The 3 BIGGEST Relationship Mistakes You’re Making (& How to Fix Them!)

Have you saved your seats at Summit of Greatness 2024 yet?! Get them before they sell out at lewishowes.com/ticketsIn this episode of The School of Greatness, Lewis delves into the complexities of creating authentic relationships with three renowned relationship experts: Esther Perel, Michael Bungay Stanier, and Gary John Bishop. Esther Perel shares her insights on desire in long-term relationships and the changing dynamics of modern dating. She emphasizes the importance of shared values and the challenge of maintaining desire over time. Michael Bungay Stanier offers practical advice on becoming a better conversationalist, highlighting the power of curiosity and asking good questions to foster meaningful connections. Gary John Bishop discusses how to maintain individuality within relationships and the importance of personal responsibility in achieving a fulfilling partnership. Together, these experts provide a comprehensive guide to understanding and improving relationships by focusing on authenticity, communication, and self-awareness. In this episode you will learnThe biggest obstacles people face in relationships. The power of asking good questions to build rapport. Why even happy people sometimes cheat. How to maintain individuality within a relationship. The key to sustaining desire and romance in long-term relationships. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1646For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Esther Perel – https://link.chtbl.com/1546-podMichael Bungay Stanier – https://link.chtbl.com/1477-podGary John Bishop – https://link.chtbl.com/1251-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey everyone, this is Lewis Howes and I am so excited to invite you to the Summit of Greatness 2024, happening at the iconic Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. This is more than just an event, it's a powerful experience designed to ignite your passion, boost your growth, and connect you with a community of other inspiring achievers. Join us Friday, September 13th and Saturday, September 14th, for two days packed with inspiration and transformation from some of the most incredible speakers on the planet. Don't miss out on this chance to elevate your life, unlock your potential, and be part of something truly special. Make sure to get your tickets right now and step into greatness with us at the Summit of Greatness 2024. Head over to lewishouse.com/tickets and get your tickets today and I will see you there.

• 0:46Lewis Howes?

  Why are relationships seemingly so hard for so many people? When it's the thing we need the most, to feel alive, to feel happy, and to feel connected?

• 0:58Esther Perel?

  This is the million dollar question, you know? I'm a relationship therapist for 35 plus years. I work with people in their romantic relationships, family relationships, friendships, co-founder, colleagues, coworkers. So, love and work, the two pillars of our life, as Freud said. And if I could just say, why is the simple feeling of loving or caring not enough? Because the entire human drama is really complex. The same way as nature is complex, so is human nature complex. And I spent my whole career studying what is changing in relationships?

• 1:42Esther Perel?

  You know, are they more complicated today? Are they more painful today? You know, have our expectations changed? And that I have answers to. I don't have answers to why is it so, you know? But I do know-

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  Is it more complicated now, relationships than 50 or 100 years ago?

• 2:01Esther Perel?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 2:02Esther Perel?

  Why? For a very simple reason. For a long time, we live, and we still in many parts of the world, live in traditional societies where relationships are clearly codified.

• 2:13Esther Perel?

  There are clear rules, there are rules, there are obligations. There's a tight structure from which you can't get out, but it tells you clearly who you are, where you belong, where you rooted, and what's expected of you. And you don't have too much questions about whose career matters more, and who's gonna wake up to feed the baby, and who has a right to demand for sex. And what, and everybody, every husband knows exactly what they can ask from their wife, and the wife knows exactly what she should not tell her husband, and children know their place, and adults can all interact. All of this was super regulated. You know exactly that on Sunday you go to visit your family, and that you have to call your grandma, and that, and nobody had- And you go to church, or you go to any other religious institution

• 2:58Esther Perel?

  where you go to pray, to be with the community, etc. And you know what? Nobody needed to explain to you why it's important. You just went, because I said so. And because that's what you do. That's what we do. And that's what we don't do, because what will the neighbors say? And there is a community that looks over you all the time, and the streets are narrow like that, and everybody knows what's going on in the neighbor's house. Right now, your best friends could be breaking up, and you didn't even see it coming. Nobody knows what goes on in the neighbor's house. That's where Where Should We Begin became, I think, so powerful. It gave you back a sense of what actually goes on in other people's lives, so that you're not alone wondering,

• 3:42Esther Perel?

  "Am I the only one who's going through all of this?" This tight structure of our society has moved into what we call today network societies. Network societies is not tight knots, it's loose ends. It's loose threads with commitment that can be revoked at any moment. That's why your women are constantly writing to you. "I thought we had something," and the next day he disappears. I thought we had developed a sense of trust. You know, where is the care? Where is the loyalty? Where is the continuity? All these things that now are not just set, fixed. They all have to be negotiated. Everything that was a rule is now a negotiation, a conversation. Who is going to go to work? Who is, are we gonna move you to the west coast?

• 4:25Esther Perel?

  Or are you gonna move with me to the east coast? Are we gonna have children? Are we ready to have children? How many children? Do we even want children? You know, on and on and on. Am I happy at work? Oh, I could do better. Should I stay a few more months? Should I leave? Should I, you know, is this what I really want to do? Is this who I really am?

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  Is this my passion?

• 4:47Esther Perel?

  Is this my passion? You know, this identity quest the whole time? Is this who I want to be? Is this? And all of these questions are rather new questions. Why? Because in the past, or in other parts of the world today, you kind of know who you are. Seriously. You're the son of somebody. Even you're the son of somebody. It starts with that, Ben, you know? And you probably will even do what your father has done. If you are a man, and maybe not too much of any of the outside the house. If you are a woman, or you may begin a charting course of working outside the house. And all of these things are very, very normative.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  And now it's different.

• 5:30Esther Perel?

  We don't have any of that at this moment. We are, basically, I call it the identity economy. We spend our time trying to figure out, who am I? We have an enormous industry of self-help. You know, with this belief that we are self-made, that we can have self-fees, that we do self-care. It's this self, self, self that is so focused, such the center of everything, and so fragile. The freaking self has never been more fragile. We are constantly making sure that it doesn't get overwhelmed, that it doesn't get triggered, that it doesn't get violated, that it doesn't get shattered, because it stands there alone,

• 6:13Esther Perel?

  like the little Dutchman with his finger trying to hold back the dike. You know, and that is the times I think we are in at this moment. And there, that's the waters I think you swim in.

• 6:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Well, I think that's where suffering, inner suffering comes from on the surface, is when you obsessively think about yourself, when you're obsessively self-centric thinking all the time.

• 6:36Esther Perel?

  Trying to improve yourself and feeling not good enough.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:39Esther Perel?

  I think it's the combination, comparing. Now, I don't know that people didn't compare themselves when they all went and stood on the steps of the church on a Sunday morning. I think communities, people have always compared themselves, but there was a different type of social control, the one that we have on social media today. Social control has always existed. You know, so suffering is part of life. Community and not being alone is what helps us with all our experiences, definitely with suffering. I look at the disappointments of relationships and the struggles that we have. Why are they so challenging? What is the challenge? What can you do about it?

• 7:24Esther Perel?

  When is it you who can do something? And when do you have to realize the limitations that what you will do will not change another necessarily? When it does and when it doesn't? And how does this manifest at work and at home? You asked me how relationships have changed. I think we've never had more expectations of love and work than we do today. I think we expect today from love and work many things that we expected before from religion and from community. We want our relationships to be transformative, transcendent, meaningful, spiritual, purposeful, erotic, passionate, and we want it at home and we want it at work.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  How do we get it at work too?

• 8:07Esther Perel?

  Oh, because we want work to be purposeful today. We want work to, you know, to give me a sense of identity, of meaning, of self-fulfillment, of development. I don't just want to go to work only for the paycheck. I need the paycheck, but I also want the paycheck to be meaningful to me. Work has become...

• 8:30Esther Perel?

  An identity economy. It's not just what am I gonna do, it's who am I gonna be? And it parallels, it parallels, you know, what do we talk about at work? Transparency, belonging, authenticity, trust, psychological safety. I mean, when did the entire emotional vocabulary enter the workplace to such a degree that soft skills, what they used to be called, which are emotional and social skills, relational skills, which used to be seen as feminine skills? And feminine skills, you can idealize them in principle, but disregard them in reality.

• 9:12Esther Perel?

  And these soft skills have very quickly become the new hard skills. And that's why I'm working in the workplace. It's not because I have changed and I suddenly am interested in work. It's because work has changed and is suddenly interested in what I have been doing for decades.

• 9:28Lewis Howes?

  I love this. I'm gonna ask you a question that may be hard to answer, maybe it's easy. But you've had, you've seen a lot of intimate relationships work and fail over thirty-five plus years, right? What's the percentage of people in your mind who are in intimate, long-term relationships? Marriages or not married but together are actually happy most of the time? Thriving, beautiful, I'm sure there's challenges, but like they're able to work through them with semi-ease. How many relationships in your mind are super happy and thriving after decades? Of the changes of the times, society, work, family, all the dynamics that happen in life?

• 10:11Esther Perel?

  So I have two ways of answering it. The first one is cultural. Your definition of happy and thriving and fulfilled is probably very different than many other cultures. Where being healthy, having enough to eat. Having children, having grandchildren, having good jobs, being respected in the community.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  Is happy and thriving.

• 10:34Esther Perel?

  Is happy and thriving. It's not about you and I are talking on the couch and I'm pouring my hearts at you and you are telling me I'm the best thing that's ever happened to you in your life and all of that. Okay, so we

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  That's one version.

• 10:47Esther Perel?

  That's one version, is you have got to look at the word happiness and thriving really in a cross-cultural context. Because a lot of us, by the way, who have the new definition, have parents who think about marriage and what is a happy marriage with the other definition. And I'm wondering, you know, that maybe we are so unhappy because we want so many other things that are maybe not part of marriage.

• 11:11Lewis Howes?

  We have such high expectations.

• 11:12Esther Perel?

  We have super high expectations. I want, we want everything. We want a partner to be an entire community. My best friend, my trusted confidant, my passionate lover, my intellectual equal, my co-parent. And on top of it, I want with you to deal with all the vicissitudes of the everyday life and all of what we need to get to, all of that. And then we should also be passionate, great lovers, fantastic travelers, exactly. You know, and very few of us.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  Go dancing every week, yeah.

• 11:38Esther Perel?

  So Eli Finkel has a best answer for you on that.

• 11:42Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 11:42Esther Perel?

  He's a researcher on marriage. And basically what he says is that the good relationships of today are better than the relationships of history. But they're very few. Because the good, what you call that happiness is the top of the Olympus. It's climbing the mountain. And at the top of the mountain, the view is fantastic, but the air is also thinner. And not everybody can climb the mountain. The people who get to the top, their top is probably better than the tops of the past. And now, what is the top? It used to be that marriage was for survival. Then it became a romantic enterprise. And it became what I call the service economy, from the production economy to the service economy.

• 12:26Esther Perel?

  You want children, but no longer just eight, so you only want two. So sexuality becomes for pleasure and connection, so it becomes a service economy. It's no longer a production. And then from there, you go into identity, which is what? I want to become the best version of myself and you're gonna help me do so. That's the identity story of marriage. And that goes up the Maslow ladder. Now, if I ask a question differently, I actually wanted to write that very article. About ten, fifteen years ago, I set out to write a piece, "What are creative couples?" And do you know, because creative was the word I was interested in. Not so much happy, passionate, but creative.

• 13:08Esther Perel?

  Meaning, not stable, not solid. But what is this thing, creativity, the spark? And I went and I asked almost a hundred people, "Do you know couples that inspire you? Do you know couples that you think have that spark still?" And the frightening thing was that the majority of people could sometimes come up with one, maybe two, and that was it.

• 13:35Esther Perel?

  You know, they knew people who were very good at renovations and people who were great parents together and people who were great business partners together. But that whole that you talk about, there were very few. And I thought, that is so sad, because here we are, we want something. I mean, if I say good business partners or business leaders, you would give me ten people who you think inspire you to run a company. Or authors, or musicians, or we all have a long list. Who can say what's your favorite musician? I mean, most of us have more than one. When it comes to intimate relationships, people have very few models.

• 14:14Esther Perel?

  Now, maybe it is because what they want is so high that there is very few models, actually. And that's probably the challenge of intimate relationships today.

• 14:25Lewis Howes?

  So how do we, how do we find, how do we create that in an intimate partner? Or is it setting a lower expectation for what we want, so that we don't?

• 14:36Esther Perel?

  It's both. I think sometimes if you lower your expectations, you're much better off, no doubt. So, back to Eli Finkel's research, calibrating expectations is probably one of the most, the three main things for what he calls successful relationships. And calibrating doesn't mean you lower your expectations necessarily, but you also diversify them. You don't ask one person to give you what a whole village should actually give you.

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  Right. Okay, that was the first thing, what's the second, you said there's three things?

• 15:07Esther Perel?

  So, one is the calibration of the expectation, two is the diversification.

• 15:13Esther Perel?

  And three, which is the one that very much speaks to me, is doing new things.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  With your partner?

• 15:20Esther Perel?

  With your partner. That if you do the things that you enjoy, that's really nice, that's comfortable, that's cozy, that solidifies the friendship. But if you want to create intensity, it demands risk-taking, doing new things outside of your comfort zone, a little bit more on the edge.

• 15:39Lewis Howes?

  How often should we be doing new things with our intimate partner?

• 15:43Esther Perel?

  I think as often, I mean, look, the answer to this is very simple. Often enough, but not too often that you become chaotic and you dysregulate. Right now, you're asking me a systemic question. This is true for an individual, a relationship, or a company. If you don't change or grow, you fossilize and you die. If you change too much, too fast.

• 16:07Lewis Howes?

  No stability.

• 16:08Esther Perel?

  If you have no stability, you go chaotic and you dysregulate. So how often, it depends on where you are at in your life. Are you the two of you? Do you have kids? Do you have little ones? Do you have aging parents? Are you taking care of somebody? What else is going on here? We'll tell you if this is a period where you need more stability, or if this is a period where it's time to go and be curious and explore and discover and go into the world and launch.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  Right. If you're a young thirty-something female, I get this all the time from a lot of women who reach out to me, who are ending relationships that were really stressful for them, or they've been single for years and they're trying to figure out how do they find the right person, or how do they create the right relationship for them that's going to be a long-term partner? If you're a female in your young thirties, what should they be thinking about? Like, should they be focusing first on themselves, growing themselves? Or what are the things they should be looking for? In the right partner.

• 17:06Esther Perel?

  I just wrote my current blog, which is a little bit of a critique of this taking care of yourself first.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 17:14Esther Perel?

  So, because you learn to love yourself in the context of your relationships with others. You know, this idea that you go first to work on yourself here and then you prepare this little, nice little package and you bring it to relationships, that is completely off, actually. It's interactive. You do, you need a good amount of self-awareness, but you also need to be in relationships because it's people who help you become more aware.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Practicing it.

• 17:42Esther Perel?

  Practicing it, but other people let you see who you are. It's by being with others that you get to know who you are, not just by sitting there alone and say, "Who am I? Who am I?" But this is a relational perspective on life, and I will stand by that. Read the newsletter. I really poured myself into that one because I'm tired a little bit of this. No, what I will say to you, I'm tired of the "go fix yourself"

• 18:08Lewis Howes?

  First, then go be in a relationship.

• 18:10Esther Perel?

  Relationships help you to become who you are. That's what happens between children and their caregivers. The next thing is, instead of constantly thinking, "Who's the right person I'm gonna find", why don't you ask yourself, "Who do you wanna be?"

• 18:24Esther Perel?

  Who should the other one be? No, maybe it's on occasion, ask, "Who will I be as a partner? Who have I been till now in my relationships? How have I shown up? What is it that I do?" Not just, you know, finding the right person. That's... No. What does it mean to find the right person? And there I will say, the simplest way of looking at it is this: There are many people you will love,

• 18:50Esther Perel?

  and they are not necessarily the same people that you will make a life with. Are you looking for a love story? Or are you looking for a life story?

• 19:00Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 19:00Esther Perel?

  You understand?

• 19:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:01Esther Perel?

  There are many people have had love stories. This is a whole different story. I never thought for a minute I would live with these people. It takes something else to have a partner in life with whom you're gonna go through the pains, the sufferings, the challenges, the, you know, the, the, all of that.

• 19:16Lewis Howes?

  Can you have a life partner and still have a love story?

• 19:18Esther Perel?

  Of course, of course. You want the life partner to be a love story too. But the love stories per se are not life stories. It's different ingredients. It's different values. There's some things that you don't need in order to have a beautiful love story with someone. It, it lives in its encapsulated version on its own. You're not thinking, can I do this with you? Can I get old with you? Can I take you to my parents? Can, can, you know, do we share similar? It's about values life, not just about feelings. So when you're looking for the right person, it's not just what attracts you.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  What do you think would be the three questions, based on your personal experience in the Coaching Habit, but also how to work with anyone, that every person should ask their partner before getting married? To try to set themselves up for a conscious loving relationship, knowing that there's gonna be, you know, ups and downs in life. But set yourself up for the best possible relationship.

• 20:19Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Well, really, I'm going to take one of the questions from the book, which is the fifth question, fifth and final question, which is, how will we fix it when things go wrong? The repair question.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 20:30Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And, you know, I just acknowledge all the work of the great people like Esther Perel and Terry Reel and John Gottman and Dan Siegel, these kind of giants in the world of intimate relationships who, who really studied this for years. And as I was writing this book and kind of re-immersing myself in all of their material again.

• 20:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Two things became really clear. The relationships that last are the ones that get repaired. And most of us are not very good at repairing relationships. You know, most of us, we, we break far easier than we think. You know, we are like, oh, I feel a bit broken, a bit betrayed, a bit let down. And so many of us either do fight or flight or, um, what's the other one?

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  Flee.

• 21:20Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You know, uh, uh, Terry Real.

• 21:23Lewis Howes?

  Freeze.

• 21:24Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah. Terry Real said it was, um, uh, freeze and flee are two options. But the third one that he suggests, which I really like is fix.

• 21:33Lewis Howes?

  Fight, flight, fix.

• 21:35Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Fix, which is kind of moving into rescue mode.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:38Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Like, if you know the drama triangle, which is, um, comes from a, a psychologist called Stephen Carpenter. He's like, when relationships get dysfunctional, three roles play out. There's the victim, there's the persecutor, and there's the rescuer. And they're all equally dysfunctional. Rescuer sounds better than victim and persecutor. It's just as screwed up as the other two.

• 21:58Lewis Howes?

  It is, yeah.

• 21:59Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And they're all reactive ways of behaving and they keep the relationship stuck in dysfunction.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:06Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And in fight and flight and fit, you actually have the brain description of those three roles. So I reckon.

• 22:16Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 22:16Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Cause when you, when you, when you're like, in the first two years of marriage, really, and all the years that you have to it, it's like, this is amazing. She's amazing, I'm amazing, we're amazing. This is, and, and you kind of hiccup, so like, minor stuff that we get over that because everything else is going on for us. It's fantastic. But after two years, it's like, okay, the veil drops a little bit. You kind of get clear on other things and there, it will go off the rails somewhere, you know? It might be an explosion, it might be a dent or a crack or a bend or something, but something will happen. So I would say, uh, you know, I wish I'd, I wish I'd asked this question because I didn't. How will we fix it when things go wrong? How will we fight?

• 23:00Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You know, how will we fight in a way that will not, um, break us? But will kind of be a, a, a source of learning and growth and clearing and kind of resetting.

• 23:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think, I think my friend Jay Shetty talked about this in his recent book.

• 23:18Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Where it was about. You know, the success of a relationship is in how well you fight.

• 23:25Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 23:25Lewis Howes?

  And how how successful you can fight together.

• 23:28Michael Bungay Stanier?

  I think so, yeah.

• 23:30Lewis Howes?

  And not hurt each other too far beyond repair, which is the repair question.

• 23:34Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Lewis Howes?

  How will you fix it when things go wrong? And I think it's, you know, death by a thousand paper cuts.

• 23:40Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You can be.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  Where you hurt someone little by little, it's just like, I just don't care anymore.

• 23:44Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  If you don't learn to repair it. I think that's key in intimate relationships, family relationships, friendships, career. It's like repairing these things. When you maybe feel like there was something that wasn't good, but I think. The challenge is asking this repair question, how will you fix it when things go wrong? It might be easy to say, oh, when things go wrong, I'm gonna be fine and I will apologize. I'm gonna do all these things.

• 24:11Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  But then when that time comes two years later.

• 24:13Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 24:14Lewis Howes?

  You're like, screw you.

• 24:15Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Exactly.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  You're horrible and I'm not talking to you for a week.

• 24:18Michael Bungay Stanier?

  But his magic.

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  You may not remember what you said.

• 24:21Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You probably won't. But that's not the magic of that question. The magic of that question is it says things will go wrong.

• 24:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Michael Bungay Stanier?

  It's an acknowledgement that this the honeymoon moment is going to pass. And that things will get hard and you get a chance to revisit it. So I think.

• 24:39Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Getting getting people's best guesses about how they're gonna fix it when they go wrong. That's helpful. And, you know, if they can pull some of that off, then everybody everybody benefits. But. It does. What I think is the real hidden power of that question is it says it will go wrong. And we're acknowledging that now. And when we say, how will we fix it when things go wrong? We're acknowledging a shared commitment to wanting to fix it. And when it does go wrong, it's something that you can say is going wrong.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 25:10Michael Bungay Stanier?

  We can actually talk about it going wrong because it's been raised before.

• 25:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And I think it's that that permission and shared commitment. That actually can be part of the real magic of that question.

• 25:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and maybe you can say like, it's not going wrong, we're just not in alignment or something is off or whatever might be happening. And I think this is one of the reasons why I really. Love hearing stories about. World-class athletes, Navy SEALs, MMA fighters.

• 25:39Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  Because they talk about. Preparing for challenging situations and how am I going to get out of the challenging situation? You know, usually as an athlete, it's more of a solo sport or a team sport, but you know, the MMA fighter doesn't just train standing on his feet punching when he's healthy.

• 25:57Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  And in the best position.

• 26:00Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  He trains upside down.

• 26:02Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  With his neck against the cage.

• 26:05Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Lewis Howes?

  With one arm behind his back, getting punched in the face over and over again.

• 26:08Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Now solve this.

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  Saying, how do I get out of this?

• 26:11Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right, exactly.

• 26:12Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't say, I'll be fine, I'll never be in this situation. And it's like same thing with Navy SEALs. They train for, okay, here is the, the mission and here's the best case scenarios. Like this is the plan.

• 26:23Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  But what is the backup plan when everything goes wrong?

• 26:26Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right, right.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  When this person goes, gets hurt, when this doesn't work out, then what do we do? And I think when we prepare and acknowledge something's going to go wrong, we're not going to go a hundred percent according to plan in intimacy and career and relationships. What can I do and take ownership of to be responsible for my part? And how can I get back into alignment? And I think that's a powerful thing with this question, the repair question.

• 26:51Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah, to your point, there's that quote, maybe from the SEALs. I know James Clear, Pinky was it as well, which is like, we don't rise to the occasion. We, we fall to the level of our training or the level of our systems.

• 27:02Lewis Howes?

  The level of our habits or yeah, yeah.

• 27:04Michael Bungay Stanier?

  So because there's variations on it, but it's like you prepare for them, for the, the mess of it. But for me, just the permission, like I didn't have this conversation with my wife. I've been with my wife for 30 years. Met in, in.

• 27:20Lewis Howes?

  How'd you fool her?

• 27:21Michael Bungay Stanier?

  I know. She was, she was dazed and confused. But we had both arrived in England to study and we had both left pretty bad relationships behind. She was going through a divorce. I'd made a mess of the previous relationship I had in part because she was in Australia. I was going to Oxford and it was all getting complicated. And we ended up sitting next to each other on a bus from Oxford to Stratford upon Avon. You go and see some Shakespeare play. And it's a long and windy road and we'd been dating like maybe two or three dates. It was really, really early on. And we just somehow fell into this conversation about what are we, what are we up for? Like I was 25, she was 36. So we were kind of old enough to go.

• 28:05Michael Bungay Stanier?

  We wanna, we wanna figure this out. We, we're like, it's not, we're, we're not kids anymore. We've got a bit of experience. Let's actually try and do this. So we actually had this conversation. It was like amazing and excruciating at the same time, not least because we're in the back of a bus and we're, we're both feeling carsick. And maybe other things as well. But we're like, you know, this is what I've learned from um my past relationships. Like I was saying, look, here's what I've learned from the relationships that I've screwed up. I have a way of disappearing into my own head and taking that other person for granted. And she's like, great, because I will kill you if that happens. And I'm like, that's really helpful to understand.

• 28:44Michael Bungay Stanier?

  She's like, that just won't happen on my watch. And that is true. Very hard to pull that off with, with Marcela. Um, but we, we, before we had any of this structure, before I'd figured any of this out, I just kind of got lucky or maybe desperate. Cause I really fancied her. I'm like, I don't want to screw this one up. I screwed up the last few. I want this to be great. We actually had this conversation, kind of tapping into the good date and the bad date questions that you're talking about, which is like, what can we learn from the past? Because both the good and the bad dates, those patterns will repeat. They'll keep showing up again in the future. So why don't you be explicit about it with each other so that you can navigate around it? So you can know where the hotspots are going to be. So you can give yourself the best preparation to say,

• 29:30Michael Bungay Stanier?

  this is how we can recover from this. This is how we'll repair this. We don't really have blow up fights. We have kind of separating moments where I'm like, I get into my own head. I take her for granted. We do that. And I'm like, how do we fix that when that's happening?

• 29:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:44Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And that would have been a healthier conversation. We figured this out, but that would have been a healthier conversation earlier if we could have got to that.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure. If you're in an intimate relationship.

• 29:54Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Lewis Howes?

  Not a working relationship, but an intimate relationship. I think that's, you know, you have one of these questions, which is the, the good date question. What can you learn from successful past relationships versus? What can you learn from frustrating past relationships? I think that's kind of interesting to ask in intimacy. Exactly. As well, like, what was the part of your previous relationship that really was great? And maybe you don't need to go into these details of like. Exactly. But what was? Too much information. Maybe that you were able to communicate effectively, or you guys had calm, you know, resolution when there was conflict, or what is the things that you enjoyed that worked really well? And what were things that didn't work well? And I think you get a better frame of mind. I agree. Understanding around, okay, how do we create our own agreement? What are our own boundaries, our agreements?

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  I'm just trying to think about all the things that I did with Martha, my, my girlfriend, which is essentially the opposite of everything I've ever done before. Um, the thing, and listen, I'm, we're two years in, so I'm not 30 year marriage. So I'm, you know, sharing that information because some people might say, well, wait till five years, wait till 10 years, all these things. But the thing that really made me say, oh, this is, this is my partner, right? And I could really feel safe emotionally, spiritually, physically safe with this person. It's early on, I said, listen, um, I've made a lot of mistakes in my past relationships.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  And none of my past relationships have worked. But in each one of them, I wanted to do therapy when they weren't working. Right. And the partners that I chose never wanted to do therapy with me. Right. They were resistant. They, it took a year and a half, two years of like it not working and me saying, hey, can we do this and find support? Yeah. And they never wanted to do it.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  And I said, listen. This isn't really an ultimatum, but I want to feel emotionally safe. Would you be open to going to therapy in the beginning of the relationship? Not when things have problems in the future, but can we go together now?

• 32:00Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  She was like, a hundred percent, that'd be amazing. I'm, I'm down for whatever. She was like, I've always wanted to do that too.

• 32:06Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Lewis Howes?

  I felt like, okay, just her acknowledging that.

• 32:10Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  And then us doing it has been a beautiful foundational process of a safe space to, to talk about maybe touchy or uncomfortable conversations to create boundaries, agreements and commitments. Which has not, you know, removed all friction or, or conflict, but has removed a lot of it. And given us a lot more grace and flexibility and freedom to have courage to communicate. When there's something that, ah, that didn't feel right, let's talk about it.

• 32:46Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  And that was a beautiful thing, just asking that question. So I don't know what that question is, it's not the therapy question, but it's more like,

• 32:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Hey, are you open to having outside support?

• 32:58Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 32:58Lewis Howes?

  And having these conversations.

• 33:00Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah, it's really powerful.

• 33:01Lewis Howes?

  And so for me, that was, that was a beautiful, beautiful, yeah, beautiful conversation.

• 33:07Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Well, you know, the question it relates to in the book is the bad day question.

• 33:10Lewis Howes?

  Bad day.

• 33:11Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Which is what can we learn from frustrating past relationships? And it's like, and this, this is my words, not yours, Lewis, but it's like, when the relationship was hard, I didn't feel like I had the support I needed and I didn't feel the other person was as committed to repair or fixing it than I was. And that's what I really want in this. And, you know, there's a, there's a definition of, of like an adult to adult relationship. An adult relation, adult to adult relationship is being able to ask for what you want. Knowing that the answer might be no. You know, you don't get, always get what you want, but being able to ask for what you want is a really rare thing. And a really powerful thing. And, you know,

• 33:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You know, it just feels like from your story, it's like what I've learned is I've figured out what I want. And I've got the courage to ask for what I want, and that's made all the difference.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  And the courage to walk away, you know, the steady question, what are your practices and preferences? You know, I was very clear with her in the beginning of us dating. Really, in the first couple of days of meeting each other, I said, this is who I am.

• 34:17Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 34:18Lewis Howes?

  This is my vision. This is where I'm heading.

• 34:21Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  This is what I will be doing, and this is what I will not be doing.

• 34:24Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  And I will not be living this type of relationship or this type of life.

• 34:29Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:29Lewis Howes?

  If you want to put me into some stereotypical box of certain relationships, that's not me.

• 34:34Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:34Lewis Howes?

  That doesn't mean I'm going to be, you know, out of alignment with a monogamous relationship, but I'm a driven human being.

• 34:40Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Lewis Howes?

  I'm, you know, I run this business. I've got a vision.

• 34:45Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  That is going to take a certain amount of energy and effort.

• 34:48Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 34:48Lewis Howes?

  And she asked me a question early on, which essentially is, what are your preference, what are your preference questions? She said, what are your priorities?

• 34:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  And I never had the courage before to be honest.

• 35:01Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 35:01Lewis Howes?

  With my priorities.

• 35:03Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  Now, this may evolve over time and anything else, but I said, listen.

• 35:09Lewis Howes?

  No woman wants to hear what I'm going to tell you. Are you sure you want the answer?

• 35:13Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  You sure you want the truth, right? It was kind of like my Tom Cruise moment. You can't handle the truth, right? I, I said, are you sure you want me to tell you the truth? She said, yes.

• 35:21Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  And I said, I don't think you're going to want to hang out with me after you hear this.

• 35:24Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 35:24Lewis Howes?

  Because no one in the past was able to handle it, was able to receive it.

• 35:29Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 35:30Lewis Howes?

  And so she said, yes. And I said, okay, well, it's been good knowing you, but here are my priorities.

• 35:36Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Good for you. A brave moment.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  Right. And I was like, but I wasn't willing to risk, I wasn't willing to, um, abandon myself anymore. Which is what I had always done. I'd abandon to make someone else feel okay, or safe, or secure, or whatever, as opposed to just, this is who I am. It may not mean we're not the right fit for each other.

• 35:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 35:55Lewis Howes?

  We're not the right match for this type of relationship.

• 35:57Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Let me show you my cards.

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:59Michael Bungay Stanier?

  And let's see how this goes.

• 36:00Lewis Howes?

  But I always lacked that emotional courage because I was afraid of hurting people.

• 36:03Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 36:04Lewis Howes?

  And I said, my priorities.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  My number one priority is my health.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  And no woman wants to hear that they're not the number one priority in a relationship.

• 36:16Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 36:17Lewis Howes?

  With an intimate partner, really.

• 36:18Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Lewis Howes?

  They don't like that. Most of them at least. And I said, my number two priority is not you or the relationship either. And no one wants to hear they're not number one or number two.

• 36:27Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 36:28Lewis Howes?

  Please, number two.

• 36:28Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Exactly. At least give me a silver medal, man.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, exactly. No, I said, my intimate relationship will be my third priority. Now, let me give context because I need my health to be a top priority so that I have more energy, focus, and value to you and to my second priority.

• 36:45Michael Bungay Stanier?

  That kind of foundational thing that allows everything else to be built, relationships and business.

• 36:49Lewis Howes?

  And to my second priority, which is my, my vision, my mission to serve people.

• 36:55Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 36:56Lewis Howes?

  And if you hold me back from my health.

• 36:58Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  And I feel unhealthy, I'm not gonna be good for you. If you hold me back from my purpose and you try to deter me from that, I'm gonna be resentful, frustrated, like antsy. But if you are in alignment that these are my top two priorities, you're gonna feel like the number one priority.

• 37:14Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Well, that's nice.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  And so it's creating that context and conversation, just setting the stage and just being like, can never pull me away from these things unless there's some emergency or whatever, but it can't be this, I don't want you going to the gym. I don't want you working on your mission. I don't want you. I need you here with me more. And I was like, I'm not that guy.

• 37:30Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  Maybe in 10 years, that'll change, and I will be.

• 37:34Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Well, what?

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  But right now, I'm not.

• 37:36Michael Bungay Stanier?

  What was the work you did that allowed you now to ask for what you want and be as clear as that?

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  I needed to heal a lot of my inner child wounds.

• 37:48Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Right.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  Really. And, and have a different relationship with my younger psychological self that never got to hear or be validated the way that I needed to validate it and never got to heal or mend painful memories. So it wasn't until I was able to mend the memories of the past and create new meaning around them.

• 38:09Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 38:10Lewis Howes?

  And create a sense of connection in an intimate relationship with my painful wounds.

• 38:15Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  Of repair. That's when I was like, okay, I am safe. I am free. I am peaceful as I am. I don't need to please you to feel loved and accepted and free. And I was able to say, okay, I'm happy alone if this relationship doesn't work.

• 38:35Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 38:35Lewis Howes?

  But I'm never going to abandon myself again. So that was a big part of it, having that healing journey and doing the therapeutic work on that.

• 38:46Michael Bungay Stanier?

  You can get Michael, stop interviewing me and stop and don't ask me about my, my partner, but I'm, I'm curious to know if you were able to ask her what she wanted, like what her priorities were.

• 38:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I asked her, yeah, really, really early on.

• 39:00Michael Bungay Stanier?

  Yeah.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  And she, you know, one of these, this conversation where she asked me about my priorities, she was like, I was like, what do you want? What's your vision? And what's your vision for intimate relationship, you know, a committed relationship long-term? Um, I've said this on the show before a few times, but I was like, you know, she said, well, I want to be married and have kids. And that's something that I want and I value. I said, okay, cool. Um, I value that as well, but I can't tell you that in the first couple of weeks that that's going to happen with us. So I need to feel safe. I need to feel time, a foundation. So if you're cool with that, knowing that maybe.

• 39:39Michael Bungay Stanier?

  It's a maybe. Yeah.

• 39:40Lewis Howes?

  But everything has to work out for me to feel like a yes. I can't, I can't commit right now.

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  What do you see is the difference maker for healthy, long-lasting love?

• 39:55Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  For decades versus those that stay married a long time but aren't happy?

• 40:00Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Lewis Howes?

  And those that eventually get divorced?

• 40:02Gary John Bishop?

  I think the statistics are something like 50%, right? So 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The illusion is, is that the 50% that are left are happy.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  No, they're not.

• 40:11Gary John Bishop?

  No, they're not.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  Maybe, maybe 15% or something.

• 40:13Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe, right? And we don't really know. I mean, like if you went and polled everybody, you might be even shocked. Part of the deal is the bar's very low. So the bar's something like we get along.

• 40:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:23Gary John Bishop?

  Like that's it. I've got T-shirts I get along with. What's it really all about? If that's the struggle, if the struggle is to get along, like I said, that's a very low bar.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  Get along with lots of people.

• 40:33Gary John Bishop?

  Right. Really what I've found to be the case, and it's not, I'm not looking at like particular people for examples, right? But I'm gonna look at like what keeps a human being involved in anything, right? So like, why does somebody like, so I love to play guitar. Why? Because I engage with that thing. I'm curious about that thing. I wanna get better at that thing. I like how it feels when I accomplish something in that thing. If you take that in any aspect of your life, the same thing holds true. My relationship with my wife is a function of who I am in it. And I need to keep bringing that to it. And that's, there's no time when this is a done deal. You know, I have to keep showing up here, not for like for longevity.

• 41:15Gary John Bishop?

  Which is, I think, where a lot of people get messed up. People look at the relationship like, well, I can't do this for the rest of your life. Rest of my life. And I'm like, well, you don't have to.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Just do it today.

• 41:23Gary John Bishop?

  Right. Like, right. It's like being on a diet. I don't need to go on a diet for three months. I just need to be on it right now.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:28Gary John Bishop?

  And it is moment to moment to moment to moment to moment, because that's really all you have. But so what I do notice is that the areas of life where you are flourishing most. There is some profound relationship you have between what you say and what you do. There's a profundity at play. So if you look at any area, you're successful. You are literally doing what you said you would do. Even when what? I don't feel like it.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Gary John Bishop?

  Right? Marriage is the same. Marriage is the same. Marriage, and I talk about this in the book, I say, especially in the Western world, but you look at, and I'm using marriage as kind of a model, but applies to all relationships.

• 42:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:13Gary John Bishop?

  But in a marriage, there's this ceremony. It's this coming together.

• 42:16Lewis Howes?

  Where you make an agreement, a commitment.

• 42:18Gary John Bishop?

  Very good.

• 42:19Lewis Howes?

  And you use words.

• 42:20Gary John Bishop?

  And it's a vow.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:21Gary John Bishop?

  Right? And, and I talk about the bankruptcy of the vow in a marriage because nobody vows anything anymore.

• 42:27Lewis Howes?

  Or they vow it, but they don't live up to the.

• 42:28Gary John Bishop?

  Well, because they don't have a relationship to a vow. So we're not going around a life going. I'll vow to meet you at three o'clock.

• 42:35Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 42:35Gary John Bishop?

  Nobody's saying that. But 200 years ago, when you vowed something, the American Declaration of Independence is just people vowing. They brought something in the existence on the strength of what they said.

• 42:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:48Gary John Bishop?

  There was no fighting. Well, there was some fighting. But they created a nation from words.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:55Gary John Bishop?

  Right. I mean, that's what that is. That's like a, oh, it was a declaration, right? That we are declaring we're independent. What would you mean you're independent? Well, we just declared it, so we are.

• 43:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:04Gary John Bishop?

  And we vow our lives and our sacred honor. And most of those people gave, literally gave their life for that. They literally gave their life to that promise. I bet they were scared.

• 43:17Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 43:18Gary John Bishop?

  I bet they were intimidated. But their word was greater than the experience of themselves. That's the same in any area of your life. Like, you have to start realizing that what you say is a big deal. And what you say to yourself is a big deal. A lifetime of constantly bending, shaping, and breaking your word to yourself will leave you with a diminished relationship to you. You'll never do great things because somewhere in there, you think you're full of it. Because you've broken your word to yourself so many times.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  You're out of integrity with yourself.

• 43:50Gary John Bishop?

  Very good. There's no, there's no power to those words anymore.

• 43:53Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we are out of integrity so consistently with ourself, or even one time with our word? What happens to ourselves?

• 43:59Gary John Bishop?

  Well, I mean, you gotta start relating to what you say like it's important.

• 44:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:05Gary John Bishop?

  Just like it's important. Stop there. Like, I said I was gonna, and this is important, not because the thing's important, but what's, what I said to myself and my relationship to that thing is what's important.

• 44:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:20Gary John Bishop?

  So, any area in life, like I said earlier, where you're powerful or successful, you'll see you have a very strong relationship to what you said. Very strong one. Sometimes-

• 44:30Lewis Howes?

  You're committed to that thing.

• 44:31Gary John Bishop?

  There's just no question for you. Like, it's on, like Donkey Kong, you know, you're just doing it.

• 44:36Lewis Howes?

  Why is it easier in some areas of life than it is in others to be consistent with what you say-

• 44:41Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 44:42Lewis Howes?

  And what you wanna do?

• 44:42Gary John Bishop?

  Right. And that's eventually, it's great that you kind of put it that way because that's the path you'll follow.

• 44:47Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 44:48Gary John Bishop?

  But the real strength of you is when you can say something, like, for instance, when I was- In my mid forties, you know, I said, I'm going to produce authentic wealth.

• 45:00Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between authentic and inauthentic?

• 45:02Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, I'm doing it for that, not for anything about me. Which was wild for me because everything up to that point about money was all about fixing something about me or my life. And I was just doing it to see if I could do it. Which I'd never done before and I'd never fully given it that attention. Like just for that. And so I put a number on it, which was cra- a crazy number for that time in my life, like crazy number like.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  For your forties or what? How much you want to make?

• 45:30Gary John Bishop?

  I was forty five, yeah. And I was, and I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to use my fifties for that. And I'm going to produce it, right? I produced it by the time I was fifty two. And I only really started when I was forty eight. So I did it really fast.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  The amount of money that you want to make?

• 45:47Gary John Bishop?

  Money that I said, but, but it was wild because I had no attachment to it.

• 45:51Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean?

• 45:51Gary John Bishop?

  Like there was no emotion in it for me. There was no like desperation, no like I gotta do it and nothing, no burning. It was just like I said I was going to do it and I'm doing it. So I ended up with this really kind of flat relationship to win between my words and my actions. Like it was flat, like. There were days when I felt like doing it and there were days when I didn't feel like doing it. But the interesting thing for me was. When I declared it, when I said I was going to do it. Like. The Declaration of Independence, I had no idea how I was going to do something like that. Like I don't know how you even, I'm not a money guy, you know, I'm not. But now it's game on because I created the top of the mountain in my speaking. So I spoke the top of the mountain in the existence.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  And then you figured out how along the way.

• 46:35Gary John Bishop?

  But that's now the game now. The game, people say, well, you know, how do you even do such a thing? Well, that's the first question. How do you even do such a thing, you know? And, and you might have to engage with that question for two years. Or three years or four years. But you've got to be actively. Resolving some of that stuff for yourself. Well, it's the same in love. Like I'm committed to the most loving. Passionate and adventurous relationship. That's possible.

• 47:02Gary John Bishop?

  That's the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain speaks to me every day. It's, it's, I can tell whether I'm walking that path or not. That influences this. It's not even necessarily about that. It's more about what that does with this. Well, how does that shape me today? How does that, am I lining up with what I said or not? And if I'm not, I might have a lot of reasons, excuses and justifications for that. But at the same time, am I going to treat that like it matters to me? Or am I going to just be like, well, you know, so far, so good. Or it's been a tough week or, you know, there's a lot in my mind. Or, you know, are you being a jerk? Why am I loving with you? Um, because I said I would.

• 47:46Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 47:47Gary John Bishop?

  And that's what matters to me.

• 47:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:49Gary John Bishop?

  That's what matters, that I said I would matters to me.

• 47:52Lewis Howes?

  Someone once told me that the key to his success in relationships was 80% of it was who you choose.

• 48:01Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 48:01Lewis Howes?

  80% of the relationship's success is, you know, how you match well with the person you're choosing.

• 48:06Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  You only spent a, I guess, a year with the person that you chose.

• 48:10Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Did you know that when you were choosing this person? Do you were like, okay, I feel like we're going to be in a great alignment with our values and our vision?

• 48:17Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Lewis Howes?

  Our lifestyle? Or was it more of just a feeling that you felt connected to this person and you decided?

• 48:23Gary John Bishop?

  I did what everybody does, right? What everybody does is they get in a relationship because they feel as if this person resolves something about themselves.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:31Gary John Bishop?

  That's what I did. And so there was something about this woman that I thought, wow, like being with her, everything seems right. Like I feel good about me.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  I didn't feel good until I met her.

• 48:43Gary John Bishop?

  Right, Ali, I, like, there's something getting fixed here. So, no, I'm, I'm not that pragmatic.

• 48:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 48:49Gary John Bishop?

  And I think most people aren't that pragmatic. And I think there's an illusion out there that somehow you'll find the one.

• 48:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 48:56Gary John Bishop?

  And really, I feel as if the job is to explore what's possible between you and this person. Whoever that person is and their potential and your potential. And so it was less about having like finding something that matched up with me, which I don't know if that would work for me. It might work for some people, but I don't know if that would work for me. What was really captivating for me at the time was being with her. Had me feel a lot better about me. And I think I really fundamentally believe that that's what most people go into relationships for.

• 49:29Lewis Howes?

  Is that the right thing to look at or is it?

• 49:31Gary John Bishop?

  No, that's an absolute.

• 49:32Lewis Howes?

  It's a recipe.

• 49:33Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Cause then you're always relying on that person to make you happier.

• 49:36Gary John Bishop?

  Well, because whatever that thing is that they satisfy for you is something you haven't sorted out for yourself yet.

• 49:41Lewis Howes?

  Right. And so eventually you're gonna have to do that. Otherwise you're always needing that from someone else.

• 49:47Gary John Bishop?

  Right, so you go in there and they're the solution. And you end it with the notion that they were the problem.

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  Ah, wow.

• 49:57Gary John Bishop?

  And what's consistent in all of that is you.

• 49:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:00Gary John Bishop?

  I mean, I don't know if anybody's ever noticed this, but in every crappy relationship you've ever had, it's got one common denominator.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  That's you.

• 50:07Gary John Bishop?

  Right, it's always you.

• 50:09Lewis Howes?

  This is a big awakening I had after my previous relationship ended. I was like, man, it's been 10, 15 years of relationships that, that, that started and then that crumbled in some way or that fell apart. And the, the core of all those things was me.

• 50:24Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 50:24Lewis Howes?

  Was my choices, was my getting into attracting those relationships.

• 50:29Gary John Bishop?

  Very good.

• 50:29Lewis Howes?

  Was this commitment to those relationships, was the unwinding of those relationships. And so why was I choosing these types of relationships? What was unresolved within me that I get to take a look at now? Or I'm gonna keep repeating in this pattern until I address the thing inside of me.

• 50:47Gary John Bishop?

  Right. So what's great about your kind of pathway, if you like, you can't, first of all, you've got to be able to look at that distinct from blame, right? And I know a lot of people just heard what you said and thought, well, but what if it is them, right? I know a lot of people, people sitting there right now going, dang, I did say that to myself. And I say, well, if you take away like who's to blame.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:10Gary John Bishop?

  And so sometimes people say stuff like, why do I keep attracting these kinds of people? And I say, well, what if it's not attraction? What if you are literally looking for them? What if it's you're seeking something about that person that initially solves what you're dealing with, right, but will allow it to keep perpetuating?

• 51:32Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:33Gary John Bishop?

  Like it keeps showing up and showing up. I call that an identity relationship. There's something about you, and it's the same for the other person.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:43Gary John Bishop?

  That when you get past all the stuff, whatever's incomplete will keep getting activated there, will keep showing up. So when you, when you start to see it like, oh, these are just two human beings doing what human beings do, then it's, it's not personal. Which is radical when you get it like that, like it's not personal. It's not personally them, personally me. Like, these are just two beings trying to work this out and what work, what will essentially work themselves up.

• 52:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:16Gary John Bishop?

  So that's why I insist with people, the greatest work you'll ever do, you'll ever do is to get complete with your first 20 years of life.

• 52:27Lewis Howes?

  So true.

• 52:28Gary John Bishop?

  First 20 years. Because everything after that is a reflection of it. I spent 20, I spent 26 years in Glasgow, 26 years. I've been longer here.

• 52:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:39Gary John Bishop?

  And I still identify with that like it's me, that I've been longer here. And it's some of the colloquialisms and the traditions and the, like, I identify with that because it became so imprinted. You know, in, in my second book, I talked about, you're the little magic sponge and you, you're, you're, you're not soaking up all of life, you're soaking up the bits. And then when you hit about 20, that little sponge just hardens and whatever's in there, that's it.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:11Gary John Bishop?

  It's in there. And that's what you use.

• 53:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:15Gary John Bishop?

  Or that logic. And until you awaken to that and realize that all of that that's there is really only a potential you.

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:26Gary John Bishop?

  There's so much more. If you think about it like, um, quantum physics, right? Like multiple universes, endless universes, all happening at the same time, multiple potentials. Well, that's every second of your life. Every second of your life. There's a myriad of potential yous that could be talking right now. And what you typically do is the you that you did the second before.

• 53:50Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 53:51Gary John Bishop?

  And the second before and the second, and so it perpetuates.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Gary John Bishop?

  Until you get aware, until you start to be like, oh, I'm not stuck with this. I could literally be somebody else when.

• 54:03Lewis Howes?

  Right now, yeah.

• 54:04Gary John Bishop?

  Right now, I could be somebody else. Right now, I could say something else.

• 54:07Lewis Howes?

  So how many things did you realize in your first 20 years of life that you needed to deal with or face or integrate a healing journey?

• 54:16Gary John Bishop?

  I think all of it.

• 54:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 54:18Gary John Bishop?

  I really think all of it. I think I had to come to terms with, like, when I was really young, I felt as if I was too small.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 54:24Gary John Bishop?

  Built in underneath with that was I'm not strong.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, I'm weak, I'm not enough, I'm being picked on, I'm, yeah.

• 54:31Gary John Bishop?

  So there's all of that.

• 54:31Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm not lovable, and then I'm, yeah.

• 54:33Gary John Bishop?

  Then there's a whole, and then for me, it was I'm not smart enough.

• 54:36Lewis Howes?

  That was mine, too.

• 54:36Gary John Bishop?

  And I'll never be smart enough. So, see, that's the thing with these things. At that part of your life, it's not that I'm not lovable, or I'm not smart enough, or I'm not strong enough, it's that I'll never be that way.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 54:48Gary John Bishop?

  I'll never be that way.

• 54:50Lewis Howes?

  It seems daunting, like you'll, yeah.

• 54:51Gary John Bishop?

  Right, right. So all of your persona and your personality is designed for you to overcome that.

• 54:57Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:58Gary John Bishop?

  But that can't go away. Because if that goes away, if you've based your whole personality on that.

• 55:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, your identity is based on that.

• 55:07Gary John Bishop?

  Now, now you're just facing a crisis because now it's like everything that I base myself on, what if it's not true? Then who am I? And people go nuts with that stuff. And I say, well, take a breath and think of it like who you are is a moment of time.

• 55:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:26Gary John Bishop?

  And in any moment of time, there's the possibility of you expressing something new that you've never expressed before.

• 55:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:34Gary John Bishop?

  Something that's not based on anything other than the moment you're in.

• 55:40Gary John Bishop?

  It's not based on a previous logic, it's not based. It's like literally an opportunity for you to show up as something new of your own creation. Everybody has a possibility, everybody has the opportunity for that. And it is a way of living life. It's and it's not like, oh, this guy's found the secret to everything. No, I'm a human being too. I'm wired a certain way. It's there now. The question is, how aware of that am I? And how responsible can I be for that playing out in my life? Am I going to own that or is that going to own me?

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Gary John Bishop?

  And that's, that's, that's the space we all want to be in. It's a, it's a space called choice.

• 56:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Gary John Bishop?

  And it's a real choice.

• 56:23Lewis Howes?

  What do you wish you would have done differently in the first few years of your relationship? With your wife? Would you have had different conversations? Would you have created different agreements? Uh, to cause less kind of friction or pain or stress in the first decade, I guess, until you started to unwind your identity and tap more into this loving being as opposed to this hardworking being that cared for her?

• 56:46Gary John Bishop?

  Well, in the first few years of my life, it was very passionate. So I was, I was crazy about this girl, you know, like it was very passionate. And this was a time in my life when I was a musician. So, you know, I'm playing in a band. And there's this beautiful woman who loves me. You know, like life is.

• 57:03Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 57:04Gary John Bishop?

  Life is good, man. You know, we, we've got three sons now, but the first eight years of our marriage, it was just my wife and I just having a brilliant time together. So this is great. And we were like the antithesis to like married couples, you know, we were like happening, you know, this is all great. But now when I look back on that, there really was no luck down the road. There was no like, what's this about? You know, it's just, it was all very much riding that particular roller coaster.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  Living in the moment of fun and adventure.

• 57:34Gary John Bishop?

  The problem was nothing was getting created. There was no, this is what we had up to.

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  There's no vision coming to life.

• 57:41Gary John Bishop?

  Right. And but that was in a very personal level, like there was no. There was no thought in my head like, so where does this go? You know, it was just like, well, let's see, you know, as there shouldn't be, by the way, when you're in your twenties and thirties. There's no like, um, what would it be like when I'm in my forties or my fifties or my sixties with this woman? You know, it was all just about making my way through where I was. The, the brick wall that I had, like I said a little earlier, was mid to late thirties and I'm like, I don't work anymore. Like this.

• 58:12Lewis Howes?

  How did you know you weren't working? Was it a feeling? Was it a stress? Was it a lack of mission or purpose? Was it a lack of love for yourself? How did you know like, I'm not working?

• 58:22Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, there was this kind of very fundamental experience of dissatisfaction, like no matter what I did. Doesn't matter what I do.

• 58:30Lewis Howes?

  And the results and the success, it wasn't, you weren't satisfied?

• 58:33Gary John Bishop?

  It's funny because, and there was kind of earlier parts of my life, and I, and I assert this is true for all human beings. You think the next thing is going to solve it. And then you get there and the problem's still there. And you might not fully have fleshed out that problem yet, but you know it's there. Like if you look back at the accomplishments of your life, like when you had them going for it, you're like,

• 58:58Gary John Bishop?

  and then you had it and you're like.

• 59:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, now what? Yeah.

• 59:03Gary John Bishop?

  Right, now what? Right, now what?

• 59:08Gary John Bishop?

  You do six of them.

• 59:10Lewis Howes?

  Like huh, I'm not feeling what I was supposed to be feeling.

• 59:12Gary John Bishop?

  Right, how, how come I'm not feeling it? Because it never resolves whatever the thing was. And so if there was anything I wish I'd really identified, and, and I don't mean this from a space of regret, I really don't. But it would have been kind of neat to identify the hole that I was trying to fill. You know, it would have been neat to see what I'm doing. I'm just happy that I did identify it. Some people go through their whole life and never, there's no introspection. There's no like, and introspection is a funny thing because you can do too much of that too, right? You can go too deep.

• 59:46Lewis Howes?

  You need to just kind of relax sometimes and live life.

• 59:50Gary John Bishop?

  Well, it's kind of like, the way I've always related to it since I started to work on myself is, okay, that's a good little insight. How am I gonna use this?

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Gary John Bishop?

  So I'm always using it for some thing in my life, for some good in my, in my life, or the people that I'm at the impact. Cause you can get, you can start to kind of get off on that, like, oh, that's a great, oh, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. But it doesn't actually show up in the reality of your life. You gotta make it show up. Yeah, I guess that's the only real thing, like, what was the hole I was trying to fill?

• 1:00:20Lewis Howes?

  Cause if you could have done that earlier, then what would you have done in those first 10 years?

• 1:00:23Gary John Bishop?

  There's that kind of force for life that you have when you're 20, you know, there's a, which gets you by.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:31Gary John Bishop?

  It gets you overcome a lot of hills, you know, a lot of mountains. There's just a kind of forward trajectory that maybe I'd have used it for something else, you know, maybe it would have been. But, but then when I look back, I think the context that I choose for that time now, when I look back on it is, like, I really had to go through the darkness to realize that, that that wasn't the light.

• 1:00:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:54Gary John Bishop?

  Because when you're in that, you think this is the, like, I'm going somewhere.

• 1:00:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Gary John Bishop?

  You know, and then there's a, like, you're like, I'm going nowhere. I'm going nowhere.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Gary John Bishop?

  And so the context that I choose for that now is it was a brilliant learning process for me, real life learning process.

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  I just turned 39 and I told you before that I always wanted to, in relationships, start a therapeutic coaching, counseling.

• 1:01:21Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Lewis Howes?

  Experience in the beginning of a relationship as opposed to, two, three, five years in, when there's some challenges and let's try to solve something or resolve it and get back to a place of love and peace. And so I'm creating that with my, in my current relationship.

• 1:01:36Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  It's a beautiful thing because there's not like an issue or a problem.

• 1:01:39Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:01:39Lewis Howes?

  And I was asking our coach, I was like, how many people come to you when there's no issues? She was like, it almost never happens.

• 1:01:45Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:01:45Lewis Howes?

  It's always when there's like a big breakdown or something.

• 1:01:47Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:48Lewis Howes?

  And so it's kind of build this foundation from the beginning. It's trying to learn from my mistakes of the past 15 years and do it in a different way.

• 1:01:53Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  Approach in a different way. I'm curious, what would your advice be, I just turned 39, as I go into, you know, my 40th year and then this decade?

• 1:02:03Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Lewis Howes?

  How do you wish you would have approached it differently? Or how did you do it that was successful for you? That you would recommend as someone going into their 40s? Or even in their 20s, going into their 30s? But a new decade, how would you approach it?

• 1:02:17Gary John Bishop?

  You've got to make it about something.

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  Like a mission?

• 1:02:20Gary John Bishop?

  It's got to be about something. If it's not about something, you're wasting your time. It's got to be about something, right? And I think that's a great way to split it up, any decades like that. And you can start your decade at 33.

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:02:33Gary John Bishop?

  But if you make it about something, like this is the decade of, right? Personal discovery. This is the decade of making a difference. That's a decade, like for me, was authentic wealth, right? For that decade.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  In your 40s?

• 1:02:45Gary John Bishop?

  My 40s was all about making a difference. This is about my wife being about somebody other than me.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  In your 40s?

• 1:02:52Gary John Bishop?

  In my 40s. And I devoted myself to that, like, and I still do, right? It's

• 1:02:59Lewis Howes?

  What was the 50s then?

• 1:03:00Gary John Bishop?

  So the 50s was supposed to be about this authentic wealth, which I

• 1:03:04Lewis Howes?

  You did.

• 1:03:04Gary John Bishop?

  Scooted through that in two years, you know what I mean?

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  And how did your relationship evolve as you started to bring more money to the Yeah. Relationship?

• 1:03:13Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  Family? Because a lot of the people struggle in marriages or relationships with money conversations. Did you see an improvement of the quality of relationship? Did you see challenges in talking about money? How did you guys address money when it's such a big factor for breakup, divorce, stress?

• 1:03:32Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:32Lewis Howes?

  In relationships?

• 1:03:33Gary John Bishop?

  Somebody once gave me this little nugget, and I believe it to be true. When somebody said, what's the difference between wealthy and not wealthy? And somebody said to me, it's just better hotels.

• 1:03:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, yeah. Nicer flights.

• 1:03:47Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's basically it for me. Like, I never made it mean anything. You know, my three boys, like, they're very grounded. You know, they're not In any way enamored by money or anything like that. Like my ten year old thinks if he could spend ten bucks on his next game of FIFA, like that's a big result, you know, it's like yay. You know, I just bought that FIFA pack for ten bucks. It's a good day. And I don't shower them with stuff, you know, I don't, we don't do that. It just seems kind of ridiculous. As a family, we're very much about the experience of being alive.

• 1:04:28Gary John Bishop?

  And whatever money we might have or not have is always about that. Like it's always about enhancing that and embracing that and exploring that as a family.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the overall key from everything you learn to having a fulfilling relationship then?

• 1:04:44Gary John Bishop?

  It's got to be grounded in what matters. I realized that two things have mattered to me in life were love and adventure. I realized that that was now my job in my relationship to bring it, not to seek it. And to bring it because it's who I am. When you take away the notion that you're seeking it, it's a whole lot easier to actually be in a relationship.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Cause a lot of people say, I'm looking for love if they're single. I'm looking for love, I'm looking for adventure. But if you be love, if you're being love and you're being adventurous, you will be it, you won't need to find it, you are it's. And you'll find, you'll attract other people who are it as well.

• 1:05:19Gary John Bishop?

  What the interesting thing about my wife and I, which was really has been brilliant since I took on this kind of perspective is she's not always looking for what I'm or expressing, what I'm expressing. She's expressing her expression of what it is to be in a relationship, which is sometimes really different. You know, like she's got a different expression of love than I do. But I'm not sitting there like, oh, you know, feed me that. I'm more like, this is an opportunity, this is an opening in my life, this is an opening in time. For me to get this out.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:52Gary John Bishop?

  You know, and she's giving it her version, you know? And it really isn't fifty fifty. It's not like that because I don't. Like I told her, you know, I don't, I don't need you to be anyone but yourself. You know, just be yourself.

• 1:06:05Lewis Howes?

  What happened when you shifted that?

• 1:06:06Gary John Bishop?

  It was just like this massive release of pressure. You know, it was like, oh, we're okay.

• 1:06:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Gary John Bishop?

  We're okay. Like you can just be you.

• 1:06:16Lewis Howes?

  You don't need to control something. You don't need to fix something. You don't need to change something.

• 1:06:20Gary John Bishop?

  Nothing about this woman. Does that mean like it's all like if I look at my wiring and the way that I'm wired? No, I got hooked and I get triggered and I get like. One of the things that we did, by the way, that I, that I think is important is we made it okay to argue. It's okay.

• 1:06:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:37Gary John Bishop?

  Even if it's a stand up argument, fight, and she called me something and I called her something. It's okay. Right? It's, this doesn't, this isn't all adding up to the exit. It's not. It's like a moment in time. It's like something happened. Okay. Being forgiving is a massive part of my wife. And, and a massive part of my relationship. I don't.

• 1:07:02Gary John Bishop?

  I'm, I'm not gonna string you up for something you did or said, like I'm not. Um, you're a human being too. In other words, there's a lot of space that I'm continually making.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:07:13Gary John Bishop?

  I make a lot of space for my wife. I make a lot of space for my children. So whatever way they are, it's got a lot of room. It, I'm not like pressing on it and compressing it and you should be in control. No, let me just back off and let that be. It'll dissipate. It's okay.

• 1:07:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Gary John Bishop?

  And so there's a lot of that in a relationship.

• 1:07:31Lewis Howes?

  But you probably have to be okay with who you are and comfortable with your own skin in order to create the space of whatever emotions or environment happens, right? You've gotta be dealing with that healing journey continuously.

• 1:07:43Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:07:43Lewis Howes?

  So that you're not reactive to it.

• 1:07:45Gary John Bishop?

  That's a critical part of it. Like you have to give yourself the room to be a human being. Stop holding yourself to some ideal. You're not always gonna be perfect.

• 1:07:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:55Gary John Bishop?

  There's gonna be times in your life when you look at it like, oh. Did I even, you know, I was a real jerk there like, oh my gosh, like, I wish I could take that back. And I'll initially go there and then I'll be like, hold on a minute. I'm a human being too. And I think that's one of the things that's drawn a lot of people to my work. I'm not professing to have every answer. And I'm not floating around here like, you know, Gandhi or something, you know, I'm not like, this isn't, I'm not a perfect kind of human being on one hand.

• 1:08:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:08:33Gary John Bishop?

  Or maybe I am.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Exactly.

• 1:08:37Gary John Bishop?

  Maybe this is what it is, you know, to be a human being. It's all of it. It's all the things. It's, I really believe you're just a vessel for experiences.

• 1:08:46Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:46Gary John Bishop?

  And some of them are great. And some of them are kind of crappy.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:50Gary John Bishop?

  And it's okay, you know, it's the more you try and fix it or shape it or move it, you're kind of nailing it down rather than letting it just

• 1:08:58Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:59Gary John Bishop?

  pass through.

• 1:09:00Lewis Howes?

  This is powerful, man. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I really love this conversation and your book, Love, Getting Your Relationship Together is out. People can buy it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. We'll have it all linked up as well in the description in the show notes, but where are you on social media the most or how can we connect with you?

• 1:09:19Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Lewis Howes?

  Beyond the book. And it's, I love, I love the short but packed books.

• 1:09:24Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:09:25Lewis Howes?

  I can read them. So I appreciate this.

• 1:09:27Gary John Bishop?

  No, that's good. It's, I love that you said that too, because I really feel as if the value in my books is in the thinking you're gonna have to do.

• 1:09:35Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:09:35Gary John Bishop?

  You know, it's not necessarily like you're gonna take something out of there linearly.

• 1:09:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:09:39Gary John Bishop?

  But yeah, I'm on, I'm everywhere, but you know, Instagram's like a favorite of mine. I like, you know, obviously I spend a lot of time on there. I love to give people stuff that they can think about and chew on.

• 1:09:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Gary John Bishop?

  But I'm also on Facebook. I'm on Twitter and obviously my website, garyjonbishop.com.

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  There you go. And you've got all the information for your books there and

• 1:09:57Gary John Bishop?

  Yes.

• 1:09:57Lewis Howes?

  everything else you're up to at garyjonbishop.com.

• 1:10:00Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Lewis Howes?

  Love this, man. I've got a question for you. This is called the three truths question I ask everyone at the end.

• 1:10:05Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:05Lewis Howes?

  So imagine hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you want to live.

• 1:10:11Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:10:12Lewis Howes?

  You are the vessel that experiences life to the fullest. And you accomplish what you want to accomplish. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you.

• 1:10:21Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Lewis Howes?

  On the last day, the books, the content, this interview, for whatever reason, got to go somewhere else.

• 1:10:26Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:10:26Lewis Howes?

  So it's not left in the world.

• 1:10:28Gary John Bishop?

  Okay.

• 1:10:29Lewis Howes?

  But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world, three things that you know to be true from your life experiences.

• 1:10:34Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:35Lewis Howes?

  And this is all we'd have to remember you by. What would you say are those three truths?

• 1:10:39Gary John Bishop?

  The only truth is the one you've agreed with. The second one would be. You are an unlimited potential, whether you believe that or not. And be kind.

• 1:10:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I want to acknowledge you, Gary, for a moment because you've had an amazing journey and you've dedicated this, I guess, second phase of your life to service.

• 1:11:01Gary John Bishop?

  Right.

• 1:11:02Lewis Howes?

  To using your experiences, your thinking, your challenges, the pain, and creating work that inspires and serves and educates. And I really acknowledge you for showing up consistently with your perfect imperfections. And, and just sharing what you know, sharing what you've learned and putting it in ways that we can understand it. That might be confusing at times. So I really acknowledge you for showing up big the way you have. And I think shifting a identity that you, you were so stuck on from the way you grew up.

• 1:11:33Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  And being okay with letting it die and also holding on to some of it and transforming, I think, is so hard for so many people. I know it was hard for me. So I really acknowledge you for shifting that and being constantly in a reinvention phase of your life.

• 1:11:47Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  And in service to so many people.

• 1:11:49Gary John Bishop?

  Well, thank you for that generous acknowledgement. That was really brilliant. One of the things, I'm going to acknowledge you for a second, if you don't mind.

• 1:11:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:11:56Gary John Bishop?

  So I think you're a brilliant example, like a truly brilliant example of what it is to be vulnerable.

• 1:12:02Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:12:02Gary John Bishop?

  And it screams.

• 1:12:04Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:12:04Gary John Bishop?

  In a really great way.

• 1:12:06Lewis Howes?

  Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, man. I think, yeah, the last eight, nine years, I've really opened up and allow myself to be vulnerable at any moment.

• 1:12:14Gary John Bishop?

  Great. I get it.

• 1:12:15Lewis Howes?

  It's not, it's not easy.

• 1:12:17Gary John Bishop?

  No.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy, but I think the more I embody vulnerability, the more my heart is open to receiving people, to having intimate conversations, to being able to share things that are sad or scary or

• 1:12:32Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:32Lewis Howes?

  Whatever might be coming up for me. So I appreciate it and

• 1:12:35Gary John Bishop?

  You're welcome.

• 1:12:36Lewis Howes?

  I receive it, man.

• 1:12:37Gary John Bishop?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:38Lewis Howes?

  My final question for you, and again, I want to make sure people get the book. We'll have it all linked up. But my final question, Gary, is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:12:45Gary John Bishop?

  Oh, that's a brilliant question, right? So it's the triumph of the human spirit. It's the opportunity for somebody to go beyond, whatever that might be for you. And sometimes it's a simple thing like going beyond some old hurt or pain. But sometimes it's going beyond a situation or circumstance.

• 1:13:09Lewis Howes?

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

• 1:13:53Lewis Howes?

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