The School of Greatness - 5 SECRETS to ALL Power Couples (HEAL Your Inner Wounds & ATTRACT Love!)

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In today's episode, three power couples are interviewed and share the secrets to their thriving relationships. We’ll dive into the transformative power of self-awareness and how it can lead to healthier, more fulfilling relationships. We explore the impact of inner child wounds—the feelings of rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and shame that linger from our past—and how they shape our connections as adults. Plus, we've got some handy tips for juggling the demands of love and work, especially when your partner is also your coworker. And when it comes to the big decision of starting a family, we're talking about the importance of looking inward and challenging those societal pressures. To wrap things up, we'll shine a spotlight on the magic of emotional intelligence and shared values in keeping your relationship strong and vibrant.In this episode you will learnThe importance of self-awareness in attracting healthy relationships and exploring love after healing inner child wounds.The impact of specific wounds like rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and shame on adult relationships.Strategies for navigating the challenges of combining personal and professional life, especially when working with a spouse.The decision-making process regarding having children, with an emphasis on personal reflection and confronting societal expectations.The role of emotional intelligence and shared values in maintaining a strong connection.For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1585For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]Guests and episodes featured today:Martha Higareda – https://link.chtbl.com/1423-podSara Blakeley & Jesse ItzlerLisa Bilyeu – https://link.chtbl.com/1265-pod

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. 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. going to be powerful. So let's go ahead and dive in. The way we are approaching love and finding love or looking for love and the people we attract has a lot to do with this five inner child wounds that if we don't assess them before getting into a relationship, you will continue to attract the same guy. What are the wounds? So one of them is the rejection wound. So the rejection wound is a wound we all have. Literally, like since you're a little kid, you know, at one point your mom or dad is going to say no to you and you're going to feel rejected. But there's people that have it even bigger. We all have that one, but there's people that have it even bigger.

So, you know, you, you have a story of rejection in school. You've told me many, many times that, you know, you felt rejected. You felt like you were not. What that creates is a person that in the future, when there's trouble, and when that person feels rejected, that person's going to try to go away or walk away, run away. Or react or trigger it or whatever. React, trigger, like, I'm feeling rejected.

I'm going to run away. Or it can also create a person that wants to be, it's so malleable so adaptable that if you like whatever thing do whatever I did in and belong and exactly so you're you're looking for love but you're you're adapting to whatever the other person wants and needs you know it'd be like you become that type of adult then there's the abandonment and that's a tough one because a lot of people experience that and a lot of women experience that from their mom or their dad. You know, there's a lot of very sad stories of my dad left for another woman and I never saw him again. And so what does that mean?

And you're a little kid with your little tiny mind of nine years old. You don't think it's because of other things. You cannot put yourself in your parents' shoes. You think it's about you. And so then what happens with people that have abandonment wounds is that they become dependent and they become, you know, a person that needs somebody, you know, it's the kind of person that if you're having a misunderstanding and the partner wants to take a beat and walk away for a second to just kind of like relax or calm down, the abandonment wound will go after that person

and say, no, don't leave me. I'm here in the middle. I'm talking. What are you doing? You know, and then it's a never-ending argument all night because that person's not leaving the good amount of space in between the two. Because if you leave, I feel you're abandoning me. Or that they get too attached. They are dating somebody and they feel, I don't know why I feel I'm going to mess this up at one point and that person's going to end up leaving me. I don't know why I feel I'm going to mess this up at one point and that person's going to end up leaving me. So it has to do with a story of something that happened to you in your childhood.

Yes. Even if your dad didn't leave, even if your mom didn't leave, sometimes it could be that you felt abandoned because they dropped you off in school when you were too little. And you had this anxiety about you. And maybe they didn't pick you up many, many times, you know, and you were waiting outside school and your parents didn't show up. So, maybe it comes from that. Because some people say, I have amazing parents, but I still have some of these wounds.

Where are they coming from? Okay, so that's the second wound. That's the second one. Then there's the humiliation wound, the shame. You feel shame. You are humiliated. So somebody, I mean, in many different ways, you have a story about that. You know, the other day we were talking about this and you went, man, I think I have most of them.

Yeah. Right? And then I said to you, I love you so much because you've become who who you become, the man who you are, which I know who you are. Having had all of these wounds is admirable. You know, the type of resilience that you have, the type of commitment with yourself that you have. Yeah. It's massive because you do but you were humiliated in school right people that were bullied or people that your parents

your parents can humiliate you yeah many many times you're like oh you're a little kid you're excited because you wrote this little song at that one moment and your dad is with a bunch of friends, it's like, no, what, no, you think horrible, move out of the way. And you continue, you feel that humiliation. So what that creates, having had a parent who has a crazy temper and you never know what you're gonna expect, right? That parent that maybe reprimand,

how do you say reprimand? Reprimand. Yeah, reprimanded. Reprimanded you. You know English better than I do. But reprimanded you in front of other kids, you know, with a big temper, that big voice. You feel like this humiliation. So, what that creates is in the future, if you have not worked in your inner child once, it's a man or a woman that is willing to take any kind of abuse. So you're replicating the abuse that you had at home. So you even learned how to stand up for yourself. Exactly. So then you have a screaming girlfriend saying,

why are you, I'm gonna break up with you if you don't pick up my phone call. And you continue in the relationship because you're like, yeah, yeah, of course. Because you lived that. That reminds you of something that you experienced. It's familiar, yeah, it's familiar. Exactly, so you know that feeling

that when you meet somebody, people say, oh, it felt like family to me. Why did it feel like family? Some family could be great, another family might make you, yeah. Exactly, so that's why the question is really important. What part of that made you feel like family? Okay, humiliation, what's number four?

The other one is treason. Something that somebody, like betrayal. So for example example my sister she when i was born first then my sister was born second and then there was a gap in which my parents didn't have children for like six years and then they had my brother so she was a little baby of the family and she's so funny you know my sister she's really fun she's like outgoing and really amazing and so then when my brother was born for her and she says this today it felt like a betrayal it felt like what is this new person in the family I'm not the little baby anymore and mom dad and everyone around including herself they say that her personality you know changed a

little bit and she felt and to this day she feels when she's more able to have more control is when she can feel safe and because she felt betrayed by my parents right so then therefore later in life she grows up as a woman and she's looking for love. And she's looking for a man that she can, in a way, give direction to. And this is why her relationship and my brother-in-law relationship works really well. Because in his case, he had an abandonment wound. And so then he was looking for somebody to give him direction. So this is for them in a way, it's a good, it's a good match. Right. So for me, being the oldest of the family, my mom was always so amazing into praising and

saying, oh, Martita is the helper of the family. She helps me with the house. She helps me with the siblings. She helps me. So in a way, I built my identity feeling as if I was of help to somebody, then I was worth it, right? I had some value to bring if I was being of help to somebody so then what happened is then later as an adult um before having healed my inner child wounds i was looking for somebody i could help and i didn't know this this is subconscious right so then all of a sudden i you know i used to fall in love with men that needed a lot of support and a lot of help. Because in a way, if they didn't need me,

I didn't know if I was worthy. So that was a big one for me. And then the other one was shame. So for me, it was my family too. We're jokers, we joke all the time. And especially my dad's side of the family, he was so young, he was 20 years old. And he used to like poke me or do these little things.

I was one years old, two, three, four, you know, four or five. And he would say, oh my God, look at that. He would say that to my mom, look at her. She's crying just by me doing this. And he would laugh. But me as a little kid, I didn't know what was happening happening so then I would feel my dad is laughing at me right so I felt shame and I had other moments in my life I stole something from school which is

you know my mom was really upset which was good by the way that I learned the lesson but in front of my entire classroom she said that I had stolen a pencil, a sharpener, pencil. Sharpener. Sharpener, yes. And so I was crying in front of the classroom and I felt embarrassed. So then later people who experience a lot of shame are the ones that turn into people that can withstand a lot of abuse later in life.

Because that's what it feels familiar to you you know and and I gotta say something that I think it's very important it's not our parents fault we should you know stop blaming our parents for the way we are they did what they could with what they could they did their best with what they the tools they had you know the things they had so and it's up to us to heal ourselves and then there's another one that's called the injustice one so something that happened to you at one point in life that you felt things were unjust. You know, whether it's whether it's, you know, the way in your perspective they treated

your sister or your brother way better than they treated you. That felt unjust. So then you didn't fix that inside of you. So then later in life, it makes you a very rigid person. Rigidity. You know you don't you want things to be a certain way and that's it. Or you're just

triggered if you see injustices constantly and everything is unjust. Yeah. And it takes a lot of your energy to manage those emotions. Yeah and so if things were in just for you when you're a little kid you replicate it as an adult in ways of you become competitive with your partner because you're trying to find justice. Right. Oh, you know what? I work so much.

Of course, you take care of the kids and don't tell me anything about anything because this is what's fair. Wait, let's talk about it. So this is that type of personality so for me you know this i needed to dive down inside of what was my life story what was my wounds why was i attracting these type of personalities and why was it that whenever i attracted a nice guy it felt boring that whenever I attracted a nice guy, it felt boring. Mm. That happens to a lot of people.

Why do why do women not like the nice guy? Why do they not? I do. Why do some women. What do some women not fall for a healthy, nice, conscious man? And they fall for a man that has, you know, likes and interests, but doesn't have a healthy relationship with themselves and doesn't treat others well. Why do they fall for that? Yeah. Well, one is this, because they haven't addressed that they're looking for love as a wounded child, as opposed to,

you know, being open to love as an adult, which is, I think think this is the way you and I met we were not anymore looking for love and although healing is an never-ending journey we were very aware of what was the inner child wounds that was having you attracting certain type of women and me certain type of men and so then therefore once like the first step is to be aware of it and then you start noticing ah and then something happens did it happen to you Louis because for me it was this integration of my inner child this moment these exercises that I would do in which I would say oh my god I got myself you know Nila is my therapist you

know you know I talked to you about Nila she's incredible and she said to me back in the day when I was in a relationship this person yelling at me all that you know like all these things and she would say don't don't say he's yelling at me he just yells it just doesn't go with you. Right. And you can either choose to accept it or not. Or get out of there. But changing it is actually something that you've got to look at within yourself.

You know, if I don't accept who this person is, it doesn't mean they're right or wrong, good or bad. It just means it's not a good match for me. Yeah. And so they may not want to change. And you have to be okay with it if the other person doesn't want to change. And you have to evaluate, okay, am I happy removing myself from this relationship? Even though there might be some other benefits,

but can I deal with the parts that cause the most stress and pain? And I think, again, not everyone is bad all the time or something, but are the things that I don't like or don't match or align with, knowing this may never change. If it never changes, am I accepting it and okay with it? And I think if you're not willing to accept who they are now, you can't expect them to change later. So it's learning to say, am I okay and can I give in to this or accept this or is this a non-negotiable for me? One of the things that we got into our relationship and the dating process, I was just like, it's non-negotiable for me and us to not yell. We can disagree, we can argue, but screaming and yelling does not work for me. And had I experienced that with you in the first six months or a year, I might've been like,

huh, okay, this is something that you do. Maybe from time to time, you haven't done that, but I would witness it and be like, okay, this doesn't work for me. And having a conscious conversation saying, Hey, if this is the way you're going to be at times just let me know because it doesn't work for me yeah or am i able to accept you if once in a while you do yell if there's a lot of other good that happens yeah i think that's those little nuances are hard for sometimes for people to decide yeah because everybody wants to be loved and so then now finally you're in a relationship. Finally you have the chemistry, the kisses. Do you know how it feels?

And then you're thinking, well, if I'm single again, well, I find someone who's good, and I don't want to be alone and all these things. But wait a second. There are all these things that are great. Okay, all these things are bad. Okay, but maybe with time. And then you hand them the book.

Then you hand them the podcast. And then you become the coach. People don't want to you become the coach people don't want to change though people want to change to the yard when they're in a relationship no I I have before you I've chosen many relationships where I felt resistance I felt like I didn't want to change but the only way to make this person happy was if I changed so many different things and that was on you, that was on me for deciding to adjust and change and adapt to make someone happy, as opposed to just being full, authentic yourself and being in a relationship where you commit to personal growth individually. I think that's

something we've done really well is committing to being in a process of personal growth individually, both having emotional coaching and saying, hey, I'm going to grow whether we're together or not. And you're going to grow whether we're together or not. So let's make that commitment impact from the beginning, which I think creates a lot of safety in the relationship for both of us, knowing this person's not going to stop improving they're not going to stop learning they're going to keep having a beginner's mind yeah about their emotions their

relationship to themselves how they navigate stress knowing we're never perfect human beings but we're in a process of of growth yes i think that commitment to growth gives us a lot of peace. There's so many things that I feel so grateful for the way we started our relationship and how it happened. And I feel so grateful for your past and my past. I feel very, very grateful for that. Because if you didn't live the things you lived and I didn't live the things I lived we wouldn't have met when we needed to meet to continue the growth process in this way but the same for me you know I was I was nodding when you said well if I would have seen you yelling you know after six months I

probably would have been like hey wait a second I think with the experience that I had if you would have started yelling in month three, I'd be like, thank you very much. You know, it was so great to be with you for those three months. And that's it. Because there's things that, you know, wouldn't have worked for me either. And so it's interesting because what I tell

most of my girlfriends is, after you do this, and you find the way, you know, the inner child ones and you address them. And let's say now you're ready because you're open to meet guys, meet them where they are. You know, don't meet the potential. Don't try to see, oh my God, this guy seems like he could be this, no, no, no. Like look at who that person is and look

at everything that they're doing and don't judge them everything is just information if that was for me like you know I was meeting you yes the thing that I wanted the most when I was meeting you is for you to be authentically you so when you would say to me oh my god I'm gonna tell you something I think this is gonna make you run away I me, oh my God, I'm going to tell you something. I think this is going to make you run away. I would think, oh my God, maybe he's into like threesomes or crazy stuff or drugs or something. That's definitely going to make me run away and put you in the friend category. But you would say something that for me was like, oh, that's amazing. So it's information.

amazing you know so it's information it's just what happens is we very quickly and especially women we very quickly jump into the place in which we see them as our future husbands right right away right away potential yeah what happened what happens to a woman who starts seeing a man as their future husband in the first month of getting to know them? What do they tend to do more of that actually will hurt the relationship long term? You know, it's interesting because at the beginning, everything is great, right? So they see all the good parts. So then for about three, four months, everything was amazing. Everything was fantastic. And then the entire person starts

coming out i don't like to say the real person starts coming out because also all the the other things that you saw at the beginning is still the real person the rest of them the rest of them starts to come out so then what happens now you want to start changing them because they don't go back to this perfect thing to match you yeah to match you you know so if you're like regularly you know joyful person and you don't necessarily raise your voice or yell when you're having an argument or whatever and while you're dating that person you saw that that person yelled at the valet parking guy right but he's not yelling at you because you're living this isn in this beautiful pink bubble.

You continue the relationship. You're not paying attention. Everything is information. And if a guy tells you, I don't want to have kids, believe him. He doesn't want to have kids. Don't keep dating him if you want to have kids. Yeah, don't think you're going to be like Bella in The Beauty and the Beast.

And you're going to say, I'm going to tame this beast. And he's going to be the one that's going to have kids with me. You could have all the tutors and nannies and cooks or whatever it may be. But still, it consumes so much energy of your time, your thoughts, and your attention. How do you guys manage energy? You have to really think, prioritize, delegate what you can and let it go and not be too mentally hard on yourself. And as your bubble grows, you invest the time in hiring your weaknesses.

So whatever, where are your weaknesses and find the best talent, invest in the talent. And you know, if you put the right people in place in certain areas, then it will free you up to be able to prioritize your time. And then you have to take the time to do that. Like even though I have this leader in place, what is the most important thing for me to be focusing on for Spanx? Even though I may or may not have a nanny, what is the most important thing for me to be doing with my children? What's important to me? And I sat down with Jesse and we wrote out like what's important for us to be, what is the quality time that we want to have with our children? And just being intentional about those buckets will really help you figure out energy and how to use it and how to make it go farther. I would add, I think, three things. I think we've

spoken about this in the past, Louis, many times. You know, I think the most important thing is to really be present and be where your feet are. So if we're with our kids, we're with our kids. If we're, if Sarah's at work and you know, I don't want Sarah to be guilty or resent me, you know, for when she's at work. When she's at work, she's at work and it's fine. When she's with the kids, she's with the kids. You got to be where your feet are. So we communicate about that. Today I was on, I had to do something for two hours. I said, I let her know I need two hours alone. She She was like no problem because I didn't want to feel guilty or and I don't want her to resent me So we communicate that but you got to be mega present to you go in and out of waves So like we went on a trip to Poland with ten friends brothers a meet best friends at it

You know overnight best friends if I don't speak to the guys for six months I'm not gonna to beat myself up. The relationship's still there. So you have to trust the seeds and know that when that you planted and know when it's time for me to jump back into that group of 10, I'm going to be present and everything's going to be,

but you can't beat yourself up that your energy is pulling you somewhere else. That time will come back, you know? And three is you got to plan. You can't like, we're not good enough to just wake up and wing it. We plan stuff, man. No, we plan stuff. Like I plan that I'm going to see my parents a certain amount of times a year. Then I'm going to go on a certain amount of trips,

one-on-one trips with my kids. We go away once a quarter. We plan a trip alone time. We have date night every Wednesday. I might not see Sarah every single day, every minute of the day during work, but we know Wednesday nights we're having date night. We know we have our family dinners. We know the weekends is our time. So you have to, you know, you have to plan. Otherwise it's, it's, it's, you know, you start to spiral and when you spiral, it's hard to get out of it. It's really hard, especially if you're in quarantine. I heard an interview that Oprah did years ago about, I'm going to butcher this, but she essentially said at one point she made a decision in her life to throw a big dinner and bring all of her friends and family who've been asking her for money and stuff for years. And she threw this big party, huge dinner,

threw the best food and gave away cash and cars and gifts and said, I'm bringing you all here. I'm giving you the last thing I want to give you. Because I assume for years, people just kept asking for more and more and they were never happy and they're never satisfied. This is the general concept. I might be butchering it.

they were never happy and they're never satisfied. This is the general concept. I might be butchering it. How do you guys manage the expectations of friends, family, people that are just on social media that ask you for things? How do you manage the energy of people getting angry or upset or getting hurt if you don't do something for them when they think you should or could. Do you guys face that at all? All the time. It's a great question. I mean first of all, I don't get angry at anyone's reaction. Every time when people ask for something, you're put in a lose-lose situation. I remember my mother told me and when I was growing up to never lend people money for a lot of different reasons.

It could be let down. You'll be let down and you know, why do I have to pay them back? They don't need the money or if you do pay them, you know, there's all kinds of guilt and resentment. So, you know, one way to handle this is you just, you can give people money and just say this is a gift, not a loan. But it's really case by case. It's really case by case and situational. And, but it, I'm not going to lie, man. It is challenging. It is challenging.

And how do you know when someone is like truly a friend or versus someone who's like always reaches out every year for, for something, you know, monetarily, let's say. I don't feel like we have, we have that much issue with that. Oh, that's good. Yeah. I mean, I personally don't know how you feel about it, but I think, you know, I think it feels very obvious to us who's a friend and who's maybe someone who's more of an opportunist.

But we live our life in such a way that we're not in the situations very often that we're put in these positions. And I stay very true to my core mission, again, with my foundation, which is elevating women and supporting women so it gives me an opportunity to explain or have my team explain why the funds don't make sense to go there and that we love to support everyone and everything but you have to pick a lane and in order to be effective or possibly make an impact in that lane you have to give yourself permission again to say no to everything else that isn't in

that lane. So that's been very helpful. Yeah. Having that structure and organization and that explanation makes sense. Yep. Has this time shifted your guys' vision for the future, this quarantine, corona stuff? Has this shifted your ideas of how to be an entrepreneur for the future about your businesses, your brands being, you know, learning how to use zoom now and is this shifting anything or are you saying, you know what, we're staying the course is our initial vision for where we had before. I mean, I'm going to speak for myself. I'm in survival mode right now.

So yes. So I retail. Well, no, I mean at home I have, she's not talking about business. She's talking about my home. I'm in survival mode. I mean, we've had no nanny, no support, no, no, you know, we have been, um, for five weeks now with four children, 10 and under, and three of them are five and under, which anybody with small kids knows you're game on. Like from the minute they wake up, you're making sure they don't get hurt. You're just tag teaming it. We're doing around the clock cooking and cleaning and all of this. So I have not had the luxury of time to think about anything much else. So it has been all consuming for me. By the time we get the kids finally to bed, it's later. And the minute our heads hit the pillow, we're pretty much asleep.

We haven't watched any television in five and a half weeks, other than maybe a few minutes of news here and there. I mean, I haven't read a book. I have not had a minute to do anything, but I will say that I do think that there's a, for me, I'm hoping that there will be this shift in gratitude because I think gratitude is the basis for happiness and the basis for joy. And we are, we, the whole, all of us got a reset button on gratitude because, you know, it's very easy when you're on autopilot, you're going to and from work, you're doing this, you know, it's very easy when you're on autopilot, you're going to and from work, you're doing this, you know, we take certain things for granted. And now, I mean, the simplest things when we come out of this, we're going to have such extreme gratitude. I mean, I had to make

a Target run the other day. I put on, you know, tons of gear, but I've never been more grateful to be able to go to Target, you know? And and so like I think there's going to be all these nuggets where we come out of this and like going to a park is going to be such a gift. Going and seeing friends is going to be a gift. And we were just doing it before. Yeah. There's a difference between guys and girls. The survival mode Sarah means is survival around time.

You know, we have to homeschool four kids that have different schedules and Sarah's running a business. I'm running a business so, and there's no one around. So we have a swimming pool, there's stuff that can go wrong. So you have to be alert and survival mode meaning like alert. I'm a different animal in this thing. For one, Louis, I'm taking, earmuffs, Sarah. I'm taking inventory. You know, this is a time where humans can shine and become great humans. You know, I want to be known at the end of the quarantine as someone that

called my friends, called my family, called my customers. I want to be remembered as someone that didn't disappear. I want to be remembered as someone that didn't disappear. I want to be remembered as someone in the community. So, I'm making it a point every day. I call it the three-minute miracle. I just take three minutes, I send three texts every day. So, over the month, I'll send a hundred texts and emails to friends, family, and customers. If you invest 10 minutes, you'll send 300 emails in the next 30 days. And that's what I'm doing. I'm making sure when I have free time that I'm staying connected. We organized a Zoom call with our friends from Poland. I've done the same with my, with my, you know, college friends, high school friends. I want to make sure during these times,

a lot of emotions come to the surface, man. You know, you start to realize what you want to do, what's important to you. And when we come out of this, I want to put way more on my plate of the things I love to do with the people I love to do them with. And that's what I miss. I don't miss going to a sporting event or watching a rerun or what I miss is like the camaraderie of my friends.

Yeah. Getting iced up together with the friends, yeah. I'm going to OD on experiences. Sorry, Sweetie, this is over. You've already OD'd for the last 10 years. I've already OD'd. But like, that's what I'm craving. I'm craving like, you know,

so I'm using this time. And if you're a business owner, this is a great time to do two things. One is for a lot of businesses, the narratives about the has changed. So if I'm in the financial world and I sell insurance, let's just say, and I've been struggling to sell,

the insurance is, the narrative has now changed because really what you're really selling and what people want is peace of mind. People want security. And those that can reimagine their talk track and their business and talk to the emotions that people are going through, taking the biggest risk off the table, giving people comfort are going to win. And this is a time to invest in that storyline and those relationships. to invest in those, in that storyline and those relationships.

Has success, your success tested the relationship? Yes. In the last, you know, few years since you've kind of been blowing up now. So it's interesting when, the reason why I said yes is I didn't actually think, realize that you were going to say so, like as in popularity. When I was behind the camera and I stepped in, and I stepped in front of the camera, like the first or first or second time tom literally in front of the entire company he's like my wife's going to be bigger than me and i have zero problem with it he's like mark my words he wants it he's like he he doesn't love being in front of the

camera like he's very good at it but he loves the impact the camera is just the tool for him um i freaking love like this, just hanging with you. And like the idea of creating impact and staring at the camera, like this could create, like who knows where this can go, right? That is such excitement and beauty to me. So the size and popularity, no. But when I went from being a housewife who supported him to being an entrepreneur, that a big struggle for us because what happened was when Quest was growing our first facility was in Compton and Tom being very passionate and big brothering for a kid who lived in the inner cities he said it was very important for us to

help the inner city people so he when we started Quest we put out a call and we said we don't care about your background we don don't care if you're an ex-convict. We don't care. All we care about is who are you today and who are you willing to become? And are you willing to work hard? And that's it. So now we put a call out. And so literally we had lines and lines and lines of people that were looking for a job.

So flash forward, Quest grows 57,000%. I've now got a facility, about 10,000 square feet, 40 employees underneath me within two years. I went from shipping on my living room floor, not knowing how to be a boss, to then 40 employees. Now, a lot of them, ex-convicts, a lot of them are much bigger than me. they're like your stature i'm five foot one you can like pick me up with your pinky so what i thought bad advice but what i thought i should do is go in there and be aggressive because show them you can't be pushed around lisa that's the only way i know how and a lot of the female entrepreneurships back then as well this is like 2010-ish 11 um we're all about basically don't show emotion and you have to be like a dude and so I went in there

going thinking okay I'm not going to get pushed around and so I'm going to go there and I'm going to bark orders and I'm going to tell them you know I'm a stern you know you can't push me around now hey you can imagine that didn't motivate any of my team. That was a total disaster. And what that ended up doing, it started to harden me. And one day, Tom pulled me aside in our person when we got home. He said, babe, I love you, but you're hardening. And you're hardening to a point where now you're bringing this into our relationship. And he said, and look, let's talk about it. I understand why you need to harden because business is tough. and look let's talk about it i understand why you need to

harden because business is tough so let's actually talk about it but i want to talk about the lovely sweet wife that i miss and he's like if you bring too much hardness to our relationship he's like it doesn't compute with me he's like i love your softness. I love that you care. I love that you have this big heart. And because you're starting to soften in business, you're starting to lose the softness in our relationship. Right. And so let's talk about that. And I was like, yeah, that's very fair. I love to be like, I love it when he like wraps me around his arms or like he carries me because my feet are sore.

Like, i love the fact that he's six foot like i love that about him and so i was like oh you know what as a relationship a you need to have space where your partner can say the truth even if you don't agree like maybe i want to be hard but have to give him space to be hurt so i heard him out and initially i was defending i was like but you don't understand why i have to be hard you know it's okay for you you're a guy people respect you and blah you know and i gave every reason why and he's like babe i'm not saying like this isn't a skill set you need to you need to grow of course you do you have to you know dominance is going to be very important in business but how do we navigate navigate what you're doing in business and our relationship

and so we just started I was like okay that's very fair when I come home how do I soften because I like to be soft yeah so I had to figure out what that strategy was and so to the strategy that I how on earth I suit up to get on stage I now do the opposite to soften so literally if I want to be a big ball of mush, which I really do enjoy being around my husband, you've seen me around him. I'll sit on his lap and whatever. I do the opposite. I take my jewelry off. I put my hair up. I wear Wonder Woman fluffy pajama bottoms. Or like, in fact, I wear onesies. We have matching onesies that we wear every Saturday. And we match onesies because I want

to feel that emotional connection with him on a personal level. And so to be able to transition with your partner being your business partner for like 15 years, to how do you keep that spark alive and the romance alive? It's because you need to know how to navigate the two, where your strengths and weaknesses are, what those tactics are that you're going to use when you need to know how to navigate the two where your strengths and weaknesses are what those tactics are that you're going to use when you need to turn to them because sometimes i've gone balls to the freaking wall all day in business and i'm like a you know i've got heart because all day all i'm doing is making decisions and now i come come home and i got my husband wanting to give me a big squishy hug. How do I transition from one

to the other? Knowing how to, having those tactics, testing yourself. What I can say will be different for you or your listeners at home, but you need to try things. Like I said, for me, it really was undoing the hair, the makeup, the jewelry, taking deep breaths. Changing the uniform. Changing the uniform. Yeah, yeah. All these things are allowing me to navigate when I need to be a beast in business and when I want to be a big ball of mud. I think that's really important for people to understand. I felt like, you know, in the sports world, you see a lot of this in the news sometimes

where there's domestic violence from, like, men with their wives or girlfriends, especially football players right and there's no excuse for this the challenge is learning how to turn off the destruction from sports let's call it football when you're trained to hit and destroy for hours a day and then trying to switch it off. Either way, with your business or sports or whatever it might be, we've gotta learn those tools to transition from one area of life to the next area of life so we don't bring that. Otherwise it will be destructive. Yes.

So I think it's really cool you've learned that skill. What's been the, besides taking off the uniform, the makeup and all these different things, is there something else you do psychologically to shift when you're, cause you also got work from home and you live at home so how do you shift psychologically yeah so i have a lot of tools so um one thing is smelling my husband's neck i don't get to do that in business because it's business right he's on the other side and we're working we're talking

about strategies that's cool but getting that intimacy we're literally like it's so funny we kind of have this thing now we're like if i lean in he'll just like expose his neck or vice versa he'll come on i just expose my neck because we and there's something very vulnerable about exposing your neck to someone absolutely so you would never do that in business right so number one that's that intimacy and i do find music very helpful so if i need to make a bit of a transition i'll use music but embracing that with different people and that tom's parameter of how much he can handle work to personal is going to be different than mine how he handles the shift so tom works the other day he calculated it's not good but he works 120 hours in a week and so he can be on all the time and he can transition to

okay i'm on oh five minutes i'm off and now i'm back on again i can't right and so embracing that we're different people we have different ways of doing things and so what he would do is i would switch off at the end of the night and he would come in and be like i just have a business question this day i'm like i'm off duty but to your point when you're working from home your partner is yours you know your business partner as well and so when he has a different habit i was like babe you can't do this and he's like but what if i need something answered how do i know when you're off duty and i was like okay it's my responsibility to signal to you when and where because i'm boundaries are very important but you can't expect someone

else to set the boundaries for you. And you can't expect someone else to maintain those boundaries. Right. That's on me. You've got to do that. Yeah, yeah. So I was like, okay, what boundaries do I have to set? And how do I make sure that he sticks to them? So I was like, all right, number one, the boundary is when I'm off duty, I can't have him come to me with a work issue that's my boundary that i'm setting all right what are the things i'm going to do in order to signal that

if you've ever been to a brazilian restaurant where it's like yes to the meat no to the meat yes we've just gone to a restaurant very recently when this big collision happened because i was like babe you have to stop interrupting my personal self care time. And we just got into this restaurant, so I was like, let's do it like the Brazilian restaurant. Right, right, you flip it. Yeah, so I was like, what can I put in my room that he can see as a signal? So it's like my lamp.

So I said, all right, babe, from now on, I'm gonna put this lamp on when I'm off duty. So when you come in, if you see the lamps on, that means you can't talk to me about work. Because now it's a signal where I don't have to say anything. Because even me having to tell him is a bit of a strain. It's tiring a little bit, yeah. It's a bit tiring.

So it could be like after a certain time, after six o'clock, no more conversations, when the light's on, but there's a sign that says close for business. Yeah, but if you want to know how you have a long lasting relationship, it may not be a work thing. It may be other things. Be so clear in your communication. Own that communication. Own

your boundaries. Own that. Reflecting, okay, if you do this, then this happens. If I say this, please then this. And then making sure that you're the person that's going to keep repeating it. So I kept saying, okay, the light on, you know, know babe the light on means off i'm off right yes you know so cut to a week later or whatever he walks in my room he's like babe sees the lion love you and then he turns around and walks out again and that is how you take a potential situation that those little things lewis can literally fracture our relationship yeah because if you didn't give him a sign or a signal or a boundary that he knew was actually there, he could just keep repeating the situation or the asking the question and not be aware and you can be frustrated that he's not respecting the boundary.

So it's got to be some type of mutually agreed upon signal sign time something yeah otherwise he's just gonna keep asking you yeah and think it's okay and the reassurance so here's the thing you said it earlier none of us are perfect yeah so of course he's going to you know overstep the boundary and he's not going to mean to right do i believe he doesn't mean to the intention of course not but he's going to do it so now how do you encourage people or in those moments where someone's overstepped the boundary let's say it's even a bigger boundary than that how do you react to hey i told you or do you go look i so appreciate that you're trying and last week you were amazing you missed the step today but don't worry i really see that you're

really trying that really means a lot to me. There you go. It's great. Yeah. And now. It's not as big a deal. Yeah. And you're reminding them, hey, please keep trying. Right. So it's like a subliminal thing.

And you want to feel good about it. Like when someone's asking you to do something for them, don't you want to feel good about doing it? Absolutely. You don't want it to feel like an expectation. So like love language, you know, we talk so much about love language. You don't want it to feel like an expectation. So like love language, we talk so much about love language. Mine is acts of service with Tom. And so one of the things I said,

you know what would be really meaningful? You boil the kettle for me. Every morning, that's just a little symbol that you were thinking of me today. I don't even need to spend time with him, Lewis. We go days and days where we don't spend any time together at all. But the fact that

he's boiled the kettle for me is meaningful now some days I get up and he forgets what am I going to do have a go at him right like that's so horrible yeah so what I do is every time he boils it I thank him and every time he doesn't I'm like babe thank you so much yesterday for boiling the kettle and I was like it's okay like, I forgot to do that. And I was like, it's okay. But you're not blaming him. You're acknowledging him for the work that he's putting into it. And it doesn't need to be perfect. Yeah.

Yeah, that's powerful. I remember talking about kids. You said earlier in the interview that when you were getting married, that that was your mission. Yeah. Step four kids, I think it was. It wasn't.

I wouldn't say mission. Just a- Or part of your vision or your dream. Yeah. What you thought you should be doing. Yes, four kids why four kids um i was brought up with those three of us and then my dad remarried and had two and i freaking love my siblings so much and um you know being greek massive families you're around you know table of 20 people all shouting as loud as they possibly can.

Like, I love family. So I was always like, this is kind of a bit of an odd one out. There's always someone that gets left behind. Right, there's pairs and twos, yeah. So I don't know, it just always seemed like a big thing. When did the moment you realized, like, you didn't want kids anymore?

When was that moment? Because there had to be a moment where you thought, okay, we're building for this, this is gonna happen. And he was in alignment with that, I'm assuming. Or was there a moment where he changed and then you decided to change as well? So being Greek, I saw everyone get married a year later, they fall pregnant.

Right. Like clockwork. So I didn't even think about asking myself, do I wanna have kids after a year of marriage? I just assumed. It was going to happen, right. And Tom was the one who was like, what are you talking about?

You're like, you're 23, babe. He's like, I married you because I want to spend time with you. And so that was the first time I was like, oh. Did you guys talk about it before marriage? About when you wanted to have kids? Maybe I think around then where I was like, oh, so you know, a year, about a year.

And he's like, well, no, like, let's move to America. Let's like really find our footing. And he's like, we're still young. So he's like, I was thinking more, you know, 26. So he was like, we kind of kept pushing it off, pushing it off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it was always going back to that when. When this happens, then we'll have kids.

When we're not risking our house, then we'll have kids, right? It's always the when. When we get our business going, then we'll have kids, yeah. And then as time got, you know, progressed, I realized, oh, well, I'm not getting any younger being a female. And so that's okay. I just need to actually really look at the reality of the situation. So my biological clock is ticking, which means that I can look through so many different other ideas, right? So many women do like fertilization, like insemination, like so many. We can do surrogacy. I can do adoption. But if I want to have my own child naturally, then there's a click in time, a tick in time.

So I just started to talk to Tom about that. And then each step of the way we just kept assessing the situation we were in and then it got to the point where I was like can I actually say it out loud that I don't know if I want children really like I didn't know I felt so judged now judged by me and judged by the outside world I'd heard so many people say that, oh, if you're not gonna have children, you're not really maternal then are you? So like all these challenges of like how I felt with like, no, I feel like I am nurturing, I feel like I am.

You know, I love taking care of my husband, you know, on the weekends. And so I started to have to assess my belief system, assess why I had that belief system in the first place, and then give myself permission to challenge it. And so in the challenging of it, Tom and I sat down. We said, okay, why did we want children in the first place? Like take all the judgment away of all the things of why you think you should,

everyone else, take that away and just say, let's make a list of why we thought we were going to number one legacy what the hell does legacy mean right like i kept saying legacy but what does it actually mean and it's like okay when i'm gone i want to be remembered and this is just my you know my interpretation and the same with Tom okay well does that mean we have to have our own blood relatives or can that mean be remembered for the mark that we've left on the world some people that means children some people it doesn't so it's like okay actually no I don't need it to be my own children it really is just to

be really feel like I've made a difference of me being alive on this earth great now I've got that number two another reason why i wanted to have children is because i really wanted to see a mini tom running around i don't want to deny that like even now to see a little kid with like his ears and like calling me mummy and him daddy like you can just see how excited i get so that's another reason why i wanted children i just with no judgment started to make a list. Since I was like eight years old, I remember thinking, oh my God, the day when I feel the baby growing inside me. Put that down on the list of why you want to. Now, with no judgment, on the other side, write all the reasons why it doesn't, like, why you may not want to. I love my business. I love

my relationship with my husband. I like going all in. I love my sleep. I don't want to give up. Right? And I don't want to give up any of these. And now, what are my choices? I can hire nannies. So then, right?

So I literally just start peeling away the onion with no excuses. Like, just ask yourself, but what if this? And now paint the pictures. An example I give in the book very specifically is, what would an average Wednesday look like? Because I can get convinced, and I'm sure you know, so many people where it's like, I want to start a business because we see the wealth, right?

The end goal. And you're like, that's going to be amazing. So I know I can convince myself to have children. I know I can say, oh my God, having a a little tom feeling it growing inside me not dying alone like all these things i can convince myself for all the amazing reasons why i want to have children but what does an average wednesday look like on a non-so-special day where nothing exciting is going on and i love my business how on earth am i going to be a mother and run a business? What does that look like? That's behind door number one.

Behind door number two, what does life look like if I'm a stay-at-home wife and I have children? Write that out. And now what does door number three look like if I chose not to have children and all I did was work? And now I've got these three doors. And with zero judgment, I've done the process. I've worked out all the pros and all the cons. And now with no one else's involvement,

what's the thing that lights Lisa up? And what I realized is it was exactly what I was doing. Going freaking hard for my goals, seeing how it was impacting strangers I'd never met. And it all started like with Quest. We were helping the anorexic community the

community and now with like impact theory helping people who have depression anxiety some people someone was going to commit suicide but they watch the piece of our content and i'll never know their names but i impacted them that's what lights me on fire and when i realized that it was i don't want to say an decision, but it was an easy decision for me and Tom to say, we're not going to have children. And then the hardship of telling everyone else and all that came with that. Right. When was that? How old were you?

This was probably 2015, 14-ish. Interesting. So before then, roughly, you were still thinking, okay, I want to have kids. Yeah. It was in your thoughts. It was in your heart. Like, we're going to do this someday, but I don't know when. Because it was never in my mind that I could question it.

So I just kept putting it off thinking, well, it will happen then. And that was like one of the biggest things is that I write them back is asking ourselves the hard questions. And that takes radical confidence because a lot of the time we fear asking the hard question. 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.