The School of Greatness - Your Life Is A Story: Why You Should Write Your Own Eulogy TODAY w/Donald Miller EP 1215

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Today’s guest is Donald Miller. He’s the CEO of Business Made Simple, his company that focuses on taking the mystery out of growing a business. He is the host of the Business Made Simple podcast and is the author of several books including the bestsellers Blue Like Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Building a StoryBrand. He’s written a new book called Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life. This episode was incredibly moving and powerful and I know you’re going to get a lot of value from it!In this episode we discuss why it’s important to constantly think about your life as a story, the key elements to your story and living a meaningful life, why Donald believes everyone should write their own eulogy, and so much more!For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1215Read Donald's new book: Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful LifeListen to his podcast: Business Made SimpleCheck out his website: www.businessmadesimple.comDaymond John on How to Close any Deal and Achieve Any Outcome: https://link.chtbl.com/928-podSara Blakely on Writing Your Billion Dollar Story: https://link.chtbl.com/893-pod 

This is episode number 1,215 with New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome back, my friend. Today's guest is the inspiring Donald Miller. He is the host of the Business Made Simple podcast and is the author of multiple books,

including the bestsellers Blue Light Jazz, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and Building a Story Brand. And he has written a new book called Hero on a Mission, A Path to a Meaningful Life. I loved diving into this book. I love this interview so much. It was incredibly inspiring

and moving and powerful. And I know you're going to get a ton of value from this as well, because there are four main characters in each one of our lives. And the quality of our life will really be determined know you're going to get a ton of value from this as well because there are four main characters in each one of our lives and the quality of our life will really be determined based on which character we move into on each season of our life. So in this episode, we discuss how there are these four characters in our lives and how you can manage and move through them to get to the best one for you.

Why it's important to constantly think about your life as a story. Donald dives into the importance of story as your life, the key elements to your story and living a meaningful life, why Donald believes everyone should write their own eulogy, and so much more. This was packed with a lot of great wisdom. We covered a lot of different topics as well, and I think you're going to love this one. If you're enjoying it at any moment, make sure to share this with a friend that you think would be inspired by this message and interview as well. You can copy and paste the link lewishouse.com slash 1215 or just wherever you're listening to

this podcast, share the link out over on social media or text a few friends as well. And I want to give a big shout out to the fan of the week. We've got millions of listeners every week. I think we're over 17 million listeners and viewers from around the world every month now, which is inspiring to see how big this show is actually getting from YouTube to audio and everywhere in between. And I want to give a shout out to the fans, people that are engaging and really connecting and leaving comments and reviews. And so this is from Stevie and Jess, who left reviews over on Apple Podcasts. And they said, Lewis, you are my latest habit

and I am stacked listening to your podcast with my daily walk and can be seen on the sidewalk, nodding, smiling, laughing, and thinking deeply about so many messages you and your guests provide. Even at 49 years old, I feel growth and development

of my own mindset, life stance, and daily actions is so critical. I'm grateful to you and your team, sir. So Stevie and Jess, we appreciate you. Thank you for listening, for constantly improving. I'm a big believer that we should have a beginner's mind at every stage of life. I'm always enjoying learning, developing myself, you know, learning from my mistakes.

And I'm glad that this show and all the guests we have on inspire you as well at this stage of your life. And if you guys want a chance to be shouted out on the podcast, you can leave a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. Make sure you're subscribed. And again, big thank you to all your support by listening to this show. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Donald Miller. What would you say are the three things that you were able to heal within the last, I guess, eight years of being together and knowing each other? It's all still happening. The trust thing, knowing that she's not know, fool around or flirt with somebody else.

And some relationships are like that, but I'm not comfortable in that. I just completely now have somebody who I just feel like I don't have to give a second thought to, you know. And she has flirted with other people, and I just kind of go, I bet you that was fun. She's like, oh, he's cute. And I'm like, yeah, there you go. That's a level of trust that'sed with other people. And I just kind of go, I bet you that was fun. She's like, oh, he's cute. And I'm like, yeah, there you go. That's a level of trust that's a whole other level.

Of course. And so it's just fun. I mean, Lewis, it's just fun. And then the healing that has happened to me in terms of just calming down when you have to be somewhere because somebody's expecting you, those sorts of things, you just grow up real fast, really, really fast. Right. And then, so that's a big part. And then the other part was, it probably took me two or three years to realize,

oh, wait a second, this isn't just her healing me. I'm actually going to heal her in some ways. I'm actually going to heal her in some ways. And I'm going to be a really trustworthy guy who just constantly says encouraging things and tries not to ever say anything demeaning or negative. And that's not true because I have. But if you're in a relationship with somebody who doesn't believe that they have the power

to give anything to you, it's not going to work. If they don't believe they have the power to give you something. That their love for you actually means something it won't work relationship won't work why won't it work because you're gonna be giving everything to them and they're never gonna be giving back because I don't believe they have anything to get interesting you know so it's I think it's really important we have very high self-esteem in our relationships that we believe no my words actually have the power to heal this person how do you

think we build self-esteem if we don't have much of it? Okay, this is going to be controversial. I don't believe that you can look in the mirror and say that you're awesome and build self-esteem. I actually think you have to chalk up some wins. Yeah, there's got to be some results in your life. Exactly. You got to go finish a marathon. That'll do it. Get a good haircut, buy some new clothes. All that superficial stuff actually means something. And writing a book like you did and finishing it, if you start chalking up wins, your identity begins to change. The role you play in the story of your life will determine your character. How important is identity for ourselves? It's everything. Why?

Because you will operate out of your identity. In stories, there are four characters, four major characters, the victim, the villain, the hero, and the guide. So let me describe them. The victim is the one who believes they are doomed and they have no way out and they are looking for a rescuer.

The villain is the one who believes they are doomed and they have no way out and they are looking for a rescuer. The villain is the one who makes others small. They demean others in order to feel powerful, sometimes physically. The hero is the one who really doesn't have what it takes but accepts the challenge and transforms until they can get the job done. And then the guide is the one who has played the hero for so long

they have the expertise to turn around and help somebody else. You will see those four characters in every story. And here's why those four characters exist in every story. They exist in every story because they exist in you. You are not one of them. You are all four. And I'm all four. And really, if you look at your day, you'll play all four characters in one day.

If you're jumping on a plane and it's late, yeah. Yeah. If you walk out and your car's been stolen, you're going to feel sorry for yourself. I'm doomed. And why does this happen to me? And that's the victim. If somebody calls and says and cancels an interview, you're going to feel disrespected. And you're going to say that little, you know what? That's the villain. The hero is the one who says, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to make sure this happens until I bench 300 pounds. I'm going to show up every day and I'm going to transform until I can be the guy who does it. And the guide is the one who says, this guy's about to step on a landmine.

I think I need to go talk to him. And so we play those four characters every day. But here's the truth. The more you identify as the victim the worse your story will go victims in stories do not transform uh they're bit parts that make the hero look good and the villain look bad it's a bit part and at the end of the story you'll notice the victim sits on the the bumper of the ambulance they put a blanket around them and they the camera shows them for a second then it goes over and shows the hero getting their reward the story's about the hero

yeah who saved or guided the, yeah. That's right. So when we play the victims, our stories go nowhere. We don't transform. We never get what we want. We don't build a legacy. We're not remembered. And we suck all the energy into ourselves.

Interesting. And people need to get away from us. Right. And so if you play the victim, your story will go like a victim in a movie. If you play the villain, where you're, you know where you're nice to people when the camera's on, but you're cussing them out behind the scenes, or I have so many friends who threaten to sue all the time.

I'm like, do you realize how fast? Yourself or other people? Yeah, other people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how they operate. And I'm like, do you realize that as soon as you send that email, they get on the phone and call 20 people, and you're burning bridges left and right? Yeah.

You're being a villain. This is what the villain would do in a movie. Don't do it because here's what happens to the villain in a movie. They're shot. Right. They die. They die. They go to jail.

They die or they go to jail. Yeah. And so the same thing's going to happen to you. You may not go to jail, but you're going to be in a social prison where people are going to, you know, and then you've got to cycle through friends because you've burned them all out. The hero, what happens to the hero is they experience a reward because they accomplished something great. But the bigger thing is they transform.

So at the beginning of the movie, they are ill-equipped. They are afraid. They don't know what to do. They need help. And at the end of the movie, they're afraid. They don't know what to do. They need help. And at the end of the movie, they're strong. And if we want to become a better version of ourselves, we have to do what heroes do. And what heroes do is they see something that they can't do, they accept that they can't do it, and they become the person who can do it by continuing to hit their head against

the wall. That's what they do. And then what we find out is if we do that 10 or 12 times and we become the great awesome man, which tends to happen to us in our late twenties, we start figuring out it's actually a pretty empty life. And we turn around and we help somebody else and we go, wait a second, that felt really meaningful. else and we go wait a second that felt really meaningful and you know you you start playing the guide more and more and so the real beautiful journey of life is you have this opportunity to play the hero and you slowly transform into the guy I did a um if you ever get a chance to interview Pete Carroll with

the Seahawks I went up in and he gave me 15 minutes in his office and we spent two hours together mmm and one of the things that I asked him, because in these interviews sometimes I'll ask, I'll say, hey, when did you realize that you were special? Now, almost everybody I've ever asked that to played the humble card and said, oh, there's nothing. He didn't. And I really liked it. He said I was in high school. Wow. He said my doctor wouldn't let me play football because I was too small, but I knew that I was bigger than my body. I knew it.

I knew I was special. That's cool. It was very cool. And I was so glad he was honest. And then I said, but did that bring you meaning by accomplishing so much? And he said, no. He said, one of the best things that ever happened to me is I chalked up a lot of wins when I was young. Because I realized they were empty.

And it wasn't until I started coaching and helping other people other heroes win that I found meaning that's kind of how I felt well that's what you do if you think about it you play the guy yeah right you sit there you you you metabolize content quickly and turn around so that somebody else can use it yeah there was something always missing inside yeah like I would go and spend years, sometimes decades, pursuing a goal and then I would accomplish it. And then I'd be like, well now what? And I didn't have, there was like a feeling of like,

yes, I can do what I set out to do, but it wasn't a deeper fulfillment. And I think, I don't know if it was because for most of my life, I was doing, I was accomplishing things to prove people wrong. And so the energy and the effort behind trying to prove the three bullies wrong or these people who said no to me wrong or who picked me last and having that fuel left me feeling like it wasn't a meaningful fuel.

The pursuit and the goal was significant for me, but the energy behind it wasn't out of pure love. And I think if it was out of like, I'm doing this because I love it, because I want to inspire people, as opposed to I want to prove to like, I don't know, all these people wrong, I might've had more fulfillment. But when I transitioned into, well, how can I just serve through the school of greatness? And how can I collect information from wise people like yourself and then facilitate and share this with others and help them improve? That's when it became another level of fulfillment. Viktor Frankl would say that in order to be meaningful, an objective needs to be mutually beneficial.

It needs to benefit you and it needs to benefit others. If it only benefits you, it won't work. Interesting. You know, it needs to be a team or a, you know, you can't do it alone. One of the three things that Viktor Frankl said you need to put into your life in order to experience a deep sense of meaning is community. And he also included art and nature into that because basically he was saying, you got to stop staring at your belly belly button pulling the lint out and holding it up to the light you're gonna drive yourself nuts right get get into a community and share an objective with a group of people and try to accomplish it what happens if we just do

it something for ourselves only it'll be empty you know when you when you watch a story you know there's been like 37 Rocky movies right but I can't remember which one I watched that Rocky wanted to win the heavyweight bout. That's always the story. But if you think about it, wanting to win the heavyweight championship is a very selfish endeavor. And so if you play that movie out and he wins it, the audience will not like him. In fact, they'll turn on him. So what the screenwriters had to do to make the story work is they had Rocky start mentoring a fatherless kid, take care of a single

mom, buy an old homeless man dinner. I'm not kidding. He goes to a dog pound and rescues a dog and adopts the dog. That way the audience will cheer for him when he wins the heavyweight fight. Because he's doing it for more people than himself because he's it's a good person winning the championship rather than just a person who's driven only for themselves now what's fascinating about that is the screenwriters had to put all of that in there in order to make the movie work so what does that tell us about life we've got to put all that in there you make it work. If you want to experience, you know, your life is a story. It is. Your life is a story. And when people say I'm restless or I'm bored,

I had a great coffee with an acquaintance in Portland. A friend of mine said, well, you get together with my friend. You wrote a book about traveling around America. He wants to write a book about traveling around America. He just finished. We get together. I did. The kid's 10 years younger than me, just starting out and writing. And I realized pretty quickly, this kid is a nihilist. This kid believes that life is futile and there's no meaning to any of it, which in Portland is like, right? I mean, on the state flag, you could just have life is meaningless, but marijuana leave. But yeah, I said something to him that was offensive. What did you say?

I said, what if life is not meaningless? What if just your life is meaningless? Ooh, dang. And here's what I meant by that. What if life hands you the opportunity to live a story and the story that you are writing with your life is not pleasing or satisfying? It's boring. It's the equivalent of sitting in a theater and watching a blank screen. I said, life is not meaningless. Life is just stuff that you can put together and make what you want with it. What you have made is meaningless. And it's giving you the experience of meaningless.

But don't project your meaninglessness on me. Don't say the world is meaningless. What's the point of being here just because you haven't created something meaningful? Yeah, or even meaningful for yourself, right? Life hands us these cultural scripts, right? When we're born, we're born into a family, you know, we're the son or we're the daughter, and our parents give us a script, and we play out that story. Then we get into school, and it's usually an education script. Then you get into university, and there are two

scripts happening in university. One is a career script and the other is find a mate Or whatever, you know Those are the scripts then you get married and you have kids and there's a family script and you know what happens after that There are no more cultural scripts Nobody gives you a script. And so what is midlife crisis? It's literally you've played out the story that culture gave you, and you did not create a new one for yourself. And so now you're sitting in the theater of your own mind,

you're watching a blank screen, and it's driving you crazy. That, my friend, is your fault. So if someone's in their early 20s, what should they be reconsidering about their story? They should look at their life like a story. They should say, look, if i were a hero in a story what would i do differently i've heard joe rogan say this i've heard a number of people say it but if i were a hero in a story and i were talking to my girlfriend this way what does that do to the

story does the audience root for this character do they not like this character i mean some of the biggest regrets of my life are things that i've said to people that if you showed that with out of context if you just showed that oh everybody would go oh it's the villain you know and um that stuff is in my story so then you ask yourself okay if i've screwed up how do you fix it well how would a hero fix it you apologize you make it right right. Don't do that again. And everybody's going, oh, we like this guy. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And so it's pretty easy.

He said sorry. Now, how does a villain change their identity into a hero? I have a cynical view of villains. I think it's very, very difficult for a narcissistic control freak to actually change. But how do you do it? We just had a therapist who's the expert on narcissism on, and it's been going viral. And she was like, you can't change a narcissist. I kind of agree with that. It's like, unless they're willing to look within,

which is very hard to do, and take accountability, which is almost impossible, and say, I want to go to therapy a couple days a week and do this for years to be willing to really start to break these patterns. I don't know if it's that extreme, but this is what she said based on her experience of decades of working with narcissists. So you're saying villains are hard to change. Well, not all villains. I have a friend who occasionally had the honor of visiting. His name is Terry. And Terry is on death row in Tennessee. Terry killed a young woman when he was about 18 years old.

Raped her and killed her. And Terry is probably 55 now. And he's consistently scheduled to be executed. And lives. But when you sit and talk to Terry, he has wholeheartedly processed what he did. Wholeheartedly. Right. So much so that he's actually written back and forth with family members of the young woman. And they've written to him. And I think the path to going from villain to hero is when the villain stops and says, I was wrong,

and I have to make amends for what I did. And then that character, if we're watching a movie, is now transformed into a hero and can move on. And they can start to see themselves as a hero. But that's really hard for somebody to do when they believe that if they admit that they're wrong, it puts me in a weak position and I'm vulnerable and now I'm exposed to an outside threat. They think I'll never ever admit that I'm wrong because that's a weakness. And one rule of being a villain is never ever show that you're weak. Why is vulnerability such a key factor in life? Because it's truth.

Yeah. Why is it so hard for so many people? It's hard for me. Like your mom said, she wasn't vulnerable for many years. I don't know if that ever changed. She was so vulnerable in the last 15 years of her life. She was incredibly vulnerable. Really?

Yeah. Why did that shift? She realized, and her children did such a good job loving her. For my sister and I,, take some credit for that. But I think that was a big, big part of it. And then I just think she became a grandma because of my sister. She never got to meet my baby. But I think that was part of it too.

Who knows? I think villainy and pride go hand in hand. My mom, she divorced my dad, or my dad left when I was two years old, and my mom made a decision. We never talked about it, but I know from the way she lived her life, she made a decision she would never, ever, ever get her heart broken again.

So for the last 40 years of her life, she never dated. She had no love. She had no love. Man, that's tough. Because she was not gonna get hurt. She was not gonna take that risk. Isn't that crazy? The fear of pain or feeling that pain once can have us hold on to it for so long. Yep. To not want to put ourselves out there and experience love again. Yep. Or to become cynical about

the nature of love itself. Or to not realize that the person that you love is actually going to hurt you. They're just going to do it. They're going to hurt you and you're going to hurt them. But what is love if it's this conditional thing of like,

well, it's over if you hurt me. That's not love. Right. You know, I don't think we can expect to always be respected or cared about by the person that we're with. And so our ability to be forgiving creates an even greater bond. And our willingness to say, no, I'm going down with this ship. If you hurt me, it's going to be worse than death. Wow. But I am here

Wow you know and not try to that was the other thing that I realized in so many relationships early on that you can't control somebody and love them at the same time it doesn't work mmm why not because if you're controlling them it's not a genuine relationship what is it it's you interacting with a puppet oh man all right and if the puppet by the way is pure fantasy on your part because they're actually not a puppet they're complying right but compliance isn't genuine you just can't you just can't control somebody and love them at same time you can't control somebody and be in a loving relationship it doesn't work

what's the alternative set them free free. I mean, think, you know, let's go back to sting. If you love somebody, set them free. Yeah, I think that's the alternative. Is that set them free by not being with them or set them free in the relationship? You set them free in the relationship. So what I learned was that you stop in my relationship with Betsy, hopefully if I'm doing it right. I'm never wanting Betsy to be different or I'm wanting Betsy to change what I'm wanting is what I have boundaries on is the relationship that we are in mm-hmm so in a dating relationship you would never say I can't be with somebody who does this what you would say is I don't want to be in a relationship that feels this way mm-hmm

are you do you want to change so that we can be in this or not? My friend Henry Cloud, who's here in town, says you got to view some relationships like a Coke machine. If you put $1.25 in a Coke machine and it doesn't give you a Coke machine, you go to a different machine. You don't keep putting money in, press other buttons, try to get... This doesn't work. And so when you're in a relationship, you go, actually, I'm looking for commitment and affection and you're just looking to get laid or whatever, you know, then it won't work. It won't work. Stop putting money into it. Yeah. Go to a different one. And it's, it's takes responsibility from both parties to recognize and see that. Yeah. And then I expect something from the person who's

just wanting to get laid and expect something different and then not expect you to be different as well. It's like. It's never going to work. Yeah. Yeah. It took me a long time to have awareness. But don't you think love and fear go hand in hand? Yeah, because I'm having conversations with my girlfriend in the last few weeks that I had some like, I had to step into courage.

I had to step into courage, like let go of past fears and step into courageous thought, action, words that felt a little like, not fearful, but just like, man, I want it to work out. You know, you want it to be well. You want it to be healthy. You want it to be strong. And so it takes courage, I think, to fully love and not go through pain again. It does. You know, I found my dad. Because he left when you were two. He left when I was two and I found him when I was in my mid-30s. Really? I had just released a book about growing up without a father. What was that like? It was terrifying. He lived in Indiana and I called him and said, my name is Donald Miller. I'm your son.

And I'm on my way to your house. Wow. Left a voicemail. He called me back. So I know he got the call, but I was too scared to answer. I'm driving to his house. I'm in Chicago. I'm six hours away.

Wow. And I'm too scared to answer. I don't want to have a, I don't know what to do. And knocked on his door, went in. And he's watching Fox News. He's drinking a beer. And I was very happy about two things. He had his hair, and he was in good health.

You're like, good, okay, yeah. And we just had this conversation, and he explained what happened. You know, mom, who I love, you know, who passed away, who became this amazing woman, emasculated him. And he felt the need to leave. And I didn't understand how could you, there's something biochemical that happens when you have a kid. How can you, how can anything pull you away from that? It just made no sense to me. And Louis, we had a baby six months ago. And one of the things that I thought was so amazing,

I still felt like how could anything pull you away from this? But what I didn't realize, what I never saw coming was my entire happiness, well-being view of whether or not life is good or bad now depends on the well-being of this child in other words if anything happens to this kid my life is over really my marriage is over my understanding and view of whether or not god is good is over really everything is that what you're telling yourself right now it's what's true is it the truth or is it i think if anything happened to emeline i don't know that i can survive come on i don't know louis i'm telling you the parents are watching this going oh louis is gonna find out right yeah i mean i think it was madeline lingle who said

having a child is like having your heart walk around the room oh my gosh outside your body that's tough yeah and uh why wouldn't the marriage work if something happened? I think so much of what became the purpose of our lives was to give ourselves sacrificially to the well-being of this child. Not all of it. We still give to each other. We still have our identities. And we still give to each other and we still have our identities.

But, you know, to lose something that you love that much is, you know, I just don't know that I, parents do it and parents survive. There's always something kind of missing. Well, but I just don't know how they do it. You know, and thank God and pray that that never, you never have to answer that question. But I only say all that to say love demands courage. So why did my father leave? I think one of the reasons is this is freaking scary. This is terrifying. Yeah, this is terrifying. What was the biggest lesson you learned growing up without a father? I learned that when you, when you grow up with deficiencies, either monetary deficiencies or relational deficiencies or even physical handicaps,

and I don't want to offend anybody, you're actually at an advantage if you can metabolize that and turn it into strength. Why is that? Because when you work out, you go tear up your body, and it turns into muscle. The problem is a lot of people with monetary deficiencies or handicaps, they'll go into victim mindset, and so the muscle will never come.

But if we can actually turn around and say, no, I'm going to see this as a hero in a story. Turn on your favorite movie. Here's how it starts. The hero is some sort of orphan. Their parents have left. Somebody has has abandoned them and they feel alone it's formulaic right because it makes the story better right because we get to see them reconcile with whoever or get what they want or become a whole and you know every parent screws up their kid. It's amazing to me.

My mom never made more than $20,000 a year. We've stood in line for government cheese. You know, M-Line is being raised in 15 posh acres in the nicest neighborhood in Tennessee. Yeah. She's getting a completely different life. So does she have a disadvantage? I want that. I've asked myself that question.

Right? I've asked myself that question is there any kid that grows up in a healthy parent relationship you love fully they have a much better chance of being happy really then not but they have a lesser chance of actually seeing a massive success or accomplishment in their life. Really? Why is that? Is there no drive? There was a study done amongst CEOs, and really, really successful CEOs. And they said, okay, what's the common denominator between the ones who are clearly a cut above? And they found the common denominator

is that they grew up poor. Isn't that crazy? A lot of these, I heard a story that something like 20 or 30%, I'm messing it up, but a big percentage of presidents like grew up without parents, like dads. I think it was like their dads died early or.

Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. Bush obviously had a great father. I don't know Jimmy Carter's history Nixon they didn't have all those errors home relationship yeah you know abusive yeah I mean you just take it all back I don't know Joe Biden story I'm not sure but yeah a lot of it's that orphan heart that drives you what is that what is the orphan heart the orphan heart is I want to prove that I belong in this world that I matter ooh because nobody ever told it to me oh man now hopefully that gets healed I feel like in Barack Obama's life that got healed I think in this world and that I matter because nobody ever told it to me. Oh, man. Now, hopefully that gets healed.

I feel like in Barack Obama's life, that got healed. I think in Bill Clinton's life, I think that got healed. But hopefully you find healing. But it can be jet fuel. It can also destroy you. Yeah. And it's much more likely to destroy you, I think, than to be jet fuel. Really?

Yeah. So we don't want to do that to our kids. Sure. But you think a child growing up with financial abundance, let's say, safety, peace, healthy, loving relationship, has a far harder chance to do something much more significant? Or what is the challenge they face? Those kids tend to do very, very well. They tend to not be, let's be clear about what I'm saying here. They don't take big risks. They're not driven by wounds mm-hmm right I mean if you got a

cattle prod poking in the butt every five minutes you're gonna move yeah yeah right and so it's not it's not a it's not a bad thing I mean I don't want a cat I don't want Emmeline to grow up with the sense of inadequacy that I had mmm and that drive to be important because I'm trying to prove that I'm not the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. You know, if you look at my financial success, I guarantee you, Lewis, 90% of it is I'm trying to prove to myself that I'm not white trash. Really?

Guaranteed. Absolutely. Wow. Still? Not as much anymore. You feel it more now. Because again, you know, one of the ways that you develop self-esteem is you chalk up some wins. Yeah.

Then you've proven it to yourself. Like, okay, I've created some results. Yeah, hopefully. I think there's people who they never get to the point of proving themselves, so they just burn themselves out trying to prove they're not whatever, deficient. You talked about if you took snapshots of you as a villain in your past. Please don't. And it was up on a big, you know, in your past, you know, and it was up on a big screen for the world to see.

Oh yeah, I'd be dead. Your words out of context are taken in. Yeah. Well, in context, they weren't that much better. That's true. How important is the spoken word and the internal word for any four of these characters and for our overall identity to live a meaningful life. The spoken word, what we say to ourselves or someone else, and the internal word we speak to ourselves.

Yeah. You know, there's an assignment in the book, and I do this... The eulogy one? Four mornings a week at least. I read my own eulogy. eulogy one? Four mornings a week at least. I read my own eulogy. And it says, it outlines the three stories that I've got in my life. One is the story of my family, which we've built a retreat center called Goose Hill. You can't pay to go there. It's just friends and family. But that story is specifically designed to give my family something to do. It's designed so that we can have some goals and accomplish those goals together

because the story can't just be about, well, let's have a great family. You create a great family when you start a family business that tries to raise the money this summer to go to Disney World. That's a great story. And then the family bonds around that story. So that's the family story. We have this retreat center. I have a business story. Business Made Simple is my company. And I really want to build six different frameworks that are so good, they help small businesses grow. And then I want to take that to a major university

and have the Business Made Simple School for Entrepreneurs entrepreneurs and I want to teach at that school so that's that's my goal and I want that story to happen I'm actively pursuing that happening and then there's a third goal that's called build the middle class and I own build the middle class calm I haven't done anything with it yet. But I'm working with a bunch of folks out of DC to identify, just happens to be eight pieces of legislation that will get America moving again. And bring moderate Republicans and blue dog Democrats together, a middle of the country, so that we can stop being controlled by these extremists who are really wacko nut jobs. And there's so many of us who just see eye to eye whether you're Republican or Democrat.

It doesn't matter. We all want the same thing on health care. We want the same thing on education. So that third story, which is really the story from 55 on, I'm starting to put little things on the plot. I have a weekly meeting with a think tank in D.C. That's cool. I'm starting to take notes on it.

That's going to be the third and final story of my career and my life. The cool thing about reading your eulogy is you know what your stories are, and the biggest benefit of that is you know what to say no to. I have 30 years left. The average American lives to be about 78.5. I'm hoping. I've lost some weight. I'm drinking my apple cider vinegar.

You look young, man. You look healthy but i'm trying to live longer but the reality is i've got 30 years so when there's a story about you know don let's go make a tv show about this i look at my eulogy and i go i would love to die but i can't i got three stories left wow that's it three stories left. Wow. That's it. Three stories left. And we don't have time. What happens if one of these stories either doesn't work out or something changes where there's no longer the ability to take on that story? Well, it doesn't matter in terms of experiencing meaning.

Because you actually, according to Viktor Frankl, you actually experience meaning. There's three things that have to happen for you to experience meaning. One is you have to have a project that demands your attention, a reason to get out of bed in the morning. There has to be an open story loop in your brain. But you need to close. Will Lewis Howes finish the new book? There's a story, right? And you have to have that.

If there's no story, you're toast. So that's the first thing. The second thing is a community, nature or art, things that pull you out of yourself. And then the third thing is fascinating. It's an optimistic or redemptive perspective on suffering. So basically you have to embrace suffering and not resist it. You have to understand that while suffering is painful, it isn't a bad thing. What's the last one again?

An optimistic perspective on suffering. If you have those three things, you will experience a deep sense of meaning in life. And I figured that out when I read his book, Man's Search for Meaning, and I applied it to my life starting about 12 years ago. And I have not struggled with depression. I have not struggled with any of that. There's been sad days. Tragedies hit my life. But there's not been a single day when I haven't experienced a deep sense of meaning. And he considers that an antidote to depression. In fact, he developed logotherapy, a therapy of meaning,

in order to take teenagers in Vienna in the 1930s through small groups where they would identify a project, embed themselves into a community, and find, you know, yes, you were abused by your father. What's good about that? Yes, it's a horrible thing. We wouldn't wish that on anyone. What benefit is there? What does that make possible because you were abused by your father? Well, it makes you a more tender person, makes you aware of suffering, makes you a better human being in some ways. And if you can redeem and metabolize your suffering and make it turn into something useful in your life, you have meaning. And what happened was that they had a suicide problem in Vienna, especially around the time grades were released. So the hospital system in Vienna said, Dr. Frankel, you've done a lot of

work with this. Can you help? He puts all these kids into small groups and under his watch, not a single person commits suicide. And so I think a lot of our restlessness and boredom, And so I think what a lot of our restlessness and boredom, what it actually is, it's a lack of meaning. And I believe you can create and generate meaning if you do those three things. Yeah. I think Tony Robbins talks about this where he was like. He loves Viktor Frankl. He loved his mom, but his mom used to like beat him and like pour soap down his mouth or something like that. a bunch of stuff that like you know kind of ruined him in some ways but made him so um care so much about human beings and helping heal people and improve the quality of life of people that that

drove him to become better yeah so here's an interesting fact that you just pointed out villains and heroes actually have the exact same backstory they have both the villain story and the backstory of the hero are pain remember Remember I said the hero is an orphan? Yes. The hero is almost always an orphan in some way. They're orphaned at the beginning of the movie. They have pain. The villain, if you'll watch the movie closely, screenwriters will put a scar on their face,

a limp, some sort of speech impediment. What they're indicating is that this person has a painful backstory. So the difference between the villain and the hero hero is one thing it's how they respond to pain because they were abandoned also that's right yeah and the villain says the world hurt me i'm going to hurt it back and the hero says the world hurt me i'm not going to let this happen to anybody else wow it's just literally how you decide to react to pain that causes you to be the villain or the victim it's the third part of a meaningful mission. It's the third part of the framework you're talking about, which is what's the benefit

from your pain? What's the optimism from your suffering? Yeah, it's how you respond to pain that either turns you into the victim or turns you into the hero and determines the quality of the rest of your life. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. But at some point, there's probably going to need to be a healing that occurs for the hero to become a hero.

Yeah. But I think the healing happens in action. Yeah. You know, I think it happens in action. Going to therapy, getting into a relationship, learning from past mistakes.

Helping someone else. Yeah. That's all growth is, is learning from our mistakes. Yeah. My therapist says that healing is not an event. It's a journey.

It's a consistent journey of showing up in that process. Doesn't just, oh, I'm healed in one moment, it's like constantly showing up. Is there a way to end suffering, do you think? In our lives? You don't want to. Why not? Because you'll stop growing.

Yeah, you'll stop growing. You know, I believe, and I don't really understand why, Lewis, but I believe there's something fundamentally broken in the nature of the world. It's easy to not think that if you live in America, but leave the country for a little bit. Right. A lot of things are broken. Go through Uganda, go through Iraq. You know, there's something fundamentally broken in the world.

So I don't think in this world you're going to get away from suffering. And then there's also just something fundamentally broken in our hearts, right? Because we need more than we are capable of getting. And so there's a deficiency in all of us. And so for us to say, gosh, this hurts. Let me turn around and help other people not have to experience pain as much. Those are the very people that we call heroes. That's the characteristic. And so without suffering, you have no opportunity to be a hero. Without pain, there's no story. Without conflict, there's no story. So let me tell you a story. A buddy of mine, he lives here in LA, he loves to play volleyball. And he gets a call and he says, hey, come down to the beach, we're playing volleyball. All

your buddies are here, let's go. He's like, can't believe this. Walks out, looks down, sees his buddies playing volleyball down at the beach. Goes down, starts playing volleyball with them. They play a few games, each game ends in a tie. And somebody says, well, I'm hungry. He says, no, it's Tuesday, it's Taco Tuesday, let's go to the taco truck. They go to the taco, they get some brisket tacos. Is this story interesting? No. You're sitting there going, when is this story going to get started?

What you're actually saying is, where's the problem? So without the problem, there is no story. So let's say my buddy gets a call. They're playing volleyball down the beach. He walks down the beach, he's looking down at them, and an earthquake hits. The ground opens up. Half his friends fall. Now we've got a story.

Right. So until there is a challenge in your life, or until you actually engage or even dream up a challenge, I'm going to run a marathon. I'm going to ask this girl out. I'm going to start a business. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to ask this girl out. I'm going to start a business. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to lose 100 pounds.

Until you say, that's something I don't think I can do, but I'm going to try. Your life is boring. Wow. And what do we do? We seek comfort. We actually run the opposite direction. And so once we engage this idea that suffering actually benefits us, it transforms us, and it's good, all of life suddenly has this different perspective. I have a morning ritual with Emmeline.

She's six months old. For the last six months, I'm the guy who gets her out of bed, changes the diaper, and does the first bottle. Because Betsy's got to do some mom things, and it's best if Betsy eats breakfast and I can hand her off and I go write. So I've pushed back my writing hour by one hour so that I can do this. And every morning, almost without fail, Emmeline and I walk to the front door and we greet the day. We open the door, we step out on the porch, and we point out three or four things that are beautiful. That's it. We just go light on the

hills. Those leaves are moving. June Carter, our dog is chasing a squirrel. That's hilarious. That's cool. Snow on the fence, whatever it is. And some days it's just completely great. And it's actually a bit challenging for me. What's beautiful. There's no light on the hills. And what I say to Emmeline is I say, Emmeline, how beautiful is it that today is going to make tomorrow special? Oh, that's cool. Right.

And so even the hurt, the suffering that we feel is even a bad relationship. I would not be so grateful for my life if I had not had my heart broken. I just wouldn't. Yeah. And so pain actually serves us tremendously that's something I talk about my girlfriend where I was just like I'm so glad that I went through all these challenges because I really value the peace the love the acceptance that you bring the lack of drama there's no drama no drama man I want to say it on camera but marry the woman man it Yeah, exactly. Lock that down. Man, it's crazy. And I felt like, I always felt like I was, and I take full responsibility because I chose the relationships and I stayed in the relationships.

Yeah, but you're learning. Yeah, nothing wrong with the people. It just wasn't the right alignment. But I kept thinking to myself, man, I feel like I'm running at like a six in my life out of 10. No, you should regret that. And I was just like, man, I feel like it's holding me back from my mission, from my, my health and they aren't doing it. I'm doing it by staying. So I needed to learn how to heal and move on, which was, was an amazing journey, but it's, you know, I think you're just getting started. Yeah. That's how I feel. I think this, I think you're just getting started. Yeah, that's how I feel. I think what you've found now is what you're actually going to build on.

That's the foundation. And Betsy and I kind of made an agreement when we got married. We said, hey, let's leave the drama outside of this house. You and I will go out and face the drama. But the energy that I want to spend changing the world can't be wasted on each other in fighting. It can't be. It just other and fighting. Can't be. It just can't be.

And I'm so glad that she's in alignment with that. You and your wife are either going to have a mission or she's going to be the mission and you're going to be the mission. Gosh, there's so many marriages I feel like that have drama and it's like you're constantly working on the marriage to fix something. Yeah. Isn't that true? Would you rather change the world than change your wife? Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. And a lot of women feel that way about their husbands. Right. Yeah. Isn't that true? Would you rather change the world than change your wife? Yes. Yeah.

Absolutely. And a lot of women feel that way about their husbands. Right? Yeah. What needs to happen in order for people in relationships, whether they're married or not,

to get out of drama and into peaceful experiences and move their energy into the world as opposed to stressing about the relationship? What do you think needs to happen? Because so many marriages and relationships are struggling. Yeah. I don't think two people should spend their life metaphorically looking into each other's eyes. I think they should be

shoulder to shoulder looking at something to do. And I think what so many relationships are missing is a story. We are going to start a business. We are going to start a grocery store where we give away the food to people for free. We are going to build a retreat center. We are going to write a book together. Stop this. Stop this because this isn't what life is about. What we need is a partner, a group protagonist. What a family is, is a group protagonist story. And what a story has to have is an objective, something hard to do. To overcome or to do. To overcome or to accomplish. And then here's the next dangerous part. When you overcome

it and you accomplish it, if you don't get another story started, you're going to hit what Viktor Frankl calls the existential vacuum. It's a narrative void. Again, it's a blank screen that I'm looking at and nothing is happening on the screen. What's the meaning? What am I supposed to be doing with my life now? Yeah. When I read Viktor Frankl's book, about 10 of us rode our bicycles from Los Angeles to

Delaware. Wow. We did it one summer. How long did that take? Partly how I lost weight. It took seven weeks. And so we did that and I'd lived enough stories, written some books and kinda, that I knew once we got to Washington D.C.

we had one more day. You can cross Delaware in a day. It's about 75 miles from D.C. And I knew, man, two weeks from now I'm gonna be clinically depressed because you have no mission next well not only that but you know we're eating seven to ten thousand calories a day our bodies are completely jacked up it's just screwed up you know we're you know we're with each other we're giggling and laughing we're experiencing pain every day we're doing you know it's a story

and as soon as the story's over, I realized I'm gonna be sitting in the theater. And I picked up Viktor Frankl's book in the Holocaust Museum, because you know, he was a survivor of the Holocaust. I picked it up and I read it on the flight home. And basically that book screamed at me, get involved in another story now.

Do not go home and sit down. Yeah, well, maybe take three days to recover your body, but then start planning. Yeah, for me, it was about three weeks. And start planning the next story. Start planning the next story. And so what I did was I got a call saying, Don, will you come do a little prayer

at the Democratic National Convention? Well, I'm a Republican. And I said, yeah, I'll do it. I went in, and I'd known about Barack Obama. He was a senator. He had some great fatherlessness legislation. And to the group there, I said, hey, listen, what's he going to do on fatherhood?

And they outlined this whole plan. I said, can I go around the country and just say what this man's going to do if he's elected president on one of our critical issues in this country but they said yes so i just became a surrogate speaker i lived there about three of us we basically lived in our cars and changed into suits and in uh in airports and i would fly back between all the swing states and i was doing it partly because i wanted this guy to be president he's a pretty moderate reasonable guy he actually he actually did some great things um but i was also doing it because i didn't want to have an existential vacuum i needed something exciting to involve myself in

and it worked and while i was on the campaign trail i'm getting text messages from friends who are on the trip saying i've never been so depressed and i don't know what to do and who are on the bike trip exactly do you guys want to meet in Delaware and ride back across the highway? And, you know, so I think a lot of people who are listening to this conversation and they're feeling like their life is going nowhere, I would say to you, get yourself involved in a story. If you don't have a mission, find somebody with a mission and join them. Get involved. Get involved.

How many parts to a story are there? And what are the parts? Well, the basic story is a character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. That's it. Right? Luke wants to destroy the Death Star, has to overcome his own insecurities and physical inadequacies in order to learn to be a Jedi, in order to destroy the Death Star.

That's it. King George wants to overcome a stutter because he's been saddled with the kingship of UK. He has to overcome that stutter with Lionel the drama teacher in order to give the final speech. That's every single story you can imagine. Now the key is you can pause any good movie and say what does the hero want? And if the audience can't answer, you've got a bad movie. So if I were to look at your life and pause it and say, what does Lewis want? And we don't know. And to be honest, Lewis doesn't know.

Lewis is having a bad life experience. Wow. And he will tell you so. If you don't know what you want. If you can't identify. Remember I said earlier, I want three things. I want Goose Hill to operate as a family home. I want Business

Made Simple to be taught in universities. And I want Build a Middle Class. If you pause Don's life, he's involved in three stories. There's zero chance for an existential vacuum if you're involved in three. So if you don't know what you want, what happens? If you don't know what you want, or if you have not joined a movement that

wants something. That has a mission. You have what Viktor Frankl calls an existential vacuum, and what I call a narrative void. A lack of story in your life. And a lack of story is boring. Not only a lack of story is boring, a lack of story is dangerous. Because

you're standing around on set and the other actors are doing something and you have no role to play here. It's extremely dangerous. It's going to lead to a mental health breakdown. So the key is to get something going that I call narrative traction. And narrative traction happens when you become interested in your own life again. And the only way you can get narrative traction and become interested in your own life is to actually set an objective before you, which opens a story question. Will Don be able to run the marathon? Will the company be able to make a profit this year? Will the woman of my dreams marry me?

Will we be able to finish this book? Will we? If there is no story question in your life, you have no narrative traction and you're going to end up in an existential void. How do you define what you want if you don't know? What if you're like, well, I don't know what I want, or I have so many ideas, I want these 10 different things. Okay. Well, that's another lesson right there. If you want 10 different things, I want these 10 different things. Okay, well that's another lesson right there.

If you want 10 different things, your movie's not going to work out. You know, if Jason Bourne wants to know who he really is and also lose 30 pounds and also marry the girl and also adopt a cat, but he wants to do it ethically because he travels a lot,

we have ruined the movie. We have absolutely ruined the movie. And so there are a lot of people who are stimulation junkies. They just want to be stimulated. So if you just want to be stimulated, that's not a... You know, if you went to a movie about somebody who just wanted to be stimulated so if you just want to be stimulated that's not a you know if you went to a movie about somebody who just wanted to be stimulated so they're getting drunk they're getting laid they're doing all

this kind of stuff you watch that movie you would be watching a movie that was hopeless you would be saying I feel so sorry for this guy right but when that person says this is meaningless what I actually want to do is be an entrepreneur and build a business and prove to my dad that I really didn't have to go to college. Now we've got a story. Now we've got a story. But you've got to write that down, and you've got to put together a plan and pursue it every day.

If you choose too many things, the story is hard to follow, and it will be hard for you to follow. How many things can we story is hard to follow and it'll be hard for you to follow. How many things can we choose in a year? In a year? Well, I think- Can we have like a health story? My health story this year is going to be this, my business story, then my family relationship story. Is that too much? No, you just said it. The answer is three. Three.

Yeah. So the human brain loves three it love I don't know why it loves three I'm sure there's been some studies for might also work five won't work mmm we've you know over and over even in sales if you give people three options they'll choose what you give them for they'll they'll choose like that's you give them five the one she's in mmm so the brain can really prioritize about three things in a in month, in a year, in a how long? Well, I wouldn't put a timeline on it. I would just say, these are the three things that I want to do.

When one of them is done, you retire that story and plug in another one. And I really like the whole health relationships career. Yeah, me too. I like that trinity. Rory Vaden, our friend, has a book called Procrastinate on Purpose. He's like, you might have a lot of goals and dreams, but what is the most important thing that you want to do right now? And then kind of put these on the back burner, procrastinate it until you accomplish the main thing, and then the next thing. I 100% agree with that.

In fact, there's a planner in the back of the book. And in the back of the book, there's a daily planner. It's actually a morning ritual that you fill out, and you identify your top three priorities. Then there's literally another line that says secondary tasks. You don't want to confuse picking up the dry cleaning with working on the book. Right, right. Go with wrinkled clothes, but don't not finish the book. Do the main thing first. Yeah, exactly. When did you write your eulogy first? I wrote my eulogy about 10 years ago.

What did that do for you when you did it? It gave me incredible clarity about what my life needs to become. Incredible clarity. Yeah, writing my eulogy told me what direction my life needed to go. And I read it. I edit it pretty frequently how is it different from ten years ago to now that's completely different in ten years I've realized how much a human being can do and it was it was a they were they were small visions ten years ago and now they are not small visions really what were they like ten years ago, and now they are not small visions. Really? What were they like 10 years ago?

Oh, it's like, you know, get out of debt, maybe write a book someday. Now it's fix the government. You know what I mean? Change the world. Yeah, yeah. Change the world. Wow. Yeah, so, and those are all 100% completely doable.

You know, these are things that we can do in our own times. Wow. So how often do you read it? About four times, three to five times a week. Actually, there's software that my team has created, and you can click I Read My Eulogy, and it will literally count the number of times you've done it. That's pretty cool.

It gamifies it. That's pretty cool. Why do you think it's important to read it frequently? There's two reasons. One is, as I said earlier, it directs your life. Two, and this is an even bigger reason, it reminds you that you're going to die. There's something unbelievably sobering

about recognizing the fact that your story is going to end, you're going to leave the planet, and you're not coming back. You're not coming back. I think it's the country of Bhutan that is the happiest country in the world. And one of the reasons that they say is because they think about their death either three or five times a day. They think about their death many times a day and they're considered the happiest country in the world. There's actually an app called WeCroak that reminds you. How much time you got? It reminds you three or five times a day, you're going to die. It says you're going to die. And then it gives you, I love that app.

And it gives you an inspirational quote to reflect on the positive of life. I didn't know about that app, but I love that idea. It's called We Croak. I think it's called We Croak or We Croak. And it's just a simple little app. Just pings you three times a day. There's my guys, my development team. I've asked them, and it's up to them. I don't control them. But I've asked them, do you think on the eulogy page you can actually have a countdown timer based on the average life expectancy in the country that you live in?

That's crazy. Yeah. You know how much time I've got left? You said 30 years, right? Yeah, two Lucys. Two Lucys. Two Lucys? Mm-hmm.

Lucy was my chocolate lab. Oh, man. And she lived to be 14 years old. And my wife called her my first wife because Lucy and I were married before Betsy and I were married. Oh, man. And we put her down two Saturdays ago. Oh, man.

And it was absolutely heartbreaking. And when I sit there... I met Lucy, I think, when I came to... Yep, you married. Oh, man. And we put her down two Saturdays ago. Oh, man. And it was absolutely heartbreaking. And when I sit there. I met Lucy, I think, when I came to. Yep, you did. Oh, man. Yeah. And, you know, and. We have photos with you and Lucy, I think.

Yeah, I mean, Lucy was a rock star. I mean, I took her. She was literally my companion. She taught me so much about her. She got me to Betsy. And then she got Betsy and I to Emmeline. Oh, man. And she had a you know a big tumor terrible arthritis and finally the vet said yes look you know you're hitting that point

where you're actually punishing her to keep her alive so we i made the right decision wow 15 years though huh it would be a little over 14 years man so when i think about when i brought lucy home be a little over 14 years. Oh, man. So when I think about when I brought Lucy home to when we said goodbye to Lucy, so much happened, Lewis. But the reality is I have two more of those. That's insane to think about. I can get one more puppy, and I'll have the same painful and beautiful and wonderful experience,

and then one after that, and then we will be put down together. Oh, my God. It's over. I mean, if you could extend your life longer, that's great. Maybe you have three is what you're saying. I can't get it. Maybe. I mean, they invent some sort of drug or whatever.

What's the life expectancy? 78.5, and I'm hoping to make 80, and everything else is icing on the cake. Right. You know, I know a lot of people who are in their hundreds. I don't think I'm going to be one of them, but a lot of people you know we might be able to make it but when wow two loosies yeah there's a guy uh do you know nas daily have you heard of this guy he's a video creator who um did a video day a day for like a thousand days in a row and he's got a you know 50 or 100 million followers on facebook and Instagram and creates all these viral videos around the

world explaining different things. And he wears the same t-shirt every day, the exact same shirt. He's probably got a hundred of them, but it says 34% of life left or he's used, he's used 34% of his life. So every year he adds percentage in the same shirt, reminds people watching him, and reminds himself how much of his life he has lived. And it creates amazing wisdom, doesn't it? And it creates urgency and it focuses you on what's important and your mission and your goals. And you don't live distracted if you're like, well, I've lived a certain percentage. I only have this much left. So that attention on the eulogy or the shirt or

whatever, or the WeCroak app, something to have our attention on our death, I'm hearing you say is important. It is. And there's something, Betsy and I just made a decision the other day, I can't remember what the opportunity was, but it was a really big financial opportunity. And we said, look, it's one day that you don't get to see your daughter. Is it worth it? And even this, I'm in LA, I live in Nashville. Flew out this morning, I'll be in bed tonight. I will see her tonight.

Because you just go, but if we didn't die, of course I'm going to go make that money. You've got forever. So it creates this real beauty of urgency. And also, you start going, well, if I'm going to die and I can't take any money with me, maybe I should pay my employees more. Right? Maybe I should go not chase that money because the reality is, you know,

what I want is Emmeline to, when she's 80, to go to Goose Hill and explain to her children and her grandchildren what happened here. And if I'm on an airplane, what needs to happen here for her to do that won't happen. So I gotta be home.

Right. And without death, I don't think I would have that realization. And without her, you probably would have gone and did the money thing or whatever

and been gone for the day because you'd be like, well, there's no child here, so I can go and make this money. Yeah. And there's seasons of life, too. But there's just practical stuff, life insurance policies, preparing financially. Emeline will live to be, they're saying our kids are going to live into their hundreds. That's crazy.

That's where technology is going. So if I make it to 80, Emmeline's 30 when I pass away, she's going to do 70 years without dad. Wow. 70. By the time she dies, she will not really remember what I look like. Oh, my gosh. She will have altogether 12 seconds worth of memories at one time

of the 30 years that I spent with her. 12 seconds. Why is that? That's what the brain can- Think about the time, right now, think about the seconds that you can remember spending with your dad. Isn't that crazy?

You know, they're just little moments, like when he passed you the popcorn at the game. Right, right. They're just literally these little milliseconds. I'm not gonna risk a chance to- Wow. Create some of those and embed those in her brain. Yeah, it's not worth it.

What do you think is the biggest mistake you've made? That I've made? Mm-hmm. Thought of myself as a victim for 10 years. Really? Lost a decade. Yeah, I lost a decade. Which 10 years?

Certainly very late teens through late 20s. You know, I did get two books out during that time, so victims don't get books done. Right, right. But I was 387 pounds. I'm 210 now. That's amazing. Thanks. Congrats.

Do you know one of the main reasons I was 387 pounds? I was subconsciously convinced that if my life were so miserable and I couldn't control myself, a rescuer would come and help me. Wow. And when I realized, you know what happened? You were the rescuer would come and help me and when I realized you know what happened that you were the rescuer well partly but what happened was I suddenly realized that chicks didn't like because I really would like to have some nice conversations with some girls when you

realize like everything that you think you're going to get by thinking of yourself as a victim, you're not going to get. The person who gets that is the person who's actually heroic, who's humble, honest, and willing to transform, realizes they don't have the capability to get this thing done, and so they transform. What I don't like or I'm not super comfortable with our books and ideas that say you are enough

you're not enough mm-hmm if you if you are an unhealthy person you're not enough to be in a healthy relationship you have to change what we're trying to avoid there is judgment but here's the key let's admit we're not enough and leave the judgment out of it. Let's admit, you know what? I'm not enough to be in a healthy relationship, but I get to change. And changing is fun and it's exciting. And I can't wait to see who I become. But, you know, we have to hold this idea that we're not there yet and a lack of judgment at the same time. And then we have this really fun, meaningful life in which we get to transform.

I like that a lot. Yeah. I wouldn't say you're not enough. I would say it's okay to not be enough. But you're not enough. Instead of saying, you are enough and you've got everything, let's actually say you're not enough and that's okay. Yeah, I like that. Do you want to change? not enough and that's okay. Yeah, like that.

Do you want to change? Yeah, I want to change. Okay, let's go on a journey together. It sounds like, yeah, you're not enough and this is where maybe the story begins. That's exactly it. You're not enough. It's okay.

You don't need to beat yourself up. You don't need to judge yourself. So what does that make possible? Right. It makes a beautiful story possible when you become enough. Right. What you can overcome. It makes a beautiful story possible when you become enough. What you can overcome. It just means you have an opportunity to overcome something. Can you imagine

if The King's Speech, which won an Oscar. Great movie. Great movie. Can you imagine The King's Speech, he speaks with a slight stutter, and the drama teacher meets with him once, and the stutter's gone? The movie does not win an Oscar.

Great stories that we get to experience are stories about us overcoming deficiencies right challenges so thank god you have a deficiency now you have an opportunity to make something really cool happen in your life you know and to get to experience it not just watch it get to actually experience it so you think the biggest mistake was being a victim for 10 years what was the biggest lesson you was being a victim for 10 years. What was the biggest lesson you learned about yourself in those 10 years? Well, I mean, you know, the biggest lesson I learned about myself is, is if you think about yourself as a victim, there is no happiness. Do victims get a benefit from being a victim? Yeah. They attract resources. They, um, they shirk responsibility. Other people have to do their work. That's the attractiveness

of being a victim. And if you learn, both victimhood and villainy are coping mechanisms. They're how we cope with really hard things. Neither of them are productive. The only thing that's productive is saying, okay, this is a hard thing. I accept it. I accept the dynamics that are in play here. I do not deny them. I do not reject them. Let me grieve a second. Now let me engage heroically and transform into the person that it takes to conquer this thing. And that could take years. When is the earliest someone can become a guide? Well, you could become a guide at roughly one year old, right? I mean, any time that you...

Yes, if you have a little sibling. Because it's always in you. It's always in you. You know, the biggest sort of big transformation becoming a guide would probably be parenthood. When your heart is suddenly right there and you want everything for this kid and you want to leave a legacy, that's probably the biggest

transformation. But anytime that you realize, I like accomplishing things, but it's not fun to accomplish things if I'm doing it alone. I want take other other people with me mm-hmm then that's that's guide characteristics yeah where do you think you'd be if you would have had your daughter ten years ago well I'm always glad that things happen when they happen just don't feel like I would have been ready sure Betsy you know we we had a baby when I was 49 I turned 52 months later and I actually asked Betsy, you know, we had a baby when I was 49. I turned 52 months later. And I actually asked Betsy, I said, you know, what do you think if I had done this so much younger?

And she said, I'm actually grateful that you're where you are. And I said, why? You know, and I thought, you know, I thought we have more money or whatever. You know, if you had had it younger, I would have still been in my angsty, like, I will conquer. You know, the kid's irritating me because I've got this thing I've got to get done and I've got to prove myself and that doesn't happen so I'm I'm grateful for that I was great story as I was getting on a flight on Southwest Airlines out of Phoenix two weeks ago three weeks ago and Betsy facetimes me now you know when you're getting on Southwest Airlines,

you're like bumper to bumper. I mean, there's 27 people touching me. So Betsy FaceTimes me. I said, hi, babe, I'm at the airport. She goes, okay, well, I just wanted to give you an update. Emmeline still hasn't pooped, and everybody is just rolling. I mean, they're just having so much fun with it. They're like, please tell us whether she poops,

you know, because they're all parents and they have a great time. And, you know, I get off the phone. Well, now we've broken ground,

right? Now we're all talking and the gentleman in front of me had his first kid when he was 17 years old. He's now in his 60s. Oh my gosh.

17 years old. She was 15 and they are still married. He's in his 60s. Wow. So the story's out there, right? And I said, well, you know, I didn't have my first kid until I was 50, basically. And I said, there are pros and cons. And he said to me, there are no cons. There are no cons

to waiting until you're 50? There are no cons, period. He said, stop it. Wow. You know, so that was really a nice thing to say. Because he had, when he was a teenager, you had it when you were 50, essentially. He said there are no cons to having a kid. There are no cons. You get to be a parent. It's beautiful. There's no cons.

There's no downside. That's pretty cool. What do you think will be your greatest lesson of being a father by the time your daughter is in college, let's say, if she goes to college? What do you think will be the lesson you'll need to learn? That's a question Victor Frankl always asks. He says look to the end of the day or the month, the year, and try to figure out what you're going to regret.

And then don't do it. Right. Don't do it beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. I think the lesson that Emmeline is teaching me, and that I still have a healthy dose that I'm in need of, is that life is not about about me really at all you you need to remind yourself of that is what you're saying yeah you know it's really much more of a we story than a me story

you know in the end yeah I really think I hope that there's a spirit world on the other side of whatever someday I want to write a book called the faith I keep and each chapter will be the same it'll say I'm 73% certain there's an afterlife. I'm 0.3% certain impressing religious people will get you into heaven. These will be the chapter titles. But I think that, I hope that there's a spirit world on the other side of what we're experiencing. And I hope in that world we really understand oneness. You know, that we are, I would have my own identity identity but somehow we would be one i feel like that

when i think about what the broken nature of the world is to me that got broken that i realized this person in india who's a different color and a different you know class system and different country in a different language is is we're one and i need to care for that person as though i would i were caring myself. Do you believe there's a spirit world after this? I'm 62% certain there's a spirit world after this. Is there a spirit world within us? I will say this. This is an absolutely magical experience.

Right. I mean, what we are getting to participate in is mind-blowing. We're just used to it. But it's mind-blowing we're just used to it but it's mind-blowing so the idea that we could be born into this mind-blowing narrative that's happening in the exposition of this whole you know the set and the i'm talking about earth you know suspended in time and space infinite universe yeah and physicists are already telling us that there are there's geographical places,

it has to do with how fast you're traveling, where time doesn't exist. It's just a physical fact in the universe. There are places where time doesn't exist, the black holes and all that. So it's a trippy world. Trippy. So why would it be any less trippy if when I put Lucy down, she goes to a place where time doesn't exist and, quote, waits for me, but she's not inside of time, so she's not waiting at all. The laws of physics say that's actually completely and totally possible.

That's not any more trippy than what you and I are sitting here doing right now. It's just a complete miracle. Than a sperm and an egg coming together and creating life. Yeah. How does a little sperm make a brain, make a heart, like all these things? Dude, it's the craziest experience when you're in the operating room

and Betsy needed to do a C-section because the doctor just wanted to do a C-section for good reason. It was literally like an alien abduction. I was just like, life just came out of... Her belly, yeah. Yeah, it was the most crazy experience. Did something change for you when you saw your daughter for the first time?

Well, you know, they talk about how you just fall completely and madly in love when you first see your child. I think that happened for me slowly over the first week. But I was too maybe narcissistic because I was just so insecure about whether I was going to do a good job with this thing. One of the big feelings that I had, and you're the first person,

I haven't even told Betsy this, but one of the big feelings that I had was I was afraid that this kid wasn't going to like me. Ooh. You're talking about past trauma. Wow. Yeah, so, you know, gosh, three days in, when I walked in the room, and since I was in the room and the big smile came across her face,

it was one of those healing moments in my life. Oh, my gosh. You're like, my child accepts me. It happens every time. Every time I walk in the room and see her or pick her up, a giant smile. It's one of those healing things you could possibly experience. That's got to be incredible. It is totally incredible.

It's a gift from God. It has to be. What do you to be incredible. It is totally incredible. It's a gift from God. It has to be. Well, I'm 87% certain it's a gift from God. What do you think will be the thing you need to heal the most in the next 10 years? I would like to continue to accomplish really awesome things because it's fun. And I would like to need less credit. I would like to need less credit. Even subconsciously, I would like to need less credit for the things that I get to participate

in. Why is it important for us to receive credit and why is it valuable to need less of it? Well to some degree it's justice to receive credit appropriately for the things that you do. But isn't it an incredible strength when you can do something and not even feel emotionally the need. You're just like, that's actually really good for the world.

I'm glad that that happened. You know, and I think, you know, as we get older, maybe we, you know, that becomes easier and easier. But I would like, it bugs me. It bugs me that I need credit.

I need more credit than I want to need. Really? Yeah, it just kind of bothers me. I would like to not be preoccupied with it. Wanting the credit or the validation? Yeah, I would love to be able to write books

and release them and not really care what any Amazon review says. Interesting. I actually don't read Amazon reviews. But I would like to not want to. I would like to just love the work. And I actually think I would be a better writer if I... And I do love the work. But I would like to not want to. I would like to just love the work. And I actually think I would be a better writer if I,

and I do love the work, but I would like to just love the two hours that I get to spend every morning writing and then whether or not it even gets published matters very little to me. I think I'm a long way from that. Have you ever wrote with a pen name? No, have you?

Have you done that, Lewis? No, but I mean. Is this a secret reveal? No, I'm just saying but i'm not like a true writer that's not something i do every day yeah but i'm just curious if that's a challenge you'd be open to one day even if it's just writing an article just without your name on it and no one knew you wrote it totally or a book that no one knew you wrote it yeah and you couldn't do interviews about it you just had to release it and just like oh i saw this cool book i don't know who wrote it but i thought it was pretty cool i

yeah i've actually had the secret thought that it would be really fun to write um like religious romance novels that are just so cheesy and so sultry but they would you would try to sell to that mark because you know that all these ladies are thinking about that. Oh, yeah. The Fifty Shades of Grey, but the religious version. But the religious version. That's right. I like this. It's for you, Pastor. So, no, I think that would be hilarious and fun, but that would have to be under a pen name.

Right, right. You could get zero credit. You just know people are enjoying it out in the world, and you could just, that's it. Yeah, but I wonder if they were so popular, I would break down. It's me, it's me. I don't know. Who knows? No, I'm not going to do that. That's not one of my three stories. Yeah, but I wonder if they were so popular, I would break down. It's me, it's me. But I don't know. Who knows? No, I'm not going to do that.

It's not one of my three stories. Yeah, yeah. I got two Lucys left. Yeah, exactly. But it'd be cool to do some challenge at some point in the next 10 years, whether it's an article or a series or a book or something where you didn't put your name on it. Yeah. I like that challenge.

You're really good at taking somebody else and being their cheerleader and probably no no yeah I made a conscious decision because I think I had part of that in my 20s or yeah part of that a lot of that where I wanted to be validated and then when I hit 30 something changed I went to it up you know something similar like on-site I went to it up my own emotional intelligence training workshop for many weekends over four months that put me through the craziest life experiences and journeys to help me reflect on every part of my life. It was kind of like a social experiment

on healing in relationships and parenthood and all these different things and um i decided i started the school of greatness right around that time and i remember thinking i want to do more good in the world and i want to interview my smart friends that i have right and i asked a few friends about like okay i'm thinking of doing a podcast this is when no one knew what a podcast was this This was nine years ago. It'll be a nine-year anniversary coming up this month. You were an early adopter, to say the least. People, you had to tell people, okay, go to your iPhone.

Yeah, nine years ago, I wouldn't know. You have to go download this thing. It was on iTunes back then. Like, people didn't even know how to play them. You know, it was very hard. Anyways, I remember asking people, people you know what do you think i should call the name of the podcast and they're like let's just call it the lewis house show or this and this and i go i think this is an opportunity for me to not make it about me

not that there's anything wrong calling your show your name i think it's smart you wanted it to be bigger than you and you wanted to outlive you i wanted to be bigger than me and i and i and maybe it wasn't smart personal branding wise, but I was like, I don't want this to be about me. I want it to be about the people that are coming on who are servicing the world in a big way and me as a facilitator. But it doesn't need to be my show. It's the show of the most brilliant or the most interesting people in the world that I can get on and interview and ask them those questions so I decided and the school of greatness was all the things I wish I would have learned in school because school was extremely difficult for me being in the special needs

classes my entire why were you especially this part of this growing up dyslexic and yeah I was and And when I went to middle school, they started ranking you on your grade card. No, no, no, no. Yeah, this was... That's terrible. So they would rank you based on your class members, like where you were ranking in the class.

In middle school, it's the worst possible time to introduce that idea. So I remember I was always in the bottom four. And so I would just see this confirmation of you're not enough. Like you're stupid. You're, you know, you're not intelligent.

You're not smart enough as everyone else around you. And being in the special needs classes, it took me seven years to finish college. Like all these different things just confirmed, you know, you're not smart enough was what is the story that I told myself until I realized, wow,

I'm actually really wise and I have skills in other areas of life that aren't from reading a book and testing well, you know, and doing homework well. Like I wasn't good at that structure and I wish they would have taught me how to approach, you know, relationships. I wish they taught me how to heal. I wish they taught me how to deal with failure. How to be creative. How to be creative, how to make money, like all these different things. And I was like, that to make money, like all these different things. And I was like, that's what I, I learned some of that stuff through sports,

and then I learned a lot of it from just interviewing mentors after school. I was like, I wish the world knew this. Let me call, I'm gonna call it the school of greatness. Yeah. And I wanted it to be about everyone else, not about me. And so that's kind of the journey there. You know, some people will call that humility,

I call it health health yeah it's just an understanding of where you fit in the world yeah and it's it's it's this two things simultaneously I can have a really big impact and I'm not the most important thing I don't have to be the center of attention right and we see you've seen it you've seen a lot of times people. I don't have to be the center of attention. Right. And we see, you've seen it, you've seen it a lot of times, people who build communities in order to be the center of attention. And you see how they implode.

Right. You know, I would say to some degree, hopefully he's much healthier now. Adam Neumann did that with WeWork. And you saw it implode. But really, he's building this huge thing

because he had a deficiency in community and feeling loved. And you drove drove drove drove but when you drive out of your wounds the whole thing breaks apart what should we be driving out of instead driving out of a desire to be have a mutually beneficial relationship with the world right i want to enjoy this and i'm not going to i talk in this book about how important it is to have some sort of selfish motivation involved in your objective otherwise you're a liar right because we only do things that benefit us but then when you realize

that's empty you things start becoming mutually beneficial right the win-win yeah you know one of my favorite movies ever and we're just through the season where it came on is uh it's a wonderful life and if you look at that movie, the lead character, of course, is brought around by an angel to be shown what the world would look like if he were never born. And what you realize in that movie as you watch his life

is that he's very disrespectful to his wife. He's very short-tempered with his kids. He gets frustrated with the sort of people that he lends money to he's normal and he changes the whole world he makes it a better place I think we're a little hard on ourselves when we say we've got to be perfect or we've got to be Saints in order to change the world you can be totally normal and get irritated your kids and change the world you know watch it's a wonderful life he's not a perfect guy right i think it was wayne dyer who talked about how

so many of the people that ended up changing the world were school teachers were yeah janitor or something like that where it's like they weren't presidents out doing something they were ordinary people like wayne dyer was a teacher for many years and he was like I didn't know that I knew he's I think was a teacher for like 10 or 20 years and then he was like and I loved or he was a therapist was the other therapist or a teacher one of the I bought it soon he was a psychologist yeah I think maybe it was a therapist but it was like he was explaining and one of his audiobooks I was listened to that I think mother Teresa was just something and or she was a nun I guess but then Gandhi I think Mother Teresa was just something, or she was a nun, I guess, but then Gandhi, I think, was a teacher, something like that.

It's like these people that go off and do extraordinary things don't always start out that way. They kind of have humble jobs and humble missions, and then it just grows and expands. You don't have to have the intention of being the president or being some billionaire CEO to change lives. Yeah. So I think that's interesting. And each of those people, if you look at like Mohandas Gandhi, and you mentioned Mother Teresa, and Dr. King. What a lot of people don't realize about Dr. King is he always 100% felt like he was in his father's shadow.

He always felt deficient. And his father was actually the big man. The guy. Yeah. Leading the church. So really what made Dr. King, Dr. King, what made Mother Teresa, Mother Teresa, what made Gandhi, Gandhi was not them. It was the actual mission. That's where they blew up when they realized, well, I've got to stop what's happening in the civil rights, push back to the civil rights

movement. I've got to stop what's happening in the civil rights, push back to the civil rights movement. I've got to stop what's happening in the British colonialism that's taking place in India. I've got to stop what's happening on the streets of Calcutta. These are just normal people who put themselves into a mission, and that's why we all know their name. It's not them. It's that they stepped into a story, and the story transformed them into heroic characters with everything that's happening

in the world in the last couple of years where do you think will be the biggest need over the next decade or two decades in the country but also in the world from this the the social media revolutions that are happening the pandemic stuff that's happening the governmental stuff that's happening here and also around the world what's the biggest need that we will need for heroes to step into? We have to de-incentivize tribalism. De-incentivize tribalism. What does that mean? Well, if you watch Fox News or MSNBC, to some degree CNN, really what's happened in the 24-hour news cycle is news stations have chosen a confirmation bias to exploit.

So they know Fox News hates Joe Biden. They hate Barack Obama. Let's paint those guys as enemy and really tell these people what they want to hear so that we can sell advertising because you've got to get eyeballs, and that's what we're going to get eyeballs. MSNBC did the same thing on the left. So they are literally incentivized to divide the country and make you afraid of people. And until you economically de-incentivize that, and I don't know how you do that, there's no hope. Because what happens when two different media arms are competing against each other and making the other ones wrong?

What happens if they stop doing that? They lose ratings. Yeah yeah and the story sells fiction you know and and the other is out to get you and gossip and yeah yeah and the democrats are you know molesting children in under pizza restaurant that stuff sells and people actually believe it right right they actually believe it. Right. They actually believe it. So is this where story hurts us? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. The brain has a very difficult time telling the difference

between fiction and nonfiction. And so you can tell the brain some really absurd stuff that actually just makes no sense. But it's very hard for somebody's brain that once they hear the story, the story feels really entertaining and really clean, therefore it's got to be true, right? It takes probably a long time to make it untrue. It takes a long time to unravel it.

Yeah. So what you see in society is the extreme left and the extreme right, they have the clearest narratives. But in reality, narratives aren't actually that clear. Bill Clinton was pretty well known for saying, look, I'm not as great as my fans say I am. I'm not as bad as my enemies say I am. I'm a pretty boring guy. Right.

But now you tell that to somebody on the far right, they'll say, no, he's evil. He's not evil. Come on, give me a break. And Rush Limbaugh is not evil. He's an opportunist. He's not evil. Come on, give me a break. And Rush Limbaugh is not evil. He's an opportunist. He's making money. He didn't want anything worse for the world.

So I think that once you understand how story works, you see how it's being used to manipulate the masses. And I think we all need a little bit of a healthy dose of cynicism when it comes to engaging our media right now. We also need to go, you know, one of the things to build the middle class that I want to do, we've already created these flags. They have a bison on them because the bison almost went extinct, but America did something about it.

And so the middle class will go extinct unless America does something about it. That's why the bison is our trademark. What will happen if it goes extinct? The middle class is shrinking and shrinking. The poor are getting poorer. The wealthy are getting wealthier because that's the way our tax code is set up. So once the middle class shrinks down, you won't have much of a labor force. and the labor force will move to probably Africa, and it will be led by China. So that's what's happening in the world. But unless Republicans and Democrats can actually see eye to eye and get along.

So one of the things that we're doing at Build the Middle Class is we're printing blue flags and we're printing red flags, but it's the exact same flag. So if you're a Democrat, fly the red flag. If you're a Republican, fly the blue flag. But what you're saying about flying that flag is I agree with the Republicans on these eight pieces of legislation. We've got to stop fighting. We've got to move forward.

You know, I work with a think tank in Washington, D.C. called Stand Together. We're working on some immigration stuff. They actually just bring me in to do some messaging. And so I went in, and they explained the situation. They said, Don, there are three pieces of legislation in the House right now. If we pass them, we would have comprehensive immigration reform. We'd be done. No longer an issue.

76% of Americans support the three pieces of legislation, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. Here's the problem. If a Democrat is in the White House, the Republicans won't pass it. And if the Republicans are in the White House, the Democrats won't pass it because neither side wants to give the other side a win.

The ego is crazy. And this has been happening for 40 years. So this has been happening on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security reform. This has been happening on immigration. It's happening on education reform. It's happening on criminal justice reform. It's happening on clarifying and simplifying the tax code.

So you've got two bodies that hate each other so much they would rather not let the other side win for 40 consecutive years than give America what it wants and what it needs. The solutions to our problems are not complicated. They're actually very, very simple. It's just these two egos won't actually sit in the same room and get along with each other. What if one said, hey, you give us this win, we'll give you the other win? They try to do that stuff, but they hate each other so much now they won't even meet. What? Yeah.

I mean, right now, currently, we're in, you know, right at the beginning of 2022. Republicans and Democrats won't get into a room together. You're talking about like in the country or you mean in D.C.? In federal, in D.C. Gotcha. That's not happening. They won't get into the room no and just talk it out no don't give them there because they're not incentivized to do so right right incentivize a win and be yeah yeah their base won't doesn't want them to do that their base they're literally a significant percentage of Americans you

know 15% want to send somebody to DC just to hate the other side rather than send somebody to DC to get work done. That would save us enormous amounts of money and help us compete with China. It's a bad deal. This is my next story that I want to dive into. What needs to happen in order for that to be disrupted so that we- There needs to be a- A different person comes in. disrupted so that we... There needs to be a platform as though it's a presidential platform in the middle that both Republicans and Democrats can sign on to. And then that platform needs 30

or 40 million petition signatures and probably hundreds of millions of dollars to run ads to support the people who... And the narrative needs to change. It needs to change to this. If you are an extremist on the left or right and are unwilling to compromise, we don't want you here. If you can't, I think in four years, if you can't pass comprehensive immigration reform

or comprehensive tax reform, you're fired. If you paid a landscaper for four years and they ever showed up and mowed your lawn, are you going to keep paying them? No. Yeah. Why are we paying taxes when these people won't get anything done? Right. It's ridiculous. So that middle ground needs to be established. Right now, it doesn't have a voice or a flag or a banner or a petition or a white paper or a book or any of that. How much worse does it need to get in order for that to potentially happen? Yeah, I think we're about two clicks away. Two presidents away, you mean? Two clicks in terms of anger. I think if Kamala Harris were the next Democratic presidential nominee and Trump came

back, the country is either going to destroy itself or the country's going to figure out a different path. Yeah, I think we're really close. We've talked about a lot, Lewis. From relationships to heroes and what's happening in the world the next 10 years. It's definitely the best interview I've ever done. That's good. That's my attention.

That's my attention. Here on a mission, a path to a meaningful life is out. People can get this if they want to have the framework, the stories. I really like the part of writing your eulogy. You've got everything at the end about creating a life plan for a one-year vision, which is something I'm a big fan of doing every year as well and seeing that consistently. There's so much value in here. There's so much value in here and you've been just consistent on creating these

frameworks in this mission for so many years that I think everyone needs to get this book, especially if you feel like the last couple of years has been a challenge for you. I want you to get this book cause it's going to give you meaning. It's going to give you purpose and direction. I think a lot of people need right now is direction in their own lives. Hero on a mission. Get it for your friends, get it for your family, get it for yourself. It's going to really help you in a big way. Where can we follow you? Where can we connect with you the most that you spend the most time online? You know, the best place

to follow me is actually Donald Miller on Instagram because then you get to see pictures of my baby. There you go. And that's pretty fun. I like that. You have a newsletter too, right? Do you share a lot more? We have a podcast called Business Made Simple. Yes. Yeah.

No newsletter, but definitely a podcast called Business Made Simple. And then we released that on Monday. On Thursday, we're starting a new series called Hero on a Mission. And our first couple interviews will be Evan McMullen is on a mission to disrupt the two-party system. I'm hopeful to get an interview with Sean Brock, the chef, the James Beard award-winning chef, because he's on a mission to not disrupt the restaurant industry. You would absolutely love Sean Brock. You should interview Sean Brock.

Sean Brock, okay. Yes, Sean Brock. You should eat his food, too, because he's amazing. You would love Sean Brock. You should interview Sean Brock. Sean Brock. Yes, Sean Brock. You should eat his food too because he's amazing. You would love Sean Brock. Okay, cool. He's in Nashville. Come to Nashville, bring your equipment, and you can stay at our house. I'll have to come down there for a week when my book launches. When is your book coming out? End of October, I believe. Yes. Of this coming? This year. Oh, yeah. Very good. Yeah, yeah. What's it called? No, don't know yet. Working title is The Greatness Mindset. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's the working title. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, what's it called? No, don't know yet. Working title is The Greatness Mindset. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. That's the working title, so. Well, come to Nashville. Let us handle the whole thing. We'll hook you up with Parnassus Books. Okay. Which is Ann Patchett's, she was shortlisted for the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize

or whatever. She's got a bookstore in Nashville. So they can route it through there. It's a mile. We can literally get buses from the bookstore straight to the carriage house at Goose Hill, and you can do an event there. Oh, man.

And it would be really, really fun. That would be fun. You would love Nashville. Bring your girl. I know. I do like it there. Actually, the guest house is done in May, so you guys can just stay at the guest house.

She's filming in Atlanta, so it's not too far, right? It's four hours. Yeah, maybe we'll drive up there as well. Yeah. What's the one skill you're going to need to master over the next few years to help you accomplish these missions i think i've gotten pretty good at it over the years but quite honestly i'm gonna have to start saying no to some really awesome opportunities you just did this last couple weeks yeah this money one right yeah i'm gonna have to do a lot more of that.

And the more you accomplish, the more great opportunities. Isn't that the challenge? It just compounds, doesn't it? It just compounds. It is. And that's why reading your eulogy is so important. Because you don't get the time back. You don't.

BusinessMadeSimple.com, Donald Miller everywhere. Instagram is the main place. Twitter and Facebook as well. Make sure you guys get the book, Hero on a Mission, A Path to a Meaningful Life. Before I ask the final two questions, I want to acknowledge you, Donald,

even though you're practicing not getting credit. I want to acknowledge you for your, really your vulnerability and your honesty in the things that you want to work on still. And I think saying, you know, I still want to get credit and I still have an ego here and I still like this. And wanting to work on those things I think is really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for being honest about all these things and having the vulnerability. I acknowledge you for having a child at 50 and stepping into this season of your life and seeing the value that'll come from having a child and starting a family at this time. I acknowledge you for healing and constantly being on a healing journey

because I think it's hard to create meaningful work in the world if we aren't healing ourselves and on that journey. And I know your three big missions are going to take a healed husband and father and man, not a hurt man, in kind of taking on those missions. So I really acknowledge you in having a healthy body, mind, and soul. You look extremely young. You look extremely healthy and whole. And so I really acknowledge you for the incredible work you've done to overcome all the challenges in your life to get to this point right now. And I'm very excited about this book and your journey.

And I can't wait to see you in Nashville. This question is called The Three Truths. So it's a question. I remember this. Yeah. So imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away, and we're getting you to 100

so you got three lucys and uh for whatever reason all of your content is gone or goes with you to the next place and you don't get to have any of your books or written word or this interview it's it's not available in the world anymore for whatever reason it's gone hypothetical and you get a piece of a piece of paper and a pen, and you get to write down three lessons that you would share with the world. Three things you know to be true from your life experiences, and this is all we would have from you, of your content. What would you say would be those three truths that you would share?

I would repeat the truths that Viktor Frankl put in his book, because I think he's smarter than me. And I would say, have a project that engages your your attention because it's going to help you love life. Don't do it alone. Bring a community with you. And just know it's going to be hard and that's a good thing. Those are the three truths. Those are beautiful.

Final question, what's your definition of greatness? What's your definition of greatness? My definition of greatness is that what I hope that happens at my funeral is that people talk more about how I encouraged what they were able to accomplish and less about what I was able to accomplish. That's good. Thank you so much for listening. 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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys. So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you

the most. And if no one's told you lately, I wanna 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.