3 Keys To Self-Mastery For Success EP 1362

Hitendra Wadhwa, PhD, is founder of the Mentora Institute and Mentora Foundation, host of the Intersections podcast, and a Professor of Practice at Columbia Business School. His widely acclaimed research and teaching on leadership have been covered by Fortune, CNN, Psychology Today, BBC World Service, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Inc., and Forbes. Check out Hitendra’s new book: INNER MASTERY, OUTER IMPACT: How Your Five Core Energies Hold the Key to Success. In this episode you will learn,The importance of inner work when pursuing mastery. How to answer tough questions using silence and solitude. How to find an abundance of love. They key steps to achieve enlightenment. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1362How To Change Your Behavior And Accomplish Your Goals: https://link.chtbl.com/1317-podHow To Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind To Manifest Your Dream Life https://link.chtbl.com/1312-podTransform Your Mind To Manifest & Attract Financial Abundance with Joe Dispenza: https://link.chtbl.com/1288-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

  All of the virtues, you know, the positive qualities that we admire in our heroes. Those are there and available for all of us freely in the universe at no cost or price. Except.

• 0:12Lewis 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.

• 0:36Lewis Howes?

  So why did you decide to want to start teaching about leadership from the inside out at business school? How did that come about first off?

• 0:48Speaker 00

  Well, you know, there's as always an outer story and then an inner story. You know, so the outer story is that we do in business school, you know, have an aspiration for students to also learn how to like engage and have impacts, you know, in terms of how do you inspire people and turn people around in moments of adversity and direct people and shape people and grow people and in all of that. But, you know, I felt that shouldn't the journey of that like leadership aspirant begin from within so that you first start to know how to inspire yourself and change yourself and grow yourself and direct yourself and advance your own self in times of adversity in other ways. And so, so that became the official positioning in all the class that this is filling a missing

• 1:33Speaker 00

  core in the journey of someone, you know, aspiring for the mantle of leadership. Sure. Which is that let's, let's focus first on getting you to a good place before you then help others get to a good place. Now, the inner story behind that though is that I was very drawn to inner mastery from a very young age. I remember being about nine or 10 when my parents, I saw a fairly significant shift happen in their life as they started to investigate and pursue kind of like spiritual growth for themselves. And pretty much around the same time for me, these questions started to become paramount, you know, which is what's the meaning of life and what's my connection with the universe and that star out there?

• 2:14Speaker 00

  You know, is it talking to me, you know, at night when I, I feel a mystic connection with it and. Is my family my only family? What about all these other people? I mean, you know, shouldn't they be as deserving of my love as the ones that I happen to be born into? You know, so these kinds of questions, what happens after death, you know, and all that. And now India is that way, you know, a place with so much wealth. Because truth seekers from ancient times have been studying these kinds of questions. I've written all kinds of scriptures and, you know, practices that are put out there that we could. So I could access and tap a lot of that, you know, from there.

• 2:52Speaker 00

  And so when I started to, you know, get more academic and school and after I think about my major in college. I thought like psychology, you know, I'm going to say that because I really wanted to dive further into the human condition. But I also started to find that at that time, now I'm referring back to the nineteen eighties. The psychology of that era was more focused on the dark states of the human mind. The dark states? Yes, like schizophrenia and depression and Bipolar, yeah. And the psychology of evil and bipolar and all of that. And while I, you know, really respect and applaud those researchers and scientists who have really invested in helping

• 3:35Speaker 00

  to support those people in great pain, I was really more interested in kind of like what you do, Lewis, right? Positive psychology, yeah. Greatness and genius and creativity and joy and harmony and all of that. And I just didn't see much of that there. So I, at that time, pursued my academic sort of degree in mathematics, which was also one of my great loves. And I continued to practice this inner mastery part more as a personal investigation, just my own kind of like spiritual, spiritual and personal practice. And so these two tracks for me got very split. The unofficial inner personal track and the official outer like pursuit of glory track. And so fast forward, I graduate from college, I come to the United States, I do my graduate degrees.

• 4:19Speaker 00

  Go and start working in business and these two tracks just getting more and more separated. And so when I came to Colombia, I had made a pledge to myself that I need to find a way to bring more harmony and integration, you know, across like all parts of me, not just kind of have have these be very separate pursuits.

• 4:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  And so this class really was an excuse and a platform for me to kind of like figure myself out.

• 4:44Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Really, that's the unofficial inner.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. So that started about fifteen years ago with this, right?

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:50Lewis Howes?

  And what has been the biggest, I guess, discovery you've had in the last fifteen years of teaching, but also learning and researching while you're teaching

• 4:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:59Lewis Howes?

  about inner mastery and outer impact?

• 5:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think I think my greatest learning has been consistent with, you know, a podcast that in my own very, very small way, you know, that I I I've started, you know, which Louis said, I'd love to have you on it.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  Let's do it. Yeah, yeah, let's do it. I'm in.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, thank you. It's called Intersections. And I think that's in some ways my biggest discovery that we tend to artificially split, you know, our life into different boxes. You know, the personal and the professional, the official and the unofficial, the public and the private, the scientist in us and the spiritualist in us, the inner and the outer, you know, all of that. But actually, they're all meant to be unified, you know, that if we are able to discover, you know, something that I call in my book, you know, our inner core, you know, the truest part of who we are from within and really aspire to let it shine through in everything we do.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Then suddenly, like, all these boundaries dissolve. The inner becomes the outer, the outer becomes the inner. One is a reflection of each other.

• 6:06Lewis Howes?

  Right. So that's been the common theme that you've been consistent with, inner core. And what does the inner core mean?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  The inner core to me is the space of highest potential, right? So everything that you talk about and do, it's kind of where you're seeking to direct your audience, you know, too, which is that within you lies a place where you are beyond ego, you're beyond attachments, you're beyond insecurities, you're deeply committed to some kind of noble uplifting heroic purpose. You're connected, you know, with life, with nature, with people.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:40Speaker 00

  You are curious and open to new learnings. You are very centered in a joyous intuitive spirit, you know, that arises from the very core of your being. And you're also very committed to just opening yourself up to truth in whichever form it comes.

• 6:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  You know, sometimes in a way that is comfortable, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes expected, sometimes unexpected, from any quarter. Inklings that arise from within as well as knocks that you get from the outside.

• 7:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  All of that is the universe just talking to you, just saying, hey, my daughter, my son, wake up, wake up.

• 7:14Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  I want you to come closer, closer to truth.

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  And so that state where you and I, and we can kind of access and operate from that place of grace within. You know, that's, that's what I call, you know, your core. And of course, you know, then the ground realities hit us and we drift in and out of that state, you know, sometimes much more out than in, sometimes for days or months or years. But it's funny, you know, we, we're living in such a polarized time today, right? Painfully so. In the state of politics and society and, you know, the geographic tensions and what have you. But I've been privileged and blessed, right? At Columbia and then in other environments like organizations that we serve at my mentor institute.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  To, you know, offer up these kind of conversations and trainings and teachings to a diversity of people. From all faiths and gender and, you know, ethnicity, everything, political and other kind of sympathies they might have. I've never found us any person who disagrees with me on this thesis that yes, there is some part of me that is actually pretty amazing and awesome and special. I kind of get glimpses of it now and then. And then I like lose touch with it.

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  In the drift.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. So that's, that's what I call the core.

• 8:34Lewis Howes?

  You know, a lot of people are, are talking about trying to find abundance in their either career, their financial journey, their business, and also in their personal inner core. What have you discovered in the last, you know, couple of decades about how to create abundance in your life?

• 8:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, abundance is a beautiful thing, beautiful thing, and I, and hats off to you for what, A, you have done to manifest it in your own life.

• 8:59Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 9:00Speaker 00

  To be a living exemplar, it is not lost in me, it is not lost in me, that here I am, striving and seeking to in some ways, you know, codify, whatever you might call truth in whichever form, but you live it, right?

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 9:14Speaker 00

  So I'm grateful for that. The thing that I have been most inspired by is how there is a capacity in this universe for any and all of us to connect with and channel boundless, boundless blank, you can call it boundless love, boundless wisdom, boundless strength, boundless joy, all of the virtues, you know, the positive qualities that we admire in our heroes.

• 9:49Speaker 00

  Those are there and available for all of us freely in the universe at no cost or price except the price and requirement of surrender and attunement.

• 10:01Lewis Howes?

  Atonement or?

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Attunement.

• 10:02Lewis Howes?

  Atonement.

• 10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Surrender and attunement, what does that mean?

• 10:05Speaker 00

  When we recognize that what we are seeking, what we are searching for, you know, to be going on a meaningful hero's journey, inspired to deliver consistently our best, be in a state of just joy and boundless love and strength and all of that, as opposed to being qualities that we need to either acquire from the outside through our, let's say, material attainments, power, prestige, fame, wealth, what have you, or through, you know, certain strengths that we want to build in ourselves by cultivating certain new skills and qualities.

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Like in AI or medicine or what have you. And I'm not saying that any of this is wrong, this is beautiful, you know, all of these outer quests are beautiful. But they become even more meaningful when we can integrate them with the notion that anytime we actually advance in those ways, all we are doing is actually awakening ourselves to that infinite abundant wealth that was always who we were at our core. Hmm. That these are just the outer material expressions, or the intellectual expressions, or the creative expressions, or who we are at the very core of our being. And you know, this might sound a little bit sort of hokey pokey, you know, to some of us who are, let's say, more skeptical, more scientific,

• 11:29Speaker 00

  have that kind of like mathematical mind which says like, hey, Tandra, you know, prove it to me, like, what's the logic, what's the math in that, right? Um, and so I want to be able to speak to that sensibility. Can I do that for a moment? Yes, please. Because otherwise it looks like I'm going out on a leap here. Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, what is the science behind this? To some extent, science is starting to emerge. In other words, today, there has been, as opposed to in those nineteen eighties, nineties, when I was hungering for the science, I want to study it. Today, in the last about fifteen, twenty years, there has been an explosion of science on the power of things like appreciation, and gratitude, and compassion, and mindfulness, and meditation, and resilience, and what have you. Yes. Now, these are timeless truths that have been coded into the scriptures

• 12:14Speaker 00

  of faceless truth seekers of the past. And so unlike, for instance, the physical sciences, right, where actually they are often yielding new inventions to us, new things that we discover about a drug that we can formulate in a lab, or a new kind of rocket that we can send to outer space. This science of human nature is actually, for the most part, not discovering a whole lot of new things. It is merely revalidating Right. the purest of the pure truths of the scriptures of the past, right? Um, and so that to me is fascinating, that it's actually emerging, guys.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  And if there are some things that I might say, or you might say, which aren't fully yet grounded in science, let's be humble enough to recognize that actually a lot of this stuff, or gratitude, appreciation, was not known to scientists twenty years ago. Hmm. They discovered it today. Who knows what they're going to discover in another fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, a hundred years? So one thought experiment I'd encourage any of us to conduct is, imagine the science of the next hundred years, and you're looking back a hundred years from now. What are things that we may be able to access today? But which haven't yet been scientifically proven. Yes. But which will get at that time. Now you and I will be probably dead by then. So would we have wanted to live with that regret that we never tapped into this just because the science of it hadn't proven it, right?

• 13:35Speaker 00

  So that's one thought. But the other is, I find that people are in some ways living museums, you know. They are living sort of examples of truth. And so I've been very drawn to studying, you know, the human lived journeys of some of these truths. And this idea that we just talked about, this abundance that lies, you know, right at the very core of a being and the, you know, attunement, attunement. And the therefore the sense of surrender with which you put your ego aside, you put your own noise aside, you put your own ideas aside. And let your truth just come intuitively in the calmest of moments to you. Yes. Um, that is something that I've studied and happily discovered.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  Picasso to talk about, Puccini, you know, as a great like opera composer to talk about. Uh, you know, Shakespeare to talk about, um, Einstein to talk about. Some of the greatest creative minds have in their own ways stumbled into these realizations that I don't create. I almost in a mystical way create a certain state of order or hunger within me to aspire for, you know, higher achievement. Yes. And I train myself in the ways of my discipline. So Einstein physics and Puccini music and Picasso and art. So I train myself and I create this order and hunger within me. And then I live with this belief that someone else will paint through me, which is almost like Picasso's. Someone else's what? Will paint through me.

• 15:00Speaker 00

  Paint or play or. Yeah, yeah, play through me or create through me. Someone else's. So it's, it's, it's my connection with the universe. Spiritual connection or? Yeah, or another way to think about it is that, you know, we think about our brain, right? If you think about it in computing terms, you can think of it as a hard drive. Hmm. And, you know, you read my book or, uh, you know, you watch one of the Lewis podcasts, right? And what you're doing is you're feeding the brain with new ideas and new information, right? And then the CPU part of the brain, the chip part of the brain goes to work and looking through the data to come up with insights and ideas and thoughts, right? So that's one way to think about the brain as a hard drive. Now, there's another way to think about the brain, which is as a browser.

• 15:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 15:45Speaker 00

  Now, the brain is in fact an access point to a worldwide web of universal intelligence that is out there.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  And, you know, when we hear about people just having these crazy intuitions at times that have sometimes just allowed themselves to just create something or make a certain choice or a decision with uncanny wisdom. Perhaps that's what the science of the future will help us.

• 16:12Lewis Howes?

  How do we tap into that wisdom and alignment and intuition in a deeper way?

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. The good news is to me that that doesn't have to be very wishy-washy or squishy. There's a pretty hard science to it.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  And, you know, the best I can offer is that what that hard science says is that, you know, anytime that you're facing, let's say, a tough decision, a hard choice, something that is high stakes for you and that you feel like there really isn't any obvious answer. There is not enough data or there's too much data or, you know, the trade-offs are so acute. I really don't know which of these therefore is the best path for me.

• 16:57Speaker 00

  Create the right intention. And what that means is, what you want to say is like, I want to do this in the service of, in the service of truth, in the service of my, you know, desire to want to create something good for humanity, in the service of my health, which will allow me to manifest goodness tomorrow. Right? In the service of something, more than just ego or instant gratification or a desire to punish somebody or, you know, all of that, right? So put those negative intentions aside, create a positive intention as a starting point, right? Then gather the facts, you know, do the analysis, I mean, get intelligent about that issue. Go out and question and ask and understand what the risks are, what the trade-offs are, what the options are. Become smart about that thing.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  But don't only hinge on that. So step three then is pull away. And then when you pull away, take a walk in nature, go take a shower. Right, I'm sure you've had, you had many of those moments.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Um, and then somehow when you release yourself from that agenda. In the back of your mind, you know, it's starting to process all your life experiences and all you know. And if you were to believe my browser analogy. It is starting to have a conversation with the universe.

• 18:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  And especially if you can create moments of solitude through prayer, meditation, um. Journaling. What happens is at some level, your own inner voice breaks its silence when you become silent. And in a moment like that, sometimes an inkling, you know, a small little subtle stirring will come from within. Or a certain, hey, Tendra, you remember that conversation you had with that person like five years ago? Something about it is very salient to this decision you're gonna make. You know, or, or, so you, you get, you get these little hints.

• 18:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  That then you can now step back and re-activate the analyst in you.

• 18:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  To kind of put the logic together.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  Do you do a lot of uh solitude yourself or have you done, you know, silent days or silent retreats or?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I have to confess that it's my greatest friend.

• 19:04Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 19:04Speaker 00

  It's my greatest friend.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  How often do you sit in solitude?

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, um.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  At one level, I have a meditation practice.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:16Speaker 00

  And so that allows me to go into that space every day.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  You know, for a period of time. And uh it's like the greatest gift from the universe, you know, to me, you know, those, those moments myself. Uh, the second is that I do very much enjoy um full silent days on their own.

• 19:37Lewis Howes?

  Um, no devices, no conversations, no music.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I, I, I wish I could say no devices. I, I have been uh guilty of uh keeping myself somewhat digitally connected, you know, from time to time.

• 19:50Lewis Howes?

  But you're not talking.

• 19:51Speaker 00

  But I, I'm living without conversations with people on the outside and it's, it's uh. So most, but here's the thing, the, the, there is research to show that um. If you enter into that space, you know, unwillingly, then you experience loneliness.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Right?

• 20:08Lewis Howes?

  And you have no one to speak to you.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  And you're wanting that.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  And you want it, you feel sad and alone.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Then you feel sad, you feel alone, you know, and all of that, right? And that's not a good space to be in, you know, and I respect that. And, you know, we are social animals in many ways and we value and celebrate relationships and human connection. At the same time, the research also shows that when you actually consciously and intentionally create space for solitude, then there are a few magical things happen. One is you realize how much in your more engaged moments of the world, you have to take on certain personas, certain identities.

• 20:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 20:47Speaker 00

  Because that's what the world expects from you.

• 20:53Lewis Howes?

  Who doesn't love the sound of a good old cha-ching? The sound of yet another sale on Shopify, the all-in-one commerce platform to start, run and grow your business. Whether your thing is vintage teas or recipes for ghee, start selling with Shopify and join the platform simplifying commerce for millions of your favorite businesses worldwide. With Shopify, you'll create an online store in your vibe, discover new customers and grow the following that keeps them coming back. Shopify has all the sales channels sorted so your business keeps growing from an in-person POS system to an all-in-one e-commerce platform, even across social media platforms like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. And thanks to 24/7 support and free libraries full of educational content, Shopify has got you every step of the way.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  So when you're ready to launch your thing into the spotlight, do it with Shopify, the commerce platform backing millions of businesses down the street and around the globe. Sign up for a free trial at Shopify.com/greatness, all lowercase. Go to Shopify.com/greatness to start selling online today. S H O P I F Y dot com slash greatness.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  And you have to co-create the agenda. And you have to be there to help serve and support, you know, that community, that family, that audience, you know, that stranger, you know, that society that you're part of. But when you are just by yourself, in some way that frees you from those burdens temporarily. And allows you to be therefore more connected with the most authentic and true as part of your unique spark.

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  And you can therefore discover more about your inner voice. Um, step back a little bit from the fray and examine your relationship with the world. Your relationship with your family, your, you know, your higher aspirations and hungers. And make some calls for yourself that then when you reinvest in the arena of life. You're more informed, you're more guided, you're more, you know, steady in purpose from within.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  What do you think of that, Lewis? And I mean, what? How does that relate to your own pursuit and exploration of solitude?

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  I feel like whenever I, as you were saying this, I was just thinking about my commute to here, which is only about twelve to thirteen minutes, right in my car.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  And a lot of times I don't have the music on and I'm not on a phone call because I wanna be in silence and really just allow myself to breathe mentally.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:13Lewis Howes?

  And I think when I am alone, you know, whether it be in the shower or on a commute and there's no, no music coming in or no conversations.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  I feel like my mind isn't allowing itself to cleanse itself, kinda like when you're asleep, it's cleansing, it's healing, it's processing, it's integrating the lessons. As opposed to always having some stimulant. So for me, I appreciate that alone time. And I think I'll notice when I'm not in attunement. When I have too much stimulus, you know, on the outside world, whether it be a screen or a video or something, you know, so. I like just sitting, you know, or sitting with my cats or something, you know, just like being peaceful. Not having the TV on, not having music on, not being on a phone call. Um, cuz that, that space in between the action, I feel like is where a lot of wisdom comes from.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Ah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. I'm so glad that you have that sensitivity and

• 24:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Engagement with it, you know, cuz.

• 24:08Lewis Howes?

  And I think I wish I created more alone time. I really value, I remember I used to not like to be alone at all when I was a teenager or growing up. I used to be afraid to be alone. So in my early twenties, I was tired of feeling lonely. And I said, okay, I really need to start loving myself and figure out how to be a good friend to me. So I started to go out on dinner dates with myself, to the movies, to the movies by myself.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  I love that too.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  To lunch, to coffee by myself.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 24:36Lewis Howes?

  Whereas I could never do that before. Before, I had to go out with a friend. Hey, who wants to hang out? So this was a couple of years where I spent a lot of time alone for just hours. Every, you know, probably every couple of days, I'd go out by myself. And I really started to enjoy my alone time. And so that helped me kind of overcome the fear of loneliness and feeling like I needed people. And now I've got a lot going on, so there's, there's a lot of actions I'm taking. But I really value being at home and just kind of having some silent time as well.

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, wonderful. Thanks for sharing that story.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  You know, one of the things, I don't know what you just said, like, since you lead such a public life. And in my own ways, you know, I have a fair amount of public moments in my life too. One thing that I have found as a practice to be very helpful in helping to recapture that power of solitude.

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:33Speaker 00

  Is just to take like short breaks.

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  Five, 10 minutes.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Just five minutes, you know, whatever time you're allowed, you know, you have two minutes before the next Zoom call or whatever it might be. Just take that moment, just go within, close your eyes and just experience stillness in whichever form that you're most drawn to. And sometimes just even doing that is enough to connect you with almost like eternity. If it's still enough, it's very rejuvenating.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. That's very cool. I'm curious, you know, we're speaking about abundance a little bit there.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is necessary for someone on their core to really be in order to start to attract on the physical world? What do they need in the spiritual inner world to attract abundance in the outer world?

• 26:19Speaker 00

  So as you mentioned, the book talks about these five energies: purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-pretization. I'm gonna pick on the love energy for a moment in in response to your question. For each of these energies, what I've developed in this book through my research and teaching is a five-stage journey. So five energies and five stages for each of the energies. So you take love, for instance, as as an energy.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  You know, love is about recognizing that you and I, you know, we were never meant to be just alone and self-made in any regards, you know, right from moments that you think life has entered, you know, the the the body, you know, whether it's a conception or beyond, what have you. Someone has like nurtured us and supported us and developed us and more than just one person. And then there are these faceless contributors of past who have also really helped create a world that is safer and more comfortable and that you and I just have just felt entitled to.

• 27:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  So so we're all in some ways interconnected and interdependent. And love is that connective tissue, you know, it's that, as Rumi would say, it's like it's the bridge between you and everything.

• 27:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  Now, so you take that energy of love. How do you manifest and experience an abundance of love? The first stage that I would offer is that it's not as much about the love that you express and offer to the world. It is actually for you to feel loved, for you to feel infinitely abundantly loved.

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  How do we feel that way?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Yes, no, no.

• 27:59Lewis Howes?

  And by who? By ourselves, by Creator, by others, how do we how do we feel that?

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So in some ways, nature has created the construct of a family. And not everybody is equally a beneficiary of that. But, you know, for the most part, if you think about there being parents, there being, you know, that relationship lovingly between, you know, unconditionally lovingly between the parents and and a child. That is a beautiful foundation on which to then, over the course of your life, just always feel a sense of love, because from a very early age, you felt very protected and nurtured in an unconditional way. Now that said, there are those of us who don't have that. And the research also shows that this is a muscle that we can build over time, even if it's something that we have to compensate for the lack of in the years of your growing up.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  So there's a field called emotionally focused therapy, which has actually been very helpful to have people discover and really strengthen a sense of love for themselves from within, even if that is something that they weren't necessarily born with. But the field of attachment theory, you know, in science has been shown to really make you much more comfortable in relationships, more invested in relationships, more at peace with conflict in relationships, more successful in relationships. If you have felt that kind of unconditional love in your life, and when you don't, then using practices like emotionally focused therapy can can really help you close that gap.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure, okay.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Now, for me, what that means practically speaking is when you, you know, the question you asked, which is a beautiful question, you know, where do you feel that love coming from? It could be, you know, as an adult, fond memories you have of having experienced that love from a teacher, from an aunt, from a grandparent, from your parents, from siblings, knowing that whether they exist physically and are in contact with you or not, that you just feel that sense of love and that connection, you know, with them in spirit, if not in form. And if not from there, perhaps for some of us, we might be very inspired or drawn to certain role models. You know, then we can have that inner circle of friends, just like we have an outer circle of friends. Kinship and connection.

• 30:02Lewis Howes?

  So an inner connection to a role model of someone you don't know.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, somebody you don't know, but you can imagine them sitting in your presence and counseling you and guiding you. I mean, over the years, as I've researched, people like Abraham Lincoln, or Mother Teresa, or Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela. I mean, I definitely feel like they're. Inseparable inner circle of friends for me.

• 30:24Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  You know, and sometimes Lincoln might whisper something to me or a quote from him might come to my mind. Or like a flash of a story that, you know, this is how he did this. And now I feel kind of being guided, you know, by the footsteps that he's left in the sands of time, right? So, so that would be another, another path. Saint, saints, you know, some people are drawn to the lives of saints or, or, you know, a higher power like God or the universe. It, it could be any or all of these, you know, sources. So, so there is an abundance of pathways that we can actually tap into. But the point is you owe it to yourself, you know, because as, as Mother Teresa would say, she said, you cannot give what you do not have.

• 31:01Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  You know, so fill your cup, you know, from within first, right? So that's, that's the first stage, you know, in love. But then the next stage is to practice qualities like gratitude and appreciation and empathy. Um, where you're always scanning for the good qualities in people, for, you know, the good news in the world, you know, from today. For things even about you and about life that you feel inspired by and joyful about. Uh, you know, gratitude as, you know, that's appreciation, right? And then gratitude as in like always looking out for even the small favors that you see people doing to you. Um, that life is doing to you, et cetera. Because, you know, at that point you start feeling loved.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  And then you are much more naturally able to love. Because you live in the state of grace where you feel like there's so much beauty.

• 31:52Lewis Howes?

  So much.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  So much possibility. Uh, yeah, you know, life is beating you down in that way, that way, but there is so much beauty in that friend who called you. In that thoughtful email you received, in the way this, you know, server smiled at you and they were serving you this meal.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  I feel like when, you know, a lot of people seem to focus on the bad that's happening in the world or the negative or the things that are unfair or things that are harmful or hurtful. And that doesn't create a lot of love within you when you only focus on that. I'm not saying you should neglect those things or not focus on them or realize that it's out there. But if someone was, if you were to say, okay, if you want to change your inner state, find 10 things today that is beautiful

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  in your life. And focus on those 10 things, their inner state will start to shift

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  naturally, because you're paying attention to something beautiful as opposed to paying attention to something that's, you know, painful.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:43Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's really where we put our attention. You said gratitude, appreciation. I like to add a third thing to that, which is acknowledgement. And I think when we are grateful

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:53Lewis Howes?

  for the things in our life, you know, maybe the challenges that helped us learn and grow and overcome, or the beautiful things that've come, it makes us feel better, it makes us feel happier, more joyful. When we appreciate it, the same thing happens. And I think when we acknowledge someone

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:08Lewis Howes?

  for the gift they brought to us, or for opening the door, it could be a small acknowledgement, but it's something you see in someone when you acknowledge another.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Beauty comes back as well.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:19Lewis Howes?

  Peace comes back as well. And you're doing a service

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:23Lewis Howes?

  to someone or someones by acknowledging them. It doesn't have to be this long drawn out acknowledgement, it can just be, hey, thank you so much for doing this.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  But I think when we add gratitude, appreciation, and acknowledgement, it just increases our joy, it increases our ability to attract

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  beauty, abundance in our life, and, and good people.

• 33:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. So true, so true. Beautifully put, beautifully put. I want to share a story.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes, please.

• 33:48Speaker 00

  If that's okay with you.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Uh, this is, was shared by one of my students. Um, you know, one of the things I am so richly gifted by, uh, from my audiences that I, I ask, you know, many times, you know, the individuals to share a personal journey, a personal story, something that has been deeply moving and inspiring to them, and that they want to offer as a contribution to us. So, you know, the book has a number of these stories from executives and students, right? And so, one of them just struck my mind as you were just talking so, so thoughtfully about

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  you know, the, these three, three, three qualities, right? And so, this is a student who's a physician, a heart, heart physician. In China.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  A heart physician.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, yes, he's a heart surgeon. And he said, look, most of the times I am the one who's, you know, the central, you know, kind of like hero in, in, in a story, you know, helping.

• 34:31Lewis Howes?

  Save a life.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Heal and save life, right? And he says, but this one time, I tell you, I experienced quite the opposite. And he said, this is a young boy, must have been in his early teens, and he was having some congenital heart issue. And here he is being wheeled into the emergency room for like, you know, surgery that I was going to perform on him. I'm in my white coat, I'm, I'm, you know, walking by, you know, by him. And he opens his eyes, he's under anesthesia, and so he opens his eyes, he sees me in the white coat, and he says, oh, are you the doctor who's going to be performing, you know, the surgery on me? And I nodded my head and said, oh, I'm so happy to meet you. You know, I also want to be a doctor when I grow up. And so I'm so, so happy that I'm meeting you. This guy is going for this, you know, major, serious surgery.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  And he says, and then painfully so, I performed the surgery, it was a very, very hard, you know, um, experience. And he passed away, I, I couldn't, I couldn't heal him. It was a tough and serious condition. And he says, and then, a day later, the nurse who had been tending to him, came over to me and gave me a note that he had apparently written.

• 35:34Lewis Howes?

  Before the surgery.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  You know, at some point in that process, I forget, it was before, you know, after the surgery, they recover a little bit and then pass on, I, I, I, I forget that detail. But essentially, he'd written a note. And in that note, uh, he said, Dr. So-and-so, I just wanted to thank you for the way you have cared for me.

• 35:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Because, he says, uh, you reminded me so much of my brother, who has also loved and cared for me.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  You know, with the same deep empathy and, you know, that you showed me. So, thank you. Can you believe that? So, so it speaks to all three of what you said, right?

• 36:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Like appreciation first, like, hey, you're a doctor, I want to be a doctor. Gratitude and acknowledgement too. And like, you know, for me, the, the power of that story, Lewis, is how can you and I ever, ever make these cues? That life's beating up on me too hard. I don't have the capacity to be, you know, acknowledging, right?

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:28Speaker 00

  I mean, look what happened there.

• 36:29Lewis Howes?

  I know. And it's, it's a simple practice that I think a lot of people don't do that consistently of gratitude, appreciation and acknowledgement. And I think if people focused on that a couple of times a day.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:42Lewis Howes?

  Their life would start to shift.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:43Lewis Howes?

  You know, they would go from a dark place to a more light place.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  Inside.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  In their core, which is the thing that you talk about.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:51Lewis Howes?

  So that's your, that's your topic of the energy of love.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  The energy of love. Now, I, I'll say one last thing on that before we move on, but before we do that, I just want to make one little small observation. As I have gotten to know you first from the outside in, right? As in, um, not sitting here in this moment of conversation with you, but, um, reviewing your content.

• 37:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  And, uh, hearing you on other podcasts and things, on your face itself, I see these qualities. That somehow in the mood and the spirit you bring, right? In your eyes and your facial expressions, there's this anticipation. That something beautiful is gonna unfold.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  In this moment, in this interaction, you know, and it's just like, it's, it's so much code who you are. That it just like becomes, you know, I think very evident just in the presence and the energy that you communicate.

• 37:45Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. You know, I, I never knew that I would be doing this as a kid, right? Where I'd be for 10 years now, been interviewing people. And I didn't have, I wasn't trained in school on how to do this, right? But I always had a curious mind and I just was fascinated by what people experienced, their lessons, their wisdom. And I just wanted to learn.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  And I, I never felt like, for me, school was a hard way to learn. In the format that it, that it typically is right now. Not every school does this, but with the whole just, okay, read this and then review it and then test on it. Like, it just didn't work well with me. I'd rather have a conversation and hear someone, a story, a lesson, a wisdom, and then go try to apply it. Make my own mistakes and learn from that. So I'm always just fascinated by the wisdom of, of people who have a lot more experience and knowledge than me. So I'm very grateful that you're here.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:35Lewis Howes?

  So the fact that you're here. And everyone that comes here is a gift for me. You know, it's like I get to learn, I get paid to learn and I get to share what I'm learning with the world.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:48Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like that's a, it's a gift. So I'm just, I'm grateful.

• 38:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:52Lewis Howes?

  I don't take it for granted, you know, I don't take it for granted. Uh, but thank you, I appreciate it. So why these five, purpose, wisdom, growth, love and self-realization as the five core energies that hold the key for all of our success?

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  And fulfillment, really, why these, these five things?

• 39:11Speaker 00

  Sure, sure. You know, when I started to do this work around, um, opening us up to our inner core as the space of highest potential, as a source of success, both inner success, it makes you feel more true to yourself when you're acting from that core and that outer success, cause it like frees you up to be able to intentionally pick and choose how you wanna show up in the world. What kind of behavior you wanna engage in, in that moment, based on how you're being guided by the urgencies and the, you know, the reactions on the other person's face, or what the kind of relationships you have in the room and, you know, et cetera. There's like so many variables, you know, from the outside.

• 39:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  That play onto us from time to time, but you kind of have to be everything in the complete opposite. Just depends on the situation you're in, as a parent, as a manager, you know, as a friend, you know, et cetera, right? And so I started to see that, um, that there is this relentless push that we have on the outside to be so many different things. If you truly, truly wanna be adapted and agile and successful. The question that came to my mind is like, but then what are the enduring tenets? The timeless essentials that will allow me and you to simplify that game? Because, you know, if you think about like the kinds of people I'm just talking about that we admire over the course of history,

• 40:29Speaker 00

  like Abraham Lincoln or Eleanor Roosevelt, you know, all of these guys, right? What you actually find is that they were not. That extraordinary. Lincoln, for example, had one year of schooling. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, they never went to college. Gandhi and Mandela, they of their own admission were very indifferent and poor students. So like, how are these guys? Right. You know, basically expressing such genius. When, on the other hand, formally, they haven't really gone through the trappings of the education that we are blessed with having, you know, many of us. What I started to find is that they reduced life to its essence.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  And then I started to ask myself, what is that essence? Right? And of course, it's nice to think about and talk about the core. But now I'm going to find a way to give it practical expression on the outside. Something which is like a how to guide, right? Which I know you love, right? And all your teachings do. And that is where I realized that, listen, this Einsteinian idea from the twentieth century, that matter is an illusion, that matter is nothing but condensed energy. E is equal to M C squared. All of matter ultimately can be translated into explosive, boundless, abundant energy, right? That's the C squared, the speed of light squared. You take a little bit of matter, multiply it with the speed of light squared, that's the amount of energy there is, you know, in the universe and every atom. What if that was true of you and me and all of us too?

• 41:58Speaker 00

  That actually, we are first and foremost not human behaviors, but actually energies. You know, and what could those energies be? Right? And then I looked at the sun, right? And I said, like, this is interesting. Actually, all of who you are and I am and everything, we owe to the sun. Because all the energy comes from there, comes into plants, and we break down, you know, plants or animals and we, you know, all of that, right? And then the sun itself, the very center of the sun is apparently, from what I understood from science, is a little small piece that is about one percent of the sun's total volume, right? So as a ball, as a sphere, that little center of the sun, the one percent of the sun's volume. But that one percent of the sun's volume, which they call the sun's core.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  Actually generates ninety nine percent of the sun's energy.

• 42:47Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  So ninety nine percent of what you and I are is actually coming from that one percent.

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 42:52Speaker 00

  The very center of the sun.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  The center of the sun.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, isn't that beautiful?

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  It's almost like a mathematical secret that nature is just kind of holding out there for us to discover for ourselves.

• 43:01Lewis Howes?

  And how does the sun even, I mean, this is an ignorant question, but how does the sun even generate that much heat in that one percent?

• 43:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  And and radiate for how far millions of miles away it is or whatever to get here. It's like, it's. It's all mystical.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's it's so much, it's so much, isn't it?

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 43:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, Einstein, you know, said beautifully, he said that there are only two kinds of people. Those who think that nothing is a miracle and those who think that everything is a miracle, you know?

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  And so there's a moment where I'm like, okay, I've been looking at the sun for all these years and here it is. I discovered today something new from science I hadn't known before. Now, now you take this idea of like energy, then the question is, you know, intuitively, does that make sense to you? That like when people enter a room, they have a certain energy. Or you feel like, you know, the energy in the, you know, room is just not good, you know, and all that. Or or like, I didn't have the right chemistry with this person or, you know, or et cetera, right? Ultimately, it's a subtle force that we are tuning ourselves into, both for ourselves and for others. And so I wanted to like give some more form, you know, to this thing called energy. And I was personally drawn to yoga, coming from my roots in India. And in yoga, they have these four different branches of yoga.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Karma yoga, which is about doing the right thing without attachment to outcome. And I feel like that's like purpose, you know, having a higher kind of goal that you're going after. And in an egoless way, just serving the goal in the advancement of humanity in some way. So that's that's purpose. That's karma yoga. The next one was.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  That's karma yoga.

• 44:25Speaker 00

  Karma yoga.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  Karma yoga, yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Then the next one is called bhakti yoga, you know, and bhakti yoga is devotion. It's love. It's your connection with the universe through that heart-based quality. And so I was like, this is cool. That is obviously a critical dimension too, beyond like the diligent pursuit of like purpose. Is the heart-based connection, compassion, empathy, kindness, gratitude, all of that. And so that became love for me as an energy. Then there is a third. Yoga, which is Jnana Yoga, and that is about wisdom. It's the incisive attunement with truth. Just like there are laws of nature, there are laws of human nature. Can you attune yourself to those laws of human nature and live in harmony with them?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Then you are advancing and sharpening your intellect, but just in a way that is consistent with just the way the universe is meant to be. And so that's Jnana Yoga is wisdom, you know, as an energy, just a commitment to live beyond just a surge of emotions or a blinding belief or a distorted thought with more of a, as a friend of Abraham Lincoln once said about him, a clear mental lens. He said he had a very clear mental lens. And so that's the wisdom, that's the wisdom energy. And then self-realization, there's another yoga called Raji Yoga, and Raji Yoga is meant to be the accelerated path towards enlightenment or towards the highest potential. And the idea is that if you're going to stillness, solitude, we've talked about,

• 45:48Speaker 00

  some form of just um deep, you know, kind of just focus of your attention to the very core of your being, just like we send astronauts into outer space, what about sending astronauts into inner space? And that's what self-realization is, this stilling of the mind, you know, moving from what I call the interiorized mind, just disconnecting from the outside, to the focused mind, to the tranquil mind. You know, that is self-realization for you, or what they call Raji Yoga. And then growth for me was just an enabling energy. You know, growth for me, which, you know, I know you love, but you know, all of your own teachings and the path you've been on, including those critical moments where you've had hardship and struggle in pivoting, you know, beyond sports into what now is this new sport, right? Exactly.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  That you're playing and helping others play. I know you're very energized by growth, and I felt like growth was needed as a way to help everybody realize, you know, as Saint Augustine once said, that, you know, no saint is without a past and no sinner is without a future, you know, so we all can grow. Right. And, you know, so that's like my view of thinking, while coming from the yoga, you know, kind of, you know, roots, you know, from where it comes. But also, if you think, well, just like in modern Western thinking, we have this notion of the whole person, right? Body, mind, heart and spirit. Bodies, karma is purpose. Mind is wisdom, is jnana. Heart is love, bhakti.

• 47:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  And spirit is civilization.

• 47:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 47:17Speaker 00

  I don't know.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  But you've added growth to it also.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  Yes, I've added growth as an enabling energy.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  So how do we learn to cultivate and hone in each one of these energies at the highest level?

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:30Lewis Howes?

  And align ourselves to our highest self within each energy?

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  What does that process look like?

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, you know, that's what the five stages are that I've, you know, kind of codified over time. I have to say, look, I mean, there's nothing new in this book or in my work because time, like, truth is timeless. Truth is timeless. And it's just more about, you know, taking old wine and putting it into the right new bottle based on the present moment, right? And so to that end, these five stages are not new in themselves, but I hope that they can provide to our listeners today, some structure, some guidance, you know? So for instance, with love, those five stages, just to give you a flavor for what they are. As I was mentioning, the first one is to, you know, I like to draw the metaphor from like

• 48:20Speaker 00

  flowers and plants, you know, for this energy of love. So the very first stage is to really prepare the soil. And that is about just making sure it's like a healthy soil in which love can actually get cultivated. And for that, you've got to feel loved yourself. And then the next one is sow the seeds. And that's about, you know, the conversation we just had about gratitude and appreciation. And you call it acknowledgement. I talk about empathy there and abundance.

• 48:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:45Speaker 00

  Then the third is pull out the weeds. You know, because the weeds will like suck up all the resources and kind of just dry up your soul from them. What are those weeds? You know, those weeds are, you know, judgment, when you live in judgment of people. Hatred, when you allow any part of your brain to entertain joy in inflicting pain on some community out there. That is a dangerous and destructive kind of, you know, weed that we need to uproot.

• 49:19Lewis Howes?

  An inner weed, yeah.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  An inner weed. Or grudges, you know? Moments where we keep holding on to unsavory memories of the past, feeling a sense of bitterness or rage or anger or something about another person as opposed to... Doing the right thing from the outside, whatever it is we need to do, because sometimes you have to litigate. Sometimes you have to cut a relationship off or have a firm conversation or do whatever. Create a boundary. Or actually truly forgive on the outside too, in some cases, because like it's your loved one and you know, we all stumble because we're all human. Whatever it might be on the outside, but from within, why not declare a victory, you know, for your own self by seeing yourself more as a hero rather than a victim in that journey and surmounting and transcending and, you know, moving beyond, you know, making peace, you know, with that.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  So, so those are the weeds, you know, the grudges, judgments and hatred, right? So that's the third stage, pull out the weeds. So you've got prepared the soil, you've got sowing the seeds, you've got removing the weeds. And then the fourth one to me is pruning the branches. Because, you know, love in left, you know, unto itself, unfettered, can lead you to over empathize with the person in front of you. This team member who's coming to you and like talking about like how they're in such great pain because their manager is doing this and that. And you're not like paying attention to, yes, but I haven't heard the other story yet. Right. What is the manager's perspective on this? What is the team's perspective on it? You know, and so you get so consumed by just like empathy for someone, individual entity. Or sometimes you just give, give, give without protecting and like you said, creating certain boundaries. Yes.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  You know, help support and, you know, you know, your own interests as well. And so your judgments can get blurred. You may not be able to have tough conversations and make hard calls, which the universe from time to time requires you to do in the pursuit of your purpose. Or there are some hard truths, you know, in the pursuit of wisdom. So pruning the branches of the love, you know, kind of tree that is starting to come together is to be able to bring purpose and wisdom and growth into those love conversations. Yes. Not just do them in such a way that is so just unfettered that you're not being able to bring perspective. So that's the fourth, that's the fourth of these. And it's, it's a razor's edge because many of us just withdraw our love from those situations, you know, I, I, I go to like fire this guy.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Or, or I would have a hard conversation with my, my son now or this or that. And so I, I should just part love out. Because, you know, because if you start getting sensitive to the person's feelings, but no, it doesn't have to be that way. You can with unconditional love and gentleness. And care still have a firm conversation. And still, you know, look at the person in the eye and say, it is for your own future good that in the moment I'm going to express this hard truths to you. You know, and so that's all about the pruning. And then the fifth and final stage is to make love bloom. You know, you've got the soil there, you've got the seeds there, you've got the weeds out, you know, you're pruning in a disciplined way. Now let it bloom. Now what that means, you know, this is a thing I I kind of like learned um over time. It's not just enough to have the right intentions.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  You know, I I had a CEO once of a um retail chain and she said, I donate a lot to uh this uh cancer hospital for kids. And uh you know, when I go there sometimes, I am just awestruck with the kind of service and care the doctors and nurses are giving. And then these parents, you know, of these kids and they're hurting. And she said, I I don't know what to say or what to do, you know, I just feel so uncomfortable because I can't be of any support to them, you know, I I can't heal the kid. And I I can't give them hope beyond what the physician is doing and all that. She said, I I just feel like I just don't have that capacity to love. You know, and she's she's, you know, confiding this in me, uh when she's hearing me talk about some of these energies. I said, wait a second, let me hold back, let me offer you a thought. You know, you say you don't have the capacity to love. First of all, you're doing a lot of love.

• 52:52Speaker 00

  By the funding you're doing to help enable this kind of healing in the hospital is your funds. So so thank you for what you're doing there for them. And I said, you know, and then the other part is, like, you could you could go there sometimes and just hold a parent's hands. And you could just look at them in the eye and just say, you know, I admire your spirit, you know, that you are being so strong and so courageous. You know, and what you're, you know, taking on here.

• 53:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I appreciate it, you know, I I admire it. And, you know, I am keen and looking forward to seeing, you know, you come to a really good place or whatever it might be, small little gestures. Right? Um. And so this is a thesis I'm going to offer, you know, our listeners as well. If you ever feel like this person has lost a loved one, how can I ever be of any help to them? I'm speechless, you know, I don't know what to say or do. Or this is an enormous cause, there are millions of people suffering, what what can I do? Never allow yourself to get paralyzed from taking some small action.

• 53:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Because Mother Teresa, you know, she would say, she says, uh, not all of us can do great things, but we can do small things.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  Great.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  With great love.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes, that's true.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's uh.

• 53:57Lewis Howes?

  How does how does someone learn to love themselves if for their most of their lives they've been beating themselves up, speaking poorly to themselves? Discounting their abilities and hating themselves internally.

• 54:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  How do they shift that into loving themselves?

• 54:13Speaker 00

  I really, first of all, you know, empathize with that individual. I can not even imagine how it must come from a place of great perhaps pain, suffering, deprivation, hardship, going back years, you know, probably going back years. I mean, you know, Mother Teresa came and gave a commencement address at Harvard University and she said, you know,

• 54:41Speaker 00

  people have told me here that, Mother, you know, what are you doing in this country? Because, you know, we don't have as many hungry people, you know, or poor people here as you do back there, so, you know, all that. And of course, painfully so, the reality is different. There are a number of, you know, physically hungry and, you know, poor people, you know, today, and perhaps even more so, you know, than her time. But, but she said, she said, I do see, you know, poverty, I do see hunger here, I see a great hunger for love. And she said, go back to your homes, each of you graduates, you know, and find the person who is most hungry for love and give them your love. And so, my prayer to all of us is, first of all, pay attention to those individuals, the kinds that you've just mentioned. Yeah. Who may be hurting, and you never know what has happened in the Korean life

• 55:26Speaker 00

  that has caused them to perhaps live with this deprivation and grapple with it. But, but there is, there is hope and there is possibility and there is a path for, for all of us and certainly for, for those that you mentioned as well. And I would say, first, develop a relationship with nature. Yes. Develop a nature, a relationship with nature. Go to parks, go to the national parks, you know, go to, just take a walk, you know, in a place laden with flowers and the open sky and just feel the connection with the universe. And intuitively, if you can free your mind from the affairs of the day

• 56:11Speaker 00

  and the inner self-talk where you flagellate yourself, you beat yourself up, if you can free your mind, even for a moment or two, in that walk in nature. You will feel love from the universe coming to you.

• 56:27Lewis Howes?

  It's true.

• 56:28Speaker 00

  You will feel part of a universal plan. You are not alone. Nothing in this universe is separate from anything else. You will feel an intuitive capacity, as I have, as a child sometimes, lying on the lawns of my home, late in the evening, at night, looking at the stars, you will feel like the stars are talking to you. It's a painting in the sky that has been made for you, you know. And so that's my one, you know, my one suggestion. Another might be that, you know, see if you can take on some practice of mindfulness or meditation. There's a reason why today it has started to become, you know, very invested in by psychotherapists,

• 57:12Speaker 00

  you know, who are starting to inculcate it in some of their psychotherapy work. And having been intrigued about it from the age of ten, but ultimately getting disciplined about it only in my early mid thirties. And finally now, you know, twenty years later, feeling the blessing of what it has accrued for me in these years, I can only tell you, it's like, it's the, you know, I say it in the book, it's like the most perfect drug.

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:35Speaker 00

  It's the perfect drug.

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  It's free drug.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  It is free.

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 00

  It has no side effects.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Speaker 00

  No side effects. As opposed to drugs, which sometimes you get immunized, you know, after you keep using them. This thing actually gives you more and more rewards over time. The more you do it, the more you, next time you do it, it'll be an even more focused, more rewarding kind of outcome.

• 57:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  So, so see if you can take on a practice like that. Don't expect results on the first day or the second day. Surrender to it, do the practice, make sure it's a good teacher teaching path. And then over time, you will see how it will just shift and completely change

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  your connection with yourself, your whole sense of self will just get to go through such a joyous transformation.

• 58:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Why do you, why do you think so many people fail at mastering their inner world, mastering these energies? Why do you think they? Struggle so much of getting in a place of alignment with these core things.

• 58:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:33Lewis Howes?

  Is it distractions? Is it they don't have the tools? Is it just what?

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Two thoughts. One is that, um, so I'll share this quickly story. So Michelangelo, right, this great Renaissance sculptor, right, of the yesteryears. So there was this piece of marble that had been quarried, you know, from around Florence in the hills and brought back into that, you know, uh, mecca of like Renaissance art Florence. But it had a big gash in it, a big cut in it. And as a result, the city was trying to commission one artist after another to take it on. But they all refused because they were like, what can we do with this wasteful piece of stone? And then in strides Michelangelo at some point, looks at an impressive, large piece of stone, but imperfect, right?

• 59:20Speaker 00

  And takes it on. And then out of that, he sculpts David.

• 59:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Which is considered to be one of the, you know, greatest, you know, contributions of Renaissance art. And so here is this pure, beautiful form that has been sculpted out of a very imperfect stone. And in fact, Michelangelo himself, when he was asked about what he thinks about sculpting, he said, he said, sculpting, you know, you don't create anything. At least if you paint, like you're, you know, you're creating something on canvas. He said, in the sculpting, the statue was always present within the stone. All you had to do was remove the excess stone.

• 59:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:57Speaker 00

  To get to the pure, beautiful form, which was always there, right? What a humble and beautiful, you know, way of defining his craft, right? Now, if you and I were to apply that to our own lives, right? Could it be that even though we have an imperfect stone with big gashes in it? Our bad habits, our past failures and all of that? That actually, within that, there is a pure beautiful statue, right? That is lying. And then all we've got to do is like activate that inner sculptor, right? To get closer and closer, not to retrofit it from the outside, not to fix and bandage a wounded me, right? But to really awaken to something that was always beautiful within by taking and chipping of the excess, chipping of the excess.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  So, so the first barrier that I think people face is you ought to believe that there's something incredibly beautiful within you.

• 1:00:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  You know, there's a thing called a musk deer. You know, it's a deer.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Musk deer.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  Musk deer, right? They have this like incredible fragrance to them.

• 1:00:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Right? And so there's this like apocryphal story about this musk deer that is, you know, kind of getting to experience this fragrance and getting tremendously fascinated by where is this coming from? And running crazy, you know, around the hill and everywhere, trying to kind of search for the source of that fragrance, ultimately up a cliff from where in that mad kind of crazy hunger for that fragrance, they actually uh jump all the way down into their own death.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  Not realizing that, actually speaking, that fragrance was sourced right from within them.

• 1:01:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  From within them. So we go out after like all these hungers that we have in the world outside, not realizing that that love, that joy, that perfection, that harmony, that sweetness, all of the things we're looking for is actually present within our own core. So first, you've got to believe that. You've got to believe that, you've got to believe that the pure beautiful form exists, which is why I think for a lot of people, they don't get there. They don't believe that, they don't believe that, right? And so that's my first suggestion.

• 1:01:48Lewis Howes?

  They probably also have created so much evidence and stories of why it's not true.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  It's not true.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  Because this person took advantage of me, my parents left me, I did poorly here, you know, this person cheated on me, whatever it is.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

  They find stories of evidence that prove

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Lewis Howes?

  that they can't believe there's goodness in them, right?

• 1:02:07Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  So it's needing to learn how to rewrite those stories and, and, and tell the stories in a different way to your benefit.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

  I think is important for us, but that's, it's hard for people to do it. It took me a long, long time to do that.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  I respect that.

• 1:02:17Lewis Howes?

  It's one of the reasons why I was seeking this wisdom, because I was like, ah, I don't know how to get out of this.

• 1:02:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:22Lewis Howes?

  But um, but that's step one is learning how to believe.

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  So true, so true, right? And, and then the next step is looking for a pathway and solutions. And I think what happens there is sometimes we tend to only focus on outer pathways. Whereas actually, the real breakthroughs come, as you know as much as I, when we pursue the inner pathways, right? And the inner pathways is to start paying attention to some of these subtler inner influences, like your thought patterns, right, which you talk so much about, right? You just mentioned it in the context of the narratives you tell, the stories you tell, right? And then maybe at a deeper level, the beliefs, you know, with which you operate.

• 1:02:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  For example, what is your belief about human nature? What is your belief about the redemptive possibilities in human nature? What is your beliefs about whether the universe is looking out for you or is against you? You know, all these things, you shift those beliefs and you start getting into a much more empowered stage, right? And so the inner work is subtler, it's a little bit less tangible. The world is not going to cheer you on when you're doing that work, it's not going to be as visible. People out there are not usually really wanting you to hang out and talk about those conversations. They'd rather have you just like express some criticism or something, but something else going on. So you're going to have to go against the green a little bit to make the space in place for it. And perhaps re-architect the environment and the relationships and which podcasts you're listening to.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  And the work you're doing. But if you start doing, you know, it's, as my spiritual master, Yogananda, you know, he once said, he said, what happens over time is that what you thought was real starts to become, you know, less real. And what you thought was unreal starts to become more real.

• 1:03:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's beautiful. I love that lesson. I'm curious of your experience at, at, at business school, teaching at business school, where a lot of students come in because they want to learn how to start a business, manage a business, launch a business. And a lot of their focus is, I would assume, is how do I learn the skills to make more money, make a lot of money?

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:18Lewis Howes?

  Probably is, is it a fair assumption, a lot of people want to come to learn how to build a business and make money, right?

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:04:24Lewis Howes?

  Have you seen any good examples of people who've come to your classes or come to the school, who have really used these core energies to launch a business? And find incredible financial success, but also keep their inner peace, their joy, their significance, their fulfillment in the process? And not lose their relationships and their health and, you know, become, you know, addicted to painkillers or something? Have you seen examples of this or, or do you see a lot of people struggling with that?

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. At some level, already I am seeing. A positive shift in the kind of motivations that bring people and the kind of plans and aspirations. Thirty years ago was different. Yes, thirty years ago, it was even more what you just shared. You know, a thirst for a certain financial and career outcome. Yes. That was very focused on the self, you know, self achievement, self success, self attainment. It certainly is, you know, still still largely true. But at the same time, I am very touched, I would say, and inspired by how today's generation is starting to look beyond. Is starting to look for purpose. Contribution.

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  And starting to look for contribution. Yeah. Right, like what's the play I want to have in society. Right. Right, and is starting to also at some regard like look for growth. Which is how do I self actualize, how do I become. Interesting. Kind of like a better version of myself, you know, through through this journey and through the career I choose and the company I work at and the culture and the company and the role I take on and all of that. So that's good news, actually, you know, in many regards.

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  Now, I will say that there is no single archetype of like a business school student. And you will have some who will perhaps roll their eyes and yawn and say like, that's not for me. Right. You know, there are these like black shoals formulas of options pricing and advanced finance classes that I need to take. And then I'm going to become a czar of Wall Street or something, right? And that's that's that's the path I'm on and and thank you, Tenra, I don't need your class. You know, I respect that. The cool thing is that the thesis I make to our students is that if you take a bell curve, right? Underperformers, average performers, high performers, right? You actually look at like the high performing end of it.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  People who might be like, say, senior partners at a top consulting firm or a law firm or a Wall Street firm or successful entrepreneurs or what have you. You actually, I wouldn't say.

• 1:07:01Speaker 00

  Find a very common set of qualities to all of them, I I wouldn't say that. But then if you look at the outliers that lie beyond the main body of that bell curve. Right, who are like vastly more successful, vastly more successful. Then you enter into a very rarefied air.

• 1:07:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  Of the Warren Buffets.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  And the Steve Jobs.

• 1:07:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  And the Elon Musks.

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Right, um, and there you actually start finding some pretty incredible common ground. Now, it doesn't mean that any of these are actually perfect people.

• 1:07:38Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  And every one of them has their own fabulous flaws.

• 1:07:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Speaker 00

  Right, and in some ways it humanizes them to me, where you realize that, oh, you know, I've got my flaws. If they could ascribe for greatness or aspire for ever, why can't I? Even the flaws I have, I mean, so so so in some ways to me, it's it's nice, it makes them more accessible. But but there are certain disciplines, mental disciplines, emotional disciplines, physical well being disciplines. Uh, if you want to call it almost like spiritual disciplines.

• 1:08:06Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:06Speaker 00

  That you see these people intuitively figure out for themselves are the critical enablers for what it is that they want to do.

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:08:15Speaker 00

  And.

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are those three core disciplines that the elite in business all have in common?

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so one of them is non attachment to outcomes.

• 1:08:28Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:29Speaker 00

  Which means that you are not obsessed with results for the sake of results. You don't attach your ego and your self esteem to those results. But you're doing it from some kind of a deeper, more enduring sense of purpose. So, for example, you take Steve Jobs, right? Uh, Larry Ellison, you know, the Oracle founder and CEO, he shared the story, he said, you know, this time when Steve was going through a little dark night of the soul, he had been fired from Apple, he was at Next Computers.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:08:57Speaker 00

  Apple was starting to stumble, not do that well, and Steve and I were good friends and we went for a walk. And I was very excited because I was seeing where Apple's stock was going. And I was like, Steve, you know, I can put money and basically buy out the stock of Apple. And then, um, because it's so low right now, and then we'll make you CEO and we'll give you a lot of stock. And then you turn the company around and you and I will both make a lot of money. And he said Steve paused there, he turned and faced me and he put his, you know, hands on my shoulders. And he said, Larry, that's why you need me as your friend. Because you don't need more money, you already have so much money. And he says, when I do this, I wanna do it the right way.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  I wanna do it from a place of higher purpose, not because of money. Wow. And he says that, he said, here is how it's gonna play out. Apple is gonna soon realize that they have a weak operating system. They're gonna need a different operating system, they're gonna come shopping around, they'll see next. They'll see that our operating system is in fact what they need, they will acquire next. Once they acquire next, I'll get a board seat at Apple. Once I get a board seat at Apple, we just wait and see. Wow.

• 1:10:06Speaker 00

  Can you imagine, this is the way reality played out over the next few years, he just kinda had it scripted in his mind. And then Larry Ellison has gone on to say in another interview, he said like, you know, Steve went on to create the most valuable company on earth, in Apple at that time. And he says, and yet he was not interested in fame, not interested in fortune. He was just interested as a creative mind in just manifesting his purpose. So that's, you know, so that's one quality I've seen these people. The second is Prince, non-attachment to outcomes, doing it for a certain more kind of enduring kind of reason than purely obsessed with a certain goal. The second thing I've seen these people is principles.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  They have taken the time to codify for themselves what the core principles are on the basis of which they operate. You take someone like Warren Buffett, you know, I mean storied investor, you know, perhaps the most successful ever in modern times. You know, the values investing ethos and model is one that has allowed him to rise above the fray from the passions of the market. And there were times, remember the telecom bubble and the internet bubble around the year ninety nine, two thousand two, two thousand three, he was considered to be like. Old hat, you know, somebody who's like obsolete now, the internet had a new model for business and all. And he was like, I'm not going to invest in stocks that don't have gravity, where I can't understand, you know, the logic behind them.

• 1:11:26Speaker 00

  And then the bubble burst and as he said, you know, it's when the tide goes away, that's when you see who's swimming naked.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  And most of those folks were swimming naked at that time, but he survived, you know, that that downturn among others. And so there is a certain core set of principles by which he does his form of investing. Core set of principles by the ways of which, you know, Steve Jobs does it entrepreneurship. And that Elon Musk uses for for what he's trying to manifest. So what are your principles? What are my principles? Based on the path that we are choosing and what we want to do. Uh, writing them down, really sharpening our thinking about them. How do you put them into practice? In a way that makes perfect sense. So that's second. The third one I would say is that they never stop growing. You know, that they always see themselves as a work in progress. They never feel like I've arrived, I've made it and now, you know, you you mentioned that as such a beautiful quality in you. That from very early age, you're very curious, wanting to learn from others. Here you are, sitting with

• 1:12:17Speaker 00

  such a mountain of wisdom, you know, within you that, you know, that we see in in your work. But at the same time, having that humility to realize like there's always more to learn.

• 1:12:26Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  And, you know, Einstein, he said it beautifully. He said the difference between what the least knowledgeable person knows. And what the most knowledgeable person knows is trivial compared to what is not known.

• 1:12:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's true.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 1:12:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's nothing.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:44Lewis Howes?

  Small matter of nature compared to all the information out there.

• 1:12:47Speaker 00

  So who cares about trying to rank ourselves against others and feel like who has more likes and more more money or more impact or whatever? Who who cares? I mean, another way I think like, think about it, uh, Lewis is. You know, like, let's say that we're looking on the ground there and there are like three or four ants, you know? And they're like fighting and competing with each other and I'm saying, I'm bigger, I'm brawnier, I'm faster, I'm wiser, I'm smarter. Look how much time it took me to build that little mound versus you, or whatever it is. And we're gonna look at them and just laugh and say, are you, are you nuts? You know, you you know, basically add the most hundred X, you know, from each other or whatever. And here we are, you know, we. And I mean, I think that's, if you think about the universe, you know, the universe is infinite, right? Whatever you want to think about in terms of space or wisdom or creativity or possibility.

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  From the perspective of the universe, any two human beings, you know, however, you look at them, you know, they're just ants.

• 1:13:38Lewis Howes?

  Not even.

• 1:13:38Speaker 00

  Like the difference between them is nothing, right? So that's what you see in these people, a sense of

• 1:13:45Lewis Howes?

  Always learning.

• 1:13:46Speaker 00

  Boundless, abundant intrigue about what lies ahead.

• 1:13:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes, that's beautiful. Who in your mind is the most inspiring entrepreneur that you've studied of the history or of current time?

• 1:14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:14:02Lewis Howes?

  Not maybe, not maybe based on their personal lives, but just based on how they've brought their mission to life.

• 1:14:09Speaker 00

  For me, Steve Jobs. For me, Steve Jobs, I, I'm just deeply grateful that he has been a contemporary. And that I have had a chance not just to study him historically, like I have with an Abraham Lincoln. But that we lived through some of those chapters, you know, with him, you know, as they were unfolding in a way that we know has changed the world. Now, why do I say that? Not because of some of the things only that he has been known for in popular consciousness. Which is that he was a creative genius, he had this larger visions, he was a force of nature and the way he was kind of pushed through his ideas and make things happen. But actually for two things which are less well known. When you add those two to this, that's when you complete the stool, you know, with the three legs.

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  So there's this piece that we, you know, we talk about, but the other two pieces that I want to quickly just offer. One is that, you know, he realized pretty early in his life, he said like, I'm not interested in being the richest man in the cemetery. So that's not the goal of life. He said, the goal of life is enlightenment, whichever way you define it. As a teenager, he came to India in the search of truths. He went to the Himalayas and things, he wanted to for a while be like a Hindu ascetic, like a truth seeker. Then he realized his calling was more in the world, but then he went on the Buddhist path. He went to Japan, took on his Zen Buddhist practice, which became his enduring faith, you know, for him. Did deep inner work around meditation, you know, et cetera. You know, worked a lot on his diet, you and I were talking about it sometime back. And, and so he, he did a lot of inner tilling of his soil.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  And I admire him for that, admire him for that. But then here's the third last piece of it, which is that that was Jobs 1.0. Somebody who was doing a lot of that inner work and then manifesting it through his voice, his vision, his purpose, his energy. And foisting it, you know, on this world which was like, oh wow, this guy is amazing, you know, kind of just entrepreneur, right? And, and that leads him to IPO and launch Apple and succeed with the initial Apple products. But then he struggles, he fails and he stumbles and then. And that's when Steve Jobs two point O starts to get sculpted. And how how old was he then? When he was the failure and. If I recall, I think somewhere in his late twenties. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Uh, don't hold me to that, but I think somewhere in his late twenties.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  So now he's actually fallen from a place of tremendous, you know, grace and celebrity status, right? And what would happen next? As opposed to just like pure bitterness, he went on a tremendous journey of growth. Yes, you know, from time to time, his bitterness or his rage or his foisting his ideas and others didn't leave him. He had aspects of his habits in him, but he rebuilt a relation or he built a relationship with this daughter Lisa that he had in the past has denied patrimony over. Now, we have to recognize that he was um in some ways abandoned in the sense that he was given up for for adoption.

• 1:17:03Speaker 00

  And he was raised by foster parent, loving parents, you know, you know, God bless them for taking such loving care of him. Who knows what struggles he had to work out with his own inner demons? In attachment and engagement and love and connection with people. But he had to work that out and he did, you know, with his daughter as best equal. Yeah. He also just became a lot more humble and attuned to other people's ideas and thoughts and acknowledging his own errors and bringing their voices in. Uh, as has been, you know, shared by Ed Catmull, the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios and knew him over twenty years. And also, you know, Tim Cook, who's also shared what what he knew, but you know. And he says the sheep jobs of his early years, feisty, you know, assertive, dynamic

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  was not the Steve Jobs that, you know, actually they saw evolve in the next ten, twenty years. He was a much more empathetic, much more, you know, so so that's a beautiful story of growth right there, the Steve Jobs. Transformation, yeah. And then finally, he had this capacity of empathy that he developed over time, which was again not necessarily part of his early years. Where, you know, this one reporter for Rolling Stones magazine wrote this piece about him upon his passing and he said, over the last few years, I just watched him completely change. And he said he would call me and talk to me and had a curiosity about my family, about my children. I never thought I'd ever talk to him about my kids in the past. Larry Brilliant, you know, his son went through cancer. And Steve Jobs would call him up and talk to his son and coach him and guide him through his

• 1:18:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:18:29Speaker 00

  cancer healing journey and talk to him about like how he can just kind of like fight it and all of that stuff. He just lovingly was just a presence for him there. Oh yeah, so so this is beautiful, very human side of like Steve Jobs stories that play out. And you know, who knows what Steve Jobs three point O would have been. You know, as Jim Collins said, like, I would have loved to see Steve Jobs three point O, which we, you know, don't have the benefit of.

• 1:18:48Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:18:49Speaker 00

  So so you know, so to that end, I I have just a lot of love for him.

• 1:18:52Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Did you ever meet him or no?

• 1:18:54Speaker 00

  No, no, no, I'm great. But we share one common connection in some ways, which I moved to share with you.

• 1:19:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:19:01Speaker 00

  Never met him, uh, which is that, um. So when Walter Isaacson was writing uh his book on him, right, so he was doing a lot of research and interviews and spending a lot of time with him. Uh, the authorized biography, so to say. He said, once I was with Steve and I asked him, um, what's, you know, what do you read? Let let me see your iPad. Let me see what books you have and you know, your iBooks there. And he said he had only one book, he had only one book. And uh, I'll tell you what that is in a minute, but let me tell you another story first. Upon his passing, they had a memorial service at Stanford University for him and all the mega, you know, folks of Silicon Valley were there, of course, as you can imagine, Google founders and others. And Yo-Yo Ma was like, you know, performing there and everything.

• 1:19:45Speaker 00

  And everything had been designed by Steve because he was anticipating his own passing and he, you know, as you can imagine with Steve, the experience and everything. He wanted to get every detail right, perfect. And so, um, you know, the uh, the founder of uh Salesforce, you know, he shares the story. Uh, Mark Benioff.

• 1:20:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:20:02Speaker 00

  He says that as we walked out from there, you know, uh, we all got a brown bag. And we were curious, like, what's in this bag? And it's apparently like Steve's last message to us. You know, because like this is the last moment, you know, his memorial service. And he said, I went to my car and I ripped open the bag to see what, and there was this book inside. Now, remember I told you that Walter Isaacson said he had just one book?

• 1:20:23Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  That book is called Autobiography of a Yogi.

• 1:20:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:20:28Speaker 00

  And it is the autobiography of uh Yogananda. Who I uh first encountered at the age of ten, not physically, because he had passed on the ninety, nineteen fifty two. But I encountered through his teachings and his writings. And I got swept off my feet, swept off my feet. And I started to kind of pursue his path of career yoga and meditation and, you know, all of that. Uh, and his international headquarters of his organization called Sepulchral Fellowship is right here in Los Angeles.

• 1:20:55Lewis Howes?

  Huh. Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  In nineteen twenty.

• 1:20:58Lewis Howes?

  With the, uh, I've been there a few times with a little pond and like, it's a beautiful.

• 1:21:02Speaker 00

  That is another of their properties.

• 1:21:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay, it's one of his too.

• 1:21:04Speaker 00

  That's called Lake Shrine.

• 1:21:06Lewis Howes?

  Oh, it's so amazing.

• 1:21:06Speaker 00

  And it's so beautiful, isn't it?

• 1:21:07Lewis Howes?

  So peaceful.

• 1:21:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a beautiful property of theirs too. This one, the international headquarters on Mount Washington.

• 1:21:14Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  It's, uh, this little hidden nook, uh, between LA and Pasadena and this little hill and at the very top of that. Yeah, it's beautiful. Actually, come there sometime.

• 1:21:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'd love to.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love to host you there.

• 1:21:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:21:24Speaker 00

  Um, and so, so Jobs told Isaacson, he said, I encountered this book during my travels in India. And I'd read it. And he said, since then, I have reread it every year.

• 1:21:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:21:41Speaker 00

  And that was the only book he had on his iPad. And then Mark Benioff at the conference, when he shared that this was his parting gift to us, he said, that was Steve Jobs' message to us. And he said, most entrepreneurs don't get it. They think it's about changing the world. Actually, was Steve Jobs' message was change yourself.

• 1:21:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:59Speaker 00

  Actualize yourself. You have no idea what your full potential is.

• 1:22:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:22:03Speaker 00

  Right? Which is kind of like Yogananda's message, is Sepulchralization. I mean, the organization is called Sepulchral Fellowship. That like you have no idea what beauty and grace that is within, within you and, you know, go for, you know, go for that search. So, so that is a connection of you, Steve, you know?

• 1:22:19Lewis Howes?

  That's very cool.

• 1:22:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Lewis Howes?

  It's a beautiful story.

• 1:22:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, thank you.

• 1:22:22Lewis Howes?

  I love this. Um, man, this is inspiring. I'm really excited about your book, Inner Mastery, Outer Impact. How your five core energies hold the keys to success. Make sure you guys get a, a copy or two, give it to a friend. Check this out. Some great stories, great lessons and wisdom, uh, from, from your entire life, but you're also your research and, and all the different things you do. So, very inspiring. Um, I got a couple of, a couple of final questions, but before I ask them, where can we go to connect with you? Where can we get the book? You know, what, how can we learn more about you specifically and what you're up to?

• 1:22:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Louis.

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  So there is my website, hitendra dot com. So that's just my first name, H I T E N D R A dot com. And I have newsletter articles, I have a newsletter you can sign up for there. And so that's my most immediate offering, you know, to us. If you're drawn to doing something as an organization, then I offer you two pathways. There is my institute called Mentor Institute. And we have taken this as the foundation and built a leadership and culture curriculum on this

• 1:23:26Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:23:26Speaker 00

  to help advance purpose, people and performance, you know, for organizations in these kind of crazy and changing and hard times. And so as an organization or a team, if you're drawn to it, then I would encourage you to consider that. And then we have Mentor Foundation. That's a nonprofit I've started recently with the goal of addressing some of the angst and, you know, struggles that we are all facing in society today, you know, collectively, by helping develop a global fellowship, you know, of change makers, people who'd be deeply committed to building not just a prosperous world, you know, on the outside, but also a principled world on the inside.

• 1:24:00Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:24:01Speaker 00

  By strengthening the moral and mental and social fibers, you know, in the world, starting with changing their own selves.

• 1:24:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:06Speaker 00

  And so we have launched a youth fellowship, you know, at present, a fully funded program for college youth who are qualified and committed and just, you know, went through the first cohort of that, a six week kind of immersive journey in New York, which then is followed up by a year long kind of additional touch, because I really want to help them connect, grow, develop, and then ultimately become like lifelong, lifelong fellows. And so, you know, send our prayer, you know, for, for the foundation, because my hope and aspiration in the future is that we can help create maybe the next generation Rhodes Scholarship or something,

• 1:24:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 1:24:39Speaker 00

  which will be coveted, you know, around the world and can help develop people based on the latest understanding we have today of what it takes to bring thoughtful, strategic, loving, caring kind of change, you know, in the world.

• 1:24:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. That's beautiful, man. And you're, the book, they can get it on Amazon or any bookstore or at your website, right?

• 1:24:56Speaker 00

  Yes, exactly. It's available everywhere. Um, you know, certainly on Amazon and the usual.

• 1:25:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Online.

• 1:25:03Lewis Howes?

  Usual places.

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  Bookstores, yeah.

• 1:25:04Lewis Howes?

  You're getting more active on social media, I saw recently, right? You're starting to put some content out there. What's your main platform of choice that you're using the most?

• 1:25:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have to say that, you know, again, I'm a huge admirer of you and those of you who have fully embraced this medium. In my case, it's still like a step by journey, but certainly LinkedIn is one platform.

• 1:25:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:25:23Speaker 00

  A reactive one. Instagram is another one that we're active on. I certainly would encourage any of all of us, if you're drawn to this work, to come and sign up and yeah, be part of, you know, this kindred family, you know, again, I think they get so much from you, but if you're drawn to more, then I'd be honored to have.

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  I love it, I love it. Uh, this is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So imagine hypothetically, it's your last day on earth, many years away.

• 1:25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Lewis Howes?

  You live as long as you want, but you've got to turn out the lights in this physical world. And you accomplish everything you want in this world.

• 1:25:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:54Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. So your book, your messages, your content, you know, your lectures, it's all gone for whatever reason, hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be truths, you, three lessons you would share with the world. And this is all we would have access to.

• 1:26:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:09Lewis Howes?

  What would be those three truths that you would leave behind?

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, the first would be a sense of unity. We're all one family. You know, we're living in a time today where we are starting to get very drawn to wanting to affirm and assert, you know, different identities and intersecting identities. And I would offer, while I really respect and admire the opportunity there for us to give voice, you know, at times to certain identities that have in the past been marginalized. There's also a lot of value in seeing us all as part of just the ones, one identity. And it's not even to me just a human identity. It's the universe, it's creation, it's life, which throbs as much in a plant as it does in you and me. And how can we feel that sense of unity with everything, with everything, with everything? So that's my first. The second would be harmony that, um,

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  Imagine that there is some invisible creative conductor out there. And you and I are all part of this symphony, you know, and we're meant to strike our note, you know, and when the moment comes and then pause, when the moment comes and retire, when the moment comes. And each of us has our role to play. But there is the capacity for incredible harmony in the universe. And we can just open ourselves up to that idea that we're all part of some incredible symphony. And with some amazing conductor, you know, in the background in the universe, whispering and guiding us to do our part. And then the third is just discovery, you know, the idea that wow, like, there's so much

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  the government doesn't know, there's so much the science doesn't know, there's so much that my friends don't know. There's so much that I don't know that still needs to be engaged on, connected with. How do you, how do you really inspire the human spirit? How do you build bridges with people you consider as your enemies?

• 1:28:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:28:02Speaker 00

  How do you overcome like, you know, impossible health issues that come up? You know, do you truly have to only engage with the knowledge of your present times and your fraternity? And those that you consort with? Or is it possible there is much, much, much more to the universe?

• 1:28:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:21Speaker 00

  And so always living in that state of intrigue and discovery, which you have so beautifully shared, has been so much part of your DNA.

• 1:28:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:27Speaker 00

  I'm just so grateful for this opportunity to be here in this space with you, Lewis. Even if this was just a conversation between you and me and nobody was gonna listen. Like for me, this would have been tremendously fulfilling.

• 1:28:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:40Speaker 00

  The fact that beyond you and me, there's, you know, all your followers who may perhaps, you know, get something of value.

• 1:28:45Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:28:46Speaker 00

  From this is just a great honor.

• 1:28:47Lewis Howes?

  I got a lot of value and I want to acknowledge you, Hitendra, for your, your energy of putting out these five core energies. And I think you've gone through different transformations in your life to get here. We were talking about different health challenges you had before off camera. And to see you continue to dive inward to, to realize what's possible in a harmonious, unifying way. And to share it in a, in a, in a platform, business school, that necessarily wouldn't be thinking about these things. Where I feel like that's where the place people need it the most. Is to make sure that they are grounded in their mission and their purpose when they go out and build businesses.

• 1:29:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:26Lewis Howes?

  Because I think a lot of people are focused on how do I make more money without the meaning and the mission and the purpose.

• 1:29:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Lewis Howes?

  The love behind it.

• 1:29:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:34Lewis Howes?

  And so for you to talk about this in a business setting and for entrepreneurs, I think it's really powerful and I acknowledge you for for bringing this wisdom to all of us.

• 1:29:43Speaker 00

  No, tha- tha- thank you for saying that. Look, I also have to say I have tremendous regard for the business world.

• 1:29:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:47Speaker 00

  Tremendous regard for the discipline that it takes to succeed in that kind of competitive environment. I think capitalism has generated a lot of positive goods in the world that you and I, we all beneficiaries of and consume and engage with and you know, other arenas of the world can absolutely benefit from some of those just like yeah, learnings and skills and functional mastery that you know, business attains. And even Yogananda, when he came to the United States in nineteen twenty, you know, he looked around and he saw some of these like selfless karma yogi kind of people doing for the sake of, you know, kind of advancing a certain material cause in the world. And he said like, many of them are actually like just yogis, you know.

• 1:30:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  Acting out something, you know, in the world. As long as you do it from a place not of greed.

• 1:30:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:30:32Speaker 00

  You know, but of manifesting something beautiful in the world.

• 1:30:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  So I have tremendous, you know, respect and appreciation for America and for the way capitalism and business has in its best face of that, really helped make the world so much more comfortable and rewarding for all of us. And to be able to serve that community and all that through what I'm bringing to help, you know, fill in the core, I think is something and definitely as you have rightly pointed out, mission driven about.

• 1:30:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 00

  But again, thank you very much.

• 1:31:01Lewis Howes?

  You're welcome. Yeah. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  Letting your inner core shine through in everything you do.

• 1:31:11Speaker 00

  In feeling a sense of attunement with the universe and being therefore able to strike whatever note that grand mystical conductor out there is guiding you to moment by moment until your dying breath.

• 1:31:29Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, there you go. Tendra, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

• 1:31:33Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:32:17Lewis Howes?

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