Modern Wisdom - #597 - Lewis Howes - How To Defeat Your Self Doubt

Episode Date: March 4, 2023

Lewis Howes is a former professional athlete, podcaster and an author. Many people are wildly uncertain that they can achieve the things they want in life. If a lack of confidence killed more dreams than a lack of capability ever will, how can we get past this self-doubt and find a place of genuine, positive reassurance to start working from? Expect to learn why your heroes aren't gods, where self doubt comes from, how to discover your mission in life, what you can learn about positivity from an army veteran who had his face blown off, how to stop negative self-talk, what to do if you don't have a support group around you, whether greatness begins with an action or a mindset first and much more... Sponsors: Get 15% discount on Craftd London’s jewellery at https://craftd.com/modernwisdom (use code MW15) Get 20% discount on all Keto Brainz products at https://ketobrainz.com/modernwisdom (use code: MW20) and follow them on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ketobrainz/ Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from Athletic Greens at https://athleticgreens.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Buy The Greatness Mindset - https://amzn.to/3J5ThS5  Subscribe to Lewis' YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@lewishowes  Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Lewis Hous, he's a former professional athlete, podcaster and an author. Many people are wildly uncertain that they can achieve the things they want in life. If a lack of confidence killed more dreams than a lack of capability ever will, how can we get past this self-doubt and find a place of genuine, positive reassurance to start working from. Expect to learn why your heroes aren't gods, where self-doubt comes from, how to discover your mission in life, what you can learn about positivity from an army veteran who had his face blown off, how to stop negative self-talk, what to do if you don't have a support group

around you, whether greatness begins with an action or a mindset first, and much more. Don't forget, if you are listening, you should have also got a copy of the modern wisdom reading list. It is one hundred of the most life-changing books that I've ever read, and it is free and available right now on the internet for you. Go to chriswillx.com slash books. 100 books that you should read, links to go by them, descriptions about why I like them, and it's beautifully formatted for your fun. So you can do it very conveniently. ChrisWillX.com slash books. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Louis House. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home.

I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home.

I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home.

I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. I'm gonna go home. my pleasure to. You're even better looking at person, even though you look good on screen too. You look very packed on screen, you know. Thank you. Well, for the people that are just listening, we did actually decide that we're gonna address the same. Twinsies.

Yeah, it's cute. Thank you for giving us a seat me. Thanks brother, thanks for having me, man. What do you think most people misunderstand about greatness? Most people go for success and they realize that it's not the thing that's gonna bring them the most fulfillment. Success is a selfish game, something I played for 30 years. And there's nothing wrong with

success. I think success is fine, but when we just chase success by itself, it's really about me. Look at me winning, succeeding, accomplishing, making money, getting the awards. This is a me game. And I played that game for a long time and it worked I got results. I got things money opportunities success, but it didn't solve the The heart game it didn't solve the game of how do I feel about me chasing the success and winning or earning Never felt enough still so I was doing it from a wound. And I think people, again, there's nothing wrong with it,

but I just think that greatness is different than success in the terms that greatness is a we game, success is a me game. And greatness includes going after what you want, but really making an impact on the people around you and empowering and lifting others up and helping them succeed and win too. When it's just me versus the world, I just think that's a lonely game. I would agree. There's a quote from a mutual friend Alex Homosi that got me thinking quite a

while ago about the tension between success and the desire to feel like enough. So I'm going to give you read this out to you. Success is a strange thing. Presumably we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning and fulfillment. Here's the problem. We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it. Success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure that success will make you happy. One of the most common dynamics I see amongst high performances is this. Parents want their child to do well. Parents encourage their child to do well. By praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail, the child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding.

That lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into, I am only worthy of love, acceptance and belonging if I succeed. Now, powered by internal feelings of insufficiency, this person is driven to achieve many things that are prepared to outwork, outhustle and out suffer everyone else because they're not just running toward a life they want, they're running away from a life that they fear. Success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency, therefore success and progress have become prioritized above

everything else. Yeah, and it's interesting because Sarah Blakely, who just sold her company's banks for, I think, 1.2 billion, when I asked her about dealing with failure and how to overcome this fear of failure, she said that when she was growing up, her dad would have the family have dinner every night together and he would ask the same question every night at dinner, what did you fail at today? And he would actually celebrate the failures and he would encourage them. And they would actually get in trouble if they didn't have something to share

about what they failed at that day. And she said that framing around a failure not being a bad thing, but actually a thing that helps you get feedback on how to get better was the thing that was celebrated. You tried something. That's an awesome thing that you did this today. Not only praising when you succeed,

but also praising that you tried, you put effort in, you had a good attitude, you failed at something, man, you had courage. You weren't trying to look perfect. And keeping the failure up only means you're gonna succeed. You play sports growing up, right? You and I know that the only way to succeed was through failure. You know, Michael Jordan missed 50% of his shots. The best baseball players in the world failed 70% of the time and they were the best. They missed 70% of the time. And we celebrate them for their successes, but they also failed a ton,

ton more than they succeeded. And I think in athletics, we were taught that failure is just feedback. It's a part of the process on how you succeed. I saw this meme, I don't know a few years ago, online, about a meme of like a baby kind of like wobbling and falling over.

And the meme said, a child when learning to walk falls a thousand times. And never thinks to himself, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. He just keeps getting up and trying again, and totally figures out how to walk. And I think if we can take that approach on everything, like, okay, I'm just going to fall a thousand times, but eventually figured out how to walk. And I think if we can take that approach on everything, like, okay, I'm just gonna fall a thousand times, but eventually I'm gonna walk. And I'm not gonna think this isn't for me,

but a lot of the times we stop after one fail today. You know, we stop after one try and it didn't work out because we got judged or criticized by someone. Yeah, certainly a healthy relationship with failure, I think, and reframing that. One of the problems that you have in the modern world is this asymmetry between what we see of everybody else and what we see of ourselves, right?

And you don't really get to see the... You get to see the grand failures of people, you know, the bankrupt seas and the house going up in flame and the very public marriage. Yeah, you see all of the divorces, you see all of that. What you don't see, the ones that I think are actually a little bit more ruthless because it's death by a thousand cuts, the way that they made a promise with themselves

that they weren't gonna hit snooze this week and yet they did on a morning. Or the fact that there was a cookie left out from last night and they decided to have it for fucking breakfast. Like why do you have it for breakfast? Oh, well, it was there and I'm sorry, and I don't know, but you're saying it to yourself, right? And those very mundane

failures, I think, are, it's hard to find a balance. And I think this is something that I really want to dig into with you today. This balance between feeling like we're enough and staying hungry. And that's something I want to get into. But first tell me this story about Jason Redmond. Have you ever viewed him yet No, he's amazing man. It's inspiring. He was Yeah, he's he's an inspiring guy who was at war and He essentially got in crossfire. He was supposed to come home Like a week or two later, but was deployed and had he was supposed to come from home for a Halloween

I think in a couple of weeks and he was gonna be down with the deployment. But he had one final mission and he got in this crossfire where he essentially got shot in the face, got shot in the body, got shot everywhere and lights out, woke up unconscious, trying to figure out where he was. Eventually got evacuated from the location he was in and he was in a hospital.

And he was kind of in and out of consciousness. And as he woke up and heard one time, there were some doctors or nurses or people talking in the room, talking about how, oh man, this doesn't look good. This is not going to end well. And this guy's face is blown off. He's got no nose. He's got side of his head blown off. You know, his body is really damaged. Shot in the side multiple times, all these things.

And he, like, in a moment of consciousness, he heard this. And he finally was able to communicate. He was just like, this type of language cannot enter my room. This type of communication cannot enter me. Otherwise, I would not get better. And he ended up writing this declaration, this sign that he put on the outside of the room. That said, something like whoever inches this room, you must enter with joy, peace, positivity, love, and service. Any type of negative attitude does not work for me. So you only enter this room if you believe in positivity, joy, and a full recovery. And I will recover to the best of my ability. And then 20% farther beyond that because I'm so mentally tough. But if anyone brings negativity in here, it's going to only hurt me. So please do not enter. I'm paraphrasing the actual quote,

but that was the synopsis of it. And he had this amazing recovery. And I think it's the more the attitude in the mindset once something tragic happens to us really determines how the rest of our life goes. A lot of us have experienced trauma, pain, whether it be a huge trauma or just death by a million cuts,

micro traumas, but it's how we interpret it. And the meaning we give those events that really dictate how much peace and harmony we have after those things. So he's just an amazing example of, and again, he's still on a healing journey, but his attitude, his energy, his effort towards recovery and healing, and taking care of his mind is what's really inspiring. That is the single sort of unifying criteria between most of the people I find that successful, that you know, they all seem to be able to deal with setbacks with difficulties, with challenges. It's man's search for meaning. It's Victor Frankle, which is probably the best example of this.

If you haven't read the book yet, I recommend everyone checking it out. I mean, how could a man who goes through so much extreme trauma around him with thousands of people dying around him in a concentration camp live a happy life after he gets out? How is that even possible? And he was able to create new meaning from the memory, from the wounds, from the traumas. And whatever we go through,

if we hold onto any type of pain around that wound, then every time we feel abandoned, taken advantage of or triggered, we are going to react. And I'm not saying it's not justified. It could be justified, but is it useful? Is reacting with anger and negativity, stress, overwhelm? Is it useful towards living a beautiful life? Like Alex Hermose, he talked about, is it useful towards happiness, joy, abundance?

Is it useful towards having more energy towards the mission we're on? And again, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not useful to hold on to that meaning in a negative way. So the primary takeaway is a man who has a strong enough way. I can bear any how, right? From man's search for meaning. How do people find their why or their mission? It took me a while to figure it out, but I think there's an exercise you can play with to start trying. For me, it's first facing yourself and realizing that there are stuff that you might need to heal. There might be some wounds that you need to heal.

And being on that journey, we can talk about that later. But once you're on that journey and you're trying to figure out what is this mission for this season of life, it doesn't need to be I need to change the world a cure cancer or something crazy, but figure out where you are right now when I was 23 24 I was on my sister's couch for about a year and a half and that season of life I couldn't think beyond just trying to find how to make enough money to get my own apartment I couldn't think beyond that. I was like I want to go change the world. I want to go do something crazy I was like I just need to survive and get my own apartment. I couldn't think beyond that. I wasn't like, I wanna go change the world. I wanna go do something crazy. I was like, I just need to survive and get my own life together.

So I had a season of life where that was my mission, but I was clear I need to figure out how to make enough money to get an apartment and get on my own. Then once I accomplished that mission, I could think beyond that. I could explore what is it that I want right now. And when we're in that exploratory phase of not,

of trying to get clear on our mission, think about the three P's. The first one is your passion. And this may sound kind of lame or whatever, but I really feel like when you're interested and curious about something, you're more willing to deal with the stress and the adversity that comes your way than if you're not interested or curious. So figure out what you're really passionate about and ask yourself those questions about curiosity, lean into that. The second P is the power that you already have. Now when I was on my sister's couch,

I didn't think I had any talents. I didn't think I had any power. I was just got finished playing a rena football which wasn't even good enough to play the NFL. So I was making 250 bucks a week. I didn't have a college degree yet. I was one of the lowest in my, in every grade in school. So I didn't think I had talent, but you really got to assess like what are the invisible talents that you might have? An invisible talent was I was really good at connecting with people one on one. I was really good at seeing things, organizing ideas,

setting goals and accomplishing them, but I didn't think that I could make money from it. But I just assessed my talents with my power. And the second part of the power is figuring out what makes you feel the most powerless. In my early 20s, I had a lot of false confidence. You know, I was athletic or whatever and thought I knew a lot, but really I knew nothing.

And I acted as if I was confident, but I was really an insecure, scared little boy inside. And so I went through a period of assessing all my fears. I created a fear list, and it was a long list. But one by one, I started going all in on these fears and making them a superpower, making the thing that made me feel the most powerless, the least amount of confidence in myself, I started overcoming them one by one. Public speaking was a big one, learning how to solstice was a big one, learning an instrument, all these different things that would create emotional

humiliation, right? Social humiliation for me was a big fear judgment was my biggest fear And so by going all in on those things and actually overcoming them They gave me a new skill a new power and actually more confidence because then I overcame the thing that I was the most afraid of And so whatever it is in your life right now create a list of your fears and start making those your talents Not insecurities anymore. So that's the second P is the power. The third one, I really believe this is when you step more from success and the greatness is when you find a problem that you want to solve the third P. So if you're in a discovery phase of like, what is my mission? What is meaningful to me? What is the thing you want

to solve in the world or for this season of life? And when we do that, we feel more in service. We feel more useful when we're solving a problem. If it's a problem, we don't care about. And where we have a curiosity and a power around something, but we do it towards a problem we don't care about, it just becomes less meaningful. It doesn't mean we can't be successful or make money at a business, but if I was going to go solve a problem of, I don't know, nail polish remover and go start a company.

It's just, I'm sure I could do it, but it's not useful and it's not a problem for me, right? So it's figuring out what is the thing. For me, the problem I want to solve is helping people overcome self-doubt because I believe self-doubt is the killer of all of our dreams. When we doubt ourselves, we can have all the talent, we can have all the people encouraging us around us, but if we don't believe, it's going to be hard to accomplish what we want. So, I want to read the world of self-doubt, help people have a new relationship and manage

it, because I think that is going to give them the courage to act on what they do what they want to do And I know you've heard a lot of people come to you and say, you know, Chris, I've had an idea for launching a podcast for five years or for writing a book for 10 years. I've had this idea to launch a company for so long, but they don't have the courage to act. It's because they doubt and at the center of out. And at the center of these three fears, the fear of failure, success, and judgment, is this doubt that I am not enough. And when we can get to the root of that, we can start to figure out how to overcome it, how to heal it. And again, solving the problem, finding these three P's, the passion, the power and the problem you want to solve will give you a sense of like, okay, here's a direction I want to start going towards. And some people might say, well, I don't know what problem to solve.

A buddy of mine, Rory Rating says that we are perfectly positioned to help the person we once were. So if you had lost 50 pounds and you overcame this problem, or if you got out of debt, or if you figured out how to do relationships but struggled for a long time, you're perfectly positioned to help that person that you once were in the world. So start evaluating with these three Ps in order to find your meaningful mission. One of the easiest things that you can do if you want to alchemize suffering into something useful if you want to transcend it

is to take the things that you've been through, the challenges that you've been through, and then teach other people how to avoid the pitfalls or expedite the successes. Yeah, avoid the pain or get to the result faster. Yes, precisely. And it's because you get to point at whatever caused the problem to you, you know, the childhood bullying or the bad relationship with your parents or the heartbreak at the age of 18 or the financial misery that you were through, whatever the problem was that you occurred, right? And you get to point at it retrospectively

and say, what did yourself, yeah? Not only did you not get me, but you're not gonna get anybody else either and I'm going to help. And that's one of the, it's a really easy thing, a strange thing actually to do because being in service is something that we're told a lot of the time is transcendent, it makes everybody feel better.

It's something that you know, the absolute top self-actualization of Mazda's hierarchy of needs, but then the one above that would then be service. It would be okay, not only if you actualize, but then you open back out into the world. And you think, well, that sounds great, but like, where do I start? Like, you go to a soup kitchen, what am I supposed to do? And I do think that looking at the pains that you've been through in your life as an identifier of, if you went through it, there's probably a lot of other

people that will as well. Yes. You are, by definition of having lived it, an expert in this particular field, especially if you've done some introspection and a little bit of self work around it, use that opportunity to help people that have been through or are going through what you went through to avoid the pain in future in their life. Exactly. There's a good example I talk about in the book with Robert Green. I don't know if you had him on yet.

I have. He's amazing. He talked about, he was my first interview 10 years ago, and I've had him on many times, but he's been inspiring for a long time. And when I asked him, how did you find your mission? He was like, I tried a bunch of stuff. I tried a bunch of stuff that I thought I was curious in,

that I thought would be it until I realized it wasn't. So you might need to try a bunch of things, and you might need to do it to a one-to-one level. Maybe you're helping a friend overcome their weight loss journey, and you got a lot of satisfaction bunch of things and you might need to do it to a one-to-one level. Maybe you're helping a friend overcome their weight loss journey and you got a lot of satisfaction from it and you saw results and you're like, all right, let me go take this to three to five friends.

But when he was telling me about his journey, he said that he knew he was passionate about writing. He loved to write. He was curious about it. So he was in there. He was also like a town of his. He got like good results and he got like some success from it in school.

So he's like, all right, we go be a writer. And he started, I think it was that like a newspaper or something like that, a small town newspaper. He did that for a couple of years because he was like, it's not really really like loving. So let me try like writing for TV shows. So he goes in the Hollywood, tries TV shows. He's like, I actually don't like writing in these writing rooms. Like my personality doesn't jam with like 10 people in a writing room or whatever.

Didn't work for him. Let me try movie scripts. He tried movies and he's like, I just don't like this industry. Then he tried writing novels. And he was like writing these books, but they weren't really getting traction. And this was like 10, 15 years of him

trying a bunch of different stuff. Until he said, you know what, I've got this idea, like I want to solve this problem. And I want to write about a book in a unique way that I've never seen written before. And I want to create this thing that it's just don't feel like it's out there, but I feel like it needs to be. And he tried to pitch it and no publishers were really interested in this. But he finally got some traction, got it off the ground, and then 48 laws of power, you know, became this massive hit. And I believe that was his first kind of main book that he wrote in his series. And he was written differently, it looked different than all these other books out there.

But it was solving a problem for him that he wanted for himself, and he wanted to help others with. And then he's like, you know what, I just figured out that I was going to write these unique type of books in a unique way and solve this problem. Use my passion, my power, and solve this problem. It took him 10, 15 years to get there, probably more, and it keeps evolving, but trying a lot of things around his interests is what got him there. And this is one of the best nonfiction authors of our era. Exactly. You've dicked about and failed and sort of circled the edge of the rim for a very long time.

Yeah, and maybe you've got to try a bunch of stuff in your interests to see like what's going to work for you. One of my friends, William Costello, says research is me, search. Absolutely. He's an academic. He actually researches in cells, so I'm not going to comment on whether or not

that's true for him. Okay, so you've mentioned those three big fears that kind of wrapped around the self-doubt conversation here. Self-doubt. Your earlier success and judgment. Yep. How can someone do a post-mortem on their self-doubt? How can they analyze where the negative self-talk and lack of self-belief is coming from. Man, one of the hardest things I've ever done is just look myself in the mirror and say,

do I recognize who I am and ask myself, who am I? And really take a look and say, what are the things that are holding me back emotionally and psychologically? What are the biggest fears and doubts that I have? It was hard to face this 10 years ago and I've faced it many times since then. Paul Gina. I'm gonna be 40 in two, three weeks. Yeah. So I kind of started this journey right around 29 of the School of Gradiness

and just kind of overcoming myself from not feeling happy, getting success, but not feeling fulfilled. And it's been a journey of allowing myself to be a beginner constantly and saying, okay, I'm going to get feedback from as many different types of experts, therapists, healing individuals as possible to see what I can do to break through from the self that does not serve my highest self. So it's been a 10 year journey of healing and recognizing. And when I think I figured it out,

I'm humbled and my ego is shattered over and over again. So now I just try to stay as humble as possible and say, I don't know anything. And I'm always a beginner. I have wisdom, but there's always a lot more to learn. Just like I think you do really well with your show. I think it's a beautiful thing. But again, going back to creating a list of all my insecurities was a big thing that helped me because that was the place where I was

most reactive. Ten years ago, I had a belief and identity that was unhealthy that I was based on results and how I would respond and react. I was angry. I was frustrated. I would get, you know, depressed at times. I wasn't a depressive state where I wanted to commit suicide, but I would be in my room for a week at a time, kind of in a depressed state. Based on results, what sort of results? Based on how I would react in situations. I would react with anger when I was triggered. I would get depressed when something didn't work out for me. And I would tell myself over and over internally and externally that I'm stupid, that I'm such an idiot.

I can't believe I made that mistake. What a dummy. I would say these words. So I was my own worst critic based on how I showed up. And 10 years ago, I created a new contract with myself. I started to have a lot of breakdowns in my life and I went to an emotion intelligence leadership event that kind of kicked off my journey of healing and trying different healing modalities. And in this experience, I created a new contract.

I was able to see and face myself and realize the narration I've been having with myself and to others about me has not served my happiness. If we recorded the things that we said to ourselves consistently and played it on a loud speaker, they'd probably put us in a mental institution for most people. If we said the things that we said to ourselves to our lovers and our best friends, they probably wouldn't be our friends. So it was creating a healthy identity with myself.

I didn't know what that meant. I thought I worked hard and I was disciplined. I could out train people. I could work hard. What are these things? But I couldn't, I didn't learn to accept and love myself, but also not be complacent. Right. How do you accept and love who you are and want to continue to grow to be more? So I created the new contract instead of being angry, depressed, and stupid, which was

the result of what was creating in my life based on the narration and the identity I had with myself. I created a new contract that I literally wrote down and set aloud and signed to myself on a piece of paper. And I said, I am a loving, passionate, wise man. This is not a mantra, just speaking to the mirror constantly. This is a new belief that I had to step into and become. And I had to create something for myself that was authentic, not a lie. I knew I was a loving guy, but I had anger inside of me. So I had to figure out how to get to the root of letting go of anger, but I knew there was love inside of me.

I knew I was passionate, but I had a lot of kind of depressed energy as well that I was holding onto it, so I had to learn how to get rid of that. I didn't think I was smart. I didn't believe I was smart because I was in the bottom of my class all through school. Dislexic growing up is very hard to read in right in general. So saying the word smart would have actually been a lie to me. I can't lie to myself. But I did think I was wise. I was like, I have street smarts. I have wisdom from different experiences. And I believed I was wise. And so I said, I'm a loving, passionate wise man.

And I had to do a couple of things. It wasn't just shouting this as affirmation, as a dog and says, it's not something you do, and just get better. I had to act accordingly every moment of every day to be those things. I had to create and reaffirm those things through my actions consistently. Then I became them and I believed them more until letting go of

the anger, depression, and the feeling stupid left me. It took time to integrate, but that practice of creating a new contract was huge for me. Do you think that beliefs or action comes first? Well, here's the thing. A lot of people can take action and still not believe. You know, I was, I was in eighth grade playing basketball and I was watching the varsity team play and sometimes I'd practice with them because I was taller. And there was this athlete who was the freakest looking athlete that I've ever seen in my life, had a 45 inch vertical could dunk at will.

At any moment, just right into the RAM and just 360 Tomahawk Jammin, could score at will was one of the smoothest basketball players I've ever seen. He took the action. He put in the reps, he worked hard, all those things happened, but he didn't believe in himself.

And it's interesting, everyone was like, you're like a god out here. You can do anything in practice, but when the games came, he didn't believe. So we had the talent. He put in the reps, all those things, but he still doesn't believe in himself. And here's the thing, it doesn't matter

if it really doesn't matter if the world believes in us, if we don't learn to believe in ourselves, we may not create the results we want. But on the flip side, what is cool, it doesn't matter if the world's against us. If we learn to overcome it and believe in ourselves, we can do some amazing things. So there's a combination that once you take the action, you still have to learn to believe. And when we have that negative script constantly running, I think it's hard to overcome ourselves with that identity. It's hard to overcome the negative script without any evidence that suggests the otherwise.

100%. Yeah, you can't fake it. Correct. Yeah, asking for confidence without competence is delusion. Yes. But having competence without confidence is what I call imposter adaptation. It's the adaptation. So,

Face the talent. Well, you've got all this talent, but then you don't take action. You have to accept that after a while, if you continue to disprove all of the concerns and imposter syndrome that you have internally by succeeding in the real world, if every single time that you're faced with a challenge

you overcome it, and yet your imposter syndrome still persists. You have to admit to yourself, it's got nothing to do with your competence and everything to do with your addiction to feeling like an imposter. Exactly. So I think that... And your inability to think in a way that serves you. You're thinking in a way and believing a way

that discredits all the hard work you've done. You were being the worst critic. When other people were like, you're amazing. You've got this. We believe in you. all the hard work you've done. You were being the worst critic. When other people were like, you're amazing. You've got this, we believe in you. But we have to learn how to overcome our own negative self-critic. And I think that's a hard thing to do.

And they usually don't teach us how to do this. And school or our parents may not teach us unless they have that skill. That's why I think it was so inspiring that Sarah Blakely's dad was like, let me celebrate you when you fail and tell you that you are still loved, you're loved, you're enough. I celebrate you. Yes. And great job. You tried something. You overcame

something. And I think that's inspiring. But when we do all the hard work and we still say, ah, no, I'm not good enough or I don't know if I can do it then. Why are you working so hard? Just go be lazy. Yeah, it's a very difficult one, man, because we know the strategies that got us here, wherever here is, even if it's step two, right, or step two thousand, we know that the strategies that got us here were probably paying very close attention to every small element of whatever practice it is

that we're doing. We're scrutinizing our game tape, we're listening back to the podcast, we're looking at the traffic on the website, we're getting other people to read our articles. Whatever it is that we do, right? Whatever the thing is that you do, you scrutinize it and you use a lot of cognitive effort

to look at it. And the problem is that that same degree of scrutiny applied over a long enough time doesn't actually end up facilitating performance past a certain point. And this is why I think that the tools that got you here won't get you there is a really interesting way to look at this stuff. Yeah.

When you start out, there are certain things you need to do. The degree of attention that you need to pay to the things that you do, the level of resolution that you need to look at things through is great. But if you now, podcast episode 1500 or whatever that you're going to release next week was looking at it through the same lens that you looked at episode one, everything would be moving so slowly, it wouldn't be as easy or as graceful. So I do think that there is this balance between belief and action in my opinion, because I was someone that and still does deal with chronic unconfident at times.

Right. Very, very unconfident, especially going through my 20s. Hidden, oh yeah, massively. Hidden behind a very brush. Outgo now. Less so now. But the reason for that is because I've got a stack of undeniable proof that I am who I say I am.

Exactly. To quote homosphere. Yeah. But a lot of people have evidence and they still don't believe. They still don't believe. So it would be that imposter adaptation thing where it's like there is so much undeniable evidence that you are, that you literally have to be delusional to believe the opposite.

Or you haven't been trained on how to believe in yourself and accept who you are. Because a lot of people are striving perfection and it hurts their performance. And we must think how can I just perform better and let go of perfection. Perfection I don't think will ever happen. If it does great, maybe it happens for a moment or a few moments, but striving for performance should be the factor that everyone focuses on, not perfection, because that's what's getting the way of your results. Yeah, I mean, there's a great quote from Tiago Forte where he says that polishing things to perfection is a low leverage activity, which is why some of the best

performers in the world that work has a rough edge to half-assed quality to it. Oh, that's good. Yeah, because the difference between, for most people, unless you're in elite sport, getting from 95 to 97, is not actually going to make a massive amount of difference to your learning in terms of practice, or the way it's issued to the market or the audience

or whatever, but it's going to take you twice as long. So hard, maybe even longer. Yes, to get from 95 to 97. Now, if you are, you same bolt, the goal is to get that 100,000 to the percent, right? That Now if you are, you same bolt, the goal is to get that 100,000th of a percent, right? That's what you're playing with. Yes, but for most people, I think just time and attention and getting things done. There's not one thing that I've done that's perfect in the last 10 years of my show. Not one thing. I could look back at every episode of men and cringe at everything that I do constantly. I'm like, I could have done that better or

Chris did this better than me on this thing. Oh, I could have done this. It could have looked better or changed this stuff. I could compare to everyone in the world and be crippled by that comparison of it's not perfect yet. But the one thing that has served me was just being willing to put stuff out there consistently and improve over time. And I still don't feel perfect 10 years later.

I feel feel like, man, I got a lot of room to grow. There's a lot of stuff I can do to get better, but it doesn't hold me back from my performance. I still show up, deliver, consistent results, and perform as opposed to focus on being perfect. What's the fear to conversion toolkit? For me, it's really transforming your thoughts, your behaviors, and actions into congruency and in harmony with moving forward towards your meaningful mission. Because a lot of fear holds us back from acting, the fear of failure, success, or judgment. So we don't act because we don't believe, we're going to get the results.

So we believe something bad will happen. And at the core root of this fear of failure is, I'm not enough. And so we can convert that into knowing I am enough. Maybe I'm not where I want to be. Maybe I'm not as good as I want to be. Maybe I've made mistakes. Maybe I've messed up. Maybe I've hurt people. Maybe people hurt me accepting the past and learning how to accept it and say, okay, I'm not happy with where I am, but I can learn to accept who I am, not beating myself up anymore and start going all in on my fears until these fears start to disappear. When we can convert it into saying, I am enough in actually realizing it, which I think

is one of the hardest things. It's why people lack confidence. It's why they beat themselves up. It's why they harm themselves. It's why they go on antidepressants because they don't feel enough. So it's really learning the skill of feeling and believing we are enough where we are and also not being complacent and not giving effort to improving and growing.

It's both in excepting where we are saying I'm also going to take massive consistent imperfection to improve over time. When I think we have fears that hold us back and we do nothing to do them, we're always gonna feel stuck or trapped in some area of life. So it's really paying attention to what are my biggest fears,

creating a game plan and a system with support. I don't think you should do it alone in order to go all in on them and say you start to overcome them. When we can do that, again, it's converting fear into confidence. Like you said, you have undeniable evidence and proof based on putting in the reps consistently. If you didn't have that evidence or proof, you still might be lacking confidence or fearful of certain things because you didn't take the action. And that's what really what it is. A lot of us are unwilling to face the fear and acknowledge that something is wrong with us or something is not perfect or something is off. So we mask it. We put out a mask to fit in and belong to others. But what we are saying when we do that is we

do not belong to ourselves. I'm trying to do something for you to like me Because I don't like myself. So I'm putting a mask on I'm projecting a false sense of confidence performative and Again, this is not right or wrong good or bad. I'm not judging people because I did all these things most of my life Is it useful? Is it effective towards your meaningful mission? Is it gonna help give you more energy? Is it effective towards your meaningful mission? Is it gonna help give you more energy, feel more peace and harmony when you go to sleep? I don't know about you, Chris,

but I couldn't sleep for most of my life until I hit 30, because I would ruminate for an hour, hour and a half, almost every night just staring up at the ceiling, thinking, stressing, anxious about myself, and not feeling good enough. And I would try to perform and work really hard to feel better, but it's still didn't work. I know what it feels like to lay awake at night wondering if you're doing the thing that

you're supposed to be doing. I'm wondering why your life's going and if this is actually how you're supposed to spend your days and I'm really fulfilling my potential and why don't I have the things that I want, why don't I feel the way that I should, why is life not, I don't I have the things that I won? Why don't I feel the way that I should? Why is life not? I don't know. It felt discordant. It felt like chords that were being played out of tune with each other.

I do think one of the easiest ways, and this is me speaking to myself, but also anybody that feels like, okay, I don't have the self belief, but I also don't have any proof. For me, the easiest place to start is to do action. And the reason is for the same reason that going to the gym is easy, the meditating,

that you can see the reps that you do. Right? I know that I spent 30 minutes writing after sitting down for an hour and a half and procrastinating. We're making it on writing my blog post, right? On starting my sub-stack, on choosing the fucking logo for my website, or whatever it is that you decide to do.

That is, it is so obvious to me that that is work that is done and it is more undeniable than I spent time digging through the trauma of my past introspectively and changing my beliefs. Yes. For me, and this may be different for girls, I'm not sure, but certainly for guys, I think that an action focused, I did a thing today. I can take it off a list. You know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, think it's also that can be a cover-up, that can be a mask, if not addressing the wounds that hurt you at some point. So it's, we don't have to sit here and think about our past pains and traumas every single moment of every day. There's a season and a period of time to start and develop that healing integrating process.

For me, it wasn't until the last couple of years when I really went all in on every area of my life that caused me the most pain and reimagining it, facing it, doing physical exercises with it, having a coach to support me emotionally process it, to where I felt the most freedom and peace in my heart that I've ever had in my life. It doesn't mean I don't face challenges and stresses in my day to day, but I sleep peacefully at night and I am way less reactive about what happens in life. Whereas before I used to be in fight or flight mode whenever I felt triggered or someone was out to get me. And so I could still take action

and build this unwavering evidence that I have put in the reps, I've got skills, now I've got the confidence. But if I'm still triggered emotionally by someone cutting me off in the street, it's not right we're on good to bad. It's just taking energy away from being more effective. And being driven to deliver

results, using that anger, that fuel, that pain worked for 30 years of my life in getting success, but it didn't bring me fulfillment. So it was unsustainable that drive to prove people wrong, to win it all costs, to get back to the bullies of the people that made fun of me, or to just overcome all the challenges I faced. It didn't give me peace, it didn't give me fulfillment. Actually, when I accomplished the goals, I became angrier, because I thought, this is supposed to be the thing that brings me more joy.

Why am I not feeling it? Why do I still not feel enough? So it's taking the action so you build a confidence, but I think if you have a story or a memory that still triggers you today, that thing has power over you. taking the action so you build the confidence. But I think if you have a story or a memory that still triggers you today, that thing has power over you. That thing is still consuming and controlling your mind

and holding you back from what I believe is your authentic self. Talk to me about this balance between feeling like you're enough and staying hungry. There's certainly a big cohort of people that I know who internally have a fear. They went to the complacent, they don't want to get complacent. They're dealing with their shit because they know that the chip on their shoulder is part

of the fuel. Now it's an incredibly toxic fuel, but it's fucking potent. Yeah, I mean, you hear about some of the greatest athletes of all time. You see, you know, Tom Brady talking about, I've always had this chip on my shoulder. And look at him, he's the greatest athlete. I mean, the greatest quarterback of all time, undeniably based on results, right? But who knows if he's really fulfilled or happy?

And I don't wanna sit here and judge either way. But it's like- You got Michael Jivey on the show, right? Yeah. Yeah, so I asked him this question. I said, do you think the most high performance on average are happier or more miserable than the normal person? He said, without it out, they're more miserable. Yeah. I think so. I think so. Unless you find some other way to create harmony in your life.

Think about this way. Think about how much of an outline you have to be to be an unbelievable high performer. And then within that cohort of the best in the world, there's outliers within that, that are the ones that have somehow managed to be balanced with it. Yeah. I just think here's, I've had some conversations with some mutual friend of ours about this. I don't want to like this chip off my shoulder because then it's not going to drive me anymore. Yep. And here's the thing. I don't feel like I really don't feel like I have a chip on

my shoulder anymore. I did. And I don't feel like I do. I feel like more, I have a desire to fulfill my mission. And I have a desire to give my best to my creator, you know, if that's God, great. I'm here for reason. I don't know really know what that is. But if it is a reason, I want to make sure I give it my all. And I want to give my all to the mission of this season of life. And that's more of what I'm afraid of is not like a chip on my shoulder,

about three kids from middle school that picked on me or someone that picked me last on a dodgeball team or the guy that sexually abused me or all these things. It's not like I'm going to go show them. What does that do for me? It doesn't do anything for me. It's more, how can I be of service to my mission? How can I show up for my mission? And by doing that, man, I'm going to be super proud of myself. How can I show up for my friends, my family, my community in a big way? Man, that gives me energy and fuel, knowing I'm making an impact,

rather than knowing I'm right, winning, or being successful. That gives me this like than knowing I'm right, winning, or being successful. That gives me this like, renewable energy. It gives me this fuel that I feel like will never burn out. I wonder whether part of the selection criteria for the people who have a forward running towards something they want as opposed to running away from something they via mentality is to do with that group that they've got around them, whether they have a support structure or not, because a lot of the creators and other discussions that I see about this online, one of the common threads between the people that seem to have the more loan ranger, I'm going to use this chip on my shoulder thing to drive me forward, is that they don't have that support structure.

I'm good community. I'm good friends or family or community to really support them because they've kind of pushed everyone away of just the obsessive nature, I feel like. So what do you say to people who don't have a strong support system or community around them at the moment? What can they do? I just think this is not alone. This is not a one-man game. I just think it's a game we're supposed to play with other people, you know? And I used to be the kind of the lone wolf and it was me versus the world,

it was me against the world with everything. And I always thought the world was against me. And I'm gonna have that feeling of anxiety, stress, and overwhelm when it's me versus the world, as opposed to we're all in this together. You do realize how narcissistic that is for the people that have that viewpoint, right? You think that the world is against you.

The world doesn't think twice about you. The world just feels like though. I'm aware that it does. I'm aware and I see this online and I had the same. I had the exact same thing. This is me speaking to my past self. Like dude, the world doesn't think twice about you. They're thinking about their own stuff. Yeah.

People, you would be way, way, way more self-confident if you realize how rarely other people give a shit about anything that you did. And yet this, it is a incredibly narcissistic, victim mentality that look at what the world is doing to me. Look at how hard I have it. It's me against the world. I'm going to sissifus my way up this hill. I'll bear the brunt of all of it. You know, you can't wait the weight of the world. Yeah, precisely. This existential burden. It's like, bro, you have had some traumas that are absolutely independent to you and quite rightly, you require sympathy for that. But it's not like the world made this happen. Yeah. Yeah. You know, who is who are some top athletes in your mind that you think of

when you think of sports and the greatest athletes of all time? Who are you? Yeah. Brady. Yeah. Christian Ronaldo. Yep. And when they got to, you know, I don't know if you've had Tim Groveron, but he's I've read about him in my book, working with Jordan and Kobe. When Jordan and Kobe won their first championship, they didn't get there alone. They had a coach and they had teammates around them. And when they won their first championship, they didn't say to the coach, Coach, thanks for getting me here.

I'm gonna do this on my own next year. They actually went and hired more specialists, more coaches, more support to help them get to that 95% to 97%, right? Like you talked about. And to stay on top to overcome the challenges that come, they enlisted more support. But I think a lot of us, and I think that's wisdom, finding coaches, finding people that support you and give you real feedback, not criticism, but how to adjust to perform better.

And when we try to do it alone, I just think we are exhausting our energy. I have a coach for almost every area of my life. I've got a business coach, I've got a fitness coach, nutrition coach, I've got an emotional coach. And I also just have mentors, friends, personal advisors that I lean on when I need support. I don't think it's weak to ask for support. I think it's wise. And when we can lean on mentors, like you said, or just watching your show is wise. When people watch you or listen to you, you're their mentor, or you're bringing on people that are their mentors, and they're learning things on how to overcome challenges faster. They're minimizing their time to accomplish things. They're dealing with less pain because of it. That's called wisdom.

That's not weakness. Well, certainly for the people who don't have the resources to maybe be able to get five coaches for each area of their life, you have the opportunity to surround yourself with the greatest minds that you like with your content career. You know, this was me at some 34 now, and this was me at sort of 27, 28, you know, the advent of your Jordan Peterson, your Sam Harris's, your Alander boton from the School of Life's. And I was in a working class town in the northeast of the UK.

I'd met about a million people throughout my career of running nightlife stuff and I'd managed to have a handful of friends. So I was... I was been knowing a ton of people. Precisely. I was the guy on the front door of the nightclub, every single person knew my name.

Every single person in that city knew my name for a decade. And I had a handful of friends because I was struggling to connect. Yes. And I knew that there was something wrong. I knew that I needed to find insight and answers and guidance toward a more effective version of me. Yes. And yet, I was in a world where those role models seem to be quite scarce. Really? So, yeah, very much so. I mean, dude, nightlife, I believe it or not, nightlife is not exactly a hotbed for philosophical

and life direction and stuff. And I'd come from, I talked about this with Goggins, the reverse role model, a world where I had people like the sort of person I didn't want to be like a lot. Surrounding you. Yeah, so not that they were close to me. Mom and dad were absolutely fantastic, but, you know, the sports that I played when I was younger, especially because in cricket, it's a game where physicality isn't a big deal skill is which means that you can immediately at 13 or 14 years old play adult level so you get exposed to

marriages and kids and divorces and breakups and financial worries and alcohol addiction or or gambling or money worries all of these things you get exposed to it's like a crash course in human life at the age of 14 or 15 of these things you get exposed to, it's like a crash course in human life at the age of 14 or 15. So, I started to see people right away, okay, I don't want his relationship with money, and I don't want the way that he shows up for his wife, and I don't want this and this and this. So, those are way markers in the ground that taught me what I didn't want. But finding a community, a role model that you can admire, that you can look up to, that makes you feel like you have a direction that you're moving in that's effective.

Yes. Is hard, man. And yet we have the opportunity now to find people on the internet that are the exact big brother that you never had. Exactly. Here's here. Here's how I did it early on because I knew going from sports into life. After I was done playing Arena football, got injured on my sister's couch for a year and a half.

I was like, I don't know how to get a job, I don't even have a degree. This was in 2008 when the housing crisis was crashing in America, so the economy was very shaky. I have no clue what I'm gonna do. School did not prepare me for life. So what am I going to do?

Let me just think what I would do as an athlete. I need some coaches. I need to find a coach and go do this life thing. And early on at this time for a year and a half, I was just like, man, I'm so afraid of so many things. I created this fear list. And I was a long list and I was just like, I just don't want to feel like a piece of shit anymore. I don't want to feel like crap knowing that I have all these fears on this list,

knowing that these things are consuming my energy. And they hold me back from taking action. So I found my mentors by going all in on my fears. One of the most public speaking, I met someone who is a public speaker, a professional speaker when I run the country speaking to colleges. And I asked him like, man, I can't even get up in front of three people and give a five minute conversation without studding and stumbling. What can I do? And he gave me the path. He said, go to toast masters every week for a year. It's going to give you toast masters as a public speaking class. It's going to give you tools and give you practice and give you feedback in a community. I don't even know what it was, but I said, okay, cool. I'm going.

I, he said go to the, you know, go to a bunch of different toastmasters clubs in this city. I was in Columbus, Ohio. He said go check them out. Join the one that scares you the most. That's going to push you the farthest. So I went to five different ones and one of them I was like, oh, this one is the one I do not want to be in because everyone's a pro, everyone's in suits, everyone's like unbelievable. I do not belong. I got a backwards cap. I got a cast on on my arm in this position, you know, 90 degrees

with a cutoff shirt, looking like a bum. These are all like 30, 40, 50 year old pros actually getting paid to speak. And I go, well, this is where I need to be. By going there, I met a guy and one of these kind of events, there was kind of like free appetizers and food in the back. It was like a guest event. You can check out. I would check out.

So at the end of the event, I went back there. This is one of my sisters couch. I've got no money, three credit cards debt, student loan debt, a bum arm. I can't, you know, I'm in a cast for six months. Got no job, no money. And there is a bunch of, it's probably one of my lowest moments just for me personally, is being injured,

losing my identity, being on my sister's couch. And the back of this room is like all the, you know, whatever, carrots and broccoli and chips and things like that. I got no money for food. I'm stuffing it in my mouth, and then I get all the napkins, and I stuff food in my pockets. Stuffing all this food, this guy who spoke,

sees me, he goes, what are you doing? I go, this is kind of my food for the day. And he goes, let me just buy you lunch. There's a diner next door. So he bought me lunch. He had spoke that day and I watched him speak. He became a mentor of mine and a coach in public speaking for that whole year.

He helped me write my first book. He gave me the confidence and the courage and the coaching to then take action. I would not have met him had I not gone after my biggest fears. I did this as well in solsadancing. Solsadancing was a huge fear of mine. Specifically solsadancing. Specifically solsadancing.

Why not ballroom? Well, it's an element of ballroom, right? So solsadancing is an element of ballroom. So I, here's why. I couldn't dance growing up, right? And being a white dude in the middle of Ohio, you're not known for being like cultured as a dancer, right? This just wasn't it. Yeah, I feel you. And I lived in college above a, my brother was a, he's the number one jazz violinist in the world today. He's a master and he's played all around

the world with the greats, all these different things. When I was in college, I had an apartment that was a studio apartment, I don't know, maybe twice the size of this room. And it was, it was above a jazz club. It was like upstairs above a jazz club. So my brother got me the apartment because he had stayed there a couple of times or whatever. there's above a jazz club. So my brother got me the apartment cause he had stayed there a couple of times or whatever and he knew the owner. And so every week there was jazz music downstairs

like being played, but one night a week, they had a salsa band. And all the salsa saddles in Ohio would come out to Columbus Ohio and dance. So I would go down just curious watching jazz and then I saw salsa one time and I go, I do not belong here. I'm watching this. It's,

you know, I'm the only white guy there. I'm a foot taller than everyone. And they are, you know, singing in a language that I don't understand. They are dancing a language that I don't understand. And I feel extremely vulnerable and uncomfortable. But I was just fascinated watching these individuals dancing together. and how can they just pick someone randomly and know how to dance? The language of it. I was just like, this is fascinating, but I was so intimidated. I shit you not for three months.

I would go down there and sit in the corner, kind of creepy, but not that creepy because I wasn't like staring or gawking or just, I was just like mesmerized at the music and it was just like beautiful And I got to know people over these three months and they always ask me to come dance these girls and I go no way I don't want to make you look I don't want to humiliate myself or make you look bad because I can't dance like these other guys And so that became a huge fear because I was just like the thing I'm resisting It has power over me. It makes me feel not confident just watching it.

Lettaline's thinking about taking a step on the dance floor. So that was another thing. I met a guy who I thought was the best dancer and he was incredible. His confidence, his poise, like his charisma, just how he moved. And I was like, it would be a dream to be able to dance like this guy. He became my coach and mentor for the next year. Finally, after three months, one girl, like, yank to me on the dance floor after trying to get me for, for weeks, I go out there.

I am like drenched in sweat. I'm so terrified. We go to the middle of the dance floor. It's crowded. It's packed. It's packed. Music is playing. People are swinging and dancing all around us. I am just stepping on her feet. I'm like, apologize and constantly I'm looking down the whole time. After about five minutes of just fumbling around like a giant idiot,

she grabs my head and pulls my chin up and looks at her. She goes, Lewis, just look around. Just have fun. Look around. And I'm looking around and everyone Lewis, just look around, just have fun. Look around. And I'm looking around and everyone's dancing and smiling and laughing and having fun. And something I realized, no one is looking at me. No one cared about what I was doing. And even if they did, maybe they looked at me for a moment and said, oh, this guy's not that good,

but then they went on to their own lives. They're dancing, they're having fun. And it was at that moment, I was like, oh wow. It was so afraid of the fear of judgment, the humiliation that could happen. And who cares if a few people were making fun of me or laughing at me? I didn't even see it.

And I was hooked. I started going out four times a week for the next six months. I started taking private lessons, group lessons, doing everything I could. This guy started coaching and mentoring me. And within six months, I started taking private lessons, group lessons, doing everything I could. This guy started coaching and mentoring me. And within six months, I literally became fluent in salsa dancing. And then for, I don't know, seven, eight years, I traveled the world to all these different countries, to the top salsa clubs in the world.

And when enter, not knowing anyone, and go find the top dancer in the club and I would just watch and see who's the best girl dancer and I would go up and ask her this. It was a challenge that I gave myself and most of the time I'd get rejected. And I was like, awesome. Okay, let me overcome this fear. Let me just get back into this.

I'd find other people to dance with. And eventually at the end of the night, those girls that rejected me would ask me to dance because they would see that I could dance. But they didn't think I could originally. So I did this in so many different areas, writing books, public speaking, salsa dancing, launching a business. I started to go all in on these things by taking action, the thing you talked about, building reps. People found me, I found mentors and coaches in that process of action, of humiliation. And they said, Hey, let me give you a few pointers.

Let me give you this. Now, I took the action on what they said. I think one of the worst things you can do today is try to reach out to someone and say, Hey, can I pick your brain for five minutes? And then they tell you exactly what to do and you don't do it. For me, it's the worst thing you can do. Because a coach or a mentor or an advisor wants to know that you took action on the thing they told you and you've got some type of result. So I just said, whatever people tell me to do, I'm going to do it.

They've got results. I want to learn how to do this. And that's what I did. Pretty much everybody is one DM away from the message that'll probably change their life. Yeah, exactly. But a lot of people just fear to take action consistently. And they don't wanna humiliate themselves or fail and lose over and over again. I was willing to humiliate myself every day for years if it was gonna give me freedom.

Have you still got the skills now? I can dance with the best dancers in the world in a salsa club setting. I'm not a ballroom dancer. There's a different form and style and pose, but if I, I can, you can drop me in any salsa club in the world. In a moment, I can grab someone and I can do anything I need to do. Yeah.

Let's go. But I've done it for 17 years. I put in the reps. And for weeks, I would go two, three, four times a week for years. I mean, I obsessed about it just like obsessed about learning how to read and write as an adult. In eighth grade, I had a second grade reading level and I couldn't read or write even through college. So I had to learn these things in my 20s in order to be effective as a writer and write

books. If I had a message I wanted to go out there speaking, I had to overcome the fear of speaking, same thing with writing, same thing with interviewing. All these things were fears. I didn't know how to do any of these things, but I overcame them and continued to overcome them through action consistently. What's the mindset in motion cycle? Let me get to the page here, because it's a graphic. Get it up. Let's have graphic here for this.

Let me find it here. Before I get to that, actually, I want to talk about the difference between a power this mindset and a greatness mindset, because I think this is going to be interesting. This is where I actually think people should start, is going over the power this mindset versus the greatness mindset. Then I'll get back to this other part here, since it's popped up for me. So wherever you're at right now, whether you're crushing it or succeeding, or you feel like you're stuck in your in between transitions, maybe a career, break up, or you're, you just sold a company.

Whatever it is, on page 201, I have this graphic, and I can just share with you guys to see your understand it, is to assess and see, am I in a powerless mindset or in a greatness mindset? And there's really six key factors. And this does not mean you are good or bad, right or wrong as a human being. It does not mean you're not lovable or anything like that. It just means is your mindset as effective as it can be or is it holding you back?

That's all it means. And a powerless mindset is someone who lacks a meaningful mission. I think your interview with Jordan Peterson was great because he talked about, you know, making sure you have a direction, an aim, something to go towards. A lot of people don't have a clear direction. Well, the direction isn't the right direction. It's an inauthentic direction. And so they might hit it, but realize it's not what they wanted. But either way, I believe a man without a mission without a mission is a dangerous man.

When we have no clear direction, that's when bad things usually tend to happen. And you see a lot of our military who struggle and suffer after their mission ends and they come home and they don't know what to do next. And thankfully, there's a lot of programs for our men and women who have returned to get them back on

a new mission. But I just think lacking a meaningful mission, we are going to power this mindset. The mission can be, I'm in a season of figuring out my life. Cool. At least you're clear that you're in a season of recovery, reflection of trying stuff. Awesome. But when you're just like, I have no clue what I want to do. You are in a power of this mindset.

Number two, when we're controlled by fear, again, it doesn't mean that there's not going to be fear that comes up. But when it controls us, we are powerless to it. So that's why we have a lot of exercises about overcoming fear. When we're crippled by self-doubt, again, for me, I was crippled by it for a long time, the fear of judgment and not feeling enough, not feeling lovable, not feeling enough. And it was really me learning to feel enough to myself.

I seeked it from outside validation, but still didn't believe it internally. So it was learning how to have a new relationship with self and stop abandoning myself in this process to overcome self-doubt. The fourth one I think a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to mindset is concealing past pains. This is something that I think a lot of men struggle with, the idea of actually sharing their past pain. And I am just a big believer based on all the science and all the research and all the

therapists and neuroscientists I've interviewed and talk about in the book that when we conceal past pains, it hurts us more. It's more of a poison inside of us and it affects us and our abilities to feel peace and abundance and harmony better when we have something in us that we're afraid to share. For 25 years, I held inside of me that I'd been sexually abused until 10 years ago, I opened up about it privately with people. And I eventually started talking about it publicly because I wanted to give men more of a permission to open up about all their shames or pains. Not in the public setting, but being able to talk to a good friend, therapist, priest,

or whatever it is for you. When we conceal, it means we're afraid and we have shame around something that has happened or that we did. And I just think that keeps us powerless. The fifth thing is being defined by the opinions of others. It doesn't mean don't get feedback and support from others, but being defined by them as our identity is what holds us back and makes us powerless. That's an interesting balance, though. You know, the same as the, is it belief or is it action? Is it fear of insufficiency or is it desire for more?

Is it feedback from the world around us or is it completely reliant on what they think about us? This is the virtuous mean, as Aristotle called it. The middleing section where it's not so much that it's toxic but not so little that it's ineffective and that appropriate dose for certain things, to get feedback from the people around you or the world at large right The actual band that you're playing with isn't all that wide. I know

It's really difficult to manage to find it right. Did you um Did you have any really good coaches growing up in sports and cricket or anything else you played in so No, not really not in terms of mindset. I mean, what can I say, man? I mean, the guys, they were fantastic at what they taught, but I never once learned the value of practice. I never learned the line between putting in work now that would facilitate a performance in the future. And I remember being, so before I did the podcast, I was always a little bit resentful of the fact that I had this sort of drive, I wanted to do things. I felt like I wanted to have a thing that I could commit myself to, and I didn't have

a thing I could commit myself to. I'd run this business. One of those things where you didn't have it. I didn't have a vector through which I could put this passion. I'm good at being obsessive. I'm very good at being obsessive. And I remember being almost resentful about the fact that I didn't learn the line between practice and performance.

I didn't understand the relationship between putting in reps and how that's going to facilitate you in the future. And now I felt like I was in my late 20s and what fucking hobby am I gonna find now? That's gonna allow me, that's gonna be the vector through which I can do this. Fuck knows. And then the podcast came along.

And Peterson, one of his rules is commit yourself to one thing to try as hard as you can and see what happens. Yeah. And maybe it doesn't work out the way you want it. Maybe it works out better. Yes, sometimes that happens. Or maybe you realize that's not what you want to do, but at least you can cross off the rubbock green thing. Exactly.

But it's also the Stephen Pressfield turning pro thing, the War of Art thing, which is that when you do decide to commit yourself to one thing, you learn an awful lot just about the process in general. And, you know, that again, I feel for people that have the desire to be great at something, to try hard at something, they've got the conscientiousness, the obsessiveness, the work rate, they've got those things, but they haven't found the thing. They haven't found the thing. The mechanism. Yes. And that's where that makes me feel really sad for those people because you think,

God, you do, you've got all the raw materials, the core components. The potential, the talent, all of that. Yes. So in that situation, that's where that you mentioned it earlier on the Explore Exploite framework. Yes. Just try someone message me again. I get quite a lot now. Pieces of advice, requests and stuff online.

And this one guy sent a really well-meaning message and I said, in my 30s, I haven't found the thing that I want to do. The friends around me don't seem like they've got my message at heart. I drink more than I want to because I don't have anything else to do. Blah, blah, blah. I was like, dude, commit to one thing a month for the next year. Like the first month you're going to try improv, then it's going to be in terms of dance, then it's going to be like painting, then it's going to be blogging, then it's going to be whatever. Because if you genuinely feel like you've got that that fuel inside of you to be great at something and you haven't found the thing,

that fuel is going to either get used to be to drive an engine or turn toxic. Exactly. Because unfulfilled or unrequited life desires are going to murder you inside. Absolutely, man. Yeah, and that's why I think we've got to figure out what that meaningful mission is and try a bunch of stuff until you get clear. And even once you're clear,

that thing might change a year or five, 10 years later. I loved baseball until I didn't. I played from five years old to have a 17. And then one summer after the season was done, I was just like, I don't think I want to do this anymore. It was part of my mission until I had new interests until it wasn't. I was like, actually, I'm not getting fulfillment from this, like I was. And that's okay. That's a really interesting point to bring up because I think a lot of people presume that what they're about to embark on now is going to be there forever. It's a very juvenile approach.

And I have this, again, this is me speaking to myself, not only now, but in the past. It's not the thing that you're pursuing now can be periodized. It can just be for the next few years. Exactly. And David Data talks about this in way the superior man at the very start. He says, the thing which used to light you up now no longer makes you feel alive. And it's like a crab out growing at Shell.

And all of the things and the routines and you have to force yourself to go to the gym, to go to practice, to see your friends, to go out and party, whatever it might be. And that's a signal that's you being poked and someone saying, Dude, this isn't really aligned for you so much anymore. Maybe you got to find something new. But the advantage of that is there is less pressure on you to get the thing that you choose. It's not got to be the life purpose for the rest

of time. It can just be for the next three years. What's the season? And that's why I love sports and allergies. I mean, I'm an athlete, but I mean, you look at the guys who, I mean, JJ Watts, an example, he just retired. He was like an all-star NFL, one of the top NFL players in the last decade. And he realized, I accomplished everything I wanted to, like this season is run its course. And that's why it's important to have an off season to be able to reflect and say, is this something I want to do anymore? Let me reflect on this and get clear on my mission for the next season. Or I'm in a new chapter. I'm discovering something new.

And I think the other, the last part of the power of this mindset is when you drift towards complacency, when we stay in that place, we are just powerless to not having a clear mission and not wanting to grow and improve. And I'm not saying that we should be working hard and pushing ourselves to the limit constantly every day in extreme levels. But if we stay complacent, I just know we won't also be happy and be joyful

in consistent complacency. You know, there might be a season of time where that's fine. And the greatness mindset, it's really, so it's reflecting, do I have any of these six areas on a continual basis and asking yourself, am I in any of these six at any moment? Do I lack a meaningful mission, controlled by fear, all these things? If so, again, you're not bad and wrong or nothing about that, it just, are you using your talents to the best of your ability? And if not, now we're aware of it.

And the greatest mindset is being driven by a meaningful mission. For me, I have one sentence that I'm driven by, and that's to serve and impact a hundred million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. That's my mission. The mechanisms can change. It could be podcasting and YouTube today. It could be blogging tomorrow. I have no idea Whatever that I'm passionate about and have power and talent in I'm gonna lean into the mechanisms with that mission

But I am clear and most people listening or watching They can't tell their friends in one sentence what their mission is they can say well. I'm working this job or mission is. They can say, well, I'm working this job or I'm in this relationship or I've got these goals, but what is the mission of this season of life? And I think when you get clear in one sentence for yourself and you can speak it, then you can act accordingly. It's really easy to say yes and no to things because you know what's going to serve the mission or what's not going to serve it. So it's just getting as clear as possible. And again, you don't, it can be like, I'm just trying to make a couple of grand a month

to get off my scissors couch. Okay, cool. Then you're clear on this mission until you accomplish it. There's a really great insight from Jeff Bezos when he was still at Amazon. Both him and Musk had a single alternating principle that they wrapped everything around. And for Bezos, it was, does this improve

the customer experience? One question, does this improve the customer experience? Yes. One question. Does this improve customer experience? For Musk, it was, does this get us closer to Mars? Does this get us closer to Mars? And when you have a single, orienting principle with it, and this is what I really like about talking about seasons of life, or periods of life, is that it allows you to optimize very, very narrow but very, very deep on one area. So at some point I can't wait to have a family and when I do for a big chunk of time,

my goal is going to be be the best father that I can, and that's it. That's good for your season. Yes, the season of fatherhood. Yes, right. And that will be all that I'm bothered about, all that I want to do, everything else facilitates me being the best father I can be.

That's exciting, but it's not right now. It's not right now. It's not your season right now. Yes. And I like that. It takes the pressure off, I think, having to get this grand plan right. And that's what, again, I just think everything is seasons of life and figuring out what season you're in and being okay with this season and working on your mission for this season.

So when you're driven by a meaningful mission, you're clear on that. It just gives you, it doesn't mean there's not going to be challenge in adversity and things you've got to work hard to do every day. You're going to probably work harder, but at least you know where you're going. The second one is, again, turning the fears into confidence.

That's what's what we talk about, figuring out all these different tools and modalities for overcoming fear. And we've got all these different tools and modalities for overcoming fear. We've got all the different research and neuroscience that talks about that. Overcome self-doubt. I think that's when you're stepping into greatness, the mindset of overcoming it. And it may be a constant journey of overcoming self-doubt. And every season brings new doubts.

You know how to live your life now, but until you're a father, you're not going to know what to do. And there might be six to months to a year to four years. We're like, I'm kind of doubting myself. So you're going to have to go all in on it and overcome it. And it's going to be a new season for you to overcome new doubts. Heels past pains. Again, I think if we conceal these things, it's just going to make us suffer creating a healthy identity. For me, this is part of the mindset and motion, the thing you were talking about. When our thoughts, our emotions, and our behaviors, the intersection of them is really creating a new mindset of identity around our beliefs from our thoughts, our behaviors, and our actions. But a lot of us, again, going back to that unhealthy identity, if we were accorded the thoughts in our mind,

they would probably send this to a mental hospital if they set it out loud. What was that movie? Was it Netflix that did it about two years ago and everybody walked around with this sort of aura, halo, and it was colored, and it would speak out the thoughts that they had? Yeah, what was that called?

People are screaming into their iPods. Anyway, that movie, and I thought everyone's considered that right. Everyone's considered what is the world like? What would the world be like if our inner thoughts were broadcasts out to everybody else? Crazy. Yeah, it would be wild. And if you wouldn't speak to a friend the way that you talk to yourself, what do you do? Why do you talk to yourself then?

Yeah, why do you talk to yourself that way? And I get it, this is the way we've been conditioned and trained, but it doesn't serve us. It's not effective. It only makes us feel worse about who we are. Feeling worse about who we are, only as good. If we recognize, oh, I made a mistake. That was my bad. Let me take responsibility on ownership. I said this thing that wasn't okay. Let me ask myself why I said this thing to make sure I don't do it in the future. That's the only time it's really good to kind of, I guess, quote unquote, beat yourself up, is when you're like, I actually hurt someone.

I did something bad, that was wrong, that was immoral, that was against the law. Let me take a look at myself and realize, okay, let me take full ownership. Actually beating yourself up isn't good still, but feeling that, I guess, healthy shame is good because you don't want to do that bad thing again. But then holding on to it for years and decades of your life does not serve you or your mission

or the people around you. So learn to integrate the lesson, heal, and move on. But creating that healthy identity, I think, is something, and again, I know, like, I've heard, I think, Coggan's talked about this on your show where he was like, listen, you can't just like scream affirmations at yourself in the mirror all the time. And I don't think it's about affirmations. I think it's about an internal dialogue backed by action and belief within that action, putting in the reps and saying, oh, I'm proud I did that 30 minutes today of that work

that I said I was going to do. So now I can believe and accept myself more for who I am. And I think that's what it is taking action with a game plan. That's part of the greatness mindset. When we don't take action with a clear game plan, whether the game plan works or not but being clear on it consistently, then we're living in a power of this mindset state of being. And we just want to try to move towards the greatest mindset

and more frequently as possible. But the mindset and motion is really the intersection of the thoughts, behaviors, and emotions. And it's the sweet spot where how you think, how you feel, and how you act all come together. And I think that's, again, if we have poor behaviors, if we have poor thoughts, we're probably not feel good about ourselves So how do we shift our thoughts?

So we can feel better and how do we shift our behaviors our actions so we can feel better as well? Like a lot of this comes back to the emotions of the heart When we think a certain way it makes us feel a certain way When we act a certain way it makes us think and feel a certain way, it makes us feel a certain way. When we act a certain way, it makes us think and feel a certain way. So it's the intersection of all these things, making sure our thoughts, our behaviors, and our motions are in congruence with our highest level of thinking, our highest level of love and harmony. And if one of them is off, it will affect the other two. And it'll make us feel like we're trying to catch up or make sure make us feel like we got a chip on our shoulder.

And since not a make wrong or good or bad, it is what is most effective for you as a human being to actualize your potential to feel the most love and harmony in your heart. And do some good in the world with the people around you. That's what I'm talking about. and do some good in the world with the people around you. That's what I'm talking about. What would you say to you? Your stomach is confirming it too. It's speaking to me. It's saying, well, you can tell I'm faster today. I'd be too, yeah.

What would you say to someone that's listening and goes, this is great. I like the idea of a greatness mindset. I'm aware that I've got limiting beliefs. I'm aware that I've got fears. What are some actionable first steps that you would give to a friend that came to you and said, books great mate. What do I do? I would do an assessment first, and I'll do this assessment with you.

On a scale of one to ten, let's call it the self-love inner peace scale, hypothetical scale. Feeling inner peace and feeling a sense of love for yourself, not a certain narcissistic love, but an actual authentic love for yourself. One being you hate yourself and have zero peace in your life. Internally, 10 being you have your bliss 100% of the time and you love and accept who you are at all times. Where are you currently on a general scale of one to 10? Probably a strong seven or a soft eight somewhere in between the seven and a nine. That's awesome. So for you, it's just asking yourself, do you want to go a little bit further? Are you trying to go further towards that 10 or do you like where you at?

And the goal is everyone to ask yourself, kind of, where you on that scale. And I used to be- Why is that the first place that you go to? I think it's first just taking an assessment. And the book is really about multiple assessments of asking yourself, where are you? And are you happy where you're at? And if you want to create something new, then here are the examples, the science, the research, the experts. It's not about me.

It's about all the experts I've brought in to solve the problems that I had 10 years ago, five years ago, two years ago. This is the book I wish I had when I was 16 and struggling trying to find a girlfriend and deal with the emotions of heartbreak. This is the book I wish I had at 23 when I was broken wrist and on my sister's couch trying to figure out my mission next.

So the book I wish I had 10 years ago before I started this whole journey because that's what I was looking for. These solutions from all these experts with back science and research, not just, I tried this thing and here it worked for me, but what works against every discipline in every industry with different individuals from neuroscience, therapy, medical doctors, world-class athletes, and billionaires. What works for them to create peace, harmony, and ultimate success.

Along with impact with others, that is the intersection of greatness. This is what Kobe talked about when I add them on. It's not about him winning. It's about him inspiring the people around him to win as well. It's about them feeling loved. That's what he talked about in the interview. It wasn't about being the best.

It was about how can I inspire people to be their best, to then inspire others to be their best, and feel a sense of loving community in the process. And I think if that's something you feel like you're missing where you want more of, then this is a good place to start. Lewis Housen, ladies and gentlemen, where should people go if I'm going to keep up to date with the stuff that you do?

Appreciate you, brother. The greatest mindset is the book. You can check it out anywhere. The School of Greatness podcast, or Atlas House, anywhere on social media. I appreciate you man. Thank you for finding out. Thanks brother.

Appreciate you. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, you