THE ED MYLETT SHOW - How To Unlock Your Greatness Mindset w/ Lewis Howes

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

The journey to GREATNESS begins with believing YOU ARE ENOUGH. LEWIS HOWES is talking to you this week on the Ed Mylett Show about overcoming challenges and tapping into your own GREATNESS. Nothing could have prepared him for what he faced after his father’s near-fatal car accident and an injury that ended his pro football career after one season. Lewis has a remarkable story about OVERCOMING ADVERSITY and finding a NEW PURPOSE in life.We cover a lot of things this week, including…🏆 Subconscious blocks rooted in FEAR, SUCCESS, and JUDGMENT🏆 STRATEGIES to process the “I AM NOT ENOUGH” mentality🏆 The difference between SUCCESS VS. GREATNESS🏆 What are the COURAGEOUS questions to ask ourselves🏆 METHODS for inner child healing and SELF-LOVELewis ends with an emotional story about how his relationship with his dad changed over the years and how it has impacted him to this day, which really touches me as you know my father means the world to me! From start to finish, this is a POWERFUL hour about how you can take Lewis’s learnings around how he has overcome INTERNAL and EXTERNAL challenges and APPLY THEM TO YOUR LIFE. This episode will help you develop YOUR GREATNESS MINDSET.

This is The Edmila Show. Welcome back everybody. Today's gonna be awesome. I got a great film. Someone I'm very, very proud of. And very fond of. I have great affection for this man. I admire him, makes me emotional, and I respect him.

And I think probably in my life the last five, six years he may, he's potentially grown more as a person than anybody that I know. And I loved him and thought he was amazing when I met him. And this is a guy in the pursuit of greatness. And it just so happens. He's got a new book out called the greatness mindset, unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today. It's man's immensely qualified to talk on this topic. Lewis House, welcome brother. Thanks, head. Appreciate it brother. Good to have you. Yeah, I'll know, Lewis, probably, but if you don't, just past 10 years with his podcast, he's already a New York Times best-selling author. And I'm grateful you wrote the book because you've been studying greatness up close now

for about a decade. I want people to know this about you. The serodipity and synchronicities that I think you bring to so many people's lives. There's tens of millions of people that watch and listen to you every week on multiple platforms. And because they watch and listen, magic happens in their life. And I'm sure you hear it and see it and they send it a lot, but I don't know if everyone sends it enough.

And so I want you, if you're watching and listening right now, if something happens today that is a serendipitous moment, is a synchronicity, maybe you, when something happens in your life, you're always like, oh, I'm going in the right direction. Maybe it's like you see a penny or you see a butterfly or you see some symbol or someone says something to you or Someone in your life calls you and when that happens something good happens like pay attention today

When you're listening to this this moment And anytime you're watching you're listening to Ed and send him a message again Saying there was a synchronicity because of you today and when synchronicities, you need to listen, pay attention to take action. And the moment you met Martin, my girlfriend, I guess it was last week, we can have a go. And you met her in a moment of prayer, was the moment you met her. You literally were holding your hand

and you were like, nice to meet you while we were praying for a friend of ours in this moment. I won't say what was happening, but whenever friends was going through a moment that needed a lot of support and prayer. And you grabbed your hands and you said, nice to meet you. I'm sorry, it's happening in this moment. And later, after the event, we were like, wow, there was a synchronicity that happened before this months ago, because I was in Maui with Martha. And I was about to make a big decision. And I remember saying,

who's a mentor I could check in on and ask about this. That's why I think it's really important to enlist support and not try to do it on your own. Like, find the mentors that you look up to. You're someone I really look up to. And I value your wisdom and your knowledge. And I always been planning to take a big investment for, I don't know, six months. I was thinking about this researching it, planning it. And I go, and I'm with Martha, I go, I think I actually need to call someone and like, double check. Someone who could give me some feedback on this.

And I call you, and I'm like kind of walking around by myself, like in the grass, by the hotel room. And then she comes up maybe like five, 10 minutes later. And I'm going to have it on speaker. So she can listen to the end of the conversation. And you said something to me, you said, this is a divine intervention. That's right. That's what you said. You go, this is a divine intervention. You know, that you're calling me at this moment because something just came up. And if you called me two days ago, it wouldn't have happened. So this is divine intervention. And she's looking at me. She goes, because the night before we said, she did a

prayer. She said, God, guide our steps in this decision. Give us a sign. She literally said, I'm giving chills. She goes, give us a sign for Lewis to be clear that this is the right decision to make. Because for months, it felt like it was the right decision. There's something that was off. I was like, I don't know, like maybe, maybe not. She said, God, give us a clear sign that this is the right decision. And then the next morning, I call you and you say, this is divine intervention. And I'm like, we're both kind of like, jump back. And then months later, you meet her in prayer. Well, I'm like,

it's just because there's just synchronicities that happen in life. And when they happen to you, pay attention. So that's why another reason why I'm so grateful for you, because you've brought, even though we've only hung out, I don't know, seven, eight times, maybe in five years, maybe a dozen times. And only on a handful of conversations, I truly value every interaction that I have. And there's always divine intervention every time

I get to connect with you. So if you're listening or watching right now, please pay attention to the signs that are in your life when you're listening to this podcast or watching a clip or our video, use it because not everyone's going to get a chance to speak to you the way I do. Not everyone has that opportunity, but they have the opportunity to hear your wisdom on the show. Pay attention to the divine intervention when you're listening to this show and any show that Ed Divert does and make sure you are following the signs. Wow, brother. That is a beautiful story. Thank you for telling me.

Of course. So good. I want to start somewhere interesting, which is the dedication of the book. Okay. You dedicated the book to you. But there's a reason and I want you to share it because I think this is the ultimate pursuit of greatness. Actually, you do get it to the younger you. Yeah. Why? Uh, I think we criticize ourselves and our younger selves too much.

I think we live in shame, beat up, and we don't forgive our younger selves for all the bad things, all the things that we did to hurt ourselves and hurt others. And so over the last couple of years on my healing journey, I had a photo of my five year old self for about a year on my phone. And it wasn't to be narcissistic or anything like that. It was an emotional coach gave me an exercise

and said, you've still got some wounds, you got a heal. And I want you to go back and have a different relationship and create meaning from those painful memories in a supportive, loving, compassionate way towards your younger self. And so I spent a year, kind of when I was writing this book doing this healing journey of the different psychological phases of my life, bringing it closer right now,

I've got a photo of my 17 year old self. Look at that. I'm in the way the camera is, maybe it's over there, but it's kind of like when I was 17 in high school. And I'm going to St. Louis tomorrow, to see our mutual friend, but I'm also going to my alma mater, my high school, where this photo was taken.

Are you sure? So I'm on this journey of going back to all the painful memories, the things I'm proud of, the things I'm on this journey of going back to all the painful memories, the things I'm proud of, and the things I'm not proud of, from as far back as I can until now. And I'm trying to marry those ages to now, to be peaceful, to be kind, and to be compassionate to myself,

and also take full accountability for all the different things that I was proud of and not proud of. And so I wanted to, I didn't know how this dedication would come off. I was like, yeah, maybe people I take this the wrong way. But I wanted to honor my younger self for getting me through the pain, the problems, the challenges, and getting me here. Without having all the tools, without having the wisdom to experience the knowledge, and by having to overcome so much,

I wanted to honor my younger self. I think it's beautiful, and because I know you so well, I knew the intention of it, but I wanted to make sure my audience did too. Do you think this is gonna get good real quick, because you're qualified to talk about this? So you've done this work about healing the former you,

and you've been open about the fact that there was some Sexual abuse issues in your life and you hid those for so long and the Freedom that I created for you by just expressing it and being vulnerable and authentic about it How does someone nuance I want to or do they have to I got to kind of Create the right meaning from my past. At the same time, not live there. Right. To begin to live greatly now. That new ones.

And you talk about these different stages actually in the book, but how does someone new on stuff? I want to recommend doing it on your own. I think have support. You know, whether that's a priest or a counselor or a friend who's qualified or a therapist or some type of coach that can support you in holding the space when you have to go back and feel that pain. Because otherwise you might go on a downward spiral

if it was that painful and you don't know how to process it. So I've always used coaches to support me in processing in a safe space. Well, they'll give me exercises, journaling, reflection, whether I'm crying, or just opening up and whatever's coming up for me. And that allows me to have kind of a container where I can think about it, go back and feel it, and then move back into my life today.

It's supposed to living in that pain. Yeah. Because that doesn't serve us to stay in it constantly. Have a moment where we experience it. Create new meaning and create a new story about how this can benefit your future. No matter how painful or traumatic it was, not saying it was okay or that you want to experience it again, but to create meaning from those moments has been very powerful for me.

And it's really caused me to be like, okay, those things had to happen for me to be where I'm at. And I wouldn't be living my destiny now, this path, this meaningful mission that I have now, without all these collection of experiences that occurred. Just like I know everything that you went through, it's like you wouldn't be the powerful leader commanding a presence in any situation you're going. You wouldn't have the voice you have if you didn't if you felt if you didn't feel voiceless when you were younger. Because you had to overcome these things that caused you to be such a leader with such a force

with every interaction you have. And I hope everyone listening and watching gets to meet you one day because your presence around human beings, you care so much about humanity and it's because you went through stuff where you didn't feel like you were enough at different stages. Thank you for saying that. Exactly. And that's, And I think those experiences for you caused you to have to overcome certain insecurities, overcome certain fears. And those things that made you feel powerless, you went all in on them and they became a superpower.

We're now at something you lead with. Yes. And you're courageous about. And so these are opportunities for us to reflect back on the things that made us feel powerless, that make us close our heart, that make us hold back our gifts, and then use these things that make us powerless

into something powerful, so we can serve others. And that's been the key. Man, I'm telling you, I'm sitting here watching you, you're gonna do this, it's gonna be groundbreaking work. Because if you have not met Lewis, he's a giant.

He's a big man, he's a powerful man, he's a competitive man. And the complexity of who you become is so compelling to me. Because there's this gentleness and kindness and softness that I think come from you to other people from giving yourself that gift. I've watched you be a little kinder to yourself.

Said something that really powerful, man. I just want to enlighten everybody on it. The container word you used. It's okay, I've dealt with it. I'm working on it. I've put in a container and I go back to my life. A lot of the things you have in here are about stories and that we live our stories. And chapter three is the first thing one to ask you about missing your

meaningful mission. What causes someone to not know their mission and miss it is that they spend too much time in the former story that they've taken meanings that don't serve them from the story. What causes somebody to do that? All of that and the fears that hold them back. And there's really three fears that I've identified, which is the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment. And when we can reflect on analyzing

which one of these hold me back the most, and what is the root cause of me living in that fear, then we can start to, again, mend the wounds and create meaning from those wounds and then create a new meaningful mission moving forward. For a lot of my life, I don't know if you've ever been in this place. I was so driven to succeed because I didn't feel enough.

Yes. And I thought by succeeding, achieving, getting awards, getting followers, making more money, would fill the whole of not feeling enoughness, not smart enough, not talented enough, not good-looking enough, whatever it was. Is that something you've experienced in your past? One billion percent exactly the same.

Yes. For me, I don't know about you, but when I would experience success in sports and then early in business, it's almost like 20 minutes after I accomplished a goal of 10 years I was chasing, I was angry. I don't know if you ever felt that way. 100%

Angry and it was kind of like mad at everyone around me. Like, when everyone's celebrating me, I was kind of like mad at everyone around me. Like, when everyone's celebrating me, I was kind of like, get away from me. Yes. And I didn't understand it. Until I started the healing journey of... Help me understand. So this is what happened for me.

I realized that my fear, when I started to dissect this, I was never afraid of failure. And I don't think you ever were either because you're an athlete. And athletes who go through the journey of multiple sports, which we both played multiple sports, we have coaches that say, hey, it's okay to fail, you know, just adjust it a little bit, adjust your shot, adjust your swing a little bit. You're going to miss it.

You're going to miss it, but here's how you adjust it. It was always feedback. It was information. So it wasn't like you suck and leave if you fail. We failed every day. Yes. And we knew that this was the process to success. I became familiar with failure.

Exactly. Yeah. Then the greatest baseball players in the world failed 70% of the time, right? It's like they're failing constantly, but we celebrate them for their successes. And so I was never like ashamed to like miss a shot or fail because I knew it was just practice. And I always wanted success. So I wasn't afraid of success. I wanted success

for the wrong reasons though. And that's why I was upset and angry when I would accomplish it. And I didn't feel like I feel like I needed more. But I was like, I want to accomplish success. I'm excited about it. So I'm not afraid of it. But I was afraid of judgment. I was afraid of the opinions of other people. And I was afraid of what people would say in front of my face, behind my face, would they accept me all these different things? When I ask people in a big room, who's afraid of failure? Most people raise their hand and say, this is a fear of mine. And that's why they don't launch their book or their podcast or they don't start speaking on stage or they don't start a new career or ask the person out. They're afraid to fail. And I ask people,

okay, for everyone who's afraid of success, raise your hands. And almost equally amount of people raise their hand who are afraid of success. And I never understood it because I always wanted it. And over the last 10 years, I started to ask why there is a there's a documentary called The Weight of Gold. I want people to watch this at some point because it's about Olympic gold medalists who go depressed, commit suicide, have overdoses within like six months or a year after they win the gold. If we do not prepare ourselves for success,

it could cripple us. And the pressure of, okay, now friends and family want more from you. I know you are extremely wealthy, and you've had to deal with probably lots of people asking for things all the time. Can you give me money? Can you help me with this?

Can you do this for me? And in some ways, it's a great privilege to be generous and supportive to people, but when it feels inauthentic, you feel like people are taking advantage of you. And so that pressure of success is real, and people don't want that responsibility. They're afraid of that pressure leaning into it. I always wanted it. But when I started to accomplish, I started to notice, oh, yeah, I don't like some of these things that come with it as well. So I have to learn how to manage it, but it was the fear of judgment, which always crippled me.

So I was extremely self critical of everything, even when I broke the world record, even when I was a two sport all American, even when I played the USA handball team, even when I hit my first million dollars after I was broke, I was so self critical because at the root cause of all three of these fears is I am not enough. And the I am not enoughness will destroy us. It will hold us back from our truest gifts, from expressing our love, from being generous, from being open. And that's the thing that I had to learn how to heal. Why do I not feel enough? No matter what I accomplish, I still don't feel enough. Why am I never satisfied with me? It was never about the accomplishments. It was always back to the root of me. I

don't feel enough. I don't feel lovable is what it really is. And I need to accomplish more in order for others to love and accept me. But really at the end of the day, I did not love and accept myself. And when we can learn the art of loving and accepting ourselves authentically, for all of our flaws and all of our beauty, that's when we can start stepping into true greatness. Lewis, I feel like you just described to me. Really?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, bro. Wow. You know, um, bro. Wow. Tell me, tell me more. Well, uh, I don't even know that I have fixed that yet. I'm not sure. I think I've made progress on it, but this notion of, because what you just said, fear

of failure, nah, not too much. No. And people say I'm afraid to succeed. I've always thought, and there's just people are different on their swear. I'm like, why would you be afraid of success? I know. But fear of judgment, holy smokes. I almost feel like you've created a new category

that maybe if people really analyze it, a lot of us fit into that one. Do you have a fear of failure? Is it the failure of fate of or the judgment that would come with the failure? And so when I looked at category three, I'm reading the book the other night, because you gave it to me,

maybe we could go two weeks ago. I'm like, oh man fear of fairs like this old school's fear of success Yeah, fear of judgment. Oh boy. He's on to something right now And it is exactly what you just said. I am not enough I'm not a little and if you go even a little bit deeper. It's what you said I had our mutual friend that you introduced me to Leon Rimes on my show and I finally said you're in there You know what my issue is? I can give love to people. I don't allow myself to feel loved

as she said the same thing. And it's weird for two big dudes that are accomplished, you know, two guys sitting here to share this. But I think it's powerful that we are. I'm still not sure right now that that's not something that needs more exploration for me that I'm still, and I wonder it with you too, is there a little, maybe it's,

maybe I've made progress and it's reduced, but there are a lot of moments, if I'm being real, where I should be experiencing more joy than I do from something, I should be experiencing more love than I allow myself to experience. And it's pretty obvious to me that that's probably because my dad was an alcoholic

and I probably lacked a little bit of that and all that anxiety. But you are on to something so huge here, which is the next thing you have in there, which is the dream killer, which is called self-doubt. I feel like judgment and self-doubt are sort of related somehow. Do you? I think self-doubt is the killer of all dreams. And that's why I love you and your message, because you instill so much belief in people you you give people belief by your presence by just your way of being. It's so powerful. Thank you. And and I think the whole game is learning how to believe in ourselves.

That is the game of life. I think it's what allows you to accomplish any goal you want, the more believe you have. And I love your definition of, you know, self esteem and self belief. This concept is really being your word. You know, you've heard you say that's a lot of times like when you can live to your word and be that and honor it or take responsibility when you're not with your word and take responsibility for that as well, you start to become more believable to yourself and others believe you as well. You become a credible person to yourself and others and that attracts more things. So self-doubt for me is the killer of dreams. And I think I wanted to ask you another thing. I follow up on that.

The interview and you always comes out. I'm just curious because I wanted to ask you about do you worry more about the judgments of other people or do you worry more about the judgments of yourself about you? I think it's moved from other people to me and I think that was probably the cause the whole time. So it was easy for me to worry about what are they going to say? What are they going to believe? What if I fail here? Opinions of others, but I feel like that's more the symptom of I'm just answering you right now on the moment on the fly. I think the disease is me not believing I'm worthy of it. I was talking to a mutual friend of ours that you're about to go see and we were both describing to each other today. He's

very successful guy that I still have a lot of imposter syndrome at 50 years old and and this dude has no reason to have any either and he has it and I think even sometimes I see this in here. Now part of me thinks that's driven me to do extra work and prepare more and that might work when you're starting but it's a painful way to live your life exhausting later it's exhausting I mean I'm so glad you're saying that because don't you feel that way that if I don't and I would like you to unpack that thing You I want to go back a little bit and stay there for a minute this idea of working on healing oneself and loving oneself Man, everybody listen to me. I know leveraging the dark sides a common thing and it does work and you should do it and there's a great space for it For a while for a while. For a while.

But if it's the only thing that moves you, don't you agree? It's just eventually miserable. It's exhausting. It's exhausting, right? And I think, and I think, you know, we all have our own heroes, journey to, to fall on that dark side, you know, early to push us. It's a driver to overcome something.

Yes. But I think we've got to learn how to mend and heal at some point. Otherwise, it's going to constantly be exhausting and feel I'm not enough or this is I'm always fighting something. Yeah, I'm always trying to fight and that was most of my life. So fight, everything was a fight. Me too. Relationship, competition, sports, business. It's all like a fight. Fight and it's exhausting. But you end up not winning. Never. And the people around you don't win either. So it's a lose, lose battle.

And there might feel like there's certain moments of success, but it's a lose, lose. And so my emotional coach, I started this journey two years ago with her. And I've been healing, doing different healing modalities for 10 years. 10 years ago, I opened up about sexual abuse for the first time.

It was about four months after I launched my podcast. So it's almost been 10 years, 10 years ago, I opened up about sexual abuse for the first time. It was about four months after I launched my podcast, right? So it's almost been 10 years since I started talking about that process. And I thought, man, okay, that took about two years to go through a process of healing that and talking about it in a, in a, in a safe environment where I felt like I can speak about this and it no longer triggers me or affects me or has power over me. Like I healed that memory and that wound. Now it didn't mean I, but what I didn't,

and I thought I was good. Cause I was like, okay, this is the main wound, but there's other stuff that I wasn't a facing. And that's why I kept repeating patterns and relationships and intimacy. And thinking, oh, I thought I healed this, but healing is not a one time event. Healing is a journey and it's a constant process.

You're in progress, right? You're better than you were before. And I feel like I'm gonna be healing for the rest of my life. And constantly holding myself accountable. Because as you know, I'm sure things get you triggered from time to time. You feel like, oh, this person did this

and I don't like it. And there's a reaction. I think that's our normal competitive edge where it's like, I'm going to come back. I'm going to come at you. Yep. And that energy will fuel us to get results, but will not fuel us to get fulfillment. And so I've learned how to manage that energy. And I still get triggered and reactive and all these things.

I'm not like it's perfect human. But I do emotional coaching every two weeks to get me back to a place of peace. So it just helps me integrate the lessons I'm learning, reflect on, oh, I went back into that place of pain. Let me keep integrating and keep healing and just the more I practice it, like anything, the better it gets.

It's so apparent because you give off an energy now that's really loving and kind. Like Lewis does this thing, we hugged you. First of all, he just swallows you up because he's massive. But he does this thing, we'll be holding you a little bit longer, then white be comfortable for you initially. And then you like, this actually feels really good. Yeah, well some people don't like it, but I know exactly why you do it. And you're 100% right if we're just talking as brothers here, you can fix, you can think

you've healed something. But if you haven't changed the patterns in which you live your life, like, for example, when my dad got sober, he fixed the issue with drinking alcohol, but he still had the, what they call like the alcoholics personality. Of course. Right. Very obsessive went to anger quickly. You know, would remove himself emotionally from situations, didn't listen, didn't pay

attention very well. So the pattern stayed the same. He wasn't doing the drinking, but he was still the person out. That's exactly right. And I think that's an evaluation for everybody. And by the way, I think Lewis and I both tell you, there's a place to leverage a dark side. 100%. A light that's just light all the time.

Sometimes a little bit of the dark side makes the light side even brighter. But we're both telling you, you get to another side of this stuff and you have to bring you with you eventually. Exactly. And our mutual friend, Dr. Joseph Spenza, says, your personality becomes your personal reality.

And so if you haven't again, mended your personality, that is fractured and causes you to be triggered or reactive or angry or lash out or close down or hold your heart back, then you're to keep bringing that personal reality into your life. And so we've got to mend the things that cause us to have a certain personality that doesn't serve us or the people around us.

And I wanted to talk about success versus greatness because most of my life, I just wanted to be successful. And I was like, achieve, achieve set a big goal, spend 10 years and do whatever it takes to make it happen. And this is what caused me to be angry after what accomplished it. And so I just set bigger goals. And I was like, okay, I'm still not enough. I got to make bigger goals. And what I realized is that I had success all wrong. I thought

I wanted success, but what I really wanted was greatness because success alone is selfish in my mind at this stage. And maybe, maybe I'm off, but this is my, you're not off at all. Success by itself is selfish because it's about my goals and my dreams. Greatness is about including my goals and dreams in the service of those around me, using them to impact my friends, family, or communities in a positive way as well so that they are elevated also. So it's including your goals, dreams, and success, but also making it about others winning with you.

For me, that's greatness versus success. Oh my gosh. All we were to think recently with a group of people, and it ended up you had to leave, and so we all sort of poured some love. So pumped, I missed, because I wanted to hear your message. It was actually good. It was good, but we were all talking about after you left

the wisdom. This is interesting conversation, everybody, for me, because a lot of these, there's a few people in this world that like I don't know they're my friends but also I look at them all like my sons because I know the impact they can make in the world and you're one of them. I'm so excited about the impact. This distinction that you just described on my show no one has ever said to me in my life the difference between success and greatness and the picture you just painted is some of the most profound things anyone's ever said to me in my life, the difference between success and greatness. And the picture you just painted is one of the most profound things anyone's ever said to me in my freaking life. Because I produced a lot of success in my life. And it wasn't until I got

much later in my life. And I didn't know how to define it. And you just did, it's not what I wanted. I want a greatness. And the more I moved towards what you've described as greatness, my fulfillment level, my peace, and ironically, the things that I thought I wanted success wise, expanded, explore. You made more money. Way more. Way more. I wish someone would have told me this when I was young and I'm so grateful that people are hearing this from you.

There's just a part of me that's just very proud of you because I'm seeing, I know this work and the difference that it could make. It's almost like it's elevating the conversation to a place it's not been and that's why I'm so excited about what you're doing. I appreciate that before you go in the next thing I wanted to, you know, you're someone I think we met with five years ago, six years ago. I remember hearing about you six months before I met you because because I was at my friend's wedding on the lake that you have a house. And I go, who's house is that? Because it's like literally right across from his,

was yours. And it's like, I was like, this is epic. And he goes, this guy, Ed, my lad, I go, who? And he goes, I think he's kind of like in your space. Like, you know, he's a staunch manure speaker. This guy, I mean, in a whole nother league than me, but yes, in the same field. And I go, I've never heard of this guy. Never heard of at my life. When I was becoming a public person, and I felt like I knew everyone in this space or new of right. I'm pretty in tune to like who's putting out content and what's happening in the space. So I was like, I don't know who this guy is. And I think, you know, if I'm reflecting on it,

it sounds like you were driven by success before that moment. And then you started to have a transition period. And I think you told me, you know, you're speaking with Tony and other people that were like, hey, it's time to really give back and serve and put yourself out there as a public voice. And that sounds like when everything even went further

for you because you said, I'm here to serve as well. And not that you weren't serving before further for you because you said, I'm here to serve as well. And not that you weren't serving before, but you used your voice more. Yeah, I didn't want to be a public person. I didn't want to inconvenience myself, and that's when he called me out on it. And the more I began to realize that if I thought

I was inconvenience myself on the service of others, now I'm stepping towards greatness. And you just described it. And then that's when you and I have become, you know, such, such dear friends. And one of the waste unpack it. Tony, you guys, this isn't just like a polyanalike self-love book. There's stuff in here that is profound. And so one of the things you talk about to heal your past, to evaluate this judgment, fear of judgment, this is powerful because the quality of our life is

the quality of the questions we're asking ourselves. And we have a pattern of asking ourselves the same unconscious questions all the time. And these questions you're internally asking yourself are usually about the judgment or your fears. You say on chapter 12, ask courageous questions. This is huge right here because we don't ever think about the questions we ask ourselves. We just sort of autopilot through our lives, same thinking, same stuff, but it starts to me oftentimes with the questions we ask ourselves. We just sort of autopilot through our lives, same thinking, same stuff, but it starts to me oftentimes with the questions we ask ourselves. Yeah, absolutely.

And I think we get comfortable, we get safe, and it's hard to be courageous in our conversations with others and with ourselves. And one question that I reflect on a lot, and I know you think about this too, is, what is the action I can do today that my future self would be really grateful for? You know, what is the conversation I can do today

to that it's gonna be really painful, but in the other side, there's gonna be a lot of growth and it's gonna be closer to my dreams. What is the, you know, the things that I haven't risked enough that I've been resisting, that if I just lean into it, I'm gonna have freedom on the other side. And I think a lot of us want peace, clarity, and freedom.

Yet most of us don't have any of it. I didn't have it for a long time. I really didn't have peace, clarity, and freedom until two years ago. And I started this emotional coaching. In the first session, she said, what is your intention with our coaching? I said, peace, freedom, and clarity.

I've got a lot of results. I've got a business, I've got success, but I don't have those things. So am I truly great if I can't feel peaceful, if I can't feel clear, and if I can't feel like a free man? Am I really great? No matter what I'm creating, no matter how many people

I'm helping, I still don't feel like I have those things. So the question for me was, what's it going to take for me to feel them? What do I need to do? What's been holding me back from it? And really, how have I been abandoning myself where it causes me to feel trapped, not free and not clear. And that was the start of the journey of creating peace, freedom and clarity. What do you think I abandon here? So see, I was really good in sports, business with my team and things like this. I would create boundaries and I wanted to abandon myself. But when it came to intimacy and relationships, I would give in to create peace, because I lacked courage

to say exactly what I wanted or what I needed. So I did this multiple times where, and I don't blame any of the previous partners I had, I wish them all well, I chose poorly, and I chose, and I stayed out of fear when I knew I should have left certain relationships. So it's all my responsibility. But I lacked the courage to sit in a conversation with a previous partner when they were screaming at me. I lacked the courage to say, Hey, this doesn't work for me. Hey, you can't do that. You can't

scream at me. That doesn't work for me. That's not part of my values. And so I would allow it to happen. And in fact, I would say, what can I do? What can I do? How can I end this pain right now? You need to do this. You need to do this. OK, I'll do it.

Even though it's not my value, I'll do it to make you happy and buy peace. But we cannot buy peace. We must be peace. So I was not being peaceful and creating the boundary. I was abandoning myself to please another and discounting all my values and myself worth for one human being. And again, I don't blame anyone else. This was me choosing the relationship and then choosing to stay in

relationships because I had this athlete mentality that I'm going to make it work. I'm gonna do whatever it takes, I'm gonna sacrifice everything to make you happy. And I was making myself miserable in the process and then just unconsciously repeating this time and time again in relationships. So again, I had yet to heal the wound. That's why I had a photo of my five year old self

and went back and said, where's the meaning I need to make so that I can create a bear a boundary in my life as opposed to give in, give in, give in to please one human being. Because pleasing one human being in the effort of discounting your entire mission is doing a disservice to yourself, to your creator, and to humanity.

And that's what I was doing over and over again. So my energy was low and I was trying to create from a low energy space, I was supposed to, hey, this doesn't work for me, let's create alignment, let's create agreements and move forward. And when I started to do that in a previous relationship, they didn't want that alignment, that vision, those agreements, they wanted to be able to express

how they wanted to express, which is fine with them, but that's not who I am. So I had to remove myself from that relationship and start really mending and healing and saying, okay, that's why with Martha, it's been a beautiful experience and you got to meet her. She's amazing. Because from the beginning, I was like, this is my values, this is my vision, this is my lifestyle, this is what I will do, this is what I want to. And I've been able to courageously stay in that space and just say, you know, she hasn't tried to cross boundaries or anything, but I've been able to say what I want and live

by those values. And it creates peace, freedom and clarity when I live up to that standard. Oh boy, these last five minutes, but that's like rewind that one, listen to it again. There's everybody driving their car going home, my gosh. I can relate to that, the holy smokes. All right, this is gonna get real deep between you and me, but people get to listen to it, okay? You don't know I was going here today.

So you've made a lot of, you use the word progress. So I'll say that word towards healing, towards greatness. And part of that is a spiritual journey. And one of the things that, I'm gonna say it the way I believe it about you, and you can correct me if I'm wrong. You haven't figured out yet completely spiritually what you align with yet. You're pursuing it would be my description of it.

And if I'm wrong, you correct me. But the reason I ask you that question, you didn't know we were gonna go there today, is that I think everyone thinks they have to have every single element of their life figured out before they can experience some measure of peace. And I've watched you. You've had people from different religious backgrounds on,

you go to one of my dear friends, or one of my own, the man, this is church intermittently, you go there. And I'm not here to talk about what you believe, but I want you to speak to the fact that part of greatness Is what you just said is so profound? Sad guru probably said that on your show and he did to me too that we just need to be peace We don't have to chase it. He said that to me about a chasing happiness. He said Ed. We don't have to chase it

We have to be it we can access that at any time that we want. And so, but I wanna ask you about that for a minute, that this notion of greatness is progress, greatness is a journey that you don't have to have. I think sometimes people listen to me or others like, they got it all figured out. I really hope I don't sound like that because I don't have it all figured out. And I don't know that I wanna have it all figured out. And I don't know that I want to have it all figured out.

I have other breaths in my body because of the exploration, the expansion of my being, the expansion of my understanding, the expansion of my deep-seated beliefs in my life. So you're sort of in that journey too right now. Is that fair to say as a friend? 100% yeah, I mean, I believe in a God, I believe there was a creator that created me

in a beautiful image and likeness of love. Yeah. And the goal is, how do I stay in the frequency of love as frequently as possible? And that's been what I've been constantly focusing on. And I think when you experience pain or suffering or just challenges mentally and emotionally, we things. You know, why am I feeling this? What's wrong with me? What why would God do this to me or whatever it is?

And so my whole journey has been asking questions being curious about life And why I'm here. I think a lot of us want to know why we're here. I think all of us want to know why we're here. Exactly. And my goal really in the last two years is understanding that I am love. I am a beautiful light. And I am here to serve the creator of love. I love it. And to stay in that frequency as often as possible. And I'm

constantly curious about lots of people of lots of different beliefs and faiths because I feel like everyone has a different perspective. So I'm always going to have a curious mind about that and know that, you know, I've got, it's funny because I've got a Catholic symbol on my chest that my girlfriend gave me and I've got a Christian science symbol, which is the religion I grew up in, which the whole, swearing right now, which the whole symbol is how to heal yourself.

That's the whole premise of Christian science, which for those asking it's different than Scientology, it's a different concept, but it's about healing yourself. And I don't prescribe to either religion, you know, I don't prescribe to mosaic necessarily as like, this is my faith, but I love messages and messengers who speak about love. And I love that you're in the greatness pursuit of it. For me in my life, my faith has been my source of peace. Yes. Has been my source of love. And I'm proud of you for having the courage to experience it.

And you're going to land where you land at some point. But I want everybody to know that a lot of this work that you're all doing, let's just, I'm going to be honest, is leading to the ultimate question of all of these courageous questions with, who am I? Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I here?

And for me, the fact that at least in my life at my age, I feel like that question for me has been answered in my faith. And for me, that's my salvation in the sense that for me is a personal relationship we have with God. It's a personal decision. It's a personal acceptance or surrender. But for me, I'm very much an energy guy. I'm very much a vibrational frequency guy. I love the quantum field.

To deny the existence of that, to me would be to deny principles of the universe. It would be like to deny gravity. Just in my case, there's a creator. And that creator, as you know know as a Christian as Jesus, but that answer for me, that the underlying question of the greatness mindset is, who am I? Now why am I here?

And I'm proud of you because I've watched this profound, when I say you've made a transformation, it makes it sound like you really need it, you're already a remarkable human being when I met you. Thank you. To see someone who's already so remarkable, be so addicted to the expansion of their being, the understanding of their being, and to be in the presence of someone who's doing that. And I think it's okay in life not to have every answer figured out. But to be curious in the pursuit of it is such a great way to live your life. And I would just encourage all of you in your way.

You know the answers I've come to. I'm very public about that. But to go find those answers in your life because it's the ultimate answer. Absolutely. And it's the ultimate question. Absolutely. And I feel like, you know, 10 years ago, I found healing in certain areas, and right now I feel like I've got more healing

and more awareness based on mistakes and experience and time and lessons. And I'm sure in 10 years, you know, when I have kids and married and family, there's gonna be new lessons to learn and new healing. There are. And so that's, you know, I'm excited about the journey. It's, and you ask questions, you guys just know,

so you know, Louis is like so curious. He's always asking me questions about Being a dad and being a husband and he's not one yet and he's already preparing because he asks those courageous questions all the time He's wanting to learn and just I don't know why I'm getting emotional being with you Because I'm just so proud of you and thank you And I also just believe that as you're on this journey like there's an ultimate place you're gonna land And I can't wait for that for you wherever that is. But I wanna ask you another tough question. There's this notion of self-love,

yet how does one dance with, I love myself when I'm enough, but yet at the same time people would say, but wait a second, you're overeating and you're out of shape or you're not making the context in your business you should or you're not living in your relationship the way that you should. So it's great that you love yourself and accept yourself, but there's a bunch of stuff you're doing right now that's really. That's out of alignment. That's out of alignment. So how do you

nuance that? When we get clear on our meaningful mission, which I think is like the foundation of all this, we can start to ask ourselves every day, did I make the decisions today and that I live the behaviors today that serve the meaningful mission or not? And it's just a barometer to see if we're on the right path. You know, I've been, I've made a ton of mistakes in my life. And some things I've done great and other things I haven't done great. And for me, it's just like, okay, I know that notice the feeling

it doesn't feel right inside of me. So if I keep doing this, I'm gonna get feedback in my life that support the things that I'm out of alignment with. I'm gonna have breakdowns, problems, health challenges, palpitations, whatever it is that are feedback, that something is not in full alignment of the meaningful mission. That's why I think we have to get clear in one sentence,

what is the meaningful mission of our life in this season of life? Some people listening or watching might be in a season of, I'm broke just trying to get a job and figure out my life right now. Cool. I had that season on my sister's couch where I just wanted to make money to get off the couch and make my own apartment. That was my whole life mission, because I couldn't think beyond it.

But if you're in a transition or a season of wanting to re-explore your life and maybe transition from a relationship or career or business, like there were a lot of people this last weekend who were kind of in transition, that weren't clear. They didn't know what their mission was. And you watched it just as I did.

If you're not clear on a mission, it doesn't matter how much money or success you have or how comfortable your life is, you feel unfulfilled. That's right. And so when in my one sentence mission, meaningful mission is to serve and impact a hundred million lives weekly

to help them improve the quality of their life Perfect. It's it's it's clear for me what I'm trying to do Now there's certain mechanisms mechanisms I could take that could support that mission that caused and I lean into my talents and my Superpowers that support it the best way that I know and so that I make decisions on a daily basis and I reflect the end of the night and say, did I act in accordance of serving the mission appropriately? Very good. If I didn't, which I haven't many times in the past,

I feel something's off. I don't sleep that well that night. I ruminate about it. You know, I've had conversations with you privately about like, you know, I was out of integrity here. And you could feed back in life. It's just the laws of physics. You do something out of integrity.

It's going to come back and hurt you personally or around you. It's going to hurt you at some point in time. It's going to affect you. It's going to stay with you until you clear that energy in space. Yes. Until you own it and take full responsibility. Until you mend it and heal and whatever you got to do in that process.

And so I reflect and say, did I do everything today on my calendar and in my schedule, which I, what you're a big schedule guy, I know you do three days and one day, and in calendar and schedules for me, am I taking the actions that will serve the meaningful mission? Is it clear this is the best decision I can make today?

Is the meaningful mission something that you saw as a through line with a lot of people in the school of greatness? 100% that's one of the through lines. 100% they were very clear on their vision. I call it a meaningful mission because it includes the service of others. I think people were clear on their vision

of their goals and dreams. And a lot of them included others, but not everyone. And so there's world champions that fell from grace their goals and dreams, and a lot of them included others, but not everyone. Yeah. And so there's world champions that fell from grace because they weren't including others, and so they didn't stay at top on the top. The ones that stay on top impact the people around them in a positive way, they bring them up,

and they stay up there. And so for me, it's about being so clear on that, so that you're guided by that. Now, it doesn't mean, not giving you an example. Yeah. I also had a mission to be an Olympian. And for eight years, I represented the USA national team for a sport called Team Handball. They just had the world championships in Denmark this last week. And I wasn't there. And I haven't played in two years. But for eight years, I played in the Pan American Champions.

Right. Since twice, I traveled to to Israel playing against the national team there I've traveled to the UK Spain played professionally for a while Brazil Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Canada I traveled the world and played against Olympians, but even though My dream didn't come true of that mission the The experience was a dream come true. The lessons I learned, the people I met, the moments I have standing there with USA against my chest holding my heart and singing the national anthem before international competition are memories that I will cherish forever. I'm getting chills thinking about it because those were dreams of mine to represent my

country and play an Olympic sport and have a chance to go to the Olympics. And I did not accomplish the goal after eight years of sacrifice and traveling and working abroad, working doing webinars from the middle of another country and trying to run my business while training with the USA team. I did not accomplish the goal I set out, but man, it was a dream come true. And I think we can also beat ourselves up so much with the results that we don't hit as opposed to focus on who we become in the process of trying to achieve it. And so my, my first couple of books, I was so focused on the results. And I remember the second book, it didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list. And I was kind of upset for like a week. There was a little bit of like anger and resentment, if I'm being honest.

Even though I knew I had a good intention that I want to serve man from that book and help people, but it's the competitive in me is like, I want to hit that right. And I can honestly say with this book, I'm in so much peace in my is like I want to hit that right? And I can honestly say with this book I'm in so much peace in my heart that I'm like the results are gonna do whatever the results do All I can focus on and I know people say this all the time But I truly feel it all I could focus on is giving my best In each element of the process of the promotion of the book all I can do is I wrote the best book I can write and I can be proud of the process and the product. I can't worry about the results. I can try to hit the results.

But it's like everything I'm becoming and experiencing in the process is what I'm cherishing more now. And it was hard to do for a long time. Because I wasn't able to do that. Yeah. You're so right. I think of even people that are great in a sport. Maybe they haven't had lived a perfect life, but even like Tiger. I think of even people that are great in a sport. Maybe they haven't had a perfect life, but even like Tiger, Tiger's always talking about, I'm focusing on the process. I want to put myself in a position to win.

He's not obsessed with that, necessarily winning, but getting in a position to win, doing the things that would cause him to win, the experience and the journey. So meaningful mission, then we're gonna finish with something that you didn't know where to go to.

But meaningful mission in your life, you should ask yourself if you have one, and your recommendation of the book is that it should be able to be set in one sentence, correct? I think so, the clearer the better. I think so. And I think if you don't have a meaningful mission, it's difficult to have a measurement.

It's difficult to know what you're pursuing. It's difficult to have a barometer to make decisions in your life. Exactly. And so I completely acknowledge that. And I love for people watching and listening to, you know, send you a message and tag you over on Instagram and say, sure, here's my meaningful mission in one sentence. And maybe you can give some feedback to people

of like, okay, that's cool or work on this. I would love it. But if you're listening or watching, like send a message on Instagram and just say in one sentence, here's my meaningful mission. You can either write it and send a photo, you can send a video, but send it a message with your meaningful mission. I would love that everybody. And I will get back to you as best I can because we're going to get a bunch of them. There's other things in the book guys that I want to get this book about

accepting the challenge and defining your greatness goals. And there are two things that I want to finish with because I don't think enough people do this. And it's all over the place if they were willing to do it. You talk about enlisting support. And one of the things that always makes me very embarrassed when I get Introduced somewhere is like that somehow I have some Something someone else doesn't have and I'm like if you knew all the freaking people who helped me that supported me along the way I would be Lost without other human beings. Yes, and other humans have been so, by the way,

I've had a lot of humans hurt me too. So of all of you. And sometimes when that happens, we form this belief that that's all humans. But there's been these other precious humans in my life that have supported me in long term in short term, some of them are just in one moment. But you talk about in the book, about enlisting support. You're not alone in your life or the pursuit of your life. My faith informs me that this is true, like we talked about earlier. So touch on that and then I want to finish with. I just think, you know, I never did anything.

I never accomplished anything without great coaches and great teammates. He's an athlete. You couldn't have accomplished your athletic career success without the teammates you had around you, your coaches, your parents, your friends, the fans cheering you on. All these things, one of them happened without so many people involved.

And I looked at my life as a sport after athletics, where I said, I need great coaches. I need great mentors with a model that I can mimic. I need this process because I can't do it all on my own. And I think it's twofold. It's enlisting support and having the courage to reach out and ask for support. And it's also being willing to acknowledge yourself

for all the hard work and everything you've overcome. It's something that a lot of people discount themselves too much when they get acknowledged. and I know you are a master at the art of acknowledgement, it's something that I love about you so much, that you acknowledge everyone in your life so consistently and openly. You do too.

Thank you. I'm modelled it from you. Thank you. And for me, a lot of us struggle receiving compliments, receiving... It's like the self-awareness around the actual effort and the actions that we're taking discounted too frequently as human beings. And I think we get to practice just receiving and saying thank you. It's just leaving it at that.

We don't have to... But there wasn't anything, and I used to do that a lot. Me too. Right? Well, no, I could have done better. Or it's like just receive and say thank you. So much.

I appreciate it. You don't have to boast about it. You don't have to discount it. Receive and say thank you. And I think if we can start to acknowledge everything with an overcome and everything we've created as well as a support of others, that's when there's some beautiful harmony in life and you start to attract more.

You're so right. I don't even know when it happened, but I started finally just going, and my intuition was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, a second here, and that's not my pattern. And so, and that hasn't gotten me here.

Right. Not feeling loved made me force myself to get the results I'm getting. So I can't receive love because it's not gonna give me the drive anymore. Brother. So we got to learn how to drive from a place of service, a place of a meaningful mission to impact the world,

not because I'm not enough and I need to feel enough. And I, but if you tell me I'm enough that I'm not gonna drive it. Then I'm not gonna try. Yeah to feel enough. And I, but if you tell me I'm enough that I'm not going to try. I'm trying. Yeah. Yeah, brother. You're, I just, I just love it because that's exactly why I didn't do it. I'm like, no, this is sort of kind of worked for me. What got me here? Got me here. Got me success without fulfillment. I got me success without greatness. And a lot of times in our life, like if I let go of that one thing intuitively, you know you should this behavior. Maybe it's that you're so demanding and angry with people.

Yeah, but that's why I won. Or I've neglected my family, but that's why I'm wealthy. It's probably in spite of that, but you've created a pattern that's convinced yourself that it's true. And you know, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, you didn't. You know that the secret to life is relationships.

Yes. And the secret to life is relationships. Yes. And the secret to successful relationships is vulnerability and showing up for other people. And there's a lot of people that in the public eye who love to have a chip on their shoulder and talk about the chip on their shoulder and sports specifically. And you see later in their life, how it helped them become champions over and over again, but then they go through divorce. Yeah. Then their kids don't speak to them. Then they have heart attacks or whatever it

might be. So yes, it drives people to accomplish. But if we aren't living in an over-relationship world and serving the people around us, while first serving and supporting the inner child in front of us that that needs that love, then we're going to miss out. Brother, you're so right. You and I are privileged to know many of those people. Yes. And if they knew behind the scenes, you'd be like, you may think that stuff worked for them, but if life is a bliss, happiness, and peace game, they lost. Yeah. And you're 100% right. Speaking of relationships, my last question to you is about your dad. Yeah. And you lost your dad recently, like I lost mine. And my relationship with my dad wasn't

perfect. And even after my dad got sober, even though it was my best friend, I think sometimes the people are like, and then it was happily ever after all. It was. It's real life. And these relationships we have with family or the people that raised us are so informative to who we become. They're so informative in the patterns we create

towards the pursuit of our greatness or the lack thereof. And I know enough to know that you lost your dad before you lost your dad. And then even before you lost your dad, there was a relationship there. How did losing your father the first time, if you can tell everybody, I know but I want them to know until you actually physically lost him. And then even prior to that, how did that, how has it impacted you? How was it made you wiser? How is it caused you to reflect on your own life? And like, I know for me, man, when my dad passed away, I'm like, well, I guess my time's limited too. Yeah. You know, like, people die. I think I used to think everyone else died. But not my mom and dad,

not me. Like, I think, I know it sounds nuts, but like I didn't live as if it was gonna end at some point. How did your relationship with your dad overall tell him about it and impact your life? Yeah, my dad was extremely loving human being, but had a lot of anger too. Kind of similar to your dad. So he showed me he loved me a lot, but I also feared him immensely.

Until he started to have a transformation when I was about 13, 14 years old, he started to do a lot of his own healing. And then I had a different relationship with my father. So the first 13 years, he would tuck me in bed and tell me, love me and say the Lord's prayer every night with me. You know, he would come home after a long day of work and you know play catch in the backyard. He would make time for me. He would take me to places. He would support me coach me all those things. But he and my mom never had a really good relationship. So there was always fear and uncertainty at home when they were around.

It's like when they weren't around, I felt peaceful. When they were around, they just didn't know what a model love well to each other, but they both loved us, right? Us kids. So it was just kind of confusing. And when I left home at 13, I begged my parents to send me away to private boarding school because I didn't feel in a good space at home.

And my oldest, my, I was the youngest of four, so my older siblings were kind of all off to college and out of the house. And I was just like, I don't want to be here. And I also didn't have good friendships. I was just kind of an awkward kid and struggled. And I begged in the semi away. And the day I infer the whole summer, I begged them. And they finally agreed at the end of begged him to send me away. And the day I, and for the whole summer, I begged them, and they finally agreed at the end of the summer

to send me away. They didn't want me to go. I begged them to leave. And the day I left, I felt like a sense of peace not being around them. I still missed them, but I was like, I don't want to stress, right? This kind of underlying fear and tension

of their inability to love each other to affect me anymore. They just didn't have the tools. So I don't blame them. It's just, it is what it is. They got married when they were 19, had a kid right away. It was just they didn't know.

My dad started to go through a healing journey around that time. And it was like, he was the most loving, generous, kind human being for the next, I guess, six, seven years, right, until he got into a car accident where a car came through his went, the SUV came on top of his car. The, the bumper came through the windshield and hit him in the head. He was in a coma for three months, who was, you know, they opened up the car.

They airlifted him out in a helicopter to a hospital. He was on a vacation with his then girlfriend at the time. My parents got divorced many years prior to this. And we didn't know if he was gonna live or die. I got the news the night before a football game when I was playing in college football. And I remember thinking, like, I have no idea, we didn't know if he was alive.

That was the thing. He was in a coma, we didn't know. I was like, should I play? Should I not play? Like, what would my dad want me to do? He was like, I was thinking he want me to play. The second to last game, or the second to last play of the game,

I catch a ball and I get speared by a helmet right in the ribs and I break three ribs. And I'm thinking my season's over. My dad, I don't know if he's alive still. My season's over, I just broke three ribs. What now? I ended up having a pretty miraculous healing and recovery based on my faith actually, and I healed my three ribs based on the faith of my religion and I went into my practice.

My dad was in a coma for the whole season in New Zealand. And I couldn't fly the first few weeks because of the injury. And so I decided to stay, my sister's way. And I was like, okay, he's not waking up. What do I do? He probably want me to keep playing, I think. So that was the thing I did. I played the whole season. He comes back three months later after the season and he can't speak. He can barely walk

and he just looked like a different guy. So he, I'm expecting him to come back and have this full recovery. I'm hoping that he remembers everything. A year, two, three, five years go by, 10 years go by, 15 years go by. He can walk and talk, but he has no drive. He can't work anymore. He sits at home every day and watches movies. When I see him, he says, what's your name again? You can speak, but he like, didn't you used to play football? Where'd you go to school again? So we can have a conversation, but he didn't have his memories. So it was so painful to be in front of my

father, who I loved and cared about deeply, who I felt like she was just getting started in his life after starting this healing journey and having a new kind of lease on life Mm-hmm And he was an amazing father at this point for the previous six years. He was like a transformed loving human being But he was also a crutch for me because he had a Life insurance business that he built up for 33 years with Northwestern Mutual, his own independent office in a small town, Delaware, Ohio, and he just grinded for 30 plus years to finally make enough money where he could do stuff.

And I saw him work so hard for so long to then have some money to play with and travel and buy a new car. He never had a new car. He always had like 20-year-old cars and just lived that life. So I saw him enjoying his life fully for the first time for about five, six years. And he always said, hey listen, go chase your dreams, go live every dream you have. I support you. He would pay for training and coaches, whatever it was to like be the best athlete I could be. Go.

And when you're done, you can come back and work for me. So it was always kind of like, come back and I'll teach you up and you can take over the business one day, type of mentality. And I remember doing an internship for a summer and I was just like, I don't think this is for me. You know, it's not my thing. I could do it, but it's not like my destiny. And I think his accident and then my injury after pursuing, you know, playing professional football and getting injured and breaking my wrist. I was really kind of in a dark space for about a year and a half just trying to forget like, who am I asking these courageous questions?

Who am I? Why did this happen? Is my dad ever going to come back around and having to kind of accept after about four years that he may never be the person he once was and loving him for who he is now, which was extremely hard because he didn't really want to be around us. I go visit him and after an hour, he'd be like, I'm tired, leave. Before that, he, all he wanted to do is like shower us with love and be around us and encourage us.

And he was like this cheerleader celebrating us. So it's hard to have that and then see a guy that you know wants to do that, but the brain trauma, it just affected his brain so much where he wasn't able to do it anymore. And kind of grieving a little bit of that, but accepting it and just experiencing it for 17 years, was just painful. I don't know what else to say. It was painful. But what it did for me is it made me live an extreme urgency. It made me so focused on my life and Overcoming every insecurity and every fear because I didn't want to live in regret And I realized this could be taken away from me at any moment like he wasn't planning on having this injury that day

Mm-hmm And it happened and it changed his life forever And I was just like I never want to let my fear hold me back from pursuing something. That's why I moved to New York City to pursue a dream of making the Olympics. I go, if this dream is in me, I got to at least try it. And if it doesn't work out, at least I tried. And I gave it a full effort. I mean, I went all in on it, man.

I went to Spain and played professionally for a while. I was traveling the country, I was traveling the world investing so much in the dream. And again, the dream didn't come true, but it was a dream, a dream come true experience. And I don't have regrets thinking, uh, when it would have been like to go try to make the USA national team and play in the Olympics, my dad gave me that gift through his injury. He also gave me the gift of, like I had to grow up as a man that day. And I didn't have his guidance, I didn't have his mentorship, I didn't have his money supporting me,

I didn't have his home, I didn't have anything to fall back on. And it was probably the greatest lesson because I don't think I would have ever been an entrepreneur, I don't think I would have ever launched the show, written books, I don't think I would have cared about humanity the. I don't think I would have ever launched the show, written books. I don't think I would have cared about humanity the way I do if his accident didn't happen.

And the funny thing is, I don't think I've ever told this. I saw him two days before he left this trip. We were at a family camp, a YMCA camp in Ohio. And we do this every year as a family and go there. And it's kind of like you just play games and hang out and go on the lake and stuff like that And there was something off about my dad He was sitting by himself on a couch in kind of the the mess hall where you eat lunch and dinner and he was sitting there alone on a couch

And I went over to sit next to him and he just looked like something was off Hmm, I don't think I've ever shared this publicly, but I sat next to my go dad You excited about your trip, because he was gonna go on this trip with his girlfriend to New Zealand. I said, he excited, he goes, I'm really excited. I go, what are you excited about? He said, I'm excited to have a spiritual journey.

And I get kind of like just chills thinking about it because I go, what do you mean a spiritual journey? He goes, I'm really excited to dive into my faith and dive into my, you know, the Bible. And there's another book in Christian science called the science and health with the key to the scriptures, which is kind of like a complimentary book about the science of the Bible. The science of Jesus and how these things happened based on science. He goes, I'm really excited to dive into my faith and dive into my books and like diving deeper into my faith

But something just felt weird like he just had an energy. It's almost like he knew this was gonna happen but I and I sensed like something was off and I was just like, I'm really excited for you dad. It's gonna be a great trip And it was just so weird because I'd never seen him have this energy ever before this moment And then it made sense later. And I really think you know, all of us kids had to have that experience for all of our own individual reasons. Yeah, reasons. And there's no way that I would have had the courage to do what I'm doing because I didn't know, I didn't think it was going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know how to make money. I didn't think anyone paid me for anything. But it almost forced me to be so courageous on everything.

And I think if I had him as a backup plan or a safety net, I don't think I would have taken action the ways that I have in these last 15 years. And I don't think that I would care deeply about people the way I do if that didn't happen. So in some ways, his greatest pain and the greatest struggle I went through was also my greatest gift.

Brother, one of the best stories of all time. Thanks. And really glad we went there today. There's a million lessons from your dad for you in your journey and your life. One of them, just to consider, is that maybe you're supposed to finish that form. Maybe he never got to finish that spiritual journey, and maybe that's the one you're really on, which is what we talked about earlier. Maybe that's the one you're really on. And I just have that feeling. And I think all of these ripple effects from that experience of

thank God you got those good years with them. And how remarkable it is to me to know that now that your dad's past and he's in heaven, he has all the understanding. And that maybe for the first time, he actually knows who you've become. And to think that this little boy, this little Lewis house growing up who had these just totally unfair things happen to him that should never happen to a little boy. And then have the strife in your home plus the situation that happened with you with the abuse, then at least get good five or six good years with your dad, then to lose him and then to have this journey that was all your own of all the healing you had to do.

And the fact that your dad's passed away recently has got to have it and now he's realized who his son's become. I know. Millions of people's lives you've changed bro. Yeah, it's pretty awesome And maybe the last part of that journey is that he didn't get to finish that after those two days Maybe it's yours to finish I know and that was the middle of the interview That's why I know now I asked you that question So I just absolutely I'm so freaking proud of you Thanks, and I love you so much And you're such a great force for greatness now in the world.

And by the way, everybody, so is his book, The Greatness Mindset by Lewis House. You need to go get this book right now. You can tell from the spirit of this man, he just, he's elevated himself, his understanding of himself and life to a place that there's a lot to learn from him. Real grateful for you, bro. Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.

We're all on the journey, man. The journey to greatness is just beginning. You know, I feel like it's, you and I have learned so much, but it's like, we're still at the beginning every day. And that's why I love that we just keep asking questions and seeking out wisdom from so many people. So, yeah. Well, I love that you call it a journey. It's not a destination. That's for darn sure.

You know, man, I'm really grateful that on some level we're on this journey together. Me too, man. You know, and that we're gonna spend our lives doing this together. Hey, guys. Tell me this was another one day. This was so good.

Looking back in the back and everybody's all excited. So I love you. Let me see brother, thanks Adam. Go get the book everybody. Hey, when you're grabbing it, grab another power or one more. Goes good as a good tandem. And please share this. This is one of these today.

I have a feeling I don't have to ask you guys to share. But if you would share, I sure would appreciate it because there's someone's life who could be so impacted by what Lewis shared with all of us today. So please share. God bless y'all, max out your life. This is The Edomirelet Show. you