671 Overcome Emotional Obstacles

“NO ONE FEELS 100% CONFIDENT IN THEMSELVES ALL THE TIME.” - EMILY SKYE There’s so many times where we focus on what society tells us will make us happy, and that’s all we chase. Money, a nice car, a house, and material objects that show off our “success." We always end up overlooking ourselves. You avoid exercising until the doctor says you have to. I’m sure you’ve experienced it plenty. You ignore your stress at work until you just can’t take it anymore. Ultimately your emotional state should take a priority. Without it, you can’t be at your best. At the end of the day, happiness is an emotional. All of the material items in the world can’t get you there. That’s why I wanted to do a mashup this week on overcoming emotional obstacles from some of the masters: Emily Skye, Josh Shipp, Rupi Kaur and Joshua Millburn. On this episode you’ll learn how to overcome emotional barriers that continue to hold us back. If you take these lessons from people who have come from all walks of life you’ll be able to achieve your true destiny. Please, sit down with this one and take notes. I know it’s going to help you tremendously. So learn how to keep your emotions in line to nail your goals, and feel fulfilled, on Episode 671. Some Questions I Ask: Do you still go through times of being insecure? (5:40) Why do you get insecure at times? (6:32) If something isn’t working in your business, how do you handle the inner critic? (10:26) How old were you (Shipp) when you met your final foster parents? (15:56) Do you (Rupi) think your work would be as powerful without going through pain and suffering? (19:43) In This Episode You Will Learn: What everyone needs to be responsible for (5:04) Tools you can use to overcome insecurities (7:48) How Emily stays grounded when things are going well (11:38) How Josh Shipp was emotionally removed from people who were trying to help him (14:02) Shipp’s lesson from a night in jail as a teenager (16:38) The danger of being your own worst enemy (18:41) How Rupi continues to create new things (21:03) What you need to focus on (22:34) How Joshua Millburn knows what needs to be fixed (25:17) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 671, overcoming emotional obstacles. 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.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Napoleon Hill said, "Your big opportunity may be right where you are now." We've heard some amazing stories over the years on the podcast of people overcoming massive challenges to become incredible leaders and achieve greatness in their own industry and in their own life. And I love these stories so much because they remind me that no challenge is too big to overcome. And I don't care where you're at in your life, or what challenge you're facing, or any type of emotional distress that you may have right now. We all face them, and we can all get through them better and stronger. And in this mashup, we're featuring clips from the past episodes that inspire me to view obstacles as opportunities to grow.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  We've got incredible people on this. Some of you may have heard these episodes, but if you haven't yet, these are huge reminders to help you overcome those emotional barriers that continue to hold all of us back from reaching our true destiny and our true greatness. We've got Emily Sky in the house, Josh Shipp, Rupi Kaur, and Joshua Fields Milburn. This is going to be a powerful one. Make sure to share it with your friends. And a big thank you to our Fan of the Week. This is from Eli Kaiser. Says, "Lewis, thank you for bringing your light into a place that needs it. This podcast is a beautiful reminder of the truest truths, to never give up on my dreams, to remember I am unceasingly, eternally, completely loved,

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  and to perpetually train my mind, body, spirit to recognize the greatness within." Let's do this. Eli Kaiser, you are the Fan of the Week, and that was a beautiful review. If you guys haven't left a review yet, go over to iTunes or the podcast app that you're on right now, and leave us a review for your chance to be featured as the Fan of the Week. It's time to overcome emotional obstacles, and let's dive into this powerful episode right now.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  You've got to be responsible for what you're consuming, I think. It's hard to do because young kids aren't... They like looking at this sort of stuff. They love seeing perfect. They love that idea. It's almost like a romantic movie. It's romanticising it. I think if people can take more responsibility and if something's making them feel bad, if a particular person's making them feel bad about themselves and maybe question themselves, "Why are they?" and "Do I need to have them on there? Can I get rid of them?"

• 2:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:56Speaker 01

  But that's hard. I mean, you can only say to people, "Be responsible, don't do this", but they're still going to do it because it's an addiction, isn't it? People love it.

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What about yourself in terms of, you know, you've got this massive audience, you have all these people that look up to you, that are inspired by your mindset, your body, your look, your muscles, whatever it is. Do you ever go through times of still being insecure or comparing yourself? Even though you have this...

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it never just...

• 3:21Lewis Howes?

  Everyone wants to be you, but you're like, "Well, I'm still not good enough".

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I don't think anyone feels 100% confident all the time in themselves. I think people always have times where they, you know, have a bad day or they don't feel like they're as good as they can be. And I have those times. It's nowhere near what it used to be, but I think now I have the tools to be able to get through it and I know how to and I'm aware of when I'm feeling down. Why am I feeling this way? What's contributing to that? What can I remove to help myself move on and get past this? So being really, I guess, self-aware.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think you get insecure at times? What are the reasons?

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know whether it's because I used to be a very insecure person, so that it's always sort of... I'm always fighting it. It's always sort of coming back. I think that that's a huge thing and getting on top of that and knowing that that's the type of person that I used to be as well, not going back to that. But there's a lot, like, social media is insane, it's competitive. There's a lot of people out there posting things that could... I could look at and then go, "Oh, I'm not this" or "I'm not that", or for instance, "I'm pregnant at the moment, obviously", and I have gained fat and cellulite.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  Oh, are you?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what this lump is here. But I've gained fat and cellulite and changed and I've lost a lot of muscle.

• 4:35Lewis Howes?

  Stretch marks or whatever, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, all these things are happening, which I am 100% embracing, I'm happy with. But I could look at these other people who are online, who are fit and pregnant and they look amazing and they're on their own journey. That's a thing, everyone's on their own journey and shouldn't compare. But I could look at them and think, "Well, how come this person's got abs and she's a few months ahead of me and..." And yet her abs are there and she's tiny and I've got all this cellulite and stuff going on. I could look at that and that could affect me, but I don't. I think I'm at a really good place now where I'm so happy and my baby's obviously most important to me. So I don't let those insignificant things affect me.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's good. What are some of the tools that you use when you're looking to overcome that insecurity or fear or comparison? Cause I think this will be helpful. A lot of people who are constantly comparing.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:22Lewis Howes?

  To see someone like you with a massive audience. Great body, great image, great everything on how you do that.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I think you've got to work out what makes you happy in life and what's most important to you. Is it really trying to be perfect and worrying about what everyone else thinks of you? Especially on social media. If you put up a photo and people say, oh, you look great here. Does that really make you happy temporarily? Yeah, you feel good. Your ego is getting fed, but long-term, I don't think it really does. And I think you need to get to a point where you do know what makes you happy and you're aware of that and you you don't rely on that to keep feeding that happiness. Yeah. But when I feel down and I've talked about this before with my followers, but when I get in my sort of down moments and I haven't had one for a while, which is a good thing.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  But last year I had a bit of a time. I think I'd been traveling a lot and I just got really run down and everything just went to shit pretty much.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to keep your body healthy and.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  And then your mind goes and oh, I was feeling crappy. I wasn't training, which is a big thing. Getting moving is incredible. It does incredible things for you. The endorphins that you get from it are really, it's a real thing.

• 6:29Lewis Howes?

  It is a real thing.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I hadn't been doing it for a while and I just, I didn't want to. I wasn't motivated. And I thought, how can I get myself, yeah, how can I get myself back there? I know that that's what changed my life. And yet here I am stuck feeling shitty again. I thought, okay, well, I don't want to go to the gym because I'm not motivated to do that. How can I get myself there? So I put music on and danced around the house and I started learning hip hop. I was putting tutorials on the big screen on YouTube and dancing around the lounge room like an idiot. I was no good at it, but it's not the point.

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  That's right.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  I felt good. I felt happy and the music lifted my mood and I started getting outdoors, outside in the, in the sun and fresh air and. Just finding that balance again and I guess grounding myself in a way. So I could start to feel like, okay, what is it? What is it that it makes me happy again? What is it that gives me life? That makes me jump out of bed every day? So I got back there and then I'm back on track again. So you've got to find what it is that does it for you. Maybe it's reading a book, maybe it's walking, I don't know, ice skating, rock climbing, whatever. Do something that makes you feel good again, but you've got to find you're creative. And my creative for me is training and getting outdoors and talking to people and helping people.

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's probably not sticking on your phone, looking on Instagram all day.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  No, that can be quite poisonous.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you've got to set boundaries for yourself and restrictions.

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  When you're following and your accounts is your business and your brand. And if something isn't working or isn't getting the results you want, how do you deal with that? Inner voice, when like, okay, I put a post out here, normally I get a certain amount of results. Whether traction, comments, whatever, sales, and I didn't get that. How do you handle that inner critic?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  It's hard because it is me. I'm the brand, it's not someone else. So it's hard not to take it personally. And I think you invest so much. I invest a lot into my business and what I do and I love it. But I do take things personally because it is me. And I know it's a hard thing to do, so I've got to sort of sit back and go, okay. There's a lot of things coming into play here with algorithms and things. What could be the reason? Is it really my content that people aren't liking? Or is it because they're not actually seeing it? Because Instagram's done an update and people who follow me aren't actually seeing the post. So you've got to like step back and then realise what's going on here. So it is hard, it's hard to sort of monitor what's working and what's not and whether it is you or not.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  But you can test and there's a lot of things you can do to work out what actually works and what people want to see and what your following really likes. But yeah, you've really got to think about, maybe it is just the algorithm.

• 9:02Lewis Howes?

  And how do you stay grounded? If something's taking off and doing really well, you're on the cover of every magazine, you're getting brand deals, you're getting all this stuff. It is all working for you. How do you stay grounded and also stay? Happy with it being enough.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:16Lewis Howes?

  Sometimes we'll get these big marks and then we're like, oh, but it could be more. It could be this and it's not enough. So how do you stay grounded in those times?

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think because it's taken a long time to get where I am. And you could say that I started working on it when I was a teenager because that's when I started with modeling and I use a lot of, a lot of the things I learnt with modeling now. So I do a lot of things myself. I take my own photos on a tripod with a timer. I edit my own videos. I write my own content. I reply to people online. I do a lot of stuff myself, which I learnt when I was doing modeling. So I think in life, there's a lot of things that you can use right now. I mean, down the track, when you find what it is you want to do. Because I've gone through that and I've worked really hard. It hasn't just happened overnight. I wasn't just handed it. I have a lot of appreciation for what I've got. One thing I do struggle with is really, really appreciating and being grateful for what it is that I've got right now.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And it being enough because I always want to be, I want to be the best. I want to reach more people, do so much stuff. And I sometimes get frustrated because I know that I'm not quite where I want to be yet. And it's a really hard balance to really appreciate and look back on what you've done and go, yeah, I've killed this, I'm doing well. And still go, oh, there's still more I want to do. It's quite hard and that's something I do struggle with a lot. And when I do say get a magazine cover, I've got to really make an effort to go, I achieved this because I deserve it. It's difficult and I think I get a bit mixed up with, I don't want to sort of lose who I am through the whole thing and I don't want people to think. And it's funny because I always say, don't worry about what people think, but I do.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I care what people think because I'm trying, I'm doing this for a reason. I want to help people. So I have to care what they think, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this. I want to always stay, I guess, relatable to people and never seem like I'm full of myself, which I'm not and I'm far from it actually.

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  So yeah, it's finding that balance between being proud of yourself, looking at what you've achieved, where you've come from and then still being able to say, yeah, but I've still got room to grow and more to do and more goals to do.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  When I was 14, I moved into yet another home. And I thought, here we go, yet another home. And these people are gonna talk, you know, big about how they're gonna love me unconditionally and all this crap. And yeah, whatever, let's just get this over with. Louis, dude, I would literally keep a notebook of when I entered a home, and then when I exited the home by getting kicked out, and I would try to beat my high score.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  And I would document what technique I used. I mean, I was so emotionally removed from it. It was just like this game for me of like, you act like you care, but I know you don't. I know you're eventually gonna give up on me, so let's just get it over. But these final set of parents completely changed my life. They were consistent, they backed up everything they said with their actions, and they backed up all their actions with their words. They were tough and tender, which is exactly what a kid like me needed, was sometimes to be hugged and sometimes to be kicked. And those two individuals, the Weidemires in Oklahoma, completely transformed my life, completely changed my life.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  And this is why one of my big things is that every kid is one caring adult away from being a success story, because the Weidemires were that for me. And that's been my drive and my motivating factor to do the work that I do with kids and teens and parents, is to be that one caring adult for some kid, be it through a message, a book, a show, training other people to go out and do that sort of work. That's really my heartbeat behind why I do what I do is like, I had this insane childhood, and I remember how frustrating and confusing and alienating and just what a complete and total mess I felt like. And to have some caring adults who didn't put on a show but were genuine and helped

• 13:13Speaker 02

  me at that, at critical time, it's like, that's what I want to do. It's my way of saying thank you to the Weidemires and others like them that helped me.

• 13:21Lewis Howes?

  How old were you when you met them?

• 13:23Speaker 02

  14 years old. And, you know, if you think about that, it's like, here's this 14-year-old showing up on your doorstep with all this baggage and garbage and crap that you did not cause, that was not your fault. But now you gotta deal with it. And even though, again, they're like two of the finest people on the planets, I pushed them away. I tried to hold them at an arm's distance. I tried to get kicked out of there. I tried everything to, again, you know, let's just get this over with. I know you guys don't really care, so let's just accelerate this inevitable breakup. They just wouldn't. I remember one night I went to jail because I wrote a bunch of hot checks as a teenager.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  They brought me home and I was, it was certainly a rock bottom moment for me. My mom made me stay the night in jail, although she could have bailed me out the night before, which, looking back, was very wise, sort of making me feel the pain of my own stupidity. And they brought me home that next morning, and I assumed they would yell or lecture, which was certainly in their right. And they just looked at me and very calmly said, "You can keep causing problems, you can keep pushing us away if you want, but..." And, excuse my language, they said, "Damn it, Josh, we don't see you as a problem, we see you as an opportunity. Why don't you start to see yourself like that?" Hmm.

• 14:48Speaker 02

  And dude, Louis, they had probably said that sort of thing to me probably 100 times. I know them, they're just that kind of people, they probably said it 100 times. But here I was in a moment where I was actually really ready to listen to it. And in that moment, it's not fair to say in that moment my life changed, but in that moment, I made the commitment that my life would change. It started shifting. Yeah, and then, you know, look, I've done a lot of work with young people who are at risk, and my opinion is you can't change anyone's life, but if you can get someone to make that commitment to begin to accept help, you know, and so then came hundreds of hours of counseling, a big brother through big brothers, big sisters, being more open

• 15:32Speaker 02

  to my foster parents, to my social workers, to all this sort of stuff of beginning to wade through my own issues. That began that life change, and man, I'm unbelievably grateful for it today as a guy who's married, has kids, and I'm certainly not perfect, I'm certainly flawed in many, many ways, but I'm so grateful to have figured that out and that the Weetamars didn't walk away, because, man, it would have been so easy to.

• 16:03Rupi Kaur?

  Once we experience something and once we overcome it, we almost forget how difficult it was when you put time with that gap. And especially because my mind is like really just blocked out so many of those memories. But I think we go through different versions of suffering. And one thing I really have seen in the last year or two, and I do write about it in The Sun and Her Flowers, is that the idea of becoming your own enemy and me becoming that in the last little while is almost more painful than any external factors trying to attack me. And I tried not to write about that because I was like, who cares about that?

• 16:46Rupi Kaur?

  But I ended up writing an entire chapter about it. And it's what I've really taught myself in the last two years. I worked so hard on trying to really respond to these other negative factors. But then it came to a point where I became my own worst enemy. And that was probably the most painful and is the most painful thing of all.

• 17:08Lewis Howes?

  Do you think you'd be able to have as much an impact without going through that much challenge, pain, suffering? Do you think your work would be as powerful?

• 17:19Rupi Kaur?

  I don't know. I don't even know if I would be writing if it weren't for those moments, right?

• 17:24Lewis Howes?

  So are you grateful for that experience?

• 17:26Rupi Kaur?

  I am. I would say I have no regrets. Even like before that, there's been things and after that, there's been things. But I've taught myself like there are no regrets and all things happen for a reason. And a wonderful thing that I do, I don't know if it's healthy or not, is like anytime something terrible happens, I always respond to it with art. So me, exactly. So going through that and ending that responded with, like I responded with that by going to my first ever open mic night and starting to do this thing on a regular basis. I don't know if I would have done that otherwise. And I remember there was other things that happened after that. And every time things went wrong, I would just do something else. Then I started a blog and then something else went wrong. And then I was like, okay, whatever, like I'm gonna start doing this.

• 18:10Rupi Kaur?

  And then I started my Instagram and then other things. Things went wrong and it was like life became so bad that I was like, "Forget about it. I'm just gonna publish this goddamn book." Because that's how I kind of deal with stuff and like work through things. I have to keep myself really busy.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  It's like your therapy, yeah.

• 18:26Rupi Kaur?

  It is.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you have to go through challenges every single year to create then? Do you think you'll be able to create from a place of love?

• 18:33Rupi Kaur?

  I think so. And that was a challenge. Like, after the success of Milk and Honey, like, I gained a lot of stability that I didn't have, that my family didn't have.

• 18:43Lewis Howes?

  Like financial stability?

• 18:43Rupi Kaur?

  Financial stability, emotional stability. You know, it's interesting because I came to a place that was, there was lots of love and everything had settled finally after so long. And it was a moment that I'd been looking forward to forever. It's a moment that you would dream of. But then, I was scared because I was like, "Oh my God." But like, if I'm not suffering, then how will I write again, you know? And then I would like go out and search for suffering and create situations and...

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Sabotage.

• 19:16Rupi Kaur?

  You know, I'd be like trying to like fight with my friends just to be like, "Yeah, like it's gonna give me something," you know, like move me. But what I realized was like, that's so not true. And that's like working from a place of trauma and suffering. And we do not have to do that anymore. And it is very possible to write from a place of love. It's just, we have to teach ourselves how to do that. Because for so long, what I did, yeah. Like, we learned to teach ourselves to write through the suffering because that's what we're trying to write through. And now I have to like reprogram myself to write through a place of like, love or happiness or whatever that is.

• 19:59Speaker 04

  My mother died and my marriage ended, both in the same month. Holy cow. And these two events forced me to look around and start to question what had become my life's focus. And I realized I was so focused on so-called success and achievement. And especially on the accumulation of stuff, the trophies of of success. Like, look at me, I have two Lexuses and I have this, I have that, I have the bigger house and and. Golf membership or whatever. Yeah, the racket club membership. There you go. And so I had I had these these things and here's here's the thing I want to get across. So there's nothing inherently wrong with stuff. We all need some stuff. The problem isn't consumption.

• 20:42Speaker 04

  The problem is this compulsory consumption, buying things because that's what we think we're supposed to do. We we've been sold this meme of the American dream. If you get this, then you will be happy, as if there is a template for happiness. And in fact, I think that's one of the the bigger problems is we are chasing happiness. For the longest time, that's what I did. I chased happiness and that forced me to to really forsake what was important. In fact, I was at a point in my life when I was very narrowly successful, right? Like, I had the job title. Right. But I wasn't I wasn't broadly successful. And it's because there wasn't a lot of meaning in what I was doing. We all have to earn a living.

• 21:27Speaker 04

  I I understand that, but I was so focused on just accumulating more money and status and identity. My whole life was wrapped up in that identity. We hold on to a lot of stuff. We hold on to all these supposed memories, right? And I know that's what I was doing, so my mom did when I went to deal with her stuff. And I realized that, you know what? Some of the stuff actually adds value to my life, but I don't know what. And so I started small because I had attachment to so many things in my life. I had given so much meaning to my stuff and I said, I need to try to get rid of some of this. Like, some of it's in the way, I don't know what what's actually adding value. And so over the course of of 30 days, I just started, I said, I'm gonna let go of one thing a day, one item a day, each day for 30 days.

• 22:12Speaker 04

  What would happen if that if if I did that? My values aren't different. Yeah. And I I think that's what's important is identifying what is important in my life? What items, what material possessions are going to augment that experience and not get in the way? Yes. And so letting go allowed me to figure out the paradox of of minimalism is I get far more value from the material items I own now than by watering them down with hundreds of thousands of items. I always look back to those five values. If my health is lacking, then. I need to repair that.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  That's the first thing.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, and I think they're all tied though. If my relationships are lacking, and it means if I'm not giving to them, or if I'm not getting what I need from those relationships, then I have to question why, right? And so if I'm not creating, if I'm not passionate about this creativity or this craft, then I'm lacking. If I feel like I'm not growing, or if I'm not giving to the world in a meaningful way, then any of those areas, if any of those areas are empty, right? That's the weak link, and I need to go back and fix that. And it's constant. Every day, I'm trying to look at how do I serve these values in my life? And if I'm not serving them, then I need to be honest with myself and find a way to fix that.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode again. Don't allow the emotional obstacles to consume you and control you and hold you back in your life. You are born to overcome these things. You have the power to withstand them, and you don't need to hold on to them. Move through the emotional challenges. Move through the pain. Move through the suffering and let it go. You were born and designed to express love and express your truest self right now. If you enjoyed this, share with a friend. LewisHowes.com/671. If you want to listen to any of the other clips and the full interviews with Emily Sky, Josh Ship, Rupi Kaur, Joshua Fields Milburn,

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  go to LewisHowes.com/671, and you'll see the links for those episodes as well, that you can click and listen to those full interviews, which are extremely powerful in their own right. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure to share with your friends. Let me know what you think. Tag me on Instagram @lewishouse. Connect with me. Let's continue this conversation of greatness and keep spreading the message to be part of one of the most powerful movements in the podcast world. This is all about unlocking. Your greatness. I love you so very much. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

• 25:14Lewis Howes?

  You.