The School of Greatness - How To Be Obsessed With Achieving Greatness w/ Dan Harris EP 1419

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today!Today I’m excited to share an interview I recently had around my new book The Greatness Mindset that I felt was so powerful and I wanted to share it here on our School of Greatness feed. Make sure to check out the original episode linked in the description to follow their show and give them some love.Make sure to show Dan Harris’ Ten Percent Happier podcast - https://www.tenpercent.com/podcastIn this episode you will learn,The difference between a powerless mindset and a greatness mindsetThe pernicious impact of self-doubtHow to counter your inner critic via a ‘contract with yourself’For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1419

I believe there's two different types of mindsets. There's a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset. A powerless mindset just means you lack a meaningful mission. It just lacks clarity of the direction we're going that also includes impacting others around us with our gifts and talents. A greatness mindset is driven by a meaningful mission. 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. Hey guys, today I am so excited to share an interview that I recently did around the new book, The Greatness Mindset. Again, if you haven't checked it out yet, make sure to get a copy of the book. But this interview I felt was so powerful, I wanted to share it here on the School of Greatness and on this channel. So make sure to check out the original episode linked in the description,

follow their show and give them some love. And again, make sure to pick up a copy right now of The Greatness Mindset and let me know what you think about this content. You've got this, maybe this is not the right word, but maybe it is, obsession with greatness. Where did that come from? Well, it started with being obsessed with success. And I realized that success, I got it, and it wasn't everything that I thought it was. I got it in sports and became very successful as an athlete in high school, college, professional football, and then played with the Olympic USA

National Handball Team for eight years as well. So I accomplished success in a lot of different endeavors athletically for my goals and dreams. And none of those results got me the feeling of harmony, peace, and fulfillment. They got me a feeling of maybe winning and competition and being right, but those things didn't bring me peace. I thought they would. I thought they would make me feel loved, harmonious inside, fulfilled, but they didn't. And that's when 10 years ago,

I started the journey of saying, okay, success doesn't work because success by itself is selfish. It's for me. It's for me to look good. It's for me to win's for me to look good. It's for me to win, for me to get credentials, for me to get, you know, seen on, you know, New York times bestseller lists and awards and all these different things for me, which there's nothing wrong with, with me,

but I feel like the ultimate peace and harmony comes from service to others. And that's being in pursuing your gifts and dreams in the service of others. That's where greatness for me started to enter. And that's why I realized that greatness was much different than success. And that's where you find more harmony and peace inside because you're in service to others in the pursuit of your gifts and in your dreams. So what did that obsession with greatness look like for you? I mean, how did you go about learning about it? Through a series of events of a lot of pain and suffering and essentially my ego

being shattered, my ego being hurt, my ego being tortured in a sense. And that was not in the worst sense of the word, but I went through multiple different breakdowns in my life from business partnership, relationship breakdown, intimate partnership, relationship breakdown. And it just caused me to break down in normal scenarios in life, being reactive, being resentful, being guarded, closing my heart, and not living in a meditative state of peace and calm and response from joy and love and harmony. I was responding out of fear and anger and resentment. I wasn't even aware of it until multiple things broke down in my life right around 10 years ago. And it was just a good wake-up call for me. It got me to look

myself in the mirror for the first time and truly ask, who are you? Why are you doing this? Why are you so reactive? Why are you living out of anger and resentment and fear as opposed to love? And again, I was driven to succeed in different areas of my life because I thought it would give me a sense of fulfillment, a sense of love, a sense of I am enoughness. But the more I succeeded, I almost got angrier at the world. I almost got angrier at others and angry at myself because I didn't know how to feel emotionally in harmony and congruent with myself because I was driven to succeed. I got it and it didn't give me what I wanted. So I was extremely confused and went on, I started to go

on a journey, uh, in a similar way that you went on your journey of, of meditation and, and consciousness and self-reflection and, and finding that inner peace, uh, in inner peace in a world of stress. And so I started to go on this journey for myself of trying lots of different healing modalities to figure out where the original wounds were inside of me, causing me to feel pain, causing me to be triggered and reactive in different scenarios emotionally, as opposed to noticing an event, interpreting it differently, having different meaning around it based on healing my past memories, and then responding in a more conscious way. And it was these series of breakdowns in personal relationships, essentially, that caused me to look in the mirror and I just didn't recognize myself.

I didn't know who I was. I thought I knew based on the results I was getting, but that identity was based on the foundation of an unhealthy identity, not a conscious loving identity. You said, you talked about this feeling of not being enough. I think that's pretty common with people who are uh successful i'll just speak for myself i i think that if

i've been driven at many points in my life by you know filling some unfillable hole right that i haven't even been able to perceive correctly um and i think sometimes people wonder, well, if I feel like I'm enough, will I still try to be successful? Well, for me, I can relate to that because I'd never felt enough. After sports, I said, well, let me go into business and try this avenue in this arena, and let me see if I can be successful here. And I realized the sports success, translating it to business, making my first seven figures and kind of getting the awards and the accomplishments, they were nice. It wasn't like it wasn't useful and helpful, but it didn't give me the inner peace still, the, or at least the calm presence and the I am enoughness feeling that I was always

looking for because I was still kind of feeling empty when I transferred into business as well. And what I realized is that we must be called and driven by a meaningful mission, something that's bigger than just our goals and dreams. It must be much more meaningful and something where I believe there's two different types of mindsets. There's a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset. A powerless mindset lacks a meaningful mission. It just lacks clarity of the direction we're going that also includes impacting others around us with our gifts and talents. A greatness mindset is driven by a meaningful mission. So when I have started

to feel, and this has really been in the last two years for me, it's been a 10-year journey of discovery and healing different things that were causing me to doubt myself, different things that were causing me to be driven based on a wound to feel more enough and fill the hole. And in the last two years, I feel, again, healing for me is a lifelong journey, but I feel much more wholeness emotionally and psychologically from the last two years of diving in even deeper on the healing journey. And in those two years, I feel more clear, more driven to accomplish my meaningful mission. And I'm doubling my business over the last couple of years. So I don't feel less driven and more lazy and more complacent because I now feel more

whole and fulfilled and harmonic inside of me. I actually feel life even with more urgency. I feel a sense of like life is now even more. And so I must act accordingly on my dreams and goals and empower and lift up people around me in my sphere of influence to the best of my abilities because it could all be gone in a moment. I know you spent a lot of time with Dalai Lama and I know you've done a lot of practice in really reflecting on death as part of a meditative practice. And I think when, you know, I've had two friends in the last couple of months

who are around my age, two male friends who died. And for me, and my father just died last year after 17 years of dealing with a brain, traumatic brain injury that shifted his life forever, where he wasn't able to pursue his dreams anymore. So for 17 years, he was alive after a car accident, but it left him unable to work, unable to cook, unable to drive, unable to do a lot of things. Um, and that awareness of how death is just around the corner for each one of us, potentially, hopefully we live a long life, but it's just, it could just be around the corner. We don't know for me that re that's the thing that drives me passionately towards

creating something in the world, making something, helping people. And having that harmony and peace inside doesn't make me more lazy. It actually drives me to serve because now I can feel fulfilled in a deeper level. I've noticed that a little bit in my life and I've not been great at crystallizing it, but somehow being happier, having a, a, a set of goals that transcend my own narrow interests has not shaved down my edge. It's made it, um, not all the time, but for the most part, I feel like I'm more ambitious and more effective than I used to be. I mean, I still have my bad days for sure, but. Yeah, but your impact and your reach and your growth is expansive over the last

few years and you're able to impact much more people and the results are coming in also. I'm assuming a financial and numbers results and all these things, you just keep growing and it's different levels to the seasons you're at. Maybe you're, I don't want to use the word lazier in some ways, but maybe you're pulled back in some ways, but you're wiser. You're more empowering to people around you. You create systems and processes and are smarter in your efficiency and your productivity as opposed to I'm driven all day long and hustling.

It's more of a wiser season because you've done so much. Well, I appreciate that. I hope you're describing it accurately. That's the way it looks on the outside. Well, let my producer DJ who's lurking on this call weigh in with his views. That'll be the real test. But back to you, I'm curious.

You mentioned that the last two years have been particularly impactful. First of all, I'm very sorry You mentioned that the last two years have been particularly impactful. First of all, I'm very sorry to hear about your dad and about your friends. But going back two years, what else has been going on in your personal life, if you're comfortable talking about it, that has provoked such a deep dive for you? I think the scariest times for us are when life are good and when life are bad. I think that's the scariest time for us because we typically don't take the actions we need in order to unlock the next thing.

We get familiar, we get comfortable with good life and bad life. And it's just hard to stay accountable to yourself. It's hard to be driven, to be pushed, to get the feedback you need and to really say, I want to get to the next level when everything is going well and when things are going bad. It's when things are at an extreme, that's when we tend to look in the mirror and wake up more. And so I was going through kind of an extreme emotional relationship, to be honest, a few years ago where it just wasn't working.

And I had a way, I had started to heal lots of things from my past 10 years ago, eight years ago, five years ago, from things I talk about publicly or I've been sexually abused in my past. It's one of my first memories is a memory of sexual abuse. My brother, my brother was in prison for four and a half years when I was eight years old until I was 12 and a half. And that caused a lot of trauma and pain within the family. And also, I just really wasn't allowed to have friends during that time. So it was a very lonely time for me in my small town of Ohio where I was just looked at as a bad kid as well because my brother

had been in prison. And so there was a number of instances that I had to learn how to amend and create new meaning from the pain of the past that were causing me to doubt myself, that were causing me to believe in a certain thing that I wasn't good enough, that was driving me to be successful so that I could fit in and belong to groups and friends and societies and teams. But at the end of the day, I didn't fit in and belong to myself. I didn't fully accept who I was and I was crippled with shame and insecurity and self-doubt. So this whole journey has been how to rid myself of insecurity and self-doubt because even though I was successful, insecurities and doubts still caused me to feel extreme inner pain, sadness, loneliness,

anger, resentment, and frustration. So it wasn't giving me the fuel that was renewable and abundant. It was an anger fuel to get muster out results and grind it out and left me feeling exhausted. So 10 years ago was a journey of healing the sexual abuse memories and those traumas. Then, you know, brother being in prison and parents going through divorce and kind of having a model of unhealthy conscious love between each other and me learning how to unwind that to all the bullying and being picked on in school and all that stuff. But I still hadn't figured out how to stop abandoning myself in intimate relationships.

So I would want to create peace with my partner and whenever she would be upset at me, any of my previous partners, I would give in. And I don't blame any of them and nothing is wrong or bad with any of these partners. It's just situational. When they would get upset at me or when they weren't happy with something, I lacked the emotional courage and the emotional freedom to say, okay, well, this is who I am and here's what I can do, but I'm not going to give in in these ways and abandon who I am, who my personality is, what my vision is, and my values are.

But in intimate relationships, I would give in, give in, give in, and change to people please and try to buy peace in my life. But you cannot buy peace. You must be peace. As you know, this is something you study constantly. We must be peace.

Things are going to happen around us. How we react and respond is based on our own psychological and emotional wounds, on how we interpret the scenarios around us and how our nervous system reacts to something. So I would get very reactive in terms of fear and worry and I don't want to upset you. Okay, I'll stop doing this. I'll stop doing this. And until it just felt like I forget who I am because I would allow myself to abandon all the best parts of me in order to make someone feel safe or loved or whatever they needed to feel. So again, this is not a blame game. This is a reflection on me lacking the emotional courage to say, all right, well,

maybe this just isn't the right match. Maybe we're just not the right fit. Instead of walking away, I would dive in and try to make it work more and more and more. So two and a half years ago, it was just, it was kind of like, okay, I've been at the common denominator of all these relationships in the past 15 years where I ended up suffering and struggling. And I ended up abandoning myself to make my partner okay. And no matter how much I would give in, they were still not okay. And I was just like, kept repeating this pattern. And I was like, okay, I'm the common denominator. I'm the one who's the source and the cause of all this suffering. So how can I take a step back and really evaluate it differently? So this is when I hired an

emotional coach to guide me in another process of healing how I interpreted intimacy and relationships. I met with her and I said, she said, what's your intention? When I met with her, I said, I want peace, freedom, and clarity. Cause I felt like I had none of those. And every time and I said, I will do whatever you tell me to do. I will do whatever it takes. I will say, I'll stay in your office for as long as it takes and meet with you. I will do any exercise, put me through any weird woo woo crazy thing. Whatever it takes for me to unlock and set myself free, I will do it. And I spent five intense months, nearly every week, sometimes five, six-hour sessions individually and joint with the previous partner to set myself emotionally free. And there was a pain, a ball of pain. I

don't know if you've ever experienced this, Dan, where you had a ball of pain, like in your chest, your stomach, your throat, your shoulders, kind of like a tightness. Mine was a ball of pain. It was kind of like in my chest area that would come and go and sometimes intensify. Now I was healthy. I worked out, I ate well, but this ball of pain was there. And it was based on a psychological and emotional wound that I had yet to face, yet to have the courage to address and mend. And there was a moment in one of these sessions after about four months of intensive emotional coaching where it all started to click. Again, in a moment, things can unlock, but it took months and practice and application of integration for it to open up. And it was almost as if the ball of pain disintegrated throughout my entire body in a moment. It's

like my brain and my body finally connected to the idea that I am not a trapped human being. That was my fear, that I'm going to be trapped just like my parents. They were miserable for 30 years. They didn't fully love each other, but they stayed together because they felt like they had to for us kids. And they didn't show love and affection to each other, although they loved us. And I did not want to repeat that. So I felt like there was no way out. I had to give in and give in and give in. And that caused me to feel this sense of trappedness.

And the fear of judgment was my biggest fear. There's three main fears that cause us to doubt ourselves the most. And I'm a big believer that self-doubt is the killer of all dreams. And my big fear was judgment. What are people going to say? What is she going to think if I end the relationship? What are others going to say? How are they going to view me?

You know, I want to make sure that I look good to everyone, that I don't want people to not like me. All these insecurities and fears were boiling up inside of me constantly. And when I was able to go back and create a new relationship, this is going to sound weird, but when I created a new relationship with my five-year-old self, with my 12-year-old self, with my 18-year-old self, and started to create new meaning from these memories and wounds and say, hey, listen, I got you now, five-year-old Lewis.

I got you, 11-year-old Lewis. I got you, 18-year-old Lewis. Thank you for getting us to here. I'm going to take over now. I'm going to support us. I've got the tools now so we don't have to be living in this past trauma anymore. We can create new meaning, as Viktor Frankl says, creating new meaning around it. We can mend these wounds and we can live from a place of harmony and peace and a meaningful mission

as opposed to a protection energy and a need to protect and defend. And when that unlocked inside of me, it's been two years. It doesn't mean there's not stressful situations and challenges and adversity to overcome. It just means I am in a much more peaceful state of being to navigate the challenges without falling apart. I mean, it sounds like you did extremely good work there and that cannot have been easy. extremely good work there. And that cannot have been easy. It's terrifying.

Terrifying. Yeah. And here's the thing. Just because I've done the work, I continue to do the work every two weeks with an emotional coach because I am such a big believer in coaching and enlisting support in ourselves and the different areas we want to improve upon.

So just because I feel peaceful and good, I keep getting coaching and diving in more courageously into the things that are uncomfortable to talk about so I can keep breaking through and just maintain a level of harmony under stress. As I grow and as I develop in the new seasons of life and as there's more pressures, I want to maintain this level of success. And I think that's why you meditate so frequently, even if it's for five minutes a day, which I've heard you talk about. If you don't have an hour, it's only five minutes sometimes. You do it because you want to maintain a level of calmness in your mind and your emotions, even when things are good. I think it's important to continue these practices.

I completely agree with that. It's like exercise. You don't want to stop as soon as you get into good shape because then you're going to fall out of shape again. Does anybody ever say to you, all right, yeah, I'm interested in greatness, but if it means staring forthrightly at all of my trauma and I don't want to look at, well, greatness. Right. Well, I just think you can still have success, but it doesn't mean you're going to have fulfillment and you're not going to have peace. And there's a, and I just think you're going to live there again. There's for me, there's two mindsets. There's a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset. And this is just my belief from my experience and all the research I've done over the last 10 years of interviewing some of the most brilliant minds, similar minds to yours, in the different fields of neuroscience, therapy, spirituality, mindset, and beyond.

And for me, this is not a right and wrong, good or bad conversation. This does not mean you can't still be successful and have a fun life. Just just means, do you want to feel disempowered in your mindset or do you want to feel empowered and step into greatness? And so a powerless mindset is when at any moment, and this could be a moment to moment thing. It doesn't, it doesn't mean right or wrong or bad or bad. A powerless mindset just means you lack a meaningful mission. You lack clear, meaningful mission. And even if you're in a transition of your life, or you're in a breakdown,

or you're in a season where you're like, I'm not sure what I want, or you feel stuck, then just define the season you're in. Okay, this meaningful mission, I'm in a season where you're like, I'm not sure what I want, or you feel stuck, then just define the season you're in. Okay. This meaningful mission, I'm in a season of exploring. I'm in a season of resting and recovering. I'm in a season of trying to figure out who I am. Great. Then just being clear on what your meaningful mission is during a season of exploration or breakdown or stuckness. A powerless mindset is someone who's controlled by fear. When fear controls us, it has power over us. I'm not saying you're going to eliminate all fear,

but being able to manage the fear and move with it is what we want to learn how to step into. When we're crippled by self-doubt, self-doubt is the killer of dreams. So we're in a powerless mindset state of being in that moment. When we conceal past pains, I don't know, maybe you can question me on this. You can come at me on this, Dan. Have you ever not shared something that you were extremely insecure and shameful of, and, or just worried about what people would think about you, whether it's some extreme thing or just a minor thing.

And it was a, it was a shame. It was a little insecurity. It was a past pain and you held onto it. Did you ever feel like holding onto it and not one human being ever knowing about it was empowering and gave you peace and harmony? Or did not one person intimately or a spiritual guide or a friend or spouse or family member knowing this about you, did it allow you to have a little bit more relief and empowerment over it? Yeah, it's 100% the latter, taking the skeleton out of the closet in a place where you feel like it's okay to do so. That is extremely liberating. Liberating. And so when we conceal past pains, traumas, shames, any of those things, it just, for

me, those things have power over us. We are afraid to conceal them, to share them. Therefore, it is controlling us in some way because we're afraid of what people think about us. When we're defined by the opinions of others, when we're defined by them, when we put our self-worth on the opinions of others, we're in a powerless mindset. And when we drift towards complacency, which I think is what you talked about is, is anyone going to be afraid if they have harmony in their heart, peace in their heart,

are they going to complace it? For me, it's been the opposite. I've been more driven over the last couple of years because I have this abundance of peace. I have so much more energy that I feel like I want to create with urgency even more now because I'm not managing stress and breakdown and all these different challenges. And the greatness mindset is essentially the opposite of these. Someone who is driven by a meaningful mission. For me, I just define the meaningful mission as in one sentence, can you define what path you're on right now for this season of life? And for me, that's to serve and impact a hundred million lives weekly to help them improve the

quality of their life. It's one sentence. It's not all about me. It's about including others as well. And that makes it meaningful. It includes my goals and dreams and the things I want to be successful in the service of the people around me. This doesn't mean we got to go cure the world of cancer and change the world or anything like this, but how are we including the people around us and empowering them and lifting them up on our pursuit of our dreams?

We turn fears into confidence. I don't know about you, Dan. I know you're extremely gifted and talented. I think you're in the top of your class. You know, you're, you're, you got 30 Emmys in the background, uh, sitting in your lap. You've got all these Emmys. You have a high IQ. Uh, you had a lot of confidence. I feel like based on your credentials, your abilities, you know, where you went to school, all these things. Um, I don't know if you ever had any fears. I'm assuming you did.

I'm just throwing that out there as a rhetorical question. But for me, I had a lot of fears and I had a lot of false confidence. I projected myself with an ego to belong, to fit in, to feel like I was enough. And it wasn't until I hit my 20s after professional football when I realized, wow, I actually have a lot of fears. And so I made a fear list because these fears were really holding me back and causing me to doubt myself. And when I started to go all in on the fear of public speaking every single week until

it became a superpower of mine, when I started to go all in on the fear of public speaking every single week until it became a superpower of mine. When I started to go all in on salsa dancing, because I was most terrified of salsa dancing the most because I couldn't dance. And I thought, okay, here's a dance where I don't know the language. I don't know the culture. I don't know anything. And I stand out. I threw myself into the most embarrassing things that were, were for me because I didn't

want to be disempowered by these fears anymore. And when I started to do that, I was able to gain humble confidence because I had to be humiliated in some sense where I wasn't good for a long time. And so I gained a sense of humble confidence in these powers that once were making me feel powerless.

You overcome self-doubt when you're in the greatness mindset. You heal past pain. You don't conceal them. And so that you can have a conversation about these things without it crippling you and making you tremble. You can speak more consciously on the things that used to cause you the most pain. They create a healthy identity. you can speak more consciously on the things that used to cause you the most pain. They create a healthy identity.

I don't know about you, Dan, but I used to be really angry 10 years ago. I was a fun, happy, loving, joyful guy, but inside of me was anger, resentment, frustration, a lack of forgiveness. So when the wound was triggered, when someone hit my buttons, what was inside of me came out. Anger, resentment, frustration, a lack of forgiveness, a sense of unfairness, that came out of me. And it was an unhealthy identity I had with myself. I would tell myself all the time, you're so stupid. Why did you do this? What an idiot you were.

I can't believe you made this mistake. What a dummy. I used to beat myself up. When I was younger, I used to physically punch myself in the head when I would make mistakes because I thought, man, I can't make this mistake. I'm such an idiot. I would say these things internally to myself. this mistake. I'm such an idiot. I would say these things internally to myself. And I don't know if you ever had these internal dialogues earlier in your life, Dan, but if people actually recorded

these dialogues that a lot of us have when they're really negative and they played it in a loud speaker, they would probably send us to like a mental institution or tie us up or something. And imagine if we said these things to the people closest to us. You idiot, what a dummy. I can't believe you made this mistake. And you said this over and over to the people you cared about the most. They wouldn't want to be in your life. And so it's hard to want to be in your own life when you speak this way, let alone other people wanting to be in your life if you spoke that way. So I had to create a new contract with myself. And I don't know if you've ever done an exercise like this, Dan, where for me, again, I feel like I've had to do some extreme things when I was in extreme breakdowns and internal

suffering. So I started to look myself in the mirror and really say like, who am I? Why am I doing this? And just ask these questions and start going through these healing modalities, workshops, meditation retreats, therapy coaching. I went and did it as many things as I could in the last 10 years, except for medication. I haven't done any type of drug therapy or hallucinogens, psychedelics. I haven't done any of that because for me, that kind of scares me. I don't know what that will do to my brain. And I have people that swear by it and they say it's amazing, but I also have seen too many cases of people that it's messed their brain chemistry up so much

that they can't recover. So I feel like that would be a last resort for me. If I was suffering so badly and I felt like I tried everything I could, then maybe I would try that. Um, but for me, I had a very unhealthy identity with self and it was driven by fear, insecurity and ego, the need to look good, the need to be

right, the need to win. Um, and I started to shift this 10 years ago. I created a contract with myself, a new contract of something that needed to be believable. I couldn't lie to myself and say, okay, I'm going to be this way. This is going to be my new identity. And it would be something that when it's really, I was faking it. I don't really believe in the term fake it till you make it. I think facing it until you embrace it is better.

It's like facing the thing that you want to embrace and becoming that is more empowering for me. So I created a contract with myself. This was a literal writing it down on a piece of paper and signing it contract. And I asked myself, what is the healthy identity I would like to step into? And I said three words, I am a loving, passionate, wise man. Now, what was inside of me before then was love, but there was also anger. So I wanted to remove the anger and step more into becoming love.

I was more frustrated when I was triggered and I said, but I'm also passionate. So let me step into passion. I'm a loving, passionate. And I always used to say to myself, man, you're so stupid, Lewis. You're such a dummy. I can't believe you did this. What an idiot you are. I would say so many disempowering, critical things about my intelligence because I was

in the bottom of my grade in school, middle school and high school, because I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade, because of my dyslexia and the struggle that I just faced trying to remember things. So I used to be really good at being self-critical around my lack of intelligence and schooling. And so I said, okay, I can't say I'm a loving, passionate, smart man, because that would be fake to me. It would be inauthentic. I'd be essentially lying to myself and that wouldn't work.

But I said, what's the word that would resonate with me? Well, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. I have wisdom. I have experience. I've overcome stuff. I'm good with people. I've street smarts. And so I became a loving, passionate, wise man, which became a contract I had with myself.

I didn't need to say this to the world. I just said this to me whenever I felt like, oh man, I'm going back into that old self-critic. And I just said, no, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. That contract written down, signed, became a new identity that I was becoming and stepping into and really allowed me to create a healthy identity, which is a part of the greatness mindset. And the final thing, part of greatness mindset is taking action with a game plan.

Again, it doesn't have to be some extreme, hardcore, like burn yourself out game plan and taking massive action, hustling. But there are seasons to life and just being clear on what is the mission and what is the game plan. And when you can do those things within the greatness mindset, that's when you unlock a more sustainable, harmonic identity and life. I know you're not saying this, but I want to get you to accentuate it. Shifting into what you're calling the greatness mindset.

This is not easy and overnight. I really wish it was, but I mean, it's taken me 10 years to be in the process. And in each phase of these last 10 years, I've grown and overcome certain things. But I don't know, for me, Dan, it usually takes me a lot longer to learn certain things. And I tend to make the same mistake over and over again until it gets extreme breakdown. So I've had to face these things and a lot more pain and suffering than I think I want other people to. So the goal is just to give people clarity and use my suffering and my breakdowns to your benefit.

You know, one of the things that was extremely painful growing up was going to a prison visiting room almost every weekend, driving two and a half hours in Ohio in a car with my family to go see my brother. And I kind of smile about it now, but it was pretty traumatic to drive to a prison, have to everyone get patted down, go through the metal detector every time, be in a waiting cell, and then go into a visiting room with 30 other inmates and their family for a period of time, watch your brother get patted down, coming out there in a jumpsuit and like experiencing that over and over again as an eight-year-old until 12, it wasn't fun. But looking back on it, his pain and his breakdown and me experiencing it made me never,

he sold drugs to an undercover cop. That's what got him in jail. And he got sentenced on his first time getting his first offense. He sold LSD to an undercover cop. And he'd never done it before. He'd only done like, you know, trading weed with like a couple of college buddies every now and then. But then he got set up.

And the setup caused him to get caught to try to sell these drugs. And so I've never been drunk and I've never been high. And maybe that's extreme, but his pain caused me to see things differently and clearly and just say, I don't even want to tempt myself to go down this path. Even if I just minimally do a little bit here and there, glass of wine is fine and all this stuff is fine. I just got clear that that's not the life that I want to experience. The pain and suffering that it caused him, my family, myself. I don't want that. And so, you know, hopefully my challenges and me revealing

these things, other people don't have to go through the same stuff as well. I think it's extremely helpful that you are, that you're pretty, that you're open about the stuff you and your family have gone through. Absolutely. In terms of making this shift into a sort of greatness mindset, what are the practical steps we can take to get out of powerlessness and toward greatness? The first step is getting clear on your meaningful mission. And if you're not clear on what that is, there is a healing journey throughout everything in my message, in my work, in the book,

and being in greatness. Healing is not a destination, it's a journey. So it's a healing journey throughout everything. And I think it's first getting to a place of full love and acceptance and forgiveness from all of your past memories to your present. I just think it's really hard to generate, to create from a space of love and harmony and wanting to serve without first loving and accepting all the parts of you that you don't like. There was a lot of parts of me that I didn't like and a lot of things that I did not want

to face. And those parts of me that I did not like were little wounds that were open wounds inside of me emotionally and psychologically. And anytime that someone touched the wound, I would react. I would use energy that did not serve a mission to defend myself. I would put myself out of my environment to defend myself, to justify, to make wrong, to compete, whatever it may be. And that energy pulled me away from taking action towards a meaningful mission.

So this is, again, not a conversation of someone who's right or wrong, good or bad, and what's, you know, what you should or shouldn't do. It's about what is the most useful energy to serve a meaningful mission. If you have a big goal, a big dream, if you've got an idea to write a book or launch a show or put your art out into the world, but your wounds are causing you to defend yourself, to react to certain situations, then it's just not useful in putting it out into the world. And you have less energy on a day-to-day basis. So for me, I did not want to, as a guy that cared about peak performance,

about success, about winning, I did not think facing your past pain was a part of this. I was trained to rub dirt on the wound, to get up and play with broken bones, which I did many times, to not show people you're in pain, to not cry, to not show any emotion. That was the way I was trained in athletics growing up. That if you show pain, if you show weakness, you will fail. You will lose.

You'll be laughed at. You won't be on the team. All these things. will lose. You'll be laughed at. You won't be on the team, all these things. So for me, I had to uncondition myself because that way of being got a certain set of results, but drained the life and the energy out of me from feeling harmony and peace inside of me and fulfilled when I would actually accomplish these big goals that I was accomplishing. I didn't feel good still. I felt upset, angry. I was frustrated. And I didn't think at all facing these wounds, healing the pain, and creating new meaning

around these scenarios would help me. So step one is really developing a meaningful mission through the practice of healing and creating new meaning around these wounds that cause you to doubt yourself, that cause you to be reactive, that cause you to be triggered. Meditation was a big practice of mine over these last 10 years, trying different types of meditations and allowing myself to calm the nervous system, to calm the anger, the resentment.

calm the nervous system, to calm the anger, the resentment. But calming is one part of it. Creating new meaning around those memories is what allowed me to have peace and total acceptance. If I don't accept who I've been in the past, I'm never going to feel enough in my present and my future. If I don't learn to say, man, I didn't like that. I feel shameful. I feel frustrated.

I did these things or these things happen to me. If I keep that inside of me, that's going to keep pulling energy away from me on my mission. So I must learn how to accept and take full accountability and ownership of my feelings around memories, create these new meanings, these new interpretations that support and serve me in my meaningful mission. When I can do that, then I can start to follow a process of actually accomplishing the goals and the dreams I have from a place of new meaning. But I think if we hold on to the pain, it's just always going to hurt us. Step one, heal, if I want to make it simple. Although, of course, that's not simple. It's not simple. It's been a 10-year journey of processing. It's been having different therapists,

having different coaches guide me. It's been doing intensive emotional intelligence workshop retreats where I physically release things, reinterpret things, experience things, and allow myself to reflect and create new meaning. It's been doing every different type of meditation that I can essentially think of, from going to India and practicing for many weeks and becoming a meditation instructor, from doing intensive different types of yoga, breathing to Wim Hof breathing to studying with Wim Hof in Poland, half naked,

climbing mountains, breathing mindset, therapy training with a group of men being vulnerable and opening up together, um, to neuroscience type meditation retreats like Dr. Joe Dispenza, breaking down all the data and the science behind the frequencies and the energies and how it affects the body, to the spiritual

meditations, to talk therapy, to intense emotional coaches, and also 10 years of interviews from some of the top therapists and individuals in neuroscience, brain surgeons on understanding the brain-body emotional connection and just applying these things. So it's been a journey for me. And again, I feel like it sometimes takes me a little longer to face certain things. And that's why these last two years, I was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling this. I will do anything and everything. I will face it.

I will address it. I'll do whatever a coach that I trust tells me to do. And that was an extremely powerful process because it set me free in a lot of ways. And freedom is a continual practice. It doesn't mean you're free and you're never to get trapped and into a feeling of suffocating or trappedness again. That's why I'm constantly practicing it. I think that's important. When you talk about having a mission and the mission is made meaningful because it does include other people, how do you balance that with having what we might call selfish goals?

How do you balance the selfish, unselfish divide as you think about achieving greatness in your life? You know, it's interesting because, I mean, this could be an ego thing just to say this right now, but this month I'm on the cover of Success Magazine and I'll be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine next month. this month I'm on the cover of Success Magazine and I'll be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine next month. And if you would have asked me 10 years ago or 15 years ago or my 21-year-old self

that this would happen, I'd have been like, you know, my ego would have been thriving and drooling. And I'm like, great, this is awesome that it's happening. And it's a cool, it's a byproduct of being of service so continually. It's kind of like if you wanted the six pack and all you did was obsess over the six pack because you wanted to impress others. You might get there, but you may always be obsessive over like, ah, but I'm still fat

or, ah, it's not popping enough or, ah, someone else has got it better. I need that to feel more complete. As opposed to, I just want to be consistently healthy. I want to put in the reps daily because I want to live a long, healthy life and be a symbol of inspiration for those around me to live a healthy lifestyle. The byproduct is going to be a six pack or a good looking body. But the intention and the vision and the consistency of, I want to show up because this is how I want my life to be. This is the mission I

have towards my health. It's going to create these other ego results. And so it's just focusing on the service and the mission first. And again, it doesn't mean it's not cool and you don't celebrate these moments. It's, you know, it's not cool and you don't celebrate these moments. It's, you know, it's kind of crazy that I'm on these covers of magazines, but, and I can celebrate them for what they are and then put my ego back in check and say, you know what, let's make sure that this is happening because I'm the face of this brand, but the message is to go and impact lives. The message is to direct people to the mission and let's keep focused on that. So it's a balance of, yes, let's celebrate and acknowledge that

we're in this human experience and the ego does run part of our lives. But if we get too caught up into it and too hyped up into it and thinking we are more than just a man, then we're going to be humbled very quickly and life is going to humble us. And I think it was Marcus Aurelius was at the story where he would go around and someone would just say in the streets, like, you're just a man, because everyone was praising him and saying how amazing he was. I think that was the story. And I think it's constantly being a reminder that I'm just a man. I'm just a human being. And that doesn't mean I need to diminish myself, but it doesn't mean I need to expand upon my greatness of who I am and really focus on

service and mission. I think, yeah, there was, I'm going to mangle this, but I think there was Marcus Aurelius or some returning conqueror in Rome walking through the streets in their version of a ticker tape parade. And you would have somebody walking behind the general whispering in his ear, because it was always men, his ear, you're just a man, you're going to die. Don't let this go to your head. Exactly. It's kind of like you with the 36 Emmys in your lap. You know, it's like you can celebrate. We should celebrate and acknowledge the hard work that we've done consistently, the efforts,

the creativity, the genius, the masterpiece in all of us. We should celebrate it. And don't diminish these things. And don't say, oh, this is meaningless. It's not meaningless. It's a byproduct of you showing up in your greatness, in your masterpiece, and putting yourself out there in the world in a courageous way to impact and change lives. That's what you've done, Dan. You've done an incredible job with the masterpiece inside of you that no one else can do in your specific way. There may be people

that do things differently in other ways, but no one has done it in the way that you have. And being celebrated, seen, and acknowledged is a big part of being a human being. And so we should celebrate these things about us. Otherwise, if we're just doing it and we're just diminishing the acknowledgements, that doesn't help us either. Let's celebrate it, but not hold onto it forever of like a constant brag and then go back to service. And that's why, you know, you got, you only have half of them behind you as opposed to all of them. That's, that's, that's the key.

For podcast listeners, Lewis is gently calling me out for the fact that I, you, if you're listening, you can't see this, but, uh, I'm in my home studio, which is basically the closet. And in the background, you can see an Emmy that I got, uh, when I was a news anchor and, uh, yes, it's a, it's a flex to keep that in the background, but I didn't do it on purpose. I promise. No, but I should, I think you should have it. If I had it, I would put it in the background.

I'd be like, look what we created, you know, but it's gotta be, how can you use it as a symbol to serve more? And I think that's, that's the key. Do you ever screw that up? Because I do, um, you know, where I, I'll, I'll get too caught up in my own selfish stuff and lose sight of the mission. Like I'm, I'm not perfect at walking this path.

Um, I think for sure I have probably a lot of times, I think I'm a lot more mindful in these last few years. It's kind of weird. Like just the example of the magazine cover, like it's weird to even show my team like, hey guys, look at me. It's weird. So it's like, hey guys, this is happening. This is something that's happening.

And the goal is to use it as an opportunity to promote what we're doing. And so it's not diminishing it. It's not me like just flashing it all day in front of my team or something like that. It's like, how can we talk about it in an authentic way and drive it back to service and the mission while also not disempowering what you've actually accomplished?

And I think I have a great partner. My girlfriend, Martha, is beautiful at giving me the praise that supports my ego, but also saying, hey, listen, make sure you're living a very humble and grateful life. Because if you don't, life will give you things to be humbled by if you're not staying humble. And I think she has been a great balance for me to navigate the growth of a personal brand, the growth of an audience, the opportunities and things that come your way that are fun for the ego, but reminding me that I am just a man, you know, she praises me, but then she reminds me, Hey, make sure you stay in a life

of service and humility or life will humble you. You've chosen well. Uh, she's great. How do you, uh, how do you, how do you think about the role of money and success? Is that a, is that a fair metric for success and greatness? Again, I look at success different than greatness. And I think you can make lots of money and be successful, and it can be useful, and it can solve money problems, but it doesn't solve the problem of loving and accepting yourself. It doesn't solve the problem of feeling like you're worthy and deserving and enough. And I think that's one of the ultimate problems or opportunities that we get as human beings

to learn how to do. How can we know and learn the art of accepting and loving ourselves authentically and in congruency without being a narcissist? How can we do this? And so I think you know a lot of people that are extremely wealthy, mega millionaires, billionaires, who aren't fulfilled, who aren't at peace, who aren't in harmony and alignment and congruence

with themselves and their mission. They're extremely successful. They make a lot of money and they've solved that problem. But during the pandemic, I lived in a building here in Los Angeles where there was a guy worth about a half a million dollars, big TV producer, executive, connected to all the celebrities, extremely famous in the business industry. And he committed suicide. He jumped off the building.

I drove back home one day during the pandemic, and there was a white tent covering the kind of the parking area. And I kind of jokingly said to the person parking the car, the valet attendant, I go, someone didn't jump, did they? And he said, yes, they did. And I go, oh my gosh. And then later finding out about it, this person had not solved the problem. He solved the problem of money, but he did not solve the problem of service and learning to accept and love himself for all of his past and his present. And I think that is, that is the ultimate challenge we get to face. And this is why I love the mission you're on of,

of bringing peace through meditation, teaching and the wisdom that you teach. Because when people feel a sense of love, when they feel a sense of calmness in their hearts, love, when they feel a sense of calmness in their hearts. They are kinder to themselves than others. They are more generous with their care, with their acknowledgement, with their gifts and their talents. And they tend to respond from peace when they have peace rather than anger, fear, frustration. And they don't want to hurt people. And so you're doing a great service to give people meditation and tools to meditate and tools to find peace and calm so that they can have that within them. And then when they're triggered and pressured in life, that's what comes out of them. I appreciate that.

that's what comes out of them i appreciate that i in terms of money though it's it's it's super complicated because you can have an increased amount of peace and still get crazy about money and so i'm just curious you know given given you your very unique perch where you're interviewing, you know, incredible people all the time and you've achieved a great deal of success. What are your thoughts on having a healthy relationship to money, even as you, uh, you know, have a healthy relationship to yourself? I think, I think, uh, this is the next thing I'm actually working on. So I'm actually glad you're asking me this because my next book I'm writing is about the relationship we have to money and essentially the mindset and the emotional sets we have towards

what the meaning of money is to us. As I, at one point, had no money for about a year and a half of my life living on my sister's couch in my early 20s. I had no idea on how to make money and I didn't have a good relationship with it. I was very scared of money and living in scarcity. And I started to find mentors who had more money to learn from and to create a new relationship and a new healthy identity with money. One of my mentors early on said, in a moment of devastation and scarcity where I was just like, man, I'm struggling. I have no money. I'm stressing out about this. I feel like a loser because I'm still on my sister's couch after a year and I don't know

what to do. The economy is, this is in 2008. So the economy was kind of like, you know, a crash like 2020 or right now kind of feeling where it was crashing housing market. They weren't hiring people with master's degrees. I didn't have a college degree at that time yet. I had to go get one still.

And I was just like, I don't know how I'm going to make money. And one of my mentors said, money comes to you when you're ready for it. And if you're not ready for it, it'll ruin you and I was like I feel pretty ready to have some money right now Like it doesn't feel good to be living off three credit cards and being broke in the bank Like I feel ready And he goes it'll come to you when you're ready for it or to ruin you if you're not ready

And I started to realize this over time. And about a year, year and a half later, I started to make more money. I was making $3,000 a month and kind of $10,000 and then $20,000. And then eventually, you know, I was doing $100,000 months in my business. That wasn't all coming to me personally. But I felt money started to come after I did a lot of things that I applied in the Greatest Mindset book of overcoming these fears and turning fears into superpowers, that's when the money started to come. And actually, that's when the confidence started to come in managing money as well.

But I still didn't have the best relationship with it. It took me time because I didn't know how to invest. I didn't know how to save. I didn't know how to manage it. I didn't know how to lend money out to friends and family when they were asking for it. So I was still learning and navigating how to manage money as it came to me. But I realized that if it would have came sooner, I wouldn't have been ready for it emotionally because I didn't have a good relationship with money. It was funny. I was meeting with a friend of mine last week here in LA. He's got a, I think his home was worth 40 or $50 million.

It's this unbelievable home. He had a big exit in the company, you know, a massive exit years ago in a big company. And he bought this home. And I go, man, it must be amazing to live here. Like it's looking over all of LA. It's this beautiful, it's unbelievable. Every technology, gadget, everything you can think of, they have. And I go, it must be amazing.

And he goes, yeah, but the saying is true. More money, more problems. And unless you have the emotional relationship to manage more problems in a healthy way, again, what is inside of you will come out of you. And they say, those that make money, it just exposes their character more when they make it. So if you have a healthy relationship with yourself and others, you'll probably continue to have a healthy relationship. If you're stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, that's going to cause you to amplify that stress and anxiety and overwhelm when you have more money. So I feel like money is an amplifier of who you are and your way of being. And we've got to learn how to have a

healthy relationship with it. It's interesting. I was interviewing this guy named Ken Honda. I don't know if you've had him on yet, but he'd be a great interview for you. I think he's, I think he's sold around nine or 10 million books. He's got a book called happy money. And it was beautiful, beautiful conversation with him. And the book, uh,

he's originally from Japan. So he sold like 10 million copies around like Japan and Asia mostly, but it's gone like crazy. And it's about how to create peace around money and how to have happy money. So he says something around like, when every time money comes in with him, he has a relationship to it. And he says, we should have a conversation with our money and treat our money like we would our most sacred friend or intimate lover. And if we want to have a healthy relationship with our lover or our partner or our spouse, a healthy relationship means you've got to speak kindly to your spouse.

You must invest in your spouse. You must appreciate and acknowledge your spouse. And what you appreciate tends to appreciate in value if you've chosen wisely, obviously. And he says, I have a conversation with my money. Again, this might sound a little weird, but when money comes, he has a relationship, a mental and emotional relationship to money. And he says, thank you to the money when it comes to him. And I think a lot of people are afraid of, they want money, but they're afraid of it, or they think it's evil or bad when people have it. And so if you think something is bad or you're afraid of something, why would something come to you? Why would you want to attract something if you're resisting it and

afraid of it? So we must learn to have a different relationship and have a love for money in an authentic way. Not, oh, I love you so I can go buy all these things and look better to the world because I don't feel enough. It goes back to feeling enough with where I'm at, accepting myself, and having a new conversation or relationship with money. So when money comes to him, he says, thank you, money. Where do you want to go? He says, thank you.

Every time that he sees an amount come to him, a check or something coming to him, he says, thank you. Thank you. He has an appreciation for money, and money continues to come to him, a check or something coming to him. He says, thank you. Thank you. He has an appreciation for money and money continues to come to him. And he also says, I ask money. And again, this is kind of a weird thing that most people maybe haven't thought of, but this is what works for him. He says, I ask money, where do you want to go?

Do you want me to spend you today on something? Do you want me to give you away to a friend in need? Do you want me to spend you today on something? Do you want me to give you away to a friend in need? Do you want me to spend it on a charity day? Do you want me to leave $20 on the side of the street for someone else to pick it up and have a moment today of needing something? Do you want me to put you in an investment account? Do you want me to put you in my living, my food? Where do you want to go?

And he has a relationship with money. And it's like having a normal relationship with a friend and saying, hey, what do you want to do today? Where do you want to go? What should we do together as an activity? He does this with the idea of money. And again, it might sound a little weird. It might sound a little different than normal thinking. But I think when we can interpret it and take a different approach to how we relate to the idea of money, then money will start to relate to us differently. In preparing for this interview, I've been thinking about you quite a bit. And as I hope you know, I'm fond of you. I've spent time with you in person a couple of times.

And you have a very different approach to these subjects than I do. I love it. But you, and I think you're interested in some stuff that I'm not interested in, but you are extremely, in my opinion, really genuine and voracious in your desire to learn. And I have a lot of respect for that. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's a way of softening you up for a hard question. Yeah.

Which is when you talk about attracting things or the law of attraction, manifestation, that is a bit of a bugaboo for me. And so I want to come at you on that and see. Bring it. I love it. Well, when you talk about the law of attraction, what do you mean by that? When I think of or talk about the law of attraction from my perspective,

I think about being very clear on what you want and taking massive action consistently over time in order to create it, in order to seeing it come to you. So if I have an idea in my mind that is not in the world right now, I want to write a book. I want to do an interview with you. I want to make a hundred dollars and I have not done that thing, like that new thing has not come to me, then it's about being very clear on the intention of what I want, why I want that thing,

and the meaning behind why I want it needs to be important. It can't just be for superficial things because again, if we attract these things, it still won't be enough if it's from a place of a meaning out of ego as opposed to out of service. So I could attract and I can accomplish, but it still won't be enough. But the law of attraction for me means being very clear on the intention of what I want to create, feel, or experience in the world, having a deeper meaning of why I want it, and then taking massive action until I create it. And, you know, that could be following a game plan, getting a coach, you know, doing something creative to make it happen, whatever. But attraction has the word action in it.

So it must be something you take action on consistently over time. And the goal for me is really to say, how do we attract things faster? How do we draw an idea that we have into us and put it out into the world? I think a thought thinking and put it out into the world. I want to write a book. Okay. Here's a thought. Why? Well, I want to serve people with a message and I think it'll really help people heal, create, develop, do whatever it is, overcome this challenge. Okay. I want to put this out in the world. Here's why. Here's the mission behind it. Now the goal is to, how do I think something? And the law of attraction is drawing it into me to physically manifest

faster, right? Okay. I had this thought for the book, put the thought out. Now I want to draw traction is drawing it into me to physically manifest faster. Right. Okay. I had this thought for the book, put the thought out. Now I want to draw this into me. So it's actually in my hands. He's holding his book. How, how, how do I do that?

Okay. I need to get clear on all these things and I need to take action. I need to find someone to help me write. I need to find a good editor. I need to find a publisher. I need to, someone to help me write. I need to find a good editor. I need to find a publisher. I need to, all these action steps. And it's my ability to communicate effectively and be in congruence with my mission. My ability to relate to other human beings in the world.

My ability to have emotional intelligence and meet people where they're at and communicate on their level allows me to act courageously and take massive action continuously to draw that thought back to me faster so that it's an actual complete physical thing in the world that I dreamt of. For me, that is the law of attraction, getting clear, taking massive action, and then making it happen fast. Okay. So what I hear there is very commonsensical. You have a goal, you go for it. And yet when I was, I spent a lot of time reporting on self-help gurus back in the day,

James Arthur Ray and lots of other folks. That must have been interesting. Yeah. He had a bunch of his followers. He went to jail for a few years, right? Yeah. He went to jail after some of his followers died. Oh, man.

That's, yeah. That's, he had like what, two or four people died in that accident, right? Yeah. I don't remember the exact number, but it wasn't good. Yeah. It was sad. Anyway, what I often heard when people talked about the law of attraction or the power of positive thinking was you can keep this spotlessly positive mind and then get things through kind of this magic you know if you watch the dvd

of the secret um you see a woman looking in a in a jewelry store uh window all of a sudden it's on their wrist yes all of a sudden the diamonds are on her neck. And so I think that's a very dangerous thing to tell people, but I'm not hearing you say that. Am I missing something? No, I just think that's the way that it's been framed by some people. But for me as an athlete, you don't dunk overnight as a seven-year-old. You can't jump.

You don't have coordination. You're not tall enough to touch the rim. That was a dream of mine since I was seven. It was like, I want to be able to dunk one day. I'm watching on TV. This looks amazing. It took me eight more years until I was able to do it. Wait, you can dunk?

And I would practice. Yeah, of course I can dunk. I'm 6'4". Come on, Dan. Well, I haven't tried. I haven't tried the dunking. I liked you until now. Now I'm just jealous.

Here's the thing, Dan. I haven't done it in like probably two years. I haven't played basketball in a couple of years since the pandemic. So I'm kind of nervous because I'm turning 40 in a few weeks. And I'm like, I still want to be able to dunk after 40. I don't want my age to limit me from anything. But I just haven't practiced jumping. So I got to get back out there and start seeing if I can dunk again.

But side note, um, you know, you got an Emmy, you got a few Emmys. Can you give me one? I'm kind of jealous, you know, just throw me one back here behind me. I'm just compensating for my lack of height. You know what they say about shorter men? The shorter men are usually way smarter, make way more money, and get the dream girl. That's what happens to shorter men.

They get so much more intelligence, have so much more skills and capabilities that they have everything else they want except for the height. I got the dream girl, but the rest of it, I don't know. I don't know, man. You're selling yourself short. I got you. No, I'm kidding. So for me, I had this dream of wanting to dunk. This is just an analogy and a story, but I had to take massive action. I did jumping lessons constantly. I had jumping workouts.

I was obsessing over this and acting for, I don't know, eight years until I turned, I think 14 was when I finally, 15 when I finally dunked, barely. And then it's a level of like, how do I get to that thing even more? How do I keep working at it and working on it? So for me, I take a very practical approach as an athlete. I know things take time, but in the world of possibilities, some things you can bend time. Some things may take longer. It doesn't take five years to write a book.

It doesn't take that. You can say, oh, it's just taking me a long time, but there are things you can do to shorten the attraction to it happening faster by taking different steps or different actions to, again, use a word called manifestation or attraction that a lot of people may not jive with because of the annotation that is attached to it. But for me, I'm able to do things faster now because I have more skills and I've overcome more fears and insecurities, and I'm just able to work in the world in a different way. But it used to take me a lot longer to do things

when I had to learn certain skills. You just used the word fears, and this is the last thing I want to ask you about here is you talk a lot in your new book about dealing with fear, and there's a whole set of exercises, the fear converter, the fear sit down, uh, the self-coaching solution, uh, multiple choice here, you know, or sort of, maybe that's not the right word. Pick one. I would just be curious if you could just walk us through an

exercise for dealing with fear. Cause at least for me, that's, that's a pretty constant companion. Yeah. I mean, I was crippled by fear most of my life and it consumed me. It made me feel powerless in situations. In certain social settings, I didn't have courage or the abilities at the time to act, to show up, to be my authentic self because the fear crippled me.

And so again, this was just me living in a more powerless mindset state momentarily until I was able to overcome a lot of these fears. And it doesn't mean that there's not gonna be new fears at different seasons of life. I'm not married, Dan, I don't have kids yet. And I'm assuming there's gonna be a set of challenges or call it opportunities for me to overcome

certain fears or insecurities at a new season and stage. There's always going to be something that we're going to need to face. And so what I like to do is I like to create a thing called a fear list. Edith Egger talked about this as well when I interviewed her, which I was really excited about when she said it. She's like, we need to create a list of our fears and start knocking them off. And I go, yes, this is something I've been talking about for a long time. She was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a book called The Gift, one of the mentees of Viktor Frankl from Man's First For Meaning.

And she said, you know, these fears hold us back and it's not until we actually face it. So she talked about going back to the concentration camp where she was, where she watched her parents get executed. And she said, it was still having power over me. I still had bad dreams until I went back and faced it, faced the situation, the scenario, back and faced it, faced the situation, the scenario, faced the man who took my parents away emotionally and psychologically in my mind in that physical setting and allowed myself to create healing, forgiveness, and peace. For me, when we can list it and look at them, for me, public speaking was a big fear. Salsa dancing was a big spear. Reading and writing was a big fear. So the first three things I did, I said, I'm going

to go all in on public speaking. And I did that every week for a year. I went to Toastmasters, which is a public speaking class. And it was humiliating. I could not stand in front of a group of people without stuttering, stumbling, sweating, and just sounding like an idiot. These were all professionals and I was not one. So of course I'm not going to be any good. But by doing it every week for a year, I eventually got a lot better. And I'm facing it and checking it off my list of it's no longer a fear. It's now something in my tool belt that I can use that empowers me.

It gives me even more confidence overcoming that one fear. I did the same thing with salsa dancing. Reading and writing was one of the biggest fears of me because I would get asked to speak aloud in class. I know you were in the top of your grade and you skipped multiple grades and you had the highest IQ and SAT and all these things. But I don't know if they did this with you, Dan, but with me, they, in our school, they would rank us of how well we did on our grade cards compared to everyone else in our class

and our grade. And I was always in the bottom four, always in the bottom four. And most of the time, you know, I'm not proud of this. Most of the time I would cheat on homework and quizzes and tests just to pass because when I would try to study so intently and do it on my own, I couldn't pass. I would fail. So this was just a survival mechanism to get through a school.

And so when I would read aloud, they would ask us to stand up and read a chapter one and page whatever, read a paragraph. It would terrify me. I would try to do anything I could to get out of reading aloud. So when I became an adult, or I don't know if I was an adult yet, but in my early 20s, still figuring out life, I was like, I need to face this fear. I'm going to write a book. And I was terrified of what people would think about me

because I wasn't a quote unquote writer. So I studied it. I worked with a coach and a mentor that helped guide me. I practiced it. Again, I didn't just say, I'm going to write a bestselling book overnight and then just manifest it with the law of attraction. I worked at it continuously and felt the fear and felt the embarrassment and felt the humiliation, but I had supportive feedback, positive coaches that said, hey, it's all good. It's a process. You're going to improve over time. And here's something you did better than last week. And let's work with this. By creating a fear list and knocking the scariest ones off first, one by one, you will start to feel fearless. And I think that's an exercise that I've continued to apply in my life

that has given me a lot of confidence in the face of fear. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.

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