The School of Greatness - 3 BRAIN HACKS to Control Your Thoughts & Emotions

Episode Date: October 20, 2023

Lewis engages in a discussion with three notable guests: Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist from Stanford University, Dr. Susan David, an award-winning Harvard medical school psychologist, and Rainn Wilson, who shares personal insights on healing from early childhood trauma. The episode delves into understanding the human mind and unlocking its power, particularly during stressful situations.Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He also runs the Huberman Lab, which studies how the brain functions, how it changes through experiences, and how to repair the brain after injury or disease. Andrew and I dive deeper into understanding the amazing human mind. We talk about how to unlock its power — particularly during really stressful situations.Dr. Susan David is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard medical school psychologist. She’s the author of the bestselling book, Emotional Agility, which describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change.Rainn Wilson shares how he healed from early childhood trauma and shares his insights on how self-awareness and the ability to manage emotions can lead to better decision-making and stronger relationships. We explore practical strategies for understanding and regulating one's emotions, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and self-reflection. Buy Rainn’s book, Soul Boom.In this episode you will learn,Steps to develop emotional agility in your life.How to respond in moments that we feel triggered.How to use the mind to our benefit when we experience stress, fear or trauma.The two types of stress and how to deal with them.Different breathing techniques you should be practicing on a daily basis.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1517For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]FULL EPISODES:Andrew Huberman: https://link.chtbl.com/1455-podDr. Susan David: https://link.chtbl.com/1297-podRainn Wilson: https://link.chtbl.com/1431-pod

The brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So I think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just want to continue to geyser up all the time. But we can introduce a positive thought. 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. Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful. So let's go ahead and dive in. Say I feel cold and ice, right? I'm in ice. It's 30 degrees. Can I control my mind to say,

you know what, this is actually a hot tub and you feel warm and you're feeling hot right now? Or is it too much physiological barriers to break through that? To some extent you can. So I think the question that you're asking is a very important one. It's actually the question, which is to what extent does our subjective narrative, the story we tell ourselves, actually mean something for the body? And to what extent does the body actually mean something for the subjective narrative?

So this gets into some areas of work that we're doing now. And so I do want to highlight that it's ongoing work, but I think, you know, the old narrative, meaning a few 10 years ago was that if you're feeling depressed, just smile. Well, if that worked, we would have a lot less depression than we see out there. Now that does not mean... Most people actually who are depressed just aren't smiling as well. Like when you change your physiology, doesn't it also start to change the way you think about yourself a little bit? The reason I call it a brain body contract early on is that

the brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So, you know, the idea that when we're depressed, we tend to be in more defensive type postures. When we're feeling good, we tend to be in more like relaxed and extended postures. All true. But it does not mean that just by occupying the extended posture that I'm going to completely shift the mind. That's a first step. Think about like two interlocking gears. It's one gear that turns the other, but then they need to kind of dance together

before you can get the whole system going. So how do you get it to dance together? Exactly. So subjective, there is one way in which subjective thought and deliberate thought is very powerful over states of mind and body to answer your question can you think your way out of the ice bath being cold so a couple things that are important first of all just to go a little deeper on what thoughts are thoughts happen spontaneously all the time they're popping up like a poorly filtered internet

connection but thoughts can also be deliberately introduced for instance right now i can say okay have a thought that um just decide to write your name and your you can do that i'm going to decide to write my name and you can do it so that's a deliberate thought which says that you can introduce thoughts so i think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just want to continue to geyser up all the time. But we can introduce a positive thought. Can you think of two thoughts at the same time? Probably not. So you can only have one thought at a time. Right. But they come very fast. But it comes and goes. So you have to constantly be intentional and deliberate about what you think. Otherwise,

So you have to constantly be intentional and deliberate about what you think. Otherwise, a spontaneous thought will pop back in. That's right. Based on your experience, based on sensory, based on how you're feeling or perceiving something, your environment, it's just going to keep popping in. Right. So how do we deliberately have a positive thought more often? Right. So I'm a big fan of wellness, and I think it's a great community, but it tends to run in absolutes and there aren't a lot of operational definitions, as we say in science. And what I love about your questions, you're asking for really getting to the meat of things, asking for the operational definitions.

One of the most dangerous ideas in wellness and in popular psychology is that your body hears every thought you have. What a terrible thing to put on people. You know, what a challenging thing. I don't think people should try and suppress their negative thoughts. I think there is great value, however, to introducing positive thought schemes. Now the reason is not because I think it's just

because I think so, but because there's actually a neurochemical basis for controlling stress and actually making stress more tolerable and extending one's ability to be in bouts of effort. And that relates to the dopamine pathway. So the molecule dopamine is a reward. It's released in the brain when you win a game, you close a deal, you meet the love of your life, someone likes your photo, the great love of your life, you complete something. But most of our dopamine release is not from achieving goals. It's actually released when we are en route to our goals, where we're in pursuit of our goals, and we think we're on the

right path. This is why a lot of people get depressed after they achieve a big goal, because they feel like, I'm supposed to feel something greater. I felt this thing for two minutes, they feel like I'm supposed to feel something greater. I felt this thing for two minutes and now that's it. That's right. High achievers know to attach dopamine to the effort process, to the pursuit, the day-to-day tasks, the growth, the lessons, the losses, like everything, right? Well, and it can be to some wins along the way, but growth mindset, which is the academic discovery and laboratory discovery of my colleague, Carol Dweck at Stanford is the hallmark of growth mindset is really two things. One is I'm not where I want to be now, but I, but I will, I'm capable of getting there eventually.

The other is to attach a sense of reward to the effort process itself. In fact, don't reward the result, reward the effort. That's right. And if you look at true high performers, people that are consistently good at what they do, they don't peak and go through the postpartum depression and crash and come back and their life is a cycle of ups and downs, but really people who are on that upward trajectory consistently, those people attach dopamine to the effort process. And actually, Carol's one of her original studies on the discovery of growth mindset was these kids that love doing math problems that they knew They couldn't get right

So it's like the people love puzzles, but in this case they knew they couldn't get it, right But they loved doing it and it incidentally or not so incidentally these kids are fantastic at math when there is a right answer because there they feel some sense of reward from the effort process Yeah, now that cool thing about dopamine is because they feel some sense of reward from the effort process. Now the cool thing about dopamine is that it's very subjectively controlled. We can all learn to secrete dopamine in our brain in response to things that are in a purely subjective way.

Our interpretation. Our interpretation. But it has to be attached to reality. So, you know, one should never confuse. What is real? Right. So if you're thinking about the effort you're expending. So let's say somebody right now is financially back on their heels.

And they're setting up a new business, for instance. And it's hard. if they can take a few moments or minutes each day to reflect on the fact that the effort process is allowing them to climb out of their hole potentially, that it's giving them an opportunity, that it's somehow they are on the right path or if they're not in movement along that path, or at least oriented on the right path, they're not lying in bed all day. They're taking a step forward. They're taking a step. If they can reward that process internally, two things happen. First of all, the brain circuits that are associated

with building subjective rewards and dopamine get stronger. So you get better at that process. And second, and most importantly, dopamine has an amazing ability to buffer adrenaline and buffer epinephrine and what I mean by that is there was a study that was published in the journal cell excellent journal Cell Press Journal a couple years ago showing that with repeated bouts of effort we use and we release more and more epinephrine

it's kind of adrenaline but in the brain with more effort with every time every time you put in effort so every time you make look for this let's keep it if I were to keep it in the business context every more effort, we're gonna release this. Every time you put in effort, so every time you make, for this, let's keep it, if I were to keep it in the business context, every time you make, write that email, every time you, let's say it's a person who's a craftsman or a craftswoman, every time you're working in the shop and doing that, every bit of effort,

you're taking a little bit of money out of this epinephrine account. You're spending epinephrine. At some point, those levels of epinephrine get you're spending epinephrine at some point those levels of epinephrine get high enough that you you feel like quitting it feels exhausting this was done in a beautiful study actually where um they control the visual environments and they have the subjects ex exert effort and they can control the visual environment so sometimes the effort of of taking steps and moving forward,

this is actually kind of pushing forward and kind of swimming motion, would give them the sensation that they were actually making progress. And other times it was an exercise in futility where they would just keep the visual world stationary and they would expend effort and they didn't think they were going anywhere.

Epinephrine is climbing, climbing, climbing, and eventually they quit. Now dopamine is able to push back on that epinephrine is climbing climbing climbing and eventually they quit now dopamine is able to push back on that epinephrine and give you anyone the the feeling that you could continue and maybe even the feeling that you want to continue and you've seen this actually like football is a good example two teams play say the super bowl both teams are max effort the entire time yeah max effort the team that wins suddenly in a moment has the energy to jump all over the place party for days they can talk i mean they they they're exhausted right before that well that wasn't glycogen or stored energy of any kind

except it was neural energy and what happened was effort is this adrenaline adrenaline adrenaline adrenaline eventually people quit they just quit the dopamine is able to suppress that and so then you're expending effort but you're doing it from a place of feeling like you have energy for it so we need dopamine to keep the effort going is that what i'm hearing you say that's right dopamine is not just about reward it's one of the biggest misconceptions dopamine is about motivation and drive it's like a jet that propels you along a path how do we get more dopamine you practice subjectively releasing dopamine in your mind like how okay so that's a great question first of all there are ways you can get more dopamine release through thoughts or through drugs or through supplements i want to be really clear. There is a drug, there are two drugs actually

that will cause massive release of dopamine. They're called cocaine and methamphetamine. The problem is- That's what gets us addicted because it feels so good. The problem is, exactly, the problem is cocaine and methamphetamine stimulate so much dopamine release that the drug becomes the only source. It becomes the goal and the path. It becomes the drug becomes the only source.

It becomes the goal and the path. It becomes the path and the destination. And you look at people's lives when they do a lot of cocaine and methamphetamine, and that baseline on their life goes down very, very fast. Because there's no reason to work hard at anything else because you feel good. That's right.

And that's the greatest feeling you'll have, so why do anything else when you can have that feeling? That's right. And if you think about, remember these neurochemical systems adrenaline cortisol dopamine epinephrine they weren't designed to keep us safe from tigers and to hunt and gather or to build fortune 500 companies they were designed to do anything they were designed to be generic so that depending on our circumstances we could adapt so in an animal context, an animal that let's say is hunting or it needs food for its young, it's going to feel agitation.

That's stress. That's cortisol. It's like hunger. My babies might not eat. I might not eat. Maybe it's looking for a mate. It's going to feel agitation and start looking and roaming and searching. Foraging is called in the animal behavior world. It's gonna feel agitation and start looking and roaming and searching. Foraging is called in the animal behavior world.

It's foraging. At some point, it might catch a smell of something, a potential mate or berries or a stream if it's thirsty. At that moment, dopamine is released and now it has energy to continue along that path. Whereas there's a specific pathway in the brain and that's involved in depression and disappointment that if it goes to that place and turns out it was the wrong path there's a signal that actually suppresses dopamine so that you don't repeat that mistake again so you don't give up that's right you just don't repeat it again that's right and those events that reminds you like that's not

the path to go that's right and this thing and we're sort of veering towards neuroplasticity here which is the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience. Dopamine is one of the strongest triggers of neuroplasticity because it says those actions led to success previously. You're going to repeat those. Those actions led to failure previously and don't repeat those. So dopamine triggers us to stay on the right path that's right so you asked how do you do this so to really make it concrete and is there too much is there too much thing is there such thing as too much dopamine well if you're not on drugs so cocaine amphetamine are bad because they lower the baseline on life they make people very focused on things outside of

themselves that's the other thing that dopamine does. It can be positive or negative. But when we have dopamine in our system, we tend to be outward facing and in pursuit of things in our environment. You can look at somebody on cocaine and realize that that's the extreme version of that. But I love social media for the reason that you see the molecules in the memes. So it's like, get after it. What do sharks do on Monday? Or I can't remember the specific things. Or then they're the, sometimes it's just time to chill. Well, that's a different molecule. That's serotonin, right? And then dopamine is the get after it molecule. And epinephrine is effort. So if we were going to break this down really concrete, we'd say adrenaline and epinephrine are about effort. Just effort with no subjective label on them, good or bad effort,

whether or not stress or you're pursuing something you want to do. It's just, it's been exerting effort. Dopamine is about reward, but more so about motivation and pursuit of rewards. What happens when we bring the two together, grief and sadness and gratitude and appreciation? Yeah, so what the research shows in this expressive journaling is that when people journal on it, you can even journal 20 minutes a day for three days and you start finding these kind of effects, which is it starts moving you from just being focused on the past into a presence with yourself, into a seeing with yourself. And in starting to, you know, what you start to recognize when you start to analyze people's writing, when they've gone through this expressive writing, is, and you start to say, well, like, what is it that predicts people who do better versus not? It's what predicts people who do better is that they aren't being

a Pollyanna. They aren't just being, oh, everything's great. Everything's fine. I should just be grateful because at least I got to spend 15 years with my father. They're not doing that. What they're doing is they are holding their beautiful, positive experiences alongside their tough, difficult experiences, the pain, the regret, and they're starting to generate a sense of insight and meaning. So for me, as an example, and I want to come back to this teacher because it was such a remarkable thing that she said to me the example was I I kind of found not to force it or not to contrive it but when I was doing this writing that over a period of time I started to connect with like a sense of resilience in myself so it was like I would write about these difficult experiences and then I would like over time start recognizing that I just had this like inner sense of resilience and connection.

And so circling back to your word calm, I came out of the writing with a sense of having seen the self, a sense of calm. Yeah, of calm. Does that make, does that? Yeah, of course. It's interesting because when my father passed earlier this year, and thanks for reaching out and sending me the text, it was really thoughtful. When he passed, I remember everyone was asking me like, how are you doing?

I was like, to be honest, I'm sad and grateful. I kept saying like, I'm really sad that it happened this way, and that he was in an accident for 17 years and I didn't get to have the relationship that I had with him. And I'm trying to find sense of that and find the meaning in that process. But I'm also really grateful because there were some beautiful times we had together. So I'm sad and I'm grateful. And I was just, I kept saying that. I'm sad and I'm grateful. it's there's bothness isn't

there and I think that's the beauty it's like this the circling back to what we were saying earlier about this narrative that they're good and bad emotions what this does is it sets these emotions up against each other but but we are we are you know that, we contain multitudes. Like we experience more than a single emotion. We can simultaneously hold these things. And so the way that we move into a space of holding them is not by making one of them good and one of them bad, but rather recognizing that what you feel is what you feel. There's such power in the acceptance. I don't mean passive resignation. I just mean acceptance. Like this is what I feel and there's such power. I just wanted to quickly circle back to something that this teacher said. Years later, so this is this teacher, I'm 15, years, years, years later, I go to a conference,

and there's someone at this conference who gives a talk and says, you know, there are going to be people in your life who've really shaped who you are, shaped your experience. And if that person doesn't know that they've shaped your life and shaped your experience, reach out and let them know yeah so i tracked down this teacher wow and and i find her and i send her you know a bunch of flowers and i like in this card say like you saw me you know you saw me and in seeing me you allowed me to see myself and i said to her but one thing i always wanted to ask you is luis i would write this journal and i would write it in pen i would like scroll and poetry and you know all this kind of like teenage 15 year old and i would scroll it and every day we had this like secret silent correspondence because every day i would have this journal in and the teacher

would then send it back with notes like saying you you you sound really sad or you you know she would have these notes but she always had her notes in this like almost imperceptible pencil it was like you could barely make out what she was writing it was really light pencil so I said to her I said to like when we reconnected I was like why did you write in pencil and she said to me which I thought was so beautiful she said to me Susan it was your story it was your story and I was simply being witness to your story, but you were crafting your story. And it reminded me a little bit of, because I know you want to dig into emotional agility. And often people say to me, you know, what is emotional agility? And I say, well, you know, I can give you a nerd definition.

But ultimately what my work is about is my work is about seeing. It's about seeing and unseeing. What do you mean by that? Well, it's about seeing yourself in ways that are healthy and whole and seeing all of you and loving all of you. And in seeing ourselves, we are then more able to see others too. And it reminds me a little bit of Primo Levi, who was a survivor of the Nazi death camps. Just in case you thought you were going to have a light conversation.

the Nazi death camps. Just in case you thought you were going to have a light conversation. So Levi describes, Levi was in a death camp. And when the camps were liberated, he, you know, literally on the verge of death was released. And so he and his fellow death camp survivors boarded trains back to their hometowns. And Levi described how as the train pulled up into his hometown in Italy, there were a whole lot of people waiting on the platforms for them to arrive. And the people on the platforms were so horrified by how emaciated and skinny and like haggard and deathly

the people on the trains were, the people who had been released were, that they were so horrified by it that they turned away. Wow. They turned away, and they turned away because they were unable. They were unable to metabolize. They were unable to process. They couldn't process it. They were unable to process. They were unable to see. And Levi described how

in many ways that experience that he had was in many ways even more devastating, more heartbreaking than the experience itself. And I think that for me, when I talk about seeing versus unseeing, it is really about the thread, which is what does it take for us to see ourselves? What does it take to see others? Because here's the thing. We live in a world that really gives primacy to goals and objectives and success and all of these things. But the way we deal with our inner worlds, the way we see ourselves, the way we deal with our difficult thoughts, like a thought might be, I'm not good enough. An emotion might be, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm grieving. A story might be a story

of, do I even deserve love? Am I worthy? The way we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we love, it drives how we live, how we parent, how we lead, our health behaviors, our ability to achieve those goals. It drives everything. And that is the centrality of my work, which is about healthy seeing. And just to kind of, so healthy seeing is about firstly holding both the joy and the discomfort together and recognizing that we don't need to be owned by any of it because we are more than those things as well. And we are able to move forward towards our values. I'm curious. I think a lot of people would probably admit,

maybe not publicly, but they'd probably admit to someone close to them, if they were truly honest with themselves, that for a period of their life, they didn't believe they were worthy of love. Yeah. There's probably a good amount of people in the world that aren't, as adults, good at receiving love. They don't believe they deserve it.

And maybe there's a whole other spectrum of people that all they do is they love themselves too much. It's like very narcissistic or something like that. But I think there's a lot of people that doubt themselves. They doubt themselves by certain stories they've told themselves, certain things that have happened in their lives that confirm they're not deserving of love. Being picked on, bullied, parents, whatever it might be. Broken up with boyfriend, girlfriend, all that stuff. How do we believe we are worthy of love? How do we learn to believe that we as an individual are deserving of love?

Yeah, that's such a powerful question. And I just want to kind of circle back. You gave narcissism as an example of self-love. They actually hate themselves the most. Actually, narcissism is a manifestation of very often low self-esteem. I think one of the most important aspects of this fight for worthiness, really, because that is what it is. And I think that- Before the interview continues, if you feel like you're not living

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to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video. All of us as humans at some level fight for worthiness. And I think the really important part of, you know, when I talk about agility versus rigidity, you know, my work is on emotional agility in contrast to emotional rigidity. And so I think what becomes really important in that is

if we think about the kinds of thoughts that people have, I've given some examples of like, I'm not good enough, or there's no point in trying. Okay. Emotions, emotions like grief and anger, or stories, stories about whether I'm worthy of love. So a really important part of actually being able to move forward in the world with integrity is recognizing that these are normal. Okay. And this is really, really important. This thought or this feeling that i'm not any of it any of it and all of it is actually normal there is nothing good or bad right or wrong about saying to yourself or the automatic thought that says like gee i'm gonna stuff this up okay there is that is literally your body and your psychology doing the job that it was meant to do which is to help you to make sense of the world to adapt and respond if you were never

concerned about how you sounded you would have no friends. You wouldn't get anywhere. You wouldn't get anywhere. If you were never concerned about whether you should be fearful about something or not. You'd be dead. You'd be dead. Yeah. Okay. So this whole narrative, which is that there's some thoughts that are good and some thoughts

that are bad and some emotions is actually like a um it's a completely false narrative and so one of the core ways we start to dismantle the narrative is by recognizing that these thoughts emotions and stories are normal yes they are normal sense making machines you know you are absolutely your brain is doing its job when it's helping you to kind of judge, be curious, assess, understand, but what have they, like that's your brain doing its job. So when do we become hooked? When do we become rigid?

When are we now being unhealthy? Yeah, when it's holding, when is it holding us back too much? When it's holding us back and when we start being imprisoned by them. Yes. Okay. So in psychological terms, the language for this is fusion. Or in my book on emotional agility, I call this hooked. Hooked meaning like trapped in your feelings, thoughts. You can't progress in life. Yeah.

So the thought of I'm not good enough or am I going to succeed at this or maybe i'll think these are normal okay normal fusion or being hooked is when you say i'm not good enough therefore there's no point in me trying okay believe it 100 so yeah so what you're starting to do is you're starting to take this normal thought emotional story and you are starting to let it define you. Hence the word fusion. You know, you are now fused. It becomes your identity.

It becomes. It's literally like the emotion owns you rather than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions. They don't own us. other than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions.

They don't own us. So when you talk about how do we move into a space of generating a sense of connection with self and self-worth, firstly, recognizing that the way you've often responded doesn't need judgment. It just needs compassion because it's hard to human. Do you know what I mean? It's hard to human. It is.

So there's firstly that. The second thing that becomes important is, and this again connects with this idea of rigidity, again connects with this idea of rigidity which is recognizing that when you were that five-year-old child and you were learning how to survive that those strategies that you used at that age were actually functional right in other words, those strategies probably protected you. If you were bullied and therefore you stopped being vulnerable, as an example, that strategy actually was protective. So it was actually a functional strategy. What happens is we start moving into a point where the strategy

is no longer helpful to us. So now imagine you've developed these strategies of defensiveness, of always wanting to be right, of like all of these things that we develop. Competing. Competing, like whatever it is for us. So we start developing these strategies and then we move into a different part of our lives. we move into a different part of our lives now we now we've got someone who really loves us and who wants to be with us and where our once functional strategy of shutting down and of being protective is now not not functional in

other words we've outgrown just like we outgrow our shoes just like we outgrow our clothes when we move into different phases of our lives we outgrow strategies and so it becomes really important this is where these emotional agility skills come in to recognize that when when we are hooked we are often not sensitive to the context. We're often on seeing the person in front of us. We're seeing the five-year-old who is fighting for survival. And so what does that mean? That means we really owe ourselves huge amounts of compassion, compassion for that child. And we also, there's this beautiful,

there's this beautiful quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, who he describes this idea. He says, you know, as a human being, you can never step into the same river twice. And what is that saying? It's saying the world is always changing. Technology, the economy, politics, like the world is always changing. And we as human beings are changing.

If we didn't, there would be something wrong with us yeah and so with change comes confusion comes difficult emotions yes comes um the it's uncomfortable to change you know it's uncomfortable and it's because it's uncomfortable that it's so important to be gentle with it. Because it's like you being gentle with you holding hands with yourself in your walk through life. Interesting. And as opposed to staying stuck where you once were. And so when you're walking through life and you're walking to a new place, whether that new place is a new job or a new career or a new idea or a new relationship, there's such beauty in holding hands with yourself. Going back to what you were just talking about, it sounds like the memories of our past that

are connected to a painful emotion hold us back or could potentially hold us back in the future to not feel those painful emotions again, right? Yes. It's these stories that we have attached a memory with an emotion, I guess, from these events, right? Whether it's on some people's point of view, extremely traumatic or something smaller, but it could still be very traumatic yeah right yeah those memories seem to hold us back it's almost like if we could you know erase all the memories of our past and enter in the world as this human being without those memories would we be able to be more unapologetic in taking action on things we want to take action on will we have more

confidence will we yeah i think it's that's such a powerful question. I think that the memories hold us back, but they also move us forward. There's the memory of… That protect us too. That protect us, all of these things. But we can be hooked by a past, but we can also be hooked by today. You know, we know that when people are experiencing a lot of stress, or even normal amounts of stress, normal amounts of confusion, there actually tends to be a cognitive narrowing. And so what I mean by this is we tend to, as we experience more ambiguity and more stress or more technology, it's almost like the technology has outpaced our human capacity to deal with it.

Because human beings, when human beings, if we think about the evolutionary survival mechanism, when we are experiencing stress and threat, there is a perceptual narrowing, literally a cognitive narrowing. So there's a focus. And that focus might be, I'm hooked on being right in my Twitter feed. I'm stuck in my emotion today because there's a narrowing. So we can be in agile and rigid because of past experiences, but we can also be in agile and rigid

because there's just a lot of stuff coming at us. And like the the world economic forum talks about these emotional agility skills as being the skills of the future for exactly this reason when did you feel like you actually got into that space of practicing it you know how many years did it take for you to finally be like, okay, this pinball machine is going everywhere, ups and downs and success and ego and fame and losses. When did you start to say, oh, this is all happening outside of me,

but let me start to nurture and tend to this garden inside of me for more peace and inner prosperity, not outer prosperity. I'm going to be really honest with you. I know I don't look it. I'm 57 years old. You look great, man. 48, 49 is when that started.

When I was really able to put into practice um some of the spiritual guidance that i had been studying some of the therapeutic and positive psychology studies that i'd been studying and for those and i want to say for those watching at home um that might have a problem with spirituality or god or religion and and first of all, spirituality and religion are totally separate things, not totally separate, but they are separate things. Then that's fine. Put that aside. And there's a wonderful reservoir of information that you have drawn on, on all 1400 of your episodes from the positive psychology always arrives at the same data points that ancient wisdom from faith traditions arrives at goes through a different way but one you can learn

a great deal from following um uh what you know great teachers you know, you know, great teachers, you know, like... you know... Jonathan Haidt has, uh, The Happiness Hypothesis, and so many great books on happiness, and podcasts on happiness and well-being, and Arthur Brooks, and, um, David Brooks, and all the Brooks. Um, there's... You... Those... It's the same wisdom, it's just kind of packaged a little differently.

Sure, sure. Wow. So about eight, nine years ago is's just kind of packaged a little differently. Sure, sure. So about eight, nine years ago is when you kind of started to tend to your inner garden. Isn't that pathetic? It's not pathetic. I should have had it at 33. Okay, Jesus. I think, you know, I wish I could have learned these things a lot sooner as well, but it wasn't really until two years ago when I felt a sense of peace in my heart that I

haven't never felt. Wow. And when I hit 38, I just turned 40. What happened there? I only felt peace when I was single, but when I was in relationships, I felt frapped and I felt a sense of not enoughness and never going to be able to live up to someone's standards and people pleasing and all these things that you mentioned as well, similar things. And I never- Sounds like a little codependence going on there too. Yeah. And it was, you know, I was afraid because my parents were trapped. And so I grew up watching a model of them not really accepting or loving one another. And I didn't know which night, if it was going to be like peaceful or chaotic, you know, every night you just didn't know which night if it was going to be like peaceful or chaotic you know every night

you just didn't know how they were going to be screaming or reacting or cold shoulders so I just didn't have a healthy model and I don't blame them it all it all developed me in a certain way to to be a curious learner of this and try to like support others going through the same challenge it's one of the reasons why I left home at 13, because I was like, get me out of here. It was just very up and down chaotic at home. My brother was also in prison for four and a half years when I was eight, 12, 12. So it was just like a lot of sadness, grief, loss, pain within the family dynamic. And I, and I know lots of families go through their own unique family dynamic of dysfunction. So this was just my own perspective. And I just went after a feeling as opposed to being the feeling.

I went after wanting something and desiring people and then needing to make sure that it worked out and going all in on it. Even when I had to change who I was to try to make them quote-unquote happy, the partners I chose were never happy with me. They didn't accept me for who I was. And I don't blame them. I chose them for a reason. I needed to learn the lessons. And it wasn't until I became fully peaceful and happy and on a healing journey of who I was and everything about my past, really grieving all the different parts of me. That's when I felt peace.

Going back to the first thing you talked about, which was grieving. I did about, I don't know, nine months of inner child healing and therapy. And, you know, I'm sorry to interrupt. I want to please go ahead, pick it up from there. But I just want to say like, see, I think this is super important that you're, you can share with your audience, your struggle. this is super important that you're, you can share with your audience, your struggle. And to say, here, I am not really kind of figuring out how to be at peace in a relationship until my late thirties. I don't have it all figured out. I struggle. I think that's, I think that's so

great that you're, that you're willing to share that. I share, I share out of here all the time about all my struggles. I kind of am like the guinea pig of breakdowns, you know, here's how I'm suffering and struggling and what I'm, you know, working out with my health, relationships, money, spirituality. So you talk about the inner child work. Did you do some therapeutic? You know, not from a narcissistic point of view of like,-year-old self as a 38-year-old adult with the wisdom and experience that I have now. Those experiences reunited me with a broken memory, a memory of mine that was broken, bruised, and hurt psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. And this allowed me to create harmony and congruency with the parts of myself that I was most ashamed of. This was also the time when I was sexually abused by a man that

I didn't know, five years old. My second memory is of being sexually abused in a bathroom by a man that I didn't know. And I never grieved that. Like you said, going back to grieving, I never even acknowledged it for 25 years. It wasn't until 10 years ago when I started to open up and talk about that and process it with support. That released a pressure valve within me that had been building up for 25 years, which drove me to be, to excel in athletics and business and getting results. I was like, I'm going to prove them wrong. No one's going to hurt me ever again. But by not acknowledging or grieving the pain and the sadness of the five year old, the nine year old, the 13 year oldold the 27-year-old you know and all these different breakdowns i had and always going to the next point without grieving a loss it caused um many breakdowns in my life physically relationally financially when on the outside things look good

but on the inside it was a one two or three wow that's powerful and so 10 years ago right when i started this show was a part of that journey of healing and finding people that could share their stories so i could try to learn from them and apply some of these lessons but two years ago specifically is when i went even deeper um because i was just i was really struggling in a previous relationship. And so I did about six months of intensive weekly therapy of healing the inner child within myself. That's great. And then doing it from the different parts of my childhood from 12 to 18 and 27,

kind of marrying all those memories, creating new meaning from them into where I'm at now. That's what allowed me. There was a moment after about, I don't know, six or seven months of this therapy practice I was doing. What was it called? It was just working with a coach. Okay. And a therapist, yeah. But it was just very intense.

I was doing like seven, eight hour sessions, you know, on Saturdays. I was just like, I need to figure this out. I'll do whatever it takes. I'm sick of pain. I'm sick of the suffering. Tell me what to practice. Try, do all of, whatever you want to do, I'll do it. Okay, let me, let me, let me tell you.

Yeah, yeah. Can I tell you a story along those same lines? People are watching and probably like, when did Lewis turn into Oprah? So when I was struggling a lot, there's a while back, I went to this therapy retreat center called PCS in Scottsdale. And I did a couple different weeks there and different kinds of sessions and different kinds of work.

One of the things they have you do there, not for everyone, but they do inner child work. It's therapy 12 hours a day. You stay off-site, but you're in, and it's very intense. Wow. They have you on the first day, go to the mall to the Build-A-Bear workshop, and you build your inner child. Shut up.

So I went and I built my inner child- That's amazing. As a bear. I love this. And you name it. That's beautiful. And you have conversations, and you carry it with you the entire week that is a beautiful exercise the entire week so it's like kind of embarrassing like because i was like walking around yeah i know here's the thing a lot of people that are watching

or listening they've heard me talk about this stuff for a while but if there's i'm always trying to be a trojan horse you know you look at me i'm this big like you know jock looking guy six four you know former athlete all these different things. And I try to draw. Doofus looking, look like an IQ of 13, like farm hand kind of. My IQ was pretty low. My EQ is high, but IQ is very low. I'm kidding.

I'm kidding. But the goal was to, the goal has always been to draw people in that want success, that want greatness, that want, you that want money, all these different things and talk about these things, but also talk about the healing modalities that allow you to feel peaceful and enough when you have the championship, when you have the money, when you have the role at the office. Because I was great at sports and accomplished a lot, but I'd never felt I loved myself or that I was lovable, kind of like what you talked about. Then I transitioned into making money and building

a business and I built a multimillion dollar company and all these different things, but I still didn't feel lovable. So I was like, well, how do I get to this place where I can actually accept and love me? And so this process, which sounds similar, but I love the idea of having a physical representation of your inner child. That is a beautiful experience. And I'm assuming you had conversations and did exercises and did some weird things that left... If people were watching, they'd be like, -"Okay, you're a crazy man." -"And if someone was doing it

and left their inner child, like, on the couch, or even went or even went to go get a cup of coffee and left it, the therapist would be like, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to leave your child there? And it was this training of like, wow, I in heart and when I was a child, I was so vulnerable and I suffered so much trauma and pain. But guess what? I get to re-parent myself. Man, this is beautiful. I get to hold my own hand. Oh my God.

And I get to see baby Rain, baby Lewis, and give him the love that he didn't get when his mom took off when he's a year and a half old. And my dysfunctional dad was stuck with this beard big weird looking toddler you know and i i get to be part of that process and uh it was it was really powerful this is a lot of a lot of really intense stuff here's the thing when i was 21 if i would have watched this conversation or heard this i'd have been like what a bunch of you know a bunch of wusses suck it up don't be such a baby right i said like whatever because i was just in more of an ego mindset. And I'd have been like, just tell me how to make money.

Just tell me to be happy. Just tell me to like, just I want to be successful. Yeah. Just teach me that. Like touch with us. What are those steps? What are those skills?

And I hope people watching or listening, you know, specifically men, if you're watching or listening, People watching and listening, you know, specifically men, if you're watching or listening, that you can just listen and hear this perspective. You don't have to listen to me. Listen to you and hear this perspective of, I truly believe that the highest form of currency right now is peace. Is it, you know, because you said you can have lots of money and still be miserable and unhappy. The highest form of currency I think is peace. Peace with your relationships, peace with your career choices or the business you have, peace with your health, and peace with yourself. And

when we don't have that, it just becomes harder. And so for me, it's figuring out how to stay in congruency and alignment with self and be in a peaceful state. It doesn't mean we're not going to experience stress and challenge and overwhelm and let down and all these things, but doing the best to stay in peace will allow us to feel better, make the people around us feel better and make better decisions in our lives. So I hope people are listening. I hope the women listening share this with their, their male friends and, and know it from two different individuals of different backgrounds, you as the career and, you know, and acting and all these different things that you've done in media, me from sports and business that it, it matters to make money, but if you're miserable and you're hurting

yourself in that process, then it's just amplifying the pain that you already have. And so this is the work in my opinion, you don't have to go to build a bear and make an inner child, you know, physical representation and hold the bear around all day. But I feel like do something that works for you. Yeah. do something that works for you. Yeah. Do something that works for you. And for me, doing intensive therapy weekly for months supported me. For you, this experience, this two-week experience

worked for you. And it's an ongoing journey of healing from my experience. It doesn't just happen overnight and you're healed. For me, it's an ongoing practice. Yeah, yeah. So. Yeah, that's beautifully, beautifully said, really. And so important. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. That's beautifully, beautifully said really. And so important.

And I love that currency of peace. Like if you can gain a peace in your inner garden, I like to use that metaphor, uh, and, and wellbeing and feel like I am enough. Um, you know, I've shared this before. I actually, our mutual friend, Justin Baldoni, I talked to him about this, that, uh, when I was first starting the list is, -"I am enough." -"Wow." And I picked it up and I was like, -"I am enough." -"Nope. Not doing that." It was so hard for me to look at

or to think about saying that. And he's like, well, that's the one that you have to say. So I had to hang in on the mirror. Every morning, I had to get up and brush my teeth and look in the mirror and go, I am enough. And it's... Do you remember Stuart Smalley, that Saturday Night Live character,

it's like, I'm good enough, gosh darn it. And I forget the... Al Franken played this character, Stuart Smalley. Insert clip. Right, right. Uh, but, uh... It's corny, it's schmaltzy, but it really helped me, but it really helped me.

But it also helped me to see like, wow, I really don't believe that I am enough. That's the interesting thing. How do you, because I think when we say a false affirmation that we haven't actually believed yet, sometimes it's like, okay, we're lying to ourselves when you don't believe it and yet you're looking at it and you're saying it over and over again. When you don't believe it, and yet you're looking at it and you're saying it over and over again. So I love that practice, but it's like our emotional state has to catch up to it and actually learn how to process, grieve, heal, and actually believe it. So how did you build yourself in overcoming the insecurities or the self-doubt in order to actually believe that you were enough?

Not just say the affirmation every day. Well, that's a really good point and i hadn't thought about that but i i agree with you i think it can be dangerous to kind of say a bunch of affirmations that you don't really believe like you're going to manifest them but you don't have to believe it that organic authentic kind of kernel of belief inside your your gut but i think that what it did for me is it kind of, it's kind of like in the show Kung Fu, which I referenced in the book, Soul Boom, it's one of my favorite television shows of all time. He's like, when you can snatch the pebble from my hand, then you will be ready to go. And that's a runner through the show. And finally, Kwai Chang Kane is able to snatch the pebble from the hand and he leaves the Shaolin Monastery and goes to the old west and fights a bunch of racist cowboys. Anyways, another topic. But

it's like when you can snatch the pebble from my hand of really believing I am enough, then you're ready. Then you're really ready. So for me, I would say it and I was not getting the pebble. I, and I recognized, oh, I don't believe that I'm enough. I really don't. And I, I've got work to do. So it was helpful for me to kind of go like, it was, oh my God. I mean, it was a good, it was a good, you know, 10 years of me saying I am enough when I didn't believe it until it started through the work that I was doing to kind of believe it. And the last, like, 8, 9, 10 years, I really have come to believe that I am enough. Well, I mean, there's some beauty in this for people watching and listening, that I think there's a lot of people that

don't believe they're enough, which for me, my mission is to give people the tools, the inspiration, the expertise, the, the knowledge, the science, the research from others on how they can start to believe in themselves more. I believe self-doubt is the killer of dreams. I think it holds us back from going after what we want. You know, when we doubt ourselves, we lack the courage, or even worse, when we accomplish the thing and we don't feel enough,

it's like, what will make me feel enough? You know, I was accomplishing in sports, you were accomplishing in acting, and you still weren't feeling enough with, like, the height of your career with that show, right? It was like, okay, why do I still not feel enough? And I believe when we can overcome that insecurity and doubt, that's when we can start to really step into a beautiful way of being. And it's been a process and a journey for me.

I'm curious, what do you think it was that allowed you to start to believe that you were enough after all those years of kind of saying it and practicing it and the modalities and the training? Was there one thing that were you like, okay, now I'm starting to feel it? What was that letting go or skill that you learned that supported it? That's a great question. And I wish I had kind of like some nugget, but, but it just, it just was, it was a shift, you know, it was a lot of work. It was like, you know, it's like you put in the work, you can, you know, use athletics as, as a metaphor, like you practice, you know, you just, you practice and you work at it and you fail and you struggle and you know, there's ups and downs and, you know, it was finding a really good therapist and doing some retreats and doing some reading and working with my wife a lot. I learned a ton from my wife.

She's much better at this stuff than I am. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure

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