The School of Greatness - 1001 Lessons on Greatness, Growth, and Healing w/Kobe Bryant, Preethaji, & More

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

“Face what’s difficult. Don’t run away from it. Use failure as a teacher.”On Part II of our big 1,000th Episode Special, Lewis continues to revisit the most meaningful episodes in School of Greatness history, discussing the importance of embracing failure, healing from trauma, and being vulnerable in your relationships. We hear from Kobe Bryant, Preethaji, Rob Bell, Laverne Cox, and more.Kobe Bryant - Mamba Mentality and the Mind of a ChampionPreetha ji - How to Overcome SufferingRob Bell - How to Practice and Understand Faith and SpiritualityLaverne Cox - Healing Trauma, Owning Your Truth, and Being Transgender in AmericaLewis Howes - What Sharing My Childhood Rape Taught Me About Being a Loving, Vulnerable, Free Man

This is episode number 1001, part two of our countdown of the most impactful School of Greatness episodes ever. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Alice Hooker said, your greatness is not what you have, but in what you give. I am so excited that you're back here today to continue celebrating a massive milestone on the School of Greatness, our 1,000th episode.

And while this is technically episode 1,001, it's really part two of a journey through the 10 most impactful moments in our podcast's seven and a half year run. But don't worry, if you missed the previous episode, you have two equally excellent options. You can go back and start from the beginning of part one, or you can stay right here because this episode can stand alone. I mentioned that we're celebrating. Well, on the

School of Greatness, we celebrate by serving, serving up great content and serving you. And I live for learning, for growing, and for sharing that learning with the world. And that's what we're doing today. Now, when I started the School of Greatness, my goal was to pick the brains of the most inspiring and impactful and extraordinary successful people in the world in order to learn how to live greater, how to love deeper, and how to make a bigger difference. 1,000 episodes later, I've acquired so much knowledge, so much wisdom and so many useful tools to improve everyday life and chase my wildest dreams. But I'm still on the road to greatness because this is an ongoing journey. It's a lifelong pursuit. There is no destination

and the goal stays the same. In my previous episode, we heard from David Goggins, Brene Brown, Tony Robbins, and more about mastering your mind, pushing your limits, harnessing your abilities, accepting yourself, and accessing your vulnerability. And we discussed the power of visualization and the value of giving back. Today, we're going to expand on those subjects and introduce a couple of new ones like mindfulness and spirituality. We have another incredible roster of guests, and ultimately, we'll end with my biggest lesson, my biggest takeaway from my first 1000 interviews. I'd like to begin with arguably my favorite guest of all time, the late great Kobe Bryant. He was a hero to so many

people and a source of deep inspiration to me personally. The NBA legend epitomized ambitious goal setting, hard work and competitive fire. He maximized his potential and he never settled for anything less than the best. He was also an exceptional leader. I mean, for sure, he rubbed people the wrong way, especially early in his career, but you cannot argue with his results or his legacy. Kobe was a flawed human, clearly, but that's part of what makes him so compelling. And his response to his flaws is what made him so great. Greatness is in perfection. It's making mistakes, acknowledging them, then learning and growing. In this upcoming clip, for example, you'll hear him talk about how he became more compassionate as he got older and how he reframed his attitude towards leadership.

And when I sat down with Kobe in 2018, he had already won his Oscar for deer basketball, but he was still writing the next chapter of his own personal story. And that stuck with me. His hunger for more success, more growth, more trying and failing and learning. Kobe was maniacal about winning, but he actually loved the opportunity that came with failure. It was heartbreaking and incredibly moving to revisit this interview, remembering how much Kobe had left to discover and accomplish.

There's a quote from one of my English teachers at Lower Merion named Mr. Fisk, and a great quote that said, rest at the end, not in the middle. And that's something I always live by. I'm not going to rest. I'm going to keep on pushing now. There are a lot of answers that I don't have. There are even questions that I don't have. But I'm just going to keep going.

I'm just going to keep going. And I'll figure these things out as I go, right? And you just continue to build that way. So I try to live by that all the time. Rest at the end. Rest at the end. What's the question that eats you alive the most that you haven't answered yet? The question that eats me alive

that I haven't answered yet. That you're still looking for the answer. I'm still looking for the answer. How to tell a good story. I don't think anybody has that answer. You know, like when I sat down to write Dear Basketball, I was like, okay, what do I want to say? You have certain acts and how you can structure

certain things, right? The ebbs and flows of story, certain formulas that have been there since the beginning of time. But it's such an exact science, isn't it? So challenging, yeah. Right? And so that one question is really interesting. Why do you want to tell a great story?

I think stories is what moves the world. Whether it's an inspirational story or it's an informational one, nothing in this world moves without story. Be it from the political world, sports world, nothing that we have moves without story. And so I think that is the root of everything. And if we're gonna try to make the world a better place, story's the right place.

Yeah, I agree. But most people don't understand. Like, my last year, people would come up to me and say, okay, what are you gonna do? I said, I'm gonna be a storyteller. Really? And they go... They're like, what are you talking about? All right, man, so what's gonna happen? What are you really gonna do? Yeah.

They're like, what's gonna happen when you retire is you're gonna go through, go through a week of depression. Then the second week is going to be denial and all that. I'm like, dude, seriously, I'm good. So after a while, I just got sick of it, and I just said, I don't know. I'll go play golf or something. Right, just tell them a lie.

I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to play. Whatever. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going to sit around. What does losing feel like to you? It's exciting. Why is it exciting?

Because it means you have different ways to get better. There are certain things that you can figure out that you can take advantage of, right? Certain weaknesses that were exposed that you need to shore up. So it was exciting. I mean, it sucks to lose. Right. But at the same time, there are is there if you just look at them.

Because you get the information from losing more than from winning probably. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the answers are there when you win too. You just have to look at them. Right? So it's a constant process. It's exciting when you win. It's exciting when you lose because the process should be exactly the same,

whether you win or you lose, is you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better. Whether you win or you lose is you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better. You find things that you've done well that worked, figure out how did they work, why did they work, how can you make them work again? Yeah. But the hardest thing is to face that stuff.

That's a really, really tough challenge. You mean face it, you mean look yourself in the mirror and say, okay, this is how I showed up or this is what happened and- I'll give you an example. So Katie Lou Samuelson is one of the best college basketball players in the mirror and say, okay, this is how I showed up, or this is what happened. I'll give you an example. So, Katie Lou Samuelson is one of the best college basketball players in the country. She plays at UConn, she's gonna be a senior.

Right now? Right now. She's from Huntington Beach, out here by us. And so she comes down and she works with some of my girls on the team, and she helps coach. They just had a really tough season last year where they lost to Notre Dame in the final. That's right. Really tough. First loss in like like years, right?

And so I asked her, I said, have you watched the Notre Dame game? She was like, no. I said, well, why not? She said, I don't want to watch that. I said, I know you don't, but you're going to play Notre Dame this year, yeah? Yeah.

What's the chances you see them again in the final? I said, well, you'll probably see them again. I said, well, you can't show up and play them without knowing why you lost that one, right? So the mistakes that you've made in that game, you have to do the hard stuff and watch that game and study that game to not make those mistakes over and over

again just because you weren't brave enough to face it. So she came down to the office. I brought her down to the office. And we sat down. We watched that game together, right? And you've got to deal with it. Face it. Got to deal face it. So she came down to the office. I brought her down to the office and we sat down and we watched that game together. Right? You gotta deal with it. Face it. Gotta deal with it.

Face it, learn from it. Wow. It must have been cringing for her to just be like, oh, replaying like we could have won all these things.

That's exactly it, isn't it? If I just did that one thing, if I didn't get that foul, if I scored that layup. That's exactly right. You look at it and say,

oh, there's the mismatch. Oh. There's the gap. You know, And all those little things and it sucks. But you don't wanna have that feeling again, do you? Right, so you gotta really study it, face it. Not to say you'll win the next time, but at least you'll give yourself a better chance. Yeah, you were so dominant your whole career.

One of the greatest of all time. Was there a weakness that you had or did you because obviously you're always trying to master your weaknesses so they became strengths but at the end or towards the end did you ever feel like gosh i still haven't mastered this one part of the game the challenge for me was always compassion and empathy because you're like guys let's go get results shut up don't complain right i Don't complain, right? I don't want to hear your whining. I don't want to hear it. No excuses.

Don't tell me how rough the water is. Just bring the boat in. You know, I don't want to hear it. That's funny. And it's understanding, like, okay, these guys have lives. Right. They have other things happening. They have other things happening to them that may be affecting the way that they're practicing or the way that they're performing.

And it was hard for me to understand that because nothing bothered me. Anything personal, anything like that never fazed me when I played. You compartmentalized it. Very well. So I couldn't understand how my teammates couldn't do that either. So I had to really work on that aspect of it. That's hard. Yeah, it is.

So did you feel like you never really had the compassion you wish you would have had? Like until the last maybe couple years? Yeah, so I think about 2009 things started changing for me. I started really making a conscious effort to better understand. And that doesn't mean you have compassion and empathy so you go soft on them. It's more like you put yourself to the side and you put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're feeling. And then you have to make certain decisions of,

okay, what buttons do I need to push for this player to get them to the next level? So it's never, it's not sit around and all, it's all happy-go-lucky type of thing. Your leader, your job is to get the best out of them, even if they may not like it at that time. And what brings you the most joy right now? Being with my family. Really?

That is, man, that is the most fun. It's just, you know, it's hanging out with them all summer, being able to do things that I ordinarily couldn't do. Yeah. Because of training, because of season, stuff like that. So being around them and watching Bianca grow up, because there are a lot of things that I miss with Natalia and Gianna because I was playing.

So being there every day with them is so much fun, man. So it brings me the most joy. That's amazing. And what does love feel like for you? What does love feel like? Happiness is such a thing I would describe love as happiness. I think I'd describe it as a beautiful journey. It has its ups and downs, right?

Whether it's in marriage or whether it's in the career, things are never perfect. But through love, you continue to persevere and you move through them, you move through them. And then through that storm, beautiful sun emerges. Yeah. And inevitably another storm comes. And guess what?

You ride that one out too. So I think love is a certain determination and persistence to go through the good times and the bad times with the someone or something that you truly love. So powerful, yet so tragic in so many ways. And hearing Kobe say, rest at the end, not in the middle, when we know his end came way too soon,

at least we know he didn't waste a single day. It's heartbreaking to hear him talk about his family, a stark reminder to cherish your relationships in this moment today. And we should all celebrate Kobe's memory by heeding his wisdom. Face what's difficult. Don't run away from it. Use failure as a teacher. And I've experienced plenty of failure, both in my personal life and with the School of Greatness. To be honest, it used to crush me. And after part one of this podcast, I don't have to remind you about my shattered football dreams. But now I try to take Kobe's mindset when something

goes wrong, especially when it's out of my control. And embracing failure has been just one element of my mental and emotional evolution. When the School of Greatness started, I was mostly interested in training my mind for high performance, or what I thought was high performance. Over time, I've come to realize the value of clearing my mind in order to sharpen my focus, increase my energy, decrease my stress, and boost my mood. While I've interviewed countless guests who've expounded the benefits of mindfulness, it was my conversation with Prita G that really inspired me. Prita G is a transformational leader and spiritual guide, and along with her husband, Krishna G, she's led millions of people on a profound journey into consciousness and

enlightenment. I had dabbled in meditation before meeting Pritha G, but after our interview, something started to click. I decided to travel to India a couple of years ago for a two-week course on meditation. Now, I try to practice it every single day. Now, this is one of the moments that started to change my life. And when Preta G leads me in meditation, I highly recommend you join along as well. To go at the basic level, our consciousness is feeling separated. We feel alienated and we feel isolated. We start seeing as being separate and we are going towards

the entire movement in One World Academy is a movement towards expanding your sense of self where you feel connected, where you feel expanded, where you feel the experience of love, serenity, peace, and joy. Why do we feel so disconnected?

We feel disconnected because we are engaged with ourselves. We are thinking about ourselves. Not selfish. I'm not talking about that. We are suffering. And the entire thinking is revolving around oneself. suffering, and the entire thinking is revolving around oneself. And when thinking is, if you see states of anger, fear, jealousy, frustration,

if you look into those states, if you actually see what is happening, you would see the entire thinking is revolving around yourself. Why did this happen to me? Why did he do this this way? I probably deserve something more. But the entire thinking revolving around oneself. And as we suffer more, as we stay in these

limited states more, you're alienating oneself. More. More. Wow. But when we say we are in a state of love, say we are in a state of love, when we're a state of joy, if you see and observe how you feel, the thinking is not revolving around yourself.

We're not talking about pleasure, but we're talking about a state of love, a state of joy, a state of connection. It doesn't alienate you, right? Yeah. It expands. And you bring together so you, right? Yeah. It expands.

And you bring together so many people in your lives. So true. And that experience is so very beautiful. It's so very nurturing and enriching. Wow. Okay. It seems so simple when you say it like that. We have a path to move from this state.

A path, yeah. A path to move from the limited state, from feeling alienated, to move into this beautiful state of feeling connected. My glimpse of awakening started when I was nine years. I always could feel another, feel another's pain and feel another's joy. I always felt connected. But at nine, I saw that the world that I was living in was not feeling the same as what I was feeling.

It was just a glimpse. I was too young. At around the age of 17, I started to practice meditation. But it's nothing deep. I've always focused on the mosquito that is hovering or the something silly. The focus was not centered around myself. But down the line, I started having these experiences and expanded states in consciousness. To just name a few, a state where there were no mind commentaries.

No mind commentaries. No chatter in the minds. No chatter in the mind. Negative, positive. Just still. No chatter. No chatter in the minds. No chatter in the mind. Negative, positive. Just still. No chatter. No chatter in the minds. For a few. It is not a state that lasted for days together.

I have had those glimpses. A state where there was no separate self. Like I did not feel separate from you. I did not feel separate from the other. Really? What does that feel like? Just the experience. A state of bliss.

It just came and went. It is not... For a moment? Minutes? For a few minutes. Gotcha. Okay. And then a state where the mind was not separating as boundaries between past, present and future. Where life was just a flow for a few moments.

But these states have left a lasting impression. Right. Like, you know there is a state in consciousness where there is deep inner stillness, right? Sure. There is no mind commentary. You know it is your experience. So when my mind moves into judgment,

it's easy to move out of it. When I actually feel separate, when I suffer, I know there is a space in consciousness where you're actually connected. It has been my personal experience. So you feel connected. So it's easy to move out of this space of suffering.

And you actually, when you see life is a flow, you're not stuck. You're not stuck between the past, the present and the future. You know life is a flow. It's going to flow. How often do you feel suffering now or do you? I do suffer.

Really? Yes. Why and when? I do suffer when I think about myself, when my thinking revolves around myself, when I feel angry, when I feel hurt, I do suffer. How often does that occur? It probably occurs, but how often, how easy it is for me to get out of the space. To shift.

Yes. The shift, the movement away from suffering to no suffering is very quick. So it's not days or weeks anymore, like... No, just a few moments. And then you move on. Move on. What do you go through in your mind or heart or spirit when that occurs? When you're frustrated, you're angry about whatever happened, someone else, something that happened, what do you do?

For most part of our lives, we really don't know that we're suffering. We don't know that we are in this limiting states of anger, of fear, of frustration, of stress, of anxiety. Yes? Yes. We feel in that space, life feels so difficult. Yes. In that space, life feels so painful, so heavy. So we have a practice, even the smallest three-minute practice that we see.

Get to your emotion. What is the exact emotion that is arising within you now? It is a small practice for three minutes. So people learn that practice, they know what exactly they're feeling. And it involves a small

technique or visualization to move them away from a place of that emotion to a place of calm. Should we try it? Yes, definitely. Okay. You want to try? Sure. Or do you want to try with me or the audience or both of us?

Yes. Okay, perfect. Close your eyes. Can you practice three conscious breaths where you inhale deep and let your exhalation be prolonged. So let us do it for three conscious breaths. Thank you. What is the exact emotion that is arising. Say, anger, fear, frustration, stress, anxiety. Or it could be an emotion, which is a beautiful

state. It can be a state of calm, peace, love, joy, serenity, or bliss. Recognize the exact emotion that is arising right now. As you recognize this emotion, observe your mindset. Where is your thinking revolving around?

Is it moving into the past? Or moving into the future? Or is it moving in the present? Are you just in the present? Observe your thinking. If you're obsessing about your past, or obsessing about your future, or are you in the middle of your skull, the place around your Thank you. Whenever you're ready, you may open your eyes.

So why that process? What does that process do for us? It actually helps in getting in touch with your emotion. You don't know. You feel so clouded because you're so fast. You have to do one after the other. You have't know. You feel so clouded because you're so fast. You have to do one after the other. You have to send your children to school.

Then you have to get to work and then you have to attend to all the problems there, the challenges there, then get back. Life is so fast. We're reacting a lot. We are reacting,

not even knowing from which place you're coming. So this process is to be aware of how we're feeling. Yeah. And it is just a three minute process. It doesn't take longer than three minutes. And you can tell that I was such a newcomer to meditation at that time. Pradita G and I would go on to talk for an hour about

the practice and I'm constantly studying it more closely today. There are so many benefits of meditation, not just mental and emotional, but also physical. Mindfulness is so powerful when dealing with challenging conversations with loved ones, managing the day-to-day overwhelm, and preparing for big moments in your life so you don't sabotage them. Of course, there's also a spiritual element of meditation, the connection with the world or God or some life force, whatever you believe in. Personally, my relationship to spirituality has been, well, interesting. I grew up in a strict Christian science home, and while I may not believe as

firmly as I once did, my religious upbringing was remarkably formative. I still feel that connection is something greater than me, and I keep searching for greater clarity. Rob Bell helped provide at least some of that clarity. A New York Times bestselling author, Rob is the founder and former pastor of the Mars Hill Bible Church, a unique, inclusive space that was one of America's fastest growing religious communities. When I first interviewed Rob back in 2015, I'd say I was still spiritual, but a little disillusioned with organized religion. Well, my conversation with Rob was awe-inspiring and faith-renewing. He reminded me of the invigorating, transformational aspects of religion without any of the judgmental lecturing. And regardless of

your belief system, I guarantee you will find immense value in his words, starting with his definition of spirituality. I define spirituality as your awareness that your life is a gift, that you have received breath, that you, for some reason, God, higher consciousness, being, reality itself, the universe, whatever language you want to use for that, you have received this extraordinary gift, and what you do with it, how you respond to it matters. And that your spirituality is your awareness that there's more to reality than just driving your car, paying the bills, meeting with your insurance agent, checking your inbox. That your life is actually animated by these unseen realities.

Hope, joy, peace, longing, desire to be a part of something bigger than yourself. Yeah. And that when we talk about life, we're often talking about these unseen realities, and you can't access them. You can't carry love in your pocket. Your sense of motivation isn't something that you can put in a bucket. And yet, it's the thing that actually drives everything else. And the problem is for many people in our culture, the moment you talk about spirituality, that immediately takes them into crazy religion. So now I got to go to war.

Now I got to condemn these people. Now I got to judge it. No, no, no, no, no. It's right and wrong. It immediately takes them into a world. It's like, yeah, but I have a brain and I have a sense of civility and decency. And so I just begin with your life as a gift. And you intuitively know that how you respond matters. And what's the difference between spirituality and religion then?

Well, often religion gets a bad rap. And a lot of people will be like, I'm spiritual but not religious. But I would simply say religion is the glue. Religion is practice. It's routine. It's ritual. Ideally, religion is simply, if you're an athlete, you have to go to practice. Of course.

You have to order your day around what you're going to eat. You got to get some good sleep. And sometimes religion is simply you regularly give a chunk of money you make away because it's good for your heart. Right. It's practice. It's the routines. It's the rituals that remind you that life is a gift and how you're a small matters. Ideally ideally that's the idea ideally but why are so many religions have such a bad rep yeah well i mean in that oftentimes people will beat up on religion which it totally deserves but the problem is politics education to pick out one human manufactured institution and be like, look how screwed up religion is. Well, millions and millions of people have been slaughtered by really mean dictators.

So humans tend to create institutions that get in the way of being human. We're not now just talking about religion. We're talking about humanity. Sure. The heart can go south in all sorts of ways. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, I grew up in a religion called Christian science.

I don't know if you're familiar with Christian science. And so I grew up with this practice and this mindset. Really, the philosophy that I remember a lot of is it's all about mind over matter. Yeah. And so I never took shots. I never had any medicine. When I was sick, we would have spiritual practitioners support us through a healing and go through understanding what we call the truth and knowing what's really true about ourselves and the world and our spirituality. And we would pray

about that. And the religion would sometimes get a bad rap because of people want to be taking care of themselves in a physical sense of the word. Like they wouldn't treat themselves when they needed to, and then bad things would happen to them. Some people died because they didn't go to the hospital because they were like... And you saw this at a young age. I saw it. I mean, I never saw anything really bad happen to anyone. I saw a lot of miracles, actually.

I saw a lot of people having incredible healings really fast without any physical doctors or medicine or things like that. And I actually really appreciate the lessons I learned in the religion early on because it taught me to be mentally tough in certain ways, but also be vulnerable and open and willing to feel miracles and to experience life spiritually as opposed to in a material form. I just, after my 20s, in my 20s, I kind of just stopped going to church for a couple reasons.

One, I don't really believe in religion myself. And maybe that's, or maybe I was just questioning it. Yeah, yeah. I was open to questioning it. Because I feel like sometimes, like you said, that there's a bad rep, or I feel like it's judgmental. The idea of religion can sometimes come across as judgmental. We've got it and you don't.

Right. And if you're not with us, you're going to hell or you're bad, we're good. And I don't like that feeling. Like you said, if it should be about... All of us. Yeah, yeah. We're all in this. A community.

We're all in this together. It's not like it's our way or everyone else is going to hell or something like that. So I think I was just like, you know what? I love the philosophy of what I learned from the practice. And I love the people, the community. And it's not like the religion. I didn't feel like they were so judgmental or this and that. I just didn't like the concept of religion as a generality.

And maybe that's an ignorant way of thinking for me. Maybe not. But I remember just feeling like the principles of it were really powerful. And I still believe in those principles and try to follow those principles of mind over matter in general. And loving everyone

and not being judgmental, things like that. It's interesting. You were given a positive worldview. Yeah, very positive early on yeah not like a life happens to you and i guess you're just sort of screwed but like a you can you can think you can control your thoughts yeah you can like act in the world you can do exactly yeah i remember actually my father i didn't understand this when i was a kid is my father i just had a birthday in march turned 32 and my father i never had a birthday

party growing up because my father was like a hardcore Christian scientist and he would not allow us. No birthdays. He would not, he wouldn't, he didn't want to celebrate our birthdays because, not because he didn't want to celebrate us. He always celebrated us for being alive, but he didn't want us to be limited by time and by our age for creating what we want to do with our dreams and our life. No way. Yeah. So what is it that you believe in? Overall?

Yeah. The whole big picture? The whole big picture. What is like, what's the faith then? I believe that there is something at work in the universe moving us forward. Do you have a name for this thing? Yeah. I mean, I call it God, but I know that language for a lot of people, the word God carries... I don't believe in like an angry God on a cloud with a long beard who's just waiting to judge you and kind of shows up every once in a while and maybe does something

good or not. By the way, the Holocaust would have been nice. I believe there's something at work in human history. There's a force of benign love. I call this force God. I think that's what Jesus was talking about. He kept talking about the kingdom of God, a very mysterious... There's something expanding, it's moving. There's something that when you give yourself to the well-being of other people, something deep within Lewis says, this is good, this is my path. And when you see somebody else moving beyond themselves for the good and healing and repair of the world, something within you says, I see that thing, I feel that thing in me. And like we just had Easter Sunday, I take seriously the idea of resurrection,

that the last word hasn't been spoken. That no matter how bad it is, no matter how much abuse, betrayal, suffering you've been through, all sorts of stuff can happen in the middle of the chaos and darkness. I've seen too many people just get wrecked. And then a couple years later, they say, Rob, this thing that I went through, I wouldn't have wished upon my worst enemy. It was hell on earth. There was blood everywhere. And yet, like when you, I'm sure when you interview people and you talk about, tell me the key moments in your life. Tell me the moments that have really shaped you. They rarely say stuff like, well, I went to Bahamas. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's their biggest adversity. They usually say, my dad got cancer. Yeah. My friend got hit by a car. I got fired, but in some strange way. And then they usually say, at least I'm sure in your experience, in my experience, they say, at the time, it was like a nightmare. Yeah. experience, they say, at the time, it was like a nightmare. And now I find myself kind of... And

then the word on the tip of their tongue that they don't know how to say is great, right? The counterintuitive impulse is, I'm grateful for it. But there's no way I can be grateful for the cancer. But that is actually... So my experience has just been, there is something at work, even in the darkest stuff. Sure. And even the first, the Bible begins with a poem, and it's a poem about water and chaos and darkness, and out of it something beautiful and diverse and unexpected comes, which is my observation of how the world often works. Oh, man.

Yeah. Whatever's going on, it works in the middle of the mess. Yeah. And that any sort of faith that's going to have anything to say in 2015 you got to leave a giant gaping hole for the mystery um and that's not because that's not a cop-out that's you gotta have that that's at the heart of any sort of authentic worldview yeah um i mean there's so you don't always give it uh a clear answer for people when they have questions for you about like why it works in the world or why. Yeah. Actually, all suffering, like why did the car go off the road?

Why did my daughter get that disease? I don't know. And anybody who does tell you why with certainty, I would probably be really suspicious of. of. I was doing this Q&A in Miami and a woman raises her hand and says, what do you say to somebody whose young daughter just died of a mysterious illness that only a few people get? And this woman starts crying. And there's like a big crowd and they're handing a mic. What I love is a big crowd in a public place and they hand the mic to the crowd and anybody can ask anything they want. It's so awesome. This woman says, what do you say to me? Because I just lost my daughter. And I said, first off, in the ancient wisdom tradition, some suffering, there are no words.

There's silence. So first off, I would just begin with anybody who does give you nice, clear-cut answers for why your daughter died. I don't know. Secondly, i do know this at some point down the road you're gonna meet up with a woman who's also lost her young daughter and you're gonna look her in the eyes and you're gonna say me too and in that moment that you'll be standing on some holy ground and here's what happened i just got the chills um Because solidarity is divine. When somebody stands with you, the woman standing next to her starts gushing. Shut up. Don't even tell me.

Yes. This is the guy. And says, my young daughter is really sick, and they've given her only a little bit of time to live. And this woman turns to her, and yeah, that's it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And this woman turns to her and yeah, that's it. Wow. Yeah, yeah. And as you can tell from the significance I've placed on my interviews with Prita G

and Rob Bell, a lot of my focus on the School of Greatness has been about self-discovery, deciphering exactly who I am, what I believe and where my priorities lie. However, this podcast has been equally about discovering the world and all the beautiful, unique people who live in it. I've always challenged myself to seek out guests who are different from myself in philosophy and values and backgrounds, and I never wanted to operate solely inside an echo chamber. And by prioritizing diversity,

I feel like I've been able to learn and grow far more than I ever anticipated. I also recognize the diversity of you, my listeners, and I want to make sure that you feel represented. In this amazing opportunity we call life, we all want to live our own truth and achieve the life of our dreams. Just a few months ago, I interviewed Laverne Cox, the Emmy-nominated actress, film producer, and equal rights activist. Laverne has long been on my booking shortlist for her incredible accomplishments and her trailblazing work advocating for the transgender community. And it turns out we have such a deep connection. We've both experienced childhood trauma, and we're both still in the process of healing.

And I found it so valuable to talk with others who have dealt with trauma. It's important to remember you're not alone and to discover new tools for overcoming your pain. And so there's healing from trauma, but then there's resilience to trauma. Healing from trauma is really about not being overly defined by the trauma, but then not being in denial about it. Acknowledging that the trauma happened, but that it's in its proper place in your timeline. When I bought this place two years ago, when I went into escrow, I started having major panic attacks.

Like just- Why? Exactly. Crazy panic attacks. And so I was in therapy just shaking and I was a mess. What was going on? And I couldn't even breathe. I couldn't see.

It was crazy. It was full of anxiety attack. And what kept coming up for me is, oh God, it's so emotional still. But what kept coming up for me was the eviction notice I had gotten in 2012 in New York. I was living in decent rent in New York. I was living in decent rent in Manhattan, but like I was working in a restaurant and business was slow and I couldn't pay my rent. And I had an eviction notice and I had to go to housing court to avoid getting evicted. It was the second eviction notice I had gotten in two years. And so I had so much shame about it

and buying a place like brought up all the shame gremlin of who do you think you are who do you think you are buying this fancy condo fancy compared to like you know the 315 square foot apartment i had in new york that i couldn't pay for who do you think you are buying this fancy fancy condo in la you're gonna it up you're gonna to it up, you're going to, you know, ruin everything and just that. But then it was a, it was a childhood incident underneath that, as we started to explore in therapy and like get into this place of like, I mean, I had to, I really had to use the help now to even be able to hear Jennifer talk to me. Cause I was in such like panic, anxiety, high zone stress. And then it was a childhood incident that i still can't talk

about publicly probably never will there's a deep deep fear of becoming homeless that goes to a childhood abandonment thing so we had to like sort of parse all that out right and that's ultimately a childhood trauma that like sort of replicated this trauma into my adulthood as I, you know, if that's triggered by me buying a condo. And the beautiful thing about after we were able to process it with Jennifer, the next week she was like, I was onto something else. And she was like, we haven't talked about that. How is that feeling? And I said to her, I still have the sensations of it, but it doesn't feel like it's happening right now. And that's, it feels like it's in the past. And that's the thing about trauma. The nervous system does not

know if a trauma happened 15 years ago, 20 years ago. Once we are triggered, the nervous system feels like the trauma is happening right now. And so the thing of healing from trauma, creating resilience around trauma is putting the trauma within the right timeline of our lives. It's very delicate work that has to be done with a professional, but it is so, it's so beautiful to be able to be in this space of resilience around these things. Yes, these, yes, a lot of,

I've had a lot of unfortunate things happen to me, but I don't need to be defined by those things. I'm not in denial of them, but they don't define me. Susan Battson, my acting mentor, has this theory around human behavior. When we create characters, we have to, it's about understanding human behavior. And she says that a character's tragic flaw is when there's tension between the public persona

and the unfulfilled need. That in the unfulfilled need is that everyone has that we've developed around the age of five years old. And often unfulfilled need is that everyone has that we've developed around the age of five years old. And often we act as human beings in opposition to what we really need. And so that tension often expresses itself in addictive behavior and potentially bullying or character deflects or tragic flaws. And I was just thinking about like that tension between the unfulfilled need and the public persona like that is the space of like not allowing ourselves to be fully authentic not allowing ourselves to be um it's a tragic

flaw if you can't be in the truth of who you are right and it's a constant tension unless you accept unless you accept yourself did you feel like you were truly accepting yourself and who you fully were? Were you being that in your 20s and 30s while in kind of New York City, you know, working? I was trying. I was trying. I think because I was an artist, I've been on this journey as an artist.

I think a lot of this is about being an artist, my sort of personal growth stuff. I think I was trying and I was doing my best, but I think I had so much trauma. so I built up so many defenses so many sort of um so much armor because to shield myself from vulnerability and so it was I was doing the best I could but I needed to I needed to meet the right therapist I needed the right recovery program I needed the right things to other tools to lean into. Because when I'm, I think, surviving my childhood,

as a childhood, I was severely bullied, deeply traumatized, didn't feel loved or wanted or like I fit in or anywhere. And I just, and I got through it, but I got through it with all of these defenses in place. I had to, the only way to survive it was I had to like build up this elaborate defense. And so in my 20s and 30s, you know, I really, this work really started for me, I think 10 years ago was when I really kind of was like, okay, what, let's, let's look at what's really going on.

And so I think that what I know about my 20s and 30s is that I was doing the best I could to survive and that that, when you know better, you do do better and so I don't have any regrets about any of that I'm like I these are the things I needed to do there were no tools that I didn't know how to meditate I didn't have community resiliency model I didn't have for Renee Brown's like you know shame resilience work I there was no there's none of that. I had my cover. I had my elaborate cover and my armor. Your mask.

And my mask. And that's what I wore until I could get it. But my life definitely changed in 2007 when a woman named Candace Kane became the first openly transgender actor to have a recurring role in a primetime television show, the so-called Dirty Sexy Money. And in that moment, I believed it was possible to be openly transgender and to be an actor. Up until then,

I was, people knew that I was trans, but I wasn't really disclosing. And I was trying to have a career as an actor without disclosing my transness. When I started owning my transness, everything changed in my career. Everything changed in my life. And then taking it to the next level with my work with Brad Calcaterra. And he started this Act Out class 10 years ago. He calls it Act Out for LGBTQ actors, where we got to deal with all the specific blocks that we created in our instruments around being LGBTQI. And that's when I really started to not just own my transness externally, but to own the trauma. It was another layer of healing the trauma and the shame of my childhood and of my young adulthood that was necessary for me to be able to step into the purpose, the reason that I

am here, that Orange is the New Black opened up for me. Yeah. Where do you think you'd be today if you didn't start owning it and fully accepting and fully being vulnerable, I guess, 10, 11, 12 years ago? Where do you think you'd be now if you didn't do that? I don't know if I'd be alive. Wow. I honestly don't know if I'd be alive. Wow. I honestly don't know if I even be here or if I were here, I'd be, I'd be deeply unhappy, lost. It's just, it's a scary thought, honestly. I mean, it just, it scares me because it just, it feels like, I think I was in such a, I was in a place where I would have sabotaged. If anything good came, I would have found a way to sabotage

it. And so, I mean, it's kind of a miracle that I haven't like, that like that, that I haven't like all the lovely, amazing things that have come in my life. I haven't sabotaged them because I think that I didn't, I don't think I thought I deserved it. I didn't think I, I don't think I thought that I was worthy. Oh my God. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I did not think that I deserved nice things because the whole world told me I didn't deserve nice things and nice things. Love. I mean, the love piece too is so deep when you feel like you are, I mean, shame, Brene Brown defines shame as the intense, intensely painful belief that one has about themselves that they're unworthy of connection and belonging.

She says, guilt is, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. And shame is, I'm sorry, I am a mistake. Deep sense, this deep feeling of unworthiness on a deep core level. Yeah, I was there. And I, and Louis, I'm not there today. I do feel worthy of love. I do feel worthy of belonging, you know, and that

is a beautiful, it's a beautiful thing. So to my trauma, to my lifelong struggle to feel worthy of belonging. When I started the school of greatness, I had a decision to make. Would I just be another interviewer, a blank canvas upon which my guests would paint? Or would I pick up a brush and add my own color to it? At first, I wasn't so sure since I had my demons. I knew that if I expected vulnerability and honesty from my guests, that I'd need to give it as well. And I realized that the community I wanted to build, the space that I wanted to create, that would require me to let my guard down completely,

especially if I hope to earn the true respect of my audience. If you're a longtime listener, you know about my childhood trauma. If you've just started listening this week, you've heard me reference it, albeit vaguely. Okay, here goes. Even though I've told this story hundreds of times now, it's still not easy. I was sexually abused as a child, and it took me almost 30 years of my life to tell anyone and to start the healing process.

It's still a work in progress, and it probably will be for a lifetime. But I'm in such a better place than I was seven and a half years ago. And I felt empowered and liberated when I first shared this story in public at a leadership workshop led by Chris Lee and then privately with my family and friends. And even though I was extremely terrified and scared, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders when I recounted the whole thing in episode 61, alongside my friend, Jonathan Fields. You know, you've got your hero's journey, which is like the story that you tell publicly about how you're a pro athlete and you got injured. And that was like the inside. That was like the big, dark thing that you had to overcome that set you on this new journey and i always knew that like that was a story that i always knew and you know we've been friends for a while now and then um it's

probably a couple months ago where like you came to to me and dropped a different bomb you know and and and shared that there's actually a much bigger thing that, um, that you've been trying to work your way through, um, that happened a lot earlier in life. And it's just recently that, you know, it's really started to bubble up to the surface and you've been able to start to process it. So I guess, um, I, I guess we should just kind of dive into it rather than keep people on the surface here. But something happened to you when you were a kid that changed everything. Yeah, it was one of my first memories that I can really remember as an experience.

And I was sexually abused or raped by another man. And I was five years old. I'll kind of walk through a brief story of. And I was five years old. I'll kind of walk through a brief story of it. I was five years old and you know, my parents were working full-time jobs. There was four of us kids. And so after school, we would all go to a babysitter. And so after kindergarten, I remember my babysitter was like across the street or a block away from the school so we would walk across the street and go hang out at the babysitters for a couple hours until my mom it was until it was five o'clock yeah i mean it's like latchkey kid a lot of a lot of people grew

up that way like every day you know you're growing up in ohio it's a normal thing yeah yeah and uh i was probably there for a while like i don't even remember maybe six months or a year the whole year and i remember one specific day you know we'd go there we'd have we'd play in the backyard we'd play games whatever it would be and there would be like i remember always being peanut butter sandwiches peanut butter and jelly but i didn't like jelly so i'd always have peanut butter sandwiches because i was picky, and we just kind of hang out for a couple hours. And one day, one of my experiences I remember is that the babysitter was a woman, like probably in their forties, an older woman. And I remember she had a son and I never, I don't remember ever

seeing the son until this one day. and he's probably in his late teens from what I remember I only saw him once and he was he had his door open to his room and he had Nintendo on and at that time you know Nintendo was huge back in the late 80s and I was like I want to play Nintendo so I asked him I said hey can I nintendo and you're like five years old five years old right yeah i said hey can i play nintendo with you and and he said yes but you have to do something for me or something along those lines i said okay you know i'll do anything whatever so he just takes me into the bathroom and and it was like so nonchalant when i I remember back at it, it wasn't like weird for him. It was like so nonchalant what happened, like when he sexually abused me.

And, you know, he had me get on the floor. I remember him having me get on the bathroom floor and performing the sexual act on me. And I remember like just not knowing what was, that it was right or wrong just kind of like I'm doing this because I wanted to play Nintendo and I thought it was just normal

and he like finished whatever he was doing and then I went and played Nintendo and I remember like during it and it's a very vivid memory for me actually it's one of my first memories and I remember, like, during it, and it's a very vivid memory for me, actually. It's one of my first memories, and I remember during it.

Because a lot of people don't remember anything. Yeah, yeah. I remember this vividly. Like, I remember the smell, the texture, taste, the room. I remember everything, like the sounds. I remember this whole experience. But I can't remember the guy's face. Like, I can't remember everything like the sounds. I remember this whole experience, but I can't remember the guy's face. Like I can't remember what he looked like. And if I saw him today,

I probably wouldn't remember. So maybe I've run into him and I, and I didn't know. Cause I only saw him that one time and it was for like an hour or something during this whole like day. And I don't, you know, I don't know what he's up to now. I don't know what's happened or what he's doing or anything. But I just remember it wasn't until later, probably when I was an early teen, did I realize what had happened. So, I mean, at the end of that, on the day that it happened, did you go home? Did you tell anyone?

I didn't say anything to anyone. First off, because I kind of didn't know what was going on. And yeah, I just went about my day, my normal life, and went home. But I remember it being a moment, an experience that stacked up with other experiences that made me extremely defensive and guarded like throughout my childhood through my life and obviously i mean we're sitting how old are you now 30 i'll be 31 in a few days right so you're 31 and and and this is one of the most vivid memories of your childhood so it stuck with you for it's stuck a reason it's stuck and here's what's

interesting it's stuck and i didn't tell anyone about it my entire life. I told my sociology professor my freshman year of college. It was like a big class, like 300 students, like just a basic sociology class. I told him at the end of like one of his lectures as he was talking about rape and sexual abuse. And it kind of like came back in my memory. I was like, man, was this a bad dream or did this actually happen? But I remember every year I would remember it like vividly remember it. It wasn't a dream. I remember it so vividly. And I think I tried to make it act like it didn't happen. Like I tried to just put it out on my head and just like go about my life. Like it didn't happen. And I think being a straight man,

uh, you know, I tried to like block it even more because it was a man and it wasn't like a woman yeah and you're also i mean you're growing up in the midwest yeah ohio right you know in a small town right where and you're you know an emerging athletic star in the town there's a lot of attention and focus on you and your family because your family's got a lot of prodigies in the family. So, so, and you're like, you're a man, you know, according to the Midwestern straight man definition. I was like extremely ashamed. I was like, when I thought about it and as I was growing up into like puberty and just like, yeah, this athletic guy, athletic guy. I was really ashamed. I was really angry. I was, that's, I was taken advantage of.

And I remember just feeling like someone took advantage of me without my control, without my consent. And that really pissed me off. And I look back at, you know, as a, if I'm looking at it from a uneducated psychologist's point of view, I would see that, you know, that was one of the instances that made me really react in the ways I reacted in sports, in certain relationships. When things would happen, they were trigger points for me when I felt manipulated or attacked or abused emotionally, whatever it may be. Then I would kind of puff my chest and be the alpha male in the room and kind of like lash back to protect myself and so it's like you're responding not just to to the immediate threat but also to like this history since you like everything that's ever happened to me i'm like i must protect myself right type attitude, ego, and, you know, a threatening, right. You know, angry way, as opposed to communicating, you know, in a loving,

knowing you pretty well. I also know like, yeah, there's like, you look at your physical presence and again, like you make certain assumptions about a guy like you and um but you have like this insane you know like nurturing like loving like caretaking you know like mothering side yeah like to the world um which i think a lot of people would really be caught by surprise but it's such a part of the fiber of who you are um yeah it's just again there's like these just crazy dualities playing out in your life all over the place. Yeah. And I, you know, again, I think it's the experiences I went through.

Again, I felt like my father, my parents, my siblings loved me, but I didn't feel loved. So I knew they loved me and my interpretation of it was that I wasn't being loved. I didn't feel it. Yeah. Whether it was happening or not, that was my interpretation of it was that I wasn't being loved. I didn't feel it. Whether it was happening or not, that was my interpretation. Now, maybe it was just because of the instances that happened, the rape, some other instances that occurred. Just my brother going to prison when I was eight. Just feeling like I didn't have any friends until I was 13. I just didn't feel like I was accepted or loved. And so I think it really made me want to love everyone so that I could feel that.

It really made me want to be nurturing and compassionate towards everyone so that I could experience what that felt like as a kid. And so I think that's kind of like how it's developed for me. Because I can either be a victim and have this be an experience that controls me and holds me back and has me hesitate and be closed off in every relationship moving forward or I can use it and say you know what what can I learn from this and how how can I ensure that I don't create this in my life moving forward? That I don't create negative feelings from people that, you know, people feel safe and that I'm honest and open and always, you know, expressing what's on my mind. And being, you know, communicating as opposed to manipulating or whatever else may be happening and really allowing other people to make decisions based on my honest communication. or whatever else may be happening and really allowing other people to make decisions

based on my honest communication. I think one of the big powerful things, you know, for me, just moving through this conversation with you and having other conversations over the years in the last few months, especially it's just, you know, something that Brene Brown

kind of brought to the public eye in a huge way last year, which is that we've been, we're taught to assume that vulnerability is weakness. And in fact, you know, more often than not, um, if not close to always vulnerability is a source of, of strength. Um, and that, and not only strength for you, but strength for those around you, because when they see you live it, you model it and you allow other people to step into theirs and connect with something deeper in themselves.

It's like if your brother and your family, they're like, you don't know this, but you're our hero. So when you model that, it's like you're opening up the world for them to step into on a high level. And then look what happens with your first 30 years later, there's like a new relationship there. Yeah. I think, you know, Brene Brown is obviously like an inspiration. Sean Stevenson, I heard him give a talk about vulnerability and how to like, he gave a presentation about how to leave people breathless. And he's been on the podcast and talking about vulnerability. I remember just being so inspired by his stories

of vulnerability for his life and thinking, you know, I don't have to portray this big, strong, got it all figured out all the time. Like I can open up and actually by being vulnerable, it's going to make me stronger. You know, it's going to make me strong and connect with people on a deeper level that it's going to strengthen our relationship, whether people know me personally or just know me from afar. And it's been powerful. It's been I feel stronger than ever now. And I feel humbler than ever now. You know, so grateful.

I feel calmer. I feel at peace. I feel like I can. I just feel really centered and grounded and not frustrated or confused. And it feels amazing. I was nervous before I decided to tape this episode, even more nervous before it aired. There was my ego, which still had trouble owning this part of my past and taking off the mask I had long worn. There was also the concern over judgment. Would some people out there refuse to accept me or turn their backs on me or view me as opportunistic in some way? I couldn't predict the outcome, but I wanted the School of Greatness to be a safe space for everyone. And it had to be a safe space for me. I wanted to use whatever platform I had to

speak out for those who thought that they were alone in their own traumatic experiences. I still want to do that. And I had to publicly forgive myself and my abuser because resentment doesn't serve anyone. And I was determined not to be shackled by my past. If I was going to talk about courage on the podcast, I had to live it. The response to this episode ended up being overwhelmingly positive, both internally and externally. It's still my most searched for and sought after episode to this day. And I still get messages about it. I literally just received one before sitting down to record these words. And what I've learned from that, well, it takes me back to a promise I made at

the beginning of this two part extravaganza. I told you at the beginning that I'd close by sharing my biggest lesson, my biggest takeaway from my first 1000 episodes. And this is it. Relationships are the key to a successful life. And vulnerability is the key to successful relationships. I believe that I found success because I've built great relationships with my guests, with all of you out there listening. And I've done that because I've built great relationships with my guests, with all of you out there listening. And I've done that because I've been vulnerable. I'm not perfect. I'm always learning and improving and growing. And it's never easy, but it's always worthwhile. Wow, we did it. I feel like we've relived the past seven and a half years together. And I'll tell you, I'm fired up to do another seven and a half years, a thousand more episodes. you, I'm fired up to do another seven and a half years,

a thousand more episodes. I still have so much more to learn, so many more people to interview and so much more to give. Many of you know that I close every episode by asking my guests two signature questions. What are your three truths? And what's your definition of greatness?

I've now told you my biggest School of Greatness lesson and I'm ready to share my three truths and my definition of greatness after 1,000 episodes. I'll be revealing them on this week's 5-Minute Friday. And make sure you check out my social media pages at Lewis Howes as we have all sorts of fun video content that we're putting together and sharing with you this week. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the School of Greatness family. We're so glad that you're here. We'd love for you to subscribe over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or anywhere that you listen to podcasts.

And also leave us a rating and review over on Apple Podcasts, as that will truly help us reach more people and impact and change more lives. And share this with a friend. Sharing is caring, and you have the power to change someone's life today just by sending them this link. Copy and paste it wherever you're listening to this podcast, or just send them to lewishouse.com slash 1000. I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Theodore Roosevelt,

who said, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And if you haven't been told lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.