the bossbabe podcast - 257. Pursuing Greatness In Love And Business with Lewis Howes

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

This is Lewis Howes like you’ve never heard him before.  In this episode, Danielle sits down with the top podcaster and global thought leader for a very personal and honest conversation on finding peace within yourself and learning to extend it into other areas of your life.  We go deep on doing the work, purpose-driven business building and especially relationships – where we learn a stark truth about what his real number one priority is, and why it’s caused so much friction with past partners. Highlights: Learn Lewis’s true meaning of greatness + the tools he uses to reach it. Get the 7 relationship keys that will radically improve your love life. How to stop choosing the wrong partners + find true happiness with the right ones. Links: Take the Love Language Quiz! Listen to the School of Greatness podcast  Watch The Redeem Team on Netflix  Follow: Instagram: @lewishowes YouTube: Lewis Howes bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

I was choosing previous partners unconsciously. I didn't have a conscious way of choosing an intimate partner. I maybe saw something that I was attracted to or maybe something I felt, I've found some like keys towards kind of conscious relationships that work for me that I didn't have before. And I don't think any of us were taught like, here's a conscious way to enter a relationship. I've kind of got my seven keys to a healthy conscious relationship from after going through all this pain for 15 years in relationships.

And the first one is... A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going, and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of actually building successful businesses,

achieving that peak performance and learning how to balance all while you're doing it. I'm Danielle Canty, Boss Babe co-founder. And this is actually a really special episode for me because I have invited my good friend on, Lewis Howes, and we are getting personal, you guys. Many of you don't know this, but Lewis and I actually went through our breakups at the same time. And we used to go to lunch with each other and just share what was going on and get support. And in this episode, we really open up about it. He also shares about how Tony Robbins actually made him cry when we were in Miami and the lessons he learned in his breakup and finding new love with

his amazing new girlfriend, Marta. The thing is about this episode, we actually really talk about how you can live and learn so many lessons in this period of your life and that it isn't easy, but you come out the other side stronger. And Lewis actually shares his seven relationship keys, which he has learned from this period in his life, which I know you guys are going to want to know and apply in your own lives. But also he shares why his girlfriend isn't actually his number one priority and never will be. But here I'm out on this episode. I promise you are going to want to grab a notepad and pen, or this is also an amazing episode to listen on a walk or in the car, wherever you are.

Just really absorb what he's saying because this is Lewis Howes in a way I've not heard him speak before. So I hope you enjoy it. Make sure you tag us both at Lewis Howes and at Danielle Canty, and we'd love to hear your thoughts. Lewis, I have been waiting a long time to get you on this podcast.

I'm very excited about this conversation today. And knowing you and I, it's probably going to go deep really quickly. Lewis and I always have these emotional conversations. So I want to ask you, you have school of greatness, but what does greatness actually mean to you? I think the definition for me has changed over the years,

but in this current season of life, it's about discovering your own unique gifts, making the most of them in the pursuit of your dreams. And in that pursuit, making the maximum impact on the people around you. That's what it is for me. And do you think you always were in tune with what great men has meant to you? Because I really want to take you back to the beginning of your story, because my understanding

is it was kind of like two juxtapositions. You're amazing at football, but really struggled in school. And how did you like navigate that with your worthiness? Like, did you feel great or was that always something that you were struggling with? I don't think I felt worthy ever really until I about hit 30 probably. I tied my worthiness to my results. And so when I would accomplish in sports, I would feel a sense of worthiness, but there's always a false foundation because there was things missing. I wasn't really honest and vulnerable with myself.

I wasn't willing to reveal my insecurities. And so I felt like I had to put on a facade constantly about success and accomplishment in order to feel worthy. But even then, I still felt like I was living a lie because I knew there were things I was ashamed of that other people didn't know about. It wasn't until I was able to reveal the parts of me that I was most ashamed of, where I felt like I could have a sense of peace and accept myself and know that others around me accepted me as well. But before then, it was a lot of like, okay, yes, I have some friends and people and business, but if people really knew about me, they wouldn't love me. They wouldn't accept me. They wouldn't want to be my friend. There's always this kind of anxiety about, well, hiding the lie of my insecurities or my fears and my doubts. Like,

if people really knew this, they probably wouldn't want to do business with me or hang out with me. And it wasn't until I hit 30 where I started to unravel and unwind some of that and start revealing it to friends and family. And then kind of on my platform, like, hey guys, this is what I've been struggling with and what I've overcome. And here's the tools I use to overcome it. Then I started to learn the process of accepting and loving myself, which opened up a lot for me. I love that. And I think that's something that I too feel like really came into my own in my 30s. It's very similar when you're like teens and 20s, you're really trying to identify who you are. And I don't think school or colleges are a great place to explore or be open about your

weaknesses or your challenges. I think it is like you say, like hiding a lot of them to get through. And then when you really kind of address the shadow sides of things that you're doing, that's when you come into your own. But for you, what was like, you hit that in your 30s around like really addressing some of those pieces, but how did you even get to that point?

Most of it was just breakdown after breakdown. You know, I was accomplishing in certain areas, but then I was feeling emotionally broken down in other areas in an intimate relationship and a business partnership. And then just in life, I was playing sports to kind of get my frustrations out. And I would keep getting in fights every time I'd play basketball, pick up basketball. Everything would trigger me. If someone cut me off, literally a few blocks from here, one day I stopped at a stop sign and there was a runner that kind of like, I cut off the crosswalk. And so I cut off him running across the street, right?

At a stop sign. And so he kind of like punched the back of my car as he ran around it because I had stopped and then he had to run like around. And he was probably frustrated or whatever that I cut him off. I didn't see him. And then that was an instant trigger. I literally ran after him. I ran.

I mean, when my car ran out in my car, then I got out of the car and started running after this guy. And then I was like, what am I doing? I left my car in the middle of the road off of like 3rd or Melrose. And I was just like, what am I? This was 10 years ago. And I was like, what am I doing? What is happening? I was 30.

So you started the podcast at that point, right? Yeah. You were early on that journey. I just started. And so you were running after him. So you started the podcast at that point, right? Yeah. You were early on that journey. I just started, yeah. I just started. And so you were running after him. I was running after him. And I was like, what am I doing?

And what was going through your head at that point? I was thinking, this guy took advantage of me. He abused me. He's using me. He's, you know, vandalizing my car. Like, whatever it was. How dare he? Yeah, yeah. I was just like, at that time, I didn't know how to regulate my emotions when I felt like

someone was taking advantage or abusing me because that was the trauma that I had as a child. I felt like this anxiety, this stress, this overwhelm, and this kind of like needing to make right, this needing to be fair and needing to have justice or something. Yeah. You know, that supported me in surviving, but it didn't really help me in thriving emotionally in my life. I didn't feel peace.

I didn't feel a sense of freedom. I was a victim and really a prisoner to my own emotions based on what other people would do. I was an inmate of my own mind, you know, where something would happen. I didn't know how to calm my nervous system. And instead I would just go right into reaction mode. And it was after many, many months of kind of this happening, a business fallout, a partnership fallout, an intimate relationship fallout, kind of these like little triggers throughout the day and playing

basketball and, you know, all this stuff. I got in a fight on the basketball court one day like a physical fight after a number of a number of sessions where i would just kind of like push someone or like you know whatever react but not fight someone and then i finally got in a fight and i remember thinking like my friend was there he said afterwards like the next day, he was like, man, I don't want to hang out with you anymore for you to be like this. And that really opened me up. I was like, wow, okay, something's off. Even though I'd been successful materialistically or accomplishment wise in sports and in business to a certain extent, I felt like I was failing emotionally and mentally. And that was kind of a wake-up call. Like after I got in this fight and just kind of all these

things happening, I was like, okay, the common denominator is me. So it means I got to become someone new. I got to become someone greater than what I'm being right now. Cause this is not greatness, right? This was not, it's one of the reasons why i started the show because i was like there's so much i need to learn so much i need to overcome and it's funny with the first six months of the show i did a lot of my interviews about like success right like being the best being number one how do you reach the top and then i went through a lot of different kind of healing journeys, emotional intelligence workshops and therapy and all these different things I wanted to try and explore and started to really heal a few key memories from my childhood, which allowed me one level of healing,

one level of transformation. There's always going to be new levels, but it started one level, which was a big level for me then. And then after that, my interview style started to shift and change. And people would email me and say, Lewis, I really liked your show before, but something different is about you. Like the way you're asking questions, the way you're talking about life, like it's a little different. And I was like, well, I'm going on a journey, you know, but I hadn't talked about that journey with people. I was just living it. I was just being different as opposed to talking about what I'd gone through. And I think that is so

powerful. And I think this is where probably you and I resonate and why we have our deep conversations that we do is why we both recognize that we're always on a journey. But when we get to ask questions, the people that we do, I definitely think it helps accelerate our journeys and those around us. For you, what are some of the biggest, like you have interviewed some of the world that you really took that helped you navigate not only your own journey, but you feel has helped you support your audience on their journey as well? I mean, a lot in the last few years, I've been going through another transformation in the last couple of years. We've talked about this many times about healing even farther, right? There might've been healing occurring and transformation occurring from

certain memories and wounds, but I still hadn't overcome a lot intimately in previous intimate relations. So I started to do a lot of that work almost two years ago now. And it has been amazing what unlocks with every new level of transformation, with every new level of healing, growth, overcoming adversity, whatever it might be. So I've done a lot of amazing interviews with people on that healing work in the last couple of years. One of them, a brain surgeon and neuroscientist,

a PhD in neuroscience and a brain surgeon who's done over a thousand interviews. And I go, what's one skill after studying the brain and the mind for so long and doing all this work on people, what's one skill after studying the brain and the mind for so long and doing all this work on people, what's one skill you think everyone should learn to master no matter what age? You said the skill of emotional regulation. You know, I just got back from a seven day retreat with Dr. Joda Spenza, which you've

done as well. And it really just taps into allowing your body to be so whole and healed and full of love and light so that when life happens, we are not in reaction mode because we feel whole and complete and loved. That doesn't mean I'm not going to be, you know, triggered at different times in my life, but how can we be so aware of the trigger that our response is greater than what we used to respond, that we can respond from a place of conscious awareness as opposed to

reactive stress and anxiety and fight or flight. And so that's kind of been my mission over the last two years is interviewing a lot of these individuals about emotions, emotional flexibility, like Dr. Susan David, emotional agility. So that's been kind of my theme because I feel like it doesn't matter how much money or how successful we are, if we don't have the emotional peace inside of us, then there's still a different level we need to overcome. There's still stress and anxiety. And I don't think that's a fulfilling life if we're hustling and grinding and acquiring money, building an audience, building a business, if we don't feel like we love ourselves, if we can't receive love from others, if we can't

learn to love ourselves when we're single or when things are not going well. And I think that is the next level of breakthrough for a lot of people. And it's hard to do when we're constantly consumed by stress and anxiety or comparison mode on social media or thinking we're not doing enough that our friends are doing. It's hard, but I think that's the game. I could not agree more. And I think that is the game. And it's really interesting. I was in Bora Bora recently and I was like, we had this morning where we were snorkeling and this guy was like our tour so he took us out on the boat and he was like taking us through this coral and there were like areas where the coral came really high so you had to go single filed like swim past it so you didn't graze yourself i remember just thinking to myself like this is such pure beauty and it's nature and exists.

And like his job, his job is to swim on it and this in a daily basis, like being at one with nature, being at peace. I was like, who, who has it right? And I had this whole thing. I, well, what am I doing? Like, when was the last time I went to the beach and watched the sunset? Which I know is one of my happiest things to do. So, when was the last time? Literally, I was like, it's months ago. Right.

And we live like 20 minutes away from the beach. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's really, really interesting when we find ourselves in these cycles. And I also recognize I come from a place of knowing that I should always carve time out to go to the sun, like watch sunset at the beach.

But why don't I? You know, I heard this quote years ago, right at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, which was like, happiness is not a destination. Like you need to be happy on the journey. I genuinely feel like I am much happier on my journey now than I ever have been before. Yeah. You look pretty relaxed.

Yeah. I do feel relaxed and chill. And there are still times when I have to really figure out how to manage my emotion. Like I definitely recognize that stress gets the better of me. I'm like, why am I so stressed about this stupid thing? Like, what does it even matter? And what I've been like coming to realize is part of it is mental and also part of it is physical. And that like, I wonder sometimes if I'm almost like addictive to the endorphins that come from stress.

Yeah, it's so familiar. So are there ways like where, I want to dive into the mental side in a second, but are there ways that you have learned to leverage the physical side of like managing stress or managing emotions like have you ever tried like tapping techniques or like i've tried it all i feel like yeah i've tried it all except for except for this is going to be controversial because i think it's so in right now i haven't done psychedelics or like plant medicine.

I'm not a personally. The only way that I would do that is if I felt like I've tried everything else and gone all in on the emotional work and it wasn't working after doing it for a long time and I felt like I need some relief, then I'd probably try plant medicine. Just for me, using an outside chemical

to influence your internal state is not a sustainable thing in my opinion. So I've tried everything in terms of emotional intelligence workshops to cold therapy. I've been with Wim Hoff in Poland for five days, jumping in frozen rivers, working out, just moving the body, yoga, meditation, stretching. I've tried every different type of therapy and all these different things. And I think it's really going back to the root of where does your stress anxiety come from? Where's the wound? And figuring out how to get to the memory of the wounds and rewrite a new story. It's healing the body and the nervous system from that memory, which we've carried with

us for decades, some of us, learning how to heal the nervous system, calm the heart, and then start creating meaning from that memory in a new way. Not having meaning tied to stress and abandonment or fear, but towards, okay, this was a lesson and I'm going to learn from it and overcome it. It doesn't make that thing that happened right, but it just means that if this happened, I need to accept it. And how can I make the most of it? So for me, I went to India five years ago and did two weeks of intensive meditation. Just did Joe Dispenza.

I'm always trying to learn new skills. I'm trying to find people who have peace in their life and figure out what can I learn from them. Those are the guys or the ladies who have the answers, the ones who have peace. For me, that's the highest currency in my life right now is being peace. Not finding it, but being it from the inside out and doing my best to stay in a peaceful state. Even when there's a high pressure, high stakes,

like how can I still be peaceful? And I was just watching this documentary last night of 2008 Olympic team, the USA team, the basketball team, sorry, with like LeBron and Kobe and all this stuff in the previous couple of Olympics, they didn't win. Right.

So they had to get back to like this, this place of greatness on the Olympic team with the USA. And they're not stressed, even though that the last couple of minutes of the gold medal game, you guys watch on Netflix, they're not stressed at the end. They had this calm and peace about them. And they had a couple of minutes where they needed to win the game at the end against Spain. If they're living in stress, you can't flow. You can't create at the highest level.

So we need to be thinking, how can I be peace as frequently as possible? That's when our best comes from. That's where we create the most in our work or our business. That's when we're our best in our relationships. That's when we're kind and generous in life. Not when we're in stress and anxiety, but when we're in peace and abundance. It's just all about constantly doing the work. I paid a year in advance last year for every two weeks of therapy to work on emotions.

I paid a year in advance this year, every two weeks, to work on the emotional side of things. Even though I feel peace right now, I want to keep it. We invest in a coach in our health. We invest in a coach in our health. We invest in a coach in our nutrition, our business, our career. But the thing that stresses us out the most is our emotions. Why don't we invest in a coach, a mentor, a guide, a therapist, a spiritual leader, whatever you want to call it, to support our emotional state as well? It's a thing we got to live with constantly.

We got to live with ourselves and our thoughts and our emotions. And I think that has been extremely helpful for me to invest in it even when I feel good. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you.

It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know? Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so

because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. Do you think you would be in a different position in your life if you'd invested earlier on in your emotion? Yeah. but I don't know if I was ready for it. You know what I mean? I was thinking about some people in my life, friends and family that I'm like, man,

they could really benefit from some of these other tools, but you've got to be willing to want it and do the work. You can't force someone to do something. You can suggest it. You can influence it some ways, but if someone isn't going to commit to the work, then they're not going to get anything out of it. Until they suffer more or until they come to the realization, I'm willing to do this. I went through a lot of suffering in different areas of my life 10 years ago.

And two years ago, I went through a lot of emotional suffering from a previous relationship that I take responsibility for because I chose it and I stayed in it when I could have left at any moment. But I didn't have the tools or the courage or the emotional flexibility to learn how to manage that because there were still wounds that were holding me back. So from that place of suffering for a while, I was just like, I don't want to ever feel this again. I never want to feel this type of pain, anxiety, and stress in a relationship. And I'll be single for the rest of my life if I need to be until I figure this out because it's not worth the pain. And so that kind of breakdown again made me have the reflection moment of, okay, I'm the one who's the common denominator here. How can I improve? Who do I need to become that I haven't been yet? What tools, what healing, what journey? I don't know. So let me go discover it.

So that breakdown of that pain created the opening for me to say, okay, I just never want to feel this pain again. It's hard to want to invest in doing these things if it's not painful. If it's just okay, or sometimes it's painful, it's hard to say, okay, I want to invest in this or do the work or meditate for an hour a day or work out every day, whatever it is, or do therapy, even when everything feels good. It's really challenging, but I think that's when people should be doing it the most. I think we're motivated by two things. We're either motivated to move away from pain or motivated to move towards a desire and attraction. I think you're either running towards something or away from something whenever you're creating change. And I definitely, for my own journey,

it was like, I think the things that have got me to move the most are the pain points. Like, I literally cannot do this any longer. It's so painful to say at this point, I think I've been more inspired to take action from the worry and the thought that nothing will change if I don't do something about it myself. And I'm curious, can we talk about love life a little bit? As that's how a lot of our conversations, me and you were going through a breakup at the same time, right? Lewis and I were in Miami having dinner together, like, oh, shit. How do we get through this?

Yeah. Stressful. That was because we were at Tony's together. For those who don't know, we went to a mastermind. There's about 20 people in the room 10 questions being asked and I think I had very a type personality and I was asked my question was very much business orientated I think I was kind of scared to go there with Tony anyway because it's my first time meeting him and I was like I didn't and I was also in a room I was really intimidated by because we'd and you know

we'd done this you know affiliate for him and supported his launch. And so while in it, we all got taken there and you were in that top 10 too. But I knew he had this reputation of like going deep. It's intense. Yeah. And so I kept mine like light and breezy really, which was probably an escape. And I was the last question. Yeah. And you were the last question. He comes around to you. I've been chatting about what your question was going to be prior to that I had a different question you had a complete different question he didn't even ask you the question and he went how because you've been there the year previously it's like how's the love life yeah and I kind of explain what happened then I pretty much just broke down and started weeping

I mean I was like I think it was kind of building up for a while where I was trying to keep it together, but I was feeling so much stress for like a year prior to that in a relationship that I was just kind of like, man, it's not going well. You know, I felt like I was suffering inside and I kind of blacked out during that point. He asked me a few different questions and I can't remember everything but I just remember crying for probably 15-20 minutes while he was talking with me being very emotional and also it's you know I didn't I knew some of the people in the room but I didn't know everyone in the room and I remember just being like well you know and this was I've learned over the years that not to be afraid to show my emotions. And people are going to judge or think or whatever they want to think.

Or bond. Yeah, or bond. And it was really interesting because I think there were some women in the room who maybe had some judgments of me that didn't really fully know me or they just met me. But maybe they whatever thought, whatever they thought, then seeing me online, it came up to me like later that night after we came back and just like stared me in my eyes and were like, wow, I really respect you and appreciate you. And like, you're like, man, I really look up to you. You know, people were just saying that. And I go, I was just bawling, you know, and just like talking about my suffering or what

I'm going through. And I don't know if that's admirable to talk about those challenges, but I think the ability to be vulnerable and real is what they were mentioning about. And that whole weekend, I remember feeling like so much joy to be around my friends where I felt accepted, yet at home, I wasn't feeling accepted and it felt like stress and chaos. And so I just remember that was a big moment for me. And we were already in therapy at that point. And I remember I was texting the therapist. I was like, I just can't do this anymore. I was like, I'm done.

I can't do this anymore. And she was like, listen. She said to me, I remember this vividly because I was looking out in the ocean. It's a beautiful view in the ocean in Miami or wherever we were. And I had some peace for moments. And I remember thinking, God, life is, it shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this stressful. But why am I choosing this day?

Why am I trying to work so hard at this? Why, you know, why am I, why don't I just leave? I remember texting her, my therapist, all these things. And she goes, the veil is starting to lift. She texted me that the veil is lifting. Like it was, it was removing the veil. I'd finally gotten out. It was also in the middle of pandemic. We were kind that the veil is lifting. Like it was, it was removing the veil. I'd finally gotten out. It was also in the middle of pandemic. We were kind of like stuck in together. And so

I finally got out around friends and peers where I felt like, man, I can thrive. I can flourish. It felt so good to be around everyone that, um, I went back and I just started saying, okay, this either needs to resolve quickly or, you know, I'm moving on quickly. I think in the next couple of months, I finally was like, I continued to show up to therapy every week. We would do eight-hour sessions together. Eight hours on Saturdays. I was doing individual every week. She was doing individual.

And then we would do it together. And I remember just being like, there is no, we're not growing at all we have different values different vision different lifestyle i was finally like okay i've had enough i'd been doing the work for five months together in that in that therapy session with her i was like this is there's not any improvement so why am i doing this ending that and moving on and continuing that healing journey was a big breakthrough for me because I was always afraid to end relationships because I didn't want people to not like me. I was going to say,

I'm curious why you almost stayed in it longer. Was that a worthiness thing or like, I think I, here's the thing. I think in every relationship I had previously had, you know, I create connection with people you know, I create connection with people, right? They create connection with me. We connect. There's vulnerability,

there's connection, there's all this stuff. And I could never put my, I couldn't understand in my mind, okay, if you spend six months, a year, two years with someone and you build this connection and you call it love, right? But then you break up and then you never speak together again. Like I just couldn't understand like how someone could hate someone. Like I never hated anyone after it didn't work out. Even if it wasn't healthy, I was never like, I hate you. So I try to think about the good moments, but I always felt like they always hated me, right? It's like, I can't believe you didn't choose me or you don't want to be with me or you abandoned me

or you didn't fight for whatever it was. And so it was always like this pain, so much pain in the breakup phase of like, okay, you're not in a relationship and you don't have a connection with this person anymore. And that was challenging for me, I think, until I realized that it probably does make sense to not have that connection, especially if you're going to be in a new relationship. It's not healthy to be connected to someone from your past like that.

Unless you have kids and you've got to manage that, it's different. But yeah, that was a big breakthrough. Learning that, practicing that. I'm really grateful for it. The challenges of previous relationships, I'm really grateful for. And I'm grateful for those women who taught me these lessons. I have no hard feelings towards any of these people, even though I know they probably still do for me in some ways. I'm grateful for the lessons and the moment when it's the hardest,

that it's the most important to step into to see where the lesson is. So that's what worked for me. I also feel like there's so much empowerment that comes from looking at lessons and challenges because my biggest thing was, I too, I don't regret anything because I feel like if I hadn't have gone, if I hadn't have walked that journey, if I hadn't have walked that mile, I don't regret anything because I feel like if I hadn't have gone, if I hadn't have walked that journey, if I hadn't have walked that mile, I wouldn't be where I am now. I would have taken me in a completely different direction. But I also feel there's a lot to be said

for taking ownership of what you can be responsible for and what you can learn and what you're, if you did do it again, what you would do differently. And for me, that's been very much like taking accountability because then I can change it. There's something really empowering by going when I feel like when you're in victim, like, oh, it's okay for them, or they did this to me or yada yada. It's very difficult to change something that you're not actually responsible for. Whereas when you're like fully responsible and like, okay, if I acted in

this way, this might've been a different outcome. Or if I'd spoken up earlier about this, it may have come to an end five months earlier or not. I think on my entrepreneurial journey and my relationship journeys and all of those things, that's my biggest takeaway is like, how can I take accountability sooner so that I can either create the change or there's a lesson there. Yeah. And I didn't, you know, I was choosing previous partners unconsciously by some type of unhealthy chemicals, right? I didn't have a conscious way of choosing an intimate partner i maybe saw something

that was attracted to or maybe something i felt like i could fix and it made me be like interested in like pursuing that individual and so from the healing and the breakup and the you know the processing of it all i've found some like keys towards kind of conscious relationships that work for me that I didn't have before. No one ever taught me that. You know, my parents got divorced. And so I saw an unhealthy model, which I probably modeled in a certain way. And I don't blame them, but I just, no one ever taught it. And I don't think any of us were taught like, here's a conscious way to enter a relationship.

I've kind of got my seven keys to a healthy conscious relationship from after going through all this pain for 15 years in relationships. And the first one is healing yourself first and going through the healing journey. Because if we get into relationships and we are still wounded, you can heal in the relationship with someone else, but you're just carrying baggage and you're dumping your emotional wounds on a partner that you're supposed to love and care for. So I think it's our responsibility to heal or if we're in a relationship already, like, okay, start healing in that journey before you enter it. That's the step one is

two whole people coming together or people that are working on wholeness coming together. Number two is, you know, I never was dating anyone where our love languages were in alignment. Ooh, interesting. Ever. I realized that like the things that they wanted from me, I didn't do naturally towards my giving of love. They always wanted like acts of service. And I was like, that's not what I want to do naturally towards my giving of love. They always wanted like acts of service. And I was like, that's not what I want to do. You know, I want to, I want to, I want to praise you and I want to touch you.

Yeah. I want, I want a physical touch and words of affirmation. But you know, all these other, you know, doing acts of service and gifts, that's not what I do, but they want, that's how they felt loved. Which is kind of natural for you to do it. And so it makes it hard for me to do something consistently for someone to receive my love. It's as simple as that. So getting alignment on love languages so that each person shows up as their authentic self, doesn't have to do something

different and they both feel loved and seen and valued. It just doesn't, it's just a less friction. So I'm trying to find less friction points in order to make sure you have an alignment of the match that your person you're with. I love that. I'm going to put the link for love language quiz on there because it is really a good one too. I find it hard when my part, my ex was quality time. That actually isn't very high on mine. Mine's words of affirmation. So that becomes really difficult as an entrepreneur too,

like trying to do all these things. I was like, Oh, this is not. So he probably never felt love. Yeah. And you weren't getting the love that you wanted as well in certain ways, which again,

these are all things we have to learn through mistakes. We're seeing a different model. So that's number two is seeing like both of you take the quiz before you get in a committed relationship and ask yourself, if we're going to do this for life or for 10, 20, 30, 50 years, if that's our goal or that's our intention, do I want to become someone different that I'm not good at being to give this person love every single day? It just seems exhausting to me. And it was exhausting for 15 years. So that's number two. Number three, four, and five is having alignment on our values, vision, and our lifestyle. Getting

very clear and being honest about this early on. With Martha in the first, around the three-month mark, I took her to Sedona. I created an exercise with her. I said, we're going to go up a vortex on a little mountain. And I played some music and I said, here's a notebook. I want you to write down all the values that are important in your life. Gave her about five minutes exercise, played on this beautiful Enya music and created the environment of, okay, what do I truly want in my values? She wrote it down. Then I did that for myself in a different notebook. So you did it separately. Separate. So you weren't sharing at the time. Influenced. Yeah. I wrote my values. And then

at the end, we looked into the gap and 80% of what we had written down was exactly the same. The other 20%, I was like, okay, cool. That's fine. There's nothing against that. And she was the same for me. So we had a lot of alignment on what we cared about as our values. And I said, here's the vision of my life. I'm going to paint a picture for the next five to 10 years. Obviously, anything could change and unexpected things, and I get it. But this is the vision I have. I'm a very driven man.

I'm going to be driven. This is how I'm going to show up in a relationship. This is going to show up in a marriage. It's going to show up as a father. There's certain things I'm going to be driven. This is how I'm going to show up in a relationship. This is going to show up in a marriage. It's going to show up as a father. There's certain things I'm going to do. Other things I'm unwilling to do. This is my vision. This is what I want to create in our relationship.

The vision of our relationship. Here's how I want to see us individually and us together. This is where I'm going. And if you're not in alignment, then we need to know now because I'm not going to change for you. I'm going to change for me and to continue to evolve as a human being, but not because you want me to change. Not because there's something you don't like, but because I want to become a better leader and a better human being. And so we did that with our vision. And then lifestyle.

At that time, we spent a few months together, and I got to know her lifestyle by watching her, right? The lifestyle. What, what I mean by that is kind of like, we're both extroverts or extroverted in nature, right? Um, we both like travel and adventure. We both like being around people. like these things if she never wanted to go out and i always wanted to go out it would just be like there's just more friction it doesn't mean it can't work it's just like okay that's a friction point and then if we have the different love languages that's another friction point and if our values are not aligned that's another friction point it's just like eliminating as much friction it doesn't mean it can't work, but I'm looking for to create consistent peace in a world of potential challenges and adversities. So that was the three, four, and five. Number six, I said with her early on, something I always wanted to do in previous relationships. I said with her early on, I have something that's non-negotiable for me. If I'm going to enter in a committed relationship with you or anyone,

it's that we do therapy together as a couple in the beginning of the relationship. And we're each individually doing it on our own with whoever we want to do it with. We must be willing to do it together. And she was like, I'm down. I'm down to do that. And there is so much that I've learned from stress in previous relationships that could have been eliminated from people just going to therapy and having honest conversations and creating agreements. And so this just, again,

it minimizes friction, minimizes the stress or the confusion around what's happening in the relationship. We started doing that early on and it's been a game changer, not because something was wrong, but because things were going really well and we wanted to continue it to go well. And anytime there was a misunderstanding, we could address it in a safe space, create a new agreement and go from there. So that was number six. And then number seven is total acceptance of the other person, who they are. Once you learn these things about them, do you fully accept them?

She's an actress. I'd never dated an actress. And I know she'd kiss guys and movies and TV shows on set or whatever for the character she's playing. I need to be okay with who she is, her vision for her career and her dreams. I need to be okay with who she is, her vision for her career and her dreams. I need to be okay with that and accept that. If not, I shouldn't be with her. I shouldn't say, no, you can't do that when you're with me. You need to stop acting. You need to start doing what makes me feel comfortable.

So having total acceptance of her after months of dating and knowing who she is, am I going to be comfortable with this if this is who she's going to continue to be for years? And same with her. I said, you need to fully accept me. Otherwise, this won't work. I'm not going to abandon myself anymore to make one person happy because they're insecure. So this is who I'm going to be. Can you accept me? And those kind of seven keys have really supported me in this process. A lot of it has been having the courage to say everything you need to say

and not shying back, being afraid to trigger someone or someone to run away from you. So that's been a big thing is just being so courageous with your truth about these things. And that's so important, that acceptance piece, because as an outsider, I think there's a lot of relationships and I definitely know this is a different, completely different relationship, Martha, to your ex, which is like, previously you weren't fully accepted. It was all about how can you change? You can change,

be better, be this, be that. That's such a different place to come from from the person who's demanding like I feel like if you're like demanding someone change for you you also owe it to yourself and that person to question if they're actually the right person because there's nothing wrong with however anyone behaves within reason like it might be oh yeah I want to change you because you don't take the trash out of the enough or whatever but it's just like coming back to that yeah like this is who they are they are that person who is really bad at answering their phone or they are that person who doesn't put their dishes away automatic pilot but am i okay with that and i think when you get that kind of taking the full conversation full circle it's getting around to that peace peace within who are. Because it's also okay if you can't accept that.

If you can't be with someone, let's say you're a neat freak and they're messy. Then don't be with them. Yeah, exactly. Choose someone else. Just don't be with them then. Yeah. Choose someone else.

There's what? Almost 8 billion people? Choose someone else. You know, you don't have to choose the one that you're frustrated with. I wonder if a lot of people stay because it is like that acceptance of who they are. Like sometimes I'll listen to some of my girlfriends and they're like,

oh, but like now he's dating her because she's so much prettier than me. Or like, oh my God, but she's like so much better in her career than me. And I'm like, it's so interesting like how you think like that versus just like, oh, I'm at peace with who I am and content with who I am and accept exactly who I am. Because yeah, they might be doing this in their career, but I have this in my career and that's also equally valuable. Exactly. And if someone's moved on from you, you should thank them. I mean, if they're not fully invested in what you want to create, then okay.

That just means they weren't the right fit for you. Don't be hurt and sad by it. You can be sad that it didn't work out, but don't be affected by yourself. Why don't you say, how can I take full responsibility on my part? What can I do to continue to go all in on me, on my health, on my growth, my development so that I'm a magnet for the right person? And I reject the people that aren't good for me. Early on with Martha, I said, listen, I want to tell you the truth about everything you

asked me. Just know you're probably going to run away. Most women don't want to hear the truth, the real truth about what I'm thinking or what I'm feeling about my priorities in life. You know, she asked me my priorities, the priorities question within the first couple of months, what are your priorities in life, Lewis? And I said, I think this is going to be the end of our kind of dating experience where we weren't exclusive yet. We weren't fully committed yet. I said, this is probably the last night we're hanging out together like this.

If you want me to tell you my real priorities. Because no woman wants to hear what I'm about to say. No woman. Because I've tried to in the past and they've all gotten emotional or cried or reacted in some triggering way, which made me have to like filter myself to try to make them happy, which was, you know, a fault of mine to try to like not rock the boat on someone and make them feel comfortable and safe as opposed to just saying, this is how it is. And if you don't want to be with me, I need to be okay with you

not wanting to be with me. But I was afraid of that too. So I would change to make someone happy. So I said, I'm going to be honest with you. You'll never be my first priority. And no woman wants to hear that. No woman wants to hear they're not the number one priority in the man's life. And let me give context around this. No, let me give context around this. I actually really appreciate and respect that you're sharing this because I actually also think there's certain women who need to be the first priority and other women who actually don't need it too. Let me create the context because it's not that they're your partner. Exactly.

So let me go to context. So I said this, I said, listen, you're never going to be my number one priority. And, uh, you know, most women never want to hear that. And so she just kind of listened. She was like, okay.

She didn't like react. My number one priority is going to be my health. Because if, if I want to be the best version of myself, I need to take care of my mental, emotional, spiritual, physical health. I need the energy to be able to respond to adversities in life. I need to be able to show up fully in life. I need to be in a good mood and have a good attitude and feel good about myself so that I can take on my life in a big way.

So I need to be with someone who understands that my health is a main priority. They're not going to try to take me away from my own health. She was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Number one health. And I said, you're not number two. No woman wants to be, you know, not number one. No, we're number two. And I said, number two is, and this, and I go, maybe I'm wrong. And maybe this is the wrong way of thinking, but number two is my calling. Because if I dim my light towards my calling, my mission, my purpose, if I don't do it, I'm always going to be resentful of myself. And I'm going to be resentful in any relationship if I feel like I'm not able to do the thing I was born to do because one person wants me not to do it at the fullest. So whether that's my calling

from my creator, whatever I feel is the voice inside of my heart telling me to do something that needs to be a major priority for me because it's going to bring me a lot of fulfillment and joy. And me being of service to my mission of helping others as well is going to not only help me be fulfilled, but it's going to serve other people, not just one person, but more people. And so I need to be in a relationship where someone fully supports my purpose and mission. And then I said, number three will be my intimate relationship, whether that's you or whatever it is.

We weren't committed at that time. And I said, number three is the relationship. Because if I take care of my health and I take care of my mission, I'm going to be the happiest man in a relationship. I'm going to be fulfilled. I'm going to be joyful. I'm going to be caring, patient, kind, generous, abundant, giving in all the ways that I am. If I'm not healthy, if I'm not doing my mission, my purpose, I'm going to be nasty, reactive, impatient, rude, and all these other things. You're chasing cars. Yeah. I'd be trying to find, I'd be doing surface level things to make myself feel fulfilled momentarily, as opposed to really in my core, the purpose of my life at this season, right? It might change in

five, 10 years, but this season won my purpose. And she looked at me and she grabbed me and she was like, this is amazing. She's like, thank you for being honest with me. Every relationship I'd been in previously, they made me their purpose and their number one priority. And I was always like, what's your purpose? What's the thing in life you're meant to do? You're calling.

Go do that. They were like, well, that's you. Like, it's being with you. It's making you happy. And she's like, yes, but what's the thing you're supposed to do? You want to be a singer? Do you want to be an actor? What do you want to do?

What is God or the universe telling you to do with your gifts and talents? And she never had a relationship where a man was in his purpose fully and embracing it. And for her, that's what she really wanted. So there was a good match there. And again, we create context for people because it's not like I never give her time. We're always spending time together. You know, we have so much fun together. We travel together.

I give her tons of my time. But it's because i feel supported with my health and my mission that i now i have more energy to give to her abundantly so it's not like she's not a number one priority she is but it's knowing the context that you gotta put health and mission above that your calling i, above one human being. Now, if something comes up and there's an emergency, okay, I'm going to be there. Yeah. You know what I mean?

But it's just having that understanding this is the baseline. I think there is more people that this is actually in alignment with than they even realize. Maybe. Because I think it's the two things. It's like putting the oxygen mask, put your own oxygen mask on first. On that plane safety guidelines that we always watch so that you can then support others. And the other thing I think is it's about the positive spiral effects or the negative

spiral effects, because let's say she was number one priority, right? Or if you're really honest, what does number one priority look like for you supporting her? Well, that's following her around as her career, dropping everything that, you know. Yeah, and that ultimately is going to, if that isn't really your truth, then you're going to go into a negative spiral anyway.

So I think the best thing that we can all do is having more honest conversations with ourselves. And I always I can't use this as like a the boss babe podcast is like a therapy session for me too anyway but like one of the things I realized was that I never spoke my truth well enough previously my priorities has always been about my growth or even just down to like being able to have conversations like, hey, this doesn't feel good for me because that's not actually like my value

or this part of the vision doesn't feel good with me, et cetera. I think as all starting to own our truth and our voices is really powerful. And like, obviously I was brought up in different countries, but we do come up with a similar age. And it looks back at like,

you know, when we were at school, it's like, oh, conform. Don't, I was sent, go to my room to be, if you're upset, like, don't talk about it. Like come down when you're ready to apologize. And I was watching this reel that came up today on my feed, which was about why you shouldn't force children to apologize because they're not actually realizing they're sorry. They're just executing on a demand of them. And I think back on my life, how much I've been executing on demands versus what was my true emotion in situations. And I think that's how I ended up in a relationship that didn't serve me because I wasn't actually truthful with myself. Then secondly, him about

actually how I was feeling about the whole thing. Right. So you guys were both out of alignment. Yeah, completely. If we had sat down and had those honest conversations and no one was scared to hurt each other, would we have even got married? I don't think we would have done. I don't think either of us would have wanted to get married. That's why I'm not saying,

you know, these kinds of keys that I've talked about or going to therapy in the beginning doesn't mean you're going to stay together forever, but I think it sets you up for a lot more peace and success and fulfillment, going early and having the most uncomfortable conversation. It's not fun to have uncomfortable conversations. It sucks sometimes. Like, man, this really doesn't feel good.

But at the end of it, we gain clarity. We gain agreements. We connect on it. We work on ourselves and we come together stronger. Or if it's not going to work out, then we can get out of it sooner than getting committed in a marriage and then having kids and then trying to like change each other later. From the interviews that you've done, does anyone spring to mind when they talk about uncomfortable conversations?

Like any leaders that you've seen and be like, they all were so good at having conversations up front that made them into the leader, personality, expert, whoever they went on to become. I mean, the first thing that came to mind was Emmanuel Acho, who has a show called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. You know, he just kind of leans into it and says, okay, let's go there. But I think it's creating the safe environment first to say, hey, listen, I want you to be able to share what you're going to share and I'm not going to react to it. I just want to hear what you're talking about

so we can have a discussion where I think there's a lot of times people in intimate relationships react when they hear something that they don't like or someone has got a different belief or a different whatever it is. So that's why I believe when you create a safe environment with a therapeutic experience, a therapy, a coach, or a spiritual pastor, whatever it is, there is someone managing the emotional energy as opposed to two wounded people coming at each other and reacting, triggered.

And guiding a conversation that is uncomfortable, I think is extremely powerful. If we don't have the tools to do it ourselves, if we feel too anxious to do it ourselves. And the more you do it, the easier it gets. You know, we still have uncomfortable conversations outside of therapy where some moments I'm like, okay, let me just breathe into this. This feels a little uncomfortable,

but it doesn't mean we have to react and yell at each other which we've never done because we made an agreement early on yelling is not a part of our values reacting from a fear is not a part of our values so we created agreements and i said i can't be in a relationship where someone screams at me it's happened every relationship prior it's happened and i allowed it to happen continually i made excuses excuses for it, whatever it is. So I just said, I would rather be single than be with someone who does not know how to communicate without screaming. It's just not worth it in my life anymore. I'm happy with my cat. You know, I can just be alone and just be happy with my cat. I don't need to like abandon my, my, my knees. And so, and she's in alignment. She's not a screaming person so it's we create

an agreement and so that if an agreement is ever broken you know or is like not met then we just go back to and say hey this was our agreement you know and then the person who broke it would say you know i take full responsibility that was my bad And I recommit to the agreement. You know, it's having a structure and a language where we can face uncomfortable conversations. And that's why I believe having counsel on a continual once every couple months basis even will support you in managing your emotions and processing and integrating whatever you need to integrate. And I know like you mentioned like a lot of things you do like about therapy and obviously Joe Dispenders, but I also think it's worth mentioning for people listening like, okay, well, that's fine for you, Lewis, because you have the money to spend on these things. I think we should just come up with some like resources as well, where people can actually

do a lot of them like for free, because there's so many resources on like you say, podcast channels that are teaching us or youtube or just i think one of the first things you have to make a decision for the loop to stop like okay i don't want to be in this like i want to learn to communicate better i am the i'm not the ella but maybe if someone listening is like oh i am the ella so i want to change this how do i go about it and like everyone has the power to create that change if they truly desire it like it's going to be coming from pain or a desire absolutely um for an attraction of something that's come coming but i also think owning that decision and starting there is a

really big point because as soon as you're saying oh it's okay for them you're even blocking yourself straight away listen if you want to be in a relationship that has fights and arguments and screaming, that's okay. That's your vision. That's not my vision. So you just got to get clear on what you want. If you're okay with that and that gives you excitement, then okay, cool. Live that life. That's not a peaceful life. Someone like us, we've got businesses, we're managing different people's emotions in life. We're managing the world coming at us, paying bills, all these different things. I want to have peace at home so when I go into the world and take on my mission, I can take on adversities knowing there's going to be challenges. And can I bring my full energy and attention to be my best there?

Not have to manage a war at home as well. It's just, it's exhausting. We had Matthew Hussey on and he was speaking about the same thing about how when, you know, relationships are often tied to what you're creating your business and how well you're creating it, because it depends whether you have got that leaky bucket. If all of your energy is being taken up by fighting at home and an environment that is conducive to create, whether you're single or in a relationship, you're going to have a knock-on effect in business. What are some of the things that you've taken from relationships

and actually applied to business? Because we all have teams, et cetera, or people that we're working with are the contractors or full-time employees. Are there things that you've learned in a therapy relationship setting that you're like, oh, I actually should be applying this in some of my business relationships. A couple of things.

I don't want to go too much into the details. It's just learning to not, you know, doing my best to not allow someone else's actions to really pierce and affect me emotionally, right? It doesn't mean I'm not going to get triggered or be frustrated or not liking something, but how can I stay in love and in light as consistent as possible throughout it and observe it from a different perspective, as opposed to reacting from a wounded, triggered nervous

system, but observe it and say, okay, this was their action. I don't like this. This doesn't feel good. But me creating stress in my body through a reaction, through anger, through resentment, through frustration, through worry, that is hurting me now, right? They may have done something that affected me that I don't like, but me analyzing and stressing and ruminating on it is now hurting my emotions. It's hurting my nervous system. It's hurting my brain by focusing on it. Joe Dispenza says, where we put our attention is where we put our energy, right? So it's like, if you're putting your attention on anger, you're going to have more energy towards anger in your body and in your mind, which creates stress, which makes you, you know, not sleep as much,

which makes you grab pizza and candy or whatever to do unhealthy things because you're in that emotional state. So someone, we had spent like three months recruiting someone, putting them through an interview process. This was like earlier in the year. You know, I was really excited about this person we were hiring, and they had a lot of experience and all these different things. So we spent all this time interviewing them. Then we hire them. Then the first month is just kind of onboarding. We're

paying someone to just learn, right? It's like we spent all this time investing. About a month and a half into it, someone on my team says, hey, I saw this. I thought you guys should see it. This person was posting recorded Zoom calls of the whole interview process that we did with her. And then recording private conversations on Zoom about meetings with our team. What? And posted videos. Then analyzing, this is what I did to get this job. This is the interview process. And showing our faces and audio on social media. And right away I was kind of like, just in shock, just like

you. Like when I saw, when someone brought this to my attention, I go, I go, oh my gosh. And literally I had a moment and my COO looked at me, he goes, let's take a moment before we react to anything. And I remember just being like, okay, you know, I've been doing at this point a year of the healing journey and like just emotional processing and integrating healing. And I was like, okay, I could go back into my old way of being, which is someone's abusing me or taking advantage of me and using whatever it is, right.

That after I've been investing in them and paying them and training them and they did this, right? Or I can make a decision based on values. It was my values, my vision, right? And so I was like, okay. I talked to Matt. I go, listen, whatever we need to do, this person needs to be gone from here in 24 hours. I don't need to call this person and react. I don't need to be upset at them. I don't need to yell at them. That's only going to hurt me. Yeah.

And a few days later, like, it's kind of like we were both kind of in shock, right? This is kind of like a shock. Like, what is this? And who is this person doing this in the first month and a half? Right. And I think a few days later, after we kind of like finalized it and let this person go and all these things, it was like, dude, like, how'd you do that? How did you not get so frustrated?

I go, man, I've just been focused on the journey of not reacting. It doesn't mean I'm not frustrated. It doesn't mean I don't want to punch a wall or something. You know, I still feel that for a second, but I'm like, what is that going to do for me? Is that supporting my vision and my values by me responding and reacting. In no way am I saying that I'm going to be a perfect person for the rest of my life. And I may react at times. But in that moment, I said, this sucks. This is unfortunate. The time, the money, the resources, all that.

But me reacting and being angry is only hurting me and hurting the mission. So it's hurting my health and it's hurting the mission, my top two priorities. So I'm moving back to like, okay, how can I be better for me? How can I do what I need to do to process this, to talk about it in a way that's not going to get me so riled up and anxious and make a clear decision and then move on and try to move on as fast as possible. It doesn't mean I didn't think about it for the next couple of weeks. Like how could this person do this? But I just kept going back to what is my vision? What's my vision?

Let's stick to the vision. That was helpful. Someone stole some cash out of my office, a team member. We caught them stealing it. I was kind of, again, in shock. It was like a lot of cash. It wasn't like a couple of bucks,. It was like a lot of cash. It wasn't like a couple bucks, right? It was a lot of cash.

And I remember just being like kind of in shock, just like the first person. I go, you've invested in this person. This person had been around for, I don't know, six to eight months or something. It's like training this person, investing in this person's life. They're learning about their relationships, coaching this person, all that stuff. And then someone to steal money from you and not apologize and not act like it was a thing or whatever. It's a shock, right?

So it was just like, okay, I can either get upset and angry, which I was upset internally. And I go, okay, but I don't want to be upset for too long because what's that going to do for my mission and how it's going to affect my health. It's going to affect my health. It's going to affect my relationship with my girlfriend. And it's going to affect my team if I'm upset. So it's just, it doesn't mean I'm not going to be human and feel emotions. It's just figuring out how do these emotions serve me moving forward? And can I feel them for a short amount of time and then move on, you know, as quickly as possible as opposed to stay in the past.

It's stopping you, like, regulating that spiral. I think it's so easy when one thing happens at the beginning of a day or beginning of a week or beginning of a month and it to have this, like, negative ripple effect if you're not careful. But being able to stop that negative one and then just harness the positive cycles out of things that you do. I always try to look at these things as a band eight months in as opposed to them doing this for two years and then we let them go so it's like okay you know we learn let's move on let's try to be better in the hiring process moving forward whatever it is for that situation and that's been powerful because it's funny because after the relationship you know two years ago whatever when i when i ended the relationship it's kind because after the relationship, you know, two years ago, whenever I, when I ended the relationship, it's kind of like my therapist said,

you know, the universe is going to bring you tests to see if you have stage. Yeah. If you're like, if you've integrated the lessons and that's part of your journey. So it's just kind of like, okay, how much more is it going to test me? You know, it's like, I feel like I'm good. Have I not passed yet? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's just kind of like, okay, you got to keep being consistent because every new level of breakthrough, there's going to be different challenges and adversities to overcome.

So speaking about starting our days off strong and going into positive or going to negative, I'm curious, do you have a morning routine? And what is it? I think it's changed a lot over the years based on if I'm traveling or if I'm in home or whatever. But I like to do a couple of things. I like to make the bed for whatever reason. I started doing that about 10 years ago when I never made it before.

And I felt just more like, okay, I have a clean space, physical space. It's helping me clean my mental space as well. So the cleaner my physical space i felt like i could not stress about it and then i could be more creative as opposed to i gotta like put my clothes away or make the bed always in the back of my mind so it's just kind of like simple little two minute thing i really like getting the workouts done in the morning because i don't have to think about it at like five or six or eight o'clock when I've used a lot of my energy for the day. So I like getting it done early in the morning. And then I really love doing a meditation in the morning as well. I feel like if you do those three

things, that's a pretty good day right there. I love that. I love having, I can't get into an unmade bed. It has to be made. I'm like making it first. Well, let's thank you so much for coming on the podcast. We're going to put all the links below and I know you're going to come on again in March, right? Excited. Yeah. We'll do round two. We'll go even deeper. I'm excited. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit, your simple no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review,

then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox. Bye.