The School of Greatness - 547 Relieve Stress, Find Inner Peace and Live Your Greatness with Nick Ortner

Episode Date: October 9, 2017

"Stress is about safety." - Nick Ortner If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/547

This is episode number 547 with New York Times best-selling author Nick Ortner. 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. You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart.

George Michael. Welcome everyone to this episode. I'm very excited because we have my good friend Nick Ortner in the house and something magical happens around the half point of this interview. I bring in Cesar, my COO, to run a little experiment and exercise with Nick and something transformational happens. You have to stick around to listen to it or to watch it on the YouTube channel, on the video, because it's kind of mind-blowing what happens. Caesar has a stiff neck. He literally can't even move his neck any which way.

He has to move his whole body to see you. And at the end of this exercise, something magical happens. He can fully turn to the side, both sides. It's pretty crazy in just a few minutes. And for those that don't know, Nick Ordner is the CEO of The Tapping Solution and a New York Times bestselling author of The Tapping Solution, a revolutionary system for stress-free living. He also made a documentary around tapping, which inspired five online Tapping World Summits that reached over a million people.

He's raised over a million dollars for other related charities on inner peace and finding relief as well with stress in your life. So I'm very excited to bring him on. And some of the things we talk about are why we stack limiting beliefs on top of one another,

how we can construct realities built on these stories. Also, why we're walking around with a stress response thinking we are about to die. How to live on the edge without stressing yourself out and why stress is all about safety. Guys, we dive into a lot and again, give you some practical things you can try out at home

to help you relieve stress and find inner peace in any moment. Whether you're feeling emotional anxiety, you have physical tension in your body, or something's going on, there's a simple exercise that we're going to break down, and there's some research and science backing it, so I'm excited for you to check it out. Before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to the review of the week, the fan of the week. This is from Rajan Bowman, who said, I listen to the

podcast every day without missing a beat. Sometimes that means listening to the same episode two or three times just to truly soak it all in. It's amazing that Lewis Howes just knows how to ask the right questions to get the most out of every guest. Truly, this podcast keeps me learning on my feet and highly motivated to succeed in life. Thank you, Lewis, for everything you do. Truly, this podcast keeps me learning on my feet and highly motivated to succeed in life. Thank you, Lewis, for everything you do. So, Rajon Bowman, thank you so much for leaving your review over on iTunes and for being the fan of the week. If you guys want to be considered for a shout-out on the podcast, go to the podcast app on your phone or on iTunes. Type in School of Greatness.

And just right there on your phone on the podcast app, you can or on iTunes. Type in School of Greatness and just right there on your phone on the podcast app, you can just click on the review, leave a review and click the stars you want to have as your review and click submit. And there you go. It's as simple as that. And you'll get a chance to be getting a shout out for the review and fan of the week. And before we dive in, guys, we are launching today. School of Greatness Academy is open for its 11th class. So this is the 10-week program, intensive training online, where we build learning, coaching, and accountability to help you achieve your biggest goals and dreams

in the next 10 weeks. So if you've had any dream or goal that you have over the last year that you haven't accomplished yet, now is the time. Make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash SOGA. That's S-O-G-A, lewishouse.com slash SOGA. Register today. There's hundreds of people joining

who are all on the journey to achieve their goals and dreams, increase your productivity, get clear on the vision for your life. All dreams, increase your productivity, get clear on the vision for your life. All of those things are included in the School of Greatness Academy. So make sure to sign up, get involved. Let's finish the year strong. And also the mask of masculinity. We are a couple weeks away from the most anticipated book launch of the year. I just said that myself and made it up, but I actually believe it's pretty anticipated

because there's so much pain and suffering and hatred in the world, and a lot of it is stemming from angry men who don't know how to express their emotions. And this book is so timely because it gives men the tools on how to release this trauma, release the stress, release the pain, the suffering, all those feelings that men don't believe they can release

or talk about. I talk about how to break it down and make it simple for men to do that, at least as simple as possible as it is challenging for men to open up. And also for women, how to understand the men in their life, the husbands, boyfriends, brothers, fathers, sons that moms have who are disconnected or feel like they aren't opening up. I give you practical tools, resources, and research on how to connect with the men in your lives to get them to open up, drop the mask, and step into who they authentically are. So make sure to go to mascofmasculinity.com, pre-order copy there, and send me a message over

on Twitter or Instagram, at Lewis Howes, when you get your copy, so I can give you a quick shout out and thank you for grabbing one. Again, mascofmasculinity.com, there are a lot of bonuses over there on that page. So if you buy multiple copies, we get you some goodies and some bonuses as well. Again, mascofmasculinity.com. All right, guys, I'm pumped for this. It's all about finding inner peace, stress relief, and living your greatness with the one, the only Nick Ortner. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast.

We've got the legendary Nick Ortner in the house. Good to see you, man. So good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. Very glad that you're here. Yes. I don't even remember the last time we saw each other. I'll tell you.

We were in a bar in New York City. And we were... When was it, though? Five, six years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, before you were doing... You were in the city trying to figure out your life, like doing your thing, good friends with my sister. And I actually think I was in the city because we had a mastermind for our affiliates then.

And met up at the bar and chatted for a little while and have been in contact. Was your other brother there too? Yeah. Okay. Your sister was there at the same time. We were all there. Yeah, we were all there. It's like after the mastermind or whatever. I remember. I remember where, you know, sometimes you remember. Okay. Your sister was there at the same time. We were all there. It's like after the mastermind or whatever.

I remember. I remember where, you know, sometimes you remember. We were standing there at the bar. Where was this? Do you remember which bar? No. That is actually, that's Jim Quick territory. Yeah.

He would remember anything. That's cool, man. Well, it's been a while, but congrats on everything you've been up to. Thank you. And you've been helping so many people over the last decade through releasing pain, right? And there's been a lot of trauma and pain in the world. It seems like more so this year than ever. There's a lot of pain and inner suffering, which the inner suffering from my experience

turns into physical pain. Is that what I'm understanding? I mean, 100%. Look, the correlation isn't always as direct. We tend to be like, oh, I have pain in my back. It must be emotional. Or I have cancer. I must have thought the wrong thought, right?

The way I look at any of these things, it's that it's a combination of stuff, right? So let's look at something as difficult as cancer or pain in the body. You start out with a genetic component, right? You're coming in with a certain set of genes. They do something. They don't control you, but they set genetic component, right? You're coming in with a certain set of genes. Like they do something. They don't control you, but they set you up, right? And now you add in a trauma or a stressor or something that you don't let go of.

I mean, I was just reading in your book, like talking about that, right? As men, we push it down. We push down these traumas, this pain. And if we don't acknowledge it, if we don't deal with it, if we don't move it through our body in some way, whether that be tapping, which we'll talk about, I think it's one of the best ways,

meditation, exercise, journaling, moving these energies through our body. Just sharing it verbally. Just talking about it. Talking about it. Right? It's moving that energy. What happens when we don't move it? We swallow it down, right? And you've met these people. I've been that person. You've been that person. That have just been swallowing things for so long.

And you get that sense. I'm sure when you were swallowing, you were happy on the outside. People were like, oh yeah, Louis is happy. But then there's just that underlying knowing thing of like, you know what? I've been swallowing something for so long, and it's eating away at me. And frankly, I think that we're doing that with big traumas and with little traumas, right? We're doing it with the things that happened in our childhood that we just, it's too painful to look at. And we're also doing it with just the daily stressors and just like the competition and the idea of like comparison and all that adds up. All that boils over. That is why people blink and they go, wait, what do you mean I have prostate cancer?

You know, what do you mean I have this? What do you mean my relationship fell apart? Like I was, the reality is everyone's doing the best they can every single day, right? People are putting it in like from the resources they have. And so many people just aren't getting that result. They're not getting that inner peace. They're not getting that inner clarity. They're not cultivating that sense of all is well. What I love about tapping, what I love about this work is that for too long, I feel like we've just been up in our heads and we haven't brought the body into it. And so when we talk about trauma, the things that have happened in our past, these traumas

happen at a cellular level. And you know it. You feel it in every bone in your body when something traumatic happens. And again, big or small. It could be sexual abuse. It can be you got up in front of the class in fifth grade and you stumbled on a word when you were reading and everybody laughed at you.

And that little fifth grader in that moment said, this is not safe. This environment is not safe. The brain decided, no more, right? So then they say, they stumble, everyone laughs at them. They have to give a report the next year. They spend the next three months before the report terrified of giving this.

We stack, we stack, we stack. And now that's the person that you meet. And I ask my audience who here is scared of public speaking, like 10% to 20% of people raise their hand. Think about that. That makes no sense, right? That someone would be scared to walk up and talk. You and I are not scared right now. We're being watched by people,

but there are, for some people, this experience right now would be terrifying. And that's because something has happened along the way in their brain that said, this is dangerous. And we know what they are, right? When we dig in, we say, well, my brain says, what if Louis thinks I'm saying stupid things? What if the audience doesn't like me? What if I stumble over a word? What if I this? What if I that? These are the beliefs that we stack on ourselves and our lives.

And these are the chains that we stack on ourselves. What ends up happening after enough of those events and enough of that creating who you are is that that's when you're shackled and you say, oh, this is just who I am. I am. And we say it with I am. I am, and we say it with I am. I am scared of public speaking. I am lazy. I'm a procrastinator.

Oh, I start things and then I always stop. Or I have trouble, like we have all these I ams. I'm not smart enough to do this. I'm too young. I'm too old. All these things, right? These are all behaviors. They're all experiences that stack one on top of the other.

And then we, look, half the time we walk around like robots, right? We're just like, we're going on all these old programs. You say something to me and I'm pulling a program from 20 years ago that someone said something similar and now I'm offended. And you were like, wait, no, what do you mean? That was a joke. Or like, where are you getting this? Right?

We construct these realities out of these previous experiences. And it's been my experience in the last, you you know 10 plus now 15 years of me doing the tapping personally that when i see i got to a point and i know you got to the same point when i was like okay i know that i want to create change in my life like everyone listening like you don't listen to school of greatness right like there's some of the population that doesn't know to create change in their life. It's one of the things that I think Tony Robbins, our mutual friend, does so, like one of his big gifts to the world, what he did in my life in 2001 was I went to a weekend and said, oh, I'm in charge. Like I create this.

Like I take responsibility for this, right? A lot of the world doesn't take responsibility for their actions. So one thing is knowing. That's step one. Like, okay, now I know. So I'm going to listen to this podcast. I'm going to try to create change. But what I was so frustrated with was like, I know.

I know where I am. I know where I want to be. Why can't I get there? Like, what is the disconnect? Why do I take two steps forward and one step back? Why is it a struggle? Why is it like I've got to push through my life? And I found when I did this work of saying,

what are the things, what are the experiences, what are the things I'm feeling in the moment that are holding me back, that are keeping that stress response running? Because that's what we're really looking at here. When that fight or flight is activated, when there's a fear of public speaking, when there's an old trauma, that amygdala is firing, the stress response is activated. When that happens, blood, you know this, flows away from

the brain into the arms and legs. Now we're fighting and fleeing. And I like to joke, imagine having this conversation and I'm being chased by a tiger. If I'm scared right now, that would be like me being chased by a tiger or a bear. And then think about the things that we really want in our lives. So to write that book, to make that call, to say I love you to someone, to apologize for something that we did, to dream a bigger dream, to actually take this action, all these things that we want, these positive aspirations, try to think about them when you're being chased by a tiger. Because if you're being chased by a tiger and I'm like, Lewis, tell me about your book. This is incredible.

What is next? What is your vision for this? How do you want to reach people? Why did you do this? Give me your love and your heart. You would say, I'm being chased by a tiger. The only thing that matters in this moment is that i don't die and too many of us are walking around running that stress response where the only thing that matters is that we don't die

the only thing that matters is that we don't feel these feelings again that we don't feel that pain and that hurt and that heartache i think a lot of times people are scared to look at this stuff right mask of masculinity is like whoa you're asking a lot for people, right? Like this is scary stuff. If you don't have a tool to process those emotions, which I know you have in the book, if you don't have journaling or meditation or tapping, then it makes sense to bury it down, right? Because who wants to feel that for no reason, right? So let me bury it down. Let me get to work. Let me just do my thing. I'm going to bury it.

What I found with tapping, and people will experience it when we do it in a little while, is that you feel the emotion, and then you actually process through it. As opposed to, say, swallowing anger down. If you're angry about something, we could tap, and it'll happen time and again. You'll be angry.

Okay, fight or flight, right? There's something in your body that's saying, I have a right to be angry about this. I was harmed. I'm going to stay angry, right? For safety. So we tap

and we talk about it and you acknowledge, this is how I feel and we send these calming signals to the amygdala in the brain. The brain all of a sudden gets this wiring mechanism that says it's safe. And now all of a sudden you'll say to me, you know, I don't feel

that anger anymore. I'm just kind of sad about this situation. It's like, oh, well, that's interesting. Well, let's take a moment to feel that emotion. Yeah. You know, it was such a great friendship and we just got at each other and things went the wrong way. And now I'm feeling that sadness. Okay. Let's tap through that sadness. You know, I don't feel that sadness. I just really realized that we were just both meant to go our own ways, right? All of a sudden, like this incredible healing that sometimes takes decades for people to get to happens in minutes because we are allowing the body to feel and express the emotion. What were the things that you suppressed the most growing up before you got into tapping? Yeah.

You know, I think I was operating, I'm like thinking about all the different aspects of my life. A place where I saw this pattern running, and I'll try to dig out where the suppression was with it, was finances and and money and people are like what do you mean tapping for money well my family growing up like i was born in argentina lived there till i was seven years old really well came to you know the u.s didn't speak a word of well spoke a little bit of english because we had like second grade english classes or whatever the equivalent is are you still fluent fluent in Spanish? I'm still fluent in Spanish. Nice. Yep, yep. And, you know, so second grade joined a new world. No English. No English. Didn't complain that the Flintstones were in English

and I couldn't understand it. I mean, that's, I remember clearly being at JFK Airport. Like, we got in late and we had to stay at the airport before driving out to Connecticut where we were living. And we put the Flintstones on, and I am just, I just, my parents tell me a story, and I threw myself back on the bed, and I said, I'll never understand this, you know,

because in that moment, right, they're just. No entiendes. Yeah, the cartoon is just jabbering in English, and oh my gosh, right. So growing up, you know, we, middle class, there wasn't a lot of money for extra little things, but we were fine. My family definitely ran the pattern. I saw it again and again of boom and bust.

It was like things would go really well for my dad, and then something would go wrong. And then things would go really well, and something would go wrong. And I get into my 20s. I start my own web design company. I'm doing really well. I'm feeling good about life. I'm passionate. I'm living in web design company. I'm doing really well. I'm feeling good about life. I'm passionate. I'm living in New York City.

I took all my friends to this trip in Mexico where I paid for the villas. I'm like doing it, right? That's pretty sweet. Perfect, right? And then a year later, broke. $100,000 in debt. Oh, man. Right?

Boom or bust. When was this? What year? So this is, congratulations, this is 2001. This, man. Right? Boom or bust. When was this? What year? So this is, graduate, this is 2001. This is right after the towers fell. Yeah.

Moved into Manhattan. Wow. 2002. You moved in after they fell. Yeah. I was planning on it. We moved to Brooklyn for the first year

and then lived in Manhattan the next year. So it was like everything. Were you watching the towers from Brooklyn or no? It was, I moved to brooklyn maybe about a month after they went down you know crazy yeah and i talk about trauma in the whole

city there after that which we're still still dealing with yeah exactly still dealing with um and uh yeah so and what i noticed with the money situation what i finally unlocked for myself right because it's like wait why am I doing so well? We go on this trip. Everything's great. We're planning the next year's trip. That you'd paid for already. No, I paid for just the villa the first year.

Oh, okay, gotcha. They got their flights. They got their flights. It was a good deal, right? Second year, we're planning it. And I couldn't get the same deal on the villa, so it was going to be more expensive for people. And I got pushback from some friends.

One in particular. It was a dear friend today, so it's all good. But she was like, you know, Nick, we don't all make the money that you make. You know? And it came with a little bit of attitude, right? You can't expect us to come and pay for these things if we don't have it or whatever.

So there I am, like, feeling on top of the world. And then, oh, I don't fit in anymore whatever. So there I am like feeling on top of the world and then, oh, I don't fit in anymore. Like now I'm different than you. Now we're not friends. I'm making more.

We're not connecting. Sure enough, my unconscious mind took over for the next year and went bust again. 100 grand. I sabotaged myself so I can stay

in the community. So I can stay in the community so I can fit in. And if I look at growing up, look, I'm passionate about the world i'm passionate about these tools of change before i was tapping it was other things i would rope people and you gotta read this book i mean you know right so

and that passion doesn't always fit in right um i I remember in fourth grade, I wrote a blog post about this, it was funny, playing volleyball. We're playing volleyball, gym volleyball, right? So everyone plays, teams are divided in two. There's one dude.

Boys and girls. Boys and girls. People just stand there, like people who literally can't hit the ball. It's okay, right? It's like as bad as it gets. And I'm like, I'm the cheerleader, you know?

I'm like, hey, we're playing a game. Let's go all in. Let's do this, this you know and i'm a nice cheerleader too i'm not like yelling at the person for missing like i'm positive got this next time right and i remember i still remember his name this is what these things do to us right he said who are you captain kangaroo now i didn't even know who captain kangaroo was he was actually a TV host from like the 70s. He was like a Mr. Rogers kind of person. Got it, got it. I didn't even have to know.

I never heard of this either. Right? But think about this. I didn't have to know who that person was to know exactly what he meant. Captain Kangaroo. Like, you think you're better than us. You think that you're like, yay, hooray, hooray, hooray. So these things happen and then we just shrink down, right?

The opportunity, I think the growth in our lives, I think the place where we find the most fulfillment is to feel these edges and, you know, not power through them, not bust through them. Feel the edge. Be with the edge. Understand why the edge is there. Accept the edge. You know, with the tapping we do, even though is there. Accept the edge. With the tapping, we do,

even though I have this problem, like what we start with generally is like whatever's going on, even though I'm anxious, I'm scared, I'm overwhelmed, I have this limiting belief about money, whatever it is, even though I have this, I love and accept myself. I love and forgive myself. I want to forgive myself at the edge. I don't want to say that I've got a power through it, that if I fail, I'm not enough. I want to love myself in that place where that discomfort is. To me, change happens from that place. We can willpower our way to great things, but change where it says, I'm a different person today, and I went through this, and I changed, and I grew, and I learned something from it, happens from that place of acceptance.

And we see it with our body and weight loss, right? My sister, who you know who wrote a book about tapping for weight loss and body confidence, she says that we can't panic our way thin. And I think that happens to like every place we look. But this is what people do, right? They go, let me panic enough about how I look in the mirror. Because if I put enough hate, anger, pressure, fear, and stress on myself.

And starvation. Starvation. I'm going to get this done. Yeah. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work. Does it work for 1% of the population? Yeah, probably. It doesn't stay, work. It doesn't work. Does it work for 1% of the population? Yeah, probably.

It doesn't stay, probably. It doesn't stay. The 1% that makes it work, they're miserable inside. They're crumbling inside when you stop and talk to them and ask them, how do you feel? They don't feel any better. Still not enough. Yeah. Right? So how do we find these edges in our lives and be with them and be present to them, be present to how we feel. I think a lot of kids don't have tools to cope with the feelings also. You know, I wish that school taught us for an hour a day,

meditation, tapping, talk therapy, whatever it may be, self-confidence, just the things that are going to be helping us throughout our entire lives. it may be self-confidence just the things that are going to be helping us throughout our entire lives and i remember as i started to chase my dreams from college into professional sports and beyond it was like i lost all my friends from college like i would keep reaching out to people yeah yeah i was like here's what i'm up to here i'm like going after this thing and it was like they stopped wanting to talk to me i I was like, I keep reaching out, and no one will respond to my calls anymore. I was like, what's going on?

And they were all hanging out together, but since I was chasing my thing, and they weren't chasing their thing, it was like they stayed kind of comfortable. Well, and who knows? Look, things worked out, but who says that your injury wasn't a way of saying, oh, this isn't safe.

Right, exactly. I want my friends. Exactly. Yeah. But it was just kind of like it sucked to feel like, huh, you're going to be alone when you chase something. So let me retreat back and shrink myself so I can be around other friends. Yeah.

Luckily for me, I felt like, you know, I'm just going to find new people who do support me. Sure. And it sucks. I don't have these friends that I had for many years, but I guess it's part of life. So I started finding people that were inspiring enough to similar things and generating new friends.

And every step of the way, the more I'm going after my dreams, I lose friends and find new friends. Some stay around. Some have come back from 10 years ago and are like, hey man, I'm really sorry. I'd love to reconnect. And that's kind of interesting too to see like where their reflection is yeah um but yeah it's hard if we don't have those tools when you talk about kids it's one of the

things i'm most passionate about um we have a kid's book for tapping where like it's a children's book and through our foundation one of the big focuses over the next year is a program for schools. So we've got a curriculum written. And what we're doing is basically working on these little videos in the morning. So five minutes, start your day by doing the tapping. Teachers are doing it all over the place now with their kids on their own. We're just looking to make that part of the system. Because what happens is you get them tapping.

They get grounded in the body. They release that stress. They release that anxiety. And one of the things that I love about the process, as opposed to talk therapy is great, but how are you going to do talk therapy with 30 kids in the classroom, right? And how are you going to do talk therapy with a seven-year-old who maybe not even doesn't have the way to express how he feels? But he knows that he showed up at school this morning,

and his parents were beating each other up in the morning before he showed up at school. And he's showing up, and he's tense, and he's scared, and he's angry, and he's overwhelmed. How is he going to think? How is he going to read? How is he going to do anything? Impossible. We do the tapping.

We're just calming his body. We're just telling the brain that it's safe. And if you do it in that moment, like if you do it when it's active, that's when you can change the destiny of someone. That fifth grader who got laughed at, right? There's two ways that that experience could go. She or he could get laughed at and say, this is dangerous, or get laughed at and say, you know what? I'm going to be better and I'm going to be stronger and I'm going to, or do the tapping and let go of the trauma. Like we have all these points in our lives where we can take one way or the other. The tapping helps us bring ourselves back to that

place of peace, calm that amygdala, calm that nervous system. So then we can make the decisions that really serve us best. Have you been big into meditation as well? Or is this your favorite meditation? No, I mean, I love it. I think it's a, my best combo is usually tap first and then meditate, right? So like people should try it because that monkey mind that you waste, you know, you're like, I just meditated for 20 minutes and nothing happened. Or the last 30 seconds, you finally are like, ah, and then it's like, ding, you know, tapping first, just acknowledging what it is that's going on. Acknowledging the stress in the body.

Some of the latest research has shown that just an hour of tapping, this was in like a session, drops cortisol more than cognitive behavioral therapy or just sitting there. Massive drop in like cortisol stress hormones in your body. So you do that before meditation. You'll see how deep you go. Tell me the science of what tapping does and the research that backs it. Yeah. So there's over a hundred research studies now. This has been around for 30 years. It's only in the last couple of years. I've put

a lot of personal money into the research. Something finally lit up for me about five years ago that said, I got to put money into research because it matters. I didn't think that way for a long time because I was sort of naive. It was like, did you see what that just did? Did you see how that person was just in pain and now they're not in pain? Did you see how much happier this person is? Like, I just went on results. Like that was, was exciting to me. Right. But you get to a point, and especially when you want to affect institutions in a bigger way. So we do a lot of work with veterans with PTSD.

VA hospitals and people inside them have sort of been doing it, you know, undercover, getting amazing results with veterans. But if we want to make a system-wide change, we need the research. So over 100 studies on everything from, like I said, veterans, PTSD, unbelievable results. And again, think about some of the mechanisms that are happening. Let's you're a veteran you come back from war i sit you down as a therapist and i say lewis tell me what happened you're like who are you first off who are you yeah you know to ask me this question second of all think about mask of masculinity and men like we can't talk about something that happened at work the other day that is stressing us out? How are these brave veterans going to talk about war and the things that they saw and experienced

with the tapping? As long as we start to access these memories and emotions, we don't have to say anything. So I can be like, hey, I know that you went through something 20 years ago, and you don't have to share it with me. It's too hard to talk about it right now. That's okay. You think about it.

You run that memory. You feel these feelings in your body. And let's tap through it. Tapping through. Now you're connecting to that memory. You're firing it in your brain. Calming the amygdala. Calming and relaxing the body.

In essence, telling the body, hey, this is safe. And it's the weirdest thing because first off, what will happen is five minutes later you'll go, you know, I want to tell you about it. Right. Because you want to share it afterwards. You just took that edge off. You took the fear off around it. I remember hearing from a parent who was using it with their teenage daughter and teenage daughters all upset.

Something's going on. Right. Right. So like mom knows something's going on. She won't say. She won't say. Right. Something with a boy had to be.

Right. She won't say. Let's do the tapping. Okay Something with a boy had to be, right? Of course. She won't say. Let's do the tapping. Okay, we'll do some tapping. We'll just talk. We don't have to say anything. Just tap through the point. Boom, boom, boom.

Think about it. Think about it. Sure enough, she opened up. Told the whole story, right? So veterans with PTSD, we can go slowly. We can start to unwind the memories. And when we bring in this physical component, the brain rewires. The cortisol drops. DHEA goes up.

Like all these healing hormones flood through our body from this process. And I tell you, I know people are like, I'm just showing the points that people are like, wait, what are you doing? I know people are like, what are we doing tapping? I wake up every morning and I say, what is it that I actually do? I teach this tapping technique. But I think we're going to look back a decade from now and it's just going to be like meditation now

is the hottest new thing, right? It's been around for 10,000 years. Now we finally figured it out. Yeah, now it's mainstream. But now we have institutions, whether it be the government or corporations, saying we have to lower the stress. We need to do something out of self-interest, you know?

A corporation's self-interest is to reduce pain in the body, to reduce sick days for people, to reduce stress and absenteeism, right? So we have to look at these tools, and tapping is just an extraordinary one to make that happen. How did you discover it in the first place? Yeah, so I found it online, you know, I'm not the original to the technique. Like I said, it was, it was first sort of formed in the late 1970s by a psychologist, Roger Callahan, who combined his psychology with this idea of

acupressure was stimulating these acupressure points. Uh, one of the students, Gary Craig took it and turned it into EFT, which is its current form that I sort of learned from and built off of. EFT stands for? Emotional Freedom Techniques. Yeah. So EFT, EFT tapping, they're all sort of general words for the tapping technique. Got it. I remember finding it online. One of the first things that I used it on, I've mentioned pain a couple of times times how well it works on pain relief and I remember waking up with a crick in my neck you sleep wrong

you wrestle the bear in your sleep what happened? how did I hurt myself sleeping? usually what do you do? you pop a Tylenol or an aspirin or you stretch it out lasts a couple days those are the conventional things that you do and I kept hearing about how tapping works on pain relief.

So I was like, all right, make sure to shut the blinds so my neighbors didn't think that I was really going crazy. He's hitting himself. And I went through the process, even though I have this crick in my neck, and I tried to think about what was stressing me out in my life, and I did the tapping. And sure enough, the whole thing just let go. Wow, really?

It just released. And that's when I just like, oof, it just released. And that's when I was like, okay, there's something here. So you learned, you saw like a video training online and there was someone who was demonstrating it and said, okay, do this process and you try it yourself. No one taught you. No one taught me. One-on-one. And that's what's like, people can just do it on their own.

That's what I love about it. That's why psychologists and psychiatrists around the country are bringing this into their practice. The reason is they can do it one-on-one and thenrists around the country are bringing this into their practice. The reason is they can do it one-on-one, and then they can say, all right, hey, Lewis, I'm not going to see you for another week or another month. Here's something you can do. Here's something you can do. Right?

When you feel overwhelmed or stressed. You know, I mentioned when we were talking before that I live in Newtown, Connecticut, which is the site of the Sandy Hook school shootings. And I've had the honor of working with first responders from that with mothers who have lost their children. And one mother in particular has become a dear friend, Scarlett Lewis. She lost her son, Jesse. And Jesse was amazing.

He was one of the heroes. There's a New York Daily News with him on the cover. It says hero because he yelled run and he saved 12 other kids lives. Wow. He's a special kid and um and we tap together and we look to minimize as much as you could the trauma not the grief right it's not like you you tap to get rid of the loss of your son but you tap to get rid of the shock and the trauma and the fear and the holding on that if you don't let go of that

you're just going to walk around with this for the rest of your life. And she didn't want that. She wanted to make sense and meaning and build off this strategy. She didn't wanna walk with this thing in her heart. So we worked together and she learned the tapping and a couple months later, she woke up at three in the morning

in the middle of a panic attack. And she had had panic attacks before. This was something that she was used to. And if anyone listening is familiar had panic attacks before. This was something that she was used to. And if anyone listening is familiar with panic attacks, full blown, there's a point of no return. There's a point where it's like, she's thinking to herself, I have to go to the hospital now. I need medication because I am panicked. My body's panicked. Her other son, JT, was sleeping in the room next door. She thought to herself, I an ambulance go to the hospital get some meds and then i'll be back before he even wakes up right like crazy but this is just the state of panic that she's in she found that space that little gap right that this is what we

need in our lives that little gap to say what if i can do something different here and she started tapping like she went even though i'm panicking and i'm so scared and this that and the other just verbalizing her feelings. Ten minutes later, she's asleep. Wow. She talks about that to this day. And to me, the power in that is that she took the power back. Like she didn't rely on having to get help.

Not that there's anything wrong with getting help, but what do you do at three in the morning when you're having a panic attack? Like we have such a culture that's focused on these outside things like, oh, that person can fix me. People, when I talk with them, they always say, oh, you really fixed me or that was amazing. I can't believe you did. What are you talking about? I showed you a way for you to take control of your emotions, your feelings, and your body. Yeah. I want to actually, I was going to practice with me, but I actually think Matt has like a stiff neck. Oh yeah. The last three days.

He hasn't been able to move his neck. So I want you to grab him and see if what happens. Oh boy. No pressure. No pressure. Yeah. He's been like, he's like, it's worse. He's got a two year old little girl.

I'm not, I'm sorry. Two month old. Oh boy. So he just had his first child. Yeah. You know, very little sleep. I've been traveling for my events. It he just had his first child. Very little sleep. He's been traveling for my event.

He's a little under the weather. So he's been going through a lot of change, a lot of both him and his wife are up late and stuff going on. So I want to see if he can come in and actually be your experiment. My guinea pig? Your guinea pig. All right. We'll see. We'll bring him in in a minute.

Let's go over the points, though. Before we bring him in, let's go over the points. There's seven points? Your guinea pig. Let's see. We'll bring him in in a minute. Let's go over the points though. Before you bring him in, let's go over the points. There's seven points? Is that right or more? A couple different variations but let me show you the basics. Right?

So we start by tapping on the side of the hand. Does it matter which hand? Nope. Whatever's comfortable. Whatever's comfortable. I usually go, you know. We'll go through the points first.

You're going to come in and be a guinea pig for something. We need you for something. He looks really excited. In a moment. In a moment. We'll bring you in in a moment You're going to come in and be a guinea pig for something. We need you for something. He looks really excited. In a moment. In a moment. We'll bring you in in a moment. Yeah.

Stay here, though. Stay here. So, well, step one before anything is, like, what are we working on? Uh-huh. Right? So, and what's great is everyone can pick something. So, you're sitting at home. Pick one thing.

I like to start on the one thing that's just stressing you out right now. You know? It's, like, it's the pain in your neck, right? It's something that you have upcoming. Like, oh, I got this project launch in two weeks. Book launch, whatever. Yeah, right? If you just feel that heaviness around it, like, look for the place where you feel heaviness.

Look for some sadness if you're anxious about something, if you're mad at somebody, right? And we want to get really specific. That way we can focus on it and then see the shift, right? Because we can just tap through the points and you'll feel better. So if I was on like the person I had an argument with that I'm mad about. Yeah, somebody says something to you this weekend

and you think about it and you're angry and it's a level eight, perfect. We give it a number on a zero to 10 scale because we want to see the change, right? So everyone just pick something. Or if you're in pain. If you're in pain, boom, right there. Like lower back pain or neck pain. You focus on the the pain pick the pain and we'll go a little deeper

with the pain because there's an emotion behind the pain sure sure so pick the thing you got your number and then we tap on it so should we just go through the whole process let's do let's get him in here first actually since he's here now so matt's gonna come on caesar and i'm gonna let him walk through it here you go how are you i great. Nice to meet you. Pleased to meet you. Thanks for being on the podcast. Yeah. So we're going to do some tapping. You ever heard of tapping?

First time. All right. All right. And I heard you have a stiff neck. I do. Left side of my neck is just pretty hard to turn left. Okay. So you're locked up to the left.

How's the pain, zero to ten? Straight on, I'm good. The second I start moving left, it's a good 6, 7. Okay. Yeah. You can't move. Yeah, I can't move. And when did it start?

It started a few days ago. Do you remember? Did you feel like you did something? Yeah, I think it was just a wake up one morning, slept wrong, slept funny. Got a newborn baby at home, so sleeping is a little bit of a challenge. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How is your general life stress level right now? Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pretty good. Okay. Yeah. All right. So here's what we're going to do. The first round, we're just going to tap on the thing. So everyone watching, like, please pick something like do this now because such a good opportunity to have the experience. Don't just watch Matt go through it.

Pick anxiety. Pick stress. Pick the one thing that you want to focus on and release. And so six or seven, we have no mobility to the left. How about to the right? To the right, it's much better. Yeah, look, he just turns his shoulder. Yeah, to the right, it's much better.

He goes like this. That's the chair swiveling. You actually didn't move. all right so we start yeah we start by tapping on the side of the hand everyone else just join along and i want you to just tune into that feeling in your neck and the first round we're just going to tap on the thing and then we're going to go deeper look into some other stuff so you can repeat after me, and everyone watching at home, you can use the same language. You can change it up a little bit. I'm going to try to be very general, but you just focus on that neck, all right? So even though I have this pain in my neck, and just say that out loud. Even though I have this pain in my neck. I choose to relax now. I choose to relax now.

Even though my neck is all locked up. Even though my neck is all locked up. I love and accept myself. I love and accept myself. Even though I'm holding on to all this pain. Even though I'm holding on to all this pain. And I'm not sure what it's about. And I'm not sure what it's about. I choose to relax now. I choose to relax now. And we're going to tap through the points. The first point, and you can do one hand or both hands. The meridians run down both sides of the body. So whatever feels comfortable. And you're going to go on the inside of the eyebrow, right where the hair ends and it meets the nose.

That's perfect. And you're just tapping five to seven times. It's not a perfect process. You could tap here a hundred times and you would be great. And you're just tuning in to that pain in your neck or the anxiety about that project or the anger that you feel. Just take a moment to be present with that thing. Now we go to the side of the eye. It's not at the temple, right on the bone here. Again, one side or both sides. And being present to your body, feeling yourself safe and grounded, thinking about

what is going on. What's the thing that you picked? If you're anxious, what are you anxious about? on? What's the thing that you picked? If you're anxious, what are you anxious about? If you're angry, run that movie in your mind about what happened. And now under the eye, right on the bone, and just tuning into that pain, that stress, that stiffness, and being present with your body. Under the nose, right on the bone there. If there's pain in your body, you can ask yourself, what's this all about? What is this all about?

Under the mouth, right in that little crease in there. It's above the chin. And ask yourself if there was an emotion in that pain, in that stiffness, what would it be? Think about that now and just say that out loud. If there was an emotion or a pain in this stiffness, what would it be? And what's the answer?

Ouch. What's the emotion? What's underneath the ouch? Stress. Distress. Stress about what specifically? The annoyance of it. It's annoying. It's not my natural state. It's not my natural state. Go to the collarbone.

Just feel for the two little bones of the collarbone. And you go down an inch, out to each side about an inch. You can tap with all ten fingers of both hands. So you're angry at the pain? I would say I'm angry at the pain, yeah. Just be present with that pain and stiffness. So you have a lot going on in your life right now. A lot of demands.

Yes. And you're staying strong. Staying strong. Staying stiff. Staying stiff. Can't bend. Cannot bend. No time for bending.

Right? No time for bending right no time for bending here right under the arm about three inches underneath the armpit right on the bra line for women either side of the body there's no time for bending no time for bending top of the head right at the crown I've gotta stay stiff there's no time for bending. No time for bending.

Top of the head, right at the crown. I've got to stay stiff. Got to stay stiff. Back to the eyebrow. And just answer this question out loud. What would happen if you relaxed? If I relaxed, the pain would go away. Side of the eye.

Just be present to the pain. Be present to the stress in your life right now. And you, baby, a lot of demands. A lot of travel under the eye. Just notice the last couple weeks and the burden and the stress and the pressure it's put on your body. Under the nose. And everyone else, just keep tapping along with us, being present, watching what happens, listening to the words that your brain is bringing up. What's it saying? What's it doing? What are you thinking about? Sometimes we start tapping with one thing and we find something else under the mouth.

Sometimes we're angry and then we realize we're sad. Sometimes we think we're stressed about something, but it's also about something else altogether. Collarbone. Just go ahead and take a deep breath in. You can gently stop tapping.

And now we tune back in. So whatever you're working on, the anxiety, the stress, the fear, we look at that number. Everyone at home, check back in. So whatever you're working on, the anxiety, the stress, the fear, we look at that number. Everyone at home, check back in. What's that number? We can get really distracted by a lot of other things. Where's that number now?

And how's the pain? Zero to ten. Numbers. Well, there we go. Wow. Did we get a good angle on that turn? The chair did not move. That is some Jedi stuff right there.

Zero to ten on the pain? Look at that. I mean, zero. No pain. Zero. Zero pain? What can you turn all the way around? That's a little bit one there, but there's nothing to the left. I had a move yesterday.

I was one and six. Holy moly. Wow. What do we do? Five minutes? Maybe? Max? Three, four, five, yeah.

Unbelievable. Really? You're not faking it, huh? No. No faking. No, I don't think you're going to fake it either. Yeah? No? Yeah yeah i was like

no this is good this is good so look that's that was a couple minutes we relax the body we decrease the stress hormones in your body we acknowledge some of these feelings like i'm sure you had your own internal process right as you were doing that tapping wasn't just about your neck it was like man I've been holding strong recently, and maybe I just need five minutes to just bend a little bit. That was a nice five minutes, I have to say. I mean, unbelievable. Yeah, so Louis said, what's it going to take for him to stay flexible?

Not go back. That's it, yeah. So look, that was only a couple of minutes. If you and I sat down for another half hour, I'd say, let's really talk about how you're feeling with everything that's going on and tapping on releasing that stress and that anxiety. It may be that you just needed a little bit of a release and now you're good to go. Yeah.

It may be that three hours from now, you're going to be on the phone and you're going to find yourself, you're starting to stiffen up and you go, oh wait, who am I talking to now? Oh, I don't like this phone call. Right. Like Lewis walks in the room. Then we know it's his fault, you know? Right. So we, we, we look for these clues. Like what's, what is our body telling us? You know, all too often we get a symptom in our body and we say, must just be this, you know, we go to on Google and we look it up and we say, stiff neck, here's what you take for it and that's just what it is right supposed to

ask ourselves like what what is the emotion here like what am i feeling what am i going through yeah i typically go to ibuprofen i mean sadly i mean that's that's my first step with with physical pain yeah no so you're good we just throw him in he wouldn't have bought it otherwise yeah i feel like physical pain requires some sort of physical adjustment rather than mental. That's typically my go-to rather than

just sitting there and having a moment of meditation, tapping, just allowing yourself to be and breathe. Yeah. I don't think

I do that enough. Well, keep me updated and I'm happy to work with you more. Thank you. Very good. My pleasure.

My pleasure. All right. Keep it relaxed. I'm relaxed to work with you more. Thank you. Very good. My pleasure. My pleasure. All right. Keep her relaxed. I'm relaxed. Don't go back. Awesome. Yeah, look at him. Does it feel better?

It feels very good, actually. I think the whole body has been better. He looks better, doesn't he? He walked in stiff. He walked in, yeah. He's got more blood to his face. Yeah, yeah. Keep trying it.

Do another five-minute session when you feel... Very good. Wow. Thank you. You're welcome session when you feel wow there you go i figured he would be a better transformation than me yeah i mean look there's nothing better than a visual right exactly you know but to me it's like what's great about that visual is that that's what's happening inside right this is how we move through like this isn't just about pain relief this is about you know it is about greatness right we both have greatness like yeah it's manifesting your greatest self you know it's

like how do we bring that out of ourselves how do we bring out our greatness here's the thing we cannot do anything greater for tight at all yeah the greatest you know that it's sports right yeah yeah you've got to be in the flow at the most times you can be throughout the day. If you want to be able to make an impact, have meaningful relationships, make sure your body is in tune to the way you want it to feel and look and the results you want financially, everything. And that's why it's all about, okay, what are those tools and strategies that are going to help us stay relaxed and focused on something bigger than ourselves, a vision of impact, a vision that will inspire other people, as opposed to a vision of I'm not enough or I'm

suffering and focusing on me, me, me. Yeah. And what do most people, their instinct when they have a vision? I mean, I do a process with people. It's like, all right, you want to make a goal come true or a dream come true? This is what you do. I'll tell you right now, right? You sit, you close your eyes, you imagine that dream and that goal. At first, it feels good, right? You're like, oh yeah, I can do this. And then you pay a little attention. You ask yourself questions like,

what's the downside of this happening? Or you bring your family members in. So you want your dream house? Like we're in this beautiful apartment, right? You want your dream place? Have a family member walk in and see what they say see how just in your mind right we can do this instantly like you know you can bring anyone that you know in your mind and you know what they will say right so have them

come in see how they react see how you react what are the things that you say to yourself you want to publish a book see it on amazon Amazon. What will I hear from people? They'll be like, oh, it's so great it's on Amazon. Oh, wait, but what if it gets a one-star review? You know, it's like instant fear, instant going to like, what's the downside? If you don't accept one-star reviews,

when new authors come out and I'm helping them with a book and talking, I call them up when they have a one-star review on amazon and i congratulate them i tell them you've made it like because no if you don't have a one-star review your book hasn't gotten out enough right you haven't sold enough copies like that should be your job like someone's gonna have something to say about what you have to say no matter what no guaranteed you know so that's how we have to bust through those fears even when we don't go after our dreams, someone's going to talk negative about us. I mean, that's it.

You might as well do it. Exactly. You might as well go after it because either way, people are going to judge you, talk negative about you. If you're sitting around on the couch all day, they're going to say you're lazy. Yeah. If you're going after your dreams, they're going to say you're not good enough or you're not doing it the right way.

So either way. Yeah. Well, thank you for doing that for him because he's been stressed out the last few days. I'm so glad. Yeah. And as much as I try to relax him and get him to breathe, sometimes it's too close to home. What is the cause of all stress in your mind? That's such a good question. I think it all comes back to safety. So on one side of the spectrum, we have that tiger chasing us, right? That is that originating behavior. I really liked, so day two of the book,

I did this thing where there's Grog and Thor, right? They are cavemen, our ancestors. And I paint this picture of Grog and Thor sitting out there, you know, in the savanna, right? And I forget who's who, but let's say Grog is meditating. Because he's just like, he's Mr. Positive. He's just like, he's oming and he's meditating

and he's doing his affirmations on the rock. He's just being so positive. And Thor is just like, dude, I hear it, like a saber-toothed tiger. He's on the lookout. He's looking around. He's scared. And he's going to Grog, dude, this thing's coming closer.

Do you hear the sound of this? And Grog's like, look, man, you need to be positive. You need to manifest the things that you want in your life. You need to visualize. And he's sitting there visualizing peace. Thor, who's just like,

freaking out, freaking out. He says, I'm out of here. I'm leaving for higher ground. Sure enough, Grog gets eaten, right? Grog was not looking out for danger. Thor is our ancestors,

right? That, we are made of that. We are made of many pessimistic people who in times of danger looked out for the negative. It's called the negativity bias. Rick Hansen talks

about it in detail. So our brain does that. And I think I loved exploring that and learning about that because the second you acknowledge, hey, my brain is going to have this bias, right? Then you can, first off, take a little bit of the pressure off of being positive. Like, oh, I just, oh, there, my brain went there. Great. Now, let me acknowledge it. This is where tapping now rewires that brain and that nervous system and tells that amygdala it is calm. And then you can feel the positive emotions truly, right? You can, like, actually feel them as opposed to, like,

trying to fake your way to them. Like, no, I looked at this fear. So back to your original question, stress is about safety. Some part of us doesn't feel safe. If we're stressed because we're running around why are we running around because we think we have to because we think we have to do it to fit in because we have to pay the mortgage or like it all comes back to safety and i find when i like people can just literally tap with i feel safe i feel safe in my body it's something that we never think of, right? Because for most of us, thankfully, we are physically safe most of the time. It's not the case for a lot of the world, but we are. But that emotional safety isn't there. Like,

they could read your book. I feel safe. I feel safe. Yeah, I have a mask and I feel safe, right? And like, what if I could let go of that mask? What if I could let go of these things that I'm putting on? What if I could feel safe in my body? When you and I feel safe around each other, we're not stressed, right? If I think that you're judging me, if I'm worried about this, I'm worried about that, that's when the stress goes up. And you can feel it with everybody around you, right? Like, do they feel safe, comfortable?

I mean, I felt that in this environment when I walked in today. right? Like, do they feel safe, comfortable? I mean, I felt that in this environment when I walked in today. Like, the people you have working with you, there was a grounded, safe energy. They were happy and just, like, it was beautiful. And it was because at some level, they felt safe in their body. They were passionate about what they're doing. You created a safe environment for them. In corporations, I mean, they've done studies at Google that the number one thing for like worker cooperation and enjoyment and productivity is a sense of safety. That I can say, hey, Lewis, I actually don't agree with what you're doing with that project there.

Like, I think you missed the mark there. And we can feel safe enough to go, oh, okay, yeah, I see what you're saying there. Well, what if I do this, right? As opposed to what normally happens is like, I either don't say anything or I say something and now you're pissed off and now we hate each other and can't get any work done, you know, where there was a collaboration based on safety. What would you say is your biggest stressor or fear in your life right now? Someone who's been practicing this for over a decade, who's been helping the world feel,

do you ever find yourself falling back? Yeah. So, I mean, my biggest stressor is I'm a parent of a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. So that has been just beautiful and amazing. And that is just the basic parent stress that exists. I actually have a book coming out next year on tapping for parents, kids, and teens. And I'm donating 100% of the profits of that in perpetuity. Never going to make a penny on it to the foundation because I think that work is so important.

I see it. But I'm okay with those stressors. That's just the life stuff. I think for me, certainly as as a public figure as representing myself out there sharing the tapping i feel a deep sense of responsibility for the technique like for tapping itself as almost like a thing um there's many other people talking about it i'm not the only one i just happen to be someone who can share it in a way that people resonate with an audience yeah build an audience and and resonate with um from the beginning we were talking about the movie i made earlier i'm barely in the movie

it was never about me i didn't want to be the guy like me on the cover is a weird thing i know we talked about this yeah it's a weird thing for me i to really, I had to get a lot of opinions. It wasn't, just wasn't what I just naturally wanted to do, you know? Now that I'm doing it, how do I balance work and family life? You know, I mean, the same challenges that I think so many of us have, like, I have this passion. I believe that this tool can help not just you and I and on stiff neck and all these great things, right, which are important. I think it can help and transform the lives of veterans with PTSD where we don't have any answers. I think it could play a role in the opioid crisis and the deep pain and suffering that people are going through. So it's just about like that feeling and how do I do that? And also just stay in balance.

Right. And not be scattered. And you know, the opportunities that are everywhere all the time, you could follow a different, a million different paths at any moment. So it's like, how do I,

what do I do to grow my business, to support my family, to support our employees and to get the message out. And the thing with the tabbing is I'm always working on like, what's the best delivery vehicle of this, right? Because we can't all tap one-on-one and we can't all going to have me around when, you know, someone has a stiff neck, right? So, and we're doing some things there with an app and other forms of getting

that. So when, you know, when someone like Scarlet has a panic attack at 2 a.m like she knew enough and had the presence of mind to do the tapping but maybe someone else doesn't and maybe they can pull up their phone and have a resource there to just ease you know not fix everything but just ease that pain i think as you know yoga kind of became more mainstream in the last 10 years you know 10 years ago there was was really maybe one or two yoga studios in LA and New York. Maybe 15 years ago it was more like that. And then the last 10 years,

it's all over the country. And now it sounds like meditation is starting to make its boom and becoming mainstream. Headspace has done a great job of getting the word out there. Andy Puttacombs on Jimmy Fallon and Ellen and doing this work and kind of making it more mainstream. Do you think

since this does come from more of a, you know, let's say new agey technique that it will ever get to the mainstream level of a yoga and of a meditation? Yeah, that's a great question. I do. I mean, I'm as biased as a guest.

Yeah, of course. But I do because of the research. Like, we're just going to keep plodding away at the research. And it's not cheap. And it's not fast. And it's just like, it takes time. But there's going to be a point where if you think I'm crazy, you can't ignore me after a point when I say, look, you know, here's a thousand research studies that show it. You know?

Right. From all these credible universities. Look, right now we have psychologists and psychiatrists using it every day in their practice. There's a psychiatrist right now as we speak using it on their client. And I've heard time and again, I mean, psychologists will come up to me,

both practice and say, I've been practicing for 20 years. I don't know how I did it before. Wow. Like, I don't know because the results that i get now are so astonishing that it's just like you know there's there they didn't waste 20 years but part of them feels that way like why did i have to wait this long to know about this it doesn't take a six months to a year to break through with someone it takes

a session or two or maybe whatever yeah depending on the case it's it is shocking you know the the original case that roger callahan had when he created this he was working with someone who had a water phobia and like terrified of water like drinking water was stressful right like just full blown phobia traditional therapy cognitive behavioral therapy exposure therapy trying all these things nothing was working. He'd been reading about the meridian system in the body. They were working at his house, looking at a pool. The pressure points?

The pressure points, exactly. Got it. And he had read that the stomach meridian is underneath the eye. His client, Mary, was talking about, you know, when I look at the pool, I just get all these butterflies in my stomach. I get so queasy. She was having that physical response, whatever that brain link-up had been, water, danger, right? He said, try tapping underneath your eye,

and the phobia cleared. Really? Like that. And you can imagine, he's a traditional psychologist. He's going, how? What's going on? Now, this is why we need the research.

You hear a story like this, like that, and you go, come on. I mean, all right, but that happened once. Placebo or something. Placebo, this, that, and the other other but when we have tens of thousands of i mean at some point we have to listen to anecdotal studies we have to listen to that experience right like we brought someone in who had a stiff neck yeah who was taking ibuprofen never met him before five minutes later his neck is moving that is different than what I had seen in my life before tapping. Have you ever seen it?

No. Right? No. And maybe if you spent a half hour with him and you really got him to relax without being on camera and all these other things, like maybe it would have been like. Yeah. Like, yeah, you could visualize. And again, to me, it's not a competition of tapping and meditation.

They're both like, you know. But so if that happened, then we need to start asking some questions about it, you know? Right, right. Yeah. Um, cool, man. This is powerful stuff. I want to make sure you guys get a copy of the book, manifesting your greatest self 21

days to releasing self doubt, cultivating inner peace and creating a life you love. Make sure you guys get a copy right now. It is out right now. Um, and for me, again, all these things come back down to inner peace. So I'm glad you have inner peace in there because if we don't have inner peace, we're not able to be our greatest self. We're not able to flow. We're not able to connect. We're not able to reveal who we truly are, which is what I talk about in my book. We're projecting certain things and holding tension all the time as opposed to just, this is who I am and I'm going to allow it to flow.

So I'm glad you wrote the book and I'm excited for people to get this. Thank you. A couple questions left for you. Yep. This is called The Three Truths. Very good. So imagine this is the last day for you

many years from now. You live to be as old as you want to be. But for whatever reason, all the work you've ever done has been erased. All the books, videos, talks, they're gone. And you've had a lot of stuff by this point, but they're erased. And all you have is a piece of paper and a pen by your bedside. And you get to write down the three lessons or the three truths that you know to be true for yourself from all your experiences. And this is all people would

have to remember you by. What would you say are your three truths? Boom, I love it. I think number one, and it's manifesting your greatest self, the school of greatness, that there is greatness within you, right? And greatness, I love the word, but many people attach this sort of sense

of perfection around it. Like I talk in the book, like no, no, no. This isn't about being your perfect self. This is being about your greatest self. This isn't the school of perfection. This is the school of greatness. And so acknowledging that that is within you

and then also determining for yourself what greatness means. Because greatness isn't about having a million followers on Instagram. That's where our brains go instantly. If I'm great, I'm famous, right? Isn't that one of the classic, or I'm rich or successful. What does greatness mean to you? Does greatness mean that you were kinder to someone today than you were the day before? Does greatness mean that you said I love you when it felt

a little difficult? So define that for yourself. We don't set these parameters. We'll never know if we meet them. That's one, that there's greatness within you. Two, is that underneath all this, underneath looking for greatness,

underneath striving and achieving and doing the tapping, I think we're just looking to love and to connect to the love that we feel in our hearts and to connect to the love we feel for others. I, one of the things that I've really been getting in the last couple months as I've been doing tapping myself with people and for myself personally is that we talk about these things like what it means to love someone, but we don't really know. We haven't been to the depth of feeling that love. Some moments in our lives, right?

You see moments where people are like, when my daughter was born or my wedding day. So the question is, that love is there. How do we cultivate it? The same way we're cultivating inner peace, cultivating love, cultivating that openness of heart. So two we cultivate it? The same way we're cultivating inner peace, cultivating love, cultivating that openness of heart. So two, cultivate inner peace,

cultivate love. And three, look, if it's my legacy, I got to say, you got to tap. You know, right?

You got to tap. You got to tap. You know, it's too powerful. I know it's funny. I know it might take a little getting used to, but I guarantee you that, you know,

the tens of thousands of people listening and watching, they had experiences. Like they said, oh, I was anxious at a level eight and now I'm at level five, right? That's big. Like we are in control. Like you have this tool, you have this technique that I believe can shape your destiny. So use it. Is there anyone you've worked on with tapping that didn't get results yeah i mean for sure right like um when i was writing my book on pain relief i would work with

people who were in pain and um it didn't work 100 of the time you know there it's not like all pain is all psychological it's a component did we potentially open a door right did we potentially open a door so they got up and exercised and now went to the right doctor or the right naturopath or the right herbalist to help them move along like so i'm not like i'm the tapping guy and i'm not like this is 100 cure for everything you have in your life right and you're never gonna have any problems or any stress again or any roadblocks. So yeah, I've seen times when it's been, you know, oh man, I wish it worked.

Usually, if I have the time to dig and if there's the willingness, we're going to get somewhere. You know, we're going to get somewhere. And there has to be the willingness. If you're closed off and guarded, then you're probably not going to get any results. Yeah, you know, what's funny is just the physical component. Like people say, is it is it a placebo effect like do you have to believe in it

i remember driving to a yankees game with my buddy who he still thinks i'm crazy but you know he really thought i was crazy that he had heard his arm playing football i had just heard about the tapping i was like the running joke was don't say anything is wrong or on nick because he'll make you tap on it you know i said let's just try this thing for your shoulder. And he's looking at me like, you gotta be kidding me. You know, like we're driving in the car. I'm showing it to him, tap and blah, blah. He's gone. Shoulder opens up. Right. So something happened physically there that let go. He thought I was crazy. He didn't believe it. The placebo effect was not in place, you know, and something changed. So that's cool. Well, I would acknowledge you for a moment, Nick, for healing so many people and giving

people the opportunity to have a tool that can heal themselves ongoingly. I think there's so much suffering and lack of peace within people. And for you to give people and be the champion of this and out there every single day committed to it when people know maybe it's not popular at certain times and maybe it's challenging at certain times but for you to continue to be the driving force and give back to so many people who are suffering you're making a massive impact so i want to acknowledge you for your incredible gift and support and empathy and compassion for human beings in the world. Thank you, my friend.

It's an honor. It's an honor. Thank you for having me on. Yeah. I've got one final question. Besides getting the book, where's the best site for you? Yeah, thetappingsolution.com. Thetappingsolution.com.

Awesome. Yeah. And the final question is, what's your definition of greatness? Yeah. The final question is, what's your definition of greatness? Yeah. You know, being a little bit better today than you were yesterday. Loving a little more, being a little kinder. Like, opening your heart a little more. Being vulnerable.

Being willing to take risks. Being willing to tell people how you feel. The actions that we do, and you and I are action guys, but that's just on top of it. That's just all this noise around it. To me, the greatness is just being more loving, caring about our fellow man.

I mean, it seems like it's gotten so lost, you know, that just that concept. Like, do we feel responsible for each other? You know? We can be capitalists and we can be, like, growth-oriented and we can want to change the world and we can want to make money. Like, we can be successful. And we can also deeply care about our fellow human beings. And to me, that's greatness. Like if you're walking around deeply caring about the people in your life, that's greatness.

Nick Ortner, thank you, man. Appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed this one. If you did, make sure to share it with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 547. Nick Ortner is making a massive impact in the world and something as simple as tapping and really tapping on different points in your body and expressing and channeling out some emotions or some trauma, putting words to the things that are frustrating you and allowing your body to release it. This is all part of the process guys of living into your greatness. If you want to be great, you need to be body to release it. This is all part of the process, guys, of living into your greatness. If you want to be great, you need to be able to express your emotions and get them

out in a comfortable, safe way that doesn't hurt people, that doesn't cause pain in other people, that doesn't lash out into arguments or fights or all the things that have been happening that create so much conflict in the world. So make sure to check out more. Share this out if you enjoyed this, lewishouse.com slash 547. And if you want to watch the full exercise, you'll see the video there where you can watch Caesar go through his transformation where he was tapping as well. And you see his neck completely turning at the end of the exercise. Also, School of Greatness Academy is open for the 11th class,

guys. Some powerful people all over the world have joined to fully dive in, overcome their challenges, their fears, and start achieving their goals that they've had all year. So step up. It's at lewishouse.com slash soga. You can get signed up today. Class starts today. Go to lewishouse.com slash soga right now. Also, the Mask of Masculinity, guys, if you haven't pre-ordered it yet, go to mascofmasculinity.com. Get a few copies. Get a copy for your friends.

Give them out as gifts. You can also get a signed copy at lewishouse.com slash sign so again make sure to pick up a copy you've got some bonuses if you get one copy we give you guys some bonuses so check out what those are at mascofmasculinity.com and again you'll never find peace of mind

until you listen to your heart George Michael said that I hope you guys start to connect to your heart and start to express the things that you need to share the most because that'll help you heal the mind and relieve that stress as well. I love you and you know what time it is.

It's time to go out there and do something great. What's up? you