Russell Brand: The Power of Fame, Fighting Addiction & Spiritual Freedom in Your Life EP 1109

“Be of service to the thing you claim to love.”Today's guest is the wise, talented, and funny, Russell Brand! His career ranges from stand-up comedy and acting, to broadcasting and writing. He is the author of the Audible Original, ‘Revelation: Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life' and his new weekly meditation podcast, 'Above the Noise'. In this episode Lewis and Russell discuss why practicing your values can help you be part of something bigger than yourself, the three skills Russell wishes he knew earlier in his life, what happens when you don’t commit yourself to achieving your dreams, how Russell manages his negative thoughts, and so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1109Check out Russell’s new book: Revelation: Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday LifeListen to his meditation podcast: Above the NoiseKobe Bryant on Mamba Mentality, NBA Titles, and Oscars: https://link.chtbl.com/691-podKevin Hart Breaks Down His Secrets to Success: https://link.chtbl.com/956-podKatherine Schwarzenegger Pratt on the Power of Forgiveness: https://link.chtbl.com/925-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1109 with Russell Brand.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman once said, "Positive thinking is not about being delusional. It's about learning how to take control of internal processing and knowing it'll shape your external environment." And Priyanka Chopra Jonas said, "What you do after failure is how you build a legacy." I am so excited because my guest today is the wise, the talented, the funny Russell Brand. And his career ranges from stand-up comedy and acting to broadcasting and writing. He is the author of the Audible original Revelation: Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life, which is extremely inspiring. I just finished it recently and I loved it. And his new weekly meditation podcast, Above the Noise, is available at luminarypodcast.com.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  And in this episode, we discuss why practicing your values can help you be a part of something bigger than yourself. We talk about fame and what fame has taught him in his life, the three different skills that Russell wishes he knew earlier in his life, what happens when you don't commit yourself to achieving your dreams, why self-doubt can be critical to your awareness, the reality of freedom, and how Russell manages his negative thoughts, and so much more. I think you're gonna love this. If you do, make sure to share this with someone who you think would be inspired as well. Spread the message of greatness to a friend, post it on social media. Make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes, and Russell Brand as well. And if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify right now

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  to stay up to date from the latest and greatest on the School of Greatness. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Russell Brand.

• 2:05Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the incredibly handsome and wise Russell Brand in the house. Good to see you, sir.

• 2:15Russell Brand?

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to start with a question that is around a quote that I love from Jim Carrey. And he said, "I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they've ever dreamed of so they can see it's not the answer." I'm curious, with all the fame, success, money, accomplishments you have, what is the truth you want the world to know about what it all means and what fame actually is?

• 2:46Russell Brand?

  Well, in a sense, you can't really add to Jim Carrey's quote or the theological precedence of it, which are broad and varied, i.e. the material world is an illusion, or the kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth and man sees it not, that no material thing can ever make you happy. Like, this idea is culturally reiterated everywhere and assiduously ignored everywhere. And because, let's face it, we live in a culture that is dominated by economic ideologies, materialistic ideologies, sort of for good and for ill.

• 3:29Russell Brand?

  And there's no question that certain markers of progress are worthy of plaudits, i.e. medicine, technology, but they can be, to a degree, false markers of progress. They can mislead us, they can make us, I would say, sort of culturally hubristic about our achievements. And whether it's sort of Mongolian culture, the plain people, or what they called the steppe people, who could, like, were equestrian archers with levels of expertise that, like, you'd only get in a circus now, that were, sort of, were practiced by whole armies, or the Jesuit priests that speak, like, 20, 30 languages, you know, like the...

• 4:15Russell Brand?

  There are historical achievements, moments of greatness that are beyond what our culture values now, that are now neglected, dormant and ignored, precisely because they are at odds with the faith structures that currently define us. We already live in a religious society. We live in a ideological fundamentalist society that believes in materialism, wealth, consumerism, and necessarily mobilizes our deeper instincts in order to facilitate the advancement of those systems, i.e. you know, any commercial you watch on television that has like families embracing each other at an airport, or like a sort of a bit of lens

• 4:59Russell Brand?

  flare as a sort of a mother and child look at each other. You know, this is mobilizing what we know to be true. Love is everything. We are all connected. God is everywhere. But those ideas would lead to ultimately to the decimation of many of the cultural institutions that are beneficial to the most powerful people and institutions in society. So those ideas have to be repressed, negated, reframed, diluted and neutered.

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  Beautifully said. I love the uh, I love the book, the audio book that you have, Revelation, Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life. And I loved the moment, um, there was a lot of, a lot of vulnerable moments for you, but I loved the moment where you talked about towards the end of it, where you went to a homeless shelter, I believe it was, for teens or young boys, young kids, and you were nervous to speak to like thirty, forty random strangers of people who essentially were homeless or had nothing. And you were talking about how your fame really didn't help you in that moment, except for when you talked about, you know, a previous relationship and trying to look cool so you could calm your nerves. What does fame do to people if they don't learn to manage it and have

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  some type of spiritual guidance or some type of higher truth? What does it do to people? And how have you learned to manage it at this level from all the different stages you've gone through it?

• 6:23Russell Brand?

  Fame kind of mimics deeper forms of greatness. Fame can feel like being, like, I wonder if you think of like, say, even a few hundred years ago, or even, you know. Like, say, Oscar Wilde was kind of like a celebrity and like a legit genius and. Wit and in much of his writing, in particular, his writing for children, he's talking about divinity and the sublime and sort of beautiful, beautiful things. And even with his sort of talk about aesthetics and, you know, being sort of frivolous and glib. He's sort of commenting on his culture's infatuation with superficiality. And beauty detached from divinity. Or a figure like Byron, who was sort of like a great celebrity of his age, was like potently.

• 7:07Russell Brand?

  Connected to the forces and powers of nature, both inner and outer. Fame now is, you know, speaking generally, an extension of commerce. An exten- an extension of commerce. I'm not saying there aren't famous people, they're great. They plainly are. Greatness can be an inadvertent factor within fame. But it is not a defining one any longer because greatness so frequently comes at a price. Um, you know, that a lot of people in like a corporate and commercial industries. Don't necessarily wanna pay. And, look, from, like, speaking personally.

• 7:48Russell Brand?

  I, the reason I wanted to be famous was because I felt insufficient and inadequate as I was. And who knows what choices I would have made if I'd have had access to spiritual principles as a child. And as a young man, if people said, look, there's something in you that you've you've got gifts and stuff. Why don't you explore those gifts in this direction? You know, so I just naturally, because in the absence of that, I took the gifts in the dominant direction of our culture. The magnetism of our culture is, you know, if you come from where I come from, Greys, Essex, a. A sort of, um, ordinary suburban town, half an hour outside of.

• 8:31Russell Brand?

  London, low expectation, beautiful, incredible people. I realise that now, now that I've gone back there and visited it. I couldn't see that then because I was too. Solipsistic and lost in myself and my ambition, my hunger, my drive, my appetites. I've got big appetites, drive, you know. Like, and. For me, what what I was kind of taught, look, at my school, if you're not good at football or fighting, you're nothing. And like in the culture at large, if you're not, if you don't get yourself some power, you're gonna get crushed. You're getting crushed. You're going to a factory or a call centre. You're not, that's what, that's what life has in store for you. So, you know, uh for me, it was the, it was the answer. It was the answer to the feeling of inadequacy.

• 9:16Russell Brand?

  It was the a- answer that my culture offered me. That's what it offers you. It's what it offers all of us. Like, and we're all bombarded with it, but only a few of us are gonna get, you know, gonna get the golden ticket. You know, there's just not enough golden tickets to go around. And those of us that do get it, as Jim Carrey has uh uh eloquently articulated, are gonna recognise its limitations. You know, we all know there's different category of famous folk. We meet, there's people that were, you know, kind of like I was for a while, that just sort of face-first thrust into it. And sort of, what is this? What is this? I'm gonna experience this, like a gargantuan appetite, a stomach on legs.

• 9:57Russell Brand?

  And then there are other people that are like, you know, that sort of seem a bit more circumspect. Like, okay, this is crazy. I'm just gonna focus on the work. Now, I'm lucky that I'm a sort of, I'm at heart a comedian. And I love, love comedy. And as I've gotten older, I've realised that there's some, the divinity in comedy. That comedy is about revelation, that comedy requires that you observe that life is a joke. Life is a joke. None of this is real. Here I am pretending to be me, you're pretending to be you. We've all got our insecurities and our inadequacies. We know the things we've done. We know the mistakes we've made. We know what we do in the bathroom. We know what we do when we're alone. We know the sort of weird things we've said to people.

• 10:40Russell Brand?

  You know, like all of this stuff. And we put on this mask and this facade, fame merely being an amplification of that. Fame mimics greatness. Fame is bolted on to greatness. A friend of mine said, even in your pursuit of fame, it was obvious that what you were after was God, was a kind of like. But the, the culture doesn't know how to give you God. The culture doesn't wanna give you God. The culture doesn't, and what I mean by God. I talk now, mate, about Sesame Street values. Sesame Street values. This is nothing complicated. Kindness. Be kind to each other.

• 11:13Russell Brand?

  If you're kind to each other, everything else is gonna, it's gonna melt away. You're like that, that, that takes care of don't judge people for being different, don't judge people, that, that all goes out the window. Just if you devote yourself to the sin- simple principle of kindness. The idea of God for me, the idea of God for me is the same idea as, as love, that. There is a magnetism towards one another. Yes, there is a revulsion, a repulsion, a competition. There, there is, everything has its shadow, everything has its opposite and beyond opposites, I'm sure. But, but there is also love. There is this sense, uh, and in by love. I mean, and etymologists who just, who studied the word love in many languages posit.

• 11:53Russell Brand?

  That what we actually mean is union, connection. I love you. I wanna be connected to you. I love these shoes. I've gotta have them. I love West Ham United. I want them to do well as I would do well myself, you know? Love, of course, can get confused and intermingled with lust, control, uh, need for approval. All sorts of things can get um, uh, intermixed with love. But you will know love when you are willing to sacrifice, when you see it as something you serve as opposed to something that serves you. This is like, you know, I'm married and sometimes I think with my wife, you know, that my love is about, I want her to take care of me.

• 12:33Russell Brand?

  And I recognize, oh, hold on a minute, that's not love. That's my codependency. That's my neediness. That's the part of me that's still a wounded little boy. Uh, but the man in me has to take care of this wounded little boy, not. Uh, invite or require that other people do it. Love is when I'm willing to just, you know, again, Sesame Street values. When I'm like, I, I, I love you, you're, what you want is more important than I, than, than what I want. I can't live to those values every day or even all day for one day. I fall short all the time, Lewis. I like, I like, you know, it becomes about me and what I want and what I care about and I'm, you know. And because, you know, like, again, many of us are unboundaried and we've lost, we don't have enough.

• 13:15Russell Brand?

  This is why what you are doing with your school of greatness is important because we don't have enough clear, simple principles that seem universal and perennial, i.e. applicable everywhere and timeless. Applicable everywhere and timeless. I know we're all different. I know we are diverse. I know we are unique. But most of us have a heart, lungs, kidneys, blood, eyes. Most of us breathe. So is it not likely that there is a kind of universal a- application on a more sublime level also? That if we are the same organically, is it not likely that the energies from which these organs must surely have evolved are similar to, possibly even one, possibly even the same energy?

• 13:55Russell Brand?

  That the same way as we know that we come from a common ancestor, that we come from a common, uh, common energy with a common heart, that our unity is more true than our separation. As the great Terrence McKenna says, when the water of illusion drains away, we see that we are all connected. We are all connected.

• 14:12Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent. And you, you talked about healing the childhood, uh, wound, uh, feeling inadequate, feeling insecure, feeling not enough, or all the, all these feelings on your kind of search or yearning for fame and what is this experience look like? This drive to be more connected, to love, to God, to that higher thing. When did you feel in your life the most insecure? And when did you fully start to understand how to overcome your insecurities?

• 14:44Russell Brand?

  Many of these negative emotions and feelings have like wisdom in them, don't they? Because even like the, like the most ferocious forms of chemical dependency that I've experienced, crack and heroin addiction are kind of about melting the boundary of who you are. Look at the idioms around it. Get off your face. Get smashed. Destroy yourself. That, that on some level, again, using inappropriate means, you were trying to transcend and become free of the self. It's a spiritual impulse. I may have to talk people through that more slowly because it seems sort of stupid to think of some. Hunched, drunk or junkie slumped in a doorway as being on a spiritual quest.

• 15:27Russell Brand?

  But when you think that spirituality is simply the valorizing of the inner life over the outer life. The need to connect, the need to feel something truthful and real. Then anyone that picks up a drink ever or smokes a joint is after a spiritual experience. They're trying to feel better. Man, I felt insecure and worthless a lot of times in my life. It happens to me again and again and again. I'm lucky that I'm an addict because the addiction shows you, it takes you to extremes. So you're confronted with the fallibility of the choices you're making, that these choices won't work for you. I think a lot of people, and I wrote about that, you know, in like the recovery book. Are able to struggle along with moderate addictions, moderate addictions to food or sex or success or whatever.

• 16:11Russell Brand?

  Never ever reaching the point of crisis. That would facilitate transformation, metamorphosis, real change, real change. You know that book Revelation I'm telling you about and that moment that you talked about going down to that place in Skid Row, the Union Mission, you know. I was doing a craft thing there with my wife. My wife does crafts and writes about craft and like creativity and parenting and in mental health and. Stuff like that. So we went down there. So I was very much just in an assistant role. The first time I went there, yes, it was to talk to them kids and I thought like I didn't feel qualified and I didn't feel good enough to do it. I felt somewhat ashamed. I felt ashamed of the, like I think I said in Revelation, like about. You know, if you're talking to a homeless kid on some level, like, cause this union mission, it's the only one of them missions that takes families.

• 16:56Russell Brand?

  That's what it is. The others take either men or women or adults or whatever. This one takes whole families. There's a lot of people in there, more than there should be in any civilized nation. And like, when I was, when you're there, you wanna tell them, look, this isn't your fault. It's not your family's fault. You're a byproduct of a economic system that simply cannot generate. Uh, well, it can generate enough wealth, but it doesn't, it doesn't distribute wealth fairly for, for a number of complex reasons. And you at the arse end of that, you know, and I can't describe, explain that to them. It's patronizing and somehow dismissive and, but more importantly, that day that I went to do the craft, I sort of saw, or maybe even someone told me it. Maybe I didn't have this realization, maybe someone said it to me, they don't know they're poor.

• 17:38Russell Brand?

  They don't, they don't have that contextualization. They're just children. They're just children. And it was sort of beautiful and amazing and I since having kids, as I said, I don't do what I used to do a lot. Me, I love children, I've always loved children. I used to get right and I didn't have kids till like I was forty, so I was very much like if I was around other my mates kids or whatever. Really play with them and like get into characters with them and do a lot of joyful play. And now I've got kids, I can't be bothered with that. I'm tired, I'm exhausted, but no, I'm not interested, you know. Um, but that day, like I held it down because my wife was doing this stuff with the mums and the kids and I felt the heaviness and I felt the shame of the adults and I was. Um, it lifted by the joy of the children and.

• 18:21Russell Brand?

  But I held back, you know, like I was just helping them, they were making play dough together and all this kind of stuff and doing these craft activities and. Then when that finished, I let myself off the hook a little bit. I let myself be a dinosaur and a monster and be all crazy with these kids and monkey around with them, you know. And like there, there's one bit where like all these little five year olds and six year olds and seven year olds, they pulled me to the ground. And they was beating me up and stuff and I sort of looked up for a moment and all I could see, my whole vista. Was filled with children's faces and they were smiling and they were full of joy. And this is when I felt God is here, God is in this room. Look at this, there's nothing but joy and love and play and happiness. In this lowest of place where people are suffering, poverty, being disregarded, neglected and the whole room, my whole experience is.

• 19:05Russell Brand?

  Filled with love. And this is just one moment in time, of course, I know that those children have got whole lives ahead of them and have whole lives behind them. But in that moment, there was an absolute realisation of something sublime and divine and for me, this is an important force, an important energy that has to be mobilised. Valorised, brought to the forefront, exalted in our culture, made the. Emblem and the driving force and the raising detriment of the way we live, not marginalised, neglected to the sidelines so people can. Plunder the earth and look at the earth as a resource and look at human beings as a resource and fortify systems of elitism. If for me, the basic idea, the Sesame Street values, kindness and love, kindness and love, instead of the values, you know, that currently dominate.

• 19:47Russell Brand?

  Selfishness, greed, this is what's at play now.

• 19:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I love that you talk about Sesame Street values. I'm a, I'm a big Mister Rogers, uh, you know, values type of guy myself, which are very. Similar, I guess, in the fact of just be kind to your neighbour and be loving, be generous. I'm curious. When have you felt the most loved in your life and when do you currently feel the most loved?

• 20:11Russell Brand?

  Sometimes I think about my wife when I'm not with her. Like when you're with her, she's just a person. But when I'm not with her, like I I I sometimes think, oh my god, I've found this person. I've found this person that just loves me, doesn't doesn't care about anything. She's not particularly, you know, I've. Known people that are very impressed by aspects of my nature and co- behaviour, uh you know, and I can speak fast or whatever and. Say a lot of stuff and I can be novel. I don't know. My wife, she doesn't seem to care about any of that. She doesn't, she just sort of sees me as I am and I feel very at ease. Sometimes the greed in me wants.

• 20:54Russell Brand?

  Stimulation, excitement, plaudits, fanfare, the carnival of life. But I recognize I've been to that carnival and, you know, I've had my turn.

• 21:07Russell Brand?

  And like, it's like it, that it doesn't work for me. There's never enough for me. For me, it's the it's the spiritual path. It's the spiritual path. And I think that's true for everyone. But it's not really right for a person that's lived the life I have to be, you know, I feel like um spiritual principles are for yourself. Not for other people, you know, I like, oh, oh, these are the things that I must do and other people have got to. Find their path, I suppose, and like, maybe I can sometimes be helpful to people, usually directly in an intimate way. Hopefully I can be helpful in a broadcast way, indeed, that's what we're doing, but um. Who who knows, I'm not sure that I was, I I I hope I was helped by, you know, people talking on the internet or on TV, but. I can't remember it ever happening.

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  What is the thing you love about your wife the most?

• 21:52Russell Brand?

  My wife. She's un- she's strange in a way that you wouldn't straight away notice. She seems, because she's she's beautiful. And she's capable and competent. But she's a very unusual little person. You know, when you're married to someone and you like, you know them. You know that after dark they turn into sort of the foulest, most impatient person.

• 22:19Russell Brand?

  Or you know, and that they have little ways. What I have in my marriage is a real intimacy, you know, like I have the ability, I don't have to, I can tell, she knows everything. She knows everything about me, you know, and like I, I need a sort of authenticity in, in my connections in life, Lewis, cause uh. Uh yeah, otherwise it's very, very sort of lonely. So what I love about her, I guess, I love her playfulness, her creativity, her willingness to change, her openness, to conver- uh. To conversation is like loads of things that I love about her. She's weird and she's a, she's a laugh. She's a funny person to hang out with.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. For the, for, for the younger audience, who it might be confused. About their life, their direction, their purpose, their relationships, and they might be chasing something, they might be looking for fame or. Power or money, whatever they're looking for. What are three things that you would recommend they prioritize? Uh, in their, in their chase, in their journey, in their, in their life, what are three things that you wish you would have prioritized? That you would share with them, so they don't waste their life away or make, you know, bad mistakes.

• 23:31Russell Brand?

  Live in service of the thing you claim to love, you know? Like if you were saying that you wanna be an actor, to make sure that what you s- don't secretly want is, actually, I just want. Loads of attention and power and glory and glamour, you know? Like make sure that you are in service of acting or music or whatever it is. And that means, you know, like. All of us have gifts and we often use these gifts, like we put the gift to work, like right, gift, get out there and make me some money, make me a star. Imagine if it was like a little bird or a child or something, you have to look after it and take care of it.

• 24:12Russell Brand?

  You know, me, comedy, I have always, this is the, thank God, it sort of saved me even before I was switched on sort of spiritually or whatever. I, and even at my most, um. Uh keen and needy, I always really, really loved comedy in a geek way. You know, I've watched a lot of stand up comedy, I study sitcoms, I learn them, I love Monty Python, I love Richard Pryor. I like, you know, I know my heritage, I know the line that I'm walking, I studied them, I studied them and observed them. So when I was doing stand up comedy, which I was for years and years and years before I made any money out of it at all. I was becoming practiced and I was in service of comedy.

• 24:53Russell Brand?

  Of course, I also wanted to be a big famous star and want people to love me and I wanted to have lots of opportunities. Of course I did, but thank, you know, I, what could I do, man? I had both things, I had both things, thank God I had both. You know, if all you've got, if all I'd had had been the appetites, the appetites for the plaudits, the prestige and the privilege. I don't know where I would have ended up. So first I say be of service to the thing that you claim to love. Don't think what about what it's going to give you, think about what you can give to it.

• 25:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 25:22Russell Brand?

  That's the first one, I've got to do three.

• 25:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. If you, if you've got three, yeah.

• 25:28Russell Brand?

  Second one is have something away from it, like that is not about it. Cultivate your inner life and your spirit, don't allow it to entirely devour you. The fact is, I think that we are spiritual beings in essence. We're the only animal that we know of on this planet that have these complex in us, these lives of complex inner subjectivity. As far as I know, my dog doesn't sort of go, oh god, that was embarrassing. You know what I mean, like he just is him, but he does sometimes look a bit embarrassed thinking about it. But like, like, you know, we, we can't spend our life in continual outward pursuit of an external goal. Because in all likelihood, we're pursuing something spiritual anyway without knowing it.

• 26:10Russell Brand?

  We're looking for approval or connection or power or status or whatever it is. You can't get that, as we, you know, we started off with this thematic idea established by your Kerry quote there, mate. So you have to have something that's separate from it. I would suggest meditate. Learn how to meditate, practise meditation, practise meditation, find a form of meditation that works for you. Don't try to change the rules and say something, I meditate when I'm on the treadmill, or I meditate when I'm gardening. Sit down with your eyes shut, meditate. You can have like guided meditation. In fact, I do guided meditations on my luminary podcast.

• 26:51Russell Brand?

  Above the noise, you could start there, or you could do my, on my side channel, Awakening with Russell Brand on YouTube. I do guided meditations on there also, um but, you know, God, that's, don't stop there. Tichnat Han Ram Das, Mujee, all like great, great teachers, great teachers available everywhere. Meditate, meditate, you have to cultivate your inner life away from it. That's the second one. The third one, do you want the third? Yes, please. You're very lovely, aren't you? You're very sort of patient and kind person, sincere and sweet. Um, well, the third one I would say is make helping other people.

• 27:32Russell Brand?

  Something that is integral to your life, so that you don't get, you don't do what I did and become so absorbed in yourself and what you want. That when you get it, it doesn't work for you because it was, it's meaningless. Like, so, like, if you, if part of your life is helping other people, and if you want to go for the black belt in this. Then help other people without other people finding out about it. If you can help people privately, no one knows about it. No one knows about the time you volunteer down at the shelter, or the thing you do for a particular person that's in need of it. If you can do that, then what you're cultivating there is a relationship with a higher frequency of being.

• 28:14Russell Brand?

  Because of course kindness, or you know, virtue now, virtue is itself a commodity. There's not a corporation on earth that isn't. Putting up some flag or another to ally itself to some cause without actually changing its core behaviours and values, just. Applying the wallpaper of virtue. If you have some virtuous behaviours that are not advertised, that are not known by anyone but you. You know, next time someone calls you out, some little voice in you will go, mm-mm, I do that thing. Nobody knows about that.

• 28:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think it's interesting, I I've always been of the mindset of like, show some of the stuff you're doing to help others so that you can inspire other people to be like, okay, that's, I should do that too, or whether it's a donation or showing up and giving time or some of your resources or talent. But definitely you don't need to show it all the time. I think it's important to show some to inspire and evoke it and evoke it out of others to be like, hey, listen, I'm doing this thing, you know, you know, I'm trying to inspire you to do something in your life that's a cause for you. Um, that's the way I've approached as well, but I'm I'm with you on keeping some of it for yourself or not needing to share with others to get, you know, an applause or validation or to be like, you're a good guy or something.

• 29:27Russell Brand?

  Yeah, I like that, Lewis, because we can create sort of shared values together, like, you know, by role modeling for one another. You can inspire others and it's not something you can do alone. You know, this idea that sort of it like sort of fated or sainted individuals are going to save us doesn't work as well as the idea that collectively we can bring about greatness and change. This infatuation with the individual is sort of part of the problem and I think all of us fall prey to it because it seems so real. What's as real to you as your own thoughts? What's as real to you as your own pleasure? You know, there there's legitimate ongoing philosophical debates about whether or not other people are actually even there. You know, the only thing we know for certain is our own existence. So it's easy to fall in that. But if we

• 30:13Russell Brand?

  practice values that appear universal kindness, again, like, you know, the Mr. Rogers or Sesame Street values. Then we're sort of part of something transcendent, part of something bigger than us. We're not continually furnishing our cell, ornamenting our fragile and transient egoic structures.

• 30:33Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are three skills you wish you would have learned earlier? Whether it be a tactical skill, the skill of making money, the skill of meditation and managing your emotions, the skill of, you know, learning how to connect with people, the skill of speaking on stage. What skills do you wish you would have learned earlier that would have helped you?

• 30:58Russell Brand?

  I wish I'd learned Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a child. That would have really grounded me. It would have really sort of straightened me out.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think that would ground you?

• 31:10Russell Brand?

  Because I think it gives you a respect for your body and it gives you a respect for other people as well. The thing about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is you learn what you're capable of, but you also see what other people are capable of. So you like think, wow, I'm kind of can do all this stuff, but I, oh my God, did look at this guy. I would not have known that. I would not have known from looking at that person that they had those kind of resources. So it creates the perfect, optimal state, I would say, of like, I would not want to be a person that is an aggressor or looks to create conflict, but neither am I so anxious about conflict that I'll bend myself into peculiar shapes to avoid it. You

• 31:53Russell Brand?

  know, like, and even, and this is, you know, it's had a positive impact, impact on me learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in my 40s. So if I'd learned it when I was 12, I think. And also there are affiliated values within martial arts, respect, hierarchies that are fair and just and earned, camaraderie, physical contact in a clear and consensual and boundaried way. I mean, it's just so full of great values. I think it's like the martial arts in general, but Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one I know, are like, you know, are like that wonderful communities. And that also, also as well, you put aside who you are. You put aside who you are when

• 32:35Russell Brand?

  you enter into it. You know, I do try and use my personality sometimes on the map. Like, come on, hey, I don't charm people a little bit. It's only moderately successful.

• 32:47Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that's, that's one skill.

• 32:50Russell Brand?

  I wish I'd learned abstinence and the principles of twelve step recovery, which of course encompasses quite a lot of values. The principles of recovery, because even before I was a a a drug addict. You know, so sort of abstinence based recovery, I wish I'd learned, abstinence based recovery. Because even before I was addicted to crack and heroin, the way that I was eating chocolate, the way I was watching pornography. The way I was obsessed with girlfriends, the way that I was sort of a clingy little dude, you know, like all of these things. The idea that I can have a connection to a God of my own understanding, that I can be to a degree sufficient, that I am. I am not God, I'm not the most important person in the world all the time, but also I'm not scum.

• 33:32Russell Brand?

  I like, um, I don't have to bow and scrape before anybody, I have values, but I don't need to always, as they say in the some of the great literature. Uh scrambling to be on the top of the pile or hiding underneath it. You know, like being happy to be just a person among people, not always seeking to sort of somehow either fate. Isolate or separate myself, you know, being happy to be part of a community or part of a group or part of a family. The twelve step recovery has so many beautiful principles, the idea of God and the idea that we all have equal access to God. The idea of fellowship, fraternity, sorority, brotherhood and sisterhood between us, the idea of service of one another.

• 34:15Russell Brand?

  The idea of being honest and authentic about who we are, surrender, acceptance. So also the skills of twelve step recovery, yes, that would be the second one.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 34:26Russell Brand?

  The third one, what would be another thing? I mean, I really sometimes, like e- every day I think about, I I wish I spoke another language, I every day I think.

• 34:36Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, man, it's funny to say that because for twenty years, Russell, I've been. At the end of every year, I look back and say, okay, what am I proud of that I created and and what do I regret? That I didn't do, that I wish I would have done. Every year for twenty years has been, I wish I would have learned Spanish and.

• 34:52Russell Brand?

  Spanish is the one I want.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  And for, because and every year I try, every year I'm like, okay, I'm going to download the latest app.

• 34:59Russell Brand?

  Download the app.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna get the book, I'm gonna try this new, someone said, this is the program that'll work for you, you'll be fluent in three months, all this stuff. And it gets so hard for my brain within the first few days and I'm like, I'm just not smart enough, I can't figure this out, it hurts. I've got all these other things going on and I end up. Giving up on myself and every year.

• 35:20Russell Brand?

  Last one I did.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  Which one, which one, which app did you try?

• 35:24Russell Brand?

  Just trying to find it like I really got quite far in. I was pretty pleased with myself. I was doing well.

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  This is Babbel?

• 35:30Russell Brand?

  Babbel, Babbel. Yeah, I was doing well and then it got into this sort of this area of grammar that was so complex. This is the same as saying this. I was like, what? That's so hard. I can't even, I can't find an equivalent for that in English. And I don't you, look, if you've been doing this for 20 years, you must be the same as me. You must be like, you know, that you're gonna have to go somewhere where you've got no choice. You've got to go to Argentina or Cuba or Madrid or whatever and then fully get down with it because otherwise.

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Well, here's the thing. What I've realized is I kept losing integrity with myself because I kept wanting to do it. I kept saying I was gonna do it and then every year I want to do it. And I kept feeling like less and less confident with myself. And so I either needed to kill the dream and say, I no longer care about this dream and let it go. Say that's not for me in my life, or I needed to commit to it. And six months ago, I said, I'm hiring a tutor. Three days a week, I'm making, scheduling the time in the calendar. I'm gonna make it a commitment. And the first four months were miserable. It was, I didn't feel like I was learning a thing. But now month six, I feel like I'm still not good, but I'm like, it doesn't hurt my brain as much. And I could see, okay, you know, in, in three, five, seven years,

• 36:43Lewis Howes?

  I could become a lot better. I could have a conversation and, and feel proud of it. And it's tough. I get up at, you know, I do it at eight AMs and, um, sessions, but it's like, I don't want to feel, you know, not confident and proud of myself by wanting this thing and always putting it off. So, yeah, I think it's either a full immersion or finding a tutor and just saying, okay, three days a week or five days a week, I'm doing this and sacrificing something else. But it's, it's been, it's been powerful for me. I don't know if you're similar to this. When I take something on, I want to be the best at it within a day. I want it to be great. I want to do things that I'm good at.

• 39:20Russell Brand?

  You need to sort it out, Lewis.

• 39:22Lewis Howes?

  I know, I'm practicing, but it's also, you know, you're you're a father, you're you know, you're speaking English to your family all day, you're speaking on podcasts and interviews all day in English, so you're not even if I went there, I'd still have to run my business and be speaking in English ten hours a day. So it's figuring out.

• 39:41Russell Brand?

  Could you and your partner go to Mexico for like six months?

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, she wants me to live there with her. I mean, she wants me to move there, but I'm like, my team is here, you know, I wanna, you know, I like doing stuff in person and interviews and this is the this is my mission right now is to serve humanity.

• 39:58Russell Brand?

  Where are you, Los Angeles?

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, in LA. And so it's, you know, I could do it and I could go for a couple of months.

• 40:02Russell Brand?

  That's meant to be Mexico anyway. The line crossed us.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  I know, I mean, I think there's seventy million people that speak Spanish in the USA as well, so I practice here and there, but definitely full immersion would be the the fastest way. I just gotta either commit to that or you know, take the long road. So either way, I'm doing it three days a week, so.

• 40:22Russell Brand?

  Well done. I didn't mean to sort of, um, because that is, I think I was deflecting from my own feelings of envy and shame, because I was actually on the walk that I was having this morning, I was thinking you could get a tutor. Like I said, like, I struggle, I'm the same as you. If I'm not good straight away and that, you know, that's why, yeah, I do deserve props for the BJJ. If I'm not good, because I wasn't good straight away and I'm still a beginner at a blue belt, you know, like it, I don't like it because I've got a few things that I'm competent at, the stand-up comedy or acting or whatever. Like, I like to stay in that. And also, I guess when I was being nourished or when I was growing up as a kid, I didn't feel confident to be not good at stuff. I felt very ashamed of not being good at football, not being good at fighting. Like, those kind of things felt like a big, felt like a big deal to not be good at those things, you know, so

• 41:08Russell Brand?

  yeah, I'm not that patient and tolerant with myself of, you know, and I guess it's a kind of self-love, isn't it, to go, okay, we're gonna gently learn Spanish, we're gonna gently learn the ukulele. You have to learn how to be your father, the father to yourself, don't you? To just go, it's okay, don't worry, we're gonna take our time with this, you know.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy.

• 41:24Russell Brand?

  My own kids, I wouldn't be going, get on with it, learn it, you're useless.

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  Well, I love the quote or the meme that I see online. I reference this a lot. And I'm not a parent, but you might recognize this.

• 41:38Lewis Howes?

  These moments, there's some meme or saying that's like, you know, when a child is learning how to walk, who falls down a thousand times, the child doesn't think to himself, maybe this walking thing isn't for me. The child just, you know, figures it out and stumbles around and hits its head on the ground or scrapes its elbow and bloodies up and smashes nose or, and then it learns to hold on to the couch, I'm assuming, and it doesn't say, maybe this walking thing isn't for me after a thousand falls. It just keeps going. So I think.

• 42:07Russell Brand?

  Same with the language impulse. You're quite right.

• 42:11Russell Brand?

  I'm torn, Lewis. I don't know whether to entirely give up on myself and dedicate it all to my daughters or to just have one last crack at this Spanish with the tutor methods that you have described.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  What are your thoughts on this? Having a dream that is inside of your soul for years that you never fully commit, you never, you dabble, again, like we've done so much and so many things. We dabble, but never fully commit to. What does that do to us if we continue on for the rest of our life? Never fully going all in on our dreams?

• 42:43Russell Brand?

  I think it obviously reinforces the idea of incompetence or it reinforces the idea that you are incapable of following through. And I feel like we have an obligation to follow that or as you say, put it aside entirely. And what's the, you know, look, we all know in the grim economies of our lives, if we were to put aside staring at some goddamn senseless social media platform and give that time to learn in Spanish, we'd speak Spanish by now.

• 43:14Lewis Howes?

  We'd be fluent in four languages.

• 43:17Russell Brand?

  Yeah. So like, you have to be willing. And that's why someone like, you know, Tony Robbins is so sort of, you think, because that man, he just makes those choices. Like, have you ever heard him tell the story about how he like learned polo? Who's just like, I was waiting for it, I wanted to learn polo. Well, I'm fucking hell. Like every time I come, whenever I'm walking my dog, I feel like, and I'm friends with Tony, and I've told him this. I say like, whenever I'm walking my dog or anything, I feel like, oh, this is not, Tony wouldn't be doing this. Tony be learning something now. Well, you know, you could be learning Spanish while you walk the dog. You know, like, I mean, he's powerful, but he is a, he's a one-off, let's face it.

• 43:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I just actually interviewed him again yesterday and it reminded me that he learned, I think, to become a black belt, like while he was on tour for two or three years and he was like, I did it the fastest time anyone's been a black belt. I had the master come on stage and like behind the scenes, in between sessions, I would spend forty-five minutes, then go back on stage. I was like, you're an animal. The commitment is unbelievable.

• 44:21Russell Brand?

  What was that? Like, what martial art is that?

• 44:23Lewis Howes?

  I think he just learned, I think he learned karate. I think it was what, this was probably decades ago, when he was like, I'm gonna learn this, but I'm on tour and he brought the guy with him to just teach him all day in between, on stage, so.

• 44:37Russell Brand?

  One of the things I most admire about him is that he's, the way that he will identify an objective and then not be restricted by sort of our conditioned, either emotional or cultural responses. Admittedly, we're talking about some of some incredible resources, yes, we are now, but the reason he's got those resources is because of this ability that he will just go, okay, I'm gonna learn that thing, never put aside all of the, yeah, there's not time, there's not this, there's not that.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  He eliminates excuses. He just says there is no room and he goes all in on his desires. It's, it's pretty powerful.

• 45:10Russell Brand?

  Tony, you exhausting genius.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  One of the things I think that holds a lot of people back, myself included, is when we doubt ourselves, when we, when we don't believe in our, our own abilities or what we're capable of creating in the future. What do you think are some ways that we can overcome self-doubt in ourselves to gain that real confidence, not fake confidence, but overcome the doubts that hold us back from, you know, asking that person out or going after that career opportunity or just saying, I'm gonna go after what I want in my life. What are some ways to eliminate that self-doubt and gain confidence?

• 45:51Russell Brand?

  Well, self doubt can be critical, Lewis, because it can be a component of awareness. I feel that the answer must always be the the embarkation on a spiritual life. Because ah it's difficult, isn't it, in this world of personal development that we find ourselves in? For us not to take on the tropes and objectives of a culture that I think at this point we need to be querying in querying and looking to move away from. We've all been deeply inculcated to believe that

• 46:30Russell Brand?

  the pursuit of happiness is contingent upon the attainment of our petty trivial desires. But real happiness is contingent on being free from those petty trivial desires. As long as I'm a prisoner to that, like, you know, see if someone's like that, that doesn't know, you know, then can't pluck up the confidence to ask someone out or can't pluck up the confidence to pursue their dream or whatever. For me, I don't feel like it's my job to operate at that that that intersection, at the intersection of, well, come on, believe in yourself, you're as good as anyone else, you'll never know unless you try. You know, I don't think that's my job. My job is like, why do you think you want this?

• 47:11Russell Brand?

  What do you think it's gonna do for you? What do you want really? What do you really want? What do you really want? What is it you are looking for? You know, a friend of mine observed once that in the nineteen eighties, the prominent sort of entrepreneurs were all about zipping about on speedboats and whooshing through the skies in hot air balloons, intrepid, bold adventurers. The very same tycoons now are all about greenness and ecology and safety and helping, responding to the trends that define a time, this time now of apparent fragility. I think our job is to look for some truth beneath culture. That culture in many cases is not our friend.

• 47:53Russell Brand?

  Culture is here to chain us to systems of tyranny, subtle tyranny. What is freedom really? If it is only freedom to operate within certain parameters, it isn't freedom at all. I'm not saying I wouldn't rather be a person who's affluent in California than a person that's sort of poor in, I don't know, Tehran or Senegal. Or, you know, I'd be poor anywhere, frankly, it's pretty grim to be poor in anywhere in the world, I've been poor in places before. But I don't feel like our job is to train people to bend themselves into a shape where they can succeed within these systems.

• 48:34Russell Brand?

  I think our job is to train people so that they learn to challenge these systems, to create fairer systems that are not solely built upon the fulfillment of individual goals. My friend Adam Curtis, the great filmmaker and genius, says the genius out of the bottle now on individualism, it's never going back in. You're never gonna be able to tell people, hey, why don't you forget your own identity? You're just a member of a community, of a collective, of a parish. You know, that's not gonna happen now, everyone, nothing is as real to you or I as our own thoughts, as our own dreams, as our own, but that's that's the way it is now. But perhaps through this, we can attain some meaning, and if I refer back even to my own suggestions, serve the thing you are pursuing. You know, if it's like you really wanna go out of a boy or a girl,

• 49:18Russell Brand?

  why are you looking to serve them, or do you think they're gonna somehow solve or absolve you? You see them as some self, or if you're after some dream, why? Is it because you don't feel like you're good enough or you're worthy? Yeah, one of my friends said like to me that you're like someone who's been up to the all you can eat buffet table, stuffed your face full of everything, and then going to everyone else, you don't need this stuff.

• 49:44Russell Brand?

  This cake won't work for you.

• 49:46Speaker 02

  You've done it.

• 49:48Russell Brand?

  But I have had this experience, so you know, you know, anyone that's saying well, that's easy for you to say, then yeah, god damn it, they're right. Although it wasn't that easy to get here, let me tell you. And like, so, but what I would say is.

• 50:00Russell Brand?

  This is, I would, I would say this, that you are beautiful, that you are enough, that you deserve to feel content and happy. But you have to be willing to surrender everything. You have to be willing to surrender everything. You have to be willing to accept that what you think you should get might not be right. Where did it come from, that idea? Where did that idea, that you know, cause if you are meant to be a world-class athlete, if you get on and do, you know, I mean, do the Tony Robbins version of get on and do the work, don't let anything stand in your way, believe in it, be willing to suffer, have the discipline, ha- make the sacrifices, then that's all sort of cool. But if the only reason you're becoming a world-class athlete is because your father told you you're not

• 50:45Russell Brand?

  good enough and that you're cheap and you ain't no kind of a man or woman or whatever, then that, you don't need to deal with that shit. Otherwise you're gonna be, end up strung up in a hotel room one way or another, you know, cause it doesn't like, you know, like you and I both know enough people, like I've, having experienced the type of celebrity that I experienced. I've met people that, as I'm sure you have, that are in, at the apex, the zenith, they have enjoyed it, they have been to Kubla Khan. They've had it, they're in there drowning in riches and drowning indeed. Because it's not real, it's not real. Never lose sight of the fact that we are in limitless space in every direction. Never lose

• 51:25Russell Brand?

  sight of the fact that in the sub-particular world, the rules of physics as we previously understood them are falling apart. Never lose sight of the fact that our senses are limited and we can only see naught point six three percent of the electromagnetic range. That we are operating essentially in darkness, that the neural activity that we experience that constitutes our reality is only a tiny percentage of the potential of our own brain. Let alone the potential brain of God. Wouldn't it be a coincidence if we were issued with all of the senses necessary to experience total reality? Isn't it more likely that we think of reality as just being the circumference of our sensual world? So there are limitless experiences as yet unheard and men, uh, uh, uh, unhad. And many of them lay in the realm of mystery.

• 52:10Russell Brand?

  Engage with the mystery, meditate, pursue these spiritual disciplines. Don't rely entirely on the material path. This is not like, you know, neglect the body or hate the body, love the body. We are in this material world. We are God-made flesh. We are having this experience in bodies. But I don't think you can take what this culture is offering you as a solution and think that it will be a solution. You'll be disappointed. The map is not the territory. The map is not the territory. When you get there, it's not like that. It's not like that. So you start where you are. Start with you now.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, absolutely. I have about seventeen more hours of questions, but I'm gonna ask you about four final questions to respect our time and maybe we can do another follow up in the future with the next book you have. This book Revelation, I, it's hard for me to finish books. It's really hard for me to finish them with a, you know, growing up with a learning disability, reading and writing was not my forte. But I finished it and it was beautiful. It was unbelievable spoken word poetry. And I don't know, I don't know how you do what you do. It's an incredible gift and a talent and people just need to listen, listen to it just to hear how talented you are

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  as a spoken word artist. It's unbelievable. But the way you were, we had many and many of the people that you mentioned throughout there, I've had the fortune of knowing and interviewing Wim Hoff and all these other individuals. Yeah, I went to Poland, I took thirteen guys to Poland last year and did five days with Wim and, you know, have had him on many times and had some great kind of spiritual experiences in Poland with him playing the guitar, singing and us jumping in ice rivers and climbing up mountains naked in the snow and, you know, crazy stuff that we, that we did together. Our friend Jay Shetty connected us and I've done, you know, many weeks in India, meditating at different places and I'm on a constant journey for myself and that's why I really wanted to have this conversation with you. And there's many things

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  I want to ask you, hopefully for another time. But I grew up in a religion called Christian Science. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Christian Science, but there's a, it's a lot about the things you've been talking about and the things you talk about in your, in your audiobook on Audible. And one of the things that the founder, her name is Mary Baker Eddy, said back in the eighteen hundreds was Stan Porter at the door of thought. And that really stood with me as a child growing up in this religion. I'm no longer really active in the church or anything, but the foundation is still with me of the mindset. Stan Porter at the door of thought. And I'm curious, how do you manage negative thoughts when they try to enter your mind?

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  What's your practice beyond meditation and the things you talk about in your book and your YouTube channel, which is incredible? But how do you really navigate negative thoughts that come into mind? The thoughts of addiction, the thoughts of lust or greed or fame, or whatever the things that are coming to you that you've tasted. This buffet you've tasted for years, how do you manage that?

• 55:18Russell Brand?

  Well, it's what I do is I don't try and do it alone. You know, like, I think that's a very beautiful piece of language and a lovely experience you just shared with me, mate. And the way that like I experienced negative thoughts a lot, experienced a lot of fear and, you know, like all of the things that you've listed. Here's a very practical way that I deal with it. I'm like, I felt like I was looking at social media too long. In particular, like, you know, I'm like, when I do YouTube videos, I feel like I'm justified in checking, oh, how many views did it get? You know, and what are the comments? But I work with people that can handle that. I'm not qualified to handle that sort of stuff because otherwise I get, I go into a point where I'm sort of numbed by it. Like, it's not like the people saying nice things really helps me or the people saying bad things really hurts me. It's like a sort of a numb, dumb stare.

• 56:04Russell Brand?

  And so like I sort of, you know, then someone reached out to me, it was like famous musician. She sort of told me I'm like looking at stuff too much. And I goes, all right, well, from now on, right? One day at a time, me and you, whenever we're thinking about doing that, let's reach out to each other. You know, and like, so I start doing it with her. Hey, I'm thinking of doing it now. And we talk about the feelings that we have and what it elicits in us when we want to do it and what it feels like to not do it. You know, if you want to know if you're addicted to something, see what happens to you when you stop doing it. Then you will know, then you will know. I'm not, I could stop anytime, stop then.

• 56:38Russell Brand?

  And like then, oh my god, I'm ashamed, I'm full of fear, ah! And then like, similar with pornography, if I don't wanna look at pornography, but you know, not judgment on anyone else who does. But like for me, if I think, oh no, I don't like how I feel, how it accumulatively makes me feel. Then I make a choice that I'm gonna reach out to someone else who's, sometimes it helps specifically with that thing. You know, like I've done it before with someone like my mate, didn't wanna like eat no more bad food and I I was cool with food at that time. So I was like, well, I don't wanna look at porn. So if I'm, when I wanna look at porn, I'll check you, you with the food. You know, so we do it like, and it's not even, that's non-hierarchical, by the way. We're both sort of people that are just sort of trying it and trying to improve ourselves together.

• 57:20Russell Brand?

  I also have mentors that I know evidently you do, like they're further down the path than me. And like, you know, for me, I tend to use the mentors in a, with a broader, you know, with a broader strokes. Like, you know, this is how I'm feeling about family, this is how I'm feeling about being a man, this is how I'm feeling about fatherhood, work, whatever it is, you know, I check in with them. And then you've got to listen to them, then you're already like, see if you, you know, if you have the privilege of access to people like Wim Hof or Tony Robbins. And you ask Tony Robbins, what should I do? And then Tony Robbins tells you, do it! Do it. You know, like, you know, and then like, then you're suddenly, you've got Tony Robbins's brain then, you're running off of that. You know, now a lot of the time, what Tony Robbins tells you might be unachievable.

• 58:01Russell Brand?

  Okay, all you gotta do is become a blackbrolly and walk around, you know, tell me something easier. Like, you know, like, or like, you know, sort of like with, um, you know, with Wim Hof or whatever, all these sort of peculiar yogis and genie. We've lost sacredness broadly speaking in our culture. That's what that book is about. How do you reconnect with sacredness after we've sort of decided, oh, those ideas, they're old fashioned, they don't really work, they're not for me. Or they've become compromised by their own hypocrisy or dogma or whatever it is. You know, I like, you've got, like for me, it becomes find it everywhere, find it everywhere, find every conversation, what is the sacredness? What is the beauty of the person that you are dealing with? What is your job in this moment? Are you taking or are you giving? Like, and I have to legitimately ask myself these questions all the time because.

• 58:46Russell Brand?

  You know, God, the only advantage that I have over someone like Tony Robbins is I think that I'm still in it. Like, you know, I talked to Tony Robbins or Eckhart Tolle or whoever, and I think, my God, these people are like, in their own ways, transcended masters. Like, so, like, it's like if you're asking, you know, sort of a Maradona about football, like, you know, God rest his soul, like, you know, like, he can't tell you what he does. He doesn't know how he does that. No one knows. That's the, like, the point of it. You know, like, but, but some of us is like, look, I'm on, like, every day, I know, like, you know, like, I think I say in, in, in that book, I certainly say it places. Like, you know, Eckhart Tolle, he lives there. He lives in the awakened state, moment to moment, fully present, return to the present.

• 59:26Russell Brand?

  Like, you know, he's sort of like, he says, the second he comes off the stage from talking, that experience is done. That's it. You can never be happy in the conceptual mind. Whenever you're thinking anything, whenever you're comparing or projecting, you could, the conceptual mind will always make you unhappy. It can't make you happy. You know, like that, and, like, so, but for me, I go to those places, Lewis. I get there, but I come back. All the time, I come back for the chocolate. I come back, you know, I do, oh, my Lord, Gory, God, we're all one. Right, I'm just gonna have a bit of chocolate. Or have a wank, you know, like, I can't, can't get out of the mud. You know, the mud is in me.

• 1:00:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the monkey mind. I hear you. Uh, two final questions, if that's cool for you.

• 1:00:05Russell Brand?

  Of course.

• 1:00:07Lewis Howes?

  I want people to get the audiobook. It is, uh, if you want to be, first off, you're extremely entertaining and you're wise and you're educational and informative. So if you want to be all those things at once, then get the book Revelation, Connecting with the Sacred in Everyday Life. Uh, if you like the School of Greatness content, uh, and you want someone who can share these ideals in a even more funny and entertaining way, then you're gonna love this book. Um, and make sure to check out Russell on YouTube, Instagram. I mean, your stuff is, is really inspiring on all those places. Uh, this is a question I ask everyone towards the end, these two final questions. This is called the three truths question. And I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical situation, Russell, where it's your last day on earth, many years away.

• 1:00:52Lewis Howes?

  You get to live as long as you want to live and you get to accomplish or be or not do whatever you want to do. But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your written and video work with you. Audio, written, video work, all your content that you've ever made has to go with you. Movies, this podcast, everything. To the next place, wherever that is. And you only get to leave behind three things you know to be true. Three lessons that you would share with the world. Maybe these would be the lessons you share with your daughters. Or maybe this would just be to the world. What would you say would be those three truths?

• 1:01:27Russell Brand?

  Oh no, this is terrible. I'm so devastated even by the framing of the question. I can't cope anymore. I'd say that you are, you know, I would say that you do not spend your life, don't think that you can medicate yourself with anything external. Whether that's something as obvious as drinking drugs or relationships. Know that it's within you. It's within you, you already have it, there's nothing to get and you already have it. I would say that you must learn a spiritual practice and you must learn a bodily practice. If that's it, if there's only three things, it's you already have everything you need. Get a spiritual practice and have a bodily practice.

• 1:02:10Russell Brand?

  You know, and I think that that would be enough. And the fact is, isn't it, for all of our, for all of the discussiveness, the grandstanding and rambling. Life is simple. It's simple, but there's complexity in the variation, but you know, the fact that these universal truths continue to emerge, Lewis, to me, suggests that there is some value in them. The recurrence of archetypes in dreams and mythology suggests that there is a truth in them. So for me, yes, it would be the, like, that all myth, all story is allegorical for the psychic journeys of the self. It's all taking place in the self. This is what's, I think, been misunderstood about.

• 1:02:56Russell Brand?

  You know, in the sort of critique of fairy tales say is that you are the that who regardless of your sex or gender, you are the king and the queen and the princess and the all of those that all of those are energy systems within a human being, the collaborative occasionally competing energy systems that make up a whole person. So everything is within you that you get to reform yourself and make yourself and that you need a spiritual practice, i.e. that is like a set of principles and values. And my one, I suppose I would suggest would be the the twelve steps of recovery and a bodily practice. So I guess I would say, do the twelve steps, do jujitsu, know that there's nothing to get.

• 1:03:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Before I ask the final question, Russell, I want to acknowledge you for the way you show up. I think someone who's lived the life that you've lived and decided to make a change and decided to heal, decided to stand against addiction in many different areas and then be of service to how you can help as many people as possible through showing up in your work, your writing, your teachings. I acknowledge you for that shift because I think it's easy to stay stuck in a pattern that feels good momentarily. But you you continue to show up and be a stand against addiction and in service to other people. And I think that's a beautiful gift that you have. So I really acknowledge you for all you're doing right now. I hope we can have you come back on in the future and and

• 1:04:20Lewis Howes?

  talk about many other topics that I didn't even get to scratch the surface on. So I acknowledge you for that. And

• 1:04:28Russell Brand?

  Thank you.

• 1:04:29Lewis Howes?

  Of course, is there anything else that we can do to support you besides getting the book and checking out YouTube and supporting you on these places, your podcast, which are amazing? Anything else we can support you before I ask the final question?

• 1:04:42Russell Brand?

  Yeah, Luminary, like my under the my podcast is on Luminary. I do two on there. There's Under the Skin, where I have amazing conversations with some of the people that we've spoken about, Wim Hof, Tony, but also Jordan Peterson, Edward Snowden, Marianne Williamson. Like I have like deep mad chats on there. And but and also now above the noise, my weekly guided guided meditation podcast. That is my monetized platform is like two ninety nine a month. If you get it like annually, the YouTube stuff I do is obviously free. That that platform is uh that's good stuff. It's important to me. Um, but also if people can't afford it, there's free stuff on YouTube.

• 1:05:22Lewis Howes?

  For sure. We'll make sure to link all that stuff up and make sure you support Russell because his stuff is very inspiring and insightful. And he's just a funny guy, you know, if you can learn and and laugh at the same time, I think that's a that's powerful thing. That's uh that's spirituality right there. Final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:05:42Russell Brand?

  Greatness, become you, become you. Don't become the obstacles. Don't allow the obstacles to define you. The obstacles can be in and out of the obstacles can be your own desire, lust, fear. The obstacles can be a culture that needs you to be a to be commodified, that needs you to be a consumer. Become you, become who you are. Greatness can't be judged by any external metric, although that is where it can be most vivid. We know what a great athlete looks like. We know what a great singer looks like. Now, I suppose the glory of sport is that it eliminates a lot of subjectivity. Either you score the goal or you don't. Either you beat the time or you don't.

• 1:06:24Russell Brand?

  Art, dance, singing, acting, you know, we can all, we all have our favorites. But when it comes to personal greatness, become who you are. When you were talking, Lewis, about the frustration around like learning and not learning the Spanish. It's like because you're not becoming who you are. There's something in you saying, learn Spanish, learn Spanish. And you're going, oh, I'm got time, I'm gonna do it, you know, like so, but like, you know, but we have to be rigorous with ourselves. Make sure that we've not got sort of that we're not got uh barnacles of conditioning clinging to the hull of who we really are. We have to actualize, self-actualize and. In a sense, we're all going to arrive at the same place. We have to be a channel of

• 1:07:06Russell Brand?

  the peace and of the light. We have to be of service. We accept our flaws and fallibility. If the entrance price is perfection, then none of us can pay it. But greatness truly understood and truly achieved is to actualize what it, who it is that you are supposed to be, that there is a teleology, that there is a purpose, that there, we understand with a tree, we would never query that a tree is gonna grow into itself if it gets the right soil and the right watering, like the actualize yourself. As we can identify that in DNA and in the fingerprints, there is uniqueness. Actualize that uniqueness. Recognize where the obstacles are. Find mentors that can guide you past those obstacles.

• 1:07:47Russell Brand?

  Have a program that's not based just on the actualization of your individualization in a disconnected and remote way. No point achieving enlightenment on a mountain top and no one gets fed or clothed. You know, do it in service. Do it in service of a higher thing. This is greatness, I think, to become this thing.

• 1:08:05Lewis Howes?

  Russell, appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here, man. Thank you.

• 1:08:09Russell Brand?

  Thank you. That was so lovely. Thank you. What a lovely conversation.

• 1:08:12Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, do me a favor and share this with a couple of friends right now. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening to this episode, or use the link lewishouse.com/1109. Text a few friends, post it on social media. Make sure to tag Russell Brand and myself as well over on Instagram on your stories while you're listening. And, and again, if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button on Apple Podcast or Spotify right now and leave us a review with the part you enjoyed the most from this episode. We'd love to read those reviews and we share them in our weekly greatness newsletter as well to our audience. And if you want to be inspired every week with text messages sent to your phone from me to keep you motivated and on track with your goals every week, then text

• 1:08:56Lewis Howes?

  the word podcast to 614-350-3960 right now. And I want to leave you with this quote from Maya Angelou who said, "Be present in all things and thankful for all things." And no matter what you're going through right now, whether you're having a Season of abundance, or a season of a drought in your life. Or maybe you're struggling in one area, your health, your relationships. Or maybe something is really thriving. No matter what's going on, be present and grateful in it all. Everything is teaching us a lesson. And it's our opportunity, and it's our obligation to learn what that lesson is, to apply it in the moment. Continue to grow and improve our life, to be good to the people around us, and make the biggest impact that we can. I'm so grateful for you.

• 1:09:38Lewis Howes?

  And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.