Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 571: What Is Holding You Back From Greatness? | Lewis Howes

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

It’s hard not to like Lewis Howes. He’s extremely open about his personal struggles, from childhood trauma to romantic challenges, from family drama to failure and self-doubt. Lewis is a voracious learner, relentless in his pursuit of his interests–and he’ll bust his ass to get to the bottom of things in his own life.His main area of interest is what he calls greatness. He hosts a podcast, a very popular one, called The School of Greatness. He has spent many many years interviewing people who have excelled in all sorts of areas and has become a true student. Lewis now has a new book, called The Greatness Mindset, in which he shares what he’s learned via all of these interviews and his own personal work.In this episode we talk about:The source of Lewis’s interest in greatnessThe difference between a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset The pernicious impact of self-doubtHow to counter your inner critic via a ‘contract with yourself’ How to face your fearsThe importance of mission and purposeWhere selfishness fits into finding your mission and purposeAnd we have a friendly debate about the law of attractionFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/lewis-howes-571See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey gang, okay, so this episode is a little bit of an experiment. Hey gang, okay, so this episode is a little bit of an experiment. Normally, Louis House would not be the type of person I would be drawn to. He's six foot four, extremely good looking, a former pro football player and an all-American in not one, but two sports as somebody who is five foot seven, or as I sometimes joke, five, eight when I'm using my wife's volumizing shampoo and also as somebody who rode the bench in pretty much every sport I've ever played. It is hard for me not to be just a little bit resentful of Lewis.

Complicating matters even further, Lewis sometimes approaches the subject matters we discuss here on this show, human psychology, the meaning of life, the training of the brain and the mind, etc. In a style that is truly quite different from my own. And yet, despite all of that, I really like this guy. And it's hard not to, I think you're going to find the same thing. He's extremely open, as you will hear, about his personal struggles from childhood trauma to his present day romantic challenges from family drama to failure and self-doubt.

Lewis is just a guy who's trying to figure it all out. He's a voracious learner, relentless in his pursuit of his interests, and he will bust his ass to get to the bottom of things in his own life. As the kids say today, he is doing the work. His main area of interest is what he calls greatness. He hosts a podcast, a very popular podcast called the School of Greatness. And he has spent many, many years interviewing people who have excelled in all sorts of areas. So he's become a true student. Lewis now has a new book called The Greatness Mindset in which he shares what he has learned via all of these interviews and via his own personal work.

In this conversation, we talked about the source of his interest in greatness, the difference between a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset, the pernicious impact of self-doubt, how to counter your inner critic via a contract with yourself, how to face your fears, the importance of mission and purpose, where selfishness fits into having a mission and purpose. And we have a friendly debate about his attraction to the so-called law of attraction, which is one of my personal pet peeves. A quick audio note before we dive in here, there are some stray sounds in the first couple

of minutes, but then it goes away. So bear with us. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelli McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm

All one word spelled out Okay on with the show Hey y'all is your girl Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress singer and entrepreneur on my 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. Lewis Housel welcome back to the show. Dan thanks for having me man, appreciate it. It's a pleasure. You've got this maybe this is not the right word but maybe it is

obsession with greatness. Where did that come from? Well, it started with being obsessed with success. And I realized that success, I got it. And it wasn't everything that I thought it was. I got it in sports and became very successful as an athlete in high school, college, professional football, and then play with the Olympic USA National Handball Team for eight years as well. So I accomplished success in a lot of different endeavors

athletically, and none of those results got me the feeling of harmony, peace, and fulfillment. They got me a feeling of maybe winning and competition and being right, but those things didn't bring me peace. I thought they would. I thought they would make me feel loved, harmonious inside, fulfilled, but they didn't.

And that's when 10 years ago, I started the journey of saying, okay, success doesn't work because success by itself is selfish. It's for me. It's for me to look good. It's for me to win, for me to get credentials, for me to get seen on New York Times bestseller lists and awards and all these different things for me,

which there's nothing wrong with me, but I feel like the ultimate peace and harmony comes from pursuing your gifts and dreams. In the service of others, that's where greatness, for me, started to enter. And that's why I realized that greatness was much different than success. And that's where you find more harmony and peace inside because you're in service to others in the pursuit of your gifts and in your dreams. So what did that obsession with greatness look like for you? I mean, how did you go about learning about it? Through a series of events of a lot of pain and suffering

and essentially my ego being shattered, my ego being hurt, my ego being tortured in a sense. Now, not in the worst sense of the word, but I went through multiple different breakdowns in my life from business partnership, relationship breakdown, intimate partnership relationship breakdown. And it just caused me to break down in normal scenarios in life, being reactive, being resentful, being guarded, closing my heart,

and not living in a meditative state of peace and calm, and response from joy and love and harmony. I was responding out of fear and anger and resentment. I wasn't even aware of it until multiple things broke down in my life right around 10 years ago. And it was just a good wake up call for me. It got me to look myself in the mirror for the first time and truly ask, you know, who are you?

Why are you doing this? Why are you so reactive? Why are you living out of anger and resentment and fear, as opposed to love. And again, I was driven to succeed in different areas of my life because I thought it would give me a sense of fulfillment, a sense of love, a sense of I am an enoughness. But the more I succeeded, I almost got angrier at the world. I almost got angrier at others and angry at myself because I didn't know how to feel emotionally and harmony and congruent with myself because I was driven to succeed. I got it and it didn't give me what I wanted. So I was extremely confused and went on.

I started to go on a journey in a similar way that you went on your journey of meditation and consciousness and self-reflection and finding that inner peace in a world of stress. And so I started to go on this journey for myself of trying lots of different healing modalities to figure out where the original wounds were inside of me causing me to feel pain, causing me to be triggered and reactive in different scenarios emotionally. I suppose to noticing an event, interpreting it differently, having different meaning around it, based on healing my past memories, and then responding in a more conscious way. And it was these series of breakdowns in personal relationships, essentially, that caused me to look in the mirror.

And I just didn't recognize myself, I didn't know who I was. I thought I knew, based on the results I was getting, but that identity was based on the foundation of an unhealthy identity, not a conscious, loving identity. identity not a conscious loving identity. You talked about this feeling of not being enough. I think that's pretty common. We people who are successful. I'll just speak for myself. I think that I've been driven at many points in my life by you know, filling some unfilatable hole. Right? That I haven't even been able to perceive correctly. And I think sometimes people wonder, well, if I feel like I'm enough, will I still try to be successful? I can relate to that because I never felt enough after sports. I said, well, let me go into business and try this avenue and this arena. And let me see if I can be successful here. And I realized the sports success translating into business, you know, making my first seven figures and kind of getting the awards and accomplishments. They were nice.

It wasn't like it wasn't useful and helpful, but it didn't give me the, the interpiece still, or at least the calm presence and the I am enoughness feeling that I was always looking for because I was still kind of feeling empty when I transferred into business as well. What I realize is that we must be called and driven by a meaningful mission, something that's bigger than just our goals and dreams. It must be much more meaningful. I believe there's two different types of mindsets. There's a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset. A powerless mindset lacks

a meaningful mission, lacks clarity of the direction we're going that also includes impacting others around us with our gifts and talents. A greatness mindset is driven by a meaningful mission. So when I've started to feel, and this has really been in the last two years for me, it's been a 10 year journey of discovery and healing different things that were causing me to doubt myself, different things that were causing me

to be driven based on a wound, to feel more enough and feel the whole. And in the last two years, I feel, again, healing for me is a lifelong journey, but I feel much more wholeness emotionally and psychologically from the last two years of diving and even deeper on the healing journey. And in those two years, I feel more clear, more driven to accomplish my meaningful mission. And I'm doubling my business over the last couple of years. So I don't feel less driven and more lazy and more complacent because I now feel more

whole and fulfilled and harmonic inside of me. I actually feel life even with more urgency. I feel a sense of like life is now even more. And so I must act accordingly on my dreams and goals and empower and lift up people around me in my sphere of influence to the best of my abilities because it could all be gone in a moment. I know you spent a lot

of time with Dalai Lama and I know you've done a lot of practice and really reflecting on death as part of a meditative practice. And I think when, you know, I've had two friends in the last couple of months who are around my age, two male friends who died. And for me and my father just died last year after 17 years of dealing with the traumatic brain injury that shifted his life forever where he wasn't able to pursue his dreams anymore. So for 17 years he was alive after a car accident, but it left him unable to work, unable to cook, unable to drive, unable to do a lot of things. And that awareness of how death is just around the corner for each one of us, potentially. Hopefully we live a long life, but it's just, it could just be around the corner. We don't know. For me, that's the thing that drives me passionately

towards creating something in the world, making something, helping people, and having that harmony and peace inside doesn't make me more lazy. It actually drives me to serve because now I can feel fulfilled in a deeper level. I've noticed that a little bit in my life and I've not been great at crystallizing it, but somehow being happier, having a set of goals that transcend my own narrow interests has not shaved down my edge. It's made it not all the time, but for the most part, I feel like I'm more ambitious and more effective than I used to be.

I mean, I still have my bad days for sure. Yeah, but your impact and your reach and your growth is expansive over the last few years. And the results are coming in also, I'm assuming a financial and numbers results and all these things, you just keep growing. And it's different levels to the seasons you're at. Maybe you're pulled back in some ways, but your wiser, you're more empowering to people around you. You create systems and processes and are smarter in your efficiency and your productivity as opposed to I'm driven all day along and hustling, it's more of a wiser season because you've done so much.

Well, I appreciate that. I hope you're describing it accurately. Well, that's the way it looks on the outside. We'll let my producer, DJ, who's lurking on this call way in with abuse. That'll be the real test. But back to you, I'm curious, you mentioned that the last two years have been particularly impactful. First of all, I'm very sorry to hear about your dad and about your friends.

But going back two years, what else has been going on in your personal life if you're comfortable talking about it that has provoked such a deep dive for you? You know, I was going through kind of an extreme emotional relationship, to be honest, where it just wasn't working. I had started to heal lots of things from my past 10 years ago, 8 years ago, 5 years

ago. I've been sexually abused in my past. It's one of my first memories as a memory of sexual abuse. My brother was in prison for 4 and a half years when I was 8 years old until I was 12 and a half. And that caused a lot of trauma and pain within the family. And also, I just really wasn't allowed to have friends during that time. So it was a very lonely time for me in my small town in Ohio, where, you know, I was just

looked at as a bad kid as well, because my brother had been in prison. And so there was a number of instances that I had to learn how to amend and create new meaning from the pain of the past that were causing me to doubt myself, that were causing me to believe that I wasn't good enough, that was driving me to be successful so that I could fit in and belong to groups and friends and societies and teams. But at the end of the day, I didn't fit in and belong to myself. I didn't fully accept who I was and I was crippled with shame and insecurity and self-doubt. So this whole journey has been how to rid myself of insecurity and self-doubt, because even though I was successful,

insecurities and doubts still cause me to feel extreme inner pain, sadness, loneliness, anger, resentment, and frustration. So it wasn't giving me the fuel that was renewable and abundant. It was an anger fuel to muster out results and grind it out and left me feeling exhausted. So 10 years ago was a journey of healing the sexual abuse memories and those traumas, then, you know, brother being in a prison and parents going through divorce and kind of having a model of unhealthy love between each other and me learning how to unwind that to all the bullying and being picked on in school and all that stuff. But I still hadn't figured out how to stop abandoning myself and intimate relationships.

So I would wanna create peace with my partner and whenever she would be upset at me any of my previous partners, I would give in. And I don't blame any of them and nothing is wrong or bad with any of these partners. It's just situational. When they would get upset at me or when they weren't happy with something,

I lacked the emotional courage and the emotional freedom to say, okay, well, this is who I am. And here's what I can do, but I'm not going to give in in these ways. In intimate relationships, I would give in, give in, give in and change to people please and try to buy peace in my life. But you cannot buy peace. You must be peace as you know. This is something you study constantly. We must be peace.

Things are going to happen around us. How we react and respond is based on our own psychological and emotional wounds on how we interpret these scenarios around us and how our nervous system reacts to something. So I would get very reactive in terms of fear and worry and I want to upset you, okay, I'll stop doing this. I'll stop doing this.

And until it just felt like I forget who I am because I would allow myself to abandon all the best parts of me in order to make someone feel safe or loved or whatever they needed to feel. So again, this is not a blame game. This is a reflection on me lacking the emotional courage to say, all right, well, maybe this just isn't the right match. Maybe we're just not the right fit. Instead of walking away, I would dive in and try to make it work more and more and more. So two and a half years ago, it was just, it was kind of like, okay, I've been at the common denominator of all these relationships in the past 15 years, where I ended up suffering and struggling, and I ended up abandoning myself to make my partner okay. And no matter how much I would give in, they were still not okay. And I was just

like, kept repeating this pattern. And I was like, okay, I'm the common denominator. I'm the one who's the source and the cause of all this suffering. So how can I take a step back and really evaluate it differently? So this is when I hired an emotional coach to guide me in another process of healing, how I interpreted intimacy and relationships. She said, what's your intention when I'm

there with her? I said, I want peace, freedom, and clarity, because I felt like I had none of those. And I said, I will do whatever you tell me to do. I will do whatever it takes. I'll stay in your office for as long as it takes and meet with you. I will do any exercise, put me through any weird woo-woo crazy thing. Whatever it takes for me to unlock and set myself free, I will do it. And I spend five intense months, nearly every week, sometimes five, six hour sessions individually and joint with the previous partner to set myself emotionally free. And there was a pain, a ball of pain.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this, Dan, where you had a ball of pain, like in your chest, your stomach, your throat, your shoulders, kind of like a tightness. Mine was a ball of pain. It was kind of like in my chest area. There would come and go and sometimes intensify. Now I was healthy, I worked out, I ate well,

but this ball of pain was there. And it was based on a psychological emotional wound that I'd yet to face, yet to have the courage to address and mend. And there was a moment in one of these sessions after about four months of intensive emotional coaching, where it all started to click. Again, in a moment, things can unlock, but it took months and practice and application of integration for it to open up. And it was almost as if the ball of pain

disintegrated throughout my entire body in a moment. It's like my brain and my body finally connected to the idea that I am not a trapped human being. That was my fear, that I'm gonna be trapped trapped just like my parents. They were miserable for 30 years. They didn't fully love each other, but they stayed together because they felt like they had to for us kids. They didn't show love and affection to each other, although they loved us. And I did not want to repeat that. So I felt like there was no way out. I had to give in and give in and give in and that caused me to feel this sense of trapness. And the fear of judgment was my biggest

fear. There's three main fears that cause us to doubt ourselves the most. And I'm a big believer that self-doubt is the killer of all dreams. And my big fear was judgment. What are people going to say?? What is she gonna think if I end the relationship? What are others gonna say? How are they gonna view me? You know, I wanna make sure that I look good to everyone, that I don't want people to not like me. All these insecurities and fears were boiling up inside

of me constantly. And when I was able to go back and create a new relationship, this is gonna sound weird. But back and create a new relationship, this is gonna sound weird, but when I created a new relationship with my five year old self, with my 12 year old self, with my 18 year old self, and started to create new meaning from these memories and wounds and say, hey, listen, I got you now, five year old Lewis.

I got you 11 year old Lewis. I got you 18 year old Lewis. Thank you for getting us to here. I'm going to take over now. I'm going to support us. I've got the tools now. So we don't have to be living in this past trauma anymore. We can create new meaning. As Victor Frankl says, creating new meaning around it. We can mend these wounds and we can live from a place of harmony and peace and a meaningful mission as opposed to a protection energy and a need to protect and defend. And when that unlocked inside of me, it doesn't mean there's not stressful situations and

challenges and adversity to overcome. It just means I am in a much more peaceful state of being to navigate the challenges without falling apart. I mean, it sounds like you did extremely good work there and that cannot have been easy. It's terrifying. Terrifying. And it's, here's the thing, just because I've done the work, I continue to do the work every two weeks with an emotional coach because I am such a big

believer in coaching and enlisting support in ourselves and the different areas we want to improve upon. So just because I feel peaceful and good, I keep getting coaching and diving in more courageously into the things that are uncomfortable to talk about so I can keep breaking through and just maintain a level of harmony under stress. As I grow and as I develop in the new seasons of life, and as there's more pressures, I wanna maintain this level of success.

And I think that's why you meditate so frequently, even if it's for five minutes a day, what you've heard you talk about, if you don't have an hour, it's only five minutes sometimes, you do it because you wanna maintain a level of calmness in your mind and your emotions. Even when things are good, I think it's important to continue these practices. I completely agree with that. It's like exercise. You don't want to stop as soon as you get into good shape because then you're going to fall out of shape again. Exactly.

Does anybody ever say to you, all right, yeah, I'm interested in greatness, but if it means staring forth rightly at all my traumas, shit, I don't wanna look at, well, fuck greatness. Right. Well, I just think you can still have success, but it doesn't mean you're gonna have fulfillment and you're not gonna have peace. And I just think you're gonna, again,

there's, for me, there's two mindsets. There's a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset. And this is just my belief from my experience and all the research I've done over the last 10 years of interviewing some of the most brilliant minds, similar minds to yours in the different fields of neuroscience, therapy, spirituality and beyond. And even if you're in a transition of your life or you're in a breakdown or you're in a season where you're like, I'm not sure, or you're in a breakdown, or you're in a season where you're like, I'm not sure what I want,

or you feel stuck, then just define the season you're in. Okay, I'm in a season of exploring. I'm in a season of resting and recovering. I'm in a season of trying to figure out who I am. Great. Then just being clear on what your meaningful mission is, during a season of exploration or breakdown or stuckness, a power of this mindset is someone who's controlled by fear. I'm not saying you're going to eliminate

all fear, but being able to manage the fear and move with it is what we want to learn how to step into. Have you ever not shared something that you were extremely insecure or just worried about what people would think about you, whether it was some extreme thing or just a minor thing. And it was a shame. It was a little insecurity. It was a past pain and you held onto it. Did you ever feel like holding onto it and not one human being ever knowing about it was empowering and gave you peace and harmony or did not one person intimately or, you know, a spiritual guide or a friend or spouse or family member knowing this about you did it allow you to have a little bit more relief and empowerment over it. Yeah, it's 100% the latter taking the skeleton out of the closet in a place where

you feel like it's okay to do so that is extremely liberating. Liberating. And so when we conceal past pains, traumas, shames, any of those things, those things have power of us. We are afraid to conceal them, to share them. Therefore, it is controlling us in some way because we're afraid of what people think about us. When we're defined by the opinions of others, we're in a power this mindset. And the greatest mindset is essentially the opposite of these, someone who is driven by a meaningful mission. For me, I just defined the meaningful mission as in one sentence, can you define what path you're on right now for this season of life?

And for me, that's to serve an impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. It's one sentence. It's not all about me. It's about including others as well. And that makes it meaningful. It includes my goals and dreams and the things I want to be successful in the service of the people around me. I don't know if I you Dan, but I used to be really angry 10 years ago. I was a fun, happy, loving, joyful guy, but inside of me was anger, resentment, frustration, a lack of forgiveness. So when the wound

was triggered, when someone hit my buttons, what was inside of me came out. Anger, resentment, frustration, a lack of forgiveness, a sense of unfairness, that came out of me. And I was a unhealthy identity I had with myself. I would tell myself all the time, you're so stupid. Why did you do this? What an idiot you were. I can't believe you made this mistake. What a dummy. And I started to shift this 10 years ago. I created a contract with myself. This was a literal writing it down on a piece of paper and signing it contract. And I ask myself, what is the healthy identity I would like to step into? I am a loving, passionate, wise man. Now what was inside of me before then was love, but there was also anger, but I'm also

passionate. So let me step into passion. I'm a loving, passionate. And I always used to say to myself, man, you're so stupid, Lewis, you're such a dummy. I can't believe you did this. What an idiot you are. I would say so many disempowering, critical things about my intelligence because I was in the bottom of my grade in school, middle school in high school, because I had a second grade reading level on eighth grade, because of my dyslexia and the struggle that I just face trying to remember things. And so I said, okay, I can't say I'm a loving passionate smart man because that would be

fake to me. It would be unauthentic. I'd be essentially lying to myself and that would it work. But I said, what's the word that would resonate with me? Well, I'm a loving passionate wise man. I have wisdom. I have experience. I've overcome stuff. And so I became a loving passionate wise man, which became a contract I had with myself. I didn't need to say this to the world. I just said this to me whenever I felt like, oh man, I'm going back into that old self critic. And I just said, no, I'm a loving, passionate wise man. That contract written down signed, became a new identity that was becoming and stepping into and really allowed me to create a healthy identity, which is a part of the greatness mindset. And the final thing, part of greatness mindset is taking action with a game plan.

It doesn't have to be some extreme hardcore, like burn yourself out, game plan, and taking massive action, hustling, but there are seasons to life and just being clear on what is the mission and what is the game plan. And when you can do those things within the greatest mindset, that's when you unlock a more sustainable, harmonic

identity and life. Coming up, Louis talks about where selfishness fits in to finding a meaningful mission that goes beyond your own narrow interests and the importance of staying humble in moments of success. Like the short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time here on Earth? And what really is the best cereal?

These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with just and long. If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists,

scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs. And sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it?

Follow Life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondering app. I know you're not saying this, but I want to get you to accentuate it, shifting into what you're calling the greatness mindset. This is not easy and overnight. I read it, which it was, but it's taken me 10 years to be like be in the process. And in each phase of these last 10 years, I've grown and overcome certain things. But I don't know, for me, Dan, it usually takes me a lot longer to learn certain things

and I tend to make the same mistake over and over again until it gets extreme breakdown. So I've had to face these things and a lot more pain and suffering than I think I want other people to do. So the goal is just to give people clarity and use my suffering and my breakdowns to your benefit. One of the things that was extremely painful growing up was going to a prison visiting room almost every weekend, driving two and a half hours in Ohio and a car with my family to go see my brother. It was pretty traumatic to like drive to a prison, have to everyone get pated down, go through

the metal detector every time, be in a waiting cell, and then go into a visiting room with 30 other inmates in their family for a period of time, watch your brother get padded down, coming out there in a jumpsuit, and like experiencing that over and over again as an eight year old until 12. It wasn't fun. But looking back on it, his pain, his breakdown, and me experiencing it, made me never, he saw drugs in an undercover cop. That's what got him in jail. And so I've never been drunk and I've never been high. And maybe that's extreme, but his pain caused me to see things differently and clearly and just say, I don't even want to tempt myself to go down this path.

I just got clear that that's not the life that I want experience, the pain and suffering that it caused him, my family, myself. I don't want that. And so hopefully my challenges and me revealing these things, other people don't have to go through the same stuff as well. I think it's extremely helpful that you're open about the stuff you and your family have gone through. Absolutely.

In terms of making this shift into a sort of greatness mindset, what are the practical steps we can take to get out of powerlessness and toward greatness? The first step is getting clear on your meaningful mission. And if you're not clear on what that is, is a healing journey throughout everything in my message, in my work, in the book, and being in greatness. Healing is not a destination, it's a journey. So it is a healing journey throughout everything. And I think it's first getting to a place of full love and acceptance and forgiveness from all of your past memories to your present.

If you have a big goal, a big dream, if you've got an idea to write a book or launch a show or put your art out into the world, but your wounds are causing you to defend yourself to react to certain situations, then it's just not useful in putting it out into the world. And you have less energy on a day-to-day basis. So for me, I did not want to. As a guy that cared about peak performance, about success, about winning, I did not think facing your past pain was a part of this. I was trained to rub dirt on the wound, to get up and play with broken bones, which I did many times, to not show people you're in pain, to not cry, to not show any emotion. That was the way I was trained in athletics growing up, that if you show pain, if you show weakness, you will fail, you will lose, you'll be laughed at,

you won't be on the team, all these things. So for me, I had to uncondition myself because that way of being got a certain set of results, but drained the life and the energy out of me from feeling harmony and peace inside of me and fulfilled when I would actually accomplish these big goals that I was accomplishing. I didn't feel good still. I felt upset, angry.

I was frustrated. And I didn't think at all facing these wounds, healing the pain and creating new meaning around these scenarios would help me. So step one is really developing a meaningful mission through the practice of healing and creating new meaning around these wounds that cause you to doubt yourself that cause you to be reactive that cause you to be triggered. But I think if we hold on to the pain, it's just always going to hurt us. Although of course that's not simple. It's not simple. It's been a 10 year journey of processing.

It's been having different therapists, having different coaches guide me. It's been doing intensive emotional intelligence workshop retreats where I physically release things, reinterpret things, experience things, and allow myself to reflect and create new meaning. It's been doing every different type of meditation that I can essentially think of from going to India and practicing for many weeks and becoming a meditation instructor from doing intensive different types of yoga breathing, to whim Hof breathing, to studying with whim Hof, in Poland, half naked, climbing mountains,

breathing, mindset, therapy training with a group of men being vulnerable and opening up together to the spiritual meditations, to talk therapy, to intense emotional coaches, and also 10 years of interviews from some of the top therapists and individuals in neuroscience, brain surgeons on understanding the brain body emotional connection and just applying these things.

And freedom is a continual practice. It doesn't mean you're free and you're never to get trapped in into a feeling of suffocating or trappedness again. That's why I'm constantly practicing it. I think that's important. When you talk about having a mission and the mission is made meaningful because it does include other people, how do you balance that with having what we might call selfish goals? How do you balance the selfish, unselfish divide as you think about achieving greatness

in your life? You know, it's interesting because, I mean, this could be an ego thing just to say this right now, but this month, I'm on the cover of Success Magazine, and I'll be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine next month. And if you were to ask me 10 years ago, or 15 years ago, or my 21 year old self, you know, my ego would have been thriving

and drooling. And I'm like, great, this is awesome that it's happening. And it's a byproduct of being of service so continually. And so it's just focusing on the service and the mission first. And again, it doesn't mean it's not cool and you don't celebrate these moments, but the message is to go and impact lives. The message is direct people to the mission. And let's keep focused on that. So it's a balance of, yes, let's celebrate and acknowledge that we're in this human experience and the ego does run part of our lives. But if we get too caught up into it and too hyped up into it and thinking we are more than just a man, then we're going to be humbled very quickly. And life is going to humble us.

I think it was Marcus Aurelius was at the story where he would go around and someone would just say in the streets like you're just a man because everyone was praising him and saying how amazing he was. I think that was the story. I think, yeah, there was Marcus Aurelius or some returning conqueror in Rome walking through the streets in their version of a ticker-tape parade, and you would have somebody walking behind the general whispering in his ear because it was always men. His ear, you're just a man, you're gonna die. Don't let this go to your head. Exactly. It's kind of like you with the 36 Emmys in your lap.

We should celebrate and acknowledge the hard work that we've done consistently, the efforts, the creativity, the genius, the masterpiece, and all of us. We should celebrate it. And don't diminish these things. And don't say, oh, this is meaningless. It's not meaningless. It's a byproduct of you showing up in your greatness and your masterpiece and putting yourself out there in the world in a courageous way to impact and change lives. That's what you've done, Dan. You've done an incredible job with the masterpiece inside of you that no one else can do in your specific way. And being celebrated, seen and acknowledged, is a big part of being a human being.

Let's celebrate it, but not hold on to it forever of like a constant brag and then go back to service. And that's why, you know, you only have half of them behind you as opposed to all of them. That's the key. For podcast listeners, Lewis is calling me out for the fact that I, if you're listening, you can't see this, but I'm in my home studio, which is basically the closet. And in the background, you can see an Emmy that I got when I was a news anchor. And yes, it's a bit of a flex to keep that in the background, but I didn't do it on purpose, I promised.

No, but I should, I think you should have it. If I had it, I would put it in the background. I'd be like, look, will we create it, you know? But it's gotta be, how can you use it as a symbol to serve more? And I think that's the key. Do you ever screw that up because I do. I'll get two caught up in my own selfish stuff

and lose sight of the mission. Like I'm not perfect at walking this path. I think for sure I have probably a lot of times. I think I'm a lot more mindful in these last few years. And I think I have a great partner. My girlfriend, Martha is beautiful at giving me the praise that supports my ego, but also saying, Hey, listen, you know, make sure you're living a very humble and grateful life because if you don't, life will give you things to be humbled by if you're not staying humble.

You've chosen well. She's great. Coming up, Lewis Hous talks about the law of attraction. We have a friendly little debate about that. And Lewis talks about how to handle fear by tackling your fears directly and then turning the whole thing into a strength. In preparing for this interview, I've been thinking about you quite a bit and as I hope you know,

fond of you, I've spent time with you in person a couple of times. And you have a very different approach to these subjects than I do. I love it. And I think you're interested in some stuff that I'm not interested in, but you are extremely in my opinion, really genuine and voracious in your desire to learn. And I have a lot of respect for that. Thank you, I appreciate it.

That's a way of softening you up for a hard life. Yeah. Which is when you talk about attracting things or the law of attraction, manifestation, that is a bit of a bugaboo for me. And so I want to come at you on that and see. I love it. When you talk about the law of attraction, what do you mean by that? When I think of or talk about the law of attraction from my perspective, I think about being very clear on what you want and taking massive action consistently over time in order to create it. So, if I have an idea in my mind that is not in the world right now, I want to write a book. I want to do an interview with you. I want to make a hundred dollars and I have not done that thing.

Like that new thing has not come to me. Then it's about being very clear on the intention of what I want, why I want that thing, and the meaning behind why I want it needs to be important, it can't just be for superficial things, because again, if we attract these things, it still won't be enough if it's from a place of a meaning out of ego as opposed to out of service. So I could attract and I can accomplish,

but it still won't be enough. But the law of attraction for me means being very clear on the intention of what I want to create, feel or experience in the world, having a deeper meaning of why I want it, and then taking massive action until I create it. And the goal for me is really to say, how do we attract things faster? is really to say, how do we attract things faster? How do we draw an idea that we have into us and put it down to the world? I want to write a book. Okay, here's a thought. Why? Well, I want to serve people with a message. And I think it'll really help people heal, create, develop, do whatever it is, overcome this challenge. Okay, I want to put this out in the world. Here's why here's the mission behind it

Now the goal is to how do I think something? And the law of attraction is drawing it into me to physically manifest Faster, right? Okay. I had this thought for the book put the thought out now. I want to draw this into me So it's actually in my hands. He's holding his book. How do I do that? Okay. I need to get clear on all these things and I need to take action. I need to find someone to help me write.

I need to find a good editor. I need to find a publisher. I need to, all these action steps and it's my ability to communicate effectively and be in congruence with my mission, my ability to relate to other human beings in the world, my ability to have emotional intelligence and meet people where they're at and communicate on their level allows me to act courageously and take massive action continuously to draw that thought back to me faster so that it's an actual complete physical thing in the world that I dreamt of.

For me, that is the law of attraction, getting clear, taking massive action, and then making it happen fast. Okay, so what I hear there is very common sense of goal. You know, just you have a goal, you go for it. And yet when I was, you know, I spent a lot of time reporting on self-help gurus back in the day, James Arthur Ray and lots of other folks. Not much of an interesting. He went to jail for a few years, right? Yeah, he went to jail after some of his followers died in a sweat lodge. Oh, man, that wasn't good. Yeah. It was, uh, anyway, when I often heard when people talked about the law of attraction or the power of positive thinking was you can keep the spotlessly Positive mind and then get things through kind of this magic

You know if you watch the DVD of the secret. Uh-huh. You see a woman looking in a jewelry store window and But all of a sudden it's on their wrist. Yes, all of a sudden the diamonds are on her neck. And so I think that's a very dangerous thing to tell people, but I'm not hearing you say that am I missing something. 100% no, I just think that's the way that it's been framed by some people.

But for me as an athlete, you don't dunk overnight as a seven year old. You're not tall enough to touch the rim. That was a dream of mine since I was seven. It's like, I wanna be able to dunk one day. I'm watching on TV, this looks amazing. It took me eight more years until I was able to do it. And I would practice.

Wait, you can dunk? Yeah, of course I can dunk. I'm six four, come on, Dan. Well, I haven't tried the dunk in my life. I liked you until now. Well, here's the thing. Now I'm just jealous. Here's Come on, Dan. Well, I haven't tried, I haven't tried the dunk. I liked you until now. Well, here's the thing. Now, just jealous. Here's the thing that I haven't played basketball in a couple of years since the pandemic. So I'm kind of nervous because I'm turning 40 in a few weeks. And I'm like, I still want to be able to dunk after 40. I don't want my age to limit me for

anything. And, but I just haven't practiced jumping. So I got to get back out there and start seeing back in dunk again. But side note, you know, you got an Emmy, you got a few Emmys. and I just haven't practiced jumping. So I got to get back out there and start seeing back and dunk again, but side note, you know, you got an Emmy, you got a few Emmys, can you give me one? I'm kind of just, you know, just throw me one back here behind me. I'm just compensating for my lack of height.

So for me, you know, I had this dream of wanting to dunk. This is just an analogy in a story, but I had to take massive action. I did jumping lessons constantly. I had jumping workouts. I was obsessing over this and acting for, I don't know, eight years until I turned I think 14 was when I finally, 15 when I finally dumped. Barely. And then it's a level of like, how do I get to that thing even more? How do I keep working at it and working on it? So for me, I take a very practical approach as an athlete. I know things take time, but in the world of possibilities,

some things you can bend time, some things may take longer. It doesn't take five years to write a book. It doesn't take that. You can say, oh, it's just taking me a long time, but there are things you can do to shorten the attraction to it happening faster, by taking different steps or different actions to, again, use a word called manifestation or attraction that a lot of people may not jive with because of the annotation that has attached to it.

But for me, I'm able to do things faster now because I have more skills and I've overcome more fears and insecurities. And I'm just able to work in the world in a different way. But it used to take me a lot longer to do things when I had to learn certain skills. You just use the word fears, and this is the last thing I want to ask you about here is you talk a lot in your new book about dealing with fear and there's a whole set of exercises, the fear converter, the fear sit down, self coaching solution, multiple choice here, you know, or sort of maybe that's not the right word. Pick one, I'd just be curious if you could just walk us through and exercise for dealing with fear, because at least for me, that's a pretty constant companion.

Yeah, I mean, I was crippled by fear most of my life. And it consumed me. It made me feel powerless in situations. In certain social settings, I didn't have courage or the abilities at the time to act, to show up, to be my authentic self because the fear crippled me. And so again, this was just me living in a more powerless mindset, state momentarily, until I was able to overcome a lot of these fears And it doesn't mean that there's not going to be new fears at different seasons of life I'm not married Dan. I don't have kids yet and I'm assuming there's going to be a set of challenges

Or call it opportunities for me to overcome certain fears or insecurities at a new season and stage There's always going to be something that we're going to need to face. So what I like to do is I like to create a thing called a fear list. Edith Eger talked about this as well when I interviewed her, which I was really excited about when she said it. She's like, we need to create a list of our fears and start knocking them off. And I go, yes, this is something I've been talking about for a long time. She was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a book called The Gift, one of the mentees of Victor Frankl from Mansfield's First Reveining. And she said, you know, these

fears hold us back. And it's not until we actually face it. So she talked about going back to the concentration camp where she was, where she watched her parents get executed. And she said, it was still having power over me. I still had bad dreams until I went back and faced it, faced the situation, the scenario, faced the man who took my parents away emotionally and psychologically in my mind in that physical setting and allowed myself to create healing, forgiveness, and peace. For me, when we can list it and look at them, for me, public speaking was a big fear. Solicitancing was a big fear. Reading and writing was a big fear. So the first three things I did, I said, I'm going to go all in on public speaking.

And I did that every week for a year. I went to toast masters, which is a public speaking class. And it was humiliating. I could not stand in front of a group of people without stuttering, stumbling, sweating, and just sounding like an idiot. These were all professionals, and I was not one. So, of course, I'm not going to be any good. But by doing it every week for a year,

I eventually got a lot better. And I'm facing it and checking it off my list of it's no longer a fear. It's now something in my tool belt that I can use that empowers me. It gives me even more confidence overcoming that one fear. I did the same thing with salsa and dancing. Reading writing was one of the biggest fears of me, because I would get asked to speak aloud in class. I know you were in the top of your grade and you skipped multiple grades and you had the high-stack you and SAT and AC. No. All these things. But

I don't know if they did this with you Dan, but with me and our school, they would rank us of how well we did on our great cards compared to everyone else in our class and our grade. And I was always in the bottom four. And most of the time, yeah, I'm not proud of this. Most of the time I would cheat on homework and quizzes and tests just to pass because when I would try to study so intently and doing on my own, I couldn't pass. I would fail. So this was just a survival mechanism to get through a school. And so when I would read aloud, they would ask us to stand up and read a, you know, chapter one and page, whatever, read a paragraph, it would terrify me. I would try to do anything I could to get out of reading aloud.

So when I became an adult, or I don't know if I was an adult yet, but in my early 20s still figuring out life, I was like, I need to face this fear. I am going to write a book. And I was terrified of what people would think about me because I wasn't a quote unquote writer. So I studied it. I worked with a coach on a mentor that helped guide me. I practiced it. Again, I didn't just say, I'm going to write a best-selling book overnight and then just manifest it with the law of attraction. I worked at it continuously and felt the fear and felt the embarrassment and felt the humiliation. But I had supportive feedback, positive coaches that said, hey, it's all good. It's a process. You're going to improve over time. And here's something you did better than last week.

And let's work with this. By creating a fear list and knocking the scariest ones off first one by one, you will start to feel fear lists. And I think that's an exercise that I've continued to apply in my life that has given me a lot of confidence in the face of fear. Is there something I should have asked, but didn't? I'm glad you asked that question because I just think that's a wise thing to do. I can't think of anything after the end of my head. I'm very grateful for your line of questioning

and your thought process. And I'm just very blessed to be able to spend this time with you and feel grateful that you want to have me back on and talk about these things. Because I feel like, again, self-doubt is the killer of dreams. And I think if people learned to overcome it and practice the healing journey, it'll give them a lot more peace. So I'm just really grateful for you for having me, Dan, and even though I don't have 36 Emmys behind me, I'm just glad that I could be here in the presence of it to you as well. I appreciate it. Oh, man, I wish I had 36

Emmy. It's still going to be enough, Dan. No, wouldn't be enough. I was just thinking that I would be gunning for 37. Before I really let you go, can you please remind everybody of the name of your book, the name of your other books, the name of your podcast, any other resources you're putting out into the world? The greatness mindset unlocked the name of your other books, the name of your podcast, any other resources you're putting out into the world. The greatness mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today is the most recent book. This is the book I wish I had when I was 16, when I was 21, when I was 30,

when I was trying to figure out lots of different transitions in life. The mask and masculinity is probably the book I'm most proud of because it's helping men become more vulnerable and heal specifically with men and identify the mass that hold them back. The School of Greatness is my first book and then the School of Greatness podcast where I've got my show and then Lewis Houses everywhere on social media.

Lewis, thanks for taking the time to do this but appreciate it. Appreciate it Dan, thank you. Thanks again to Lewis Houses, Thanks to you for listening. Well, I have you if you have the time or energy, I would love it if you would go rate and or review this show. It really helps us grow five stars if you're up for it. Also want to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. 10% happier is produced by DJ Cash, Mayor Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justin Davie, Lauren Smith, and Tara Anderson.

Our supervising producer is Marissa Schneiderman and Kimmy Regler, he's our managing producer, scoring and mixing by Peter Bonnaventure of Ultraviolet Audio and Nick Thorburn of the Great Rock and Roll Band Islands. Wrote our theme, thank you Nick. We'll see you right back here on Friday for a bonus. Hey, hey prime members, you can listen to 10% happier early and add free on Amazon Music.

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