within me, accepting my past and being at peace with it, not saying I have to like all these things that have happened in the past, but accepting it and being at peace with it gives me permission to pursue things with a whole heart. Now, some people may look at you, Lewis, and go, hey, I get it for you, right? You are a successful sportsman. You host one of the most listened to podcasts on the planet. You're successful, right?

What has your success got to do with me and my life? I've got struggles. I've got insecurities. I've got fears. Why is your story relevant for that person? I just think I can relate to a lot of people who struggle because I struggled so much. I mean, I grew up in a household when I was eight. My brother went away to prison for four and a half years. And so growing up in a small town, I just didn't know anyone who went to prison. And here my brother went to prison. And so I wasn't allowed to have friends for four and a half years.

And I went to go visit a prison visiting room on the weekends with my family for four and a half years. And I went to go visit a prison visiting room on the weekends with my family for four and a half years. So it was a very confusing, sad, challenging time. When I was five, I experienced, I've talked about this many times, but I experienced sexual abuse when I was five. It's one of my first memories as a human being was being sexually abused by a man that I didn't know. And so that was confusing, scary, uncertain. I felt abused. I felt taken advantage of, all these different things. And then I was also just in the bottom of my class in school. So I was always in the bottom four. They used to rank us in our grade cards. I don't know if they did this in the UK, but every semester you'd get your grade card and then

they'd tell you what ranking you are with all your classmates. So I was always in the bottom four in the special needs classes and just struggled in school. So I just felt very insecure, like I had no value, no worth in school. And I thought I was dumb my entire life. And the one thing that I did have ability in that I trained myself for that I dedicated my life to was sports because I wasn't good in school. I said, I'm going to take all this aggression and energy after school into the sports field and the sports courts and to pursue a dream. And I did pretty well. And I got to the professional level in professional football in America, but I got injured in my rookie season. I broke my wrist and was in a cast for six months. So my identity, I don't have my dream anymore. I don't have the thing that I'm skilled at anymore to do

to have value to my life. And at that time, it was 2008, 2009, when the economy was crashing in the US. And I didn't have a college degree yet. I had left early to go play football. And so for a year and a half, I'm on my sister's couch with no money, credit card debt, no job, no opportunities trying to figure out, you know, what I'm going to do now.

And so I can, I feel like I can understand the feeling of being stuck, the feeling of being lonely, which is what I felt for a long time. The feeling of not being good enough, not, you know, being afraid that you don't have the skills necessary to make money or to get a job or to start something. I didn't have the confidence in myself for many years after that happened. And it took me going on a journey of really saying, okay, these things that make me feel powerless, these fears, these insecurities, these doubts that make me feel powerless, these fears, these insecurities, these doubts that make me feel powerless. They need to become my mission. They need to become the journey that I go on. And so I started, I literally around 23 years old, created a fear list. When I was sleeping on my sister's couch, I wrote down

all the things that made me feel the most insecure, the most worthless, and the things that I was afraid to do. And public speaking was one of them. Learning to salsa dance was another one. I'm happy to tell that story why that. Singing in public. Starting a business. All these things. Writing a book. These things were all scary because I didn't think I could do them.

And I didn't think I had the skills or the experience or the wisdom to be able to do them. And I just said, one by one, I'm going to go all in and train like an athlete in these fears and insecurities until these fears no longer consume or control me from taking action, from having courage. And by doing that one by one on that fear list, it allowed me to start feeling this incredible confidence in myself because I was doing the things that were so scary to me. And I was getting pretty good at them. It wasn't like I just did it so I wasn't afraid anymore. I actually became great at public speaking to where I get paid a lot of money now, where I could not speak in front of three people without stuttering and stumbling 15 years ago. But by practicing every week, humiliating myself for many, many months until I learned how to fumble my way into it, I started to get better. Same thing with salsa dancing. I could not dance to save my life.

I don't know about you, Rangan, but for me as a white boy from the Midwest, salsa dancing is not in our vocabulary or in our culture. It wasn't something we did, salsa dancing. wasn't something we did salsa dancing um and i looked completely out of place when i would enter a dance floor with a bunch of latinos and spanish speaking music and people speaking spanish everywhere i'm like ah what is going on but that uncomfortableness that insecurity that fear that i don't fit in i don't belong i'm not accepted here I'm not supposed to be here. That taking on that action and humiliating myself for many months. Again, I'm not good right away. Humiliating myself and feeling out of place, but overcoming it after six months. And then learning how to really actually be pretty decent and decent enough to be able

to dance with top people around the world over the last 15 years has given me incredible confidence and belief in myself. So for people that are doubting themselves or feel like they're stuck or they're not sure where they're heading or they feel like, oh, I'm just not getting a break or an opportunity. I felt that way for a long time because a year and a half, that happened to me. I was stuck on the couch, no money, didn't feel like any opportunities were falling my way. And that's why I had to go make the opportunities by writing down my fears and insecurities and going all in on them. Yeah, it's really, really powerful. There's so much there, Lewis, isn't there?

There's you leaning into your fear of public speaking, leading into your fear of salsa dancing, the imposter syndrome. I mean, these are universal experiences. You've experienced them. I've experienced them. Pretty much everyone listening or watching this show right now has or is currently experiencing them. Yet from the outside, at least, Lewis,

you seem to have beautifully overcome them to really make a success of your life. You definitely come across as someone who feels very calm and content and at peace with themselves, which is very magnetic when you see someone like that and hear someone like that speak. But no one would blame you, Lewis, if you hadn't got here. You've shared, I know, about the sexual abuse you experienced when you were five years old. And I don't claim at all to know what that must feel like to go through that, to have that imprinted within your body, within your mind for so many years, the shame, the secrecy.

I know you've spoken about that. I think we should unpack some of it here because I think it's very, very relevant. But nobody would have blamed you, Lewis, if you hadn't made something of your life. And you'd struggled and said, yeah, this happened to me. Yeah, you've made a conscious decision to not let that hold you back, haven't you? 100%. I mean, I didn't want anything to hold me back, but things were holding me back for a long time. In the beginning, that pain and that shame and that anger and resentment and that feeling of not being enough, not being worthy enough, it drove me to achieve success in sports and then eventually in business. It drove me.

It was the fuel that said, I'm going to prove people wrong. I'm going to, you know, get back at all the doubters. Anyone that criticized me, I'm going to show them. And I'm also going to get so, you know, successful that no one can mess with me. It's essentially a defense mechanism to protect ourselves. When something like abuse or abandonment or any type of big trauma, little trauma happens, we have different defense mechanisms. We wear masks. Some of those masks drive us to be effective, efficient, or workaholics. And other times it makes us shut down or makes us shrink. It makes us overeat. It makes us overindulge or get new addictions to cope, to deal with the pain

and numb the pain of I'm not enough. I'm not lovable. I'm not accepted. I'll never be good enough. This feeling that can be crippling. And I had kind of both of them I had you know Things that made me feel like i'm shrinking to numb the pain and other things that drove me to be more successful And every time I would accomplish success in sports or business I remember Never feeling good enough still I never I still was like kind of angry and resentful after I'd accomplished big goals and big dreams after years of hard work. And 20 minutes after it would happen, I just wasn't that happy. And I was wondering why. And so I was just like, well, maybe it's not big enough. I need bigger goals and bigger

dreams. And that would happen for years. And I was just like, okay, I just got to keep going for more and more and more. And this fuel that was pushing me to run away from my past, essentially, to not talk about the past, to numb it, to push that pain as far back behind me as I could, it just kept coming after me. It wasn't until I turned around and faced it and started to really look at it and really have a conversation in a weird way with myself, who was still wounded as a five-year-old, who was still traumatized as an eight-year-old, who was still confused as a teenage boy going through puberty and dealing with breakups and

heartaches, who was sad at 22, breaking my wrist and losing my identity, when I never faced these things, I actually finally turned around and faced those painful memories and painful moments and painful experiences. Because I don't know if this is the same way for you as a man in the UK growing up. The culture for me growing up in America was never to talk about your shame, your challenges, your pain, your past, your heartaches. It was to rub dirt on the wound, wipe your hands off, and keep moving forward. It's not to talk about it because when you talked about and showed any emotion in school or in sports, it was almost like you were laughed at, made fun of, picked on, pushed out of the friend circle, and a little bit bullied. And so as kids, we want to be accepted.

We want to fit in. We want to belong. And so we mold and mimic to be able to be safe in a friend group or a sports team or whatever, our social circle. So I never felt, and I don't blame these kids. We're all just trying to figure it out. But I never felt safe to communicate how I truly felt. And imagine going your whole life without feeling safe internally.

It's going to do things to your health. As you know, as a doctor, it's going to hurt your health when you're constantly in chronic stress, chronic anxiety, chronic rumination, chronic self-criticism. It's going to affect your nervous system. it's going to affect your nervous system it's going to affect your your your chemical makeup it's going to affect your brain your heart your emotions and everything and it's going to affect the way you see the world and we're going to respond and react in certain ways that are not as useful to our inner peace to harmony, and to our greatness. When we live in a state of trauma from the past, when we hold on to it, when we're unable to reveal it in a safe way. And so for me,

I've had to learn how to unwire and unwind a lot of that, those lessons and that way of thinking and living. And it started And the process started 10 years ago when I started the School of Greatness show. I was like, man, I'm accomplishing all this success. I'm making money. I've got awards and accolades. I'm building a following. But why is every relationship in my life breaking down?

Why is this business partnership I had breaking down? Why is this intimate relationship not working? Why am I reactive in life? Why am I triggered so easily? Why when someone can like push a button on my, in my wounds, I just, ah, I react. Why is that? And I realized I was the common denominator in every one of these relationships. So there had to be something where I needed to finally take a look at. But in my 20s, I thought like, you know, I have it figured out and there's nothing wrong with me and don't judge me and don't criticize me. You know, I had to protect myself because I was so insecure. I was so, I lacked confidence. I was wounded. I was a wounded little boy inside of a man's body still. And it wasn't until 10 years ago when I started the journey of healing. And

it's been a constant journey it's been up and down it's not like this perfect straight line of getting to healing and wholeness or whatever we're trying to get to but it's it's been a beautiful journey of learning then applying what i learned trying stuff you know growth, making some mistakes, relearning stuff to get to the point where I'm at now. Yeah, so powerful, especially someone as successful as you, Lewis, sharing things like this, being a man. I think it's very, very powerful. A lot of things you've shared over the years about your own journey. You mentioned what was it like for me growing up in the UK. I think it's very similar. Men don't really share stuff like this.

You just get on with it. I think this is why I'm so drawn to your story, because I know you talk a lot about shame and secrecy and how when you open up, the story no longer has the power over you. We don't realize, do we, how much these stories get wired in as children. And then as adults, we're unconsciously just playing out this wiring that we didn't even know was in there. And my dad's whole philosophy coming to the UK, Lewis, was when there's racism, when there's

discrimination, you don't mention anything. You just put your head down, you get on with it. Put your head down and you get on with it. You don't cause a fuss. So I absorb that. Yeah. I mean, anytime there is a shame that we have or a frustration or hurt and we don't address it, it stays with us in some way. So if you put your head down and you keep moving forward, you'll keep getting results, but it doesn't mean that thing's going to go away. It's going to keep like popping up and kind of nagging at you every once in a while. It's just going to be a reminder where you see something unjust in the future, and it's going to remind you of that thing that you haven't addressed yet. And so I definitely resonate with it because for 25 years, almost every day I thought about

the moment I was sexually abused. I tried to erase it. I tried to put it away. I tried to just put my head down and keep moving forward and having fun as a kid or whatever. But it really affected me. And as an adult, it affected me as well. Because as my brain started to mature and I started to learn more, and I realized, oh, wow, this was actually something that was not

okay in a major way. And I had to keep facing it. I had to keep like thinking about it and realizing, oh, wow, this is, you know, this is frustrating, but let me not talk about it because I'm so ashamed of it. Let me not unpack it because it's so hurtful. It's so painful. And that drove me. Again, I just focused. I worked hard. I did all the right things, I guess. But it still drove me from a wound, from a pain. And it took me 25 years until I started to open up about it. This was 10 years ago. And it was one of the scariest things for me to kind of open up about that. Because I thought if people knew this about me, this shame, this,

this insecurity I had, this, this experience that I had, that I went through that no one would like me, no one would accept me. No one would love me. And I'd be unlovable for the rest of my life. That was the story that I kept telling myself because at the time, 10 years ago, I'd never seen, specifically, I'd never seen athletes or businessmen talk about ever being sexually abused or anything like that. It was never talked about in culture, on TV.

I never saw articles about this anywhere. It's just people didn't talk about it. And I think there's been, the last, you know, five, seven years, more men opening up about just mental health challenges, depression, sexual abuse, different challenges they've gone through, and they're starting to open up about it. And you're seeing them create freedom and peace in their heart when they process it, when they reveal it. I think it's just a cultural thing. My previous book, The Mask of Masculinity, I would go around and do a tour and I'd have rooms of about 50% men and women

in the book tour. And say there's 500 people in the room and I would ask the women in the room, I'd say, raise your hand if once a week you get together with a girlfriend, girlfriends, your mom, your sister, and you talk about your insecurities, your pain, your problems, your challenges, maybe you talk about your insecurities, your pain, your problems,

your challenges, maybe your body issues that you're dealing with, your relationship challenges. If you do this once a week with a girlfriend or girlfriends, almost every hand, and I say, keep your hands up, ladies. If you do this pretty much every day, you're on the phone with a girlfriend, you're having lunch, tea, coffee, and you're talking about it. Almost all of them left, kept their hands up and kind of laughed, right? And I said, OK, for the men in the room, raise your hand if once a month you get together with another male friend, once a month, and you talk about your insecurities, your body issues, your fears, your shames, your doubts, your relationship issues. Raise your hand if you do this once a month.

And there would typically be one or two guys in the room that would raise their hand out of hundreds and i'd say kind of jokingly are you guys part of a Almost mandatory church group that gets together as a men's group and does this and they all kind of laugh. Oh, yeah And I say okay Men raise your hand if you get together once a year With a guy friend or guy friends and talk about this. And again, only a couple of hands would go up. And I'd talk to the ladies. I'd go back to the ladies and I'd say, ladies, what would it feel like if you only got to share what you

were dealing with once a month and you only had one moment once a month to talk about it, how to make you feel? They were like, I would feel like I'm going crazy. I'd be like holding it, bottling in all these energy. I couldn't, I wouldn't, I'd just be going crazy. I couldn't do it. And I say, what would it feel like if you could only do it once a year? And they're like, there's no way, there's no way it's not possible. And I say, imagine a lifetime, never talking about these things. What would you do? And ladies would say, you know, I'd probably, I just couldn't live. I'd probably kill myself. It'd be unbearable. You know, all these kinds of words. And I'm like, well, imagine again, this is what a lot of men are faced with.

And I'm not saying it's every human is responsible for their own feelings and actions and they got to get the courage to talk about these things. But when they're shamed constantly as kids, made fun of, made wrong, it's not a safe environment to have these conversations with guy friends. And they don't feel they can do it with their intimate partners because maybe they're not comfortable opening up yet. It's just a hard thing to do. And again, every man is responsible for the actions they make in the world. But when they feel suffocated, trapped emotionally, and they are unable to communicate

or express their feelings in a safe environment without being made wrong and shamed, it's just going to be hard to do. And when I had that conversation, I feel like those women understood. They're like, wow, I don't know how men do it then because i couldn't do i couldn't go a month without talking about these things let alone years and that's why you know the stats you know more men commit suicide than women more men get go to

prison than women and when men have pain trapped inside of them it can be a big trauma or little trauma and it doesn't matter the level of pain or the level of abuse. We still have to process whatever it is we're experiencing and go through. And if we don't process it, it stays with us, and it starts to affect us emotionally. You start to get chest pains. You start to have back pains. You start to get throat closed up. When we suppress our emotions, the body keeps the score, as the book says. So I think our goal, you know, as all human beings, but men specifically, is to learn how to face the pain and create safe environments for us to heal. Because as you know, and what you see on the news, a lot of the pain

caused in the world, the mass shootings, the political unrest, the anger in the world, a lot of it comes from men. And I believe a lot of those men have not healed yet. They have pain, they have wounds inside of them, and therefore they are using that anger to hurt the world or hurt others or hurt their spouses and things like that because of unresolved trauma, because of unresolved pain and a wound that has caused them to react and defend or attack when they feel hurt or under attack. And again, I'm not saying any of this is okay. Any of these actions are not okay.

But what I am saying is I can understand where that pain is coming from because I've experienced a lot of that pain. I know you've experienced it and everyone's experienced it. But we must learn to face it and process it in a healthy way if we want to be great. Yeah, it's not excusing the behavior necessarily.

It's trying to understand the behavior. It's trying to get to the root cause of it. And my own journey as a Dr. Lewis has very much ended up currently 21 years in that mindset, the way we think about the world, the way we approach the world, that's where it all starts. That's why I love your work. That's why I think the book you've written is so great because a lot of our behaviors, you know, we could talk about food and exercise and sleep and stress and do all these things. And sure, I'm passionate about that. I've written

about it. I'll talk to patients about it. But I've come to the realization that these are usually downstream consequences of the way we view the world, the internal stress that we carry. This is why I believe many people can't make lifestyle change stick because they're trying to use willpower and motivation for a few weeks, for a few months. But ultimately, the behavior there is serving a much bigger goal. It's helping you numb that emotional pain inside, right? Right. I've experienced this where you can work out, do the perfect workouts consistently every day

and train your body. You can eat perfectly. You can eat healthy food perfectly, cut out sugar, gluten, whatever, and eat clean vegetables, lean meat every day, under 2,000 calories a day, and no snacking, no sugar. You can get eight hours of sleep. You can get sunlight in the morning. You can do cold and hot showers. You can do ice baths. You can do saunas. You can do meditation. You can do it all. And you can still suffer and be unhealthy if you don't learn to process the emotional

and mental traumas and triggers that cause you to react in unhealthy ways. So you could do all those things and still feel sick and still feel hurt and still be held back and feel unsafe and insecure. And that's why. And I've experienced that because I did all those things. I worked out, I ate well, I slept well, I tried to get eight hours of sleep, all these different things. But when your thoughts are ruminating and you're unable to sleep and your emotions are triggered when someone cuts you off in the street or someone says something about

you you don't like and you try to defend yourself, there's something inside of you that is wounded still. There was a moment that opened a wound inside of us emotionally that causes us then to react later in life and as adults. And every time we react, it doesn't make us wrong. It's just an awareness that someone pushed a button, an emotional trigger, where is that a trigger coming from? If that wound never opened in the first place when we were 5, 10, 20, whatever it is, we wouldn't be reactive. If we understood how to give that wound the time to heal and create different meaning around it. And it's not masking it and just saying, oh, well, I'm just going to have a happy life anyways. That's called a spiritual bypass. That's not really processing the pain authentically.

That's just wiping it away, sweeping it under the rug. That doesn't work either. It's feeling the range of emotions, processing it, and really creating new meaning around it. And figuring out how can I solve this in the future so that it doesn't happen? How can I make sure I don't abandon myself, that I speak up the next time or that I do something or I use a little more courage the next time or I just remove myself from these situations or whatever it might be so that it's not as hurtful in the future when things happen. Because as you know, remarks, whether they're intentional or unintentional, they're going to keep happening to me for whatever is going to happen to me, for you, for everyone. We're not going to escape.

And the world is never going to be perfect. And people are going to do things that are intentionally harmful and unintentionally harmful. It's how we react and respond to them and how we create meaning around those things. As I'm sure you've read or you're aware of Man's Search for Meaning. It's one of my favorite books by Viktor Frankl. Again, here's a man who went through one of the most horrific experiences of life, being in the Holocaust and experiencing death and extreme harm around him daily. And yet he lived a life of meaning and purpose and joy and love and peace after he got out. And again, it's about the meaning we place.

And it's about allowing yourself to face it. It's about going back to the place mentally, emotionally, or physically, facing it and allowing yourself to find peace and forgiveness in that state. Again, not needing to forgive certain people that have done harm, but forgiving yourself for holding on to the pain. Yeah. Just taking a quick break to give a shout out to AG1, one of the sponsors of today's show. Now, if you're looking for something at this time of year to kickstart your health, I'd highly recommend that you consider AG1. AG1 has been in my own life for

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preventive medicine, genetics, and biochemistry. I talk to them regularly and I'm really impressed with their commitment to making a top quality product. Until the end of January, AG1 are giving a limited time offer. Usually, they offer my listeners a one-year supply of vitamin D and K2 and five free travel packs with their first order. But until the end of January, they are doubling the five free travel packs to 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer. All you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. That's drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Your new book is all about achieving greatness, right? And you write in the book how greatness only really begins once you decide to heal the pain and trauma of the past. And you've touched on that already

throughout this conversation that you have that typical story, Lewis, where you were in your 20s, maybe your 30s, you're crushing life. Crushing. From the outside, people would think- I was dominating. Yeah. Lewis Howes is a success, right? But there's external success and internal struggle. And I often think about energy these days, and what's the energy behind a certain behavior? You know, it's the drive to do well coming from a place of lack. You know, I'm not going to let anyone ever do something to me again. So I'm going to get strong. I'm going to make myself big. I'm going to be a great sportsman,

right? Or is the energy coming from a place of abundance and love where you already feel whole? Because, I don't know, when I hear your story, Lewis, I was thinking about Michael Jordan in The Last Dance. What really struck me watching that was that, yes, he was the greatest. He's widely considered, possibly, arguably, the greatest basketball player of all time. Certainly one of the greatest, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time, certainly one of the greatest, right? And it seemed throughout that documentary that what was pushing him was a feeling of lack, was an internal pain. And I often wonder with some of these high performers, and of course, I don't know his full story, but sometimes I wonder, was the success worth it? Was it worth the cost?

On the outside or the accolades, I don't mean with Michael Jordan, I mean with many high performers. A lot of the time we find that the energy driving it is a place of lack, not a place of love and fullness. And you also had, I think think elements of that story early on in your life where you're achieving the success but the energy behind it isn't one that's going to make you happy and give you that inner peace is it yeah I mean it's interesting when I interviewed Kobe before he passed I asked him what greatness was to him and he he talked about, you know, being in a place where you give your ultimate best at the thing you're doing so that you inspire others to give their best. And then they inspire others to give their best. So it wasn't about like win at all costs. It was about giving your best in the endeavor you're doing, but being an inspiration,

a symbol of greatness for people in your life or anyone that's a witness the endeavor you're doing, but being an inspiration, a symbol of greatness for people in your life or anyone that's a witness of what you're doing so that they want to be a symbol for the people in their life and they want to impact people in their life. It's about the ripple effect. Yeah. And it wasn't about like be number one and win at everything. everything that's greatness um and if interesting story about kobe he told me that his first summer he did like a summer league of basketball when he was like 12 or 13 and he didn't score one point the entire summer and like every game there was not one time he scored and he mentioned that his his parents said hey, we love you either way, whether you score every point or no points, we still love you. And he said them saying that gave him permission to then go out and fail and go out and try harder and go out and do it from a place of love as opposed to I'm not enough.

Let me go prove I'm enough. And again, there's two different paths. There's the I'm not enough. Let me go get big, fast, And again, there's two different paths. There's the I'm not enough. Let me go get big, fast, strong, and do whatever it takes to win. And then when you win, you might feel enough for a moment until you don't. Because as the late Wayne Dyer used to say, he used to give this analogy. I was a big Wayne Dyer fan. Where he would say, when you have an orange and you squeeze the orange,

what comes out of the orange is orange juice because that's what's inside the orange. When you squeeze it, orange juice comes out because that's what's inside. When you apply pressure to a human being and you squeeze the human and you put pressure through them and it's adversity, a challenge, life pressures, what comes out of the human is what's inside of the human being. And that might be pain, anger, resentment, fear, a drive to be right, make people wrong. And that's what you see people when there's pressure. You see them react or respond in different ways based on what's inside of them emotionally,

mentally, spiritually. And so that's why we must cultivate what's inside of us to be an environment of peace, harmony, love, and an environment of a drive from a sustainable energy, which is abundance, not from fear, insecurity, or lack. And when we can cultivate that more consistently, again, we're all human beings and no one's perfect here, but when we can do that more consistently, we show up better when life happens, when adversity happens,

when we have sickness in our family that we're facing and it's fairly sad and it's hard to deal with, when we have a job loss that we're dealing with, a transition, economy crisis, a crash in the market, and we deal with challenges of life, how we react is based on what's inside of us. And so that's why we must face the things inside of us, heal, create new meaning around these memories

that cause us to hurt ourselves and others so that we can have more peace moving forward. Yeah, really powerful. That orange analogy is fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. What a privilege to have interviewed Kobe Bryant before he died. A really, really powerful conversation. Just a couple of things on that, Lewis, as you were sharing that story. Number one, I love what you said about what his parents said to him, that we don't mind whether you score or you don't score, we still love you. And as a parent myself, I've been a dad now for 12 years, as someone, and I've shared this story in my last book and many times on the show, as a child this story in my last book and many times on the show as a child who really felt, again, I'm not putting blame on my parents this, but I, for whatever reason, took on the belief that I was only loved when I was top of the class, when I had full marks, when I was the straight A student,

right? So I took that belief into adulthood and it has caused me a lot of problems for sure. A lot of internal pain. Yes, on the outside, it's driven a lot of success. Results. Yeah. But at a huge internal cost, again, I feel I've repaired a lot of that now. And I really do feel the sense of calmness and contentment. But as a parent, because often as parents, we try to overcorrect, you know, we perceive what happened to us and go, right, that's not going to happen to my child. And I do wonder sometimes, am I overcorrecting with my own kids? But one thing I do try and do with them is I want them to know that I love them irrespective of what grades they get,

what they do, whether they've been kind, whether they've not been kind. I will always love them. And I want them to know that. And just hearing the impact that had on Kobe, I think was really very powerful for me to hear. It gives me confidence that hopefully I am doing the right thing, or of course, only time will tell. But the other thing, Lewis, that came up for me is, will tell. But the other thing, Lewis, that came up for me is you were talking about his definition of greatness and that it's about inspiring other people, right? And I agree with that, but there's a slight clash in my head. Let's say Michael Jordan, for example. There's no question Michael Jordan has inspired millions of people over the last few decades, right?

So he's ticked off the inspiration box because of his phenomenal play. Even me as a non-basketball fan was inspired by watching him as a kid, thinking, wow, that's ridiculous what he can do, right? But if, and again, this is an if, but if he has internal pain and internal struggles that have driven him, yes, he's inspiring people. Is that still greatness? I just think it's not the highest level of greatness. I think your results are great. Your success is great. But if we as human beings still suffer, then we still have to do work on ourselves. And we've still got to take a look at why

we suffer. I don't think greatness is internal suffering. I don't think that's a part of it. Like external results and internal suffering, I feel like it's the harmony you have within yourself, which I think is the hardest thing to do is to face yourself. Face your insecurities, your shames, your doubts, your pains, things that people have done to you, things that you've done to people that were not okay, and facing it all. No one really likes that.

It's not a fun journey. It's not like, oh, I get to go do this today and face the darkest parts of me. That's not enjoyable. But I think that work, that intention, that reflection, the integration of healing daily that it takes to cultivate more peace. And again, I'm a human being. So I have challenges and struggles and get flustered every now and then too.

But it's the constant work of reminding myself and improving, which I think is more helpful and useful. I lived in a big high-rise building a few years ago here in LA. And a lot of successful people in this building, a lot of celebrities and famous people and people with a lot of money. And during COVID, there was a guy who was worth a half a billion dollars who jumped out of the building, committed suicide. It was the day after Father's Day.

And I'm not trying to assume I know what happened or connecting the dots or anything, but it was the day after Father's Day. He didn't have a good relationship with his son. His son wasn't in his life. And he had all the money in the world, but it didn't seem like he had love in his life and he had all the money in the world but it didn't seem like he had love in his heart with he was alone he was single you know all these different things so again i'm not i don't know what caused it yeah but there was a lot of underlying things that oh that's interesting that might have influenced it and there might be some other stuff that he and dealt with internally that caused them to jump.

And again, you know, I just think when people hurt themselves or want to hurt themselves, it's because they are hurt inside and they don't know how to deal with it. Yeah. And they don't know how to face it. And so they hurt themselves through being an alcoholic or drugs or cutting themselves or hitting themselves or causing themselves to get in physical harm, getting in fights or wanting to commit suicide. And there's a way to heal that is extremely scary for so many people. And so I get it because it took me so long to start the process. And you feel like You're going to die when you face these things. It feels like

How could I ever say this me talking to a group of people about being sexually abused for the first time? I thought my life was over. I thought These people are gonna hate me. No one's gonna love me They're gonna kick me like I just thought like my life was over and I wasn't going to make any money anymore. My business is going to fail because now people really know this about me. I'm going to be kicked out of society. That's just like where my, my thoughts went. It just was like, uh, you don't feel safe. And so it's one of the scariest things to do to, to reveal past pains. And I'm not saying you need to do this publicly, but finding a safe space to do it,

a safe person to talk to, or someone confidential to talk to, I think is important. And it's one of the elements of the greatness mindset. And I'm not sure if I got you a physical hard copy over there, but on page 201, I give a graphic in the book, and I'm happy to explain it. It's kind of like an assessment. This is to ask yourself and to reflect, are you living in a powerless mindset state of being, or are you more in the greatness mindset? So this is a way for you to reflect and just ask

yourself, you don't have to tell anyone, but just to think about yourself, am I more powerless right now or am I more in greatness? And it doesn't mean you're bad and wrong if you are in a powerless state. It doesn't mean you can't be effective. It doesn't mean you can't get results in your life and get a relationship and all these things. It just means that there are certain things that still have power over you from being more effective, from having more joy, more love, more peace, more harmony, and therefore attracting more of what you want in your life,

creating and manifesting more of what you want in your life, creating and manifesting more of what you want in your life. So a powerless mindset is someone that lacks a meaningful mission. And I believe the enemy of greatness is lacking a meaningful mission. There's nothing more dangerous than a man without a mission, a wandering man who's just susceptible to all of life's desires, pleasures, and anything that could pull him away from something intentional. So lacking a meaningful mission just means you're not clear on what you want. And when you're not clear, you're in a state of confusion. And we can have transitions. We can have off seasons. We can have seasons of life where we're in recovery. We are in discovery.

But just be clear that this is a season of recovery and discovery and figuring things out. But that's what you're clear on for that mission. Number two is you're controlled by fear. Again, fear is going to happen. But when it controls us, we are in a powerless state. So we must learn how to face and embrace it and manage and work with fear. But not let it control us.

Number three is crippled by self-doubt. This is something that held me back for many years. This was the whole start of the school of greatness was to figure out how I can overcome self-doubt. Because I was successful, but I still doubted myself. And that's what hurt me and caused me to be insecure. Second guess, people please. I was an extreme people pleaser

because I was crippled by self-doubt. Number four, conceals past pains. I think there's 20,000 plus books on mindset and success. If you go on Amazon, you'll see 20,000 different books. Most of them talk about discipline, willpower, which you mentioned, hard work, grit, all these things that we think of with success. But I don't know many of them that talk about revealing past pains and healing. And I just think that is everything.

You know, you can teach people how to work hard, set goals, show up on time, be consistent, but it's so much harder to deal with the stuff inside of us that is messy and scary. And I just think that's what gives us peace and freedom. So concealing past pains, it doesn't mean you're bad or wrong. It just means you're more powerless because you're concealing something. You're afraid that if someone knows this about you, they won't accept you or love you. But typically, it's because you don't accept and fully love yourself. And so that's what you're most afraid of.

The fifth thing is defined by the opinions of others. Again, this was something that crippled me for years. I wasn't afraid of failure or success because I knew failure was the path to success. And I wanted to be successful, but I was afraid by the opinions of others. So I would people-please. I would get defensive any time someone left criticism.

I would say yes to everyone because I wanted people to like me, and it caused me to feel overwhelmed, stressed, and I would abandon myself. And the sixth thing is drifting towards complacency. towards complacency. I just think you're more powerless when you're not in a state of trying to grow, learn, or create something to help others. And so it's just asking yourself, do I have any of these six things that come up from time to time or daily? And it doesn't make you wrong or bad because I've had all of these at different times in my life and I was still effective in certain areas, but I wasn't feeling the way I wanted to feel when I was effective. The greatness mindset is driven by a meaningful mission. And Rangan, for me, I have a one sentence meaningful mission that guides me. It directs me on which direction to go. It helps me make clearer decisions. It gives me more focus. The greatness mindset is having a clear, meaningful mission and driven by that.

Turning fears into confidence. We talked about that a little bit earlier about how I created a list, a fear list. And I went all in on these fears until the fears went away, until they disappeared. And we all are going to face fears at different times and at different seasons. I'm not a father yet, Rangan, so I'm assuming when I am a father, I'm going to have to face new fears, new insecurities, new uncertainties. What do I do here? I don't know. And so I'm going to always need to face new fears at different seasons of life. And we have to turn those into confidence. That's greatness. Overcoming self-doubt. Again, same thing.

Not being crippled by it, but overcoming it by facing it. Healing past pain. I believe this is greatness. When you can realize that there are some wounds, there's some hurts, there's some things that have happened that have affected you, that has become a belief for you, a story, a narrative for you, and you've allowed that to run your life in certain ways. We haven't healed. And so as a doctor, you would never tell someone who breaks an arm to just go out there and start using their arm again. You would tell them,

you need to heal that. You need to put a cast on it. You need to set the bone. You need to just lay around and relax for a while. You need to not work. You need to rest. You need to put a cast on it. You need to set the bone. You need to like just lay around and relax for a while. You need to not work. You need to rest. You need to recover. Let the body heal. Let your mind heal. And then it's going to take some time because it's going to hurt once you get the cast off.

You have to get your elbow, your wrist back on. It's going to take some rehab. You're going to need three months, six months. For me, it took a year and a half of rehab to get my wrist and my elbow because they put me a bone graft. They took a bone from my hip, put it in my wrist, and I was in a 90-degree angle like this in the cast for six months. So I couldn't straighten my elbow because it was in this position, 90 degrees, for six

months. The elbow was painful, and that's not what I broke. I broke my wrist. It took a year and a half until I could just get like minimal function. And so you're not going to prescribe me, you know what, go out there and just start like hammering away on the weights and doing pull-ups right away. And just like using your wrist within the first year, you're going to say you need to heal. But a lot of times we experience emotional wounds, psychological wounds, spiritual wounds, and we just get right back on the horse the next day. And we push through

the wound and it never fully heals. And that wound is a trigger for us forever. And again, you would never prescribe someone to go out there on a broken leg and start running a marathon the next day. That would be bad advice and you'd lose your, your, you know, license probably as a doctor, but we prescribe this all the time with our emotional wounds. And that is not greatness. We must heal past wounds, create a healthy identity. I think a lot of us rank, and I don't know if this is a, uh, something that happens in the UK, but if you would have taken a voice recorder and you could hear my internal dialogue for a lot of the years that I've lived before the last 10 years, and you could have voice recorded what I said to myself, you're such an idiot. You're a dummy. You're never going to amount to anything.

You're such a loser. You're worthless. You're an idiot. If you would have heard this over and over again, you would have recorded it and you would have heard this over and over again, you would have recorded it. And you would have played it in a loudspeaker on the streets of your city. They'd probably be like, what is wrong with this guy? We got to send him to a mental institution, right? A hospital.

This guy needs help. And imagine if you'd say these things to your partner, your spouse, your parents, your friends, your teachers. You'd speak to them the way we speak to ourselves sometimes. No one would want to be your friend. No one. They'd be like, don't speak to me this way. Don't treat me this way. But for whatever reason, human beings tend to treat ourselves so horribly to ourselves and say the meanest, nastiest things on repeat. That is an unhealthy identity.

That is not greatness. And so creating a healthy identity is learning to be a better positive self-coach as opposed to a negative critic. Give yourself feedback, but be kind to yourself. So creating a healthy identity. And then the sixth thing is taking action with a game plan. For me, those are the elements of greatness.

Those are the things that we all get to work on and practice consistently. These are not easy things. These are not things that just happen overnight. It takes practice. It takes time. It takes having tools. And that's why I wrote The Greatest Mindset because I wrote this for me 10 years ago when I was stuck struggling in breakdown after breakdown in transition trying to figure out who am I what am I supposed to do I've been successful but I feel like I have no purpose and I feel like I have no love in my heart and I have no peace and I'm in constant breakdown so I wrote this for me for the you know 10 year old 21 year old 30 year old

and current self to have the tools I need to have peace. And I think your acknowledgement at the start of the book really reflects that. You know, I dedicate this book to my younger self for having the courage to carry me through pain, my current self for facing my shame and learning how to heal, and to my future self, because the journey to greatness has only just begun. A very, very powerful acknowledgement right at the start of the book really speaks to everything you've just been talking about. You, of course, mentioned a meaningful mission. You said you can say yours in one sentence. What is your meaningful mission? Yeah, mine is to serve and impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. And it's clear.

It's one sentence. It's one direction. And I'm not beholden to a certain mechanism. Again, I didn't say my goal is to be the number one podcaster in the world. It is to serve 100 million lives weekly. So I'm striving to get to that place to be able to reach and serve in 100 million lives weekly Which allows me to again the mechanisms can evolve and change but the mission

Is the same and it's clear and that may evolve that may change It doesn't mean I have to be stuck with this mission for the rest of my life It's just the season of life that i'm in that's the mission that i'm on when I was on my sister's couch It was just how do I make enough money to get, that's the mission that I'm on. When I was on my sister's couch, it was just how do I make enough money to get off my sister's couch? I couldn't think beyond that. I was just like, how do I be a grownup? Let me figure this out.

Let me overcome fears. That's the season and the mission that I was in. And then once I was overcoming that, then I was able to see farther and say, okay, what's my new mission? I'm gonna transition. Okay, great. And I think a lot of people aren't clear

on their meaningful mission. They know like, oh, I've got this job that I want to do, or I've got this idea, or I've got this career path, or I want to be in a relationship. Okay, but what is the meaning of it? Yeah. What is the purpose of it? And just, this allows you to get clearer

on scheduling your time, to get clearer on what you say yes and no to. Because if I, without a meaningful mission, then I'm just like, oh, there's so many projects I want to do, I want to do them all. Okay, great. But diluted efforts get diluted results, as my friend Rory Vaden says.

And so we don't want to dilute everything. You can do that. And if that's the life you want to live, there's nothing wrong with that, but it's probably not going to be the most impactful on optimizing something. So it just depends on what you want. A couple of really important things you've just touched on, Lewis, which I'd love to just respond to. One is the seasons of life. I think that is so important for people to really take a minute to sit with. Because I think sometimes we hear people on podcasts or someone that people look up to say something and think that that has to apply to us at this moment in life and in every moment in life.

But as you so beautifully put, life changes. Your goals change. I think it's a really nice way to think about it. your goals change that i think it's a really nice way to think about it i'm thinking about maybe someone who's listening to the show at the moment who maybe is a mother of children and at the moment part of their meaningful mission may well be different from when their kids have left home in five years yes you know exactly because it's a different season in our life i thought that was really important but also what you said about your mission and the mission doesn't really get lost in the mechanism of delivery, right? You can be serving that mission through your books, through your podcast, through some social media

posts. Maybe you're going to go on a book tour and talk to people. You've got multiple delivery mechanisms for that mission, right? And I was thinking when you're going to go on a book tour and talk to people. You've got multiple delivery mechanisms for that mission, right? And I was thinking when you're talking about someone with that job, well, the job is a mechanism, right? It's a delivery mechanism, but what sits higher than what you're actually doing? That's the point, isn't it? Because then that insulates you in case you ever lose that job or if you retire or whatever that's when it can get problematic when it's all in on that job whereas if the job is serving a higher mission that's the message i get from from that chapter in the book would you agree with that

100 yeah and again we can't always control outside forces or factors. You might get lost from your job. And then if you put your whole identity around a career as opposed to a mission, let's say you're a graphic designer and you put your identity into the career that you're at and you have a job and they cut you for whatever reason and they let you go, it's going to be a lot more painful if your mission is the job versus I want to be the best designer and I want to create inspiring designs in this industry. Okay, cool. Then you can go to a different mechanism after that. It doesn't mean it may not be challenging and painful and stressful

time, but at least your whole identity is not shattered around one thing. You put it into your effort, you put it into your attitude, your energy, your creativity, your generosity towards the thing you're looking to create in the world. I think that sets you up for more success. All right, let's go to a thought experiment then, Lewis, which just came to me. Give it to me. Before we get back to this week's episode, I just wanted to let you know that I am doing my very first national UK theatre tour. I am planning a really special evening where I share how you can break free from the habits that are holding you back and make meaningful changes in your life

that truly last. It is called the Thrive Tour. Be the architect of your health and happiness. So many people tell me that health feels really complicated, but it really doesn't need to be. In my live event, I'm going to simplify health and together we're going to learn the skill of happiness, the secrets to optimal health, how to break free from the habits that are holding you back in your life. And I'm going to teach you how to make changes that actually last. Sound good? All you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash tour. And I can't wait to see you there.

This episode is also brought to you by the Three Question Journal, the journal that I designed and created in partnership with Intelligent Change. Now, journaling is something that I've been recommending to my patients for years. It can help improve sleep, lead to better decision making, and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. It's also been shown to decrease emotional stress, make it easier to turn new behaviours into long-term habits, and improve our relationships. There are, of course, many different ways to journal, and as with most things, it's important that you find the method that works best for you. One method that you may want to consider is the one that I outline in the three-question journal. In it, you will find a really simple and structured way

of answering the three most impactful questions I believe that we can all ask ourselves every morning and every evening. Answering these questions will take you less than five minutes, but the practice of answering them regularly will be transformative. Since the journal was published in January, I have received hundreds of messages

from people telling me how much it has helped them and how much more in control of their lives they now feel. Now, if you already have a journal or you don't actually want to buy a journal, that is completely fine. I go through in detail all of the questions within the three-question journal completely free on episode 413 of this podcast. But if you are keen to check it out, all you have to do is go to drchatterjee.com forward slash journal or click on the link in your podcast app. Okay, so you've got your mission. You want to impact these 100 million people every week. Of course, being as successful as you are,

you have mechanisms by which you can reach a lot of people each week. Now, let's imagine overnight, podcasting disappeared, right? Social media disappeared, YouTube disappeared, right? Social media disappeared, YouTube disappeared, right? So a lot of these delivery mechanisms you currently rely on to meet your meaningful mission, they vanish. What do you do like tomorrow? How do you then approach this mission when all these things that you've relied on no longer exist? Yeah, I mean, if that was the case, it would have to be, I would try to see if there's other mechanisms that could reach masses of people. So is that TV?

Is that newspapers? Is that magazine? I would just look for other outlets. Is that WhatsApp? I don't know. I would just look for other outlets. If all those went away and there was no way to reach masses of people in short periods of time for whatever reason, then my mission would evolve into changing the number.

Yeah. And it always starts with one. So even though my mission is to serve a hundred million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life, like if this reaches one person, this book, and you know, it's, it's going to reach a lot of people, but if it reaches one and it impacts them, I'm also in my mission. I'm also living in my mission of service, of impacting one person to improve the quality of their life. And so that is still important. My mission. And that doesn't mean I've failed if only one person a day that I'm in service to. The milestone or the end mission would be to get to 100 million lives. That allows me to think creatively and get out of my comfort zone. That allows me to say yes and no to things that could

support me getting there faster. That allows me to use my time more wisely to create media, content, and say yes or no to things that could reach more people because that's the goal if the ability wasn't able to reach more people that wasn't available i could still have that mission in place that i want to reach 100 million lives every week but maybe i'm only reaching 10 a week i'm still not going to beat myself up because i'm in service and i think that's what we got to look at. And here's an interesting concept for you. It's a great example for you. I wanted to be an Olympian. I wanted to go to the Olympics. My entire life, I wanted to do this.

And when I got injured playing football, I was in my cast living on my sister's couch. And during this time, the 2008 Summer Olympics was on during this time. So I'm kind of down and out. I'm kind of like, you know, a little depressed because I realized my dream of playing football is probably over. And I was in denial for a little bit because I thought, oh, I'm going to heal up in six weeks, come back and train for the next season. But life happened and it took me six months in a cast and another year to recover. But I'm watching the Olympics in 2008 and I see this sport that I'd never seen before ever. And I'd watched every sport, but the sport came on in the Olympics at like 3 a.m. called team handball. And it's pretty much unknown in the U.S.

It's like water polo, but on a basketball court with no water is kind of how it looks like. And it's not that big in USA or the UK, but it's big in other countries in Europe. And I saw this sport and I go, wow, this is fascinating. I feel like this is the sport I was meant to play. It was kind of perfect for my size and my abilities as an athlete. And I said to myself in 2008, I am going to go to the Olympics. This is the dream. This is the mission.

And I said, well, I started doing research. Okay. Is there teams in the USA? Is there a team in Ohio where I was living? Like, how do I join a team? How do I learn this sport? There was really not much information. And I realized that there were no teams except for club teams in specific cities. There was nothing in Ohio. I saw that the national champion club team was in New York City at the time. I tried to reach out to people, try to see if there's a phone number for the club. There was nothing. So I said, okay, when I make enough money, I'm going to move to New York City and I'm going to go play with this team and try to make the USA national team. Two years goes by. I eventually make enough money. I go to New York City. I joined this club, this New York City handball club. The first day I get there, I say, my name is Lewis. I'm from Ohio. I'm here to learn handball

and make the USA team and go to the Olympics. They all laugh at me. They're all laughing. They're like, this is crazy. Who are you? Go back home. I stick around. In nine months, I practiced with the team. I play with the team. And nine months later, I made the USA national team. Now, shortly after that, I go to Buenos Aires and I play in the Pan Am championships. And then for eight years, I have this dream, this mission in mind that I'm going to make it to the Olympics. Now it's a team sport. So the team has to qualify. And they only take one country from North and South America who wins the Pan Am Games to go to the Olympics.

Again, that's once every four years. So you have to win this one tournament. Now, a lot of teams in South America, a lot of countries in South America that have professional teams and leagues, and they play since they're kids. No one in the USA plays this sport. So it's very competitive to win the Pan Am Games. And we haven't done it in like, I don't know, 30 or 40 years or something. And so we haven't been to the Olympics in 20 plus years

as the USA. But if the USA hosted the Olympics, it would be an automatic qualifier. So I was hoping that we would get an automatic qualifier and we would host the Olympics. That never happened. The last time I played was a couple of years ago and I did not accomplish the mission. But even though the dream didn't come true, doesn't mean it wasn't a dream come true. The experience, I got to play all over the world. I got to wear USA against my chest. I grew as an athlete. I became a better leader. I followed my dreams and I didn't accomplish the mission. But I'm not going to beat myself up for not succeeding at the end mission because the eight, nine year journey was incredible.

The friendships I built, what I learned about myself. I traveled, I played against national teams in Israel, Luxembourg, and the UK, Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile. I played against Olympic teams and I got to experience like a taste of it. But I'm not beating myself up because I didn't accomplish the mission.

Yeah, very powerful. It just didn't happen for me. So I'm not beating myself up because I didn't accomplish the mission. It just didn't happen for me. So I think we got to understand that the experiences we have are just as meaningful, even if we didn't accomplish the end goal. And I just think it's the journey of who you become in the process of going after something that you're excited about. The Olympics, a quarter of a percent of a quarter of a percent of a quarter of a percent of people make the Olympics. Like it's already like a crazy thing to try to even do. Uh, so the chances are so slim and yeah, I wanted to do it and I wanted to be a part of it and go to the athlete's village and walk into the opening ceremony and compete and, and, you know, get to be in that exclusive club of being an Olympian and have that life memory,

but it didn't happen. And I can beat myself up for it, or I can say, man, you gave it your all. You gave it your all, and you inspired the people around you. And they then went and gave their all, inspired the people around you, like Kobe said. And I can be proud of that. You know, Lewis, what's really powerful about that, as I reflect on the content of your book, this idea of a meaningful mission, is that it's also what you said earlier on in this conversation, Lewis, that there's nothing more dangerous than a man, I think, without a mission, I think you said. Without a mission. Right? Yeah. Because the mission becomes the North Star. It helps guide you in a world where there is infinite choice now.

Right? There are so many options. There's so much information. It can be paralyzing. It can bring us down. It can lead to paralysis because there's too much choice out there. What I'm hearing is that get clear on your mission. You can change your mission.

It doesn't have to be forever, but at least you have one. And that will help guide your decisions. And like your goal to be an Olympian, you didn't make it. But what a journey you went on. How much did you learn about yourself? And had you not had that mission, what would you have spent your time doing otherwise who knows but maybe it would not have been as meaningful so i think that's a

really powerful story what i think is so powerful about the book and your story is this idea that greatness only begins when you heal the pain and trauma of the past right we've already said that once, but I think it's such a key message for people because it's easy for people to skip that and go, hey, yeah, but come on, let's get to the good stuff, right? Let's get to the stuff, the routines, right? Tell me how to make money.

Tell me how to succeed. Tell me how to do these things. And here's the thing, something I've learned, there's a difference between success and greatness. My whole life I was chasing success and I got it, but I didn't feel great. I didn't feel fulfilled. I didn't feel love. I didn't feel loved. And I didn't know how to love myself. And I had a lot of anger and resentment and frustration still inside of me. So I got the success. I achieved it. I did it in sports, then in business, then in social media. It's like I did

it in lots of different ways to chase something to get a feeling. The feeling never came because I have to cultivate the feeling from within. I have to be love. I have to be peace. I can't have more money to create more peace. And they say that more money, more problems. It's true if you don't have peace. If you have more money, you can solve money problems, but it doesn't mean you don't manage the stress in your heart. And it probably causes more stress because now you have more to stress about.

So it doesn't mean you can't solve certain things with it, but it doesn't teach you how to love yourself. It doesn't teach you how to heal. And so more success, for me, I realized was not helping. And success by itself, my definition, is a selfish endeavor. I want to accomplish this goal for me. I want to make this money for me.

I want to be a doctor for me. If it's about me. Now, when it becomes greatness is when we say, okay, I want to do this for me and to be of service to others in the process. I want to do this to support myself and accomplish my dreams and goals, but I want to do it in the support

and service of others as well. A lot of people you probably know who wanted to be a doctor because it would make them look good. It would make them be protected, make them safe, make them get respect in their community from their family, make them have wealth for them. And that's fine. You'll be successful. But to transition to greatness is when you say, you know what? I really want to be a doctor because I want to have a great opportunity for myself, but I care a lot about people and their wellbeing and their health. And I really want to be of service to people.

I want to do it because I want to be able to offer more for my family, for my kids in the future. I want to do it for something greater than only me. It's including you, your needs and wants, but also in the service of others. And when we just make that slight adjustment, that's when we start transitioning from success into greatness with the that slight adjustment, that's when we start transitioning from success into greatness with the service of others, that impact of the people around us, where they can ripple and impact people around them because of the way you show up. And I just think it's a slight shift. It's going from, I want to do this to look good, to win, to be right, to look good, to win, to be right, which is success,

into I want to do this to help others. I want to do this to create a win for me, but also a win for others. And in that process, you really create greatness. I wonder, Lewis, if you'd be open to sharing some of your journey from the abuse that happened, but then to that point where you felt confident enough to share that. Because what you said about men as well before, I think there'll be men listening to this right now. Many of them will have something inside of them. Maybe it's not as extreme as what happened to you. Maybe it is. You said this happened when you were five years old.

And please, if you don't want to go here, that's completely fine as well, Lewis. Who knew? I mean, when was the first time you told somebody? No one knew. No one knew until I was 30 years old. And so for 25 years, no one knew. No one.

I didn't tell anyone. No one. And so for 25 years, I remember I had a college professor. This was kind of the time when I first started to really, I thought about telling my professor because it was in like a sociology class in college. And he was talking about like the effects and harm of sexual abuse or something in society. And I was like, oh, wow, this is the first time I'm hearing someone talk about this. And I started to reflect about it. And I remember just kind of

going into him and asking him more about it, but I didn't have the courage to tell him that this happened to me. But I was like, can you tell me more about these effects and what this does in society and this and this? And I think maybe he knew because I was like asking him, I was like, why is this kind of jock football player coming to my office asking me these questions after this class? He probably maybe like assumed, but he didn't ask me, and he was just kind of like answering my questions,

but I really wanted to because I thought maybe it would be a safer space, but I was like, ah, I can't sit. So I just ruminated on it almost every day. This kind of memory or movie would play in my mind of the whole experience throughout my entire life. And you told nobody, no friends? Nobody.

No one, you didn't? Nobody, man. Did you ever consider it? Girlfriends, I never told girlfriends. Like I wanted to, but again, I didn't feel safe. I didn't feel I'd be accepted. I was afraid of like someone not loving me, not liking me. So I wanted to with girlfriends, but I didn't have the courage and I didn't have the skills

or the tools or the confidence in myself to be able to speak it and be okay if someone didn't accept me. When we live in shame and insecurity, we typically don't accept ourselves. In that process, we don't belong to ourselves because we're holding onto so much shame and insecurity about something that happened to us, something we did bad that we're not proud of. And so we hold onto this. It means we're not accepting it. We don't belong to it. We haven't faced it and processed it. And so I couldn't accept myself. That's why I had to work harder. That's why I was like, I need to be the best. I need to win. And when I lost, I felt like I had no value. So losing a sports game was extremely hard for me because it was life or death feeling is what it felt like

emotionally. I know physically it wasn't, but emotionally I was like, if I lose, then I'm not a valuable person, that I'm not going to be accepted, that no one's going to like me, no one's going to love me. So I must win at all costs. And that is a heavy price to pay to live that way and to feel like suffering after every loss in a high school basketball game, in a college basketball game. It's not like there's some massive stakes on the line here. You know, there's some stakes, but it's not like life or death. And so when I hit 30, all these breakdowns started to happen in my life. An intimate relationship was just up and down, up and down emotional. A business partnership was up and down, up and down emotional.

A business partnership was up and down, up and down, and we weren't seeing eye to eye. And I was a reactive person in life. I was easily triggered at this time. Now, Rangan, I was a fun, loving, happy guy. I was very much similar to who I am now. Love people, One of the high five people give people big hugs. Like I'm a, I'm a loving guy. But when you poked the wound or wounds that were inside of me, it was like a reaction would come out. It was like, I had to protect and defend myself at all costs or my honor or my respect and my whatever it was, I had to like defend it. So, I was easily triggered in life. Someone says something to me, don't say that to me. Someone looked at me weird, don't look at me. It was like this reaction.

And that's all because of a past pain or pains that I had inside of me that I hadn't faced and healed. So those were the root causes that caused me to be responsive and reactive in unhealthy ways in situations in life. Someone cut me off in the street that I felt like, oh, they're trying to cut me off. Let me get up in front of them and look at them with a stare. It's like all these things that, how is that serving or supporting me, my abundance, my

health, and my mission? It's not helping me at all. my health and my mission. It's not helping me at all. So when I was 30, I, I got into an actual physical fight on a basketball court. And this was kind of like the last, last breakdown. I got in a physical fight in like a no stakes basketball game, a pickup friendly basketball game. And it was a pretty, pretty intense fight, like a full on fist fight. And I'm not proud of. And after the game, one of my best friends was there with me playing and he goes, Lewis, what are you doing, man? He goes, I don't know why you're so reactive in these situations that are meaningless. Why do you let people get under your skin? Why are you so reactive? Why are you so triggered to

defend yourself? Like there's no physical threat here. It you so triggered to defend yourself like there's no physical threat here it's not like i get if there's someone's actually trying to hurt you physically okay like defend yourself but someone says something to you just let it go and um he was like i really don't want to hang out with you anymore if you're going to keep acting this way if you're going to be volatile and that was a wake-up call for me. And I remember going home after this fight kind of like shaken. I was really like shaken because I was like just got into this fight. There was a lot of adrenaline. And I was looking myself in the mirror at this time.

And I was just asking myself, who are you? Looking in the mirror, I looked in my eyes, and I just didn't recognize myself. And I kind of lost who I was. And I really don't know if I ever found who I was because I was always chasing success to fulfill something inside of me that was not there, that I hadn't claimed. It was there, but I hadn't owned it. Harmony, peace, acceptance, self-love. I had a lot of self-hatred. I had a lot of frustration, anger, resentment. I didn't forgive.

I didn't forgive others, the person who abused me and kids who picked on me and bullied me. I didn't forgive them. And I didn't forgive myself. And that was a wake-up call that got me down a path of going to different workshops, meeting different therapists, going to different workshops, meeting different therapists, talking to different coaches,

going to meditation retreats in India, doing Wim Hof intense ice training in Poland, breathing, meditation, ice bath training, doing heat therapies, doing, you know, I did Dr. Joe Dispenza's seven-day intensive meditation neuroscience retreat. I've worked with different therapists over the last 10 years. So I've tried lots of different healing modalities and they all work. You know, whatever you decide to go all in

on will work for you. So there's not like one thing that's like better than the others or something. But there was a workshop that I did early on that got me to face my past in a group setting. So it was an emotional intelligence workshop that I did 10 years ago that had like different games and exercises and scenarios over a number of days to reflect on your past, on what got you here in your life in the present, and then to reflect on what your vision is for the future that you want to create. But in order to create a powerful future, we must first face the past and see what are the behaviors, beliefs, thoughts, and emotions that are supporting us today or that are holding us back. And so after a few days of this workshop, we had done a lot of stuff of facing past, you know, talking about facing your parents, you know, kind of within yourself, doing exercises to like let go of pain, to talk about the different challenges, things like that. And I remember there was a moment in the halfway mark of this workshop where the trainer, the facilitator said, okay, now we're going to

create a vision of the future that we want to create and start having tools to step into that. But before we do that, if there's anything you haven't shared that you feel like you need to share, now's your moment. Because you have to face everything in the past before you can move forward. And I'm thinking, we're all kind of sitting there, maybe a group of like 40 people. And I remember thinking, well, okay, I talked about everything, I feel like. I talked about my parents going through divorce and kind of being stressed out in the house growing up as a kid and not feeling safe. I talked about my brother being in prison and what that did for me and the pain that caused me. I talked about being picked on

and bullied in middle school and high school. I talked about heartbreaks from relationships. I feel like I've processed all this stuff. And then for whatever reason, I was like, well, why have I never shared this one story with anyone about being sexually abused? And for whatever reason, like, I just felt like if I don't share this right now, I'll probably never share it in my life. It'll probably go to my grave. So I was in a, I was in a setting where I felt like safe and open and people were being open. And I just stood up. I just got the courage in that moment to stand up. I walked to the front of the room. Everyone was kind of seated in a horseshoe, like seating assignment. I walk into the front of the room. And the interesting thing, Rangan, about shame, it's hard to look people in the eyes

when you experience a lot of shame. It's extremely hard. And for me, I was living in so much shame. hard. And for me, I was living in so much shame. So I looked down as I stood up at the carpet and I just looked down and I just went back to the place where I was as a five-year-old. And I shared the entire story from all my memories. I shared the whole story and verbally expressed it for the first time. And I remember I did not look up at anyone I was terrified of looking at anyone's eyes so I just stayed down here and talked about it and then I walked back to my chair I was able to get through it like kind of calm like I was trembling a little bit and like a little shaky but I was able to speak about it without you know breaking apart breaking apart and I get back and I walk back to my chair and I don't

look up until I sit down. And there was a woman on each side of me sitting next to me, two different women. And for whatever reason, like I look over and I see her eyes and she's weeping and she just grabs me and hugs me and she's bawling in my, my shoulder. And then And she just grabs me and hugs me. And she's bawling in my shoulder. And then the other woman grabs me. And she hugs me. And she's bawling. They're just weeping. And for whatever reason, I just like, I don't know, 25 years of pain and suffering just

comes out of me. I finally released it. And I just start bawling and crying and releasing this pain. But half of it is fear and shame and thinking everyone's going to hate me and no one's going to love me. Whatever reason, I was just like, after, I don't know, 30, 60 seconds, I was just bawling. I was crying. And I felt so ashamed that I was now crying and bawling in front of everyone. And I just shared this. that I ran out of this kind of this room we're all in, this conference room we're all in. I run out of the building and behind the building,

there's a little back alleyway behind this building. And there's a wall on the other side of the alley. And I put my head like up against the wall with my hands. And I'm just kind of like leaning against the wall, just bawling, bawling. And I'm outside, I'm trying to breathe. I'm just like, I can't go back in there. My life is over. I cannot go back in there. I can't face these people.

Like my life is done. It's over. That's the way it felt. It felt like I was dying. And one of the most beautiful things that's probably ever happened in my life happened after this moment. It was a few minutes I'm out there, again, crying just by myself.

And then I feel a tap on the back of my shoulder. And I turn around and it's this older gentleman who was in the group. He was probably in his late 50s. And at the time I was 30. It's about my height, but a little bit bigger, just like a big, like manly man, you know, older manly man. And he looks me dead in the eyes and he grabs my shoulders and he goes, you're my hero. You're my hero. And I'll tell you why. Because in my 50s, this happened to me when I was 11, 12, and 13. I've been married for 30 years.

I got three daughters. My wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. No one knows. I've carried this with me for my whole life. You're my hero because you're going to give me permission now to go share this with my wife and allow me to find peace and healing. Thank you. And I'm like, now he's crying, I'm crying, we're hugging each other. And I'm like, what? I was like, for my whole life, I thought I was the

only one that had experienced this. Again, I hadn't heard anyone say there's other men that have been sexually abused. I'd heard this happen in women. And I'd heard women talk about this on TV or whatever it might be in the media, but not men. And so when I heard this from this man who was, again, this big kind of burly man, this older, wiser man, I was like, what? And there was a couple other guys that came out who had also experienced sexual abuse that told me. We're all outside, these guys. And then more men came out from this group. And they just told me other things that they had been through.

Not sexual abuse, but other traumas and challenges. And they're like, I've never shared this with anyone. And it was one of the craziest things that happened because the thing that I was most afraid of, the most ashamed of, that I thought everyone would hate me or not like me or not love me by doing it actually got me more love, got me liked by more people, more respect, more trust, more vulnerability from other men and women when I thought it was going to be the thing that ruined me. And that began the process of healing and facing it. And it didn't mean it was overnight. I was fine. It took me a couple of years of continuing the conversation with family, with friends, and then I eventually started opening up

publicly on my podcast. And I thought when I opened up publicly, my life was over. I thought then, okay, my business is done. My life is over. Lewis, if we weren't on Zoom, I'd give you a big hug right now. Thank you so much for sharing that. So, so powerful. How did you take the leap from there to going, I'm now going to share this with my huge global audience? It wasn't as big 10 years ago as it is now, but it felt big in terms of sharing something with anyone publicly felt like, okay, this is out there. This is now in the world. People have this record now, whoever sees it in the future. Maybe like six months or nine months had gone by. And after this workshop was done, I felt like, wow, I felt accepted by this

group of people because they were sharing other vulnerabilities that they were going through. And so it was a powerful experience. But I was like, huh, will my family accept me? Will my friends accept me? So it took me a few weeks to get the courage to actually tell my family one by one. And I, again, I realized that this was still a fear of mine. If I can't tell my family, then it has power over me. Then I'm holding onto a fear and a past pain because I'm afraid of what they'll think. I'm afraid they'll judge me then I'm holding on to a fear and a past pain because I'm afraid of what they'll think I'm afraid they'll judge me I'm afraid they'll you know push me out of the family or whatever the fear was so I realized for me I needed to tell them because this thing still

had power over me it still affected me if I was unwilling to speak it because I was afraid, it had power over me. So I did it with my family one by one. And I was terrified. And I talked to a therapist beforehand. I said, what's the best way to approach this? And she gave me a great piece of advice. She said, call each one of them and tell them you have something vulnerable you want to share with them.

But ask them first to make sure that they're in a good setting and a good space to receive it. And don't share it with them unless you think they're in a good place to receive it. And ask them this question, is there anything I could ever do or say that would make you not love me? And then see how they respond. And if they respond and you feel in a safe space, then feel free to share. But if they're like, you know, making a joke or they're not in a safe space, then feel free to share. But if they're like, you know, making a joke or they're not in a good space, like maybe it's not the right time to share it. And each one of them were like, absolutely not. There's nothing you could ever do or say that would make me not love you. So they gave me like permission to then communicate it. And then I thought to myself, okay, but the beautiful thing is when I did that, like each one of them opened up to me about things

that I didn't know about them, that they had experienced. It wasn't sexual abuse, but it was just other things that they felt like they wanted to share with me. I didn't even ask them. So it brought us closer and had a deeper relationship, more intimacy. And then I thought to myself, okay, well, these strangers, I'll never see them again from this workshop.

So it doesn't matter as much. My family, they have to love me, but I couldn't tell my friends. And so a couple of weeks go by and I go, dang it. This thing still has power over me if I'm unwilling to speak it to my friends. And I'm not saying this is a path that everyone needs to go on, but this was the path that I needed to go on for me to be free, to set myself free. And so I started telling friends one by one kind of the same type of setup. And they were all very accepting and loving and supportive,

which I was like, huh, male friends, female friends, all of it. And then I said, well, they're my friends. They have to accept and love me. But my audience, man, they're going to unfollow me. They're going to stop listening. They're going to unsubscribe. No one's going to buy anything.

I'm going to be poor and broke for the rest of my life. That fear had power and consumed me. They're going to stop listening. They're going to unsubscribe. No one's going to buy anything. I'm going to be poor and broke for the rest of my life. That fear had power and consumed me. And so maybe six or nine months went by and I was just like, I almost felt like at this point it was a duty and a responsibility. And I almost feel like because of my experiences, because I was a big former male, you know, white jock that you wouldn't expect this. I never saw anyone that looked like me in sports growing up on TV, talk about this. And maybe if I did, maybe I would have been able to tell my parents. Maybe I would have been able to feel accepted. Maybe I would have been able to heal better. Maybe I wouldn't have beat myself up every single day that I was a loser and I was worthless.

Maybe I would have had more peace in my life. So it became this kind of nagging thing that was more of like I felt called to do something publicly. And again, I'm not saying everyone needs to like share their stuff publicly. I don't think that's the right thing to do or necessary. But it more felt like, oh, Lewis, this is part of your path.

This is part of your mission. And because it happens, and because of your sports experiences and business experience, this is going to open the doors for certain people who have experienced that. And I started to learn the stats that one in six men have been sexually abused. And I was in shock when I learned this. And so I ended up doing a podcast about it. And I had someone interview me that I was a safe friend of mine that I thought could guide me in the right way and make sure we did it correctly, that it was the right thing to put out. I got other people that I really respected in this space to say, hey, is there anything off here? Is there anything that I should do or not do? And I wanted to be of service. And I remember putting

it out there and I recorded it and I waited a few months because I was still living in fear. And then I finally put it out there and I came to peace thinking, okay, my business might be over. I might have zero followers tomorrow. My business might be over. Because again, 10 years ago, no one had opened up about this stuff that I remember. And I put it out there and the opposite happens. I got hundreds of essays and emails from men sharing with me for the first time ever about their sexual abuse. They never told a soul. And I was not asking them to do this, but I guess I gave them permission to do it. And it was emotional. It was extremely emotional. I feel

like I had an emotional hangover for weeks. I've never been drunk in my life. I've never been on drugs. I don't know what that feels like, but my body was aching knowing that there was so much pain and suffering out there. Obviously, there's a lot of suffering for both men and women. But for the men that had never shared this, I was just feeling their pain and sadness. And it's been a beautiful journey. It's been a beautiful journey of me processing and healing. It took a number of years for me to feel like I could tell anyone at any moment

and not have an emotional or physical response in a negative way. So it doesn't mean it wasn't painful. It wasn't traumatic. It wasn't challenging. It didn't hurt me. It did. But I've healed it. I've created new meaning around it.

And I've used that meaning to be of service to others. And again, that is, as opposed to using the pain to be successful and prove others wrong, my mission is to use the lesson from the pain and be of service to help others overcome theirs. And I think that's what we all have the opportunity to do. And we can all relate to someone in our lives and be of service to them through our pain, not because of our pain. And I think that really is why the book is such a powerful rigged because it's not you theorizing. I wanted to say, here's my lessons and my experiences, what's worked for me. And then for 10 years, I've essentially gone out and found the research from the top doctors like yourself, mental health experts, therapists, neuroscientists, brain surgeons, energy healers, spiritual leaders, billionaires, world-class athletes. And I've asked them all the same thing. all the same thing. And I've gotten the research, the science and the tools that are scientifically backed in pretty much every industry that just, okay, if you want to hear it in this way or this

way or this way from these people, here's what I did and here's what they're all saying, which is almost exactly the same in a different way. And then here's their research that backs this. So I just wanted to make it bulletproof as opposed to here's my seven ways to do something from what I've learned. It's really, man, I've made a lot of these mistakes and overcome a lot of things and I'm still overcoming and still making mistakes. And here's the lesson I learned from all these great people

that back it with research. Does the story still have any power over you? I don't feel like it does, to be honest. I feel really at peace about it. And if someone wants to ask me about it at any time, I can speak about it without sadness, without, I have compassion and sadness for my five-year-old self, but I've done so much integrating work

consistently to heal and bring that quote unquote little Lewis, five-year-old me psychologically, emotionally, spiritually into my adult self, into my current heart and say, I've got you. You're safe. Thank you for overcoming and getting us here. Thank you for having the courage to deal with all this stuff that you had no clue what was going on. I'm so proud of you. You're courageous.

You know, it's kind of like having a conversation with that version of myself that I wish someone would have told me at that time when I was so confused. But I didn't tell anyone, so no one knew. And so it's me facing the past, which we must own our past if we want to have a powerful future. Otherwise, the past, we will carry that past and that pain in those old stories that don't work for us. We will carry that into the future, and it will only stay with us. That pain will stay with us unless we face it. We turn around, we look at ourselves, and we have a conversation with self. We address it. We process it.

Whatever healing modality or therapy you want to do, do it. And then go all in on that process. And this is not an overnight thing. This is not, let me just do a couple sessions and I'm good. This is a lifelong journey of healing. And the longer you do it and the more intentional you are, the easier it becomes. So I don't feel like I can speak about it at any time,

like I'm having a cup of coffee with a friend, talking about almost anything. Now, it doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge, but it doesn't have the meaning that it used to have. It doesn't have the emotional trigger it used to have because I faced it and I've been healing it. You mentioned earlier on in the conversation that you had a troubled relationship with forgiveness,

forgiveness to yourself, forgiveness to the perpetrator. Yep. How do you feel today? How is your relationship to forgiveness sitting right now? Yeah, I feel I forgave. Here's the thing. I don't know where this man is. I was out of babysitters after school and it was the babysitter's son.

So he was probably like 16 or 17. And I saw him a few times after that, but it was only a one-time experience. And I don't know where he is. I could probably go find if I needed to, but I don't have the desire to. So I've forgiven him emotionally, mentally, spiritually to myself in the world, so say. And I don't feel like I need to face him or

do something like that because I just don't think it's useful. So I had to learn how to forgive him, you know, and he could be dead for all I know, but I had to learn how to forgive him you know and he could be dead for all i know but i had to learn how to forgive him and sometimes there's people that hurt us that are dead and we still don't forgive them and we can't face them so we have to learn how to mentally emotionally spiritually forgive people that have hurt us in the past even if we did you know even if they're our parents or something like that and we did love them but they they treated us poorly or they did bad things to us i think it's important to learn how to forgive. It doesn't mean you have to like the person, but forgive them so you don't feel the pain and the poison in yourself.

But I think that's the person that I needed to forgive the most was myself. Because then once I forgave him, I realized, oh, for 25 years, I beat myself up with shame and essentially abused myself emotionally, mentally. I allowed this story, this experience to define a part of me and then find other examples that confirmed that I was abused, that I was taken advantage of. I just find other examples of it and confirm, oh, I'm not lovable, I'm an idiot, I'm stupid, you know, all this stuff. And so I had to forgive myself for 25 years of pain that I caused me.

And yes, there was other instances and experiences that happened that were painful, that other caused, but I continued the beat up. I continued the abuse to me. And that's why I said, if most people would record their thoughts and publicly broadcast it to the world, they'd put a lot of us in mental hospitals, me included when I was younger, because of the thoughts I'd say to myself. And I had to forgive me. I had to forgive all that pain that I caused me and have compassion and accept myself and say,

you know what, it took you to your 30 to start this process. And I even was like, man, I wish I would have learned this sooner. I wish I could have done this sooner. But that's not forgiving yourself. That's not accepting yourself. So I had to just face man, I wish I would have learned this sooner. I wish I could have done this sooner. But that's not forgiving yourself. That's not accepting yourself. So I had to just face it, accept it, forgive. And that takes time. Again, it's not an overnight thing for a lot of people.

It's a grieving. It's a grieving of a loss that you've been holding onto. It's a shedding of an old identity that you've been living for so long. That doesn't always happen in a moment. You might have a realization in a moment and a processing and an integrating of a new way of being and healing over a period of time. Yeah. Lewis, you've been very clear throughout this conversation and in the book that lots of different things can work. It's up to us to try and experiment and find what works for us. Having said that,

is there one practice right at the end of this conversation that you'd recommend people consider? If you were going to give people one practice to think about integrating into their life, what would it be? Man, I mean, what I can speak for is my own experience. And I know other people have experienced different things that they think are amazing, but I don't want to speak for others. I did an emotional intelligence workshop that gave me an intense experience within a five-day window

that allowed me to reflect and look at myself in many different ways quickly and to see how I show up in response with other human beings. And I think just doing this alone journaling is helpful. But I think needing to respond and react with other human beings is what we do in life. So learning how you react with others around you when you're triggered is valuable. So doing any type of group workshop of emotional intelligence, leadership training that dives into these types of things. There's a bunch of them all over the world, but one I did was in LA. And I think doing an intensive retreat style group workshop of healing is a powerful way to start because it allows you to

dive deep intense quickly and and face certain things but i also believe doing one-on-one like in emotional healing work with a really well-trained licensed therapist or an emotional coach. Yeah. Where you say, like I did this two years ago because I felt like I still had more things to uncover, even though I've been on the healing journey. And I was still struggling emotionally in intimacy and relationships. And so I was better in life and in business. I was less reactive, but still in intimacy, I was struggling. And I realized I was the common denominator still. So I met with

an emotional coach and I said, I don't feel peace, freedom, or clarity in this relationship. And my intention is to create peace, freedom, and clarity. And I said, I will do whatever you tell me. I will do whatever it takes. I will show up weekly. I will show up for three, freedom, and clarity. And I said, I will do whatever you tell me. I will do whatever it takes. I will show up weekly. I will show up for three, five, seven-hour sessions on Saturdays. I will do whatever because in a relationship, I was unable to create the peace, freedom, and clarity that I was looking for.

And I didn't have the courage to exit the relationship because I still had a fear of people pleasing and things like that. And so I spent five and a half months every single week, two, three, five hours sometimes on Saturdays diving deep into my own emotional journey in intimacy and relationships. That was after having the skills of meditation.

Like those were skills that allowed me to get calm, but I still had to heal things within me. So meditation is great. It can help you get back to center. But the goal is to not be off center or have to get off to center because you're cultivating a state of peace and harmony consistently. And you're able to manage and navigate the stresses of life differently. It doesn't mean you're not going to feel stress or challenge, but you should have the peace within you to be able to manage it differently. Again, going back to the orange, what's inside of you is what comes out of you.

So just learning a meditation skill is great to try to get you back to baseline, but it's because you've gotten something inside of you that's pain and hurt. You've got to constantly go on top with another skill as opposed to healing from the inside out. And so I did that for five and a half months intensely until I felt the pain. And I kind of had chest pains throughout this time because of a relationship I was experiencing. And I didn't know how to navigate my emotions still in that experience. And there was a moment after five and a half months with a pain in my chest, it felt like a ball of my chest. It disintegrated and went away. And it kind of went all throughout my body. And I don't know what that was, but I haven't felt that pain ever since. And it wasn't like it happened, like it wasn't like I was healed in a moment. It was integrating and practicing and diving deep

and facing it week after week for five months where it all finally clicked. And integrating it daily and practicing it in life is what I had to keep doing afterwards so that I could maintain it and be that in my nervous system. And so that's what I did, but I'm willing to do whatever it takes for peace, freedom, clarity.

And so I'm not saying that's the path for everyone else, but I knew that I wanted to be free emotionally because it was still holding me back. And it's been a beautiful journey. Lewis, I really, really appreciate everything you've shared today. I appreciate you taking the time to write the book. It's going to help so many people. The Greatness Mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. I also want to just finish off by doing to you what I see you do repeatedly to your guests. I want to acknowledge you, Lewis,

for your openness, your compassion, your service, the way that you have found greatness in yourself and the way you're inspiring so many others to greatness as well. Thank you, Lewis. We appreciate it. Thanks, Frank. I appreciate you, my friend. Really hope you enjoyed that conversation. As always, do think about one thing that you can take away and start applying into your own life. Now, before you go, just wanted to let you know about Friday Five. It's my free weekly email containing five simple ideas to improve your health and happiness. In that email, I share exclusive insights

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