The Single Biggest Killer Of Relationships: Lewis Howes

Lewis is the host of The School of Greatness podcast and the author of The Mask of Masculinity. An icon of American self-development, Lewis’ podcast has been downloaded hundreds of millions of times, and helped hundreds of millions of people. But the first person Lewis had to help is himself. Someone who always ran towards things that made him feel safe, whether that be towards working out, towards the need to get girls to like him, or away from his trauma. But an outside injury, and a reckoning with his inside trauma, meant Lewis had to start from zero. What strikes me about Lewis is someone who’s come so far after his life was turned upside down. When his world was spinning around, Lewis saw the way forwards. Follow Lewis: Twitter - https://twitter.com/LewisHowes Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/lewishowes Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Am I doing everything in my power to live the way I want to live? Because if it could be over in a moment, I gotta shift my attention to things that really matter.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Our next guest has got the resume. Former professional football player turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Who was making millions of dollars in helping others achieve their dreams.

• 0:16Steven Bartlett?

  New York Times bestselling author.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  School of Greatness. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

• 0:21Steven Bartlett?

  You have been very, very open about the abuse you suffered when you were five.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  I mean, I knew something was wrong. I knew something was off. Every single day for 25 years, I thought about it. I needed to heal the memories of the past in order to create a healthy relationship with myself and others in the present. The challenge is, most men have not been taught how to effectively communicate their guilt, their insecurities. Constantly working on yourself is huge in intimacy and relationships.

• 0:50Steven Bartlett?

  What is the single biggest killer of relationships?

• 0:54Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say something right now that you're probably not gonna like.

• 0:58Steven Bartlett?

  So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:14Steven Bartlett?

  Lewis, I have to start with a with a point of gratitude, which is, thank you so much for doing this. You are, and I don't say this lightly, but you are one of the real inspirations for me in this whole podcasting content space. Because you've been, you're like the GOAT in my eyes. You're the guy that did it first in our space and did it best at the same time. But not just that, when I got to meet you maybe a month ago in Dubai, I was pretty much in awe of a bunch of things that I noticed about you that really set you apart. One of them was this real unbelievable self-awareness, which I talked to my team about before you got here. I said, he's one of the most self-aware guys that I've ever met because he's done and doing the work. And the second thing is, there's actually probably three things that come to mind.

• 1:55Steven Bartlett?

  The second thing is your genuine curiosity about humans on a very deep level. Because we'd be having, we were having a conversation at 2 AM in a bar. And if there was a moment of silence, it would be interjected by you with like a, tell me three things that your your biggest failings in life or three things. And I just thought. This is a guy that doesn't want to mess around at surface level with small talk and things that don't matter. And then the third point, which kind of links to those two in some way, is your unbelievable ability to speak and deliver a concept or an idea with wisdom and a personal anecdote attached in a way that's captivating to the point that people don't tune out when you're talking. And I don't, I'm not blowing smoke up your

• 2:36Steven Bartlett?

  arse, but I genuinely was like, I need to learn this. Specifically, that delivery of ideas. And having seen you on Jay's and Tom Villes' podcasts, I saw it then again. And it's a culmination of all that self-awareness and practice. But there was something else which you showed me when we were in Dubai, having that conversation at 2am in the morning, which is where I wanted to start our conversation today, which was the screensaver of your phone. That really stayed with me.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 3:03Steven Bartlett?

  Can you tell me what the screensaver of your phone is?

• 3:05Speaker 00

  This is, yeah, I don't know if you guys, for those watching on YouTube, I don't know if you guys can see this, but this is a photo of myself when I was probably about five years old. And I put it on there a year ago because I was doing some intensive, I would say, inner child healing with a therapist I was working in, in another relationship that I was ending. I was ending a relationship. And I realized that in relationships in the past, I was repeating a pattern of people pleasing, of saying yes to things that I didn't want to say yes to, of changing and shifting who I authentically was in order to try to please or make someone else happy. And a lot of it came from the dynamics of

• 3:48Speaker 00

  my childhood, from being sexually abused, from having just a challenging, let's say, family dynamic with parents and things like that. And so for years, I was never taught on how to deal with my inner child. I never was taught how to heal the things that I was really wounded as a child. And so. Having these experiences of intensive emotional intelligence and therapy training on dealing with previous relationships and then in a current relationship was extremely helpful for me. And my therapist said, we gotta heal that part of your life that is attached to a memory of a wound. And unless you heal that, you're to keep repeating certain patterns.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  And so that's why I had that on there. And I'm actually going to change it to a different period of time in my life when I was about 11 to 12. That's the next phase of growth for me is to actually heal that next stage. So that's why I do it.

• 4:43Steven Bartlett?

  What was the world and the perception of the world that that five-year-old Lewis Howes saw and felt? What was he feeling and seeing?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Oh, man, he was abandoned. He was abused. He was taken advantage of. He was unworthy. He was unlovable. And that was what I believed. And so it's hard to create a meaningful relationship with myself and with another person if that story or narrative or belief was still there for me, which it was unconsciously. So I needed to heal the memories of the past in order to create a healthy relationship with myself and others in the present.

• 5:25Steven Bartlett?

  And where did that story come from that he was unlovable? I've heard you describe yourself even as thinking you were dumb, thinking you couldn't, you weren't worthy of friendships and things like that. Where did all of that?

• 5:37Speaker 00

  I mean, it was all from real life experiences and results that I was experiencing. So just getting picked on as a kid, feeling neglected from parents and family members, feeling, you know, again, sexual abuse that I dealt with. And struggling throughout school, my entire childhood until it took me seven years to finish college. I was in the bottom of my class in school, elementary, middle and high school. And so the narrative was there were real world results that were showing me that I was unlovable or being taken advantage of or abused or these things. And so that stayed with me. And this is why I built a persona or really a mask. I tried to mask it and defend myself by becoming a great athlete by

• 6:20Speaker 00

  getting bigger, faster and stronger so that I could defend myself against the the feeling of being taken advantage of or abused. But that didn't leave me feeling fulfilled. It left me feeling angry and resentful.

• 6:32Steven Bartlett?

  When you were, you have been very, very open about the abuse you suffered when you were five from a babysitter's son, I believe.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:44Steven Bartlett?

  Did you understand at the time that it was abuse?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  No, I had no idea. I mean, I knew something was wrong. I knew something was off, but I didn't know. I mean, as a five year old, I don't think anyone really knows how to emotionally handle that or emotionally regulate or understand what's really happening at that time. But it was something that I lived with for every single day for 25 years. I thought about it. I thought about the instant, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, it was coming up. It might be a second or it might be minutes long of a memory, but it came up pretty much every, every day for 25 years until I went through it. A transformational workshop experience that got me to finally face it. And it wasn't until I faced it and started to integrate the healing of that moment that

• 7:33Speaker 00

  I felt like I was a prisoner for so long until it set me free of actually talking about my shame, expressing it, communicating it with my friends, my family. And then eventually I did a podcast about it, which took me about six months of publish because I recorded it. And I waited six months because I said, if people knew this about me, no one would love me. My business is over. I'm going to have no friends if people actually knew how shameful this thing was for me. And I think that was the biggest fear. But what I realized, this was back in 2013, maybe the end of 2013, early 2014. And I thought my, I literally thought my life was over. I was like, no one is going to love me.

• 8:16Speaker 00

  But I, I also thought to myself, I can no longer be a prisoner inside with this information. I need to let it out. And if I can help one man heal from what they've been through, then it's worth it. I'm happy to lose everything if I can help one man. And it was one of the most profound experiences and, and really spiritually freeing experiences of my life was opening up, talking about it. And the aftermath was so powerful.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  For weeks, I was getting essays from men, opening up, saying, you know, I'm married, I've got three kids, I'm 55. My wife and kids don't know, and I've been holding this with me for this long. It happened to me when I was 11. You know, men opening up about all the different experiences of sexual abuse or trauma that they face with. The challenge is, most men have not been taught how to effectively communicate their shame, their guilt, their insecurities. There's not many guys that grow up, I don't think you had guy friends when you were 12, 15, 18, 23, saying, you know what, can we just have a coffee and talk about how shameful I feel about my,

• 9:28Speaker 00

  my, uh, my past right now, or I don't really feel that good today, let's talk about it, or my body image is kinda off. Like, we don't do that generally as men. We're not taught how to do that in society. But when you ask women, how often do you meet with a girlfriend on a weekly basis to talk about your shame, your insecurities, the challenges you're dealing with in your relationships, struggles at work, whatever it might be? Women typically say they, they meet with their girlfriends every week, if not every single day. They'll have a conversation with a girlfriend, a sister, a mom, about a challenge, or just what's on their mind. But we just haven't been taught that. So I started, I really wanted to change the narrative, uh, and be a model.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  There was no one that looked like me growing up that talked about these things. There was no athlete that I admired that was like, on TV saying, I've been sexually abused, or I went through childhood trauma, or I didn't love myself, or I struggled with insecurities growing up. I just didn't see that growing up as a kid. So my goal was to be a model of saying, you know, I'm willing to lose everything if I can help men heal, because I truly believe a lot of the pain caused in the world is caused by men who have massive wounds, who are reactive, because they don't know how to handle. Or regulate their emotions.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  And so they react in certain scenarios, whether it be domestic violence, domestic abuse, war, just reactions on social media, causing more stress, screaming in a workplace, whatever it might be, driving here in London, just people honking at the horn because they're, they don't know how to handle their inner wounds, their emotional regulation. And I feel like if all humans, but men specifically, can continue to learn these tools, it'll be powerful. But we weren't taught this in school. There was nothing in school that was like, okay, emotional regulation 101 class. There was none of this. It was just suck it up, be a man, toughen up. Don't, you know, we don't talk about these things. So, and I think the world has been shifting over the last four or five years as well,

• 11:35Speaker 00

  where it's more acceptable for men to talk about it with, you know, social media in a good sense, allowing men to be more vulnerable and kind of lifting these conversations up about mental health. So I'm seeing that shift, but I just didn't see that or have a model when I was growing up.

• 11:51Steven Bartlett?

  Terms of models when you were growing up, could you tell me a little bit about the dynamics of your parents as well? Because I've heard you describe that early life and yeah, the quote that I, that I read from you was that they were miserable times and the tension in the house impacted you and your siblings.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, I grew up, it's challenging because my father just passed away a month and a half ago. And for 17 years, he, he got in an accident 17 years ago, with a car accident where a car came up on his car, hit him through the windshield and split his head open. He was in a coma for a few months, had severe brain trauma, stayed alive miraculously, but just had a challenging 17 years where he never fully recovered. So it was a, it was an interesting dynamic with my dad the last 17 years. Growing up as the youngest of four, my siblings, I feel like probably had it worse than me. They had to deal with, you know, twenty year old

• 12:53Speaker 00

  parents. My, my parents were twenty when they had my brother, and then twenty-four when they had my sister, and then twenty-eight when they had my other sister, then they had me at thirty-one. So they had to deal, you know, grow up with parents who didn't have these tools either. So I have a lot of grace from my parents because they didn't have the tools of emotional regulation, or how to communicate effectively, or how to process wounds. And I think if you don't know how to process wounds, it's gonna be hard to just interact without being defensive, or reactive, or, you know, all these different things, passive-aggressive.

• 13:24Speaker 00

  So I grew up for the first thirteen years of my life in fear. In fear, I knew my parents loved me, but there was this like, energy that felt fearful, and I was afraid of my father. Why?

• 13:39Speaker 00

  He was pretty angry. He was an angry guy, and he would, he was super loving, but then he would explode at times, because he didn't know how to process emotions.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  And he had wounds. And so that was the challenging thing. It was, it was confusing. And they weren't loving towards each other, so I didn't feel safe. My brother went away to prison when I was eight years old, for, for four and a half years. So every weekend, we would travel two year, uh, two hours to go to a prison visiting room and see my brother for a few hours. So I was exposed to things that I probably shouldn't have been exposed to at eight years old until twelve. Which expanded my mind and my, my worldview and my perception of people, but also it was just challenging to have a sibling in jail for that long, and dealing with the dynamics of that. Yeah, it was just a, it was a challenging time, but at thirteen...

• 14:34Speaker 00

  I begged my parents to send me away. I went to a private boarding school at thirteen for middle school and high school and I couldn't get away fast enough. They didn't send me away because I was a bad kid. I begged them to send me away because I didn't feel safe at home.

• 14:49Steven Bartlett?

  I really want to dig into that. What was it? Your dad's anger and his anger directed, I guess, at you or your siblings?

• 14:56Speaker 00

  All of us, yeah.

• 14:57Steven Bartlett?

  All of us?

• 14:57Speaker 00

  But it wasn't all the time, you know? So again, he was a loving guy. He would tuck me in a bed at night. He would play catch with me in the backyard.

• 15:04Steven Bartlett?

  But then there'd be.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  But then it'd be explosion and we just didn't know when it would be. And so the beautiful part about my dad is he had a massive transformation. When I turned thirteen, he started to dive into the emotional intelligence, training workshops and seeking wisdom on how to process his emotions. And he had incredible, you know, healing transformation. So from thirteen to twenty one, I had this incredible relationship with my dad. He would fly out to all my games. He would be so loving and supportive. He wasn't angry. He wasn't reactive. He had this transformation. So it's almost like I had two lives with my dad. The first half of first thirteen years, I loved him, but I was also afraid of him.

• 15:47Speaker 00

  Thirteen to twenty one, he was like my best friend. And so when he got in his accident when I was around twenty one, it was devastating. Because now I didn't have a mentor that now was showing up in a different way, was loving, was vulnerable. I saw him cry a lot more. I saw him just be sensitive. So when he got in his accident, I didn't have that anymore. He wasn't able to have that relationship with me because of the brain accident.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  And this was a time when I felt like I needed it the most, right? I went to go play arena football. I went to go chase a dream. I got injured. And at the end of the first season, had a surgery with my wrist. And at that time was two thousand, end of two thousand seven, two thousand eight. The economy was crashing in USA. People weren't hiring those who had master's degrees. I barely graduated with a, you know, just a general degree. I'm living on my sister's couch for a year and a half. I've got no money. I've got no mentorship from my father. And so in a sense, it was almost like, this is the weird thing when I reflect back on it because I don't think I would be the man I am today without his accident. Although I wish he didn't have the accident.

• 16:56Speaker 00

  I don't think I'd be in service. I don't think I would care about people as much. I don't think I'd be on a mission to wanna change lives and serve millions of people around the world. I don't think I'd be doing an interview show or a podcast. I don't think I'd be writing books or all these things. But something shifted within me because he was physically alive, but emotionally and mentally not there. So I didn't have that access to a relationship. Something shifted in me where I couldn't rely on him for money, for kind of that wisdom. I had to, I just had to unleash something new that was, that I didn't think was inside of me. And I don't know if your parents are still around or if your dad is still around.

• 17:35Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  Something shifted in me 17 years ago when my dad got in the accident. And then something shifted even more in the last month and a half when he passed. That is hard to explain. I don't know. I haven't really fully processed it. It's still kind of a processing time. And there's some, a lot of gratitude and memories, but a lot of sadness tied to it. But I just don't think I'd be the man I am without his accident because it made me unleash something inside of me that was untapped.

• 18:09Steven Bartlett?

  When I met you in Dubai, every topic you talked on, you talked on as if you had processed it and done work on it and you had a perspective on it. And then when you spoke about your dad, it was like the end of what we call a cul-de-sac, getting to the end of a street where there's nowhere else to go. It was like you hadn't, the conversation ended there and you would look down at the floor.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:30Steven Bartlett?

  And I knew, I'm so sorry to hear of your loss, by the way, but I could see that it was still something that you're, I could, there was two kind of suspicions I had. One was that, A, you were still processing it, of course.

• 18:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:40Steven Bartlett?

  But the second was that there was a profound lesson somewhere there because of the pause you took and the way that you looked at the floor. And, but when every other topic, you were like illuminated is the best way to describe it.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 18:51Steven Bartlett?

  You see what I mean? So.

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think one of the things that it taught me 17 years ago was that. My dad also felt larger than life. I don't know if your father felt that way, feels that way as well. Yeah. But he felt larger than life. He was extremely intelligent and smart. He was very charismatic. He was resourceful, talented. He was, he was a big lover. He loved people. And he gave his heart in a big way after this transformation. And he cared deeply about relationships. Like I witnessed things he did that brought smiles to people's faces all the time. Which is probably a lot of things that I've like translated in my own life, but one of the things it taught me was that if this can happen to a guy who feels larger than life

• 19:38Speaker 00

  in a moment, when he was on vacation with his then, you know, partner at the time, not my mother, they got divorced. But they were on vacation, having a great time. If this can happen in a moment, at any time, then it brought so much urgency to my life to make sure I pursue the things that really are meaningful to me. And for years, there were things that I had to do that I wasn't like loving. I had to work really hard to get to that place. When I was broke and had no money on my sister's couch, it wasn't like this all just unfolded perfectly. It was years of effort, work, late nights, all that stuff. But it made me just say, what is my mission? What is my intention for this season of my life? And am I doing everything in my power to live the way I want to live?

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Because if it could be over in a moment, I gotta shift my attention to things that really matter. And so that was a big, powerful shift for me. And when he passed last month,

• 20:31Speaker 00

  it made it even clearer. You know, there's so many opportunities for someone like yourself and myself at this stage of our life and our careers.

• 20:40Speaker 00

  And a lot of opportunities can seem incredible. Here's a big money-making opportunity. Here's a cool project I can do with someone. Here's these things that are coming my way. But if it's not aligning to my mission of something greater, if it's not aligning to my ultimate level of joy and authentic power, then should I be doing it right now? If it was all over in a day, in a month, in a year, is this something I would say yes to? And so it's just bringing me closer to that awareness that how it could all be over in a moment. And it brings the energy back to like my relationship with my girlfriend. I'm like,

• 21:14Speaker 00

  If it was over tomorrow, am I doing and saying what I need to say today? And that's been a powerful thing for me.

• 21:21Steven Bartlett?

  There's a real, I mean, I always reflect on this, that Brony Ware, who was the palliative nurse who interviewed people in their last days. And the retrospective clarity people must have in their last days about what they did and didn't do.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:32Steven Bartlett?

  Right, is so, so empowering. But as you say there, one of the things that terrifies me is my dad is ill. He's like not in good health and he's, he's outlived his siblings. And his life, if you look at it in any kind of comparative measure, was way more stressful than them. And his brother died of a heart attack and his brother died younger than he is now. So this thing is haunting me almost in the back room. And the haunting thing is like, what should I be doing now? My relationship with my dad isn't particularly strong. You know what I mean?

• 22:03Speaker 00

  How often do you see him a year?

• 22:07Steven Bartlett?

  Through three, four times.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Okay. This is my friend Jesse Etzler made this example one time to me and to like the audience. And he said, and his father just passed away actually a couple of weeks ago. And he said, my, my parents are old, they're in their eighties or something like that. And, um, you know, maybe they have five or 10 more years, but it's really five or 10 more times with them if you only see them once or twice a year. It's not five or 10 years. If you see them two, three times a year, maybe you have three times if it's a year. Maybe you have 10 times if it's four years that you experienced a moment in person with your dad.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Hopefully he lives 10, 20 years, but two, three times a year is really 20 times left with your dad. And when we put it in, I just got chills thinking about that. Because when we put it in perspective like that, are we giving as much as we could to the relationship?

• 23:05Speaker 00

  Are we opening up and healing certain things that maybe aren't healed yet? Are we having the conversations that are unspoken? And I think, I feel like I did the best of my abilities to do that with where he was at emotionally and mentally. And I encourage you or anyone listening or watching to, to ask themselves on a scale of one to 10, how is my relationship with my father, my mother? And if it's not above a seven right now, what can you do? Not about them, even if they're the parent, what can you do to reach out and communicate? How can you take responsibility for your part of that relationship? And you just never know in any moment.

• 23:49Steven Bartlett?

  What if someone sat listening to this now and they think, well, my parents or my dad or my mom or whatever was abusive or toxic or whatever to me?

• 23:57Speaker 00

  I think you gotta ask yourself, if they died today, would I be happy with how I communicated, how I showed up? And maybe that means you need to disown your parents for a season of life because you're not able to get along. But are you still happy if you did that with everything you tried to do from a loving, calm, healed place? It's your healing journey. It's not about what they do or what they didn't do. It's about your healing journey. And I look at it as a gift from everything I experienced from my childhood. You know, I don't look at it as a painful thing anymore. You know, I'm not living in fear from the memories of my past anymore. I look at it as, God, I'm so grateful that I grew up feeling insecure, unlovable, and really dumb because I cared deeply about loving other people.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  I cared deeply about being a good listener and showing people how much I care. I cared deeply about wisdom and knowledge in a different way, not just from school and books, but from interactions with human experiences, adventure, learning new skills and hobbies, and just progressing as a human. And I think, you know, even from the sexual abuse, I'm not mad at it anymore. I'm not hurt by it anymore. I hope it never happens to anyone in the history. I don't wish it on anyone. But I also know that it gave me an incredible gift because I've healed from it. I've taken my power back from that. And I know that it's benefited me now because I've rewrote in the story about what it means about me.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  And I think if we can rewrite those stories in an empowering way, then we are not powerless. We're powerful.

• 25:36Steven Bartlett?

  To that point of your healing journey, then you describe your life in these three sort of sections, right? You've got the, I think it's the preteens.

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then it's like the teen to 22 and then it's the, is it four? And then the twenties and then the thirties, right?

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:49Steven Bartlett?

  The twenties phase, as I read it, as I read through the whole, all the experiences on you, you know, your sister's sofa, the LinkedIn stuff you've done. Felt a little bit like you were finding yourself a little bit.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course. Yeah.

• 25:59Steven Bartlett?

  And then post thirties, it's, it feels like the work really started to begin.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  I mean, thirty is when everything started to change because that's the moment. I allowed myself to be vulnerable for the first time. I just thought I had it figured out. And what I realized is I knew nothing.

• 26:15Steven Bartlett?

  There were symptoms of an internal conflict that suggested to you that you didn't have it figured out.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Of course. Yeah.

• 26:21Steven Bartlett?

  What were the symptoms of that?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  I mean, getting in fistfights on a basketball court in a, in a pickup game that's supposed to be fun. And reacting so much to someone jabbing me, you know, in the ribs or, or smack talking me, talking bad or just like talking trash. And being so reactive.

• 26:41Steven Bartlett?

  Explosive, like your father?

• 26:42Speaker 00

  So explosive, extremely explosive. Again, it was more of like, I didn't heal a lot of things from my childhood. It wasn't like one thing from my dad or the sexual abuse. It was kind of like the entire childhood. All the stories and all the examples that made me feel like I'm not lovable or I'm someone to be taken advantage of. Was still inside of me. So it wasn't just one thing or one experience. It was all of it that was building a case for me to be reactive and explosive. And feel like, you know, the, the world was just out to get me or something.

• 27:17Speaker 00

  And when I learned the art of emotional regulation, that's when everything started to change. And I learned a part of that at thirty until thirty seven. But in intimate relationships, I still hadn't learned how to fully love and honor my authentic power. I still gave in because I deeply wanted people to like me. I deeply wanted the person that I was giving my heart to, to love and accept me. And yet I was choosing people based on a wound still from my parents, from my mom, you know, giving in, from my mom not feeling probably loved and accepted and kind of repeating that pattern of her.

• 28:01Speaker 00

  With my dad, I was finding partners like that. And I was taking on the mother role, like kind of what my mom was taking on. And I was giving in. I watched her give in over and over and over to my dad and never stand up for who she truly was. You know, this is all unconscious. It wasn't until about a year ago when I started to learn this and process it. So I was choosing partners that after a period of time, they would get upset at me over and over of lots of different things. They just weren't happy with who I was or the actions or decisions or things I did in my business or whatever, whatever it was that made them feel like they were insecure or something.

• 28:40Steven Bartlett?

  Same.

• 28:41Speaker 00

  And so I would say, okay, I'll change this to make you happy. Okay, you don't like me doing this? Okay, I'll stop doing this. Okay, you don't like me salsa dancing? You don't like me traveling? You don't like me speaking? You don't like me doing? Okay, like whatever's gonna make you happy because there was love there. And I thought that when you love someone, you'll do whatever you can to make that love stay, to make it last. And so I would give and give and give up who I was in order to create peace and love. And what I was doing was creating incredible pain, resentment and anger and frustration with inside of me of the person, of the relationship and of myself.

• 29:22Steven Bartlett?

  Because you were abandoning yourself.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Abandoning myself over and over again. And I didn't know how to say no

• 29:30Speaker 00

  and how to be around someone who was unhappy with me in intimacy. I could do this in business and friends, but in intimacy, when there was love, I didn't know how to say no. And so I just gave in to create peace. And what I realized is that You know, I was looking to create, to buy peace by abandoning myself, but you can't buy peace. We must be peace. And if someone is okay with that, great. And if they're not, then maybe you're not in alignment and that's okay. But I was not willing to let go of the feeling of love. It was a false love. It wasn't authentic love because authentic love is accepting the person for who they are and them accepting you for who you are. It's not trying to change the person.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  If you're trying to change someone, you shouldn't be with them. We should be elevating each other to grow. But if there are fundamental things about you that I don't like and I'm trying to change you, why am I in a relationship with you? Go find someone that you don't need to change and vice versa. And so my girlfriend Martha, I was like, listen, we started dating and I'd done months of this healing work and finally started the process and feel this inner peace. I said, listen, I'm going to be a hundred percent authentic to who I am. I'm going to obnoxiously be myself around you. And I'm letting you know, I wanna, I wanna be so obnoxiously myself that I, I hope you run away. I hope you run away because I'm never gonna change. I'm not gonna change for you or anyone else. I'm going to evolve.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  I'm gonna constantly improve, grow. I want you to be willing to give me feedback, but I'm not gonna change of something you're unhappy about, about me. Here are my values. Here's my vision. Here's my lifestyle. This is what I'm gonna be doing. I'm not gonna change this stuff, just letting you know. And it's been a beautiful journey because it's amazing to, to see what it's like having authentic trust and someone receiving you for a hundred percent who you are and feeling like I can be myself. I've never felt this until now. It's beautiful.

• 31:29Steven Bartlett?

  It's such a important conversation because

• 31:32Speaker 00

  It's crazy, man.

• 31:33Steven Bartlett?

  You talked, you described the reasons why in your trauma that, that made you a people pleaser. And do you know what's really interesting is when you told me that you were a people pleaser, um, I couldn't believe that. I'm like, what, you big tough athlete man? People pleaser? You know what I mean? But it just, it goes to show that, that sort of, that trauma in us

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:51Steven Bartlett?

  um, is kind of agnostic to, to, to our mask or

• 31:56Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 31:56Steven Bartlett?

  You know, certain And I, when you told me that, because we had a little bit of this conversation, just a hint of it when we met in Dubai, I realized that I'd been a people pleaser. But I never thought I was. In all of my relationships, I think the significant reason why they failed is exactly what you've described. I've gone in trying to compromise everything.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Really?

• 32:17Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, my god.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  For love. Just to keep the peace, keep the love.

• 32:21Steven Bartlett?

  Just to, just to keep them and try and keep them happy with me. And in the short term, that day, fine. You go any kind of mid to long term time horizon, and it's resentment, it's anger, exhaustion, arguments.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  It's a weight.

• 32:36Steven Bartlett?

  A weight.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  So exhaustion, man. You know, I take full responsibility for every relationship I've chosen and been in and stayed in because I could have gotten out of any relationship at any moment. But I was afraid and I lacked the, really the self-confidence to step away because I was afraid of losing love. But it's not real love if it's inauthentic. If you're having to change who you are to make someone happy, I just don't feel like that's real love. I'm all for making adjustments and alignment with certain things, but it shouldn't be changing your core essence of who you are to make someone happy. That's not real love.

• 33:14Steven Bartlett?

  You said something to me which really puzzled me because I've never heard it before, which was when I said, I started talking to you about what things I should be compromising in my relationships, and you went, no compromise.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  I mean, for me, I don't believe in compromising who I am.

• 33:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  If you're like, listen, this week I want to go to this place for a restaurant and next week you can choose, that's, I guess, a compromise of like activities.

• 33:39Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  But not compromising your core values and your authentic power. If we are compromising our authentic selves, we're essentially saying, screw you to our creator. You've created us for who we are and nah, I don't want to be this way for one human being because it doesn't make them feel good, or it makes them unhappy, or they're afraid or scared. As opposed to who can I be if I'm 100% myself in life? And I'm not saying like, if you've got flaws, adjust those, improve those. Like, I'm all willing to improve and adjust all my flaws. But if it's something that's at my core, is my personality, I'm not changing for anyone. Why? I want to be changing for one person?

• 34:22Speaker 00

  That just doesn't seem like a good, I don't know, situation. And I've done it for too long.

• 34:27Steven Bartlett?

  And with, with Martha, your current partner, you had a conversation very early on about your unwillingness to compromise your core values.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yes, and my priorities.

• 34:37Steven Bartlett?

  And your priorities.

• 34:38Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:40Steven Bartlett?

  So tell me exactly what you mean by your priorities and how that was received.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Man, I told her probably like three months in, as we, I knew in the first night I met her, I go, I wanted to be single. I was like, just got done this healing journey, get out of a relationship. I was like, I really want to be single for like a year and just be single. And I met her before that time, and I remember thinking, oh crap, there's something unique and special here on a different level, more than just sexual attraction. There's a spiritual connection. There's something deeper that I can see a vision of something incredible that I couldn't do on my own, right?

• 35:23Speaker 00

  And I was like, let me just string this along as far as I can before I get committed, right? Let me just give it some space, not jump into this thing too fast. Like, let's just take it slow. And after about three months, I said to her, I go, listen, I'm going to tell you something that I don't think you're gonna like. And I said this many times to her. I go, I'm gonna say something right now that you're probably not gonna like. And I don't think any woman wants to hear this from a man. I'm just letting you know. And she's thinking I'm about to drop a bomb or something. And I'm like, you may not want to continue dating me after you hear this. She was like, what is it? Now she's freaking out. I go, you will never be my number one priority. Never.

• 36:04Speaker 00

  And I had an explanation. I said, listen, my number one priority needs to be my health. Because without my health, I can't fully show up for my number two priority, which is my mission or my calling from God.

• 36:17Steven Bartlett?

  Oh God, she wasn't even number two, Lewis.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  And I said, you're not number one and you're not number two. You're number three. And no woman wants to hear, I'm the third priority in some man's life. They need to make me number one. I need to be thinking, they need to think about me all the time. I'm number one priority. Otherwise, I'm out of here. And it's not that she's not a number one top priority, but health needs to come first at all times. And that doesn't mean all day I'm doing my health. It's just, I need to make sure every day I'm taking care of it. This is a top priority. If this is number two, number three, number 10, I'm not going to be good for you in our relationship. I'm not going to have energy. I'm going to be more moody. So I need to make this a priority first for the second priority,

• 37:01Speaker 00

  which is my mission, my calling from God, the universe, the world, whatever you want to call, whatever's speaking through me into the existence. Because if that is not a high priority for me, then I'm going to be unhappy because I'm going to feel like there's something calling me in the world and I'm not doing it because I'm giving more time and attention to one person.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  But if I am healthy and working on myself, if I am putting energy and time into my mission, then you're going to have the most incredible relationship of your life because I'm going to be of service to you in such a high, beautiful, authentic way that you're going to be feeling like you're the number one priority. But you just have to be in awareness that this is where I'm coming from. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to be spending all my time with you and I'm free and we're not going to have amazing life. But you've got to be aware, this is my priorities. And the crazy thing is, right when I finished, she said, that's the most amazing thing I've ever heard because that's exactly what I've been looking for. I've been dating guys with no purpose. None of them had a purpose. They made me their purpose.

• 38:05Speaker 00

  And I was like, no, what's the thing you want to do in the world? What's the calling you have? And none of them had a calling. They had stuff, activities, they had hobbies, but it wasn't like a main calling in the world. And she was like, you're the perfect match for me because you have a mission to serve the world. And I'm cool with that. Were you trying to scare her off based on a previous relationship? I was trying to scare her off by saying, I'm never going to change who I am. Based on a previous relationship? Based on five previous relationships. It was based on every relationship before where I abandoned myself to try to make one person happy and create peace in an environment because there was never peace. And it's my responsibility, it's my decisions by choosing these relationships,

• 38:50Speaker 00

  by staying and by not leaving sooner. And so it's never, because I just wanted to fix the relationship. I was like, okay, how can we make this better?

• 38:58Steven Bartlett?

  What mask have I got to wear?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 39:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  And so, man, it's liberating and freeing. And the only way this works is because, this sounds bad. I'm going to say something that probably sounds bad. I think my girlfriend would be okay with me saying this, but the only way this works is I'm willing to walk away at any moment. I don't want to walk away. I want to be with this woman. She's incredible. She's a gift in my life. But if it's not in alignment with her values, her vision, her lifestyle, my values, my vision, my lifestyle, and we don't fully accept who we are, then we shouldn't be together. And I want the best for her and I want the best for me. So as sad as I would be, I'm willing to walk away at any moment if it compromises

• 39:45Speaker 00

  giving up who I am. And it brings me peace because I'm not attached. I'm committed. I'm holding it loosely. You know, I've got my hands wrapped around the relationship, but I'm not suffocating the relationship. I'm not squeezing it to death. I'm like, okay, you can.

• 40:03Steven Bartlett?

  You want it, you don't need it.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, I want it. I'm committed. I'm all in. But I'm not going to change who I am.

• 40:10Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  To force it.

• 40:12Steven Bartlett?

  When you talk about priorities, I was trying to, in my head, think of a a use of words that might be more received better. And it's funny because I was thinking about this table. I was thinking there's, this table now has two levels, right? The first foundation of this table, you could call health, right? Without that, nothing else can sit on the table. The second foundation could be mission. And then the relationship sits on top of both. And it's enabled by the foundation of my health and my mission.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  Absolutely, man.

• 40:38Steven Bartlett?

  I think if you kind of flip it, it kind of sounds better. Because effectively you're putting your health at the bottom, which is was also still your foundation. But I completely get that because at any time in my life where I've abandoned my sense of mission, I can only do that for a short period of time. I can only fake that before I start to lose orientation in my mind and.

• 40:58Speaker 00

  And you resent yourself. You resent the person, you resent the relationship. And you're like, you're not in love as much with the relationship because you feel like you're not, it's not lifting you to your highest calling.

• 41:09Steven Bartlett?

  Amen.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  And I think. The beautiful thing about Martha and our relationship, I think she'd be open with me talking about this. But every relationship I've been in, I was like, I wonder what it would be like to start therapy in the beginning, when everything is perfect. So with Martha, I said in the beginning, I said, listen, I'm doing therapy every two weeks. I did this for the last year on my own individually. I'm going to be doing it for this next year and years, just as emotional accountability for myself in life, business, friends, family, like anything I need to process, it's just good for me to clean the energy and not let things pile up. And I said, I'd love for us, and she was doing this individually, I said, I'd love for us to do this together as we start to develop our relationship

• 41:52Speaker 00

  when things are great and actually see if we are in alignment. And so two weekends ago, we did a five hour session together with my therapist, talking about expectations, agreements, values, dreams, vision, and just processing anything we needed to process. And it was such a powerful experience that when things are going good, to continue to talk about vision casting, what we want to build together, not when things are going bad. And it's really to talk about things that maybe we haven't fully been comfortable talking about yet and putting it out there as opposed to hiding things or waiting for things to come out later.

• 42:35Speaker 00

  And it was such a powerful five hour experience. I mean, it's very emotional and you're processing a lot and we're we're diving in deep exercises, eye gazing, talking about things like

• 42:47Speaker 00

  it's an emotional relationship workout. You'll save a lot of time and headache by going to therapy when things are great as opposed to when things are bad. It's like that prevention versus reacting to once it's red as ugly hair and there's been some bust up. You go to the gym, not because you're sick, but because you're healthy to stay healthy. You know, not when you're wait to get sick. Now I need to go to the gym. And I think who does that in relationships? I don't know anyone who's done that. You hear people say like before marriage, we do like a premarital, maybe relationship training with the churches or like a therapist, but that's after a few years usually. I just wanted to experiment. I have no idea where it's gonna go, but I feel like hmm,

• 43:29Speaker 00

  something's, something's happening underneath the surface by both of us doing this together when things are good.

• 43:36Steven Bartlett?

  Men just don't do this stuff, Lewis. I'm thinking about my guy friends and I can imagine some hesitancy towards them.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Hundred percent.

• 43:42Steven Bartlett?

  Because they're just not, it's all the things you've described, that they've worn a mask of toughness. We put, we keep the emotions in the back room. You know what I mean? And, and also, do you know what, do you know what as well? Guys don't love conflict.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  It's not fun, man.

• 43:56Steven Bartlett?

  So they would probably see that as, oh my God, I'm gonna get told off. Oh my God, she's gonna give me shit for that thing I do.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  It's so hard, man.

• 44:03Steven Bartlett?

  What you've described there, that doing the, making the roots go deeper, again, something I have to thank you for, because we had a conversation about vision, values and lifestyle. And when I go back from Dubai.

• 44:16Speaker 00

  How'd it go?

• 44:16Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I had a conversation with my girlfriend and she was all for it. So we sat on that table there and I said, I spoke to Lewis and he talked about vision, values and lifestyle. So we sat there one night on the weekend, lit a candle. We were making some like pottery stuff. And we said, after we've done this, we'll just write down our visions, values and lifestyle and we'll go through them one, one by one. So like I speak on one, you speak on one.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  That's beautiful, man.

• 44:41Steven Bartlett?

  It took about three hours and there were tears.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  Oh my gosh.

• 44:44Steven Bartlett?

  There were moments of joy.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  That's horrible.

• 44:47Steven Bartlett?

  But the conclusion was exactly what you've described. There was all these little things. I'll give you some detail.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Give it to me.

• 44:53Steven Bartlett?

  How we, when we go to sleep at night, I like to go to sleep a certain way. So I like something playing. She likes silence.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Oh, but you hadn't talked about it probably.

• 45:00Steven Bartlett?

  Hadn't talked about it. And it was one of the things just about like our sleep routine. We're obviously gonna have to sleep in bed for many, many years. And we hadn't discussed it. And I knew it was conflict. I was getting in bed and knowing if I play that she's not gonna be happy, but she might not say anything. And so just talking it through and going, look, babe, the reason why I listen to something when I go to sleep is because. I've had 29 years of doing that. When I lived in the countryside in Plymouth, I had a radio in my room and the kid in me found comfort in hearing a voice when I went to sleep. You've had 29 years of doing it another way. We've got to ask ourselves, is it really a problem? And that was the discussion, like, is it a problem? If I say, if I put an AirPod in, because I'm not going to compromise. And if you, you know, you wouldn't even hear it. Is it really a problem?

• 45:44Steven Bartlett?

  And then we discussed why she thought it might be a problem. Does that impact her intimacy? What intimacies are separate, you know, and eventually we came to this conclusion and it's not an issue anymore. And it was an issue in our, our relationship for about a year. It was that niggling little, you could feel the contempt and resentment slowly building.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  And you guys were long distance too, right?

• 46:01Steven Bartlett?

  You were long distance, yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  So it wasn't like,

• 46:03Steven Bartlett?

  You weren't sleeping with her?

• 46:04Speaker 00

  It wasn't every, every, every day for months.

• 46:06Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  So you were like a couple of weeks at a time within space.

• 46:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Speaker 00

  But when you're going to be more together consistently, it could be a problem.

• 46:11Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. That's one of the list of about 30 things that, that we, we addressed and worked through. And more than anything, coming out the end of that exercise, which is something I've never done with any partner I've ever had. I've never even had the conversation. You just crack on.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  We don't think about these things.

• 46:26Steven Bartlett?

  No, you don't.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  I didn't learn this until like two years ago, man.

• 46:28Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. You just, you just get, get on with life, right?

• 46:31Speaker 00

  You just try to keep having fun experiences.

• 46:34Steven Bartlett?

  And avoid

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Conflict.

• 46:35Steven Bartlett?

  The conflict.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  I've had so many uncomfortable conversations with, with Martha that it's like a muscle. You got to practice it. And every time an uncomfortable conversation comes up, I have to breathe. I'm like, oh, man.

• 46:48Steven Bartlett?

  You feel tense and anxious.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't want to do it. I don't like it. I don't think anyone likes it. But the more we do it, here's the thing, we've created a safe space where, and the reason I don't like to do it or haven't liked to do it until now is because every time I would have an uncomfortable conversation before, the partner I had could not handle it. So I'd say, here's how I'm feeling and they couldn't handle it. Or there'd be an explosion or reaction or something. So it didn't make me feel safe to have the uncomfortable conversation. So I'd avoid it.

• 47:17Steven Bartlett?

  Amen.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  And with Martha, I said to her, listen,

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Like the first uncomfortable conversation, I go, she asked me a question about something that was kind of like, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I remember being like, hmm, should I tell her the truth or should I kind of a little bit of the truth, you know? And I go, do you want me to be a hundred percent honest with you? And she said, yes, always. I go, are you sure you want me to be a hundred percent honest? She said, yes. And I go, okay, let me ask you one more time. And the reason I'm asking you is because I've never met someone who can hold the space for my honesty without reacting or crying or screaming or running away. So are you saying you're emotionally available to hold the space for my honesty and truth?

• 48:04Speaker 00

  And she said, yes, I'm a grown woman. I go, interesting. Okay. Well, here it is. And she was like, thank you for your honesty. And it built a one step. Okay, let me try this again one more time and make sure she can really handle it. And the more steps of her holding the space for my honesty, my vulnerability, and not exploding or reacting makes me feel like, okay, I can say anything. And she may not like it. It may be uncomfortable, but she's not explosive. And that's a powerful thing of how can I be comfortable in the discomfort while also feeling safe? That's huge. And you've got to learn to practice that yourself in a relationship

• 48:47Speaker 00

  and not be reactive. If a partner is telling you stuff about their past you don't like, or what they did, or this and that, you've got to be okay and practice it. And they've got to be. And that's where constantly working on yourself is huge in intimacy and relationships. And if one person's doing that and the other person isn't, there's going to be conflict.

• 49:07Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Do you have a trainer when you work out?

• 49:09Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 49:11Speaker 00

  Have you had a business coach in the past?

• 49:12Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so many.

• 49:15Speaker 00

  Would you stop getting coaching in business even though you've been so successful?

• 49:18Steven Bartlett?

  No.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  You want to stop even though you've got all this money in businesses and startups and investment, you know, dragons then you keep hiring a coach or have a mentor in business. Why would we not do that for our emotions and our heart? It is the most powerful energy that we have, emotions and our heart. And yet, we have a stigma around having a coach or mentor or a guide or a therapist, whatever you want to call it, of emotional regulation and accountability. And people make so many mistakes in their lives by not having that regulated. Their reactions can have consequences for years. People go to prison for one reaction.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  People lose their entire business for one reaction. People lose their marriages because of one emotional reaction. This is one of the most powerful currencies in the world, in my opinion, is having power over your emotions. Not stuffing your emotions, not saying they don't exist, not acknowledging them, but expressing them in a healthy way and in a healthy environment. And when we learn that, and I've been learning that over the last couple of years, it's been an incredible shift in every area of my life. And I also just feel an incredible sense of peace. I'm not saying that I'm always going to be perfect in the future around this, but showing up to someone twice a month and processing makes me a whole lot better.

• 50:48Steven Bartlett?

  You just reminded me of something that really stuck out to me when I first met you. Was when we were sat there and you're doing it again today, you've done it three times today, is you would say something and then you'd say, and that's my responsibility. So even when you were talking about previous relationships you've been in or whatever else, you would not blame the other person. You would like aggressively not blame them in a really remarkable way. So you'd say, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. Where any other human being I've ever met was in their right to attribute the blame to the other person. And you would always end the sentence, as you've done three times today, with, and that's on me or and that's my responsibility. Why?

• 51:30Speaker 00

  Because I chose it. I chose those experiences. I chose those relationships. I chose the environment. I chose those people. I chose to stay. And it's my responsibility on how I show up and how I react, how I respond and how I stay or leave.

• 51:48Steven Bartlett?

  But even when someone was toxic or whatever to you, you say that was on me.

• 51:51Speaker 00

  It's my responsibility because if someone does that. And I stay with them, that's on me. That's me not standing up for myself, it's me abandoning myself. That's not on them. They're living their life. They're doing what they do naturally. It didn't line up with me, but I stayed, so that's on me. I can't expect someone else to change. I can't expect someone else to respect my values, my vision and my lifestyle. They have theirs and they're showing it through their actions and their behaviors. And so for me, if I'm able to witness that and be aware and not have the false sense of love and be attached to the false sense of love that I'm feeling, I'm having this feeling about this person and I want to get back to this healthy environment with this person. I gotta learn to let that go.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  And that's why I say I can hold love in my hands loosely, committed and excited about it. But if it's not meant for me, I shouldn't hold on to it and abandon myself. And I think I did that too many times, so that's a hundred percent my responsibility.

• 52:52Steven Bartlett?

  Can you run me through then, because I know there's going to be people that, people listening to this that I've just had, we've both done this exercise and it was amazing. And they're gonna, they're now thinking, what is the values part? What is the vision part? What's the lifestyle part?

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the values is really about, for me, the values is like, okay, I value health in my life. I'm, I'm gonna be focused on my health. I value my mission, my team, my business, like, that's a conscious mission. I value spending time with friends. I value all my hobbies and activities. That's salsa dancing, that's traveling, that's all these different things I enjoy doing. I value conscious conversations. Like, I want to have conscious conversations. I can't have superficial conversations. I literally met someone this morning before I came here. Who is a part of a big company here in London. And within two minutes, I probably like, shouldn't do this, but I don't know if all British people are this way.

• 53:46Speaker 00

  And it's not a bad thing, but it's very good with like, surface talk. Oh, how's it, how was the flight? And uh, let's order some tea and crumpets or whatever it is, you know? And it's like. Which is fine, but I just can't handle it after a few minutes. So right away, I, the person sitting next to me, I was like, how's your marriage? You know? I just asked, I was just like, how long have you been married for? You know, and she was like, I've been married for like six years. And I go, what's three questions you wish you would have asked? I literally did this. I go, what's three questions you wish you would have asked the day before you got married? That you didn't ask? Cause I'm just fascinated by people. You know, I'm curious. I'm like, how amazing has the marriage been? How's it been? Has it been healthy? Have you had challenges? Is there anything you wish you would have changed or talked about sooner?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  And right away, she's like opening up and like being vulnerable. And I was like, sorry to put this on you right now, but I'm just fascinated. Cause I want to learn from everyone. And um, so I was like, I want to have conscious conversations. It's one of my values. So we have these deep intimate talks all the time. And so I write down a list of all my values. The vision is, this is the vision for my personal life. So personally, I want to be working out. I'm going to be healthy as an individual. My vision is my, my mission, which is building a conscious business to serve millions of people, to help them improve the quality of their life. And this is a major priority to me. This is my one and two priority.

• 55:12Speaker 00

  This is my vision and also our relationship vision, which I think is extremely important to talk about with your partner. Here's the vision I have for our relationship for these, these couple of years and for the future. This is what I see with flexibility, nothing set in stone, but this is what I see. What is your vision for our relationship? Because maybe her or his vision is different. One person wants to have kids, the other person doesn't. One wants to get married, the other doesn't. One wants an open relationship, the other one doesn't want that. One wants their family around every weekend. The other one's like, I don't want to be around your family every weekend. So what is the vision of our shared relationship? And then lifestyle, I love, you know, traveling.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Do you like to travel? I love to watch these types of movies. I like to eat these types of foods. I like these types of experiences. This is a lifestyle that I live. If you have a completely different lifestyle, that's going to be hard for us. If you like to do none of those things, if you like to stay at home every day where I want to go out and network with people and travel, that's just going to be a tough, we're going to be butting heads a lot and there might be, maybe it works, but it might cause some friction and distance in the future. So are we in alignment of values, vision and lifestyle? Doesn't have to be a hundred percent perfect, but is there alignment in each category? And I think the more alignment you have, the more potential for a better, healthier relationship.

• 56:39Steven Bartlett?

  And on things like work, this is obviously a big one for ambitious people. When they, um, when they're running a business, they're career driven, they're vision or mission driven and they have a partner. I want to know from a work perspective, what kind of conversation you've had with Martha and vice versa? Because I know you're a guy that travels a lot, does a lot of speaking, is very, you know, in pursuit of yourself and your potential. So how do you then balance like being a boyfriend, being present, going on dates and stuff? What's the conversation?

• 57:10Speaker 00

  When I first met her, I said, one of my values is alone time. Like that's one of my values as well, is having alone time, having enough space in our home so that I can go in a room and do what I want to do and watch sports or chill and you can do what you want to do. And I feel like we have space. Doesn't mean I don't want to be around her all the time, but I also value my space and alone time and so does she. So it's having those conversations. And with, with business, I said, listen, if you can come on any trip, like you're more than welcome to come. I'd love for you to come, but she's doing her own thing. She's traveling as well, back and forth from Atlanta. So, um, and she'll be filming two movies later this year and gone for two months at a time. So I'll need to travel at those times and she'll travel with me. And that's the season of our life right now.

• 57:54Steven Bartlett?

  And you're anticipating another season at some point, I imagine.

• 57:58Speaker 00

  At some point, yeah. I mean, it may evolve, may change into family and all these other things. So it's like when that season happens, there may be less travel for her.

• 58:05Steven Bartlett?

  How do you feel about that?

• 58:07Speaker 00

  About what?

• 58:08Steven Bartlett?

  About the next season of family. There's a smirk on your face, which is.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Well, this is something that I say to her. I go, listen, I'm really intentional about building a deep, strong foundation. Let's keep building the strong foundation and everything else will follow. If I feel a sense of peace, I feel a sense of safety in this relationship, just like you, then all these other things are going to happen naturally and they'll probably happen fast naturally. Once we both have a deeper foundation and just experience life more, so.

• 58:36Steven Bartlett?

  Have you historically had a commitment challenge?

• 58:38Speaker 00

  A hundred percent, man. A hundred percent. Well, actually, I haven't had a commitment challenge because I've always been committed. I've been in very long-term committed relationships. But I've had a commitment challenge in seeing around family and kids because I've never trusted the person I was with fully. So I couldn't see myself having kids with them and I kept waiting to see something to shift to where I felt like, this was kind of where my head would go. This is maybe weird, but I would say if something ever happened to me, could I trust this person would take care of my kids? And I just never felt that because I never felt like I could trust them with me. Like, again, I take full responsibility and accountability because I chose people that didn't accept me fully,

• 59:22Speaker 00

  that weren't happy with who I was. And so that's on me. And I never felt like I could go to the next level with any of them because I was like, something's off inside. And I feel like I'm changing who I am to make them happy and they're still not happy. So I can't have kids with, I can't see myself living like this for, you know, 20 years with someone, so.

• 59:44Steven Bartlett?

  And that kind of trauma, that niggle, is that still inside you there somewhere as you think about this?

• 59:49Speaker 00

  I think it was in the first maybe few months of us dating, but I don't feel like it is anymore. Yeah, I feel like every day I create more and more peace and connection and safety. And she's just an incredible person. Like, she's just a great human being and trustworthy and.

• 1:00:09Speaker 00

  So it's like, even if something happened to me, she could be incredible. You know, credible mom, so.

• 1:00:15Steven Bartlett?

  Of all the things you've learned from your good and bad relationships, if you were to have, if I had to, if I said to you that, what is the single biggest killer of relationships? What would your answer be?

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  I would say the biggest killer of relationships is being out of integrity with your authentic power and abandoning yourself to create peace in the relationship. Because if one person's doing that, or two people are doing that, there's some type of codependency, there's some type of wound on why we're doing that. That's creating that. So for me, the biggest killer is not healing. That's the biggest killer. Whatever wounds we have, be on the healing journey. It's not, it's not going to happen overnight. It's not like a moment, it's a journey of healing.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  And I think the more people are willing to dive into their heart and their emotions, and whatever insecurities, wherever they feel triggered, that's where you need to lean into. Because that trigger's going to come up in our relationships big time, if you haven't healed it. So it's the emotional healing, I think is one of the most powerful things. It's funny, I interviewed a brain surgeon who'd done over a thousand brain surgeries and studied the brain. And he's also a PhD in neuroscience. So he studies the mind and thoughts, and he was a brain surgeon. And I said, what's the number one skill you feel like human beings should learn to master? And his answer was beautiful. He said, emotional regulation. And I was like, I hundred percent agree.

• 1:01:55Speaker 00

  Because if we don't have the power to regulate our feelings around a situation, an environment, something that happens, an event, then that event has power over us as opposed to us over that moment. And if it has power over us to where we react so strongly. We need to ask ourselves, why am I so triggered? Where is that one? That's a wound somewhere. Where is that wound? And how can I start the healing journey? I'm not saying that things are going to happen in life and you're never going to feel something, but just not react and be overwhelmed emotionally to where it takes you away from love and takes you away from your mission. But if something is so strong that it causes you to lose sleep for three days

• 1:02:39Speaker 00

  or causes you to react in a negative way, it's pulling you away from your heart, from love and from your meaningful mission. And I think we've just got to get back to, okay, why is this stressing me out? How can I process this and integrate healing in a healthy way? So that when life happens, it doesn't pull me off my mission. And that's something I've experienced for the first time in the last three months is really like, life has happened in a big way for me. It's sidetracked me a little bit, but it's not pulling me off. Like I'm needing to face it and deal with things and process, but it's not like defeating me to where I feel like I'm exhausted. And that's because I'm holding myself emotionally accountable

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  and doing the work.

• 1:03:26Steven Bartlett?

  If I, if someone's listening to this and they don't have a therapist, they don't have the resources or whatever to have therapy, how else can they go about developing the self-awareness required for that emotional regulation journey?

• 1:03:39Speaker 00

  There's definitely things you can do on your own. I would, I would read a book called How to Do the Work by Nicole LaPera, which gives you a lot of exercises and practices and things like that on how to do the work yourself. So you can get the book for 25 bucks and start there. And start your own ritual and healing process, whether it be journaling, whether it be, you know, other types of meditation, things like that. They have, she has different rituals in there you can do. But I would recommend, I don't think there's anything more powerful than sitting in front of a human and talking to someone about how you feel and what you're going through. So whether that's a priest, or a parent, or a teacher, or you know, a friend that you

• 1:04:19Speaker 00

  trust, someone you feel like who has a little bit more wisdom than you, I would start there until you can afford the therapy.

• 1:04:26Steven Bartlett?

  And in terms of emotional journeys, you cite that you're still on one?

• 1:04:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:32Steven Bartlett?

  What are the things that you're now talking to your therapist about that you're trying to solve in yourself?

• 1:04:37Speaker 00

  I had this photo for the last year, and I'll just show the camera, the photo of my five-year-old self, and in the last session I did with her, it was all about healing the inner child, right? It was all about healing the inner child and doing the, the work, I mean, I did some weird stuff, like putting myself in spiritual and mental environments where I'm talking to my five-year-old self and looking at my five-year-old self, hugging my five-year-old self, integrating my five-year-old self with my adult self and kind of reparenting that psychological child. Some weird stuff, but for whatever reason, it's worked for me.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Because now I can look at a situation and say, okay, do I feel triggered? Oh, where's that coming from? Is it from that hurt child? If so, all I need to do is have a conversation with that part of my mind and say, I'm an adult now, and the adult is here, and I got your back. I can take care of this. I know how to process and soothe things in a healthy way. I don't need to lean onto an addiction or a reaction or whatever it may be to process. I know how to handle this. I know how to breathe. I know how to take a walk. I know how to have a conversation and process. You're safe. You're okay. It's all gonna be okay. Whereas before, I didn't have that ability to communicate with a wounded part of myself.

• 1:06:03Speaker 00

  And so now she said, we've healed the five-year-old version of you that was sexually abused because I don't get triggered about it. I don't get reactive to it. I'm not defensive and guarded anymore.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

  And I'm also shifting the way I don't please people in relationships anymore. So I've done a lot of things to do the work about intimacy and relationships and just in life. She's like now, and I go, okay, am I done? Cause this is a lot of work, you know? It's like, it's a lot. You're diving into emotions, you're tapping into uncomfortable stuff. You're like crying. It's all these things. She's like, this is a journey. Do you want to go to the next level in your life? Are you satisfied? I'm like, okay, you gotta keep going, you know? There's always something else. So she's like, we want to tap into the 11 and 12 year old self. And she's like, find a photo. That's my next homework is to put a photo of myself when I was 11 or 12 and start healing that part of my life. And there was a bunch of different stuff that happened at that phase that I haven't fully healed

• 1:07:02Speaker 00

  or forgiven myself. And so that'll be the next work to do. And it'll be like stages of life until I meet myself to where I am now.

• 1:07:11Steven Bartlett?

  Interesting.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  And heal and working on the evolution of all the memories of the past that wrote a story and developed chapters in a book that did not serve me.

• 1:07:24Steven Bartlett?

  Like a script, wasn't it?

• 1:07:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. And rewriting the script.

• 1:07:27Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  And not diminishing the things that happened, but acknowledging them and healing them in a different way and processing it in a healthy way so that I can meet myself where I'm at now and then really start elevating.

• 1:07:40Steven Bartlett?

  How much has doing a podcast where you sit with these people, but also you reflect?

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, right. It's a game changer. I mean, I get the biggest like neuroscience. I've had so many. And this year has been like the year of therapists and neuroscientists and spiritual gurus and just being like, figuring out more and more about emotions, about regulation, about healing, about inner child work. Because I have people on there where I'm like, when I'm struggling in something in my life, I bring those people on and like, teach me how to like overcome this.

• 1:08:10Steven Bartlett?

  Free therapy, right?

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  It's incredible. Yeah. And so my audience will be like, oh, Lewis is going through stuff in this. Oh, Lewis is going through a breakup. Oh, Lewis is in a relationship.

• 1:08:20Steven Bartlett?

  It's amazing. The other thing that I know a lot of people will will struggle with is the confidence to overcome some kind of fear. You talked a little bit there about our self story and how that limits us. One of the fears I know you had in your life, which is almost impossible to imagine based on the man you are sat in front of me today, was that fear of public speaking.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  Huge fear, man. I could not stand in front of two to three friends in school and really even have a conversation. Like, I didn't know how, if someone asked me a question, I would get nervous. I couldn't even respond with really a small story. Just because I was so, the story I told myself that I was so used to being made fun of and picked on growing up, that I would just didn't want to speak that much because I didn't want to be made fun of.

• 1:09:06Steven Bartlett?

  To put it in context of where you are today, you're an international speaker, you're getting you're getting paid big six-figure numbers to speak once.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:14Steven Bartlett?

  And I just want to put that in context because you went from someone that basically couldn't have a conversation, kind of like an international public speaker.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't know if it was like this in school in the UK, but in America, at least in Ohio where I grew up, the teacher would sometimes say, okay, we're going to have you guys read aloud, right? And, okay, Lewis, open up chapter one, paragraph one, and stand up and read in front of people. And it got to the point where it was so terrifying because I would get up and I was not able to read until really about 10th grade, no joke. When I went into eighth grade, that private boarding school, they tested me, reading and comprehension and everything, and I had a second grade reading level. So when I was in school, it was so hard for me to stand in front of the class and read aloud because

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  the simplest words, I didn't know what they were. I was dyslexic, so it was just challenging to read. And then I'd feel nervous and then I would sabotage it and then kids would laugh because I couldn't read. And so it was just kind of like a traumatizing thing that I had to learn how to let go of and heal. And so I just never wanted to speak in front of people. And I remember, this is funny, I was also

• 1:10:27Speaker 00

  I was also terrified to dance and I started salsa dancing obsessively because I wanted to overcome this fear. And when I was learning this skill of salsa dancing to overcome that fear, I met a guy who was a public speaker and he got paid to speak around the country. And I said, how do you do this? And he said, meet me tomorrow at this coffee shop and I'll, and I'll answer any question you have because we're literally like in the middle of the dance floor and I'm asking this. So I meet him at this coffee shop in Columbus, Ohio. And he was like, if you want to overcome the fear of public speaking, you need to practice it every week. And I recommend joining this thing called Toastmasters where you can practice in a safe environment where they're not going to laugh at you. And he said, go every week for a year and come back to me when you're done. And that's what I did. I

• 1:11:11Speaker 00

  went to a Toastmasters club every week for a year. And I remember it was terrifying for the first few months. But the more I did it and just messed up, I just kept messing up, but I found someone to mentor me there. I practiced it consistently every single week. My next speech, I would put myself in uncomfortable conversations to just be made fun of or just feel like I'm so stupid around these people. But every week I'd show up, I would get a little bit more confidence, a little bit more confidence till the last week of the year. I remember I had no notes, no props, no nothing. And I was extremely poised and confident and got like the standing ovation at the end of the year because they saw my

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  journey. The first speech, I had everything written out word for word, word for word. I looked down at behind a podium and read word for word. I didn't look up once on my first speech. To the point where I was like, okay, I'm writing a speech and then looking up a couple of times while reading it. To then it was like just note cards. To then it was bullet points. To then it was a slide. To then it was nothing. But it was mind blowing because it took a year to kind of get a baseline of confidence. And it took every week showing up. But I'm telling you, if I could do something like this, it's possible. But You've got to be willing to be so uncomfortable to overcome these fears sometimes.

• 1:12:33Steven Bartlett?

  There's two things I was reflecting on as you were speaking, and it's the first is how that repetitions rewrites this new kind of subjective evidence about who we are and what we're capable of, which results in mastery. But it starts with repetition, which creates new evidence, and then you've got the mastery point. But also just that that wasn't just a lesson about public speaking. It's a general lesson about what happens when in life we arrive at the crossroads of fear. And one side says, turn right to go back to comfort, which is never do this thing ever again.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:12:58Steven Bartlett?

  Because it's humiliating. And the other is like, it's the lights are off down that path, but it's like into the fear. And this happens every week in everyone's life, in your job, in your relationship, in someone offers you, oh, do you want to come and do this thing? And you go, that's not, I do salsa dance.

• 1:13:14Speaker 00

  And Or you go through a hard relationship and you're like, I can't open my heart up again to love.

• 1:13:19Steven Bartlett?

  Vulnerability, but so evident in your story, and even the fact that you write down your biggest fears every year. It's so clear that you continually chose to go into the fear and that resulted in tremendous growth.

• 1:13:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's always, it's always. And the amount of confidence I have over the last fifteen, twenty years, really, of just taking on these different fears that I thought I would never be able to do. Let's talk salsa dancing. You know, I started that seventeen years ago. It's opened up a world to me. I've traveled the world, I've salsa danced in every major city around the world over the last seventeen years. I've met incredible people. I had so much fun. I get to just go and dance and have fun. And it gives me an incredible sense, it's a tool that I can take out at any moment whenever needed. It's a language that I can speak to so many people that speak that language.

• 1:14:13Speaker 00

  And it's given me a level of confidence that I never had without that because it was a fear. And now it's something that's fun that I've mastered. It's incredible. Same thing with public speaking. I remember thinking before I started Toastmasters, like if I want to get a job, I need to learn public speaking. If I want to like improve in the career that I go into, I need to be able to communicate in the boardroom and get my ideas across. Even if I'm an employee, I just need to be able to communicate. Or if I'm a CEO one day, I need to be able to inspire. If I want to be on stage, I need to be able to get a message across to influence and impact people. So I was like, if I want to accomplish my dreams, I need to overcome this fear.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  It's brought me so many opportunities because I spent a year obsessing over this and failing. Again, it's brought me incredible financial resources. It's put me in front of it's I've traveled the world because of speaking. It's brought me business deals. I've met and collaborated with other speakers that I've met on stages at these events. It's given me confidence, you know, by having this skill. So every fear that I have, if I master it and I go all in on it, something magical and beautiful happens on the other side. Same in relationships. After the previous relationship, I was like, okay, I can be afraid and be single for a year and like guard my heart.

• 1:15:36Speaker 00

  Or I can open my heart, keep it expansive, not closed off of the after this pain and challenge. Keep it open and see what's possible. And when I met her, I was thinking to myself, ah, I don't know if I want to like go into this, but I was like, let me keep it open and explore. And it's been magic and beauty on the side because I've gone all in that as well.

• 1:15:58Speaker 00

  Every time it's just something magical happens.

• 1:16:01Steven Bartlett?

  When I think about that crossroads analogy where you've got the you arrive at the crossroads of fear and it says, turn right if you want to go back into certainty and comfort or turn left, it's dark in there. Yeah. It goes go into the fear and address it and work through it. I think the people, the reason why people turn right into certainty and to comfort or really go back, right? Is because they've miscalculated what the actual risk is. So in the case of say, being vulnerable in your relationships, it seems like the the low risk path is to like, keep the mask on, just please them and whatever.

• 1:16:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:34Steven Bartlett?

  However, when you zoom out, that is the existential risk of the relationship is faking and being inauthentic to yourself.

• 1:16:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:40Steven Bartlett?

  That was actually the risk, but people like they miss, they don't know what the risk is. And generally in life, it's people that when they say to me, oh, you're so courageous for dropping out of university and starting this business. I've reflected on that over the years and because I've really struggled with this concept of people thinking I was courageous. In my mind, the risk was staying in university, going into the corporate rat race and not pursuing myself and then having a midlife crisis when I abandoned myself. That was the risk.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:04Steven Bartlett?

  The easy cowardice thing to do was leaving university and pursuing myself. And I think the reframing of it.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Steven Bartlett?

  Is really probably the most potent way of getting people to understand that in fact, the dark left side of that fear crossroads is actually the least risky path to take. If you zoom out.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And you have to see what's on the other side.

• 1:17:23Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  What's possible for you, what's available on the other side.

• 1:17:26Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Or even if you see what certainty and comfort will.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Exactly. It's about having a short period of pain versus long period of pain. And the short pain is diving into the fear. Maybe the pain is a week, a month or a year in order to overcome that fear until you overcome it and transcend it. Or having this numbing, low level pain for the rest of your life by not choosing that. Which one do you want? You know, for me, I just can't live that way.

• 1:17:56Steven Bartlett?

  And it's not just one, right? So if you, if you fake it in work and then your relationships, then your friendships, then you're gonna have.

• 1:18:02Speaker 00

  And your health.

• 1:18:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yes. You're gonna have 10. Which is gonna, what happens then? Depression.

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:07Steven Bartlett?

  Crippling anxiety.

• 1:18:08Speaker 00

  Exactly. Panic attacks, all that stuff.

• 1:18:10Steven Bartlett?

  Pulsive behavior, all these, you know, addiction.

• 1:18:12Speaker 00

  Addictions, everything, man.

• 1:18:13Steven Bartlett?

  As you look off into your future then, Lewis, you're thinking about how Lewis Howes shapes his future, what he's pursuing, how he finds his meaning and happiness on an ongoing basis. What is the answer?

• 1:18:26Speaker 00

  Everything is based on mission. The, the mechanism is kind of irrelevant. How I do it is irrelevant. The mission is to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. That's the mission.

• 1:18:38Steven Bartlett?

  That's your mission.

• 1:18:39Speaker 00

  That's the mission. That's been the mission for about eight years. It's been consistently that.

• 1:18:43Steven Bartlett?

  Why 100 million?

• 1:18:45Speaker 00

  People ask me that. I think when I came up with that number, it's because I'd already impacted millions at the time. And whenever I ask people like, what's your dream? And they say they want to change the world. It just doesn't seem real, like, okay, what does that mean? And then some people say, I want to change billions of lives. Okay. It just seems like it's hard to

• 1:19:06Steven Bartlett?

  Measure.

• 1:19:06Speaker 00

  It's hard to measure that quickly, like, how fast is that gonna happen? But I'd already impacted millions and I was like, okay, what would it look like? How long would it take me to reach 100 million people at once? Like in a year? And then how could I, what would it look like to do it in a month? And then in a week? And then how could I repeat that every week?

• 1:19:25Speaker 00

  What's the mechanism? Right now, it's podcasting, YouTube, social media, books, events, all those different things. Maybe in the future, there's another mechanism. For me, I'm not attached to the mechanism. I'm committed to the mission. And so I'm flexible and open on how. I want to make sure that I'm a messenger. And I'm a facilitator of messages with other messengers. And that's the mission for this season of my life. Until something shifts inside of me where it says, you know, that's not your calling anymore. Then I'll listen to that next mission.

• 1:20:00Steven Bartlett?

  Two questions then. The first question is, why does that matter to you? Why does helping 100 million lives a week matter to you? What are you gonna get if that happens? If you succeed?

• 1:20:09Speaker 00

  Well, helping one person matters to me. When I wrote my book, The Mask of Masculinity, I remember thinking to myself, this probably isn't gonna sell 100 million copies. Right? It's about how men can be vulnerable. Like, most men don't want to buy that book.

• 1:20:22Steven Bartlett?

  It's this one here.

• 1:20:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, so The Mask of Masculinity, I, once I started opening up about my healing journey and seeing the impact and the responses that men were having. I was like, gosh, I need to write about this, don't I? Internally, I was like, this needs to happen next. My book agent was like, let's go do another book about business or marketing. And I was like, I just can't do it. Like, even if I make no money, this has to come out of me. Because if I can help one man heal their internal relationship with themselves, and then heal their relationship with their family and their marriage, whatever it might be, then it's worth it to me.

• 1:21:01Speaker 00

  And so I just felt like I needed to put it out. And so I'm happy to help one person and I feel accomplished. I feel purposeful, useful. I feel like my talents were for something meaningful. But I know there's something more inside of me. And so I'm striving to serve 100 million lives. One of the reasons that's meaningful to me is because I believe that we're all here for a reason. I believe that we all have a certain unique set of gifts and talents. And I want to see how far those talents can spread. I just feel like that's part of my calling at this season of my life. And I'm 100% happy and fulfilled with all the efforts I've had to this moment.

• 1:21:45Speaker 00

  Because it's everything I've been able to do. But I know there's so much more. So this is just something for me to aim towards, to reach towards. It gives me a target. It's something I can measure. It's not too unrealistic. It's a big number, but I feel like, yeah, how things are going. Maybe it could happen in a year. Maybe it's 10 years. I don't know. But it gives me a focus and it keeps me in alignment on the things I say yes and no to. Does this decision, project, interview, partnership, serve 100 million lives? Or get me closer to it? Or is it a distraction? So it helps me get clear on saying yes or no to things as well.

• 1:22:25Steven Bartlett?

  And what happens today if you get an email when you leave here? And it says, Lewis, good news. We've, we're now reaching 100 million lives a week.

• 1:22:32Speaker 00

  I say, great, we gotta, we gotta repeat this over and over again for a while. Until I feel like, okay, what's the next goal?

• 1:22:41Speaker 00

  I mean, I mean, if we get 100 million lives weekly, then I'll be like, awesome. It's been, I'm doing this podcast for nine years now. It's like, I've been doing this for a long time. Last year, we got over 100 million views just on our YouTube channel alone. So we're in the hundreds of millions a year of, and I don't calculate it as like a like or like a one second view. I'm like, what's a 20 minutes of some, an interaction? We had over 100 million just on YouTube of 24 minute watch time. So for me, that's a deep encounter of someone introspective, learning, diving in, you know, overcoming something and trying something new. That's meaningful to me. And so if we can do that weekly for a while,

• 1:23:24Speaker 00

  then I'll, I'll take an assessment and say, okay, where am I at my life this season? Am I striving for more? Am I maintaining? Am I shifting? You know, I'll reassess it then.

• 1:23:34Steven Bartlett?

  Would it be a really happy day?

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  I'm happy today. I'm really happy today.

• 1:23:38Steven Bartlett?

  Cause Gary Vaynerchuk said to me, he said, my goal is to buy the New York Jets. And in the same breath, he said, it will be the worst day of my life.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Right. Cause then there's no more chase. It's no more thinking to work towards. And here's the thing, I'm happy today because I have inner peace and I think

• 1:23:53Speaker 00

  there's no goal that I've accomplished in the past that has brought me into peace when I accomplished it. I felt depressed and anxious with a lot of goals from the past. Now I feel happy with just showing up and giving my best day today. It's as lame as that sounds. The healing work has allowed me, it doesn't mean I'm like satisfied. I still am driven and I'm hungry for more. But I'm just in such a beautiful place in my relationship with myself and my relationship with Martha and my relationship with friends and family, my team. I just feel like, man, if this was it, I'm in a peaceful place and that's beautiful.

• 1:24:30Steven Bartlett?

  Amazing. And I, I truly feel it. I truly feel it in everything you say.

• 1:24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it doesn't mean I'm perfect. And it doesn't mean I have it all figured out. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to make mistakes in the future. It just means that's the path I'm on.

• 1:24:44Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast, which is the previous guest writes a question for the next guest into the diary. What is the most frequent piece of advice people ask you for? And what is the answer?

• 1:24:58Speaker 00

  I mean, what do people ask me for?

• 1:25:00Steven Bartlett?

  What is the most frequent piece of advice people ask you?

• 1:25:03Speaker 00

  Like the question they ask me for, like a piece of advice.

• 1:25:06Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. What's the most frequent piece of advice?

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  I mean, it's like, what would you do if you were starting all over again? You know, if you were 21 and you, or you started your podcast again, or you know, you're getting started again in your business. What would you have done differently is what I get asked. And then what's the answer? I mean, the answer is.

• 1:25:26Speaker 00

  I don't know if I would have done anything differently because it's all given me a lot of wisdom and experiences to where I'm at now. I wish I would, I guess I wish I would have like known this stuff sooner, but I think we all need to learn things as they come to us. What I, I guess what I wish I had known differently is how to have inner peace. I wish I would have had that skill because I think I'd be farther ahead and I would have been happier sooner inside had I learned that skill of healing, of inner peace, emotional regulation, all these things that kind of held me back from being a hundred percent my authentic self and in my power towards building everything that I'm doing.

• 1:26:08Steven Bartlett?

  I sit here with people a lot and I remember speaking to Gary and Gary talked to me about the importance for him of legacy.

• 1:26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:16Steven Bartlett?

  Is this something that's important to you, the concept of legacy?

• 1:26:19Speaker 00

  I think yes and no. It is in the sense that like with my dad passing, I think about his legacy, right? And I've had a lot of like sad moments and I've also had a lot of beautiful grateful moments thinking about his life and his legacy and what he, how he lived, what he taught during his, his life and what he left behind in terms of wisdom and lessons. And I think it's important to, for me, that's valuable in the sense that I'm going to be around, you know, my siblings are going to be around, his grandchildren are around who

• 1:27:00Speaker 00

  experienced him, they're going to have, we are going to have memories and an imprint based on his life and how he lived with us. And now it's all about how we show up. Through his legacy, you know, I'm a part of his legacy. He was a part of my foundation and now I'm going to be a part of that. And I think about that because I want to make sure that my last name is meaningful and it would make him proud. You know, to make sure that am I doing things in alignment with what he taught me? Would make the world a better place, would be good for our community. Am I living to the highest level of the values? Not the stuff that he didn't do well, but the stuff he did well, do well.

• 1:27:45Speaker 00

  And so I think it's important because we're going to be interacting with people. And when we're gone, they're either think of us in a positive way or negative way. And they might be acting like we acted in either of those ways. So I think it's valuable and important. And I think about it in that sense, but I also think about that it's not important because in 200 years, no one's going to remember. Maybe, you know, like someone has like a memory of it in a history book and they talk about you. But no one you know is going to know you in a, in a hundred years. No one you interact with is going to know you. So in the, the, the big scheme of things, you know? It doesn't, it doesn't matter after a hundred years, really.

• 1:28:26Speaker 00

  But it matters because everything is a reflection of our past.

• 1:28:32Steven Bartlett?

  It's like Domino's, isn't it?

• 1:28:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, my grandparents influenced my parents. Their traumas and their beauty influenced them, which influenced me. And I felt like I had to heal the traumas of the past legacy as well. Just like I'm carrying with me the beautiful parts of the past. And, and leaning into those, but also healing things that were brought down that they never healed. So there's an impact with the legacy.

• 1:29:00Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. I, my answer is very similar to yours in the sense that I, I've never understood why people care about what people like, what people will say about me when I'm gone.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 1:29:09Steven Bartlett?

  Like, I don't care, because I, again, if I engaged in that thinking, it's the same as caring too much about what they think about me now.

• 1:29:16Speaker 00

  Now, yeah.

• 1:29:17Steven Bartlett?

  Like, I'm not going to be there, I'm going to be dead. So, but I, I, I've never heard it and it's really refreshing to hear that kind of Domino's analogy where like, actually, the way that I, that a way that I show up is going to impact my kids. They might impact 10, then it's 20, and it's 50, and then that's how the world is created.

• 1:29:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think the traumas that our parents, you know, had or didn't heal are going to be felt in our childhood and in our adulthood until we heal it. So, and that might be their grandparents and their grandparents who'd like pass it down. So we either need to heal it now, otherwise we're going to pass it down to our kids.

• 1:29:50Steven Bartlett?

  Lewis, thank you. You're a very special individual for so many reasons, but I think having had this conversation with you, the most, and also, you know, it's a reflection of your book as well, The Mask of Masculinity, is your ability to be open and vulnerable is, I think, like the most powerful service, especially men can be doing in this world for all the reasons you've described, because that like being emotionally in touch and being willing to be open is the foundation of all of our interactions, our happiness, our mental health, even our physical health. And as is the case in this country at the moment, the thing that is unfortunately killing most men under the age of 45 is themselves. Suicide is the biggest killer of men in our country under that age group. So, and it's a reflection of, I think, the lack of vulnerability.

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:30:36Steven Bartlett?

  And the lack of openness and the lack of the ability to process and regulate our emotions. So having a light like you in the world that is leading that crusade in such an open way, even though I know the feeling of discomfort it can even gives me to talk about things like my mental health or how I'm feeling, all those things inspires me. And you've inspired me to be more open. And in fact, you've actually inspired me to go on the journey of like having therapy just for the sake of, not because there's, I'm like, oh, I need to fix this, but because of the prevention and because of all the unknown unknowns.

• 1:31:08Speaker 00

  Absolutely, man.

• 1:31:09Steven Bartlett?

  So, thank you.

• 1:31:10Speaker 00

  Thanks, brother.

• 1:31:10Steven Bartlett?

  You're an inspiration to me and so many others, and it's been a joy to have you on my podcast.

• 1:31:13Speaker 00

  Thanks, brother. Appreciate it.