The School of Greatness - Lewis Howes: “Martha & I Did Everything Backwards!” How I Found Lasting Love with My Partner

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

In this heartfelt episode, I have the pleasure of joining my good friend and Greatness Network partner Rob Dial for a deep dive into personal growth, relationships, and inner peace. Rob's thoughtful questions lead me to open up about my journey of healing from childhood trauma and learning the power of vulnerability. I share my evolution in relationships and the lessons I've learned along the way. We discuss the crucial elements of building strong partnerships, the transformative impact of therapy, and my current preparations for marriage and fatherhood. Rob's insightful approach allows me to offer candid advice and personal reflections that I hope will resonate with anyone striving for healthier relationships and personal development. This conversation is filled with raw honesty, practical wisdom, and moments of genuine connection that just might spark some transformative realizations for listeners.In this episode you will learnHow vulnerability and opening up about past trauma can set you freeThe importance of starting relationships with clear communication and agreementsWhy therapy and continuous personal growth are crucial for healthy partnershipsHow to prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for major life transitionsThe power of accepting your partner fully and not trying to change themStrategies for having difficult but necessary conversations in relationshipsFor more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1669For more Greatness text PODCAST to [phone]More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Eckhart Tolle – https://link.chtbl.com/1463-podRhonda Byrne – https://link.chtbl.com/1525-podJohn Maxwell – https://link.chtbl.com/1501-pod

The thing is, when we are constantly running away from our past, we're always going to be running away and chasing something else to try to feel enough. I just never felt good. Did you notice any transformation within yourself in the way that you viewed the traumas that happened to you when you started talking about it? It set me free. Bob Dial, the mindset mentor. Author of the book, Level Up.

One of the best interviews I probably did in this last year. Enjoy this interview with me on his show. I think relationships are extremely hard if you're unwilling to have courageous conversations. And they are going to be hard and they're going to be exhausting because you're going to expect someone else to understand you when you're not communicating with courage to them about your needs, your wants and desires. I said to her, OK, there's a couple things that I want to create. We needed to start the relationship in therapy because every relationship that I had before ended in therapy and then it ended poorly.

People would say, man, that seems like a lot of work. It's kind of heavy. You know what's heavy? Is going through years of relationships that don't work. Sleepless nights, dealing with emotional turmoil from someone who wants you to change who you are. What is Lewis Howes' mountain that he's climbing or thing that he's working on? Where are you at right now? nights dealing with emotional turmoil from someone who wants you to change who you are. What is Lewis Howes' mountain that he's climbing or thing that he's working on?

Where are you at right now? There's three things that came to mind. Hey everyone, Lewis Howes here. Before we dive in, this episode that you're about to watch is from an episode I did on Rob Dial, The Mindset Mentor Show. And it's one of the best interviews I probably did in this last year. Rob has a unique way of interviewing and connecting with people on their dreams, their vision, their goals. And he really dove in deep. Make sure to subscribe to his channel, The Mindset Mentor, as well, as he's part of the Greatness Network. And I hope you enjoy this interview with me on his show. Welcome, everybody, to the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial.

If it looks a little bit different for those of you guys that are looking on YouTube, I am in Lewis Howes' basement. Don't worry, I'm not captive of him. We are in his studio that is in his basement, and I'm excited to be here and be with you, man. Excited to also announce for those of you guys that didn't see it i have joined uh the greatness network so the school of greatness podcast is lewis and um we have the greatest network which i have joined with him and sirius xm and so i am uh excited to sit down with you and chat this is round three of my podcast let's go baby believe yeah having fun

is it third time third time third time in three years. You're one of two people that's been on three times now. All right, let's do it. I'm excited to have you with me. I was reflecting on the drive over here, which I told you I was on your show. I started getting kind of teary-eyed because I was thinking about this journey of life that I've been on. I remember when I lived with my friend Dave at his house, and he was listening to a podcast on his phone and he was doing laundry. And I was like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm listening to a podcast. And I

was like, why? Who would do that? This is 2016-ish. And he was listening to School of Greatness podcast. And I was listening to it. I was like, this is cool. I was like, I think I could probably do something like this. I might be good at this. I should give it a shot. And so it's crazy this journey that I've been on to growing it. And you've had a podcast longer than I've had a podcast, a couple of years longer than I have. 11 years. And when I first started, I was like, I felt like there was nobody in the space. Right. And so I'm curious with you just in the beginning, like what's the journey been like for you, a young guy, 11 years ago, I think I'm going to do this thing that not many people are doing to now over billions of views and downloads. If you take a step back and like, think about it, what's the journey been like for you? And what are some things that you've

learned along this journey? A lot of gratitude for the journey because I've had over 1500 episodes. So I've got to meet a lot of incredible minds and individuals from all walks of life, business, sports, arts, all these different things, science. And so I feel completely grateful for the proximity that I have to inspiring people. People with resources, with knowledge, with results that I can learn from. And then extremely grateful that I can record it and share it with other people, just like what you do. So grateful for that. But also my mind goes to all the things I wish I could have done differently. It's like, I'm grateful for all the good. And I'm like, man,

if I would have just focused a little bit better this first five years, how much more impact could we have? So I think about that as well, because I was doing a lot when I first started the podcast, similar to you was not a thing I wanted to make money with. It was a thing to impact people, build an audience and a platform with, uh, you know, build my personal brand with and drive people back to my coaching and courses and events and membership sites. So it was a tool to drive people back to other things. Right. And if I could do it all over again, I probably just focused on making it the main thing 11 years ago. Um, but I was at a different time in my life. We couldn't monetize podcasting back

then really. It was really clunky and challenging. So, um, but it's all been a beautiful journey. Yeah. What, um, what do you think you've learned about yourself through the process? Like, cause, cause putting yourself out there online is a scary thing because you're basically putting yourself out there to be judged by people, possibly judged by people, um, to have people say that they don't like you, they don't like your message. You don't like you look like, you know, it's, it's putting us up to one of our biggest fears as humans, which is, uh, the fear of judgment and the fear of other people's opinions. And so what I have found is through the years, um, I don't care about any of those things anymore, but it wasn't that way years

ago. And so I'm curious, like, what are some of the hurdles that you had to overcome within yourself to decide I'm going to, you know, build this massive personal brand? I think I did. I think I was smart in a certain way early on because I didn't want to make it my name. I think I had too much fear around being the authority. I didn't think I was smart enough back then or had enough experience. I was 30 years old.

So I didn't call it the Lewis Howe Show. I called it the School of Greatness with my name. And I think that gave me a lot more peace because I can make it about others. And so also in the transition of that, more people are like, hey, we want to hear more from you. So I've had to overcome that now

and I'm starting to do more solo content and more individual personal content, which I've always kind of shied away from for a number of reasons. One, ego. I didn't want my ego to be like running the show and be like, look at me. I have all the answers, which I've never thought that I did. Two, you're setting yourself up for more criticism when it is your personal content more. And three, I think it's like wanting to make sure that I'm always living in humility and in service. But I was talking with a friend, Jason Wilson, the other day, who is pretty big on social media.

And I keep telling him, dude, everyone wants to hear more from you. But he's like, you know, I just want to be in service. And I don't want it to be about me. And I'm like, you're a mirror to me right now because people need your wisdom and they want to hear from you. And if they read your book, that's great. But then if they don't have more content to go afterwards, then you leave them with just the book and then nothing else. And they want more from you, teachings, content, messages.

So I'm in a season now where I'm starting to do more personal content. But again, I also just had too much on my plate that I didn't have the space and the energy to think creatively to create personal content. So now I'm trying to empower my team, let go more so I can have space and energy to create my own stuff. Yeah. And so that's interesting because I know that, you know, we've talked about it and we both kind of had the fear of not being smart and kind of being dumb kids when we were younger and stuff like that. smart and kind of being dumb kids when we were younger and stuff like that. So, um, as you start creating more content, what I find with people, and I'm trying to even talk more about my personal life, cause I'm, I like to teach, I like to instruct. And what I've come to find is that when I start talking about my personal life, people make connections in their own life.

And they're like, Oh, Lewis is just like me. It's not unattainable for me to get to that. It's not an untable for me to, to do what they have done not unattainable for me to do what they have done. And what I think is it's hard because it's kind of like the, there's a phrase, a Native American phrase that says the brightest light gets the arrows. It's like, we know that in order to step up and put ourself in front, it allows us to be completely open to get arrows for other people. But then you go back to the thing where it's like your message, your message. Like I think even for myself when it's like, oh yeah, I can instruct and I can teach people these things when I'm like, Hey, here's what I'm dealing with. Here's what I've dealt with. And here's how I worked through it. I think people kind of click in a little bit more and listen a little bit more. And I'm curious for you, have you noticed

working through the fear, putting yourself out there that you've actually felt more of a connection or more acceptance from other people because of that? A hundred percent. I mean, in the first year of doing my show, I remember it was all, it was a lot more towards like how to be successful and how to win and how to like be the best was like a lot of my content from the interviews I was doing. I was like, how do you become number one in what you do? How do you become the best?

That was kind of language. And then I went through a personal journey where I started a healing journey. I opened up about sexual abuse that I went through. I talked about different family challenges I had. And I just started opening up about these struggles that I faced in my own life. And I started shifting in the content and the questions I was asking on my show. And so many people started saying, hey, I'm noticing something different. I really like the way you're communicating. Like I liked you before,

but this is a different level of you. And I feel like I've had that probably three or four times over 11 years where I've gone through an even deeper transformation or an evolution or a reflection or a breakdown or something's happened in my life. You know, I've been through three different breakups in the last 11 years in relationships. So that unpacks a lot of different things inside of me. And I bring on all these different therapists when I'm in breakups and I talk about these things. So I think people get to learn as I break down

or have challenges in my life, I'm very open about them. I may not say specific personal details about certain people, but I'm very open about what I'm experiencing. And I try to navigate that. And I think that's been really helpful for people to see that I'm kind of like a guinea pig of my emotions on my show. And so that's been really helpful for people to see that I'm kind of like a guinea pig of a guinea pig of my emotions on my show and so that's that's been really helpful seeing that transformation and I think it's brought my audience in a deeper relationship with me because I'm willing to go there yeah and

you know it's hard to stay in the game of something for eight nine ten years in 11 years it's hard to stay consistent and relevant or unless you're evolving. You know, if we're not evolving in this industry, then there's going to be new people who are evolving and creating things in a different way that's going to be attracting connection with audiences. So it's making sure that we're evolving,

that we're improving it, that we're always trying to get better. And I think that's been helpful. But if I'm not getting better on the inside, then it's not going to matter what happens in the content on the outside. Yeah. I'm curious, man. So you've had, you've had three books. You had the school of greatness was the first one. The mask of masculinity was the second one. And the third one, which is the one in front of us that everyone should buy is the greatness mindset. If we can go back to the mask of masculinity, I remember

following your journey and following when you actually started talking about like the sexual abuse and all of that. I can say from, from my, when my father being an alcoholic, him past when I was a kid, I tried to hide as much as possible. I was so ashamed of it. And then when I started talking about it, I realized that it stopped having power over me. And it went from me taking power over this thing that felt like had power over me. I'm curious as you as you put up like the mask of masculinity, put that out, you start talking about the sexual abuse. There's a lot of people out there that have been through a lot of different traumas. And we try to hide it. Did you notice any transformation within yourself in the way that you viewed the traumas that happened to you when

you started talking about it? Yeah, it set me free. Yeah, set me free. Like you said, I took my power back for 25 years. No one knew about the shame or the secret that I kept inside of me. Like I wasn't willing to share the secret. And when I started talking about the secret of me being sexually abused by a man that I didn't know, it was the most terrifying thing because I started telling my family and friends one by one. And it was terrifying because I didn't think I'd be accepted or loved. And when I was able to get on the other side of that and realize it brought us closer together, I was like, wow, the thing I've been most afraid of has been holding me back from feeling

the most loved and connected. Wow. All I needed to do was have the courage to authentically express it. Now, I think there's a time and a place and a context setting that needs to happen in order to express a shame or a secret. I don't think you just blurt it out to anyone. You have to trust the person in front of you to be able to receive the secret or the shame that you've been holding onto, especially for a long time. So I had a therapist kind of guide me in the process of talking about it with people closest to me. And I was just like, I'm really

afraid to talk about this. I had opened up about it in an emotional intelligence workshop in kind of a safe environment in front of 50 people. That was the most terrifying thing. But these people didn't know me. So it was still extremely difficult to do. It took many days for me to finally get to open up. I didn't even know I was going to talk about it. But there was an exercise that said, hey, listen, we've covered a lot of things from

our past. And now we're going to start creating the future that we desire. But in order to step into a desired future of abundance and joy and love and peace, we need to address the things in our past and start to let them go and process them and start to heal. So if there's, the facilitator said, so if there's anything that you haven't said yet or you haven't addressed yet that you need to address, now's your moment. If not, like we're moving forward. But if you hold on to that, it's just gonna be harder.

And I was like, Okay, I'm in this experience. I'm in this workshop. I've been like committed. It's been two weekends. I've seen other people open up. I've opened up about challenges. My parents went through divorce and how challenging that was being a kid from them arguing and fighting all the time and the stresses talked about being dyslexic and being picked on and made fun of with all these kids in school. My brother was in prison when I was eight. So for four and a half years, I went to a, you know, a visiting room at the prison and felt shame and humiliation because this had happened to a family member and my and my small community knew about it and they didn't accept us. I had to deal with all these different things

that I had talked about, breakups that I went through as a, you know, my 20s. And I was like, okay, I addressed all these things. I think I'm good. And then something just said, well, what about that time you were sexually abused? Why have you never shared this with anyone? It was kind of just like a rush of a thought. And you've never shared it at all before that moment?

Never shared it. And I had multiple girlfriends and I was kind of like hinted at things like, oh yeah, I've been through some challenges, but I was never able to fully, ah, this happened to me. I was unable, I lacked courage, the emotional courage to speak about it. Because I thought if anyone knew this about me, no one would love me or accept me. So I was terrified about what would happen, the consequence, if I shared my authentic truth of something I'm so ashamed of. And for whatever reason, I was just like, you know, if I don't say this now, I may never say this. Like this is the, if there's ever a moment to talk about this, this is the moment. And I stood up in front of this room. There's probably about 40 or 50 people. I stood up and I just started speaking. And I just told the whole story for the first time

about, you know, when I was five years old and how this happened it was with an older man that i didn't know it was the babysitter's son he was probably in his late teens and it was a story that kind of replayed in my mind probably every day for 25 years you know they just replayed some somehow some way during the day in a dream it it would just replay in my mind. And it was always kind of haunting me. It was like always kind of like running after me and I was running away from it. And the thing is when we are constantly running away from our past, chasing something else to fulfill us, to make us feel good enough based on the shame of our past that we're running away from, we're always going to be running away and chasing something else

to try to feel enough, feel good. And I just never felt good. I always felt anger at certain moments. I felt defensive. I felt people were abandoning me or abusing me or all these different things based on this story and this moment and other moments that kind of validated it for me. And I finally said it. And I remember just being so like, when I was talking about it,

I couldn't look up at anyone in their eyes. Like I had to look down at the ground the whole time while I was telling this story, because I was so ashamed. And I finally look up and started seeing people and everyone's like, weeping, right? People are just like in tears. And I sit down. like weeping, right? People are just like in tears. And I sit down and I just start like erupting of emotions. I start to start crying. I'm bawling. There was two women on either side of me. They just start hugging me. They're crying. And I'm just in kind of so much shame and emotions that I run out of the room. So I run out of the room and I leave. It's kind of in a conference ballroom, hotel room. And I run outside of the hotel and I go in the back of this kind of in a conference ballroom hotel room and i run outside of the hotel and i go in the back of this kind of like an alley behind the hotel and i'm just like sitting there against the

wall crying and i'm like my life is over i'm just like my life is over i'm not going back in that room i can't face these people like people are now now everyone knows who I really am. And it's over. Like I might as well just call it quits. And I remember it was probably one of the most like beautiful moments of my life is I'm sitting there like this against the wall, just weeping. And I get a tap on my shoulder and I turn around and it's just like giant of a man who's like the same size as me, but just a big guy, probably 15 years older than me. He looks me in the eyes and he's tearing up and he's like, I will follow you anywhere. It's the first thing he said to me.

And I'm just like, I'm just kind of like, what is going on? He's grabbing me and he's like, I will follow you anywhere. He's like, you have no idea what you just did, how that's going to help me in the rest of my life. And I think he was in his late 40s or 50s. And he said, I've been married for 30 years. I've got three grown kids. My wife doesn't know.

My kids don't know. No one knows. This happened to me when I was younger as well. And I've never had the courage to do what you did. And he was like, I will follow you anywhere. And I was just like, holy cow. I was like, what? I was just like, it's kind of, it was just, it's overwhelming.

It was beautiful, but I was scared. And then one by one, it was kind of like, it was kind of like a scene out of a movie. I don't know if you ever saw Rudy. Remember when like Rudy wanted to play and he wasn't going to play and then the last game all the players come in and give their jersey and they say, I want Rudy to have my spot. It was like all these men came out and just started hugging me

and they just started telling me their stories. A few other guys had deal with sexual abuse, but they, they all had some shame that they just started opening up about. Yeah. And it was the craziest moment. Like I've never had a moment like this in my life. It felt like I'm seeing out of a movie when it's happening. I was like, this is surreal, but it was also beautiful because these men were willing to open up and reveal their shame that they didn't want any other men to know as well. And that brought us closer together. That allowed us to trust each other more. That allowed

us to understand one another and drop our guards down with each other. So it was just a beautiful lesson and experience for me as a 30-year-old at that time where I was like, oh, I can trust certain people. Maybe not everyone. Like there's got to be the right context, like I said, to be able to have the conversation and open up. But we had created that in this kind of workshop experience where the context was set. And I wanted to feel free. And I knew that I needed to try something. I wanted to feel free and I knew that I needed to try something. And this was the thing that started the path of freedom for me. It started the healing journey and it's a, it's a journey, a consistent journey. And the more I spoke about it afterwards with friends and family, and then eventually I opened up on my podcast, um, about a year later. And the more I did that, the more impact I realized I was able to have on everyone.

And so it's just been a beautiful journey because the podcast gave me, and I had this, I felt a nagging, like I told my family, my friends, and I was like, man, I feel like maybe I should talk about this openly. But if I do, I may lose everything. I was like, I might lose my business. I might lose my audience. Who knows? But I remember just this nagging feeling that I was like, if you can help one man heal and recover, it's worth losing everything.

And I was just like, it's worth losing everything yeah and i was just like it's worth it if i can help one man feel free it's worth losing everything for me yeah and i would have been like this was a well-lived life like i lived a life of service to help one man and um i remember publishing this post where i talked about it and it's still 11 years later, the most downloaded episode I've ever done. Really? I still get messages from people finding it from 10 years ago, talking about their experience and opening up about their sexual abuse experience for the first time to me. And it's always like, you know, I'm super grateful that they feel safe to talk about it with me. But usually when you open up about something you're struggled with,

it gives permission for others to start opening up as well. They may not talk to you about it, but they might reflect on it. They might tell a therapist. They might tell their husband, their wife, their boyfriend or girlfriend. And that gives people permission to heal. So it's been a, the podcast has also just held me accountable for, for a lot. Yeah. And it's, you know, you can't hide because people can tell if you're being an authentic. So it's been a beautiful journey. Wow. It's like a whole episode right there. I mean,

that's, I thank you for sharing that. Cause I, I didn't know the whole context of it, but that's the whole thing's incredible because I think a lot of times we think the things that we should, the things that it's kind of like the phrase shame breeds in the dark, where it's like, when you bring it to light, it has no more power over you. And in like your mess is your message. And it did become this thing where you allow other people to heal, but it's so hard for us to be vulnerable, especially about the things that we have the most shame around. And so the thing that I liked to said is that you said there has to be some context with it. And your, your therapist kind of helped you with that for anybody who's out there that,

that has gone through something that they want to share with other people can even kind of like the steps of what that would look like and how it helped you. The thing that she told me, cause I was like, I'm really afraid. I was like, I opened up about this in this workshop, but I felt like it was a safe environment because we all went through stuff and we were all opening up about everything right so and I may never see some of these people again although I built great relationships with them so it became different but I was like my friends and my family is very close and what if they don't accept And what if they don't accept me? What if they don't love me? Then what? And she said, ask the question for each one of your family members before you tell

them this and make sure you feel good about their response when you ask them this question. And the question was, you know, first setting some context. So I called each one of them. I wasn't in the same city as them at that time. So I called each one of them, my family. And she said, set the context first and say, Hey, listen, there's been some some reflections that I've been going through in my life that I've been thinking about and some realizations I've been having. And I realized there's some things that I that ashamed of that I want to tell you about, but I'm really nervous and I'm scared to talk about them. And I wanted to ask you a question first. Is there anything I could ever say or do that would make you not love me?

So that's the question. Is there anything I could ever say or do that would make you not love me? Then wait for the response. And if a friend or a family member is kind of like joking or kind of like, well, I don't know, it depends, then maybe you don't tell them right then. So make sure you set the context of what you've been experiencing and your feelings and where you're at. Ask them the question, is there anything I could ever say or do that would make you not love me? And then see how you feel based on their response. And then, you know, if they say, no, there's nothing you could ever say or do that can make me not love you. Then they're opening up the door for you to talk about it. Now you have to have ultimate courage and share something you've never shared or share something you're afraid of.

ultimate courage and share something you've never shared or share something you're afraid of. And depending on their emotional awareness or their emotional intelligence, they may not give you the response that you want. They may not know how to handle the response also. Like there's some deep, dark stuff that people go through and their initial response may be, oh, I'm so sorry. Or they may not know. So you've got to be willing to sit with them also in their discomfort and be okay with it. And they want to sit in the mess of the conversation. But if you set up the context, if you ask the question, then they've given you permission to talk about it. Now you've got to accept the challenge and lean into that courage. And every time I did it with a family member, every time I did it with a friend, it was terrifying, but it gave me more and more freedom on the other

side. And I think that allowed me to start healing my nervous system to feel more at peace, at least with those individuals. And I felt after like six months of kind of tiling my friends and family in the right time and moments, I felt like, okay, I feel a lot better. But I'm still worried about what my audience thinks about me. I'm still putting on a mask or I have an image in front of my community. And I just didn't feel right about that. So that's what made me say, gosh, I may lose everything. But if I can help one man heal, it's worth it because I still have my friends and family. So that's been the journey.

That's incredible, man. And so what was, for people that are out there and they're afraid of it, what was the responses like? How many people do you think you shared it? Was it different than you thought it would be? Did you feel more free after each conversation? Because that's what people are afraid of is the response from someone else. I think I felt more love than I'd ever had in my whole life. Wow.

Yeah, with each interaction. And family had a different interaction. Like the thing with my family, my siblings had been through some, each had been through some dark stuff. Like just, yeah, we've all been through some of our own dark stuff. My brother went to prison and had a lot of dark stuff that happened in jail for four and a half years. My sisters went through their own different challenges.

I don't want to go into it too much because it's their story. But the thing that made it special is they opened up about stuff that I didn't know about, each one of them. I didn't ask them to. It gave them permission to be like, you know, there's something that's been on my mind actually that I've been afraid of and ashamed to talk about to the family. And so they started opening up with me because I opened up with them. And that vulnerability between both of us brought us,

brought us all closer together. And so it created a very special moment, a very special bond that i was like wow we would have never had this moment if if at least i didn't start with vulnerability or you weren't willing to to share in return yeah and i just felt more love and acceptance because of that vulnerability yeah and that connection um you know friends were a little different but they were all very accepting. Some people opened up about certain stuff, but I wasn't, again, I wasn't asking them to.

Sure. I think the family, we'd just all been through stuff we were ashamed of or stuff that happened to us or things that we felt bad about that allowed us to clear, clear a little bit, let things go, confess, whatever you want to call it. And that sets you free. So crazy, man, because as you, as you decide to step vulnerably into something, which is probably the scariest thing to be vulnerable for other people and, and to be courageous, it's like you give permission for other people to also share the thing that they're most afraid of. And so I think it's, it's interesting because even though you're

sitting there and you're wondering like, will people still love me? Then you open up, they then open up and now you have an even tighter bond than you've ever had and felt more love you've ever had in your life. Um, I'm curious with that. Um, cause one thing I told you, I really want to talk to you a little bit about is like just relationships in general. Cause there's been, since I've known you over the past few years, since the first episode we did, we spent a lot of time talking about relationships and stuff like that after the episode and your life has changed immensely over the past three years in relationships yeah i'm curious um do you feel like after this happened you started to change in relationships or or is that just a completely

different um journey for you after opening up after opening up yeah everything started to shift in relationships after opening up now i still had three failed relationships i'm a slow learner sometimes not failures you know three relationships that taught me a lot there you go and uh that didn't work out but it ended up working out um i still had a lot of fear around intimacy in relationships. Although I started healing that element and I started closing the loop around that, I thought, oh, I'm good. I was like, oh, this is the thing I'm most afraid of. I'm good. And so I spent a number of years learning and constantly growing, but I still hadn't healed my nervous system around intimacy

and around boundaries and around people-pleasing in love. So I started to let go of some of that old wound and trauma. I started to build more confidence in myself. I started to drop the walls of anger and resentment and things like this, but I still lacked the ability to, uh, to fully create boundaries and relationships. And my wound was,

I was still, I was still making decisions out of desires, not out of, I guess, I was still making decisions out of desires, not out of, I guess, a dream of a healthy conscious relationship. And by desires, what do you mean by that? Sexual desires.

Okay. Yeah. So I was still allowing sexual chemistry to draw me in versus having courage of asking the right questions about the future. Are we in alignment of our values, our vision, and our lifestyle? Does our dream life line up on how we want to live our lives, how we want to interact in our lives, who we want in our lives, the lifestyle we want to create, our values, vision, everything. And most of those things never lined up. And so I was always connected through desire, not through consciousness. And then I would try to, I don't know if fix is the right word, but I'd try to heal the wounds of my child, my parents' relationship in the partner that I was choosing.

How so? You know, I would pick partners. I would choose partners that had really poor relationships with their fathers and who were kind of emotionally unavailable. Like in the three relationships I was in, I always was the one that said we should do therapy together. And the people that I chose, they never wanted to do it. And I always kept thinking to myself, how is this possible? Like what woman would not love a man to say, let's go to therapy together.

Like that never happens. But somehow I chose the people that never wanted to go. They didn't want to face certain things within themselves. And I'm not saying I was perfect. I was like, I want to go and take responsibility and learn and grow and develop. And I didn't feel the willingness from them. They eventually did, but it was kind of like kicking and screaming. It was like the reverse of like the man kicks and screams for months until he finally has to go. And so almost each one of those relationships, they were about to end. And I was finally like, I can't do this anymore unless we do therapy. Like it's not working. It's been a year.

It's been a year and a half of just this fight and this struggle. It's not working. And I want to work on it. I want to make it work. At the moment, they weren't willing to face certain things. Or we just weren't the right match, right? So I'm not trying to blame them because I chose certain people. But they were unwilling to do the work. And for me, that should have been a sign from the beginning.

If you weren't willing to be in a place of personal growth, and I'm willing to do that, then we're just not in alignment. It doesn't mean you're wrong or bad. It's just like, okay, this is a value of mine, but it wasn't a value of theirs. So I should have known that early on, but I tried to stay. I tried to fix things. I tried to do whatever it took. I tried to change myself to make them happier,

but they were never happy with me. No matter how much I changed for them, they still didn't accept and love me for who I was. And then I lost who I was to please them, and they still weren't happy. Yeah. So that was a pattern that I did because I was afraid of loving someone

and them not loving me back for who I am. And then I forced it to try to help them grow and heal in some way. So it was just out of alignment everywhere. And then I finally, in the previous relationship, I finally felt like I was able to heal in the relationship. Went to therapy together after about a year and a half of just every week, emotional up and down, struggle, fights, all this different stuff. Finally was like, it's over unless we do therapy.

For a year, she didn't want to do it. Finally started going and just realizing like wow why have i stayed in this and why have i stayed in every relationship for years after i knew something was off and a lot of it came back from like childhood you know we talked about the patterns of childhood from from the episode i did with you and a lot of it came down to if i'm going to start something, I want to make sure like it works out. You know, I'm going to give my all, I'm going to give my best. I'm going to do whatever it takes, no matter what. A lot of the sports mindset as well, it was in there. And it

was just like, as opposed to, well, I never chose the right path in the first place. So I was choosing something that wasn't an alignment and trying to make it work and doing whatever it took to make it work but it just wasn't the right alignment so i need to choose alignment first and then be willing to work and improve and grow and it's going to expand it even more so with martha my fiance we did that from the beginning i did everything completely opposite with her things that i've never ever done before yeah and um and i was just like i don't and i was also just like if this doesn't work out it's okay you know at least you know now if we're not in alignment it's okay if you want something

else in your life cool then we can be friends as opposed to well we have this chemistry so we should try to make this work. I really allowed it to flow differently. And I was almost kind of like, hey, this is 100% who I am. This is my mission. This is what I'm up to. This is what I'm doing. And if we're going to date, you need to know this is who I am. And I'm not going to change to make you happy. I'm going to improve and grow as a human for myself, but I'm not going to change to make you happy or to please you with something. If you're not happy with who I am, we shouldn't be together. And so for months we dated and I told her before we started, you know, before I like asked her if we can be together, committed, exclusive for months we were dating. And I said

to her, okay, there's, there's a couple things that I want to create if we're going to start this relationship and be exclusively committed to one another. My commitment I'm going to make number one, I'm going to commit to you that I'll never get angry at you. I'll never explode. I'll never yell at you. I'll never scream at you. I'm never going to get angry for who you are. And is this different than past relationships? Yeah. I mean, I wasn't really explosive or angry.

I was never that. The partners I chose were, which was a pattern. Yeah. But I would change to try to keep the peace so they were a lot more like this and so I would be like what do you need what's wrong okay I won't do this anymore

so I just said I'm creating a boundary I'm not going to change who I am to make you happy you're either a happy person or you're not with me and if you're not happy with me don't be with me if you can't accept who I am then we shouldn't be together and so If you can't accept who I am, then we shouldn't be together. And so that's why I said, I will never get angry at you. You know,

I've been frustrated in moments, but I'm not getting angry or exploding or anything like that. And I said, I'm never going to try to change you. Like I've been asking you so many questions for the last few months. We've gone on experiences. We traveled, I've met your family. We've done all these different things. I've gotten to know a lot of your personality. I've seen you in different settings. Obviously, you're going to continue to get to know someone forever. But I've gotten to see a majority of your personality in your way of being over a long period of time. And I said, if this is who you are, then I'm choosing to accept and love you for who you are. And if these are your dreams that you're telling me now, although some might change and evolve, but I've known her past, like she's an actor. She's done movies for the last 20 years. She's, you know,

done kissing scenes with guys on set. And so I said to myself, would I be okay with her continuing to act in this way if this is who she wants to be? And I had to choose to say yes. Like okay, if this is who she is, I can't choose her and tell her to change to make me happy. I need to accept who she is and be with her or accept her who she is and not be with her. Either way, if I'm trying to change her, she's not going to be happy and I'm not going to be happy. And so I said, I will never get upset with her. Either way, if I'm trying to change her, she's not going to be happy and I'm not going to be happy. And so I said, I will never get upset with you. If you talk to her now, you can ask her.

I've never been upset with her in almost three years. It doesn't mean we've had disagreements. We have, but I haven't been like lashed out at her. I told her you need to change or anything like that. That was the first thing that I said, I'll never get upset at you in this way. I may not agree with you, but I'm never going to get upset at you. The second thing was you have to fully accept and love me for who I am. You can't get upset at me. And otherwise, this isn't going to work because we're going to be in fights and conflict. And I'm not going to feel like I'm enough for you.

You're going to feel like you need to change. We're just going to be unhappy people. I've seen this play out many times. So we both had to be in acceptance of each other. The next thing was, because I, you know, just like you, I speak, I travel, I have an audience. There's people around me and previous relationships that made people partners insecure or jealous or questioning or where are you or who's hitting on you? Like, you've got to accept me. This is a lifestyle that I have. The second thing was we needed to start

the relationship in therapy because every relationship that I had before ended in therapy and then it ended poorly. And I said, I don't want that this time. I want to start in therapy to know that we're both have a coach or a therapist individually, which she already had. And we're both working together in the relationship from the start. She was like, I think that's a great idea. I think most people might get afraid of that early on. Why should we do this early on? Everything's great. Something wrong with us if you go to therapy. Exactly. And there was nothing wrong, right? It was like, we had an amazing dating experience starting out. But I said, I want to know and have a better feeling within the first year of dating that we are in alignment with our values, our vision, and the lifestyle. Because typically,

when you get into a relationship, chemicals take over, you know, love is more blind, you don't ask the questions about the real deep intimate stuff, and you allow the chemical desires to keep you bonded physically. And it just feels so good. Just like, ah, it feels amazing. And you don't wanna see, oh, he's doing that,

or oh, she's doing this weird, or that's a red flag. You kinda let those things go to the side once you start bonding chemically. And so I said, I want to start in therapy so we can talk about everything, talk about all the subjects, talk about our values, our vision, our lifestyle, the future, agreements, boundaries, roles, responsibilities, everything. And most people would say, man, that seems like a lot of work early on and it seems like it's kind of it's kind of heavy but i was just like you know what's heavy is going through years of relationships that don't work spending time energy hours sleepless nights dealing with

emotional turmoil from someone who wants you to change who you are. Someone screaming at you constantly, that is heavy. That's way heavier. And I'd rather go through the first six to 12 months of getting clarity and doing the deep work early on and having years of peace and freedom on the other side of it than three to six months of pleasure and then years of pain on the back end

because you never had those conversations. So for me, her willingness to say, yes, I want to continue to grow on my own separate of you. And yes, I want us to grow together as a partnership. Working together was an incredible decision that we made together early on. And I highly recommend it for anyone starting a relationship. I just think the stats are undeniable. 50% of marriages end in divorce. Probably 70% of people that stay married are unhappy, who don't get divorced. People are cheating on each other all the time. They're lying to each other. Just because they stay together for

a long time doesn't mean it's a successful marriage or relationship. There's not peace. There's not freedom to express your true authentic self. And that's not the life I want to live anymore. I lived that for 20 years in relationships. And I felt like a prisoner to people pleasing, the people I was with,

to try to keep the peace and make them happy versus both of us being able to express who we are and be our higher selves in the relationship. And for the first time, I feel that in this relationship and it's the greatest gift I've ever had. Yeah. And I mentioned this to you when I saw you last time is you actually just feel different to be around. Like you feel like your energy is way lighter, you know?

And I think it's, a lot of us, what we do is we think, all right, well, yeah, like it's happening at home, but I can put on a face and I can go out and do my work and do what's supposed to be done. And I think that we don't understand that people are always feeling our energy in some sort. So if you just had a fight and now you've got to go on stage or you've got to go and talk with someone,

they're feeling something's a little bit off in your, your nervous system. They might not have any idea what it is, but they feel their nervous system. Something's a little bit different. And, um, and I told you when I was at your event up in Columbus where I was like, man, like you just feel different to be around. Like it seemed like it was, it was, there was, it was taken a lot from you. The previous relationships were, and, um, it's awesome to see cause you guys just got engaged, right. A couple of days right after that. And so I'm curious, um, I have a question for you. I'm curious on, cause I know my answer with my relationship with Lauren, my wife, but, um, it feels like a lot of people talk about relationships have to be hard. They have to be worked. They have to be strenuous. I'm curious

your thoughts on that. And if you think that it's true, or if you're finding that it's false with the one that you have. Well, I feel like all of my relationships before were hard work and they were exhausting. Yeah. Now there were moments in the first three months that were fun and interesting and exciting, but then it started to get more tiring and exhausting. And it was always like, how do we get back to that beginning few months of fun and excitement? Like, how do we get back to that? We never did. You know, and here's the thing.

I'm not a parent, so I know there's going to be a lot of parents in the comments right now that say, well, wait till you have kids, and wait till this, and wait till life happens in bigger ways, and wait till you've got to take care of your parents, and wait till death happens, and all these things,

then your relationship is tested right so i understand and have compassion for that because i don't have kids but i you know had a father who was you know essentially had a in a coma for many months from a brain a brain uh a car accident that i was in that had a traumatic brain injury for 17 years he was not the man that he once was, and he had to be taken care of 24-7. So I was in relationships where, you know, this was happening to my father. I wasn't his primary caretaker, but I experienced that.

I don't have kids, and I know dynamics shift and change when you have kids. I know that. And I know some people don't have the luxury of maybe getting a babysitter or having support or having parents around to support them. And there might be more pressure and weight to take care of those kids. So I get that too. But I think if you set the foundation of your relationship before having kids about roles and responsibilities, about guidelines and boundaries, about agreements,

then I feel like it should be extremely peaceful based on these last three years with Martha, almost three years, two and a half years. Because we did the uncomfortable work up front by going to joint counseling and addressing any little fears or concerns that we might have. And there were some uncomfortable sessions where each one of us had to face insecurities and fears or doubts from our past and address them and face them. We couldn't keep running from them. We had to turn around and face them. Because we leaned in that uncomfortable conversations early on and we created agreements with one another, it gave us clarity. That clarity has given us freedom.

It's given us peace. I have peace. You know, if this was, you know, three years ago, seven years ago, 10 years ago in the relationships I was in, I'd feel anxious being like, I got to check in. I got to tell them what I'm doing or they're going to be calling me saying, who are you with? Who's at the house right now? What's going on? Why aren't you checking in with me? Like that was kind of my history. And I don't have to do that because we have agreements. We've had these conversations up front about this is my lifestyle. This is how I work. This is what I need. This is what I'm willing to do. This is what I'm not willing to do. Do you accept that? Do you need something else from me? And getting clarity on both sides so

we're in alignment. And that has set us free. And I'm sure there's going to be new agreements and commitments we'll need to make when we get married, right? We're engaged now. So there'll be new agreements. When we have kids, there'll be different agreements. There's going to be different things to agree to at different seasons of life. But because we both say we are independently growing and have coaching and counseling independently on our own to deal with our own stuff, so we don't have to dump everything on each other and have the responsibility of another person making us happy, we are responsible for our own happiness individually. making us happy. We are responsible for our own happiness individually. We each have a mission and a purpose in life that we're pursuing. And we each have friends and communities that we can lean

on as well. And we have counseling together. So there's like multiple layers of support for each one of us to overcome and navigate challenges, which doesn't put all the burden on me to have to fix something or rescue or like be this perfect conscious person to listen nonstop to whatever challenge someone might be having. And I know she can handle her own emotions. She's able to deal and navigate with them. And yes, because she does that, I want to be there to support her even more when she's in those challenging moments in her life. So that has been that has given me a lot of peace, knowing that she's fully committed to her own happiness, and to her own coaching, and she's committed to the relationship coaching as well. Yeah.

And it's just incredible peace when both partners are willing to grow together and separately. Yeah, man. I think that's real important. As you're speaking, you're talking about how you started early. I shared on right before this episode, we recorded an episode for your podcast, The School of Greatness. And I was talking about how I had a friend who I had met through a poker tournament. Sat next to me and he was a relationship therapist and we started connecting stuff. He's like, Hey, it'd be great for you and your

girlfriend to come in. And it was like two years into our relationship and there was nothing wrong, right? There wasn't any, it wasn't like we were trying to fix something, but we went in and we spoke with him and we learned about like how I am. He had said something to me that was really eyeopening, um, that I'd never thought of before. And I was, I was, I was talking to him about, you know, my relationship with my father and where my father was and he goes, yeah, you were neglected as a child. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like I wasn't neglected. Like, cause in my mind, I'm thinking like food, water, shelter, clothing, right? Emotionally you were neglected. Exactly. He said, he said you were emotionally neglected. And I was like, Oh God, that feels true. Like I felt it. And I was

like, Oh yeah, there was emotional neglect there. And so he reflected to me something I never knew, but I started learning like how Lauren's love style was, how my love style was. And I left that first session and we had gone a couple of times to him after that feeling like number one, I understood myself more than I ever had, but I also understood more, her more than I ever had, but I felt like she understood me more than she ever had. And I think that that's important where it's like, a lot of times I have a friend who's, who really wants to go to therapy with his, with his parents and they just don't, his dad's hardcore resisting it because in his dad's mind, he thinks that that means he failed. Like he did something wrong. And in reality, it doesn't have to be that way. Just because you go

to therapy doesn't mean there's something wrong. It just means, Hey, I kind of want to mirror it. I want to have someone tell me something about myself that I might not know about. Like I, I've been in at that point in time, personal trauma for like 12 years. And I had no idea I was emotionally neglected. And then I started realizing that about myself. And so I think it's really important for everyone out there to think about this. Like if you can do it, if you can afford it in some sort of way, it would be really good for you to go and talk with someone on your own, but also talk with someone who is, if you're in a relationship with someone where you could start to understand each other a little bit better.

Yeah. And to go back to the question of, you know, do relationships need to be hard? I think relationships are extremely hard if you're unwilling to have courageous conversations. And they are going to be hard and they're going to be exhausting because you're going to expect someone else to understand you when you're not communicating with courage to them about your needs, your wants and desires. For sure. You're expecting them to just get it, to understand you, to just know what you want, as opposed to saying, actually, I'm feeling a little scared here, a little, I've got some stuff I'm still working on.

I want to talk through with you. And most of us are unwilling to have the courage to open up. And therefore, we're resentful, we're angry, we're frustrated, we're insecure, we're needy, all these different things. And so it feels hard and complicated. But if you're willing to start opening up courageously and make sure the other person is willing to receive that, if they're not, they may not be the right match for you. You may just be out of alignment.

If one person is willing to be courageous and the other is afraid, do you want that as a partner? And I think that's hard because a lot of people get chemically bonded early and they think about the dream life of this person, the fantasy of this person in the future. They like me and I have this chemical feeling when I'm around them or when I think about them and they don't want to lose that feeling of chemicals. And that's where you get trapped. That's where you get in a really scary place of staying in a relationship for too long,

making excuses for the person who is treating you poorly or not giving you what you need based on what you've requested or who's doing things out of alignment with your values, your vision, and your lifestyle. And then you keep abandoning yourself and what you truly want for the hope that one person continues to give you this chemical feeling. And that's why early on, I was just like, I'm blocking all the chemical connection. I'm not going there. Sure, I felt

attracted, but I was not willing to go there chemically for months. And I said, I just want to get to know your personality. And I'd never done that before. And I want to get to know your values, your vision, your lifestyle. I want to see you around your friends. I want to see you around your family. And I think people are so, myself included in the past, are so willing to give of themselves chemically and sexually without actually knowing who the person is. And then they're bonded for a long time. You're bonded.

You're connected. And you want that rush, you want that feeling. It's an addiction. And that makes you blind. And so you got to do things differently if you want peace and harmony in a relationship. And that may mean you're dating someone for a while and after three to six months you realize,

man, we're not in alignment. Like we don't want the same things in the future. We don't have the same values, vision, or lifestyle. They want to have kids. I don't want to have kids. They don't want to be married. I want to be married. I can't deal with, I can't accept them for who they are.

And if you can't accept the person for who they are right now, you shouldn't be with them. And I was like, that's why I said that there's really two main conditions. One, I'm going to accept you for who you are and I need you to accept me for who I am. That's number one. Otherwise, this won't work because I'm not changing for you. I'm going to evolve.

I'm going to grow for me, and you've got to accept who I am. And I'm going to fully accept who you are. Where most guys would be like, okay, you're never doing a kissing scene again. You're never doing this with this actor. You can't do this. You can't do this. Now you're going to stop acting and just be a stay-at-home mom because it makes me feel safe. I said, no.

You're going to do you. And I'm going to trust you to make good decisions that are good for you. And she's been gone for a month because she's shooting in a different country right now. And she's doing kissing scenes. She's doing sex scenes. She's doing kissing scenes in another country for a month without you. Exactly. And I feel at peace.

Yeah, I was going to say. So in another relationship, would that have just driven you crazy? I think 10 years ago, I wasn't as emotionally involved. And I think I would have been angry that this person is choosing to do something that would hurt me. Oh, yeah. It's all about us. We're all thinking about ourselves. Exactly.

I'd have been like, how could they do this to me? Are they not thoughtful about me? What do they mean? Why are they going to do a kissing scene in the movie? Can't they just not do this movie? I would make all these things up and say, why are you doing this? And who is this guy? And let me talk to this guy. I would have to do all these things. And I put myself in scenarios weeks before we got committed. I said, okay, can I fully accept who she is? i'd seen some of her previous movies where she done kissing scenes but i also understand like when you're on a set there's 50 people watching

it's not intimate at all romantic no it's not but you know you have to let your ego down for sure you have to like let your ego die and say okay this is who she is so is this the type of person i want to be with am i able to accept her and love her for the choices she makes and be happy for her and her choices? Or am I so insecure that I need her to change to make me feel safer? And I made that decision. And it's funny when you make those decisions, the universe or God tests you and says, okay, you said you could do this.

So we're going to put some extreme cases in front of you right at quickly afterwards and make sure you really say you're going to do what you're going to do. And, um, yeah, I've been super calm and peaceful and it's just been like, okay, you know, uh, maybe I don't want to watch these scenes, but you know, I accept you and that's, you're making great art. I'm just looking at it as you're making great art. And that's, that's cool. Um, I've chosen to accept her. Otherwise, I shouldn't be with her. Right. That's interesting.

And I think that the main part that is really like coming to light is the communication side of it. Whenever I hear people that have trouble in their relationships, usually there's some breakdown in communication. Someone's not saying something or both of them are not saying something. And it's actually interesting because I learned something from a coach of mine years ago, which is similar to actually what your therapist had told you when you were talking about the sexual experiences is how to actually go and have a really tough conversation.

And it's hard, man. It's super hard. And what makes it easier though, that I have found, you know, there's times when we've all been in a situation where like, you know what, I'm going to tell this this person about this thing and then we say it and the person gets triggered they blow up on us and now we're like i can't i'm not safe to to say this to them because our walls immediately go up and uh the the tactic i guess the you could call it a tact if you want that he taught me is to disarm them and the way to disarm somebody is to go to them and tell them how you feel and and before you do anything else.

So it's like, hey, Lewis, there's something that I want to say to you. If I'm being fully transparent, I'm terrified to share this with you because it's really on my heart and I'm not sure how you're going to accept it. And so I started doing this with my wife and I was like, hey, because the way that I always thought that the pattern that I always had is that if she got mad, she was going to leave. And so the first, my brain would always go to like something I did wrong. She's probably going to leave me. She's probably going to leave me. She's probably going to leave me. And I would always, and even though it never happened, luckily, you know, it always kept popping up in my head. And so what happened was as things would happen, I would say, Hey, listen, Lauren, can I talk to you? Like after there's no, we're not in a moment where things are heated, anything like that. And, uh, listen, Lauren, can I talk to you? Like after there's no, we're not in a moment where

things are heated, anything like that. And, uh, we're sitting, it's just normal day. And I'm like, can I share something with you? That's like been on my mind. And if I'm being honest, I'm terrified to say it. Yeah, that's good. And when you do that, usually they're like, Oh my God. Yes. I would love. And so the walls don't go up. It's like, I'm inviting you in and then allowed to communicate with that person. Now, I think that's important because you can then usually communicate vulnerably. That person's reaction, we can't really, we can't control anybody else's reaction. Yes. But like you're saying is, I've shared it with you.

I've gotten off my chest. Your reaction is in a way going to show me how open you are to making some shifts in this relationship. Exactly. Yeah. exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And also, if someone can't accept you for you being vulnerable and courageous and opening up about who you are and they are going to leave you, let them leave you.

They're not aligned with you. Yeah. And the challenge is we get too chemically bonded and too invested in this person that we're afraid for someone to leave us. But if they're not right for you, they should leave you. You should leave them. If they can't receive your emotions, receive a vulnerable conversation from you, is that the type of relationship you want to have for the rest of your life where you're walking on eggshells? Probably not. And people are too afraid to be left or that they've invested too much time,

that the person's, you know, they've wasted all these years. But if you're not in alignment, you can try to communicate to get in alignment and go to counseling and therapy, but eventually it's not working. Why make it this hard thing? To go back to your question, should relationships be hard work? I think they should be conscious conversations continuously. Maybe that's hard to do at the beginning, but over time that should bring you closer together and make things easier.

Right. Because you're having conscious conversations about roles and responsibilities, about agreements and boundaries, and about acceptance of who each individual is. And when you can get clear on all those things, along with your values, your vision, and your lifestyle, and be in agreement on these things and accept them,

then everything else is a lot easier. And you just look at each other and you say, wow, what a beautiful life we have. And that's what we do in our relationships. We just look at each other and say, what a beautiful life we have. But it's because we're willing to have the conscious conversations. Some people might call that hard work.

It's uncomfortable at times. But man, to have a few months of conscious conversations for a lifetime of peace and gratitude, it's worth it. Yeah, for sure. Well, I'm curious with you, man. I've known you for a while. And you've gone on this journey you've gone through you know the the sharing of the sexual abuse the things that have happened in relationships

it's 2024 like what is what is lewis houses um at 40 years old mountain that he's climbing or thing that he's working on where he's like this is the thing that i want to work on with myself in my life where are you at right now? I think it's, I mean, it's the, there's three things that came to mind. The first two are, you know, stepping into preparing myself for marriage and then stepping into preparing myself to be a father. I think those are two big milestones that I've never experienced. So what does that preparation look like?

I'm working with my, you know, my coach and my therapist and walking through any type of fears or uncertainties or what do I need to keep communicating or addressing to make sure that I'm saying everything I need to say. It's just kind of walking through a reflection of stepping into the greatest version of me that is married, the greatest version of me that is a father, and bringing him closer to me now. Like, how can I draw him closer to me now? And what is in between me now and where I want to be? And any fear, insecurity, or doubts that I might have around anything, and being willing to have courageous conversations. It all goes back to courageous

or conscious conversations, to bring it to the light, to address it, to, you know, feel anything out. And so stepping into that. So that's one process that I'm on right now. And the other one that I have with my therapist and coach is, you know, individuals like me and you who have big platforms and big communities and audiences have bigger demands and responsibilities, right? We've got to show up in different ways. We've got to lead in different ways, which is not ways I was when I was 10, 15, 20, 25, 30. Like I had to continually step up and evolve. evolve. And so one of the questions I ask my coach often in the last six months is,

what are the men who are in their 50s and 60s and 70s struggle with the most that she coaches? Because she works with a lot of high profile leaders, big CEOs, billionaires, you know. You want to be able to navigate that now. And so I'm saying, what are the biggest challenges that 50 year old menold men, 60, 70-year-old men who make it deal with? And a lot of it comes back to their ego. You know, it's not, it comes back to their ego of, you know, younger women come into the picture or they've neglected their marriages or whatever it is. And that gets them, you know, their ego eventually gets them if they're not constantly working on it. gets them. Their ego eventually gets them if they're not constantly working on it. And I think I'm trying to prepare myself now to eliminate that stuff in the future, to prepare myself to be as

ready as possible, knowing that I'm never going to be some perfect human being, but how can I make sure that I'm dealing with or navigating things now so they don't catch up to me later. And part of that is also like, okay, I've chosen this year for 11 years, I've kind of made everything about others on my show. I've interviewed everyone else. I've done very little solo stuff. I've written three books, but a lot of the books are about like examples from other people and then some of my stuff. But it's never like I'm the expert.

Here's all my wisdom and look at me all day. I've never wanted to be that guy. And it's not who I want to be necessarily, but I also know in order for me to take my audience, my business, my brand to the next level, that I'm going to need to step in front more and share more of my thoughts. So this year I'm going to be creating more individual content, more solo stuff, more social media content of just me teaching, educating, inspiring, and entertaining. And with that, I believe it will expand my impact and draw people back in more. But it also leaves you open for people criticizing you more

and people judging you more and people saying, okay, just preparing myself for abundance and expansion and making sure that my ego doesn't get the best of me as it grows abundantly. The audience, the community, the wealth, all these different things. And so it's just preparing for all that and just knowing I'm stepping into this level of leadership in a different way and making sure that I'm in alignment with myself and my soul so that I don't get into things that I shouldn't be getting into. That's what I'm preparing for. Yeah. I'm going to ask you the same question you asked me in your episode because I thought it was so good and it's a perfect transition.

I'm going to ask you the same question you asked me in your episode. Cause I thought it was so good. And it's a perfect transition because you had already asked me the, the final episode, final questions that you do at the end of episodes. And the last time I was on your show, which everyone should go back and listen to both of them with this last one, you asked me a question, which just like made you think,

I mean, maybe I was silent for a while. Right. And so, so the question was, though, and I think it works perfectly when you're talking about your coach, your therapist talking 50, 60 years old.

Let's say that 50-year-old Lewis walks down these stairs, sees us. He's got everything he's ever wanted. He's got this amazing relationship, amazing children. He's a great father. What do you think that he would say to you right now to help you on the path to get there sooner?

father. Um, what do you think that he would say to you right now to help you on the path and to get there sooner? I think he'd be really excited for me. And, um, he would say, I'm, he would say, I'm so grateful that you decided to commit to cautiously growing so consistently because look at this beautiful life we've created together. And what do you think would be some of the steps to have gotten you to where he is compared to where you are now? It's the consistency of working on myself, like making sure I show up every month for coaching, therapy, making sure that I'm working on the things

that I know I need to get better at, which is patience and allowing to trust other people to handle things, to allow myself to feel more peace and freedom in my business or my life. But I think he would say a number of things. One, look at this beautiful family you've developed because you healed your heart and you continue to be on a healing journey, but you committed to it. And look what we've created because you committed to healing. You know, thank you. He would say, he would say, he would say, thank you for continuing to make your life about serving other human beings and using your story to be in the service of others.

And so he wouldn't give me the advice to do that because he would say, thank you for being consistent in that. He would say, thank you for choosing health every single day. Because at 50, we're still jumping around, dunking, we're running, we're freaking lifting heavy weights. And he would say, I'm so grateful for you for making decisions to be committed daily to health and prevention and mobility and strength. Because look what we're able to do at 50 with our kids. Thank you for taking care of your health. And the thing that he would say, which is the lesson I've been getting this last month, is the only way for you to grow into where you need to be

is to creating the right partnerships with people and not doing it all on your own anymore. For the last 11 years, I felt like I've done it all on my own. And so it's still another evolution of healing in that area of business around expanding with the right partners, team to allow me to expand as opposed to me doing it all on my own. Yeah. So that's what he'd be saying to me to keep evolving. But I've been listening to that version of me already and I've been stepping into it slowly.

So that's what's going to allow the impact to expand through the right aligned partnerships. It's awesome. That's why you're part of the network, baby. Let's go, you know, Greatness Network. How do people find you, Lewis? School of Greatness. Podcast's awesome. That's why you're part of the network, baby. Let's go, you know, Greatness Network. How do people find you, Lewis? School of Greatness. Podcast.

Podcast. Yeah. And Lewis Howes anywhere on social media. Yeah. Appreciate you, man. Excited for this. Yeah. We had a great conversation on ours so they can listen to ours on our show and check it

out. Yeah. You have some really good questions. So yeah, go to School of Greatness if you want to listen to that episode and appreciate you, man. My man. Thanks, brother. 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 Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn

how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now, it's time to go out there and do something great.