Find Self-Forgiveness & Write A New Narrative For Your Life EP 1284

Today’s guest is best-selling author Shaka Senghor. Senghor was released from prison in 2010 after spending 19 years for being convicted of murder. Today, Shaka’s priority is shifting societal narratives through storytelling and developing workshops with high entertainment value and deep social impact. Senghor is the Head of Sales and Success Culture at TripActions and Founder of Redeemed Sole. He has taught at the University of Michigan and shares his story of redemption around the world. His memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an American Prison, debuted on The New York Times and The Washington Post Best Seller Lists. Shaka’s widely anticipated sophomore book, Letters to the Sons of Society was released in January 2022. In this episode, you will learn:How to create a new narrative for yourself. How to create peace from past trauma. How to find self-forgiveness. Why the best conversations are the ones you have with yourself. For more, go to: lewishowes.com/1284Bobby Hall a.k.a. Logic on How To Pursue Your Dreams In The Face Of Adversity: https://link.chtbl.com/1163-podWallstreet Trapper on the Journey From Prison To Financial Freedom: https://link.chtbl.com/1209-podEd Mylett on Developing Superhuman Levels of Self-Confidence: https://link.chtbl.com/1274-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?

  In solitary confinement, for people that don't know, how much time do you get to spend with others? How much time do you get out of your cell? What is the day to day?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  23 hour lockdown.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Five days out of the week.

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  But it was in that environment that I really began to examine.

• 0:17Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:42Lewis Howes?

  At 19, you're a drug dealer and you shot and killed a man, right?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:46Lewis Howes?

  And at 17, you got shot a few times?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:49Lewis Howes?

  And how would you say that your childhood developed for you to get to a place to be in that environment?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  That's a really profound question, you know? And it takes me back to my healing journey. And one of the parts of that healing journey started with reading this quote from Socrates, "Unexamined life isn't worth living."

• 1:12Speaker 01

  So I was sitting in a prison cell in solitary confinement, being told that I would never get out of prison.

• 1:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Let alone out of solitary confinement. And the thing about it is I almost started to believe that because my neighbor across from me, this guy named Tony, a super fascinating guy, one of the most charismatic, charming guy, he can emulate voices like you wouldn't even be beginning to believe, he had been a solitary for like 20 years.

• 1:40Lewis Howes?

  20 years?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  20 years.

• 1:41Lewis Howes?

  So in solitary confinement, for people that don't know, how much time do you get to spend with others? How much time do you get out of your cell? How much activity time? What is that? What is the day to day?

• 1:52Speaker 01

  23 hour lockdown.

• 1:54Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  Five days out of the week.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  And 24 hour lockdown, the other two days of the week. So for five days out of the week, you can go out to basically what's essentially dog kennels.

• 2:08Lewis Howes?

  The yard.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they put handcuffs on you, put a leash on the handcuffs, walk you out to this cage, and you're allowed to stay out there for like, you know?

• 2:16Lewis Howes?

  An hour.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  An hour or so. Um, and oftentimes, me personally, I would choose not to go out for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they were like feces wars, like guys just swinging feces and, you know, I didn't wanna be in the line of fire of that. And then other times, it was just like, you know, it was in Michigan, so it could be extremely cold and you had the bare minimum on. Um, but it was in that environment that I really began to examine, like, how did I end up here? And what got you into solitary? Cause originally you're not in solitary confinement. Yeah, so I got into a conflict with an officer and that actually ended up being two additional years in prison. Oh, man. It turned out to be four and a half years straight in solitary on that particular stint. Cause how, what was your original sentence for?

• 3:01Speaker 01

  So my original sentence was for second degree murder. For how long, how long was it supposed to be? Seventeen to forty years. Geez. And so I ended up serving a total of nineteen years. Cause you added two years with this. Yeah, it's had two years added. Um, and so that, that extended my time, but during this time in solitary, you know, it was a serious assault on an officer was the charge. We got into a fight and because I was incarcerated, I got charged with, you know, a crime, a new crime and, you know, sitting in that environment, I, I was reading, you know, that line, unexamined life isn't worth living. And so what happened is I asked myself this question.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  How did you go from an honor roll scholarship student with dreams of being a doctor to this being your life? And so I began to journal and I began to unpack all the things that had transpired in my childhood that led me to that moment. And as I was journaling, I was like, how is a kid who has experienced this level of trauma?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Even alive, let alone, you know, capable of just being like, hey, you know, what happened to my life and why am I here? And so that journaling just peeled back the layers and it was raw and it was ugly and then it became beautiful and it became powerful. Because what I was able to do was to go back and reassign responsibility to the people who had caused me harm, who had traumatized me, you know, early in my childhood, that trauma started within my household, uh, with my mom, which was very difficult to write. Uh, growing up and, you know, the kind of community that I grew up in, it was unheard of to say that this is abuse.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Um, and that this is traumatizing me. So I, early on, I began to accept that this was just the way it was. Um, and so when I began to journal and unpack that and think about, you know, like what that meant, I was able to say, you know, I wasn't responsible for those hits. I weren't responsible for those mean words. And as I got deeper into that conversation, I began to understand how that household trauma led me to running away when I was around fourteen years old. And when I ran away, I was so naive, you know, I thought that one of my friends' parents would see this smart,

• 5:38Speaker 01

  you know, had some kid and just take me in and wrap me in a love that I believe all children deserve. Um, you know, it's something I'm so adamant about in my work. I think children deserve like love and care and kindness and you know, all the things, you know, wrapped in structure, you know, they need discipline.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And what ended up happening is for like two weeks, I just was like roaming the neighborhood. I was sleeping in friends' garages. I was sleeping basements, you know, I was hustling food at the store. I would, you know, hey, can I take your bags to your, you know, car and they would give me fifty cent and I would like, you know, go eat, um, you know, potato chips and cookies. And I was unbathed and, you know, began to get ridiculed by, you know, the, the older guys like, hey, you know, you're kind of dusty and like go take a shower and get some sneakers and all the things. And like a lot of kids who grow up in those experiences, I was vulnerable. Uh, we don't talk about it a lot culturally because you know, if you come from the streets, you have to be like hard and you gotta wear that mask. But when you really get down to it, like I was a kid.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  At fourteen. Fourteen and most of us are kids, we get looped into this very adult world and it's a seduction. And I, over the years, I began to actually reframe the language for exactly what it was, right? What was it? It was, it was the seduction of a kid into a culture, an adult culture. And what that looked like was. Were you still going to school or were you more just? So I was kinda going to school whenever I can shower and bathe and you know, so I would go up to the school. And what happened is there was an older guy in the neighborhood and he was like, hey, you know, I see, you know, what's going on, like, you know, come ride with me, let's go get something to eat. And he took me to Burger King. And then he was like, you know. Acting like he's gonna take care of you a little bit.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like, yo, you need some sneakers, you need some clothes. If you come, you know, work this spot, this is the beginning of crack cocaine, uh, the crack cocaine era. Was it nineteen? This is like eighty-six. Eighty-six. Yeah, so this is when crack is just penetrating the Midwest. And this is Detroit, right? It's Detroit, yeah, so we don't even know. You know, this is a new drug in the community, we don't even know how devastating it's gonna be. Uh, and as a kid, you can't even begin to imagine what that is, you know, and so. You know, he takes me in, he's like, you know, let's go get sneakers and let's go get food and all the things. And then I'm in this crack house on the east side of Detroit, I'm, I'm in here. And I remember the first time where I was like, this is scary.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Is he brings me this sawed-off shotgun and he's like, if anybody tries to break in, just shoot through the door. You're fourteen, fifteen. Fourteen years old. Oh my god, that's terrifying. I've never even shot a, a low caliber gun, let alone a shotgun. That's terrifying. Um, it's terrifying, but I can't say that I'm terrified because that's not the culture. You gotta act tough. Yeah, and so it's like, you know, he breaks down the, the amount that I'm to sell and what I owe and then what I'll make at the end of the week. And so the end of the week comes around and it's three hundred and fifty, four hundred dollars mostly in singles and five dollar bills. It's this big wad of cash. And the first thing I do is go to the grocery store.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  And I just buy all the cereal. I had dreamed of, it's like everything, Captain Crunch, the. Lucky Charms or whatever. Fruity Pebbles. And then I buy like chocolate milk and strawberry milk, you know, the reality is I'm a kid. Yeah. You know, I'm gorging this cereal now, but that was my entry into that culture. Wow. And within the first six months is when it got real. You know, my childhood friend was murdered. Oh. I was robbed at gunpoint. And then I became addicted to crack cocaine at fourteen years old. Um, you know, I was introduced to that again by another adult who's like, hey, this is cool, this is what we do, it's fine, we make a lot of money.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  You know, and so I had to navigate addiction in this adult culture. Wow. As a fourteen year old kid. Um, and then after that, I ended up messing up the money because of the addiction. And they beat me near to death. Oh, man. You know, and I remember being fourteen years old, laying on the bathroom floor in a pool of my blood and asking this question.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  What kind of world do we live in where this happens to kids? And so that was my intro into that culture. And then over the years, you know, I began to become hardened, I began to put up the mask. And then when I was seventeen years old, I got shot. And at that point, I was the third of my mother's sons to be shot. Come on. My oldest brother had been shot in the neck. Geez. Um, my second oldest brother had been shot at that point when I got shot, he got shot in the arm. And then he got shot again, he's currently paralyzed, he's been paralyzed since. I wanna say nineteen ninety eight. Um, so high levels of gun trauma, high levels of, you know,

• 10:54Speaker 01

  uh, gun violence within the culture, you know, I can't even tell you how many of my friends have actually been shot or murdered. Um, and so at seventeen, sitting in a hospital bed, I'm processing this very traumatic event, and there's nobody there to help me. There's nobody there to say, hey.

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  No support, no family support, friends?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think my, my dad and my mom came, but I think they didn't even know what to do at that point. It's like I'm a third of their child, just laying in a hospital bed with bullet wounds, um, and I can't even tell you how many kids in the neighborhood who they saw grow up, you know, this was, I mean, and this is the height of that era, right? So, you know, eighty-six to ninety, you know, this is like a very volatile time in Detroit, you know, and this is when crack cocaine is at its high, the war on drugs is happening. Um, and, you know, it wasn't until I began to journal that I realized there should have been an intervention. And had I been from a different community with different resources,

• 12:01Speaker 01

  then somebody would have said, hey, you're gonna need help, you're gonna need a psychologist, you're gonna need a therapist, you're gonna need somebody to talk to and help you unpack this traumatic event.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And that just didn't happen. And so what happened was I went back to my neighborhood with this narrative in my mind that if I get into a conflict, I'm shooting first. And I began to carry a gun every day. I didn't feel safe. And what you can't say, you know, when you grow up the way that I grew up, you can't say that, you know, that actually hurt when I got shot.

• 12:40Lewis Howes?

  No, you're gonna say, ah.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, ah, whatever, you know, I'll get back, you know, I'll get the guy the next time.

• 12:44Lewis Howes?

  Be fine in a couple of weeks, yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so. That's the mindset at seventeen years old that I'm just like, yo, I'm hard, I'm standing on this corner. What I can't say to my friends is every time a car pulls up, that I have anxiety because there was no language for anxiety.

• 12:59Lewis Howes?

  Nah.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Um, there was no language for paranoia, there was no language for fear because, you know, you can't be a tough kid growing up in the hood and be afraid. You know, you just gotta navigate it, you just gotta put the mask on. And so I wore that mask, but deeper than that was the narrative that I had created. That if I found myself in a conflict, I would shoot first and sixteen months later, um, at nearly two in the morning, I got into this conflict over a drug deal that I refused to make, and that conflict escalated. And there was this moment, you know, that I always think back to where I turned to walk away.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  You did?

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And I turned to walk away. And what I thought was happening was that the person I was arguing with was attempting to get out of the car, and I just turned and fire forced us to tragically end his, ended his life. And, you know, it's a moment that I played over for years of like, why didn't I just take that second step? Um, you know?

• 14:07Lewis Howes?

  And keep walking away, yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it wasn't until I was journaling that I realized that the, the grip of the trauma of being shot would not allow me to make a different decision.

• 14:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Cause you weren't healed, you can't make a conscious decision from a hurt place.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:26Lewis Howes?

  You have to make that from a healed place.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  Or a healing journey.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:30Lewis Howes?

  You know, you gotta be on that journey.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. What happened after that incident?

• 14:37Speaker 01

  So I was subsequently arrested, I was charged with open murder, and I was eventually sentenced to seventeen and forty years for second degree murder. And, you know, going through the legal process, I was like psychologically, I was already traumatized, like I was just like so numb. And I remember at my sentence, you know,

• 15:04Speaker 01

  My lawyer telling me, you know, here's what you say to the family. And it was the most superficial apology ever. On what he wanted you to say? Yeah, and you know, I was still a kid. And so I trusted his judgment and I just kind of went with this kind of rope apology.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  And that was, that was devastating. Really? As I began to navigate my prison sentence. For you it was devastating or for them? It was for, I'm sure it was devastating for them. Uh, but it was devastating for me in the sense that I knew that I didn't communicate what I actually felt. What did you actually feel? That I had made a horrible decision that had caused them incredible pain. And like I was deeply sorry and just like, it was something that I wish I could have took back. And. As opposed to like the scripted kind of clinical apology. Yeah. You know, and so for years I, you know, in prison, I just kind of beat up on myself and I just internalized

• 16:12Speaker 01

  even more of that pain, you know, and, you know, my first five years in prison was just like dark and anger filled and just, I got into tons of trouble and. Lots of fights or? Lots of fights and, you know, disobeying the rules and it's very recalcitrant. Like I'm like, I'm not listening to no rules.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And it was in that environment where in that, in that dark space, where one of what I call my three miracles transpired. And that first miracle was meeting some of the most incredible mentors in the world. And. In prison? In prison. Yeah. Yeah, and these weren't like, you know, people who were coming to visit us to help salvage our souls or people who were just like, you know. You know, we want to come in and help you fix your life. These were guys serving life sentences. Um, guys who, if you, you know, really think about what a life sentence is, they had nothing to gain, you know, they were.

• 17:18Lewis Howes?

  By helping you.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, by helping me. But these guys were brilliant, you know, these guys challenged me to read, to think, you know, they challenged my thinking after I read. Uh, we debated, you know, they tried to give me guidance and even though I didn't listen to them in a moment, you know, that, that wisdom later on became one of the most valuable gifts I've ever received. Um, yeah, so that's what it was like, the, the first part of.

• 17:47Lewis Howes?

  The first five years dark, you're getting into trouble. Some mentors are trying to help you, you're doing a little bit of the work, but you're still from a hurt place, you're still reactive, you still haven't healed the trauma or done the journaling and the the healing work yet. And so what, then five years in, you got into the fight with the, uh, the guard, which sent you into seven years solitary?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  No, that came about three years later, the second miracle actually sold up in about that fifth year. Um, and it came in the form of a letter from this woman named Nancy. And when I first got the letter, I'm just like, okay, who is this random person writing me? Cause.

• 18:28Lewis Howes?

  You didn't know what she was.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought it was, you know, just a pen pal, cause that's what happens in prisons, like people hear about your case and you just start getting these letters from random strangers who are like, hey, you know, I just want to be friends, et cetera. But it turns out Nancy was the woman who had raised David, whose life I was responsible for taking.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  And so Nancy writes me this letter.

• 18:51Lewis Howes?

  She wasn't the, she wasn't the mother?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  She wasn't the mother, she was the godmother.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Um, she writes me this letter.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  So this is five, seven years in?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Five, five, yeah, five or so years in. And I remember opening the letter and her beginning to tell me who David was. You know, the father, the husband, the man, the friend. And I can tell you, I wanted to boil that letter up. Oh. I was like, you know, emotionally, it was just like a tidal wave of like guilt and responsibility and all the things that I hadn't unpacked yet. And something was like, you have to read the letter all the way through. You have to finish this thing. And I continued to read the letter and what Nancy said to me was like, despite the harm and devastation you've caused my family, I love you.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Holy cow. And I forgive you because that's what God would want me to do. Oh, my goodness. And. How did that make you feel, reading that? I was like, I went through kind of like a process of different feelings. First, I just felt horrible because I'm like,

• 20:07Speaker 01

  this woman in a moment of her own hurt and anguish is giving me something that I didn't even know if I was capable of receiving, which was love. Hmm. And forgiveness. And I wasn't emotionally mature enough at that time to even understand, like, the power of like, you know, love, that's like spiritual love, you know, this, this deep, deep spiritual love, this principle perspective of like somebody's beliefs really aligning with what they actually do. Um, I hadn't forgiven myself, so forgiveness was like,

• 20:52Speaker 01

  whoa, like, what is this, you know, what, what am I supposed to do with this, you know? Um, but I wrote her back, you know, and I wrote her back and her and I embarked on this correspondence journey. And, you know, Nancy

• 21:13Speaker 01

  was essential to my personal healing in this way.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  What she said to me was that I wanna know what happened to that nineteen year old kid that pulled the trigger that night.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  What caused you to get to that space?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  What caused me to get to that space?

• 21:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  And so her and I began this journey of just unpacking a lot of the things. But even with that, it wasn't the kinda moment of just like where everything comes together, right? You know, in storytelling, people often want just that one moment of like, it's your come to Jesus moment.

• 21:55Lewis Howes?

  Healing is a journey, man. Healing is a journey. It may not be like, oh, I'm healed in this moment. There might be little moments that bring you closer to awareness.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:06Lewis Howes?

  And then eventually over time, it starts to mend and heal. I remember a moment that I had, not to go off track, I remember a moment I had where nine years ago, I mentioned I was, you know, when I was thirty, I opened up about sexual, the sexual abuse for the first time. And I held on to it for twenty-five years. So I didn't even start to heal until twenty-five years later. And if I look back and I'm like, hmm, there's a reason why I reacted in this way, in this situation, in this situation, not saying it's okay or that I'm off the hook, but without having the tools to heal, even the littlest of traumas, we could turn situations into horrible situations.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  We can choose bad things.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 22:50Lewis Howes?

  And I remember I started my healing journey at thirty, but I still had other things in my life that I hadn't started to heal. Other traumas, right? From parents to previous relationships to whatever, shame and guilt that I was holding on to. And it wasn't until about a year and a half ago in therapy, diving in very deep, where like I felt the pain in my chest that I had for so long, kinda disintegrate. It was like, it was actually a moment, but I was like, this is almost ten years of a healing journey?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  But then there was a moment that I felt like it connected like my mind to my heart and my body, where my nervous system finally fully relaxed from that trauma. Now, I'm sure I'm still gonna have things that come up and you, you, you go back and you have to learn and heal and you go back a couple steps and you learn and heal. It's a journey, but... There wasn't like this aha moment, the moment I talked about it the first time. It took me nine years.

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm still gonna need to learn how to heal, you know?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  But so that so that happened for you with the letter.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  The correspondence was like, it was a moment of awareness, but it wasn't like, oh, I'm this loving, healed, no shame, human being anymore.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And and you and you speak to something that really, you know, speaks to me, right? Is that the healing journey, when you explain it, what we haven't created space for is the explanation. Without interpreting it as an excuse.

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Like, I don't make any excuses for the horrible decision of that night. But I think it's important for people to really understand how we get to those moments. Like, I don't think that violence is born in a vacuum. I don't think that these acts that we see play out all the time in the world are things that just are in a moment or are born in us as human beings.

• 24:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  There's all these things that happen, right?

• 24:46Lewis Howes?

  And so. And I heal in a in a healthy, conscious human who's

• 24:53Lewis Howes?

  got, you know, on a healing journey or is just processing their pain, you know, processing trauma when it happens and learns how to do that, which they don't teach us these things growing up in school. Parents don't teach us. You know, I grew up in Ohio was never, you know, share with me how you feel. You know, it was just tough one up. And in the sports field specifically, you fall down, you get hurt, it's just put the dirt on it and go back. Right? You're made fun of if you showed emotion, right? In the sports field, right?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:20Lewis Howes?

  And so you just wanted to, I just wanted to fit in. You just wanted to fit in and you couldn't. You couldn't show a tender, emotional side. And I think it's, you know, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to create this show 10 years ago. During my healing journey was like, what are these tools? That can really help transform human beings inside, so we can have a healthier outside. We see all these, you know, all the pain in the world, right? School shooting that just happened the other day, 19 kids, right? And this is what, I don't know, 20 or 30 shootings this year so far?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  A mess, yeah.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  It's whenever these mass shootings or this wars, it seems like a lot of times it's caused by men who are hurt, Absolutely. who are in pain, who haven't learned how to heal trauma. And there's no justification, there's no, you know, lack of responsibility by any of these acts. But I think you can see where that pain is coming from and how like, man, this, this person had to go through a lot of years of trauma that was unresolved to get to this breaking point. Absolutely. And I think, and I'm so glad that you're doing the work you're doing, because for me, I know that if I didn't have some environment that was healthy and some friends that were good and some, you know,

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  parental figures that were good, I could have gone down the same path. You know, my brother went to jail, I told you about this. And it's like, I could have seen myself going down that with one decision. Absolutely. One action that just like my pain gripped a hold of me and I made a dumb decision and now I'm in jail for five, 10, 20 years. So it's, it could be so quick how one action can hurt a lot of people and yourself forever. And I think the most important thing is teaching men how to heal their emotional wounds, their traumatic wounds today. Because a lot of the pain in domestic violence

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  and community violence and schools and just the world, the wars that people are having is from men who are hurt and haven't healed. And so I'm so glad that you're doing this work and you're talking about this because when you're a young boy growing up, as a young teen, I'll speak for myself, one of the main drivers is to try to get a girl to like you. It's like in our DNA or something, right? It's like, how can I get a girl to like me? To hold my hand, to kiss me, to whatever it is when you're like 10, 12, 14. You just want to be accepted by a girl that you like. Absolutely. So we're driven to do things to get the attention from a girl essentially. Whether that's right or wrong, it's just kind of like, That's what it is. what drives us. That's the driver, yes.

• 28:11Lewis Howes?

  And this may sound not politically correct, but the challenge is, I don't think women understand how to allow men to be emotionally vulnerable, especially when they're growing up. It's not accepted. When you're made fun of, when you're picked on by other boys, when you're being sensitive, or maybe a girl who's saying, hey, what are you crying for? That's not sexy to me, that's not a turn on. Then boys start to toughen up and say, okay, I can't show my emotions because my buddies are gonna make fun of me. I'm not gonna get the girl. And she's not gonna think I'm a real man. And so we kind of just put these masks on.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 28:52Lewis Howes?

  Right? Am I, tell me if I'm wrong here.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  No, no, I think you're right. And I think what it is, is that the culture, even for, you know, young girls who eventually grow into be women, who want men to be emotionally vulnerable, they're as much a victims of it as we are. Because they're told that, you know, the toughness, the mask, the indifference, you know, the bad boy, you know, imagery is what to, you know.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  It's a turn on.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  It's the turn on, right? And then as they go through their maturation process, they realize that, you know, there's something else that's needed and that vulnerability. And then I think from a cultural standpoint, as men, what we fail to do is to say, hey, you know, I actually love love.

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  You know, I actually appreciate intimacy, you know. That, you know, as beautiful and as amazing as you are, what really is beautiful is that I can trust the conversation we're having is authentic. And I can be my true self and I can say, you know, today this actually hurts. You know, one of the things I wrote about in a new book, I said, you know, as a boy, when I couldn't cry tears, I cried bullets.

• 30:03Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Like, that's our community right now, right? These mass shootings are unexpressed sadness. They're unexpressed frustration, they're unexpressed insecurities. And while it doesn't excuse the behavior, if we grow to understand it, then we can actually better prevent it, first of all. Because everybody can do, you know, a Monday morning triage and, you know, we can all play Monday morning quarterback. But prevention is what we have currently available to us.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  And that prevention starts with understanding. If you don't understand, if you don't create space for men to actually say, here's how I really feel. You know, let me, let's, let's, let's take down the idea that you think about how I feel. Uh, but here's how I really feel. And like, and we have to do it with each other as men. Absolutely. And what I found is that, like, in my men's circle, I get so excited to talk about my friends. Yeah, like I say to them, you know, I, I love you, brother. Like, I, I care about you and how does your soul feel today? You know? Did you do anything that was joyful? Um, are you fulfilled in your life and in your purpose? And we don't have to talk about numbers and metrics and all these other things that, that have been defined as the way that we measure our manhood.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  But I can do it because I'm willing to share those things. And I didn't get there overnight. Like, this was a journey unlike anything imaginable. And I would say that it, the, the tipping point from the emotional growth started with the third miracle. I mean, I see that there was these three miracles. Nancy was the second, the second one. Yeah. And so that third miracle was getting a letter from my son while I was in solitary. So this is after the altercation with the officer. I'm about seven or eight years into my sentence. From your son? Yeah. When did you have your first son? So my first son was born six months after I was arrested. So his mom was three months pregnant. Wow. Oh, wow.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And so, you know, probably about two years into that time in solitary, um, which began about, um, about my eighth year in prison. So I probably was coming up on 10 years when I get this letter. Wow. And my, my dad always would sit my son down and make sure he wrote me letters. And normally they were just, you know, these little kid letters, hey dad, you know, Transformers is my jam right now, you know, or you know, here's a drawing or whatever, and I love you dad, and you know. He would send you those? Yeah. As a kid, young, two, five, seven-year-old. Yeah. And I actually still have those letters, some of those letters. Um, and so he would send me these, you know, throughout my, my journey.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  And then I get this one letter when he's about 10 years old. I'm in solitary at the time. I think I'm on about year two.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And I opened the letter expecting it to just be, you know, hey dad, here's what's happening in my world. When I opened it, my son writes to me, dad, my mom told me why you're in prison. Hmm. For murder. And he said, dad, don't kill again, Jesus watches what you do.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  That letter destroyed the facade of toughness. Like the mask that I had worn up to that point in my life. I mean, it just disintegrated. And I was like, I owe him a dad. And if I don't know if I'm getting out of prison or not, but what I do know is that I have to live my life in a way that my son understands that no matter how far down you fall in life, if you are willing to do the work. Hmm. You can get up. Wow. You can overcome. And so I said to myself in that moment, I don't know how, I don't even know if I'm ever get out of this place. But I need to prove to myself that I am committed to transforming my life.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  And I'm in a Spartan cell at the time, like there is nothing there that says, hey, here's how you can prove it. So I started with journaling. Cause I wanted to get to the truth of like, you know, how did I end up here? Like there was a part of me that was like, I know I'm not a bad person. Um, I know that I'm a good soul, but I've done horrible things that have hurt people. And so that was a conflict that was just like, this is a war right now, right? And so I go into battle mode. I'm like journaling and I'm writing and I mean, it's raw and it's scary and it's just like, sheesh, this is the things that I've done, these are the things that have been done to me.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  Um, and while I was doing it, I realized that I hadn't completed anything other than the GED. And I was like, okay, if you're committed to transforming your life, you have to finish something. And you have to do it for you. And you can't do it for the warden, you can't do it for the guards, you can't do it for your parents. I told them many times, oh, I'm turning my life around. So last time I've been in trouble, it was all the fluff, it was the mass, it was the lies that we tell ourselves in the moment when we're hurting and we're just like, okay, we don't want the, we want that immediate hurt to stop. But it wasn't about turning a life around. And so I said, here's what you do. You have to write a book in thirty days.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  And if you write this book in thirty days, then that will be your proof that you're ready for a change. That's cool. And so I didn't have a laptop, though. I didn't have a typewriter. Handwriting. It was old school. I didn't even have a real good pen, like, so imagine if you pulled the inside of that pen out. You had that little thing. That little thing. Oh, my gosh, that's hard. Yeah. And so I was like, okay. They want to give you a pen? No, not in solitary. They're scared you're gonna like shank the guard or something, right? And so immediately I was like, it's no way possible I'm gonna write a book in thirty days with this thing. And the first thing that popped in my mind was here's excuse number one. Here's your victimhood. Here's your blaming everything other than being accountable.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  And I was like, okay, no, this not gonna happen. We're not, we're not going back down this path, right? And so I took that pen and I rolled it up in some paper. Ah, that's you. That's you getting in there, making a heart. Yeah, I'm like, yo, I mean, I had tons of experience rolling things up, so it was just like, let me, let me be intentional, right? Like, this is innovation, this is, you know, I learned that later on in my life, that, oh, that's what that is, like, innovation. But rolling it up in that paper made it firm enough for me to write. And I wrote for thirty days straight. Until I finished that book. And when I finished that book.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  I felt this incredible weight lifted from my shoulder. And I felt empathy for myself. And I felt compassion and I was like, you are a smart kid. You are capable of doing good. You are worthy of doing good. And I was like, wow. And then I was like, okay. That's cool. I wrote a book. But I was like greatness is the ability to do something good over and over. Mm hmm. And so I was like, write another book in thirty days. Wow. And I wrote that second book. And then I started a third book and I fell into the deepest body depression

• 37:43Speaker 01

  that I had ever experienced while incarcerated. Writing the book? Writing that book. Why? About halfway through, I realized I had all this talent. And I was trapped in an environment where I couldn't give birth to it. And all the disappointment of my life flooded back to me. This realization that I was this brilliant kid. I was a talented writer. I was an artist at heart. I was smart. But here it was, I was in the worst place imaginable. In solitary confinement. With the chaos of that environment playing out all around me.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  And it was devastating to come face to face with that. And I just remember not even wanting to get off my bunk. Like everything felt heavy and weighted, like just to go to that door and open that food slot and take in a slop one more time. Like it felt like a, a million mile journey. Uh, because it was like that heavy, that devastation of coming face to face with my authentic self in a environment that was created by this mass version of who I was. Wow. And I was just like, damn, I failed this kid.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I let this person down. Um, and so I fall into this deep, deep depression. And then one day, I was just like, you know.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  You can sit back and you can feel sorry for yourself. You can blame your parents, you can blame your trauma, you can blame the guards, you can blame everything that led to this moment. But right now, you have a choice. Whether to wallow in self pity and defeat and brokenness. Or you can find your inner light. Mm hmm. And you can find your way out of here. And so at this time, I was reading all these brilliant books, you know, As a Man Think of the Secret. And it was talking about the power of manifestation. Yeah. And initially, I was like, this is some whack. Whack science, right? It's all woo woo garbage, right?

• 40:07Speaker 01

  This, how do you think into existence and things, right? But here's where, what I learned about that. I went back and I read my journal. And I began, as I'm reading this journal, I'm charting how I was thinking. And I was like, my thinking produced the exact outcomes that it should have, like by reading this journal, it was very clear that I was gonna end up in prison. Mm hmm. Like, it was very clear that at some point, I was gonna pull the trigger, that was gonna cause someone's death. It's very clear that I was gonna get into these altercations because I was thinking that that was the only thing I was worthy of. From the time I was seven or eight years old, I heard you're only gonna end up dead or in jail.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  You know, I had observed my friends go to prison, I had observed my friends get shot. I had accepted that narrative, so there was my dominant thoughts were dead or jail. Like, that was, those were my dominant thoughts. Like, I wasn't shocked when I got shot. I was traumatized, but I wasn't, it wasn't like, oh my God, like, this wasn't supposed to happen. It was like, oh, this is a narrative, right? And so my dilemma was, if this is absolutely true, that I had magnetized Hmm. my thoughts in a negative. That if the laws of the universe are true, that I can magnetize them in a positive.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  And so I began to.

• 41:32Lewis Howes?

  You had this when you were in solitary.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  In solitary, yeah. And so I started waking up with intentional thoughts of what I wanted my life to be. That one day my life would be full of joy. One day it will be purposeful. One day I'll get out of solitary, one day I'll get out of prison. And while I was on that train of thought, I was like, okay, let's test this theory. If thoughts are things, if what you think manifests. If how, you know, you believe dictates your outcome. Let's test it. That's the empirical thing to do, right? It's the most scientific thing to do, right?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  And so I wrote the warden this letter, you know, I had been like getting deep into philosophy. So I write the warden this very philosophical letter. And what I proposed to him was to understand what the truth is. And I said to him, I said, you know, Warden, when I enter prison.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  I pledged that I was never going to follow the rules that I didn't want to follow.

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  And it got me into solitary.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  And it got me into solitary and it got me into, I've accumulated over thirty six misconducts. And while you may not like that. What I would hope that you can acknowledge is that I'm a man of my word.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  And that was the truth, right? I said I was gonna get into all manner of trouble and I did it. And I was like, if you believe that the truth is the only thing that matters in conversation. Everything that I'm about to tell you is what my truth is today. If you give me this opportunity to get out of solitary. I will focus on developing my skill sets as a writer. And I will focus on creating a pathway to build a career for myself. Using my talent as a writer. And the warden actually wrote me back. And he said to me, this is the most compelling argument for release I've received. And while it feels counterintuitive, I'm going to advocate for you to get out.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow. How many more years did you have in solitary?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  I ended up being like two and a half more years because the census was indefinite.

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  It was forever.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  It's whenever they feel.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  Whenever they feel you're ready.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:51Lewis Howes?

  So you had two and a half more years after that letter?

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, after that letter. But he advocated immediately and then it went to his higher ups and they shot it down.

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  Took more time, yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So it took these three steps. Um, and then also wrote down what I wanted to happen in my life with my writing. I was like, okay, if I'm gonna be serious about writer, here's the, here's the goals.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  And I wrote down the most lofty goals you can think of as a writer. I wanted Oprah to read one of my books.

• 44:21Lewis Howes?

  It would be a New York Times bestseller.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  New York Times bestseller.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  Check, check.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Check, check. And I wanna, and I wanna build a career for myself.

• 44:28Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Using writing. And I wanna write across multiple platforms. I wanna write music. I wanna write for the stage. I wanna write for television. And so I was just super intentional and very clear. And when I got out of solitary, man, I took all the books that I had handwrote. And I typed them all up on a little word processor. And it was the most tedious thing I've done today. It was like, oh my God, it was brutal.

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  Months, just like, yeah.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  But that, that was the culmination of those three miracles coming together. Kind of letting that mask down and charting a new path for myself.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  What did the warden say after you hit New York Times bestseller and had Oprah interview you and talk about you and all these things?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  You know what? I, he ended up retiring, so I haven't been able to track him down.

• 45:15Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, that'd be cool.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  But, yeah, yeah. But there's so many people from that part of the world that experience.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  That have reached out, that have followed my work, a guy I used to work for, he's one of my best friends now. Uh, I worked for him, like, in the days when I was in a dark space, I was creating all type of chaos on the yard, and his name is Tom Scheit. He was in, he was an inmate with you? No, no, he, he was my supervisor, he was a civilian coming into the prison. Um. And teaching, or he was? He was running a recreation center. Gotcha. So he was running a recreation center at Michigan Reformatory, which was the Gladiator School, this was like the most chaotic part of my incarceration, there's fifteen hundred young guys with long sentences, every, anything from fifteen years to life. Um, and I worked for Tom. In the prison? In the prison. For this program?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I worked for the recreation center. And back then, Tom was just like, you know, you can do anything you wanna do in life. Like, positive or negative, you know? Um, he was like, but I, I believe that your life is meant for a greater purpose. Mm-hmm. And that one day, you're gonna get out of prison, and young people will look up to you, but you gotta make sure you don't end up with life in prison. Cause I can see you going down that path as well. And so I looked Tom up when I got out of prison, I wrote him, I hadn't seen him since like ninety-six. And, um, at first, when he answered the phone, he was like, he was like, "Sucker, like..." I'm like, he like, "How, like, how did you get out?", like, you know, it was like, like I escaped or something.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  I'm like, I'm like, "No, Tom, I legitimately got paroled." Um, but he took me to my first football game, my first college football game, him and his wife. Um, you know, he was one of the first people to read some of my writing before I even thought of myself as a writer. Mm-hmm. Um, and so, you know, over the years since I've been out, Tom has come and stayed in my place, I've stayed in this place in, in, in Lansing, Michigan, and, you know, we're really, really good friends now, um. But he saw something in me, the way that my mentors did back then, that I didn't see in myself. So you had these thoughts that got you into jail, essentially, right, that had you?

• 47:32Lewis Howes?

  Doing the actions and the behaviors that got you into jail and then you continue those thoughts for the first nine or 10 years until you kind of learned that thoughts can become things and you can manifest what you want in your life and you started shifting and creating goals and and then staying true to your goals by accountability, daily consistent actions to help you accomplish those goals and then backing it with the positive thoughts or the thoughts of gratitude or joy or possibility that one day something will be better as opposed to falling back into shame or upset or guilt. How does someone, just in their life, whether they're incarcerated or not, they might be incarcerated in their own minds, shift their negative thoughts to set themselves up to

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  manifest more abundance?

• 48:19Speaker 01

  It's an incremental process and it's truly a journey and you know, what I always tell people is that, you know, when you look at the end results of anybody who's accomplished anything great or anything of, you know, respect and, you know, what would we consider success, it always looks easy after it's done.

• 48:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  But it's a process, you know, it's a journey and it's a, for me, what worked was bringing myself to the moment and checking the narrative, what story am I telling myself? You know, am I telling myself the truth? Am I recirculating the old outdated story that no longer exists? And like that mindfulness, that ability to bring myself like true to the moment, that was one of the most powerful things I learned, you know, I learned it through meditation and and really processing thoughts and energy and okay, what am I, what am I bringing in? Like I always talk to young people about the importance of checking what you're consuming.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  You know, our consumption cycles, you know, mentally often go unchecked.

• 49:26Lewis Howes?

  In terms of the thoughts and what you're watching and what you're reading.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Thoughts, information, reading, listening to.

• 49:32Lewis Howes?

  What your friends are saying, gossip or whatever.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  All the things like those, like we take in so much information.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  And then it's that internal conversation, right? That that internal conversation is a beast. You know, the the best conversations I ever have are with myself and they're they're complex, you know, they're not always easy, you know, and so. What I what I would say is that that journey from negative attraction, you know, um. Manifestation like is it's a process of like, okay, can I check it in a moment? Can I really just take a beat and say, okay, is this real? Is this happening? Or is this me drawing from old outdated information to create a story that's not even true? Um, and so I'm constantly doing that. I'm constantly just checking the narrative, right?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  When things are happening in a world that can be so chaotic and feel like they're so in our face. I like I I center myself and I just come back to like mindfulness, right? We talked about. You know, the horrific, you know, mass shooting that just happened yesterday. I learned about that about a half hour before I was going to pick my son up from school. Oh, gosh. And I just had to like re-center myself, be present. And I remember getting to the school and I felt just that anxiousness, you know? And then I heard the laughter of those kids. And I was just like, oh, this is what's really happening is these kids are in joy over here. Um, and that shooting was horrendous and horrific and as a dad, like my heart.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Just went out to those parents. But I knew that there was a way that I can go down this negative kind of. Taking my son out of school, he that he's not going, you know, like this whole chain of events. And bringing myself to the clarity of that moment. Yeah. And knowing that collectively, we can help those families heal. But we also can be present and. The kids that are still here, they're in love on and care about, and we can double down on that care. Um, and just that doubling down on the care and the love was like, okay, let's be present in that while we help these families heal.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  So it's just a, it's a process, you know, writing it down really helps. Um, you know, I still write down my thoughts, you know, I still in my notes on my phone, just kind of like, hey, I had a thought about this thing and journaling and processing and attracting good energy and good intentions and, and that, that hyper awareness of like, what am I consuming and, and what does it serve? Because everything we consume serves a part of us, even when it's like, when I was in that negative loop, like that served, it served a part of me, it energized me, anger energized me, right? It made me feel, because it was what I was taught I can only feel.

• 52:23Lewis Howes?

  It gives you some significance, too.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, was there a moment in time in prison where you were able to fully let go of shame, guilt, the trauma that you were maybe holding on to, and actually start to love yourself authentically and have peace? Was there a moment that happened in prison or did this not happen till after?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  No, absolutely. So around that time that I was journaling and I really began to unpack that narrative, um, I began to grow my locks. And it was my-

• 53:01Lewis Howes?

  Your hair.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, my hair, yeah. And it was my third attempt. So the first time that I attempted, they got it started, and when I looked in the mirror, all I heard was all the negative things I ever heard about my natural hair. And, you know, I went and cut it off immediately. I started a second time and it got a little bit longer. And then I heard that negative narrative. And so I knew I was on a healing journey when I was able to see the beginnings of it. And see beauty. And see joy and see cultural connectivity. And I began to apologize to myself.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  I began to apologize to myself for all the mean things that I had said internally. Um, all the times I had doubted my capabilities. All the times that I had bought into the shame. You know, I grew up, I have gap teeth and you know, I would get teased as a kid and. You know, there was shame attached to that and I learned to look into that little window. Uh, between my teeth and say, oh wow, that's fascinating, that's beautiful. Um, and so it's just a process of like.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Watching all of the narratives fall away. And creating new narratives and creating new language of self-love. Um, you know, and it's, and that's still a thing that's like a journey, right? Like it's just like, you know, you're. There's not these one-offs, like I know people want it to be like a magical. Thing, but it's like, no, it's a journey, you know, I have to wake up and just be like, hey. You know, you're okay, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're doing fine, there's things that you still have to navigate and. You know, you have to overcome and, and face and confront. But it's actually okay, you know, cause if you can. Label it in the right way and you could just say, oh, I'm just triggered right now.

• 55:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 55:07Speaker 01

  Um, or you know, this is kind of a moment where I'm kind of having a self-defeating moment. Uh, get it together, you know, self-talk, you know?

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  On a scale of one to 10, the first 10 years you were in, in jail. Uh, on, on a scale of self-love. 10 being like you loved yourself the most in an authentic, conscious way. You know, had peace in your heart, all these things, one being you hated yourself, you know, shamed yourself, all these things. Where were you in those first 10 years?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Kind of like minus.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  Probably minus, minus five, you know, it was, it was like now.

• 55:43Lewis Howes?

  And where were you after you got, when you got out or the last, you know?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  You know, the day I walked out of prison, I would say.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  I was at about a strong eight. So the strong.

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  Self-love.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Self-love, yeah. Yeah, I was at a strong eight.

• 56:04Lewis Howes?

  Was it because you were getting out or was it because you had gotten there maybe in the previous year?

• 56:08Speaker 01

  No, yeah, it was probably like that last few years where it just started hitting on all cylinders. You know, and it was just kind of this space in my life where I was like, you know, I'm in prison, one day I won't be. Um, you know, I went up for parole like two times, three times before I got released. So it was kind of like the, the, the moments would knock me back down a few notches.

• 56:31Lewis Howes?

  Hoping maybe this is the time.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was the, that was the challenge, you know? That was the thing that I had to combat was the negative talk attached to that. Okay, they're never gonna let me out. And then I just had to start countering it, you know, so every day I would walk the yard with one of my best friends, then Calvin Evans. And Calvin is an incredible light in my life, you know, he, he served twenty-four years for a crime he didn't commit. And one of the most joyful people I know.

• 57:00Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And, um, and so I would walk the yard with Calvin, we would just walk. And I would say, one day, man, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna get out of here and this is what I'm gonna do and this is how I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna hustle these books out of the trunk and, you know, one day, one of these books gonna reach, you know, Oprah. I don't know how, but I'm just gonna hustle, hustle, hustle, you know, um, you know, I'm gonna mentor the kids when I get home. And so I was just, this, this talk was like, it was verbalizing my intentions. But it was also countering that narrative that was attached to like getting denied parole.

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  You're not gonna be, I'm out to anything, you're gonna be in here forever, you're, you know.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was just that constant refrain, right? And, um, you know, and so, yeah, it was, it was, it was at about an eight by the time I walked out of prison.

• 57:50Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty powerful.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:51Lewis Howes?

  That's really powerful. Where would you say you're at today?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Today, I'm at a ten. And man, life is, life is great, it's complex, you know, the things that happen, I. Just acknowledging for what they are, you know, I had a tough year last year was probably one of the toughest years that I've had, you know, in a very, very long time. Why is that? My, uh, my younger brother was murdered, um, my dog was our puppy, we had like a one year old beautiful puppy, left him with a trainer, the trainer calls me the next day, puppy had got ran over. Oh, gosh, man. You know, I got, got, you know, dealt with like illness and just, it was just brutal, you know, it was a brutal, brutal year.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, what I found to be the most killing was that I was actually able to sit up and say, you know, I'm sad. Express it. I was able to literally articulate those words. I was, you know, I went through the anger phase with my brother and I remember like I flew home to Detroit and it was just like all the autopilot of like, okay, we gotta get my brother buried, let me make sure my parents are good, you know, let me navigate all the things, the, the kind of thinginess of, of reaction to, you know, negative experiences, right, where it's just like autopilot is fix, fix, fix, correct, you know, all those things.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And not pause and feel. Not pause and feel. And I remember we were sitting, um, you know, in a hotel room right outside of Detroit and it was my, my girlfriend, um, my partner, we like to call each other's partners, like I think we're a little too old to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Um, my partner Liz and I and my friend Calvin and we were sitting there and we were talking and I just like the tears just came and I was like, I'm sad, like I'm sad that my brother's in here, I'm sad that he didn't get a chance to experience all the great things that we had planned together.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Um, and then when the puppy, you know, got ran over, it was the same thing of just being able to say like, hey, this was my companion, you know, one of the things that I experienced with my puppy that I didn't know was like, you know, I got shot when I was walking. And so there's negative emotions attached to that experience. And when I got the puppy, I had to take him out and walk. And I was like, wow, this is the first time that I've walked freely in almost thirty years.

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  That kind of allowed you to heal.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  It allowed me to heal, you know, so, you know, to lose that uh was devastating, you know. But it was really sad because he was like so joyful and my son was sad. And, you know, to be able to cry with him, you know, and and just hold him and and experience like his sadness, but also our love. Um, and for my partner to be able to hold space for that and for us to be able to experience sadness together in love and, you know, vulnerability and, you know, and so it just made a a tough year. Fulfilling it and enlightening in this way that, you know, I've just recently started coming out on the other side of, you know, and I'm excited about that, you know.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  But I'm also excited that I experienced the sadness and I was able to express that. Um, and to still feel aligned with just like joy and fulfillment, you know, and to know that that's part of it. Is, you know, sadness is going to happen, but joy comes in being able to fully express all of your emotions.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  And like as a dad, you know, I don't think there's a greater gift I can give my son than full access to his emotions by modeling that for him.

• 1:01:50Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. What do you think, what do you think, when I did um my book, The Mask of Masculinity, back in almost five years ago now. I did a little tour, right, for the book. And I would sit in rooms of a few hundred people. It was usually fifty fifty men and women. And I would, at one point in every speech, I would say, for all the, uh, you know, ladies in the room, raise your hands if once a week you get together with a girlfriend or girlfriends or your mom and you talk about your insecurities, your feelings, your emotions around relationship or body image or work. And pretty much all the women would raise their hand. And I'd say, okay, for the guys in the room, how many of you get together once a month?

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  And talk about your feelings with another guy? Or guy friends, you talk about your, you know, relationship issues, you talk about your self doubt, your body image issues, these different vulnerabilities? And it'd only be like one or two hands would go up out of like a hundred something, right? I'd say, how many of you guys are in like a church group where this is kind of mandatory every month to get together?

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:56Lewis Howes?

  And they're kind of laughing, yes.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:59Lewis Howes?

  And I said, ladies, how many of you guys do this every day? You talk about your feelings? You know, maybe it's thirty minutes over lunch, you express yourself and most of them kept their hand up. And, and I go, guys, how many, how many of you in the room never do this? And most of the guys put their hand up, maybe once a year or something, they have a moment where they're vulnerable.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  And I go, ladies, imagine what it would feel like to, to never be able to express your emotions, to never be able to say how you feel. What would that do to you? And most of them are like, it'd drive me crazy, I'd go nuts, I'd explode, right? And I go, well, look what's happening with the men in the world, they're exploding on others, whether it be verbally, whether it be online, whether it be domestic violence, whether it be, you know,

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  any other type of violence out there. And I'm curious, what do you think? What do you think will happen if, if human beings, men and women, all human beings, never express their feelings and emotions and don't learn to heal their trauma? What do you think will happen?

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  I think if, if, if we continue to create these personal prisons around people, these emotional, um, spiritual prisons around people, you know, we'll continue to see these massive upticks in violence. We'll continue to see this just kind of. Disdain for each other that shows up in in social media will never get to a space where there's like clear conversations and healthy dialogue and you know all the things and you know it it's so interesting you know when I think about being here on this podcast and I think about just the many brilliant minds you talked through over the course of you

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  know you building out this great platform and how much of it is about you know just like greatness and success and you know sometimes even about wealth building and you know and I think all those things are drivers for me right like I love the grind I love the hustle you know I come from the streets so like that that mindset of like entrepreneurship and building something and doing a thing like I I love it you know it's super exciting to be here to talk about it but I think the greatest untapped resource we have in the world right now is the emotions of men like when we are able to fully be ourselves

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  to authentically be connected emotionally to be able to be vulnerable and intimate you know with each other with our significant others with our children like everything around us just gets better

• 1:05:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Like it just gets better and it's like such a great untapped resource.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  And feel accepted for our emotions.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:05:56Lewis Howes?

  Not feel shamed, made wrong, made less than because we are have vulnerability.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:02Lewis Howes?

  Or express sadness every now and then or or shared tears every now and then.

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Yeah and I think and and you know and I and I can just say this right you know we talk about privilege in the world right we talk about white privilege we talk about you know gender specific privilege like I know I sit in a space of privilege. When I'm talking about emotional vulnerability. Because I've dealt with the toughest things you can deal with in life, right? So there's not a guy that's gonna come and question like toughness, right? So I have a cheat code, so to speak, like I can talk to these things and, you know, I don't have to worry about the shaming that comes with like, oh, he's soft because he's talking about feelings now or whatever the things are. So I, you know, I'm fortunate in that regard, right? And I don't take that for granted.

• 1:06:46Lewis Howes?

  You lived a tough life.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  I lived a tough life, yeah.

• 1:06:49Lewis Howes?

  And you got the results of what that looks like.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely.

• 1:06:52Lewis Howes?

  And you continue to have more and more pain and restriction based on living that lifestyle, right?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. And that's why we're not, the subtitle of the book is an invitation. And I know that I'm a great ambassador to invite people to join this party of emotional vulnerability and love because I've overcome the most adverse conditions imaginable. The hardest things, the things that I wasn't supposed to survive. Like, nobody's supposed to get out of solitary confinement and to operate in love. Nobody's supposed to get out of solitary confinement and be a successful writer, successful tech entrepreneur, successful investor. Like, nobody's supposed to be able to get out of solitary confinement and dream or imagine a life

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  that, you know, is beyond what people who've never been in, you know, solitary confinement imagine for themselves. So I have the cheat code, right? Uh, which comes with responsibility. And it's one of the reasons that, you know, I chose to like write and I choose to talk from these vulnerable spaces because it's a blessing. The cheat code is a blessing. The hack is a blessing, right? It's, it's this ability to understand that I know this is what men crave. Somebody just has to open up the pathway for it. Somebody has to invite them into, like, life gets so much better when you're at peace with yourself. Oh, my gosh.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  When you're not in turmoil, when you're not aching, when you're not, you know, waking up with worry and fear and dread and, you know, all the things that stand in the way of like achieving great outcomes, life is beautiful. You know, when you're not beating up on yourself internally, life is magic. Like, it's the most magical thing is when you're just like, hey, I love life. You know, I love joy. I love fulfillment. Um, and it doesn't have to be hard and it doesn't have to be complex. And like, those things don't make me a man. Like, I was the, I was the least manly the night I pulled that trigger. I was a boy having a grown-up tantrum. You know, because my emotions weren't processed in a healthy way.

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  You know, I'm the most masculine and the most man that I can ever be is when I'm actually loving my son. You know, when I'm taking care of him, like, you know, I talked a little bit about, like, the, the details of care. Like, I think love is in the details, right? Like, when I'm able to, like, literally just two nights ago, my son is, um, he had a loose tooth, you know? And he's like, Dad, I just really wanna get the tooth out, right? And I'm just like, you know, I'm not screaming by any stretch of the imagination, but I also don't wanna hurt him. I don't want it to be a traumatic event, like, old school. Let me just rip it on out, right? And so, you know, we go into the bathroom and, and, you know, we're trying to

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  figure out how to loop the, the, the string around. It's like a weird, sad, his, his mouth. And then there was this moment where I was just like gently, like, rocking it, and then the tooth, like, comes out. And it was like the most gentle extraction possible. You didn't need a plier? I didn't need a plier, yeah, you know, and there's like this moment where he's just, he's, it's joy, right? It's pure joy, you know, and so, like, those moments of fatherhood, like, that feels great. You know, preparing a meal for him when he specifically wants something that I prepare for him in a way that he likes. You know, folding up his laundry, like all the details, teaching him a new skill set, you know, that isn't athletic, that isn't combative.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  It's not about, you know, the sports and, and just letting him be, you know, like I'm a big sports guy, you know, and, and it's, and, and the, the, the complex thing like now in the world of political correctness, right? It's like you can't say you like to see people's face pummeled on UFC and that you're also a kind, loving and gentle partner. But that's the truth of who I am. Like I love boxing, I love combat sports.

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  I love basketball, I love football and I get all the things associated with it, but I love it. You know, I love the crash them up, bang, bang, reality of, you know, I love cars with big engines and that guzzle way too much gas.

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  But I also love sitting, you know, present with my son and hugging him. Also love sitting in deep, beautiful conversations with my partner and receiving love.

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  You know, and those things don't have to be dissimilar.

• 1:11:23Lewis Howes?

  It's beautiful, man.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Lewis Howes?

  Now that you're, you know, a father, what are the three things you wish you had as a child growing up that you are giving to your kids and, and you want more parents to give? What are those three things that if you would have received, you think would have changed the course of your life in a different way?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  I think the three things that I think about most is complete and full access to healthy emotions as expressed by my parents.

• 1:12:07Lewis Howes?

  Like witnessing them have healthy emotions, modeling it?

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Witnessing them modeling it and then

• 1:12:13Lewis Howes?

  Being able to do it.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Being able to do it myself.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Safety, like the safety of emotional vulnerability from my parents.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  I wish the second thing would be the freedom to fully express all of my curiosity, all of my artistry, all of, you know, my emotions. And when I, when I think about that,

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  you know, I just think about, you know, my son

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  and how he's able to fully express himself. You know, he can wear Mitch Mack shoes, he can draw on his clothes. He can do pretty much whatever he wants to, he just has this freedom. I wish I had that freedom of expression. I think that's so important.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  And I would just say emotional and psychological safety. So one is like emotional modeling of, of vulnerability. But emotional and psychological safety to me for a child, I just think is the greatest gift that parents can give.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  You know, it creates deep, deep trust. It creates confidence. You know, it creates space for just like children to imagine all the things possible. And I see it with my son, like he's so confident.

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  In a way that's not like arrogant or cocky, which comes out of insecurities. Like he's confident because he's been able to just be free, you know?

• 1:14:03Lewis Howes?

  Challenges a lot of parents have kids and they haven't healed their wounds.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:14:07Lewis Howes?

  And so how do we teach or educate or empower new parents to do the work themselves, the inner healing work, the trauma work, the, the inner child?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:21Lewis Howes?

  You know?

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  It's tough, you know, it's it's tough because a lot of us become our parents in different ways. Uh, for bad or for for for good.

• 1:14:32Lewis Howes?

  And if you're traumatized and you weren't allowed to share emotions, then maybe you do the same, you repeat the pattern.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you you repeat the pattern. Um, and then there's cultural realities, right? Like, I grew up in, you know, you don't know, I'm like black, right?

• 1:14:45Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you are?

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  So, I grew up in in in an environment where, you know, corporal punishment is like a normal part of the conversation. You know, if you watch black comedians, they talk about, you know, getting whooped when they were when they were young, right? And we poke fun at it because that's what we kind of tend to laugh at our pain. Uh, some of the most difficult conversations I've ever had as a mentor is when I'm talking to parents about physical violence. Like, that's it's physically a violent thing to, you know, hit your child out of anger and frustration and, you know, your own insecurities and like all the things, right?

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  Um, so what I try to do is is create space for role reversal and and empathy. And sometimes it can be a little gnarly and, you know, hard to unpack those conversations. But, you know, I always just think about, you know, if we can get to a space of thinking, like, what did you need most as a child? What did you desire the most as a child? And then put yourself in your child's shoes, right? Um, and parenting is tough. Like, it's it's it's like complex, you know, it's like, you know, there are so many things we're thinking about all the time as parents, right? Are they safe? Are they fed? Did they do their homework? Did they go to this thing?

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Did they do they got good friends? Are they, you know, avoiding trouble? And a and a lot of times, it's rooted in our own experiences.

• 1:16:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:16:19Speaker 01

  So, just helping parents bring themselves to presence and just saying, hey, you know, detach your ego. You know, detach yourself from your trauma, um, and really give them space to just be, you know, who they're intended to be.

• 1:16:34Lewis Howes?

  If someone feel, talking about detaching from your ego or your past or your trauma, if someone feels like... Something's off inside, you know, they've been driven by anger or to prove or uh, cause they were picked on or, or didn't have the right support from their parents or the love that they wished they would have received or for whatever reason, they feel like inside, I don't feel inner peace and maybe they don't even know that they haven't, they don't need to let go of the past, right? Cause I didn't know this until I realized like my life is not working at a level and I'm still in pain. And I'm, and I'm sick and tired of feeling this inner pain. So instead of chasing things, I'm gonna like look within and start healing.

• 1:17:18Lewis Howes?

  What would you say would be the, the first three steps to take? If someone wants to let go and detach of their past and their traumas and start moving into peace?

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  I would say acknowledgement is the first thing, like you have to acknowledge it, you know, um, you know, you cannot fix what you're not willing to acknowledge is broken. Um, so acknowledgement is a big thing. Apology is a big thing.

• 1:17:47Lewis Howes?

  Apology to who?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  To self. Like, once you can acknowledge the ways that you've hurt yourself and the ways you've been hurt and the way that you've hurt others, like apologizing to self is powerful. Um, and then it's kind of atoning with yourself. Like, how do you become at one and how do you heal and get back to that space? And for me, what it looked like was like meditating was like one of the greatest gifts I've ever given myself, this ability to just kind of process and breathe and, and really exhale all this negative energy, right? Yeah, releasing it. And then it was the journaling, you know, which I, I consider meditation on paper.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Um, freeing up and liberating myself from old narratives and old hurtful and harmful things. And then, you know, that mindfulness practice, just bringing myself back to the moment. You know, and, you know, in the moment. You know, really being present with like, here's what's actually happened versus the story I'm telling myself and you know, and I talk about it in in Letters to the Sons of Society, there's this moment where I'm talking about the dread that comes with living in a, in a racialized culture, right? And you know, I've talked about police brutality, I've talked about all the things going on in the world and what I've realized is that

• 1:19:13Speaker 01

  a lot of times when we're having these conversations, we're having them from a source of pain. And it makes it hard for the other person to receive it because our pain, when we're filtering through pain, it comes across as angry and people just put up a wall, right? And sometimes we are angry and rightfully so. But there was a moment where I was up at about two or three in the morning and my puppy had got sick, he had pooped in the crate. And I'm out in the middle of the night, I'm in the new neighborhood, I hadn't been there long, you know, it's a pretty nice neighborhood in West LA. And it's three in the morning, so I got a hoodie on, I got jogging pants on, it's dark.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  And I'm out making all this noise because I'm cleaning up the crate and you gotta imagine at three in the morning, you just got woke up with dog poop. It's not the most gentle thing, you're banging things around. And I had this moment that was paralyzing. And I froze and I was like, what if my neighbors called the police?

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  Think you're doing something not supposed to do.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Think I'm doing something I'm not supposed to, when the police arrive, are they going to see a homeowner who's upset because he's cleaning puppy poop at three in the morning? Or are they gonna see a black guy in a hoodie? That looks to fit all the prototypes of what we see on TV? And that moment was so jarring. And it wasn't until I was like, able to bring myself to mindfulness, so you know, this isn't happening. I'm actually a homeowner in my backyard cleaning poop up. Everybody does it. You know, but it's like, that's what, one, living up under the cloak of an oppressive kinda idea.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  But two, that's what mindfulness does. It can get you dislodged from that paralyzing moment.

• 1:21:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Um, and so that's why it's such an integral part of my own journey and and it's really, you know, kinda gave me a competitive edge when I'm in a world of, whether it's in the world of business, whether it's some books, whether it's, you know, manifesting all the things that I believe that the universe has in abundance for me. That ability to shift out of self-defeating thoughts, out of negative narratives, um, out of ideas that don't serve me on the journey that I'm on and where I wanna go in life. Being able to bring myself to that moment and say, I'm actually sitting across from Lewis, having a great conversation.

• 1:21:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  As opposed to the ten other things that can potentially be running in the background.

• 1:21:46Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Like, that's powerful.

• 1:21:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, Shaka, is, uh, would you say that's the same process, these three steps to work, you know, the process of letting go of shame and guilt and the feeling that I'm a bad person for things I've done? Is that the same steps or how do you let go of shame and, and the the feeling like I'm a bad person? As opposed to, I did something bad versus I'm a bad person?

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's a great question. And the way that I think about it is the, the accumulative effect of living life, right? Like, we live through so many moments in our lives, right? And, you know, as a, as a person who navigates a world where data is always being processed and numbers are being crunched. You know, you think about the moments that we hold on to that are negative. They're usually minor by comparison to all the great and good moments we have.

• 1:22:44Lewis Howes?

  We fixate on those.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  We fixate on those things, right? Yeah, it's kind of like you have on a beautiful pristine white suit and it gets a little splash of mud on the heel. And you're obsessed over, over the cuff where the little splash at instead of the amazing suit that you have on, right? And for me, it's just like, understanding that once a moment has happened, it can, it's, it's not, no longer exists other than in your mind. Like the moments from, that I've lived through, those moments no longer exist. Those aren't moments I'm living in. I'm living in the, in the right now, right? So it's really like liberating yourself from old moments, you know, um, that have already happened. And I think sometimes we live in spaces that we don't control. Like you can't

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  control the past. The past has already happened. Like you can reflect on it, you can go back and, and attach some energy to the emotions or whatever the case may be, but you can't recreate. The moment has already passed. Um, and then the future hasn't arrived yet. You know, you could plan for it and think about what it'll look like and, and do everything in your power to manifest it. But you can't control it because it hasn't arrived yet.

• 1:23:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  You know, and I think all too often we're living into those, in those two worlds as opposed to like being centered in the right now. And so the way that I've helped, you know, free myself from those things is being present in the right now. And, you know, erasing that videotape, you know, of the past. You know, or at least putting it in the closet, unless it's necessary to bring out and express it in a way that's going to add value.

• 1:24:20Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. This is powerful stuff, man. I feel like we could talk for, for hours on this, but I want to be respectful of your time. You got a couple of amazing books. Um, this one we have in front of me is Letters to the Sons of Society. A Father's Invitation to Love, Honesty and Freedom. Um, were any of these letters that you wrote, or any of this that you wrote in, uh, in prison of the, in this book?

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  No, these are all letters I wrote during the imprisonment of the pandemic. So in our COVID, during our COVID, I call that my COVID baby. Um. You know, there was a lot going on in the world, you know, and a lot is going on since my first Mator release, um, nearly six, over six years ago, uh, Right in My Wrongs, I released that six years ago, and I've grown tremendously, you know, as a man, as a dad, you know, I took my time writing another book because I wanted, I only like to write when I have something to say.

• 1:25:15Lewis Howes?

  So that was six years ago, right?

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:17Lewis Howes?

  And this came out?

• 1:25:18Speaker 01

  In January.

• 1:25:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  This one came out in January.

• 1:25:20Lewis Howes?

  I've waited, my, my next book is five and a half years after my last book.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:24Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to, but I was like, I don't feel ready to, I don't feel like I have the right thing to say yet.

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:25:29Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to just put it out, just to put something out, so that's good.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that, and that's what it was with this book, you know, so much was happening in the world, you know, as a dad, you know, as a black man, you know, as someone who navigates the world of, you know, Hollywood and tech and then the neighborhoods, right? I have this very complex, you know, um, network of friends from every walk of life you can imagine, different races and genders and, uh, but I just have tons of great friends, right? And great people who inspire me and, and, you know, I was, I was really just thinking like, you know, what do I want to talk about?

• 1:26:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:08Speaker 01

  And then the world just started going berserk. And I was like, I gotta memorialize some of these moments, I gotta talk to my sons of society, I was really thinking broadly about, you know, kids I mentor, you know, people I work with in the world of hip hop and, you know, and I started writing, you know, down these ideas and I was like, you know, I'm just gonna write these letters to my two sons.

• 1:26:29Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  And because between my thirty year old son Jay, who grew up while I was in prison, my ten year old son who I'm raising now.

• 1:26:38Lewis Howes?

  Seku?

• 1:26:39Speaker 01

  All of my, yeah, Seku are all of my sons of society. Um, and so I started writing these letters, man, and, and they cover things that.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  We don't talk about as dads, you know, um, you talked about earlier about the freedom that came later on when you were able to talk about, you know, sexual abuse.

• 1:27:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  I write about my experiences growing up and being over-sexualized as a teenager and how that impacted relationships, you know. Um, you know, I talk about what it's like to bear witness to George Floyd's demise in this public spectacle, um, and what I want my sons to learn from that, you know. I talk about love, like, like how rich life is when you're able to fully access love and share love, you know, I talk about the affirmations that I do with my son, you know, and that I hope other dads adopt and emotional vulnerability, accessibility, um, you know,

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  success, you know, living your dream, building your dream, writing and expressing your dream, you know, so I get a chance to talk about all the things that excite me today as a dad, you know, and as a man, and, you know, what's interesting with this book is oftentimes, you know, people try to lump us into these categories, right, they're like, okay, this is a book for black dads, or this is a book for dads, it's like, it's a human story. I just happen to be a black dad, living in America, um, but what I have to say in this book is rooted in the human tapestry, you know, it's love, there's no colors to that. Um, it's vulnerability, there's no gender identity to that.

• 1:28:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  You know, it's healing, there's no class identity to that, you know, it's success. We all have the potential to dream as wide and as big as possible.

• 1:28:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  And to decide if we want to pursue those dreams, you know, so it's so universal in the messaging, I just happen to be expressed through the lens of me being a dad, you know, and raising, um, a ten-year-old son and, and, and the current realities and, you know, dreaming up what I hope, you know, this wisdom does for his life.

• 1:28:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man, inspiring stuff, man, really inspire what you're creating. I want people to get the book, I want them to follow you, um, you're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, all the places.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:07Lewis Howes?

  What's the place you hang out the most?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Ah, in social, in the social world, um,

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  I kind of like my throwback Facebook. Because I can write a little bit longer on that. I like to write, you know, notes, but I'm on IG. I'm on Twitter, Clubhouse, you know.

• 1:29:25Lewis Howes?

  You're still on there, huh?

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:27Lewis Howes?

  I got, I got there. You're still active in there. People are in there a lot?

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. You know, there's great conversations happening there, you know, so I'll pop in and.

• 1:29:36Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  You know, have a great conversation. So love that, that crew and, you know, LinkedIn, I'm on there as well. You know, figuring out that space, but yeah, I'm just, I'm there, you know, and everything is up under my name and website. All that stuff is all the same.

• 1:29:51Lewis Howes?

  It's shakasankor.com for your website where you can get all the books and content and information. What's the thing you're most excited about for the future?

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Man, I am, I am super excited about my current role as the head of sales and success for our company, Trip Axons. It is, it's kind of like, it brings all together, together all the things that I love, right? You know, I love working with talented people. I love working with people who just dream big and massive and just like, you know, we're gonna collaborate and we're just gonna work together to just build this new world and this new way of being in the world. Uh, and then I get a chance to tell stories and help my team become just the best storytellers that they're capable of. And like, to be entrusted with that responsibility is really affirming, you know.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  Um, quickly, I'll tell you this story I had in this conversation I had with our CEO, you know, who's a friend of mine. He's my friend of mine before I joined the company. And he always said to me, you know, he was like, you know, I want to see you just navigate the world based on your talent. Not based on your past. And he was like, you have so much to contribute to the world that has absolutely nothing to do with the time you serve. It's because of who you are as a person. And for us to partner years later and him ask me to join the company.

• 1:31:15Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty cool.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Because he believes I'm one of the best storytellers that he's ever met. And he's entrusted me with the sales team. I'm super excited about that, man. And it's a new role and we're having fun with it. We're building it in real time. I did the first sales training a couple of weeks ago and it was a big hit. With our leadership team and so I'm excited, man. I get a chance to utilize my skill sets in different ways. You know, I don't have to talk about my work in criminal justice, which is really important to me and work that I'll always do. But it's not all of who I am, you know, so as a writer, as a storyteller, to be able to use those skill sets to help build out the vision of our company. It's nothing more exciting right now.

• 1:31:57Lewis Howes?

  Living the dream, man.

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  Living the dream.

• 1:31:59Lewis Howes?

  Living the dream. I love this, man. I want people to get the book. Letters to the Sons of Society. Uh, make sure you guys get a couple of copies. Really inspiring letters in here. Make sure you guys check this out. Uh, I got a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths. So imagine, uh, it's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want.

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:19Lewis Howes?

  You get to accomplish and achieve and, uh, do everything you want to do. But eventually you gotta call it quits in this world, in this life. And for whatever reason, you gotta take all your work with you. All your book, your message, this interview, anything you put out in the world, it's gotta go with you. All your content. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true with the world. This is all we would have to remember of your information. Three lessons you would share with the world. What would you say are those three truths?

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  The three truths that I would share is love wins. That would be my number one. Love wins. The second truth would be, the universe is abundant. And every resource we will ever need to live the kind of life that we desire. And the third thing would be.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  To never settle for mediocrity when greatness is available.

• 1:33:24Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I would acknowledge you, Shaka, for your transformation. I think it's really easy for human beings to stay stuck in a past that they're used to. It's easy to stay in blame mode, in anger mode, in frustration, in lack of accountability, responsibility, right? It's easy to hold on to pain and shame. It's hard to shift into love, accountability, responsibility, apologizing, forgiveness, all these different things. It's hard to express your emotions in a vulnerable way. It's hard to do good consistently when you've been stuck in a, an environment, a past

• 1:34:09Lewis Howes?

  that didn't foster that. So I really acknowledge you for shifting while you're in prison and continuing to add value to yourself, to your family, and to the world by teaching, by inspiring, by creating, all the work that you do, man, it's really inspiring. And, and, and more people need to hear your message and be connected to your message because a lot of people are suffering and in pain. And I think, you know, I was telling you, my brother was in prison for four and a half years and there's a lot of suffering in prison, right?

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:42Lewis Howes?

  A lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of, a lot of stuff that goes down. And I witnessed part of this, right? I wasn't in jail, but I witnessed the pain that is caused to a family when someone is in jail.

• 1:34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Lewis Howes?

  I heard about all the crazy traumas and madness that happens in prison, right? The, the stuff that creates you more scared, you know, living in prison, more in fear with the different stuff going on in jail. So I really acknowledge you for learning how to shift out of that, learning how to heal. And there's a lot of people in the world who aren't in physical prison, but they're in emotional, mental prison, spiritual prison, and they're trapped. So I'm so grateful that you're teaching how to get out of that from the physical and the spiritual side point as well. And excited for what you're creating, man. It's really, really beautiful stuff.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for that. I truly receive that. And that really touched me, you know, and to be seen, you know. Oprah and I, we had a conversation one day and she said one of the greatest desires for human beings is to truly be seen.

• 1:35:50Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  And so thank you for that. That means a lot. And thank you for this incredible platform. Like, you know, I reached out to you and you just was like, hey, let's do it.

• 1:35:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, man.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  So I'm truly honored to be here. You know, I think that the work you're doing is so purposeful and so transformative. And to be a part of that journey with you now means a lot to me.

• 1:36:10Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, bro.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 1:36:12Lewis Howes?

  Of course, man. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  My definition of greatness is the ability to do something good over and over. You know, whatever that specific field of focus is, right? You know, when I think about Michael Jordan, I think about Kobe and LeBron and, you know, one of my favorite, Tom Brady, is like, that's what separates the great from the good. You know, anybody's playing pro sports, we know they're good, they're pros, right? But the greats have the ability to execute over and over and whatever that is. Execute kindness, execute, you know, whatever success metrics you're using. But the ability to just show up over and over again, to me, that's like greatness.

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  You know, when I think about being a great dad is because I know every day consistently, I'm going to show up in the best way possible as a dad. And I'm gonna do it over and over. It's not going to be a one-off. So when I think of greatness, I think of repeated goodness.

• 1:37:13Lewis Howes?

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