The School of Greatness - 3 Success Habits That Will Guarantee Powerful Results EP 1472

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – Bob Proctor shares stories about science and mindset to speak wisdom into the hearts of millions of people around the world. In this interview, we talk about why faith over fear is one of the main keys to success, the power of setting hard goals that will help you grow, why realistic goals are things you should never set, how we can reprogram our minds instead of allowing our minds to be run by fear, and so much more.Tony Robbins knows all about how to have breakthroughs in the areas of business, life, and love. In this episode, we discuss three habits Tony wishes he knew in his twenties and thirties, why loving yourself is not the secret to success, the key to “stacking the positives” in your life, parenting mistakes we are making in this generation, and so much more.Robin Sharma is a globally-recognized humanitarian who has been helping people realize their native gifts for over 20 years. Widely considered to be among the top 5 leadership experts in the world, Robin’s expertise and work have been embraced by clients ranging from NASA to HP, Starbucks, and even Yale. Robin possesses the unique ability to engage an audience while offering advice and insights that ultimately lead individuals to perform their best work, and organizations to become unbeatable.In this episode you will learn,Why your story about yourself could be what’s holding you back.How to transition from a victim to a hero in your own life.The best habits that most people are unwilling to build.How faith over fear is key to success How intuition informs us every dayFor more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1472For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]Bob Proctor’s full episode – https://link.chtbl.com/1227-podTony Robbins’ full episode – https://link.chtbl.com/1218-podRobin Sharma’s full episode – lewishowes.com/988

Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful, transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jaspreet Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to

dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials. So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there. Get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. You're either going to grow or you're going to die it's create or disintegrate there's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are and so if you have good habits you're going to keep growing 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. When you control from the inside, like we're in control of ourself, we're in control of our world,

so it doesn't matter what happens. You figure out how to get to where you're going. The goals don't change. Sometimes the methods of getting there do. But I have never, I think probably I had great teachers. I had a half a dozen phenomenal mentors. And I think I was raised the right way. You stay in control regardless, you know? Yeah. What would you say are some of the habits that

you have that people wouldn't expect that you would have? Maybe they would expect certain things like waking up early or journaling or, you know, getting eight hours of sleep. But what are some habits that you do differently that maybe are unexpected in the personal growth space? I study every day, every day. I've studied every day now for 60 years. I started to study this book in 1961, and I read it every day, the Same book, Think and Grow Rich.

I have just here behind me, I've got the laws of success, the original ones that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1928. And then he came up with this in 1937. And the man that gave it to me, he said, if you'll study this every day, he said, you're going to have a wonderful life. And he pointed out Napoleon Hill spent his whole life studying the lives of 500 of the world's most successful people. He was mentored by Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. And he said, since he spent his whole life putting this together,

he said, it would be a prudent move on your part if you spent the rest of your life trying to understand and apply what he was teaching. And, you know, that just seemed to make some sense to me. And that's what I started to do. And I've never stopped. If there was only one principle inside of Think and Grow Rich that you could only live by and only talk about and you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else inside the book, what would that one principle be? Persistence. He said there, he said in the book,

he said there may be no heroic connotation to the word, but the quality is to the character of the human, like what carbon is to steel. See, I think the trick, Lewis, is get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. Because you're either going to grow or you're going to die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And some people think they can just hold it where they're at,

but they can't do that. You're either going to go ahead or you're going to go backwards. It's create or disintegrate. And so if you have good habits, you're going to keep growing. Way back, I think around 1938, 1939, Albert E.N. Gray worked for the Prudential, and he wrote The Com Denominator of Success. It's a great article. And he said, the common denominator of success is informing the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do. And he was speaking one time, a young guy said, why do

successful people like doing these things? And he said, they don't. That's why they've turned them into habits. I thought that was beautiful. That's why they've turned them into habits. They don't like doing them. And of course, I have. What do you think? Well, a habit is something we do automatically without any conscious thought. We just it's part of our paradigm. We're programmed. without any conscious thought. We just, it's part of our paradigm. We're programmed.

What do you think are the three most difficult habits to develop that actually will support us for the most growth long-term if we can take these habits on? One that I think the most difficult is repetition of studying the same thing. I have a book here on my desk. It's in a book holder. And when I went to visit Earl Nightingale way back, 1968, no, it was earlier than that. It was around 66. And I saw he had this book stand on his desk, and I asked him what it was earlier than that. It was around 66. And I saw he had this book stand on his desk,

and I asked him what it was. He said it was a book holder. And I said, why do you have it? He says, because I want to read those two pages every day for the next month, maybe two months. I said, really? The same thing? And he said, yeah. He said, then they'll become a part of me. And he said, that's really the secret of success is the repetition of an idea. You see that in sports. You play ball. I mean, it's definitely part of your game. You know, how many plays would you have in your head? You know, how many how many plays would you have in your head? Who? Well, a lot of different plays, but in football, there's really only like nine different routes a receiver can run.

Yeah. That's part of the tree of of running a route. But there's so many different variations within plays that that one receiver could run. And then another person could run in tandem with that. Yeah. So you have to, there's a massive playbook that you go through at the beginning of the season. And you've got to remember a lot of different things, but if you typically know the route you need to run and what other people are doing around you,

then you can, you can figure it out. But it's repetition that enables you to do that, isn't it? Over and over and over and over. You see? Same route over and over. That doesn't just apply to football.

I think that applies to life. And if a person will really understand that, it's through repetition that you program your subjective mind. And it's your subjective mind that controls your behavior. Doesn't make sense to some people, but if they would study it and start to understand it, they would start to do it. What's the most important thing on those two pages that you have open in front of you? Most important thing here. Read it to you.

The lesson to be learned from the practical aviation of the present day is that of triumph of principle over precedent, of working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experiences to the contrary. With such a notable example before us, can we say that it is futile to inquire whether by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are the back of external and visible conditions, and then by bringing these unseen causes into a better order make practical working reality of possibilities which at present seem but

fantastic dreams. They're talking about the Wright brothers. He said there was a secret they got off the ground because nobody knew how to fly, and neither did they until after they got it in the air. But he pointed out that it was principle over precedent. And we let precedent control us too often. What's the difference between principle and precedent? Well, precedent, you're letting something that has happened in the past control you. The principle is that there's always a better way it doesn't matter what you're doing better is a beautiful word

what's something in your life that took a long time where you were holding on to the precedent of something for a while maybe it was months maybe it was years decades that eventually the principle finally started to fly and you had a breakthrough is there an area of your life you can think of oh absolutely absolutely just soon as you said it yeah you see when i started in this when i first got this book in this. When I first got this book, I was such a loser. And I mean, in every way you look at it, I went to high school for two months. And I didn't quit. They kicked me out. They didn't want me there. And I was kind of happy because I didn't like it there anyway. I held dumb jobs. I never had a half-decent job.

The idea that I could even get a good job never entered my mind. I had such low self-esteem. I didn't understand that at the time. I didn't even know what self-esteem was. And letting go of the fact that I didn't have a formal education, that I never had any business experience. The man that gave me the book, he said, none of that matters, Bob. That's the past. He said, let it go.

Well, I had a difficult time letting that go. Because we're programmed that if you don't go to school, you can't get a good job. That if you're going to earn a lot of money, you've got to be really smart. Well, you see, I didn't think I was very smart, and I didn't have any formal education. That's a hard thing to let go of. But through the repetition of studying this over and over and over,

and as he pointed out to me, Edison had grade three. And he pointed out different people that had no formal education. And I finally made a break, left it behind. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but I let it go. What would you say are some deciding factors that can help someone with their self-esteem? Because you and I are very similar. Where my childhood, I didn't have much confidence in myself or esteem because I was in the bottom of my class in school because I was, you know, had tutors

and special needs classes because I just wasn't able to understand it and comprehend that well and felt awkward and goofy in my life. What are some, some things you think people that in their teens or even in their forties and fifties who don't have confidence yet, what are the things we can be doing differently to gain confidence, to build self-esteem? Because I think this is one of the key factors of success is believing in yourself. It doesn't matter if the world believes in you if you don't believe in you. What can we start to do to change that?

Well, I think a person has to start to study themselves. Most people know very little about themselves. They think they're their body. You're not a body. You have a a body and you have a marvelous mind and when i first started to study this i thought you know study in the mind that's for psychiatrists psychologists behavioral scientists and the man that told me he said no it's not he says that's for anybody that's for little kids and so i think as we start to understand something about our mind and something about our higher faculties see we're we're all programmed to live through our senses we go by what we see hear smell taste touch

well i've got a little dog at home that you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. All the animals in the world, they're completely at home in their environment. They blend in. They operate by instinct, which is perfect. We had instinct removed and we had higher faculties put in their place. And if we would study these and gain an understanding, your self-image would automatically start to improve. You have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. Those six faculties will give you the ability to create your own environment. See, we're totally disoriented in our environment,

where all the other little creatures are completely at home in theirs. And we're disoriented in ours because we can create our own. But we don't know that. School doesn't teach us that. School is more interested in the development of your intellect than in the development of your intellect than in the development of awareness. Like, a person doesn't earn $100,000 a year because they want $100,000 a year. They earn $100,000 a year because they're not aware of how to earn $100,000 a month.

Awareness is really the key. And when we become aware of who we are and what we've got working for us, you know, marvelous things start to happen to us. And that's really what happened to me. I never went back to school. I built a very successful company. It operates all over the world. I didn't do it myself. I have a tremendous team of people.

I've got just an absolute genius of a business partner, a woman who's an attorney. I mentioned to you before, you should have her on sometime. You'd be fascinated with her. She's that interesting but there's a group of people we've attracted a phenomenal group of people in our company and we're operating now in 91 countries wow teaching this information you know it's i don't know another company that teaches what we teach I don't know another company that teaches what we teach.

Like I think Tony Robbins has probably done more for our industry than any individual. The Secret has probably done more for it as much as Tony has, the movie. But I don't know anybody else teaching what we're teaching and what we're really doing is teaching people how their mind functions and um how to expand their understanding of how it operates what are the six faculties again you shared this before which i which i love and i think if people really understood this perception help them build their self-image perception the will imagination memory reason and intuition

which one is the hardest for people to i don? I don't think any of them are. They're all equally valuable. You take your imagination. Think of this for a minute, Lewis. Nothing is created or destroyed. Look here. Here's a little cell phone. What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it.

Yeah. Well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a phone. What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it. Well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a phone because we didn't have any money for the first reason. But the second, not everybody could have a phone. We were not aware that there was an infinite number of frequencies. Today, there's, what, a zillion phones, because there's an infinite number of frequencies. This phone is on its own frequency. Yours, it's on its own frequency. If I have your number in here, and I hit send, you and I connect, we're on the same frequency.

It won't matter where you are. We can see each other. We can communicate because we get on the same frequency. Well, the good that we desire is already here. It's on a frequency. The way to build this has always been here. We weren't aware of it, but somebody took their imagination and went off into no place. What they were really doing is going on to a higher frequency. And if you'll stay on that frequency, you'll attract everything that you require. That's why Dr. Warner Von Braun, when President Kennedy asked him what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a man to the moon

and then bring him back safely to Earth, von Braun said the will to do it. The will is the mental faculty that gives you the ability to hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions. See, if you take your imagination do it you have goals take your imagination and then take yourself there see yourself already have completed the goal and then hold that picture with your will when you go there with your imagination there is a place whatever it is you want you go there with your imagination, there is a place. Whatever it is you want, you went there with your imagination,

there is a place. You stay there in your imagination. You will attract everything that's required for the manifestation of that picture. You saw Brady doing it last Sunday. Yeah, he's a machine. Yeah. Absolutely phenomenal. So holding the imagination, the picture that you want in your mind,

and then attracting it on the steps to get there. Yeah. You see, we don't work toward the goal. We work from the goal. You get the goal in your mind. Our problem is we measure everything on the physical. And you look at the physical and you say, well, I haven't got it yet. If you think your conscious mind, if you get an image there of your goal, you've already got it intellectually.

If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me. But if you have it, you've already got it intellectually. If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me. But if you have it, you can share it with me. You can share with me the idea that you've got in your mind. So you've already got it there, haven't you? Right. As you get emotionally involved with that idea, you've got it also on an emotional level. You've got it there. You've got it intellectually. You've got it also on an emotional level you've got it there you've got it intellectually you've got it emotionally the only place you haven't got it is physically now there's a period of time must elapse for that idea that you have intellectually and emotionally for that idea to move into physical form we understand how much time pardon how much time does it usually take we don't know we don't know

that's the only thing we don't know is the gestation period for an idea we know what the gestation period is for wheat we know what it is for a carrot we know what it is for a baby moment of conception is about 280 days we didn't always know these things, but we do now. We don't know what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and that's what an idea is. But it grows by exactly the same law. And so if we hold that idea in our mind, it must, by law, manifest in form. It moves into form. Now, that is called the perpetual transmutation of energy.

It's one of the laws of the universe. There is something that you shared just a moment ago that reminded me of an interview I did with Joe Dispenza recently, where he said we're really good at remembering the past and actually building a story in our mind about something traumatic that was actually way worse in our mind than it actually probably was in person. We're really good at remembering these stories, but what we need to do, he said, is to remember the future. And when he said that, it kind of triggered something different. It's like what you just shared. It's like, have an idea of the future of what we want to manifest and hold on to that idea and remember the memories of the future, as opposed to holding onto the memories of the future of what we want to manifest and hold on to that idea and remember the memories

of the future as opposed to holding on to the memories of the past so we can move into that as opposed to be stuck in the past that's totally that's what that is yeah yeah yeah that's that's why is it so hard why is it hard for us to hold on to or maybe not hold on to, but keep in our minds and imagine the idea of a greater future for us as opposed to constantly being stuck in the past. Why is that hard for so many of us? Because we're programmed to go the other way. You know, what language do you speak? I barely speak English.

How about Russian? Привет, как дела? That's all I know. Well, the point is, you were raised with the English language. Yes. You don't know another language. I was raised with the English language. I don't know another language. I was working with people over in Kuala Lumpur a number of years ago, and they had a little boy four years old. That little boy could speak four languages. They thought nothing of that. There's people who speak many more than four languages

because that's the way they're raised. We're the product of our environment from the time we're born. But prior to that, genetically we're programmed. You're genetically programmed at the moment of conception. You got all mom's DNA and all dad's DNA. And God knows how far it goes back on either side. Well, that is programming. That's in our subconscious mind. And that's called a paradigm. That's what it is. It's a program in our subconscious mind.

Now, here's the crazy part. You have programs in your phone or in your computer. The people that write the code for these programs are really smart when it comes to writing code. They really know what the hell they're doing. The people that wrote the code for our bio computer had no idea what the hell they were doing. They don't. They did not. They were writing a code for my subconscious mind and for yours. That's our paradigm. And that probably controls our life to an enormous degree. It did

with me until I was 26. Now, I was fortunate when I met Ray Stanford and he got me into the Think and Grow Rich book, and that led me into God knows what else. I have been working at changing that program since I was 26. I'm 86 right now. So I've been at it for a long time, and I work at it every day. Most people don't even know that they have the problem. So they stay stuck their whole life. Listen, you interview some pretty interesting people. I watched you interview here a billionaire a while ago um which one i forgot i forgot who it was anyway ray dalio charles coke it was a pretty interesting interview anyway but yeah the point is

anybody can become a billionaire if that's what you want to do you say well wouldn't everybody know everybody wouldn't i wouldn't want to do. You say, well, wouldn't everybody? No, everybody wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put all my energy into that. Now, does that mean I don't want money? No, hell, I earn all kinds of money. And I probably want to earn more. But that's not my focus. We are programmed to live a certain way.

And rarely do we change that. Now, I change it, and I teach people to change it. But most people don't. Stop and think of how few people are really well off. Three, four, five percent maximum, if that. And 95% are struggling. And some of these are really bright people. You've got people that have a doctorate degree in commerce and finance, and they're broke. How the hell could that happen? Well, they never learned how to earn money. They learn how to

count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn money. They learned how to count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn it. School doesn't teach us how to earn money. It's absurd when you stop and think about it. Was there ever a moment where you didn't unconditionally love yourself? And if so, when did that shift where you stopped that and you started saying, okay, I appreciate myself because of my contribution and my service and who I am? When was that shift? I don't think it was ever I just didn't love myself.

There are times, obviously, being angry with yourself or frustrated with yourself or thinking, you know, I'm not doing enough. I mean, I can remember my birthdays, to be honest with you, probably up to my 40th birthday, including my 40th birthday. You know, you have a birthday with a zero on it once you're over past 30, you know, 35, sometimes five years on it as well. People look at their life differently culturally. And I used to think it was bullshit. But sure enough, I would do it. And I remember turning 40, and I was really, really unhappy.

I was like, Jesus, I've not done enough. I've not helped enough people. I know tens of millions of people at that point already had done all over the earth in 100 plus countries at that point. But it was still kind of stuck in my head. So I would earn the love by over delivering, change somebody's life. Like, I don't get it because somebody says, oh, I love you, Tony. I mean, I appreciate that.

Oh, you're the greatest. It's got to be my standard. My standard is higher than their standard for me. Right. So when I get up and someone's going to kill themselves and they're suicidal and boom, turn around, they're no longer not going to kill themselves, but they're transformed, their life is there. That's when I go, OK, now we've hit the center of what I'm made for. Now I deserve to feel this euphoric feeling within myself and appreciation. And even then, I still know it's God coming through me.

I don't have the delusion it's just me. But I think sometime after 40, I finally saw the stupidity of it. I accumulated enough that I looked at life with fresh eyes. And I can say by the time I turned 60 a year ago, I noticed it was interesting because my birthday, I didn't have an ounce of it. I was just like, you know, how could I at this stage of my life when I've had the privilege of serving so many humans in so many contexts, you know, from turning around, you know, guys going to kill themselves with PTSD, to helping kids turn around, to getting kids off cocaine or adults, to, you know, helping people build multi-billion dollar businesses from nothing.

And when I've lived this long, I can't go by without hearing half a dozen stories a day or a dozen stories a day from people telling me how something I did changed their life. So it's not that I'm so smart now. It's just I've stacked it. By the way, though, stacking is the way you can do things. Most of us stack the negative. If you are really angry, it's not usually because it's just the moment. It's that it happened again.

You know, it's like if you've ever lost it or overreacted to your kid or to a friend or a business or even within yourself, it's because it happened again. We hit this one, two, three, many point and then our nervous system overreacts. But what I've learned is you can stack the good. And but for example, if you're if you go into a state of really strong anger for more than five minutes, your immune system is suppressed between an hour and a half to two hours. That's a physiological fact. But no one had done the study, I started stacking good, like, okay, let me stack a dozen great memories, feel them, see them, experience them. And I felt this biochemical change that didn't just last a half hour, an hour or 10 minutes. It went on for a day

or two. And so I think I've learned to stack the good. So just having the experience is not enough. You got to stack the good to be able to appreciate it. But I think just come learned to stack the good. So just having the experience is not enough. You've got to stack the good to be able to appreciate it. But I think, just come back to the main point here from my perspective, which could be completely full of shit, it's just my perspective. So I want to point that out. I think the more you find unconditional love for others, the easier it is to find in yourself. And I think the focus is serving and loving. And that's what will get you to the point where you

start doing it but if you want to speed it up stack all the good you've done you'll feel great about yourself I already know all the comments that have come through thousands of comments tell me but what about my family that's toxic what about my partner who's toxic and how do I love someone unconditionally when they don't respect me I I can't trust them. What about situations like that? All those reactions are natural human reactions from ego. Because it's all about you, me, me, me, what I'm not getting, what I'm not doing, and that's why you're in pain. And so I'm not telling you like I haven't done this,

but I've done it too in the past, but it's an old pattern I don't really do anymore. And it used to affect me. Now, not a dominant one, I wouldn't have become who I become. Early in my life, I developed this belief that life is calling not to give me something. Life is calling for me to deliver things, for me to bring something to life. And I felt the joy that came from not getting, but giving. And I got hooked on that core pattern and then the pattern of learning so I'd

have something to give which I know one of the things I respect about you Lewis is that you have that same pattern in you you're you're always trying to learn more because underneath it all you also want to give it you want it you want it for you but you want to share it right and so those patterns help me not be and what they're not giving and all this language language today people don't understand the power of their language. Like, toxic. What the hell are you talking about? You've been reading too much social media and thinking about yourself, or somebody raised you to constantly judge everybody else.

We live in a culture now where people, you know, you're evil or you're like me. That's basically how it is, right? The whole world, everybody else is immoral unless they do what you do, think what you think, experience what you think. I mean, being a liberal, I was a liberal, right? Being a liberal growing up meant I would fight for your ability to say and believe whatever you want different than me. Today, now, everybody wants everybody to think the same thing. Otherwise, they're evil or otherwise they could hurt me. Whatever happens, sticks and stones will break your bones.

Words will never hurt me. We have this whole thing that words are evil. Words are action. It's bulls**t. And all it does is make you incredibly weak as a human being. And you're more than that. We all are more than that. But you know what? Like a kid that's never broken their bones, definitely afraid of breaking the bone. But if you're a kid and you're rough and tumble, you broke multiple bones and they heal, you don't have any fear of it. There's so many kids that have been raised to be safe and secure every moment. Anything that's insecure or unsafe, they don't want to be a part of, including language. And what it does is make you incredibly weak and fearful. And that's why there's so many people that are abundant that are angry all the time,

because they're angry because they're not growing. So don't get me wrong. I know some people are not a good influence. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying you're more than somebody's influence unless you obsess about it every moment and make them wrong so you can make yourself feel superior morally, psychologically, or spiritually. That's bullshit. Stop the pattern. We've all done it. Catch yourself.

Because if you want joy, and freedom and extraordinary life it will not come from blame never there's no pride that comes from blame i don't mean fake pride where you make up to feel good i'm talking about real pride pride is something you earn like people tell me oh i have no self-esteem because my parents used to say this or they'd say that i'd say that's such bullshit i'm not saying it's bullshit they didn't say that i said it's bullshit that's why you're doing self-esteem. Self-esteem does not come from what people say about you. Self-esteem comes from what you experience about yourself. See, someone can tell you your whole life you're a piece of crap and a part of you can go, you're full of it. I'm

going to show you. Lots of people have done that. They never bought it. Or someone tell you you're beautiful your whole life. You go, I'm not really beautiful. So what people tell you doesn't matter at all. It's what you stack. It's what you assemble. It's what you create. It's the habit of what you put in your head. And today I don't blame you because we got a whole culture that's always blaming somebody else for something in their life. But blame is not a strategy for pride. That's why you listen to these blaming people. They're all angry all the time. Listen, if I wanted to blame, I grew up in an environment. I didn't even share it to my mom past that even then I didn't share. I grew up in a pretty rough environment. My mom was a beautiful soul, but when she drank alcohol and she mixed it with prescription drugs, it was a different creature and it was a violent creature. And I have a younger brother, five years younger and a younger sister, seven years younger.

And my mom would get nuts and I didn't want them to get hurt. So I was 5'1 in high school. She grabbed me by the hair and smashed me against the wall till I bled. Now I never shared this and I'm not denigrating her in any way. I only shared it like four or five years after she died

because I was talking to a group of kids in New York City all without fathers, 80% African American, about 20% Hispanic out of their group, roughly. No white kids. And I'm talking about your biography is not your destiny. And it doesn't matter what you've been through. What you decide now is what's going to control your life. What you decide each day going forward is going to decide your life. And I look at them seeing me, I can read their minds. This big, tall, white,

rich guy is going to tell me biography doesn't matter. So I said, you know, let me tell you my story. And I told them the whole story way more than I'm telling you. And everyone was crying their eyes out when they're done. I said, look where I am right now, because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rearview mirror to guide yourself, you're going to crash. So what you've been through is horrific. What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future and you have no one to blame but yourself. And these kids, to their credit, man, they just responded to the challenge because they first cried their eyes out hearing all the stories. My mom would think I was lying and I wasn't lying. She poured

liquid soap down my throat till I threw up and I wasn't lying. So it's not the physical abuse. It's the fact that this is the person you love most that's trying to hurt you that messes with your head. So I could have been messed up for life, but I didn't because something inside me says I'm responsible for this life. And part of that's because I started reading when I was 13, 14 biographies of people, the greatest people in history and reading their lives and finding out, guess what? Their lives were far from perfect. Some of them had worse lives than I had. But when you have no reference and all you do is go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic and I'm

like this and they didn't do that. Then you get to have this life just like those other people why are they online so much because they don't have a life right don't be one of those free yourself from the chains of your past i'm not saying your past doesn't matter but listen my mother i tell people this all the time and it's the truth if my mother had been the mother I wanted her to be, the mother she should have been, I would not be the man I'm proud to be today. Because I had to become a practical psychologist way before any schooling, figure out when she's going to go into mood, how do I change her state, how to protect her from the kids.

I mean, it was thought life and death, and it was to some extent. So I developed skills at such a young age then when i learned things i just added to my skills but i had a core sense of certainty that i could turn anybody around because it started with my mother and thank god for her and she encouraged me in so many ways she did so many great things and she loved me even though it didn't look like it at times. So, but if your parents, if the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been toxic, if they'd encouraged you, you wouldn't have any muscle. And right now you don't have any muscle because you're using that as an excuse, if you're thinking that. And I'm not attacking you, brothers and sisters. I'm calling to you because I know you're more. Otherwise, I'd just keep my mouth shut.

We're just, you've been hypnotized by a culture of weakness. Now, having said that, I'll say one last thing. I know you haven't got other questions, but so important what you've asked. Yes, there are people that you don't want to hang out with that will not serve you, but then move on. Don't sit there and talk about it constantly. Don't waste your time. And you say, but what if it's family, Tony? Mine was family too. And you learn to grow. You go there in my life. Someone can get your goat. If someone can piss you off, if someone can make you feel less than, that's God coming to you saying, grow. You need some spiritual growth. There's got to be some

change in your perception, your belief, your emotions, your spiritual look of life. So that can't happen anymore. And when it happens, like at 61, I've been through so many of those things. And I like do things in mass, I took on big challenges, so I'd have to grow more. But then life throws them at you too. When they come, you just go, okay, it's gonna have me until I grow. What needs to shift in me so that no longer has an impact. But you know, Jim Rohn used to say, my original teacher, he used to say, Tony, what happens if I've got a cup of coffee here? And he'd say, what if your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee? What's going to happen? And I'd go, well, you'd have sweet coffee. And he goes, what if your best friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your loved

one drops one drop of strychnine? I said, you'd be dead. He goes, that's right. Life is both sugar and strychnine. So watch your coffee. His whole thing was stand guard at the door of your brain. But some people take that and go, oh my God, you can kill me. It was a metaphor. These people are not so toxic. They're toxic because you give them energy. So if your mom's crazy and constantly criticizing you and it drives you nuts, just go, that's my mom. That's her way of showing love. And I find a new perspective. And no matter what she does, just stay in a beautiful state and love on her and think, boy, think of all that she cares and feels for, all that she's frustrated in life, or all that she's going through that's made her this way. And think, I don't have to go through this. I can love her. It's like your growth is the only limit to your happiness. If you're not happy, you're not growing in some area.

And usually it's a place where you're blaming. You're pointing the finger. I don't care if it's government. Don't get me wrong. People can be unfair, unjust. That for sure happens. But you can't control that. You can't make it not happen.

What you have to do is become stronger than any of it so you're free. Freedom comes from growth freedom does not come from control because control is an illusion you can't control everybody no matter how hard you try you can't control what they think or feel and not everybody's going to be fair and just and you my dear friends and i have not always been fair and just whether we admit it or not it's just the nature of being a being, a human being. But we can't make the largest pattern fair and just and loving and powerful and serving and growing

until it becomes the dominant thing inside you. And then you experience life as being great, not your great. Life's great because you're living a great path. It seems like what I'm seeing and hearing from a lot of people that this past year, everything has fallen apart for them. Their health, their relationships, their finances, their mission or purpose,

and their spiritual awareness. Every area of life has been in breakdown mode for some people. Not everyone. Some people have had incredible lives and have stepped up to the occasion and broken through on all these things. But I'm seeing a pattern of a lot of people breaking down in many areas. Hypothetical scenario, let's say you could only focus on one thing to get you started. You only have the time and energy to focus on one of these areas. Your health, your relationships are all breaking down, your finances are failing everywhere. Where should people lean into first to kind of create that foundation so that everything else can start to rise as well? I think before you answer what to do, you've got to answer why you're there.

It is not because of the pandemic. I remember when 9-11 happened and people tell, oh, my God, my life was destroyed because of 9-11. And there were people in the same building who turned their life around, became, grew spiritually, grew closer to their family, made their businesses larger. And the same building who turned their life around became grew spiritually grew closer to their family made their businesses larger and the same building burned down right um i know in my case you know 9-11 comes if you can imagine you know i'm fortunate to have now more than 80 companies and all these different industries and obviously you know i've done pretty darn well but by most people's standards of business and life but my core mission is what I do for a living. It's why I'm here talking to you right now. It's getting people to be free and alive

and have the level of fulfillment that they deserve to have. I know they desire, but I also believe they deserve to have. But to deserve to have it, you got to do certain things, right? And so you're not in the place of being overweight because you lost your job.

So stop the bullshit. Blame. Blame is not a strategy for a meaningful life. Blame is not a strategy for greatness. So you got to resolve that, number one. And then your question was, what's the one thing to focus on if you can only focus on one? I think it's smart to focus on one thing primarily. Focus on too many can be overwhelming. Other people, it's good to focus on multiple things. It depends on your personality. So I wouldn't presuppose. But then the answer would be whichever thing you're most desirous of changing, whatever thing is giving you the most pain. So if it's your relationship, I'd go full force on that. Now, in the world we're in today, you know, you don't usually have the privilege of going, okay, I want to work on just being happy. Well, I can train you to be happy while hell's breaking loose. You can sit in this chair and be totally euphoric.

But if you do that in a Western culture, people come and take your furniture, right? So you probably have to work on both your business or financial side and some personal side. I would be working on both. And to me, the way to attack that, if you're not sure which area is to start with the body, and I know you can relate to this, Lewis, because you and I both share this in common. It's like I always teach physiology first, as you well know. If you change the body, you'll change the emotions. If you change the emotions, you'll change your decisions, you'll change the quality of your life. Because the quality of life is your emotions. It's not what you get. You have a billion dollars and commit suicide. People have done it, right? You can have beautiful relationships and

commit suicide. You can have people loving you and be sad all the time. Our pattern of emotion is our home and you have to upgrade your home. You have to train it. And one way to train it is the emotion comes from the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you speak. So if I said to your listeners, there's a depressed person behind the curtain over here, and I'll give a hundred thousand dollars to their favorite charity if they had to describe their body, their posture, and they're depressed, you tell me. I'll just use the example. What does that person look like?

They're slunched down. They're looking down at their feet. They're not looking upward. Their shoulders are over. Are they breathing full or shallow, do you think? They're shallow. Are they talking fast or slow? They're talking, if they're depressed, they're probably talking fast because they're not calm.

Well, no, that's usually stressed. Depressed is different than stressed. They're probably talking low volume, slower than. And all those physical characteristics change your biochemistry towards this feeling of being depressed. And in a depressed state, you won't do anything. When I used to be depressed, I don't get it it anymore i just took it out of my life i even took the language of it out of my life because the words you create create a biochemical response but when i did that decades ago because i was like having those thoughts like is there a reason to

still be here that kind of crazy in your head i got out of it by using anger originally i'd much like sometimes if somebody's really sad or depressed, I'll make them angry and be like, what's he doing, he's making them angry. Because anger is much more resourceful than depressed. From anger I can get you to laughter, I can get you to taking action. So, and then gradually I got where I didn't need anger, it was about growth, it was about contribution,

it was about meaning. So there's like stages to go through. But to answer your question, they should work on both their business side of their life and personal, one of each. And in order for either one of those to work, you need to be in a strong emotional state. And if you start with your body, like you know I start every morning in my cold water, start every morning with my workout.

I start every morning on feeding my mind, right? So there's certain things you've got to do physically so you're strong enough to remember the truth. Because remember, fear is physical. You feel it in your throat or your gut. So is courage. Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid. It just means you're strong enough you push through in spite of the fear, right? And courage feels different in the body. So when you go lift or you go for a sprint or a strong run or you jump in that freezing water,

when you push your mind to go beyond what's comfortable, you feel a strength inside you, and that strength will help you to change your body, your emotions, your relationships, whatever. But then the other thing I'm going to say is model someone who's successful. Don't just do this shit by trial and error. Like, find somebody who has what you want, ideally maybe more than one person, two or three. And figure out what are they doing different than you in their relationship? What do they believe different than you about relationship? If it's their body, what are they doing different?

They're not lucky. They're doing things differently. You might be slightly biochemically different, but there's patterns there that you can see. And so instead of learning by trial and error, which can take decades, you may never learn. Jim Rohn taught me success leaves clues, man. Find someone's got what you want, study what they do, every aspect of it, and then add yourself to it. And that's the pathway to speed of transformation. So now, like, like you know I've

done it I'm not the only person there's so many companies that went from worse off than they'd ever been in their history to the best off because they found a way to pivot one of the most important things a human being can do is press the pause button each morning while the rest of the world is asleep and ask yourself, how can I fortify my mindset? How can I insulate my heart set? How can I optimize my health set?

How can I escalate my soul set? The four interior empires that I've introduced in the 5am club so that when I walk out in the world, I'm creative, I'm productive, I'm compassionate, I radiate positivity, and I have resilience in case I get knocked down. And so I think one of the best ways you can do that is this 2020 formula that I've been teaching to the billionaires, the NBA stars, the film icons, and many of the most successful people on the planet for, as I say, 24 years. And very high level, Lewis, the 2020-20 formula is simply this. You get up at 5 a.m., and anyone can get up at 5 a.m. One of the gifts of a human being is neuroplasticity.

We are built to change. So please, I would encourage, you know, if we recite our excuses long enough, we actually believe they're true. We are built to change. We are built to grow. We are built to own our heroic nature. And so according to University College London, if we do any practice or habit for 66 days, we reach a point of automaticity where it becomes easier to do that new habit than not do the new habit. Once you wire in the new habit for the first 20 minutes, 5 to 520, you move because you can release BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which promotes neurogenesis and optimizes your brain. If you move first thing in the morning, you release serotonin, which makes you feel good.

You release dopamine, which sets you up for inspiration. Second, we can get into it more deeply, but second pocket from 520 to 540 is reflect. While the rest of the world is asleep, there's such quietude in the air. This is where you can pray. You can meditate. Write in a journal. This is where you can pray, you can meditate, write in a journal, sit in quietude so that you're focused, living your life and your priorities through the day. And then the final pocket of the 2020 formula that I talk about in the 5am club is grow. You'll never get old if you grow. You'll never become obsolete in your business, even in a time of great volatility. If you're growing, you'll always stay happy if you grow. So 20 minutes at the end of this victory hour, that's what I call it. You spend some time

listening to a podcast like Lewis Howes on the School of Greatness, a man adored by the majority of humanity. You listen to an audio book, you read a book, you study your battle charts. Anyway, that's a really rough general way to explain the 2020 formula that is currently helping millions of people navigate this hard time. Does it matter the sequencing of 2020? Do you need to move first? Can you meditate first? Do you grow a lot, you know, or is that a process that is proven Scientifically the process has been proven in the trenches of elite performance for a long time with my clients Yeah, and having said that, you know, I would say the 2020-20 formula is minimum viable morning routine.

And you're a biohacker. I'm a biohacker. I'm a productivity hacker. I'm a life hacker. And so I would say, do what's right for you. You know, it's like this whole field of personal mastery and leadership that we inhabit. I'm not one to say you must do this because we all have different learning types. We're all on different journeys. Someone might be right now upgrading their spirituality so they connect with their crusade and their higher power in this time of house arrest. Other people are creating their masterwork right now. So I think we have to find the routine that morning routine that works best for us what about people that say you know what I'm just a night person you know I like I think at night I work out at night that's when I meditate you know I strategize the next

day at night and I just I've tried the morning it just doesn't work for me what would you say to that? I've had a lot of night owls. That's a great excuse, isn't it? To be a night owl. I've had a lot of great, a lot of night owls who have said, you know, I could never be a morning person. I've had a lot of people who've said, you know, grandma couldn't get up early. Grandpa couldn't get up early. My parents couldn't get up early. I couldn't get up early i don't have early rising genes you know and what i would say is if you don't read that book you've been resisting because you don't think it's for you you might just miss your new favorite book if you fall in

love with your most closely cherished beliefs and you're not open to trying new things, you might miss trying your new favorite food. If you say, well, here's the kind of friends that I hang out with and I'm not open to anyone else, you might miss that new friend or that new mentor who will transform the way you run your craft and live your life. And it's the same for the morning routine, the 5 a.m. club. I mean, it's just I've had so many people read the book, run the models in the book, live the message, and achieve what they never thought they'd achieve. And so what I would say to a night owl,

or a lot of people say shift workers or whatever, I would say, give it a try. And don't just give it a try for a week, you know, give it a try for three weeks, four weeks, the 66 day minimum, and then judge by your results. Yeah, so it's okay to sleep in once a week or to miss the routine once in a while. It's not gonna affect your overall,

you know, results or process. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. I think, you know, if you want to commit to the 5 a.m. club, you want to commit to a world-class morning routine because the way you begin the day profoundly sets up the way your day unfolds. And this, again, this is not anecdotal. You get up in the morning and you run the 20-20-20 formula that I explain in the book, you will create the flow state, you will release serotonin, you will release dopamine, you will release BDMF, you will increase your metabolic rate, you will boost creativity, you will increase your willpower, you know, all those things. I mean, we, we want, we all have the ability as human beings to

arrive at our own original form of greatness. We have not been schooled. We have not been taught. A lot of us have not been mentored on the mindsets, heart sets, routines, rituals that will create and allow us to live our personal genius. But, you know, if you look at the greatest women and men who have ever graced the planet, these were so-called ordinary people who just set up their lives in such a way that their native gifts saw the light of day. It's funny how no one ever teaches this stuff unless you had a parent or an

older sibling that's, that you were able to model and mimic like, Oh, my, my dad gets up early or my brother gets up and does his violin or practice a sport, whatever it may be. And I want to be like that. And I want to try that. It's, you know, we're not taught this in school. You know, Lewis, when I was a kid, I wasn't believed in by a lot of people. I marched to my own drumbeat. I had a different way of seeing the world. I was very sensitive.

I was very creative. Very much a dreamer in many ways and I didn't fit in with the cool crowd and in grade five I had a history teacher and her name was Cora Greenaway and she was one of the first people in my life who believed in me and we all made a Cora Greenaway, and may you and I and everyone listening from around the world or watching from around the world, may we be a Cora Greenaway to someone else. What I'm suggesting is all it takes is that one person who coincidentally shows up in our life, and maybe it's a book,

coincidentally shows up in our life. And maybe it's a book, maybe it's a podcast episode to introduce us to a new frame of reference and a new way of living. That's why I love reading so much. It could be one idea in a 300-page book and that idea opens you up to a new galaxy of possibility and the hand that puts down the book is a fundamentally different hand. I mean, all it takes is one new insight to change the way you see the world. That's very true. And so, yeah, and that's why I'm on such a mission. I've been on such a mission for 24 years to remind people of who they're meant to be. Martin Luther King Jr. said, if you have not discovered something you're willing to die for, you're not fit to live.

And I believe we all need to find our mighty mission and our crusade it doesn't have to be lofty it could be delivering pizza by uber eats it could be a you know a teacher it could be a lawnmower it could be a coder it could be a grave digger or street sweeper all labor has dignity, but, you know, there are no extra people on the planet. And I think, you know, that's why I appreciate the work you do so much. I mean, we do have greatness within us and society has brainwashed us and heartwashed us into thinking that the great ones are cut from a different cloth. thinking that the great ones are cut from a different cloth. And it's not true. As a matter of fact, in the 5M Club, I say, you know,

genius is less about genetics and much more about your daily habits. Wow, that's true. That's, I mean, that resonates with me because growing up a kid that was, you know, dyslexic and still struggles with reading and writing today and was in the special needs classes, I never thought I was going to amount to much. And I didn't have belief in myself until I found a spark and belief in myself. And then I started leaning into that gift, which was sports and started to realize, oh, I have some vision and I have some coordination and I have some speed, even though I was never the fastest or strongest, I had some height. And so let me lean into this gift that was here and see if I enjoy this gift.

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 want to 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.