The School of Greatness - 658 My Mindset Hacks for a Greater Life

Episode Date: June 25, 2018

“NEVER SAY YOU'RE NOT WORTHY OF SOMETHING.” Your mindset is one of the most important tools you have in life. It can make you or break you. Many times people don’t realize the impact their thoughts and words have on their life, They tell themselves stories, whether it’s about their work, their finances, or even their health. These stories become real. They dictate your future. Unfortunately, it’s not so simple to change the narrative you are giving yourself. A lot of times it takes a major life event to make you realize the problem. By then, it can feel too late. I wanted to share this episode with you to show you 6 of the common misconceptions we have that can be holding you back. If you take the time to open your eyes to these mindset problems, you can start changing your life now instead of waiting to hit rock bottom. Learn more about my mindset hacks on Episode 658. In This Episode You Will Learn: How to change your mindset (2:14) Health as a lifestyle (3:16) How to appreciate time (10:24) Ways to get over self doubt and victim mentality (13:48) How to get your work to align with your dreams (21:05) What you need to do to connect with people (20:31) How you should look at money (25:03) Plus much, much more

Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone. This is episode number 658. This is my personal mindset hacks for high performance. I was having a conversation with a couple of Brazilian influencers the other day who were here that got me thinking about this. They were mentioning how the mindset in Brazil in general is kind of like this, there's a victim mentality sometimes for some of the people in Brazil is what they were saying,

at least. I'm not sure this is everyone. I've met some people from Brazil who are amazing and super positive and who are doing great things. But I think some of the people there have this mentality of like, everything's out to get us. I'm not worthy of having what I want. Right before I achieve what I want, something's going to break down and I'm not going to get it. Kind of this mentality. my mindset hacks and really what I do to think differently than what the norms have been taught in society for me or for my peers growing up. And a lot of this is luck. My parents taught me a lot of these things early on, which something needs to shift inside of you in order to change that

belief over time. Something needs to not work. Something needs to have a breakdown. You need to suffer in order for that way of thinking or that mindset to shift into looking for a different question, looking for a different way, looking for another process in your life. And so I put together a list of six different things that I think about differently, either now, and I used to not think this way, or have always been thinking this way. But these things are kind of contradictory to what most people might think you should be doing in this part of your life. So I wanted to talk about these six things.

Again, the things you should be thinking about differently and applying differently to your life to get much greater results and much higher performance in your life. So these are the mindset hacks that I personally use for my life. The first one is health as a lifestyle. Now, I grew up eating a lot of crap. I mean, I'm just going to be honest. I ate a ton of sugar. I ate a ton of junk, fried foods. You know, we'd have like eight cans of Coke or Pepsi or Sprite every single day and thought it was actually hydrating us. You know, I just didn't know any better. I was eating pasta and chicken fingers and pizza every single day and tons of milk.

I mean, I was having eight glasses of milk probably as well half the time growing up. I used to have a five-gallon commercial metal milk dispenser in my bedroom, believe it or not, for a year. I was living as a boarding student in St. Louis, Missouri at a private school. And in the dorm room, I asked them if they could put a container of refrigerated milk, a five-gallon bag that we'd fill up every single week and just crush that thing every single day, just pulling it down like you're in the lunchroom. And I was always like, well, I'm just going to burn all this off. I'm healthy. I'm skinny. Nothing is affecting me. I'll be fine. Until I could hardly ever breathe. I was always out of breath. I had

a stuffy nose constantly. I always had inflammation and pain in my joints. And I wondered why. And it wasn't until later in my life when I discovered information about nutrition in the body and really decided that I needed to shift things. You know, I stopped playing professional football, got injured and I gained about 35, 40 pounds and I could notice it. You know, I was chubby in my cheeks, my face, you know, I had like marshmallow face. They called me Fluis for Fat Louis. And I started to really feel the effects. You know, I remember one day I looked down and my underwear was rolled over, like it folded over because my belly was pushing out so much that my underwear now had rolls. And I remember at that moment I was like, I need to shift this, like something that I thought about growing up and the way I've been living my life around this idea of my mindset isn't working anymore, so let me find a new way to shift it.

idea of my mindset isn't working anymore, so let me find a new way to shift it. And I really think about health as a lifestyle now, not as like a diet or like I can do what I want sometimes and then change what I want another time. It's really about a lifestyle. And health is either hurting us or helping us achieve the life we want. And everything comes down to if we're healthy or not. You know, nothing else really matters if we're sick. Think about it. If you've been on your bed for a week or on your couch for a week, you miss work, you miss school,

you can't go do any activities, you can't be around your loved ones because you're sick, you're coughing, you're in pain, you can't move, you'll do anything to get over the sickness, to get over the pain. And sometimes when we get out of the sickness, we go back into our old ways of routines, which get us back to being sick again, needing to be on medications, needing to be having low energy throughout the day, always being behind. Your health is either hurting or

helping your dreams. And I learned this about, I don't know, almost eight years ago, seven or eight years ago when I really started to dive into educating myself on nutrition and lifestyle, living it like a lifestyle. It's very challenging to break a habit. For 25, 27 years, I just ate sugar every single day. I mean, I would have candy bars just for lunch. I would have six candy bars and call it a meal. Snickers, it's got some protein in there, some peanut butter, right? I was just like, this thing's all good for me. And I was addicted to the sugar. And still today, it's an addiction of I crave it all the time. But when I shift my mindset around, this is either helping or hurting me

for a greater purpose in my life, for a greater vision in my life, when I shift the mindset and think of something bigger than the pleasure of right now, of having that sugar rush or sugar high or whatever it may be, and I shift it towards the mind of the future, the mind of something greater that I'm thinking about,

of something I want to achieve or how I want to show up for people, or how I want to inspire people, or how I want to live a long time pain-free so that I can do the things I love. When I start to put my attention on my dreams and aspirations, then my mindset is able to push through any of the desires of wanting to have bad food because I know it will hurt me in the long run. And listen, I'm a human being, so I'll still have desserts and things that I like every now and then, but it's a conscious decision to eat more mindfully and to eat with responsibility. Now, that's a word that, you know, I'm not vegan. So the vegans listening may think I'm a bad person still

because I'm not plant-based and I'm still not a perfect human being in that regard. But it's about the mindfulness of eating what I'm eating, whether it's meat or plant-based or whatever it may be, but being very intentional and mindful of where my food is from, making sure it's organic, it's grass fed, all those different things. And not just abusing food, not abusing food as a crutch for something emotionally that I'm missing out on. And that's really where it comes from. It's like, is food something that's supporting to fuel my dreams

and something that I can also still enjoy the richness of food and life? Or is it something to mask a pain or a deeper sense of feeling not desired or not worthy or not accepted or anything else I might be missing out on? And if we're eating from a sense of lack of pain, of suffering, then that's not the right mindset to have with our food, with the way we move. So for me, it's hard to stay focused on this lifestyle unless I create structure. So the mindset is one thing, understanding why I'm having a healthy lifestyle. But structure is the second thing because it's hard to follow through on any of this. So I really schedule it out. 6 a.m. workouts. I get it done first thing in the morning. It is not fun. It sucks. I don't like waking up at 5.30 and going to the gym. I went this morning and I was like, man, I'm really tired. I don't want to do this. But at the end,

I felt so much stronger, so much more confident, so much more capable of taking on anything else throughout the day. And the more you do this, every single time you do this and follow through on an action you commit to, your mind gets stronger, your confidence grows, and the belief you have in yourself and your abilities continue to grow. So all these things play hand in hand. It's about the lifestyle. Doing things you don't want to do today to create a greater tomorrow is what I'm always focusing on. And it pays off.

It always pays off when you do those things. That's the first thing. Health as a lifestyle. Second thing, personal mindset hack for high performance. The second thing is time. Now, this is something interesting. My dad, when growing up, we wouldn't celebrate birthdays, and I've told this story a bunch, but he never wore a watch, but he was always on time.

And he always lived with a sense of urgency and passion towards the meetings he was going to, the actions he was taking. He had a sense of urgency for his life. And I think growing up, I was always amazed by this. And I would ask my dad, you know, why don't we celebrate birthdays? And he said, I never want you to focus on your age or time as a limiting factor towards your life and your dreams. So many people focus on their age and say that they're too young to achieve what they want or they're too young. They're not capable of being a great athlete at that age or a great musician or a great doctor at that age. Or some people go through life saying, I'm too old to try this now. My time has passed.

Time is gone. I can't learn this. I'm too old to pursue my dream now. And they limit themselves with the mindset, the way they think about time and their age. And I'm always living in urgency, but I'm not focusing on my age as much. I just hit 35 and it kind of hit me where I was like, man, I'm getting closer to 40 now. I had to stop myself and stop focusing on the age or the number and focus more on just living life with urgency, no matter what. Urgency at 15, at 25, 35, 55, 85, just always living with urgency, not saying, well, I have got all the time in the world. You might have a lot of time. You might be around for another 50, 70, 100 years. You might or might be all over today. And I think about my last moment. If I got to reflect before

I knew I was going to pass away on my last moments and ask myself the question, did you at least go for everything you wanted to go for? Did you at least attempt it and give your best effort towards everything that you wanted to try and explore during this lifetime? And if I can answer that question in a positive manner, then I feel like I lived a life of something meaningful and rewarding and something that I could be proud of personally. Now, I may never achieve certain things that I set out to achieve, but as long as I know that I went for it and I pursued it, like I've been on the pursuit of playing in the Olympics for the last seven, eight years now. We still haven't qualified as a USA national handball team.

But I've been giving an incredible effort, right? And I may never make it. I may. Maybe I won't. And as long as I know that I gave my full effort and I went as long as I could and I still had passion for it and I still went for it and I still cared about it, or I stop when I don't care anymore, then at least I know I gave it an incredible effort and I can be at peace within myself understanding that sense of time and urgency. Don't live thinking you have tons of time, even if you might have that. Live with a sense of urgency and make

the most of the time right now. That's the second mindset hack and belief. The third one, self-doubt and victim mentality. Now, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode about these two Brazilian influencers that I met. This is Flavia and Bruna. They're these incredible, one's a writer, one's a YouTuber that teaches kids and moms and parents how to be better parents and how to raise their kids with a better mentality. And I met with both of them yesterday and they mentioned how they're both from Brazil and they mentioned how there's this kind of victim and self-doubt mentality that they notice in kind of like just the general aura of Brazil, right? Now, it doesn't mean every Brazilian has that mentality.

They were just saying how that's kind of like the overall feeling within the media and people you talk to and things like that. That's kind of the overall feeling. Whereas in America, it's more about going for your dreams and believing yourself and all those things. And one of the things, the mindset hack, my parents always believed in having self-worth, having that self-worth. And the more self-worth you have or create for yourself, the more you'll believe that you are deserving of having financial abundance, that you're deserving of having the relationship of your dreams, deserving of having the career you want, things like that. Whereas some people just I'll hear will say, well, I don't know if I'm worthy of having the relationship that I want, or I'm worthy of having that job, or I'm worthy of certain things, or of the health that I want. We're all worthy of whatever we choose to be worthy of. And if we continue to choose

that we're not worthy, then we're going to attract unworthy things or feelings or thoughts. But when we shift our mentality to unlimited possibilities, to an abundance mindset and say, I am worthy by the actions I take, the things I follow up on, how I treat other people, by the skills I'm learning, by what I'm mastering, by the time that I put into things. When we continue to show up in certain ways, we start to develop a deeper sense of self-worth. And that self-worth creates an abundance mindset, an abundance mindset that you have confidence in yourself that you can create the things you want and you can attract the things you want, the people you want in your life, the finances you want in your life, the meaningful work you want in your life, things like that. So one of the big questions is, why am I here? Something we probably have all thought about at some point.

Why am I here? What's the point of all this? Is this real? Am I real? Am I a mistake? Am I supposed to be here? Did my parents mean to have me or was I an accident? And I think a lot of us, if we don't figure out what that answer is, we live in self-doubt and we live in victim mentality. Honestly, who knows what the answer is? Maybe we're all just a part of some big dream, right? Who knows what the answer is? But I believe it's our duty to interpret and create a story around what our own answer is and discover that for ourselves. And when you can get clear on your answer for why you're here and own it and be responsible for that story, then I believe you

can move through life and choose to feel, think, act in different ways. And those ways create different results for your life. So self-doubt and victim mentality, there's no room for self-doubt and a victim mentality. You may be feeling like I'm not ready to do something, like I'm doubting myself in this sport or this activity or on a job interview, whatever it may be. You may be doubting yourself for a few moments and saying, well, I'm going to give my best is different than just saying, I'm unworthy. You can always doubt and still give your best and go on with your best foot forward no matter what. You're always going to have some type of nerves

or fear or something whenever you get out of your comfort zone. And that's natural. That's okay. But never say that I'm unworthy. Never say that you're not worthy of something because you'll constantly attract things that reaffirm that feeling.

You may not achieve everything because you just may not be ready for it or you may not be prepared, but don't have a sense of I'm unworthy. That's huge. And when you can shift that, then you can just get out of that rut of victim mentality. The fourth thing I want to talk about is work and dreams. Now, a lot of people tell me that they ended up doing things that their parents wanted

them to do, that their teachers wanted them to do. And if they didn't love it, they ended up feeling resentful, lost, stuck. And they spent their whole year, got into debt, learning all these things, went to class for years, learning all these things that they really didn't find meaningful. They may have brought them some protection, some safety, some financial security, something else. It may have brought you something else. It may have brought you something else. But I'm always thinking about finding meaningful work first. Find things that are meaningful work for you or work on something that brings you closer to meaningful work. Now, you may not be able to do exactly what you want based on if you're just getting out of college or if you're in high school or a certain age or whatever it may be. If you don't have the skill set of something, you may not be able to be where you want to be in your career at this moment.

But you can take a step of working towards something that brings you meaningful work. You can work and master skills on those things. brings you meaningful work. You can work and master skills on those things. You can work somewhere at a job that maybe you don't like, but you're also learning something there that you know you're going to take at a certain place to the next step. And that's what the key is. Focusing on, okay, I'm going to sacrifice today for a greater tomorrow. At least I'm working on something that's going to bring me more meaningful work in the future. And that's really the key, as opposed to just saying, well, I'm stuck here. I have to work here because I did a degree for four years. And now this is what I've got to do for the rest of my life. And I'm just going to be miserable, and I just have to suck it up. No. You either choose to be happy with your work or choose that

this work is a stepping stone to bring you a more meaningful experience with the work you're doing in the future. And I see too many people wrapped up in the saying that I don't like what I'm doing. I wish I was doing something different. I hate my job. I hate my work. My parents forced me to do this. My teachers told me I should do this. Don't live for what other people encourage or pressure you to do.

This is your life. Live for what brings you meaningful work. Now, number five is people. I see people constantly connecting with other individuals to try to gain something. And that mentality, that mindset never works out in the long run. People always feel used, taken advantage of, and they feel like you don't have your best interest in mind. So you really want to connect to the heart, not the head when it comes to people, whether it be in relationships, intimate, professional, family, connect to the heart, not to the head. And don't look for something to gain, look for something to give. A lot of people ask me, well, Lewis,

how did you get all these incredible people on your podcast? How do you interview all these influencers and celebrities and billionaires? How do you get them to say yes and to meet with you so you can ask them these questions? Or how do you have the relationships that you do have and just have those friendships that you have? How did you develop that?

And I always give the answer, I've always made it about them and connecting to what their biggest desires are, their biggest needs are, their biggest passions are, and focused on them, not focused on what I can gain from these individuals. And I think that's where a lot of people have this mentality of like, I need to achieve results right now in my career, so I got to go meet the person and have them give me a job. I need to go meet this person and have them invest in my company. I need to go meet this person and have them promote me and market me on social media and share it out to their email list so I can make money now. I get it. You have an agenda that you want to create something in your life, but if you connect

with people with an agenda, they're never going to want to support you in your life. You may get something really quick and then hurt the relationship forever. So you've got to lead with the heart, lead with how can I serve you first, lead with how can I add value to your life, whether it's just hanging out and not bugging people or just like asking interesting questions or just being a good human being. So focus on giving, focus on service when it comes to people. Don't focus on what can I gain from this person? You know, how can I give? How can I give more? And that will go a long way. You know, Adam Grant has a book called Give and Take, where there's a whole

science behind developing relationships. And you don't want to just always give, give, give, give, give, give, give, and let someone take advantage of you or abuse you or anything like that. There's some give and take in all types of relationships. But when I focus on giving and service first, it almost always comes back around where someone wants to help me at something. It might be right away or in five years. And that mentality really pays off. And switching that mentality will go a long way. So with people, focus on giving, not what you can

gain. Focus on connecting to the heart, not to the head. And find clarity in the types of people you want to surround yourself with. Just because you grew up with a certain group of people doesn't mean you need to grow up with a certain type of people. You can let those individuals go that you grew up with and grow into greater relationships for your now and for your future. Just because you were childhood friends with someone and felt like you owe someone time and energy because you spent 20 years with them, if they are not willing to change or evolve or grow or shift in certain ways and it's affecting you negatively and you've communicated with them clearly a number of times, you're not just abandoning them, but you've communicated a

number of times how you'd like the relationship to grow and evolve. And if they don't want to grow with you, then you don't have to be forced to constantly hang out with that same person every Saturday afternoon for six hours and doing things you don't want to do. You can grow into a different person with different people around you, and that's okay. And the last thing that I'll talk about from my personal mindset hack for higher performance is around money. Money seems to be something that a lot of people struggle with. It's something I struggled with my entire life because I grew up without money. We grew up on the lower spectrum of the finances in our neighborhood. In America, we were on the lower

end. We still had a home and had food and clothes and all these things. It wasn't like we were poor, but we didn't have an abundance of money. And there was definitely this feeling of scarcity and we weren't living with much. It was very much a month to month type of feeling growing up. And so I always had this fear around money, like I was always going to be broke or I was never going to have enough. And that mentality is hard to get out of. I get it. If you're in that mentality right now, I definitely feel for you because it is one of the scariest things to feel like, how am I going to pay my bills this month or next month? Or I don't know what's going to happen in the next few months. No one wants to feel homeless. No one wants to feel like they can't earn a living and pay for the things to get people by. So I get it and I feel for that because 10 years ago, that's how I was feeling. And something I started to shift around, one of my mentors, Chris Hawker said, money will come to you when you're ready for it. And I remember thinking at the time, man, I'm really ready for money to come to me right now.

Like I could use this money right now. So I'm ready for it. Come on, money. And it wasn't until later when it made sense because I wasn't ready to manage money. I wasn't ready to take it on emotionally. If I'd gotten a big check or something, I would have probably blown it in the wrong ways. And you see that sometimes with lottery winners, right? Almost 95% or more blow $100 million and commit suicides or have some type of deaths within a few years afterwards. And if we're not ready to manage it or if we don't learn quickly how to manage it, then that money is probably going to consume us because our mindset is not ready for that amount of wealth. us because our mindset is not ready for that amount of wealth. So what I think about is living for today while you invest in tomorrow. Living for today while you invest in tomorrow.

I am constantly investing and putting away money for tomorrow. I'm investing in different investments in general. I'm investing in myself. I'm putting money into learning new skills, into education, into relationships, into my business, into creating new projects. I'm investing. I'm living for today while I'm also investing today for a greater tomorrow. I'm living for today while I'm also investing today for a greater tomorrow. And I've met so many people over the years that just live and spend for today and this month. They just think money's going to keep coming in all the time. And so they overspend and live just for today and don't put anything away or very little away for tomorrow. Whereas I'm thinking, how can I live on less now? I already have a lot of nice things. I don't need to buy more things.

I don't need fancy watches or necklaces or tons of crazy clothes or whatever it may be. I'm already living an amazing life. I already have so much. So let me put a majority of my money away for investing for my future. Again, in investments that grow for me. When you invest in the right things, your money is like saying, hey, Lewis, I'm the money you put away a few years ago. And what I'm going to do right now is I'm going to go to a nine to five job for you. Every day I'm going to show up

and I'm going to make a hundred bucks an hour, 500 bucks an hour, thousand bucks an hour. And you don't ever have to show up to this job because I'm going to show up for you. And this money is just going to keep growing in your bank account. You're just going to keep getting paid

every single day for as long as you live. You're just, your money is just going to keep getting paid from this other job. That job is called an investment. When you put money away now for tomorrow, your money is going to work for you. It's going to go to a job and earn you a return every single day. And when you think of that, and the more money you put away now, it's like your money is multiplying into more employees for you. And they're all going out to a job every single day. And their job is to make you more money. And when you have that mentality and you start to shift it and say, okay, I'm going to put

more away today to invest in my future so that I have multiple jobs out there that are earning income for me. And it all comes back to one person, me. That is a powerful way of thinking. But I remember meeting a professional athlete years ago when I was living in Columbus, Ohio. And this guy was making great money, right? He's a professional athlete making great money. And I go, are you investing a lot?

Are you saving a lot? He goes, nah, life is now. I live for now. Who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? I may or may not be here. And this was nine years ago, about nine years ago. And I remember thinking, huh, that's interesting. I would want to have money for my future though. What if I get injured? What if I get hurt? Yes, my life could end tomorrow and then I have all this money sitting in the bank. I get it. But also something can happen

where I'm stressing out later in life if I haven't created more money and I don't have anything. Then I have to rely on someone else. And it's funny. I got a message from him a couple years ago and he was looking for a job because he had ran out of money and he said, you know, I really wish I would have invested better back then for today. And I think it's just a mentality, you know, it's like we can live on a lot less than

we think. We don't need all these fancy things. And if you invest now for a greater tomorrow, you'll be able to enjoy those things later if you want. But they obviously, they don't bring us a lot of fulfillment anyway. Create an environment and have things you like, things like that. But you don't need to spend so much right now to bring you joy and happiness. Spend to have a nice, comfortable life that you enjoy and have fun with. And that's what it's all about. Invest in skills, invest in learning, invest your money so it works for you.

Again, shift the mindset around money. These are six things that I came up with that I thought maybe they would be helpful for you. I'd love to know which of the six you enjoyed the most. Feel free to leave a comment if you're watching on YouTube. If you're listening on the audio, leave a comment on my Instagram page at Lewis Howes and let me know because when we shift our mindset to work for us as opposed to working against us, we start to create a lot more magic in our life. And I thought this could be a powerful episode, solo episode and round to connect with all of you

on just a few of the things that I think about a little bit differently than a lot of people that I talk to. And a few of these things that work for me. I'm constantly looking for new ways to hack the way I think and my mindset to continue to grow. So if you have any ideas,

feel free to share with me again in the comments. I'd love to hear your mindset hacks as well to create more abundance and high performance for you. Other than that, hope you have a great one. See you next time. There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this one. See you next time. all the places we like to hang out. Again, you were born with something special inside of you. You may not know exactly what it is, but it's your duty to figure out how to optimize your life, to create the life that you can imagine in your dreams.

I don't care how old you are right now. If you're a teenager in your 20s, your 30s, your 70s, you can live and change your life at any moment to start feeling different by your thoughts and then your actions that follow. You're an incredible human being. I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you. you