Turn Sadness Into A Superpower & Find Wholeness In Your Life EP 1287

Susan Cain is the #1 bestselling author of Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which spent eight years on The New York Times best seller list, and has been translated into 40 languages. Susan’s TED talks have been viewed over 40 million times. LinkedIn named her the Top 6th Influencer in the World, just behind Richard Branson and Melinda French Gates. Susan partners with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to curate the Next Big Idea Book Club. They donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs. Visit Susan at susancain.net. In this episode you will learn:How to embrace all of the emotions we have. How to resurrect the power of sadness. Why your vulnerability will build deeper connections. What the hero's journey really is. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1287Muniba Mazari on Becoming the Source of Your Own Joy & Finding Self-Love: https://link.chtbl.com/1282-podInky Johnson on Hacking Your Mindset To Overcome Life's Challenges: https://link.chtbl.com/1279-podLaura Berman on Releasing your Pain and Overcoming Trauma: https://link.chtbl.com/1273-pod 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  In our culture, we know joy is a superpower. Like, no one will doubt that one. What we need is to resurrect the power of sadness. And the power of it is, well, as we've said, that it's one of the most powerful ways that we have.

• 0:14Lewis Howes?

  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.

• 0:37Lewis Howes?

  Bittersweet. I think it's something that connects with both of us. Specifically recently, we both had people close to us pass away. And for me, when my father passed a few months ago, it was a time of fully allowing myself to express my range of emotions. Sadness, some resentment, some anger, some frustration, some... But just a lot of sadness. But at the same time, I went back to my hometown, to my old house, and there was a lot of gratitude. There was a lot of appreciation, gratitude, and joy. And I don't know if you experienced that when you had family members pass recently,

• 1:19Lewis Howes?

  where there was both sadness and lots of joy and gratitude. But that's what I felt, and that's what I continue to feel.

• 1:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like such a dizzying mix of emotions that you end up having. And for me, with both the loss of my father and my brother, the first emotion that I had in both cases was nausea, actually. And I had it for days. It didn't go away. Yeah, I think it was just like a profound, you know, feeling of like the ground is pulled out from under you. Yeah, you know, just the sense of like the finality, you know? That which used to be will never be again, like that kind of feeling. Like, both times I had to just really absorb that first. But I don't know, with my father in particular, I guess what took the place of that?

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Pretty quickly in... My father was like, was a person who... He was a really bittersweet person in his own way. And he really loved beauty. So he was like, he was a medical school professor and he worked like crazy long hours. But he would come home late at night and he would always have these things he was doing. Like he loved orchids, he just thought they were beautiful. So he built a greenhouse full of orchids in the basement.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 2:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, and he would just like cultivate these orchids. The only people who would see them were like him and the family. And he loved the sound of the French language, so he would teach himself how to speak French.

• 2:54Lewis Howes?

  He spoke French, he was fluent or he understood some of it?

• 2:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think he was like mostly fluent by the time he was done.

• 3:00Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, he loved mu- I love music so much and I write about it in Bittersweet. And he was the one who really taught me to love it so much. He was like playing it for me from the time I was a little kid. So after he died, like every time I listened to music or see something that I know he would have appreciated. Like at the beginning, it was like, oh my gosh, I wish so much that I could tell him this or share this with him. But then I was able to move to a place of like, well, he's still here with me in some way. And I love these things because he loved them too. You know, whether, whether we're sharing it for genetic reasons or because he taught it to me, like we're, I feel like there's still a togetherness there.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:42Speaker 00

  So that's been great to see.

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel more connected after his passing than when he was here spiritually?

• 3:50Speaker 00

  No, no, I think it's more just that it's similar, that it hasn't, hasn't changed as much as I thought it was gonna change.

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, something like that.

• 4:00Lewis Howes?

  So there was sadness, but was there also a sweetness to it after this, after him passing?

• 4:07Speaker 00

  I mean, I guess the sweetness is like that it's made me take stock of all the different,

• 4:15Speaker 00

  you know, things that he gave to me.

• 4:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  Like everything I was just describing to.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  Appreciating all these things.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, like I really like live my life thinking all the time about beauty. I don't know why it matters so much to me, but it just really does. And I think it was really only after he died that I became as intensely aware as I now am of how much that comes from him.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What would you say was the biggest lesson that he taught you?

• 4:42Speaker 00

  Well.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  It was that, but you know, there was just a way that he lived his life that was like, you know, just do the right thing without any mess or fuss. Like, he was not a person who cared about the spotlight, one way or another. So, you know, my first book, Quiet, was about introverts. And I think it's, I mean, everyone in my family is introverted. So I got these lessons from everyone in the family. But I would look at my father and like, everything that he did was because he was a quiet person who would like spend a lot of time, you know, poring over medical journals and doing everything that he needed to do to be really good at what he did. And he didn't care about the spotlight. So then, so I would go from that and then look around at the culture that is telling

• 5:29Speaker 00

  you, you know, you have to be the kind of person who wants to be in the spotlight all the time. And there was like this total mismatch between what I was observing with him and at home versus what the culture was saying. And that, I think, was what enabled me to question the cultural message that we were getting.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  Ah, did you have a lot of confusion growing up then, when other people were about the spotlight and you were kind of happy being more isolated, I guess?

• 5:52Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, not so much, like, I always liked to connect with people, but I liked to connect one-on-one.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  Not in big groups?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, not in big groups. And really, like, everything that I do now that's in the spotlight is always like, oh my God, I'm stepping so far outside my character. And it's like in the service of work that I really love, so I do it.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  But it's not really my core.

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  It's a constant process of working through that. You talk about being whole when you're experiencing sorrow and pain and sadness and all these things. How does someone feel whole when there's so much pain in their life?

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Well, because they're human, so humans have pain. That's part of what it is to be human. And like, I define bittersweetness as being a deep recognition that joy and sorrow are forever paired in this world and that everything in this world is impermanent. You know, the people we love will not be here forever. But there's something about really intensely knowing that, that connects you to a kind of piercing, you know, joy at how beautiful everything is. So it's like, I don't think you can feel whole if you're doing, you know, the sort of toxically positive thing of, um... Always plastering a cheerful smile on your face and never talking about what's really happening.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  That's not wholeness, that's just like self-presentation, it's a complete different thing.

• 7:16Lewis Howes?

  So how does someone get to a place of knowing their whole when all they feel is sadness and darkness?

• 7:22Speaker 00

  Well, if you're only feeling sadness and darkness, you're probably going, you're probably situated too far on the other extreme and you might be needing to figure out what's keeping you locked only in that place. So I think it's a process of being open to all the emotions that we have and asking, you know, what do each of these emotions tell us? What does this pain that I have tell me? You know, like if you're experiencing, let's say, huge pain over a breakup, that's telling you that you have that pain because you care about love and about relationships. So it's like the pain is pointing you directly to what do you care about most?

• 8:04Speaker 00

  And once you know what you care about most, you can lean further into that thing. As opposed to what you could alternatively do is say, "I'm feeling all this pain, so maybe I shouldn't have relationships anymore. You know, I keep having pain over and over again, so I better like reconsider this whole thing."

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  That was me. It was like always painful.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:23Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 8:23Speaker 00

  And did you ever think, "Well, maybe I just shouldn't do this at all?"

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  Well, I was always like, "Okay, being in a relationship for a period of time is beautiful until it's not, and then eventually it turns into pain and suffering." Being single is freeing and fun and peaceful until it's not, when I feel a longing of intimacy and vulnerability and true deeper connection as opposed to kind of surface level connections. It was like, "Okay, I really craved intimacy and vulnerability, but every time I dove into that, I found myself suffering and in pain and heartache." And so I was really figuring out the process of getting back to wholeness and not... It was almost like getting to a place where I didn't need it and I was so whole with myself

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  and my own vulnerability and intimacy, and then being able to create a relationship based out of wholeness, not out of...

• 9:19Lewis Howes?

  A wound or something that I was lacking. And that's where it really started to shift for me.

• 9:24Speaker 00

  Right, right. Yeah, no, that makes total sense. So it sounds like each time you could either spend six months in the relationship and then get to the wall, or six months in singlehood and then get to the wall of loneliness.

• 9:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  But I never figured out how to break through the wall, till recently. What would you say is the hardest emotion for you to overcome or learn how to manage, where it wasn't like holding you back in a big way?

• 9:49Speaker 00

  For me personally, the emotions of sorrow and longing that I talk about in the book have actually always been ones that I do manage pretty well and see the beauty in them. So for me personally, the one that's been the most difficult, I would say, is anxiety.

• 10:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  What type of anxiety?

• 10:08Speaker 00

  Well.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Social anxiety or just anxiousness around what?

• 10:12Speaker 00

  I guess a little bit of both, you know, I just have a proneness to a kind of low level anxiety so that, I don't know, if I have a lot of things that I need to get done, like until I'm really on it.

• 10:24Lewis Howes?

  You feel a little stressed or anxious?

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And then we were talking before, before we came online, you know, that all my life I had this historic terrible public speaking anxiety. And that one I really did overcome, but it was a huge thing that overshadowed my life for decades, really. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was huge.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Would it cripple you or would just, it would consume your energy a week or two getting ready for the speech?

• 10:49Speaker 00

  It was a little bit of both. It was like before the speech, I wouldn't be able to eat for like a week. I wouldn't really sleep.

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  A week?

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  You couldn't eat for a week?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  I couldn't eat for a week, yeah.

• 11:00Lewis Howes?

  Holy, can't you just like nibbling on some peanuts or something or some?

• 11:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, just like the bare minimum.

• 11:05Lewis Howes?

  Just to stay alive?

• 11:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, like you'd get hungry enough and then you'd eat something.

• 11:10Lewis Howes?

  I need four days, I need to stay alive for this speech, yeah, wow.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I could always like grit my teeth and get through the speech, but I don't think I did a great job, but I didn't do a terrible job either. Like I would just grit my teeth.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  All your speeches, you always look incredible and like on it and you remember everything and you're connecting with the audience. You look like you're a trained pro.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  Well, I don't feel all those things anymore. Like I actually really did overcome this one.

• 11:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 11:34Speaker 00

  Which was not easy, but there's a magic way to overcome. Any kind of fear. I'm curious if you did this with your public speaking anxiety that you used to have. You know, the secret is just desensitization of like exposing yourself to the thing that you fear, but in really small doses. So that's what I did. You know, I went to seminars for people with public speaking anxiety and I went to Toastmasters.

• 11:57Lewis Howes?

  Toastmasters, that's what I did.

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:59Lewis Howes?

  It worked for me.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  It really works because you have to practice in a supportive environment where it doesn't matter how much you screw up.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Toastmasters was the foundation for me because I could not get in front of a group of five people, like I was telling you before, without forgetting everything. I remember thinking, how am I going to give a two-minute speech? Like, what can I say that's interesting for two minutes? Five minutes felt like five hours.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:25Lewis Howes?

  And I remember going to Toastmasters for the first time. I was 24. I was terrified. And it was all these like, you know, 30, 40, 50-year-old professionals in suits and had been speaking for decades. And I'm sitting there, this bum, just got done playing football, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life in a T-shirt, a cutoff T-shirt, walking in like I'm not in the right place, but that was exactly where I needed to be. And I remember they said, you know, "Okay, your first speech is an icebreaker, five minutes long."

• 12:55Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 12:56Lewis Howes?

  I remember this. I go, "I spent two weeks writing down, word for word, the speech." And I was like, "I have no idea what I'm going to say for five minutes." And I entered the Toastmasters for the first time sweating, dripping sweat. I stood behind the podium because I was so afraid to get in front of people. So I needed the barrier.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:14Lewis Howes?

  And I had my papers up there and I literally looked down the whole time and just read like this to make sure I didn't miss anything. Flipped the page, read the whole time, and then at the end looked up. And I remember feeling like, man, I am such a loser. I'm so bad. I'm the worst person here. They're gonna make fun of me and obviously in Toastmasters, they can't make fun of you. They have to be supportive, right? Semi encouraging and give constructive feedback. And they were great, but they were like, you know, next time, try to look up once.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's like, next time, try to smile, you know, next time, take a deep breath. And so as opposed to small doses, I threw myself in every week, giving myself another speech. And I said, every time I go, I need to get up for table topics, which I don't know if you remember.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  Which was terrifying.

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Wait, are those the ones that are impromptu?

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  The table topics?

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  It was like improv, public speaking. And so I remember saying, every time I have to do this because I don't want to do it.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 14:14Lewis Howes?

  Anything that made me feel uncomfortable, I just said, okay, I have to get up and do this.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  And did you ever like stay home? Like it's Tuesday night, let's say, time to go to Toastmasters.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  I went every time.

• 14:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:23Lewis Howes?

  Cause I was, this is a period of my life where I had no, nothing else going on. I was on my sister's couch, I was broke and I was like, I want to overcome this fear. So I was, I was like, I'm going every week. I found a mentor from the Toastmasters who I meet with every week as well at night at his place and go over my next speech. And I'd practice it with him. I was like, I'm coming.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  You're probably the only person in the history of Toastmasters who's ever done that. That's amazing.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  I was committed because I had a, I knew that this was crippling me. This fear, this inability to stand in front of a few people and say a message would cripple me for the rest of my life if I didn't overcome it.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  That was exactly how I felt also.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I used to be a corporate lawyer and I didn't care deep down, I think, that much about corporate law. So I was never invested enough to overcome the fear when I was doing that. But then when I became a writer and I cared so much about what I was doing. Yeah, and I just felt like, oh my gosh, you know, you can't nowadays do this profession without being able to go out and speak about it. So that was when I had the motivation to do what you were just describing. Like, oh my God, I'm gonna show up every week, even though I hate this. You know, you just keep doing it. And yeah, and I think people who don't have it don't understand what it's like. But the thing that you said about that you needed the podium.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  At the seminar that I went to for specifically people overcoming this fear.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  I didn't even know there was a thing that was like overcoming fear, public speaking seminar.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's in New York City. I think it's still going. It's run by this guy, Charles Decagnolo. It's called, I think, the Public Speaking Center of New York. It's great. And he does exercises where it's like, you'd stand in front of everybody with other people on either side of you, and all you'd have to do is answer some questions about yourself. But the idea of having the other people next to you is like, you're not alone in the spotlight.

• 16:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh, because being on stage is terrifying alone.

• 16:23Speaker 00

  Right. So you're practicing being on stage, but you're not up there all alone. So that's like the whole little by little idea.

• 16:28Lewis Howes?

  Do you answer a question and they just stand next to you and they're not, they're not doing anything? Like, it's just one person's answering at a time? It's not everyone's answering?

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Right. It's just one person. So like, let's say it's my turn. I'm like up there. I've got two people here, two people here. They're not saying anything. I'm the only one, like, on the hook.

• 16:44Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  But I know that, but they're there with you, and that changes, that like ratchets it down a little bit.

• 16:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then little by little, you know, you go up there on your own the next week.

• 16:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think the thing I like about Toastmasters is they give you like a new prompt every time you do a speech.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay, this one, let's use a prompt. This one, use, you know, vocal variety. This one, you know, whatever, say people's name or something. It's.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  And what's great also, like, I mean, we were talking a lot before we came online about vulnerability and, you know, to what extent does our culture allow it? I feel like a group like a Toastmasters, it, it's actually allowed to talk about that because so many people are there for that purpose. Like, I had assumed when I first went that it was gonna be all these, you know, amazing, confident speakers who are just there to put the cherry on the icing on top. Yeah, but it wasn't. It was more like people who really needed to work on it. So I would say that was one of my first public spaces of really talking about these kinds of topics in an out there way.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  And you practiced these topics there first, before you took it out into the public, right?

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 17:54Lewis Howes?

  On a scale of one to 10, when you wrote Quiet, when it came out there and it was on the New York Times Bestseller list for the first year, let's say, on a scale of one to 10,

• 18:06Lewis Howes?

  How much self-love and confidence did you have after a year of accomplishing this kind of these accomplishments?

• 18:14Speaker 00

  How much self-love?

• 18:15Lewis Howes?

  How much self-love and confidence, like lack of anxiety, did you say you had when you were after the first year? And ten being like you loved yourself the most and had no anxiety, one being you had a ton of anxiety and you were questioning your self-love or you were you were you weren't loving yourself to the full capacity?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  Hmm. Do you mean about like, um, public appearances or just in general?

• 18:43Lewis Howes?

  Internally?

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Just internally?

• 18:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  I think internally I was okay. I I I think I was feeling I was feeling pretty darn.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  You were feeling good.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I was feeling pretty darn good, yeah, because I had wanted.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  I'm crushing it, yeah.

• 18:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I'd wanted to be a writer since I was four and I had spent so many years often this gigantic detour of being a lawyer and then suddenly this dream I had always had had come true.

• 19:12Lewis Howes?

  Pretty amazing.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, and and I mean, you know, this feeling of like when you get letters from people and they tell you what it might have meant to them and that's the best thing in the world. I don't really know of anything better work-wise.

• 19:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  So, yeah, I think.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  When did you feel have you have you felt pretty consistent with those emotions over the last 10 years then? Or have there been times where you doubted yourself in the last 10 years?

• 19:37Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I mean, I don't think you can help but sometimes doubt yourself, but I don't I don't know how to explain it. Like, when it comes to writing on a deep fundamental level, I don't have that much doubt because I have so much of a sense of like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. So I don't always know that I'm actually gonna create the best thing, but I just know that the process of trying to create it.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  You know how to do that.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Well, I don't even know if I know how to do it. I just know that trying to do it is like, that's like the great gift of my life, just working, you know, there's always like. Your vision of the shining, amazing thing that you're actually gonna create, and you know you're never gonna actually reach that vision or reach that goal, but just the act of trying to reach it, to me, is the ultimate state. So like when I, so I wrote Bittersweet, it took me all these years, once again. And yeah, like I have moments where I'm like tearing my hair out over how the heck do I structure this chapter, I have no idea what to do. But then there's some deeper level where I feel like, well, you know, just the act of tearing my hair out over this is the right pathway.

• 20:44Lewis Howes?

  It's worth it, yeah.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:46Lewis Howes?

  I remember when I had Liz Gilbert on, I'm not sure if you're close with her as well, but...

• 20:50Speaker 00

  I know, yeah, she's great, she's great.

• 20:52Lewis Howes?

  I remember having her on, and she mentioned how she had this, you know, massive hit, You Pray Love, and then she was like, what do you do now, knowing that probably your best work, or your most successful work, is behind you, right? It's kind of like, did you have this sense after Quiet of, okay, this eight-year run of New York Times Bestseller list, what, 10 people in the world have done that? I don't know, for that long? Did you have this thought of like, how can I make the next thing as good? Or am I going to be as good as my previous work? Or are people gonna care as much?

• 21:30Speaker 00

  Well, I will say, so Liz Gilbert gave the most beautiful TED Talk on that exact topic, did you ever see that one?

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes, it's incredible.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  I watched that TED Talk like a million times before I ever gave mine, because to me, it was just amazing. So yeah, so I thought about that a lot as I was writing the second book.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  And I don't know, it's kind of a mix. So yeah, there's a feeling of like, all of that fear, but there's also something that you and I talked about earlier, about the feeling of like, well, if you connect with one person, that's, you know, that's the goal. And, and so I felt like, well, okay, you know, you want...

• 22:19Speaker 00

  To be spending all your time, you want to be connecting with as many people as you possibly can. But I also think there's something about just one intense one-on-one connection that is worth it.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  So that's what I focus on. And yeah, you know, and so now I have new letters coming in from people who have read Bittersweet and they'll talk about it.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Those to me are the mind-blowing moments.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  It's tough because so many of us want to have these accomplishments, or you want to reach the same thing that you did in a previous thing. But what I'm hearing you say is focusing more on the processes where you really get the joy and focusing on

• 22:59Lewis Howes?

  however many people consume it or engage with it and supporting them is really where the joy comes from.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, I feel like there's a kind of magic in it. Like, the reason I wanted to be a writer in the first place is because the feeling I would get reading a book of like the intense connection with the author. And the author might not even be alive anymore at the moment you're having that connection. And yet you're having it across the centuries. So that's what I'm in it for, you know, is trying to have those moments.

• 23:27Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. I feel like there isn't much wholeness in the world. I mean, there's so much addiction to outside things to try to create wholeness. Social media addiction, substances, whether it's alcohol, or vaping, or cigarettes, or drugs,

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  to sex addictions, to whatever it might be out there. Where do you think the emptiness is coming from? And why are so many people seeking wholeness and outside distractions?

• 24:01Speaker 00

  I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that, but

• 24:05Speaker 00

  I think our culture, we've been in trouble for a while because we and I say a while, I'm like, I'm actually dating this all the way back to the 19th century. Like, I talk about this in the book. Since then, we started asking ourselves the question of like, when something goes badly or well for someone, is that because of outside forces of good luck or bad luck, or is it about something inside the person? And the answer is probably really a mix of both. But increasingly, we started answering that question by saying, it's all about you, like, you know, you're totally determining everything. And from there, we started

• 24:47Speaker 00

  Categorizing people into born winners or born losers.

• 24:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  And I think, we may not admit it, but that's really how we think about ourselves and each other.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  Why do we categorize as born winners and losers?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Why? Because...

• 25:01Lewis Howes?

  I mean, based on like, you have a chapter about this in the book, about winners and losers.

• 25:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:05Lewis Howes?

  Is it about like, your parents have a certain amount, so you're going to be a winner? Or where you were born, or what type of winner and loser do you mean by that?

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean like, are you gonna be like a winner at the game of life? You know, and at different cultural moments, we define that differently. You know, nowadays, that looks like, you know, are you successful at work? Are you attractive? Are you, are you fit? Are you, all these things. And not only are you all those things, but do you achieve all those things very effortlessly?

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  And the more we are looking at ourselves and each other that way, the more we feel like we have to present the emotions of a winner. So we have to always seem happy and everything's easy for us. Nothing's too vulnerable.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Nothing bothers me.

• 25:51Speaker 00

  Nothing bothers me, yeah. You know, like the emotions that I talk about of sorrow and longing, which I actually believe are some of the most powerful emotions that connect us with each other and that connect us kind of with the heavens and, you know, with transcendence and with creativity. We don't allow ourselves to go there because to express sorrow and longing is to put yourself kind of on the loser's side of the emotional ledger. And so we can't be whole because we don't allow ourselves to talk about pain, even though that's part of life. Like, it should be no big deal. It should be no big deal because of course, everybody has it. Of course, everyone has these emotions. But, but we're afraid of how we'll be seen.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think people are afraid to cry in front of others? To be vulnerable, to say things that they're ashamed of? Uh, to say things that they're not proud of? Why do you think that is?

• 26:48Speaker 00

  I think people are afraid of falling in status, you know? Like, falling in, losing their status in the eyes of others. You know, that you'll, you'll topple a few ranks down on the social hierarchy if you admit to those things. Even though, you know.

• 27:04Lewis Howes?

  That's what also connects us to people too.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  That's what connects us. That's the thing. That is what connects us. I mean, there's a reason that like all our religions, they talk about suffering, what to do with the problem of suffering. And all our religions talk about the longing for a world that's more perfect and beautiful than this one. You know, like the longing for Eden, longing for Mecca, the longing for Zion. It's because we, we all come into this world with a sense of incompleteness and the desire to, you know, to articulate that and to reach a little closer for a place of, of real love and beauty. But we only allow ourselves to express that through, let's say, religion

• 27:51Speaker 00

  or through a few different pieces of art, let's say. We don't allow it in everyday chit chat, even though that's what connects us.

• 28:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's interesting because up until I turned thirty, I would say I lived in a world where I had to put on a certain mask, right? I had to project a strength, a confidence, knowing I have the answers, whatever it might be. I had to project a lack of weakness is what I felt like I needed to do in order to belong.

• 28:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 28:23Lewis Howes?

  Fit in, be accepted and be loved.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  And then I, I realized that was the thing that was holding me back from deepest levels of connection, intimacy, love, and the full range of emotions, I would say, in a conscious way. And when I started to kind of peel back the masks and be vulnerable in certain settings and seasons of life, I was able to release a lot of pain, release a lot of shame, release a lot of things that were holding me back to feel loved like I'd never felt before. And it's a, you know, it's a work in progress of the last decade of figuring that out and unlearning, but it's been a beautiful journey. And I find that.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  Vulnerability brings me so much deeper connection to people. And I think you gotta do it at the right time and season.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 29:16Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's not just like in every moment, you know, regurgitating a vulnerability. There's incredible power to vulnerability. Being able to connect with people when you reveal yourself.

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  And I think when you do that, you can create incredible things together. As opposed to just coming from a surface level.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Right, right. And you don't feel like you lost strength or power from doing that?

• 29:41Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  Or did you have moments of it?

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I've let go of relationships that maybe weren't in alignment to the vision I had now moving forward. And I've built a stronger, deeper community of people that are willing to go to the same place. And that's been a really cool thing.

• 29:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. You said an important thing as you were talking about that, which is, you know, you can't like be doing this all the time.

• 30:03Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 30:03Speaker 00

  And I do think it's important to say that, right? And there's even data showing that, you know, in certain circumstances, like if you're, if you're, let's say, the boss, you're the person who's under you, may not actually want you to be telling them everything that you might be going through. It might make them really uncomfortable. And you actually might, they might start to view you as a little bit less capable. So that's just one of those unfortunate realities that are also important to kind of lay out there. Like, we need to get to a place where those realities live side by side with being able to show up with all our different emotions.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And it's also, yeah, you don't have chronic vulnerability where it's like all day long, you're coming from a sad, vulnerable, hurt place.

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 30:48Lewis Howes?

  It's like, at some point, you have to get into a different emotion, right?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  And have some courage and have some joy and express play and beauty and wonder and awe and love and connection. And maybe there's vulnerability in that and maybe there's not. But staying in kind of chronic sadness will keep you from a lot of the joys of life.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, we actually found, so in the book, I developed this bittersweet quiz that you can take to figure out like how prone you are to these states of bittersweetness. And I developed the quiz along with Scott Barry Kaufman, who I know is also a friend of yours.

• 31:22Lewis Howes?

  He's incredible.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  He's so great. And David Yaden, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins. And so we ran all these different correlations to figure out if you tend to be prone to this bittersweet kind of acceptance of joy and sorrow, what else goes along with that? And what we found, to your point, is that people who are high in bittersweetness are also high in states of awe and wonder and spirituality.

• 31:50Lewis Howes?

  When you have sadness and joy.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  When you can access both.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  When you can access both, because what it's really saying, if you can access both, is that you're kind of open and receptive to everything that the world brings. And you're open and receptive to yourself and to all your different emotional states, as opposed to like only being in sadness, which is probably, there's probably something about joy that you're afraid of or something like that. Or if you're only willing to go to a state of cheerfulness, it's probably because you're afraid of where sadness can take you.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, I had two interviews recently, one where I was on someone else's show and then someone who came on here, and both the individuals said that they hadn't cried in over a decade.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 32:36Lewis Howes?

  And they said this in the interview, and they both said, I acknowledge it's something I want to work on, right? It's something, I know there's something there.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  And I want to figure out what it is. But if someone, and they're two great people, inspiring, you know, kind people.

• 32:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  But both very driven, right? Driven for growth, business results, right? Where do you think that might come from if someone hasn't tapped into it yet or blocks the ability to feel the emotion of sadness, crying, tears, sorrow?

• 33:11Speaker 00

  I mean, of course, it's different for everyone, but I think for a lot of people there is, there's a fear of like, if I go to that place, I might never be able to come out again.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, I hear that from a lot of people, you know, I'll be like, I'll be stuck there.

• 33:28Lewis Howes?

  Be sad forever.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, and of course, it doesn't have to be that way at all, but I think there is a fear that many people have, or just like, yeah, like just not wanting to, not wanting to look at it.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think it's so scary to look at sadness for some people?

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Well, I mean sadness doesn't feel good, right? It just by its nature. I mean, I don't think it feels good either.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  So it's scary to look at anything that's painful, or it can be scary. I mean, it's different for different people. I actually find it scary, or let's say more difficult, to not talk about things that are so plainly true and right in front of us. To me, that would be the hard thing.

• 34:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, to just stuff it or to sweep it under the rug.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  And not expose it.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  It's like, it's right over there, so how can you not talk about it?

• 34:20Lewis Howes?

  The elephant is right here.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 34:23Lewis Howes?

  If someone listening or watching hasn't been able to tap into that emotion, what do you think is a strategy or something they could do to start practicing getting there? And feeling safe to go to those places without thinking they're going to be trapped there?

• 34:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a really good question. So I would start by looking for expressions of it that feel not so threatening to you. You know, and that might be music.

• 34:49Lewis Howes?

  A sad song, or...

• 34:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, which is actually how I got into this whole topic in the first place, was because I have this crazy intense reaction to sad music of feeling not actually sad when I hear it, but more like completely connected to humanity, because it feels like the music is expressing something that all humans express, and then turning it into something beautiful, which is something humans have the capacity to do. You know, we take something, we look at something painful, and we want to turn in the direction of meaning. You know, like after 9/11, suddenly all these people are signing up to be firefighters.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  And after the pandemic, they're signing up for medical school. Why do we do that? We do that because we look at something painful, and there is this human impulse to transform it into meaning. So the strategy for people you're talking about would be to find expressions of human sorrow that also feel meaningful and uplifting. And they're there everywhere, you know, whether it's in music, or art, or religion. I think sports is also another great one.

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  You know, like... Like, it's been really interesting, right? How, since around, what, the 1970s or 80s, suddenly, sports coverage became not only about studying the mechanics of the game and who won and who lost, but suddenly, we're telling emotional stories about all the players.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  Stories, yes. Their childhood, their parents, or...

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the pain they had to overcome to get to where they are, all of it. So, there, so I think for everybody, there are different portals or gateways that they can kind of go through to get this, to this state of a kind of elevated connection with other people through, through accepting it all.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing that you think all people want the most, but they're also the most afraid of?

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Love. Yeah, I think that's what everyone really wants the most. Like, they want, they want a kind of perfect and unconditional love.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  Why are they afraid of love?

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Because they're afraid that they're not gonna get the true love that they longed for. You know, like you described it, right? Like, six months, you got a, you got a great six months, you got a great run, and then, and then you hit that wall.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  And said, and probably that wall would come with a huge sense of, like, a crushing disappointment, right?

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  Like, I had love, and now I don't.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Now it's gone, and how do I get back to it?

• 37:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  It's always like, how do I get back to that?

• 37:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that's what people are fundamentally longing for.

• 37:28Lewis Howes?

  How can people get to a place of fully loving themselves and feeling whole so that they have that unconditional love with themselves all the time? And they don't need to seek it in someone else or something else?

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Right, right. One of the important things that I think most people need to do is internalize their parent. Like, the parent, you can pick your mother or father, whoever it was who most represented, like, a deep love to you. Or if you didn't have such a parent... To, it doesn't have to be even someone you know. You know, it could be like the Virgin Mary. It could be like a representation of love. And to really internalize that being, that essence, as part of you and carry it with you where you go. And be able to speak to yourself in the words of that nurturing parent figure. Especially when you need it most.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  And ultimately, you'll need it less and less because it'll just become, you know, absorbed into you. But I think really to be, like to literally be able to speak to yourself the way a parent would speak to a kid who needs encouragement. You know, like literally say the words. Like if, if your parent figure spoke to you or you wish they had spoken to you with specific terms of endearment, use those terms of endearment for yourself. You know, no one has to hear you do it, but do it in your mind or write it down. Speak to yourself that way until it becomes part of you.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  How long does it take for someone to get whole?

• 39:03Speaker 00

  I think it depends where they're starting from, you know? And we're all on the journey to some degree forever.

• 39:09Lewis Howes?

  Is there a process if there's someone saying, I feel like I'm a half a person? Or I feel like I'm a fracture of who I should be? What would you say is the process or the method they could take to start rebuilding, reshaping their identity or worth to where they feel, oh, I'm a whole person and I can feel a wide range of emotions and that's okay?

• 39:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd say little by little by little. Like just the way we were saying with the public speaking, you know? To just take it like one step every single day. You know, whatever it is. And it's hard to speak in generalities because everyone's lack of wholeness looks very different. But, you know, like if your thing is a fear, you know, take one little step in the direction of like overcoming that fear. You know, or if your thing is not being able to open up to people, let's say, because you're afraid of what might happen. If you really open up, you know, take one little step every day. Have a little bit more openness.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  I like that. It's interesting. When I, when I started opening up about sexual trauma as a child, I remember I did it in a workshop first to a group of people that I didn't really know, right? It was the scariest thing I'd ever done. But I was also like, okay, I may never see these people again. So who cares, right? It took a lot of courage to do and it was after two weekends with this group of people.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  But afterwards, I remember saying, oh, shoot. Okay. How do I tell this to my family or my best friends? You know? They may disown me, or they may judge me, or who knows? And that's a scary thing to open up and say how I feel. And I remember talking to a therapist friend at the time. I said, what do I do in this situation? She said, go to the person you feel like will receive this the most first. You feel like it's the most open.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  Don't say this to the person who's going to be resistant to hearing it first. To the person you feel most open to build baby steps, just like you were talking about. And ask each family member, ask them this question first, to see if it's appropriate to tell them. Ask them, is there anything that I could ever do or say that would make me not love you? Or that would make you not love me? Is there anything I could ever do or say that would make you not love me? And ask them that first and see how they respond. And so I started asking my family members one by one this question. I said, hey, I've got something I want to share, but is there anything? But I'm kind of nervous. I'm nervous to share with you. I feel really raw right now.

• 41:42Lewis Howes?

  And I want to know, is there anything that I could ever do or say in my life that would make you not love me? And each one of them were like, absolutely not, there's nothing, right? So and then it gave me permission, one by one, to build that courage, to feel like I'm healing that relationship with myself and with them.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:58Lewis Howes?

  By revealing it. So I think that that approach had worked for me. So I think that's a good approach.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then you got to the point where you shared it with the public, and you couldn't say to the public, is there anything?

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 42:10Speaker 00

  That I could do that would make you not love me? But it must be that by that point, you loved yourself enough that you didn't need to ask that question.

• 42:17Lewis Howes?

  I loved myself enough, and I knew that I had my friends and family there.

• 42:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  Even if the world hated me, right? Or thought I was a loser or something. I was like, okay, well, at least I've got my friends and family. And I was like, I need to do this. Because if it could help one person.

• 42:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:32Lewis Howes?

  Heal, it would be worth it. Even if I lose everything in my business, it would be worth it. And I also thought to myself, I have a responsibility because there's, the more I started to study this, the more I realized that men everywhere were suffering. One in six men have been sexually abused. That's the statistic in America, one in six men. It's one in four for women, which is obviously more. But women in general have a place to share and have a place to. Have support to talk about it, whereas I didn't know any man who had talked about it. And so men were just suffering.

• 43:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:06Lewis Howes?

  And then using anger as their way to share and express themselves.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:10Lewis Howes?

  I was thinking if men could have a place to share this pain without anger, or through anger in a healthy way, then men could heal and relationships could heal in the world as well.

• 43:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  And that, and I was like, if I don't do that, then I know I have the ability to potentially help someone. And I'm not doing it because I'm scared.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 43:30Lewis Howes?

  And then it was like this nagging thing for six months. It was like, you gotta do this.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  And so after six months, you kind of like.

• 43:38Lewis Howes?

  After six months, then I.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  Went over the cliff.

• 43:40Lewis Howes?

  I remember I recorded a session. I called Jonathan Fields.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 43:44Lewis Howes?

  I said, Jonathan, and I called Glennon Doyle, and I asked her for some advice as well on this. And I called Jonathan, I said, listen, I'm thinking about doing this. And will you interview me or will you guide me talking about it on my show? So that I can get it out there, because he's a very spiritual, grounded human being. I was like, can you just create a safe space for me to talk about it and ask me questions and guide me? Because I was like, I don't know how to do this on my own. So I reached out to him, he helped me. And then I reached out to Glennon, and then I waited another three months after I recorded it. Because I was just, should I put this out there, you know? Glennon Doyle helped me like write the article and the whole thing to put it out there.

• 44:25Lewis Howes?

  Because I didn't want it to go out in a way that was anything but in service.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 44:31Lewis Howes?

  I was like, I didn't want people to think it was some ulterior motive. I was just like, here's what I'm doing. I want to help men and create a space. But I like your approach, your method of like baby steps until you feel more whole and love yourself more and feel comfortable before you take the bigger steps.

• 44:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it's little by little by little. Like that, that really is how we change with everything.

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and to know, I mean, there's a psychologist at Stanford, her name is Laura Karstensen. And she's done all this research showing that when people are more in touch with life's fragility, like they've accepted it, that.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  All these other things come with that state. You know, they become less angry, they have more gratitude. They start focusing on meaningful relationships and activities of meaning. And she first saw this in older people. Because when you get to be, you know, seventies or eighties, you like know that life is fragile. You know, you only have a few years left at that point. But then she started noticing that she was finding this also with younger people who had had life circumstances that had made them have to face fragility. So I think like just knowing that, you know, there's so much research out there. It's like all our wisdom traditions, they all tell us that going down this path takes you to a place of more meaning and more acceptance.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  And you kind of just have to trust that.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  There's a, I think the country of Bhutan, I don't know if you've heard of this, but they, they think about their death five times a day. They reflect on it for a moment, five times throughout the day. And I'm sure there's different countries or religions that do this.

• 46:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:14Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's really powerful if you create different moments in your day. I think someone has a tattoo that says like, you know, you're gonna die. And it's like just looking down at your wrist or looking at a reminder, an alarm come up five times a day. It's like this will all end.

• 46:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Allows you to focus on perspective, allows you to feel deeper, allows you to have urgency in your life, allows you to say the things you need to say and not hold back, all these different things.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, I actually started doing that.

• 46:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, because I was writing about that practice while I was working on Bittersweet. And I thought, okay. You know, and I read about all these people doing it, like the Stoics would do it. They, or like these grand generals in ancient Greece, they would win a battle. And they would be like marching victoriously through the amphitheater. And they would have a guy going along with them at the back of their horse saying, "You're gonna die, you're gonna die." So that they would never lose sight of that. So I was like, okay, you know, what would this mean if I tried this? And it...

• 47:14Speaker 00

  It led to so many just differences in how I spent my time. Like, I noticed at the time I was doing it, my kids were pretty little and we had this bedtime ritual. And I was also really busy at that time. So, truthfully, even though I loved the bedtime ritual, it was really hard for me not to be checking my phone. It would be like, you know, one of my sons would like look away for a minute and I'd be like, okay, did I get an email? And, but then I started doing this practice. And it completely changed it. Like, I would literally say to myself, you know, you might not be here tomorrow, he might not be here tomorrow, we have no idea. And I didn't feel freaked out or anything, it didn't make me anxious. It was more just like a reminder.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 47:58Speaker 00

  And then I just started leaving the phone in another room and it wasn't like an act of willpower. It was like my perspective just totally shifted.

• 48:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think Marcus, there's a story about Marcus Aurelius that, that he would bring someone with him to walk through, like the town, because everyone was praising him.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:16Lewis Howes?

  And they brought someone with him to say that you're just a man, like whispering in his ear constantly to remind him of like, not to get too high

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:23Lewis Howes?

  on yourself and think you're like this godlike because you can die just like everyone here.

• 48:27Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, right before you came in, I was talking to some of the team. And I was saying, you know, a couple of years ago, I looked up a stat, I was just like, I'm curious how many people die every day in the world? It's about 150,000 people die every day, on average. 150 to 180,000 on average in the world that they calculate. Might be a little more, a little, little less, but I was like, 150,000 people died today and we're not one of them. That's a blessing, you know, that's the ultimate gift, we're still here today. 150,000 people, that's a, that's two football stadiums, you know, that didn't wake up. And we did. And so there's perspective there and it's finding those moments, whether it's five times a day reminding yourself you're gonna die,

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  or just every day waking up and realizing you're not one of the 150,000 people that didn't wake up. Something to create that perspective, I think will also Create more sweetness in our life. You know, when there's, because like you said, there's going to be, you started writing this before the pandemic.

• 49:28Speaker 00

  I did.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  But there's going to be pain, loss, sadness, heartache, suffering, no matter what in life. There's going to be challenge. There's seasons of beautiful joy and everything's working out and other seasons where bam, everything hits you at the same time, it seems like.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:47Lewis Howes?

  And so when those moments happen, which they will for all of us, it sounds to me like we don't want to suppress our emotions. We want to have, we also don't want to go down a dark hole of sadness for forever. But we want to be able to experience the full range of emotions in a healthy way is what I'm hearing you say.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, and, and you know, the flip side of what you just said is it's also the case that when we're going through times that do feel like they're like tilted towards the dark, there's also always joy there. Like that's the thing, like if you're really in touch with joy and sorrow at all times. Like we were talking before about how I dedicated the book to Leonard Cohen and the epigraph is the line from his song Anthem that there's a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in. So to be able to remember that also, you know, even at the darkest times, there's always that light coming through and it's always available to us.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  So.

• 50:47Lewis Howes?

  I think there's, you know, what's the Japanese art?

• 50:51Speaker 00

  Oh, wabi sabi?

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Or it's called, whether like when something breaks and they put it back together with gold?

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Oh, that's kintsugi.

• 50:57Lewis Howes?

  Kintsugi?

• 50:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but yeah.

• 51:00Lewis Howes?

  Kintsugu or kintsugi or something, yeah, where it's like, okay, here's something that broke, there's a lot of sadness. Let's actually make it more beautiful. The cracks by filling in the cracks.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly.

• 51:11Lewis Howes?

  With gold or whatever they do, this, this paint was actually, oh, it's actually got this more beautiful character now. Because it's not perfect.

• 51:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 51:19Lewis Howes?

  There is fragility to it.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's what I would say to people who are like afraid that if they go in that direction, they'll never be able to come out again. That's not actually what all these wisdom traditions teach. They teach the opposite, you know, that, that there's always a way to, to turn in the direction of beauty.

• 51:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes, when I went to, I studied meditation at different places, but when I went to India to study for a few weeks. They talked about, um, this place I went to talked about, there's two states of being. A suffering state, or an energetic state of suffering, or a beautiful state. A state of beauty, which could be gratitude, joy, love, peace. You know, all these different things, where suffering could be, you know, sadness, anger, resentment, fear, anxiety, suffering state. And they taught that the best way to get out of suffering and into a beautiful state is to stop thinking of self in terms of like, oh, why is this happening to me?

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  And actually putting attention on service, giving. Not on, why am I not getting something that I want? Instead, creating that in the world and giving. Removing from suffering into a beautiful state by your action of giving and service. So, it's something I think that when we are... I've been curled up in a ball many times in my, in my bed, in my, my early twenties and my teens, because I didn't know how to manage emotions. And I was always focused on me. Why is this happening to me? Why did I not get what I wanted? Why did this person hurt me? Why did, you know, why this to me? And I would just sit there and be sad. And I would go down a dark hole for many days sometimes.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  And it wasn't until I said, okay, this sucks, this is unfortunate, but how can I use this for good? That's when I was able to get out of it.

• 53:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, that's what your whole life has been. And I bet you every single person who you've admired or used as role models for yourself and for others along the way, I bet you every single one of them, that the narrative, the overarching narrative is that they took some kind of pain and turned it into something else.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 53:31Speaker 00

  And that's like the ultimate goal. That's the ultimate goal. Like I say, like whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  Give me an example.

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Oh gosh, there's so many. Okay, so like there's one story I tell in the book about Maya Angelou. So, she, she, she had such a harrowing childhood, you know, like her...

• 53:54Speaker 00

  She and her brother were effectively abandoned by their parents, who sent them off to live with relatives. And she faced terrible racism. And she was raped when she was eight years old. Like terrible stuff. And like it was so bad that she literally stopped talking for five years. She did not speak to anybody besides her brother. Five years, not a word. And then she, and then when she's like 13 years old, and she writes about this in her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. When she's about 13, this woman takes her under her wing and starts reading to her from A Tale of Two Cities.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  And Angela recalls how the words sounded like music in the way that this woman said them. And there's also this amazing detail that she describes about the woman. She says, like she was this very lovely, elegantly turned out person, very gracious. She said she often smiled, but she never laughed. So it was kind of like this allusion to the fact that the woman herself had been through whatever it was. And the woman succeeds in opening up the young Maya. And so she then starts putting forth her own, you know, memoirs and plays and poetry and everything that she did. And there's an amazing twist to the story,

• 55:18Speaker 00

  which is that 30 years later, there was this other little girl who grew up in a situation that was almost like uncannily like the young Maya's. And she reads Maya's memoir, Angela's memoir. And she says, oh, my gosh, that's me. And she can't believe that there's another person out there who's had her story and transformed it into something else. And that little girl who was reading that memoir was Oprah.

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 55:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, and so that's just like one example, but I think there's almost no heroic figure that we admire where if you scratch the surface of your life, you wouldn't find some version of that same story. Like, that's really the, we hear about the hero's journey. That's what the hero's journey really is.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Yeah, someone once said that in business, you're perfectly suited to serve the struggling person you once were and overcame.

• 56:15Speaker 00

  Oh, wow, that's good.

• 56:17Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean? It's just like.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, totally.

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  What do I need to do in a business? Well, where were you struggling five to 10 years ago that you overcame?

• 56:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 56:24Lewis Howes?

  Help someone overcome that struggle. You're, you're an expert in that thing.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:28Lewis Howes?

  Even if you can only help a few people, it's like get started doing the thing that you struggled with the most and overcame.

• 56:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:35Lewis Howes?

  That's why you see people in the fitness industry, it's like, I lost 100 pounds. Let me show you how I, I suffered for 20 years with this and let me show you how to do this for other people that were suffering, right? It's like.

• 56:47Speaker 00

  I'm glad you're using the business example because, you know, when I say like, whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your creative offering. I'm using that word creative like really broadly. You know, it can mean anything. It just means like, you know, bringing something into being.

• 57:01Lewis Howes?

  You could do painting, you could do whatever it might be.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  Right, but it doesn't have to be that. It could be, you know, being a fitness instructor or whatever it is for you.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think that's what it is because there's a lot of people that, you know, struggle with being overweight or obese or something and then they finally overcome the challenge and get in shape and get healthy.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  And get back a life maybe they wanted or get their self-confidence back. And so that person is perfectly suited to serve other people that were in that situation they once were in.

• 57:31Speaker 00

  Yes, that is right.

• 57:32Lewis Howes?

  And to be a teacher.

• 57:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  And to give back and however they want to create that information, you know. Maya Angelou did it through a memoir and books and you could do this through a course or you know, whatever it might be.

• 57:43Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  Or teaching one-to-one or classes or anything like that. So I think that's what, um, what people can do, but I love that story. You know, no one relates to the person that has not had some pain in their life. It's hard to relate to someone that's perfect.

• 57:59Speaker 00

  Well, because we know it's not true.

• 58:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  It's just, there's no way that it's true. And so then you're not relating to a real person. That's what it really is. It's not only that they're too successful and therefore like on a whole other plane from us. It's also that like we sense that there's something not authentic about it.

• 58:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's off, yeah.

• 58:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:16Lewis Howes?

  And what's the difference between perfect love and unconditional love?

• 58:20Speaker 00

  Ah, um, well, I don't know the answer to that exactly. I think that we, I think that perfect, call it perfect love, call it unconditional love. I think it's something that, um, exists. It's a kind of like, we can get closer and closer and closer to that state that we yearn for. I don't think we get there fully in this lifetime.

• 58:48Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  And that accepting that is actually part of what helps us to have great and enriching love relationships.

• 58:59Speaker 00

  But yeah, no, I, I talk about this a lot in the book, the, like, the longing for the state in which, the longing for that state of perfect union, you know, perfect everything, perfect beauty, all of it. We're born to exist in that state of longing and we know from all the wisdom traditions that to dive into that longing brings us ever closer to the thing that we're longing for, even if we don't ever fully, fully reach it.

• 59:27Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:27Speaker 00

  And I think the more we accept that, the healthier our love relationships can be because otherwise it can be like what you were describing where you were like, you know, I just spent the first six months with someone and we were in the Garden of Eden, um, but somehow we got kicked out.

• 59:47Lewis Howes?

  Now we're in hell.

• 59:48Speaker 00

  Now we're in hell.

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  And how do we get back to Eden? Yeah.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 59:52Lewis Howes?

  Because you ate the apple. Ah, don't eat the apple.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And you know, it might just be that you were with the wrong person.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, exactly.

• 1:00:02Speaker 00

  But it can also be that, like... It's not really our state in this world to exist in Eden forever. And if we expect that, then that can prevent us from having, from working, from building the healthy relationships that we're seeking.

• 1:00:18Lewis Howes?

  And that's probably why when we hear a song that is so perfect, or we see a piece of art that just looks almost perfect, or we see a a perfect catch on a football game, and you're like, that's when we feel awe.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Exactly, because you're like, oh, I just saw Eden.

• 1:00:37Lewis Howes?

  A moment of perfection.

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  Or you have this night with your partner where it's just like, everything is beautiful and every synchronicities and the connection and intimacy. It's like this perfect night, you're like, this awe, right? It's the, it's the bittersweet. And then the next day you wake up and you're like, you smell her bad breath or something, right? You're like, oh, you know, it's like, this bittersweet experience. Searching and yearning for the, the perfect, the unconditional, but knowing there's only moments of it.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And to know that there are only moments of it is actually like, it's incredibly empowering. Like, it makes you love those moments when you have them. You know, and not like despair when you don't have them, because that's the nature of existence.

• 1:01:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Would you say that you unconditionally love yourself?

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  That's a good question. I think it depends on what you mean by it, because

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  I feel like there's a sense in which I do, but if you listen to the, like, my, my inner dialogue sometimes, you know, I have the same issue that I think many people do of like,

• 1:01:47Lewis Howes?

  What do you say to yourself?

• 1:01:48Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh, I don't know, you know, like, like, I just said a stupid thing, or I didn't say the right thing, or, you know, I should have done this, or I should have done that. And it's hard for me to tell where that, where those voices come from. It doesn't really feel like it's me talking to me. It more feels like,

• 1:02:09Speaker 00

  it's like my perception of what some outer force would say, and then I'm grappling with it. Which is why I say like, underneath it, I kind of feel like I'm on my own side. And yet, those voices are coming from somewhere. Does that make sense?

• 1:02:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I hear you there. How, how do you think it would, what would it take for us as humans to stop judging ourselves? But also have humility and have constructive feedback in a healthy way for ourselves to improve and grow and expand.

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 1:02:41Lewis Howes?

  And not think we have it all figured out.

• 1:02:42Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:02:43Lewis Howes?

  How do we, how do we get to that place where we're not internally judging, shaming, making wrong, doubting?

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Lewis Howes?

  But also looking to improve, looking to grow in a healthy way?

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:02:57Lewis Howes?

  So it's more unconditional love?

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I don't think that there's anything about increasing our self-love that brings with it arrogance or, you know, disinterest in growth or anything like that. I think the fact that we tend to see those things as being connected is a huge misunderstanding.

• 1:03:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  It's actually the opposite. I think the more you have true self-love, the more you would be quite humble and quite interested in growing.

• 1:03:22Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:03:23Speaker 00

  Um, but there's a technique and a practice that I think is really useful, a metta. I don't know if, loving-kindness meditation.

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:03:33Speaker 00

  Um, I actually write about this. I studied it with Sharon Salzberg, who's one of our great meditation teachers. And it's basically this practice where you wish yourself and all the people in your life, including your easiest relationships and your most difficult relationships.

• 1:03:54Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:03:54Speaker 00

  And then you wish everyone on earth and you wish, you know, the guy at the gas pump. You wish everybody who you're passing, like step by step by step, you're wishing everybody love, you're wishing them well-being, you're wishing them peace and freedom from suffering and all of it. And it is really transformative when you do it. It's like, it feels a little bit formulaic at the time, but I've noticed whenever I do it, then I like go out into the world and I'm just much more likely to beam into that state of mind.

• 1:04:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what is that? Prayer or meditation or a mantra? Is it a?

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  It's a meditation.

• 1:04:23Lewis Howes?

  Meditation?

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm actually putting a version of it up on my website for people who are curious. Like I have my own, my own version of it that I've developed.

• 1:04:30Lewis Howes?

  You make your own version?

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  You can. I mean, there's a, there's a traditional metta version.

• 1:04:35Lewis Howes?

  How's it go?

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  Um, here, wait, I'll give you, because I always do my own stuff, but I'll tell you the traditional one. Okay, so the interesting thing is, so Sharon Salzberg, who taught this to me, she first studied this in Burma. And the phrases that she was given to repeat were, "May I be free from danger?" "May I be free from mental suffering?" May I be free from physical suffering? May I have ease of well-being?

• 1:05:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:05Speaker 00

  What's interesting is she started teaching this in the States. And all these people were coming up to her and saying, I don't really like using these negative words like danger and suffering and all that. So for Americans, she had to turn it around. Yeah, and she made it like, may I be safe? May I be happy? May I be healthy? May I live with ease?

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's cool.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  You started out asking about self-love. And what's interesting is like traditionally with this practice, you would start by wishing all these good things to yourself before you move on to others. But a lot of Americans have trouble with that. They feel uncomfortable wishing these things to themselves first.

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 1:05:44Speaker 00

  There's something in us that makes us feel like it's selfish and wrong to be doing that. To be, I, I think it's because of the way that we confuse self-love with arrogance.

• 1:05:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Even though the opposite is what's true.

• 1:05:59Lewis Howes?

  What is the difference between self-love and arrogance?

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  Well, self-love is just wishing yourself well. Arrogance is thinking that you're better than other people. And that you don't have to care so much about other people. You know, it's holding them with a degree of contempt. Whereas this is much more of a practice of acceptance of yourself and everyone around you. Very different.

• 1:06:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think growing up, uh, when I grew up in the eighties, especially in the Midwest and the sports culture, let's say it was all about winning, right? And you're praised for when you won.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Lewis Howes?

  I wasn't praised for getting a third place trophy or a 10th place trophy. I guess like kids are now, it's like everyone's celebrated for whatever place, which I get the celebrating the participation, but it was more about, I wish it was more about the effort that people were celebrating. But back then it was like you either win or you're a loser if you're second. It's like, doesn't matter how great your performance was, you lost.

• 1:06:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:54Lewis Howes?

  So everything was focused on doing whatever it took to win. And so my sophomore year in college, I broke the world record for the most receiving yards in a single game. So no one in the history of the world had ever done something that I did. 418 receiving yards in one game. It was more than in any, in any college football game, professional game, high school. And we lost the game.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  We'd lost by like a few points at the end.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  And I was the last one out of the locker room, beating myself up, focused on what I could have done better.

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:31Lewis Howes?

  I didn't even know that actually broke the record until after I got out of the shower. I remember my coach coming in, I was the last one to get out of the shower. And he told me this, and he was kind of like congratulating me, but we also just lost. So it was hard to celebrate it and I was like so confused because I was like, man, my effort was so good. But it wasn't good enough to win. But I wasn't even willing to celebrate the effort at that time because I was so focused on like you either win or you're a loser and you're not worthy of love.

• 1:08:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:00Lewis Howes?

  Right? It was kind of like where my feelings were around. And so I think it's hard to unwind that.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  I know, and I totally get it. I mean, both of my sons play sports and I've seen that exact same thing. Like they'll come off the soccer field and I'll be like.

• 1:08:13Lewis Howes?

  Score three goals and you lose, but you're like.

• 1:08:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I'll be like, oh, well, you know, I know you lost, but like those goals were really great, just so you know. And they'll be like, who cares? We lost the game. But I don't know, at the same time, I think that there's a way, I don't think it's wrong to want to win or to have things like sports where there's a winner and a loser. Like I think that's completely consistent with being able to say that the goal is unconditional self-love, even while you might be bummed that you lost the game.

• 1:08:41Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:08:41Speaker 00

  But I think we think those, those two things are inconsistent because we think, no, if you lost the game, it means you're a loser as opposed to you're a human who sometimes wins and sometimes loses.

• 1:08:53Lewis Howes?

  How do we reshape that thought process if we don't get the job we wanted? If we don't get the relationship we wanted, or the person says no to us and rejects us? Or we get fired or whatever, we don't get the deal we want?

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Lewis Howes?

  We lose the game. How do we keep our identity whole and loving and full? And not tied to losing or failing at the external things?

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  It's that just something happened and maybe you did put in enough effort and it happened anyway. Maybe you didn't put in enough effort and you're going to put in more next time. But I think the real mind shift is that we. See it as that when we're winning, when things are going well, that's the main road. And when we lose, that's like a detour off the main road. And now we feel like, oh, my gosh, we're stuck in a detour in the hinterlands over here. As opposed to thinking it's all the main road. It's all the main road. This is just part of what happens in life. And I'm gonna, next time, put in all the effort and all that stuff, but not see it as like this fundamentally unnatural state that casts us out into the realm of losers.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  That's the use of the term loser has risen astronomically in recent decades. And that's what we've got to figure out how to get away from.

• 1:10:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:17Speaker 00

  You can lose without being a loser. That's really what I'm saying.

• 1:10:20Lewis Howes?

  What is the superpower that an introvert has that an extrovert doesn't have?

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  There's a, there's a power in being able to spend time in solitude. I mean, like, we know with creativity, for example, you can't really do great creative work without quite a bit of time spent alone. Like, in our culture, we only focus on the part of creativity that's about exchanging ideas or going out on stage and sharing your ideas. And that's all good. But you also need the time alone, which for introverts comes much more easily.

• 1:10:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:53Speaker 00

  And, and then, like, when it comes to leadership, there's a way in which introverts lead, where they're much more apt to be asking questions of the people around them and soliciting ideas, and then, like, taking the best of those ideas and running with them. Whereas for an extrovert, what comes more easily is, like, inspiring and rousing the troops and all that. But they can be so dominant or just irrepressible that they're only getting their own ideas and they're not getting in as many inputs from others.

• 1:11:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:11:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:11:28Lewis Howes?

  And what is the superpower to feeling sadness over joy?

• 1:11:32Speaker 00

  Well, I would call it the superpower of feeling sadness and joy.

• 1:11:36Lewis Howes?

  Both. Just one is not a superpower.

• 1:11:38Speaker 00

  Right, yeah, just one. It's more that in our culture, we know joy is a superpower. Like, no one will doubt that one. What we need is to resurrect the power of sadness. And the power of it is, well, as we've said, that it's one of the most powerful ways that we have of connecting with each other, to be able to really share and really open up. Humans are evolutionarily designed to do this. Like, if I see you or someone struggling, we all have a vagus nerve. It's the biggest bundle of nerves in our bodies. And it activates when we see somebody else suffering.

• 1:12:13Lewis Howes?

  We want to help them.

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  We want to help them.

• 1:12:14Lewis Howes?

  Reach out, we want to connect, we want to lend a hand.

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, and this is part of who we are evolutionarily. Because we were designed to be able to care for vulnerable infants. And then we, like, you know, came up with this capacity to do that in general. So, the power to connect, the power to be creative, like creativity in its essence for most people, it's like, it's trying to turn pain into something else. Or it's trying to get closer to that perfect world, you know, that you were talking about, like, when you see the perfect jump shot, or whatever it is. You're like, trying to get closer, so you build something new. And it's connected to transcendence, and to wonder, and awe, all of it.

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  How does an introvert let go of the need to people please? And get back to a place of saying, creating boundaries and saying no? So that they can actually stay charged throughout the day, as opposed to lose their charge?

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  So, I'll tell you, like, the mind shift, and then I'll tell you, like, the concrete practice.

• 1:13:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  The mind shift is, you have to feel entitled to be who you are. I cannot tell you how many letters I get from people who are like, it's really amazing. They're like, you know, as soon as I started feeling like... I was not just okay, but powerful in who I was. The more successful I became in the outward facing world, you know, like at a job interview or something. Because you're starting to show up as yourself instead of showing up trying to be somebody else. And in terms of the concrete tip there,

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  introverts desperately need to be scheduling in recharge time where they get to be alone. For some people, it's taking a nap. Or for somebody else, it's taking a walk, like whatever it is. You should be putting that into your calendar as many times a day as you need it and honoring that commitment just as fiercely as you would a commitment to a client or colleagues or whomever. And if you have trouble doing that because you feel guilty about it, just remind yourself that you're going to be so much more present for everyone else if you've taken that time for yourself.

• 1:14:22Lewis Howes?

  How does social media play in with introverts? Because if you're experiencing all these micro doses of interactions with people, but you're not physically around them, does that drain you just as much? If you're on your screen interacting conversations all day? Or does it not feel the same?

• 1:14:41Speaker 00

  It goes both ways. It doesn't feel the same on the one hand, right? Because it's like, it's still just this one source of inputs as opposed to, you know, a gazillion that you might feel at a party. But on the other hand, you know, as you said, social media is just like, it's really self-presentation media. And I think that's draining to the soul for everybody.

• 1:15:03Lewis Howes?

  It's learning to manage that.

• 1:15:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:15:06Lewis Howes?

  What else do we need to know about bittersweet that we can take with us today?

• 1:15:15Speaker 00

  Gosh, I would say, so I spent all these years studying all these, what all these traditions have to say about this. And the one thing that they all have in common is the idea that

• 1:15:28Speaker 00

  When we're faced with a pain, there's kind of two roads, you know, and one road is to leave the pain unattended to you in one way or another. And then you end up taking it out on yourself and it shows up as depression or it shows up as severe anxiety or you're taking it out on somebody else and it shows up as abuse or passive aggression or addiction or, you know, whatever it is. And then the other road is to take a pain and, as we said, to try to turn it into something else.

• 1:15:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  You know, not to minimize what it is, but to turn in the direction of meaning. Because that's what we were born to do.

• 1:16:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I love this. I'm excited about this. I want people to get a copy, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. I think in a world where a lot of us feel empty, this is exactly what we need to start diving into to feel more whole and to create the practice of loving yourself with a full range of emotions.

• 1:16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:28Lewis Howes?

  Not stuffing, not masking, not hiding, and not staying trapped in one emotion as well.

• 1:16:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:16:34Lewis Howes?

  So you feel like you can't get out of it. So I want people to get the book and also check out Quiet for all the introverts in the world. That's going to be your, you know, essentially your introvert's bible, right? It's like, it's the go-to on how to know that you're not alone and how to know that there's a lot of power within being an introvert and having quiet. Like you said, I get my best ideas when I'm alone. You know, when I'm not with other people.

• 1:17:02Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting. So even for you, you do too?

• 1:17:05Lewis Howes?

  It's like when I'm on a run or on a walk or I'm on the drive and I don't have music on, right? It's like when I'm in silence, I might be in motion.

• 1:17:14Speaker 00

  Right. Yeah, motion helps for everyone.

• 1:17:16Lewis Howes?

  But I'm in silence, I'm not listening to anything, you know? And I'm listening to the inner voice.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Lewis Howes?

  That's when all the things are connecting in the brain and like the dots are coming, oh, this idea comes.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:30Lewis Howes?

  When that happens. So I actually want, I call it strategic messing around time. It's scheduling in time to just play, just to do nothing, to play, throw a frisbee. Just whatever it might be, or to go for a walk, giving myself that time is where I get some of my best ideas. Because if I'm always productive and doing, doing, doing, that I'm not, I'm not being and I'm not listening.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  And you're not generating.

• 1:17:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, not generating from a place of a space, right? It's like when you're always creating, it's hard to come up with the next beautiful idea.

• 1:18:04Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 1:18:05Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  I love that. You know, the, um, the amazing psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he did this study of creativity. And he found that extroverted teenagers who had a lot of creative talent in one domain or another, that they sometimes wouldn't realize all their talent because part of the process require solitude. And for the teens who just disliked solitude so much, they didn't have the space that they needed to develop.

• 1:18:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  So I, I worry about that sometimes with our schools because everything is now so group focused in schools.

• 1:18:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, it's all collaboration group focused, right?

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  It's all collaboration group focused, which like, that's hard on the introverts in one way. But I worry about the extroverted kids who aren't ever getting the training that they need to realize that they can actually thrive in solitude too.

• 1:18:54Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting because I was so afraid to be alone in growing up and I needed to be around people. And since it was early growing up, I didn't have friends. And so I felt worthless and a loser because no one would be friends with me. And then when I had friends, I didn't want to lose the friends.

• 1:19:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:19:12Lewis Howes?

  So I was like, let me, what are you guys doing? Let's do a play, let's do this, right? And I always wanted to be around people. When I got into my twenties, I remember thinking to myself, I don't like the way this feels. Needing to always be around people to feel like I'm good enough.

• 1:19:26Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, because of the word needing in that sentence.

• 1:19:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was like a needed like in order to feel loved or accepted. I was like, hmm, I really don't accept myself yet fully if I'm needing other people to accept me, to feel good. And so I gave myself a challenge for a couple of years.

• 1:19:45Lewis Howes?

  Where I was like, I'm gonna go out with myself alone a few times a week. I'm gonna go to lunch or dinner. I'm gonna go to movies alone, which I would have never gone to the movie alone. Never would have gone to lunch by myself. Would have felt too intimidated or too like, like I'm a loser just sitting here alone. And I did this for a few years and I got so, in a weird way, I fell in love with myself for the first time by just appreciating my own company. Sitting there and just enjoying lunch and just being able to observe people and say hi to people, but just being able to be there, go to a movie by myself, have some popcorn alone and just laugh or be a part of the movie experience alone. And it was one of the greatest gifts I gave myself because I no longer needed to spend

• 1:20:29Lewis Howes?

  time with people just to be around them. I could appreciate my alone time and I really value that now, whereas before I didn't because I couldn't accept myself.

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, it sounds like an aspect of self-love for you.

• 1:20:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  What's it called when you're in between? Extravert?

• 1:20:45Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, that's a good question. It's called an ambivert.

• 1:20:47Lewis Howes?

  Ambivert.

• 1:20:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:49Lewis Howes?

  Cause I love being around people, but I also love my alone time.

• 1:20:52Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:20:53Lewis Howes?

  Like I wanna go hang out with friends and do activities, but then I'm like, I just wanna be alone for like a half day.

• 1:20:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:00Lewis Howes?

  Susan, I'm so grateful that you decided to put this book out and I really wanna acknowledge you for your mission to serve people, using your gift, using your talent to create beautiful piece of art to share with others on how they can understand themselves better, how they can heal, how they can grow, how they can connect with others. These last couple of books are really inspiring and impacting a lot of people. So I'm grateful for your knowledge, I'm grateful for your lessons, the challenges you face in your life to make this from that space so that others can understand their lives. It's really cool what you've created and I hope this continues to do well for you with Bittersweet, because a lot of people feel empty and this can help them feel whole.

• 1:21:44Lewis Howes?

  So I'm really grateful for you.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  Well, thank you so, so much, Lewis. It's like such a joy and an honor to be here with you. I really appreciate it.

• 1:21:52Lewis Howes?

  I'm really grateful. I've got a couple of final questions.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 1:21:56Lewis Howes?

  But I want to make sure people get the book. I want them to go to SusanKane.net and take your quiz. You've got a quiz on there, you've got a newsletter on there, you've got a course. What's the course about?

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  It's actually, it's a bittersweet course. And what's cool about it is that it's, it's done through texts that we send to your phone, either through your text, your SMS, or through WhatsApp.

• 1:22:17Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  And so it's like every morning you wake up and there's an audio message from me, a written message, or all different things. Yeah, so it's just like little bursts that you wake up to every morning.

• 1:22:25Lewis Howes?

  What's it gonna help people with when they go to the course?

• 1:22:29Speaker 00

  It's a way of, of learning to live life with joy and sorrow, and then to come out in a more whole way at the end of it.

• 1:22:37Lewis Howes?

  So if we go to SusanKane.net, they can get all the information there.

• 1:22:40Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:22:41Lewis Howes?

  The book, make sure you guys get a few copies. This is a question I ask everyone towards the end. It's a hypothetical question called the three truths. So imagine you get to live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day. You get to accomplish everything you want to accomplish, you experience all the sorrows and joys of life, the awe, the beautiful art, music, all these things. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you to the next place. So no one has access to your books. This interview is gone. It's a hypothetical scenario.

• 1:23:12Speaker 00

  Wow, okay.

• 1:23:13Lewis Howes?

  Every interview you've ever had is gone, every article, everything. For whatever reason, it goes somewhere else. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you've learned. Three truths that you would share with the world. And this is all we have of your message. What would you say would be those three truths for you?

• 1:23:30Speaker 00

  Okay, so I guess one of them is the one that I already said before, but it's the true answer to the question. It's the idea of whatever pain you can't get rid of, make that your offering, make that your creative offering. And then another one, and this comes from, this is an idea from Quiet. Well, actually, this idea is really about both books, I would say. It's that I believe there are many different kinds of superpowers on offer in this world. You know, we know this from the movies, right? There's like lightsabers and there's wizards and there's, you know, people who climb up with spider feet or whatever they do.

• 1:24:10Lewis Howes?

  Spiderman, yeah.

• 1:24:11Speaker 00

  Spiderman, yeah, exactly. And each of us is given different kinds of superpowers. Like, you know, you only get the lightsaber, you only get the wizard's hat, you don't get them all. So, a lot of the key to life is figuring out what are the superpowers that you have been granted and using those and using them well.

• 1:24:30Lewis Howes?

  Amen to that.

• 1:24:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, and not thinking, well, I have to have some other superpower. Like, what's yours?

• 1:24:35Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  What's yours?

• 1:24:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, that's number two.

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  That's number two. And the third one, okay, this is a little bit, this isn't like a pithy one-sentence one, but, I'm never good at the piths. Okay. One of the lessons that I learned from doing all the bittersweet research, it comes from the Kabbalah, which is the mystical side of Judaism, and it's this parable. And the parable basically says that all of creation originally was one intact divine vessel of light. But then the vessel shattered, and the world we're living in now is the world after the breakage. But the shards of that vessel are scattered everywhere around us still.

• 1:25:22Speaker 00

  And so, what we can do in this broken world is everybody's gonna notice different shards of light, and what we can do is bend down and pick them up whenever we notice them. And I love this because to me, this is like the answer of how to live in a world that contains like so much tragedy and evil over here, and then so much joy and love and beauty over there. And like, it's, it can be overwhelming to think, how do I live with both of those? And I feel like this parable is giving us the answer. It's like, okay, don't expect it to be perfect, it's never gonna be utopia, but always you have the power to be bending down and picking up the light.

• 1:26:03Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  Always.

• 1:26:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. That's a great three truths. Final question.

• 1:26:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:26:11Lewis Howes?

  What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:26:12Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh.

• 1:26:16Speaker 00

  I don't know, the answer that just came into my head is love and like self-love and love of others.

• 1:26:23Speaker 00

  That's what I would say.

• 1:26:24Lewis Howes?

  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 want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.