Dr. Lisa Miller: The Neuroscience of Spirituality - How To Heal Your Mind & Manifest More

My conversation with renowned psychologist Dr. Lisa Miller takes us deep into the fascinating intersection of spirituality and neuroscience. As a pioneer in the field and professor at Columbia University, Dr. Miller shares groundbreaking research on how our brains are actually wired for spiritual connection. Through powerful personal stories, including her own journey through infertility and adoption, she reveals how depression often serves as a spiritual wake-up call rather than just a medical condition. We explore the science behind synchronicities, the power of choosing love even in difficult times, and how developing our "awakened brain" can transform our lives. Whether you're struggling with mental health, searching for deeper meaning, or simply curious about the science behind spirituality, this episode offers profound insights on connecting with something greater than ourselves. Dr. Lisa Miller's websiteDr. Lisa Miller on InstagramIn this episode you will learn:Why depression is often a developmental gateway to spiritual awakening rather than just a medical conditionHow our brains are physically wired for spiritual connection through three distinct neural networksThe scientific evidence showing that spirituality significantly reduces depression, addiction and suicide riskWhy synchronicities aren't random coincidences but guidance markers on our spiritual pathHow releasing ego control and embracing life's "yellow doors" leads to unexpected blessingsFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1708For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:David Ghiyam – greatness.lnk.to/1692SCDr. James R. Doty – greatness.lnk.to/1612SCDr. Joe Dispenza – greatness.lnk.to/1702SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

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• 0:41Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful for you and I hope you are feeling blessed and abundant in your life right now. And did you know that if you're feeling not blessed, if you're feeling depressed or anxious or like something's off, that depression is your body and your mind screaming for a spiritual awakening? And that's something that we talk about today with Dr. Lisa Miller, who is a clinical psychologist who does something different. She likes to blend spirituality with science and apply both disciplines into individuals' lives. And with her work, she has seen incredible transformations.

• 1:22Lewis Howes?

  In this episode, we talk about the difference between a depressed brain and an awakened brain, and how to transform your mind and brain from static depression into awakened abundance. It's an extremely powerful process that she walks me through, a visualization and meditation process, one like I've never done before, that I think will be extremely interesting and powerful for you if you're open to going through it with me. Talk about all these different points in transcending the parts of ourselves that hold us back. And she also mentions this divine hunger, how we're starving to feel the divine, to feel divinity within our lives.

• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  And yet we distract ourselves with so many things that Keep us in a depressed brain. I'm so excited for you to listen to this episode. If it brings you any value at all, please leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Please follow the show, The School of Greatness, on either of your audio platforms you're listening to right now. And copy and paste this link and send it to one or two friends that you think this could inspire them. You know, we have a gift every single day to bring joy to others. That can be through your presence, that can be through a simple text message, a phone call, giving someone a smile or a hug. And I think this could be one of those things for you today. So send a link to someone where you feel like they could blend science and spirituality to

• 2:51Lewis Howes?

  serve their life in a better way. Without further ado, let's dive into this episode with Dr. Lisa Miller. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest and the conversation we're about to have. We have Dr. Lisa Miller in the house and I am excited about this. I've got a quote I want to share from you first before we dive in. This quote you said is, "What if the condition we pathologize and diagnose as depression is sometimes actually spiritual hunger, a normal and genetically derived part of human development that is unhealthy to muffle or deny." Now, Dr. Lisa, you have a bachelor's degree from Yale, a doctorate from UPenn, and you're a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University. You're also

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  the first scientist to publish a peer-reviewed article on spirituality and mental health in the first two decades of human life. I'm so grateful you're here. And I think there is a massive dis-ease within society where depression and mental health is at an all-time high in terms of suffering, sadness, and in a weakened energetic state for a lot of people. I think specifically a big proportion of our use. And you talk about a lot of the differences between the awakened brain versus more of a depressed brain. You've been studying this for a long time. You've got

• 4:18Lewis Howes?

  science, research, and spiritual practices blended together, which I think is so powerful. And I wanted to ask you first, What is the difference between an awakened brain and a depressed brain? And how can someone who feels the weight of the world, anxiety, depression, ADHD, any of these symptoms, how can they start to transform those symptoms or those feelings or that emotional weight into peace and awakened brain?

• 4:51Lisa Miller?

  To lose half the United States and half of most of the post-industrial world is depressed.

• 4:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 4:58Lisa Miller?

  We have unprecedented supply of food. We have unprecedented quality of medical care. We are a very well-provided-for society and still our inner life hurts. It hurts. And depression isn't just feeling sad. Depression is, can be an edginess. You know, a lot of times people are grumpy or hostile. Depression can be the sense of dread creeping up on us and anxiety, like the boogeyman inside. Depression can be not wanting to eat, lying in bed, not having our game on at all. So depression is not just sadness, it's really powering down. And for a very long time, there was, most of the 20th century, people would say, "Depression?

• 5:43Lisa Miller?

  Well, we can see that it has biological correlates. We can see that there's correlates in the brain. Depression, that's a medical illness, always and only, uniformly." But over here, you know, there's these people who are religious or they're spiritual and religious, that, that, that's, you know, that might be nice for them, but the view in the 20th century in much of mental health was that that's somehow a Band-Aid or a crutch.

• 6:09Lewis Howes?

  Religion or spirituality?

• 6:11Lisa Miller?

  Somehow a crutch. That was the, that is now the outdated, but it was very prevalent for a long time, point of view. What we now know from science is that just as depression has neuro correlates, our spiritual awareness has neuro correlates. We can track in the brain the circuits undergirding a transcendent relationship. And that's true no matter what religion you may be, or if you're any religion at all. So whether I'm Hindu, or Catholic, or Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, and spiritual but not religious, the same circuits run, as I perceive, a deep sacred transcendent relationship. I can say I feel oneness with life.

• 6:53Lisa Miller?

  I can feel that nature is my sanctuary. I can say that God, or Jesus, or Hashem, or Allah walks with me. However, I understand the transcendent relationship. I'm using my awakened brain. There is one awakened brain. 7.2 billion people on Earth have the same awakened brain.

• 7:15Lewis Howes?

  But why do we suppress our awakened brain?

• 7:18Lisa Miller?

  So very often, depression is not always a medical illness. In fact, as we look, two-thirds of the time, depression is not a medical illness. You can track its biological correlates as you can track the spiritual correlates. But that doesn't make it an illness. When you're lifting weights, you can track the biological correlates. That doesn't make it an illness, it's a strength, right? Well, it turns out that depression is actually a hunger for spiritual awakening, at least two-thirds of the time. Why is this happening to me? Why did she leave me? Why did I lose my money? I just feel horrible. Yesterday, everything was fine. That hunger, just like we're hungry for food, or thirsty, is the body, the mind, the soul.

• 8:01Lisa Miller?

  It's all one, body, mind, and soul, screaming for an expanded awareness. Life as I'm living it, life as I'm seeing it, has gotten too small. And just as I grow in height, or weight, or maturity, or my eyes change as I get older, our spiritual life changes.

• 8:21Lisa Miller?

  All of us.

• 8:22Lewis Howes?

  How has your spiritual life evolved from your youth to where you are now? Specifically, after studying the science of spirituality?

• 8:29Lisa Miller?

  So, when I was maybe about 19, I fell in love for the first time. I mean, was flat in love. I couldn't believe it. I'd never been in love before, and he was perfect. He looked like a sculpture in a museum.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  Ah, there you are.

• 8:46Lisa Miller?

  Very nice. He thought I was so interesting, and I thought he was so interesting. And he said, "I love you." And I said, "You love me? I love you." And that was after three months. After five months, he broke up with me.

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow, devastating.

• 9:02Lisa Miller?

  Devastated. And I couldn't understand it. I really couldn't understand it at 19. You know, I thought, "Well, wait a minute."

• 9:09Lewis Howes?

  You said one thing, I felt it, you felt it, and then you ended.

• 9:12Lisa Miller?

  How could that be?

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:14Lisa Miller?

  Right? So, is love not real? Is love impermanent? And we'll call this poor guy Jason? Is Jason real? Like, do we change? Can we not count on each other? What do we count on?

• 9:28Lewis Howes?

  Was he lying to me? You know, why would this happen to me? All these things.

• 9:31Lisa Miller?

  So, I think he was telling the truth, and he thought he was telling the truth. He changed. And it gave me a shocking, really, it was sort of a drowning sense of impermanence. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The things I want so much in life, love, is impermanent. And that sent me at 19 into a downward spiral and a search. Wait a minute, okay. Is love permanent? Are people permanent? What are we really about? And I became more and more concerned about the existential nature of life at 19. And it was very depressing. I started getting more and more upset, more and more depressed, sleepless, anxious. I'd stay up and sort of look out the window and wonder. So, I thought, you know, I really have to go to a therapist.

• 10:15Lisa Miller?

  And at 19, I went to a therapist, and the therapist said, "What brings you here?" And I said, "Well, I don't, you know, all my life, I felt connected to God, and I felt connected to this deeper presence in life. And lately, I just don't feel that." And I, you know, was in love, and love ended, and I just don't know, you know, what's real.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  What's the point of all this?

• 10:36Lisa Miller?

  What's the point of all this? And the therapist said, "Hmm." Was your father there for you when you were little? And I thought, you know what? My dad actually was there for me when I was little. This isn't about that. This isn't a story about my early childhood. This is a story about a hunt for what's true. And at least I had the gut instinct to say, new therapist, which is what you should always do if you don't feel at home with your therapist.

• 11:02Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 11:03Lisa Miller?

  The therapist number two, from a psychodynamic to a cognitive therapist, who works on your thoughts. And there we were, and I said, you know, I just don't know, you know, if there's meaning in life, if there's any value in life. And these, at the time, were viewed as nothing but symptoms, secondary symptoms to a deeper medical depression. That a cognitive therapist thinks you can fix by changing your thoughts. And so I said, well, I just don't know if life has worth. I don't know what's real. And she said, hmm, you don't know if life has worth? Do the low self-esteem. I said, I'm embarrassed to admit I feel just fine about myself. I don't know if life has meaning. It wasn't about myself.

• 11:48Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 11:49Lisa Miller?

  And this went on and on, because at that point, there had yet to be a science that showed that there is, in emerging adulthood, a hunt for what's true.

• 11:59Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 12:00Lisa Miller?

  And it is not easy. A hunt for, is there deeper meaning in life? And if there is, what is my walk?

• 12:07Lewis Howes?

  What's my purpose?

• 12:08Lisa Miller?

  What is my purpose, to your point?

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  If someone is feeling completely depressed, or the symptoms of depression, or just an emotional weight, they can't seem to get off their back. And they are thinking to themselves, you know, the relationship I'm in is just not working, or I'm getting into relationships and getting out of them, and they just don't seem to be working. The career I'm in is just like draining my energy.

• 12:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm just not, I don't feel healthy, I don't feel good. I have a lot of negative thinking consistently and it's hard to get these thoughts out of my mind. How does someone start to find meaning and purpose when they have no clue where to start?

• 12:50Lisa Miller?

  Yeah, well, I do think therapy is valuable, but it's only a piece of the story. And if you're in terrible pain, medication can be helpful, but that's only a piece of the story. Because that hunger, that yearning for a deeper significance, a deeper connection, is actually your innate, inborn spiritual hunger. The hunger is a divine hunger. It propels us on a quest. And we all have it, nobody's left out, nobody's not spiritual. One spiritual brain, we all have it, we can trace it in your genes, this is yours.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:25Lisa Miller?

  But how do we discover it? People want to know, how do I get to that? Well, right where the pain is, is the portal of entry.

• 13:33Lewis Howes?

  Where was your pain?

• 13:35Lisa Miller?

  My pain was here.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  In your chest, in your heart?

• 13:38Lisa Miller?

  I could feel it in my chest because I had a broken heart. And my question, which was held in my mind and my body and my soul, is, was love real?

• 13:50Lisa Miller?

  And because God is love, I wondered, is God real? And that is a pretty bitter question. Not only do we ask this at 19 or 20, we ask this again at midlife, and we ask this again as elders. There's three bridges and we can't get around it.

• 14:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 14:07Lisa Miller?

  Because spirituality is inborn, and like any inborn quality, just like we change and look different at 19, and 45, and 85, our spirituality kicks in.

• 14:17Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 14:18Lisa Miller?

  We cannot get around these questions. And just as there's three bridges of beckoning.

• 14:25Lisa Miller?

  It kicks off with sort of the ignition is actually part of the spiritual process. Wait a minute, yesterday, everything was fine, and today, I feel somehow caged in. I don't feel at home in my inner being.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:39Lisa Miller?

  It's so easy, when I don't feel at home in my inner being, to say, I don't feel at home. My spouse must not be right for me anymore. You know, I don't feel enough inside myself. My job isn't big enough. I'm not special enough. It's so easy to look outwardly. And in a culture that's just knee-deep in measurement and obsessed with how big and good am I outwardly, sometimes the answer isn't outward. It's a deep seat of being inside ourselves.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  What was your awakening? What did it look like? How long did it take for you to do the therapy, do the exercises, go inward to reflect during this first bridge in your life?

• 15:22Lisa Miller?

  For the first bridge, it was only about six months. Although at 19, that feels like you've been a long time.

• 15:28Lewis Howes?

  Feels like forever, yeah.

• 15:28Lisa Miller?

  Right, right. And I want to say that I see on social media, there's a lot of people in Gen Z who have a lot of pain.

• 15:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 15:37Lisa Miller?

  Right? And that pain is not against you. That pain is for you.

• 15:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Lisa Miller?

  The pain in your heart, at 19, at 20, at 25, is a deep calling to seek the presence of the deeper nature of life. Meditation, prayer, walk in nature, join a service group, your sangha, your mingin, your fellowship, you will awaken. You are built to awaken. And the first step of awakening is actually the depression.

• 16:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:08Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 16:09Lewis Howes?

  Needing to go through the depression and experiencing it?

• 16:11Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  Why do you need depression to have a spiritual awakening?

• 16:15Lisa Miller?

  Because it is not a pathological depression. Over two-thirds of the time, in young people, young adults, it is a developmental depression. It's a banging at the door.

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  It's a calling. It's like, hey, wake up.

• 16:26Lisa Miller?

  Wake up.

• 16:29Lisa Miller?

  And it was just fine two years ago to be as you are. But to rise to the next mantle of your being, not your outward getting, that'll come.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 16:38Lisa Miller?

  But of your being, you need to answer the call.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  I saw this video online of Jim Carrey saying depression is something like deep rest. It's like your body needing deep rest from the character you've been playing.

• 16:53Lisa Miller?

  Oh.

• 16:54Lewis Howes?

  And I really liked the way he interpreted it. He was like, I was depressed, but it was like, I was playing a character that wasn't serving me or my spiritual abilities at the highest level anymore. And he was literally playing characters in movies, but he was probably playing a character in the world also. Uh, and he was like, depression is deep rest. It's your body saying you need deep rest from the character you've been playing. And I really liked that perspective. It's like, what have we been trying to portray? What masks have we been wearing to fit in, to try to belong? To try to compare ourselves or be judgmental towards what we're seeing on social media or with our friends and how we can live up to some standard or something like that.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  And so you're, what is the science, though, that proves?

• 17:40Lisa Miller?

  I love that, deep rest. Because deep rest means that we go into the deepest sleep. We go to the dream world where we meet the infinite. And when we wake up from deep rest, we are replenished.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  Refreshed.

• 17:52Lisa Miller?

  Bright.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 17:54Lisa Miller?

  And the same is true with awakening. That after and through a depression, we don't solve it. We don't figure it out. You don't have a pro and com list to get out of a depression. We don't churn what I call our achieving brain. I'm going to strategize my way out of depression. I'm gonna research my way out of depression. There's another side of our brain, which is our awakening, our awakened brain. And just as in the dream world, we receive.

• 18:21Lisa Miller?

  Great replenishment, great renewal, great direction in our dreams. We know that we're loved, we know that we're guided. We awaken through, in the daytime, a depression into an awakening. We come to see that in our darkest, most painful moment, we don't fall through a black hole, we don't backfall into an abyss, but we're buoyant, we're actually caught, we're held.

• 18:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:49Lisa Miller?

  And that's not something that you sort of figure out. It's something that you experience. It's something you feel in your heart and in your body. It is perceived. So spirituality is not a belief, it is the capacity to perceive.

• 19:05Lewis Howes?

  If someone is feeling this state of depression right now, and maybe they've been feeling a depression for years, and they've been using substances to try to numb and remove the depression, alcohol, smoking, vaping, drugs, pornography, whatever the addiction is, to try to depress the depression.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  Will that ever get them out of depression, using substances?

• 19:34Lisa Miller?

  So it will never get us out of depression, ever, to use substances. But the desire that's often behind substance use is to transcend. Very often, when we look at the data, transcendence, which is really only found through a spiritual process, is so desired, the heart so hungers for spiritual awakening, that we can take the tricky, kind of cheap backdoor. Okay, I'll just have a few more drinks. Okay, you know, I'm just gonna do some form of as-if-I-had-transcended experience. And so, we can note, hey, okay.

• 20:16Lisa Miller?

  I'm looking for transcendence. Is there a way that really has legs under it? How can I get there without the drugs? Because, you know, the impulse to go deeper is the hunger of the spiritual heart.

• 20:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 20:30Lisa Miller?

  How do we honor that? And every tradition on earth shows us a way. It doesn't matter if I'm Hindu, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Catholic, or Christian. It doesn't matter if I'm someone who walks in the forest or along the beach. It can be through deep service that we realize, hey, we're not alone. Altruism, love of neighbor. And we wake up and say, okay, I shoveled my neighbor's driveway. Okay, I babysat for this couple that's like out of their wits. And suddenly, I'm not alone. And wait a minute, the world isn't fractured and lonely. The way we act brings into our inner being the nature of reality. If I am loving, love of neighbor, okay, right now, we just had an election.

• 21:13Lisa Miller?

  I don't care if you voted red, blue, or purple. I love you. I love you as a fellow parent on the soccer sidelines. I love you as someone at work with whom I've got to get this job done. I love you as my friend of 30 years. In fact, I'm not even going to ask you who you voted for. Because it is not nearly as important as that we're souls on earth, walking the earth at the same time, that we're sharing this journey. And in fact, in fact, it's radical love, it's civic love, that is our responsibility. The government doesn't build civic love. We build civic love, the civic bond. And everything goes from there.

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Another quote you have is, you said, "Right now, we're not studying spirituality. We've been educated out of our awakened awareness. We've been educated out of our spiritual awareness." Who is educating us out of our spiritual awareness? Is it schools? Is it our parents? Is it teachers? Is it the government? What is? Getting us out of our awakened awareness.

• 22:14Lisa Miller?

  Every single person on earth is born with a capacity for spiritual awareness, but it is one-third innate, two-thirds environmentally formed. So our parents and grandparents, the 10,000 exchanges by the locker. If you're part of a faith community, the pastor, priest, Aman, rabbi, no matter who it is in the first two decades of life, all weigh into shape our natural spiritual awareness. And as we get older, we pick our environment. We pick if we meditate and awaken. We pick if we pray and connect with our higher power. We choose.

• 22:48Lewis Howes?

  It's a choice, David.

• 22:49Lisa Miller?

  It is a choice. Handing it over is the way out of addiction. Handing it over is the way out of trauma. But we wait until we tank to hand it over, when in fact, we were built from the day we were born to be in a sustained relationship with our higher power.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:07Lisa Miller?

  Why don't we realize that? Because the gift of the two-thirds of the environment, being taught, being shown, praying, meditating by the side of a parent, hearing people talk about, you know what? I just lost my job, but I know that God has a plan for me. You know what? I, you know, we were just robbed, but that's okay. I saw the full community come around me, and I know that we're never alone. And everyone in this neighborhood is an ambassador of our higher power.

• 23:33Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard for people to believe that life is happening for them instead of to them, when they have so many bad things happening all at once? It seems like the world is against me. This person left me. This person robbed me. This person lied to me. This person stole from me. My parents abandoned me. This person cheated on me. It's all happening all at once. How is this happening for me?

• 23:57Lisa Miller?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Lewis Howes?

  How, God, is this happening for me? And the world's just not against me.

• 24:01Lisa Miller?

  Right, so overload, yes. But you know who the one agent in this story is who is unflappable? It is you. And so you have every choice to be an agent of God. I don't care what is thrown at me. I don't care how much it hurts. I don't care if I'm led back. I'm gonna choose to love.

• 24:18Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 24:19Lisa Miller?

  Why? Because it's the path to the deep, most buoyant love that we can feel. That's a choice.

• 24:27Lewis Howes?

  When you choose to love, even when everything's against you?

• 24:29Lisa Miller?

  Yes. Oh, it's so important, Louis. May I share with you? I had the really life-changing experience to visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama a couple of months ago. And I asked him a very metaphysical question that his resident scientist liked. He wasn't interested, not at all, Dr. Miller.

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  Did you go with Arthur Brooks?

• 24:46Lisa Miller?

  I was with Arthur Brooks.

• 24:48Lewis Howes?

  I was meant to go on that trip, but we had other plans, so I'll have to go.

• 24:51Lisa Miller?

  Next time. Next time. Well, so we'll share this forward. The Dalai Lama was not interested in my abstruse metaphysical question.

• 24:59Lewis Howes?

  What was the question you asked the Dalai Lama?

• 25:01Lisa Miller?

  The question I asked the Dalai Lama was, "Is it not the case that all living beings have a transcendent faculty through which they feel the unit of reality? So that the love that's transferred in the mother's milk to the human is the same love experienced by the baby goat or baby calf?"

• 25:17Lisa Miller?

  And he looked at that and he said, "You must love.

• 25:22Lisa Miller?

  Do it."

• 25:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's it. That was it.

• 25:24Lisa Miller?

  Do it. One message. And then he went on to clarify his singular point, which is, "Love is a practice. Love is a choice." So love is not just a feeling, oh, it feels so nice to love. Okay, everyone's forsaken me. I don't feel love. I don't feel God's love. It hurts. That hurts real. We're not minimizing that, right? But that's not the story of love. Love is a choice. Love is a practice. So I've been betrayed. I've been hurt so terribly. And I'm going to choose to love more deeply.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why? Why love deeper when people have hurt you so badly?

• 26:04Lisa Miller?

  Because it is the only way to feel the ultimate, deep connection with the source of life, who I call God. It is your word. The universe chooses Hashem. Your word. But this ultimate connection...

• 26:19Lisa Miller?

  Is the core of who we are. We are built, Lewis, as an open system. We are built, designed, in our biology, to be in a sustained connection with the deeper force in life. We are built in our biology to be in a lived, daily, transcendent relationship. You can call that anything you want, but it is essential to being whole, to guiding ourselves. We can't navigate this earth as command, control, as if we're the agent of all choice and power, the anthropocentric view. That is the source of pain. We don't control everything. How much do we control? When we do a good job and we research and strategize, somewhere between 2% and 5%.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 27:02Lisa Miller?

  95% of the most important things in our lives, how do they come? So to really have a bigger life, to really be successful, is to be in dialogue with the source of life. And Lewis, you lived this way.

• 27:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:17Lisa Miller?

  How did you find the true love of your life? Did you do a pro and com list? Or did a dialogue with the universe bring her?

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, I was telling you before, just being in a state of a journey of healing so that I could first become peace myself and become open to possibilities and synchronicities. And being committed to the journey of healing was what I think allowed me to see Martha in front of me and say, wow, this is something that is starting from a spiritual connection rather than a sexual connection. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. That's different. I've never looked at this this way in a relationship, starting a relationship. And making it a commitment to myself on a daily basis when I connected with her

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  to say, how can we make this spiritual and not sexual? Which is kind of the opposite of what I'd done in every relationship before, which is like, I'm sexually attracted. Let's have fun, whatever. And then think about the spirituality later. And there was always some out of alignment. It was like a forced energy. And this just felt more, it just felt aligned. It felt harmonious. It felt more peaceful. And that space of being aware of past wounds and mending and be on the journey of mending those wounds. Gave me more clarity and more awareness to see what was in front of me. And to see, okay, what's possible for us?

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  If we can sync up synchronistically, from a place of consciously creating a spiritual relationship first, and seeing what's possible. It doesn't mean we're perfect for each other, we're gonna work out, or it's the right fit, but creating from that space has allowed for beauty in other ways that I'd never imagined.

• 29:11Lisa Miller?

  So the Dalai Lama was right, love is a choice.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  It's a choice daily, yeah. And it's a choice daily also when there's, you know, it doesn't mean I don't have frustrations in life, or people that upset me, or things like that.

• 29:23Lisa Miller?

  Sure.

• 29:23Lewis Howes?

  And it's learning how to also ask, what is this happening for me? And if this was happening for me, then I get to thank God that this is happening for me, if it's designed that way, as opposed to why is this happening for me? But, or why is this happening to me? But this is happening for me. Let me trust and keep an open heart in terms of what's gonna come to me because of this happening? Because of this experience? And what blessings are to come my way because of this? Now, whether that's factual or true or not, I think having that mindset and believing something good will come from it, gives me more peace.

• 30:06Lisa Miller?

  Well, the proof's in the pudding. Because there's a real Marta and a real relationship.

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah, yeah.

• 30:11Lisa Miller?

  You chose love, you sustained love.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I didn't block my heart again. You know, I didn't say, screw this, or screw women, or whatever it is from previous relationships. I was willing to heal that and keep healing, and then create from that space.

• 30:25Lisa Miller?

  When you met Marta, was there some sort of ding in your heart that you'd met something significant in your path? Someone, a significance in your...

• 30:33Lewis Howes?

  I just remember in the first, our first meeting, I was kind of like... My ego was getting in the way because I was kind of like, oh shoot. I didn't think I would meet her right now. I was like, I just want my ego to have fun for a while, you know? But I was like, that's not what God wants me to to experience. You know, God wants me to live in the highest level of service and to experience the highest level of love possible. And if I lead with an ego mindset of like, oh, let me just be single and have fun. Um, I knew it would limit me, limit me from my ability to serve and feel spiritual love. I would be feel material loves or lust or emotions, but I don't think it would feel

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  pure, pure like abundance, pure cautiousness love. And so I've never felt that in relationship with another. She creates the space. So she created a space in the first time of us meeting where I was like, oh, this is a spiritual connection. I can't mess this up. I kind of had that thought right away. I go, shoot, there's something spiritual here. And so I made a conscious decision to make the the dating phase before we, you know, we dated for many months until we became committed, right? I, I, I made a conscious decision to make it a spiritual phase. Not that it's not spiritual anymore, but it was like

• 32:03Lisa Miller?

  Celibate?

• 32:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:04Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 32:05Lewis Howes?

  And that

• 32:05Lisa Miller?

  And focus on the spiritual.

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  And that was the greatest decision I, I think I've ever made because it didn't fog my minds or my body from what was possible. It didn't confuse me chemically. And therefore we could keep it spiritual. And that has been, that's been a beautiful, and I recommend that for everyone.

• 32:27Lisa Miller?

  What a discipline.

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  It was, yeah, it was an extreme discipline. And every man that I was telling after it happened, they were like, this is not even possible. How did you do this? You know, they're like, it's not in the realm of the reality. And I just knew that doing it the other way for the previous 20 years in multiple long-term relationships didn't work. Like, so I was like, I need to try everything differently. And maybe it doesn't work, or maybe it's not the right fit or whatever, but I need to lean into the spiritual synchronicities that I'm feeling in this moment. And I need to continue to lean into the healing journey of myself and create peace and wholeness within me.

• 33:11Lewis Howes?

  You know, irrelevant of her. You know, whether this works out or doesn't, I need to keep developing the wholeness feeling, the healing journey. And then I can see, based on our values, our shared vision and our alignment, and our lifestyle alignment, if it makes sense now, you know, it materially makes sense to create a relationship.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  And so kind of aligning the spiritual feeling, the energy with, okay, let's talk.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Uh, you know, do we have the same values? If we're completely out of alignment, then all right, maybe we're just friends. You know, I want to make sure we have a harmonious relationship, entering a relationship harmoniously with our values, our vision, and our lifestyle. I don't want it to be constant friction. So then it was having those conversations and I wasn't confused chemically. So I was able to speak the truth fully and see if she could accept it or not. And same for her. I think that was a beautiful practice.

• 34:09Lisa Miller?

  How didn't you realize, when was the awareness that not only are you spiritual friends, this is your spiritual life partner?

• 34:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I think in the first day, I felt like something is different. I didn't think, I didn't was like, I wasn't like, oh, this is my person forever. I also wanted to just not jump so quickly into something. I was like, let's just take time. It doesn't have to be like figured out right away. It doesn't have to be like, I have this feeling and we're getting married tomorrow. I also wanted to give myself space and time to not rush something and really feel the experience of time a little bit. So I think in the first day, I felt something was different about our spiritual connection.

• 34:54Lisa Miller?

  And you listened to that?

• 34:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 34:56Lisa Miller?

  Can you describe that feeling?

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Peace. Just felt like peace. I felt full acceptance.

• 35:02Lisa Miller?

  Peacing your heart?

• 35:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, peace in my heart, full acceptance. I didn't feel fear. And I think it was, I wasn't afraid if it worked out or it didn't work out. I was just like, I felt free to be myself, fully. No matter what her reaction to me was. I was like, I'll be fine when this works out or it doesn't work out, I'll be okay. And I think before I had more of anxious, like I wanted to work out because there's chemicals. There's like a connection. So, let's make it work. So I would abandon self or my connection to God in order to please someone, try to make them happy. As opposed to just let them go. Or say, okay, this doesn't, we're not a lineman, that's okay.

• 35:46Lisa Miller?

  So is it fair to say that in your deep bond, there's God in your bond?

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent, hundred percent.

• 35:52Lisa Miller?

  There's a godly bond.

• 35:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, there's a relationship, a spiritual relationship. That we each have individually with God and then together. Yeah. And I don't think, I don't know, you tell me, like, this is science of relationships and what you've studied for the past, I guess, how many, three decades now? As a clinical psychologist and professor of this and a researcher. Do you see people being, having a healthy, loving, peaceful relationship? With a lack of spiritual connection? With a lack of God? Is that possible to have a long-term, healthy relationship? As a psychologist, have you seen that?

• 36:32Lisa Miller?

  So Louis, we've even looked through the MRI and seen that when there's deep love, deep, deep spiritual love, godly love between two people. We are using the same circuits as when we talk directly to God.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 36:50Lisa Miller?

  So as I may turn to my higher power, who I call God, I feel that same presence and love towards my husband.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:00Lisa Miller?

  And that's after thirty years.

• 37:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:02Lisa Miller?

  So it lasts.

• 37:03Lewis Howes?

  What do the MRIs say from a brain that is connected? To God, or as a spiritual practice, versus a brain that doesn't have a spiritual practice.

• 37:14Lisa Miller?

  We have charted this very precisely. And the first thing that everyone needs to know is that we are all capable of awakening. Every brain, every brain is built to awaken. Nobody's left out.

• 37:26Lewis Howes?

  But it's a choice.

• 37:28Lisa Miller?

  It is a choice and it is a practice.

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  And what are the brains that are spiritually connected versus a lack of spiritual connection?

• 37:34Lisa Miller?

  A spiritually connected brain is compared to one that has yet to do the work. Has three components. The first is that just as we are loved and held as children in our parents' or grandparents' arms, the bonding network comes up online and we can feel that we are loved and held. So Louis, that's not a belief. Our brain perceives.

• 37:58Lewis Howes?

  It feels it.

• 37:59Lisa Miller?

  Feels it, because we are detecting something real.

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 38:04Lisa Miller?

  It's not a brain in the box that made up, isn't it nice to feel love? We are...

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  It believes it is loved and held.

• 38:10Lisa Miller?

  The brain perceives.

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 38:12Lisa Miller?

  Transcendent love.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:14Lisa Miller?

  So, we're moving here from the 20th century view of the brain that makes thoughts, like the brain in the box, to the emerging view of the brain that is like an antenna, that receives thoughts, or inspiration, or transcendent presence. So if we, when we receive God's presence as incarnate beings, the bonding network comes up online and we watch it through the FMRI that tracks blood flow. We watch the bonding network literally engage as we experience and receive God's love.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  And what happens when the bonding network engages in the brain? What happens to the body?

• 38:52Lisa Miller?

  Ah, it's, well, we are at peace. We have less stress. Cortisol goes down. There's a whole host of downstream problems from dysregulated cortisol, dysregulated diurnal patterns of cortisol. So when we sustain a relationship with God through practice, through prayer, through meditation, through how we treat each other, as you just described, the choice of godly relationships. Interesting, yeah. We literally host and welcome, you know, God chooses when God shows up, that we can invite and welcome God. And when we feel God's presence, when God touches us, the bonding network comes up online as we are incarnate

• 39:36Lisa Miller?

  and shows that we are loved and held. The second circuit that we all have is that there's multiple forms of intelligence, of multiple forms of attention. There's the bowling alley attention, which is Narrow focus? Narrow focus, and there's times for that, right? We need that discipline. But the bowling alley alone is insufficient. I've got to have it. I've got to get that job. I'm going to do A plus B plus C to close that deal. That is not an accurate map onto the structure of reality. Because life is full of surprises and hard left turns. And we have another attention network. There's another system of awareness,

• 40:21Lisa Miller?

  which is not our dorsal attention, but our ventral attention, where the floodlights come on and the world becomes a lot bigger, brighter. And a new direction pops. And that allows us to receive guidance. What's that step called? So we are loved and held, as we all have a bonding network, and we are guided. We are built to receive divine guidance. We are built to perceive direction from the universe. Loved and held, guided. And the third circuit, the third component of the awakened brain that we're all built with, ready to go, is that

• 41:04Lisa Miller?

  You, Louis, are in your chair, and I'm over here in mine. And we also have friends in New York, and Cincinnati, and London, and Des Moines, right? We are separate beings, and at the same time, we're part of this great oneness.

• 41:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:17Lisa Miller?

  The brain is built to receive and perceive separateness and oneness.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:22Lisa Miller?

  The parietal region puts in and out hard boundaries. As blood flows through the parietal region, we see that, okay, I have my zipped-up bio-body seat, and we're all wonderfully diverse, and we live in different chairs, and at the same time, we're part of one family of life, we're part of one unit of consciousness. That capacity allows us to know we're never alone.

• 41:46Lewis Howes?

  So is that oneness, or what is that?

• 41:47Lisa Miller?

  That is the oneness. So if you add up all three circuits that run together, they don't run separately, we are loved and held, we are guided, and we are never alone. That awakened brain is yours, it is there for everyone.

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  So everyone has that in us, but we need to be practicing and believing it in order to experience it?

• 42:10Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

  What happens if we don't practice and believe that we are loved and held, we are guided, and we are all one, we are never alone? What happens to us?

• 42:21Lisa Miller?

  We feel unloved, we feel lost, and we feel completely painfully lonely. And that excruciating pain is a big bang at the door, it's an invitation

• 42:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:37Lisa Miller?

  to start to practice awakening, to start to use your awakened brain.

• 42:41Lewis Howes?

  And as a clinical psychologist, doing this research for a long time, and doing all the MRI studies, and working with individuals who have experienced this, is there any other way to get out of pain and suffering than seeking a spiritual practice?

• 42:58Lisa Miller?

  There is no greater way, there is no profound, and robust, and enduring way to move out of despair as to awaken spiritually.

• 43:08Lewis Howes?

  But you're, you know, you're a psychologist, aren't there medicines that people can take that are gonna fix them or solve them? Aren't there drugs that people should be doing? Isn't this clinically proven that if you're depressed and you have mental health diseases, that the medicine will set you free? Isn't that why we have medication?

• 43:26Lisa Miller?

  So medication, I'm not against medication, if you're in terrible pain, and it's urgent, and you need it now. Do whatever it takes to keep yourself buoyant.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:37Lisa Miller?

  But that said, when we take away the medication, the majority of the time, the pain comes back, as does the deep existential feeling of unlovedness, isolation, of being lost. Why is that? Because we have yet to engage our awakened awareness. We have yet to engage our spiritual capacity. We have a donut-sized hole because we haven't deployed this gift we're all given.

• 44:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What's the gift that we're all given that most of us never use?

• 44:10Lisa Miller?

  We have, within every brain, the neurofoundation for a relationship with God. We have, within every human being, the inborn capacity, actually, the inborn imperative, to be in relationship with our higher power.

• 44:25Lewis Howes?

  But why do so many of us reject God or a relationship with a higher power?

• 44:34Lisa Miller?

  Well, it's very easy to feel isolated, to feel lost, because the rich two-thirds embrace the socialization of our natural spirituality. Our environment, our culture, is pretty silent.

• 44:50Lewis Howes?

  What we consume, what we're putting in our physical space, the people in our environment, the conversations that we're hearing, listening to, and having, all that stuff, right?

• 45:02Lisa Miller?

  And yet, we can choose to cultivate every single thing you've said. So, 40 years ago, in the United States, there was a decision made. It was made with a good intention, to be inclusive, which was to throw all religion out of the public square. And you may remember, we take down the Christmas tree, take down the Hanukkah menorah. We're not talking about religion.

• 45:19Lewis Howes?

  It's offensive, yeah, it's all offensive.

• 45:21Lisa Miller?

  Someone's going to be left out. And the intention was good, which was to be inclusive. But it actually was radically exclusive. Everyone was left out.

• 45:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:31Lisa Miller?

  And we had an Ice Age, forty years of an Ice Age.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:35Lisa Miller?

  Where people don't talk about spiritual and religious life at work, at school, at a cocktail party, at a dinner party.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  To not be offensive or feeling exclusive if they don't have a similar belief, is that right?

• 45:45Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 45:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay, if they have a different belief, we don't want to force something on them or talk about it if they feel uncomfortable or...

• 45:51Lisa Miller?

  Yes, right? But society now has grown up and we've become much more pluralistic. We can comfortably talk about different genders and race and orientation as part of the fabric of our culture. It's time now to be pluralistic when it comes to our spiritual life. I want to know you, I want to hear about Diwali or Ramadan or Hanukkah or Christmas. I want to hear about the crossing of your grandmother and I want to hear about the baby that came into your life in the deepest, most important way.

• 46:20Lewis Howes?

  Something you said in one of your books called The Spiritual Child, I believe this one is, you talks about that you talk about the next big idea in psychology, which is the science and the power of spirituality. And you're explaining a clear scientific link between spirituality and health and it shows that children who have a positive, active relationship to spirituality are forty percent less likely to use and abuse substances, are sixty percent less likely to be depressed as teenagers, are eighty percent less likely to have dangerous or unprotected sex, and have significantly more positive markers for thriving, including an increased sense

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

  of meaning and purpose and high levels of academic success. Why do kids lack spiritual connection in a spiritual relationship today? Why are, is it parents aren't willing to encourage their kids? Do the parents not have the spiritual relationship? Why do you think that is in kids today?

• 47:27Lisa Miller?

  The most important gift we give our children. is a strong spiritual core. In fact, I would even go so far to say there is nothing that a parent needs to do more than strengthen their child's natural spiritual awareness. How do I do that? Every parent wants to know. Okay, look at those statistics. Your child will be less at risk for addiction, depression. In this epidemic, 82% protected against suicide when spiritual life is shared. Suicide is tragically the number one killer of high school students.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  Well, really?

• 47:58Lisa Miller?

  It's come to rival auto accidents. So it's not cancer or COVID by our own hand. And yet we have the antidote. I mean, Lewis, if I said, here's a pill, and you can give this pill to every high school student in the United States, and they are four fifths protected against the epidemic of suicide, what school wouldn't give that out every day at lunch? What parent wouldn't give that to their child? And yet we have the antidote in us already. And it's the realization of how we are built to be in a sustained connection to God or higher power. Why is this not happening? Why is this not happening? Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. Parents don't know how, and they don't know if they're spiritual enough. So I went on the road. I thought it was going to be three weeks. It was three years with my first book, The Spiritual Child.

• 48:43Lisa Miller?

  And parents would raise their hand, and they'd ask questions. How do I help my child be more spiritual? What is spirituality? But when parents started to cry was when they said, am I spiritual? So people don't know if, you know, as a mother, as a father, I'm spiritual enough. And the answer is, you don't need to be because your child is spiritual. And all you need to do is listen and be totally in awe of your child.

• 49:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, kids are like a portal. They're already a spiritual port.

• 49:14Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 49:14Lewis Howes?

  It's not, you know, it's your job not to throw on material animal magnetism types of thinking or thoughts or energy to diminish their spiritual power.

• 49:25Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 49:27Lewis Howes?

  And that's hard to do.

• 49:29Lisa Miller?

  But you know what? Parents are so in love with their child that if we can just hold our tongue and listen, you know, your child is just going to come up and say, you know, I saw grandma.

• 49:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:39Lisa Miller?

  Or your child is going to come up and say, does God love evil people too? You know, and those are incredible moments. We don't need the answer. We can simply hold the moment and say, wow. Because often the child's actually not looking for an answer. They're looking to engage in the spiritual realm.

• 49:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:59Lisa Miller?

  And so they're really saying, can you walk with me here?

• 50:01Lewis Howes?

  When a child asks a question like, does God love bad people? Does God love evil people? Whatever, any question. And a parent says, man, I think I know the answer, but I really don't know the answer. What should a parent do in that moment when a child asks a difficult spiritual question that the parent doesn't know the answer to?

• 50:23Lisa Miller?

  The child's question is an opening for the child to learn to listen to their own heart. So we can say, you know, deep in your inner wisdom, what does your heart say? Or we can say, you know, do you want to sit with me now in meditation or prayer and see what comes to you as the answer to that?

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 50:44Lisa Miller?

  Teach the child to receive their own spiritual answers. I can tell you a story about that. I adopted my son from an orphanage north of St. Petersburg, Russia. The most delicious little boy on earth, madly in love with this little boy.

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  How old was he?

• 51:00Lisa Miller?

  He was 10 months when he came back.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:02Lisa Miller?

  I knew right away that this sort of, you know, secular materialist culture was going to tell him a big story about not having been wanted and why did that mother leave you? And so I was going to get ahead of this. And the way I was going to get ahead of this, my husband and I together, was by talking about our authentic spiritual journey to finding Isaiah.

• 51:25Lisa Miller?

  So from day one, we said, you know, we had really been five years of this. We prayed hard for five years before we found Isaiah.

• 51:34Lisa Miller?

  And so from day one, Isaiah was a little 10-month boy, used to hearing Russian. And we said, Isaiah, mommy and daddy, we prayed for Isaiah. And grandma prayed for Isaiah, and grandpa prayed for Isaiah, and everybody prayed for Isaiah because mommy and daddy had been crying for you. And then, one day, we heard they'd found Isaiah. And we took little baby, a plane, to a train, to an automobile, kids love transportation. Ran up the hill, and there, there was Isaiah. And we'd throw him in the air, and we'd celebrate the finding Isaiah story. And that's, you know, when he was one, two, somewhere around four. He had a little older, and they like symbolic stories. So here was little Isaiah.

• 52:19Lisa Miller?

  He loved to play in our backyard by a little creek, a river. And we'd point at the river, we'd squish his toes, and we'd say, "Isaiah, you see this river here? You came down this river. You were our baby Moses."

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 52:32Lisa Miller?

  And he'd say, "I'm baby Moses." So, "That's right, Isaiah, you came down. God sent you to us." So this was the story of finding Isaiah for a four-year-old. And we always told Isaiah the spiritual story of finding Isaiah. So sure enough, Louis, now he's eight. Driving my SUV, everything in parenting happens from the second row.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 52:57Lisa Miller?

  His best friend Johnny's back there. "Mommy, mommy, Johnny says, my name is not Miller. You are not my mother, and I am not Jewish."

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:08Lisa Miller?

  And I took a big breath, the day had come.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  He knew the original story, the story before the story.

• 53:15Lisa Miller?

  Right. And sure enough, that's right. He was prepared. And I held my tongue, prayed, and Isaiah whips around, turns to Johnny and says, "I'm baby Moses." And Johnny says, "What?" And he said, "No, I'm baby Moses." And pretty soon, Isaiah realized that Johnny just didn't understand, but that he was baby Moses. "Mommy," this time more desperate, more agitated, "mommy, Johnny says, what about the woman who gave me up?" The story I'd always knew was coming.

• 53:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:49Lisa Miller?

  Ten years before, I expected it.

• 53:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:52Lisa Miller?

  But there it was. Again, I held my breath, said a prayer, and from the second row, "Oh, I know. God whispered in her ear and said that you were crying for me."

• 54:07Lisa Miller?

  So if we support the natural spiritual knowing of the child, when the tough questions come, they're ready to receive and perceive a spiritual answer directly from God. He, like every child on earth, has an awakened brain. But as parents, we build that day in and day out sense that just as you and your new wife have God in that bond, you and your new wife, and God willing, your children

• 54:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:37Lisa Miller?

  will have God in that bond. And our message to Isaiah from day one was that this is a family built by God.

• 54:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's beautiful. It sounds like

• 54:46Lisa Miller?

  And it's true.

• 54:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Lisa Miller?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Lewis Howes?

  It sounds like you were practicing the first eight years, step one, which is, you know, show him that he is loved and held by you and also by God, right? You're loved and held by us. And the world is loving you and holding you high. It sounds like

• 55:06Lisa Miller?

  And the river.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  And the river, right? It sounds like step two, you know, understanding we're all guided. It sounds like he was able to remember that he was loved and held and be guided into like having the answers within him for when his friend was telling him, no, that's not true. This is you were adopted or whatever it is he was saying. And it sounds like he had the inner strength to feel guided in that moment. And I'm curious, what have you learned as a psychologist about the science and spirituality of synchronicities? Of knowing that we are guided and how to really have our antenna up

• 55:47Lewis Howes?

  and awareness up so that we can receive signals, signs, and the synchronicities of life to know where to move our entity toward to create more opportunities, abundance with our purpose?

• 56:02Lisa Miller?

  When you met Marta, was that a synchronicity?

• 56:04Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 56:05Lisa Miller?

  Will you tell the story?

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  Well, I mean, I've probably told her on here a few times already, but I mean, there was just too many synchronicities that were just like, oh, this is, it was weird. It was weird synchronicities. I was like, okay, this is, and let me keep exploring. And the synchronicities were so weird, there was like, I felt like I was on the right path. It was like, uh, let's keep, let's keep hanging out for another few days. Let's keep hanging out. You know, I didn't want to not hang out there, but I was like, I need to keep exploring these conversations with you to see what unfolds. But the first day, you know, within the first five minutes, uh, where I knew something was different. Um, I went to pick her up. I was visiting a buddy of mine in Mexico and near Tulum. And she was actually in Tulum at that time.

• 56:52Lewis Howes?

  And we had never met, but we connected online and I just happened to respond to something that she posted online, right? She was posting something in nature, actually. And I replied to that and I said, it looks beautiful there. That was it. I wasn't like hitting on her or anything. I just replied to what she was posting about. So nature was the first thing that I replied to within her, her, her, connecting online. And then she replied, hello, my friend, how are you? Are you ever in my country? And I don't think she knew I was in Mexico, but I was in Mexico at that time and I was assuming she meant Mexico. So I said, yeah, I'm actually here with a friend right now in Plata Carmen and it's like an hour from Tulum. She goes, oh, I'm in Tulum. Let's, let's hang out if you have time. So we ended up just getting together.

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  When I picked her up, I had my buddy's Jeep and I had my phone, picked her up for dinner. I had my phone in the middle of the Jeep, you know, in the middle of the seats in the front. And it was dark out because I was getting her, picking her up for dinner. And so my phone screen kind of turned on as I set it down, like the screen turned on and you could see my screensaver. And it was a photo of a boy, a little boy. And that, I could see that she looked at the phone because the screen popped up. You see this image of a little boy. And so I kind of looked at her and go, oh, don't worry. I don't have a son or anything. You know, it's our first time meeting. So I was like, oh, don't worry. I don't have a kid or anything. And she goes, I know what that is. She goes, that's you and you're healing your inner child.

• 58:22Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, I get chills just thinking about it. I was like, uh, yeah. And she took her phone. She goes, here's a photo of me. I've been doing the same journey.

• 58:30Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my.

• 58:31Lewis Howes?

  When she was five. I get chills thinking about it. I'm just like, oh, something's different right away. She understood the journey of healing that I was already on and that had been up there for, I don't know, eight months on my phone, right? So I've been alive, had it for a while. And she was like, yeah, this is something I was doing like in the last year. And I'd been healing and transforming and, you know, probably getting out of a depressed state that was like a reawakening to seeing the world differently. And so even just in that moment, like that unlocked the conversation. The whole conversation was spiritual from the first moment. There's no, there was no surface. I can't do surface anyways with anyone, you know, we talk right away and I'm like, tell me about this, tell me about, you know.

• 59:14Lewis Howes?

  And so the whole conversation was spiritual and the whole first few months was that, like every time. Some people might say, oh, that's too deep when you're like going on dates or you shouldn't be like going so deep so quickly or having spiritual conversations. But I think why wait to, why wait to have those conversations like, and they can be fun and lighthearted. They don't have to be deep and heavy. It can be like, wow, fascinating, you know, you can get to learn about someone's soul sooner rather than six months down the line, have those conversations. So for me, that was a synchronicity that said, oh, hang out again. And every time I hung out, there was just things like that, that just kept happening. That was like, oh, there's,

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  there's some force that's more powerful pulling us to keep exploring. And I think I, I allowed myself to, to be open and stay in it without rushing to, this is the person I'm meant to be with forever because of one synchronicity. And I think I wanted to continue to not rush a lot of things, but just dive deeper spiritually, which created safety. It created a sense of safety and feeling at home within me and her feeling at home within her. So it made us feel more at home together. Like that was a powerful, you know, again, I would.

• 1:00:43Lewis Howes?

  I wish I would have learned this, you know, 20 years ago, but it happened at the right time. So, and I needed the painful moments, I think, to awaken to where I'm at today.

• 1:00:53Lisa Miller?

  It's a magnificent love story.

• 1:00:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's beautiful.

• 1:00:57Lisa Miller?

  And the deep question is, what is life showing me now? What is God revealing to me now? What has my higher power just put in my path?

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and understanding if we believe that we are guided, that's what I was like doing. I go, okay, God, just show me the way. Let me just explore this a little more. Let me just go hang out another day. Let's have more conversation. Let's just be guided into the possibility. Whether it works out or not, I'm just gonna lean into this without rushing to conclusions. So what did you then learn from the research of the science of synchronicities and spirituality together?

• 1:01:31Lisa Miller?

  The more we pay attention to synchronicity, the more we are able to perceive synchronicity. And on the one hand, it's because we strengthen our eye. We know, yes, this is real. We take it to heart. We think about and reflect on what it might mean, and then we act on it. You chose to go another day to, both of you, to look at this more deeply, to walk a little further. But that only happened because you said, wow, this is way too unprobabilistic to have happened by chance. This touches my heart in a deeper way. This has that type of high pixel hit that has information that's yet to unfold before me.

• 1:02:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes, more 5D energy versus 3D energy.

• 1:02:16Lisa Miller?

  Yes, and you knew it.

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:02:19Lisa Miller?

  So, say yes to it, and we all have this capacity, say yes to it. This is real. Reflect what it might mean, and then act on it.

• 1:02:30Lewis Howes?

  How does someone open their mind or their soul to synchronicities more frequently?

• 1:02:34Lisa Miller?

  It's a practice. So, the first time, I might sort of be a little curious. Wait a minute, I was just thinking about this guy. I haven't seen him in six years, and he's right here. The same day I'm thinking of him. Or, you know, I have this question on my mind, is do I want to go, you know, east or west this summer? And a guy sits down on the bus next to me and says, you gotta go west this summer.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:53Lisa Miller?

  So, that might catch my attention and seem unlikely. But I'm not sold yet, because I'm a skeptic.

• 1:03:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:01Lisa Miller?

  And skeptic's okay.

• 1:03:01Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:02Lisa Miller?

  The skeptic's welcome. The skeptic can even fuel the deepening of the journey. Right?

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  I don't believe yet. Show me another sign.

• 1:03:08Lisa Miller?

  Show me more.

• 1:03:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, show me another sign. And if you show me another sign, then it's undoubtedly, okay, I gotta explore this.

• 1:03:14Lisa Miller?

  And so when we actually allow ourselves to be curious, we start noticing how abundant the universe really is. How generous God is in laying synchronicities in our path to guide us. So, the more we say, yes, this is real, the more we say, I'm going to reflect, I'm gonna act on this, the more the next time, we're quick to identify synchronicity. It's less likely to slip through our fingers. So, when I started paying attention to synchronicities, I'd catch maybe one in three. And then it meant to path. And now I've lived this way for 30 years, and I catch 90%. There's still, I miss balls.

• 1:03:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:03:51Lisa Miller?

  Right? But even when we do, it comes around another day, in another way.

• 1:03:56Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:03:56Lisa Miller?

  Because we're on our path. We don't have to be perfect.

• 1:04:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:00Lisa Miller?

  To be on the path.

• 1:04:01Lewis Howes?

  What happens for you? What are you doing on a consistent basis? Mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually? To where you just have a heightened sense of openness? Where synchronicities are just for, like, every day it just seems like, of course, this is a synchronicity that's just guiding me here. Introduced me to this person. Unlocking this door. Of course, what are you creating energetically? To be the highest frequency of synchronicities?

• 1:04:31Lisa Miller?

  So, I open my day, and everyone has their own language and their own practice. But I can share with you mine.

• 1:04:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:04:36Lisa Miller?

  So, I open each morning with a prayer. I go outdoors. And I mean, you know, it can be a sunny, bright day, or it can be freezing cold and snowing. And I go outdoors. And I open by saying, loving God, my word is God. Thank you for a new day. Thank you for sun, and air, and earth, and water, and trees and birds, and for all living beings of the air, earth, and water, and beyond. Please bless our family of life and please bless, as a parent, our family, and I name our family. And then I say, please, may I be present to you. Please use me as a vessel to serve you in love, that I might be you, see you, and act you.

• 1:05:19Lisa Miller?

  Because all of us are emanations, like rays of the Son of God. Louis, you are God, and the magnificent Martha is God. And all your friends and family and trees and birds are God. So may I be you and realize our being. May I see you in Louis and in Martha and all living beings. And may I act you. And please, at the end, I say, may I serve you in love? And please bless you, God. I saw that when I've been to holy sites. Please bless you, God, unto yourself. And then I've opened the day in service. So each day is an adventure. It's a spiritual adventure. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know who I get to meet. I don't know if it's going to hurt or feel good. It could be a day of tremendous loss. It could be a day of great discovery.

• 1:06:04Lisa Miller?

  But it is always a sacred adventure. So I don't need to have control. And in a world that's highly volatile, none of us have control. I mean, we have two, four percent control. But to have a really big, magnificent life is not to have the whole thing tightly clenched between our hands, but to have a stance, a sure-footed stance in quest. What God do you reveal to me now? What universe do you ask of me now? How might I love more deeply? The quest is the sure-footedness. And anything that comes, whether it's wind or tornado or the love of my life, is part of this great spiritual adventure. It is the Star Wars of spiritual adventure.

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  That's a beautiful way to start the day. Is there a practice you have at the end of the day to open up to more synchronicities?

• 1:06:56Lisa Miller?

  And in dream, dream life, yes. Because the very same symbol that guides us through synchronicity, that you both had the child on your phone, is the very same symbolic language in our dreams. And in our mystical experiences, it's a symbolic universe.

• 1:07:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:07:14Lisa Miller?

  And we're being talked to all the time.

• 1:07:16Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:16Lisa Miller?

  And we're built to listen.

• 1:07:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:19Lisa Miller?

  So we're whole, and we're guided, and we're not anxious. And we have love and connection when we are an open system to God.

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:27Lisa Miller?

  And we are isolated, and our heart hurts like hell when we're not connected.

• 1:07:35Lewis Howes?

  But what if someone's been hurt by the idea of God, or someone that represents God or religion?

• 1:07:41Lisa Miller?

  Very important, so important.

• 1:07:43Lewis Howes?

  If someone's been abused, abandoned, any type of way, from a religious figure, either from, maybe from their parent who says they're religious or spiritual, but then yells, screams, abuses, and other ways. How do we get beyond the hurt and pain that someone in our life who has a spiritual connection to God hurts us?

• 1:08:07Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:08:07Lewis Howes?

  Or hurts someone we know and shatters our faith in God, religion, the universe, spirituality?

• 1:08:16Lisa Miller?

  Yes, yes. And that is exactly how that happens. So here's the flame of truth, God's presence, the fire. And here's the torch, and here's just me, the human torchbearer. And when we meet, particularly as children or adolescents, teenagers are exquisitely aware, when we meet a torchbearer who talks about the flame.

• 1:08:43Lewis Howes?

  The light.

• 1:08:43Lisa Miller?

  The light, the truth, but who does not walk the walk. When we see hypocrisy.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:49Lisa Miller?

  There's a tendency to throw out the flame.

• 1:08:52Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:08:52Lisa Miller?

  Now, as a torchbearer, I could be a little foible, I could be maybe hypocritical.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  Joke mental, or whatever, yeah.

• 1:08:58Lisa Miller?

  Say one thing and do another. Or I could be quite egregiously foible and transgress. And the more... The torchbearer has failed. The message, the more pain in the child, and the more likely the child is to throw out the flame.

• 1:09:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:09:17Lisa Miller?

  Now, the good news is that a spiritual injury can be healed. Spiritual injury can always be healed because every one of us has the God-given inborn innate capacity to connect to the transcendent relationship, has the inborn capacity to renew the connection with our higher power. How? And there's two ways. One is, we meet a torchbearer who does walk the walk.

• 1:09:44Lewis Howes?

  Right. And restores our faith.

• 1:09:46Lisa Miller?

  Yes. Someone who embodied, is holding the flame, and does walk in step, who is loving, who is unconditionally devoted, who speaks of God with the same love that they move out towards us. And that could be a parent, it could be a counselor, it could be a coach, it could be anyone. The second way is that we can invite one another to have a direct connection to the flame. And in some faith traditions, that can be through prayer or fellowship, but there's also practices in the language of life. And in fact, Lewis, I had a very dear colleague, the late Dr. Gary Weaver, who for 36 years worked with boys

• 1:10:28Lisa Miller?

  who had been transgressed by torchbearers. And some of these boys had been so transgressed, they didn't want to hear about religion, they didn't want to hear about spirituality, and they'd be so abused that they'd become abusers. And so the third time, this young fellow would go before the judge, in came Dr. Weaver. And the judge said, "Okay." He loved Dr. Weaver. He said, "You have a choice, young man, 15, 18 years old. You can go to prison."

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Who'd been abused sexually, and then done the same thing.

• 1:10:59Lisa Miller?

  And then done the same thing. And he said, "No, you can go to jail, or you can go out into the Moab Desert with Dr. Weaver." And there, he shared with them a practice that invited them right back to the flame.

• 1:11:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:11:13Lisa Miller?

  And I've done this practice, Lewis, with bankers in Midtown. I've done this practice with generals in the US Army. I've done this with kids sleeping under the Brooklyn Bridge. I've done this with everybody because there's one awakened brain, and there's one source of all life, who I call God. You pick your term. And we can all get back to the flame. May we try it?

• 1:11:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:32Lisa Miller?

  Okay. It's 90 seconds. It's in the language of life. I'm going to invite you to close your eyes, clear out your inner space.

• 1:11:43Lisa Miller?

  In your inner chamber, I invite you

• 1:11:48Lisa Miller?

  to set before you a table. This is your table.

• 1:11:55Lisa Miller?

  And to your table, you may invite anyone, living or deceased, who truly has your best interests in mind.

• 1:12:07Lisa Miller?

  Anyone living or deceased who truly has your best interests in mind.

• 1:12:22Lisa Miller?

  And with them all sitting there, ask them if they love you.

• 1:12:32Lisa Miller?

  And now you may invite your higher self, the part of you that's so much more than anything you may have or not have, anything you may have done or not done, your true eternal higher self.

• 1:12:48Lisa Miller?

  And ask you if you love you.

• 1:12:56Lisa Miller?

  Now finally, you may invite your higher power.

• 1:13:02Lisa Miller?

  Whatever your word, however you know, your higher power.

• 1:13:13Lisa Miller?

  And ask if they love you.

• 1:13:20Lisa Miller?

  And now with all of those people sitting there right now, what do they need to share? What do they need to show you now? What do you need to know?

• 1:13:38Lisa Miller?

  When you're ready, I invite you back.

• 1:13:43Lewis Howes?

  It's a real exercise.

• 1:13:47Lewis Howes?

  Very beautiful. I'm just gonna write down the position of everyone.

• 1:13:54Lewis Howes?

  So I had in my table, and I'd love for people if they did this exercise to comment below, who was sitting at their table on YouTube or wherever you're watching this, to comment below in the comments, because I think it's actually a very powerful exercise

• 1:14:10Lewis Howes?

  of what will be revealed to you. So for me on the left, so I was imagining kind of a circular table, I was sitting here. For me on the left was Jesus, my father, who is no longer on this world, my grandfather is past, my mom, who is here, and then Martha, my fiance. So it was a, you know, kind of a half circle, and they're all looking at me, and I asked them, "What you said, you know, what do I need to..." Was it about love from each other? Do they love me? Was that the question? Yeah. And they all just, I just felt like a big hug. I felt like this big kind of embrace from all of them, like a resounding yes. And then when my higher self spoke to me,

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  it was just like, "100%, you are loved, and I love you." Right? It was feeling that from everyone on the table, and then my higher self. And then when I asked God,

• 1:15:05Lewis Howes?

  or what God and all of them were kind of like speaking to me, what I needed to hear was, "Forgive greater, love deeper, and serve more." And so it was like, just keep forgiving yourself. And it was like more reflecting like, forgive yourself from everything from the past, where you feel ashamed, guilty, insecure. Forgive yourself and others.

• 1:15:31Lewis Howes?

  Love yourself deeper and love others deeper. And continue to be of service more, like just serve, serve, serve. And going back to your question, like, how may I love more deeply? I think that's a beautiful thing that we should be asking ourselves. How may I love more deeply, which is what you mentioned a little bit ago? And I think it's really hard to love deeply if we don't forgive ourselves for decisions we made from the past or if we've lost trust within ourselves because we made poor decisions where we got hurt. We hurt others, they hurt us, we allowed things to happen, whatever it might be.

• 1:16:12Lewis Howes?

  If we've lost that trust of love and that the world is good.

• 1:16:21Lewis Howes?

  We haven't forgiven ourselves for it yet. And I don't think I forgave myself for a long time, until a few years ago. And I had to really learn how to accept all the parts of me that I thought were kind of bad or nasty or just that I didn't do at my highest level of consciousness. And learning to forgive and accept.

• 1:16:43Lewis Howes?

  So that I had the capacity to love myself. Because I don't think I fully loved myself for thirty-five plus years.

• 1:16:53Lewis Howes?

  And I think when I have learned to love myself, I can authentically serve greater. I can serve from a better place. Now, I still get frustrated in the human world and things still bug me. But I think I'm better at choosing back to how can I love and serve greater? As opposed to how can I hold on to frustration? Because I know that anger or frustration, although maybe it's good to release it, isn't good to stay in it for too long. And to get back to love and service. So yeah, it's a beautiful exercise. What is that exercise you call?

• 1:17:30Lisa Miller?

  Hosting council.

• 1:17:32Lewis Howes?

  Hosting council.

• 1:17:33Lisa Miller?

  And everyone at the table is a sacred, transcendent relationship, whether they're embodied or not embodied, whether they're here on earth or they've crossed over.

• 1:17:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Lisa Miller?

  Every single person are those who truly have our best interest in mind are higher selves and our higher power. And we are built to be in that deep relationship. So hosting council is a way that we can reclaim our birthright.

• 1:18:00Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting because I talk about the importance of having mentors and kind of leaders in your life that can lead you financially and business and your health and your relationships, just people who have wisdom, you know, who have already been there and done that. And I think it's powerful to have a spiritual council as well, not just a physical council of mentors, but spiritual mentors. And really tapping into that inner power, that inner wisdom, which may sound a little weird to do this exercise, but you feel something different. You feel more oneness, which is the third step that you talk about

• 1:18:40Lewis Howes?

  in the three circuits of an awakened brain. And, you know, whether it's real or not, if you believe it's real, it feels real, you know, it feels like it is. For all I know, this could all be a simulation. I don't know if we're actually here in earth or if it's dream. But if we believe it to be true, we create the brain that is awakened. And the science proves based on the MRI scans are like, here's what's possible with an awakened brain. Here's what's possible with an awakened heart. And when you synchronize them together, man, life is abundant and powerful.

• 1:19:21Lewis Howes?

  And it's just a better experience. Do you want to have a beautiful experience or a suffering experience?

• 1:19:26Lisa Miller?

  And the proof's in the pudding because who comes around the corner but Marta?

• 1:19:30Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh, exactly, yeah.

• 1:19:32Lisa Miller?

  So, the question ultimately is answered by our libbed walk when we actually awaken and we perceive that we're loved, held, guided, and part of the great oneness, never alone. And then we show up for one another in service, as you said so beautifully, to be loving, holding, guiding, and never leave anyone alone. Then we're living an awakened life.

• 1:19:56Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:19:56Lisa Miller?

  And that is the glorious life that is our birthright.

• 1:20:00Lewis Howes?

  How does someone then figure out if they're just like, I don't know my direction in life, I don't know what my purpose is, and I want to figure out my purpose? What does the science and spirituality tell us on how people can discover and live their purpose?

• 1:20:15Lisa Miller?

  So, a purpose is written in and through us and in and through our past. It's not something that we need to develop on a, you know, eight-point list, but it's something that we can discover. Louis, may we do one more practice?

• 1:20:31Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:20:32Lisa Miller?

  Okay. This practice I call the Road of Life.

• 1:20:35Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:20:37Lisa Miller?

  I'm going to invite you to close your eyes, do a few breaths.

• 1:20:56Lisa Miller?

  I invite you to locate a time where you wanted something so badly. That red door was yours. You wanted that job, that school, that team. You wanted him or her or them to say yes. And you did everything right to get that red door. You researched it, you were tactical, you strategized A plus B plus C.

• 1:21:22Lisa Miller?

  That red door was yours. When you go for your red door, you grab the handle, but the handle stuck. And you can't believe it's stuck because you've done everything right. A plus B plus C. You might kick the door, you might rattle the handle, but only because it is stuck, you have to pivot. You pivot 40, 80, 120 degrees. And over there, over there is a wide open, sparkling, yellow door. You might have said, "Yellow doors don't exist." You'd never heard of yellow doors. On the other side of the yellow door is someone who makes you feel alive, is a job that's more right for you,

• 1:22:04Lisa Miller?

  is a mentor who sees in you beyond what you knew was in yourself, a community where you belong. That yellow door was not what you had wanted. It was better and better for you. And as you sit back down, you think of the stuck red door and the hairpin turn that took you to the wide open yellow door that has everything to do with who you are and where you are today. Was there anyone at that hairpin turn who maybe told you a story? You could have met them for two minutes at a party or the coffee shop. It could have been a counselor, a grandparent, who for the first time, shared a story you'd never heard before,

• 1:22:48Lisa Miller?

  a trail angel, pointing you to the wide open, yellow door. And now finally, as you sit way back, stuck red door, hairpin turn, trail angel, and wide open, yellow door. How really are the most important parts of our lives found? Is it narrowly through planning? Sure, we have to do our parts. But are we less makers of our paths and more discoverers of our journey? And are some of the most profound and important parts of our lives gifts of being in a deep dialogue with the journey of life?

• 1:23:32Lisa Miller?

  And in fact, stuck red door, hairpin turn, trail angel, open yellow door. Where in your road of life is your higher power? Where is God? Is God in the wide open yellow door and the stuck red door? Is God in the trail angel and in your openness to be in dialogue with the deep sacred force in us, through us, and around us? Have you been on a spiritual path all along? When you're ready, I invite you back.

• 1:24:18Lewis Howes?

  That was beautiful. The road to life.

• 1:24:20Lisa Miller?

  The road of life.

• 1:24:21Lewis Howes?

  The road of life.

• 1:24:23Lisa Miller?

  Which is a spiritual path. We're never off the path. When we're depressed, we're on the path. When we're ardent, we're on the path.

• 1:24:36Lewis Howes?

  What's been the most challenging part of your path?

• 1:24:42Lisa Miller?

  Well, in the awakened brain, I write about, it almost broke us, which was my husband and I, for five years, struggled with infertility. And it was brutal.

• 1:24:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:24:53Lisa Miller?

  You know, people do not talk about infertility enough. And since sharing the awakened brain, men and women, but primarily men, have come up to me and said, you know, my wife and I struggled for three years. No one talked about it. There was no one, none of my buddies I could talk about this with. You know, the right child comes in the right way at the right time. Becoming a parent is part of the road of life. And whether it's because you carried a child, or carried two or three children, or through marriage, or through adoption, your spiritual child comes. God makes families.

• 1:25:31Lewis Howes?

  That was the hardest time for you?

• 1:25:33Lisa Miller?

  By far the hardest time for us was the struggle to find our children in all time and space.

• 1:25:38Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest lesson for you during those five years of trying to have kids, but not being able to create it at that moment?

• 1:25:45Lisa Miller?

  I was deeply depressed that we weren't conceiving.

• 1:25:49Lewis Howes?

  How old were you at this time?

• 1:25:50Lisa Miller?

  So I was 30. My husband was 31.

• 1:25:53Lewis Howes?

  So you were 19-ish when you had your first kind of depressed season, right? Six-month range?

• 1:25:59Lisa Miller?

  Which was emergence, emerging adulthood. And it was what I now know to be a hardwired spiritual emergence that first boots up as existential struggle. When we expand our spiritual capacity, it first feels like a half-empty glass of spirituality. But this was different because while there are three bridges of spiritual emergence, developmental depressions that open into awakening if we say yes, there are also hailstorms and rainstorms and very unwanted life events, traumas.

• 1:26:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:34Lisa Miller?

  And those are also a knock at the door for spiritual awakening, post-traumatic spiritual growth, a spiritual response to suffering.

• 1:26:44Lisa Miller?

  So my greatest discovery through our struggle of five years to find our family was that depression was the prison house of my ego.

• 1:26:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:26:57Lisa Miller?

  That I had made myself miserable. I wanted a family so badly. I was so depressed we weren't conceiving. There are half a million children in foster care. There are 20 million children up for adoption around the world. I could have been a parent in three months, and I made myself miserable.

• 1:27:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:27:13Lisa Miller?

  Because of my ego, my narrow view of what a parent was. And where the world opened up to me was when I realized in this very painful, long journey that what a parent is, is profound love and ultimate commitment. And it does not matter if they have my nose or, you know...

• 1:27:33Lewis Howes?

  Your DNA.

• 1:27:34Lisa Miller?

  Yes, at all. It is, God brings the soul on earth and it's your child.

• 1:27:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and if you can imprint a spiritual DNA into someone through your nurture, your guidance, your love... That's almost more important than a physical DNA. With a lack of that spiritual guidance.

• 1:27:52Lisa Miller?

  And that child is your spiritual child. In the same way that you met Marta. Your child comes, whether it's through Marta's body or four through Marta's body and two from another country on earth. Those are your spiritual children.

• 1:28:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:07Lisa Miller?

  And through the road of life, God makes sure you find each other.

• 1:28:11Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:12Lisa Miller?

  And you know, in the same way that you knew Marta was your spiritual partner, that this is your spiritual child.

• 1:28:18Lewis Howes?

  If you had you at 30 or from 30 to 35, when you were in this depressed season of life and allowing your ego to trap you in this prison of depression and choosing that.

• 1:28:32Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:28:32Lewis Howes?

  What would you tell your younger self? Maybe you wouldn't have listened, but what would you told your younger self on how to set you free from that prison of ego?

• 1:28:44Lisa Miller?

  Be up for this grand adventure.

• 1:28:48Lisa Miller?

  Open your eyes to the guidance.

• 1:28:54Lisa Miller?

  Now, as it turns out, God is good and the universe is abundant and the synchronicities come back and the road of life rises up to meet us. So it took me five years. It could have taken me 10. If I'd been a quicker study, I could have done it in two.

• 1:29:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:07Lisa Miller?

  It's a dialogue. It's not a race. And this in the spiritual path is where we go from the measurement of the human to the witness of the awesome dialogue.

• 1:29:18Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Were you a clinical psychologist at this point?

• 1:29:21Lisa Miller?

  Oh, I was, yes.

• 1:29:22Lewis Howes?

  So as a, you know, psychologist, scientist, researcher,

• 1:29:28Lewis Howes?

  were you not able to see the practices that were also able to support you at that time? Or were you just too much in your own way?

• 1:29:35Lisa Miller?

  Oh, so at the time that my husband and I were struggling with yearning for children and this sort of dogging unexplained infertility, which I now know was a spiritual impasse.

• 1:29:47Lisa Miller?

  There was nothing in mainstream psychotherapy that was remotely helpful to us.

• 1:29:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:29:53Lisa Miller?

  There was not one shred within mainstream psychotherapy, psychiatry, nothing was there because we were having an ego death.

• 1:30:03Lewis Howes?

  It would just be, "Here, medicate yourself," right?

• 1:30:05Lisa Miller?

  Or "Talk about your feelings of longing for a child."

• 1:30:08Lewis Howes?

  But it wasn't going away?

• 1:30:10Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:30:10Lewis Howes?

  The more you talked about it, you still had it.

• 1:30:13Lisa Miller?

  And there wasn't, you know, there wasn't an answer.

• 1:30:15Lewis Howes?

  There wasn't a solution.

• 1:30:17Lisa Miller?

  Right.

• 1:30:17Lewis Howes?

  So what do we do when there's not a solution yet in the material world to our physical problems or pain?

• 1:30:25Lisa Miller?

  Because I was stuck, Louis, in asking over and over, "Why am I not getting what I want? How can I research this more assiduously to get what I want? What strategy? What tactic? I'm gonna bang that red door till I knock it down." And finally, I got the picture. Wait a minute. Maybe I could stop asking, "What do I want and how am I gonna get it?" And instead say, "What is life showing me now? What is life revealing to me now?"

• 1:30:52Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:30:53Lisa Miller?

  "Might there be a yellow door out there that's not what I wanted, but better?"

• 1:30:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:30:59Lisa Miller?

  And as it turned out, we found the most beautiful boy on the other side of the world who awakened my spiritual heart.

• 1:31:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:31:05Lisa Miller?

  The second I saw his video, I became a parent.

• 1:31:09Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:31:10Lisa Miller?

  I had this soaring love like I'd never felt before. I loved this little boy. And Louis, that night, we conceived his sister naturally.

• 1:31:18Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 1:31:18Lisa Miller?

  After five years.

• 1:31:19Lewis Howes?

  No way. Really?

• 1:31:20Lisa Miller?

  Because I had become a spiritual parent.

• 1:31:23Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, that is a synchronicity. That's crazy.

• 1:31:25Lisa Miller?

  Isaiah awakened my heart.

• 1:31:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:31:27Lisa Miller?

  And then I joined this infinite field of love, and Leah entered.

• 1:31:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh. So, five years of trying.

• 1:31:34Lisa Miller?

  Five years of IVFs. We went to the team that

• 1:31:37Lewis Howes?

  Really? Everything?

• 1:31:38Lisa Miller?

  Invented IVF.

• 1:31:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:31:40Lisa Miller?

  It was a non- Biological problem. It was a spiritual

• 1:31:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 1:31:44Lisa Miller?

  In our case, in our case.

• 1:31:46Lewis Howes?

  Because you tried everything, physically, medically.

• 1:31:49Lisa Miller?

  Oh, everything, the best.

• 1:31:51Lewis Howes?

  Naturally, you know, injections, all of it.

• 1:31:53Lisa Miller?

  Oh, I mean IVF and the whole bit.

• 1:31:56Lewis Howes?

  For five years.

• 1:31:57Lisa Miller?

  IVF, IVF, IVF. And Louis, it was a spiritual.

• 1:32:01Lewis Howes?

  I believe it. I believe it.

• 1:32:03Lisa Miller?

  Because the day I fell in love with Isaiah, after five years, we conceived Leah.

• 1:32:08Lewis Howes?

  That is insane. I mean insane in a great way. But that's a powerful lesson. What an amazing timing of it.

• 1:32:20Lisa Miller?

  They're spiritual twins. And they love each other.

• 1:32:24Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 1:32:25Lisa Miller?

  And I share in the awakened brain, there were some synchronicities.

• 1:32:28Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:32:29Lisa Miller?

  There were also some mystical experiences.

• 1:32:31Lewis Howes?

  I believe it.

• 1:32:33Lisa Miller?

  I had, you know, one night I woke up, out of the blue. Louis, my husband was so depressed that he would lie on the floor.

• 1:32:40Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 1:32:41Lisa Miller?

  I mean, he was so depressed. So we had the jobs we wanted, we had the house we wanted, we loved our friends. And there was the biggest hole in our heart. And my husband, you know, 32, would lie on the ground. Literally, I'd look over the bed, Wavy, and he'd say, "Our lives are hollow and meaningless."

• 1:32:58Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:32:59Lisa Miller?

  Without children.

• 1:33:00Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh. Did you guys not have a spiritual practice then?

• 1:33:05Lisa Miller?

  I had a spiritual practice, but I had an impasse that I had, a limitation that I'd set for myself. Which was, I still doggedly asked, "Why am I not getting what I want?" You know, there's this notion of manifestation of send it out and you'll get it. And that's sort of like the Amazon shopping list, you know? But the bigger view that you've shared in your story with Marta is not, you know, "I'm gonna go on this app and that, and I want someone who's, you know, over 5'8", and someone who plays sports, and someone who, you know, wants to focus on family. You don't make a shopping list and go buy a Marta.

• 1:33:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:33:45Lisa Miller?

  It's not done that way. It's a shift from, "What do I want and how am I gonna get it?", to, "Wow, what is life showing me now? What has God just laid in my past?" And that dialogue with life is an awakened life. That is using your awakened brain. And Marta, you knew.

• 1:34:04Lisa Miller?

  In your deep register of spiritual awareness. That was an awakened heart that knew that, wait a minute. High pixel hit. This has meaning. This has profundity. This has sacred guidance.

• 1:34:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:34:17Lisa Miller?

  That has yet to unfold before me. See, what do I want and how am I going to get it? I call it achieving awareness. That only is built off of yesterday's information. You know, as a kid, I saw people, you know, and families looked this way. As a kid, my parents always said, someday you'll be a mom. Do it before you're 30. And, you know, all that's archival, yesterday's information. But the hidden heart, the awakened heart, receives that high pixel hit that has information that's yet to unfold before us in the future. The yellow door is better than what we want because we haven't even imagined what's on our spiritual adventure.

• 1:34:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So what would you say as a clinical psychologist is the science of manifestation then? What the process of manifesting your spiritual desires?

• 1:35:11Lisa Miller?

  I would say that it is the Lewis approach, which is walking with an open spiritual heart, doing our part, but then looking with great love and respect and appreciation. When someone comes along, when a moment comes along, when a teacher, a lover comes along, you didn't expect it. You didn't know it would be that.

• 1:35:35Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:35:36Lisa Miller?

  You didn't know it would be ever.

• 1:35:37Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:35:39Lisa Miller?

  But you knew this is real.

• 1:35:42Lisa Miller?

  I'm going to take it and reflect on this as a gift.

• 1:35:45Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:46Lisa Miller?

  And I'm going to act on it.

• 1:35:48Lewis Howes?

  What was blocking you then for manifesting a child? Manifesting what you truly wanted, what you desired? What was blocking you from manifesting for five years?

• 1:35:58Lisa Miller?

  Yes, so I am to the wisdom undergirding your point. I am convinced that we get just the impasses we need. Right? So why was I not?

• 1:36:08Lewis Howes?

  You don't want them, but we need them.

• 1:36:10Lisa Miller?

  That just the ones for our journey to inherit the next station of our lives. That we might grow and awaken and flourish spiritually to be prepared. So I had yet to be prepared to really be a spiritual parent.

• 1:36:23Lewis Howes?

  If you think you would have had the child at thirty at the beginning.

• 1:36:27Lisa Miller?

  On day one, first trip to the Caribbean, right?

• 1:36:30Lewis Howes?

  Versus five years later, what would have happened, do you think?

• 1:36:34Lisa Miller?

  So on day one, you know, I mean, we thought.

• 1:36:37Lewis Howes?

  It's a bit easy, let's do this.

• 1:36:39Lisa Miller?

  Let's start a family, right? As if we hit all the buttons and control everything. Let's, let's, let's get pregnant, as if humans decide when to get pregnant. Humans can create, if you will, the conditions. Humans cannot decide when to get pregnant. So off we went to the Caribbean, right? Lovely trip. Come back a few weeks later, what? Not pregnant? Oh, well, okay, first shot, who gets first shot?

• 1:37:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:03Lisa Miller?

  You're off to Sedona, right? Great vacation, come back, what? No baby? And after about six months of this, it started to terrify me. Because I had this haunting depressive feeling that we weren't going to get what we wanted. Right? That's door number one, achieving awareness. What do I want?

• 1:37:21Lewis Howes?

  We have this goal, we have this vision. I want to go through the door and open it and receive the goal in mind.

• 1:37:27Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:37:28Lewis Howes?

  And it's not working.

• 1:37:29Lisa Miller?

  It's not working.

• 1:37:33Lewis Howes?

  So you started to feel anxious, scared, nervous?

• 1:37:37Lisa Miller?

  Terrified.

• 1:37:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:38Lisa Miller?

  Terrified, because no one sees this coming.

• 1:37:40Lewis Howes?

  And when you feel terrified, anxious, depressed, that you're not getting the thing you want to manifest, what happens?

• 1:37:49Lisa Miller?

  Existential meltdown.

• 1:37:53Lisa Miller?

  Right? So it's not.

• 1:37:54Lewis Howes?

  Is it going to come quicker if you're feeling terrified and depressed and anxious about it not coming?

• 1:38:00Lisa Miller?

  The invitation to go more deep and start witnessing life.

• 1:38:07Lewis Howes?

  I mean, it's the thing we want to get a come quicker.

• 1:38:10Lisa Miller?

  Oh, no, the baby doesn't come more quickly just because I'm completely depressed.

• 1:38:14Lewis Howes?

  And trying harder.

• 1:38:15Lisa Miller?

  No, no. See, just that impasse was the impasse I needed to start to do something, parent or no parent, which was to start to look at the deeper nature of life, to stop thinking that I controlled things.

• 1:38:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:38:29Lisa Miller?

  Quite so absolutely, to stop being quite so careerist. I love my work. I'm passionate about my profession, but careerist is a certain ego attachment to it going my way. It's different than being passionate about your calling or your contribution. So this sort of layer of ego, this layer of control, I was bringing it to parenting. Yeah, I'm ready. Let's start. Time for us to get pregnant. And what I realized in this journey was that synchronicity started showing up gently, sometimes not so gently, that said, you know what, this really hurts. You feel really alone.

• 1:39:10Lisa Miller?

  But you're not alone. You are not alone. I'll give you some examples. So, you know, I came out of, you know, I was a very healthy, fit NCAA athlete. I was a fit, healthy person. I couldn't believe my body was failing me.

• 1:39:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:39:26Lisa Miller?

  Like, how can I not be getting pregnant, you know? You know, I'd been a cheerleader. I'd been a field hockey player. I'd been not a decathlete, but a hurdler, one of your ten events, and I couldn't believe that my body was failing me. You know, mighty, powerful. How could this be? And my husband's a fit guy, good athlete. How could this be? So it really sort of was a ding. I'd say it was more than a ding. It was more like a crash. We were a wrecked chassis, and our identity was wrecked. And here we had this fabulous life that we thought is everything we wanted, and it was nothing without a child. So, right when we thought, like, this is it, you know, I even, Louis, I'll confess,

• 1:40:08Lisa Miller?

  I even reached a point where I thought, is my life worth living if I can't be a mother?

• 1:40:16Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, wow.

• 1:40:19Lisa Miller?

  I was 31 years old, I was in love with my husband, I had the work I loved, with plenty of resources. Is my life worth living? If I can't be a mother? If I can't have the thing I want? And it's not a bad thing to want. It's not, is my life not worth living if I can't have a hundred million dollars? You know, it's like a baby, a God given baby.

• 1:40:36Lewis Howes?

  The interesting thing is like now, it seems like there are some women in society that their life is over if they have a child.

• 1:40:43Lisa Miller?

  Well, that's their journey.

• 1:40:44Lewis Howes?

  Their identity, their freedom, their ability to do what they want, when they want, is over if they have a child. That's kind of like, I see that sometimes now in some women in society.

• 1:40:54Lisa Miller?

  Well, everyone has their path.

• 1:40:55Lewis Howes?

  It's a different, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:56Lisa Miller?

  I can only speak for myself. But in my path, the child was a spiritual awakening. The road to finding our children, as the book tells, was a spiritual awakening. And the child himself, the child herself, is this great, like a wellspring of God's presence. And you can even feel it at the other end of the house.

• 1:41:17Lewis Howes?

  It's magic.

• 1:41:18Lisa Miller?

  Yes, it is sacred presence.

• 1:41:20Lewis Howes?

  Like how a child is born is unfathomable. The magic that is created from conception to building these cells into a being that comes out of a woman. It's unbelievable when you think about it.

• 1:41:36Lisa Miller?

  And the child comes out as pure spirit.

• 1:41:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:41:39Lisa Miller?

  So, take your child's lead would be the one bit. You know, I don't like to give parenting advice because it's more important to awaken the parent's own inner spiritual awareness. But that said, watch your child closely. Because every time that my two-year-old made us late, we showed up at the right time.

• 1:41:57Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:41:58Lisa Miller?

  And every time that my child told the story, it ended up being a harbinger of what we were about to experience an hour later. Your child is in nowhere. Your child is born in nowhere, with a direct connection to all the universe.

• 1:42:11Lewis Howes?

  When was the moment that you unlocked the ability to stop forcing what you wanted? And get out of your own way to create the space for manifestation to happen?

• 1:42:23Lisa Miller?

  Yes, so Louis, there was a gentle process, it took us five years, where gradually I started to release the choke of my demanding ego. I've gotta have it, I want it, how is it that we can't get pregnant? I'm gonna research the better doctors up in Boston.

• 1:42:40Lewis Howes?

  Right, what's wrong with me, what's wrong with you, what's wrong with God?

• 1:42:43Lisa Miller?

  What's wrong with the doctor?

• 1:42:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what's wrong with the doctor, we need a better doctor.

• 1:42:46Lisa Miller?

  Point, point, point. And I stopped saying, why am I not getting what I want? And I started listening to God, I started listening to the synchronicities before me. I'll give you some beautiful examples. My shaman in my life is my sweet mother. And she called me one day, you know, she'd been saying, when are you guys gonna get pregnant? We didn't tell people we were going through.

• 1:43:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:43:08Lisa Miller?

  Yeah, it was so expiation, Louis, I remember going home to visit my parents, walked into the guest room, opened the closet, and my mother had all these baby clothes.

• 1:43:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, devastating.

• 1:43:18Lisa Miller?

  Yes, and so she had been so disappointed.

• 1:43:20Lewis Howes?

  Dreaming about it, yeah.

• 1:43:21Lisa Miller?

  Dreaming of your grandma.

• 1:43:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:23Lisa Miller?

  So, my awakening in this road of becoming a parent was very gentle and gradual. There were a trail of synchronicities, each of them actually jaw-droppingly unlikely to have happened by chance.

• 1:43:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:43:36Lisa Miller?

  My mother calls and she says, honey, I just wanna tell you a story. You know, there's this woman down the way, she couldn't be nicer, and she just adopted the cutest little boy, his name is Alan Jones, from Russia, bye honey.

• 1:43:50Lisa Miller?

  And I thought, hmm, another synchronicity. I'm, you know, pretty bummed out, like very devastated, I just had a failed in vitro. I had still to go to work, you know, I was a professor at Columbia.

• 1:44:02Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of energy, it's a lot of energy, yeah.

• 1:44:04Lisa Miller?

  The students are in their chairs waiting, where's Dr. Miller?

• 1:44:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:06Lisa Miller?

  So I get on the bus, I go up Broadway, and, you know, it's 11, I'm late, right? I'm not there at 8, I'm not there at 9, it's 11. Who gets on the bus but a quite unusual looking gentleman. He was quite unusual. And I thought, oh, no. The unusual gentleman's looking at me. I was depressed. I just, basically, every failed in vitro feels like a death. That's how I experienced it. That's how in my heart it was felt, and my husband's too. So this man keeps walking closer and closer to me. And I thought of all days, not today.

• 1:44:38Lewis Howes?

  Don't talk to me, yeah.

• 1:44:39Lisa Miller?

  I mean, I like to be nice to folks on the bus, but I was not, I was not at my best. And closer and closer, Louis, he sits down right next to me on the orange linoleum chairs. He looks over and he says, lady, you seem like just that type of lady that would go all over the world adopting children. A big happy family.

• 1:45:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:45:00Lisa Miller?

  And Louis, at the next stop, the gentleman gets off the bus. He goes one stop. Who sent him? Another synchronicity. So clearly, the message is starting to come through. Then finally, you know, fellow living beings, all living beings, are part of the same symphony, the same sacred path that we're on. So in our case, I'd come home, again, this is probably the fourth in vitro, and I just had this haunting feeling, this had been with the team in another city that invented in vitro.

• 1:45:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:45:31Lisa Miller?

  I just had this haunting feeling that it wasn't going to take. I just, you know, I'm getting the knowing, the deep inner wisdom. So Louis, I walk up to the front step of our home. And on the front step, right in front of the door, there's something like slimy and moist, and I don't know what it is, and I haven't seen it before. And I look, and it's a little dead embryo. It's a dead duck embryo on my front step.

• 1:45:58Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:45:58Lisa Miller?

  We've lived there now for 30 years. Never before that day, never after that day, was there a dead embryo on my front step. So it was confirmation.

• 1:46:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:46:08Lisa Miller?

  Right? This is, now, does this mean the universe is against me? No. The dead duck embryo doesn't mean that the universe is against me just because I'm not getting what I want today. The dead duck embryo means that you are actually supported. You are on a buoyant path. There is meaning written into life itself. Your journey, your purpose is in you, through you, and in front of you, all around you. But it was still depressing and not what I wanted. So I, I mean, I hit the hay, I go to bed. It's, you know, the middle of the day. Not even in our bedroom. I don't, can't bear to face Phil. I go to my study and I hear on my study window, sliding door, and I look. It was the mom.

• 1:46:53Lisa Miller?

  It was the mom and duck.

• 1:46:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:46:55Lisa Miller?

  Who'd come to my office door.

• 1:46:58Lewis Howes?

  Sort of banging at the beat.

• 1:47:00Lisa Miller?

  And she'd brought me a worm.

• 1:47:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:47:03Lisa Miller?

  Her best gift. Okay, all living beings are connected. She was a mom who'd lost her hopeful baby. I'm a mom who lost my hopeful baby.

• 1:47:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:47:14Lisa Miller?

  And we are in relationship. We are never alone. We are loved. Loved, guided oneness.

• 1:47:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:47:21Lisa Miller?

  Loved, guided oneness. And fellow living beings are in this with us.

• 1:47:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:47:29Lisa Miller?

  I'll tell you the most profoundly moving alignment. My husband and I, we're starting to get the picture, you know, that maybe there's a baby out there for us.

• 1:47:39Lewis Howes?

  To adopt, you mean?

• 1:47:40Lisa Miller?

  To adopt, yeah.

• 1:47:41Lewis Howes?

  Stop trying, forcing this.

• 1:47:43Lisa Miller?

  Forcing, but I couldn't get my sticky controlling fingers off it. You know, achieving awareness is A plus B plus C. How am I going to make this happen? So sticky fingers.

• 1:47:53Lewis Howes?

  You're in your analytical brain, not in your heart.

• 1:47:55Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:47:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. You thought you were in your heart. I want to give love. I want to have a child. I want to start a family. But it was more like a controlling love, I guess.

• 1:48:03Lisa Miller?

  Yes, versus a receptive dialogue with God's power, an alignment with God's path.

• 1:48:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes, right.

• 1:48:10Lisa Miller?

  The road of life. So, final story.

• 1:48:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:48:16Lisa Miller?

  We're lying in bed in solidarity, Phil by my side. I've just had an in vitro. Hopeful, hopeful, hopeful. We had gone to another city. We'd gone to Philadelphia to meet the team who, using seurgents in Woodsville, had come up with in vitro. And they are excellent scientists and excellent doctors. But in our path, for us, again, I had that sinking feeling. So there we are, lying in bed, and in this pretty overpriced hotel, it was only one night, so it was a splurge. The remote's broken. I'm like, why are we in an overpriced hotel and the remote's broken?

• 1:48:47Lewis Howes?

  This place doesn't work.

• 1:48:49Lisa Miller?

  My husband's hitting the remote. He's normally chair of the remote. There's one channel. And in this hotel, we had no choice on bedrest but to watch four hours of a documentary. And what is it? It's a story of a little boy who lives in a garbage dump in another country. And the little boy, through the translator, says, "I don't care that I can't go to school. I don't care that I live in this trash heap, but it hurts so much to not be loved that I sniff glue to make the pain go away."

• 1:49:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:49:26Lisa Miller?

  And I thought, you know what? This little boy needed parents. We needed a child. And what has kept us from being a family is our narrow-mindedness, is the prison of our own ego. And it was the opening to what became the road to find us.

• 1:49:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's beautiful.

• 1:49:42Lisa Miller?

  And a synchronicity.

• 1:49:43Lewis Howes?

  That's incredible. So being open and listening to synchronicities and then acting on it.

• 1:49:49Lisa Miller?

  Yes.

• 1:49:50Lewis Howes?

  Stop being, like, resisting them, you know?

• 1:49:51Lisa Miller?

  They're for you.

• 1:49:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:53Lisa Miller?

  And if you say yes, the yellow door is so beyond imagination. It is so full of promise and splendor. It's not what you want. It is so much better.

• 1:50:03Lewis Howes?

  It's what you need, yeah. Man, this is powerful. I've got a couple of final questions for you, Lisa, but thanks for sharing this. And I want to acknowledge you for being a gift and being a beautiful, wise inspiration for all of us in what's possible. And I do think there has been a

• 1:50:23Lewis Howes?

  Spiritual disconnection, I think in society, I think there are forces that try to pull us away from a connection to God. The materialism of the world that tries to have us judge, compare, tear down others, and build us up over others. Competitiveness, that's not a healthy competition, but a angry competition. And so I want to acknowledge you for bringing, you know, science and research and practical advice along with spiritual wisdom together so that we can reconnect to that part of our soul and our heart that yearns and has thirst and hunger for a spiritual connection,

• 1:51:04Lewis Howes?

  even if we doubt it, even if we don't believe in it, even if we struggle to see the point of it all. I want to acknowledge you for being that voice and for constantly showing up for yourself, for your children, and for all of us. I'm really grateful for your time.

• 1:51:20Lisa Miller?

  Yes, I'm deeply touched and honored, and I want to thank you for being a clear, profound voice, body, mind, and soul, right in the middle of our culture, fearless, answering only to one source.

• 1:51:33Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, I appreciate it, thank you. Two final questions, Lisa, but before I ask them, I want to send people to your site, Lisa Miller, PhD, I believe is the main place where all your content and your books and all the things where people can get them.

• 1:51:47Lisa Miller?

  And I use Instagram, just dr.lisamiller.

• 1:51:50Lewis Howes?

  Dr.lisamiller, if you guys want to follow Lisa over on Instagram, but both of those places will have them linked up. And I'd love for people who are watching or listening to leave a comment over on YouTube or over on Instagram and share your biggest takeaway from this conversation.

• 1:52:05Lisa Miller?

  Oh, I'd love to know how people resonate.

• 1:52:07Lewis Howes?

  And I highly encourage people to do the, gosh, what's it called? Hosting the council exercise? Powerful, so do that and share who is at your table and what was said to you from that exercise in the YouTube comments below. I think that's a really powerful exercise. The Road to Life exercise as well, feel free to do that one, but definitely do the hosting council exercise. This question is a question I ask everyone towards the end of the show, it's called the three truths. Imagine a hypothetical scenario, you get to live as long as you want in this earth, but it's your last day, far in the future. You get to create and experience what your heart desires. Physically and spiritually.

• 1:52:51Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, all of the content you've created, your books, this conversation, and anything you create until then goes with you to the next place when you pass. So the people on earth don't have access to this conversation, your books, or any of your work, hypothetically.

• 1:53:09Lewis Howes?

  But on the last day, you get to leave behind three lessons, three things that you believe to be true, and that's all we would have of your content. What would those three truths be for you?

• 1:53:21Lisa Miller?

  Love your enemy.

• 1:53:25Lisa Miller?

  Love your lover. Love God.

• 1:53:29Lewis Howes?

  Why love your enemy?

• 1:53:32Lisa Miller?

  That doesn't mean expose yourself to your enemy. That doesn't mean...

• 1:53:36Lewis Howes?

  Be best friends with your enemy.

• 1:53:37Lisa Miller?

  Or that your enemy's right.

• 1:53:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:53:40Lisa Miller?

  But as you said, Lewis, the choice to forgive, to love them as a soul on earth, as flawed, as searching, as trapped within their own ego and illusions.

• 1:53:51Lisa Miller?

  It frees you to be part of the ultimate field of love.

• 1:53:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:56Lisa Miller?

  Where anything's possible.

• 1:53:59Lisa Miller?

  And you're on the road alive.

• 1:54:00Lewis Howes?

  Final question, Dr. Lisa Miller, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:54:05Lisa Miller?

  To be in deep connection to God and live an abundant, valid life.

• 1:54:10Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Thanks so much for being here, I appreciate it.

• 1:54:13Lisa Miller?

  Loved it.

• 1:54:15Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed this, and if you found value, make sure to share this with one friend. Just copy and paste the link and text a friend where you feel would be truly inspired by this episode as well. And also, make sure to click the follow button on Apple or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this episode, because we have a massive episode coming up next that I do not want you to miss. So make sure to follow this and be on the lookout for the next episode coming with some massive content and guests. Also, I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you are looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life...

• 1:54:58Lewis Howes?

  And you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. You want to make it flow. You want to feel abundant. Then make sure to go to makemoneeeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

• 1:55:30Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:56:14Lewis Howes?

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