Build A New Identity, Own Your Truth & Love Your Life w/Jen Hatmaker EP 1113

“Your people matter most. If you’re going to go to the grave for something, go for your relationships. That’s what will last.”Today's guest is Jen Hatmaker, who is a best-selling author of 12 books, host of the podcast called, For the Love! She is also a sought-after speaker who tours the country every year speaking to women. She’s written a new book called FIERCE, FREE, AND FULL OF FIRE: THE GUIDE TO BEING GLORIOUS YOU. The book provides a detailed roadmap to reconciling our inner convictions and outer presentations. Jen poses tough questions and provides thoroughly researched psychological tools with the goal of helping women live lives that are honest and ultimately, culturally transformative. In this episode Lewis and Jen discuss the lessons Jen learned after leaving a 26 year marriage, how to take control of your emotional well-being, how to not rob yourself and those around you of your true value, how to become vulnerable within all areas of your life so that you can grow, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1113Read Jen’s new book: Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious YouCheck out her podcast: For the Love! The Power of Erotic Intelligence with Esther Perel: https://link.chtbl.com/732-podFind Lasting Love with Matthew Hussey: https://link.chtbl.com/811-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,113 with New York Times bestselling author Jen Hatmaker.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Zig Ziglar said, "Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will." And Dolly Parton said, "If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one." My guest today is the inspiring and funny Jen Hatmaker, who is a bestselling author of 12 books, host of the podcast called For the Love, and a sought-after speaker who tours the country every year speaking to women. She's written a new book called Fierce, Free, and Full of Fire: The Guide to Being Glorious You. The book provides a detailed roadmap to reconciling our inner convictions and outer presentations. And Jen poses tough questions and provides thoroughly researched psychological tools

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  with the goal of helping women live lives that are honest and ultimately transformative. In this episode, we discuss the lesson Jen learned after leaving a 26-year marriage, how to take control of your emotional well-being at all stages of life, how to not rob yourself of those around you of your true value, how to become vulnerable within all areas of your life so that you can grow, and so much more. If you're enjoying this, make sure to share it with someone that you think would be inspired by this as well. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and leave us a rating and review with the part you enjoyed the most about this episode as well. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Jen Hatmaker.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guest. We've got Jen Hatmaker in the house. Good to see you.

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Same. Thanks for having me.

• 2:03Lewis Howes?

  Very excited. You've written like a thousand books.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  And we are talking beforehand about the amazing blessings that are happening in your life right now. All the benefits that have happened in your life. You've, you've written all these books. You've learned a lot of lessons. You've got five kids. Incredible mom, married for 26 years. And yet during COVID last year, you thought you'd be married forever. That's not the case. And what are the biggest lessons you've learned from going through a transition that you did not expect to have happen in your life?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  I'm still learning. I'm still in it. I'm still deeply,

• 2:50Speaker 01

  sometimes on the path, sometimes in the weeds.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  For me, everything was unexpected. I mean, obviously COVID was unexpected for all of us. Didn't see that coming. None of us were really prepared for a year-long pandemic. But a hundred percent didn't see the end of a decades-long-plus marriage coming. And that was a blindside and a real shock. And just compounded by so many other losses. So there was a moment last summer, early fall where I thought, I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I can handle this.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  Handle what? The pressure, the stress?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  The pain. The pain, the suffering.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  The loss and then ultimately the changes that are, I didn't want them, but they came.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  What it was going to look like for me, what was going to have to change and immediately what I was going to have to learn. What I was gonna have to figure out how to show up for in a new way. And I do remember a few weeks there having had no food and no sleep. You know, those little seasons, mercifully, they're usually short. But and I just remember thinking, finally, at the end of it, that I can handle this. I can handle this. I don't want to handle this. I don't ask to handle this. But I know it. I know that I can. I know that I'm strong enough. I've got what it takes. I have it internally. I have it externally with my people.

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I'm gonna see if I can practice what I've preached. Everything I've been saying all this time.

• 4:33Lewis Howes?

  Been teaching us the way men for years.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. All this time, all these words I've put out into the world about resiliency, about strength, inner strength, really, about our capacity to thrive, to overcome, to flourish. I'm like, was that? I don't know if we can curse on this podcast.

• 4:53Lewis Howes?

  Say whatever you want.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  I'm like, was that foolish or is that real? Let's press on. Well, we're pressing on it. Let's see what happens. And it held. It held. And so when you asked me what I've learned, I'm like, really happy to discover and report that everything I profess to believe about the human spirit, about what it looks like to have healthy community, about what integrity means, is true. It's true. You can put it to the most fiery test, and it'll hang on. It'll hang on. It's almost shocking. But here we are.

• 5:33Lewis Howes?

  On a scale of one to 10, pre-pandemic, where was your self-worth at? Like, 10 being like, I'm super confident all the time, and my relationships are great, and work.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Pre-pandemic. Mm-hmm. Marriage in hand, career thriving.

• 5:54Lewis Howes?

  Where were you at?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Creativity blooming. I mean, I would have said A+.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  A+.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  Pretty consistently, right?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty consistently.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  And then where were you when everything hit?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  I don't even know. I actually startled to assign a number to it. It was such, for me, uncharted territory.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  You've always been pretty confident and you've had some bad days here and there and some moments of pain.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Super high on positivity. I am glass half full by any measure, annoyingly so.

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Frustratingly so.

• 6:32Lewis Howes?

  Friends don't like to be around you at some times.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I am my dad's daughter. We're born this way. Like, we just, we see the good in people. We see the good in a scenario. I'm constantly able to, or at least prepared to pivot toward, what can it be? How can we recover? How can we, what can we make out of this? And so having walked through life with that kind of outlook for so long, and then really being knocked down to such a level

• 7:03Speaker 01

  that included rejection and the loss of love and the loss of family and the loss of, and then of course, all the losses that came with the pandemic. I don't even know how to assign a number. That was literally as it put up, never lived in.

• 7:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Never. And we've suffered. So I don't want to paint the picture that I have managed all 46 years of life without any suffering, because that's not true either. We have really been through it in our family. This was a whole new level. And so, yeah, sometimes you find yourself in a moment in your life where you're like, do I mean what I say? Am I just full of it? Is this real or not? Because if our, if all the things we're telling our community on what it looks like to be a human at his or her highest capacity, if that doesn't hold in suffering, if that doesn't hold in setback, if that doesn't hold in loss, then it's not true. Like, it's true all the time, or it's true never, right?

• 8:05Speaker 01

  And so when I had to overlay the suffering bit on top of all these values and tenets, and then see what's left.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Well, I'm here, all these months later, thrilled to report that it is, we're not, we, we mean it.

• 8:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  This stuff is true.

• 8:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  What would you say you're at now? You're still in, it's not out clear the weeds, I guess. You're still in some good days, some challenging days.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  What's, what's the level now? And what have you done to get yourself back up to a certain level?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  It's interesting because

• 8:49Speaker 01

  I've had to step into this whole new realm of adult, adulting.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  You weren't doing this before?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  What were you doing?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  It was just a division of labor. Listen, this is insane. It's insane to even say this sentence. But I got married when I was 19 and my husband was 21.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Babies.

• 9:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Literally a teenager.

• 9:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  So I mean, I wasn't even an adult. Uh, and so I never developed a lot of those chops.

• 9:19Lewis Howes?

  To adult?

• 9:20Speaker 01

  To adult.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  Like what chops are we talking about? Cause you've got five kids.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Financial responsibility.

• 9:27Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So your husband took care of the finances?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  That was our division of labor.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Okay, I'm gonna make the money and then you figure out what to do with it?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for a while, I'm gonna raise the kids.

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Um, I'm gonna keep the wheels on.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Um, and then later, surprisingly, I'm gonna make some money. I didn't see that coming. I was a teacher. Um, and I'm just gonna hand off these things. And I had a little, um, I mean, I can admit this now, but like I had a little shtick that I did. Like this little two, soft shoe two-step I did, like, I don't know how much money I make.

• 10:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I don't know what our bills are. Like, I don't know how much electricity costs. This little, um, damsel in distress bit that I did, which really isn't even true to me. I'm not even like that. That's not actually true. It was a bit of, it was a way for me to abdicate personal responsibility in a cutesy way. In a cutesy way. Meanwhile, I'm literally running a huge operation.

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I'm a business person. I am a content creator. I'm smart. I am incredibly capable and I'm acting dumb.

• 10:36Lewis Howes?

  But you didn't know what your bills were for your house or something?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  I'm acting dumb.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And it served me well because then I didn't have to work at it.

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I mean, that was my ticket out. And so now, having had every single one of those pillars crash around me, and I am all by myself left to figure out how to pick these up and reconstruct them. I have learned in the last six months what I'm capable of, and it's a lot. It is a lot. I'm actually good at this. I'm not dumb.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  So, yeah, you're not.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  And so finances were one of them, like financial.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Was one of the things for adulting.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Huge.

• 11:14Lewis Howes?

  What was another thing?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Restructured my business. What does this look like for the long term? How can I be more financially healthy? How can my employees be more financially healthy? What's our work culture? I'd also outsource some of that even. What is our work culture? Where are the pain points inside of here? Just absolutely restructuring our professional working relationships together, which, not surprisingly, has fleshed out a handful of like tension points. Shine a little spotlight on those things where you just kind of go.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  You mean people that weren't?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Like, well, since you're asking, this is pretty crappy.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  So, a lot of business restructuring, even from a financial standpoint. Long-term planning. I'm just gonna assume, now I'm gonna be delightfully surprised if I have a whole second chance at this, at love and at relationship. I suspect that I will. I'm gonna assume for right now that I'm on my own. And so I have now sat down at the table and went, I'm in charge of me. I'm my person. I'm my own person. I'm my best person. I'm my own partner. I am my own long-range planner. And so that has been a complete and total overhaul to consider what it looks like to be responsible and well taken care of from right this day until I'm dead.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Including my kids.

• 12:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Total overhaul. I now have so many people that I work with and who work with me who are like, let's plan. And so, I could have been doing this all along. It's not that I was incapable, no one is incapable. So, when I think about, you know, I lead largely women. You kind of have this mix of, of, of men and women in your community. I largely lead women. And when I think about the amount of perfectly capable, smart women, married even, who would say, "I do not have the first idea. I don't know what our bank account is. I don't know what the login is. I don't know what our password is."

• 13:23Lewis Howes?

  What do you think, in your audience, what do you think that percentage is of women?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Well, it's interesting because...

• 13:28Lewis Howes?

  Did you do a poll already?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Well, I've been sort of living this evolution publicly in front of my community. I don't really know how else to do it. It's not performative for me. It's just whatever's really happening in my life is what you're gonna see. I don't have a different gear. So, I've been talking about, "Guys, this is what I'm learning. This is what I think you should be learning. This is, these are the levers every single one of us should be pulling. I don't care if you're the happiest married person that ever lived on the face there. These are things you should know. This, this, this, this, this. Do you have your passwords? Do you have access to every account?"

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  Can you get your money out?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Can you get your, are you regularly checking your bank accounts? What does your savings look like? What are your investments? And all the women are like...

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  They're playing like you.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Well, oh my God. I don't, except for I have this whole category of women too who are like, "Oh, I appreciate these questions. These are questions that my husband could not answer if you paid him a million dollars. So, I need to sit down with my husband and teach him what the passwords are." You know, these women who are in charge of the financial solvency in their own homes. But, and so, it is interesting to, to watch us sometimes drift into these female tropes.

• 14:41Lewis Howes?

  The stereotypes of old.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  We'll just hand over the keys, assume it's all gonna go well. And guess what? It doesn't sometimes.

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, and it's not like men are educated out of high school about financial literacy. They don't teach us, either us.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  They don't teach any of us.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, so how are we supposed to figure this out?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  We're all dumb. We all got, we're all dumb dumbs going into the adult world like without a clue on how to do this. And so, but that is like, it's a stereotype that I see a lot of us have drifted into, myself included. And like, I'm just here to say... If that can be my story, somebody who is also very independent in other ways. Like as a business person, as an author, as a leader, as a teacher, as a somebody who really prizes personal development and growth. This is just probably work that a great deal of us need to do and it's so empowering.

• 15:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  It's been one of my biggest lessons in the last six months.

• 15:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What else with adulting? Besides the financial, besides long-term planning?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:44Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything else?

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Well, unfortunately, and I'm furious about this, but it turns out the only person really in charge of my emotional health, of my mental wellness, of really even my trauma recovery, is me.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  Unfortunately?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  That's a bummer. Well, it's easier and more preferential to blame somebody else. That is, that is, that's an easy reach for me. Everything will be fine if only you would behave, right?

• 16:18Lewis Howes?

  Was that how you were before?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's how I just drifted in, like these patterns in my own life.

• 16:24Lewis Howes?

  If you don't do it, it upsets me or triggers me.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  You're difficult and so you make me bad.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  You know, you're difficult, so you make me respond this way. Or you create these entrenched relational habits that now I'm just stuck with because you're difficult.

• 16:40Lewis Howes?

  Was that how you were living?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I think that was definitely one plane of it.

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  And that's mine to own, right? And it's mine now to deal with.

• 16:51Lewis Howes?

  To process and heal and overcome.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Nobody can do this for me. And so also having to take my own health and recovery by the horns without blame, without shame, even internal shame, and without excuses is, that's new work for me. This is new work for me. I've never, ever been on my own. I have always had a partner for whom I could offload however much of the responsibility I wanted to. Pick a year, pick a percentage. And so now having, now being, as I said, my own best partner now, it's me and me. I am left with this truth that this was always my work.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Always, it always was. Inside or outside a marriage. Um, this is my work inside all my relationships.

• 17:44Lewis Howes?

  What work?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  This work of being incredibly, having entire ownership.

• 17:50Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, of how you feel or how you react?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  How I react.

• 17:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  How I'm willing to perceive my own self. How I am willing to perceive other people. What level of grace I am willing to give. Not just myself, but others.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Um, how, what narratives I am going to refuse to keep listening to and which ones I'm gonna pick up. These are mine. This is my work.

• 18:13Lewis Howes?

  What was a, a narrative you were listening to strongly that didn't work for you? After, after the last six months, realizing it didn't work for you now?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  What was one you held on, one or two you held on to?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kind of jumping right back to something I just sort of mentioned. This narrative that

• 18:32Speaker 01

  any given relationship, just pick one.

• 18:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Any given relationship, it could be with your kid, it could be with your spouse, it could be with a coworker, your boss, whatever. Would be different if only that person would fix A, B, and C.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Didn't make me angry here.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  I would be happy then.

• 18:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Like, that would make life easy. That is all I've ever wanted is for you to be better.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Um, that's not true.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  That's not true because really

• 19:02Speaker 01

  it's still on us what we're going to, um, allow.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And how we're gonna respond.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  And I'm, I'm learning so much right now. I don't know how much work you've done around like codependency.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  I've, I feel like the last eight years have been an emotional boot camp. Every couple of years I go through something that

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  I then say, okay, like, what's the therapies, the workshops, the coaching, the, you know, process that I'm going to take on to continue to peel back the onion, become even more vulnerable,

• 19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  take even deeper ownership and responsibility and figure out, well, why am I reactive to this? Why do I get angry or resentful or unforgiving in these places? Why does that trigger me? Why does it this trigger me? Why? Is it just because it's me or is there something underneath it?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:52Lewis Howes?

  And I think being, you know, the last year brought up a lot of that for a lot of people. You know, I started a new relationship a couple of years ago. The first year was amazing. The second year with the pandemic and all these changes of identity and, you know, all these things happening was like, okay, there's a lot of work that I still, I thought I've done a lot of work until now.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 20:13Lewis Howes?

  And it's like been intensive therapy, but not for, for the relationship, sure, but for each one of us.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 20:21Lewis Howes?

  It's not about the relationship. It's about like, why am I reactive to that? Or they're frustrated with this or why is she, you know, it's so, which I am, I resist, but then I'm like, well, if I resist it, it's just going to keep coming up in every area of my life until I embrace.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:35Lewis Howes?

  And embracing is painful.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  It's painful. And again, because it's not ever really about that other person.

• 20:41Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  It's wherever you go, there you are.

• 20:43Lewis Howes?

  And you repeat the pattern with the next person over and over.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Of course you do. And in any relational dynamic, it's not only romantic.

• 20:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, business, friends, family.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  It will repeat.

• 20:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Um, one thing I'm working on with my therapist right now, and I have a battery of therapists, they all help me. Uh, some of them are like woo woo body people and some of them are like talk therapists and some are EMDR. I mean, I'm like anybody, everybody in the pool, everybody come in.

• 21:09Lewis Howes?

  Any tool.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Any tool, any resource, whatever you can help me understand about myself. Um, and so this, this work of

• 21:20Speaker 01

  What I'm working on, and this is hard for me, I didn't realize this was hard for me, is I'm incredibly judgmental.

• 21:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh, for yourself or others?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  At all? Anything?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  Anything that's not what, right, or the way it's supposed to be?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Deeply judgmental of myself. So, when I have a thing come up, as you said, like, why is this coming up in me? What is this reaction I'm having? What is this? Why did I just spike to like, level 100 right now? What is this about? Like, the punishment doesn't fit the crime here.

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  You know? I am judgmental of my own be- my own response. I am learning that I prefer, um, status. I prefer stability. I prefer things to be nice.

• 22:04Lewis Howes?

  Safe and protective.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Equilibrium. I like it right here, right around the same equal line. Give or take a degree.

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  So, I struggle to let hard things be hard. I struggle to let bad things be bad. I struggle to let sad things be sad. I judge those things. I judge them that, um, hard is bad. Sad is bad. Mad is bad. Just disintegrated is bad. Disruptive is bad.

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  Anything that's uncomfortable for you is bad.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Because it's uncomfortable.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And so, this work of learning to be less judgmental of the thing that's not good. Good's my favorite.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Good is my favorite.

• 22:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Good and happy, that's my favorite space. So, anything that's outside of that, rather than say, something's wrong with me to feel, I'm, something is wrong in me, that I'm feeling this. How can I hurry up and hustle this back to goo- good and happy? But rather, non-judgmentally, observe it, like, why is this coming up in me? It's not bad, or it's, it has no morality. It's not, it's just this what it is. There's something here willing to teach me something, if I'll listen. Instead of just shove it back into a corner, cover it with a blanket, and pretend like it never happened. And so, this is really hard work for me. I mean, I have really practiced the art of compartmentalization, I guess, for 46 years.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  Your whole life.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I am good at it. Like, I am really good at it. I can hustle a story into its tidiest version in like, half a minute.

• 23:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? I can soften the blow of a really serious letdown, quickly.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  And be like, but here's the silver lining. But here's what I've learned. But here's why I'm happy. And so, sitting in the discomfort and not judging the discomfort, but rather asking it, you're here for something. Are you trying to protect me? Are you trying to show me something? Are you, are you trying to keep me safe? Um, are you a warning sign? Because I have learned incredibly deeply that my body, my soul and my mind have been sending up so many flares for me for the last few years. And I was like, nope.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  About what?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  All kinds of things. Things that any other normal person would say, this feels like a red flag relationally. Uh, and, and some family rhythms. Um, even just as somebody who loves and is observing another person very close to you. Flares, flares. And I'm like, nah, not here. Not us, not this. We are outside of that story.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  Beyond that.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  We're outside of that narrative. Um, and so, learning to trust myself again is new. That's new. Um, my body is one agenda. My body is team Jen. That's it. No other agenda except to keep me safe and healthy, out of harm and flourishing. So if my body's telling me something, I don't listen.

• 25:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you weren't listening.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  What were you doing?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Judging. I was judging those signals. I was judging those instincts flaring up, trying to like get my attention. Say something's wrong here. I don't want things to be wrong. I want them to be good and happy. And so, this is all new work for me. It's taken me half my life to get here. And I'm not great at it yet. But I'm learning. I'm learning. I don't know. Do you listen to your own instincts a lot? Do you have, have you learned at this point to really trust what it is you are seeing, responding or hearing?

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  I listen. I feel and I notice, but sometimes I don't take action on it.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Right. Why? Like, why not?

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  My pattern has always been, I don't want to upset someone.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 25:59Lewis Howes?

  People pleasing.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  Up until now.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, relational disruption.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  It's been like, well, I'm doing this to make the other person happy. I'm saying this to make the other person happy. Or I'm not doing this because the other person would be mad if I did this. Which then I'm out of integrity with myself and who I am. So I'm kind of resenting myself, resenting the other person, and resenting that context of the relationship. If I don't live my authentic self.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  And this is just outside of agreements and boundaries and whatever the relationship is. And that was my pattern for years, up until recently. And it's been, it's extremely painful to do that to yourself. And I was aware of it. It wasn't like I was like, why am I feeling this pain and this nagging thing in my chest? And like tension or like my throat closing up or whatever the pain was. It was like, I know exactly why this is, but I never had the courage to actually say what I wanted to say. Because I was afraid of the response.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  So I'm so curious, once you started putting some of that into practice.

• 27:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's foreign.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  How, because I've got a thought here in a thesis. I'm curious if you found that that actually served your relationship.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Well, it serves you.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Lewis Howes?

  And it will serve the relationship at a greater level if you're being more authentic.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  I think so too.

• 27:20Lewis Howes?

  Or that relationship will dissolve if it doesn't work.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  But you not being you doesn't serve the relationship.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Totally. I was just telling Heather this earlier that I think when we operate out of that sense of pleasing that person, other people, all the time, that's our general operating system.

• 27:38Lewis Howes?

  And would you say most women come from that place or is that too general?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  You know, it is general, but I don't find it too unfair. I, we were conditioned to keep the temperature in the room stable at all, whatever room we're in.

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  We are the temperature stabilizers.

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  I feel like that's how I have been up until now as well too.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  But my sense of it is, I mean, having now also really, I'm pressing into this as well. Is that ultimately, and maybe not at first, because the truth is, living authentically like that, especially inside of a relationship where you have been trying to keep the peace, but you have no peace.

• 28:14Lewis Howes?

  That's been me my entire life.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Initially, it does create relational disruption.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  It does.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It does.

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  These things are changing.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  They don't like that.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Who does? Yeah, you've been keeping some little world tended.

• 28:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  But they like that, how it is. And so, I do think there is a courage required for that initial stage. But my thesis is that ultimately, if we, if that relationship is, is healthy, and cohesive, and collaborative, and stable, that it ultimately serves the relationship. That that person, we're actually robbing our best people of who we are.

• 28:56Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  We are, we're robbing them.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Of what we are thinking.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  And ourselves.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  We're robbing ourselves. We are not telling the truth. We are out of alignment, which, for me, when I'm out of alignment, when I'm not living in integrity, when I'm saying one thing but thinking another, when I'm saying yes and I mean no, it comes out sideways. It comes out in my body language. It comes out, I'm resentful. I'm pissed. It means I'm always idling high, and the tiniest little thing, like, and I'm just through the roof. That doesn't make sense. That's why, if I could pay attention to that, I'd be like, wait a minute, that was too much.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Of a reaction to what actually happened. Why? Why?

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  It's when bottling something up, resentment or shame or whatever.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Totally. I'm just bottling up some resentment, and it just eventually has to come out.

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it amazing how we can still be very achievement, and succeeding in our careers and businesses, even though we hold on to these things?

• 29:54Speaker 01

  I know. What in the world?

• 29:56Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it crazy? It's almost a false sense of success.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  Not saying that what we've created isn't successful in its own right. But it's like, if we aren't able to emotionally be 100% authentic to ourselves, and find inner peace.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:10Lewis Howes?

  In the process of achieving and building the business and everything, then is that true success?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  It's tricky for like, people like you and me, because we have kind of innate skill set that is rewarded.

• 30:24Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  We just do.

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  We've got the thing that the people like. And it's rewarded behavior. It's rewarded language. It's rewarded leadership. We get to belong. We get to be in charge.

• 30:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  We get to be admired. We get to be like, genuinely liked. And there's a lot of merit there. It's not like we're just completely full of. There's a lot of goodness that we are bringing to the world. But because the rewards that we, the ROI on the way that we are just kind of moving through the world, the way that we are formed is so high, it can eclipse some of this really important work that needs to be done.

• 31:04Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Or you can sweep it under the rug and be like, "I'm just gonna focus on the things that I'm giving good attention for and the rewards." That's why I think it's so important, no matter what stage we're at, is to really surround ourselves with people that check us, that keep us grounded. That I'm just so grateful for my family, my team, or even just like if something happens on social media where I'm checked and reminded, like, "Hey, that wasn't your highest level of authenticity or integrity, like, you're gonna get discounted because of that for a week or two, what you said or what you posted, like, people noticed and they felt it was off." You're gonna feel some of that. And I think it keeps us honest with ourselves if we don't do it consistently ourselves.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And there's really good...

• 31:49Lewis Howes?

  Like, life is gonna humble us if we don't continue to stay humble.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Oh, sure as hell will. Everybody's not blind.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Eventually, a fake person, someone who is insincere, who is not genuine, who is incredibly outside of their integrity, that just eventually shows up for what it is.

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Eventually.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Eventually.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  And the most sensitive and tender among us can see it early, right? They're usually the ones waving the like, it was the sound of the alarm bells earlier than most. But I'm grateful for the sort of communal accountability. And of course, in my life, and I'm sure in yours too, my real people, like, my in-life, in-real-life people are, we're lockstep. Like, at every moment, they could be like, "That's stupid."

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  "The way that you're being right now is mean, or the thing that you're saying right now is not true, or you should apologize for that." They say it to my face all the time because I ask them to. I ask them to, and I'm grateful. And so, that keeps me grounded too. And I'm always open to that feedback from people who love me and who I trust.

• 32:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  That's the two-pronged approach there.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  Where would you say has been the biggest shame in the last year for you?

• 33:08Speaker 01

  I have, can I pick more than one?

• 33:12Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  I said, can I have a couple of shames?

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  Sure. What's thing that stood out the most for you that you felt the most shame?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have this unhealthy instinct to be responsible for everybody in my life. This is going back to what I said earlier about codependency.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  You mean, responsible for what? Their...

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Happiness, their joy, their good decisions. Thus, when they make bad decisions, that's also my fault.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  So, it's a real...

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  I wasn't a good friend, I wasn't a good mother, I wasn't a good...

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Now, you got it.

• 33:46Lewis Howes?

  Daughter, whatever.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  Had I done this, they wouldn't do that. Had if I had said this, they wouldn't have felt this.

• 33:53Lewis Howes?

  Man, that's a lot of pressure.

• 33:54Speaker 01

  It's, I'm a big self-blamer. My, I'm always telling my counselor this, she's like, "Are you blaming so-and-so for this?" I'm like, "No, I'm blaming myself." Who are you talking, me? It's me.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  Man, it'd be nice to be in a relationship with you.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  Take all the blame away from me all the time? Just, "Hey, it wasn't my fault."

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Self-blame's hard.

• 34:08Lewis Howes?

  Jen did it all.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:10Lewis Howes?

  If she would've done this, I'd be fine.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  This is what codependency is. Like, when I started learning that I was a codependent, and I'm gonna get back to your question, I can see that I'm taking the circuitous route, but I thought codependency was a word that meant needy and like, not independent, clingy, fragile. And I'm not any of those things, and I've never felt any of those things. So, I'm like, I'm definitely not codependent. I stand on my own two feet, I have my own dreams, I live my own life, I got my own vision. But, when I discovered that codependency is really about control, it is about being responsible or trying to control outcomes that aren't yours to control.

• 34:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  It is trying to control somebody else's behavior through whatever, pick a thing, shame, withdrawal, nagging.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Bribery.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  Manipulation.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  Pick it. There's a whole battery of things you can reach for. But you're trying to control somebody else's choices, outcomes, and then you take this disproportionate amount of responsibility for it. And the unfortunate thing about that is it doesn't work. Like, you actually can't control somebody else. So that's a stupid thing to find out. You actually can't control outcomes. It's not your... You're in charge of you. And so, because this is also my work right now, I have felt like really deep shame this year, not surprisingly. First of all, around losing a 26-year marriage.

• 35:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  I'm a lifer. I'm a lifer, man. My in-laws, they hit their 50th anniversary last summer. My parents' 50th anniversary is next month. Like, in it to win it. I come from a long line of committed marrieds. Committed lifers. And that's in my... That's my value, too, and so...

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  And it's identity, too.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  Deep. I mean, what else?

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  Identity's not there anymore.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Hell, I was a 19-year-old bride. I had no other identity. I never had an identity outside of it. I was a kid, and then I was a wife. And so, that sense of what I perceive to be failure. And then, of course, now watching the ripple effects on my kids, our families, our friend groups. It's just devastating, and it feels like deep shame to me, constantly working through this. I know this is not mine. I know it. I know enough to know what's true, but it's still in there.

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  It spikes up. I feel it. It keeps me awake at night. I'm pretty good during the day. Nighttime is my worst self. That's my meanest self. Wants me to stay awake and think about all the things I could have done differently.

• 36:45Lewis Howes?

  I won't call you after 9:00.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Or do. Call me at 3:00 a.m. and talk me off the ledge.

• 36:50Lewis Howes?

  Hey, get some sleep.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Go back to bed. Put on your meditation app. And then around parenting. Because I am watching my children suffer so much this year. Um, and in pretty major ways. And their pain is so acute. And their dreams are all busted up too, you know what I mean? Their home is never the same. The, the home they thought they were gonna come home to, the rest of their days is gone. It's never gonna be the same. So their pain, I told you earlier, for me, pain is bad, right? Bad, sad is bad. And so I'm assigning morality to my kids' pain and somehow finding myself at fault.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And so, those are my deep shame wells right now that I'm just clawing out of. How about you?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  We've all lost this year.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  What's my biggest shame? Um.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  I would say realizing that I've never had courage in any relationship, intimate relationship, up until now. And staying in relationships for much longer. When I knew that I wasn't meant to be with those people anymore. Out of fear of hurting someone, me being sad or alone or lonely or whatever might happen from the fear of that not being there anymore. And being able to reflect back on the pattern I've lived for, I don't know, two decades, I guess. And realizing like, man, like, I wonder what life would be like if I didn't hold, if I didn't live that way.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  And if I could have learned this lesson sooner. Like, could I have not felt this pain? Could I have not hurt other people by staying in, whatever, like, whatever I did? And so I think about that. But I'm also like, you know, our lessons come to us when we're ready for them. And so I'm also just like, okay, well, I'm learning it now at 38. And now I get to put it in practice for as long as I get to live. And so I'm trying not to hold on to the shame and blame myself because that doesn't do any good.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  My counselor, Carissa, she says to me at least, at least every single week, whatever it is I'm walking through, I'm telling her how another new way I failed. This is just a normal, this is what I could have done better. This is what I, I'm also an Enneagram 3, I don't know if you watch, I don't know if you know Enneagram, but this is just part of my makeup. Every single week she tells me, she leans into the camera, you know, we're on Zoom, leans in really close and she's like, you just haven't learned this yet. She's like, you're just now learning this.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  You just don't have practice at this yet. You're practicing.

• 39:35Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Like, be gentle because now you're learning it. So.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  You're learning how to walk at that thing.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yes, it's so nice. It's this like very sweet, like self compassionate way to think of it. Like, do I wish I would have known this sooner? I do. Do I wish I could have put this into practice a decade ago? I sure do. But I'm just now learning this.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It is what it is.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  Have you seen that meme online of like a child, like a toddler that's learning how to walk? Something like, you know, as a kid, they fall over a hundred or a thousand times. And never do they say to themselves, maybe this walking thing isn't for me.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Totally, that's good.

• 40:13Lewis Howes?

  And we, we haven't learned how to walk in other areas of our life. Whether it be the financial literacy, because we're never taught it. So it's like, we're gonna stumble and smack our face and bloody up the back of our head and skin our elbows in the process of learning the new thing.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:27Lewis Howes?

  But it doesn't mean we should say, ah, I fell once. Maybe this thing isn't for me.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean?

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Failure can be such a good teacher. Such a good teacher.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  The greatest teacher.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. That's been.

• 40:38Lewis Howes?

  Besides the relationship you're in.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, yes. Our relationships have so much to teach us.

• 40:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  If we want to pull up a chair to that table as a learner, the problem is, most of us want to just be right. Right? I just want to be right. I want to be vindicated. I want somebody to look at this and go. Yes, you are, you are in the right here. They're obviously wrong. How can you put up with this? And, but that, the, that just doesn't have a strong return.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  That really doesn't deliver what I want it to. I always think,

• 41:13Speaker 01

  you know, do I want to be right? Or do I want this to work?

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  You know, which is it?

• 41:19Lewis Howes?

  Do I want peace?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, do we want peace?

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  I don't have peace in being right.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Do I, do I want to be right or do I want to understand you?

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Do I want to really, in the same way that I'm able to say, whoop, where did that come from? And my, can I hold it loosely enough to also look at you and go, wow, that reaction is something, something's there.

• 41:37Lewis Howes?

  And not be triggered by it.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Not be triggered, not be defensive.

• 41:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I've been guilty of that for my whole life.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  So guilty. I keep a whole pinned board of offenses that I can go back and look at me. You know what? I got some stuff.

• 41:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Um, so yeah, that, that to me is this, this, the work of like being a really healthy, mature adult.

• 41:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  And a lot of people don't do it. Some people never do it, honestly, never.

• 42:02Lewis Howes?

  Forever, yeah.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they go to the grave bitter and disappointed and feeling wronged and really having never looked in the mirror. It's, I just don't want to do that, you know? I maybe act that some of this work later than I wanted to, but I'm glad I'm here.

• 42:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  I'm glad I'm here. I got a lot of pavement left, you know?

• 42:21Lewis Howes?

  Perspective. When, there's a lot of people, I think, in the world that have experienced shame or loss or identity crisis in the last year with whatever, relationship, career, all these different things, health.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:33Lewis Howes?

  What feedback or thoughts would you give to someone who is experiencing deep amounts of shame in trying to build their self-worth?

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Oh, man. It's tricky because the levers that we typically pull towards self-worth can be arbitrary. Um, they can be constantly in flux. They can be outside of our control. Um, we don't get to control what other people think of us. We don't get to control how our, the industry that we work in is going to ebb and flow in a pandemic. You know, we don't get to control what our grown adult children choose.

• 43:12Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  You know, and so, but these are our markers. These are our markers of identity, you know, and so. I think funneling down to the raw material of identity is hard. It's so hard because I tend to reach for the more external things. My roles, my relationships, obviously my career. And so, yeah, pushing some of that aside and going, what's actually the thing? What is the thing? What is the core of me? Who am I in my heart and soul and mind?

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  Who am I? Not what do I do, the roles I play?

• 43:47Speaker 01

  Totally. And that's my preferred mode of operation. Yeah, because I'm a doer. I'm a hard worker and I'm a person who externalizes a lot. That is, it's more natural for me to look this way out to my community, to my people. As a content creator, as a leader, then it's work for me to be introspective. That's not natural for me. And so, that work of having to say, outside of what I do, and honestly, outside of what anybody else thinks of me, and I don't mean that in a trite way. You know, there's this, just the trope of like, who cares what anybody thinks of you? Well, we all do. We care. We care what our kids think of us. Like, we care what our partners think of us. We care what our coworkers think of us.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  But even outside of those opinions, when we can sort of funnel it down to like, who am I? What is so good and beautiful about me? What am I meant to do on this earth? Where, how do I bring like life and love to this world? What's at the essence of what is like good and lovely about who I am? Now, we're getting somewhere, but we're not really good self-reporters.

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  How does someone say what's good and beautiful about them when they hold on to shame?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Oh, man. Shame will take us out. I feel like shame is probably...

• 45:11Speaker 01

  One of the, if not our greatest enemy on self-compassion and on really living out of our own identity, so powerful shame, so powerful.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  So what have you done to recognize the good and the beauty inside of you with the shame?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Well, I can tell you one thing that's helped me sometimes, and even though I just said not to look at this, one thing that has at least moved me toward a healthier space around this question is being willing to listen to a very small handful of people who love me most, who know me best. I'm not talking about Facebook followers.

• 45:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  I mean, my people who love me and know me, and to say, Jen, this is what I see in you. Like, this is who you've always been. This is a thing that makes you you.

• 46:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  That helps me. Like, that mirror.

• 46:04Lewis Howes?

  When you have nowhere, when you can't see it for yourself.

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Sometimes you need someone to see inside of you.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  We have to be careful who we, who we hold up as a mirror, because sometimes those voices can also be unreliable. So that's a small, that's a small little pocket of folks for me. But if I can be courageous enough to take them at their word and not let the shame just immediately negate whatever it is they have to say, that, for me, is a powerful mechanism to move into a more tender, authentic space and then see what I can do there. Like, what can I learn here? What, how, how do I respond here? What does this feel like in my body? What does this feel like in my bones? Like, what does this feel like in my rhythms?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Which is all, you know, it's some heavy lifting. I don't know. What do you do? Sure, what's your, you got a solution?

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  For self-worth?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do you get there? How do you, how do you get over shame?

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for me, it's in, if there are, if there are moments in my life where I just feel like I'm a piece of crap, or I'm worthless in this moment, or I'm sad, I'll take a day or two, or whatever I need to, to just like be and not do.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:20Lewis Howes?

  Because I'm such a doer, so that's like something that's uncomfortable.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yes, me too.

• 47:24Lewis Howes?

  But I can reflect in those moments. I can feel it and I can reflect. I can have intimate conversations with people and get perspective in that time. If I'm always doing, it's hard to gain perspective.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  So taking some reflection time and being okay with not being productive is one thing. Another thing, once I'm ready to be more active, it's just following through on the things I say I'm gonna do. So like whatever is a valuable, a value in my life, am I following through on those values? So physical activity is a value of mine, play. Eating healthy is a value of mine. Being my word with people is a value of mine. So can I follow through on that on micro or macro levels on a daily basis? Being my word to myself. What I say is a value, is a value for me. I think then the third thing is how do I get out of myself in this moment and help someone else? How can I serve?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's big for me too.

• 48:19Lewis Howes?

  Because I think you're, you know, your self-worth will be, will rise when you continue to get out of yourself and help someone else.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  With whatever they're going through, any challenge, small, big, or even just like a smile or a handshake or a hug type of a service.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:36Lewis Howes?

  So being in service, again, whether it's a smile or donation, is huge.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is for me too.

• 48:43Lewis Howes?

  If you hug 20 people a day, pre-pandemic, you're gonna feel pretty good about like making someone else's day.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and our bodies are like meant for that. Like they have built-in rewards for that behavior.

• 48:51Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 48:52Speaker 01

  For that connected behavior, for that behavior of service. You know, we are intrinsically rewarded in our brains for that good, that good behavior. I would also add to that list, which is an incredible list. I find a lot of healing and I get to eject out of shame pretty quickly if I can choose to be. Even painfully vulnerable.

• 49:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  If I can do it.

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  If I can say, "This is how I'm feeling." "This is why I'm overwhelmed." "This is how it's making me feel about myself." "This is where my shame points are." And I, um, for me, approximately 100 times out of 100, vulnerability has a beautiful return. It's contagious.

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  Is it hard for you to be vulnerable?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Yes, this is not natural for me. But I'm better at it because I've practiced so much.

• 49:52Lewis Howes?

  What's the hardest thing for you to be vulnerable about?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  For me, it's this sense of admitting for public consumption, be it the big public or my normal public, doesn't matter. And possibly exploitation. Points where I have either failed, or I have regret, or I got something wrong and have shame around it. Or I'm scared. Those to me are so vulnerable and I'm always worried somebody's gonna use that against me. But they don't. They don't use it against us. It's what it does is it draws people to us. You know? And I know this is true when I put myself in the other side of it because when somebody else that I love and respect is vulnerable in front of me, when they say a tender, fragile, hard thing.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  You don't say, "Get away from me."

• 50:43Speaker 01

  Never. I'm so drawn to them.

• 50:44Lewis Howes?

  Like, "What can I do?"

• 50:45Speaker 01

  That tells me, you know what? I don't have to hide from you. I don't have to hide from you. You just showed to me that you can be safe, that you are truthful, that if you are willing to say that hard thing in front of me, then I can say my stuff in front of you. And it really creates this beautiful dynamic. I think I find a lot of good contagion in that sort of vulnerability. And so that to me is a shame buster. Because of course, what you get back every single time, no matter what you say, is, "Me too." Every time. "Oh, me too." I've said that.

• 51:18Lewis Howes?

  I've felt that.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  I've felt that. I'm there now. I've done that.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  And you don't feel alone in it anymore. Loneliness is scary. And so vulnerability is this weird counterintuitive way to like dig our way out of shame.

• 51:36Lewis Howes?

  It's really, it's hard to be that if you've never done it before. It took me 30 years of my life to learn vulnerability.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  Did you grow up in a family? That was vulnerable at all?

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  I feel like they showed emotion, but I think I grew up in a society

• 51:59Lewis Howes?

  or a culture slash society in middle Ohio. As a boy, that boys aren't supposed to do certain, boys don't show emotion, don't cry, you're playing sports, like, get yourself off the ground, don't cry about that, you know, kids making fun of kids like for showing vulnerability. So I don't think it was my family, like it's funny because my dad would cry, I'd see my dad cry in movies sometimes or in like vulnerable moments. And I would always watch it and be like, is that weak or is that strong? I didn't know because

• 52:30Lewis Howes?

  of, it was talked about as weak with my 12 year old friends or whatever, you know, it's like,

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  just because we didn't have the language or the emotional capacity to really accept those tender moments as, at least I speak for myself or my peer group, I and our group. I didn't feel like we had a capacity or the emotional agility, as Susan David would say, to really

• 52:55Lewis Howes?

  allow a nine year old boy to cry in front of you and be like, hey, I got your back. Like there wasn't, it was more like, get all, you know, it was like you're, you're worse, you're a little girl, don't be a little girl.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  So it was name calling and shame around emotion.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  And so, and I remember as a kid just feeling like, all I want is people to like me and have friends. And so if I'm vulnerable, people don't like me and they shame me and they outcast me because they are not comfortable with it, whatever. So I'm not blaming anyone here. I think it was just our level to feel and to receive that type of emotion as kids. We weren't trained that way. I wasn't trained that way.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  It's interesting because, you know, I have five kids and three of them are boys.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  And two of them are girls and we're, they're all like young adults and upper teenagers. So like we're, we're up there. And, you know, I lead women, so that's my community is almost entirely women. And so I spend a lot of emotional energy dissecting the narratives we were handed as little girls. Um, helping us unravel some of these tropes that we were expected to just fall in lockstep with. But being a mom to sons who are now 17, 18 and 23.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  I am dead serious. The narratives handed to boys just as destructive.

• 54:16Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Just as destructive. And I know it because I raised real human kids. Like, I watched them go to their bed and cry for three days after a breakup. I've watched them write love poems. I mean, they're tender.

• 54:29Lewis Howes?

  I was the biggest sap, yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Tons of boys are. It's not, it's not a true thing that boys aren't.

• 54:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:36Speaker 01

  But this like-

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  They're conditioned to be hardened.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  You are.

• 54:39Lewis Howes?

  And not show emotion.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  And you know because you even pretended.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  It wasn't real for you, but you pretended, and so-

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I had to to survive.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Totally, I believe you.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  It was like, you're either gonna be authentic and have no friends.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Was either the narrative or the truth, whatever I was telling myself. It's how it felt.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Or you put on a mask. That's why I wrote a book called Mask of Masculinity, because a lot of boys did this to belong, to feel like you belong.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 55:05Lewis Howes?

  Even though it's a false sense of belonging. I think that's hard. And it takes courage to say, okay, I'm gonna be alone and like, maybe I find a friend or not for my high school life. And maybe a girl likes me or not, or whatever, and I gotta be comfortable in my own skin alone. Hopefully you attract some friends that, that understand you and you understand them, but I don't know what it's like today.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  I don't know. I don't know what you, if you've got your finger on the pulse of like teenagers and young adults right now, I definitely do, it's my world. And I feel, I feel a little hope that some of these gender stereotypes are reversing. In a million ways. Like, just in a million ways, like-

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  For good or bad, yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Gender and sexual identity, of course, that's completely, that looks completely different now than it did when you and I, when you weren't going even and I was in school, ten years older than you.

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  What's acceptable, what's not acceptable.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  You get to be who you are now. More or less, you get to kind of be who you are in your body. And I'm, I'm hopeful that some of this is folding in on itself. The good news is- There's a lot of role models to look toward now. I'm not sure that there were that many when we were growing up.

• 56:14Lewis Howes?

  This is what I talk about all the time. I was like, I never saw an example of a man who'd been sexually abused. Publicly talking about it.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  Especially like an athlete archetype that looked like me, that was like the jock and whatever, like that played sports. There was never someone that went on TV and was like, I was sexually abused.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 56:32Lewis Howes?

  And here's how to deal with it. So I didn't have a model. And I think a lot of boys didn't. I'm not saying it's easier for women, but I feel like for men, it was like.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Zero.

• 56:42Lewis Howes?

  Zero model. And again, maybe it was there and I just wasn't able to see it, but I don't remember seeing it. And so when I opened up at 30 about it, I still was like, I feel like I'm the only one in the world. Cause I just never seen it. Or maybe I was just resistant to seeing it, whatever it is.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:00Lewis Howes?

  I know Oprah did something with a bunch of men.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  I was just gonna mention that.

• 57:02Lewis Howes?

  But I didn't see that.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  That was the first I ever saw that in my life.

• 57:04Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I don't even think I saw that because I wasn't watching Oprah at that time growing up, but. And so it's like, unless you're seeing it consistently, it's hard for us to like connect to any type of shame or vulnerability that happened to us with sexual trauma or divorce or whatever.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  If you never saw anyone else get divorced.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  You'd be like, my life is over.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 57:25Lewis Howes?

  If I'm the only one.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  I'm the only one.

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And so it's.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  This goes back to that like positive contagion, because I'm sure you've seen this in your life. Having been so vulnerable as you are, shared your story with such like tenderness and open-handedness and in such a public way, I can only imagine how many men have now come to you and said.

• 57:47Lewis Howes?

  Hundreds of men have emailed me essays about.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 57:50Lewis Howes?

  Them opening up.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Of course they have.

• 57:52Lewis Howes?

  And it was when I started opening up like eight, seven years ago, I guess. I had this emotional hangover for months. Because I didn't know how to handle the essays that came in from men saying, I'm 55, I've got, you know, I've been married for 20 years, I've got three kids, my wife doesn't know.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:10Lewis Howes?

  And I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  My gosh, it's heavy.

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  And just receiving it and feeling it, it's like, man, for months, it took me a while to like emotionally get back to kind of baseline.

• 58:21Lewis Howes?

  And I think. Yeah, I mean, we all need, whether it's men needing to talk about their traumas, women talking about their traumas, we all need a place where we can feel safe to talk about it.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:31Lewis Howes?

  In general.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:32Lewis Howes?

  Communities, groups, forums, whatever it is.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  It's not that complicated. Like, as we look at all this pent-up rage and trauma and absolute suffering that people are walking around with, turns out, sharing it with people is a pretty low-hanging fruit solution.

• 58:52Lewis Howes?

  It's not expensive?

• 58:53Speaker 01

  It's not.

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to go anywhere to do it?

• 58:55Speaker 01

  It's effective immediately.

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  It helps release pain?

• 58:59Speaker 01

  It's really the solution I think we're all looking for.

• 59:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  It's just tricky because somebody has to go first, you know?

• 59:07Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard to go first, the courage.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  Somebody has to go first, the courage. But then, it's exciting because it's such a ripple effect, like what you have set off in the lives of all those men. You know that so many of them went back, they told their wives, they told their children.

• 59:21Lewis Howes?

  They started to heal and...

• 59:22Speaker 01

  They went to counseling, they did the work, their friends started to come to them and say, "Me too. Thank you for saying that, I've never told anybody." It just, the effects of that, the domino effects are really so powerful. We can all do this, this isn't just the work of influencers. This is just the work of humanity.

• 59:38Lewis Howes?

  It is, it is.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  I believe in that, I really believe in that, and I think setting that example constantly for our communities of sincerity, of tenderness, of vulnerability, is probably more powerful than we'll probably ever even know.

• 59:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I know.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  You know, that that sort of courage gets seeded in the hearts of our people, and we just don't even know what they go back and do with it. It's exciting to think of.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the biggest challenge that women face today? Women in their, like, women after their late twenties face today? Whether they're single, married, and have kids or not, but just a generation not in school, you know, after school.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Man.

• 1:00:22Lewis Howes?

  What is the biggest thing that women get to let go of, that they're holding on to?

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  You know, we're somewhere in the middle of a lot of shifting, which is exciting. I feel like I am both... A member of a generation getting to watch in real time. Some incredible shifts for women.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  By any measure.

• 1:00:43Lewis Howes?

  When did this start? What was the catalyst? Was this pre Me Too? Was this feminist movement, Me Too?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it would be unfair to ever say like, it just started on our watch. You know, we owe the women before us a huge debt of gratitude. Generations before us, our moms, our grandmas, our great grandmas.

• 1:01:01Lewis Howes?

  They went through crap.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  They went to the mat. They went to the mat.

• 1:01:06Lewis Howes?

  I'm not trying to laugh at it, but it's just like, they had to go through a lot of crap.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 1:01:09Lewis Howes?

  For the world to get to where it's at now.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  The gains that they made, like, at the base level, created ultimately a foundation for, I think, our generation, not just to stand on something sturdy, but to climb. Really, it's exciting. And of course, you know, two of my girls or daughters, I've got a 20-year-old, I have a 14-year-old. And watching their age group, I'm like, oh, it's a completely different day, like.

• 1:01:34Lewis Howes?

  What are they doing that's different?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  They're unafraid. It's interesting.

• 1:01:38Lewis Howes?

  Like, I can do whatever I want, I can create.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  They are smart. We've been telling them since the day they were born, that they're equal to men, that they are just as smart, that they are just as capable, that they can do anything, you know. We've been telling them that since they were on a bottle. And they believed us. They believed us. And so, they are growing up with these dreams that are not encumbered by fear and by sort of feminine stereotypes as much as we did. They are absolutely not interested in joining the patriarchy as a co-conspirator, right? As just a submissive partner to the patriarchy. No, thank you. They'd rather be single.

• 1:02:23Lewis Howes?

  Find a conscious partnership or a conscious relationship.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  And the boys are kind of coming up like that, too.

• 1:02:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  So, it's interesting to watch some of the. Deep painful work of the last few generations really take root right now. That said, still have a lot to do. Pay parity is still a disaster and we can't have this conversation. I can't even speak for women personally because I am still so incredibly privileged. I live in almost every category that's favored except being a man. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm charismatic.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  Well, that's debatable.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  It is debatable.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  I make money, I'm educated, I have the look, so I'm...

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  You have no state tax, yeah.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Never moving. So, I mean, when we start talking about like the pay disparity for women of color, when we start talking about what it looks like for Hispanic women who are at the absolute bottom of the pile. You know, we have a long way to go. We are still not there. I'm hopeful and excited to begin to watch

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  what our representation looks like at the government level shift. It's more women than ever right now representing us. That's good because we're half the country. So, it would make sense that we would see more women in leadership in state and federal government. And so, for me, that's incredibly exciting to watch those numbers just tick up every single election. That's gonna matter, that's gonna matter. Our girls are watching that too. The having women's voices at the table, particularly women's of colors' voices, is going to be an absolute change agent. And so, we gotta keep our foot on the gas, but we are, so that's the good news.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  This is a really fun time to be a woman in leadership because my colleagues that kind of do more or less what I do, we're sort of in this work together. What in the world? Best, best, best women on earth. And so, that these are the role models for my girls, I'm hopeful, incredibly hopeful. My girls don't know that they're supposed to play it small. That would never occur to them. Yeah.

• 1:04:43Lewis Howes?

  That's awesome. And what would you say is the biggest limiting belief that you get to still let go of?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Me?

• 1:04:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Me personally? How rude. How dare you ask me personal questions on your podcast.

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  The one that you feel like is, uh, maybe you're not even aware of it, but something you feel like's gonna keep holding you back from your greatest self if you keep holding on to this limiting belief.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Uh huh, uh huh. That's a great question. Probably, I would say that a limiting belief that I continue to kind of cling to is that some of the choices that I've made historically, some of the ways that I have related to important people that I love, kids,

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  are going to, I'll never be free of them. I'm gonna pay those, I'm gonna pay the price. I don't even know what the price is yet. I'm still waiting for some of those shoes to drop because remember how I'm in charge of everybody? Um, and that something about my life is going to hit a ceiling because of things I got wrong. I still think it. I tell people not to think that. I tell people it's not true.

• 1:05:58Lewis Howes?

  But you're still thinking it.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  But I still think it. I still think that some of the ways in which I failed myself, I failed other people, things I didn't know, practices I didn't have in place yet, ways in which I could have responded completely differently are gonna somehow bend the arc of possibility.

• 1:06:21Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. For other people, for myself, and that I'll never really have full absolution from it and be like, "I just didn't know that yet," as Chris would say. "I just didn't know that yet." So I still worry deeply that I've gotten enough wrong that I'm gonna pay for it.

• 1:06:38Lewis Howes?

  If your daughter said that to you, what would you say to her?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  I know, it's absurd. I hear it. I hear that coming through her mouth and I'm like, "You're acting crazy. You're acting crazy." This is just four-plus decades of conditioning for me. Um, I grew up in a Christian subculture.

• 1:06:55Lewis Howes?

  What's a subculture mean of Christian?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Meaning...

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  A subculture of our greater culture at large, so it has its own set of rules.

• 1:07:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Its own operating procedure, um, its own hierarchies, which are very well-known. Girls at the absolute bottom. And one of the things that I learned early on in a hundred different ways, was that girls were responsible for the bad behavior of others.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Girls were responsible for the bad behavior, particularly of boys and men. And so.

• 1:07:28Lewis Howes?

  About how they.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  If you were harmed by one, how were you, what were you wearing? Did your, did you have a spaghetti strap on? You know, like, um, what did you say? Because.

• 1:07:39Lewis Howes?

  So the blame was back on you.

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  Always. And, and, and our system reinforced that because men were always protected and victims were blamed and ostracized. So we.

• 1:07:49Lewis Howes?

  Is this the Christian community you're talking about?

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Um, and so I learned some pretty destructive messages pretty early on that women, girls and women were responsible for their own bad choices and they were also responsible for everyone else's bad choices.

• 1:08:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's crazy.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  It is. Steep, steep root, hard to pull up. Um, and so, uh, that's still a largely patriarchal world.

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  How does, how does a, a Christian woman, who maybe was raised with the similar beliefs, still love their faith, but let go of the beliefs of the religious.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:29Lewis Howes?

  That held them down and made them play, well, not made them, but influenced them that it was their fault.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  It's a great question.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  How do you not get out of that and say, well, I'm just not gonna be a Christian?

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Lewis Howes?

  Or do you say that and say, I'm gonna set a new standard for myself, a new set of beliefs that work for me and my family and my life?

• 1:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 1:08:45Lewis Howes?

  Without making someone wrong or bad, but.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  If you kind of peeked into this subculture, as I called it, particularly around my age, more or less.

• 1:08:56Lewis Howes?

  Which, well, like, 31, right?

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  That's right. You got it, you nailed it.

• 1:08:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  You would see this whole generation of people who are going through or considering going through this sort of spiritual deconstruction. And talk about painful. Laying some of that down is terrifying and it feels like, are my, is this bad? Am I betraying something precious? But one thing, I've been doing this work for years and so I'm on the other side of that quagmire. But it's not the very beautiful, loving, beating heart of faith that I'm pushing hard on. It's the systems.

• 1:09:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  It's the structures. It's all the man-made stuff wrapped around it. That was obviously, just like any other system we have, steeped in white supremacy, steeped in misogyny, power, privilege, hierarchy. It's no different than any other system we're looking at right now with critical eyes. And so having to really do this work of integrity of parsing that out is challenging.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  So hard, right?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  It's really challenging, like what goes and what stays, you know?

• 1:10:10Lewis Howes?

  Is this why you feel like some of the younger generation is like, I'm just not going to church?

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Oh, 100%.

• 1:10:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'm just learning other spiritual practices on my own and not being in a system?

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  The data is unambiguous. The next generation, having already been taught to question systems, having already really frankly been very let down by authority. They've been let down by their parents. They've been let down by government.

• 1:10:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  They have been

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  Religious leaders.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Let down by religious leaders and by the religion, period. And so they're a little bit more, they're critical thinkers at an earlier age than you and I learned to be that. I didn't move into critical thinking until I was grown.

• 1:10:47Lewis Howes?

  You just obeyed the rules?

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Of course. I was an A-plus girl. I mean, you give me a rule.

• 1:10:52Lewis Howes?

  I was like a D minus, but I was like, trying to

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  I loved rules. I loved, give me a rule. I never met a rule I didn't like.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  And so I was set up to flourish in that system on the outside, but I died on the inside.

• 1:11:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Speaker 01

  And so that is, oh, that's a, that's a heavy lift.

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  And but a good one.

• 1:11:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  And what I've discovered is that I have emerged with so much less shame than I grew up with. Um, cause shame and fear are the two levers to pull. They work too, they're powerful incentives.

• 1:11:26Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  And belonging, shame, fear and belonging. Those three things, it, you just can touch the button and it'll work.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  And so putting aside, setting aside the concern about, I'm gonna lose my belonging. I'm afraid of this and I'm ashamed of where I'm at is wow. But it's, it's freedom, I'll tell you that. It's exciting. Um, feel really free in that for sure. And so that is, so back to your original question, that's a limiting belief of mine because I learned it from, I mean, I used to go to church three times a week as a fetus.

• 1:12:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? So I, those are deep, deep, deep waters for me.

• 1:12:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow. A couple of final questions for you. Before I ask them, I want people to get your book, Fierce, Free and Full of Fire.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  I tried to just name it something impossible. Nobody, nobody can say it or remember it.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  Fierce Free and Full of Fire. Yeah, you got it. The guide to being glorious you. Um, and is there anything in this book that you wish you would have written now? After going through more and more of this uncovering and experiences in your life.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  You know what's funny?

• 1:12:32Lewis Howes?

  That isn't in here yet.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  That book came out last April. Terrible time for a book to launch. I don't know if you know that. I don't know if that seems clear. Um, came out last April. My life fell apart.

• 1:12:43Lewis Howes?

  After the book.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  In July.

• 1:12:45Lewis Howes?

  And I'm not laughing at this.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Right? It's just, this is, this is so lifelike.

• 1:12:51Lewis Howes?

  You gotta laugh sometimes.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Fell apart in July and I was just absolute, I was in the ER for several months, couldn't even, I mean, the emotional ER.

• 1:13:00Lewis Howes?

  I was gonna say the physical ER.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  Sorry, emotional ER. Um, so I picked this book back up probably in December, having emerged just a hair. And I was like, holy Lord, what did I write in here? You know, like what did I write? Did I, what did I say? Having now, I am in a completely different place in December than I was in April when it came out. What did I say? And like with trepidation, I opened that book and I was like, oh. It's all true.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's good.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  Every page.

• 1:13:28Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  It all held.

• 1:13:30Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  Every bit of it. And when I read it through the lens of what I experienced, it's as if I wrote it in real time.

• 1:13:37Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  It's in there. It's in, I knew it.

• 1:13:39Lewis Howes?

  So it was everything you needed to hear for yourself?

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  I had what I, I had what I needed.

• 1:13:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  I'd learned it, I'd shared it, I'd written it. It was in there. I was so relieved to find out that that book held up.

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  Well, that's nice.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Lewis Howes?

  Were you able to use the thing?

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Totally, I read it cover to cover.

• 1:13:55Lewis Howes?

  And you started to apply it?

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  It was like I taught myself, cover to cover. Yes.

• 1:14:00Lewis Howes?

  That's good, that's good. Well, I want people to get the book.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:03Lewis Howes?

  Fear's Free and Full of Fire, The Guide to Being Glorious You. If you want to be inspired and entertained and learn more, you've also got a great podcast that I've been on. I'm not sure what episode that was, but people can check out your podcast and it's called For the Love Podcast, right? For the Love Podcast. You're all over social media, Jen Hatmaker. What's the main channel that people?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Probably the main two are like probably Facebook and Instagram.

• 1:14:27Lewis Howes?

  Facebook and Instagram, yeah, okay. That's your jam?

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my jam.

• 1:14:30Lewis Howes?

  You're launching YouTube, you've launched?

• 1:14:31Speaker 01

  I go to Twitter when I'm feeling very spicy.

• 1:14:33Lewis Howes?

  All right.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  When I want to get in trouble and maybe get in a fight.

• 1:14:36Lewis Howes?

  Okay, okay. All right, there you go. So go to Twitter first.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Right, totally.

• 1:14:43Lewis Howes?

  I've got two final questions for you.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:45Lewis Howes?

  This one's called the three truths.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:47Lewis Howes?

  So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away from now.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  You get to live as, as long as you want to live, but eventually you got to turn the lights off.

• 1:14:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:57Lewis Howes?

  And you have accomplished and created every dream of yours.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:01Lewis Howes?

  For whatever reason, you got to take all your work with you.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:04Lewis Howes?

  Every book, every word, every video, audio, it's with you to the next place.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:15:10Lewis Howes?

  So we have none of your content available and you get to leave behind three things you know to be true. And this is all we would have of yours to remember you for the history

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:15:20Lewis Howes?

  of human existence. I know it's a big hypothetical scenario. Your three biggest lessons that you would leave behind, what would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  I would say, first of all, I would want people to hear from me that they were always worthy. They were always good enough, from the day they were born. They couldn't add or subtract a single thing from it.

• 1:15:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  I would want them to hear me say, "Your people matter most."

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  If you're gonna go to the grave or something, go for your relationships. The ones that you love, that's what'll last. That'll last long after a bestseller.

• 1:16:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  And then I think I would say, "Have a little bit more fun than you're having." Everybody calm down a little bit. This is it. We get one shot. That's it. I mean, do we really wanna end it going, "I wish I would've been worried more." You know? "I wish I would've gotten more arguments." "I wish I would've gotten the weeds more with my family members." Like, this is it. I know this now, 'cause I feel like I'm at about the halfway mark.

• 1:16:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  And I'm like, "Whoa." This thing zips past. So, have a little bit more fun. We get these days on this beautiful earth. That's it. There, that's my life's thesis. You forced me to think of it.

• 1:16:50Lewis Howes?

  That's the next book.

• 1:16:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think we don't have fun?

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  We're such worried little creatures. Our poor little mangled minds. We just worry and we fret and we squeeze and we fuss and we and we rage. And we are just so extensively in crisis all the time. And I just wonder if this life wasn't meant to be full of love and joy and

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  Possibility and happiness. I just think we're getting it a little bit wrong. So, life is hard. None of us get out of here unscathed. It is hard. I'm not a Pollyanna minimalist on the things that cause us suffering.

• 1:17:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 01

  But wow, what, I just know for a fact. I know for dead fact, when I'm 95, I just gave myself a lifespan.

• 1:17:44Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  When I'm 95 on my deathbed, I am not going to wish I worried about all the things I worried about. I bet I could get rid of 80% of it. I bet I could look backward and go, 80% of that was stupid.

• 1:17:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  It didn't matter. It didn't have longevity. It was imagined. I'll make up something to worry about. I'll invent it. I'll write a whole story.

• 1:18:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  It's not even real. So, I already know that. I already know that looking back from just my vantage point right now. So, it's gotta be true that we gotta let some shit go. Let's just, let's hang on to what matters and let's go. Let's just let go of as much as we can.

• 1:18:21Lewis Howes?

  Before I ask the final question Jen, I want to acknowledge you for, for being vulnerable, for showing up in the still messiness of everything in your life and being here, being raw, being real and not having it all figured out, but being in the process and showing yourself and talking about it.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:18:38Lewis Howes?

  So I think it's gonna inspire a lot of, a lot of my audience and people listening, that you don't have to have it all figured out. You can still be successful and create and build and grow and be in the journey of something that you're challenged with as well.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:18:51Lewis Howes?

  No matter what age you're at or how many books you've written about the thing, you can still feel and experience something and you probably will feel more of this for the rest of your life at different stages.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Pretty sure that's how this goes.

• 1:19:02Lewis Howes?

  So I acknowledge you.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:19:03Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate you for being here. I've got one final question and that is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  I think that my definition of greatness for me, again, I'm going back, I'm going to my 95-year-old self.

• 1:19:15Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Uh, the one who's gonna look back on a whole life. And it is going to be, I hope that all the people at my funeral, every single one of them is like, "Oh, she loved me so much."

• 1:19:28Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Like, she loved me so much, I was her favorite. I hope they all fight over who they think was my favorite. That they all think it was them, you know? That'd be great for me.

• 1:19:38Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  That'd be great for me.

• 1:19:39Lewis Howes?

  Jen, thank you. Appreciate it.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 1:19:41Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it. Amazing. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, spread the message of greatness to a friend or two right now. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this podcast and share it with friends, or use the link lewishouse.com/1113 to get the message out there to help other people be inspired as well. And I would love to hear your thoughts on the part you enjoyed the most about this episode. So please leave a review over on Apple Podcasts with your thoughts and leave us a rating as well while you're at it. And if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button to stay up to date from the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. And if you want inspiring text messages sent to your phone every single week to help you stay on track,

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  motivated, inspired with your goals, then text the word PODCAST at 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with this quote from Les Brown, who said, "You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream." Yes, my friend, no matter what stage of life you're at right now, it's always a good time to go after your goals and dreams because that's what makes you feel alive. That's what makes you feel excited, adventurous, courageous to go after what you want. So start planning, start taking action towards your goals and dreams. And I want to remind you, if no one's told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, you matter. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.