6 Steps To Manifest The Future You Desire EP 1348

As one of the architects of modern personal growth, Vishen has worked with some of the most brilliant and recognizable names in the industry, offering courses from the likes of Sadhguru and Lisa Nichols to Mindvalley members. This book will be his third release, having previously written two bestsellers, including The Code Of The Extraordinary Mind, which became the No. 1 in the world on Amazon Kindle, and The Buddha and The Badass, which landed in the No. 1 coveted spot on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list. In this episode you will learn,The 6 phases of Vishen’s meditation method for manifesting the life you desire. How you can begin attracting your goals towards yourself. About the human qualities you can quickly hack to obtain your life’s mission. The importance of generating self-love and how it affects your body. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1348How To Change Your Behavior And Accomplish Your Goals [MASTERCLASS]: https://link.chtbl.com/1317-podDr. Joe Dispenza: Break Free Of The Addiction To Negative Thoughts & Emotions: https://link.chtbl.com/1309-podBruce Lipton on How To Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind To Manifest Your Dream Life: https://link.chtbl.com/1312-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

  We're imperfect beings trying to make the best we can of a crazy world as we learn and as we grow. And all of us will go through moments of doubt. Self doubt isn't a bad thing. Self doubt keeps us humble. Self doubt keeps us vulnerable. And so it's important to understand.

• 0:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:41Lewis Howes?

  Can humans influence each other with thoughts alone and with their mind? Can they get them to make decisions, act, buy something, date them with just thinking without talking?

• 0:56Speaker 00

  Yes and no. Yes and no. Okay. So, so no, you cannot get someone to buy something. You cannot, you cannot get someone to date you just by thinking about it, right? Like that, there's no evidence for that. We can think about law of attraction visualization, but you know, the evidence is a bit sketchy. But this is what fascinates me. I'm fascinated by the idea that animals of the same species can seem to connect with each other across distance, right? There's this, there are studies that have started emerging right now showing that animals sometimes can, can, that move in herds can be deeply connected to each other.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  One study which was really interesting was the, the study of monkeys in a particular island in Japan. So in a particular island, one monkey learned to use a tool in a unique way, say a piece of rock to open a shellfish. Very soon, all of the other monkeys imitate and learn that. And that's cool. But then when about a hundred monkeys on that island have learned that particular method... The same species of monkey on a neighboring island, far away, like way beyond what a average monkey can swim, starts deploying the same tool.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  And so scientists were wondering, is there a form of knowledge or consciousness transfer across similar species? Now again, there's a whole new field of quantum biology that's emerging. It might help us understand it. We don't understand it, but we seem to see this. And we see this not just in science, but in spirituality. One of my favorite quotes on Love by the Rumi is this, "I can close my eyes and talk to you in a thousand silent ways." And this quote means a lot to me. Because right now on this trip, I, this is the longest I've been away from my eight-year-old daughter. And I felt guilty about it as a parent. Because I've been on this crazy book tour. I've never been separated from my children for four and a half weeks, never.

• 2:54Speaker 00

  But I know they are good. And I know they know I love them and that I haven't forgotten them. Because every morning, when I kick off my meditation, I kick off my six-phase meditation process by seeing my daughter's face. And just beaming love to her. Now, the question is, we know that when you do that, okay? When you see the face of someone you love and you're beaming love to them, we know that there's a physiological difference in your body.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  In your body, but what about their body?

• 3:22Speaker 00

  So first, let's talk about the science for your body, right? So what I just described, this idea of seeing the face of someone you love and beaming love to them, is actually how you kick off the six-phase meditation, which is the protocol I designed. And the evidence comes from the HeartMath Institute of Los Gatos. So there they measure something called heart resonance, which is a biomarker of health. And they found that your heart resonance shows a healthier pattern, almost instantaneously, when you see the face of someone you love and you just feel that love for them. Crazy, right?

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  And this is what you call the circle of love and compassion.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Circle of love, and then you, and then face one of the six-phase.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  This is not sitting around in a circle and singing kumbaya with people.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no.

• 4:00Lewis Howes?

  But it's having love and compassion for people in your life, or maybe people you don't know.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, it could be your lover, it could be your pet, it could be your child. But here's the question. When you do that, you relax. We know that. We know you relax. We know, not only do you relax, but you feel more compassion. So the way you you learn it in the six phases, you learn a particular practice. We start with a heart mat protocol, then we expand to a protocol from Zen Roshi Buddhism, where you expand that compassion across the room, your home, then your city, your state, your country, then the entire world. And it actually puts you in a really beautiful state of open-heartedness and kindness. And evidence shows that when you do this, there are certain beneficial effects to your body

• 4:43Speaker 00

  and your mind. Anxiety, for example, reduces. You feel more socially connected to the people around you. You get less triggered. If somebody says something that doesn't agree with you politically, or if someone cuts you off in traffic, you're less likely to react. You have compassion. You have compassion. There's a there's a whole, there are multiple books, multiple studies right now on compassion as a healing force. And that's why we start the six phase with it. But your question, back to your question. But can she, can your daughter feel it? Is my daughter feeling something and can we measure it? There was a study on this, and this is really, really, really interesting. It was done by Dr. William Broad at the San Antonio Mind Science Institute several decades

• 5:25Speaker 00

  ago. So they took two people. So, well, they took hundreds of people, literally hundreds of people. I believe it was in that study between five and 700 people. One group were senders, one group were receivers. Now, if you were a receiver, you were put in a room and you were hooked up to 19 different machines measuring your body. So they might measure your heart, your heart rate, your skin resistance, your skin. When you get more relaxed, your skin resistance goes up. Why? Because micro sweating, okay, when you're feeling a little bit of anxiety, when you're a little bit nervous, there are micro sweat particles appearing on your skin. But when you're relaxed, that isn't happening. Sweat transfers electricity better, so skin resistance goes up when you are relaxed.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  So you can measure all of these things, brainwave activity, skin resistance, heart rate, and then you can deduce, okay, this person is relaxed, this person is feeling calm, this person is feeling peaceful. Now, at exactly a specific minute, they would ask the senders, be love and positivity to the receivers. Say at 1:53 PM, at precisely that time, these nineteen machines that William Broad had set up would show a difference.

• 6:31Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  And so they found that just thinking about someone creates a physiological impact on their body.

• 6:39Lewis Howes?

  Now, can one person do it, or does it need to be a group? You hear about monks doing this for individuals, trying to heal them as a group and being there and kind of like having their hands close to the individual. You hear about shared prayer groups and meditation groups. Is it?

• 6:54Speaker 00

  So the thing that interests me is, so Lynne Mettaget, she's a British journalist, and she wrote a book called The Field. And she set out to investigate all of these things and to see, are they real?

• 7:05Lewis Howes?

  Like Rumi's field?

• 7:07Speaker 00

  No, I think the field, she means the field of consciousness between us, right? And so she went as an investigative journalist. And in the book, The Field, she wrote everything she discovered and the overwhelming science that we are more than just meat and bone bodies. But Lynne went on, deepened her research, and she wrote a book called The Power of Eight. And what she found is that, yes, you can influence healing in another person. I'm not saying you can heal everything, and this should always be done with your doctor, right? Alternative therapies with a doctor. But she found that the magic number is eight. If eight people are focused on an intention, it is more likely that an intention comes true.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so the first part is having love and compassion, because that helps you relax, but it also potentially could influence the person you are sending that signal to. And maybe it all depends on factors. Maybe it's on how clear your energy is and if they're open to receiving these things, who knows?

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Exactly. We don't know. There's more studies that need to be done, but there's enough evidence that this is happening. There's enough evidence that when you... And it's not just the scientific evidence, right? Because millions of people report this, millions of people, women especially, I've seen this with mothers. I've seen this with the mother of my children. She knows when something is off. She knows when something is off with her child. And so many moms report this, so many people who are, who have a close connection with someone else.

• 8:38Lewis Howes?

  There's an intuition, and they send a text or they send a phone call and say, hey.

• 8:42Speaker 00

  Are you okay?

• 8:43Lewis Howes?

  Are you okay? I was feeling something that was off. Are you, is everything all right? And a lot of times you hear people saying like, how did you know?

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. Is that the quantum field? What is this quantum physics?

• 8:54Speaker 00

  I don't think we should. I don't like it when people say, "Oh, it's quantum physics." Because we don't know. You can't just add the word "quantum" and then say that it explains things, right? Let's not do that. It pisses off all my scientist friends. But we should accept that there are certain things in science that we cannot yet explain. Now, keep this in mind. Our knowledge of physics doubles every seven years. It doubles. Which means that 14 years from now, we're gonna know like four times as much more as we know now. Maybe we'll figure it out. Nassim Horemann, the physicist, spiritualist, says, "Spirituality is nothing more than physics we have yet to find an equation for."

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. It's true, though.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:34Lewis Howes?

  One day we will, probably.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Perhaps. But right now, it doesn't stop us from using it. Look, I bet you most people here have no idea how a mobile phone works, right? I'm a computer engineer by training. I know a little bit, but most people don't. But you can still use a mobile phone. We don't have to understand how it works to use these subtle qualities of the human mind.

• 9:52Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I've been saying this a lot lately to my girlfriend Martha. I was like, you know, over 100 years ago, if you imagined this like tin thing flying through the air, you'd have been like, "What is this?" You know, this is like some god is like flying through the sky. You know, if you would have seen these airplanes before, never seen it, be like, "How is this even possible?" I mean, that much weight in the air flying across the world. A cellphone, I mean, 20 years ago, we weren't doing FaceTime. For me, it's mind-blowing. If we can go back and think, "Okay, you can just pick up advice and see your best friend, or your partner, or your family member from around the world in real time."

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 10:26Lewis Howes?

  And actually speak to them and for hours. It's kind of mind-blowing.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  It is.

• 10:31Lewis Howes?

  How these signals all connect and work. And I have no idea how that's even possible. But it is.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, was it Carl Sagan or Isaac Asimov who said, "Any technology sufficiently advanced will be seen as magic?"

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It all seems magic to me. But once we're used to it, it's kind of like, oh, this is just, it's here. Okay.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we're just so used to it. You know, gratitude is something that I practice on a daily basis in the morning and at night. I feel like it's the, it's the basis for me feeling peace.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:01Lewis Howes?

  And having appreciation. That's the second thing for you, happiness and gratitude. Why is gratitude so important and integral scientifically in a meditation process to have abundance in your life?

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Perfect. Great question. So first, let's do a quick basis. So the six-phase meditation is six unique human qualities that you can hack within yourself in two minutes each. I'm a computer engineer, former hacker, and I used to play computer games. And sometimes I'd get really bored by the computer games when I was like 12 or 13 years old. Because computers back then were flat, flat, green screen, tiny pixelated people moving. And I would just hack the computer game and give myself ultimate gold and ultimate endurance. Then go to the end of the game, kill the big boss, celebrate with a chocolate milkshake. But as I grew up, it occurred to me that you can hack life. Life is like a computer game. We have a quest we are on. We have a mission. You can hack the qualities you need to attain that mission.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  And as I built up Mindvalley, where we have, I've interviewed thousands of people and we have the world's biggest personal growth platform. I started looking at what were the qualities of humanness that were most hackable? Because I wanted to build a 15-minute practice every single day to put me in optimal states. So the six qualities are compassion and loving kindness, gratitude. The third one is the quality of forgiveness. The fourth one is future dreaming. The fifth one is commanding your day. And the sixth one is feeling blessed. Okay, so we're going from compassion, which we spoke about, to gratitude. And I gotta say, Lewis, one of the things I notice about you is you are perpetually grateful.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  When I look at your Instagram, you're constantly celebrating life. Like, I know some personal growth people on their Instagram, all they do is they teach something and they teach something. And nothing wrong there, but you share your gratitude. Today, I saw you put up a post about Maui and how grateful you were to be in Maui. And seeing that. Elevates other people, right? And so I saw your post on Maui and it uplifted me. Because I saw a man who was truly appreciating the world. And I believe one of the reasons you're successful is because of your gratitude, wouldn't you say?

• 13:12Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  So scientists say that gratitude is the human characteristic most associated with overall well-being.

• 13:20Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 13:20Speaker 00

  In other words, if you have one human characteristic, studiousness, confidence of all of these human characteristics, gratitude is the one that gives you the highest correlation with personal well-being.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  And this is why, you know, there's a lot of different, you know, professors who've done the research on gratitude as well for decreasing depression and just creating more joy in your life. And I just think doing it in the morning, finding a time in the afternoon and then doing it at night, if you can consistently do it throughout the day as frequently as possible, you're going to feel much more calm and relaxed, you're going to feel more love toward yourself and for others, and it's going to give you more peace.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's the currency that at least I want in my life the most is peace. Because from a peaceful place, then I can get into flow. And I know you talk about flow a lot, but you can't get in the flow when you're stressed.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:11Lewis Howes?

  Gratitude unlocks that key in my mind.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  And not only that, but gratitude also increases your levels of happiness. And we know today from numerous signs that happiness fuels productivity. There's a whole series of books on this by Sean Aker, the Harvard psychologist. His book is called The Happiness Advantage. Shajad Shamin wrote a book called PQ, Positivity Quotient. In that book, he said he shows scientifically a meta-analysis of all happiness studies. And one of the craziest things he said is that if you're running a company, the one thing that is most correlated with the success of your team is the overall positive state of the team. And gratitude is that hack to get you there.

• 14:48Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 14:49Speaker 00

  But can I share with you something really frickin' crazy?

• 14:51Lewis Howes?

  Break it.

• 14:52Speaker 00

  We did this little experiment in our office, and all of you watching can do this experiment. We took three little Petri dishes, and you can use a simple plate. And we put seeds on this, like some cotton bud with water and seeds, okay? So A, B, and C. So in one, it was basically the control group. We didn't do anything different, we just left it by a window. The second one was the negative test. Where we would, my team would look at the seed. I hate you, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hate you, you're a stupid little plant, you're an ugly seed. I bet when you sprout, your leaves will be upside down. You will be tiny, the other plants won't like you. You're a puny, little pathetic plant, and I hate you, okay?

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Now, the third one, or as nasty as you can get when you're talking to a plant. Now, the third one, you could just praise it with compliments. You are gonna have the most beautiful green leaves, you are gonna be so beautiful. You're gonna light up a room, I'm so proud of you. You're gonna grow so tall and healthy. Okay, now, look at the picture, this is the picture. And you can see, the control group is mid-size. The one that we insulted, the negative plant, the leaves are literally upside down. No way. And it's tiny and short. Now, look at the tall one, that's the one that we express gratitude and appreciation to. So, anybody can do this. In fact, in some schools in the United States, they are using this as an exercise to teach people the horrors of bullying.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Because when you see how your words can affect a plant, which is a different species, you understand that your words can affect your body. Your words can affect other people. And by the way, all of these plants have the same amount of sunlight, the same amount of water. The only thing different was the emotion that was being passed to the plant. So, when I said, "There is evidence that we can send love across time and distance." When I quoted Rumi, "I can close my eyes and talk to you in a thousand silent ways." This is one of the most interesting experiments you can do on your own. But this experiment shows two things, it shows phase one compassion works. If we can influence the biology of plant life, imagine what this can do for human life.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Yes. And phase two gratitude, same thing is happening over here. We're expressing gratitude for that plant as it's blooming. But it also shows you how negative energy can really mess things up. The next time you think a negative thought about someone, "What if?" And I don't know if there's any studies on this, but what if, just like you were hurting the plant, you were physically hurting another person? Wow. And when you understand that, you start really watching your thoughts. But let's go deeper. That plant is distant from you. It's practically a different species. What about the cells in your body? Your body is not purely human. Your body is roughly ninety-six percent human, four percent microbiome.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  So your gut, your throat is filled with microbiome. There are more bacteria cells in your body than human cells. And this microbiome, they work with your body. They create emotions, they keep you well. When your gut is off, not only is your digestion off, but your your brain chemistry is off. Serotonin, today we know ninety percent of serotonin, which is the happiness chemical, is produced in the gut and goes through the vagus nerve to the brain.

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:16Speaker 00

  If we can influence plants, we can influence bacteria. And this bacteria is literally part of us. So what are we doing to our bodies when we think a negative thought? When we blame ourselves? When we say, "Gosh, I don't know how someone could date me." Or, "God, why did I make this mistake again?" Gratitude is the opposite of that. You're saying, "I freaking love my life. This is so incredible." And so when we do the six phase, we express gratitude in a three-by-three matrix. Three things that you're grateful for in your work life. Three things about your personal life, which would be, you know, your your love, your children, your home. And then three things about yourself, your body, your gut microbiome, your the fact that you have great skin and hair,

• 19:00Speaker 00

  the fact that you're a generous tipper. In our world, we are told, "Don't do that. It makes you a narcissist." Bad advice. More people lack self-love than they have too much love, right? And if you start with the basis of compassion, you can't be a narcissist because you start by giving compassion to everyone. Then you give yourself compassion. And I want to encourage everyone out there to try this plant experiment because once you see how your words and your thoughts can influence plant life, you start understanding just how powerful it is on your own biology and the people you love.

• 19:37Lewis Howes?

  I love this analogy. I think there was a documentary called What the Bleep? That did the water experiment with the words on the water. And I don't know if you saw this documentary back in the day where it's like you put hate or love and it turned into beautiful crystals or like dark moldy crystals in the water when you put it in the freezer. And I think that's an interesting concept about the intention of words and energy on something. Water, plants, food, people, you know, and on yourself. And imagine if you're constantly saying horrible things about yourself internally or saying it publicly. Why would good things happen to you?

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:14Lewis Howes?

  If you have this victim mentality. So I'm a true believer of what you appreciate appreciates in value. And what you discount continues to discount in value as well, especially with yourself, the self-love. Do you feel like you always loved yourself and said good things to yourself?

• 20:31Speaker 00

  No, but-

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  Or when did you learn to fully love yourself?

• 20:35Speaker 00

  So one of the things is when I was growing up, so what our, what our mind's belief creates our reality. Now, I discovered this when I was approximately 13 years old. So I grew up in Malaysia, a developing country. And you know, back then, I probably turned 13 in 1989 or something. And back then, we didn't know that much about the mind. Personal growth wasn't a thing. And what happened was, I remember my first pimple. I looked in the mirror and I saw my pimple. I was 13 years old. And an aunt, right? And back then, I also, you know, like many kids, I also had dandruff, like I had itchy scalp.

• 21:18Lewis Howes?

  You got great, you got great hair and stand down, man.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  I do now, I do now. But here's what happened. A well-meaning aunt came to me, put her hands on my shoulder and said, "Oh, don't worry. This is so normal. You're now a teenager. And because you have dandruff, your dandruff is going to fall off your scalp. It's going to land on your face and it's going to cause even more pimples and you'll just have pimples. And that's okay. All teenagers have it." She was trying to be nice, but she programmed me. And she programmed me with bad signs. I mean, dead ruff doesn't fall in your face in hospital. But as a result, from thirteen to seventeen, I had the most horrible acne breakouts. I remember my mom taking me to dermatologist, like injection sometimes on my skin. All of these creams. And I felt ugly. And the kids in school didn't help.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  I was the smart kid, I was the nerd with the glasses. And the acne. All the other kids hate you. Yeah, yeah. And so I remember being in the lunch line and a big bully behind me singing, "Pimple face is here, pimple." And so it just wrecked my ego. I didn't have many friends. I felt I was unattractive. I remember, you know, as puberty kicked in, I would have a crush on a girl, but I couldn't even talk to her. I never went on my, I never went on a date with anyone until I was twenty-two years old. Right, like pretty much senior of college. But this is what happened. My dad helped me discover a book called The Silva Method. Okay, today The Silva Method, and it's now called Silva Ultramind as part of Mindvalley, and I'm the face of Silva Ultramind. It was, it's one of the meditation approaches I espouse.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  But back then, my dad helped me discover that book. And in that book, I read that your skin is the organ most susceptible to the human mind. And that was the first clue. Was I manifesting bad skin? So in the book, Jose Silva thought a protocol called creative visualization at the alpha level. Now that is phase four of the sixth phase, right? So we bring creative visualization into phase four. And we use phase four of the sixth phase to manifest an ideal future. You can manifest the goal, but you can also manifest health. And the skin is the easiest one. So this is what you learn to do. And again, I talk about it in my book. You see, like a, imagine like a giant movie screen in front of you.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  And you use symbolism to talk to your subconscious. So just like my well-meaning aunt said, You're gonna have pimples throughout your teenage years. You're gonna reverse that command to your subconscious. So you see your skin and then your subconscious speaks in symbolism. You tell it a new story using symbolism. It doesn't have to be scientific. You don't have to understand the, you know, that the skin has sixty something layers and sebaceous glands and all of that. You simply speak to your subconscious with symbolism and you see your skin heal. Now, this is the symbolism I used. I imagined that I was sitting in a peaceful location and around me were trees. And I imagine as if I can reach my arms out and grab a green cream from these trees.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Put this green cream all over my face, then like Iron Man, I can blast a healing laser. And as I, as I, as I put this green cream over my face, it absorbs all the oil and all the dead skin and all the pimples and I pull it off. And I toss it away. Now I have a nice, healthy layer of skin. Then I reach up to the sky and I grab a blue cream from the sky and I put this blue cream on my face. And then again, like Iron Man, I shoot out this laser and as I blend over the blue cream, it blends in and forms a new layer of smooth, healthy skin. Now, Jose Silva said, if you're attempting to do healing of this sort, it's a three-minute approach. You're literally visualizing this for three minutes, but three times a day. And that's what I did.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Three minutes, three times a day, while at a relaxed level of mind, commonly called the alpha level. You're lowering your brainwave frequencies and I talk about how to get there in the book. In five weeks, Louis, I healed my skin. I had skin disease for five years, right? Not just acne, horrible acute acne. I healed it in five weeks. And my skin today is, is much, is so.

• 25:21Lewis Howes?

  Young.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  It's young. Given my age, I'm gonna be forty-seven.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, looks really good.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  So I've used the same thing to reverse graying. I was graying maybe six, seven years ago and then I reversed graying on my hair. I actually like graying of my beard, so I like that, right?

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  Wow, you reversed it by doing that practice?

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, so you can command your body. You can command your body. And, you know, I've seen this in other ways. In October twenty twenty, in the midst of the pandemic, I was going through a lot of anxiety and stress because I was moving countries and my eyesight went up to twenty forty. The doctor told me I needed glasses and I simply commanded my eyes to heal. And in about a week or two, I went back to 2020. Right? So you have, we all have command over our bodies, our mind influences our bodies. And there's evidence for this. People with multiple personality disorder show different health symptoms when different personalities.

• 26:11Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 26:12Speaker 00

  You can Google this, this is crazy. So when a different personality sets in, their eyesight changes. They can go from needing glasses to having perfect 2020 vision. What is going on? How much of our body is our mind manifesting this illness? And when we can learn to talk to our bodies and command our bodies to heal, amazing things can happen.

• 26:35Lewis Howes?

  How old were you when you did this acne thing?

• 26:37Speaker 00

  I was 17.

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's interesting you say this because I believe in all this because I've done this myself many times. When I was 18, I was playing college football. And I actually think I've told this on the podcast, I've told friends this, but since you went there and talked about it, I was like, well, okay, I can share it now. I had a, I was 18, I was playing football in Minnesota, my freshman year of college. And I'm the only freshman playing on the offensive side of the, of the team. Most of the freshmen redshirt, which is mean they, they practice, but they don't play. So you get an extra fifth year when you're a senior. But I was like, I want to play, you know, I play as a freshman. And so I'm playing, but it's, it's so grueling and demanding, right?

• 27:20Lewis Howes?

  It's a learning, a new system, there's a playbook that I have to learn, you're, you're going against upperclassmen, it's, it's demanding. For whatever reason, I start getting these, I mean, it's pretty nasty. I have like probably 50 to 60 little black warts on the bottom of my feet. The little planter warts on the bottom of my feet. Probably athlete's foot, just like being in the locker room, walking around like, you know, a bunch of hundred sweaty guys and just not showering right afterwards, whatever it was. So I had these like little, they were so painful to walk, just to touch on it was extremely painful. It felt like it was a little needle sticking up, but 50 to 60 of them in each foot. And I would just kind of like grunt it out, but then it got so painful, I couldn't play.

• 28:03Lewis Howes?

  So the, the nurses on the team, they like tried to scalpel them out, right? With a scalpel, no numbing, no nothing, just like trying to pick these like little warts out. It was so painful, I had to stop. I was like, I can't do this. And every time I was in, you know, in football cleats, the cleat would kind of stick up and just the pressure point was excruciating, right? So my sister Heidi gave me a practice, a meditation practice back at this time. It's kind of when I started to learn meditation was in, in college. She said, I think you can heal yourself. And I grew up in a religion that, that, that really practiced healing yourself with your thoughts in your mind. So she gave me a meditation and I used this kind of healing practice from the religion I learned. And in literally two weeks, they all went away.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  They were getting worse and worse, but then I started this practice and I went into a relaxed state. I put calming music on and I imagined myself laying in a river, kind of like you did with nature. Pulling up these leaves and these trees and kind of bringing this cream to your face. I imagine myself laying in a river of golden healing light. And it was flowing through the top of my head and pulling out all the toxins in my body and flushing out these kind of warts on my feet at the bottom. And I would imagine them releasing from my feet and going away. Within two weeks, I had perfect feet, like the bottom of my feet, all these warts were gone. And I was like, this is mind blowing. No one had to like pick these out with knives. I didn't have to take medication.

• 29:30Lewis Howes?

  I released it with my mind and thought and intention by going into a relaxed state, kind of like what you talk about in your meditation practice.

• 29:37Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  I didn't know what it was doing necessarily. I didn't have like a whole system, but it was like, I was practicing this visualization strategy at 18. And it's something I still do today.

• 29:46Speaker 00

  So let's break that down, right? From, from theory of healing. So I had plantar warts as well and I healed it too. But here's the interesting thing, I'd healed my skin at seventeen. And I got the plantar warts twenty, twenty-two, I was living in New York. And it, it really was painful, so painful. And then I met a girl, the, the woman I, Christina, the woman I would ultimately end up marrying. And I went to Norway to visit her. And I remember, you know, lying in bed with her. And I had all of these plasters on my feet. I was embarrassed for her to see my feet. I was literally trying to hide my feet because I thought she would reject me. Okay, but here's what had happened, before I'd flown to Norway, I went, I'd had the plantar warts for several months.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  Finally, I went to a doctor and I asked him, what will it take to take this away? And he says, it's very simple, we shoot a laser, we, we, we have to cut it out, we have to cut it out. But you're gonna have like little holes in your feet. And I said, heck no. Then I got a second, I went to a second doctor and the doctor said, no, that's rubbish. All we gotta do is shoot a laser and it'll be gone, you have nothing to worry about. And the doctor didn't realize it, but his words, you have nothing to worry about, healed me. So I go to Norway, I'm sitting with Christina, the woman I would ultimately marry. And we're, we're now divorced, but we are, we are great friends, we were together for nineteen years. And as we are sitting there in bed, holding each other, having the most, being in the most blissful states.

• 31:13Speaker 00

  The next day I wake up and I'm trying to clean my plaster and the warts are gone. Two things happen. The first thing is that the doctor had told me, you have nothing to worry about. So I expected that my reality was gonna be wart-free. Because I knew, even if it, either way, this doctor could take care of it. Second thing, I was in a blissful, loving state, in a state of compassion, in a state of gratitude. Because I'd met this incredible woman and it activated the healing effect. Yes. Now, this is why when we do the six phase, phase one, two, three are about these blissful states. Compassion, gratitude, then forgiveness. Then you go to phase four where you're manifesting and or healing.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Okay, but here's the, here's what is going, that going on there from healing theory. Jose Silva. So his work is an inspiration for phase four creative visualization. He says there's a specific model that you've got to implement in your thoughts for the healing to work. It's not just about visualization. It's the DBE model. You must have desire for the outcome, desire for the healing, or desire for, you know, the house or whatever. I had that desire because I thought, oh my God, if a woman sees this, I will never get a girlfriend. And it's so freaking painful walking. So you have that desire. If you don't have that burning desire, you're gonna flip flop. Your mind is gonna want one thing, one day, then something else. Now, the second thing is you must believe that it's possible.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  So I believed it's possible because the doctor told me, you have nothing to worry about. But if that doctor had said, ah, this is gonna be painful, it's gonna last eight years, he would have affected my belief. So you must believe healing is possible.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  Kind of like your aunt saying, oh, you're gonna have this for four years. It's just, it's normal. You'll be, you know.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  You must believe it's possible. If you don't believe, if you're just starting a business and you set a goal, I'm gonna make 10 million this year, and you don't believe it, don't do that. Set a goal that you believe is possible. Belief is necessary. Now, the third one is the most interesting. You must expect it to happen. When you expect it to happen, you stop worrying about it. Because the doctor has told me, you have nothing to worry about, when you come back from Norway, we'll get this fixed. I expected it to happen. And so there was no worry. And it healed itself before I even did. When I went to see the doctor, the doctor's like, this is whipped, there's nothing hit a laser. It was absolutely gone.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  I did this with, I broke my wrist and I healed my wrist, the wrist bone as well. And I had x-rays and came back a few weeks later and the bone was healed because I did a similar process and I did this with broken ribs and many other things. And I think when you're attached and hoping like it's gonna, you're attached to it needing to happen. It's probably less likely to release.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 34:01Lewis Howes?

  But when you let go of attachment, like you said, like expecting it to happen, believing, and then letting it go.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:07Lewis Howes?

  Allowing it to release naturally, I think, is the key, right?

• 34:10Speaker 00

  Now, now here's, let's go crazier. The modality of healing that I talk about here with its roots in the Silva method is called imagery therapy. Dr. O'Call Simonton of the Simonton Cancer Research Institute decided to test this out on cancer patients, and what he discovered was astonishing. He tested this out on one hundred and fifty-nine cancer patients who were given twelve months to live, so this is terminal four cancer, right? The average survival rate went from twelve months to twenty-four point four months. Now, of these patients, seventeen went through, fourteen completely healed their cancer. Seventeen went through a situation where their cancer started subsiding. So this is fourteen plus seventeen, what is that, that's thirty-something, so around thirty

• 34:52Speaker 00

  out of one hundred and fifty-nine basically went on a path to recovery. Yet, all of these people were given twelve months to live. The average lifespan increased to twenty-four point four months. So we're not saying, O'Call Simonton's certainly not saying that this is a cancer cure, but what he's saying is that imagery therapy, when applied to even terminal illnesses, seemed to increase the probability of recovery.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  And of course, you're doing this with your doctor's advice. Now, these patients were practicing visualization using the Silva method for four months.

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  Really? When was this study?

• 35:21Speaker 00

  This study, in the nineteen seventies. Simonton went on to say that about the Silva system, it is the single most powerful tool I have to offer patients.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  The doctor said this?

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, O'Call Simonton.

• 35:33Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think, you know, imagine if you did the reverse, if the imagery therapy of you saying, oh, this, I'm gonna die soon, you know, you're putting more stress and worry on it, you look at the, for the pain or whatever the, the disease is, and you think about how it's going to expand.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  Then you'll probably expand it faster.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  Right? If you reverse the imagery therapy.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  And, and sometimes, disease is manifested as a punishment on ourselves.

• 35:59Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Which is why phase three is forgiveness. In phase three, you practice an eight-step forgiveness protocol that was pioneered by two, two pioneers, Dave Asprey of Forty Years of Zen and Dr. Jim Hart of the BioCybernet Institute. And what they found is that This forgiveness protocol has a healing impact on your body, but also puts your brainwaves in a state most comparable to Zen Roshi monks who have spent twenty to forty years in meditation. What we mean by that is high alpha amplitude, left-right brain coherence. Forgiveness.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  Forgiveness of yourself and others.

• 36:34Speaker 00

  And other people, anybody who has wronged you and you've had brutal things happen to you, Lewis. I've read about that in your book. But when you forgive the person who did that to you, there's a healing impact on your body. The science of forgiveness is eerie, especially you're an athlete. An Israeli study shows that it improves endurance. A study at the University of Ithrich, it shows that forgiveness improves your vertical jump. It also reduces anxiousness, reduces back pain, makes you sleep better, improves heart health. It's crazy.

• 37:05Lewis Howes?

  Well, when you're holding on to resentment, you're literally carrying a weight.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:09Lewis Howes?

  You know, an emotional weight which makes you physically weaker.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 37:12Lewis Howes?

  So, why would you, you would be able to jump higher if you're letting go of this emotional weight. It should have a little bit more lift.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  And theoretically, your body should be able to heal better.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  It should be.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  So we're seeing that forgiveness improves heart health. There was a study on this and anybody can go online and type in forgiveness studies. Hundreds of them. Now, you have, so phase one is compassion. Phase two is gratitude. Phase three is forgiveness. This puts you in the right emotional states for phase four, which is where you step out from blissfulness and you go into action. And in phase four, you're either applying your mind to heal your body or to attract a goal to you. The new book you want to write, your soulmate. But all of these go in a particular sequence. Now, when you forgive yourself, you typically forgive past judgment. And past judgment on yourself can sometimes cause illness and disease. You know?

• 38:03Lewis Howes?

  Give me an example.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  Last month, last month, I was surprised and so delighted to see that the number two book on Amazon was a book called The Body Keeps Core.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh, it's a great book.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Exactly, right? You've read it and it talks about how our body keeps core of negativity, of trauma, of hate. Our emotions are so powerful and there's so much evidence that shows that our emotions, our body keeps core of them. And when you can heal that emotion, and forgiveness is one of the most powerful protocols, you literally heal your body. You put your body in a healing modality.

• 38:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's so powerful. I was talking to a doctor. Oh, man, I'm trying to, I've had so many different doctors and I'm trying to remember his name, but it'll come to me. But he said there were two different times in his life where he was, I don't know if it was like sick or more of like a depressed state, you know, just like low energy, kind of depressed, in a funk for like a year or two. And I said, what? And then he said, and then I had like a healing. And I, I started to have all this energy again and I started to thrive and my body started to recover. And I go, what? What changed? And he goes, I found love in both those occasions. You know, I found a beautiful partner. These were like, I don't know, 15, 20 years apart or something. And that energy allowed my body and my mind to heal.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  How has, how, what is the science of love? In terms of healing as well?

• 39:24Speaker 00

  As a healing force, right? So again, compassion. So firstly, you do not necessarily need love from a partner. And it's important that you learn to generate self-love.

• 39:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:36Speaker 00

  If you do not generate self-love, if you're not able to generate love from within, going into a type of relationship can be difficult because you develop neediness. And I've been there, right? We've all been there at points where we lack self-love. We need it from our partner and that can push away the partner.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  A hundred percent.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  It makes you unattractive.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  So in phase one compassion, we activate love as an energy by seeing the face of someone you love. And even if you are single, that face could be a nephew, a niece, a mom, a dad, a pet, your best friend, maybe a younger version of you. You feel that love in your heart, you give it a color and then you take a deep breath, as you exhale, you imagine that love filling your entire body. You can even experience love from God or a higher power. You feel that raining down upon you and filling your entire body. And you just feel that love for yourself. Then you expand that into wider and wider circles. So love as an energy is a incredibly powerful energy because the feeling of love creates all of these other delicious emotions. Esther Hicks, the spiritual teacher, wrote a book called, The Deliberate Power of Emotions. And she says, you know,

• 40:42Speaker 00

  it's not our minds that attract. She also wrote the book Law of Attraction, but she's very clear. It is the emotional state you're in that causes the attraction. It's not, oh, I'm gonna see that house, so I'm gonna get that house. I'm gonna see myself healing, so I'm gonna get that healing. It's the emotional state you're in. This is why when I designed the six phase, before you go to the manifesting part, you work on compassion, gratitude, forgiveness. This is about six minutes. You put yourself in the right emotional states, then you go to the action-oriented manifestation.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. Because you wanna attract and manifest from an emotional state that has all these other things. Gratitude, love, appreciation, all these different things.

• 41:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Because it's hard to attract from a negative space. Emotional negative space, right? So, okay, here's a, I guess, controversial question for you. Narcissism has been, you know, a massive topic in the last couple of years. What is the difference between self-love and narcissism?

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Narcissism is self-love without love for others. We need both. This is why in the sixth phase, we literally start with compassion as a trampoline to everything else. You expand your love and you feel your love radiating to all life, all plant life, all animal life, all human beings, and we go into wider and wider circles. So if you were meditating here, you would see your love radiate to your entire team and even every part of plant in your office. Then you'd expand it to the entire city of L.A. You might then go on a detour, maybe see your partner, see your mom and dad, see a nephew and a niece, see your pet. Then you might expand it further to all of the United States. Because especially in this country, we need to bridge the gap between people of different political views.

• 42:26Speaker 00

  So you wanna see all people of the United States, regardless of color, religion, political view, as being a recipient of your love. Then you expand it to the entire world because you wanna feel yourself connected to the greater human species.

• 42:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  And studies show that not only does this make you kinder and gentler, people literally start tipping more, you know? But you get less triggered. And so there's a huge beneficial effect to you as well. When you walk the world, like, your mind sees the beauty in other human beings. Even if they happen to wrong you, you see the beauty in them. Your judgment disappears. And it makes you a better person, but it also makes you a person who uplifts the people around you.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  What happens when we judge others? Well, there's a natural thing in our mind called the fundamental attribution error. Right? So what happened? The what? It's called fundamental attribution error. So when we make a mistake, we attribute it to circumstance. But when somebody else makes a mistake, we attribute it to character. Compassion practices, tune down F A E. So let me tell you something that happened to me that I'm not proud of. So I remember I was living in San Francisco and I'm walking down the street and you know, I love this particular street. I walked on beautiful Victorian houses, really nice spot. And there's this lady in front of me and she's eating a frickin' Oreo. And as she puts the Oreo in her mouth, she drops the Oreo wrapper on the ground. So I'm like, how dare she does this? What a horrible human being. My fundamental attribution goes up.

• 43:56Speaker 00

  Straight to judgment. I'm thinking, she's horrible, she's a litterbug. So I walk up, I grab that Oreo, I go to a bin, I make sure I'm walking faster so I overtake her and I drop it in the bin and turn around and kind of give her a judgy look. And she looks at me, she stops, dead in a trap. And then she starts crying. And I'm like, um, why are you crying? I'm just picking up your trash. And she goes, why do you have to be so mean? And I'm like, I'm not trying to be mean, why do you have to litter? And she goes, listen, I'm so sorry I littered. I found out this morning that my boyfriend dumped me. Oh, man. And all I wanted to do was just ease that pain with this Oreo. And my mind was on so many different things, I didn't realize I dropped the wrapper.

• 44:41Speaker 00

  Why do you have to be such a jerk to me at this moment? And I felt like she was right, I was a jerk. I labeled her a litterbug without understanding what was really happening in her soul. She wasn't a litterbug. She was a sweet woman who went through a hard time and made a mistake. And I felt bad. That's fundamental attribution error. All of us do that. Right. We all do that. Now, when you are seeing the world through the lens of compassion and emanating that compassion, if the wrapper dropped, you might pick it up still, you might drop it. But you don't feel like you need to prove the other person wrong and you wouldn't judge the other person. You know that in human life... All of us go through moments of weakness, go through moments of pain.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  And your default thinking might more likely be, hmm, I wonder if she's okay.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think a lot of us jump to the conclusion of, oh, if you're not, if this person's not being perfect and they they they falter a little bit, we we quickly jump to a conclusion and we judge, right? As opposed to jump to compassion.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:42Lewis Howes?

  We should jump to compassion, not conclusions and judgment.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  And I and when you go with, I wonder if she's okay, here's what else is happening. Firstly, you're not putting on more hurt onto someone who is hurt, but you are also feeling better. You don't feel like there are bad people in the world, or litter bugs in the world, or bad drivers in the world. You just go, oh, I wonder if they're okay. And and a natural human response is, I wonder what I can do to help.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:06Speaker 00

  And so imagine if we did this with, if you were schoolteachers and we did this with a student who was going through a difficult time, not that person is misbehaving, but I wonder if they're okay. If we did this with our coworkers, if they were having a grumpy day, we just wonder if they're okay.

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Maybe they had a fight with their spouse that morning, maybe they had, they couldn't sleep the previous night. And so we approach the world from a different presence, and the world becomes so much better. But it also makes our world safer.

• 46:34Lewis Howes?

  So why do you think it's so hard for people to actually love themselves? Why why is it such a hard switch to start appreciating ourselves, acknowledging ourselves for the hard work, having gratitude for ourselves, for how we show up, for the things we've overcome in our lives, for the adversities we've had to tackle? Why is this so challenging for so many people?

• 46:55Speaker 00

  I think one of the reasons is because culturally, as a society, the way parents have been trained to raise kids, the way our education system has been trained, trained us, is to tell us that there are certain things we do which are wrong, and we have to be right. We see this in religion. There are religions that said, you can't do that, that is wrong, God is going to judge you, you are wrong. A lot of this is nonsense. Look at what's happening in Iran right now, right? Women are being told that they are sinners for showing a little bit of hair. They're being arrested by morality police, right? And that's why the women of Iran are taking off their hijabs and protesting right now. But it's not just in Iran. Think about like the religions in the countries you are at.

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Think about what you've heard in many, through many religious teachers. Religion is a beautiful part, and in phase six, we actually honor religion through prayer. But there's also that dark side of religion. Dogma, which tells us that there are right ways and there are wrong ways. And because you make that mistake, you are a sinner and you are going to hell. And you know, all of these other things. Then you look at the education system. We grade kids based on the stupidest things, right? You get an F for history, and it makes you feel like a failure. But what the is that knowledge of history gonna mean to your life in the future? Or geography, right? Nobody wakes up as an adult depressed because they can't remember, you know, the the date of the Mongol siege of Baghdad, or the amount of rainfall in Montana.

• 48:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  We go through horrible situations in life because of heartache, because of anxiety, because of, you know, dealing with stress. We don't learn any of that, so we are graded on given grades. As children, told this person is an A, you got an F. You gotta study harder for the stupidest things which have no bearing in future success. And then there's parenting. Parenting, and so many parents practice discipline. And they tell the kids, you need to do that, you need to do that. You're you're bad because of this. You don't eat your vegetables, so you are gonna be frail. All of us go through that stuff.

• 49:00Lewis Howes?

  If you could go back fifteen years ago, before your first child, what advice would you give yourself before your first child that you know now as a parent? From all the things you did well and the things that maybe you wish you would've changed?

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Here's the answer to that. Here's the answer to that. It is, it's it's two parts, okay? Two parts. The first part comes from the psychologist Shelley Lefkoe. She founded the Lefkoe Method, which is a belief system training. And one of the things Shelley explained to me is that the most important thing a parent can do for their child is to protect the child's beliefs. As make sure your child understand that they can heal their body, that their beliefs heal their body. Ensure your child understands that gratitude and appreciation will actually cause more good things to come to their life. Make their child understand that getting an F is meaningless. Make your child understand that compassion is an important quality.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  All of that, right? Protect the child's belief. Never install in your child a bad belief. So let me give you an example. I was driving with my son once. It was a Sunday. It was Father's Sunday. And as we were driving, my CFO calls me. It's something urgent. He needed to talk to me. So I had to pick up the phone and talk to my CFO for twenty minutes in the middle of a Sunday drive with my kid. When I put down the phone, I realized that if I didn't explain to Hayden what happened, he might form a belief, Dad's work is more important to me. And that belief could emerge as adulthood. Work should come before family. All of these are dangerous beliefs. So I turned to Hayden and I said, Hayden, I want you to know, you're the most important thing in my life. You, as my son, I love you so much.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  You're more important to me than my work. My entire company can disappear and I'd be okay. But you, I always love you and always want you around. I'm sorry I had to take that call for twenty minutes. Something important happened and my company needed me. However, we're going to extend this trip by another twenty minutes so we can continue spending time together because you fill me with so much joy. Do you see what happened there? It's because in any circumstance, I ask myself, what will this tell my children about the world? Kids have a meaning-making machine. They rapidly create meaning. Right. Even if you don't tell them, they're going to make sense of it somehow. Exactly. So that's the first one. The second thing is, let your children know you love them. Like, it's so important. Like, they must feel love from you.

• 51:26Speaker 00

  If they feel love from you, they're more likely to give love to themselves. Yes. But so often, as parents, we don't do that. It's so hard, especially for men. So many men are not trained to say, I love you. I practice, like, I know my dad loves me. Why is it so hard, though? It's weird, right? I know my dad loves me. He does the most incredible acts of service, right? Like, when I'm traveling, he'll ensure that my apartment, everything is running great. But he doesn't say I love you. And so in my case, I tell that to my son. And it makes him a little bit uncomfortable. You know, guys get uncomfortable. My son is fifteen, but I tell him, Hayden, I love you. When I missed his birthday because I was on this book tour. And I left him a beautiful three-minute message, just talking about how much I loved him. Explaining why I felt I had to do this book tour.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  Explaining that he is the most important thing in my life, along with his sister. And reemphasizing, I love you. And children need to hear that.

• 52:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  Protect your kids' beliefs and ensure that they know without a doubt that you love them.

• 52:28Lewis Howes?

  What happens if you don't tell your kids, or you don't hear from your parents that they love you?

• 52:33Speaker 00

  So, you know, we all have different love languages, right?

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 00

  And if you don't hear that often, all of us, all of us, we're imperfect beings. Trying to make the best we can of a crazy world as we learn and as we grow. And all of us will go through moments of doubt. Self-doubt isn't a bad thing. Self-doubt keeps us humble. Self-doubt keeps us vulnerable. But very often, that self-doubt is, does he or she really love me? And that he or she could be your mom, your dad, your partner. And so it's important to understand that this self-doubt is a normal thing. But if we can share that with people, share our love with people, this can be a real gift today.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. And the sixth, go ahead.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I was at Burning Man recently, and I learned this beautiful technique. So I was listening to a talk by John Weinland, Annie Lala, and Leila Martin. And it was a talk on relationships at Burning Man. It was so beautiful. But I can't remember who of the three speakers it was. That's why I wanted to mention all their names. But they shared something really interesting.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  Don't just say, I love you to people, right? Especially in your partner. Don't just tell them, I love you. But in your mind, practice a game called, she loves me, or he loves me. Oh, she put her arm on my shoulder as I was driving. She loves me. She. Made coffee for me this morning. She loves me. You're mentally reaffirming, because most people, we do the negative thing. Oh, he's not talking to me today. Does he really love me? Oh, he couldn't make this date because he had to work overtime. Does he really love me? No, you want to practice the opposite. He loves me, she loves me. The littlest thing your partner does, you look at it and you reinforce, I am loved. And I thought this was such a beautiful exercise, because I've gone through those self doubts sometimes.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, like when I'm dating someone or in my past relationship. But understanding the she loves me exercise really helps you feel, feel more secure. And then in turn, you can give more love.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  I love the idea of saying, I am loved. You know, whether or not someone's doing something or touching you or giving you something. Or if you're single, just saying, I am loved.

• 54:44Speaker 00

  Right.

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  You know, you don't have to have a partner to feel loved.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:48Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's an important thing. And when we can come from a foundation of I am loved, you're probably going to attract more love into your life.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  And giving that love by re-creating it to your children, to your lover, to everyone.

• 55:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. The sixth phase, you talk about the blessing. How does the blessing complete the circle of meditation?

• 55:07Speaker 00

  Well, first, let's just quickly go to phase five. So phase five is commanding your day. And that is manifesting practice. You are literally practicing manifesting exactly how you want your day to unfold. And we bring in some, we bring in the science of it, which has to do with the brain's reticular activating system. And then we bring in the spirituality of it, which has to do with a lot of theories from Michael Beckwith, Esther Hicks, and all of these great spiritual teachers. Now, you wrap everything up in a blessing. And a blessing is where you reunite the six phase with whatever is your deepest spiritual or religious truth. So you're essentially saying, God, or the universe, or a higher power, or whatever you believe in. I've given my love and compassion to all life, everything that you've created.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  I've expressed gratitude for all the wonders that you've showered me with. I've forgiven people who have wronged me to seek to understand and not judge. I've laid out a three-year vision of how I want my life to be or my body to heal. And I've asked for my day to unfold perfectly. Now would you support me and bless me? That's it. That's phase six. And then I like to end it with a little fist bump to God. Because you know, we're in the COVID era, you can never be too safe. And the reason this is so important is because religion has a beautiful truth to it. And that is the feeling that you are blessed. When religion tells you that God is judging you, that's rubbish. That is horrible. Do not take that on. That is dogma that came from the origins of religion where they had to scare you

• 56:34Speaker 00

  so the churches could make money. But when religion talks about how God loves you, how you are blessed, that is the positive side we want to emphasize. Sri Kumar Rao, the great MBA professor who brings eastern philosophy into America's MBA school, says, "The most important belief we can take on," do you know what that is? The most important belief is the belief that we live in a benevolent universe, that the universe loves us, is holding us, is guiding us. The universe has our back. And that everything that happens to us is not happening to us, but happening for us. And that is what we're doing with this sixth phase, the blessing.

• 57:11Lewis Howes?

  I love this. I'm excited about this. The six-phase meditation method. Make sure you guys get this. I think it's really, everything you talked about in here are things that I feel like I've been doing, but not in a method standpoint. So I feel like it's helpful to have a guide, a process, a step-by-step.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  This is super specific. Two minutes each phase, maybe three minutes to go in your meditation, come out, 15 minutes total. And with the book, you get a course, the six-phase meditation course. It's about 90 minutes broken up into 15 minutes a day. And at the end of six days, you've mastered the approach. And I'm personally teaching and guiding the course. And you learn all of the advanced protocols. So this is like playing any sport. You can be at the surface or you can go really deep. The deeper you go, the more feelings of bliss you get, the more powerful you are at forgiving, the more you can manifest. And that's what we seek to do with the book.

• 57:59Lewis Howes?

  What's the best place to get the book and follow you?

• 58:01Speaker 00

  You can get the book from Amazon or you can also go to mindvalley.com/six. And if you buy the book from there, you get a special crazy bonus, which is not just the online course, but... For a limited time, we're giving away Mindvalley's meditation app, which is really cool. 500 plus meditations by Norwell tracks, hypnotherapy tracks from hundreds of teachers. Completely free for you for a year. All you've got to do is get it from mindvalley.com/number6.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Make sure you guys go there. Follow you. Where's the main place you like to be on social media? Where should we follow you?

• 58:34Speaker 00

  So follow me on Instagram @vision. V I S H E N.

• 58:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. You're everywhere else on social media as well, but that's your main place to hang out? Mindvalley.com is an amazing resource. Make sure you guys check that out as well. Couple of final questions for you before we got to get you out on a plane back to Europe. This is a question I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical situation.

• 58:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  It's the last day for you in this world, many years away. You get to live as long as you want, but eventually you've got to turn the lights off. And you've accomplished and manifested everything you want in your life. Love, business, health, you know, community, all the things you want, they happen. You see your kids do things they want to do. But for whatever reason, everything you've created, this book, your companies, they're all gone. We don't have access to any more information that you've put out into the world. This interview, gone. Hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. And this is all we have to remember you by. And I like to call it three truths. What would those be for you?

• 59:36Speaker 00

  Oh, I like this. I like this. I've never answered this before. So I'm going to reflect on some of the things we spoke about. The first one would be always live in gratitude. The second one would be always radiate love. And the third one would be raise your children with positive beliefs. With only positive beliefs.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  I love that. It's a great truth. It's powerful. I want to acknowledge you, Vishen, for how you continue to show up in the world.

• 1:00:07Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:00:08Lewis Howes?

  Again, the way you show up with Mindvalley, your events, you do a lot of curated events as well, but you're constantly trying to innovate, simplifying, living a better life.

• 1:00:17Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:00:17Lewis Howes?

  There's a lot of complexities to the world. There's a lot of adversity, challenges, negative energy in the world. And everything you touch and create has an intention, I feel, is trying to impact people in a positive way.

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:00:31Lewis Howes?

  So I really acknowledge your brilliant mind, your engineering mind, and how you bring love, peace, and healing through engineering. I think it's really unique, the way you bring this to the world. So I'm really grateful for you. I acknowledge you for this book, your mission of service, which is what you're really here to do. My final question for you, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  Ooh, that's interesting. I think greatness is understanding that the point of life is to live. And we forget that. We think the point of life is the accolades, or the career, or the company. All of those are just vehicles to move you towards really living, having the abundance, the juicy emotional states, the creative creativity to live. And living means adventure, travel, being in love. To me, it's raising kids, seeing the world, it's connecting with people, it's discovery, it's growth, it's romance, it's sex, it's all of these different things. And I've started to learn that that is what life is about. I'm 47, right?

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Well, I'm gonna be 47, and I want to dedicate the rest of my life to living. I love my company, and I love my mission, but that's gonna be secondary to truly living.

• 1:01:48Lewis Howes?

  Vishen, thanks, my man. Appreciate you. Good times.

• 1:01:51Speaker 00

  Thanks.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. 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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple. And let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.