The School of Greatness - 801 Don't Let Your Past Define You

Episode Date: May 24, 2019

Knowledge is not enough. We can know what we’re doing isn’t good for us in the long run. We can know that we have weaknesses in certain areas. We can know that we have stored up pain and anxiety. But what do we do with that knowledge? You have to work through your past issues and trauma so that you stop repeating harmful patterns. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Neil Strauss where he shared how he went from being a “pick up artist” to someone capable of having a fulfilling romantic relationship. Neil Strauss is a seven-time New York Times best-selling author. In his latest book, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, Strauss dives deep into the worlds of sex addiction, non-monogamy, infidelity, and intimacy, and explores the hidden forces that cause people to choose each other, stay together, and break up. Neil says that learning humility was key to helping him grow as a person. He had to admit to himself that he was smart but didn’t know everything. Learn how to heal from your past trauma and keep evolving in Episode 801. In This Episode You Will Learn: What was driving Neil to become a pickup artist (2:00) The three things Neil learn in therapy (3:00 ) About Somatic Experiencing (4:00 ) Follow me on: Instagram @LewisHowes Twitter @LewisHowes Facebook @Lewis Howes

This is Five Minute Friday! Neil Strauss is a seven-time New York Times best-selling author. His books, The Game and The Rules of the Game, for which he went undercover in the secret society of pickup artists for two years, made him an international celebrity and an accidental hero to men around the world. And both books topped the New York Times bestseller list and were number one on Amazon. Now, in his follow-up book that came out just now, it's called The Truth, an uncomfortable book about relationships.

Sort of started to learn about, okay, what are the forces, unknown, unconscious, hidden forces operating on me that made me make this decision? Largely largely having a you know depressed controlling mother and parents in a bad relationship if that sounds familiar at all you know a dad you know a very meek dad who kind of gave up everything for it's so similar it's insane uh and started to learn about that but here's the crazy part so i learned all about the fears of intimacy i had the fears of controlled, the fears of being smothered, the idea that I kind of have to take care of someone that I'd resent them for

a choice I made. Right. And, uh, and here, but here's the crazy thing. And then when I told you that story earlier about her and I broke up, cause I thought Monogamy wasn't natural.

That happened after I learned everything about myself. Like I learned it all. And then I still did it. And the thing is, this stuff is so strong that the knowledge is not enough it's like when somebody said says like oh i'm gonna stop dating jerks or i'm gonna stop dating people like this and then you're like wait you you're in another relationship with the same person again you know it's a new version of the same person and so i had i went through some super deep that I highly recommend to everybody, kind of healing trauma, emotional work that really purged,

that really sort of, let's just say, weakened those connections we were talking about in the box, those stories that we build up. And so I went through some really, really heavy. Yeah, well, first thing was humility. I had to accept that, like, as smart as I am, I know nothing because I'm just messing everything up. And just say, I know nothing. I let go. All my logic is not going to help me. Right. You know, the second thing is just not blaming on anyone else. Like, you know, well, she's doing this and she's doing that.

I had to just accept all the responsibility. And then the third thing was to just treat this thing I took out of the, out of the book. And I'll say it here that I thought, uh it here, that I thought, like, whether we think of them as trauma, like a psychologist may say, or just variables that make you you, I think of all that stuff as like a, all that bad messaging you got growing up, you know, as a sort of like a cancerous ball attached to the heart by an elastic band, right? If you can get rid of that, you can actually see reality and get out of your story and be in a pretty accepting, happy place. And so what I did was I just kept stretching with every therapy possible. I kept stretching that, that elastic band till eventually

it just sort of, I won't say snap, but got so weak that it has no pull over me. So there's something called somatic experiencing, which is about releasing. It's almost like if you think about someone dies in a house with unfinished business and they haunt the house until their business is finished. That's like maybe the stuff in your body that's a lot of whatever the stored up pain and sadness and anxiety. And again, seeing parents fight is not a good feeling to have. And that's all locked in there. And so they do things that kind of unlock that and release it after all this time. So that was good. There's a lot of programs where you'd sort of really unpack this stuff and do a lot of, let's say, just heavy emotional work

through this stuff. And it's life-changing. There's a moment when you can step outside of your own head, outside of your box, and see the world as it is, not as you think it is. Like, oh, it's a beautiful place. I just need to get back there.