Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 127: Lewis Howes, Former Pro-Athlete on Removing 'Mask of Masculinity'

Episode Date: March 21, 2018

As a former pro-football player and two sport All-American, world-record holding athlete, Lewis Howes built his life around being the tough, "get back up and play" jock, and it took him a long time to learn how to shed "The Mask of Masculinity," to realize that stamping out emotion was causing him great suffering. The 34-year-old entrepreneur and best-selling author had a breakthrough a few years ago when he opened up for the first time about a horrific childhood trauma and now Howes shares inspiring stories from brilliant business minds, athletes and influential celebrities on his podcast, "The School of Greatness." See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the memes come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUT [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING Hey guys, this interview with Lewis House really surprised me on a lot of levels. I think you're going to get a lot out of it. We'll get to it in a minute, but first, your phone calls.

And before we do the phone calls, my usual caveat, which is not a meditation teacher, not a mental health expert, just a journalist and a meditator, and I'm doing my best to answer these questions because I love taking them. I'm really excited about the fact that we've started adding this to the podcast. So just know that I don't know what the question is going to be in events, and I'll do my best to answer it. Here we go. Here's question number one. Hey, Dan, Justin from New York here. A quick question. If you're sort of in and out or are lapsed possibly from meditation and you know, you find yourself walking to a stressful meeting or on the verge of an experience you might only find stress in. Are there quick sort of techniques or fixes that you might employ to kind of combat that and achieve, you know, for lack of a better

word, you know, just an overwhelming calm as you head into a situation where, you know, without that, you might normally, you know, have a negative reaction. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Two things to say. One is, I'm going to make a pitch for regular meditation practice because I don't think meditation works as well in acute situations without a baseline of practice.

I don't know if I'm going to try an analogy, maybe this works, but maybe like with physical exercise, if somebody's chasing you, a mugger, you're going to do much better in that chase if you've got a baseline of running. Same is true in like you're walking into a stressful meeting with your boss or whatever and you're like, oh, damn, I wish I'd been meditating more frequently for the last two years because I'm freaking out right now. If you don't have a regular meditation practice to call on, any mindfulness you're going to bring to this situation is in my view significantly diminished because your muscles have atrophy a little bit.

That being said, all is not lost. I do think it's better to embrace some of the meditative techniques than not to. So what would I do? You use the term, I believe you use the term, overwhelming calm. I don't, I don't, I'm not familiar with that feeling. I would, a, take, take out of the mix the expectation that you would ever be able to achieve that. Because that's just going to become another source of self-flagellation.

You're gonna feel bad that you can't achieve that. It's okay to be nervous. Some actually being a little bit nervous is good. You know, it can keep you, in my experience, can keep you on your toes. In fact, when I'm, when I'm completely not nervous, that's usually when I make the, the dumbest mistakes. So, I've a little bit bit of nerves make sense to me. Again, I'm just speaking for my own personal experience here.

But of course, you don't want that to go too far. You don't want it to go, for example, to a panic attack. I've had that happen, and it wasn't fun. So I'll just, you know, recently I was on the Rachel Ray show. And so occasionally I go on these talk shows and being your standing backstage and there you can hear the host reading your introduction off the teleprompter saying, okay, here comes Dan Harris and you don't have to walk out

and there can be a lot of people yelling, well I find that kind of stressful. I don't know what the situation you're in that's stressful, and there can be a lot of people yelling. Well, I find that kind of stressful. I don't know what the situation you're in that's stressful, but that's something that stresses me out. And honestly, the things, the two things that I will do in those situations that make me feel a little better, not overwhelmingly calm,

but just a little better and able to just hang in there is that one is gonna sound ridiculously obvious, but taking deep breaths really works. There's a reason why parents, myself included, tell kids, take deep breaths. It works physiologically and psychologically. So I'll do that, I'll try not to make them too obvious. And the other thing is I'll just employ basic mindfulness,

which is tuning in so if I'm feeling a little scared, if I'm worried, we're just trying to step out of the story of the worry and the fear. And just examine, where's it shown up in my body? Is it my feeling, my chest buzzing a little bit and my head throbbing a little bit? And that act, which sounds really basic and is, it has this incredible, for me,

has this incredible value of pulling you out of being so caught up in the inner momentum of your fear and nervousness and sort of the phantasmagoric projection into the future about all the horrible things are going to happen if you misstep in any way. And even for just a few nanoseconds. That's all, I mean, that's a huge leg up because just for a few nanoseconds, you're not so caught in the fear. And just do that over and over again until I have no choice

and the stage manager is pushing me out and I gotta go be chipper on television. So your stressors are almost certainly entirely different but you can extrapolate from what I've just described, which is deep breaths and a little bit of mindfulness can go a long way. I would just go back to my original enclosing here. I would go back to my original point,

which is I think those measures are supercharged by having a daily practice, which is why I advocate for it. Not to be annoying. I'm not trying to lecture your hotel, you're doing your life incorrectly, by saying you don't have a daily meditation practice or saying you should have a daily meditation practice.

I hate being in the position of finger wagging. I just think it's to your benefit, is my point. Okay, second question, here we go. Hi Dan, this is Jennifer, I'm down in Florida. I love your podcast, I love your app, and I don't have a question, but I just wanted to share a funny story because the other night I was lying in bed awake, listening to my husband's norr, which is something that he does frequently, but it was particularly bad this week because he had a cold.

And of course my normal reaction is to get frustrated and even a little angry. But I decided I'm going to apply what I've learned with 10% happier and I was going to make his snoring the focus of my awareness. And I did. And I meditated on it for about 15 minutes. And it was pretty interesting. It was kind of funny. The sounds were pretty funny, but it really made me feel a bit more tender toward my husband. So thank you. Although I will admit, after about 15 minutes, I did gently wake him up and ask him to roll over.

But anyway, thanks for everything you're doing. I love it all. Keep it up. Bye. All I can say to that is Bravo. I mean, it's so well done. Because honestly, I would have gone to sleep on the couch. And my wife doesn't snore.

I think I might sometimes, but I would have done, either I would have done the poking thing right away, or I would have gone to sleep on the couch, but your method is phenomenal. It's fantastic. You say it better than I could have, so I'm not gonna say say much more other than again

Bravo. All right our guest this week Lewis house Here's here's the short bio and then I'm gonna embroider it a little bit on top of that. He's a New York Times best-selling author. He's got a couple of books including a new one out right now The Mask of masculinity. He's also an entrepreneur. He's a former pro athlete. He's a world record holder in football and He's got a hit podcast called the School of Greatness with Lewis House And on the podcast I've been on there. He shares inspiring stories from brilliant business minds athletes influential celebrities I don't fit in any of those buckets, but somehow I got on there. Anyway, he is in a really warm and interesting and interested dude. And he, you know, presents as he could be really intimidating.

He's giant and really good looking and seems to have everything. And yet he is, as you will hear, shockingly honest about some of his own vulnerabilities and personal traumas. And so one of them, in particular, which is, which I did not see coming, comes up in the, in the middle of this interview. And I was quite moved by his ability to talk about it the way he does. So here he is, Lewis Hous. You were telling people before we started going that you started meditating in college? Yeah, when I was 18 for sports originally.

What was your sport? Football, basketball, and then I did the de-Cathlone. Yeah, I was at all-American and football in the de-Cathlone, yeah. And gender stuff right there. Yeah, and so when I was doing the the Catalan specifically, I would visualize the events are very technical, you know, the javelin, it's all like body alignment,

the pole vault, the shot put, it's very like technical with the hips and everything in alignment. So I would visualize every single night, just like going over the repetitions in my mind of what it would look like, just like going over the repetitions in my mind of what it would look like, my body going upside down, the pole vaults, you know, throwing the javelin, piercing through the sky, all these different things. And my sister had gone through a lot of different Buddhist trainings, you know, raky healing,

therapies, all these different things. And so she gave me a CD at the time of her, you know, Buddhist yogi teacher, he named me Swami Ji from Nepal. That's Hindu. Yeah. And so I would listen to this audio of this thick accent of talking about the whole body. He'd be like, connect to the whole body.

And I would hear his words every single night, just kind of like, I didn't know it was a meditation at the time. It was a guided meditation, you know, visualizing yourself with the blue sky, visualizing, you know, a mountain, you know, just getting to a peaceful place. Yeah. Did it work? What did it do for you? Because you... When I started...

We were serious athletes, just because you were not... When I started... Two months before I... When I started listening to this, two months later, I then broke the world record from the most receiving arts in a single football game. So I was like, huh, something's here. Where were you playing? I was playing at a small school called Principia College, the school for Christian scientists, not Scientology, but Christian science. Did you come from that background? I did. I was raised in this religion called Christian Science. Yeah.

And my dad was very heavily into the church and the religion. And it always got mixed up with Scientology, but I tell people it's not science. No, no, completely different. Yes. We read the Bible and all that stuff. Yeah. I'm not, I don't go to church anymore, but I grew up in it heavily. And there was a school for Christian scientists. So I went to that school in middle school, high school, and then a little bit in college. And I'm gonna apologize,

because I'm totally derailing you, but just curious, you don't go to church any more, does that create a riff with you and your parents? No, no. My dad still does. My mom was never really in the religion, but just did because my dad was.

And it's interesting, because I've interviewed so many fascinating spiritual leaders who are in religion, not in religion, meditation experts, done these different meditation retreats. So just understanding about religion and God and the world, I still have so many questions. I feel like a church that I grew up and didn't have all the answers. There's still some mixed things. So I'm like, just exploring and discovering and not right or wrong about any religion, but I think the religion I want to be a part of is just love and inner peace and lifting humanity up. And so I'm happy to go to a church and like experience that type of experience and just hear some

great messages, but I don't associate with any type of religion. What is Christian science? Christian science, you know, it's interesting because it's been a while since I've been in part of it, but really I remember growing up it gave me such a powerful foundation in a sense because a couple things my dad taught me early on we he never Celebrated my birthday Really on and I didn't understand. When everyone else had their birthday celebrated, I'd go to their parties,

but then it was my time to, for my birthday, no cake, no present, no celebration. And I didn't understand why. I was kinda mad at my dad, or the on until later in my life, I would ask him. He said, I never wanted you to be limited by your mind. And I never wanted you to say that you were too young or too old to chase your dreams. And so many people focus on their age as a limiting factor in their life. And celebrating your age only reminds us of how limited we actually are.

So he came from an infinite space. He always said, you know, time is infinite. He never carried a watch, but he was always on time and punctual. So I was just always like, oh, interesting. And he never, I didn't have any shots as a kid. Yeah, so that's part, that's the controversial part of the church. Yeah, he is, you know, he was more of like an extremist where he was just like, if anything happens, we're going to pray about it. Yeah, I think sometimes that gets controversial because kids get really sick. Very sick.

Yes, some kids have. This was back in the 90s or the 80s when there was news stories about parents who were neglecting or something, and then someone died, because they didn't take them to the hospital or whatever it may be. And so my dad just always said that we are spiritual beings. He was always emphasizing we are not material, we are spiritual. And therefore, spiritual being can't be physically harmed. He would just ingrain that in my mind. And in the religion, talks about spirit over physical and things

like that. But he was more of an extremist. So there would be people that would be like, no, if you break your arm, go to the hospital and get it set. My grandfather would always say that Christian science means common sense. That's what he told me. CS means common sense. And he was like, go take care of yourself. Like whatever you got to do, do it. And then come back to prayer and to the mind. And so it gave me a foundation because in sports when other kids were getting hurt I was able to take my mind to a place that I thought a lot of kids weren't able to and I was able to push through a lot of physical Boundaries because I was trained in early age that I was a spiritual being and that There was no room for

Physical harm in my life, but it was always very conflicting, because I was like, well, this hurts when I like, pinch myself, I cut myself, I like, so what do you mean? Am I not? So I was just always confused. And that's why I think, you know, there's holes and religions and things like that where it's just like, what doesn't have all the answers.

And so I was just more of a seeker of the truth. And meditation, I think, really supported me and brought me back full circle towards connecting to the inner towards connecting to the inner mind, to the inner peace, to finding peace even through chaos and how to really connect to soul, spirit, minds, and something more powerful than our current chaotic situation. And you talk all about this as well. So it was a powerful upbringing,

being in the religion and being around the mindset, and the people are so loving and giving in that religion that I have like, nothing bad to say about it. It's just, there were some extremists who I felt like, people got hurt because they didn't go take care of themselves, like at medicine or go to the hospital and, and, you know, people died, you know, at certain stages, you know, so because they were like, well, I'm just going to pray on this. And I'm going to just know the truth that I'm a spiritual being and I'm going to be okay.

But I think that's, that's not common sense. And so I always come from the place of common sense now. It's like, if anything happens to me, I'm gonna go to the hospital and get my tooth fixed. My dad wouldn't even go to the dentist. You know, he was like that extreme. He was like, no, like, I'm just gonna work through the pain and overcome it mentally and spiritually. And in some ways, I love his mindset for that,

but in other ways, it like hindered him. You know, he had a hernia like for 30 years and he would never get it fixed because he was just like, well, I'm just going to rise above it and I'm going to know the truth and think spiritually over physically and it always affected him. And so I'm just like, go get a simple surgery, you know, to fix yourself and you'll be good to go. So I think there's something to be said for like pushing our minds to what capable and our bodies and our lives But also having common sense and doing what we need to do. Yeah, I like way the way your grandfather put it

Yeah, so yes common sense and when I went to this a meditation retreat Called one world academy. This was when last year in October I went for two weeks Two weeks two weeks. Yeah weeks. Two weeks. Yeah. Is it like a silent deal? Not a silent deal. It was a lot of like exercises, a teacher would teach some stuff. We would practice it. They would put us into longer like five, six hour meditations that felt like 30 minutes.

And really, it felt like it was 30 to 45 minutes, but they were like, no, it's like 3 a.m. and we started like nine, you know, like what? It was just like the time and space. What was they doing in these meditations? It was interesting because I've been doing my own meditation since college, like I would listen to this CD for years, right? And that was pretty much all I did.

Even as you like went pro and all that. Even after that, I was pro, like, even onto my business life after pro, just listen to this one CD, because I was like, I had the best results of my life. I broke a world record. I was like doing this and that like all American, I was like, I'll just keep doing what works. I didn't really explore other meditations because I was so used to this. Then I started, you know, learning about head space and other stuff that was happening a few years ago and I started listening to audio programs and other stuff that was happening a few years ago. I started listening to audio programs and different audio meditations.

I think I listened to a couple of things from D-Poc four or five years ago. Just different stuff here and there, 10-minute guided meditations. I was like, oh, these are nice. They're very similar to what I was listening to. I've never been to an intensive thing. I've heard about TM and other workshops that people are doing locally. I was like, if I'm going to do something, I want to go to kind of like this quote unquote source of meditation or like a place where it gets me out of my environment and experience

it and really kind of disconnect and just go all in. So I've heard about one world academy. It's actually where Tony Robbins went a couple of years ago and essentially changed his entire language for his 30-year workshop. He used to always say, you got to get into a peak state of mind that everyone of his workshops, he'd be like, let's get in peak state, peak state, that's where you create the best results in your life. Then he went to this workshop, one world academy, and he learned that there are only two states, a beautiful state and a suffering state. And a beautiful state is coming from a place of love and joy and peace and harmony and creativity and all these things.

That's a beautiful state. And the suffering state is the ego mind, the resentment, anger, frustration, jealousy, whatever. Peak state is so hard to sustain 24, 7, you know, for all of your life. It's hard to be like up that high energy all the time, but a beautiful state is something we can sustain. And a suffering state, once we realize we're in that state, we can disassociate our ego from it and come back to a beautiful state. And so I was like, let me go try this place out because I've heard some great things about it. And there was zero like religious attachment or

who runs the thing? Uh, is a married couple, um, Krishna G and Prita G, their names. And the stem from, uh, they have another facility called Oneness that it's kind of where broke off from. Oneness was more, uh, I've never been, but it's, I think that they have like 200,000 people go a year in India to their like facility called Oneness. And I think what I've heard about it is there's more connection to like God and religious type of language, not all of it, but there's more ceremonies around that where I was just like, I want to be, I want to find a place that doesn't say, well, this is the only way. Right.

And that's what I found with one more academy. They break down the ancient Indian wisdom of meditation. And then they do research on all the science behind the body, the breath, the minds. They do all the research to back. Okay, why should we hold the breath at the top for two counts? Why should you hum and close your mouth? What happens to oxygenating the blood in your cheek? And what does that do to access different part of your mind?

When you do that, and what's the number of repetitions to doing all these things? So they broke it down in much more scientific basis with like ancient wisdom as well, but they don't talk about God and any of that. So for me it was really insightful and I didn't want to start with a silent meditation which you just did 10 days which I want to get into. I wanted to be able to like explore and ask questions and talk and like get here from the class

and not just be like go right in silent. And so for me that work, they did a ton of different exercises and some things they had, you know, just some some supportive instrumental music over things, other things we would do them in the middle of the night when we were already kind of like tired and go to like the craziest places in our mind. I mean, now I have this process every morning for about 12 to 15 minutes, depending on how long I do it for, that I go through a process with one of the meditations, they create what's called soul sync, it's just like syncing to your soul essentially. And it's a number of different breathing strategies, thinking about certain things, visualizing your intention for the day,

expressing gratitude, things like that. But there's a part of the meditation that allows you to, it's an unstructured part where it allows you to explore yourself. And it allows you to explore the minds. And during this place of my mind, I always, when I did this and learned this in India, they asked us at one point to elevate,

to imagine ourselves elevating just off the ground, a couple feet, right, which is as an exercise to see what was possible. And when I did that, I kept elevating in my mind. I was elevating and I saw myself kind of going into the clouds and feeling very light and feeling very at peace and feeling very loved and these things.

And then I imagined myself like gum be arms, like stretching out my arms and picking up all the kids with any type of pain and bringing them up into the clouds with me and them all smiling and feeling the sense of peace and love in their heart. And it was like a big dance party. It's like all these kids dancing having fun. And then I brought all the adults up as well. Just kind of reached out and just went over the whole earth and like scraped everyone up

and just pulled everyone up into the clouds. It's like a dance party. And then while everyone is dancing, and I do this every morning when I do my meditation practice, so it might sound a little weird. Then actually just sounds like a personalized version of compassion meditation. So it is. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's like a compassion meditation that can sound a little sappy, but you're

deliberately cultivating giving a S about people, right? I can't. I'm not allowed to swear. You are allowed to swear. I think one let me swear to the podcast, even though it's mine. Compatient meditation is just like you're systematically developing the ability to care about other human beings other than yourself, including yourself. But what you're doing is just like you made up your own version of that.

Yeah, exactly. Me sounds legit. Yeah. And so what I do is, and tell me if I'm going a little too off here, what I do is I, I start to, from this one experience that I had in India, I kind of just repeat it and go a little further in my mind. After that, I saw myself kind of like looking up in the sky and then kind of Superman flying through the atmosphere into outer space, into like the sense of like quietness, stillness.

And then I kept exploring and like looking up farther and farther so I just like went as fast as as far as I could throughout our space. Until I looked back as I'm flying as weird as this sounds. I looked back in the earth like it's smaller and smaller until it disappears into the back of the space. And so now I'm in outer space and I'm surrounded by planets and stars and I'm jumping on planets and touching planets in my hand and just slightly like shifting them and like moving them and like spinning them on my finger and just like playing in outer space by myself. And for me, I think of that as like how expansive our mind is and how vast the opportunities are in my world. And that's kind of the metaphor for myself is like that I can do what I want to do that

I can create when I want to create if I can see it in my mind. And this is every morning. Yeah, every morning. And then what I do, again, may sound a little weird. I fly back towards her. It sounds weird talking about it. For me, it's like, makes sense when I'm doing it. You have this look on your face, people can't see it. Like, should I be talking about this?

We're all talking to me. We're gonna think I'm crazy. So I think- No this? We're all talking to you. People don't think I'm crazy. So I have to say, I have something to say when we're done, it's actually going to make you feel better, but people. So I fly back into Earth, like warp speed. And then what I do is I come back down and I go through. I go through the Earth's core until I find

the smallest grain of sand at the very center of the core of the earth. And what, this is what happened to me. It was just like, I couldn't, it was like I couldn't control what was happening organically in India. In India, yeah. Yeah. And it was like, so I saw this.

And for whatever reason, I was like, I I'm gonna see what's inside this sand. So I punched through this grain of sand and In a universe was created a thousand times bigger than the one I was in it exploded and expanded into a universe Like the one was in but a thousand times more infinite and then I flew through to the middle to a finding a planet Through to the the center of the earth's core for that planet to I found the smallest sand and Exploded through it and opened it up and expanded a whole another universe Even bigger and kept doing that over and over again and for me. I was like, why is happening? But then I finally like came back to earth and sat down to where I was and like put myself back in my body

From where I was in my mind And it really kind of reminded me like you know when I go into a place in my mind like how small things actually are when earth is I can't see earth anymore in my mind in this meditative state like my problem is really aren't that big like it's so tiny When I look at it from a different perspective. Yeah also from the perspective of things, there's so much abundance in the world. And there's so much opportunity for me to create what I want to that I don't need to doubt myself or limit myself to what is possible. And so for me, it's really more of a practice of like just coming back to a place of perspective, creating an intention of what I want to do that day and being very grateful for what I have. Yeah, well, so that you redeemed the whole thing right there at the end.

I think we probably don't practice the same kind of meditation and you maybe don't think about it the same way I do, but I think the top line, the headline on meditation is, it's training your mind. That's what it is. And the exciting thing to know is that the mind is trainable. We're not stuck with the mind we have right now. And the things we want, like patience, compassion, calm, mindfulness, generosity. These are trainable assets and the things we don't want,

like self-denigration, anger, selfishness, we can work to de-emphasize these in our minds. And so therefore, there are limitless kinds of mental training, just like there are limitless, almost limitless kinds of mental training, just like there are almost limitless kinds of sports. And you are training clearly through this exercise, perspective, compassion, gratitude, a sense of what's possible.

So I got your back, it's gonna be fine. Oh, my love, yeah. Tell me about your experience with a 10-day journey. Yeah, it was cool, man, it was cool. It was like, well, I don't wanna say it cool. It was arduous and a lot of it sucked, yeah. But it seems like forever, doesn't it? Yes, and then the big problem is, for me,

I create a lot of suffering for myself of, you know, day two. I'm like, I have eight more days of this. Oh, how am I going to make it? But the thing you realize very powerfully is that is just a thought. That is just the mental phenomenon of doubt. Like doubting why am I here, can I make it? What's the point of this? And just as soon as you are mindful, just another way of saying that, as soon as you're just

aware of that and not fighting with it, it goes away Yeah, and it comes back But all you have to do is have a little machine gun in your head non-violent machine gun in your head that is a filled with Mindfulness of just regular awareness and every time the doubt comes back if you catch it it evaporates And that is just and when you do that at high intensity, high dosage, very interesting things happen in your mind. You realize the mind is capable of so much more than we, and this is going to be cutesy,

think. It's so, it is capable of so much more. And you, that, to me, as much as I fight going on retreat, I walk away with an enormous amount of confidence. You could even say, faith that it is worth it. Because I always have experiences that make me realize we are missing so much in our daily lives, walking around in this fog of this sort of autopilot of wanting stuff, not wanting stuff or all. Comparing. Yeah. Comp comparing and on our phones, and that if you set that aside, even for nanoseconds at a time,

you realize how much you're missing, and unfortunately requires some artificiality, like taking yourself as I did into the woods of Massachusetts and walking at a snail's pace all day long and sitting and doing meditation for 11, 12, 13 hours a day, and it at a snail's pace all day long and sitting and doing meditation for 11, 12, 13 hours a day. It's a ton. It's a ton. It's hardcore. But in my view, absolutely worth it.

More the two biggest lessons you learned this time. If you are suffering in any way, there is something you are not aware of. There's something you're not mindful of. So in other words, if you're in a bad mood, if you bring mindfulness to the fact that maybe tanger, jealousy, whatever, for the moment where you are just mindfully aware of it, it will evaporate. That doesn't mean your problems will all disappear,

but right now you you have unlimited permanent access to just what I guess you could call present moment awareness. You always have access to whatever's happening right now. Just to coming back to being aware of whatever's happening right now, and that will stop whatever's spinning off you're doing in your head, planning, hating, wanting, and you can always settle back into this just kind of non-judgmental, friendly awareness of what's happening.

Yeah, I learned about suffering from one more academy that taught that, I hope I'm not butchering it, that it's that suffering comes from the obsessive, self-centric thinking. And when we are aware of how obsessive we are of our self-centric thinking of that thought, that mindful thought, then we can say, okay, I'm aware of it and now I can move on. Yes, that's right. It's not more, it's being aware of that moment, yeah.

It's not more complicated than that. It's like you're sitting, we're holding water bottles right now. I'm sitting here thinking about, oh, Lewis is so tall. I'm jealous. Why holding water bottles right now. I'm sitting here thinking about God Lewis is so tall I'm I'm jealous. Why am I so short blah blah blah blah and then boom What does it feel like to hold this bottle in my hand? What is it's there's coolness here? What does it feel like to feel jealous? Oh my chest is buzzing a little bit It's maybe my makes my stomach upset that which by the way, is available to every home losapian,

is kryptonite for the ego. And it's just, you have to practice it. And that's what a meditation retreat is. It's just taking it and stepping on the gas. And the other thing is you, at high, high dosages of meditation, you just start to see the world very differently, that right now the world seems solid, right? In a regular life, like this is a microphone, this is me, I'm pounding my chest, but when

you actually pay close attention for hours and hours and hours on end, you see that actually the world isn't as solid. Every second is filled with millions of minute sensations, your on the chair what you're thinking what you're hearing Do do do just like that on the wheel of fortune when they spin the wheel as a It and when you pay attention your mind gets really concentrated you close your eyes You're able to tune into the momentaryness of reality and it pixelates and that is super interesting It's not wearing loincloth and sitting on a cliff with the wind blowing through your hair.

It's actually, it's not tuning out or zoning out in that way, it's zoning in to what is here all the time that you don't see. And for me, as somebody who comes from a very secular scientific background, that is awesome. Yeah, do you feel like it's important for you to keep going to these silent retreats, even though you've done them five, six times now and you've done many things

Why is it important to continue practicing it every year? The ego is strong and in city is creative relentless force and you You have spent a lifetime practicing unawareness. You have millennia of evolution that has bequeathed you a mind that is really good at fixating on things you want and avoiding things you don't, and in order to hack that, it requires a lot of work. Now I actually am not of the belief that like I think your 12 to 15 minute a day, a daily-ish meditation routine or somebody was doing one to five minutes a day of just

regular mindfulness, I actually think that is absolutely enough. But if like me, you got the bug and you want to go further, I am of the view that for me, a meditation retreat a year at least is what makes sense. But you said something about self-centrism, and I wanna get you to be self-centered for a second, because I wanna hear a little bit more about your story. At the beginning of this, we talked about you being an athlete, and I just wanna hear about the road from being an athlete to being this kind of guru

of greatness. And by the way, I'm not trying to make you sound like you take yourself that seriously. You don't, which is one of the many things I like about you. But you're like, it's just clear to me you're a guy on a mission to kind of figure stuff out for yourself, which is really interesting and charming. And so how did that happen? You were flying high in sports for a while. Playing football, my dream was to be in the NFL.

I played Arena football first with the goal of making it to the next step. So Arena football is indoor football for those that don't know what that is. And I broke my wrist. I had surgery on my wrist, diving into a wall, playing Arena football. And for a year and a half, I was in recovery. I had a cast on for six

months, full arm cast in this position, which pretty much my arm was up for the whole six months. And I was sleeping on my scissors couch at that time. I didn't have any money, I didn't have a job, I didn't have a college degree at the time. I left early to go pursue this dream. And this was in 2008, 2009, when the economy was pretty bad. So people weren't hiring people with masters degrees at the time. And I didn't have a bachelor's degree, right? So I was trying to figure out, well, who am I? That's pretty dire situation. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot less, there's a lot worse things

in the world that people go through. But for me, that was pretty chaotic. It was devastating. Yeah. Because my dream was over. I'm 23, 24 now at the time. And the time. And I'm leaving on my sister's couch trying to think about, well, who am I? What's my identity? And my whole life with sports. Now I can't do it. I've never made money in my life, except for just training and playing football.

So I don't even know what it looks like to get a job. And I really didn't, I just wasn't sure. I was like, well, what do I do? What skills do I have? What skills do I have? What information can I have? You know, do whatever it may be. I got into LinkedIn early on, a mentor when I was injured, said, why don't you connect with people on LinkedIn?

I heard about this site and people are getting jobs from it. So I said, okay, I spent about six hours a day for that year and a half, connecting with people on LinkedIn, asking them questions, learning about their story, meeting them in person, these successful leaders in Columbus, Ohio, where I was living. And people just started to take notice that I was, had such a big audience on LinkedIn. I had so many great connections. They would ask for introductions.

Then I started hosting these kind of networking, LinkedIn networking gatherings in all around the country. I started with one and 500 people showed up. And I just promoted it on LinkedIn. I was just meshing one person at a time and said, hey, I'm doing an event. There's the information show up. And I would just do that all day for days because I had all this free time in my hands. And 500 people showed up, I had it free, but I got a couple of companies to sponsor like a booth for like $250 bucks, so I made $1,000 on my first event.

And I was like, oh, maybe there's something here. People need to connect and get opportunities in this time of the economy in 2008, 2009. So I did 20 events after that, first event in that whole year. And I started charging at the door for an entry fee, five bucks, then I started charging 10, 20, then I started to get more sponsors for these events.

I was getting like consulting deals from people saying, can you help me with my LinkedIn profile and show me how to do what you've done. So I was charging, you know, these one on one kind of profile makeover sessions. Then another mentor said, you should write a book and teach people how you're doing all this about LinkedIn.

So I wrote a book with him, and I would sell my books at the events. Then I built a relationship with the venues and said, hey, can I get a commission of any of the food in bar because they were usually at restaurants and bars. So I was getting a 15% commission, 20% commission, just trying to figure out how can I make money doing this one thing?

You were hustling, man. Hustling. I'm still in my sister's couch, but I was like, how do I just make any money? And these events were kind of like that early testing ground for me of learning what it meant to be an entrepreneur. I was like, okay, how do I just turn dirt into gold? How do I just manifest these things? How do I add value? How do I solve a problem for someone?

And how do I build relationships? So early on I was building relationships and I was interviewing these people without recording them. I was connecting with successful leaders and I want to ask them how they got to where they were. I was so fascinated by their journey of how they got there. And you know the school of gradients is essentially what I always wanted to do, but I didn't have the credibility or the platform or the audience to do it 10 years ago. And then I kind of took this LinkedIn experience I've essentially, eventually someone said

that they wanted me to speak on their online webinar, like an online platform to teach LinkedIn, because they didn't know anyone else online who was talking about LinkedIn the way I was. I was writing articles, I was online platform to teach LinkedIn, because they didn't know anyone else online who was talking about LinkedIn the way I was. I was writing articles, I was just trying to be like, know everything about it and use it for myself and help other people. So I did this free like 60 minute talk online,

and he said he wanted me to offer an online course afterwards. Now I knew nothing about online marketing or online courses or business in general. I was just kind of scrapping around trying to make a few bucks here and there at these events. But I did this speech online on the webinar. And at the end, I said, hey guys, I don't have anything for you right now, but I have a PayPal link.

And for 150 bucks, I'll do three more of these training sessions to teach you more advanced strategies on LinkedIn. Here's the link, like check it out, and I'll send you something in a couple weeks. So there was pretty much like blind faith. They weren't going to get anything. And at the end of the webinar, there were 600 people on the webinar. So at the end of the webinar, I closed down the webinar screen and opened up my Gmail account.

And it was probably one of the most beautiful sites that I've ever seen, except for probably like, a beautiful girl when I was like 12 and wasn't a girl's for the first time or something. But the entire email screen and the whole screen on my computer said, you've received payment on every single line in my email. You've received payment, you've received payment on every single line in my email. You've received payment, you've received payment over and over again.

Much more of our conversation right after this quick break. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellesai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wunderys new podcast's new podcast Disantel where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up why it happened and the repercussions what does our obsession with these feuds say about us the first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama but none is drawn out in personal as Brittany and Jamie Lynn Spears when Britney's fans form the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous

conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcast. You can listen ad free on Amazon Music or the Wondery app.

There's $6,200 instantly in my PayPal account, and at that time, I thought I was the richest person in the world. I was like, I've never seen this much money in my life. $6,200 was the life-changing richest person in the world. I was like, I've never seen this much money in my life. $1,600 was the life changing for me at the time. It was like I won the Super Bowl. It was that big of a deal for me in that moment. I was at the time, my sister kicked me out of her place. She was like, you need to pay rent or get a job or something.

So I did what any young brother would do. I begged my older brother to let me crash at his place. And he said, you know, he was married and had a kid. He was like, my wife wants you to pay something. Can you pay 250 a month for a room? So I was paying 250 a month for a room at his place when this happened. And I was like, finally, I can go get my own apartment. So I felt like I could finally like take care of myself after two years of just hustling and essentially begging to like live places and eat people's food

and it just didn't feel good to be like, you know, two years prior, wearing a helmet and 20,000 screaming people like signing autographs and like being the man and playing football and all these things to sleep in all my siblings' couches and having them support me. So it was like that moment where I was like, wow, here's something I could do. I could teach LinkedIn, offer value for people to help people

and sell like this online, you know, training thing around it. And so I just put all my energy into figuring out online marketing, how to create a course, how to create value sales, branding, design, like everything. I just obsessed over learning about business because I saw a way to a better future for myself. And ended up creating a number of online courses over the next few years. Things really started to take off there where I had a business partner,

where we were doing a couple million dollars a year in sales for these online courses, pretty quickly after that. Like, once I figure something else that works, and if I have a good coach or mentor who's like, okay, here's the path, I went into athlete mode where I said, all right, I'm just gonna execute and practice every single day and just get results and just get better.

All I did was just like, I'm gonna take as much action as possible to get me the financial results that I was looking for, so I didn't feel broke anymore. And it worked. The challenge is I obsessed so much over it that I gained 50 pounds, I wasn't sleeping, I didn't really have any good personal relationships, and I was obsessed with making money.

And it became like my, you know, the thing that I needed the most, my net worth became tied to my self worth. It hurt me emotionally, and it's one of the things I, talking not to plug my book, but it's one of the things I just want to say. This is a very plug-friendly zone. So, plug away. All these things started happening, where I was getting these great financial results,

I was getting these accolades, I was achieving things, I was growing, and then I sold the company, and I started the School of Greenness podcast, the thing I really wanted to do, but now I felt like I had credibility, I had relationships where I could tap into these kind of influencers to have them on. And my podcast started growing and taking off,

and I started doing other things. But for whatever reason, I never felt fulfilled inside, from sports when I would achieve my biggest goals. Two sports all American professional athlete played on the USA handball team, still play with the team. All these things were dreams of mine. And yet every time I achieved them, it was like 10 minutes after I achieved these things, it was the most miserable person I'd ever been. And I was angrier and upset and resentful. And I never understood why.

I was like, maybe my dreams are just so small and it'd keep dreaming bigger. And so I would go after something bigger to feel this fulfillment. And it wasn't until I hit 30 on 34 now, where I had like, you know, from what it looked like on the outside, I had a lot going on.

I had like this beautiful girlfriend, but it was a extremely toxic relationship. I had just sold a company for millions of dollars. I was getting a lot of attention online and press. Everyone was like, Lewis, you're killing it. For me, inside, I was like, I feel like I'm dying. I mean, it looked like things were doing well, and I was good at faking it, but on the inside I was like, I feel like I'm dying. I mean, it looked like things were doing well, and I was good at faking it, but on the inside I was suffering.

And my business partnership was suffering, my relationship was suffering, and I didn't know how to get out of it. And I was so reactive to everything in the world. Anytime I felt attacked or under criticism, it was like I had to defend my manhood or whatever it is, my masculinity. I had to defend myself constantly. And it was exhausting defending myself. And I went to a emotional intelligence workshop where it was essentially kind of like group therapy,

if I can explain it, where there was a lot of exercises, one-on-one group exercises, talking about the things that hold us back, talking about the things where we find suffering, pain, resentment, and going into like past relationships, you know, things that happened in school, things that happened with your parents, you know, any hard feelings you have about anything from your past. And then we focus on the vision for our future, the life we want to have, what we want to create in our business, our relationships, our health, those things. And after a few days of this,

we were really diving in deep about kind of our past as a group. And the facilitator says, okay, enough of the past, we're moving towards our future what we want to create. And at this time, you know, people are getting very vulnerable and opening up about things that had happened to them or whatever may be going through divorce

or other heart breaks things like that. People are really opening up. And so it was a very vulnerable room already. It was about 50 of us. And he said, if there's anything that you haven't addressed in your life yet, anything at all that you need to address now is the time, otherwise we're moving forward. And so there's silence for about a minute and I'm thinking to myself, you know, I've addressed everything. I think I'm fine. I talked about my brother being in prison when I was eight for four

and a half years. He was in prison. And I didn't have any friends during that time because in the neighborhood I was in, the other parents wouldn't allow their kids to hang out with me when my brother was in prison because they thought I would be just as bad, right? So I talked about that and you know, overcame that. My parents were fighting a lot when I was growing up and they got a divorce pretty much like everyone else in the room. So it's like I addressed my parents issues and the pain I had around that, I addressed, you know, heartaches of relationships.

I was in the past. I addressed feeling bullied and picked on and insecure when I had around that, I addressed, you know, hardaches of relationships. I was in the past. I addressed feeling bullied and picked on and insecure when I was in school because I was in the special needs classes. And I was just kind of going in my mind like, okay, what's the thing that I haven't talked about? And then I was like, what about that time I was raped by a man when I was five. It just kind of popped in my mind that I was like, why have I never shared this with anyone in my mind that I was like, why have I never shared this with anyone in my life? Why have I been so afraid and so embarrassed

and ashamed to talk about this? And so in that moment, I stood up. It was like I just was like, I don't share this now, I'll never share it. And so you shared it with anybody? Never shared it before. And it's something that comes up in my mind all the time since I was five years old.

For 25 years, no one had ever heard me talk about it. And so in my mind, I'm like, if I don't say this now, in this room of like strangers that I've been with for a few days, like, there's never going to be another setting that I feel comfortable opening up about this. So I, my body just like stood up for me. I walked to the front of the room. I didn't even like raise my hand and say, I had something to say, I just like walked to the front of the room. I didn't even like raise my hand and say I had something to say. I just like walked to the front of the room It's like a semi-circle of like chairs people are sitting on and I remember I wasn't able to look up at anyone in the eyes Because I was so ashamed about what I was going to say so I looked down at the carpet and

I walked through you know line by line I was just like when I was five years old. I was at the babysitters and this man took me to the bathroom and I walked through the entire thing. For the first time, I just didn't hold back. I walked through like the sights, the smells, the sounds, the taste, everything from that moment. And I wasn't really like, I wasn't crying during it. I was just kind of like, a matter of fact,

they're talking about it, just kind of like this. And then again, I couldn't look up at anyone. And I walked back when I was complete with the story. I just walked back to my chair, sat down, and it was like an eruption of tears I could not hold back. It just like it all started to come out of me of just this like pain and sadness and relief and insecurities and fears and everything just like I started bawling

Thankfully, there was two women on the side of me Sitting next to me who both started holding me and like we're crying with me So it was just kind of like an overwhelming moment where I felt like okay or some comfort But I'm so embarrassed and ashamed of what I just said and what are these people gonna think of me and And so I ran out of the room. It was in like a hotel conference ballroom area and I ran out of the the room ran outside of the hotel and there was a There was a wall like a across the street I walked across like an alley and there was like a back fence and I put my hand on the on the wall and put my head

On my arm just like in a shamed, you know kind of like crying still like couldn't stop And after a few minutes, I was just like I'm not going back in there like I'm done like this is it I'm like I gotta go I'm gonna go home. I gotta go figure this out and after a few minutes one of the most beautiful things happened in my life one by one the men of the group who were in the group came up to me and gave me a big hug and looked me in the eyes and they were like, you're my hero. They were like, you're so courageous and yeah, you're my hero and I've never heard someone who looks like you talk about these things and it's the last thing I expected you to say and

you know, I've been judging you this entire time because of this, this, and this. And they were jealous like me. Exactly. I mean, I had my guards up and my ego was up and I was trying to look perfect and all these things. And they were like, you're unbelievable. And this is amazing.

And what a service to just to, there's so much shame associated, anybody who's actually a son, there's so much shame, but there's so much shame for men. Absolutely. And to have somebody like you get up and just matter, effectively say it happens, of course it's not your fault. It's not an adult on your masculinity in any real way.

Sure, the challenge is to finish that story, something amazing started to happen where these men were like, you know, for 30 years, for 40 years, this happened to me when I was a kid I've never told anyone. And so they started to open up to me about things that happened to them, whether it be sexual abuse or other things they were ashamed of that weren't sexual abuse. It's like I gave them permission to like trust me and talk to me about these things. Of course. Which was like what? Like, they were like, I trust you. I'll follow you anywhere. Some guy said that to me. I was like, what? You don't even know me.

He was like, I've never seen something like that courageous. I was like, what? I was like, I'm ashamed. I'm this. I'm crying. I'm like, snot out of my nose. I'm like, you trust me. I'm like, you trust me. And it was just a crazy experience where... Tell the story in the book. I do tell the story. Yeah, I tell the story. And I finished out the workshop for the next couple of days with just like a sense of

freedom for the first time. I never felt this sense of inner freedom. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulder. And I talked a lot of my, you know, I have a lot of gay friends and I talked to them about this experience. And I like that's exactly how it felt for me when I opened up to my parents about, you know, not being straight and feeling the shame and humiliation that I couldn't be myself or couldn't talk about these things or whatever.

And I felt like the sense of weightlessness for the first time, fear, but also like weightlessness. I was like, are people that accept me now? What if my parents didn't know? My family doesn't know. My friends don't know. Well, they accept me. Maybe this group will because we're in this session together, but I was like, I don't know if I can tell anyone else.

Everyone was like, you gotta tell your friends and family. I was like, I don't know. Because what if they don't accept me? What if they don't trust me? What if they don't love me? It was my fear. friends of family, I was like, I don't know, because what if they don't accept me? What if they don't trust me? What if they don't love me? It was my fear. And I talked to a therapist friend of mine after this.

And I just said, I don't know how to tell my parents or my siblings, like, how do you even set a context around this? And she gave me a great piece of advice. She said, ask them a question first and see how they respond. And the question was, is there anything I could ever say or do that would make you not love me? Simple. She was like, ask them that. And you'll know really quickly if they're open. And I asked all of them that first. And they were like, absolutely not. Like, there's nothing you can ever say or do that would

make you make me not love you. I asked them all individually. And then I shared with them, especially my brother who went to prison as a kid who felt by the most shame of what he had our family go through and things like that. I think he was like, absolutely not. Like, you can do whatever you want. I'll still love you, you know, because he went through that. And I was like, okay, I told all my family members

one by one. And again, another powerful experience. Like, when I opened up, it gave them permission. They shared stories about things that I had no clue about and it brought us closer together. Like our relationships are all closer. And then I was like, well, my family has to love me, but can I tell my friends this?

You know, they're gonna make fun of me. But again, one by one, I started telling more and more people and I realized I need to tell this until it doesn't have power over me anymore. That's smart. Because, you know, every time I said it to my family members, realized I need to tell this until it doesn't have power over me anymore. That's smart. Because every time I said it to my family members, I was like stuttering, I was afraid, my heart was palpitating, and I was like, man, this thing still has power over me.

And ownership, it owns me. If I can't talk about something freely, it has control. And I said, okay, I'm going to keep talking about this until I'm no longer afraid. And no longer afraid of people not loving me or accepting me or whatever. And I did that with all my friends until like after a few months, it started to not be hard anymore. You know, it's started. It's still like a topic that obviously is very sensitive for a lot of people. But for me, I can talk about it matter of factly now, because it's something I'm at peace with. I've forgiven myself.

I've forgiven the man. I've forgiven, like, I've never seen him since, but I've come to peace with it myself. And of, you know, I think I remember used to thinking like, if I ever see this guy and like, I will kill him. I used to think that to myself. Like, if I ever see this guy, I will literally kill him with my bare hands until I have no strength left and do whatever it takes to destroy this man's life until he is dead and can't breathe. That was like the amount of pain I was feeling growing up.

And now I'll just give him a hug. And I wouldn't be his friend and I wouldn't want to like hang out with him and I wouldn't want to like say what you did it okay because it's absolutely wrong. And I would, you know, make sure I'm very clear with that. But me hating someone else is not serving me and it's not serving humanity. It doesn't lift others up. It doesn't support my vision. Me speaking out on these things and creating awareness about it does support this type of situation.

And I remember my friend saying, you've got to write, you've got to share this on your podcast. And I was like, no, frickin' way. Am I gonna talk about this publicly? But more and more people said, like, you have to because no one else is. There's no other white male athlete, jock-looking, straight man that I'm aware of

who is openly talking about it, who has like a bigger platform. And so it became very aware to me that I was like this is more of like a mission and a responsibility I have now that I feel like I need to do this. And if I'm not talking about this, I'm doing a disservice to humanity and to myself and to other men who are going through this. So when I talked about it on my podcast, I remember holding on to it. Like I recorded it and waited for months because I was terrified still.

Like what if it hurts my business? What if people don't subscribe anymore? Like what if what if what if what if? And I posted it and it was the most downloaded thing I've ever put out there. And more so than that, within days, hundreds of essays of men all over the world were emailing me and saying,

you know, my wife doesn't know. I've been married for 20 years. I have four kids. She doesn't know. This is what happened to me when I was seven. My this doesn't know. This person doesn't know. I've never told anyone. All they just started sharing stories of some of the most horrific stories I've ever heard about sexual abuse. And I was like, it made mine look like a Disney movie, my experience, compared to what I was reading to some of these men. And I realized I was like, wow, there's so much more to this. I started doing research on sexual abuse with men.

And one in six men have been sexually abused. That's in record, right? It's one in four with women, one in six for men. But the challenge is growing up, at least from my experience where I grew up, how I grew up, you know, very early on, you were, I was called names, if I was affectionate with any of my guy friends,

if I put my arm around a buddy of mine, if I just wanted to hug a friend, it was like, they would push you off and say, don't be a f***, don't be a little bitch, don't be a little girl, don't be this, don't be that. So showing any type of affection or just humanity towards people, even if you're just like caring with your words, not like putting an arm around a friend, it was like always a word about that's gay, that's f***, that's this, that's that, that's, you know, don't be

a little girl, don't be a little this, don't be a, see, don't be whatever. Like all the words that you would say. And as a kid, just trying to fit in and get a couple of friends, it's like, okay, if I want them to like me, I have to like play along and not do a day, not be compassionate, not be caring, not be giving, make fun of other people, do these things. And I realized that is a, that's where this book started to come about was like this role of masculinity. There's a lot of pain and suffering that I think men have gone through. Listen, women and gender nonconforming and all human beings are going through their own

types of pain and suffering. But I think as men based on societal views and the roles that men are supposed to play, it's not okay to be expressive. it's not okay to be expressive. It's not okay to be vulnerable. It's not okay to show emotion or show a range of emotions that are sensitive. It becomes made fun of or look down on or and all these other things happen to where the pain gets bottled up inside. Now we're seeing in the media a lot of the results from men who are unable to express themselves in healthier forms of communication.

We're seeing this this year more than ever. All the shootings, all the killings, the racial marches, the sexual abuse, the domestic violence. It a lot of the different, and this book was researching with a lot of psychologists why boys have been conditioned certain ways to not open up, not express themselves. Why was it never told that it's okay to talk about these things? There was no hotline when I was five that if you've been raped by a man, here's what to do. No one ever told me these things. We were not taught these things. It was kind of like be a man tough on up in sports. Don't cry. Don't be a little girl. Get up. Get back up. If you show weakness, you're not going to play. It was like you always had to deliver and perform from my experience as a boy going into a man. And I never wanted to be that way. Inside, I wanted to be more sensitive and vulnerable and connected and listening. And but I felt like I always needed to be right.

I felt like I had to win at all costs because being right and winning meant that I was, it was connected to my self-worth. And if I lost, then my self-worth was less than. If I was wrong, then I didn't have self-worth. If I wasn't making money, it was attached to my self-worth. So I started to put on all these masks. I started to say, I need to get rich

so that I can find value in the world. I need to get these accomplishments, these sports accomplishments. I need to get the hot girlfriend so I can have this self-worth. But when I realized like, I had all of those things, but I still in how many self-worth. And I was like, why?

What's missing? And four years ago, this kind of workshop, this experience of opening up and talking about these things, going through deeper forms of meditation, have allowed me to be aware fully of my conditioning, of my, of why I've been wanting to be like the best at everything in the world and why I needed to win and why I need to make a lot of money. And it's been so powerful. Just being aware of it first of like why I've been wearing all the masks of masculinity in my entire life and why I put them on at different times to protect myself and defend

myself. And what's available when I take them off and just reveal myself, whenever I reveal myself, people say, you're my hero. I trust you. I will follow you anywhere. Anything you do, I want to be a part of. I'm like, wow, all I have to be is my authentic loving, caring, vulnerable self, not have all the answers, not need to win at all costs. I don't need to have all the money in the world. But I can still be competitive and win. I can still have the answers. I can still make lots of money and that's okay, too. It's just where is it coming from? Is it a deep desire to prove myself in the world? Or is it more coming from a place to lift others up? And now I'm coming from a place

of lifting others up? Your story is incredibly important and just beyond brave. So bravo. Thanks. And I think it's just so useful for somebody in your position to say what you're saying. But just just back in in my relentless push to make you say to draw out your self-centre because I'm just interested in you. Where do you mention Tony Robbins? Do you see yourself becoming sort of like a Tony Robbins? What do you see? Where do you see this all going?

I get I get a you know, compared to him a lot. Like this is our generation's Tony Robbins. And I'm flattered by it. I think he's incredible. I love I love his work. I love his message. I've had him on my show three times. He's amazing.

He's in big inspiration for me. But I don't really want to be compared to anyone. I want to be the first Lewis house and kind of pave my own way. I'm inspired and use, you know, I speak at events, but it's not my main thing to like do these big workshops and, you know, do what he does. I can't do what he does. Yeah, you could. Well, he does it a way that's where you need to him. I would do it differently. Yeah.

And I do a big event once a year, but I don't want to be doing five days like events every month the way he does it. I look at myself more as a facilitator and curator, you know, kind of like you. I'm just very curious to learn about people and ideas and then to distill those complex, challenging things into simple tools that we can apply in our life to live a better life. And that's what I really want to become. You're well on your way, my friend. You expressed some sheepishness earlier about plugging, but now I want to move into what I call the plug zone. Where you just give me everything. Like where can we

All right, where you just give me every give us everything like where can we every book The podcast and give this the whole social media where can we find as much? Lewis house is just at Lewis house everywhere out of his house on social media Lewis house calm and then school of greatest podcast and I've got a new book called the Mask of Masculinity which Is actually just as much for women as is for men because so many women are buying this and reading this and saying, wow, I understand my dad for the first time ever. I understand my husband for the first time ever. I understand why my kids don't look me in the eyes. I understand why my brother has been this disconnected to me for the last seven years. I understand the mask

the men in my life are wearing. And once we are aware of what they're wearing, we can understand where it's coming from, and then there's some tools on how to connect with people to speak their language. And so that's what this book is all about. But it's just been powerful to hear all the stories of men who are emailing me every day, opening up as well as being really cool. And you also just in terms of being holistic here in the plugging, you have a previous book that was bestseller. Yeah, the school of greatness. School of greatness, which I believe is like the foundation from all the wise people I've interviewed, I distilled down the eight principles of greatness.

And there's a lot of exercises and action plans on how to get clear on your purpose for your life, how to get clear on achieving those great things in your life, and it kind of gives you the roadmap for that. So that's that, in the School of Greatness podcast, which you've been on, which was a powerful interview. So. Thank you. And in the podcast, you really get a sense of what it is

that, I think, in part, fuels your greatness, which is the curiosity, is that you're just why you're a student. Yes. You are a student. I want to learn for the rest of my life. Yes. That really comes through. Yeah, it comes through.

I'm just fascinated by so many people, ideas, how people think, how people got to where they are, what works, what doesn't work, what's available for us. I'm just fascinated by it all. Such a pleasure to have you on, man. Thanks for having me. Always great to see you. Appreciate it.

Even if you remind me of my diminutive scratch. Snatcher. It's all right. You give me the inspiration of the voice that I wish I had. All right, man, great job. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, that does it for another edition of the 10% happier podcast.

If you liked it, please take a minute to subscribe. Rate us. Also, if you want to suggest topics, you think we should cover or guests that we should bring in. Hit me up on Twitter at DanBHarris. Importantly, I want to thank the people who produced this podcast, Lauren Efron, Josh Cohen, and the rest of the folks here at ABC who helped make this thing possible. We have tons of other podcasts. You can check them out at ABCnewspodcasts.com. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery

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