Know Thyself - E36 - Lewis Howes: The Secret to Unleashing Your Inner Greatness

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

Lewis Howes has been interviewing high achievers & performers across a multitude of fields for the past 10 years. Today he reveals his insights on what it takes to achieve greatness in life, and why we must heal our past to step into our best future. Lewis shares his own story of healing from the wounds of being abused in his childhood, and how he went from professional athlete to motivational  podcaster & author. He explains 'the mask of masculinity' in our culture, and why men must face off with their emotions and start the healing journey.   ___________ Timecodes: 0:00 Intro 4:26 Strive for Greatness 9:19 Healing the Past 16:31 The Mask of Masculinity 38:20 The Greatness Mindset 39:57 Power of Gratitude  43:38 How to Achieve Greatness 58:44 Defining a Meaningful Mission 1:11:08 Rapid Fire Questions 1:15:35 Conclusion ___________   Lewis Howes:   Lewis Howes is a New York Times Bestselling author of the hit book, The School of Greatness. He is a lifestyle entrepreneur, high performance business coach and keynote speaker. A former professional football player and two-sport All-American, he is a current USA Men’s National Handball Team athlete.    He hosts a top 100 iTunes ranked podcast, The School of Greatness, which has over 100 million downloads and 1000 episodes since it launched in 2013. Lewis was recognized by The White House and President Obama as one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in the country under 30. Details Magazine called him one of “5 Internet Guru’s that can Make You Rich.”   Lewis is a contributing writer for Entrepreneur and has been featured on Ellen, The Today Show, The New York Times, People, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health, and other major media outlets.   Lewis's New Book: THE GREATNESS MINDSET: https://www.amazon.com/Greatness-Mindset-Unlock-Power-Today/dp/1401971903?crid=2LOHPOT1CLUQ&keywords=the+greatness+mindset&qid=1672264598&s=books&sprefix=the+greatness+mindset,stripbooks,93&sr=1-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=lewhow07-20&linkId=ebb660cf6969c4bef3883e83677dd5fd&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewishowes/ Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@lewishowes   ___________   Know Thyself Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/ Website: https://www.knowthyself.one Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ4wglCWTJeWQC0exBalgKg   Listen to all episodes on Audio:  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4FSiemtvZrWesGtO2MqTZ4?si=d389c8dee8fa4026 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/know-thyself/id1633725927     André Duqum Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andreduqum/   Meraki Media https://merakimedia.com https://www.instagram.com/merakimedia/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Most of my life I wanted to be successful, but I was chasing success from a wound because I didn't feel like I was enough. When I first opened about sexual abuse, 25 years of emotion erupts out of me, and I start howling. And I remember just saying, like, my business is over, and I'm accepting this. But if this can help one man, it's worth it. This guy turns me around. He looks me in the eyes and he goes, you're my hero. When men start to heal, the world heals. Politics heal.

People create bridges as opposed to walls. A lot of us are defined by the memories of the past. I'm not saying that things in our lives aren't painful and challenging. Some of them are. But if we want to live a rich, joyful, abundant, free life, we must learn to mend those memories, create new meaning and draw in the presence of a future that is greater than our past. So for me, everything about greatness is tied to healing. And I don't think we can truly be great in our life unless we're willing to heal the past on every stage of the past. Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome back to the Know Theyself podcast for every single week. We get the on and privilege to sit down with a beautiful mind and open heart to see how we can learn more about ourselves in the world around us. My guest today is an incredible human being. Indeed, he is an athletic salsa dancing podcast hosting, heart-centered pioneer in bringing forth powerful conversations to help people discover their greatness within. He is the host of the School of Greatness

podcast, which is an incredible platform bringing in thought leaders, doctors, teachers, and spiritual leaders from all around the world. And it's really beautiful to be able to have him in the studio here today. He is author, New York Times Best Selling author and author of New Book, The Greatness Mindset, which is available now. Unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. Lewis Howellus. Thank you for coming on the show.

My man. Andre, thanks for having me, man. It's my honor. It's so good to have you in the studio today. It's good to be here. Yeah, I'm doing a little podcast tour. You're going on other people's shows. Yeah, man.

It's been fun. It's been a lot. but, you know, I can handle it. So I'm grateful. Yeah, you've had enough practice in front of the mic. Exactly. You've done like, what, 1,200 podcasts so far? I think it's almost 1,400 episodes, 10 years.

Wow. 10 year anniversary last month, three times a week for eight years, but every week for 10 years. Man, just the amount of life expanding insight and beautiful connections that come on the other side of having a platform like that is just kind of feel so rewarding and nourishing. What do you say? one of your favorite things. It's unbelievable. I mean, to get paid.

I didn't go into this trying to get paid. I went into it because I was in breakdown in a lot of areas of my life. And I just wanted to improve. And I had access to certain people that were mentors of mine at the time. So I just said, let me interview these people that I think are much wiser than me, see if I can improve the things inside of me that felt that I was suffering and struggling and breaking down with and then try to share with others who might be stuck in their life as well. So that's kind of how it started.

And then I realized, oh, I can actually like make money doing this as well. And it's a business. But it wasn't the intention to be a business. It was to help myself and then serve others. Yeah. It's so funny when you find alignment in the things that genuinely light you up. And if you're, you know, lucky enough to be in the position where you don't need it to make money, make money from it, then you do your best work. And it also creates a sustainability for you to be able to do it long term because you do it.

It doesn't feel like work, right? Yeah. I never, again, I went into it with the intention. Like I'm not trying to make money. I'm going to do it as a social experiment for one year. I'm going to do it every week and see what opens up for me. And again, money started to come. And I was kind of rejecting it.

I was like, I'm not trying to make money. I didn't run ads on it for a long time. And then after two years, I was like, well, let me record these on video and put them on YouTube. But for five years, I never monetize the videos. I said, I just want to help people for free and just give it away. But then I realized, you know, when you're willing to receive, you can also generate more for others. when you allow for the flow of abundance, prosperity to come into you, then you can help others create that in themselves. So it was learning how to, okay, make it a part of my business as well,

and now it's the main part of my business. Yeah. Wonderful. You know, we're diving in here in a lot of the topics in this book, in this new book of yours, The Greatness Mindset, you share a lot of your own personal insights and frameworks, a lot of which you've learned over the years with having your podcast and having these conversations. How do you define greatness and why do you feel like it's meant so much to you to discover what that is earlier on in your path? Well, let me define it first by defining success because most of my life I wanted to be successful.

And I was never afraid of success, but I was chasing success from a wound because I didn't feel like I was enough or I didn't feel like people accepted me or I didn't feel like I got the respect I needed or whatever. So I wanted to be successful, and I was driven for that. And when I would accomplish it,

I still didn't feel enough. because again, I was driving for it from a wound, from a place that felt broken. And every time I would accomplish success, I would feel like it's still not enough. I'm not creating what I want. I would almost get resentful and angry. And I believe success by itself, not a bad thing, but it's selfish. It's for me. I want to accomplish this goal for me.

I want to make this money for me. I want to be a bestselling author for me to feel good. And again, this is not a right or wrong, good or bad. judgment thing. This is just what is the best for you and for others. And so most of my life, I accomplished success in sports and business and realize I was still suffering and struggling inside. And then when I had 30, I had all these breakdowns in my life. And I said, I don't want to be successful. I want to be, I want to figure out how to feel fulfilled and significant without the need of other people's approval and all these different things. And that's why I was like,

let me study greatness and see what this is all about. So greatness for me is. So greatness for me is, it includes your dreams and your goals, but it's really discovering your unique gifts and talents in the pursuit of those dreams and making the impact on the people around you in a positive way. So greatness includes inspiring and impacting your friends, your family, your community in a positive way so that they do the same thing for their communities. It's not about how big of a success you are, how much you make, the audacious goals you want to go after. It's about the impact you make in that pursuit of those.

dreams. It's beautiful. And Earl Nightingale has that quote that success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, you know, and for you as you grow on your journey and as you evolve as an individual, so do your values and so do what you desire and what you seem worthy, whatever you deem worthy in your life changes and shifts. And so for you, as you've been growing and you've been dissolving these masks of who you're not and, you know, seeing what identities no longer serve you. Because earlier on in your journey, you're going to think what's worthwhile in my life based off of a narrative that, you know, is coming from conditioning. That's not truly you. And so as you've been shedding these layers, how is your, I mean,

you spoke to how there's this evolution of greatness being perceived as just your own self-interest and gain to then going into a little bit more service and how I can really be of service to the world. It is about service. Yeah. Everything's about service. And I wrote a book called The Mask of Masculinity, which is about how specifically men have identified by wearing masks to fit in and belong in social settings, circles, communities, sports teams, whatever it might be to feel like they belong. But typically when we wear a mask, it's because we don't feel like we belong to ourselves. We don't know ourselves. We don't face ourselves.

And the only way to know ourselves is to look in the mirror metaphorically or literally and face yourself and say, who am I? Who are you? And what do you stand for? And why have I gotten to this stage of my life? What are the negative or positive consequences my way of being? my actions, my thoughts and behaviors have created in my life. And for me, I had a lot of external results.

So I thought everyone else was wrong and was against me, trying to change me, when they didn't see, you know, I just didn't think people understood me for a long time. When they'd try to change me or they'd get mad at me, I was like, I'm the one getting results. I'm one who's working hard. I'm creating these dreams. I'm making them come true. But I still didn't love and accept who I was.

And so no matter how much I'd chase, I still felt less than. I still felt not enough. And I just realized it was, you know, I didn't have the tools emotionally on how to know myself, on how to face myself, and accept all of the different pains that I had been through. And for most of my life, it was running away from the pain, the trauma, again, big T, little T, that caused me to be driven, that caused me to to want to create something, that caused me to want to be seen or celebrated or accepted. But at the end of the day, if we don't learn to accept all the pain that we've been through, it's going to be hard to feel accepted by others if we don't accept ourselves.

Such a beautiful framework that shift from thinking greatness is just about self-improvement to actual self-acceptance. Because from that, you discover more of who you are. And then what's your Dharma just kind of comes online when you discover who you are. Exactly. And that's a process. And it's in continual evolution for you. But what are some of the biggest masks you've had to shed in that process of self-examination?

discovery. Probably the mask of like the know-it-all mask where I felt like I knew a lot. You know, my teens and 20s, I felt like I knew things. And so my ego was driving the way. The athlete mask, I was really driven by the identity of like, I'm a successful athlete. No one can hurt me. No one can, you know, affect me. I'm going to win at all costs.

And when you get injured and you realize you're immortal and you realize that you're a human being that can be like die in a moment or can be injured in a moment. That's what happened to me. One moment, you know, I broke my wrist and it took a year and a half to be able to like use my arm again after surgery. Your identity shifts and you have to essentially kill your ego and surrender your ego, if you will, to what it once was to what it can become that can serve you and others around you in a more harmonious, congruent way.

And so when my ego was driving my life, again, it got external results, but it left me with internal suffering consistently. And it really has, it's been a 10-year journey of healing, different kind of layers and stages and seasons. And it really hasn't been into the last two years, I would say two years ago, when the healing finally unlocked at a whole different level. And I think it's going to be a journey for the rest of my life. but for years I kind of had like chest pain and heart palpitations off and on depending on what was happening

right and it wasn't until two years ago where I had this pain in my chest and it finally like all the dots finally connected from six months of intensive emotional coaching where it finally like

I realized and had a moment where I was a free man that I was actually free whereas before I felt emotionally trapped. And this pain in my chest, it was kind of like a ball right here. In one moment, it disintegrated and kind of went throughout my whole body. And I haven't felt chest pain or tightness in my body since then. It doesn't mean I haven't gone through emotional stressful times or had challenges to face or had like adversity. But the pain in my body and my heart has disappeared. And my goal is to keep

in that space for as long as I can be in forever. But that's, but that's a lot. But that was me facing the darkest parts of me, the deepest parts of me and really knowing the things I was most afraid of and being an acceptance. And I don't think we can truly be great in our life unless we're willing to heal the past on every stage of the past. So, you know, I think you'll resonate with this and this show. I started doing an exercise with my emotional coach where I had a photo of my five-year-old self on my screensaver for about six months. And so every time I look at it, and I would meet her every week to go over like how to essentially reparent my inner child wounds and create a new relationship with that part of myself because I really didn't know myself as a five-year-old.

I have memories and pain from being sexually abused. It's one of my first memories as being sexually abused, which I had already talked about, you know, many years ago and thought I'd healed. But I didn't talk about all, I didn't have a conversation with myself. at that age and really ask myself at five years old, what do you need? What are you going through? What are you experiencing? And putting myself in a meditative state where I am with my little self, right? Staring him in the eyes, asking him these questions. For 10 years or 8 years, I'd been asking everyone else questions, but I didn't ask myself the questions that I needed to hear,

that version of myself. And when I had these conversations, with myself for these many months over and over and practice a lot of different exercises, I finally was able to integrate him into my heart and really connect with that wounded psychologically, emotionally version of myself that felt confused. And I said, hey, I got you. I'm so proud of you. Thank you for getting us here. Thank you for overcoming all the stuff that you overcame, not just in that experience, but all those moments. You did so great. I'm proud of you. just kind of giving myself the things I needed to hear back then when I was so confused as a 5, 7, 8, 10 year old developing brain and being the adult in the room, giving myself what I needed.

This kind of process, along with many other healing modalities, has just supported me in feeling harmony and peace in my heart. And I don't think we can be the greatest version of ourselves with the people in our lives, with our Dharma, with our purpose, our mission. if we are in stress, if we are in pain. We can empathize and understand pain. We can feel it compassionately. But if we are constantly experiencing it,

it's hard to be focused and have the renewable energy that we need to serve at the highest levels to the people around us. It's hard to truly be present and connect with people in their eyes. It's hard to ask questions and actually think about them when you're thinking about yourself. So for me, everything about greatness is tied to healing. Healing self and every level in continuing the journey because healing is not a destination. It's a journey.

So beautifully said, man. Thank you so much for sharing and opening that up. I love that framework or just understanding and that distinction as you grow on your path, that it's less of, I mean, of course we are creative beings who want to go out there and build businesses or our careers. but the true, I guess, peace, happiness that really are the feelings underlying what we think, the external things will give us that we're chasing in relationships and career, come by virtue of releasing what we're holding on to. And oftentimes we just don't know what we don't know.

We don't know unconsciously what we've accumulated in our life and traumas that have happened. But that process of excavation that you've gone on has allowed you to realize and kind of collapse those feelings and being able to find some sort of semblance of peace and presence, irrespective of external circumstance. Exactly. That's the goal. I think, again, if we can feel harmony and peace inside, we can do amazing things externally. But if we feel stressed or tightness or not enoughness constantly or lack of acceptance, then we're always going to be chasing something to fill a hole and fulfill a wound

that you cannot mend until you actually mend the wound itself first. Yeah. It's like a hole. It's a bucket with a hole at the bottom. You keep pouring stuff in. It's going to keep going out. Exactly. And so that's beautiful that you've been able to over the course of the conversations and therapists and interactions to be able to discover what are the holes within myself that need to hatch up. Exactly. And from that place, as you've been like vulnerably sharing this and, you know, talking about your sexual abuse situation and how have you, how has that changed things for you when you've been publicly sharing a lot of things that are vulnerably, you know, experience? Well, when I first, when I first opened about sexual abuse, it was in a, in a workshop, like in the,

small group, kind of emotional intelligence workshop, it was 10 years ago. And I remember when I, when I shared it, the whole workshop was about kind of facing yourself and knowing yourself, you know, knowing all the parts of you that you thought you knew, but you really don't know, why we do certain things, why we're triggered, why we're reactive, all that stuff. So it kind of goes through our past, our present, and then creating a vision for the future. And after the first couple days of like diving into our past, it was still like a lot of people opening up about stuff. It got me to a space where I felt safe enough and vulnerable enough to like share. And I remember the workshop trainer at the time said, okay, we're at kind of the halfway

mark of this five-day workshop and we've covered your past, you know, about your parents and past relationships and everything else. We've kind of covered this stuff. Role played, created games, exercises to help you uncover knowing yourself better. Now we're moving into the future. But we can't fully move into creating the ideal future unless we make sure we address everything from the past first. So if there's anything that you haven't shared yet, now is your moment. It's kind of like this, this moment. And I remember just thinking to myself, okay, well, okay, I talked about being, not sexual abuse. I talked about my parents going through a divorce. I talked about like not feeling safe at home. I talked about not,

you know, my brother was in prison for four and a half years when I was eight, so I didn't have friends during that time. I was in the special needs classes. I talked about, just breakups and heartbreak in relationships in my teens and 20s. So I was like, I feel like I've talked about a lot of stuff that was hurting me. But then I was like, huh, why have I never told a soul about this one thing that comes up in my mind every day about being sexual abuse? And for whatever reason, I was in kind of just a safe space where I was like, huh, if I don't get up and share this, I may never share it in my life. I might keep this to my grave. So I got up in the front of the room and it's interesting.

When we feel so ashamed, it's really hard to look people. in the face. So I just stood up and I stared down at the carpet and it was probably like 40 people in the room kind of in a, you know, semi-circle sitting in chairs and I just was looking down at the carpet and told the whole story for the first time about being five years old and being sexual abused by a man that I didn't know. And I was able to get through it, I think because I didn't look at people in the eyes. So I was able to kind of like talk about it, you know, without like breaking down and just kind of got through it. And then I said, sat down in my chair and there was two women on both sides of me and I kind of look at one of them

and she's sobbing and then she just like grabs me with the biggest like bear hug the other girl next to me kind of like hugs me from behind she's soft they're both kind of like crying and sobbing I like 25 years of emotion erupts out of me and I start howling with incredible sadness pain grief fear insecurity all of it mixed together in this release where I was just like, I could not control my body. I could not control my emotions. And I remember being so shameful and terrified at the same time that I'm like getting these people off of me, that's women who were kind of hugging me and crying.

I felt so insecure. I ran out of this conference room. It was in a hotel conference room where this workshop was. And I go outside and I go across like in the street of like a back alley. And there's a wall. I just kind of put my head on the, wall and I'm just like sobbing for minutes, just like weeping. And I was just like, had this feeling that my life was over. I had this feeling like I can't go back in there.

I can't face these people. I'm going to be shamed. I'm going to be people going to judge me. I was so terrified of the opinions of other people. It crippled me. It's why I wore a mask for so long to try to fit in, to try to belong, to be accepted for what other people wanted me to be. but if they really knew the things about me that I was most ashamed of, would they love me? Would they like me? Would they would be my friend? I didn't think anyone would. So I thought at this point my life was over.

Now that these people know, I can't go back in there and face them. And it's probably to this day still one of the most beautiful things that have ever happened to me. A few minutes goes by. Again, I'm crying in the back of this alley behind this hotel. And I feel like a hand on my shoulder in the back of my neck. And this guy turns me around, a big guy, he's probably in his late 50s, a little bit taller than me, just like a bear of a man, turns me around. He looks me in the eyes and he goes, you're my hero.

And I still got chills thinking about it. He looks me, he goes, you're my hero. He goes, this happened when I was 11. I've got three kids and my wife, they don't know. No one knows. I will follow you anywhere. And I was just like, I'm so confused. I'm like, what?

I'm like, what do you mean? For me, I thought I was the only one this ever happened to. I never heard of a man being sexual abused growing up in the middle of Ohio. You didn't see this on TV. Sports stars weren't talking about their vulnerabilities and insecurities. The guys that I looked up to and admired, you know, it just wasn't talked about. Guys on my, you know, my classmates, guys have played sports with, they would, the slightest moment of you showing weakness, they would make fun of you. Right?

It was just kind of the culture. I'm not saying guys are like bad and wrong. It's just how things were. And so if you had a scrape on your knee and you're like, ah, that hurts. They would just make fun of you. So sharing something this deep and vulnerable was not even in the picture of possibilities. It was like you were going to be kicked out of school in life.

If people knew this about you is how it felt. That was all a false image. But it was scary. And this guy looked at me and he gave me the biggest hug. He goes, thank you. You've just changed my. life. I've never had the courage to do it because I've never seen anyone talk about it. And now I'm going to go tell my wife. And now I'm going to start healing. I'm so confused,

but I'm like giving him a hug where, you know, then I don't know, probably 10 other men in this group came out and one by one kind of talked to me. And there was probably like two other guys that had been sexually abused at some point. And they shared for their first time what had happened. And I was just so confused, but I was also like grateful that they weren't, you know, shamed of me or something and like accepting me in some way. And I was like, what? And then other men just started opening up about other things, you know, other fears and insecurities and things they were ashamed of, not sexual abuse, but just, you know,

traumas they had. And I was just like, what? You too had this other thing? And that was the start of a healing journey 10 years ago. And I remember saying to myself, okay, well, these guys are a part. part of like a workshop group, but I could never tell my friends and family because these are strangers. I may never see them again. But then I remember saying like I need to tell my family because this has power over me. This fear is controlling me. It's consuming me. It's causing me

to hold myself back. It's causing me to not open my heart and connect with people that I care about. It's putting a mask in front of myself and defending myself. And I'm not saying I need to share this every moment with every person, but the people I care about, if I'm concealing my past pain, that in definition has power over me because I'm afraid of it. So I had to learn how to communicate this to my family one by one to certain friends one by one. And for, I don't know, six to nine months, I kind of went through this process of talking about it, one by one with some people. And I realized, wow, they accepted me, which was one of my biggest fears. Will I be accepted if people know my deepest shame.

And can I really accept myself? Which I didn't. You know, I was running from it. And when I started to do that more and more, I remember realizing like I had the deepest connections with people after that. They started being vulnerable with me and sharing other things. And I was just like, wow, this is like what intimacy is about. This is what connection with people is really about.

It's not about going out and only having fun and only, going to parties and only like talking about the superficial things. There's a time and place for all that, but it's also about revealing who you are and being in relationship with others, them revealing who they are and you connecting on certain levels. And again, everything with context and timing and the right place with everything. But that became like what I was truly seeking in my life, you know, was this relationship with self and this relationship with others that was deep.

that was more profound. That was more rich and abundant and vulnerable. And I remember after, I don't know, almost nine months, I kept thinking to myself. And people kept saying, like, Lewis, it's so powerful that you're willing to talk about this. My podcast had just started like nine months or a year before, some around them.

And I remember saying to myself, like, I just felt like I urged that maybe I should share this on my show. So for months and months, I was thinking about it. And I was like, if I share this, my business might be over, my reputation might be done. No one may never buy anything from me ever again. I may lose all my audience. Is it worth it? And I kept like being afraid to talk about it because I was like, I may have no money.

I may have, like, people may completely kick me out of their lives. My friends and family have to love me. but my audience like I don't know they're just going to be like who is this crazy person and I remember for months I was working with other people their mentors and I was like I think I want to talk about this but I want to do it in an authentic way that doesn't feel weird or something so I got some guidance on how to do it and I had my friend of mine Jonathan Fields interview me and I just said I need to guide me because I'm going to do this the right way to help men heal and give men a space to listen to something if it's happened to them

and I eventually put it out months later. I recorded it and put it out months later. And I remember just saying like, okay, my business is over and I'm accepting this. But if this can help one man, it's worth it. Unlock the pain and creating healing. And I posted it overnight and I woke up the next morning with hundreds of essays from men all around the world talking about their sexual abuse for the first time. And I remember I had kind of an emotional hangover for the next couple weeks just reading all these emails because it was so much pain in the world. And it took a couple weeks to get out of it for me because I was just feeling it all and realizing, man, there's a lot of men suffering.

And when men are suffering, women suffer. When men suffer, communities suffer. When men are in pain, they're causing pain in the world in other ways. We see that on the news all the time. or they're causing to kill themselves. They're causing to hurt their wives and their relationships. All the mass shootings are caused by the pain and suffering that men have yet learned how to heal. And I'm not saying any of that is justified, but this is what's happening because of the inability to express emotions in a healthy, conscious way, in a safe environment and feel seen and accepted for our shame.

And I could empathize with that because I had a lot of anger in my life. And even though I didn't do horrible bad things, I reacted in ways that were not my highest self. I would get angry. I would yell. I would whatever, flip people off in the car, all these things based on a wound. And when we are emotionally triggered so easily, when you poke me and hit something inside of me, that's like, I don't like this. I'm going to defend myself.

It just means there's something inside that we've got to face and know ourselves better about. and learn to mend, heal, and create new meaning around that pain, whether it be a little trauma or big trauma. And when we can create new meaning around those memories, then we can draw our future in faster. We can draw the abundance in faster. We can draw love into us more. But it's hard to do that when we're living with wounds open

all over us emotionally and psychologically. Wow, man. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's so beautiful and so powerful. and I got chills during that whole time for multiple parts of that. It's just so powerful when you started to completely own the parts of yourself that you've disowned. And you've seen like how you had this crazy, you were putting the pressure of the weight of the world on this decision of revealing the shame and how you won't be loved on it. But it was really just a projection of your own view of yourself that you're not loved.

And it's like to see the impact and the ripples that the ripples have made from that. decision of you being able to share that, I can only imagine how big the healing and the amount of suffering that's alleviated from you sharing that. It's like on the other side of our deepest challenge, our deepest grief, our deepest shame is our biggest gift in how we can share that with the world. And I'm sure that's just one of the most powerful things that you're able to now give to other people by virtue of having gone through that experience firsthand. Yeah, I remember I wrote my first book, the School of Greatness, which was kind of like the lessons of the people I'd interviewed,

like the main principles. And then my agent, and it was a New York time bestseller. It was like, okay, it fed my ego of like hitting the list and getting the numbers and all that stuff. And my agent was like, let's follow it up with like the business book,

you know, like after the first month, he was like, this is a huge hit. The publishers want your next book. Let's do a business book. Like you're building this business. You have this philosophy.

Let's do this thing. And I was just like, I don't think I can. do that right now. I go, I really think I need to write a book about how men can heal. And he goes, ah, he's like, I don't know. I mean, okay, I don't know if people are going to be receiving that or this and that. I go, I don't care if it only sells one book. I really don't care. If it gets in the hands of one man or gets in the hands of a woman who can understand the man in their life that's suffering or struggling that they've never been on to connect with and they can start to communicate with them in a

way that they can receive it. It's going to help that relationship and impact their entire immunity in ripple effect in there. And he was like, okay, we can do this, but, you know, we'll see how it goes. And I said, this is, it felt like a duty. I don't know if you've ever created a piece of content where you feel like, this doesn't matter if it makes me money. I just have to put this out in the world. It's a piece of art.

It's a message. I'm just got to do it. And I spent the next few years just like researching and diving in because I was like, I gained so much beauty, emotion. And it's been a journey. It's not like I was perfect at that moment. Neither am I now. But it was like I unlocked a level of purpose in me that I had never had before.

And a level of peace that I hadn't had before. Even though I still needed more peace, it unlocked a certain level. And I remember writing this book. And the book came out in the middle, like right when Me Too movement came out. This book came out. So they weren't, I thought, this is perfect timing, you know, because men, need this, right? But they did not, the world was not ready for this type of book to come out. And it did like find numbers wise, but it wasn't like this massive hit. And I remember thinking,

like, I'm okay as long as the people that read this are impacted in a deep way. And that book continues, I continue to get messages from men who the last five years who keep finding it and keep healing. And I'm like, it's great. As long as it keeps doing that, I'm happy with whatever it does. And I'll give an example. A few weeks ago, I got a text. I've done works. I've done a lot of work in prisons and help men who are extreme murderers who are on the path of wanting to improve. And I'll go in and I'll do workshops and do different things because I grew up essentially in a prison on the weekends. I would go for four years to a prison to visit my brother. So I would be in visiting rooms with other men convicts and their families. And I got to know them. And there are some men who did some horrible. things, but they were also good men at that time. They had owned it. They were living their consequences and they were trying to transform. So I'm not saying what they did was okay, but the fact that they were trying to improve and owning it, I respected that. And some of the men that I've worked with in prisons have been in there for 20, 30 years, but they did something horrible when they're a

teenager. And they've tried to improve their life. They've tried to own it and be the best they can with what they have. And I respect people who are making that effort. Over the pandemic, I did a live stream to all the prisons. So I talked about the mask of masculinity in all the prisons, kind of like TVs. It went live. Whoa. And I got this text from a guy who really serves in a lot of these prisons and goes almost

weekly to help these men recover. And he also helps a lot of men who've been wrong with. wrongfully convicted. And he sends me this text. He's the one who interviewed me for this kind of live stream. And he sent me this text of a letter, a six-page letter from an inmate that he had known for a couple years. And this inmate, he said, I met this kid two years ago.

He's been in solitary confinement for two years, which means he's got one hour a day outside, 23 hours a day in a cell like this, in a cell trapped, essentially. Probably a little less vibe. Less vibe. Yeah, less cool vibe. I mean, you could probably live there if you had this, but two years. And he said, when I met him, he had a swastika tattooed on his chest. And he was in a white gang in prison.

And he got this letter saying, I left the white gang because of Lewis Hous and the mask and masculinity. After this message that I heard, because all I had was the TV inside, I heard this, I got the book. I've read it four times and I'm starting to know myself of the actions. and the beliefs that got me in here in the first place, how they've caused me so much pain. I've started to heal and mend. And again, I believe when men start to heal, hurt men heal, the world heals. Politics heal. People create bridges as opposed to walls.

People come together and communicate. We collaborate as opposed to compete. And we look at life differently from a healing journey as opposed to a hurt journey. And so again, it's, you know, something that I did five years ago in this process is still making an impact today. And we never know who we're going to be touching with the message we share. And the version of you that becomes available on the other side of that healing firsthand is the most beautiful thing to feel. But then also what you get to create in the world is going to be so much more aligned to what your soul is here to bring. And you start to live life not by default and the conditioning that you've been accumulated, but by design and how you want to create a lot.

life that you want to create. But you can't have that clarity if there's all this other noise that you haven't reconciled with. Well, a lot of us are defined by the memories of the past. Yeah. And so we are defined by those memories and those stories that we have attached painful meanings to. And I'm not saying that things in our lives aren't painful and challenging and aren't tragic. Some of them are. But as man searched for meaning, I'm sure you've read the book with Victor Frankel, it's like he went through one of the most horrific experiences. that any human being can go through being in the Holocaust and watching thousands of people die around them all the time.

And Victor Frankel found a way to create meaning from those painful memories. And I'm not saying this is easy. But if we want to live a rich, full, joyful, abundant, free life, we must not be defined by the memories of our past. We must learn to mend those memories, create new meaning, and draw in the presence of a future that is greater than our past. and that's what gives us more energy, more vibrance, more openness, more ability to connect with people. That's what makes us less triggered and reactive and defensive and guarded because we have mended those

memories and we're drawing in a greater future. So beautifully said. It really encapsulates the journey of healing and self-actualization so well because the more that you actually realize who you truly are beneath those stories and the meaning that you've attached to the past, oftentimes unconsciously that you're not aware of, but like we're speaking to going through this process of actualization, of excavating and then finding who you are, then you develop clarity. And I think clarity is something that for me personally on my journey is something that I valued like the most in my life, right? Because with clear sight, you can, you discover what

conditions are necessary for your desired aim to arrive to manifest in your life. And we are creative beings and we're here to create and to serve. And you become so much more capable of doing that when you're working with the intelligence of nature. Yes. And not just from conditioned wounding. So it's beautiful. And the impact that you've already shared on this planet before that was incredible, right? And then after you reconciled that, it just exponentially jumped in the level of impact that

you were having. And now at this place where even said to your book, you feel like you're just getting started with this new book and this whole journey that you're going on now. This is the book I wish I had 10 years ago when I was stuck struggling. suffering in breakdown mode in every relationship. Again, externally, it looked like I had things figured out. But relationship-wise, emotionally, internally, I was constantly stressed and overwhelming and breakdown and just felt like stuck.

I felt like stuck. Like, why is this not working? What's wrong with them? You know, pointing the finger at everyone else, but like, why don't they understand me? And then I realized, oh, I'm the common denominator of all these breakdowns. You know, all these relationships, I'm in them. Yep. I'm in them, so it can't all be me.

So the more everything broke down, I was like, okay, my ego got hurt enough where I was like, all right, it's not about everyone else. It's about me. So how can I start? So I think that's first. It's like seeing what are the parts of me that are working great and what are the parts of me that I just get to improve on and evolve on, not shaming and making myself bad and wrong and judging and putting myself down, which I was extremely good at for many years. years, but it's just saying, okay, there's some areas of my life that I'm unconscious to. And it's not good, bad, right, or wrong. It's just what it is.

And if I want to feel better, if I want to create a deeper impact in my relationships around me, and if I have a desire to impact in bigger ways, in order to do that, I've got to change and transform my emotional state of being. You know, have you been to India? I feel like you've been to India. I haven't. And I studied in India meditation for a number of weeks. I learned about the two states of being, one being the suffering state and one being the beautiful state.

The suffering state is, you know, energies of frustration, anger, resentment, a lack of forgiveness, kind of those energies. And a beautiful state is joy, peace, abundance. And we're essentially in those two states at all times. And it's a decision we get to make. We want to stay in suffering or get out of suffering into a beautiful state of being. A gateway to getting in there is gratitude. You know, it's hard to be suffering and grateful at the same time. It's really hard.

When you're in gratitude, your energy state changes. It shifts. But we're focused on suffering state. We're so focused on self-centric thinking, not gratitude thinking. and in order to get out of that suffering state, it's to release ourselves, release our egos, and dissolve that in certain ways.

And I just think it's, you know, I didn't know how to do these things. And so when I was in breakdown after breakdown, after breakdown, and that's when I was like, okay, I need to unlock certain areas in my life. I need to learn.

I need to humble myself. And I truly believe if we do not humble ourselves, life will humble us. Which it did it many times over and over. And I tried to just muster through it and just like, oh, bigger, faster, make more money to overcome that.

But we will be humbled and humiliated unless we stay humble and grounded. And that's why I think it's really important to have a practice of staying aware, of a practice of facing yourself and knowing yourself and whatever modalities work for you to do that. And to really surround ourselves with people that we believe are so well intended. in elevating and supporting us in a positive way while also accepting us and not trying to change us.

It's kind of this balance. Like my girlfriend Martha, she's amazing because she fully accepts who I am. She doesn't want to change who I am. She fully accepts my past and all the flaws and mistakes I've made in my past because she knows that's what's gotten me to who I am now. So she doesn't get upset at the past things I've done,

the things I've done wrong or mistakes. She's like, I see you, I accept you. And she accepts who I am now. And at the same time, she wants to encourage me to stay on the path of consciousness, of doing the right things, of elevation, of empowerment. So it's not a make wrong. You need to do this. It's a encouragement. It's a support and acceptance at the same time, which I think is a beautiful balance of staying grounded and making sure we surround ourselves with people like that. Yeah. For people that see the level of success impact and yeah, just real success that you've had in your life, people don't realize the magnitude of things that it takes to reconcile within yourself and then to also call forth on that journey of self-actualization and like, you know, creating a popular podcast or being a successful artist or whatever people want to go out there and create and find, be able to create the lifestyle around, you know, and create a career from their passions. For you, you know, discovering clarity around what your strengths and what your skill sets are, I know has been a big journey. And then also on the flip side, reconciling and discovering what are the fears that you have in regards to rejection and to failure.

And so, you know, after so many years of having conversations with individuals and being on your own process of discovering greatness, what have been a few of those really key understandings in terms of transforming yourself on that path? Well, I think the enemy of greatness is lacking a meaningful mission when we are not clear on our meaningful mission. And I like to define it in one sentence. You know, what is this season of life's mission? This doesn't need to be. I know what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I'm going to go cure cancer and change, you know, millions of lives for the rest of my life. It is a seasonal thing.

When I was on my sister's couch, I couldn't think beyond that for a year and a half. I was living on my sister's couch after an injury from playing football. And I had no money. I couldn't think beyond what I wanted to do besides like my mission is to make enough money to get off this couch and live on my own. That's all I could think. Once we have like more room to think and breathe or a season or transition has happened, then we can see what we want for the next season. But getting very clear on defining what my meaningful mission is gives me the ability to act with more focus, intention, and energy. So for me, it's to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life.

it's clear it's one sentence for me i know where i'm heading i may never get there but i know where i'm heading and that focus allows me to say yes and no to things it allows me to put my energy and attention towards a mission and not everything and be distracted by everything the enemy of greatness is lacking a meaningful mission i'm not talking about and it's really like not just sending goals and dreams for yourself but including the service of others in those goals and dreams that gives it more purpose And that gives you more energy when there is adversity and challenges. Like you're asking me before we started, you know, I'm in the middle of a, you know, six, eight week book launch when I'm doing three, four interviews a day.

I'm recording my audio book on the weekends. There's no days off right now. And I understand this is the playoffs for me. This is a season of intensity. And we're moving into a home tomorrow. And we've been doing all these other things. And I've been traveling and no sleep, all that. Years ago, I would not have been able to do this.

when I didn't have a meaningful mission. But because I know this is temporary, because I know it's for something that I'm so inspired by, and it's not about me. It's about service and we. I have more energy. I'm able to sustain on, you know, less sleep on these things for this period.

And most people get burnt out, overwhelmed, stressed, anxious because the goals and dreams are about them alone. which is not bad and wrong, I just don't think it's as useful when it's including others in your goals and dreams and seeing how can I solve problems in the pursuit of this dream or inspire or lift people up in my art, in my creativity,

not just try to do it for my success, but for the service of others. And that shift, it's just a little shift, allows you to have more peace in your heart, allows to be less stressed and anxious and overwhelmed. when challenges arise. Again, it's not like I'm going to be lacking challenge at university, but my response to it is more harmonious

because I have harmony inside of me. And I can see things with that level of clarity and focus. So the enemy of greatness is lacking a meaningful mission. And we talk about in the book on how to get clear on finding that and knowing what season you're in and not judging yourself or comparing yourself to what someone else is at, but really getting clear on the things.

three P's for you, which is your passions, your power, and the problem you want to solve. Your passion is kind of your curiosities, your interests, your powers, your talents, your gifts. But marrying those with the problem you'd like to solve or overcome. Most people don't do the third one. They're just like, I'm curious about this. I'm passionate about this. And it's my talent. Let me go make money.

Let me go find some success. But it's finding that problem you want to solve. So we break down that whole process of how to discover what season you're in. what your meaningful mission is for this season by going through these exercises on that. And I also believe that self-doubt is the killer of dreams. I think it is the thing that holds all of us back

from allowing our gifts to come out into the world when we doubt ourselves. And here's the thing. It doesn't matter how gifted and talented you are as a human being. I'm sure you know people, Andre, that are extremely talented, that are probably more talented you as an editor or filmmaker. You're like, this guy is a mutant. He's a machine.

How does he, he's an artistic genius. And there were athletes for me that were way more gifted as athletes. And the world could say, God, you're an incredible genius. You're a gift. You're so talented. The world could put this like gift in you. But if you don't receive it and believe it, your gifts are not going to come out into the world. Your self-doubt will cripple you from acting.

It doesn't mean you're bad and wrong. good and right. It just means there's something that's not useful because you doubt yourself. So you don't put your gifts into the world to serve people because you're afraid of one of three core fears, which I'll get to in a second. Self-doubt is the killer of dreams. But here's the other thing. The cool thing about this, it doesn't matter if the world is against you or no one else believes in you. If you learn the skill of believing yourself, you can go do incredible things. You can put your work, your art, your books, your message into the world because you learn to believe. not put your definition of other people believing in you in order to do something.

But there's a lot of talented people that don't act, that don't create, that don't produce, they don't put their stuff out there because they don't learn how to overcome that doubt in themselves. So half of the game is learning to learn, believing and overcoming self-doubt. And the three causes of self-doubt is the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment. the fear of failure I never was never my fear because in sports I was trained did you ever play sports going up yeah in sports it was just part of the process to getting to be successful to winning like you're

going to fail you're going to make mistakes that's how you learn to improve your game and you learned early on okay you know Michael Jordan missed 50% of his shots you know the greatest baseball players of all time fail 70% of the time so we're like okay you don't have to succeed every play. You just have to win the game. And you're going to fail your way to success. So failure wasn't the thing that I was afraid of that held me back from acting courageously,

where failure is usually a big thing. The fear of failure holds people back from putting their thing out there, from risking themselves on the sports field, from creating their music, their art. Success was never something that I was afraid of also because it's something I wanted. Now, I wanted it based on a wound to feel,

love to feel seen, to feel powerful, accepted, all those things. So I was driven to it. I wasn't afraid of it, but the wound caused me to feel like it's still not enough when I accomplished success. And I almost got angry and resentful when I would accomplish. So I could organize my thoughts. I could work hard. I was disciplined. I was gritty. I could overcome pain. I could create goals and structure my day and train to get the results I wanted in sports and business. But every time I accomplished goals, I was never happy. I was never satisfied. So that hurt me. But it didn't cause me to not act to go get what I wanted. The fear of judgment is the third one that causes us to doubt ourselves, the opinions of other people. This was the thing that crippled me the most for most

of my life. And I was so worried about what other people thought. So therefore, I would abandon myself in almost every situation to people please, to give in, to change who I was to make someone happy. and I was constantly shifting my energy to make sure that everyone else was happy and liked me. And it caused me deep suffering and deep sadness because I was always in a constant abandonment phase to try to make one person like me or love me. And it's exhausting. It's draining. It's energy sucking.

And at the center, so if you have these three things, say three fears and put them in a bend diagram at the center is the, the idea that I am not enough. It's something that we've all had to face and struggle with at different times and different seasons. Fear of failure, success, and judgment. The core, the root is I am not enough. I'm not smart enough, pretty enough, talented enough, good enough, worthy enough. And that causes us to doubt ourselves and causes us not to act courageously in our lives.

Relationships, career, sports, art, business, whatever it might be. Because we believe we're not enough. And so that whole book for me is teaching you how to overcome that belief by owning your past, accepting your past, healing the past so that you can beat a place now and your present where you believe you are enough. Now you can't fake it. You can't put a false sense of confidence and say, I am enough. There are a number of different strategies to get you to there to accepting and owning it.

And it's also not about being complacent and saying, I'm enough and I'm going to be lazy. for the rest of my life because that's not a fulfilling life either it's about how am i enough now and i'm also becoming greater i'm also becoming more i'm actively improving and i think that's that's the process and that's the thing that holds a lot of people back such amazing understandings and tools for people to and you know and you get you dive deeper into each of those things within the book and depending upon our wounding we're all going to have our own karma that we need to work through and whatever that fear is and yeah it's really what was your biggest fear if you could reflect back where you're more afraid of failure, success, or judgment? Probably

success or judgment, actually. Yeah. Why success? I think that, I mean, if you probably have gone through this as well, there's certain levels of playing within your reality that you get comfortable and like you're coasting and it's a funny thing to be afraid of your own light. You know, it's really interesting. And I think that on the process of even starting this podcast of stepping into my own voice and sharing more and more, there's, a level of owning and claiming who you are before you even are that person. And that is kind of jumping into the unknown a little bit. It can be a little scary. And I think that it's just such an interesting process to go down because it's inevitable. Like our evolution is going to happen. You know,

whether we resist it or not at some point it's going to happen. But to be an active participant and meeting life halfway into claiming who you are before you're really that person. And it's not like faking it necessarily, but it's really just claiming that version of yourself and being okay with the death of the perception of who you thought you were, you know? So yeah, I'm not a fan of fake it to you make it. I'm more a fan of facing it until you embrace it and becoming it. Yeah. In the process and stepping into the identity you want to become and believing that and owning it. You know, success is a funny thing. When I started doing talks about this years ago and kind of doing research on what causes people to doubt themselves the most.

This whole 10-year journey of the podcast has been me trying to understand why I've doubted myself and been successful in doubting myself, but also suffering and the whole thing and also understanding how the greats have overcome self-doubt in business, politics, sports, you know, arts, everything. When I was doing this journey, I didn't realize that. success was such a big fear because I was like, that's what I want. So why, why be afraid of it? And if we are afraid of success, then we are resisting it. Because why would something come to us if we don't want it? If we're in resistance, we're just going to be pushing it away, pushing our own abundance

away from us. People say they want more, but they're afraid of it. I think it was Marion Williamson that said, like, our biggest fear is not our darkness, but our light or something like that. They're powerful beyond measure. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, it never made sense to me, but I'd go speak to big rooms. And I'd ask people like, raise your hand if you've ever been afraid of success. And so many people raised their hand. I go, it never made sense to me early on. But then I started to ask the questions why.

And I got it. Because there is a weight to gold. There is a pressure to when you are succeeding, when you essentially leave your tribe, your community, your town, and you go do something that they haven't done. There is a pulling back down sometimes from some of those communities or families. or you're not all the time. You might have incredibly encouraging friends and family, but there's sometimes a pulling down of,

are you better than us? Are you too good for us? Come back here where it's comfortable. There's also a massive weight. Like, if you have money or success before you are ready for it, most of the times you will sabotage yourself. If you're not ready for it, emotionally and psychologically.

That's why you see a lot of lottery winners go bankrupt within like 12 months or commit suicide within a couple of years because they don't know how to manage the money that's come to them, that amount of wealth. They blow it. That's why you see, I think the stat used to be 78% of NFL athletes

four years after they retire go bankrupt, 78%. They didn't know how to manage it. They just went emotionally, mentally ready for that amount of wealth at 21 years old. You know what I mean? And they didn't have the right energy to manage it.

And you see this with a lot of, lot of, there was an actually amazing documentary, and you should check out called the weight of gold, which is about Olympic gold medalists who go through extreme depression, anxiety, mental health challenges, drugs, abuse, and suicide within a year or two after they win the gold medal. Because of the pressure. Now that they've been training their whole life for this one moment, now the spotlight is on them. And everyone's expecting them to repeat it and do it again. You've got to be successful at the top constantly. That is a big pressure that if you are not ready for that amount of weight and navigating it and making the weight feel lighter, like you've got to become a greater

leader inside of yourself to navigate more, to have a bigger plate. And it's a lot of pressure if you're not ready for it. So I understand, and I started to understand as my audience grew and my opportunities grew, okay, people are coming out of the woodworks. You see old friends coming out and asking for stuff. Are people really in my life? because they want to be. It's like you don't know. And so it's just navigating all these things are scary. So I get it now.

Yeah. Yeah, it's so interesting. And there's a beautiful invitation for everyone's different, right? Their karma is different. I love how you spoke to earlier, discovering really in the process of realizing your own greatness. You need to discover what is your meaningful mission, you know, because so many people just haven't defined what they want.

Get clear, man. Yeah, got to get clear. You got to get clear. And it's hard sometimes. And that's why I think I give an example in the, book about Robert Green, who was my first interview 10 years ago, Robert Green, the author of 48 Laws of Power. And he knew he was interested in telling stories.

Like, that was his interest. That was his passion. He knew that he had a gift, a power of being a good writer. But he didn't know what his mission was. And so he set out and I think he got like a newspaper job originally for a couple of years and realized, eh, it's not for me. Let me try something else. he came to Hollywood and he started like getting in TV writing rooms and he's like this is not

like my job my my my vibe either I think he did like a couple like scripts for movies but he was like ah it's not really what I want to do I can do it but it's not my thing I think he even wrote like a novel or two or something like that he was like yeah nothing's really like making me feel alive but I think it was like 10 years of him trying stuff you know he was just leaning into his curiosity leaning into his talent, going from thing to thing, trying stuff, until he was like, I've got this idea. I really want to solve this problem. I've got this thing. I want to research.

And I want to write a book in a unique way that's never been written before. And so he starts pitching into publishers and people are like, eh, it's not going to work. And they don't sign him. And then eventually someone, you know, years later, takes a chance on him. And he writes 48 laws of power, which becomes one of the bestselling kind of personal development books of the last 20 years. really and just keeps selling like crazy but it's formatted in a unique way and it's different than every other book but now he just wants to write these unique kind of quirky books around topics that he's excited about solving these kind of challenges that he faced and it just keeps

working for him so it's leaning into these curious things and really getting clear on what you want sometimes it takes time and you've got to try a bunch of stuff yeah and that self-doubt killer is such a big one for so many people like you spoke to earlier if you're you're not going to be your biggest cheerleader and go out there and create it. Who else is going to do that for you? And in that process, you really need to discover the direction that you're going is way more important than the speed. Yes.

And we really got to create a healthy identity in our journey. I don't know about you, Andre, but for most of my life, if you would have recorded liner thoughts and announced them on a loudspeaker into the world, they'd put me in a mental hospital, like literally,

because of the horrible things I said to myself every moment of every day. You idiot, you're so stupid. I can't believe you did this. What a dumbass you are. You're all these things. Even when I succeeded, God, you should have done it this way.

You didn't do it good enough. All the beat up and the negative self-talk was crippling. It caused me so much stress. And imagine if we had those things recorded and we said them to our loved ones, our friends, our family. And we spoke to them this way. No one would want to be in our heart.

lives. No one would want to hang out with us if we treated others the way we treat ourselves sometimes. And part of the greatest mindset over the powerless mindset is developing a healthy, conscious identity with self. Again, knowing thyself and creating a new identity that is in service to a meaningful mission, not in service to hurting yourself and others, but in service to a meaningful mission. So 10 years ago, when I went on this healing journey, I, again, it's first facing yourself and saying, okay, what are all the the things that I've been being and doing that don't work for me. Maybe some things have worked, but something still don't work. And the negative critic in my mind was not working anymore.

And so I had to create a new contract with myself, a new identity that I wanted to own now and become consistently. And that's what I did. I created the contract. I wrote it down. I signed it. and I said, this is who I am right now and moving forward. And it doesn't mean I was always perfect in that contract with myself. It doesn't mean I wasn't a breakdown in times. But it was a reminder of like, this is what I want to be. This is inside of me. So I know I have it.

I've just got to practice it consistently and catch myself whenever I go back into that negative critic talk. And all this is a journey and a practice. It's not going to happen overnight. Yeah. That perfectionism mindset is one to really overcome, you know, the one who even you find one level of success, but then the inner critic is saying you could have done it this way, that way.

And it's like until you actually put things out there and allow it to be judged, allow it to be criticized, allow it to be accepted, whatever the result is, it's detaching from that external, you know, outcome of that. But being willing to accept, you know, critical feedback, which is just great. But those were often just our own biggest critic, man. And it's because we don't. It goes back to not feeling enough. I'm not enough.

So even when I succeed and get number one and have money, I'm still not enough because I don't believe I'm enough. So we must learn how to accept and believe that we are enough and our core as a human being in order to be receiving the abundance, the love, the intimacy that we want because it may come to us and we resist or reject it because we don't believe we're worthy of and deserving of it. So why would it keep coming? And you're going to affect the people in your life who want to love you

and support you and celebrate you by you resisting it. So you're doing a disservice to yourself and of the people around you by not learning how to love and accept yourself. I'm not saying you have to like all the parts of you that you went through in your past and maybe you did some bad things and hurt some people. You've got to mend that. You've got to forgive. You've got to create that connection to those relationships and say sorry and own these things.

And that's hard, man. You know, writing letters and saying I'm sorry and especially saying, sorry to yourself for all the bad things you did to you. That is not fun to do. But that practice will get you to a center of peace within ourselves. Then we can just show up differently and allow life to flow more organically as opposed to blocking and resisting our abundance. Yeah. So much of those inner dialogues really stemmed down and boil down to either I'm too much or I'm not enough. Exactly. And when you discover that you actually are enough and you are inherently worthy, like that is the most powerful place to be able to create from.

It's interesting because a lot of high achievers, high performers, they'll say this to me, Lewis, like, I don't want to lose my edge. Right. I've got this chip on my shoulder that's gotten me here. And I'm like, I don't want to be satisfied because I may not be hungry. Right. And I'm like, I hear you. And how is that suffering working out for you?

How's that anxiety and stress working out for you? How is that being up all night, like ruminating on something working out for you? I get you're externally successful and you got 20 cars in the garage and you got all the mansions. But why do you still need to go to the hospital because you have heart palpitations? Why do you need to take this medication? Why do you need to numb yourself with alcohol at night to relax? Like, I'm not saying there's not going to be challenges in adversity when you get that chip off your shoulder still. There's going to be stress as an adversity.

But when we are in harmony and we are resonating. and we are resonating in a more harmonic melody inside of ourselves. Our symphony is beautiful. And we will resonate with the people around us in a way that is in our favor. We will resonate with our mission that is a flowing with nature feeling, where things will come and go. And we're not forcing things to happen. We're not grinding and hustling and forcing the material world to come to us.

It will naturally flow to us faster when we are in a harmonic resonance with the symphony of our meaningful mission. And that doesn't mean we can't create amazing results in our life. You know, if we have that chip on our shoulder. We've seen this in sports and business that like people who have that underdog chip on your shoulder. these people hurt me, I'm going to go and do this and show them. Sure, you can create great results, but how's your relationships? You know what I mean? How's the love you have with your life and your family and your communities and things like that?

And how's the inner peace? And the greatest, you know, the greatest gift for me is having inner peace. That is priceless, you know. And you can't buy peace. You have to become peace. and that takes knowing and facing yourself consistently. And I tell these guys, you know, because I have these kind of intimate conversations with a lot of these guys who are making a ton of money and just crushing life externally. And they're like, Lewis, I don't want to lose this chip or this kind of like drive.

I don't want to feel satisfied. And I'm like, when you are clear on your mission and that's big, you're going to be driven. You're going to be driven. And you're going to have an energy that is renewable. You're not going to be burnt out and exhausted at the end of a month because, your renewable energy drives you to solve a bigger problem in life because, you know, there's a book out there about heroes. Donald Miller wrote a book about heroes. I forget the exact name of the book about this, but he tells the story of, you know, the difference between heroes

and villains. And as a storyteller and a filmmaker, you know this better than I do. But, you know, the hero and the villain has the same origin, right? They're both orphans. They were both a abandoned, they're both hurt in some area of their life. The villain grows up and wants to cause this same amount of pain on others in the world that they felt. And when I have power and control to never be hurt again, the hero wants to go and make sure that no one has that pain ever again. You know, but it's both the same origin. It's just making the decision. What energy do I want to be driven from in my life? It's my mission to hurt others or to serve others. And I think it's getting that problem you want to solve, being driven by that to helping and serving people,

not being driven by, well, I've got this wound in this chip, and I make sure no one ever hurts me again. And I'm not saying that's bad and wrong. It's just, is it serving your energy at the highest level? Yeah. That progression you share in the book as well, from victim to villain to hero, to guide, to when you come to that place. It's so refreshing.

I see it 10 out of 10 times. I have a men's group. and we're going to Hawaii in a few days. I'm really excited. Amazing, incredible, high-performer CEOs, really heart-centered leaders, and a lot of them have gone through this process of this process of inner healing and excavation. And like you spoke to, there's so often we're under the illusion that once we heal the wounds that have gotten us to the place we're at externally, maybe we became successful or made a lot of money by virtue of feeling not good enough.

So it's like, okay, if I feel good enough, then what's going to happen to all my success and riches? 10 out of 10 times, what happens is that more abundance comes to you because you're switching from this paradigm of needing to hustle and achieve to aligning and receiving. But it takes the courage to release yourself from that. And it's like that Terrence McKenna quote, hurl yourself into the abyss and realizes a feather bed. And when you realize it's, you know, you are held and you are safe by life, it's so different

when you allow yourself to be a conduit in a container for a more abundance to come through you. Ramakrishna has that quote, it could be raining oceans of bliss from the heavens above, but if you hold up a thimble, that's all that you'll receive. Oh, yeah, it's true, man. And it's removing what's taking up space within us that we're holding on to and allow us to become a container for something bigger, man.

That's a beautiful journey. Hey, man, man. Yeah, that's beautiful. So good, man. Well, there's so many things that we can continue to dive into. I have a few kind of last little quicker rapid fire stuff that we're going to. Sure. Let's do it. All right.

So good. A lot of this we've kind of already touched on. But what's one interquality that surprised you that's needed to become truly great? Clarity, peace, and freedom. Amazing. We touched on that. What's one thought you had about what it means to find greatness that after some time you no longer yes, true.

I think the thought that you have to be doing something at some extreme level and getting recognized in a big way, you know, I used to think that was greatness. But rally really now, it's being someone on a certain level and impacting the people around you in a certain way that is more about greatness. Yeah, that shift to service. Yeah. Beautiful, man. coming to this point in your journey now,

is there anything that you want to acknowledge in yourself for how you've shown up on this path? It's interesting. Let me see the book real quick. I'll show you. Someone told me yesterday, I did an interview yesterday, and he goes, man, I really liked the way you started the book with the acknowledgement to yourself.

You know, there's a dedication that every book has, and I did a little something different with this. I said, 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 my future self because the journey to greatness has only just begun. And I think we don't acknowledge who we have been and the challenges we've overcome enough to ourselves. And when we can do that and we can say, man, you know, I'm proud of you, little Lewis, five-year-old,

seven-year-old, 12-year-old, if all the confusion you were facing of all the uncertainties and the unknown, of all the lack of tools and awareness that you had and the confusion and the pain that you had experienced and the suffering you had internally and the stress you had at home, I acknowledge you for carrying us here and doing your best to get here. It wasn't perfect. You made a bunch of mistakes, but I acknowledge you for getting us here. Thank you for carrying us here. Now I've got you. Now I'm here to get us to the next place. I'm here to be present in this moment. And I'm excited for my future self and I'm preparing myself to be better for the future and drawing that future vision closer to me now. So I would say that I'm proud of consistently doing the work. And again,

I feel really great internally. And that's why I keep diving in and doing the work. It's not like I've arrived and I've figured it out and I've healed and it's, okay, that's why I got to keep showing up. That's why I got to keep asking questions. That's why 10 years in, I feel like I'm even more of a beginner at life. And I got to keep surrounding myself with people like my girlfriend and friends and family that support the evolution of me, not the I've made it and arrived and the external success me, but like the true me inside that cares deeply about humanity. And so I'm, I guess I'm acknowledging myself for that part of me. It's beautiful. And it's a great reminder for all the audience and people who've been tuning in today that on the process of actualized,

in your dreams. It's like that carrot always gets pushed further out and we don't realize that we're living the reality right now that we prayed for five years ago. Absolutely. And to just acknowledge the present reality that we've attracted and to be thankful for that. It's beautiful, man. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so good. Is there anything else on your heart that you want to share before we wrap up? Yeah, I'm grateful for you. Thanks for creating the space and the environment for me to share openly. Thanks for creating the experiential design of quality, of value, of, that people can see and learn and listen and watch because there's such a value to your creativity. So I really acknowledge you for creating this space, for having me, for investing

the time to get to know, you know, the message that I have, and for doing this. when you're moving in a couple days. I'm moving in a couple days and making it happen. So I really acknowledge and appreciate you, man. Man, my biggest honor. Thank you so much fully received. And it's just been so good to be able to drop in with you. I can tell we're already going to be great friends.

Yeah, man. I feel the co-creation and the weaving continue to happen. And you've just been such a big inspiration to see really like the pioneer that you've been in the space of bringing forth powerful conscious conversations that can liberate the planet. Like just you don't know how, like we spoke to earlier, the real. ripples of the ripples that you really made and um it's just so beautiful so thank you for showing up and fall authenticity man my man appreciate you for everybody that's been tuning in to this powerful

episode of the know they self podcast the greatness mindset is available today check it out the link is down below in the description is where you know as well as everywhere you can find louis and what he's doing again thank you so much for coming on the show brother and until next time be well