Become A Powerful Leader In Your Life (Celebrating Black History Month) EP 1388

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today! Today we’re honoring Black History Month by highlighting four experts who share critical lessons they have learned in their pursuit of greatness. In this episode, you will learn:Kobe Bryant, the late NBA legend, breaks down how the stories we tell ourselves impacts how we show up in the world. Lisa Nichols, NYT bestselling author and life coach teaches us the power of manifesting abundance in our lives. Inky Johnson, collegiate athlete, speaker and entrepreneur shares how to overcome adversity and extract the positive from the negative. Mariel Buque, a Columbia University-trained Psychologist & intergenerational trauma expert, teaches how you can regulate your nervous system & heal your soul. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1388Full Episodes:Kobe BryantLisa NicholsInky JohnsonMariel Buque 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.

• 0:03Lewis Howes?

  If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of, I've written a new book called The Greatness Mindset, and I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and step-by-step guidance, The Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link in the description to get your copy today.

• 0:30Kobe Bryant?

  Stories is what moves the world. Whether it's an inspirational story, or it's an informational one, nothing that we have moves without story. And so I think that is the root of everything. And if we're gonna try to make the world a better place, story's the right place to start.

• 0:47Lewis 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.

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 1:29Lewis Howes?

  How important is understanding human psychology and human behavior to work with a team, as opposed to just relying on your gifts and talents?

• 1:37Kobe Bryant?

  It's probably the most important thing. You know, when you're in this culture in our society, you can do some phenomenal things individually, but they'll never reach their full potential unless you do them collectively. And you have to figure out how to do that. And you know, Phil Jackson was great at that. Phil, he wouldn't just coach the team or coach the game, but he'd read everything about every single player. He'd learn about your history, how you grew up. How you were raised, where were you raised? He'll read every interview and he'll learn about you. And gives him a better understanding of what's motivating you. What your insecurities are, right? And then it just helps him communicate with you better.

• 2:22Kobe Bryant?

  Or even push a button here if he needs to.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  When did you learn that it was important to understand who your teammates are? What their likes or dislikes are? Was that in high school for you or more?

• 2:33Kobe Bryant?

  No, I learned it from Phil. There was a stretch in 03 where Shaq was out with an injury. And Phil called me up to his office and said, okay, we need you to really turn on the afterburners and start scoring a lot if you have to win. So I did and I wound up scoring, I think it was nine straight games with 40 plus points.

• 2:53Lewis Howes?

  Nine straight?

• 2:54Kobe Bryant?

  Nine straight games. And then Shaq comes back, second to last game of that. And then Phil calls me up to his office and says, Kobe, okay, I need you to dial it back. I'm like, why? Like, we're winning. I don't understand. Because our goal is to win a championship. And we can get through the Western Conference with you playing this way. But in the East, we can dominate them inside with Shaq in the post. But if you continue to do this, we'll lose Shaq. We'll lose him.

• 3:25Lewis Howes?

  His motivation, his excitement.

• 3:26Kobe Bryant?

  Which triggers him, right? So I need you to pull back so we can pull Shaq forward for June.

• 3:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:33Kobe Bryant?

  And I just looked at him like, this is one smart dude.

• 3:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's really smart.

• 3:39Kobe Bryant?

  That's one smart dude, man. So I pulled it back.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:42Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  What do you think was been the greatest challenge you've had since leaving the game?

• 3:49Kobe Bryant?

  The greatest challenge?

• 3:56Kobe Bryant?

  I think it's...

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  You won an Oscar, you're launching podcasts and shows and you got a book coming out.

• 4:03Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, but it's different though. Like, you know, we were just talking about it here in the office the other day.

• 4:12Kobe Bryant?

  When you play the game, you hit a game winning shot, you miss a shot, the reaction's there. You can see how people responding to it, right? You can feel it.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  The energy is like-

• 4:21Kobe Bryant?

  The energy is there. What I do now, you don't. Like, I don't see how people are affected by your basketball. Or, you know, creating the punies and you put it out there. Like, I wish I could see a car ride of a family the first time their daughter hears Lily's Lemonade and what she's doing, you know, she's singing along to it. That's not there, right? So, that's the challenge. That's the one thing that I miss is being able to-

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  The feedback.

• 4:46Kobe Bryant?

  -feed off of the energy.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  The instant feedback you get from shoot, missing or scoring a shot, winning or losing a game. It's like, either way, you're getting a result, right?

• 4:53Kobe Bryant?

  Yes, yes, that's the one thing. And I went to, because I spend a lot of time with mentors as well, up at Pixar and Disney Studios. They've been absolutely wonderful animation, Disney Animation. And I've talked to them about Frozen and Moana and how our kids love them. And they're always like, "Oh, that's awesome." And they want to hear, because they don't ever get a chance to truly see it. Like, they're not-

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  Not sit in the movie theater, like-

• 5:15Kobe Bryant?

  No, no, and they don't have time to go to Disneyland and walk around the park and see how many families are enjoying the content that they've created because they're busy making the next one.

• 5:23Lewis Howes?

  Creating.

• 5:24Kobe Bryant?

  Yes, yes, so that's the one thing.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  What do you think the biggest challenge is for most athletes after they retire?

• 5:31Kobe Bryant?

  I think it's the fear of starting anew. And that was certainly present for me as well.

• 5:37Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 5:37Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Lewis Howes?

  Like, an identity, you mean, or?

• 5:39Kobe Bryant?

  Well, it's starting from scratch, right? Because when you, when you play for 20 years, I played for 20 years, you reach a certain level, you're like, "Okay, wait a minute, I have to start again at the base of a mountain." It's very scary. It's very scary.

• 5:51Lewis Howes?

  Even for you?

• 5:52Kobe Bryant?

  Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And the thing that helped me actually was hurting my Achilles. Because that forced me to sit there and say, "Okay, the day could be today that your career's over."

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  At any time, when you were playing, you mean, yeah.

• 6:07Kobe Bryant?

  Now, what do you do? You have these ideas about doing something with your life after basketball.

• 6:14Kobe Bryant?

  But what if today is the day that you, that's it. Now what do you do? So I had all this time sitting there with my Achilles injury and contemplating and thinking. I said, I better get to work.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 6:25Kobe Bryant?

  That was that.

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  What was the vision for you afterwards then? Was it to do what you're doing now? Did you have other ideas or what is, what's the vision?

• 6:33Kobe Bryant?

  I struggled with it at first because the first question I asked, which is the wrong question is, what's the biggest industry I can get into?

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Was it more money thinking or?

• 6:42Kobe Bryant?

  Money thinking, saying, okay, athletes are saying you can't make more revenue when you retire. This is your source of your income is here. Saying, okay, that's a challenge. What can I do? And I remember going for.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Didn't you launch a fund or something?

• 6:55Kobe Bryant?

  I did, I did. And so I started, I went for a ride and I said, okay, stop thinking of it that way. You're thinking of it the wrong way. Why did you start playing basketball? Because I loved it. All right, what do you love to do? Oh, I love to tell stories. All right, let's do that. And then that's where it started for me. And then on top of that, it became things like, you know, you started learning more about the financial industry and about players going broke once they retire and saying, okay, how can I, how can I minimize the chances of that happening? What are the things that I can do to invest my money smartly? Also help control some of that outcome to a certain extent.

• 7:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:35Kobe Bryant?

  And that's when I called Mike Rapoli. Mike Rapoli was an entrepreneur who built Vitamin Water, Pirate's Boot and some other companies. And started learning from him. And then from that came the opportunity to invest in body armor.

• 7:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Kobe Bryant?

  And which, yeah, which.

• 7:50Lewis Howes?

  It's delicious.

• 7:53Kobe Bryant?

  But all that came from the injury and really having to self-assess. And, you know, face that really dark room of what comes next.

• 8:02Lewis Howes?

  Storytelling is something you're really passionate about. What's a story over your life that's been a constant theme that you go back to? Is there something you heard as a kid that you, that really resonates with you? Or a book or a movie that just feels like this is me?

• 8:17Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, that's funny. Movies are plenty, but there's a quote from one of my English teachers, a little American named Mr. Fisk. He had a great quote that said, rest at the end, not in the middle. And that's something I always live by. I'm not gonna rest, I'm gonna keep on pushing now. There are a lot of answers that I don't have. Even questions that I don't have. But I'm just gonna keep going. I'm just gonna keep going. And I'll figure these things out as we go, right? And you just continue to build that way. So I try to live by that all the time.

• 8:50Lewis Howes?

  Rest at the end.

• 8:51Kobe Bryant?

  Rest at the end.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  What's the question that eats you alive the most? That you haven't answered yet?

• 8:59Kobe Bryant?

  The question that eats me alive that I haven't answered yet?

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  That you're still looking for the answer?

• 9:03Kobe Bryant?

  I'm still looking for the answer.

• 9:06Kobe Bryant?

  How to tell a good story? I don't think anybody has that answer. You know, like when I sat down to write Dear Basketball, I was like, okay, what do I want to say?

• 9:18Kobe Bryant?

  And you have certain acts and how you can structure certain things, right? The ebbs and flows of story.

• 9:26Kobe Bryant?

  Certain formulas that have been there since the beginning of time. But it's such an exact...

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  So challenging, yeah.

• 9:32Kobe Bryant?

  Right? And so, that one question is really interesting.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Why do you want to tell a great story?

• 9:40Kobe Bryant?

  I think stories is what moves the world. Whether it's an inspirational story, or it's an informational one. Nothing in this world moves without story. You know, from the political world, sports world. Nothing that we have moves without story. And so I think that is the root of everything. And if we're gonna try to make the world a better place, story's the right place to start.

• 10:06Lewis Howes?

  I agree.

• 10:06Kobe Bryant?

  But most people don't understand. Like my last year, people would come up to me and say, okay, what are you gonna do? I said, I'm gonna be a storyteller.

• 10:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:13Kobe Bryant?

  And they go...

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  They're like, what are you talking about?

• 10:15Kobe Bryant?

  Alright, man, so what's gonna happen? Yeah, like what's gonna happen when you retire is you're gonna go through like a week of depression. Then the second week is gonna be like denial and all some of that. I'm like, dude, seriously, I'm good. So after a while, I just got sick of it and I just said, I don't know. I'll go play golf or something.

• 10:32Lewis Howes?

  Right, you just tell them a lie.

• 10:33Kobe Bryant?

  I'm not gonna do anything.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  I'll invest in real estate, yeah.

• 10:35Kobe Bryant?

  Whatever, I'm not gonna do anything. I'm just gonna sit around.

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  What does losing feel like to you?

• 10:40Kobe Bryant?

  It's exciting.

• 10:42Lewis Howes?

  Why is it exciting?

• 10:44Kobe Bryant?

  Because it means you have different ways to get better. There are certain things that you can figure out, that you can take advantage of. Right, certain weaknesses that were exposed, that you need to shore up. Right, so it was exciting. I mean, it sucks to lose.

• 11:03Kobe Bryant?

  But at the same time, there are answers there, if you just look at them.

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  Because you get the information from losing more than from winning, probably.

• 11:10Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, the answers are there when you win, too. You just have to look at them.

• 11:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Kobe Bryant?

  Right, so it's a constant process. It's exciting when you win, it's exciting when you lose, because the process should be exactly the same. Whether you win or you lose, is you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better. You find things that you've done well, that worked. Figure out how did they work, why did they work? How can you make them work again?

• 11:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:33Kobe Bryant?

  And, but the hardest thing is to face that stuff.

• 11:37Kobe Bryant?

  That's a really, really tough challenge.

• 11:38Lewis Howes?

  You mean, face it, you mean, look yourself in the mirror and say, okay, this is how I showed up, or this is what happened?

• 11:43Kobe Bryant?

  I'll give you an example. So, Katie Lou Samuelson is one of the best college basketball players in the country. She plays at UConn, she's gonna be a senior.

• 11:50Lewis Howes?

  Right now.

• 11:50Kobe Bryant?

  Right now. And she's from Huntington Beach, out here by us. And so she comes down and she works with some of my girls on the team, and she helps coach. And they just had a really tough season last year, where they lost to Notre Dame in the final.

• 12:04Lewis Howes?

  That's right.

• 12:05Kobe Bryant?

  Really tough.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  First loss in like-

• 12:06Kobe Bryant?

  First loss.

• 12:06Lewis Howes?

  Years, right?

• 12:08Kobe Bryant?

  And so, I asked her, I said, have you watched the Notre Dame game? She was like, no. I said, well, why not? She said, I don't want to watch that. I said, I know you don't, but you're gonna play Notre Dame this year, yeah? Yeah. What's the chances you see them again, in the final? She goes, well, you'll probably see them again. I said, well, you can't show up and play them without knowing why you lost that one. Right, so, you know, the mistakes that you've made in that game, you have to do the hard stuff. And watch that game, and study that game, to not make those mistakes over and over again. Just because you weren't brave enough to face it. So, she came down to the office. I brought her down to the office and we sat down, we watched that game together. Right, and you gotta- You gotta deal with it.

• 12:49Lewis Howes?

  Face it.

• 12:49Kobe Bryant?

  You gotta deal with it. Face it, learn from it.

• 12:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow, it must have been cringing for her and she'd be like, oh, replaying like we could have won all these things.

• 12:56Kobe Bryant?

  That's exactly it, isn't it?

• 12:57Lewis Howes?

  If I just did that one thing, if I didn't get that foul, if I scored that layup.

• 13:01Kobe Bryant?

  That's exactly right. You're looking at it and say, oh, there's the mismatch. Oh, there's the gap. You know, and all those little things and it sucks. But, but you don't want to have that feeling again, do you? Right? So you gotta really study it, face it. And not to say you'll win the next time, but at least you'll you'll give yourself a better, a better chance.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And did you, what was your routine and ritual like after every game? Would you watch almost every game over or certain games?

• 13:28Kobe Bryant?

  All of them.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Every game you watched?

• 13:30Kobe Bryant?

  Every game.

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  The whole game?

• 13:31Kobe Bryant?

  The whole game.

• 13:32Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 13:33Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah. So it started with me when I was a, when Phil Jackson's, his first year here with the Lakers. One of assistant coaches, his name was Tex Winter, and I call him Yoda. I mean, he was like 82 when he got here.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:45Kobe Bryant?

  And he was responsible for teaching me the triangle offense.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  How old were you then?

• 13:50Kobe Bryant?

  I was 21.

• 13:52Lewis Howes?

  So three years, four years in the league?

• 13:54Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, so about my fourth year in the league.

• 13:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 13:56Kobe Bryant?

  And so I go up to his room and this is when there were no iPads or anything like that, right? So when you're on the road, yeah, you have to call down to the front desk and have to bring up the TV. With the whole, you know, the rolly thing and the VHS and the cassette tape and pop it in. And I thought we were gonna watch what we call touches. So watch all your touches when you have the ball, all the decisions you made, good ones and bad. No, we're watching the start of the game.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:21Kobe Bryant?

  To the end of the game. And not like, not like the TV feed. We're watching the in-the-arena feed. The layup line, the timeouts.

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:31Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah. Rewinding, stopping, fast forward, rewinding, slow motion. Every little thing, every game of that season. With the 82-year-old Yoda.

• 14:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 14:45Kobe Bryant?

  Who is as brutally honest as you can get.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  What did that teach you that season?

• 14:51Kobe Bryant?

  It taught me to look at detail.

• 14:54Kobe Bryant?

  Look at things at their smallest. Right? Look at body language.

• 15:02Kobe Bryant?

  Look at the energy between players, our team and the other team. Right? Look at the tactics. Look at the overall strategy and to look at how tactically things are manifesting themselves. And because I watched so much film, then it gave me the ability to see game in real time as if I was watching film. Where I can see, because a lot of times the game starts moving really fast. But if you train yourself to watch hours and hours of film, the game's not moving that fast anymore. You can really recognize who's doing what and why. Then you can position guys in the right places in real time.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Seeing it before it happens.

• 15:35Kobe Bryant?

  Yes.

• 15:36Lewis Howes?

  We, you know, in football, we'd watch it once a week, game film. But not, you know, after every game. It was only one game a week. You got it like three a week sometimes.

• 15:45Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta go.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  And I know Tom Brady is obsessive over game film as well. I mean, watching his show that came out, Tom vs. Time, was all about him just in there studying. Even months after the game, he's studying to prepare, right? It's just like, he's obsessed. And that's, that's one of the keys, you think? It's like, if you're not watching film, whether it be as a speaker on stage, or a performer, a musician, if you're not watching yourself back.

• 16:11Kobe Bryant?

  You gotta learn, man. I mean, Beyonce is same, same thing.

• 16:14Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:15Kobe Bryant?

  After a performance, she's immediately on her laptop, re-watching the performance.

• 16:20Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 16:21Kobe Bryant?

  Yes, seeing how to do things better. What could we have done differently? Right? I mean, it's just, it's, it's an obsessiveness that comes along with it. You want things to be as perfect as they can be. Understanding that nothing is ever perfect. But the challenge is try to get them as perfect as they can be. And what can you do? It's in your control. So control what you can. I can watch film all day long. It's gonna help me.

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  Get better.

• 16:45Kobe Bryant?

  Yes, yes.

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  Now, did you have your teammates also follow on this obsessiveness that you had as well? Or did you just encourage them or what was the?

• 16:54Kobe Bryant?

  No, you can't push somebody to do that, right? But what you can do is alter behavior and also change the vernacular of how they speak about the game. So on team buses, team planes, in a locker room after practice, I would look at the film, I'd pull Powell, Lamar, D. Fish, pull them aside and say, let's look at this. Right? We probably should have done this, that and the other.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  So you'll show them the game film a little bit here and there.

• 17:19Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, then you speak to them in executional terms. It's never, come on, guys, we can do better. Come on, guys, we can do better. That's rah rah stuff. Right? Leader must give very tactical, you know, things that we can do, adjustments. Okay, the defense is doing this, that and the other. That means we should probably do this, this, this, that and the other. By midway through the season, through that behavior, you start seeing them communicating the same way back to you. Right? And it's like, okay, Kobe, they're doing this, that and the other to you. Maybe we should do this and that. You're like, okay, yeah, awesome, great, let's do it.

• 17:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. What about season 16, 17, 18? Are you still watching every game film as obsessively as the first 10 years?

• 17:59Kobe Bryant?

  Not now, no. Well, when I was playing.

• 18:01Lewis Howes?

  When you were playing.

• 18:02Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, so when I was playing, what I would do is study the film, but study our younger players. And see what areas do they need to develop in and how can I help them develop? I mean, that was the big challenge is you move from, you know,

• 18:19Kobe Bryant?

  being a single dominant player to understanding, okay, I have to help these other guys.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  How do I lift everyone else up?

• 18:25Kobe Bryant?

  It's tough.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  What, I mean, you were so dominant your whole career, one of the greatest of all time. Was there a weakness that you had? Or did you, because obviously you're always trying to master your weaknesses so they became your strengths, but did you at the end or towards the end, did you ever feel like, gosh, I still haven't like mastered this one part of the game?

• 18:44Kobe Bryant?

  The challenge for me was always compassion and empathy.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Because you're like, guys, let's go, get results, shut up, don't complain, right?

• 18:51Kobe Bryant?

  I don't want to hear you whining. I don't want to hear it.

• 18:53Lewis Howes?

  No excuses.

• 18:54Kobe Bryant?

  Don't tell me how rough the water is, just bring the boat in. You know, I don't want to hear it, you know? And it's, uh, it's understanding like, okay, these guys have lives outside of here.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  They have other things happening.

• 19:06Kobe Bryant?

  Other things happening to them that may be affecting the way that they're practicing or the way that they're performing. And it was hard for me to understand that because nothing bothered me, you know, anything personally that never fazed me.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  You compartmentalized it.

• 19:20Kobe Bryant?

  Very well. So I couldn't understand how my teammates couldn't do that either until I, you know, so I had to really work on that aspect of it.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  That's hard.

• 19:30Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, it is.

• 19:31Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you never really had the compassion you wish you would have had? Like until the last maybe couple of years?

• 19:37Kobe Bryant?

  Yeah, so I think about oh nine, things started changing for me. I started really making a conscious effort to better understand. And that doesn't mean, I mean, you have compassion and empathy, so you go soft on them. It's more like you put, you put yourself to the side and you put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're feeling. And then you have to make certain decisions of, okay, what buttons do I need to push for this player to get them to the next level? So it's never, it's not sit around and all, it's all happy-go-lucky type of thing. Your leader, your job is to get the best out of them.

• 20:12Kobe Bryant?

  Even if, you know, they may not like it at that time.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Wow. What are you most proud of from your 20 seasons?

• 20:23Kobe Bryant?

  Honestly, it was, it sounds.

• 20:29Kobe Bryant?

  May sound a little shallow, but I gotta say beating the Celtics in game seven. That's what I'm most proud of because it was the hardest. You know, you're playing with Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen. And, you know, it was myself, Powell, and players that other teams didn't want. And, you know, how do we figure out as a group what to do? And the reason why I loved that series so much is that we went down three games to two against Boston. And now you got two games coming home. I remember sitting in the locker room and they beat the crap out of us too that game. So, we're sitting in the locker room and it's really, really quiet.

• 21:12Kobe Bryant?

  I'm sitting there looking around and we just lost to Celtics in 08. So, this is like revenge, right? And they're kicking our butt again, right? So, I sit around and I just started laughing. I started laughing and then I remember Derek Fisher looked at me like, and Lamar looked at me and goes, "What is funny?" I said, "Dude, they beat the crap out of us. They just beat the crap out of us." And I said, "I'm missing the part where that's funny." I said, "Man, listen, if you start this season and they say, you know, all you have to do is win two games at home and you're NBA champ, would you take that?" Yeah. And like, "Right. That's all we gotta do. Go home, win two, we're NBA champions. All we gotta do is win two games in a row. That's it.

• 21:54Kobe Bryant?

  We'll take care of the first game and I promise you, they're not winning game seven on our home floor. It's not happening." So, we all just laughed about it and then we went out and we figured it out. But that game seven was, we're down 15 points in the fourth quarter, right? And that's when you have to collectively look at each other and say, you know, the spirit of your team must be good because at that moment is when teams fracture. If the energy amongst each other isn't there, that trust isn't there, you're done.

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  How important is visualization in abundance, but then also how important is taking action?

• 22:30Lisa Nichols?

  Right. So I have five visualization exercises in that book, just because it's so important. Visualization is a gift to your heart and your soul. It's a gift. Because if the idea is the seed, visualization is the fertilizer. It's the fertilizer. Because when your thoughts are connected with an emotion. See, you would visualize yourself winning, and you would feel all the emotion that came with that. And all you're doing now is you're not chasing a foreign emotion. You know the feeling, and now you're just doing what's necessary to get back to that feeling in real time.

• 23:08Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 23:09Lisa Nichols?

  And so, what a good friend of mine, Vishen, the CEO of Mindvalley, who you know. I did a visualization with him. We were in Bali. And he said to me afterwards, "I never get emotional."

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  He doesn't get emotional.

• 23:24Lisa Nichols?

  Right, right, right, right. Well, he was like, "I cried. I got emotional." He goes, "I figured it out. It's visualization, a good visualization, brings in emotion." He was like, "That's how you do it." And so, I love doing visualizations. Because, and it's really important in the visualization, you can't see it over there. You have to see it right here.

• 23:46Lewis Howes?

  Feel it.

• 23:46Lisa Nichols?

  You gotta feel it right here. Like, I am. It's all I am. I am. I am in my dream home. I am in my dream relationship. And then unpack what that looks like. But most importantly, unpack what it feels like. And when you have that emotion in this moment, all of a sudden you stir up something that I don't think will ever go back to sleep. It'll go, "Okay, let's go get that." And what it really does is it sets up a state of cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is when you see something in your mind and you see yourself in a way that your behaviors are not currently leading to it. So your mind becomes disrupted and it goes, okay, can we get there?

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Right, because I'm not there right now.

• 24:27Lisa Nichols?

  I'm not there right now, and that's not comfortable. Your mind wants to literally be congruent, what it thinks is what you're doing, what it thinks is what you're doing. And so when you set up a constant, and abundant thinkers like you and I, we do it unconsciously. We're constantly keeping ourself in a state of cognitive dissonance, meaning, okay, what else? And I'm seeing Lisa over there and I'm going, okay, let me go, while, while being grateful for my now.

• 24:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Lisa Nichols?

  It's not in that I'm gonna be whole and complete when I get over there. I'm whole and complete now. I just know I'm supposed to be over there. So let me do what's necessary to get over there. And let me, let me evict any behaviors or characteristics that are stopping me and let me adopt any new ones that I need.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. How does someone discover their unique calling? Because you talk about that in the book, discovering your unique calling. What if people are like, I don't even know what I want. I know I want to be out of the place I'm in. I want to be abundant, wealthy, healthy, great relationships.

• 25:20Lisa Nichols?

  Right.

• 25:21Lewis Howes?

  But I don't know what my purpose or calling is right now.

• 25:24Lisa Nichols?

  I think that people put too big of a notion on purpose in that they think that it has to look like a Nelson Mandela, or a Mother Teresa, or Oprah, or you, or I. And, and a lot of times what you're really good at is right in front of you. What you're really great at is right in front of you. And to recognize that your calling and your purpose can change.

• 25:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:46Lisa Nichols?

  That it can change. You have a long lifetime. It's not gonna be the same calling the whole time. And so allow yourself to evolve, allow your purpose to evolve. What's that thing you do effortlessly that you give no credit to? Because you're, you're, you're just looking past, oh, it can't be that, because it's not hard. Well, how about, it doesn't have to be difficult. How about the fact that you're a great listener? How can you take that and, and use that and expand it? And, and don't compare yourself to someone else. Comparison, I think Benjamin Franklin said comparison is the thief of all joy. It's all, when you look left or right, you know, people are always comparing me to... Oprah Winfrey, or Yana Von Zan, or Les Brown, or Tony Robbins. I said, listen, I will, if you want me to give you Oprah, or Yana, or Tony, or Les,

• 26:29Lisa Nichols?

  I'm always going to one thousand percent fail you.

• 26:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:32Lisa Nichols?

  I do a good Lisa Nichols.

• 26:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Lisa Nichols?

  And so, when you look at what are my gifts? What are my unique gifts? I knew very early on, I was a gifted speaker. I wasn't certified as a gifted speaker. I haven't passed any courses as a speaker. Matter of fact, the last time I took a speech class, I got a D minus. And my speech teacher told me, Ms. Nichols, I recommend you never speak in public. That you get a desk job. That was in my freshman year of college, the last speech class I took. So, a lot of times, your gift and your purpose, you've discounted it. Either because someone else discounted it, or what's more common is you don't know how to monetize it.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:08Lisa Nichols?

  And sometimes, the greatest gift you have to give is not for fee, it's for free. You watch people like you and I, and go, well, why can't I get paid for it? Well, not every gift you're supposed to get paid for. Nelson Mandela did not get paid for leading twenty-seven years when he got out of prison. He got paid after that. But he was a great leader while he was in prison. And Martin Luther King, he was a, he, he got paid from the church, but his rights, his fight for civil rights, that was a free one. And he paid the highest cost. And you can go on and on and on to the, some of the greatest leaders, Mahatma Gandhi. It wasn't a paycheck.

• 27:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:39Lisa Nichols?

  And so, and I'm not, and, and I know we're scaled down to our version, but don't get attached to having to get paid for your gift.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  Right. Yeah. I started this podcast as a way of, I'm gonna do this for free for a year. I'm not gonna take any sponsors. I'm not gonna do anything. I'm not gonna sell anything, I'm just gonna create and facilitate great conversations.

• 27:58Lisa Nichols?

  And serve.

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  And that's it. And now, the, the money is coming in because of how it's impacted people's lives.

• 28:03Lisa Nichols?

  And your intention was in the right place.

• 28:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, but I wasn't like, how can I do this right now to make money? It was, how can I serve the maximum amount of people?

• 28:10Lisa Nichols?

  That right there. That when people live in a place of servant leadership, my grandmother said when I was twenty-four, if you leave and how you, how can you serve the most people? When I sit with my team, I go, how can we serve more people? How can we, last year, we were able to touch thirty million people. How, and that's all our question. Now, as we serve, our platform gets brought up, but how can we serve? Tell me how we can make more money. I'm not interested in that. I mentioned, how can we serve more? Because if I do the right thing for the right reasons, everything I need will be a byproduct of that.

• 28:39Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 28:40Lisa Nichols?

  So I think we get caught up in, you know, society allows us to have us, has us looking at possessions. And so we begin to measure our joy and our abundance on possessions.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:49Lisa Nichols?

  I, I have a friend who's worth, he's worth fourteen billion dollars. How do you even write that? I had to write it down so I could see it.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  How many zeros is that?

• 28:59Lisa Nichols?

  Right, right, a lot. He's worth fourteen billion dollars. I checked my email on my phone before we started, and he's on my phone asking me, please come visit me. Because he's lonely.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:10Lisa Nichols?

  He's rich, but he's not abundant.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:13Lisa Nichols?

  He flew from Canada to co- to come to my house for New Year's, just to be around people who were celebrating and wanted nothing from them. And so, don't pursue the things. Pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come. I promise you.

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's powerful. Let's talk about the four Es. What is this principle of the four Es that you talk about in your book?

• 29:35Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, so that, I, I like to break up my life in quadrants. And I help my students. I do a lot of coaching. I do personal development and professional development coaching. And no matter where you come, where you come to me, whether you come to me for personal development, or whether you are, want to turn your passion into profit in this professional development and business development. For entrepreneurs, we go over the four Es.

• 29:57Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:57Lisa Nichols?

  Because abundance is holistic. It's a holistic experience. So the first is enrichment of self. That you're only gonna go as far as you think you're worthy. I can push, you can push, you can have the greatest product. But if you don't feel worthy, you will work hard to sabotage that relationship.

• 30:15Lisa Nichols?

  You don't know you're doing, you just think these are the things I need and you're driving that guy away. You're driving that woman away because your self-worth says they weren't gonna stay forever anyway. Or self-worth around money, you have a cap that you feel like you're worthy of a million dollars. You will always get to nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand and you will stop because your self-worth says it. So enrichment is number one.

• 30:38Lewis Howes?

  What's a good exercise or process that we can follow on a daily basis, maybe something simple? To enhance our enrichment.

• 30:46Lisa Nichols?

  Absolutely. I did this for six months, every single day, right after I brushed my teeth. And it's the ICU exercise and you get in the mirror now. It is not necessarily simple, cuz you're dealing with yourself.

• 31:00Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 31:01Lisa Nichols?

  And as complicated as you are, will be the degree. The mechanics are very simple, yes. I appreciate that distinction. You get in the mirror and you complete three different sentences. You wanna write this down. The first sentence, you look at yourself and you say your name. So you say Louis and you complete this, I'm proud that you. And find seven different things every day to celebrate yourself for, seven different. Each day you can do the same thing you did the day before, but each day do seven different things to be proud of. The second sentence is gonna knock you down a little bit, it's gonna come from your gut.

• 31:33Lisa Nichols?

  Louis, I forgive you for. And cut the shackles to blame, shame, guilt, regret, and anger. In that sentence, you cut those five shackles. Not the first day, maybe not the third day, but by the twenty-first day, by the thirteenth day, you'll feel some relief. So Louis, I forgive you for. And go back five years, fifteen years, twenty years, do that forgive you for that thing don't nobody know about. But you, go ahead and cut those shackles, cuz if you can still think about it, it's still in your energy space. And then the third sentence is Louis, I commit to you that. Before you make a commitment to anybody else throughout your day, you make seven commitments to you. So the first sentence is, I'm proud of you. You're celebrating yourself first. We are under celebrated as a, as a society. We look for acknowledgement.

• 32:18Lisa Nichols?

  They inter, they interviewed a hundred executives that all made over a quarter of a million dollars and said, would you like a five percent raise next year? Or would you rather be told thank you more often? One hundred percent, one hundred percent said, keep your money. I'd rather hear thank you. So we're under celebrated, but first celebrate you. Be the example. When I was on Oprah, when she said, what do you do? I said, I recognize that I'm the example of how the rest of the world is supposed to treat me. And it's my job to give the world the best example of how I like to be treated. So celebrate yourself, forgive yourself, cut the shackles, and then commit to yourself before you commit to anyone else. That right there.

• 32:53Lewis Howes?

  Powerful.

• 32:54Lisa Nichols?

  That right there will begin to fill your cup up to get to your saucer.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Where did you start to learn that process? Was that something you just started to practice yourself and started looking in the mirror and trying different things?

• 33:06Lisa Nichols?

  You, boy, you asked the question. Um, I was in a relationship, engaged to be married, and it became abusive. I was emotionally abused. And then, um, he picked me up and threw me three feet across the room and choked me until I passed out. I don't tell a lot of people that.

• 33:25Lisa Nichols?

  And I was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder. And my mother asked me to go to the doctor, strongly recommended I go to the doc. Mm, drug me to the doctor. And after the assessment of me in Manhattan Beach, um, my doctor said that I was clinically depressed. And I, I said, how did I get here? Me? That don't even fit with my name. I was head cheerleader at my high school. I was, I was the captain of the track team. I was, I'm always the person to get people going. It didn't fit. How did I get here? I don't know if you've ever found yourself saying, how did I get here? I was sitting on the table in the doctor's office saying, how did I get here? And when she wrote me the prescription, she handed me the prescription.

• 34:09Lisa Nichols?

  And I read the prescription and it said Lisa Nichols Prozac.

• 34:15Lisa Nichols?

  It was like, I was looking at a foreign statement, my name and Prozac. And I asked her, I said, can I try something for thirty days? Cause I, I realized I was just sad. I lost me. I had lost me in him. I had lost me in being a mother. I had lost me in being the mother of a son whose father was in prison. And trying to hide that shame. And then trying to make this man happy and then beginning to fend for my life. I lost me. So I needed to discover me. I needed to remind myself who I was. And so, I just realized I, I didn't celebrate me. I, I was beating myself up. I was really mad at me. And I was showing up for everyone else. So I just made up these sentences.

• 35:01Lisa Nichols?

  And I did it to rescue myself, to turn my crawl into a walk. And I ultimately was able to turn my crawl into a walk. And my walk into a run. And my run into a soar. But it started out as a crawl. So I don't offer the how I got to that exercise often unless someone asks. Thank you very much, my darling.

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  Thanks for sharing and opening up.

• 35:24Lisa Nichols?

  I, I've, I've, I've, I've long since learned four things. This, to me, this is the road to true freedom. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to protect. I have nothing to hide. And I have nothing to defend. That your perception of me, after I tell my truth, has actually none of my business.

• 35:48Lisa Nichols?

  My perception of me, that I go to bed as whole and complete as I woke up. Before I check how many likes I have on Facebook, that I like me first. And every other like is bonus.

• 36:01Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 36:02Lisa Nichols?

  Like it. That was a long road to get to. Long road.

• 36:05Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 36:06Lisa Nichols?

  Long road.

• 36:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. We probably have to constantly be reminded of it, you know.

• 36:11Lisa Nichols?

  And then when I

• 36:11Lewis Howes?

  Forgetting that place.

• 36:12Lisa Nichols?

  And then when I, when I live like I'm forgetting, you have to have accountability partners stashed in the corners of your life. And you have to give them an assignment on your high day. You have to give them an assignment on your high day. If I look like I'm slipping.

• 36:26Lewis Howes?

  Well, my ego's in the way.

• 36:27Lisa Nichols?

  Get in my face. Get in my face. Right. Get in my face and remind me of the man, of the woman I said I wanted to be. Don't let me off the hook for the twenty twenty version of me.

• 36:38Lewis Howes?

  Cause we're humans. It's gonna happen. As long as we're breathing, we're gonna be out of integrity at some point.

• 36:43Lisa Nichols?

  Come on. Your humanity's gonna get in the way. Your ego, or ladies, your she-go is going to get hooked.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 36:49Lisa Nichols?

  Absolutely.

• 36:49Lewis Howes?

  Your resentment, your

• 36:51Lisa Nichols?

  Your smallness, just smallness. It all fits in smallness. I'm, I'm, I'm human. And so I, I'm, the best thing I did was to keep people around me, to hold me accountable to the woman I said I want to become.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  Sure. That's great. I love that. That's why I have a lot of people from the Midwest who, who work with me on my team, to support me, keep me grounded.

• 37:08Lisa Nichols?

  Right, right, right, right, right. Like, don't get too Hollywood.

• 37:10Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 37:10Lisa Nichols?

  Don't get caught up in the lights and the cameras and the dag gone headset.

• 37:14Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 37:15Lisa Nichols?

  Absolutely.

• 37:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay, enrichment. That's the first part. Uh, the second part is enchantment.

• 37:20Lisa Nichols?

  Relationships are going to define the quality of your life. When you're on your bed on your last days, you're gonna wanna know who's gonna be around you. Bottom line, you're not gonna care about another podcast. You're not gonna care about another sponsor. I'm not gonna care about another book or the freaking New York Times best, it matters to us now. But the relationships in your life are going to determine the quality of your life. And so mind your relationships. And so in the book Abundance Now, I teach you how to, how to heal broken relationships that matter to you. How to give back level set. I give you this great, um, this great tool, um, called, um, it's a, it's a, it's a, a conversation to heal a, a broken experience. So, uh, it's called a communication charter. I use it in my company. I use it at my house.

• 38:05Lisa Nichols?

  And, um, so just is about how do I keep great relationships? And then the third area. Is engagement, work engagement. You're gonna spend so much time in work. And we're so emotionally attached to our work. And most of the time, people are attached in such a dismal way. That why would you have that dismal energy around something you're gonna spend so many hours in? So I teach you how to shift your energy toward your work. So that you no longer look at it as your work. Now, it's no longer your J L B. Like everyone in my community, all everyone in my tribe, they no longer say they have a job. They say, I have an investor. And when you look at your job as your investor, and you really rename it as your investor.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:42Lisa Nichols?

  And it's investing in your breathtaking future. It has the capacity to buy anything you want for your future. If you mind your money right.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:50Lisa Nichols?

  Right? It can buy your freedom. And all of a sudden, you start treating your investor better, and you're more excited about going. Matter of fact, you're grateful. You're grateful for your investor. Man, my investor was L A Unified School District. That was a hard place to be when it was a job. I'm just telling you. But as an investor, for three and a half years, I wrote myself a check. And I put in the memo line, funding my dream. I didn't even know what the dream was. I wasn't even clear. I just knew whatever my dream was, it was gonna cost some money.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 39:18Lisa Nichols?

  And I needed to pay. And I need to have some money to pay. In that, if I was gonna ask other people to invest in me, I had to be my first investor. Who am I to ask someone to put money my way when I didn't put money my way?

• 39:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:27Lisa Nichols?

  So I wanted to ma- I wanted someone for them to match, just match my investment in me. I got ten in, can you put ten in? I got twenty in, can you put twenty in? And so when you look at your job, your work engagement as an investor into your breathtaking life, all of a sudden, there's a different energy around it.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:41Lisa Nichols?

  And then the last one is money endowment.

• 39:43Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 39:44Lisa Nichols?

  And to recognize, more than the Dr. Seuss family, and the Disney family, and the McDonald's family, and the Lawrence Welk family has a right to an endowment. When you get the understanding, and I really unpack it here, where you kinda go, what? Like, I'll, I'll make you do a couple of Scooby Doo looks in the book like.

• 40:00Lisa Nichols?

  When you look and go, I can do an endowment, like, I, like, cuz we think it's for them. Remember, I started this conversation with, abundance is for those people over there. Especially when it comes to an endowment, or living legacy, like in your book, and be a quick, create, creating a legacy. To recognize that, wait a minute, there's a Lewis endowment, and a Lisa endowment, and a Don and John, and Tanya endowment, and, and fill in the blank here, endowment. And I need to live my life to set up my endowment. All of a sudden, you become responsible for generations to come.

• 40:31Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 40:31Lisa Nichols?

  Responsible for changing the trajectory of your family's life. That's some bold stuff. When, in your lifetime.

• 40:39Lisa Nichols?

  You do a needlepoint move for your family? In my lifetime, I was able to do a needlepoint move for my son. Like, he's a Nichols child. He's one of many Nichols men. But that's a Nichols man who now knows what it feels like to cook in Italy and in Tuscany and in Florence and in Venice and in Rome. That's a Nichols child who knows what it feels like to go surfing on the coast of Australia. That's a Nichols child who understands what it feels like to stand on the tallest mountain in Africa. Like, his life. I asked him this morning, I said, "Jelani, can you, when you get married and have children, can you stay in California so mommy can really see her grandchildren?" And he goes, "Well, Mom, that's kind of restrictive." It's restrictive to stay in big California. He's like, "Mom, that's kind of..." Because he knows the world.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Lisa Nichols?

  His paradigm shift has occurred. He won't ever live like another. And he'll take everything he's learned and expand the Nichols male child experience. So, in my generation, in my lifetime, I was able to change our family experience for him. And so, I believe that we have a right to look at our legacy and create a living legacy. And then create a legacy.

• 41:49Lewis Howes?

  What was the fear or insecurity you had to overcome?

• 41:51Speaker 04

  Man, I would say, um, it's layered, so I want to touch on it. It was extremely difficult when I first started going out with my arm. It was extremely difficult, you know, because...

• 42:03Lewis Howes?

  Were you single at the time, or did you have a girl at the time, or...?

• 42:06Speaker 04

  No, me and my wife, you know, we've been on and off, you know? She's had more patience with me.

• 42:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, but at the time, you were with her, or on and off with her?

• 42:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, on and off. And, um, but she was always there, man. It was my immaturity.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 42:20Speaker 04

  But, um, you know, my arm, you know, is just naturally, you know, smaller. And so, when I first started going out, sleeve, and I would go out and either people would shy away, which would hurt, you know, in the early years, or a person would just look. Right, like, man, what is that? You know, and very few people would ask, right, when I started going out with my sleeve, very few people would say, just in terms of if I'm out in the area, like if I'm at Habitat for Humanity, I'm there with the football team. So it's all good, like, people gonna come over, boom, but if I'm out, like, solo, walking through the mall, very few people would just come up and be like,

• 43:03Speaker 04

  hey, man, what happened? They would just look, right, and just stare. And that was extremely difficult for me for a long time, right, just thinking about, okay, man, like, what are they thinking? Right? Or it really hurt when people would just look and they would think I'm looking and they would shy away. Like, that hurt, you know, early on. But I would say the biggest thing that I've had to overcome, like, public speaking, I was fearful of that, but the biggest thing, man, was, um, running from poverty. You know, what I considered to be poverty, man, um, because I thought football was gonna help my family, and so when I started speaking, I started doing extremely well, you know, have been for a while, with speaking,

• 43:49Speaker 04

  to where I would just go, and I was just trying to accept gigs, gigs, gigs.

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  Make as much to.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  I was just running, right, just trying to speak, because I grew up a certain way, and I was like, man, I don't want

• 44:00Lewis Howes?

  You don't wanna go back there.

• 44:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, to have to grow up the way I grew up, my kids, or go back to that environment. And I loved every element of it, right? I loved the encounters with the people, I loved the impact that it gives you. I was just running from my past. And I'll never forget, I was in a small group and a gentleman was walking around in a circle, and he was like, what's something that, you know, you guys feel like in your childhood, you're still dealing with, or you're running from? And, you know, everybody would raise their hand and say something, and he got to me, and I was like, poverty. And he was like, are you in poverty? I was like, no. He was like, well, stop running. And and it's simplicity was yet profound, but it was simple, right? And I thought about it when I got to my room.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  And I'll never forget, Louis, I got a gig. And it was one of the biggest gigs I had gotten to date. And they were about to pay me more money.

• 44:55Lewis Howes?

  How old are you then? How old are you?

• 44:57Speaker 04

  I was thirty six now. I was probably thirty.

• 45:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay, six years ago.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:03Lewis Howes?

  They're about to pay your biggest check ever.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, biggest check ever. And I was stoked. And the challenge was it fell on my wife's birthday. Right? And so I'm like, man. And so, you know, you start working it out in your mind. Oh, man, my wife's birthday. I start talking. Negotiating.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  We do a birthday week before or week after.

• 45:26Speaker 04

  Right, I'm working it out. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So when I bring it to her, I already done worked it out. Hey babe, this gig, you know, like, I could send you and grandma to the spa. I can come back right after that. We can work, I got it all figured out. Oh, I got it all figured out. And she could see how excited I was, so she was like, oh, yeah, yeah, go, sure, go. And my wife, man, my wife been at it since fifth grade, so she knows me. Go. So I go, it works out, do the gig, I send them to the spa, fly back the same day, pick her up. Everything goes great on the birthday. Two days later, think it was something about, might have been some socks or something at the house, something small. Wife blew up.

• 46:09Speaker 04

  Right? She showed a side to me that I hadn't even seen yet, right? And I knew exactly what it was. Like, it clicked immediately. I was like, that was the gig. I was like, she's blowing up, not because she's blowing up about the gig. She felt as if I value the opportunity, the engagement and the money over her and her birthday. That was the damage, right? Over the kids, over the family, over that moment, right? And so what I had to do was realize that, man, you got renewable and you got non-renewable moments in life, right? Renewable, you can always make some more money, right? Non-renewable, my wife will never get another thirtieth birthday. My son will never have another tenth birthday.

• 46:54Speaker 04

  My daughter never have another eleventh birthday. Right? And so my biggest thing that I had to overcome and destroy and grow through was that spirit and that thought process of running from poverty. Something I encountered as a kid. And once I got to a solid space as an adult, you know, every next level of our lives demand a new version of us. Right? Taking that toolkit. Reconstructing it, growing to another level. So I didn't do damage by having the right intentions while doing damage. The right intention. I want my family to have a better way of life. But I'm doing damage with the right intention because I'm not growing beyond that level and that thought process.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  So how do you negotiate? What if you got a hundred thousand dollar gig on her birthday?

• 47:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  Are you just to say, nah, sorry? Nike, nah, can't come and speak.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  Nah, we good. Go, go, right? We good. Yeah, but man, just trying to communicate. You know, that's a skill that I don't think is, man, we always get or cultivate. You know, so, but yeah, it worked out.

• 48:00Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think so many people hold on to their tragedies or traumas so intently in their present? From something that happened two, five, 10, 20 years ago? Why do you think people hold on to it so long?

• 48:14Speaker 04

  I think just the the nature of the impact when it happens. Right? And how it stuns their life. Right? Like I had one of my friends who is a high level coach, division one coach, that ended up getting fired. And great coach, man, just had a bad run, bad couple of years. And hit me up and was like, hey, Inc., man, I need you to help me with something. Said, why am I resisting opportunities to get another head gig? It's like, I love ball. Like, why am I resisting the opportunity? Why am I fearful? And I was like, I'm not saying this is for certain. But I think for one, maybe the embarrassment of being fired. Mm hmm. And how that made you feel.

• 48:59Speaker 04

  How that impacted your children. How that impacted your family. Because I think painful experiences. They always come with a lot of different emotions. Right, like me talking about going out. It was hard for me with my arm when people would look at me. Right, that was a bit embarrassing at first. Right, and so sometimes we hold on to these different emotions. That attach to the experiences that we have. So I think you got the experience. And then you got the collateral damage of the experience. Yeah. How it affects our mindset. How it affects the way we see people. How it affects our emotions. And I think sometimes it's challenging to separate the two. And deconstruct the two. Mm hmm. And so therefore, we hold on to the feelings that the trauma may have given us.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  Right, the feelings that the adversity and opposition may have given us. And so I think the moment that we can grow through it. Mm hmm. And figure out a way to use it. I think the quicker we get through it. Because I think it's a powerful thing, Louis, and I think you probably know this to be true. When we use what happens to us. And it creates a light bulb moment for another person. That's a great feeling. It's like when you get something for yourself for Christmas. Mm hmm. That's awesome. It feels great. But when you do something for another person that you know is in need. Like that feels ten times better for some reason. Mm hmm. And so I take adversity and opposition. And I I interconnect it the same way. Yeah. When we go through things that hurt, or we figure out a way to get through it. But when we share something and we identify with another person.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  To let them know that, because oftentimes when people go through stuff, you feel alone, you feel isolated. And you feel like, man, like, is something wrong with me? And I think what happens when we go through and we create a level of empathy. We show them that, nah, man, you're human. Like, we all go through things. Like, nobody is perfect. Like, I told a guy that had a brachial plexus injury, he's like, man, I see how you got through it. Like, it hasn't been that easy for me. I was like, no, bro, it took work. It took years. Like, this was painful. I went through every emotion that you're probably going through. And I had a lot of people that helped me with it.

• 51:05Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between the traumas that happened to us and the generational trauma that happened to our ancestors?

• 51:12Speaker 03

  The major difference is placed in biology. So there's a genetic component to intergenerational trauma. And so intergenerational trauma has this way in which there is a genetic transmission that happens from parent to child.

• 51:28Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 51:29Speaker 03

  And so it creates a predisposition to vulnerability to stress.

• 51:32Lewis Howes?

  Give me an example. What's a common example you see in your practice that is a generational story?

• 51:39Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, you know, there are people that will come in and say, you know, ever since I was a child, it was like difficult to soothe. And I was, you know, I had like this hyperactivity. There's a lot of trauma survivors that also like believe that their symptoms are coincide with ADHD because there is a lot of overlap in the experience and the symptomatology. So there's a lot of that. There's like people that, you know, reflect back to their childhood and they say like, I've always had like this experience that felt like I was always anxious. When we dig into the layers and we dig deep, we start noticing, okay, especially because I do a lot of like family tree work and like really going down the lineage to know like,

• 52:23Speaker 03

  well, what are some of the trauma responses or what are some of the responses around also like inflammatory responses like depression or anxiety or other kind of like mental illness, you know, kind of experiences that were held in the family. And when we start going down the family line and we start exploring not only their childhood and how they responded in their childhood, what their attachment patterns were in their childhood, but also how perhaps like their mother had an inner child wound and their mother's mother had an inner child.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  And they never healed it.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  Never healed it, expressed it as a trauma response, yelled and screamed in the home, you know, had like emotional outbursts. What did that do? That actually created a disruption in the attachment that you could have had like in your childhood. It created an insecure attachment. You then went out into the world and experienced bullying, a pandemic, like all kinds of things. And then that trauma, that trauma, you know, propensity or vulnerability got triggered out. And so now you are a... Continuing the cycle of intergenerational trauma because it was modeled to you genetically, it was passed down and then, you know.

• 53:30Lewis Howes?

  Now, is it genetic or is it, let's say the mother breaks the cycle before she heals her trauma, the generational trauma, before she has her child?

• 53:43Speaker 03

  She can.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  And she creates an environment of peace, you know?

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 53:51Lewis Howes?

  Is it the environment or is it the biology, the genetic code that is passed down? Because it's like these environments are kind of passed down. You witness your parents doing it, you just follow the pattern and you follow the environment pattern.

• 54:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:05Lewis Howes?

  Is that genetic? Is that environment? What is both or?

• 54:09Speaker 03

  It's both. It's like, you know, for as long as psychology has existed, we've had like theories on nature nurture. Darwinism also kind of just started that, right? Like way back when. So, nature being like the biological aspects of our experiences and then nurture being like the social aspects of our experiences. And intergenerational trauma is really the only trauma that is situated at the intersection of both. So we have the nature side, yeah, so you know, on the nature side, the genetic expression, like we're getting a lot of information from like the field of epigenetics, which helps us understand how behavior like impacts genes. And so basically what happens is that, let's say a mother, a mother has stress and depression in her life.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Let's say that this mother is actually pregnant at five months gestation. So she's pregnant, she has a baby in utero. And because she's at five months gestation, that baby also has all the precursors sex cells that they're gonna have for their lifetime, regardless of the, whether it's male or female. They already have those. So the mother, she experienced chronic trauma her entire life. And so because that became the status quo, her genes re-expressed. So her genes said, okay, this is the way that things are. We are a stressed body. And so because her genes are now saying, we are predisposed to stress. That's being handed down to the baby in utero, actually at conception.

• 55:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  So the baby is conceived into genes that are predisposed to stress.

• 55:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  And because she is already still stressed while she's having this baby, all those stress hormones, namely cortisol, those are being passed down to the baby in utero. And what's happening to the precursor cells, those are also ingesting a lot of that stress environment. So you have three generations in one body.

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:57Speaker 03

  Genetically being passed down, the, the stress vulnerability, but also the social piece, the mother's stress, you know, like she has all her things going on. She's predisposed to trauma. She's got all these things going while she's,

• 56:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  you know, still pregnant.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  Her environment is still stressful, yeah.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so everybody

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 56:15Speaker 03

  in that lineage of three generations in one body is experiencing stress.

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  Is it just three generations or is it like every generation that's had it?

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Well, you know, like, I mean, I, I'm, I think it's, it's a little bit of a chicken and egg kind of phenomenon when it comes into generational trauma, right? Like, it's like, where, who, who started it, right? But I think I illustrate that because it's, I think, a little bit easier to see like, oh, well, maybe it started with mom. Maybe she was, you know, the person that.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  Maybe she had an extreme trauma and there was a reaction response.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Exactly, right? And so now we at least get to see where the genetic line started from the, from the trauma perspective.

• 56:52Lewis Howes?

  When you think about it that way, you're like, man, I'm carrying the weight of, you know, multiple generations of trauma in my genes, like physical weight, actual weight. That could, that could get a little dark and heavy if you really put the emphasis on that. So how do we actually break that cycle once and for all where none of that trauma stays with us and we don't pass it down to our kids?

• 57:15Speaker 03

  It definitely has to be a very like whole system overhaul for most folks. Like it has to be, you know, an, an integration of holistic practices in our day to day lives. Every single day.

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  Like a daily practice.

• 57:28Speaker 03

  Every day. Can't waver on it because we gotta think about what we're undoing. We're not just undoing the decades of trauma that.

• 57:36Lewis Howes?

  That you experienced, yeah.

• 57:37Speaker 03

  You're doing, you're undoing all the.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  You really need to have a rebirth. It's like a spiritual, psychological, emotional nervous system rebirth, in my opinion. I feel like I've. Had a couple of them in the last decade. Ten years ago, kind of opening up about my sexual abuse trauma. And then in the last few years, just dealing with all relationships in general, like all intimate relationships that I've had. I've never really faced them until a couple of years ago. And I feel like I had to re, I had to emotionally, spiritually die in a sense. Psychologically, I guess.

• 58:11Speaker 03

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 58:13Lewis Howes?

  Allow it to burn and then, and then build from the ashes, kind of psychologically. And it's a process. I'm not saying I've finished it or whatever, but it's like a constant journey of going back to the different stages of childhood. Healing each stage and integrating that age with my current self. So there's full integration and healing of every different memory from my life that was a traumatic response.

• 58:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:43Lewis Howes?

  And it's been a beautiful journey that has allowed me to have peace and harmony on the inside, which I never had that until, really ten years ago, I didn't start feeling it, but until a couple of years ago, when I started feeling more and more peace on the inside. And it allows me to, again, see the world differently. I'm not saying I'm like, not triggered by things, but allows me to see it. And I say, okay, this sucks. How can I consciously communicate what I want to change? Not from a reactive, overwhelmed, stressed, traumatic state, which I feel like you can't really get much done from that state.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  No, I mean, you can, you know, you can push things down and numb and, and still operate, you know, fairly well, but

• 59:29Lewis Howes?

  You can survive.

• 59:31Speaker 03

  All of that will come back because you're in survival mode still. Because numbing is still survival mode.

• 59:35Lewis Howes?

  But you're not thriving. You're not creating an abundant life for yourself when you're in a traumatic response, are we?

• 59:41Speaker 03

  No, not at all. I mean, I think, you know, abundance comes from being able to get into the depths of your soul, right? So I love that you're talking about the more like psycho-spiritual angle, because that is definitely, I operate from a holistic angle. And so like, a lot of the work that I do is very mind, body, spirit. And the spiritual piece is really essential, because it's not You know, just your, your connection to higher power is really just also your connection to yourself. When you're like really disconnected from your true authentic self, you're not living abundantly.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  And if we want generational abundance, then we have to get into the depths of everything that's there, into the, the mud, if you may.

• 1:00:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think if you're, if you're triggered or have a nervous system response to a lot of things, you're constantly in a survival mode, right?

• 1:00:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Lewis Howes?

  And it's hard to create an abundant, it's hard to dream from a place of survival. It's hard to create something beautiful from that place.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  I mean, it makes a lot of sense, even like, you know, from a biological perspective. Like when we're in a nervous system response and that's, you know, survival mode, you're in a chronic nervous system overhaul, right? So our nervous system is designed to actually make it so that whenever we are in a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, any non-essential functions, any non-essential like organ functions, bodily functions, our brain even, like the cortical region of our brain, all of that is mildly shut down. So if you're talking about like alchemizing and creativity and like all these things, those things require a lot of cortical, you know, structure, like manifestation of like, you know,

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  all the things that you want, like really requires for you to get into your creative mind. And if your cortical brain is not fully functioning in the ways that it, because it's in survival mode, then you're not really going to get into that actualization.

• 1:01:29Lewis 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.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

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