The School of Greatness - How To Heal The Pain From Your Past To Manifest Your Ideal Future

Episode Date: June 6, 2025

Leave an Amazon Rating or Review for my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!The power of setback recovery isn't about avoiding failure - it's about transforming your relationship with the uncomfortable process of becoming who you're meant to be. Jay Shetty reveals how stress blocks our ability to love authentically, Dr. Joe Dispenza shares the science behind healing trauma through elevated emotions, and Mel Robbins breaks down the neuroscience of self-love and manifestation. Through vulnerable stories of overcoming brutal pasts, childhood trauma, and self-defeating patterns, these conversations illuminate a profound truth - your greatest setbacks often become the catalyst for your most meaningful breakthroughs. From Jay's revelation about asking for love in unloving ways to Dr. Joe's evidence of people stepping out of wheelchairs through coherence healing to Mel's discovery that high-fiving yourself rewires decades of self-criticism - these aren't just theories, they're proven pathways to reclaim your power when life knocks you down.Jay’s books:8 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It GoThink Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every DayDr. Joe’s books:Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself: How to Lose Your Mind and Create a New OneBecoming SupernaturalYou Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind MatterMel’s books:The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking AboutThe 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday CourageThe High 5 Habit: Take Control of Your Life with One Simple HabitIn this episode you will learn:The hidden connection between stress and your ability to show authentic love to othersHow people who've healed from stage 4 cancer and paralysis used meditation to literally reprogram their biologyThe neuroscience behind why most people manifest backwards and how to visualize the bridge to your dreamsWhy your brain's reticular activating system is either working for you or against you based on what you tell it mattersThe simple morning ritual that rewires your subconscious to support instead of sabotage your goalsFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1781For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Jay Shetty – greatness.lnk.to/1417SCDr. Joe Dispenza  – greatness.lnk.to/1494SCMel Robbins – greatness.lnk.to/1170SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy!Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to

this episode on the School of Greatness. You've been studying this for the last few years and teaching deeper insights on love, practicing it, writing about it, speaking about it on stage, in podcasts, things like that. Where do you see yourself growing in love with friends, family, your marriage, and with yourself moving forward after this work. I think that when I started this journey in my life of trying to make wisdom go viral and to share ideas and help people train their mind for peace and purpose every day, there

was a certain speed and pace that allowed me to figure out what I needed to do every 12 months. And now I feel like I'm moving away from thinking about the next 12 months to thinking about the next 12 years, and thinking about the next 20 years, and thinking about the next 30 years. And so I feel like I'm at a evolution and growth in my own life where a change of pace

will be what I'm looking for because I found that up until now I felt like I had to do lots of little things all the time to be able to establish what I'm doing today and now I realize it's actually going to take fewer bigger things that you can only get to if you've done the step before but now I realize that that's what it's going to take and so what I found was as I was, but now I realize that that's what it's gonna take. And so what I found was, as I was doing this work, I realized that often the blocks to love are not because you don't have the deep intention to love people, but it's that you are putting yourself

under so much stress and pressure that you're too agitated and irritated to be present and actually share love. So I saw this study that talked about how you think you don't wake up early the next morning even though you wanted to because you're bad at waking up early. But the truth is it's because you're actually experiencing stress and when you're experiencing stress you can't implement a new habit. And so reducing stress allows you to be the person

you want to be. If you think about when you say something you don't wanna say, it's because you're irritated. When you do something you don't wanna do, it's because you're stressed. When you react to someone in a way that you don't think is yourself, it's because you're agitated. So we act in unloving ways

because we are putting ourselves under stress, irritation, agitation, or pressure. And so for me, what I've realized that if I wanna be my best loving self and be present with each and every person and be conscious of that energy, I have to learn to not put myself under so much stress that I can't be present.

So that's been a big lesson of love that you can't love while you're putting yourself under stress or pressure in any way. And it goes back to your kind of theme about peace and purpose every day. I don't think you can fully give your authentic heart without being peace. Yes.

Without being in a state of peace. And I understand life happens and stresses happen, but creating a baseline going back to peace so you can be present. Yeah. When we're not in peace, when we're stressed, you're in scarcity mode. You're in fight or flight. You're not present with your friends or family, your loved ones or just acquaintances. You're reactive.

Totally. People don't feel loved when you're not present. When you're not looking them in the eyes or just listening to them and being in a good state of being when you're around them. The other one that came to mind when you said that as you're speaking is, Russell Barkley said that the people who need the most love

ask for it in the most unloving ways. And the commitment I've made to myself is I no longer want to ask for love in unloving ways. I no longer want to be snappy to feel loved. I no longer want to be demanding to experience love. I no longer want to be demanding to experience love. I no longer want to make someone else feel a passive aggressive comment to feel love. I want to communicate about the type of love I needed in open and honest way rather than trying to hope that someone else is going to figure it out because I'm sending subliminal

messages or I'm being distant or I'm avoiding them. And so that was something deeply that I learned was that we just constantly keep asking even the people that love us the most, we keep requesting and demanding love in the most unloving ways. And if we can free ourselves of that, you can actually make a relationship

really special and beautiful. And so we have to let go of that, you can actually make a relationship really special and beautiful. And so we have to let go of that. People who have come on, who have done great things and done it over a short period of time or gotten notoriety or gotten well known or different things or had a big exit when they didn't have money. Essentially five years ago, you weren't on the map.

You didn't have a big audience, you didn't have a lot of money, you didn't have the New York Times best sellers, You didn't have a big audience. You didn't have a lot of money. You didn't have the New York Times bestsellers You didn't have all these things I'm curious before all that started On a scale of one to ten The the peace and self-love scale, let's call it

Ten being you had total peace and love for yourself and love for the people around you and you were present all the time One being you hated yourself. Where were you before we met and then where are you today after success? Yeah, that's a great question. I'd have to say that I was probably at a seven or eight before, to be honest, because even though my work's being noticed publicly in the last five years or six years,

there was a whole 10 to 11 years before that where I literally did this for whoever showed up. Five people. Literally, so like when I was 18, and of course in my first book I tell the story of how I met monks. I would have, I had a society at university called Think Out Loud.

And what it was was a community where I would put out flyers and posters myself, and whoever wanted to come from my university would attend. And it was called Think Out Loud. I would dissect a movie based on philosophy, psychology, and spirituality. So I would take a movie like Inception, and I would break it down.

I'd take a movie like Notebook and break it down. I'd take a movie like The Butterfly Effect, Good Will Hunting. Like I'd take these incredible movies, and I'd do these sessions. They'd be absolutely free. And I did it for the first year and five to 10 people came.

Second year, maybe 25 people came. Third year, there were sometimes where 100 people were in the room. And I was just doing it because I loved it. Then I became a monk. When I came back, I did the same thing in the corporate world. I had an event in London called Conscious Living.

It was on a Friday night. Literally five to 10 people would show up once a month, but it would make me so happy to spend hours with them afterwards. I would literally do a session. I'd serve everyone food because we'd always sit down to break bread. And then we'd sit down for two, three hours

and I would just answer people's questions and sit with them. And I didn't have any followers. I didn't have any platforms. I didn't have any audience, but I loved it any platforms, I didn't have any audience but I loved it and so I was already living the dream in my opinion because I was getting to do what I love on top of having a day job and to me that felt realistic. When I look at my happiness enjoyed now. Scale of 1 to 10 and like the yeah.

I'd say to be honest there's days when it's be honest, there's days when it's a nine and there's days when it's a five. Really? Yeah, it oscillates and it's because. Why is that? Well, I think it's because I've taken on so much more now to think about, to be in charge of, to lead. You have other people that you're responsible for.

You have teams of all of these people that people that you're responsible for you have teams of all of these people that rely on you to do what you do best and take care of them and connect and they're trying to Help you out and build with you and so the responsibility scale level is so much higher now And so it's not that I don't feel peaceful in my purpose But it's that you do deal with daily stress daily challenges daily pressure in a way that I didn't before because it was just about me This is so fascinating because pretty much everyone asks as something similar No way where this like they were peaceful. They loved them so they had more confidence before it's not saying you know more confidence but on the scale of like inner peace and self-love and

Fulfillment it was like almost less on every scale because of the weight, the pressure, the just so much more going on and needing to navigate a lot more going on in life as opposed to more of a simple peaceful life. One thing I've understood though with that point is that the reason why that that translate is that discomfort is where you grow. That's it. And that's what I realized. Can't stay comfortable.

You can't. And so I find that a lot of my life today, I often say to people, I think 75% of my working week is in my discomfort zone. And so I really crave comfort in my relationships. I crave comfort in my weekends. Peace at home, relax, relax. Exactly, yeah, great relationships with you, of course.

And we have a good group of friends and I have good relationship with my wife. So I rely on my personal relationships to have some comfort and some stability as I take on discomfort in my service and purpose. And so I think that makes sense. And so I think you also just get better at understanding what growth looks like and what you need.

I think if I just sat and lived that life forever, I don't think it would have stabilized. I don't think I would have stayed at a seven or an eight. That would have probably come down as well, but for different reasons. And so the reason that now it comes down are actually positive, healthy reasons or can be managed in a healthy way.

For someone watching or listening who's thinking, okay, Dr. Joe, I'm sure you've had some challenges in your life, but you don't have the type of challenges I have. You don't have the childhood trauma that I faced. You don't have the parents who were just detached and didn't show love to me. You don't have the bullying that I went through. You don't have the financial burden that I'm faced with right now and have been in debt for most of my life.

You don't have the constant heartbreak I've felt from all these different relationships. I'm sure you've had some challenges, but I've really suffered. I've really gone through so much pain that I don't even believe I'm deserving of being healthy and well. Because all of my evidence from the past is showing that I'm unlovable,

that people are going to abandon me, abuse me, and the world is against me. How do you get people to understand that they are deserving of health and this state of love and gratitude when they can continue to convince themselves about the past and cannot see or believe in a future greater than their past. I'd ask them how long you want to tell that story. Like, I mean, how long you want to tell that story? Because you believe as if it's the truth, you behave as if it's the truth and you've

ultimately become it. That's the end of that person's emotional belief. I just want them to tell a different story. In fact, you can't tell me any longer that you've had a brutal past and you can't do this work, you can't tell me that. We've had some people with some really brutal pasts, really, really difficult pasts and we're talking about abuse, molestation, trauma, murder, veterans, navy seals, people who've witnessed and seen really horrible things and had really horrible moments and

They had all kinds of health conditions That the trauma wasn't just in their brain the traumas in their body because it was the emotion that kept them in the past Right, and they couldn't couldn't get past that emotion They tried everything on the plant medicines all you know all, everything, they just couldn't get past it. They just didn't know how to do it. The memory. They couldn't get past the memory. They just didn't understand why they were there and what to do to help them to get out, right?

So, so many of these people that had brutal paths also had really difficult health challenges. They had endometriosis, they had depression, they had night terrors, suicidal tendencies, blackouts, vertigo, ovarian cysts, you know, all kinds of crazy things and they did the work because nothing else was working. And many of them came to the point where they did their meditation every single day. Every day, they never missed a day because nothing else was working. They believed that this could work, they just didn't believe it could work for them. Right.

So, they were doing their meditations to actually believe, right? They had to change their emotional state and they reached a point and typically when they come to the weak lungs because I stretch people a little further. They were already feeling a little better and they were already doing better but they reached a point where they just thought, oh my god, this is the worst feeling I've ever had in my life. I don't think I'd go any further and then they think, oh my god, I've never missed a day in my meditations.

I can't give up on me now and they go one more time and the words that we hear over and over again is always the same. It's like my heart blew wide open. It was like my heart exploded. It was like my heart opened up all the way. I felt something move through my heart and I felt more love than I felt my entire life and they look back at their entire past and they don't want to change one thing in their past because the feeling that they have, they realize that they had to go through all of that to get to the present moment and that's the moment

the past no longer exists and they look at their betrayers, they look at their molesters, they look at the tyrants and they have nothing but compassion and love for them. And the relationship changes with those people and the moment their heart blows open, the body literally comes out of the past because when energy makes it to the heart, it resets the baseline in the brain and the autonomic nervous system for trauma. It says it's over and the body literally moves out of the past and the side effect of that, there goes the depression, there goes the endometriosis, there goes the diet terrors and the person would, they don't want to change anything in their past.

They'll tell you, no, no, no, no, no, no. This all had to happen for me to change. So many people with diseases will say, I just didn't know it. I would have never changed. I would have never changed unless I had this health condition. I would have never changed. This was the push for me to change and they would say I was too sick to do their meditation in the beginning but you know what? There were days they felt really bad and they could have said,

I don't feel like doing my meditation today but guess what? They did it anyway and they overcame their body a little bit more that day and there were days they had a lot of self-doubt because their condition was getting worse and their family was worried about them and they could have said, ah, this is too much, I have too much doubt, I can't do this. Guess what? They did it anyway and they overcame their doubt a little bit more. And there were days where they had a lot of fear because they were given the voodoo curse that they had six months to live or a year to live and they could have said, I have too

much fear today, I can't do my meditation. But they did it anyway. Instead of surrendering to fear, they surrendered to love and it was the overcoming process that was the becoming process. That is the unlearning process. And if 95% is how we're hardwired in terms of attitudes, beliefs and perceptions, how we're habituated in terms of behaviors and actions and how we're conditioned to our emotional responses, then there's going to

take a lot of work in the overcoming process because you got to get so conscious that you don't go unconscious again. And then you as a process of going unconscious to the point where you no longer go unconscious And you stay conscious you ask that person Where the where the where is the disease now? Where is it now? They'll tell you it's in the old person It's the old guy. It's the it's that person settled person. It's not me. I'm not that victim anymore I'm not that person any longer and again. They were doing their meditations to change They were doing their meditations three times a day not because they wanted their meditations to change. They were doing their meditations three times a day not because they wanted their meditations to heal them

They just defaulted back to the old self and they started disbelieving a bit again So they were doing their meditations every day to believe and they would not get up Until they felt the feeling of that future because they knew Consciously if I could feel this emotion of signaling genes ahead of the environment and I'm gonna keep feeling this feeling with the intention of signaling the gene and that was their intention. Of course, they started producing a greater outcome. So they were doing their meditations to strengthen their belief three times a day because they

lost their belief. Now, you can't say to me you're too out of shape or you're too in shape or you're too unhealthy or too old or you're too young. You saw we have people that are 12 years old or 10 years old that come to our events. Yes, teens sitting around. Yeah, yeah. We have hundreds of kids that come under the age of 25, you know, a huge youth community. We have people that are in their 90s and their 80s.

They have elegant brain scans. They have beautiful heart coherence. You can't tell me you're too old to do it, you know, you can't tell me you're too young, you can't tell me you're too sick, you can't tell me you're you know, you're in a brutal past or you're out of shape, you can't say any of those things any longer. I mean, no one's so special to be excluded from this process. And again, I think one of the things, I'm jesting part of the time here but one of the things that people need is knowledge and information. I mean, the data that we have in our scientific research just tells us that we're greater

than we think, more powerful than we know, more unlimited than we could ever dream. The testimonials of people standing on a stage, you've seen them, with stage four cancers that spread to their bones, to their liver, to their lungs, to their pelvic organs, the kitten walked, they were in so much pain, no drug trial, no chemo, no radiation, the surgery was changing, no diet was changing them and now they're up there with no evidence of cancer. You hear that story, it's the four minute mile. That is, evidence is

the loudest voice. And when you see a person that doesn't look vegan, doesn't look young, doesn't look buffed, that had people steal money from them, that they lost everything, they slit their wrists, they have horrible but bankrupt, they're worth millions now and they're living a happy life and they've got a great relationship and their health conditions all better. You gotta scratch your head and you gotta look and you gotta say, well, if that person can do it, I think I can do it. And then there's number two and then there's number three and then there's number four. And there's thousands and thousands.

Now we had seven people step out of wheelchairs in our last event in Denver. I couldn't believe it. With spinal cord injuries, with brain tumors, with head trauma, with myasthenia gravis, with MS, with ALS. I mean, it's crazy. It just takes one and then collective consciousness. Now it's possible, right? It's fascinating. When I was at your event and we did the coherence

healings towards the end, obviously once we practiced more of the meditations and understood the science and understood the research and you really dive in on it and did the 3 a.m. you know, 5-6 hour meditations and all these different things we did, it's a beautiful thing to witness serving others who need healing with your consciousness collectively. It's an incredible thing to witness and to feel the energy. It's not a false fake energy. You're like, you're feeling like you're healing yourself as you're intending consciously to

heal someone else. Yeah, which is that happens we just had somebody just on the stage just that had trigeminal neuralgia, severe facial pain. Oh wow. She got on the stage and she said, I wanted someone to cut my head off. Oh man. She said, that's how bad the pain was, I could never get away from it. She said, during that coherence healing, my heart blew wide open, I felt so much love.

She said I have no pain in my face, I've done every therapy, I've done every drug, I've taken everything, every narcotic, everything has never changed, I have no pain. Like that instantaneous change in her health. This is crazy. So, when you see, I know this is insane, we've had more than one person that had vision problems all of a sudden start to see. We've had more than one person with hearing problems start to hear, just happened recently. It's not uncommon for people.

We had a guy that lost his speech, he couldn't talk, he's talking now. He's a happy guy. I've seen people with Parkinson's disease with bilateral breast cancer. I've seen spinal cord injuries, I've seen all kinds of different health conditions in one or two or three coherence healings have a complete change. It's incredible. And it's a really cool thing because people are never being touched. They're just, listen, changing information in the field and it's not matter that's creating the field, it's the field that's creating matter. So, if you change the information in the field, could you change the hologram in three-dimensional

reality and that's exactly what we teach. Oh my gosh. And that's exactly what we start to see. The tumor is the illusion, it's the hologram, it's the information in the field. If you change the information in the field, can you change the destiny of matter? And when people start to understand it and they can piece it together and they've been practicing all week overcoming themselves, they do that. Yeah.

They practice all week opening their heart, they practice all week bringing heart coherence, now it's time to put it all together but now this time, it's not about you. That's someone's mother down there. Yes. That's someone's best friend, that's someone's kid, you know, that's someone's cousin, that's someone's uncle, that's somebody. Yes. And I just asked them to actually show up and be the healer that they would want to

be healed by. Oh, it's a beautiful thing man. And it's really cool. I mean, you're just in the last 30 seconds using vocabulary and language and explaining things that some people might say, what is this quantum field and 3D and hologram and that's kind of the tip of the iceberg for what you go into for these seven days. And you know, one of your quotes that I love is the quantum field responds not to what we want, it responds to who we are being.

And when you or I am wanting to serve someone with so much love, when I fill my heart up and have brain-heart coherence with love and gratitude, healing vibration, and I spread that energy onto someone else, whether it's a stranger or someone I love and they're in alignment with that. There is a vibration between the two. I'm getting chills just thinking about it now. There's a vibration, you said a waving of a sheet that connects in the middle and the center is this power of love that is healing.

It is a beautiful thing. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about, this frequency, this emotion, this love, is, is it possible to heal ourselves with our thoughts and with meditation alone? And is it possible to heal another with our thoughts, our love, our heart coherency alone even if they don't respond to it and they're not doing it themselves? Is it possible to influence without them doing the work?

Yeah, that's a really great question. My belief in what's possible has changed dramatically in the last two years. I'm not the same person because of the things that I've witnessed. I mean, I saw a person with muscular dystrophy that was in a wheelchair for 12 years, young guy. If you study muscular dystrophy, there's no cure. There's no coming back. There's no coming back and- I think I saw this video.

Yeah, they lit him up and he was out of his wheelchair. He's walking around in his life now. I mean, I can't go back to business as usual. I watched that video a hundred times. I just don't want to forget what's possible. I was being interviewed for a documentary and the interviewer, unbeknownst to me, I didn't know anything about it, said, what about the woman in your work that grew her thyroid back? And I was like, what? Like, what are you talking about?

She said, yeah, she grew her thyroid back. I'm like, what? I didn't know anything about it. Like, I'm like, no. Like, she's like, yeah, yeah. She said, we have the medical records and everything and this woman grew her thyroid back. Like, it stretched me, you know?

And so, okay, there's a lot that has to happen for us to make this journey, right? You get diagnosed with a health condition and it's a terminal health condition or chronic health condition and you're compromised in some way and you're reliant on something to get you back in the health and balance and that's what the conventional model is but if it isn't working, you guys start looking. Some people just, they just, they shrink into mediocracy and they stay there, other people are bothered by it and they're gonna look for answers. Okay, so the person starts looking for answers. We had some lady that someone, Amazon accidentally mailed, accidentally mailed my book You Are the Placebo to her house and she didn't

order it and she just put it on her coffee table and she had Parkinson's disease. And finally, after like three months, she picked up the book and she saw the brain scans and Parkinson's disease, she started doing the meditations. She came to the week long retreat, she completely healed of Parkinson's. She was on the stage selling the story. This is crazy, right? So, now the person is crazy, right? So, now the person heals herself, okay?

As an example. Now, a person who heals themselves, I've seen green berets, I've seen Navy SEALs with a lot of physical and emotional health conditions really heal. The only thing they want to do is they want to give, they want to bring it to their people, they want to bring it to their tribe, they want to bring it to their tribe, they want to bring it to the people they love. And really the intention is, I want to heal somebody else, right?

And so you're healed, the next thing is you want to heal somebody else. That's by the word, yeah. So now, but your model has to change. If I heal myself and I've actually changed my energy, can I kind of heal another person? And that's exactly what we do. We say, okay, now that you can change your health, can you change another's health? Let's build a

model of understanding and let's do that. And we did the model of understanding. All of a sudden, I see people stepping out of wheelchairs left and right and blind people seeing crazy things going on, a lot of remissions of diseases. I'm more surprised about that than anybody. COVID happens and then we're like, hmm, can we actually, if we're in the quantum field and there's no separation there, can we just hit a target? Just give us a picture, coordinate. And we have remote co-ear and sealers. Yeah, it's fascinating.

And these people do it, listen, they do it every day. They're machines. They do it, they never miss a day. They would never miss a day and the reason they never miss a day is because they get so much out of it and they're not doing it to the heck. By trying to heal another. They're not trying to heal another. They're actually healing another that is not even that they don't even know.

They don't even know and they're not even in the same room. They're spread across the world and they're hitting a target. They're hitting a target. They see an image and they visualize that target. They go to the field and they hold that person in their heart and they just and they're hitting a target. They're hitting a target. They see an image and they visualize that target. They go to the field and they hold that person in their heart and they just and they change their energy. So, then the model builds more now. Now, can you heal at a remote location? The answer is absolutely yes. In fact, our studies with UC San Diego is insane. I said to the scientists, when in your life did you think you would be sitting

talking about the effects of remote coherence healings that are working as well as drugs? When better than drugs actually, when have you ever thought you'd be talking about this? So, our data suggests that it's real, right? We did a triple blind placebo study and there's absolutely no doubt that these people are causing some profound effects. We just published another paper about the mathematical synchronization of the heart of groups of people that collectively get together, how they synchronize. You know, we published a paper, it's mathematical, it's real, right? It's a lot of science but there's some effect that's happening in the people's hearts that

are feeling the same amount of love. They're in training to a similar resonance, a similar frequency. Okay, so now, they did an amazing, amazing study, preliminary study on autistic children. Okay, now I'm telling you this because I want you to know that this isn't conjecture, this is reality. Boys, young boys between the ages, I think, of six and 12, and these are problematic kids. They've done the physical therapy, the occupational therapy, the speech therapy, the inhibition therapy, the talk therapy, they've tried the nutrients, the vitamins, they tried everything and then they're not responding, they haven't changed much. They're head bangers, they're incontinent, they don't sleep, they're obsessive, they

have outbursts, they have no sociability, they have no gross and fine motor skills, their language is compromised. Now, we decided instead of doing scientific analysis, we decided to have the best scientists take a look at their kids and that's the parents, right? So, we did. Parents know every single thing about that kid because they have all their attention. They know every habit, they know every behavior, they know every obsession. Six weeks, two times a week. These kids at the end of six weeks, speaking in complete sentences, sleeping through the

night, taking naps, walking themselves to school, using the toilet, no longer defecating or urinating in their bed, hugging their parents when they come home, asking for what they want, jumping on the trampoline, being in a school place and it's insane. The parents are overjoyed. Their lives have changed dramatically because their kid is somehow changed, they're smiling, they're more engaging, right? They're not even in the room and they're producing these effects. So, back to your question.

This is an evolution. You never know what you'll think in differently until you have a new experience. New experience causes you to think of possibilities you would never thought of before. And there is an infinity, there's infinities. Because you and I are making known, unknown possibilities by having a new experience and we start thinking of other ways and that's consciousness and it's never running process of self-discovery.

They answer the question, who am I, right? So, then what we discovered is that in our data collection, that people that are the most desperate tend to be the less likely to respond because they're waiting for their healing to feel gratitude. They haven't realized that when they feel gratitude, their healing begins, right? So, that's not a problem. We have to work with them to get them out of that state and that's what I do when everybody's getting ready, I work with the healies. We noticed that people who actually are in the river of change, they are actually working

on changing something about themselves, they receive that energy better. We notice that when people are grateful, super grateful to be there, that energy just hits them. It hits them really big. So, but we also see that people that don't do the work, that it just it's their moment, you know? It's just their moment. It's just their moment and they get lit up and I've seen bodies contort, twist

and convulse and turn red and shake. I mean, I've seen grown men scream at the top of their lungs. That guy that lost his voice for two years, that was ready to take his life. Stan Wow. Stan He had one moment, he never was touched. The moment people walked in the room, he said I felt this ball of energy right in my heart, This guy in my throat, this guy's not a whales in space woo woo guy. He's a business man. He just, he was just ready. And it was his moment and then that I heard him yelling so loud because the energy was so intense and he was coming up off the ground. I was watching him. Then he'd fall back down and come up again. Nobody was touching him. They were all with their eyes closed like they had no idea what was

going on. 80% of his voice came back after that first intervention. After the coherence healing. After the coherence. Gets on the stage, tells a story. Of course, what do you think is going to happen to the energy in the room? People are just going to go more in, right? Now their belief is just elevated. The person that stands on the stage that no longer has a stage for a cancer, they tell their story, they're no longer in a wheelchair, they're in the wheelchair for seven years, you know, like you shake your head and you're like, I don't want people to forget that. I don't want them to go back to business as usual. I want them, once you know, you cannot know. Absolutely.

And you got to keep, it's so much easier to forget this information than to remember it because it goes against the program, right? It's so easy to forget if you're not practicing consistently. And one of the things that I've been doing for the last year since I went to the advanced retreat was, you know, almost every morning, either in the morning or at night, I'm putting on one of your meditations. And even if I only feel like I have limited time, I'll at least put on a 10-minute morning or evening meditation. I think the one you did like eight years ago or something, right?

And there's so many new ones that Martha is always putting on. We were in the sauna three nights ago and she put a 30 minute meditation on in the sauna and talk about elevated emotion. It was like a whole nother level of I'm in pain but how do we not feel the pain? How do we connect? Like how do we breathe?

It's something to do, it's something to do. It was 200 degrees and I was like, okay, Dr. Joe's speaking to me right now. But the consistency of it has allowed me to continue to feel peace, gratitude, and love in my heart. Yeah. Doesn't mean I don't have breakdowns or frustrations or, you know, things that I have to deal with. And I notice when I do it less consistently, if there's times where I do it less and I

react to things more, I feel more stuck. I feel more physical pain trapped inside of me. Because you know the difference between you're living in a whole different state, you go back to that state and you can notice the difference greater. Yes, 100%. Yeah. And like you said towards the beginning, like once you know, you never want to go back. You just want to keep staying in this beautiful elevated state of emotional peace, harmony

and coherence with thinking and feeling and it's incredible feeling. I know people are probably taking a ton of notes and there's so much they want to take action on. You have a walk that's happening soon called Walk For The Dot World. We're going to link all this up. I want to link up the research paper. I want to get people your meditations because this is something I practice almost daily. I want to get people your books. So we're going to link all these things up. And can you tell us before we wrap up what this

walk around the world is, how people can get involved, and also if they can only do a couple of things each day, what can they do on a daily basis as a habit to help them improve their health? And also, what can we do with walk for the world? Yeah, okay, so I'll ask the first question. Three types of stress, physical, chemical, and emotional. Three types of balance, physical, chemical, and emotional. Get two out of those three in order.

Third one typically comes around. Get more emotionally balanced, more physically balanced, more chemically balanced. Get more chemically balanced or emotionally balanced, more physically balanced, right? But you have to do an inventory every day. You have to ask yourself before you start your day, you know, what do I want to bring to the world? Who do I want to become? Let me become that person. Let me disconnect from my outer world. Let me close my eyes. Let me play some music, fill the space. Let me not eat anything, smell anything, taste anything. Let me not move

around, experience anything and feel anything. Let me make my inner world more real than my outer world. Let me remind myself of that 95% the way I think, the way I act, the way I feel. Let me just get so conscious of those thoughts if I can. I'll start tomorrow, it's too late, it's her fault, it's his fault, I don't, something wrong with me. Get really aware of how I speak, how I act, do I complain, do I blame them, make excuses, do I feel sorry for myself. What emotions are my primary emotions? What's my default? Is it anxiety, is it fear, is it self-pity, is it unworthiness? What is it? Let's just get real about it. Okay, great day. A great day would be not going there the whole day and if I catch myself, I'm gonna catch

myself and I'm not gonna say I failed because that's a program. I'm gonna say I caught myself. Okay, I'm gonna change it now. Let me remind myself the thoughts I do want to think. Let me remember them so I don't forget them. Let me rehearse my behaviors in my mind so I can do it when I have the opportunity. I want a shot at this. I want to evolve my life, I want to evolve my experience. And how am I going to feel today? I want to feel this feeling to keep bringing it up until I can't forget it. And then don't get up, do not get up until you feel that way. If it takes you an hour, it'd be worth it. And when it's the hardest, it matters the most.

Yes. So, that's a simple thing to do that anybody can do and then, but it's the experiment. The experiment isn't like I'm doing good or I did it right or I succeeded or God loves me or none of that. It's doing it to see the experiment is if I change the way I think, if I change the way I act, if I change the way I feel, will my life change? The answer should be yes because if you're choosing to evolve your experience, your life should change and that personality is how you think, how you act and how you feel and

that personality is intimately connected to your personal reality. Marshall Oh my gosh. Stan And if you're not going to change your personality, you're not going to change your personal reality. Most people try to create a new personal reality as the same personality that doesn't work. We got to become somebody else. A simple practical thing. People say to me all the time, I have this health goal, I have

this wealth goal and I say to them, that health goal and that wealth goal, you're gonna have to go from this person to that person. You will never get to that goal until you change, you cannot. And when you make it about change, watch out because the hardest part about change is not making the typical choice that you always make and that's the process of discomfort and you just got to get good at being uncomfortable. The world can't change without you, the world can't change without me, the world can't change without anybody and we get enough people to change, you could actually change the world because you got to be able to walk out into your life and show people what love does.

You got to show them what greatness looks like, you got to show them what love does. You gotta show them what greatness looks like. You gotta show them what nobility and character is. You gotta have an uncompromising will. You gotta be able to face adversity and be able to be relaxed in your heart and awaken your brain and completely disagree and be unintimidated by it. I mean, that's the new consciousness. And so, there is an energy of change and with that energy of change comes a new consciousness. You get enough people together moving into a new state of being and conscious of a change in the world. But I really feel like knowledge is the precursor to experience. What is your thoughts on how to manifest? Yeah, everyone's doing it wrong. That's my thoughts.

Okay. Yeah. How should we manifest the dreams that we have inside of us? Okay. And what's your thoughts about the law of attraction on how to apply it the right way or? Yeah, I think, well I think the law of attraction

and manifesting are the same thing. So law of attraction for everybody who's not read The Secret is simply your thoughts become things. And it's true, we've talked all about how when you have a negative self-talk, it tends to draw more of that to you. I think about it like lint in a dryer. Once negative stuff starts collecting,

it collects a lot more. We can also talk about your brain filter or something called the reticular activity system and how it is a live network that filters the brain. We'll dig into that deeper, but let's do surface level right now, manifesting law of attraction. So here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. Everybody, at least kind of in the mass market, what you're trained to think about when you

think about manifesting is vision boards. And when you hear the word vision boards, you think about the big stuff. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should! Should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean, if that's your thing? Yes. Should you dream of the log cabin? Yes.

If you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Bronco, should you? Yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about it? Yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You dream about the end, you make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life. That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment

with the cat box that hasn't been changed in two weeks. No food in the fridge. No food in the fridge, and you're looking for a job and you're staring at a mansion going someday. It's gonna make you feel like a loser because the gap between where you are and where you wanna go seems insurmountable. And so what happens based on the research

is when you only visualize the end game, Louis, it's demotivating. At first it's really fun to like have a bottle of wine and make your like collage, I'm gonna visualize, I'm gonna slap this up, there's my vision board, this is fabulous, law of attraction, baby, come on. I'm gonna think about it, it's gonna come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for two days.

I'm still in this apartment with the cat box that needs to be changed. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go. The bridge. Yes, and particularly the horrible stuff. So let's use your example of the marathon. The vision board would be Louis crossing, woo!

The arms up at the metal. Yeah, the arms up in the metal, exactly. The high fives, yeah, I did it. High fives, yes, I did it, exactly. That will not help you. Because when you hit mile 13 on the actual race and it is sleeting rain. You're just saying, why am I doing this?

Yes, and it feels nothing like that thing on your vision board. You're going to start a negative dialogue. I can't do this. My knees hurt. This is not what I thought it was going to be. I'm not ready for this. I didn't train for this. I'm running New York.

I trained in LA. Are you running in New York? LA. Okay, good. Well, then at least you're trained in the right weather. So on and on and on, and you are going to tank yourself. What you do by visualizing the bridge is you train your nervous system and your mind to do the hard work.

So you should visualize not crossing the finish line, but what is it like to be at mile 12 when your batteries run out on your earbuds? Yeah. Oh, I'm serious. And you keep going. What's it like when your shoelace breaks and now your heel is lifting

and you're starting to get a blood blister at mile 17? What's it feel like when you wake up and it is pouring rain and you visualize yourself running anyway? That way when you visualize the work, you are preparing your body for it so you're not resistant to it when it comes. Isn't that cool? I think it's great. It's a story that I had. George St. Pierre, who's one of the greatest UFC fighters

of all time, he said that he always puts himself in the most uncomfortable situations in practice, leading up to the fight. The most, you know, the hardest situations to get himself out of. When his arms are behind his back and he's facing against the mat in between the fence and he's just getting punched in the face,

he's like, how do I get out of this? Right, right. He's like, visualize that and seeing how can I get through this? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Where it seems like I just wanna tap out. Yes. Instead of tapping out,

what's the process for figuring out how to get through it. Yeah. To then raise my hand at the end victorious. Totally. And so you are literally building up almost like this resilience and this muscle inside of you to do the work to get the thing. So yeah, create the vision board, but make sure in addition to crossing the finish line, you have somebody running the rain.

You have somebody who you have an alarm clock that says 513. You have these images that show the stuff that you don't wanna do. So like for people who wanna launch a business, for example, like a lot of people that I'm sure follow both of us are dying to launch a business, or interested in being an influencer, social media, or making money online,

and what you visualize are the checks, or you visualize the money you're gonna make, or you visualize how cool it's gonna be when you're a lifestyle entrepreneur, whatever the hell it is. Don't do that. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends that you're not gonna go out tonight

because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work. Visualize sitting at a seminar and learning from other people.

Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserably. Like literally that's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through because that's gonna help you do that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through because that's going to help you do the work. Isn't that cool? I think that's great.

Yeah. Visualizing. So in order to manifest what you want, don't just visualize the good things happening. Visualize the bridge, all the things it's going to take to get there. Yes, and the hard parts of the bridge because then you're ready for it. Then you're like, I didn't expect this to be this hard. I mean, it's still going to be hard, but you're less likely to quit. Yes So what have you done in the last five years to help you manifest after the first book?

Were you doing this as well or Kind of once you get on a rhythm and build momentum does it become easier to manifest in your opinion? well, so I am constantly training my mind to work for me. And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of the beginning of having a high five attitude. And a high five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low

and to flip yourself back up into a high five attitude. Okay. The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen. You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is. And so I do this thing where I,

this is again, it's going to sound so dumb, but it's a way for me to introduce you to the power that your mind has to change in real time. We've talked a lot about negative self-talk. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain called the reticular activity system. This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it, we've experienced it,

but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So first let me tell you what the RAS does, then I'm gonna give you an example of when you've experienced it in your life, and then I'm going to explain to you how to use it to get what you want in life. This is like the super attractor manifesting and it also works for interrupting negative self-talk.

Like it's gonna supercharge all the work you're doing with the mirror and interrupting thoughts. So first let's talk about the RES. So the RES, imagine a hairnet on your brain. Only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now, the RES has one job, and the job is block out 99% of what's going on and let in 1% of what's going on. Our brains at this moment in history are having to process about 34 days' worth

of cell phone data in one day. It's crazy. And so your RES has a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in, you can come in. And you've experienced this. So have you ever shopped for a car? Yes.

Okay, so what's the last car you bought? Tesla. Oh, Tesla. Oh, fancy. Lewis Howes. I like that. Well, I never had a nice car until three years ago. I had a $4,000 car for five years before that.

Yeah, yeah. And then I was like, you know what? I have no Bluetooth. It's like, I just needed an upgrade. Yeah, no, I love it. It was in 1991. Dude, you deserve it. I had a 1991 Cadillac.

You deserve it. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna buy a car. You deserve it. So I bought a Tesla, yeah. Right, and so before you thought about buying a Tesla, you drive down the road, you don't really think about it. The second you're like, you know, I think I'm interested in a Tesla. What do you see everywhere? Tesla's yes everywhere everywhere. My husband just bought a pickup truck. I never even noticed him now

I'm like there are baby blue pickup trucks everywhere. What is going on? That's the bouncer in your brain and let me tell you how this works There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RES. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowded place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis and you're like, huh, somebody call my name. That was the bouncer in your brain.

The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this. That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in. The third thing that gets let in is when you sense that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else, you're like, Chris, stop looking at her. You know what I'm saying?

You kind of pick up on the signals. That's the bouncer in your brain. And the fourth one, and this is where this is the billion dollar thing that everybody needs to know. The bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you. So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like I'm interested in a Tesla, Your brain's literally like, oh, let all the Teslas in, come on in.

Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important? Examples that mean you're a bad person. Right. So I'm gonna give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I're a bad person. So I'm gonna give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I'm a bad person.

I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean well, I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't. And let's say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment, I'm like, ugh, I gotta pay the 25 bucks. I gotta reschedule that thing, that kinda blows. That's all I think.

And then I go on. My daughter, who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person, this is a real example, by the way, she oversleeps, misses a dentist appointment, and it becomes, see, I always screw everything up. I'm a terror, I'm always messing things up. I'm a bad, like everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person.

She finds proof and evidence. Yes, that's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself, it changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't. That helps you with the other things that you're doing. The high five in the mirror,

the I'm not thinking about that, the pathetic monstera, hey, you know, just because I missed the dentist appointment doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I'm doing the best I can here. Give myself a break. High five. You know what I'm saying?

Shake it off. Get back in there. Well, it's true, right? Because it's these little things. Somebody cuts you off. Somebody reaches for the last thing, a cereal, that you wanted to buy at the grocery store. You think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you.

This is all your story, and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating. And the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite, like high-five yourself, even though you don't feel like it. Interrupt the crap that you keep saying.

Put your hands on your heart and settle your body down. Yeah. All of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves, when they think they deserve to be treated with kindness, when they think they deserve support, and when they realize they need it. And when you start to build yourself back up,

you'll show up very differently in other relationships. Absolutely. You know, if you tolerate this kind of treatment from yourself, you'll tolerate it from other people. Mm-hmm. It does begin with you. And when you create boundaries and you don't abandon yourself,

then you won't abandon yourself with other people either. Correct. You won't let them cross the boundaries. Correct. Like if you stand in front of the mirror every single morning and you're like, I look like crap, I am not good enough, I'm unhappy with my life,

and then you step into a relationship and somebody leaves you on read and they ghost you for three days, like you come to expect that because that's how you believe you think you deserve to be treated. When you stand in front of a mirror and you're like, hey, you're awesome, we got this, I got you.

I know it's hard, you know, we're gonna go do this. Or hey, this is a big day today. I've got this huge presentation. I am going to destroy this. You know, like you get into it, you're excited. Like then you're creating momentum for yourself. Otherwise what, you're gonna stand around, oh my God, I'm gonna screw this up.

I'm not prepared, I didn't, it's like the negative morning routine. It leads to negative actions. So this training thing, training your RES. So here's what I want you to do. Starting tomorrow, after you wake up and make your bed and kind of settle your nervous system and high five yourself after setting your intentions.

So now you're like sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way with that calm down nervous system and high five yourself after setting your intentions. So now you're like sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way with a calm down nervous system and intention and this boost of feeling supported and loved and celebrated. I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape as you go through your day. I saw this in your book. Yeah. It could be a stone, it could be a leaf on the ground, it could be a cloud shape, it could be a coffee stain, it could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage,

it could be a spot on a dog walking by, I want you to tell your mind, let's find a heart. Let's see if we can find a heart. And something weird's gonna happen. You're gonna see something and then I want you to literally supersize what's going on in your brain and what you do is when you see the heart, I want you to then take a moment and literally congratulate yourself, like feel like, oh my God, I found it. Like whatever you believe in, God, the universe, like greater connection, you put that there for me and I found it like whatever you believe in God the universe like greater connection You put that there for me and I found it and I want you to feel this kind of wave of that's kind of cool

Yeah, I just saw a heart and then that positive thing Remember how I told you the bouncer in your brain pays attention to what's important to you When you get your nervous system celebratory involved, that makes your brain really pay attention. Just like trauma makes your brain pay attention. It does. So you supercharge the experience by celebrating it and then look for another one around.

I see hearts all day long. And what happens when you start to play this game is you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it. There are opportunities, there are signs, there are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out.

Yes. And we can all sit in this moment, Lewis, and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. The coolest thing about practicing the high five habit, this training of finding hearts and the high five attitude, is that you start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life. And it is leading you somewhere incredible. And when you start to have that kind of high five attitude that there are signs, whether

it's the little hearts that you're now seeing or it's your ability to catch guilt or people pleasing or insecurity or the negative self-talk and be like, no, not going down. Nothing about that. Five, four, three, two, one. Let's get that high five attitude back. I can do this, I can have my own back. It's not gonna be perfect, but I can keep going. And you were just talking about how you never truly learned

how to love yourself in your own skin. And you started this daily ritual, this habit of high-fiving yourself in the mirror. Yeah. I mean, you've lived a pretty full life right now, but you feel like really you've never truly learned how to love yourself, but now you feel like you know how to? Yes, I do. Why did you not know how to love yourself in the first place?

Oh, that's a big question. I think that most of us are not taught how to love ourselves just for being alive. For existing. For existing, thank you. It's always like we have to accomplish something. Correct. Then we can get love. Yes. It's the same thing with happiness. Like you're chasing it and you think that if you achieve something you're going to get it. And you also, or at least I, felt the most loved when I was little when I was achieving something. And I think that most parents kind of fall into this camp. And it's really interesting to write a book about this and sort of trace back how we go

from being little teeny babies that would crawl up to a mirror and put our hands up and kiss ourselves and love the sight of ourselves to being a self-loathing adult that stands in front of a mirror and either ignores or criticizes your very existence. And I believe that a lot of this has to do with the fact that so much of what you learn as a kid is, if you do what I tell you to do, then I'll like you, then I'll love you. And so much of your existence becomes complying, fitting in, not making people angry. You learn how to sort of go in and out of spaces,

belong to groups, make sure people like you, and you stop focusing on how you were born, which is looking in a mirror and liking yourself. So my formula for being somebody that was worthy of love is, well, if I'm accomplishing all this stuff, then I'm lovable. If this person over here that I love loves me back, then I'm lovable.

If somebody likes me, then I'm lovable. Notice where all the sources of love were coming from? Outside. But I never really understood, how do you learn how to put yourself first? How do you learn how to love yourself, Louis? How do you do that? We know we need to, but the question is how?

So how'd you learn how to unlearn it and then I guess relearn how to love yourself? Okay, so this is kind of my brand of advice. It's got to be incredibly stupid on the surface. It's got to be so simple, it's really implausible that it works. And once you start unpacking it, it has to have a crazy bananas amount of scientific proof and real life proof in people's lives to prove why it works.

So I'll tell you the story first behind the high five habit because I did not set out and go like, okay, I've written the five second rule book. I need to come up with another five. I have been toiling away with what book to write for nearly five years. So it's been five years since I've had a book in print. And I had this random morning

where there's a lot going on in my life. I'm not gonna get into it because it's a boring story, but I was just having a really hard time in my life. And I woke up, got out of bed. I made my bed like I always do. I walked into the bathroom. I'm standing there brushing my teeth and I catch my reflection in the mirror. And my first thought is, God, you look like hell.

Seriously. And I know women in particular can relate to this, but what a lot of people don't realize is you guys are incredibly hard on yourselves too. And so as I go, God, you look like hell, I start then cataloging all of the things that are wrong with my appearance. I'm like, your gray hair is coming in, you've got stripes on your neck, one of your boobs is lower than the other, you look exhausted, and then as soon as you have

a negative thought or a self-criticism, it's sort of like lint in a dryer. Once you start collecting it, it just keeps on collecting it. So now I'm thinking not about how horrible I look or how tired I look, now I start thinking about all the stuff I need to do. I start going, oh my gosh, I got up a little too late

and I've got a Zoom call in eight minutes, I don't even have a bra on yet, the dog needs to be walked, and I could feel my energy going down. Like I just felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. Overwhelmed, uncertain. It doesn't even matter what was going on in my life at that time because I think it's a universal feeling

to feel overwhelmed by your life at times. And so here I am, a motivational speaker. Unmotivated. Unmotivated, uncaffeinated, no brawn, standing there in my underwear with my dog at my feet. I don't know what came over me. But as cheesy as it sounds, I just raised my hand and gave the tired, haggard woman in the mirror a high five.

And it didn't change my life like right then and there, but something shifted. Like I felt a little lighter. I felt like I wasn't alone. I felt like, okay, you know, this moment in your life is hard, but you can do this, Mel. And I went on with my day. So the second day, I woke up, and this is when things started to really kind of churn in my mind.

The first thing that I noticed was this. So I wake up, Louis, and I make my bed. And I realized I was looking forward to that moment in the mirror where I was gonna see myself. Now look, I'm 52 years old. I will probably have a hot flash during the middle of this interview. At some point, I'm a lot older than you.

But- Just don't eat lobster. Oh yeah, I know I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together, wow. Oh yeah, I had a really allergic reaction the last time we were together, wow. But I have spent the first 45 years of my life either criticizing the woman in the mirror or ignoring her.

And this was the first time that I could remember that I was actually looking forward to seeing myself. Sort of like, you know, when I was coming here today, you and I are very good friends. As I was walking in the building, I'm feeling excited to see myself. Sort of like, you know, when I was coming here today, you and I are very good friends. As I was walking into the building, I'm feeling excited to see you. And it wasn't like I was feeling excited to see myself. Like, I'm not like, yeah,

because I got a lot of crap going on in my life. But I felt a little bit like I'm about to see a friend. And so that second morning, I high-fived myself again. And again, I feel something shift. I feel a little, just a little lightness in the mood, and I go on with my day. So the third morning, I do it again. And again, lightness, and so I keep doing it, keep doing it a couple weeks go by. And now I'm starting to feel a little bit of momentum.

And I'm really enjoying it. I have no idea what the hell is going on. I haven't even done this in front of my husband, Chris, yet. Because let's be honest. Standing in front of a mirror. High five yourself. Yeah, like, come on. How pathetic does it get?

Like, it's really, you're like that bad. So I snap a photo of myself. I've got my retainer in. I got bed head. Like, I'm not looking glamorous. I did not expect this to be the photo that would ignite a movement. And within an hour, I posted on my story on Instagram, within an hour, at least a hundred people tagged me.

All over the world, people high-fiving the mirror with their kids, people on a submarine high-fiving it in the military, people MMA, like just, and I thought, okay, wait a minute. Maybe I'm not the only one that needs a little boost in the morning. Maybe I'm not the only one who feels alone. Maybe I'm not the only one that is missing a sense of encouragement and control and confidence in an overwhelming moment in my life.

Maybe there's something here. And then the messages started to come in. Whoa, Mel, like I have been using this for five days. This woman wrote to us, Lewis, she's had body dysmorphia for 20 years, has not been able to look at herself in the mirror. Five days of doing this high five and she said I can look at myself and I even see beyond the body, I see the person and I can grin. We had a woman who wrote to us who said

that she was in a domestic violence shelter. She had escaped a very abusive relationship. She had seen me talking at our friend, Jamie Kern Lima's event. She started doing the high five thing. She DMs us and she says that, you know, I have childhood trauma, I've just been in a physically abusive relationship, I've lost everything, I'm in a domestic violence shelter,

what this high five in the mirror is teaching me is that I still have myself. And so that was when I said, I gotta figure out what's going on. And I started to unpack the research, and the research around this simple ritual, I love that you called it a ritual because I want people to habit stack this

with brushing their teeth. This is so life-changing. It's so simple. The science here is like, pow! You can't believe it. And once I unpack it, you're gonna be like, I can't believe how cool this thing is. So what's the science say? Okay, so the science let's start with the first thing So the first thing is that when you first try it, okay?

You will Not be able to raise your hand and high-five yourself and be like you suck Mel or Today's gonna be terrible and there's a reason for that And the reason is that for your entire life, you have given other people high fives. So when you give a high five or you receive one, what is a high five? Just the gesture alone.

What does this communicate if we do this to each other? High five. Nice job, good work, you're doing amazing. Keep it up. Yeah, I believe in you, I love you, let's go. If you blow a shot and you gotta get back in the game, a high five's like shake it off, you can win. And so all of that lifetime of high fiving other people

and the messaging associated with it is programmed right here in your subconscious brain. There's a field of study called neurobics, which is about- Neurobics. I didn't make that up. It's interesting. Physical movement plus new neurological activity.

When you marry an unexpected physical movement with new neurological activity, it's the fastest way to forge new neural pathways in your brain. We know the example, you've covered this on your show, of brushing with the wrong hand and thinking positive thoughts. And the reason why that works is because when you're brushing with the wrong hand, it's unexpected, your brain doesn't expect it, so instead of drifting off about the fact that you need to walk the dog, you have to focus, so your prefrontal cortex is engaged. You're not used to high-fiving your own reflection, so it's an unexpected physical movement

that then activates all of the positive programming in your subconscious. So when you raise your hand and you high-five, you're tired self, Lewis. What happens is all of the messaging with this, the high-five, I believe in you, I love you, I celebrate you, you got this, keep going, come on. It actually fuses with your freaking reflection.

It's impossible to criticize yourself. Your brain won't allow it because it's not wired that way when you're making that motion. Isn't that crazy? It's hard to say you suck, you don't matter in anything. No, you can't, you can't. And so this lifetime of positive subconscious programming associated with high-fiving other people

gets fused with your own reflection in this ritual. That's just the beginning, okay? That's just the beginning. The second thing that starts to happen that's really interesting. So, you know, we've had a ton of people do this, obviously, around the world. Super easy idea.

It's spreading around the world. We start interviewing people about what's going on, and this is what we notice. We notice that one of two things happen when you first try this. So here's how I want everybody to try it. You're gonna go into the bathroom and do it before or after you brush your teeth, and that's important because I want you to make this a ritual that's part of your morning routine. And so we need to stack it with something you already do.

And you're gonna stand there for a minute and I want you to look at yourself. Now that right along, most of us don't do. Look at yourself. And I want you to just think about the day ahead. This is based on more research. So recent studies show from the University of Florida that if you take just a minute

and you set an intention about how the day is gonna go, about who you're gonna be, how you're gonna show up, what's the one thing that kinda matters to you to really make progress on, if you just kinda set that intention, who am I gonna be today, how am I gonna show up today, even if it's a hard day, how are you gonna show up? And then you raise your hand and you seal it.

Research shows just setting the intention alone changes your mood, it boosts your productivity, it increases your ability to make an impact on other people. And so when you seal it with this high five, it becomes this ritual of setting an intention for the day and also silencing the critic and Reprogramming the default setting about how you see yourself whether or not you believe in yourself and you leave that bathroom Feeling like the wind is at your back

Now when people do this for the first time so you're gonna stand there tomorrow and you're gonna go. Okay Mel Robinson Lewis Brush my teeth. Okay, this is stupid. This is what you're gonna go, okay Mel Robbins and Louis, just gonna sit here, brush my teeth, okay this is stupid, you're gonna just start rejecting it, I guarantee you, the coolest stuff, you're gonna have the biggest resistance to. And so for those of you that just raise your hand and do it, you're gonna immediately be like, why have I not been doing this? It feels good to be encouraged and supported.

To high-vive yourself. Yes. Why have I not had my own back? Why do I stand here and criticize myself? Why do I allow this moment every single morning to be a moment where life takes over and I drift into autopilot? Why am I not taking this moment for me

to build a partnership with myself? Yeah. The second group of people, and this is the larger group. not taking this moment for me to build a partnership with myself. The second group of people, and this is the larger group, resisted. And this is really interesting. And the reason why you resisted and the reason why it feels weird is because you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration. From yourself or from others?

Period. Wow. Why do we think we're not worthy of celebration? Well, for people that grew up in a chaotic, violent, or whatever household, it was your lived experience. Yeah. I think that for many of us, we look back on our lives and the cognitive negative bias has this focus

on the things that went wrong. And so you begin to tell yourself a story about your life that is basically a pyramid of all the things that you regret, of all the things that you wish had done over, of all the things that you regret, of all the things that you wish had done over, of all the things that you don't like about yourself. And so you drag that with you into the bathroom every morning.

And you stare at the mirror, and you see somebody that has screwed up. You see somebody who's not where you're meant to be. You see somebody who doesn't have the number on the scale or the car that you wanted, or the job that you had hoped for, or the relationship that you had always dreamed about. And so standing there, you believe you're not worthy of support or celebration.

And it's this deep belief. We talk a lot in the personal development space of, oh, I'm not good enough. I actually think that's the polite thing that people say. I believe that people have a much more Horrible way of talking to what I'm a I can't say it on TV, but I can say it on the internet I'm a piece. Yeah, I'm worthless. No one will ever love me. Mm-hmm. I screwed up my life. I'm a failure I'll never amount to anything It's too late.

I'm a bad person. Like I think people actually say this to themselves. Yeah. And they say it over and over again. Yes. Daily. Yes. Yes. And just like ruts on a dirt road,

it starts to wear in your brain and it becomes the familiar path. And so you stand in front of the mirror and I'm telling you, raise your hand and let all that positive programming you've given to everybody else. We are amazing at celebrating everybody else.

We cheer for our favorite sports teams. We buy tickets to our favorite musicians. We throw birthday parties for people. We take on extra work for our colleagues. We help our family members out and our friends out, but when it comes to supporting ourselves, we don't know how to do it. In fact, there's a lot of people that think it's selfish

to put yourself first, or that you're arrogant if you do. I'm here to tell you, it is essential to your well-being, to your fulfillment, to your happiness, all of it. So if you're feeling resistance, you're either going to feel it because you already have a deep story that you don't deserve it because of your track record, your past, because of what's happening in your life.

Or you're gonna feel resistance because you have been trained to believe that you only deserve that kind of stuff when you're winning. Like if I don't have that car, I don't get the high five. If I didn't get that promotion, I didn't deserve it. If I am not in a loving relationship, I don't deserve to be celebrated

because I'm not actually achieving or doing the things that warrant that. I'm here to tell you, I'm on a mission to make every human being realize that if you wake up in the morning and you're breathing and you're standing in front of that mirror and you have survived the stuff you have survived and you are still waking up and trying to do better,

you not only deserve a high five, you need it because what we also know based on the research is that empowerment, support, kindness, love, celebration, it is the single most motivating force on the planet. Tough love is a bunch of baloney. What really fuels people, particularly when you're going through a challenge, is feeling celebrated, seen, and supported. And the research bears it out. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free free listening then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on apple podcasts share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on apple podcasts as well let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review i really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter.

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.