The Real Reason You Can't Stop Self-Sabotage | Dr. K

Dr. K, the Harvard-trained psychiatrist known for his work with gamers and high performers, drops a truth that reframes everything: your negative identity isn't a flaw — it's your mind's attempt to protect you from failure. Most people go through life trying to upgrade from a loser identity to a winner identity, never realizing that both are traps that warp how you see reality. If you've ever wondered why motivation disappears the moment a goal feels out of reach, or why doing everything right still leaves you feeling empty, this conversation answers it in a way that actually makes sense. Dr. K breaks down the neuroscience of why you can't control your thoughts, why goals can secretly fuel procrastination, and why the most powerful thing you can do happens entirely inside your head. By the end, you'll see that the path to real change isn't about believing harder or wanting it more, it's about understanding how your mind actually works and learning to respond differently to what it generates. Dr. K’s book How to Raise a Healthy Gamer: End Power Struggles, Break Bad Screen Habits, and Transform Your Relationship with Your Kids Healthy Gamer Website Healthy GamerGG Podcast Healthy Gamer Youtube In this episode you will: Discover why your negative identity is protecting you and why trying to eliminate it is the wrong move Understand the critical difference between being capable of something and believing you can do it, and why confusing the two keeps people stuck Learn why goals can actually kill your motivation and what to focus on instead Recognize that you can't control your thoughts, only how you respond to them, and why that distinction changes everything Apply Dr. K's framework for processing setbacks without letting them collapse your sense of self For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1909 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Lewis Howes Solo [Create Lasting Motivation] Dr. Caroline Leaf MrBeast Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games. There is such a powerful drive to return to the couch. So, identity shapes motivation.

• 0:14Lewis Howes?

  He is a psychiatrist, a Harvard-trained physician, and founder of Healthy Gamer, one of the fastest-growing mental health communities in the world. Dr. K, thank you so much for being here.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. If I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy, and they will think of me as a loser as well. So, a loser never has imposter syndrome. We need to be defiant in the face of the world. We need to be doing stupid action. Not giving up means being an idiot. Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. 99% of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action.

• 0:54Lewis Howes?

  How do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  You know, one of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with, like, high performers is...

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  We were just talking maybe for the last hour about our lives and challenges we've overcome and what we're up to in our lives. And one of the things that I really care about here on the School of Greatness is helping people unlock their potential.

• 1:23Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:24Lewis Howes?

  Helping people live more meaningful, harmonious lives, helping people be on mission in their lives, having healthier relationships in their lives, and really, living from a place of peace rather than pain. And everyone's gone through pain. Everyone's gone through some type of trauma, or suffering, or sadness, or loss, or grief. And some of these things shape their identities. And I truly feel that our identity shapes our view of the world, and it can either support us in creating the life we want, or it can keep us stuck in feeling more traumatized, victim, and things like that. And I'm curious...

• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  How do we improve our self-identity if our identity is holding us back?

• 2:12Speaker 00

  I mean, my goal and what I try to help a lot of people do is to get rid of identity entirely. So if we look at like the function of identity, you're spot on that your identity is the lens through which you view the world. So, you know, I've worked with many people who will adopt a negative identity. So the first thing to understand is even a negative identity, like I'm a loser, is not actually a negative identity. A loser is an adaptation that our mind forms to protect ourselves. So I was struggling with gaming addiction when I was like 18 years old. And, you know, I had hopes, I had dreams, and not being able to achieve those dreams is so painful.

• 2:57Speaker 00

  So one of the ways that we adapt is we become something that is not capable of success. Right? So there are winners in life and there are losers in life, and I am a loser. And that thought comes with a lot of a negative emotion. The mistake that a lot of people end up making is they try to get rid of that negative emotion. They try to think like, okay, I'm a loser, instead I should be a winner. And there's a lot of value to a positive mindset, which we can get to, but like, let's understand the fundamentals. First thing to understand is if you have a negative identity, it is serving you in some way. The human brain, our mind has evolved with all of these structures. And one of the simplest ways, I know you, I'm sure you've had injuries, right?

• 3:41Speaker 00

  When you have an injury, the first thing that happens is we'll form scar tissue. So scar tissue is tough, it's fibrous, and it protects us. So the negative identities that we form help us from facing other things. So if I'm a loser, I never have to try anymore, right? If I am lazy, it's not my fault. Because there's the people out there who are disciplined and the people out there who are lazy. And I'm one of the lazy ones, I'm unlucky. Then the problem becomes that our identity literally shapes the way that we move through the world.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  So if I think of myself as ugly and I go on a date, my expectations of the date, the way that I show up.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  Is going to heavily affect the date because human beings are empathic. So if I walk into a room and I believe of myself, if I think of myself as a loser, other people will pick up on that empathic energy and they will think of me as a loser as well. So you know, if you go into a job interview and you're, you don't think you belong. I see this all the time. It's really interesting. I see a ton of imposter syndrome. When I was at Harvard, I would see a ton of imposter syndrome. And you'd think that imposter syndrome is fixed by success. But actually, success, we'll get to this. I'm getting a little bit all over the place. But imposter syndrome is actually created by success.

• 5:12Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean?

• 5:12Speaker 00

  I know it's weird. So a loser never has imposter syndrome. You get that?

• 5:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  You only have, people only think they're imposters when they achieve things. It's really bizarre.

• 5:22Lewis Howes?

  That they don't believe they're meant to achieve.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Exactly. Right? So when I end up at a place at, like Harvard, there's a ton of imposter syndrome.

• 5:29Lewis Howes?

  And these are with the most successful, smartest people in the world.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And that imposter syndrome is created when the world views us in one way, but our identity is something else. So the reason we have so much imposter syndrome at a place like Harvard is because you have a bunch of kids who thought of themselves as the smartest kid in the class. And then the moment they get into Harvard, I used to be valedictorian, now I'm average.

• 5:58Lewis Howes?

  I'm a nobody. Yeah.

• 6:00Speaker 00

  Right? And then you're with all these, you're with your peers and suddenly you used to be number one, now you're average. And so you feel like you don't belong because you've never been average.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  And everyone's jockeying to like one up and smarter than, and I know this better than you.

• 6:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right? So this is, identity is a tricky thing. So first thing is negative identity is protective. So the, if you have some part of your identity that you think is bad. That you want to get rid of, wrong approach. Ask yourself, what is this, what is this identity doing for me?

• 6:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  When I think of myself as a loser, how does that protect me?

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  You, you mentioned that it's serving, it's serving you in certain ways, but it may not be empowering you to live your fullest potential.

• 6:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely. And, and, and even a positive identity is not going to empower you to live to your fullest potential. So we're into that, right? So there, there are identities that we have that protect us from some negative things. And then we have positive identities too. So going back to the negative identity, this will shape the way that we perceive the world. So it creates some kind of filter, agree?

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes. So I'm a loser, or I'm not beautiful, or I'm ugly, or I'm stupid.

• 7:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:09Lewis Howes?

  This identity that we speak and believe to ourselves, shapes the way we view the world.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it also shapes things like our motivation.

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  So if you were, so this is going to get a bit technical for a second, if that's okay? But we get motivated based on an action success calculation. So what, what our brain does is it looks at what the possibilities are. And if the possibility of success is high, it will be motivated towards it, right? This is why.

• 7:37Lewis Howes?

  We'll be more motivated.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  More motivated, right?

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  If we believe there's a high possibility to succeed.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  There will be more motivated, right? This is why, like, if we sort of think about, you know, if I tell you, oh, hey, can you get me a glass of water? That's easy for you to do because you can do that. You believe you can do that. You believe you can succeed. It's such a simple task and we don't even think about motivation for getting someone a glass of water. Because our, our perception that we can do it is like 100%.

• 8:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:02Speaker 00

  So we automatically do it. We don't even perceive that we're motivated, but it's easy to do. Now, if I don't believe I can do something, and if I can guarantee you that just about every human being who's watching this has something that they're capable of doing, but they don't believe that they can do it.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  And think about all the things in your life that you can, have done, that you did not think that you were capable of. And when you don't think you're capable, it becomes so hard. Because naturally, the part of your brain that is telling you whether you can do it or not, you know, if it doesn't believe you can do it, you have to overcome.

• 8:44Lewis Howes?

  Your limiting beliefs.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have to force yourself. You have to use things like willpower. Right? It's not really, you're not really motivated. You have to like, you're motivated to not try.

• 8:55Speaker 00

  And you have to force yourself, but that comes from your identity. And then the moment that you believe that you can do it, it becomes easier to do. The big problem here, and you were asking a question about identity, is in our, you know, if we have some negative identity, that will prevent us from doing certain things. It also motivates us to do other things. So this is what a lot of people don't realize. People will say to me, Dr. K, I have no motivation. That's incorrect. You have a ton of motivation. You have a ton of motivation to stay home. You have a ton of motivation to play video games.

• 9:26Lewis Howes?

  Sit on the couch, watch TV.

• 9:28Speaker 00

  Right? And just think about how motivated you are. If anyone pulls you out of that, there is such a powerful drive to return to the couch.

• 9:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  So, identity shapes motivation. Then we get to positive identity. Where positive identity says, I can do something, I'm capable of doing things. Sometimes, you know, this positive identity can turn into things like ambition. It can even turn into narcissistic tendencies, right? So narcissism is a particular kind of positive identity. I think I'm great. I think I'm awesome. I'm the best. Other people are not as good as I am. So in Sanskrit, you know, we have this word ahankar, which means ego. And there are three kinds of ego. There is a tamsek ego, which is like a negative identity. That is an identity which keeps you inert. It makes it hard for you to move.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Then there is the rajsek identity. This is the identity that motivates you to act. But this is also the identity that I have to do it. And it's not even that I'm great. I need to do it. I need to accomplish something. I need to help the world. I've worked with so many people who are 52 years old, multimillionaires, and are working themselves towards a heart attack. Because they have this identity, I need to do it. I need to make people proud. I need to have an impact in the world. I want to do good.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And so even in service of that, they will have a lot of motivation. But the really interesting thing is that their motivation keeps them from slowing down. I'm motivated to always move. I can't rest.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I can't sit still.

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  A lot of high achievers or high performers have that.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  That struggle to slow down, to rest, to take a break.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  And, and we all, we, we all covet them. I want to be, I wish when I woke up in the morning, I would flagellate myself. I wish I was so consumed by passion that I could work 90 hours a week, 100 hours a week. I wish I was like that. But those people suffer too. They wind up in my office. So this is where there is, you know, we start with a negative identity that protects us from certain emotions. Then there is a positive identity which activates us, but we are always chasing something. And this is the problem with the positive identity, you'll always move the goalposts.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  So you've got a million subscribers on YouTube.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  When's enough, when's enough enough?

• 11:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, when's enough, right? And you always want more, you always want more, you always want more, because that's what the identity, the identity feels activated when it is achieving. It is the, it is raising the bar that makes you feel really good. And so then the bar, now you actually become addicted to the bar going higher and higher and higher. And we think to ourselves, wonderful, that means I'll get more and more and more and more. But you won't attain peace. You will become a slave to success.

• 12:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's no harmony there.

• 12:28Speaker 00

  Absolutely not. So then we have the third kind of identity, sattvic ahankar. This is the balanced identity. Where you have some amount of inertia, it's a balance between activity and inertia. See, we think that inertia is bad, but it's not. There's a balance between stillness and activity.

• 12:48Speaker 00

  And ideally, what you want to do, in my opinion, is get rid of all identity. Because remember that the negative identity shapes our perception, the positive identity will shape our perception as well. I've worked with some people who are problematic gamblers and really believe in themselves. I can win. I can win. I'm special.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  They've lost a lot, but maybe they've won some, so they believe, oh.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no. They've won a lot. They've lost some.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  Oh, they've won more than they've lost.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:18Lewis Howes?

  So how's that a problem? If they were always winning and they're not losing.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Because they keep playing. Because they can't stop.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Right? So, yeah, they do keep winning. And sometimes they lose. Sometimes they have catastrophic mistakes. So this is what's really interesting. You know, one of the hardest challenges I have as a psychiatrist who works with like high performers is helping people understand that if you're right 99% of the time, your mistakes are more catastrophic.

• 13:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because you're like focused on the losses, right?

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Not just that you don't realize you're making a mistake. So if you're right 99% of the time, the 1% of the time that you're wrong, what is your mind going to be telling you?

• 13:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I made this. Oh, maybe I'm not always right, or maybe.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  And that's why so many people, you know, like it's, I don't think we cover this enough. We talk about rags to riches. We don't talk about riches to rags. But there are way more human beings on the planet that go from riches to rags than go from rags to riches. And sometimes people make catastrophic mistakes because of this positive ego, because I can handle it. But you can't. There are so many signals telling you to slow down. There are so many signals telling you this is, this is a problem. This is not working out. So many people are telling you not to do it. And even your mind is telling you not to do it. But you can't afford to think that way. It is so scary. No, I can do it. I believe in myself. I can do it, you know? I gotta believe.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Don't give up. Keep going. And it can be absolutely catastrophic.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  So how do you know when you should reinforce the belief that you can accomplish, achieve, overcome something that you feel pulled or drawn to do?

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  And instead of, oh, I'm not even gonna try at all.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:07Lewis Howes?

  You know, how do you, what's the balance there?

• 15:10Speaker 00

  It's a problem of perception. So if we look at how identity literally neuroscientifically shapes us, it shapes our perceptions. If I think I'm a loser and someone, I say hi to someone and they just say hi and they look away.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  Maybe this person lost their parent this morning. But if I'm a loser, I will take normal data from the world and I will shape it. If I have a positive identity, I will also do that.

• 15:37Lewis Howes?

  It's evidence reinforcing the belief that I have.

• 15:40Speaker 00

  It, it's actually not evidence. It, I shape my, my belief shapes the evidence. The evidence doesn't shape the belief.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  My belief shapes the evidence.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  So I see something, it could be a neutral event, but then it's shaping the belief.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  Yes, and this is a huge problem where, you know, there are so many people I work with who are way too nice. And they're compassionate and they're kind and they're forgiving. And they get screwed time and time and time again. You know, they think to, oh, every human being on the planet deserves to be loved. So I'm gonna let someone.

• 16:16Lewis Howes?

  Walk all over me, yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Walk all over me. Or not even walk all over me. It's I will let someone take advantage of me once and I will forgive them. And I will let them take advantage of me again. And I will forgive them.

• 16:28Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I did that for most of my life.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  A lot of people do.

• 16:30Lewis Howes?

  I feel like my, we were talking beforehand off camera about, you know, how you went through a midlife crisis in the last few years. I don't know if you publicly, publicly shared that, but I feel like my midlife crisis was a couple of years ago as well. And it was shedding 95% of relationships in my life that I had had, that I felt like were,

• 16:52Lewis Howes?

  that I needed to create boundaries in those relationships.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  But Louis, when you shed those relationships, don't you become a mean person?

• 16:59Lewis Howes?

  That's what I believed.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Shouldn't you be a caring person who maintains your, you wanna be someone who maintains relationships, right? That's a good thing to be.

• 17:07Lewis Howes?

  That's what I believed and then it drained the life out of me.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Constantly giving and constantly giving and.

• 17:12Speaker 00

  Because you are, this is the positive identity. Oh, I wanna be compassionate. I wanna be great. Right? We feel so guilty when we step away from our positive identity.

• 17:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  And then that guilt, cause I don't like the feeling of guilt. So you know what? I'm gonna let this person take advantage of me again. So the goal, how do you tell? Positive identity will shape your perceptions as well. All identity will shape your perceptions. So what we want to do is to see the world as it is, free of all perception. And the only way you can do that is to get rid of identity.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  Your identity, you're a humkar. This gets a bit tricky, but if I ask you, Louis, who are you, what would you say?

• 17:55Lewis Howes?

  Well, my first thought is I'm a loving, passionate, wise man.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's what I would say.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Okay, great. Right, so.

• 18:02Lewis Howes?

  I'm a loving, passionate, wise man.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  So we identify with all kinds of qualities. So I could say I'm a man, I'm a doctor, I'm a husband, I'm a father.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  And that's all part of my ego. So I don't know if this makes sense.

• 18:17Lewis Howes?

  If I can make the identity, yeah, I'm a New York Times bestselling author, I'm a podcast, I could identify with accolades.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  You could identify with accolades, you could identify with vices.

• 18:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  But here's the crazy thing. You were you before any of those things were true.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  You will be you after all of those things are gone.

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Right? So one of the most interesting questions that's, you know, I struggled with is when did I become a doctor? Is it the second I get my M.D. degree? So for me, it was being on call. And there was one particular instance where

• 18:50Speaker 00

  there was a, I, my pager went off and it was something called a rapid response. So a nurse was like, it's like a, not quite an emergency. So I go into this room.

• 18:57Lewis Howes?

  Semi-emergency.

• 18:58Speaker 00

  Semi, about to be. If we don't do something right away, it's gonna be an emergency. So I go into a room and there's a patient who's having a seizure. And so the nurse is there and I walk in and literally like 15 seconds later, my senior resident walks in. His name is Ken, he's an awesome guy. So Ken walks to the other side of the patient and he's like sitting there with his arms crossed. And so I start reporting to him because I'm an intern. I've been an intern for two weeks, finished medical school like a couple of weeks ago. And so I say, Ken, you know, is a 38-year-old woman who's started having a seizure, seems like about 90 seconds ago. And then he looks at me, he's like, mhm. And I said, Ken, the patient's having a seizure. And he said, mhm.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Ken, what should we do? It's like, what do you want to do? I don't know. IV lorazepam, like 1mg or 2mg? And he's like, which one do you want to do? 1mg or 2mg? I'm like, 2mg? It looks like it's a big seizure. And he's like, sounds good. And so what's really scary is a seizure isn't dangerous for like 60 seconds. And Ken is, Ken knows that everything is fine. But that's where like, you know, when someone, when you're panicking, you want him to take over. It's like, I've been doing this for two weeks, but I actually have the information. I know the thing. You have the, but you didn't have the autonomy yet. You didn't take over like- I didn't take the autonomy, right? But I had the ability. And so that's why Ken was awesome, is awesome, I'm sure. Sure. He's being a good leader.

• 20:25Speaker 00

  Being a good leader by not taking the responsibility from me. And so, you know, that was the moment I became a doctor. But I knew everything before then. If after I retire, will I still be a doctor? It's a piece of my identity. But I've always been me even before that. So accolades are not bad. Parts of our identity are not bad per se. They're a necessary part of living in the world. But we should step away from them as much as possible. At the end of the day, in this moment, I'm not a doctor. I'm just me. And what we really, what I really try to help people do is move from negative identity to positive identity. That's a step in the right direction. But then we want to shed all of that.

• 21:09Speaker 00

  And recognize that we're just humans. And you are a wise, passionate man. You weren't that before, in a weird way, but that's okay. Right? Because you had to go through the negative versions of yourself to be the current version of yourself. And if you try to hold on to being a wise, passionate man, you will be in trouble. That too is a stage. So let that go too. Let that go when you're ready. Let it go.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  That was more for the giving an answer, you know, you're like, who are you? I was like, okay.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, so and this is where, you know, I spent seven years studying to become a monk. And the answer of who I am is nothing. I'm nothing, I'm empty. I'm just, I'm just an organism. I'm just a random set of neurons, tissue, thoughts, emotions, moving through the world.

• 21:59Lewis Howes?

  And a soul.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  And a soul. So that's our purest form.

• 22:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  Right? So, identity is of the mind. It's a part of psychology. But, and as we practice these, you know, states of, as we achieve states of meditation, you will feel emptiness.

• 22:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:15Speaker 00

  And emptiness is a beautiful thing because all of your problems disappear. And then when you don't have an identity, see if you believe that you are a wise man, and then you get some bit of information that is contrary to that.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  You're like, oh, maybe I'm not.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  And so then you're, you're struggling, right? Because am I a wise man or am I not a wise man? Here's the crazy thing. You are a wise man and you are also not a wise man.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  And I'll make mistakes and I'll.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  And you will make mistakes, right? And you will make mistakes that will lead to your wisdom. And you will make mistakes that'll make you an idiot.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  I'm brilliant and I'm an idiot. To hold multiple identities.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  I know a lot and I know nothing.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So that's how we transcend. There's this word that gets thrown around a lot. So I think the ultimate goal is to transcend identity, to move away from all of those things. That all of those things are a part of you, but they're not you.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Right? It's, it's a part of you, but it's not ultimately who you are. And when you step away from that, that's when you start, when you stop thinking of yourself as wise, then you will be able to recognize your mistakes and you will be able to recognize your wisdom.

• 23:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:27Speaker 00

  Wisdom is a piece of you, it is not you. And so ultimately, we're gonna step away from all of that stuff.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  In my opinion, if you want to be happy.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  How do you think about identity for yourself? Living in a material, physical world where you have to, you know, organize things and strategize the future and bring people together and plan and pay bills and bring in money.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  Present yourself and have credentials and study, like, how do you think about identity personally?

• 23:55Speaker 00

  Great, so this is such a weird thing. But what, what I want you to understand is that identity is a riti. Riti is a fluctuation within the mind. Identity is not an object, it is an activity. Yes. Okay, so I know this- Ongoing, ongoing. And goes away. Yeah, okay. So, so I, I want you to literally think about this precisely, okay? When you're taking a dump, are you a wise, passionate man? I still am, I still am, but I'm in that moment taking a dump. Are, how would I know that you were a wise, passionate man if I were to just- It would be more of a self-reflection of a knowing, but someone else wanna know. So, in that moment, you're not a wise, you're just a dude taking a dump. Yeah. Right?

• 24:40Speaker 00

  So thi- this is what I mean, so, so your identity literally activates and deactivates, that's what people need to understand. It i- it is, it is a, it is an energetic pattern. So we know this because like we have this thing in, in, you know, in psychiatry, we talk about the narcissistic defense. Hmm, what is that? That is when we pump ourselves up when we feel threatened. So if I say, "You're stupid," you say, "No, I'm not." "Here are all the reasons how I can prove to you that I'm not stupid." Uh huh. So that's narcissism. If you criticize a narcissist, they will put you down, they'll attack you back, they'll pump themselves up. So, identity, literally if you look at like, as you go through the day, right?

• 25:21Speaker 00

  And, and maybe I'll use another example, so you, you know, I don't know if this is public or not, but I think you've just had a couple of kids connect. Yeah, yeah, it's public. Right, so, you know, when you're holding one or both of your daughters, you are just a dad. Just present. You're just present, right? You're not even a dad. I- i- i- it's weird, we think a dad is everything that you do for your kids. When you're holding them in that moment and they're asleep in your arms, or you're watching them sleep, you're not even a dad. You are just an organism that is in bliss. Observing. Observing, right? You're just in that moment, and when you're doing that, like, someone else will see a dad in you. But in your mind, there's no identity of dad. Right? There's identity of dad when, when they take their first steps, there's identity of dad when you watch them graduate.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  There's maybe identity of dad if they get married one day, that's when there's identity of dad. But in the moments that you're with them, there's no identity. So, identity is something that turns on and turns off. Mm-hmm. So for me- And and this is what becomes important because we require identities to function in the world. Right? I have to have an identity as a doctor in order to be a doctor. I can't let that go.

• 26:27Lewis Howes?

  So it is important for you to step into identity.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Perfect.

• 26:30Lewis Howes?

  At different times.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  And then step out of it, right? When so when someone comes at you, you need your ego. I'm not, I'm not a POS. I deserve respect. What you are doing is not okay. I deserve better. But this is the key thing, and this, I think, gets misunderstood a lot because in, you know, in these contemplative traditions, we talk about being egoless. The goal isn't to be egoless. The goal is for you to be in control of your ego, not have your ego be in control of you.

• 27:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  So I think about my ego and my identity is a guard dog. And if I tell it to attack, it attacks. There are times where it gets antsy on its own. A stranger comes in and my ego activates, but I need to take a step back. I need to tell the dog to calm down. You know, this is not when a patient says, hey, Dr. K, I've been coming here for six months and I don't even know if I'm getting better.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  And then I say, I am a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. If you are not, I have thousands of patients that are getting better. You are not getting better?

• 27:32Lewis Howes?

  You're the problem. Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 00

  You're the problem.

• 27:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  You are not doing the treatments properly. That's why. You know, it's not my fault. And then that that naturally arises, the narcissistic defense naturally arises. And there may be times where I have to defend myself. And there may be times where I need to receive that criticism with perceive that in the right way.

• 27:52Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. What is there a part of your identity or ego that still gets the best of you?

• 27:59Speaker 00

  Every day, all the time. Um, I think for me, it's being a loser.

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  That's what you believe or think?

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I am a loser. Like, I'm, I like literally, I lose every day. I make so many mistakes.

• 28:14Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  You know? Like, I failed so many classes. I had to apply to medical school 120 times to get in. You know, it took me three years to get into med school.

• 28:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Um, even today, you know, I'll make a YouTube video that sometimes has a million views in 10 days. Sometimes has 100,000 views in 10 days. I, I am a loser. So here's the other thing. There are parts of, the negative parts of our identity are only a problem if we make them a problem. And I can accept, like, of course I'm a loser. That doesn't mean I'm not also a winner. I have both of these things within me.

• 28:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Right? I'm a good, I'm a good husband. Really important. And I'm a bad husband.

• 28:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  The moment that I start believing that I am exclusively a good husband is the moment that my wife gets screwed.

• 29:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:07Speaker 00

  Absolutely. I need to accept that at times I'm a bad husband. At times I'm a good husband. No one on this planet is perfect.

• 29:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:19Speaker 00

  So there's a lot of data that shows that the more cognitively flexible you are around your identity, the better off you will be. And, and I don't know if this kind of makes sense. I know it sounds weird and I know it runs kind of contrary to some of the stuff that you may say, but I, I think you do this, right? I, I think you, you must in order to achieve what you've achieved. You must consider your weak parts. You must acknowledge.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. Right? That if I do not act in the right way, my baser nature will take control.

• 29:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  There is an addict, a degenerate gamer who lives inside of me.

• 29:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  And if I'm not careful, that will come out again.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. There's an importance of stepping into an identity that is more empowering than disempowering, I believe.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:09Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to, I'm a loser, there's no chance I'm going to win this game. I'm going to mess up, you know, if I'm having a disempowering identity or belief. It's probably not going to serve me.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So here's, here's, if you think you're a winner, it starts to become other people's fault.

• 30:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Then you're, you're right that it, there's a tension because now if you think of yourself as a winner and you get data that you're not winning.

• 30:33Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Now your identity is threatened.

• 30:36Lewis Howes?

  This is what happened to me also, because here, first I was a loser and then I was like, I was picked last, you know, on teams. I was made fun of. I was in special needs classes. So all these things, I didn't have the psychological or emotional tools as an eight year old on how to navigate the emotions of the world and fit into groups and societies and teams. So I just associated, oh, I'm picked last. I'm in special needs. I'm in the bottom of my class. I am a loser. Those I am statements I believed. Then I said, let me work so hard to improve this so that I'm never picked last and so that I'm a winner. And I did that for years.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  And it worked. I started getting picked first. I started being, you know, the best on the team, whatever it is through middle school and high school. But then everything became about winning. It was like, if I don't win, then my identity is going to crumble, right? It was like, then now I'm a loser. And so my whole life became threatened with the idea of if I'm not a winner, then I'm a loser. That way I have to win at everything. And winning, I associated winning with being right. So if I was wrong, I'm a loser. If I lose, I'm a loser. And so I tried to defend this identity, like you said, by being right and winning in everything, sports, business, relationships, until I hit about 29 or 30 years old.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  And I realized life was not about winning and losing. It was about win-win. How do I create a win-win scenario, even if I'm losing in a situation? And that became a part of my process was seeing everything as from a lens of how do I create win-win? What does that look like? This, this experience instead of I need to be right. I need to win at all costs.

• 32:30Speaker 00

  So, so I think there's, it's beautiful because people are probably asking, how do I, how do I get from loser to winner to beyond? And, and I would even argue that you are doing what I'm saying.

• 32:42Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 32:43Speaker 00

  So I, and people can even rewind this and pay attention to the subject of your sentences.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  How do I create win-win? The object is outside of you. I am a winner, I am a loser. So when we transcend identity, we don't focus on the ego, we focus on the action. We actually divorce our identi-, we become independent of the action. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way in, in residency because, you know, you get trained to, like you think as a doctor, like I save lives, right? Like that's a, you do, don't save lives. And then you like learn the hard way, like you can't save a life.

• 33:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and people die.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  And people die.

• 33:28Lewis Howes?

  On your table.

• 33:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 33:30Lewis Howes?

  How does that feel? Not to get off, how does that feel when you're told your whole life, I'm gonna go and save lives? And then you see someone, whether it be in residency or you watch someone die after an operation? And you're like, oh, we actually didn't save a life and these are really good doctors around me. How did that feel the first time?

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Numb.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  So people think it feels bad, but my experience was numbness. I, I remember, I mean, this is a bit graphic and. So I remember I was doing chest compressions on a guy who was having his third code in the hospital. And like.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  What's code mean?

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Uh, like, so he's having a, an arrhythmia, so his heart was not beating. Yeah, so his heart was not beating, um, the way it's supposed to. His, his heart was.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  Fluttering.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  Fluttering, and so wasn't able to beat. So he was a, a rather large dude and, and I remember like doing chest compressions. And what they don't show you in the shows is that like sometimes when you start doing chest compressions, people will vomit.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  And, and so I remember I had gloves on and, and all I could really remember was like the feeling of the vomit hitting my elbows? And then going down the arm and into the gloves. And and it's like In your gloves. In your gloves, right? Like, and it's like nasty because like we don't like things in gloves to begin with. Like, if you've ever done the dishes. The whole reason the gloves is those dumps them on your hands. And then that it's vomit and there's someone dying underneath you and and you know, so then it's like, I remember. The stress and. The pressure because like I was pushing and he's like vomiting on me and I'm getting this stuff in my gloves and like there's a part of my mind that's like, maybe I should push less. That way he'll stop vomiting on me, but like, no, we're not gonna push. Trying to save the life. We're just trying to save a life.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  And so my experience from that was just after afterward, I was just numb. Like I was just like, what the hell was that? Did he come? Did he? Did he? Didn't make it. He didn't make it. Didn't make it. I mean, he was, there was no way he was gonna make it. Yeah, yeah. I mean, he was, he was gone days before. Yeah, yeah. And so you just learn real quick, you know. And and for me, it happened pretty quickly because I'd I'd had this training, right? Like on yoga and meditation and understanding some of these things, but that that and there was another patient that came in with a couple of gunshot wounds when I was working a shift in the emergency room.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  And you learn very quickly that you don't have the power of life over death. You know, you you just don't have that. It's not something that you're entitled to. You can't save a life. You could do your best to Exactly. Support life in staying. All you can do is act. Wow. So there's a, there's a great principle from sort of like eastern meditative traditions. As a human being, all you're entitled to is your actions, not the fruits of your actions. Hmm. And this is a beautiful way to get rid of ego. Yeah, I mean, it's the whole, what's the quote around like

• 36:19Speaker 00

  planting seeds under trees of shade that you will not see in the future. It's like, I don't know what that, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, so so it's, you know, the world is a good place when you plant a seed.

• 36:30Lewis Howes?

  Under whose shade?

• 36:31Speaker 00

  Shade you'll never sit in.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, something like that, right?

• 36:33Lewis Howes?

  It's like putting in this work that you won't get the benefit from.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:37Lewis Howes?

  But others will. And the beautiful thing is you have been benefiting from everyone else in history for your life now.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think it's more drastic than that.

• 36:46Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Even, right? So this is not doing work for shade that will come. You, you're, you're entitled to plant the seed, but even then you don't know that the shade will be there.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  So a, as a human being, as a doctor, you, you don't, like, you can do everything, right? So I, I work now with people who are like suicidal. And like you can do everything that you can do, but you can never stop a human being from taking their own life.

• 37:12Lewis Howes?

  You can try.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  You, that's.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  As hard as you can go.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  And, and, and, and that's the huge part, right? So the moment that you start focusing on your actions, what can I do? Not what happens. Too many people are held back by their ambitions. They're held back by the target. Cause we think to ourselves, okay, like if I don't have a goal, how am I going to motivate myself? But you have to be really careful about a goal as a source of motivation.

• 37:40Lewis Howes?

  Should we have goals?

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  Why do you hesitate?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  So let's think about how the, a goal affects the motivational system. So I think we should have goals with care.

• 37:52Lewis Howes?

  Should we have goals without focusing on the outcome of the goal as part of our happiness?

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Yes. So we should be detached, we should have goals, but we should be detached from our goals.

• 38:02Lewis Howes?

  From the results.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. So a way to put it, like, I'll, I'll kind of give a simple analogy to start because then we're going to get technical. See, it's okay to want, let's say I want a fried chicken sandwich. It's okay to want a fried chicken sandwich, but are you unhappy if you don't get it? But say you go to a restaurant, you're like, hey, can I get a fried chicken sandwich? You're like, oh, we're out. How do you respond to that?

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  So one of the biggest challenges for me, so I was planning on becoming a monk and then met my wife. And that was like

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  You're not allowed to be a monk. Yeah.

• 38:34Speaker 00

  And so I was, I was really like struggling internally because I had this idea of like, okay, I'm going to be like free from attachment and celibacy and I'm not going to be like these other humans who are, you know, falling in love.

• 38:45Lewis Howes?

  All these lustful thoughts and feelings.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I need to be better than that, right? Lust is for animals. I will be greater. So one of my teachers.

• 38:54Lewis Howes?

  So was it seven years you studied to be a monk? Is that what it is?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:57Lewis Howes?

  But when you were studying to be a monk.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  I met my wife.

• 38:59Lewis Howes?

  You weren't being a, you weren't living as a monk.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  No, but I told her, I was like, girl, look, I'm sorry, babe. This is a temporary thing, you know, this connection that we have.

• 39:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:07Speaker 00

  It's temporary. Yeah. Like I'm, I'm planning on taking my vows. So it's like, it's fine for us to, you know, hang out and

• 39:13Lewis Howes?

  Fun, yeah. This will be my last hurrah.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  I, I just want you to know out of respect.

• 39:18Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:18Speaker 00

  I, I want you to know out of respect that, that I'm gonna take my vows when, you know, a couple of years from now.

• 39:24Lewis Howes?

  Why hadn't you taken it yet within seven years?

• 39:26Speaker 00

  Oh, I tried. So at the age of 21, I went to my teachers and I said, hey, I want to become a monk.

• 39:31Lewis Howes?

  And they said?

• 39:32Speaker 00

  And they said, being a monk is about giving up your life. You have nothing worth giving up. Literally.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so you have to have something.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Exactly. They're like, you're just running away. You're running away. You haven't achieved anything.

• 39:44Lewis Howes?

  Ah.

• 39:45Speaker 00

  So first thing you should do is go back, get a doctoral degree.

• 39:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And then give it all up.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  And then give it all. Come back when you're 30. And so they, they let me come back and they're like, we'll continue teaching you and training you. But you don't get to take your vows until you're 30 years old and you have a doctoral degree. Those were their two requirements.

• 40:02Lewis Howes?

  Then you could give it up and come live like that. But, okay. Not everyone has done that to become a monk though. Some people are younger when they become a monk, right?

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So I mean, these were my teachers.

• 40:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 00

  Right? So, so my teachers were amazing. They also knew me very well.

• 40:17Lewis Howes?

  They're like, nah, you really don't want this.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  You know, you don't, you don't realize. And they, they, they explained something interesting to me. They said that becoming a monk is going to be harder than anything you do in the real world. So if you can't succeed in the real world, you're not going to succeed as a monk.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  You'll fail as a monk. Yeah.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  Right?

• 40:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:34Speaker 00

  So, so, so that's how I ended up getting a target of, of, you know, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna become a doctor and

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  And do something big that I have to then sacrifice and give up.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, so that was also where

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  Then I'll be worthy. Then my ego will be worthy to be a monk.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  Um, not quite, but, but yeah, a great joke. You know, there, there's the, so this is what I had at that time. I had the ego of having no ego.

• 40:56Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 00

  I have no ego. Other people, how do you go?

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  I'm so above everything.

• 41:02Speaker 00

  I'm beyond this.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  And speaking of identity, you know, so, so I was.

• 41:08Lewis Howes?

  That's an identity itself.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  That wasn't, it's an identity where I devalued the things that I had failed at.

• 41:16Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 41:16Speaker 00

  So like in college, this is pretty classic. I don't know what your college experience was like, but you know, like you're into a girl and you ask her out and then she says no. And then you tell your bros, you're like, yeah, I wasn't that into her anyway. She's not.

• 41:28Lewis Howes?

  That's beneath me anyways. Yeah.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  Like, it's like, ah, like, eh.

• 41:32Lewis Howes?

  Whatever.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  So, so we devalue things to protect ourselves. We develop this identity.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So you, so when you're meeting her, you said, I'm gonna be a monk. This is for fun for the next year or whatever. But then don't get too attached to me.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Fall in love.

• 41:43Speaker 00

  Right, right. Cause I like, I didn't want to hurt her, you know, like, oh, I didn't want to hurt her.

• 41:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Cause like, being in a relationship with me, like, when, when it ends, it's so painful for anybody that I'm with. Oh my God. My compassion. I don't want to hurt you from the party of me.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh, shoot. And so, yeah. And then what happened?

• 42:03Speaker 00

  So, so the first thing is she's like amazing and she knows me well. So she was not worried at all. She's like, you're not gonna become a monk. There's no way this is gonna.

• 42:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 00

  You know, like.

• 42:14Lewis Howes?

  You're too attached to this medical stuff over here. Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 00

  So, so then I, I, you know, went and decided to go to medical school and, and stuff like that. And it's really crazy because I, I never looked at my grades when I was in med school. And so I, I got a call from, uh, one of my mentors and after graduation, he's like, where, where are you at the award ceremony? And I was like, I'm, I don't know. I'm like, I'm like, at home. And he's like, well, I'm presenting you with an award. Like, why aren't you here? And I was like, I, I didn't even know. I, I had gotten so divorced from the outcomes of my actions. I, I just showed up and e- even when I, you know, sometimes when I was in residency, you get all these kids from Harvard who were like really great. And then they get a B. And then they're devastated. And, and I have to do this thing where I try to explain to them, you're not here for grades. Like, you gotta understand it. At some point,

• 43:03Speaker 00

  you're gonna be like in an elevator. And, you know, someone is gonna start giving birth when you're trapped in an elevator.

• 43:11Lewis Howes?

  And graves don't matter at that point.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  And graves don't matter. You, you don't get to say, you know, and I'm a psychiatrist, but like, I don't get to say, oh, you're in labor, like, sorry, I'm a psychiatrist, I can't help you.

• 43:22Lewis Howes?

  No, you have to do your duty.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  You, you have to. So, so.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  If you're on a plane, if you're on a.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Residency, residency in medical school is about like, learning how to be a doctor, because one day someone will depend on you. So it's not about being a great doctor, being at the top of your class. It's about focusing on learning the material for its own sake. And I think when you talk about making things win-win, I think if we really were to do like an X-ray of your mental structure, we would see that you would be very focused on action. You'd be altering your perception, right? You're not gonna give yourself some pat on the back and, oh, I'm a winner, and I'm a wise compassionate man, you know, like, like, that, that's not, that's not the copium that you're gonna be huffing, which is what the kids say nowadays.

• 44:06Lewis Howes?

  Huffing?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, huffing copium.

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's what the kids say.

• 44:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  You know, so you're gonna be really focused on, okay, like, how do I integrate this data? This is negative feedback. How do I incorporate this feedback? How do I plan on this feedback? So there's no you involved. It's almost like you're, like, you know, it's just information coming in.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  calculation, change in, in the outside world. And people may think that that feels really sterile, but the other side of it is when you're holding your child. There's no ego there. There's just you being present. And if we look at action, what's really cool about action is action is when, when you're one with action, that's when you're the most present. So just focus on doing the thing. It is not in your power to have something happen.

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the results.

• 44:52Speaker 00

  Results are out of your hands.

• 44:54Lewis Howes?

  But focusing on the action today, or this moment, the act, the next best action.

• 44:58Speaker 00

  Yes. And this is the problem we were talking about, goals. The problem with goals is that goals actually get us away from actions.

• 45:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  Also.

• 45:08Speaker 00

  When is a goal? It's a weird question, I know.

• 45:13Lewis Howes?

  When is a goal?

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 45:15Lewis Howes?

  Well, if you create a goal with a timeline, you can have.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Is there ever a goal without a timeline?

• 45:20Lewis Howes?

  Some people have a goal and say, I want to write a book, or I want to launch a podcast, or I want to be in a relationship.

• 45:26Speaker 00

  When is that?

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  When?

• 45:28Speaker 00

  But when is it? Is it now?

• 45:30Lewis Howes?

  They don't say when sometimes, but I think if they say when.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Even if I say, I want to write a book.

• 45:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  It's not today.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:36Speaker 00

  It's in the future.

• 45:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  All goals are things that will happen ideally.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  All goals are in the future.

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  When does action happen?

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  Now, or when you take the action.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  Uh, and when you take the action, when is it?

• 45:52Lewis Howes?

  In that moment.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Exactly. Action happens now, goal is in the future.

• 45:56Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 45:56Speaker 00

  Fundamental. I know it's so weird. We don't ask ourselves these questions.

• 45:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 00

  But, so this is the problem with goal. Right? So this is what's really scary is the most ambitious goal is the easiest to procrastinate on. I want to write a book. How long does that take? Oh, it takes two years.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  Okay, so you're saying it takes like 720 days?

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Why don't we just do a little bit more work in 719?

• 46:25Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 46:26Speaker 00

  So goals are really sneaky things. And it's not that they're bad. So our, our frontal lobes require some way to.

• 46:33Lewis Howes?

  Organize time.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  Organize time, strategy, right? So you need that for the sake of a goal. But if you're not careful, a goal will induce procrastination.

• 46:42Lewis Howes?

  Cause you seem, it's too much work. I can't do it right now, or it's daunting, or.

• 46:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, it, it, if you're, if you're lucky, that's what you feel. Because then you know, oh my God, this is overwhelmed. I need to fix this. What's way more dangerous is, oh, I can take care of it tomorrow.

• 46:58Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 46:59Speaker 00

  It's not even daunting.

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  You never take the action.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  You never take the action. Right? So action is completely independent of goal.

• 47:07Speaker 00

  And accomplishing big goals involves taking lots of action. So focus on action, not on the goal.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  The other really interesting scary neuroscience thing is that

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  What if someone says, okay, I don't have a goal, but I'm just taking the action like I'm learning Spanish every day. I'm taking the action to practice Spanish every day. But if I just said, well, I don't have the goal to learn Spanish and be able to speak it, then why am I doing it? Why am I doing the action if there's no thing that I'm actually looking to step into? Just for the action sake?

• 47:39Speaker 00

  Great question. So goals serve a function. Once again, the goal here is is not to get rid of this stuff. So in order to be a functional human being, if we're pursuing enlightenment, the enlightened person has no goals. They just exist.

• 47:54Lewis Howes?

  They're just better than all the goals of the world. Their ego is

• 47:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. They've abandoned all that stuff.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  They're just chilling. They're not above it all. They're not, yeah, I know. So, so goals serve a neuroscientific purpose. They organize our frontal lobes. They allow us to sequence out things. So that's good. But a goal being used to sequence things. I'll give you an example. I'm going to the airport later today, so I had to pack.

• 48:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  But packing has, it's not like, it's a goal that I have to do, but I'm not like attached to it anyway. It just helps me organize the sequence of events and then I have to take the actions. There's no identity caught up in it. I'm not like, eh.

• 48:40Lewis Howes?

  Look at me.

• 48:41Speaker 00

  Trained at Harvard?

• 48:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Back to my own undies? I'm great, bro. You know, so this is where goals are important, but we should never have them serve a greater function than what they really should be serving.

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  What should they be serving?

• 48:56Speaker 00

  Helping us organize action. That's it.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  But when you had a, you know, when your monk teacher said, go become a doctor or do something, and then come back to us when you're ready to give that thing up. And you said, all right, I'm gonna go to medical school and I'm gonna become a doctor.

• 49:13Lewis Howes?

  You had a goal in mind.

• 49:14Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 49:15Lewis Howes?

  You needed, you wanted to accomplish something, some type of learning, experience, credibility. And there was a deadline to when you wanted to accomplish it by, right?

• 49:24Speaker 00

  Great.

• 49:24Lewis Howes?

  So how did you navigate the goal and the actions with that?

• 49:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so a beautiful example, because it's an example of I didn't care. That I accomplished the goal. This is a really weird thing.

• 49:35Lewis Howes?

  You didn't care if you were to accomplish it or not?

• 49:37Speaker 00

  No, no. So I needed to accomplish it, right? So goals are necessary, but we don't need to get attached to them. We don't need to get hung up. They're necessary steps, just like packing. I have to pack.

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  But you weren't attached to the result.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  I wasn't attached to the result.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  If you became a doctor or not, you weren't attached.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I was attached, but I tried really hard not to be.

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Right? And that's why, like, I never looked at my grades. I was like, okay, I'm gonna like, someone will tell me if I fail. Like, I'll get an email if I fail. And I didn't fail, so whatever. I'm focusing on learning the material.

• 50:04Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 50:04Speaker 00

  Right? So I know it's, I love that you're asking these questions because it's so counterintuitive from the way that we think. Here's the reason that detachment from our goals is really, we want goals, we want to be detached. Here's why. If you have a stumble towards your goal and you are attached to it, you are more likely to give up. So your brain says, okay, why are we doing this? We're doing this in order to get this. And now we get a bit of information that that becomes less likely. So then our brain says, okay, we're not going to achieve the goal. So I see this all the time in the patients that I work with who have early-stage sobriety. And so it's really interesting because when they start to relapse,

• 50:47Speaker 00

  I've been sober for 160 days. I have, I had one bad night of alcohol. And now it's ruined. I lost all of my sobriety. What do you think they do the next day?

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  Go drink more?

• 50:59Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Now that it's busted, might as well, right? So the self-loathing, like, all this kind of stuff. So if you, if you want an outcome and something gets in the way, if you have a setback, your attachment to the outcome is going to cause you to give up.

• 51:19Lewis Howes?

  So when someone has a setback, how do we, how should they process that setback and continue moving forward towards a goal? Whether they're attached or detached to the outcome?

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Great question. Can I give another example for this? So.

• 51:34Speaker 00

  This is also why people don't get started. So like, you know, I struggle with this a lot. Maybe this is something people can empathize with. If you're not sure you can achieve something, it's really hard to get started. So I would, I would do this thing where if I got, like, I had like less than a 2.0 GPA. I had failed a lot of classes. So I was like, okay, I need to get straight A's. And you're here. Yeah. But you became a medical doctor and I didn't. Potato, potato. Yeah, exactly.

• 52:05Speaker 00

  So I did this thing where like, you know, since I needed A's, now I have like a 1.0 GPA. So I need a 4.0 to balance it out, right? I need to have an A. I can't afford to get a B in order to save my GPA. Oh, stress. So, so then what would happen is if I got a B on my first test, I would drop the class. Because I can't hit my goal anymore. I'm gonna give up. So it's so easy to not get started when we are attached to our goal. Because think about when I'm attached to the goal, I need, I can't ask her out yet, bro, because I need her to, I'm so in love. I can't handle, like, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. So what I'm, what I'm, what am I gonna do? I'm gonna take her to the airport. I'm gonna be there for her, but I'm never gonna shoot my shot. I'm never gonna take that chance.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Friend zone. Because I can't afford to lose. I have to win. I want to win. I have ambition. I have goals. I have dreams.

• 53:02Speaker 00

  And so unless it's going to work, I can't, I can't try. As we detach from the goal, right, as we let go, which is challenging, it requires a lot of, there's a lot of emotion towards it. I think a lot of people run away from the negative emotion. How do you act? I think your question was, how do you act if you are attached to a goal? You accept that on this planet, you cannot achieve it. It is not within your power to achieve. You know, there's something that I think is really scary about the society we live in. We've started taking things lying down. So like nowadays in society, this is gonna sound kinda weird, but like,

• 53:45Speaker 00

  When, when we're on the brink of failure, we don't fight with defiance.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  Right? We're like, okay, if I'm gonna lose, then I'm just gonna give up. We've stopped fighting futile battles. And that's so devastating.

• 53:58Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by this?

• 54:00Speaker 00

  Like, if you're gonna get screwed, go down fighting.

• 54:03Lewis Howes?

  Go all the way.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  Go all the way, even if you, even if, like, you know, I, I got my first forty rejections to medical school, my next forty rejections to medical school. And my uncle pulled me aside and he's like, bro, this is not working out. Like, go get a PhD. Like, go to Plan B, right? Like, come on, man. Like, your GPA is not changing. What are you expecting? You're an idiot. You're being stubborn. My uncle's a great guy, loves me very much, and it's good advice.

• 54:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Right?

• 54:26Lewis Howes?

  You're just repeating insanity over and over and over.

• 54:29Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  And so, like, this is where, like, we need to be defiant in the face of the world. Like, we need to keep, we need to be doing stupid action.

• 54:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  You know, like, don't, that's what it is. When you say, don't give up, what does that mean? Don't giving up, not giving up means being an idiot.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Let go of the possibility of it ever happening. You know, I was, I was reading about, like, Stranger Things and how many times Stranger Things got rejected.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  You know, another good example of this is Harry Potter, like, got rejected over and over and over again.

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  Squid Games also was like, ten years it took for it to sell.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right? So, so we have to be really careful about goals because if we, if we attach ourselves to the goal and we get negative feedback, we are gonna give up. So focus on the action. Right? And this is what's really important.

• 55:18Lewis Howes?

  But how do you know when to give up? Like, sure, those things, they had a belief that these things should be in the world. These movies, these books, these things should be in the world. My medical school, I should, that should be happening. But if it goes twenty years and it doesn't happen, do you keep fighting until you burn everything down?

• 55:35Speaker 00

  Here's, here's, it's so tricky, but beautiful question. Give up with tranquility. So when you are at peace and you want to let something go, that's when you give up.

• 55:46Lewis Howes?

  When you feel like I've given everything I can, or I'm okay with it not coming to the world.

• 55:50Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 55:51Lewis Howes?

  Like, if you still feel like there's something inside of you.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Right, so like, this is a lesson I learned when someone has, so I had a patient who was eight years old, had stage four cancer, was in the pediatric ICU. I was a medical student, I wasn't even a doctor then. And then, you know, how do you know when to pull the plug? Like, that's where I learned that lesson. Like, you can do everything, but you should be at peace. So if you feel like giving up is a failure, if you feel like giving up is giving into your fear, your internal emotional state will tell you what is right and what is wrong. So if you're giving into fear, don't do it.

• 56:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:32Speaker 00

  You know, even if you're overly ambitious, you want to attain a state of tranquility. That's where you should operate from. This is really important. I want to, goal is out there, it's in the future, action is now. Emotion, you have to be careful because we're oftentimes running away, the emotion tries to get you away from the here and now. Right? I want to avoid the anxiety, I'm anxious, how do I not be anxious? So instead, what you should do is be as tranquil as possible. Go for a walk, have a nice cup of tea. You know, sit with your thoughts, stay off of all devices for 24 hours, and take a good, long, hard look at your goals. And ask yourself, is it time to give up or not? The answer will come from in here.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Don't make a pro con list, don't do anything, like, just ask yourself. So I went to a swami, which is like a monk. And after I failed for two years to get into med school, and I was like, hey, I don't know if I should give up or not. What do you think I should do? And the swami turns to me, he's like, you know, two years is not such a long time in life. Give it another year. He just kind of shrugged, right? So casual, just so simple. And I was like, okay, fine. I'm not giving, I'm going to give it one more year. That's what I decided. Luckily, I got into one medical school.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  So tranquil mind, tranquil, and then decide, then you'll know whether it's enough. It's not give up. Even that phrasing is wrong. It implies failure.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  It's transition. It's.

• 58:03Speaker 00

  No, no, but I think it's the right word in the sense that that's what that's the way everyone thinks. Instead, ask yourself, has this been enough? I work with patients who are trying to make it work in couples therapy. And and what we get to, what I get to like emotionally is, is this enough? Have we tried enough? Have we tried treatment enough? Is this enough?

• 58:24Speaker 00

  And if the answer to that question is yes, then let it go.

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. There's a question I wanted to ask you about capable versus believing. You know, and maybe this ties to goal setting. At one point you said, I think you said, there's, there's a difference between we're being capable of achieving something or living into something versus believing you can achieve it. What is that difference of capable versus believe?

• 58:50Lewis Howes?

  And are there times when you believe you can do something, but you're not capable? What does that do to someone?

• 58:56Speaker 00

  I think belief and capability are two entirely different things. Belief is your estimation of your ability. Capability is your ability.

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:04Speaker 00

  So the gap between capability and there's a gap between what your estimation of what you can do and what you're capable of.

• 59:11Lewis Howes?

  But when someone has the capabilities, but not the belief, then what happens? They doubt themselves constantly. They're insecure. They're afraid. But they have the skill, the talent, or the ability to do the thing if they worked at it.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think, I mean, this is something we see all the time. Most human beings on the planet are far more capable than they believe.

• 59:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 59:31Speaker 00

  Right? So our belief, let's understand where this comes from. Belief comes from your own estimation. It comes from your data. It comes from your cognitive biases, your perception, your emotions.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  You know, your fear will try to protect you by telling you that you can't do it. They'll try to trick you into believing that you are incapable. I don't put much stock in belief. Personally, you don't. Personally. For yourself. Just in general. For my patients, I try to help them not put much stock in belief. Because, but let's understand what belief is. Belief is the absence of knowledge. By definition. Hmm. I believe my keys are in my pocket. I don't know that. Mm hmm. So belief is literally a mental hypothetical construct. I believe it's possible. I believe in God. Mm hmm. That's very different from I know God. Hmm. I've seen God, I've felt God.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  Right, so we'll use this, and I'm not trying to be like anti faith or anything like that, but it's kind of interesting, right? So, and because when I sit with people who do have intense faith,

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  sometimes there's belief and there can be, there's value to belief too, but in general, I think step away from your own beliefs. Mm hmm. In general, what you should be doing is collecting data, not hypothesizing. Belief is in your head.

• 1:00:53Speaker 00

  So should we not have belief in ourselves? That we are capable of accomplishing goals or dreams? I mean, so, so I, I think you should learn.

• 1:01:04Speaker 00

  Right, and I know this is like running contrary to some of the language that you use. I don't think we're, I think we end up in the same place. Yeah, yeah. But I, I think just, just learn, try. Okay, you don't believe in yourself, so what? You do believe in yourself, so what? Try. Hmm, act either way. Act, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Be independent of all of this stuff. Yeah, yeah. Because what is it that correlates with accomplishment? What is it correlates that correlates with success? It's action. So we use belief, right? So this is why it's important to kind of. To take action. Exactly. Right, so belief helps us take action sometimes. But this is where it's like, we can do whatever kind of mental gymnastics you want to end up with action. Take action either way, whether you believe it or not.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Whether you believe it, whether you have goal, whatever, right? Let's get to the root of action. And all of psychiatry and psychology and stuff is all these ways of helping people act. Karma, karma. The actions that you take. Here's something really interesting, what a lot of people don't realize about karma.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  Karma, ninety-nine percent of karma is not visible. Ninety-nine percent of karma happens in here. When you have a thought, how do you respond to that thought? That is technically an action.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. So this morning, I was tired. I've been working here for nine days. And I didn't want to go to the gym. So I didn't go to the gym. And then it's a little bit cold outside, but I was like, you know what? I normally swim about twenty laps. And so I was like, I don't feel like swimming twenty laps, but I'm gonna swim five. I felt like swimming zero. Yeah. It's like, I'm just gonna get in the water. I'm gonna swim five laps and then I'm done. I got into the water, it was awful. You're like, I wanna get out. I wanna get out. I felt really tired. I'm kinda out of shape and like haven't had a great schedule. But like, the way that we respond to ourselves, that's what forms our destiny. Hmm. Everyone thinks karma is our actions out here. It's not the most. Think about how many actions do you take in your head every single day? Thousands. How do you respond?

• 1:03:09Speaker 00

  Oh, I wanna eat this. Okay, I'm gonna eat it. Oh, I wanna pull out my phone. I'm gonna pull out my phone. That mental action, okay, let me pull out my phone, costs you sixty minutes of your day. Hmm.

• 1:03:21Speaker 00

  A thirty-second distraction costs you an hour. The way that we respond to the impulses in our mind, this is the most important action. I believe I can't do it. Are you going to listen to that belief? This is why like, oh, believe in yourself, not believe in... That's not the question. Question is, when you believe something, how do you respond to your beliefs? Do I have a goal? Do I not have a goal? Not the important question.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  When you have a setback in your goal, how do you respond to that? The problem is that most human beings on the planet react. They don't respond. Automatic. There isn't awareness of what's going on. There isn't intention.

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  And pay attention to your mind. You'll be stunned. There's a beautiful exercise that I offer people. Pay attention to how many thoughts you have that you've had before. Hmm. So the crazy thing that a lot of people don't realize is most of their thinking is habits. It's not even logical. It's not real. It's automatic. It's just automatic. It's on repeat. It's on repeat. I'm a loser. This won't work. I can do it. And it's not that these thoughts are good or bad. Yeah. Right? And I appreciate the perspective. It's not good or bad, right or wrong. It's what's, is it serving you in empowering way? Is it helping you to feel more harmony or not? I mean, I think if people want to be rich and successful, they should ask those questions. Hmm.

• 1:04:49Speaker 00

  You were better at that, Louis, than I am. Hmm.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  What I'm about is not even the goal of all of that stuff. Is it empowering or not empowering? I mean, I mean, a step away from that. Just understand. Hmm. So in Sanskrit, you know, they have the saying that avidya is the source of dukkha. Ignorance is the source of suffering. And this is something as a psychiatrist, I think is very true. Most of our suffering comes from not knowing what is going on. Why is this happening? Or not being aware. Not being aware. Yeah. So much of our suffering in life comes from our reactions and our automatic patterns. I see this all the time. So can I use profanity? Sure. Okay. So one of my clients came to me and asked me,

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  Dr. K, I don't know why I only attract boys. Hmm.

• 1:05:43Speaker 00

  And we talked about it for a little bit and we realized you attract everybody. You choose. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of great people come up to you, but you're not attracted to them. And this is what's so cool. Like people don't realize when they're suffering in life and life feels hard. Yeah. I mean, I've worked with people who have had polysubstance addictions from the age of nine. Oh.

• 1:06:07Speaker 00

  And then you you you live this way for nineteen years and you think there's no way you can get better. You're the age of twenty eight, you've been struggling with substances for nineteen years. Relatively young, but your whole experience has been struggling with this and you think it's impossible. But you just don't understand yourself, you don't understand how you are responding to your impulses. You don't understand why you're using these substances, that you're trying to run away from something is that is inside you. And you can try to control your behaviors as much as you want. But as long as that black flame that like tar is inside you. No way that you're going to control your behavior. So understand yourself first, I it's not for me to say you should do this or don't do this or. I can teach you how.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  I can't tell you what direction that's for you to figure out, you decide for yourself. Why are you so lazy, you want all the answers from me? Go and explore yourself.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  Pay attention to your mental actions. Pay attention to the way that you respond to the things around you. I think it was Carl Jung who said. I forget exactly what the quote is, but something about until we make our unconscious conscious.

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  We will look at our lives and we'll think it's destiny, even when it's in our control. I'm butchering the quote, but. You know, it's crazy how much of our our life we actually control. But we just have no awareness of.

• 1:07:36Lewis Howes?

  How much of our life do we control?

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  All of the important parts.

• 1:07:40Lewis Howes?

  How much of our thoughts do we control?

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  None.

• 1:07:45Lewis Howes?

  We don't control our thoughts?

• 1:07:47Speaker 00

  No, the thought, the mind generates thoughts.

• 1:07:49Lewis Howes?

  How much do we control our mind?

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  None.

• 1:07:53Lewis Howes?

  So do we have any control over our thinking or our mind?

• 1:07:57Speaker 00

  We have control over the way that we respond to our mind. That's all we control, the only.

• 1:08:03Lewis Howes?

  Do we generate a thought or is a thought generated automatically?

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  What are you thinking?

• 1:08:11Lewis Howes?

  I'm thinking you're touching my leg.

• 1:08:12Speaker 00

  Did you have control over that? The generation of that thought?

• 1:08:15Lewis Howes?

  Of you touching me?

• 1:08:17Speaker 00

  The generation of the thought?

• 1:08:18Lewis Howes?

  I was thinking that that happened.

• 1:08:19Speaker 00

  Can you control that that that happened?

• 1:08:22Lewis Howes?

  I can I can think a different thought when it happens. I can shift the thinking. I can know that's happening and also think about something else.

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  Right, so.

• 1:08:32Lewis Howes?

  But it's.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  All you can control. So the the mind, I mean, this is the problem is we can't. Everyone thinks we can control the mind.

• 1:08:37Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:08:38Speaker 00

  And they try.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:39Speaker 00

  It's like trying to swim up a waterfall. So when I do psychotherapy with a patient, let's say I've got a patient who's got suicidal ideation. So they want to kill themselves every single day. So they come in and I can't control their thoughts. They can't control their thoughts. They don't want to be suicidal, but they the thought comes, thought comes, thought comes. Okay. So then they don't control their thoughts, but as we do work, we change the thoughts that are automatically generated in their mind.

• 1:09:05Lewis Howes?

  You do?

• 1:09:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:06Lewis Howes?

  By by responding to the thought differently when it comes in?

• 1:09:09Speaker 00

  I I talk to them in certain ways. I say certain things to them. And then as I say something, this is why a good psychiatrist is really important. Right? So the whole point of a good psychiatrist is they can change your mind. You come in, you're suicidal. I engage in an evidence based practice. And and I I took this principle and turned it into a coaching program because I thought, hey, we're doing all this stuff for people who are suicidal. Why aren't we doing all this stuff for people who procrastinate? Who are stuck, who want to write fiction? We can take these evidence based techniques because someone comes into my office and there are thousands of studies. That's why psychiatry is an evidence based practice. They're coming into my thought. There are certain things that I can say, certain things that I can do that will alter their thinking.

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:09:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  Right? So you'll learn this soon enough, but I mean, you're married.

• 1:10:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  And so, you know, your your your wife has certain thoughts in her head. She's upset.

• 1:10:07Speaker 00

  And you can do things to alter the pattern of her thinking, right?

• 1:10:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:11Speaker 00

  You can say, oh, tell me what's wrong.

• 1:10:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  I love you.

• 1:10:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 00

  Or, yeah.

• 1:10:15Lewis Howes?

  Hug her.

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  Or you can tell her how she can fix all of her problems.

• 1:10:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 00

  Right? And so here's the really wild thing. We as human beings can affect the human beings around us. We can affect their thinking.

• 1:10:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:26Speaker 00

  Which means by definition, her thinking is being shaped by who?

• 1:10:30Lewis Howes?

  Me.

• 1:10:30Speaker 00

  Which means that from her mind, her thoughts are being generated by the people around her.

• 1:10:35Lewis Howes?

  And her.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  You actually don't control her. She doesn't control her thoughts, you control her thoughts, which is wild.

• 1:10:40Lewis Howes?

  And she controls my thoughts.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:10:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:43Speaker 00

  So your.

• 1:10:44Lewis Howes?

  Influences them.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  Influences them. Yeah. There are other influences. Right? So let's be clear. First thing is that thoughts are generated for you. That's why advertising is a thing. Cause they figured out, if I can generate this thought in your head.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  You'll take action.

• 1:11:00Speaker 00

  Then you'll take action. So everyone is doing thought control. And this idea that, oh, I can control my thoughts, bro, you cannot.

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  So as a Harvard trained psychiatrist, then, knowing that, what do you do to have better? I don't want to say control, but better awareness or a handle around the thoughts in your own mind.

• 1:11:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:22Lewis Howes?

  That either supports you or don't support you in your life.

• 1:11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so what we do control is the way we respond to our thoughts. The way we're aware of our thoughts. So I, for example, my ego.

• 1:11:36Lewis Howes?

  And Viktor Frankl said, you know, it's, it's about stimulus and the, the, the space between the stimulus and response.

• 1:11:41Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right? So, so this is what a lot of people, so I'll give you a really interesting example of this. It's a bit tangential, but so here's the key thing with thoughts. The key thing that we want to do is have distance from them, which is beautiful, what you said. So I'll give you a good example of this. If we look at mental illness and we rank the severity of mental illness, what we find is the worst mental illness has no space between stimulus and response. So when someone has psychosis or is delusional, I've had patients who will say, there is an electronic device in my brain that is shaping my thoughts.

• 1:12:22Speaker 00

  This sentence that they say is a thought in their head. But there is no space between this is a thought and this is reality.

• 1:12:29Lewis Howes?

  They can't separate observing themselves, thinking or doing.

• 1:12:34Speaker 00

  Exactly, right? So the thought is real.

• 1:12:37Lewis Howes?

  It's delusional.

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  It's delusional. And the nature of delusion is when you believe your thoughts are real.

• 1:12:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  Literally, and I'm going to show you this beautiful scale. So there's psychosis, which is the worst. Then there is things like, let's say you have a mood disorder. Where I think I'm a loser, I'm pathetic, I'm all this, my family would be better off without.

• 1:12:54Lewis Howes?

  Or a level of depression or.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  Level of depression, right? So, so, so as people become really depressed, they believe their thoughts. There's no space between thoughts and anything else. Then as they start to get a little bit better, okay, like, yeah, I, I feel this way. And there are times that I think my family would be better without me. But, you know, I'm beginning to see, okay, maybe that's not the case. Then you're conflicted. Now there's a little bit of space between those two things. Another good example of this is when you have a panic attack. You don't think you're, you are dying. Then, you know, less severe than panic disorder is like a generalized anxiety disorder. Right? It's not one to one. You can have that generalized anxiety disorder. But when, when your anxiety is less bad than you're, okay, like I'm anxious about this, but it may not, I think this is gonna happen.

• 1:13:39Speaker 00

  Or if I have OCD, my anxiety is something I believe. Unless I flick off the light switch seven times, my house is gonna burn down. I believe that. There's no space between thought and, and belief. It's one and the same. And then I get anxious, right? Oh, I think this could happen, but I don't, I'm, I acknowledge, maybe it won't happen. And then we get to the normal state of mind, which is like, okay, I have thoughts, I believe most of them, I don't believe them. And then we get to you. Which is you're very good at training yourself to disbelieve particular thoughts. That's what all the, all these questions, how do you empower yourself? Because you have disempowering thoughts and you choose not to believe them.

• 1:14:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, or not let them stop me from taking actions in my life that I think are better actions than worse actions.

• 1:14:23Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, but, but that's the key thing there is that the thought comes up, oh. Hey Louis, can I tell you something, bro? You're forty, forty-two, right? You're gonna be forty-four, forty-five when you compete in the Olympics.

• 1:14:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, good luck.

• 1:14:38Speaker 00

  How many, I mean, what do you think about that? Do you think that's gonna work out? Does your mind ever tell you, hey, bro, this is like, you know, you're competing against twenty-year-olds?

• 1:14:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if you're asking me personally, I think of, man, what about this story that I will get to share?

• 1:14:52Speaker 00

  So see the way that-

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  When this works out, or if this works out.

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  So-

• 1:14:56Lewis Howes?

  Either way, if it doesn't work out, the story of pursuing something that you care about.

• 1:15:01Speaker 00

  So that's beautiful. So you're doing some cool mental jiu-jitsu? You're like a matador? You didn't even address my question. So here's the scary thing. If you go back and you watch this and you look at your face, that fear is in you. I saw it in your face.

• 1:15:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. There's a level of like, I think it's not worth going for unless there's something that's-

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  That's all of the way that you respond-

• 1:15:22Lewis Howes?

  If it's easy, why would I go for it?

• 1:15:24Speaker 00

  The way you respond to your thoughts. The way you disbelieve your thoughts. You know it's hard. I know it's hard. I can say it to you. It hurts to hear it. And you say-

• 1:15:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:15:34Speaker 00

  Right? The way you respond to your thoughts. Disbelieving your thoughts, moving away from your thoughts. So this is the spectrum of thinking.

• 1:15:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's almost like being a coach. It's like seeing yourself as a coach rather than being the critic.

• 1:15:48Speaker 00

  Very good.

• 1:15:49Lewis Howes?

  With the thought, right? It's like, it's rather like, I am this thought. There's no separation of the thought. It's like, no, this is me. If I'm thinking it, it's my identity. That's why I was, wanted to start with identity of like, if that's who you're identifying as, and holding on to it rather than saying, all right, it's a thought coming in. Let me distance myself and kind of observe it. And do I want to be the critic that continues to reinforce that thought? Or I can hold it there and still take actions and coach myself through it? And that's kind of the process.

• 1:16:21Speaker 00

  Beautiful, right? So what, if you tunnel down into the precision of what you're doing, you are changing the way that you respond to your thoughts. And now here's the really cool and tricky thing. As you change the way that you respond to your thoughts, your thoughts will change.

• 1:16:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:16:36Speaker 00

  But you did not create them.

• 1:16:37Lewis Howes?

  No, really? So we don't create our thoughts?

• 1:16:39Speaker 00

  No, all we do is, so think about your, your mind like a garden. We weed, right? So we remove, we, we don't react to that thought. We don't give in to that thought. And over time, it will wither. And then as certain thoughts, you, because I don't know if this makes sense. The first moment you started believing in yourself was not something you had to choose. What matters is when you had that thought of self-belief, how did you respond to it? You protected it, you got around it, you're like, grow, baby, grow.

• 1:17:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  Right? You cultivate, when you talk about an empowering mindset, what is the mechanism of an empowering mindset? It is responding to certain thoughts in a particular way, but you still don't control them. So over time.

• 1:17:24Lewis Howes?

  Because it could be a negative thought comes in, there could be something else, but it's what you nurture will grow.

• 1:17:29Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, so this is what's really interesting. You know, I had a patient who was afraid that her fiance was cheating on him. I mean, sorry, on her. And so she was like, I want to check your text messages. And so she thought to herself, if I check his text messages, then I'll know that I can trust him. But as she feels the anxiety, she checks his text and she feels reassured. But the next day, when she feels anxious.

• 1:17:57Lewis Howes?

  Let me check again.

• 1:17:57Speaker 00

  Let me check again. Because she is, her brain is learning that the antidote to anxiety is to check it. This is really important to understand. Whatever we feed in the mind grows. We don't control it, but we choose what we feed and we choose what we don't feed. We choose, we get to control action.

• 1:18:15Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:18:16Speaker 00

  We get to control the way we respond. But we don't even get to control what thought comes next.

• 1:18:22Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  Fingers crossed.

• 1:18:24Lewis Howes?

  Now, you, you hope that when you're nurturing and watering a thought, that thought will continue to expand and develop and grow more frequently and will pop up in your mind.

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  That's what we get to control, right? So that there's tons of neuroscience evidence for that the neurons that fire together, wire together. We have habitual patterns of thinking, right? So when we have, and then we can wire our brain to generate thoughts. And literally, the, the goal of my job is to help someone wire their brain so that their brain generates the right thoughts. But I want to be precise here. That doesn't mean you get to control what you think. You can simply plant your garden in a certain way.

• 1:19:02Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. So it's almost like, you know, tell me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing you say is your mind is a blank canvas, or it's a desert. And you can start to respond to the thoughts that come to you and hopefully build a rainforest around you, or a garden, or some type of scenic

• 1:19:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:19:23Lewis Howes?

  thing that supports your, your, your mind in a more beautiful way.

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  Spot on with the general. Here's the key difference, I would say. Your mind is an untended garden. It's not a desert. It's not blank. Because if you think about it, your whole life, you've been giving into certain impulses. You have allowed weeds to grow out of control.

• 1:19:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Let's say you're a blank canvas when you were born, then, maybe, I don't know.

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, no. Yeah.

• 1:19:44Lewis Howes?

  But at your, the point of watching this, if you're in your twenties, thirties, or forties or fifties, your mind is an untended garden.

• 1:19:50Speaker 00

  Absolutely, right?

• 1:19:51Lewis Howes?

  And there might be some beautiful things, and there might be a bunch of rocks that you don't want. It's figuring out how to tend to the beautiful things to create more harmony and peace inside of you.

• 1:20:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:00Lewis Howes?

  And things that will support your life, rather than hold you down.

• 1:20:04Speaker 00

  And the beautiful thing is that when you start doing this, you cultivate your mind, life becomes easy.

• 1:20:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  Because now-

• 1:20:12Lewis Howes?

  Even when it's hard, it's easy.

• 1:20:14Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So, we struggle with motivation, but think about it. That's because your mind has this impulse over here, and you're trying to wrench it over here, right? Whereas, once you start to do the right kind of reinforcing stuff, once you start reinforcing the right behaviors, once you start, once you stop giving into certain thoughts.

• 1:20:36Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't mean you won't have them.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Huh?

• 1:20:37Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't mean you won't have these thoughts.

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  It doesn't mean, and it's a-

• 1:20:39Lewis Howes?

  You don't respond to them.

• 1:20:40Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:40Lewis Howes?

  And give into them, yeah.

• 1:20:41Speaker 00

  So, so for example, my ego is like, really like, it's really messed up, because for years, I got bullied. For years, I was, you know, I struggled, and then I, I got into Harvard, and then I had an ego about that for a while, and it's still there. So what I do is, I, I laugh at my ego.

• 1:20:58Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:20:58Speaker 00

  I'm like, there's that ego again. Sometimes I'll have fantasies about-

• 1:21:01Lewis Howes?

  The great Harvard psychiatrists, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, so, you know, on, on the car ride over here, I was thinking about how to make this podcast great. That was one of the questions you asked me. How do we make this great? I was like, there's my ego again. There's me trying to be great. Who am I to be great?

• 1:21:16Speaker 00

  Right? I'm, dude, I'm, I'm a noob. I'm a failure. I'm a loser and I'm great. So I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the best that I can.

• 1:21:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:25Speaker 00

  But it is not for me to be great. It is not for me to decide what is great and what is not great. So my ego is still there after all of these years. It's still there. My wife is hilarious about it. Cause she mocks me so much.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  Right? So sometimes I'll say something really profound in conversation because sometimes I say things that are really proud. She's like, oh.

• 1:21:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Yeah. I'd quote that.

• 1:21:46Speaker 00

  And I think it's a beautiful way to keep your ego in check.

• 1:21:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure, of course.

• 1:21:49Speaker 00

  Right? So the way that I respond. So now my ego is not something to be conquered. It's like, I'm cursed with it and I've, I've accepted that after so many years of, I've been meditating for 21 years.

• 1:22:02Speaker 00

  And my ego is still there. It's still there in the background. It still sneaks up. It still makes comparisons. There's no, I'm cursed. Ah, so what?

• 1:22:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:13Speaker 00

  Am I going to let it? Am I going to try really hard to get rid of it? No.

• 1:22:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:17Speaker 00

  It's there forever. So be it. I don't need to change.

• 1:22:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Speaker 00

  I don't need to be egoless. I'm a new, like, who am I to be egoless? Am I some great person who should be egoless? No, like I'm some pathetic POS who struggles sometimes and does a good job and I do right by people. I hold both of those things.

• 1:22:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:35Lewis Howes?

  If we went back to the, you said there was like a scale of mental disorders, I think you called it, or mental diseases or disorders or, I don't know, diagnoses.

• 1:22:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:44Lewis Howes?

  And psychosis is, I guess, like the highest on the scale of

• 1:22:47Speaker 00

  Yes, severity.

• 1:22:48Lewis Howes?

  severity. And then maybe mood swings or some type of anxiety, you know, would be

• 1:22:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. So like panic disorders, you know, severe depression, then like generalized like anxiety, then there's like the normal level of anxiety. Then there's like the positive dimensions. Right? Of, of understanding and the highest dimension is understanding that you are not your mind. That the mind is just an object. It is your mind. We even say it. My mind, my hand. It is an object of its own that does whatever it wants to do. Just like your body. It's like, you don't get to control whether you have diarrhea today. Like your stomach is messed up today. Your mind is messed up today. But just like your stomach, you can take care of your mind.

• 1:23:29Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. And so what would you call this? The scale of you just making it up.

• 1:23:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. So.

• 1:23:34Lewis Howes?

  Severity around.

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  Well, actually, it's it's what what technically is is the scale of attachment to your thoughts.

• 1:23:40Lewis Howes?

  Okay. I love this because if because anyone could relate to somewhere on this scale. Hopefully, not many people relate to the psychosis, but anyone watching or listening can relate to. Yeah, I've had depressed thoughts or anxiety or stress or overwhelm or whatever it might be.

• 1:23:58Lewis Howes?

  Or a feeling of laziness or a lack of motivation, or I've ADHD or whatever it is. How does someone go from having a tended mind, a beautiful garden or a tended garden in their mind to psychosis or to suicidal thinking over and over again? And is there a way from someone to go back from psychosis or suicidal thinking to a beautiful garden in their mind?

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:24:26Lewis Howes?

  What is that process of how they got from mood swings to suicide? And how can someone go back? What is that process?

• 1:24:34Speaker 00

  Okay, we're going to teach it to you right now. It's going to take about 30 seconds. Okay, so I want you to close your eyes, Louis, and I want you to observe your breath.

• 1:24:47Speaker 00

  I didn't say breathe. I didn't say change your breath. I didn't say take a deep breath. I said, just observe it. You're doing that deep breathing thing again. You're breathing slow. Just observe it. Don't change it. Can you breathe the way that you were when we were talking?

• 1:25:02Speaker 00

  Now you're artificially increasing the pace, right?

• 1:25:07Lewis Howes?

  A little bit. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:08Speaker 00

  So here's the wild thing. The moment you are aware of something, you gain control. Literally, the part of your brain that monitors conflict within you is the part of your brain that is willpower.

• 1:25:24Lewis Howes?

  And I was going against what you were trying to have me to do. I was like, no, I'm going to do what feels good to me.

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  But even then, you're controlling it.

• 1:25:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:31Speaker 00

  So so if you pay attention, it is impossible for you to observe your breath and continue to breathe naturally. Impossible. Try it.

• 1:25:40Speaker 00

  You'll notice that the moment that you pay attention to it, it starts to alter. Right? So in physics, this is like-

• 1:25:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, cuz now I'm paying attention to it as opposed to just being.

• 1:25:49Speaker 00

  Right. And when you pay attention, you'll start to control it. You can try.

• 1:25:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:53Speaker 00

  I mean, maybe you can do it. I haven't been able to do it.

• 1:25:55Lewis Howes?

  No, it's, yeah, cuz I was focusing on breathing rather than just talking right now. I'm not thinking about breathing, how I'm just-

• 1:26:03Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:26:03Lewis Howes?

  In and out, you know?

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  So it's really cool. Awareness is the first step to control.

• 1:26:10Lewis Howes?

  Why does it seem so hard for so many people who are stuck in their, their minds? That creates so much stress, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts. Why is it so hard then? If it's so easy, why is it so hard where people get stuck for years or decades in this way of thinking? They need addictions, alcohol, drugs, medication to try to have some type of control over their thoughts or their, their body, their functions? Why is it so hard?

• 1:26:39Speaker 00

  Okay. Beautiful question.

• 1:26:41Lewis Howes?

  If what we just did right now in 30 seconds, awareness, I have it.

• 1:26:45Speaker 00

  Okay, let's be precise with our language.

• 1:26:47Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:26:47Speaker 00

  I never said it was easy.

• 1:26:48Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:26:49Speaker 00

  I just said it was simple.

• 1:26:50Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:26:52Speaker 00

  Biggest thing to understand.

• 1:26:53Lewis Howes?

  But why is it, okay, it's simple, but why is it so hard then?

• 1:26:57Speaker 00

  The simpler it is, the harder it is. The more complex it is, the easier it is. Okay? The simplest things in life-

• 1:27:04Lewis Howes?

  That should be your wife giving you a little, huh, sounds so good.

• 1:27:07Speaker 00

  Exactly. Right, so this, this is a really confusing thing. But if you look at like, you know, a master chef.

• 1:27:14Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:27:15Speaker 00

  It's simple.

• 1:27:16Lewis Howes?

  For them.

• 1:27:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, right? So it becomes easy at some point. But generally speaking, this is what's kind of really interesting. The things that are really hard are actually the easier things because there's like 15 different components. And then I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this, and I'm gonna do this. There's a very interesting relationship between simplicity and hard.

• 1:27:33Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:27:34Speaker 00

  You know, if, if we took, talk about, you know, to be a good dad is a simple thing.

• 1:27:41Lewis Howes?

  But, but you gotta do a lot of things.

• 1:27:42Speaker 00

  It's very hard.

• 1:27:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:44Speaker 00

  So this is a big thing that we have to understand. The, the simplest things in life are actually the hardest. How do I love myself? It's simple. It's not complicated. It doesn't have 18 different steps and you do this, and you do this, and you do this. But it's hard. It's very hard. So I think Well, it takes awareness consistently. Exactly. Which is hard. So that gets to why it's so hard. When you're distracted and overwhelmed and responsibilities and yeah. So let's look at why it's hard. The first reason why it's really hard is because we haven't been trying.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  We've never thought about it. We've never thought, literally, literally. Bro, I was 18 years old. I woke up on the morning of, I had set my alarm for 7:00 AM. I had a Spanish final at 8:00 AM. I set my alarm at 7:00 AM. And I thought about how, when I went to the Spanish final, I was going to be done in 15 minutes because I had skipped all the Spanish classes. I didn't know Spanish. So what was I gonna do? Stare at a piece of paper for three hours when I didn't know Spanish? And I decided not to go. I just skipped my final. Oh, yeah. F.

• 1:28:46Speaker 00

  If I just showed up, the professor had told me, if you show up, I'll give you a D. Yeah. Just show up. She's like, I don't know anything. I don't know. I did. I was so unaware. I was like, I was not a robot. I was, I felt like I was swept up by my mind. I couldn't control my mind. I would plead with, I would beg and hope, tomorrow, go to class, bro. Go to class, please, God, just go to class. And it wouldn't listen. Hmm. Why not? Because I wasn't aware. I was trying to get it to do. I was not observing. Right? So I, my daughter, here's a great example of just how powerful awareness is. My daughter was trying to close the box of a board game. I don't know if you've ever had this problem where, you know, if it's a little bit off,

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  you can push down and it'll never close, no matter how hard you push it. And then all it takes is just a little shift. A little adjustment, yeah, yeah. And then it'll slide right down. Easiest thing in the world. So when we don't understand ourselves, when we aren't aware of what the problem is, then we can exert this, we say, why is it so hard? Because everyone is trying to push the door open when you've got to pull. That's life.

• 1:29:58Speaker 00

  Understand yourself, understand how you work, understand that a goal can actually inhibit your motivation. If you get a little bit of feedback and the goal now feels harder, your, your mind will tell you, hey, it's not worth investing in. Now you have to overcome that. Understand that you actually don't control your thoughts. You can never control your thoughts. Imagine for a moment, if you agree with me, if I've made a logical argument and you now understand that you can't control your thoughts, you ask, why is it so hard? Because everyone's trying to control their thoughts. They're trying to swim up a waterfall and you ask why it's hard. It's not complicated. You can't swim up a waterfall. Waterfall, water go down. Water don't go up.

• 1:30:37Lewis Howes?

  So when you, when you go to, you know, Harvard, day one psychiatry training and, and they're like, one-on-one of psychiatry training, you can't control your thoughts? Is that something they teach you?

• 1:30:49Speaker 00

  No. So the crazy thing at going to Harvard is they were teaching me all this stuff and they were like, this is how the mind works. And I was like, no, it isn't. Cause I had learned about the mind in India. So they're teaching me what the subconscious is. They're teaching me all this stuff that is just one view of the mind. There's a different view of the mind, which I think is, it's not that their view of the mind is wrong. We use both, right? But there, the way that the West studies the mind is problematic for one really simple reason, which is we have no way to actually measure the mind. If we look at how medicine works, how do we learn, how does science learn things? Science learns things through observation. What's going on on your chest? We're gonna x-ray you. What's, what kind

• 1:31:31Speaker 00

  of bacteria is in your blood? We're gonna do a blood culture. What's the x-ray for the mind? There's none. There's no way to detect the mind.

• 1:31:38Lewis Howes?

  And you can't put a scan on the, a scan on the brain or on the head and get data from the mind?

• 1:31:43Speaker 00

  You can't. It's impossible. Right? So how do we know which part of the brain anxiety comes from? Because we do a brain scan, we see some part of the brain is lighting up and then we ask you, what are you feeling? And we did that a thousand times and we figured, okay, this part of the brain is where anxiety comes from. So in India, the yogis did it a different way. They observed their own thoughts. This is the cool thing. Because you're the only one, I know this is gonna sound like a weird question, Louis. Am I thinking? Am I a thinking being?

• 1:32:18Speaker 00

  Or am I a robot? Do I, am I conscious? Or am I just a hallucination in your perception?

• 1:32:24Lewis Howes?

  Are you conscious? In my opinion, are you conscious?

• 1:32:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:32:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 00

  How do you know?

• 1:32:29Lewis Howes?

  It's based on my perception of the.

• 1:32:31Speaker 00

  What do you perceive?

• 1:32:33Lewis Howes?

  I perceive you in front of me, the five senses, the, you know.

• 1:32:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. So do you have a sense of my thoughts and my consciousness? Do you have a sense that tells you that?

• 1:32:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Speaker 00

  How? Tell me.

• 1:32:44Lewis Howes?

  Belief.

• 1:32:45Speaker 00

  Okay, belief is different.

• 1:32:46Lewis Howes?

  Perception.

• 1:32:47Speaker 00

  A perception, what are you perceiving? Pay attention, what are you perceiving? Can you see my thoughts?

• 1:32:52Lewis Howes?

  I can see your reactions and your behavior around.

• 1:32:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, but I could be empty up here.

• 1:32:57Lewis Howes?

  It's true, you could be.

• 1:32:58Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:32:59Lewis Howes?

  I don't know for certainty.

• 1:33:00Speaker 00

  So this is, this is insane.

• 1:33:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 00

  I had a, a patient once in the neuro ICU. We got consulted. And so they're like, yeah, we think something's wrong, like he's depressed. So I go to the neuro ICU. Guy got hit by a car. And was in a coma for a while. Now was doing better. And then I'm like, hey, you know, so tell me a little bit about, you know, what's going on? How's your relationship? He's like, oh, you know, my wife is great. She's here every day. How's your relationship with your kids? Seems like kids are fine. What's your recovery look like? He's like, I'm gonna have to do physical therapy. It's hard, you know, it hurts, but like, I'm expected to make a full recovery. What's going on at work? You know, my partners are fantastic. They're like, they're gonna cover things for three months and I'll go back into the office maybe a month or two. So I'm kind of like confused, like everything's gonna be fine.

• 1:33:46Lewis Howes?

  But he had a level of depression or?

• 1:33:48Speaker 00

  Some, some depression. So I go back day after day after day, because once you get consulted, you're responsible. And, and so, you know, the last day he's, he's gonna be discharged. Like, bro, I gotta be honest with you. I ask, I come in, I ask you all these questions. You say nothing's wrong, but when I sit here, when I sit in the room with you, you seem depressed. Can you tell, like, am I just like crazy? Like, what's going on here? And then he kind of starts like breaking down into tears and I'm, and he says like, you know, it's, it's crazy. But when I was in a coma, um, I lived a whole life. I had a family. I was married to a different person. Come on. I I had two sons, not two daughters. And I realized that that was all fake, but like it hurts like they're gone. I'm never gonna see them again. Different people. Just a completely different life. Wow.

• 1:34:34Speaker 00

  Right? And it's really weird. But like. You know, you know, when I ask you. Do I have thoughts like the only person that you know really exists? You could be in a coma right now. That's true. This could all be a hallucination. This could be a dream. Could be.

• 1:34:53Speaker 00

  Right? Could be. So these fundamental things. Is it a dream?

• 1:34:58Speaker 00

  We'll find out.

• 1:35:00Speaker 00

  At some point. Yeah. I mean, I think it's real. Mm hmm. But maybe I'm hallucinating you. Who knows? You know, so Descartes always like cogito ergo sum, right? I think therefore I am. At the end of the day, you can't tell the difference between a hallucination and a dream. But at least there is something there that is dreaming. Even if it's a dream, even if you're in a coma, there is still someone in the coma. Mm hmm. And and as we understand some of these basic things, like this is why it's hard because we don't understand that we're not our mind. You are that which experiences your mind and no one else experiences your mind. You are that which experiences your mind. You are the awareness of the experience of your mind? Of course, because you can observe your thoughts. Mm hmm. Can you see your eyes?

• 1:35:44Speaker 00

  Not unless I have a mirror. You're not seeing your eyes in a mirror. What are you seeing? A reflection. There we go. Mm hmm.

• 1:35:52Speaker 00

  So what you really are. I'm observing it. You're observ- you're observing. I can observe my hand. I can observe my mind. This hand is not me.

• 1:36:03Speaker 00

  It is a. It I own it. It's my hand. Yeah, yeah. But it's not me, even if heaven forbid something happened. I lost the hand, I'd still be me. What is you? That which observes. It's empty, egoless, nothing. It's just the capacity for observation.

• 1:36:20Speaker 00

  And so this is what's really cool.

• 1:36:22Lewis Howes?

  So it's the being of you that observes everything around you.

• 1:36:25Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So here's the crazy thing. You want to know what you are? You're not a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that thinks you're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that believes you're a wise, passionate man. You're the thing that has watched the construction. You have experienced every moment of your life. That's the only thing that makes you you. Ego is outside of that. We can construct the ego. Well done. You constructed a very healthy ego. We need a healthy ego. It's nice and rajsek. Seems like you're not having problems with heart attacks and stuff, so you may not need to slow down. I'm sure you've learned, you're a professional athlete, you've learned the value of rest.

• 1:37:03Lewis Howes?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:37:04Speaker 00

  Right? So that's okay.

• 1:37:07Speaker 00

  So as we understand these fundamentals, life becomes easier. As we start recognizing that don't just chase goals. Don't just get willpower. If you're feeling tired.

• 1:37:20Lewis Howes?

  Rest.

• 1:37:21Speaker 00

  Rest or recognize, imagine this, if your brain thinks something is a bad idea.

• 1:37:29Speaker 00

  How does it let you know? It makes you feel tired. If you really don't feel like doing something, you should really ask yourself, what is my body and brain trying to tell me? It's so sad. People are in a relationship that's been dead for years. And the thought of seeing their partner makes them exhausted. That's your brain telling you something.

• 1:37:51Lewis Howes?

  Something's off.

• 1:37:51Speaker 00

  Something's off. And it's not that this relationship has to end. You don't have to break up with the person, but you better damn well make a different relationship with them.

• 1:37:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:38:01Speaker 00

  So you don't have to jump to the conclusions that your mind says, but like if you're feeling tired, instead of just taking a supplement and powering through, ask yourself, why am I feeling tired? Spend more time with awareness.

• 1:38:14Speaker 00

  Then you'll know how to move the box a little bit and then life becomes easy. You don't have to work so hard.

• 1:38:19Lewis Howes?

  For someone who's going through a mental challenge, do you call it a mental diagnosis, a mental disorder, a mental disease?

• 1:38:27Speaker 00

  Depends on what they're going through. You have to tell me what they're, then I'll tell you what.

• 1:38:29Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I guess. Anything from anxiety to psychosis.

• 1:38:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:38:33Lewis Howes?

  Is that, is the.

• 1:38:34Speaker 00

  So here, here's.

• 1:38:35Lewis Howes?

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna categorize things the wrong way, I guess.

• 1:38:38Speaker 00

  So if, if something is going on in your mind and possibly in your body that impairs your function, then we call it a mental illness.

• 1:38:46Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:38:47Speaker 00

  So if it interferes with your ability to work, if it interferes with your ability to do school, if it interferes with your relationships, if it interferes with your physical health, if it interferes with your mental health, if your anxiety is so bad that you can't go see your friends.

• 1:39:00Lewis Howes?

  Can't, can't leave the house.

• 1:39:01Speaker 00

  Well, it's not, it's not that it, it's can't, it's impairment to function.

• 1:39:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  If it's really hard to leave the house.

• 1:39:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:39:07Speaker 00

  Cause so many people with depression are

• 1:39:12Speaker 00

  functional and empty.

• 1:39:13Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  Right?

• 1:39:15Lewis Howes?

  So that's a mental illness.

• 1:39:16Speaker 00

  That's an illness. So if it impairs function, that's the line.

• 1:39:19Lewis Howes?

  How do you, when do you know you've healed a mental illness? And can you heal a mental illness without medicine?

• 1:39:25Speaker 00

  When do you know you, you've healed a mental illness? Um, so what we shoot for in psychiatry is no longer impairment to function. So even if you're depressed, if you're able to enjoy life, if you're able to form relationships, go to work, if the depression comes and goes a little bit, that's actually okay.

• 1:39:44Lewis Howes?

  That's not a mental illness anymore.

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  Or it's in remission.

• 1:39:47Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:39:48Speaker 00

  Okay. So I personally believe that many mental illnesses can be healed or cured, but that is not something I can say scientifically.

• 1:39:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  So we'll talk about remission because it can always come back, right?

• 1:40:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:40:00Speaker 00

  But in my experience, you know, people will be in sustained remission and that's very common. The majority of people who have a depressive episode only have one in their life. So then that begs kind of a philosophical question. Is it cured? Or is it just so dormant that, and, and, and not being triggered because your life isn't, is healthy? And are you, you know, does that kind of make sense?

• 1:40:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And can, can you heal a mental illness without medication?

• 1:40:27Speaker 00

  I think so, I, I

• 1:40:28Lewis Howes?

  Without saying

• 1:40:29Speaker 00

  Very, very clear. Uh, medication never heals mental illness.

• 1:40:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 1:40:33Speaker 00

  And I think most psychiatrists would agree with me with that.

• 1:40:36Lewis Howes?

  I don't think most people understand that. They think medication will heal them.

• 1:40:40Speaker 00

  No, medication manages your symptoms. Right? That's why, so if you have ADHD and you take a stimulant medication for a month, it's not like your ADHD is gone at the end of the month.

• 1:40:51Lewis Howes?

  So meditation or medication cannot heal your mental illness.

• 1:40:54Speaker 00

  I do not believe so.

• 1:40:56Lewis Howes?

  And you're a Harvard

• 1:40:57Speaker 00

  There's maybe some exceptions to that, but generally speaking, ninety, ninety-nine percent of medications that we prescribe will manage symptoms. They will not heal anything.

• 1:41:07Lewis Howes?

  What heals the symptoms so that the illness goes away? Awareness?

• 1:41:12Speaker 00

  No, healing the symptoms.

• 1:41:14Lewis Howes?

  What alleviates the symptoms?

• 1:41:17Speaker 00

  Symptoms are the fruit of the tree. The illness is the tree.

• 1:41:23Speaker 00

  So if I take

• 1:41:23Lewis Howes?

  Want to remove the symptom or remove the illness?

• 1:41:25Speaker 00

  Well, it, that depends on you. So the reason people take medication is because they usually don't have the time, energy, or money to do the healing.

• 1:41:36Lewis Howes?

  Which it takes time to sit there and observe yourself and meditate or do what's necessary.

• 1:41:41Speaker 00

  Do psychotherapy. So I think psychotherapy is the best evidence-based practice for healing something.

• 1:41:48Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between psychotherapy and talk therapy?

• 1:41:51Speaker 00

  Uh, psychotherapy is the broader umbrella of things that we call talk therapy.

• 1:41:55Lewis Howes?

  And it's under, talk therapy is in psychotherapy.

• 1:41:58Speaker 00

  So much of psychotherapy is talking, but as an example, if you have something like OCD, we'll do something called exposure and response prevention. So if you have a phobia of like, if you're claustrophobic, talking about how you're claustrophobic.

• 1:42:12Lewis Howes?

  Be in that as experiences.

• 1:42:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:42:13Lewis Howes?

  And start to feel calm and peace.

• 1:42:16Speaker 00

  Well, start, no, start to feel terrified and then survive terror. And then realize that terror is not to be feared.

• 1:42:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're not gonna die.

• 1:42:25Speaker 00

  You're not gonna die, right? And you don't die. And then we're gonna put you in that situation again and again and again.

• 1:42:29Lewis Howes?

  Teach you how to relax during this.

• 1:42:31Speaker 00

  Not even, yeah, we're gonna teach you how to relax, but actually, we don't have to teach you. All you need to do is just survive.

• 1:42:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:42:38Speaker 00

  And then you will acclimatize to it.

• 1:42:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:42:40Speaker 00

  Right? So we're going to encourage some good neuroplasticity there.

• 1:42:43Lewis Howes?

  And that's one of the best ways to overcome fears by, you know, I guess, exposing yourself to the fear.

• 1:42:49Speaker 00

  Absolutely. Right? So for fear-based things, whether it's social anxiety, you gotta go to that party.

• 1:42:54Lewis Howes?

  Party, yeah.

• 1:42:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, right?

• 1:42:55Lewis Howes?

  Go get rejected by the girl.

• 1:42:56Speaker 00

  Go get rejected, but yeah, absolutely.

• 1:42:58Lewis Howes?

  Know you're gonna survive.

• 1:43:00Speaker 00

  And know that you're gonna survive. So confidence doesn't come from success, it comes from surviving failure. Right? When you believe in yourself and this is

• 1:43:09Speaker 00

  It's so easy to do, isn't it?

• 1:43:16Speaker 00

  Right? No, but really, like, it's like, so, you know, we can talk about, talk about your Olympic aspirations and stuff, right? And it's like, I know you're gonna, you're gonna charge into that because you have failed and you've picked yourself up off the mat.

• 1:43:29Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:43:30Speaker 00

  Right? And when I work with patients who have addictions, like, their big thing is you really conquer an addiction when you learn to pick yourself up. Not when you avoid falling down.

• 1:43:41Lewis Howes?

  So when you fail, you know, I've, I've never been drunk in my life and I've never done drugs or any of these things or been high. And, but I can assume how hard it could be to overcome the addiction of alcohol for people that have been alcoholics or drinking consistently. I can assume it's extremely challenging without the right tools. Even with the right tools, it's still very difficult, I can assume. Again, I've never experienced it. But it's, it's not the person who's been an alcoholic or having alcoholic tendencies that never does it. It's when they relapse and drink and then they pick themselves up and go another hundred days without it or whatever it is.

• 1:44:18Speaker 00

  Yes. So, so if you think about it, damage control is a skill that you can learn.

• 1:44:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:23Speaker 00

  Just like anything else. So I think a lot of these can be, it's not clear how much it can be healed. So I wouldn't, if you are

• 1:44:31Lewis Howes?

  Managed and, and

• 1:44:33Speaker 00

  So I think for every person, it's somewhere in the middle.

• 1:44:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:35Speaker 00

  But I think that we have good evidence of healing.

• 1:44:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:44:39Speaker 00

  So for example, you know, some people who have things like PTSD, like, we can sort of like rewire their brain and it's kind of fixed that. And it kind of goes away. Um, other examples of this are things like personality disorders. So there are people with like borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality disorder where we can like do psychotherapy with them for some amount of time.

• 1:44:59Lewis Howes?

  They also have to want it, right? They have to want to

• 1:45:02Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:45:03Lewis Howes?

  If you're resistant to it, you're not gonna improve.

• 1:45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think I think they absolutely have to want it, but even wanting it is a tricky thing.

• 1:45:10Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:45:11Speaker 00

  Cause there it's totally.

• 1:45:12Lewis Howes?

  Willingness, right?

• 1:45:13Speaker 00

  It it's totally fine for a part of you to not want it.

• 1:45:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you don't wanna face these parts of you. Yeah.

• 1:45:20Speaker 00

  And there there but there has to be some part of you that is willing to do the work. Absolutely. I I've never seen a case. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen. I've never seen a case of it working without the patient.

• 1:45:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, just forcing the patient.

• 1:45:32Speaker 00

  But but a a big part of what I do is people come into my office and are reluctant. So a big part of it is even if you don't want it, even if because people are afraid.

• 1:45:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:45:43Speaker 00

  They don't come in wanting it, right? They they come in sometimes kicking and screaming.

• 1:45:47Lewis Howes?

  No one wants to be wrong. No one wants to be like, something is wrong and bad with me. We don't want that.

• 1:45:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, right.

• 1:45:52Lewis Howes?

  Want to feel like, man, I'm a failure. I've messed up. I've got this thing that I can't figure out on my own. And that's why I have this addictive personality, or I smoke, or I drink, or cheat, or porn, whatever it is like. I do these things that don't feel good. And I don't want to admit that. No one wants to admit that something is wrong with them.

• 1:46:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, what we all want to do is solve our problems in secret and then come out triumphant.

• 1:46:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and or no one even knows we have the problem, I guess. It's like.

• 1:46:16Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:46:17Lewis Howes?

  We we don't want to reveal that to the world because that's shame.

• 1:46:20Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:46:20Lewis Howes?

  That doesn't feel good.

• 1:46:22Speaker 00

  But I I I do think we can heal for the most part.

• 1:46:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:25Speaker 00

  And and I think even if we don't, it is in some people's karma to always have a brain that is going to produce depressive thoughts. We know, for example, that there are some genetic polymorphisms and the serotonin transporters in your brain can be a little bit different. And so if they're a little bit shorter, we're more prone to things like depression. So there are some things about mental illness that are not fixable.

• 1:46:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Speaker 00

  But in my overwhelming, in my career, I've seen over a thousand patients. There are three that I can think of that I've been basically unable to help in a significant way.

• 1:46:59Lewis Howes?

  So ninety nine point nine percent of patients you've seen improve their mental.

• 1:47:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:47:05Lewis Howes?

  Illnesses or mental disorders or mental stresses.

• 1:47:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:47:09Lewis Howes?

  Into having a more empowering mind that it makes them feel better.

• 1:47:12Speaker 00

  And I I would even go as far as to say that cure is the wrong target.

• 1:47:15Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. It's improvement, right? It's man.

• 1:47:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I I I I think it's your life doesn't have to be so hard.

• 1:47:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:47:23Speaker 00

  You don't have to cure it. That's what everybody wants. Everyone wants to be completely free. Whereas I think that's once again, the goal, right? Like, I want to be free of this forever. I, I think the challenge, and this can be really depressing to hear is like, yeah, this is going to be a part of you. But just because it's a part of you, it's so exhausting right now, but you can learn to live with it. It can be a part of you.

• 1:47:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:41Speaker 00

  I was addicted to video games. It's a huge part of who I am. I had a gigantic ego. It's a huge part of who I am. You know, and I think this is what's really weird. I've had patients who'll be like, yeah, cancer is the best thing that happened to me. I'm like, what are you, what are you smoking? But th- this is what's really crazy is life is about all of these things. It's about the good and the bad, to be detached from just wanting good.

• 1:48:03Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:48:04Speaker 00

  And wanting to avoid bad at all costs. That's when we get into trouble.

• 1:48:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:09Speaker 00

  If all you want in life is the good stuff, you will not be in control of your own actions. Be able to embrace that negativity. Don't run away from it. Then you're, then you have control. Control is about being independent of the responses that life sends your way. This thing sucks. I didn't want to go swimming today. It felt bad. It was torturous. And I did it.

• 1:48:39Lewis Howes?

  Did you do 50 laps or five?

• 1:48:40Speaker 00

  Five.

• 1:48:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you, you see, you did five, and then you're like, I'm done.

• 1:48:43Speaker 00

  I did five.

• 1:48:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:44Speaker 00

  I forced my ass to get into the pool.

• 1:48:47Lewis Howes?

  I thought you were going to say in the beginning, because we never finished what that story was. That you're like, okay, I got there, I did five, and then I kept going a few more. But you're like, I'm just doing what I said I was gonna do.

• 1:48:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so oftentimes I will do a little bit more.

• 1:48:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:59Speaker 00

  But today was a day where I was like, I did five, and that's, that's enough.

• 1:49:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:49:03Speaker 00

  It's enough.

• 1:49:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:05Speaker 00

  And I thought about, do I want to do more? Do I want to squeeze out one or two more? And I was like, not today.

• 1:49:10Lewis Howes?

  I'm good. Yeah, because you've been on the road for nine days. You've been working, you've been, you know, eating a little extra food here probably and.

• 1:49:16Speaker 00

  I actually haven't been eating extra food. That's the problem. Yeah.

• 1:49:19Lewis Howes?

  You needed more calories.

• 1:49:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:49:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:23Lewis Howes?

  I love it. I've got a couple of final questions for you, Dr.

• 1:49:24Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:49:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay, but I want people to follow you, HealthyGamerGG on YouTube, Spotify, social media, all the places. And I think it's HealthyGamer.GG as well. What's the website for you?

• 1:49:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, HealthyGamer.GG.

• 1:49:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So a lot of your content, I think you've got, you know, millions of subscribers over on YouTube, a lot of great stuff over on Instagram that I've been consuming. Books, all the different stuff. I want people to go check it out, HealthyGamer.GG. And you have guides to mental health.

• 1:49:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54Lewis Howes?

  And a lot of these things are coming out here in the next month or two. So if people want to get more of this information, they can get some of your guides to mental health, topics on love, relationships, et cetera. If they go to HealthyGamer.GG, you'll get the information on how you can get some of these guides. And I think your guides are like, you know, 20 or 30 bucks or something. I think they're very affordable. So I recommend people going and getting more information on you there. This question is something I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths. So hypothetical scenario. Even though you are egoless and formless and have no identity, but in the future, you have transcended the world. But in the future, let's a hypothetical scenario, you get to

• 1:50:37Lewis Howes?

  live your life in this world exactly how you want to.

• 1:50:41Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:50:42Lewis Howes?

  For the rest of your life.

• 1:50:43Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:50:43Lewis Howes?

  You get to create, experience, accomplish, you know, or not accomplish goals how you want, but it's the last day on this earth for you.

• 1:50:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Lewis Howes?

  And for whatever reason, all the content you've created is no longer with us in this world. So it either has to go with you or it's eliminated from the world. But you get to leave behind three lessons from all the work you've done or not done or accomplished or not accomplished. Three lessons that you would get to leave behind. I call it the three truths.

• 1:51:11Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 1:51:11Lewis Howes?

  What would those be for you?

• 1:51:13Speaker 00

  Number one is, understanding is more important than effort.

• 1:51:17Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 1:51:18Speaker 00

  That one's, and I think about this because I wonder, you know, if I, I teach all this stuff on, on the internet and whatnot, but I think about what would I teach my kids?

• 1:51:29Speaker 00

  So definitely, understanding is more important than effort.

• 1:51:34Speaker 00

  I think mistakes are a part of your journey. Is another huge one.

• 1:51:41Speaker 00

  And I'd say the third thing is, is.

• 1:51:49Speaker 00

  The results of your life are determined by your actions. Right? I know we said that we don't control our, but like, like, action is all you've got. So that's the one resource.

• 1:52:02Speaker 00

  And kind of related to that. This is a huge thing. I think people don't realize that 99% of the actions that you take are in your head.

• 1:52:12Speaker 00

  Literally.

• 1:52:14Speaker 00

  So an action, the way you respond to your thoughts is an action.

• 1:52:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So how you think about a thought is an action.

• 1:52:22Speaker 00

  How you respond to a thought is.

• 1:52:24Lewis Howes?

  With another thought.

• 1:52:25Speaker 00

  Sometimes that's what people do.

• 1:52:27Lewis Howes?

  Right. They think I'm a loser and then they respond to it by confirming.

• 1:52:32Speaker 00

  But yeah, they spiral.

• 1:52:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:33Speaker 00

  Right? So when we talk about a thought spiral, that is not controlling our response to thoughts.

• 1:52:41Speaker 00

  And, and literally, literally, the most important thing that you can do is change the way and control the way that you respond to what your mind generates. Win, lose, and a win-win. You did it right there.

• 1:52:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And it sounds like if you can train or develop the skill of learning how to respond to your thoughts, you will live a much better life.

• 1:53:07Speaker 00

  Undoubtedly.

• 1:53:08Lewis Howes?

  If that is the number one skill that you develop is how to respond to your thinking.

• 1:53:13Speaker 00

  Undoubtedly.

• 1:53:14Lewis Howes?

  You, it will influence the quality or lack of quality of your life.

• 1:53:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. So it'll change your actions. It'll change practically what your life looks like.

• 1:53:24Speaker 00

  And it'll change your peace.

• 1:53:26Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent. It'll impact your emotions too.

• 1:53:30Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:53:30Lewis Howes?

  How you feel.

• 1:53:31Speaker 00

  Absolutely. So we, you know, the.

• 1:53:34Lewis Howes?

  Do thoughts influence feelings or feelings influence thoughts?

• 1:53:37Speaker 00

  Both.

• 1:53:39Speaker 00

  So thoughts, emotions shape our thoughts and thoughts shape our emotions. So usually the first, this is the key thing is the first emotion, we don't have much control over. But what we do with that emotion.

• 1:53:52Speaker 00

  That's the key thing.

• 1:53:53Lewis Howes?

  Correct me if I'm wrong. I have a belief that most.

• 1:53:58Lewis Howes?

  Doctors, professors, extremely intelligent, successful academics,

• 1:54:07Lewis Howes?

  think more than they feel.

• 1:54:09Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:54:09Lewis Howes?

  They're more analytical than they feel.

• 1:54:12Speaker 00

  Yes, yes.

• 1:54:12Lewis Howes?

  But it sounds like you have this unique experience of practicing yoga, meditation, you know, being with monks for many years and deepening a spiritual, more of emotional practice, I would say, in your body as well, not only analytical in your mind.

• 1:54:30Lewis Howes?

  Have you been able to navigate the mind emotion connection well? Or do you feel like you still have blockages in your body or in your emotions because you're in your head?

• 1:54:41Speaker 00

  Both.

• 1:54:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:42Speaker 00

  Right, so I think it never, never, the work is never done.

• 1:54:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:46Speaker 00

  And you're always gonna have problems. And that's okay.

• 1:54:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Speaker 00

  Right, so we have this idea of like, problems are only a problem if you don't know how to deal with them.

• 1:54:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if you stay stuck in them.

• 1:54:57Speaker 00

  If you stay stuck in them, right? So, you know, falling down is only an issue if you can't get back up. Ha ha.

• 1:55:05Speaker 00

  That's what I have to do, so that's the way I respond. If I even hear it in my own head, to avoid myself from becoming a guru.

• 1:55:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:13Speaker 00

  Alok Baba, come, I will do every, I will give you peace and joy. So, well, a lot of people, this is really fascinating, there's a lot of information about intelligence. So, one interesting question I had is, why isn't everyone a genius? So, if you think about like, evolution, right? And the way that our bodies evolve and things like that, like, why wouldn't just everyone be smarter?

• 1:55:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, why not?

• 1:55:34Speaker 00

  So, it turns out that intelligence is a double edged sword, especially really high. So, a couple of really fascinating statistics. If you look at the top 10%, uh, the top 10% of intelligence, those people make way more money than the top 1%.

• 1:55:51Lewis Howes?

  Why? Cause they haven't, they're more naive also?

• 1:55:55Speaker 00

  The top 1%?

• 1:55:56Lewis Howes?

  The top, the top 9% I guess are more naive.

• 1:55:59Speaker 00

  So, if you, if you take the... Ten smartest people in a room of a hundred, they will make more money than the smartest person in the room. So at some point, intelligence becomes harmful.

• 1:56:11Lewis Howes?

  Ah, because it's a lack of action, probably, right?

• 1:56:13Speaker 00

  Well, it's a couple of things. One is that people who are very smart are actually more prone to depression.

• 1:56:20Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 1:56:20Speaker 00

  Because they realize how screwed they are. They can calculate their problems way easier. Second thing is, the more intelligent you are, the more emotionally underdeveloped you become.

• 1:56:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:31Speaker 00

  Because your brain, you solve all your problems with intellect instead of emotion.

• 1:56:36Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:56:37Speaker 00

  So oftentimes, people who have high IQ have lower EQ.

• 1:56:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:41Speaker 00

  And the reason for this is because if I have, you know, a dominant hand, I'm going to use it all the time and my left hand will become weaker.

• 1:56:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47Speaker 00

  So as, as intelligence becomes your tool of choice, other parts of your brain will actually be underdeveloped.

• 1:56:54Lewis Howes?

  They become more dormant.

• 1:56:55Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:56:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow. And you need both the body, the emotions, the minds, the body.

• 1:57:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, the, the healthiest way to be is to use the full capacity of what's at your disposal. People with super high IQ are basically one-trick ponies. And so there's some stuff that they're good at and some stuff that they're not good at.

• 1:57:13Lewis Howes?

  And you want to have a range of skill sets.

• 1:57:17Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 1:57:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, look at you.

• 1:57:19Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:57:20Speaker 00

  Right? Curious, intellectual, thoughtful.

• 1:57:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Speaker 00

  Physically on point.

• 1:57:26Lewis Howes?

  And nothing at all.

• 1:57:27Speaker 00

  Emotionally connected.

• 1:57:27Lewis Howes?

  And nothing at all.

• 1:57:28Speaker 00

  And nothing at all.

• 1:57:28Lewis Howes?

  Nothing at all.

• 1:57:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:29Lewis Howes?

  You know, egoless, formless.

• 1:57:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, not yet, but you'll get there.

• 1:57:33Lewis Howes?

  One day I'll send to your level.

• 1:57:35Speaker 00

  Uh, descend.

• 1:57:36Lewis Howes?

  Descend.

• 1:57:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:39Lewis Howes?

  Become nothing.

• 1:57:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Lewis Howes?

  Final question for you. What, what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:57:46Speaker 00

  I, I think it's to lean into being fully you. If you look at most people, if you, this is going to sound kind of weird, but you pay attention to their head, they're running away from themselves. I don't want to be this. I want to be like this. I want to be like this person. I want to be like, you're not being you. And so then you look at what other people are doing and you're like, oh, this person wakes up at this time and this person wakes up at this time. I, I, if I have time for a story.

• 1:58:09Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 1:58:10Speaker 00

  So I, you know, I was in my first, the second, third week of medical school and I, I saw like all of my colleagues would like study a lot, right? So we'd go to class and they'd be like chugging coffee and it's like seven PM, eight PM, nine PM, 10 PM, 11 PM. They're at the library and I was trying to do that because I was like, I have all the stuff to learn. It just didn't work.

• 1:58:28Speaker 00

  So then I was, I didn't do great on my first set of tests and I was like, I gotta figure this out. And I was like, I just can't work like these people. So instead I leaned into my yoga training, woke up at 4:30 every day, would study for two hours a day between five and seven in the morning. And then I would go to class, finish class, go home, you know, just do whatever. And then I'd go to sleep. So I only studied two hours a day in medical school. And the right two hours of the day, everything goes into my head, it's fresh. My absorption just drops so much when I'm fatigued. I'm not sleeping well because I've had so much caffeine. So lean into who you are. You have a unique set, you're a unique set of genetics, unique set of experiences. You have talents that

• 1:59:11Speaker 00

  other people can't even imagine. But as long as you are trying to be someone else, the strategy that worked for somebody else worked for that set of genetics, worked at that time. You know, we were talking earlier about Mask of Masculinity. It's a book that I think every dude should check out. This is the book that should have been, that people should be writing today. You were too early. I know I was. Right? Yeah. Everyone's talking about masculinity now. You did it before it was cool. Yeah. And so like you have to lean into who you are. Mm hmm. That's how you're going to be great. Yeah. Can't live anybody else's life. Hmm. Stop trying. Okay. Thanks, man.

• 1:59:53Lewis Howes?

  Powerful.

• 1:59:54Speaker 00

  Appreciate it. Great dude.

• 1:59:56Lewis 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. And

• 2:00:39Lewis Howes?

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