The School of Greatness - 3 Hacks To Manifest Success, Peace & Abundance In Your Life [MASTERCLASS] EP 1437

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today!Today’s Masterclass revolves around the topic of manifestation and how we can use it on a daily basis to reach new levels of peace and abundance. Stay tuned for three of our favorite guests discussing how they’ve manifested success in their own lives.Sadhguru, a Yogi, mystic, and visionary, explains why it's okay to feel empty-minded and how to take the power back over your emotions.Bob Proctor, the late best-selling author & lecturer, teaches the path to turning self-doubt into confidence and how to reprogram our minds for success.Dr. Tara Swart Bieber, Ph.D neuroscientist and former MD examines the many intricacies of the human brain, and how to hack our brains for abundance.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1437In this episode you will learn,How to define “The Mind”. If education and wealth equates to happiness. Why do we obsess about comparing ourselves to our neighbors? What we should really be worrying about in times of crisis. What’s happening to our brain on a biological level when we learn something new. 

This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they have become. These particularly western societies have become such slaves of their intellect because of that. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, 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've 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. Are we stressing our minds? No, there is a mind across this body. What is it that you call as a mind? A certain combination of memory and intelligence is mind, isn't it?

It's our whole body's mind. Yes. In yoga, we see physical body, mental body, energetic body, etheric body, bliss body, like this, everything is body. Because it is right across, it is not in any one place. Only intellectual activity is here, okay? Right now, because modern societies, particularly western societies, have become such slaves of their intellect, because of that, they think everything is here. Intellect works only with the data that you have gathered. You cannot function beyond your data. That means you will remain so small.

Because even if you have read the libraries on this planet, what you know in terms of data is minuscule compared to what this cosmos is. With that minuscule, you think you're very intelligent because you're analyzing and processing. Anyway, all these people who think they're intellectually very smart are going to feel dumb, stupid in the next five years because your phone will be far more smarter than you. Already people are calling it a smart phone. See why would you call somebody or something smart?

Only because it's smarter than you, right? Right, yeah. Yeah. Otherwise you wouldn't, right? So right now too much dependence on intellect because our education systems are crafted like this, not exploding other dimensions of intelligence at all. See intellect, if I ask you this simple question, would you like your intellect to be sharp

or blunt? Choose quickly, I'm going to bless you. Sharp? Yes. Sharp. So essentially, intellect is like a knife. If you want to dissect something, it's very good. Yeah.

So, now the only instrument that you have is a knife in your hand. Hmm. You want to stitch your clothes. If you stitch your clothes with the knife, what'll happen? You'll be in tatters. Right. This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they become. With all this education, tell me, uneducated people are more unhappy or educated people

are more unhappy in the world? It depends what type of education. No, generally illiterate people in the rest of the world, tribes and this and that, even in India, many many many people. Whenever I visit, I go to Guatemala almost every year and I visit small villages and the kids seem so happy. Because they didn't go to school like me. They don't have much but they have family, they have community. What do you mean they don't have much? I mean they don't have much in terms of the material world. They are not environmentally disastrous, that's what you're saying. Right, exactly, yeah. They don't have a lot in the material side of things,

but they have a lot in their hearts, richness, connection, community, love, and they seem very happy. Uneducated people or illiterate people are happier than the educated people. With education, your life should have become better, isn't it? Hmm-hmm. Unfortunately, they're becoming unhappy simply because they only have sharpened their knife. Hmm. And a sharp knife in your hand and you're unconscious, you're cutting yourself all the time.

All the time cutting yourself. You don't need any outside help. You can stab yourself. Yes. So people come to me and say, Sadhguru, my boss, he's horrible. My mother-in-law, she's not even human. My wife, she's such a pain. My husband like this. I say, you come here to the yoga center. I'll make sure your boss, mother-in-law, wife, husband, nobody enters this place, just you.

I'll give you a nice place to live, good food to eat, nothing to do, just be happy, that's all. You must be just joyful. I'll make random checks on you. If I find you unhappy or miserable, then I won't feed you because I don't believe in feeding misery. If you remain joyful, I will feed you for the rest of your life and take care of you like you're my prized guest. But if you show misery, we won't feed you. Well, you leave them in one room for twenty-four hours,

you will see in how many ways they'll twist themselves out, it's unbelievable. Because when you're alone, if you're miserable, obviously you're in bad company. Simple. Right. I'm with you, I'm miserable. I think it's because of this guy I'm miserable, this guy I'm miserable. I'm sitting here alone and miserable. Now who? Right.

Who, who is causing misery? How do we get out of that though? No, essentially one must understand human experience is caused from within, not from outside. What we do, arrangements we do outside in the form of home, family, automobile, this, that, these are arrangements to facilitate our activity. They are not going to make you happy or unhappy, but right, the car sellers are telling you, only this is joy, this car… I'm sorry, I'm not against any brand. I like the brand. They say, this car is joy. Another, somebody else says, this car is love. Oh, all the best.

This is power. This is, yeah. Power is okay, car has power. But where is love exuding from the engine or joy exuding from the engine? All right, power all right. But right now, if you… you know, this is something I've been noticing, it's only in recent times, probably last ten, fifteen years. If you look at any car adverti… I look at every advertisement, whether they're selling an automobile or a machine or a crane or an earth mover, because I'm interested in anything that works,

not that I'm going to buy them. So when I look at it, car ads, nobody's telling you what's the engine, what's the transmission, what's the power, what's the torque, nothing. They're talking about the leather, they're talking about the wood paneling, they're talking about the stereo. They're talking about the wood paneling, they're talking about the stereo. Are you buy… you buying a sitting room? You want to buy a drawing room or do you want a car? If I want a car, I would look at the engine, how it is made, what does it do? No, nothing. Only… Why is that?

Because they're buying a car for neighbors and we. They're not buying a car because they love to drive a good machine. Yeah. It's always about being better than somebody else. Why do we obsess over that in general? And is that mostly in America or do you see that all the time? No, no, it's everywhere. America kind of setting the, you know, path breaking. The standard. We're the best at trying to be the best. So this is unfortunate cultivation that is happening from kindergarten. If you're going to school, what do

your parents will say? You must be number one. If you are number one, what about all the other 30-40 kids who are there? They must be below you. They're losers. They're losers. So your joy is only in other people failing. When your joy is about other people's misery, that's not joy, that is sickness. Right now, whole world is invested in this. It's not just America. America kind of displays it like that. Not that it's not there everywhere else in the world. Everywhere it's there. But here it's being shamelessly displayed. They are little shy everywhere, rest of the world. But still they got it.

Yeah. What would the world look like if we chose to lift everyone up and celebrate other people succeeding or being happy or whatever it looks like for them to succeed, what would the world look like? See, I see in America, everybody keeps talking about family, family, family. But you've forgotten just maybe a century ago. Yeah. Maybe a century ago or even 70 years ago or 50 years ago. If you said family, it meant crime. Why?

Because the families were running the crime. Oh, wow. The Cosa Nostra. The family crime. Gotcha. They always refer to crime as family. Because family is a crime. Really? Let me come to that.

I know this will get me into trouble. Let me come to that. See, there is only one crime and there's only one evil in the world that is limited identity how much crime you will commit simply depends on how empowered you are say one more time how much crime you commit simply depends on how empowered you are how empowered you are yeah so you want to be if you are highly empowered and your identity is very limited, you will do terrible things. So the most important thing is to enhance or to expand one's identity.

How do we do that? See, for example, traditionally in the yogic culture in India, before we start education for a child, the first and foremost thing is that he must take a cosmic identity. A cosmic identity. Yes, he has to take that. What does that look like? So, if I'm a child and you're teaching me this. Yes. So, the thing is, one thing is there is a mantra which says that. That he has to say it again and again. He has to look at the sky and say it, he look at the earth and say it, look at the air and say it, look at the fire and say it, all the elements of water and say it, because these are all the composition of the cosmos. You look at empty space and say it, you look at water and say it, you look at fire and say it, you look at the earth and say it, so that you understand your identity is limitless.

Why this is being done is… Oh, wow! Why this is being done is education is seen as an empowerment. You should not empower a person who has a limited identity because he will cause havoc. I'll take the worst example which will get me into trouble. Sure. See, everybody talks about… you're not even supposed to mention this name, Adolf Hitler. Uh-huh.

Well, many people have been there who caused enormous pain to other human beings. But I don't think anybody managed to organize it, mechanize it and really deliver it like a factory of misery, like this man did, all right? It's a factory. Literally a factory of misery, manufacturing misery, properly organized. But do you think there aren't thousands or hundreds and thousands of people with the same mindset in the world? Absolutely. They are. Only thing is they're not empowered like him.

Competence is the only thing that's lacking. Tyranny is there in people's mind. They're as much tyrants as Adolf Hitler. You may find them in a school teacher, you may find them in your parents, you may find them all around you in your neighborhood, only fortunately they're not as potent as that man. That man is super competent, That is what the problem. So right now human competence becomes a terrible problem simply because you have a limited identity.

So you invest your identity in a family, you invest your identity in a community, race, religion, nationality… Your relationships, your… Tell me, in the name of nations, in the name of race me in the name of nations in the name of race in the name of religions in the name of communities how much terrible how many terrible things have we done in this world it's still happening today no the most terrible leave what's happening today just look back in the last hundred years all for someone's identity, pride, country, city, state, religion, all these things. Just take 20th century.

One century past, 21st century is just progressing now. 20th century, take it. In the name of race, what all have we done to each other? In the name of religion, what all have we done to each other? In the name of nationality, what all have we done to each other? Just look back and see. We have literally killed half the world's population in 20th century. Because of identity.

Yes. Of a philosophy, of an ideology, people have killed, all right? Right. So, limited identity and empowerment is a disaster. But we are continuously cultivating this all the time. So, I said family is crime because family is the first identity that you take. After that comes community, after that comes maybe race or religion or nationality. Right now, nationality is reasonably the largest identity you're taking. Within this nation, it looks nice that you're committed as an American to the well-being of America.

But just see who is fighting who in this world. A good Indian is fighting a good Pakistan. A good Hindu is fighting a good Muslim. A good American fighting just about anybody. Because you never fought a war here, you go out and fight all over the world, all right? Well, you will find reasons as to why you fought that war and the heroic nature of it. I know people who lost their lives believing that they're doing the best thing in their life, yes. But I want you to know that man that you think is horrible, that terrorist, that miscreant, that militant or whatever you want to call him,

that guy also like a suicide bomber. See, anybody for every human being or even for an ant, its life is precious. You try to catch him, see, he'll do everything possible to save his life. So somebody to throw away their life like this, obviously what they believe in means much more than their life. Crazy. Right? It's not crazy. See, if they do it your way, it's heroic. If they do it their way, it's crazy. I'm not trying to support terrorism or something, I'm just telling you it's limited identity. Genocides have been committed because of limited identity. Nations have been razed down because of limited identity. Genocides have been committed because of limited identity. Nations have been raised down because of limited identity. Evil things we have done to each other

on individual level, simply because of limited identity. So this is what yoga means. Yoga means union. That means you consciously obliterated the boundaries of your individual nature and your experience of life expanded. Once you sit here and you experience everything around you as a part of yourself, after that you do not need any morality, you do not need any commandments, thou shall not cut that tree, thou shall not kill this man, thou shall not rob this. This is meaningless to you when you have experienced something as a part of yourself. meaningless to you when you have experienced something as a part of yourself. So the entire system of yoga, when I say yoga, I mean yoga, all right?

Not the yoga that's happening in Los Angeles studios. I have nothing against them, but I'm saying we've reduced it to something just one aspect. To build an identity around. Yes. Twisting and turning your body, it's good for you. You'll become flexible and maybe healthy, it's good for you. You'll become flexible and maybe healthy. That's good for you. But I want you to understand. Would you not wish that Adolf Hitler was a sick man instead of a healthy man?

I would not wish that, yeah. I wish he was a healthy man. Huh? I would wish he was a healthy man. He was healthy. That's the problem I'm saying. You wish he was a sick man? Yeah. Wouldn't you be happy if he got cancer at 25 and he wouldn't kill all these people, wouldn't set up this factory? Yeah, I wish they wouldn't have died. So I am saying health becomes a curse. Competence becomes a curse. Individual intelligence becomes a curse. Why? Because you have limited identity. It's in that context I said family is crime. Family is a wonderful place

where people are supporting each other. Although you cannot change conditions or circumstance, you don't have to let them control you. We can't control what's going on outside, but we can control what's going on inside, you know? And unfortunately, I don't think many of us have been raised to really understand that. Yeah. And it's a lack of understanding that's causing all our problems, you know? But how, I mean, how can you say that to someone who's like, well,

I don't feel like I have control on the inside when it seems like everything has power over me. What's something that could start to shift? You see, the truth is for that person, that would be true, that they're being controlled by outside. Look at it this way. We are the only creature on the planet that's totally disoriented in our environment. All the little squirrels, the birds, all the animals are completely at home in their environment. They blend in. You and I are totally disoriented in our environment. We've been given the mental faculties to create our own environment. However, we go right through school and we've never learned that. We have higher faculties and the average person has no knowledge of how to operate with

them, how to develop them. We have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. Now, those mental faculties, they're not just words, they're actually mental faculties that we can use to take control over our world and to create the environment that we want. But unfortunately, we grow up, we don't know that. We've been raised to live through by what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, our physical senses. And we've been raised to be controlled by what's going on outside. As little kids, will you listen to what I'm telling you?

Will you look at this? And so it's all outside. We get our report card and that tells us what kind of student we are. But it really tells us where our mind was at for a few minutes three weeks ago. Got nothing to do with who we are. So I think we're raised

in ignorance, actually. There's a very small percentage of the population that have a reasonably clear understanding of who they are and what they're capable of doing, but the ones that do are in the minority. Our whole company has been dedicated to teaching that to people for the last 50-some years. Powerful. You talked about the five faculty, the five mental faculties, and I even touched on this briefly in our previous interview. But I'm curious. I have a new question for you.

Which of the faculties typically is the hardest to I guess master or you know become efficient in to use to your advantage in a positive way and which is the one that you feel like hurts us the most when we don't well I think reason is probably it's the one that's spoken about by almost all the great leaders. Yeah. They've all been complete and unanimous agreement that we become what we think about. It's our reasoning factor that enables us to think. Ford says thinking's the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few people

engage in it. Dr. Ken McFarland, who's gone for a long time now, but he was a great educator down in Kentucky. He one time said 2% of the people think, 3% think they think, and 95% would actually rather die than think. Now, you know, that sounds cute, but it's true. If you stop and listen to what most people are saying, it's going to be fairly obvious they're not thinking. If you stand back and watch what most people are doing, it's fairly obvious they're not thinking.

Or they would never say or do what they're doing. Most people today have their television on the news and they're just soaking up all the stuff that's going on. That's dominating the media right now. So they've become a play thing for what's going on outside. And that's why they're living in such fear. By consuming the media of whether it's true or accurate or not true, you're being manipulated. It's not a matter of whether it's true or not. Is this how you want to spend your life?

Just listening to that? That doesn't mean you should deny it. It doesn't mean that you should say, well, that's all false. I don't know whether it's true or false. It's just bad news. I don't want to be involved in it. Am I aware that it's there? Well, you'd almost have to be dead not to be aware that it's there. But that doesn't mean you have to spend your time thinking on that. I would much rather activate some of my creative faculties and do something that's constructive. In a time under crisis and worry and fear for a lot of people, what should we be thinking about? How should we be using our imagination in different ways as opposed to fixating on the bad

news? Well, I think a good idea right now would be spend some time thinking about how are we going to adapt when this is gone. Yeah. Because we're going to live in a different world. We're not going to be in the same world when this is all blown over than we're in right now. It's going to be quite different. Yeah. People are not going to be rushing out to big events where there's a lot of people. They're not going to be rushing to restaurants. I think they're going to be very careful about

what they do, where they think, and where they're going. I was listening to Sinek and he said, if you're a public speaker, don't look for a stage for a little while because you're not going to have one. Yeah. Now, this also presents great opportunities. It's for us, for my company, we're going online, you know, full speed ahead. Now, fortunately, we built the studio four or five years ago. So you're prepared. We're quick. We're equipped and we're ready. Yeah.

We can, um, we can broadcast. We were, we had a training class going in here, um, just last week with about 300 of our consultants from all over the world. We had a three day training program them, and it was very effective. Online. You didn't have to come together. Yeah, yeah. We did it from right here.

Yeah. I mean, you're known for doing these powerful transformational workshops in person. So for someone, I mean, it's very inspiring for me, for someone at your age where it would be the excuse of most people your age to say, well, I don't understand this technology thing, and I've been doing this way of business for so long. It's always worked this way, and I'm not going to try to reinvent

or evolve and pivot and grow in this way. So it's really inspiring to see someone your age with your level of experience and say, you know what, I'm embracing it. Maybe I don't like it. Maybe you do like it, but you're embracing it and making the most of it as opposed to resisting. Because what happens when we start to resist in our life? What truly happens? Well, when we resist it, we create it in our mind. That's all we think about. You see, I guess my age really has nothing to do with it, but I formed that attitude a long time ago. I didn't like the

idea that when you've lived for so long, you've got to cut out, you've got to stop. I thought, I don't like that idea at all. First of all, I believe we're here to do God's work. God's work is creation, expansion, fuller expression, greater goodness. And if we're going to do that, we're going to be working at it all the time we're here on this planet. We never stop. So age should have no bearing on it. I had a couple of people ask me when we started to build this place, we put a couple of million dollars into this and somebody said, how old are you? And I think I was probably 83 when they started to break ground. They said, you're 83 and you're gonna spend $2 million building a studio? I said, yeah, like, why not? I mean, you see, we let things that really have no concern,

we let them bother us, we let them control us. Age is a dumb thing to let control you. It's our thinking that controls everything. That's the one point every great leader of the read on. We become what we think about. Well, what's a person thinking? I'm thinking if I get old, I got to stop. Well, then you'll stop.

Or I'm thinking, well, if I've been here a long time, I've got a lot of experience. I want to utilize that experience to keep me going as long as I am here. I mean, anybody had their head screwed on right a few years ago would know that this thing is going to take over. Yeah. And if we don't learn how to use it, we're toast. So, you know, I was doing seminars on my iPad because I can run it right on to monitor an outstripper of the universe.

Yeah. What should we be thinking about the most right now, in your mind? I think we should be thinking about our future. I think we should be thinking about the greatness, like it's the school of greatness. I think we ought to be thinking about the greatness that we've got locked up within us

and bring it to the surface. Everyone has deep reservoirs of talent and ability within them. And they can bring it to the surface. Everyone has deep reservoirs of talent and ability within them and they can bring it to the surface to accomplish anything they want. Now to sit in fear and wonder what's gonna happen, that is a dumb waste of your talent and your time. And unfortunately, that's what most of the media is promoting

right now. To believe in fear is to believe in something you can't see. To believe in faith is to believe in something you can't see. Well, if you have a choice, I think I'd choose faith over fear. Absolutely. I think I believe where I can really see something happen. I believe we're going to have a phenomenal year in our company. In fact, our business partner, Sandy Gallagher, and a very bright lady, was a securities attorney prior to joining us, she ran a program this morning for our entire company. We have about

70 people in the company. She was teaching masterminding to them all and saying how this is important that every one of us get involved in this, that we learn the basics of masterminding that Napoleon Hill brought to the world, let's say, way back in the 30s. Now, I think that's what we should be teaching people. Sandy was on the right track there. So I think we ought to be thinking about what we're going to build. How big are we going to do it?

Where are we going to do it? When are we going to start? Our goals have not changed. They're very big. They're very ambitious. And we're not letting this virus slow us down one bit. As a matter of fact, we're trying to figure out how can we use this to speed it up? Since it's here and you can't get rid of it, use it to your advantage. There is a way we can use it to our advantage. People are more dependent we can use it to our advantage. People are more dependent upon the phone.

I've got a computer here. They're dependent on their phone, their computer, more than they've ever been. We can reach them anywhere in the world through those meetings. Yeah, use them to your advantage. You talked about fear for a second. I'm curious, when we live in a state of fear, what does that do to us? And when we, the second part to this, when we feel that fear and we become aware of it, what should we be thinking or doing or acting on in order to shift into a more positive state? You know, that is one of a good question.

You know, that is one of the good questions. And it's a question most people are not able to answer. First of all, the cause of fear is ignorance. That is the cause of fear. And so if you follow the ignorance, it doesn't start out as fear. The ignorance starts out in a conscious level as doubt and worry. That's on a conscious level. We're doubting or we're worrying.

Then we take whatever image comes into our consciousness of the doubt and the worry, and we turn it over to our emotional mind. That's what causes the fear. Well, that fear then has to be expressed through the body, through the only instrument it can be expressed through, our physical body. It sets up a vibration known as anxiety. Anxiety is not expressed, anxiety becomes suppressed. We suppress it.

And the suppression then turns to depression, which turns to disease, which turns to decay. You see, you're talking about a track a person gets on, it's a very negative track. It's ignorance, don't worry, fear, anxiety, suppression, depression, disease, disintegration. Now the polar opposite of all that, the opposite of ignorance is knowledge. There's only one way to get to knowledge, and that is to study. Now unfortunately, school didn't do the job that it was designed to do for most of us. School should teach us to love to study. Not to dread studying and homework and tests. They should teach us to love it because study leads to the opposite of don't

worry, which is understanding. See, it's study that leads to understanding. We understand how to handle the fear. It's understanding that enables us to cause us to understand where the fear starts. The understanding, then we want to say, what do we understand? We want to understand this whole universe operates by law. One of the laws is the law of opposite. The opposite of don't worry is understanding. Now, if the don't worry leads to fear, what's understanding leads to? Understanding leads to faith. The faith leads to expression, well-being, and expression. It's not depression. It's not

suppression. It's not anxiety. The faith leads to well-being. The well-being then is expression, acceleration, because we're at ease. There's not disease. So you're dealing with polar opposites. There's two different sides to things. And when we understand that, our world starts to change. It's by understanding that that we learn how to deal with these pandemics when they hit. And they will hit. There will be others.

There always has been, all down through history. If you look back, there's been things like this happen in the past. And unfortunately, the masses are sort of paralyzed by it. And as a people, we add to that paralysis by feeding them more of what scares them. What we should be doing is helping them understand what the hell is going on. Why do we do that as people? Why do we feed people more of what scares them as opposed to what you and I do, which is- Because that's what people want. That's what they buy. People don't buy good news.

People buy bad news. Why though? Can you imagine if everybody that tunes into CNN tuned into the school of greatness every week? It'd be amazing. Can you imagine if everybody that tunes into Fox tuned into your school of greatness every week? Have you any idea the impact you could have on the world? That's what we're trying to do.

It'd be enormous. It'd be enormous. People want bad news. It resonates with where their mind is programmed. They're programmed with negative information. Their paradigm is all bad news. It's what we're programmed with. Now, is everybody?

No. There's a small select group of people that don't fall into that category, and they are always working diligently trying to lift everybody up. It's not an easy thing to do, but every now and then, well, a Lewis Howes will come along and start a school of greatness and he'll call in different people

that feed into that concept that are in harmony with that, that resonate with that. And so it makes it interesting for the listener. And then that's how it goes. And that's what you're goes yeah and that's what you're doing and that's what I'm doing yeah and it's not a losing battle it just appears like it is I'm winning yeah I think you're winning now we're not we're not drawing the numbers that

CNN's drawing but the ones we draw are saying, absolutely. You got it. You got it. We're making an impact on them for sure. I'm curious. I want to ask you more about self-doubt because this is something I've been fascinated with for the last few years as I spent most of my life dealing with trying to understand how to overcome doubting myself and achieve the sports goals, business goals, relationship goals that I had throughout my younger years. And I became obsessed with learning how to eliminate doubt. And I've been researching this more and just trying to learn from people like yourself on how you have dealt with self-doubt over the years and how you think anyone who feels

like they're doubting themselves, what can they do to go from doubt into confidence? What do you think is the path? Okay, that's a good question. It ties in with the previous question you asked. What do we do with fear? Fear comes from the doubt. So the doubt becomes the cause of the fear, which is the cause of the anxiety, et cetera. The doubt is the cause. Fear is the effect. What is the polar opposite to doubt? Understanding. It's understanding. That's the opposite of doubt.

So what is it we want to understand? Well, if it's me that's entertaining doubt, why am I entertaining doubt? If I were to find out who I really am and I believe everything that's been taught down through the centuries I would have no doubt I would be realizing that I could do anything and the only thing that's causing the doubt is a lack of understanding so I'm going to keep studying I'll'll gain a better understanding. I don't doubt myself. I don't doubt what I can do. Does that mean that I can do everything? No. When doubt

appears, I'll eliminate it and I'll eliminate it fast because I'm going to figure out how to do whatever it is I'm doubting. And you see, if it's me that I'm doubting, it's because I don't understand me well enough. I did a broadcast the other day. It was all over the place. We had thousands into it on self-image. And we've got to get a better image of ourself. We have to get a true image of ourself, understand who we are, how our mind functions.

Realize this physical instrument we're living in is nothing but an instrument. It's the instrument of the mind. And the mind expresses itself with and through this thing we call our body. Well, let's understand that better. This thing, you're going to have power in your one hand to light up that building you're in for probably a month. There's about 11 million kilowatt hours per pound potential energy locked up in the electrons and the atoms of the body. Well, that's the invisible power that's in me. I want to understand that better. That's the physical side. What's the higher side? Higher side is my intellectual side. And that is the intellectual factors that I run through earlier. Perception, will, reason,

imagination, memory, and intuition. There's six of them. And as I understand those more, as I understand my intellectual factors, I'm using the things that I'm utilizing and developing the things that separate me from all the rest of the animal kingdom of which I'm a part. Then I can tap into the spiritual essence of who I am because we're spiritual beings. And that's where the greatness lies. It lies in understanding the spiritual essence of who we are. You see, our spiritual DNA is perfect. It requires no improvement. It requires no modification. Our spiritual essence is perfect. It requires no improvement. It requires no modification. Our spiritual essence is perfect. And that perfection is within us. So the trick is figuring out how to express it in a greater way. Yeah. And not get trapped into a different type of expression through bad news

or friends or parents' beliefs or whatever it is that tries to shut us down. Correct? Exactly. And they will try and shut us down. Correct? Exactly. And they will try and shut us down because we're coming up and we're saying, I'm going to do this. They'll say, you got to be out of your mind. You're going to quit that good job. Are you crazy? We got to be strong enough to say, I'm going to follow my dream.

What is happening when we are in the field in our mind and the grass, we start walking over the grass and then we start putting, you know, then it's muddy. Then you put stones down and then you have a paved road. What is happening to your brain when you start to learn something new that is challenging and you get to a level of mastery or close to mastery on this? What is happening to the brain? What is happening to the brain? What is happening to the body? And everything else. So what's happening to the brain is that you had a pathway that was established

either from childhood or later in life. And the brain is obviously a small percentage of your body weight, like two to 5% for most generally, but it's a very energy hungry organ. So it's using up 20-30% of what you eat. Wow, really? Yeah. And so, you know, I think having been a sportsman, you would think about what should I eat so

I can have big muscles or what should I eat so I have lovely skin or whatever. But actually you should be thinking what should I eat so I can make skin or whatever. But actually you should be thinking, what should I eat so I can make the best decision today? Wow, interesting. So when you're asleep, your brain is using up 20% of the glucose that you have ingested that day. When you are focused on a task, it's using up 25% of your dietary intake.

When you're stressed, it's using up 30%. So in terms of, I sort of like to live in a brain first kind of way because if you're stressed it's using up 30 so you know in terms of you know i sort of like to live in a brain first kind of way because if you're doing that everything else is going to fall into place your cardiovascular system your gut um so you know hydrating foods good fats all that kind of thing is going to feed your brain and so you know what's happening in your brain and body is that you are creating the pathway, that dirt road into the paved road, that should become the default pathway for your brain. So your brain is going to go down the most energy efficient route because that's easiest and what it knows and what it likes and it's using up less glucose. So what you have to do is build the pathway so that it's so strong that it's stronger than the pathway that's been there since childhood. How do you do that?

Okay, you're not going to do that with Spanish because you're never going to be better at Spanish than you are English, right? But in terms of things like emotional regulation, if you were the person, and there's so many people like this who would cry and yell and slam the door and walk out and then come back. You can actually change that. You can become somebody who's got good boundaries, who's got self-worth, who feels that they deserve love. And you do that through neuroplasticity and building the pathway, giving yourself the

examples and acting like that in life until you do believe it. And just going back to the two things I remembered what the other one was, which is what I have found personally is that when you have no choice but to do the thing that you have to do, you do it. So I would say, I would ask you, have you gone to a Spanish speaking country on your own to a village where nobody speaks English? I mean, I've been, I mean, I have been on my own in Mexico recently where my girlfriend speaks Spanish. And so I'm like, I practice with her, but this is the thing. When I go to Mexico with her her she's a crutch for me yeah right cuz I'm like I gotta order this thing and then I'm just like I just

want the chicken and vegetables can you let us and and there was some days where I was alone because she was off working and I was like okay this is an opportunity for me to practice to mess up to be embarrassed you know and be okay with it and just and by doing, I felt like I was getting way better because I was forced to practice and try and ask questions and listen intently and not just speak in English and translate it. Exactly. It's powerful.

I mean, at your age, you will always, the way that your brain will speak Spanish is to translate it from English. So there's three types of being bilingual. that your brain will speak Spanish is to translate it from English so there's three types of being bilingual um and one is you know if you're bilingual from the time that you start speaking and one is if you learn it so for me the Indian language and English and then the second one is a language that you learn as a child but you're not you already speak another language so that's French for me and then my adult languages. And so I learned Afrikaans when I was about 25, which is like Dutch. And then Danish when I was a bit

older. And I was saying to my friend, who's a professor of neuroscience in London, that when I tried to recall a Danish word, and I'm struggling to recall it, I always think of the Afrikaans word, but never the French or the Indian and he said isn't that fascinating that your adult languages are stored in a different part of your brain and you know so for a neuroscientist to understand that my adult languages are stored in a different part of my brain to my childhood languages that that's you know at a certain point with Danish I reached that tipping point where I wasn't tired and hungry from trying to do it. And I'm going to admit that I then gave up Danish because I was just too hard.

But I've changed my brain. And that's actually what I wanted. That's why I was doing it. Sure, sure. So, yeah, and with so many things in life, like, you know, when I gave up the regular paycheck of being a doctor in the NHS, a lot of people said to me, you could just go and do a locum for one weekend and you'd be able to pay your rent and your bills. A what for one weekend? A locum means when you just do a temporary job, you just go and sub in for a weekend

or a day or a night. But for me, that would have meant failure because it was going backward. And I had to force myself to make the new business work. You had to burn the boats. Yeah. You had to burn the ship that got you there so you couldn't go back into the old, you know, the land. And that's not for everyone.

I'm not saying that if you want to start up your own business that you shouldn't have another job on the side. But for me, I had to burn my boat. I was watching this TED Talk recently of a guy who was teaching about how to be fluent in a new language as an adult and why it's so challenging and things like that. And he said, listen, the reason why most people fail

is because they keep speaking their native language so frequently. And you take a 50-minute class three times a week, you're not going to become fluent. And he's like, the only way that I was able to do it. And he's like, I tried this for years and all these things. And so I finally went into a program where I think it was three months, something like that, where you get kicked out if you speak any other word other than the language you're trying to learn. And he was,

he's like, if you say a word in English at all, you're gone. So it's like total focus on, okay, I just need to learn how to survive. Yeah. And this is not even allowed.

And if I'm doing this for three, and he was like, I was completely fluent in three months or something quick like this three, maybe six months, but it was like a full immersion program. You can't translate anything. maybe the teacher is able to but you're not allowed to say anything in your language and he was like it's because i was forced like you were saying to go to this other country essentially by myself i had to learn how to survive and it was faster

because i couldn't just go back to the place where I was comfortable. So, I don't know. I haven't had the time to do that yet. But I still need to use my language. But I'm sure it's amazing what the brain can do under these types of conditions, I'm assuming. Yeah. And I think that sort of speaks to what we were saying earlier, which is none of us want to go through hardship. We don't want to see the people that we love and care about go through hardship. But it can be taken as an amazing opportunity.

And even with the hardest thing that I've ever gone through in my life, there has to be an opportunity that comes out of it. Otherwise, it was for nothing. Right. What is the thing you're learning this year? What's the new thing? So, yeah, I've been sort of navigating a personal journey. And I want to do some different things with work. So, you know, I had a break.

work. So, you know, I was a, I had a break and it's so tempting to go back to doing the keynote speeches and taking on the high net worth clients. And, you know, I've been tempted. I have sort of like done a little experiment and gone down the keynote and, you know, sort of met a new coaching client. But I think this, you know, belief that I had for a long time that I'm not creative, it's really important for me now at this stage of my life to live that dream and be the creative person I've always wanted to be. So I've actually co-written a song with my colleagues in a music studio.

Oh, look like it too. I like it too. And the COO of the business said to me, you know, I need you to sign a document because you're a songwriter now. And that was like, I never, ever thought I would hear those words. You know, when you go to medical school when you're 18 and... The arts are not in your cards. Yeah.

And, you know, I get why, and I I'm very very grateful for my education but my parents were immigrants from India to England and they wanted me to get an education and be professional I never had the luxury of being creative or doing sport you know I I was like always in my sports clothes once I was an adult but that wasn't something that was valued by my parents. It wasn't a big thing for me at school, at high school. So yeah, art, creativity, sport. I'm the trustee of a charity for gynecological cancers. That's, you know, again, something that I sort of thought that, you know, you have to be a very privileged person to be able to do that. So, yeah, I think this constant journey of reinvention, of really being like the maximum that I can be.

And in my book, The Source, I talk about the six ways of thinking, which are logical, emotional, intuition, physicality, creativity and motivation. You know, trying to build all of those pathways in my brain and not... And I think it really comes back to like where we started with you saying about the woo-woo, which is that my logical pathway is well built. I don't need to build that pathway anymore. You've got that. 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 out how we can support

and serve you moving forward. And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.