How To STOP Seeking Validation & START Defining Your Life By What Matters w/Van Lathan EP 1260

Today's guest is Van Lathan. He's a producer, media personality and host. He’s most recognized from TMZ, where he worked as Senior Producer for nine years. He's written a new book called ‘Fat, Crazy & Tired’ which hilariously documents his journey with weight loss and anxiety, and explores the real reasons behind our unending physical and mental health battles. In this episode, you will learn:How to make sure you’re defining your life by the right things. How to be ready for an opportunity that’ll change your career. How to begin loving yourself more. Why we have to stop seeking validation. For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1260Get Van's book: Fat, Crazy & TiredDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-podMel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Disagreements are incredibly valuable, but when you have resentment in your heart, disagreements are not disagreements, they're declaration of war. You don't win, I don't win, we win. But we have to be accepting of one another. And when I say accepting, I mean.

• 0:16Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:40Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to start by asking this question. We just got to chat and catch up for the last hour almost, which has been fun. You've had an amazing last few years. I mean, some beautiful things have happened, some also tragedies and challenges have happened. And I want to start by asking you this, on a scale of one to 10, of self-love, peace and freedom, 10 being you have incredible self-love for yourself, 100% freedom and peace internally, externally, one being you feel trapped in a prisoner of everything in the world, and you have no self-love. Where would you be on a scale from one to 10 right now?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  I could choose any number, right?

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  Any number from one to 10, where do you feel right now?

• 1:20Speaker 00

  Seven.

• 1:21Lewis Howes?

  Seven?

• 1:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, seven.

• 1:22Lewis Howes?

  What's missing for you to be an eight, nine or 10?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Three different answers to that, right? One is I have never in my life felt comfortable with my body. Doesn't matter. I can show you a picture right now of me standing up,

• 1:40Speaker 00

  shoulders popping out, biceps bolt jacked, ready to go, shredded, right? And I'm taking the picture in a dressing room of a Zara.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  And the reason why I'm taking the picture is because I'm sending it to Kalika to ask her if I look fat in what I'm wearing.

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:58Speaker 00

  So, growing up and like always having issues with my weight, I've never ever ever just felt comfortable. Um, doesn't matter, and I've been in such great shape, man. I've been in shape. There was a point where I was doing four hundred pushups a day. While I was going to the gym, playing basketball, boxing. I still very, very active. I box every morning. I've never been a shirt off at the beach guy. I've never been just, hey, we're hanging out. So, that's something, learning how to like be completely free and at peace with who I am. You know what I mean? It's still something that I'm working towards even at forty-two. Um, also, I personally feel like there's gonna be a point in my life where I'm in control of my talent.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  Meaning that I dictate sort of, uh, the rhythms and steps that need to happen in my career because that's what I want to do. Um, a lot of people would say, oh, he's just talking about not having a job. And I'm not talking about not having a job. I'm talking about to where there's a group of people in my orbit that make sure I have all the little delicacies I need just to sit back and create. You know what I mean?

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  I'm talking about like, you know, your dates are ready. You know, like your, your, your, your cashews are nicely worn.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I get up and I write all day and I'm producing and inspiring people. And not that I don't have any problems or responsibilities, just that I've cleared out all the cobwebs in my life to where I can be purely focused on creation and problem solving and solution building. And I'm not there yet. I'm getting close to that.

• 3:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What would you need in order for that to happen? Is it an amount of money in the bank? Is it an amount of accomplishments? Is it letting go of certain things? Is it projects concluding at certain points?

• 3:43Speaker 00

  It's understanding what that really, what it takes to build that.

• 3:45Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Which, right now, I understand that I'm closer to it than I was before, but I have to be a little bit more intentional about it now.

• 3:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Now, and, and now I need to understand where I need to be living, like what people I need to surround myself with. Uh, what I need to let go of. Letting go is incredibly difficult. Because if, right now, I make my money with my mouth. Talk, talk, talk all day long. Talk, talk, talk all day long. Sometimes that's less than fulfilling. Like you say so many words, you end up kind of sometimes filling the air with regret sometimes. And with things that you didn't mean to say, or with things that came out wrong.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  So, so, so for me, I think the intentionality that I want for my life is going to have to come with a certain amount of financial freedom. Because that gives me the space to like really sit in my thoughts.

• 4:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. What's the number one thing you feel like you need to let go of?

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Doubt.

• 4:46Lewis Howes?

  What do you doubt the most?

• 4:48Speaker 00

  If you're asking me seriously, what I doubt is that I belong here.

• 4:52Lewis Howes?

  Belong where?

• 4:53Speaker 00

  Where I'm at. I don't see anything special about myself, if I'm being real. Uh, like, I, it, it feels like this, so, what happened, what happened to me was, was working at TMZ. Kanye West comes into the room, me and Kanye have this moment, right?

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  And then all of a sudden you.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Things change.

• 5:13Lewis Howes?

  Take off.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  Boom, right?

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  This was what, four years ago?

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Four years ago, right?

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  And, and you were at TMZ for how long at that point?

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Uh, seven years.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  Seven years, senior producer, producing shows.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Producing shows.

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  So you were on TMZ as talent, I guess. Every day?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Every day, three times a day.

• 5:30Lewis Howes?

  But it was like thirty people at the same time, it was like the newsroom.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  Right, well, there were a couple of different shows, so there was TMZ on television where it's everybody on there. Then there was TMZ Live where it's Harvey and Charles, I would sometimes host that show. Uh, but then there was TMZ Sports where it was me and Evan, and we would co-host the show.

• 5:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  I think when you visited, we were doing TMZ Sports, you had a chance to meet Evan and Harvey and everyone. And so, uh, I'm, I'm doing all of these things, and really in that little ecosystem, I'm the man, right? So, and I'm feeling good about that, you know what I think about? I think about what happens if Kanye never walks into the room?

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  Where would you be?

• 6:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, what then? So he comes into the room, we have this moment, everyone then sort of goes, hey, this guy's talented, this. And I get a chance to display all of these things to different people, I mean, great.

• 6:18Lewis Howes?

  After seven years of.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  After seven years of doing basically the same thing every day and putting on every day and proving myself there. One moment changes it, and I think to myself, if that never happens, then what happens to me?

• 6:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  And, and.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  It's a weird way to look at life because it did happen, right? And a moment came and I met the moment, but.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  And you stood up and you said something and you shared an opinion.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, and that's in my character to do, but it didn't have to happen, right? And when something, when a career comes from something, that's not where my career came from. I was prepared for that moment. But when you look at all of these steps that happened along the way, all of these things that happened. Sometimes I put it together and the more you give it to luck, the more you say, hey, there are some fortunate things that happen. Cause I look at people all the time and I go, these people are brilliant. These people are absolutely one of a kind.

• 7:16Lewis Howes?

  Talented, unique.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Talented, unique. It's sometimes hard to to think of yourself as somebody that uh whose opinion matters or people want to hear from, where people need a book from. And some, when you're writing something sometimes or when you're going through something sometimes, no matter what comes from it, you think huh.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  Like what if, like what is really inside of me? That makes me think that I should be telling people anything. And I think that's something, and I think sometimes being where I'm from, uh, coming from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Growing up in the neighborhood that I grew up in, I think imposter syndrome is sometimes something that a lot of people have to have to kind of get through because the most talented people I've known growing up. A lot of them didn't make it out of Baton Rouge.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  They did not make it and they were quote unquote more talented than you.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  They were, I've known beautiful, amazing, super smart, whip smart. Uh, the funniest people, um, I've known the most talented athletes all get caught up. Like people that just walk into a room and everybody goes, oh my God, she's here, oh my God, he's here. Makes everybody feel better and just like a Tiffany or a Kevin or any of these people times 10 and it just.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  You eat up reading about them.

• 8:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  And sometimes when that happens, you think of all the people like I'm in L A doing my thing. And I haven't made it to where I wanna to where I wanna be yet. I still got a lot of more work to do. But sometimes I think I have to be, I have to be comfortable that I'm maximizing the gifts that God gave me.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  And that wherever I go is, uh, that I gave it my best shot. Meaning I don't want anything more than what my talent guarantees me. So I don't wanna get anything just because I was in the right place at the right time. Like, I don't wanna get anything just because I know the right person, even though that's a very popular refrain in Los Angeles. I wanna get the maximum amount that my talent allows me to have.

• 9:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  And I don't wanna get once in till or less, but I don't wanna get once in till or more, because I feel weird about it.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like that limits you from what's potentially could come your way?

• 9:35Speaker 00

  Sometimes.

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  Like, sometimes, like, when we first hooked, like, when we first hooked up, I was trying, I was thinking, like, what's this guy's game? Because, because I really was, I was thinking, I was thinking, because we, we started talking, like, and then you came out to the office, way out to Playa Vista.

• 9:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  You walk in there and you're looking around and everybody's like, I remember people, was that, was? I'm like, yeah, yeah, come meet him. And it was, it was like a whole deal. I was like, like, why would somebody be like, sort of that open, um, and that interested? And even you gave me, this was the first time we met, this book, you gave me advice on it. This is four years ago.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  So, I don't know, man, it was just kind of, um, it's just kind of sometimes a thing to where, like, even on this show, I'm hosting a television show right now, and I ask people how I'm doing, and they'll be like, Jesus, like, you're doing really well. And I'm like, really? Because I don't feel like I'm nailing it.

• 10:31Lewis Howes?

  You're asking other people, how do you think I'm doing?

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  Why do you feel like you have the need to ask people, hey, how do you think I'm showing up or doing?

• 10:38Speaker 00

  Because I think.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  You want the validation, you wanna feel like you're in the right place?

• 10:41Speaker 00

  Well, and we'll talk about this later. So I recently lost my father and.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  I don't mean to come off like I am not confident in who I am. I'm very confident in who I am. I'm more confident in things that are like, if we get to play in sports, if we boxing in the ring, I know when I hit you.

• 11:02Lewis Howes?

  Dude, you should come to boxing with me. I do it twice a week.

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Where you boxing?

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  I just got a private trainer that I do one on one with.

• 11:08Speaker 00

  Oh, for real?

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, we do no sparring in the head, though. It's just body sparring and fun, so.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:13Lewis Howes?

  Just come out.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  I will definitely will.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  It'll be fun.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, see what's up. So, I know when I hit somebody. When I'm playing ball, I know when I scored. I can feel it, it's there, there's nothing you can say.

• 11:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Like, I just scored on you. I run back down to see what you can do. Let's get it, you know what I mean? I know it. All this other thing is up for interpretation. We made a movie, it won an Oscar, some people hated it. Who's right? You know what I mean? And you can live your life in that. You can live your life in that thing of, I just did this thing. Am I gonna be defined by who loves it? Or am I gonna be defined by who hated it? Or I'm gonna be defined by the thing itself? And sometimes it's hard to readjust that. And for me, a lot of that comes from, you know, the fact that my father, who passed away this past July, was this indomitable Superman.

• 12:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:06Speaker 00

  Louis, he was amazing.

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  He was like a, I'll tell you a little quick story, so like, my dad's from Maryland, Louisiana, population eighteen hundred, something like that, across the river. Baton Rouge is here, you go west across the Mississippi River, about thirty minutes, you're in Maryland, very, very small town, very small town. Mostly black, mostly farmers, sugarcane, whatever you want. Hunting, fishing, all of that. My dad was a man's man, horseback rider. He could, he could, there's literally a story of an uncle at one of our family get togethers, drinking too much, he's got a Hennessy bottle in his hand, everybody was laughing at him, like, put the Hennessy down, and all of a sudden the bottle yanks out of his hand, and you see on the other, the other side a guy pulling the bottle.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  My father had thrown the lariat.

• 12:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow, lassoed it.

• 12:56Speaker 00

  Lassoed, like, lassoed it out of his hand, you know? It's easier than you think it is.

• 13:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Especially if the guy's drunk. But, um, but yeah, so he was that kind of man. One day, we were all inside the crib. There's a big old wasp in the house, right? Big ol' wasp, big country wasp, big Louisiana wasp. And me and my boys are like, we're in there, we're like, oh, man. I was, don't let it get you, don't let it get you. My dad walks in, he goes.

• 13:21Lewis Howes?

  Dang.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Ya all right?

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Jeez.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  And then later on, I look at his hand, and it's a big welt. It's not like it didn't sting, just sometimes you gotta kill the wasp.

• 13:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:32Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And my whole life, I spent it trying to make him look at me the way I looked at him. I tried to overachieve sometimes. You know what I mean? Um, I tried to defy him because nobody could tell him what to do. And I would figure the only person that he would respect is somebody who he couldn't tell what to do.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:58Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So, um, but more than anything, I tried to hold myself to the mythical standard that I held him to.

• 14:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:07Speaker 00

  Which is, had to be the best, had to be this. Um, and then at one point in my life, I felt like I realized that it was impossible. So I stopped holding myself to any standard. That's when, after college, my weight ballooned up to three hundred and seventy pounds. That's when I was just hanging out. That's when I almost used, uh, the inability of myself to achieve. Or the fact that, or my sloveness, or whatever you wanna say, or whatever, my shiftlessness, my lack of direction to antagonize him.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  To make him see me as what, uh, as what he actually wasn't. I think part of that is now that he's gone, or even before he was gone, I'm still searching for that validation, but from other places.

• 14:54Lewis Howes?

  So you were searching for validation from him?

• 14:56Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 14:57Lewis Howes?

  And now that he's gone, do you ever feel like you got validation from him?

• 15:00Speaker 00

  No.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  He didn't know, he didn't know how to do that. Hmm, didn't matter what you did. You win an Oscar, he's not gonna Oh. validate you. Won the Oscar, he get a call? My dad's a great guy. He was a great, he was a great guy. Just his way. You know what I mean? Won the Oscar, get a call? Um, boy? Yes, sir. Boy, I'm forty one. Um, or I think forty at that point. Boy, yes, sir. What, what people keep telling me about some award that you won?

• 15:34Speaker 00

  I was like, oh, yeah, so my company, we won an Academy Award. That's the highest honor in cinema, in film. So what you did for it? We made a movie. Hmm. And we won. He's like, oh, okay, it's like a short film, thirty minutes long. He's like, well, why people keep calling me about it? Well, they're probably calling you cuz it's a pretty amazing thing. It's a big deal. You know what I mean? And they wanna know what you think about it? Mm-hmm. He was oblivious to it. Wow. You see if I'd, see if I had killed a ten point buck and field dressing, which I've done before, and then, and brought him the, some backstrap or ground him up into some sausage, that's something he would have appreciated more. Hmm. You know, you know what I mean?

• 16:17Speaker 00

  He was, it was impossible for him to validate anyone because nothing meant anything to him. There was like three things that would matter. If I had been drafted first in the NFL, that might have worked for a little while because if I had a bad game. It'd be on you. Right, right. So there was, he didn't, he's not the type of man that believed in validation because to validate was to be complacent. Uh-huh. And so what he wanted you to do was to continue to strive. To him, pressure made diamonds. Mm-hmm. And like, he'd tell me all the time, he'd be like, I need you to be more concerned and more afraid of me.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  Then you are of what's going on in the streets because I can't have you listening to them.

• 17:05Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  So they ask you to do something, you gotta be able to be, I know you'll be scared, you gotta be able to say no to them. Because you're afraid of me.

• 17:13Lewis Howes?

  True.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  So our relationship was based on, if you ask me, him trying to keep me alive. And him pushing me to be something that it became apparent after a while that I wasn't, you know. He, they showed me Star Wars and then a, a year later, he's like, you're too obsessed with Star Wars. Like it's just a movie, like you don't need ten books. T-shirts.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:36Speaker 00

  And all of that stuff, like you're too obsessed with it, so like you gotta learn what's real and what's not, and I was like. Nope. Going to Tatooine. You know what I mean? I was just, that's kind of who I was. And so, I think, for me now.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  The unanswered question of who I am has a lot to do with the fact that I never really got a chance to define it. With the one person whose opinion mattered to me. You know? And he never considered things in that way. Action, reaction, responsibility. Action, reaction, responsibility. This is my family, this is my son.

• 18:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  I'm gonna make him, I'm gonna make him, I'm gonna make him a man that everyone, uh. I'm gonna make him a man that. Everybody fears and respects.

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Because I'm a man that everybody fears and respects. And if he's not a man that everybody fears and respects, then he's not the type of man that I am. And, nobody's afraid of me, and I don't want them to be.

• 18:39Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:41Lewis Howes?

  People like you.

• 18:43Lewis Howes?

  What do you, why do you think it's, uh, in general for a lot of people, the need to be validated by? Parents, or people in general, why do you think there's a need to be validated in order to feel like we belong or fit in or we're good enough?

• 18:57Speaker 00

  Because a lot of times I think, so society is full of these little treaties. Right, like these little bitty treaties, like right now, me and you are in an agreement. The agreement is that you'll sit on your side of the table and I'll sit on my side of the table. We did that just like, like instinctively.

• 19:14Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  Because we need this conversation to go in a certain way. We, you need to ask questions, I need to answer questions, and we need to do. If I come right now, out of no, out of no reason, and just sit on your lap, or try to get up and move you out of your seat, and make you sit in my seat, and don't give any explanation why, you're gonna be like, society's full of all these little things that we do, um, because we're supposed to do them to make things go along at a place that, that, that works, right? And I think the only people sometimes that we don't make those treaties with, or we make them too late with, are our parents. Our parents don't, or at least in my culture, where I'm from. Um, where I'm from, I made no agreements with my parents. All I got was directives.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  And because I, I got those directives from them, I learned to look at them as more of symbols for things than actual people. Right? So it was hard for my dad to validate me because I don't know enough about him. I don't know what even his, I don't even know what validation would mean coming from him. I don't know how he does that. Like, even when he died, I thought about myself, it's like I would say, people would ask me, what happened, I would say, my father died. I would never say Van Lathan Senior died. I would center him in the way that I know him. Which is as my dad.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Which makes sense to do, that's the definition of who he is, but if I looked at his life in its totality, I might understand what's going on. So looking for validation from something that you truly don't understand is a losing game.

• 20:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  And I, I often wonder how much we understand our parents sometimes. How much we understand what their goals and dreams and aspirations for us are. Because they normally don't have to do with who we are. They normally have to do with what they think success, and what they think being a well-adjusted member of society is, right? So when I meet you, in a lot of ways, I give you more grace than I gave my dad.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  Mm.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  I give you more grace than I gave my mom. In many ways, you give me more grace than they gave me.

• 21:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Right? Because the rea-, because the reality is, it's like, okay, we have to make this work. Being that we have to make this situation right here work. You're gonna do what you need to do and I need to do what I need to do.

• 21:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Now, we think in our society that we don't do that that much, but we do it all the time. We get on the bus, everybody sits in the seat that they're supposed to do.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:37Speaker 00

  Like you go to the bank, you speak to the woman in a certain way. She speaks back or he speaks back. And all of these things that we do, we do them so that we just make it, can make it to the next thing. When your mom calls, that's different.

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  Right, when you're, well like, when, when your mom calls, okay, make complete space for mom right now. Mom has a million things that she wants to talk about. Mom, you can't, I, I can't tell my mom sometimes, yo, it's draining to hear about everybody who passed away. I can't, I can't, I can't be like, it's like, you know, I didn't die. I'm like, well, I can't handle anymore. I can't tell her, that's my mother. And, and so, our relationship isn't based upon any real give and take. It's based upon me understanding what she needs from me. And I think that's kind of the situation sometimes with not just our parents, but with other people in our lives.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  Like, when you have a relationship that's based upon making sure that someone knows, making sure you know what someone needs you to be or needs you to do. It's hard to sometimes be yourself or understand what they have to say.

• 22:43Lewis Howes?

  What do you feel like validation would have looked like for you, from him?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Everything that my dad was interested in, I became interested in it.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Louis, I can shoot, I can hunt, I can ride, you know what I mean? I can pour concrete, I can do all of that. He never took the time, like, to.

• 23:06Lewis Howes?

  To ask questions or be curious or?

• 23:08Speaker 00

  It was just always something else I could be doing.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Like, it was just always something else I could be doing, always something else I could be doing. Always like a incredible, incredibly strong man, a protector, a responsible, loving father in his way. But I would have wanted just, hey, who is that character right there? Oh dad, that's Magneto. What can he do?

• 23:33Lewis Howes?

  Tell me more about your interests, yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Do you feel like you got to have any healing conversations with him before he passed, or?

• 23:41Speaker 00

  One.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  What happened?

• 23:43Speaker 00

  So, I hunted all the way up, I hunted pretty hard all the way up about, uh, till about, I'd say seventeen.

• 23:53Speaker 00

  After seventeen, I love to eat it all. Whatever you put in front of me, if it's rabbit, if it's deer. Hey, look, there's something called deer sauce picante. You take the back strap of the deer, the meat along the deer spine, make a gravy, put it over some rice. Oh my god, venison is the best thing you can possibly eat. I love it. All of that stuff, like, you know, some of my relatives in Louisiana get a little crazy with it. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Some of them like to eat some wildcat. Oh, no, no. Some of them like to eat a little coon, but if we're talking rabbit, if we're talking deer, Louis, even some squirrel. I'm not, I'm not bad off some squirrel. You ain't mad at it, yeah. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not mad at some squirrel. Y'all never had squirrel before. Squirrel is bomb. But one day we're rabbit hunting.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Rabbit hunting is fun because when you see these things and they get like parallel to the, it's like, he's gone, he's gone. And you barely have time to think about it. It's like, whoa, boom. And then that's that, right? It's not the way this rabbit came out. Came out, boom, boom, and he stopped. And the rabbit stopped and I did, I went.

• 24:56Speaker 00

  Right in front of you, just waited. For, but literally, I'd say no more. I had a twenty gauge, so the range is not crazy. I'd say no more, maybe ten feet. He's dead. Gone. He's dead. We are eating tonight. He is dead. The rabbit stops. And I'm like.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  And I looked at the rabbit and I'm like, a living thing. Right, right. Looking up at you. Yeah, like, living thing. And I guess he went. All right, well, I didn't do anything. I gotta get back to what I was doing. Hopped in the thicket, moving very slowly and deliberately, and goes back into the, um, into the other side, right? It's clear. Father comes out. Dogs come out, my dogs run through. Dogs sniff where the rabbit was. The dogs are always gonna tell on you, always. The dogs are snitches. They're gonna tell on you. They're gonna sniff right where the rabbit went. These are six beagles. This is what they're made for. They're gonna sniff right where the rabbit went. Then they're gonna hop into the other side of the thicket, right? So they do that. My dad comes out, he goes, he's like, did you, you didn't see the rabbit? I was like, no. I was like, maybe my back was turned. He's like, why would your back be turned?

• 26:02Speaker 00

  Right. I told you. Where this rabbit was gonna come out. If I told you to look this way, he was gonna pop out right there. Why would you be looking the other way? And I was like, I don't know, maybe I I heard, maybe I turned around. He's like, well, did you turn around? I was like, I turned around at some point. And he and he was like, so you didn't see that rabbit? I'm like, no. He goes, huh. Dogs go back in. You move up, right? Didn't kill anything that day. I never told him that. Wow. But I never told him that. I never told him. I never told him that I actually saw the rabbit. So you held the lie until? For one day. My father passes.

• 26:45Speaker 00

  July fourth, twenty twenty one. This must have been March. Twenty twenty one. Twenty twenty one. This must have been March. Hmm. Shout out to Coley Williams, my therapist. Hmm. Um, this must have been March. Calls me up randomly, going on and on and on about something. Nothing to do with anything. And I go, you know, I didn't shoot that rabbit. You just said that randomly? I sw- I promise you. And he goes, he goes, what? This is twenty years, twenty three year, twenty four years later? Longer, maybe. Like, like, I'm like, you know, I didn't shoot that rabbit. No context. No content, no context. He goes, what? I'm like, and I retell him the story.

• 27:29Speaker 00

  He goes, yeah, I remember that. It's like, you wouldn't come hunting after that? And I was like, yeah, yeah. It's like, I saw the rabbit that day. And I didn't show him. I didn't shoot him. He goes, I know. He's like, what'd you think? And he starts laughing. He's like, I know you saw him. It's like, I know you saw him. I know he came right there. He's like, you think the dog's gonna lie? Like, we had this this hunt dog. His name was Boy. He was the best hunt dog ever. He was an animal. He was obviously an animal. He's a dog. But he was like a, just the most relentless hunter you have ever seen. Like, he lived for it. Beautiful, beautiful beagle. Athletic, just loved to hunt. He's like, boy, stop and sniff that patch right there.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  For literally a minute, and then got on in the thicket. I know you seen him. You had to have seen him. And he was like, why'd you lie? I was like, he froze me. Like, I couldn't shoot. And my father goes, you think that's never happened to me before? He goes, the most beautiful deer I've ever seen in my life, I couldn't kill him. Wow. He was like, and he told me this whole story about how he was out past Big Papa's. And he was coming back from a hunt. He had gotten off of his stand. Mm-hmm. And he was coming back from a hunt. He's coming back from a hunt, he's making his way to his three wheeler. And in a field open. He just sees a buck. And the buck turns and looks, and my dad, my dad goes, his neck and everything.

• 28:59Speaker 00

  And right there, I had him. But it seemed like I shouldn't shoot him because I was out of my stand. And I'm looking at him, wide open in the field. It looked like a deer picture, like a painting he said, and I didn't do it. I was, so this is the thing sometimes, I was too ashamed to tell him that I couldn't do that. Because I thought he was a killer and I thought I was a coward. Wow. So after holding all of that, and my therapist had said, maybe you should talk to him about that. After holding all of that, I ended up telling him. That made me think. Have I underestimated him? Like, this idea of him, have I conjured this? Mm-hmm.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  Like, what about this is real? And what about this is me doing the same thing that I've always done, which is make up powerful characters? Sure, sure, sure. Sometimes for writing, other times in my real life. And we laughed about it. He said, number one, it's definitely happened to me. Wow. He, and then he goes, he goes, number two, he's like, I'm your father, I know when you lying. I know everything. Yeah, he's like, he's like, he's like, I know, I'm like, I know when you lying, I'm your daddy. Yeah, wow. He was like, yeah, that's something else. And then the conversation changed, like, you know, they even got them woods no more. Like building up everything, and then so he went off on a tangent, like taking away all of our woods, we can't hunt no more, so, but.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  As stupid as that sounds, that felt good, man.

• 30:30Lewis Howes?

  That was a healing moment.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, that felt good. We didn't get many of them. Um, cause most conversations seemed like they had to be on his terms, but that felt good. That it, that felt good. And at the same time, it was a little sad because I wondered if I was started missing hunts because of that moment. I didn't know at that particular time, that as much as I loved to do that as a kid, that just wasn't a lifestyle for me. That wasn't like, I wasn't that into that. To his dying day, deer a- antlers to rattle with, camouflage stuff, Bowie knives, different scopes, three or four different um, uh caliber rifle. He had his bow. That was.

• 31:14Lewis Howes?

  He loved it.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Loved it. A bloodthirsty Louisiana hunter. You know what I mean? And that just wasn't me. It was cool. But we was doing that on Saturday, bro, and it was college football on.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Like, we was like, we was doing that on Sunday and the Saints would be on.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So like, it, it was like, like for me, it, it wasn't, it, it wasn't that type of deal. And I think in a way, I felt ashamed about that. And I felt like that would other me to him.

• 31:44Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting. Do you feel like you got to share everything with him you wanted to or heal everything else or?

• 31:51Speaker 00

  Not really. I mean, aspects of him and my mother's relationship just were off limits to talk about.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Really? With him?

• 31:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:58Lewis Howes?

  Were they married until his passing?

• 32:00Speaker 00

  They divorced in, I think around two thousand three.

• 32:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 00

  So aspects of, of, of him and my mother's relationship, things that might help me, you know, were off limits to discuss.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Um, there were some revelations about other stuff that came out after he died.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 32:19Speaker 00

  Um, and so obviously, you know, there were things like that, that he would never discuss with me. He would never discuss any other family members I might have. Or uh, anything like that.

• 32:31Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 32:31Speaker 00

  Until after he was gone. So it felt also kinda interesting that some of those secrets he took to his grave.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Rather than let me in on them. Um, but all of this stuff, to be honest with you, it's cathartic talking about it just because.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  There's nothing that can change the love that I have for this man. This man was like a... The other kids' dads looked up to him.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Oh, interesting.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  Imagine you're there. Imagine you're there with your friend's father. And your friend are dropping you off from basketball practice. They're dropping you off from basketball practice. And all of a sudden, your dad walks by with a deer on his back.

• 33:16Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty epic.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? Hey, how y'all doing? Yeah, okay, cool. Boy, uh, come back here. We about to get him right. Okay, I'll be there in a second.

• 33:27Lewis Howes?

  Skin him, yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  Skin him, the whole nine. And then mom's gonna take him apart and cook him, like, Jesus. And then like you, then your father, then your friend's father stands there and watches you and your dad prepare the deer.

• 33:39Lewis Howes?

  In awe.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  In awe.

• 33:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  And that was who he was, like that. And so, um... It, but there were just other parts of it that, you know, you feel like you didn't really have access to.

• 33:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I hear you. Some unavailable emotional parts. You talk about in your book, Fat, Crazy, and Tired, Tales From the Trenches of Transformation, about kind of anxiety, shame, and insecurities, things like that. Where do you think was the root of the insecurities and shame and guilt that you had? That might have been part of the cause that led to, you know, the overeating, the obesity, all these different things that you piled on?

• 34:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Um, like, food is...

• 34:22Speaker 00

  Food is a very devious ally.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  It can save your life, or it can kill your life?

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Food is a cagey ally. Food never tells you no. But what you don't realize until you get older and is in your life, you have to be told no. And you have to tell yourself no. Like, right now, if I want to leave here... And go to Jack in the Box? Jack in the Box is ready to have me. That's my open arms. Tasty. Tasty, right? So, sometimes in spots in your life where you don't feel accepted by anyone else, you know that there's one thing there that'll always make you feel good. Food. I would go to Bennigan's, right? You know Bennigan's at all? You ever heard of it? Just the southern restaurant? Irish pub. Irish pub? It's like Irish type of restaurant. No one remembers Bennigan's now. I hope Mr. Bennigan and his family are doing okay.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Uh, so it was like an Irish type of pub, right? So I worked at Best Buy, store four ninety-five, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Shout out to Best Buy store four ninety-five. My formative college years. So after I would leave the Best Buy, I would always go to Bennigan's. Always. And I would get, Bennigan's had these gigantic chicken tenders. You know how you get chicken tenders sometimes? It's like eight tenders. But you know how sometimes you go to a restaurant and it's like four? Because they're huge. Massive. Massive. So I would get the chicken tenders, big chicken tenders, and I would get loaded mashed potatoes and fries. Going nuts. Sounds good, man. Lot of fun. And I had this trick that I would do. I would also want a dessert.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  But I didn't wanna make the people at the Bennigan's feel like I was piling on too much. So this is what I would do. I would call, make a fake call. Pick up the phone and be like, "Hey Louis, hey, what's up, man? Yeah, I'm just at Bennigan's, you want something? Oh, you said you want the double chocolate fudge brownie à la mode. Okay, cool. Y'all got the double chocolate fudge brownie? Yeah. Are you, uh, what else you want? Want anything else? Shake, oh. Okay, cool. All right, dough, bet, cool. Uh, can you add a, a, a chocolate fudge brownie and a thing there? And I would get that, I would get that whole thing home and... Wow. There was a moment right before, cause the more you eat it, the more you eat of it, the worse you feel.

• 36:41Speaker 00

  Right, right. So there's like a, so there's like a moment right before where you're looking at all of this and you go, man, this is about to be good. Mm-hmm. And then you take a couple of bites and you're like, oh, and then you get to the point, there's a point in a meal that big where you go. I'm sick. I'm sick. Yeah. Or then you go, should I finish this? I should probably not finish this. But you can't stop like, like you have to finish, right? So I would do this all the time. One time I'm leaving the Best Buy and I look over at the parking lot and

• 37:14Speaker 00

  there's only one car in the Bingham's parking lot. It's obvious that Bingham's is close. Obvious. I was working a holiday shift. Hmm. And it was so hectic inside of Best Buy that I had forgotten. Maybe they can open up. Maybe they can make a shake for me, make some fries. Maybe there's somebody in there that can still cut the grill on and I can get some chicken tenders. Some fries and chicken tenders. We can do something. So I literally go, I drive over there in my car, one parking lot and thing, and I'm literally looking through. Hey, is anyone in there? I never forget this, never. I go back, I get in the car and I cried. Oh. Like I was in a relationship with food.

• 37:58Speaker 00

  I didn't have a relationship with food. I was in a relationship with food. Uh-huh. This was the time when I felt my utmost undesirable. How big were you then? Probably around three hundred and seventy pounds. Dang, how old were you? Uh, I'd say twenty-four. Dang. Um, so I felt at my undesirable, my undesirable, I was just out of college. I didn't know what I was doing. I was literally at, at, uh, the crib. My mom had moved out of the house. The minute my mom moved out of the house, the house started falling apart. Hmm. Because having, I don't mean to be, I know people getting mad at me about being heteronormative or anything like that. I'm just telling you how I grew up.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  There are things in that home that only she could see. That only a lady who was taking care of her home could see. When my mother left that home, there were two men in there. Two men in there who didn't need to see when certain things needed to be fixed or taken care of. Two men in there who didn't see when something was kind of going wrong. When the, when the washing machine was making a certain noise. When somebody need to go out there and power wash. Even if these weren't things that she was doing, these were things that where she would look at it. And just the spirit and the beauty of a home. Waking up, going to work, going to sleep. Like running ladies, running ladies throughout there, just like, just it was falling apart without her, right? It literally was.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Um, and so, like, all of that stuff in my life was just coming to a head. I'd be in there, the days I didn't work, I would stay in there and play Madden all day long with my cousin. Drink, minute made, whatever, the whole nine. Like, that's, that's all we're doing, and go, go back and forth to work. Just nothing else going on in my life. I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know who I wanted to be. I didn't know, uh, e- exactly where I was going to go. And food was always there for me. Food was always there for me, always there for me. And when I wasn't, I felt rejected by it, even though it was just that the store was closed.

• 39:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  And actually, in that moment, like, something weird about me is I remember all of these seminal moments in my life that kind of, in that moment, because I always laugh at this stuff, I go, "Bro, you got a problem, bro." Like, I'm looking, I'm like, I'm laughing, I'm like, "Yo, this is, this is nuts." And I still went right to McDonald's and got a family's power meal. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so it, it, uh, it just became a relationship that wasn't based on nutrition, it wasn't based on health. It was just me soothing myself.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes. When was the moment where you realized this has got to stop? Or I need to figure out how to self-soothe in a healthier manner? Whether that's addressing the problem and learning how to heal the wounds? Whether that's just, or did you not do that? You just masked it and said, "I gotta go cold turkey and try to, you know, muscle my way to eat less and be fit." What was the?

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Thing that got you to start shifting. So a lot of people are gonna watch this and they're gonna say, hey, this guy's still fat. Now, let me talk to these people real quick. Okay. I gained some weight after the pandemic. I've been, I've lost this weight for years and years and years. Now, I'll go back to what I'm saying. Um, uh, I'll get back, I'll be, I'll be, I'll be right back shortly, guys. My body will be back, don't worry about it. Um, I'm not nearly as big as I was. I'm literally a hundred pounds, uh, less than I was in my head is. But, um, so I moved out to Los Angeles and How old? Twenty-seven. Okay. So, um, Three seventy still? Three fifty. Okay. Three fifty. Cut back on the I, I, I was, I worked out a little bit. I had actually lost like thirty pounds, but then I gained some back like me first time.

• 41:39Speaker 00

  So I was around three fifty and I ordered some pants from the Gap. Cause I couldn't buy pants in the Gap store. I had to order them online. Yeah. What size was that? Forty-eight? Nah, fifty-two maybe? Fifty-two. Fifty, fifty-two, something like that. Okay. So I ordered some pants, maybe over forty-eight. It was forty, it was between forty-eight and fifty. I, I know I got up to fifty-two, but I'm not, I'm not, I've been to fifty-two at that point. So I, um, I ordered some pants from the Gap. Get the pants. One of our producers, I was working at this place called Capricorn Programs, um, Burbank. One of the producers thought that that was coming for him. Opened it. Hmm. And pulled out the pants.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  I remember I come out of my office and I see somebody looking through at, uh, uh, like looking at the, looking at the thing and then I see somebody do like this. And I'm like, oh shit. But that's me. Like throughout my life, God has put, dropped these little angels in my life. Cause there's always somebody there for me when I need it. It just, I remember I walked, I lived at that point, like I lived basically Pico and Fairfax. That's basically where I lived. So I look online, what's the nearest LA fitness? The nearest LA fitness was La Cienega and like whatever. But I went right there on La Cienega with the little roof and play basketball. I walked around there. Walk was tough. I walked, I walked, I walked, I walked around there.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  And I remember I got there and this is in the book. I got there and I cannot remember the name of the guy who was working in the front. Uh, young brother. And I'm talking to him. I remember he, and I didn't have much money at the time. I wasn't making good money.

• 43:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  So this gym membership was, it wasn't something that like I could really afford like that. You know, I was making maybe, maybe four hundred dollars a week.

• 43:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  And you know, thirty five, thirty dollars for a gym membership, that's not nothing to me.

• 43:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's a lot of money.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  That was money to me at that point.

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Um, so nuts that I was twenty seven making four hundred, fifty dollars a week. Nuts. Uh, but, I remember he helped me. He,

• 43:54Speaker 00

  rather than have my, cause I didn't, I didn't qualify for a California discount because I have a two two five number, which I still do. And he said, okay, this is what I'll do. I'll put your number down as three two three.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  And the rest of these numbers. So that you could apply for this discount. And he looked at me, he goes, cause I could see you tired of this.

• 44:12Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, wow.

• 44:13Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 44:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  He goes, I could see you tired of this.

• 44:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  And,

• 44:18Lewis Howes?

  That was nice of him.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so he did that and I would see him from time to time, he ended up getting transferred to another gym. So I would come in there and at first, all I could do, all I could do, at twenty seven years old.

• 44:28Lewis Howes?

  Just walk. Treadmill walk.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Walk on a treadmill. And I started getting to the point to where I could, ride the bike for fifteen minutes, and hit the heavy bag for fifteen minutes. Ride the bike for fifteen minutes, hit the heavy bag for fifteen minutes. And I would just do that every day, just thirty minutes, was talking on the phone to my boy, my homeboy Ryan Davenport from Baton Rouge. And like, um, talk fifteen minutes, put the heavy bag, and then after a while, it just started coming off.

• 44:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow. What do you feel like was the, so you've been, you were pretty consistent for a long time with that then?

• 44:59Speaker 00

  I, it was, I was Gucci until the pandemic. The pandemic was hard, but we're working our way back.

• 45:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  We'll be fine.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  Cause when I saw you, you were lean.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:08Lewis Howes?

  I think pandemic got me for, fifteen, twenty also, I feel like I'm back in college again, that freshman fifteen.

• 45:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, we'll work, we'll, we'll be, we'll be fine. We're working our way back.

• 45:16Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Do you feel like you were ever battling, was it a full-on addiction, do you feel like?

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. For me, it was.

• 45:23Lewis Howes?

  And what was the root cause of the addiction?

• 45:25Speaker 00

  Um.

• 45:26Lewis Howes?

  Not feeling enough, shame, relationships with family, what was the?

• 45:31Speaker 00

  Probably loneliness.

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  Loneliness.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  The, the, the root cause of it was probably loneliness, it was probably, uh, Being in a room with all of your friends and all of these people who couldn't love you anymore. Who love the very thought of you, but still feeling like you were the only person in the room. How does it get to a place like that? Uh, it gets to a place like that when you've been called weird long enough. Weird, by who? By just people, even as, even though they didn't mean it in a bad way. Look, I wasn't an outcast. I was a good athlete. Mm-hmm. I was a good student. I wasn't an outcast. I just always felt like it was.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  It was a weird thing, like I was a, I was educated. I was in a gifted program, so all of my classmates were white, right? Hmm. But I lived in a neighborhood, so sometimes the diffusion wouldn't work. Right, right, right. Sometimes it would be like, I would come back and it would be like, yo. We all live, playing a video game and we listening to AZ, we listening to Nas, we listening to P, we listening to Silk. We listening to Cash Money. I say, okay, let's listen to Soundgarden. You know what I'm saying? Oasis. And, you know, like, love Oasis, you know what I'm saying? And, and, and it wasn't, and a lot of my friends were very eclectic in their taste and stuff like that. But some of my homies are not trying to hear them white boys from Seattle. Right, right. What's wrong with you, bro?

• 46:58Speaker 00

  We listening to that BG. I'm like, alright, whoa. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I love all of it. I love everything, very connected to my culture, right? So, you wanna watch a movie, like, I tried to get some of my friends to come with me to see, again, to see Pulp Fiction. Nobody was trying to see Pulp Fiction. Mr. Gobert always passed away now. One of my AP World History teachers would do movies during lunchtime. Right, and they let, he let us choose the movies. So I chose Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Uh-huh. It's like, yo, y'all come watch this movie. It's really funny. I promise you, it's really funny. And then, and you do that a long enough time. You feel like you're the outcast. You start doing it by yourself. Yeah. Now, I'm not even gonna ask you. Uh-huh. If you wanna come with me. I'm not gonna ask you, you know what I mean?

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Like, even with my girlfriend. Like, my girlfriend at that time, I fell in love. I experienced sexualities. We can do whatever we're doing or whatever, but this, like, yeah, I'll do it for myself and. Yeah, yeah. The list of things. That I needed to do alone just started growing. So it becomes that you have all of these things that you only want to do by yourself. And a couple of things that you like actually want to do.

• 48:08Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:09Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 48:10Lewis Howes?

  So you said when you started, you're a seven out of 10, right? In the scale of self-love, peace and freedom. Where were you the day, the morning before the Kanye thing?

• 48:21Speaker 00

  Oh, man, like at that point, I think I was probably like a nine.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, man, I have asked this question so many times to people. This is crazy, this theme now. I don't know, maybe not that many times, maybe five times.

• 48:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 48:35Lewis Howes?

  Where I asked this to Manuel Acho, I asked this to my friend who came on right before, he's Steven. Who has gone through this incredible growth spurt on social media and everything, the press over the last like six months. And I asked the same question. And every person before they hit a big spurt of success was at more self-love before. The weight of gold.

• 49:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 49:00Lewis Howes?

  The weight of success, the acknowledgements, all those things. Why do you think you're at a nine then and a seven now?

• 49:09Speaker 00

  The more people that know who you are. The more people have an opinion on who you are. And the more people have an opinion, the more people tell you what not to love about yourself.

• 49:19Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, snap.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? So it's like, it's like the more like the more opinions, the more people tell you. This is what you need to change and this is what you need to do better at. And it's not that that's bad, right? It's that you have to know how to accept that energy. Like you have to know how to accept what's constructive and destroy what's corrosive.

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Or just let it go.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Or just let it go, right? Actually letting it go is better because even if you destroy it, you're spending too much energy on it. So letting it go is much, much better, so.

• 49:53Lewis Howes?

  What if three, or go ahead, finish your thought there.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  So no, I'm just saying, so like, I thought I was okay. And so I was loving myself and it was only until more people knew who I was that I realized, ah, maybe I'm not okay. And I'm like, maybe there are things I need to change and you start to be obsessed with. Uh, the perfect version of you or the version of you that you feel like people need to consume.

• 50:16Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. What are three tools you wish you knew before that moment when more people started to know who you were? That over the last four years, you wish you had these skills or tools to prepare you for greater success, greater acknowledgement, Oscar awards, you know, bigger celebrities working with you and all these opportunities. What are those things? Maybe it's an internal tool or, you know.

• 50:43Speaker 00

  We're about to get a little, so.

• 50:45Lewis Howes?

  Bring it.

• 50:46Speaker 00

  Therapy.

• 50:47Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 50:48Speaker 00

  Breath work. And the mute button.

• 50:52Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 50:53Speaker 00

  So. I can tell you one thing that would have changed my life had I knew how to do this earlier. During the pandemic.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  I was trying to reconnect with my breath. This is so L.A. I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry to all the people at home. I've changed.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  I was trying to reconnect with my breath, right?

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  What had happened to your breath?

• 51:17Speaker 00

  So I went through a very, very.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Debilitating. Stretch of anxiety and.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  When? During the pandemic?

• 51:26Speaker 00

  During the pandemic.

• 51:27Lewis Howes?

  Was it because of the pandemic? Was it because of? Work? Was it because of movements happening in the world? Was it because of societal changes?

• 51:35Speaker 00

  It's because my anxiety has programmed me since I was a kid. I could talk more about my dad here too and like how.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  My father didn't realize what kind of kid I was sometimes. He didn't realize how precocious I was. One day we were watching Silverado, great movie, Lawrence Kaszner, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover. And my father looks at the movie, he goes, one day the world's gonna be just like that again. I'm like, what do you mean? Why? He goes, oh. Like his eyes lit up. He's imparting new information onto me. He goes, oh. Cause Reagan gonna drop that bomb. I was like, what bomb? My father goes, well, they're bombs. That if the Soviet Union shoots their bombs. And if we shoot our bombs. It's a chain reaction, destroy the whole world. We'll be riding around on horseback again.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  Geez.

• 52:22Speaker 00

  And he kind of just goes.

• 52:24Speaker 00

  It goes back to watching the movie.

• 52:25Lewis Howes?

  I'm like, I'm gonna die.

• 52:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. I started like, I remember I won a drawing contest because I drew a Soviet soldier and a United States soldier like hugging. I was like freaked out. Like, you know, they put up in the class, my teacher's like, yo Van, like, why are you, you know, so. So from that moment on, it's like, that's kicked off my anxiety and I was always waiting kind of for the end of the world.

• 52:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  It was like, I've been, I've gotten to the ozone layer. I got into North Korea. I got into all of these different things and.

• 52:56Lewis Howes?

  It's happening, now it's happening.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  It's happening. I tried my best. By the way, I tried my best not to get caught up in it. But there was one particular time, shout out Jamel Hill, that me and Jamel went to. Uh, so. March 6th, 2020.

• 53:11Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  The week before everything went down, right? Before the NBA shut down, Tom Hanks got COVID.

• 53:16Lewis Howes?

  It was literally like, cause March 16th is my birthday and it was literally, that day was a Monday when no one went to work.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Right.

• 53:22Lewis Howes?

  And then I was like, wow, this is interesting, you know?

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So we went, March 6th, we went to dinner with this guy, I remember, not dinner, we went to lunch with this guy at King's Road Cafe. Great producer, very nice guy, and he looked a little sick. And I remember, I looked at him, I was like, hey, cause it wasn't to the point, like, we knew, but we weren't freaking out yet. People were still talking about putting me on panels and stuff like that. I had, it was enough that I had. Uh, hand sanitizer on my keychain.

• 53:50Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 53:51Speaker 00

  But not enough, not, no mask, nothing. And we sat outside, we ate, and he goes, oh. There's nothing, like, he's like, this is not a big deal, it's nothing. We went to a wedding in Mexico and people got sick, it's not that big of a deal. It's like, he didn't think that he had COVID. And then he said that. Uh, he said that even if he did have COVID, COVID's not a big deal. But he didn't have, he said, I don't have COVID, I have a cold. Right? He was fine, older guy, it's fine. So, you have that, everything shuts down, right? The next week, whatever, a couple of weeks. Two Fridays later.

• 54:22Lewis Howes?

  It's like, oh.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Shemel.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  I had covid.

• 54:24Speaker 00

  I got, I had covid.

• 54:25Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  So now I've sat next to this guy.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Who has covid. We don't know anything about covid. I'm like, yo.

• 54:32Lewis Howes?

  Am I gonna die?

• 54:32Speaker 00

  That is, we're done. It's, it's, that's a call, cancel Christmas. It's a wrap. I definitely have it. And also, I was taking zinc pills on an empty stomach at this point. I was doing everything to try to boost my immune system. So the zinc was upsetting my stomach.

• 54:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 54:48Speaker 00

  So I'm thinking to myself, upset stomach, sign of covid. Guy had covid, I have covid. And it sent my anxiety into a tizzy. And so after a while of dealing with this, of having all kinds of issues, this is months and months and months. I started researching breath work.

• 55:02Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  I started researching HRV breathing. And um, just laying down on your back, putting on a, a, a, a audio cue. And just taking six breaths a minute.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Slow, deep, deliberate breaths.

• 55:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, deep, deliberate breaths. I utilize it in every aspect of my life.

• 55:26Lewis Howes?

  It's such a powerful tool that is free and available at all times.

• 55:31Speaker 00

  To everyone, anytime you need.

• 55:33Lewis Howes?

  And it can change the state of your body, your mindset, everything.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, and like people, like they make fun of me at the boxing gym, like we'll be sparring. And everybody in the middle of the sparring is like, everybody in between rounds is like, looking at their coach and I'm like.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Ding ding ding, let's go.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  And like snap back into it, like just in and out. Had I, that right there is something that after you do it, right? And I can do it for long spells now. Like, it started off, I, I did it for five minutes, I did it for 10 minutes. Now, sometimes, I'll sit down there for 45 minutes. I'll just, I'll just zone.

• 56:13Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful.

• 56:14Speaker 00

  Just zone, I'll be in a hammock, or I'll lay down flat on my back and just zone. Sometimes, these videos on YouTube, sometimes I have to reach over and tap them and start them over. You know what I mean? And it just brings you, for whatever reason, you start to feel in your skin again. You start to feel like, oh, that's my hand. Oh, like, I like, oh, like, like, I'm, okay, like you don't feel out of your body. And that would have helped me a lot. So, uh, that's one, and also, I don't like blocking people, but I love muting them.

• 56:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  I don't like blocking people. I don't like knowing that I've put a wall in between someone because I can't handle what's going on. That feels like defeat sometimes. But muting things

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 57:00Speaker 00

  is important because not everything needs to be in your brain.

• 57:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 57:03Speaker 00

  So sometimes you have somebody that you love, but you need to love them from a distance. That is the mute button to me.

• 57:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  So on social media, if you, if like, if you're getting a little too critical of me, if you're getting a little too frisky.

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna hear this all day.

• 57:15Speaker 00

  If every time I do something, you pop on, because it starts off cool. Hey, man, I love you so much, man, do this. Okay, cool. Hey, man, after a while, I'm gonna mute you. I'm not gonna block you. I'm gonna mute you because I don't need to hear your opinion on my life every single day.

• 57:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  I just don't need that. You know, there are people in my life who I entrust, who I've given them permission to give them opinions on my life. And like random people on social media, and some people that I even work with are not those people. So, there you have it.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Those are three powerful things.

• 57:46Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  Therapy, breath work, and mute button. What's the biggest lesson you've learned from therapy?

• 57:50Speaker 00

  You have to control whatever it is for you.

• 57:54Lewis Howes?

  Stress, anxiety, fear.

• 57:55Speaker 00

  It's not going away.

• 57:56Lewis Howes?

  Self doubt, yeah.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  It might not get worse, but it's not gonna get better unless you deal with it.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, right.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  It's not, it's not going away. It's not. Sometimes you, you can be in different places, right? Nobody feels, you might not feel stressed when you're in Turks. You know what I mean? You know, you might be there, you're, you know, drinking a rum punch, and you think, oh, two weeks, I'm feeling good. Well, you're gonna get back to a place where the environmental triggers are gonna be back there, and some of the personal triggers in your life are gonna be back there. And sometimes I, I would wonder whether or not I really wanted to address these problems, or whether or not I was more comfortable having them. And therapy helps you, or it's helped me, um, it's helped me learn that there is a prescription in a way to get around some of these things. Might not, you might not never cure them.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:42Speaker 00

  It's like my homie told me, one of my trainers, I told him one time, I was like, back in the day when I was dunking all the time, dunking all over people. And he goes, uh, but I could never jump off two feet.

• 58:51Lewis Howes?

  I can't jump off two feet either. I'm a one-footed dunker, man.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  I'm a one-footed, I'm a

• 58:57Lewis Howes?

  I could maybe like maybe five times I dunked off two feet.

• 59:00Speaker 00

  I've never once in life done it.

• 59:02Lewis Howes?

  Dude, it was so hard.

• 59:03Speaker 00

  I like it and some guys can't jump off one foot.

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 59:06Speaker 00

  And it's so weird. People ask me like, you know, because if you're trying to get to the rim super quick, one foot is better. But if you're trying to do something crazy in the air or take a hit and finish, you need to jump off two feet. I can never jump off two feet. It's just not a thing, right? Um, and so I remember I was talking to a friend of mine. I go, yo, can you teach me how to uh be an explosive two footed jumper? And he goes, I can't promise that. He says, you know what I can do though? I can make you a better two footed jumper.

• 59:34Speaker 00

  And I'm like, huh. That's life.

• 59:37Lewis Howes?

  But you may never be able to explode out of the gym.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  You know, you like, it may never get to the point to where you're boom off of that doing whatever you want. That might not be for you, right? But you can get better at what it is that you're doing. You can get better. I might not ever be at the point to where I'm never feeling anxious in the world and never feeling anxious in my life. But I can be better. I can be better and like therapy, even though I he taught me about the two footed jumper thing. That was years before, right? I actually was like, huh. I had it with that. When when I talk to her, I'm thinking, life is about learning to jump off two feet. It's not about putting some sort of uh artificial goal in your head. I mean, you should have goals, right?

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  Um, sometimes you need a finite goal. Sometimes your goal should just be to do be better. Be better at what you're doing.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  What would you say is the biggest challenge, obstacle or problem that you want? That you know you need to face and find a better solution for in your life right now?

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Resentment.

• 1:00:40Lewis Howes?

  Towards who?

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  I feel like as a black man in America, if I didn't have some issues, I wouldn't be paying attention, right? Having said that, I need to always let those things.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Inspire me to make change and actually do something. When I say actually do something, I mean awareness is great. Using my voice is great. Talking to, talking about, talking to people who have solutions are great. But I'm gonna feel better served and I'll be a better servant. If I'm actually initiating things and following people, not necessarily always leading.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:01:19Speaker 00

  Maybe not leading a majority of the time, following people. Who are on the ground with answers that are doing things.

• 1:01:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  Told you I met a guy in Chicago named Pastor Corey Brooks. I met a, a lady in Chicago named Inglewood Barbie. I met a guy in Chicago named Chicago King Dave. When I was out of Chicago, we were in some of the worst areas in the city. You would, people would call them the worst areas in the city. I call them areas where people are looking for solutions. And in all, and talking to all of these people, what I've learned is that anywhere there's a problem, there's somebody looking for a solution. And being out there looking for a solution, you can be a part of that. And the reality is being mad about it is only useful. Being mad about it is only useful if it inspires you to do something.

• 1:02:01Lewis Howes?

  To take action, yeah.

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  It like, other than that, the anger will be corrosive. It'll stop you from experiencing things, it'll stop you from expressing things.

• 1:02:08Lewis Howes?

  What is resentment, holding on to resentment in all these areas of your life? Done for you? Or how has it hurt you?

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  Well, one way that has hurt me is it's probably cut off some relationships.

• 1:02:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And it's, it's probably made me.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  The socioeconomic resentment hasn't really hurt me at all, but I think resentment

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  for other things has hurt me like.

• 1:02:37Speaker 00

  Some of the resentment I felt towards my parents, some of the resentment I felt towards friends of mine, some of the resentment I felt towards other people I was competing with, I think it caught me, it, it stopped me from viewing these people as human beings and looking at them as obstacles.

• 1:02:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  Because once you, once resentment is inside of you, it just, it chokes inspiration.

• 1:02:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:58Speaker 00

  It just, it, it like, it chokes it. It, resentment just chokes.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  So this is still a big part of your life right now, resentment?

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Not as much.

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  What would it take for you to let go of it?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:03:10Speaker 00

  I don't know, Louis.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  And what do you think is available on the other side when you let go of that?

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  As long as there are black women in this country who don't have access to adequate healthcare and who have a significantly higher chance of dying during childbirth, as long as there are black children who don't have what they need, I'm gonna have some resentment. I think getting over the resentment is not as important as channeling it, like recycling it, like not letting it fester.

• 1:03:40Lewis Howes?

  Inside of you.

• 1:03:41Speaker 00

  Inside of you.

• 1:03:42Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you fester the resentment?

• 1:03:44Speaker 00

  When you fester the resentment, it turns, it infects you, right? So like it, something inspiring you is one thing, something infecting you is a different thing. Like when you're infected with resentment, when you're infected with anger, when you're infected with these things, they actually shut off avenues to solutions to me.

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  They block them.

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  They block them. Like you can't think past what it is that's going on. And you need to be able to think. You need to be mentally limber. You need to be spiritually limber. You need to be nimble in these ways to solve problems. You need to be open. You need to be able to look into the world with open hearts and open to, in order to have a conversation with someone that you disagree with, you need to be mentally open, you need to be mentally limber, you need to be spiritually open, you need to be spiritually limber. You need to have that look in your eye that sometimes like, and I'm, so I'm from the

• 1:04:41Speaker 00

  South, so there are, there's Christianity as is portrayed in, by people that would like hijack a plane at thirty thousand feet and play their songs without asking anyone. And then there's like real Christians, like someone who really loves God. And that's, this is not just Christians. This is any single mantra or religion or whatever. Like I know this rabbi, Rabbi Ari Lam, you know what I mean? Him, some of my Muslim brothers, some of the like the Hindu people I know, the people that are really believers, there's a certain

• 1:05:19Speaker 00

  Certainty and a grace that they move with. Like you could talk to them about anything and they're like, oh, okay. Oh, nice. Okay, I, I, I disagree with you. Let me tell you what this teaches you. Let me tell you what this teaches. Let me tell you what this teaches you. But there's an anointing, there's a circle around them and this, even if you don't have like a religious belief, if you are really devoted to like, that can, humanity itself, doing good for humanity can be a religion if you ask me. It can be a spiritual, a spiritual calling devoid of a higher power if you don't believe in that, right? And when people are truly anointed to do that, they sit and they listen and they absorb what you're giving them. And they turn it around and give you back an energy with things that you never even thought of before.

• 1:06:05Speaker 00

  Or with disagreements that you can use to make your foundation, your foundation stronger. Disagreements are incredibly valuable, but when you have resentment in your heart, disagreements are not disagreements, the declaration of war. And if you, if every single disagreement is a declaration of war, you'll never stop battling. So in order to remove the resentment and really find what, what, what, what society is based around. It, it was just compromise. Compromise. You don't win, I don't win, we win. Not my world, not your world.

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  Our world.

• 1:06:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  And it's just hard to do with resentment. That's why we have to push ourselves a little bit, to be a little bolder. All right, but we have to be accepting of one another. And when I say accepting, I mean, you know what I mean? Like, we have to talk to each other. I got that backwards. You have to, we, you have, we have to talk to each other and say things to each other that aren't easy to hear.

• 1:07:03Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:07:04Speaker 00

  And if, it's much easier to do that if I can temper my resentment towards you.

• 1:07:08Lewis Howes?

  Right. But you said. That you might always hold on to some resentment, right?

• 1:07:13Speaker 00

  So I was gonna be a little bit. I'm a human being.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:07:16Speaker 00

  I'm a guy. I'm a dude.

• 1:07:17Lewis Howes?

  I hear you, man.

• 1:07:18Speaker 00

  You know what I mean?

• 1:07:18Lewis Howes?

  I hear you, man.

• 1:07:19Speaker 00

  But the, but the.

• 1:07:20Lewis Howes?

  I would love for you to, I would love to challenge you.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:07:23Lewis Howes?

  In a loving way, to challenge you.

• 1:07:24Speaker 00

  Got you.

• 1:07:25Lewis Howes?

  To reframe the word then.

• 1:07:27Speaker 00

  Okay, give it to me.

• 1:07:28Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it's not resentment, maybe it's frustration, it's upset, it's sadness, it's there's a wrong that you wanna see right, or there's a struggle that you wanna see peaceful.

• 1:07:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:40Lewis Howes?

  In the world, or within a relationship, or whatever it might be. And have the feeling of anger, frustration, whatever sadness, hurt, all these different things. Feel the feeling, but don't hold on to it.

• 1:07:50Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:07:51Lewis Howes?

  Consistently.

• 1:07:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:07:52Lewis Howes?

  This is something I'm learning still.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  What up?

• 1:07:55Lewis Howes?

  Cause if I'm holding on to it, it's hard for me to see the person from a beautiful place. Even if they're doing the most messed up stuff. Not saying I need to agree with them, but to be able to find a solution with that cause or thing or person.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:09Lewis Howes?

  It's not easy. It's a constant thing I'm working on, but

• 1:08:11Speaker 00

  What up?

• 1:08:11Lewis Howes?

  As opposed to holding resentment, I'm coming from a defensive attack mode when I'm resentful personally. So something to look at.

• 1:08:18Speaker 00

  I will. I'll try.

• 1:08:19Lewis Howes?

  Something to consider.

• 1:08:20Speaker 00

  Got you.

• 1:08:21Lewis Howes?

  Try it on. That's what therapists would say.

• 1:08:23Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:25Lewis Howes?

  I love this, man. I'm excited for your journey and I think it's interesting to see that you were a nine out of 10, now you're a seven out of 10.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:08:33Lewis Howes?

  What do you think it would take for you to get back to the nine?

• 1:08:35Speaker 00

  Oh, I think it's coming. I think if you'd have asked me this question last year, it was a six.

• 1:08:41Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah. So it's coming back.

• 1:08:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, or maybe even, and there were points in 2020 where it was probably a five.

• 1:08:50Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 00

  Like low.

• 1:08:51Lewis Howes?

  You were a duck.

• 1:08:51Speaker 00

  So I think, I think I'm trending up where things are, things are coming together. I just gotta stay the course and continue to grow.

• 1:08:58Lewis Howes?

  Right. What is the thing that you wish you would have been able to say to your dad that you maybe didn't get to tell him?

• 1:09:04Speaker 00

  I appreciate what you were trying to do.

• 1:09:06Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:08Speaker 00

  I appreciate it.

• 1:09:09Lewis Howes?

  In his way and his.

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Your way. You are it, man. Like, we, we cool.

• 1:09:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Like, I, like, you did the best you could.

• 1:09:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. With the tools you had and, yeah.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  With how you were raised, with, with, with, with your measure of it, you did the absolute best you could.

• 1:09:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? And I got my hugs from mom, so it's okay.

• 1:09:33Lewis Howes?

  You got the affection you need to kiss and the hugs. Your, uh, book, uh, Fat, Crazy and Tired: Tales From the Trenches of Transformation. It's out now. People can go get it over on Amazon or bookstores. Uh, they can follow you on social media, Van Lathan, on Twitter, Instagram, and all the different places. Uh, you've got your podcast.

• 1:09:54Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  Higher Learning Podcast on the Ringer Network.

• 1:10:00Lewis Howes?

  Where you're doing that how often, every week? Uh, how much a week?

• 1:10:02Speaker 00

  Two times a week.

• 1:10:03Lewis Howes?

  Two times a week?

• 1:10:03Speaker 00

  Yeah. Higher Learning Podcast.

• 1:10:05Lewis Howes?

  They can find that if they go to your Instagram, follow you there. You always got great clips on there. I love seeing your stuff, man. It's always very entertaining and inspiring. Um, how else can we be of service and support to you right now?

• 1:10:15Speaker 00

  Oh, man, nothing. That was, that was amazing. Um, I would like to thank Kalika, my girl, who put all of this together, who like, who like, helped me. She was in contact with you guys. Played a little assistant role. She's a big fan of yours. Um, but, yeah, no, I think, I, I've listened. I've appreciated your friendship. You know, I've appreciated being able to bounce things off of you.

• 1:10:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 00

  I've appreciated you, like, challenging me sometimes, because Louis's answer for everything is just do it yourself. Like, Louis, Louis, Louis's answer to everything is, I remember, I remember like, when we were first talking about, I started about leaving TMZ and starting my own, uh, getting, getting a podcast deal, and he was like,

• 1:10:53Lewis Howes?

  Just do your own deal, yeah, yeah. Just do it yourself.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  Just, just, just do, just do it yourself.

• 1:10:58Lewis Howes?

  Why do you need a network or this or that?

• 1:10:59Speaker 00

  Why do you need a network? Why do you need that? Just, and, and to be honest with you, that is in the back of my mind every single time. The point, I'm not gonna rush it, but the point to where the answer is, just do it yourself, and I'm doing it, and I'm, and all of this is a big time inspiration to me, so I appreciate you.

• 1:11:16Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, man. I'm excited for that, man.

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  This is a question I ask everyone towards the end called the three truths. So imagine a hypothetical scenario, last day on earth, many years away. You live as long as you want to live.

• 1:11:29Lewis Howes?

  But eventually you gotta turn the lights off and this time on your earth is gone.

• 1:11:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:11:34Lewis Howes?

  And you accomplish all your dreams. You're making movies, you're doing books, you're doing content, whatever it is you want to create, you do it. Have family, what anything, you make it come true. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your content with you to the next place. So no one has access to this book, the podcast, anything you've ever said, it's gone. But you get to write down three lessons that you can share with the world. Three truths, and this is all we would have to remember your legacy by essentially are these three messages. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:12:04Speaker 00

  You're bigger than fear.

• 1:12:09Speaker 00

  Two is, it's not that big of a deal.

• 1:12:15Speaker 00

  And the third one is this, this is the most important one.

• 1:12:20Speaker 00

  Every single problem has a solution.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  Nothing on this planet is bigger than our collective understanding and our drive and will to be better, more healthy and well-adjusted people. All of these problems that everyone keeps shoving down your throat every single day. All of these things that are wrong with the world, all of these things that are wrong with human society. We can figure them out. We can figure them out if we get on the right wavelength.

• 1:13:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Speaker 00

  So concentrate on the solutions, concentrate on getting better. You can fix it, like you can. Like, I swear to God, man, it's frustrating sometimes. You can fix it.

• 1:13:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  You can be a part of it. So I just, I want everybody to feel super empowered to go out and make the world as they need it to be.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful, man. I want to acknowledge you, Van, before I ask you the final question for your constant journey of growth. I think it's I think it's challenging to go from one position and pretty much overnight, get a lot of opportunities and have this awareness about you. And take on the weight of these challenges and take on the weight of the responsibilities that come with it. And do it in the face of having an addiction that you've overcome and facing all these different challenges that way as well. I think it's really hard to overcome an addiction. I think it's one of the hardest things people have to learn how to do. Especially a weight addiction or a food addiction that causes a weight. And then it creates guilt and shame and all the stuff that happens there. So I acknowledge you, man, for being on the journey, the imperfect journey.

• 1:14:13Lewis Howes?

  And grateful for you for using your voice to share a message for people. To let people know they don't have to be perfect, but they can be on the journey as well, just like you. And for constantly developing your own masterpiece.

• 1:14:28Speaker 00

  I appreciate that.

• 1:14:28Lewis Howes?

  It's beautiful, man. It's a beautiful, beautiful journey. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  My definition of greatness is peace. So I'll tell you about me. So you have all of these things you want to do. I think about your story, right? So you have all this stuff that you want to do. You came from, you know, living on your sister's couch and all of that stuff like that. The world isn't designed a lot of times for us to find peace. There's always something in order for you to go out and be a cog in the consumer wheel. Or you have to feel danger and pressure and all of these things. You have to find, you have to feel that way, right? You have to feel all of those things. You have to feel all of those things. You have to feel like, okay, I gotta do this or my life's gonna get cut out. I gotta do this or this is gonna happen. I gotta do this or this person's not gonna wanna have sex with me. I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this. Greatness to me is when you're at a peaceful place in your life.

• 1:15:17Speaker 00

  And you can seriously look back and look, and you have all the latitude to figure out how you want things to be. And you have to build towards that. And you have to get there. To me, Michael Jordan was the best on the court, the greatest on the court, because he was the most peaceful. He wasn't rattled. Like you couldn't rattle him.

• 1:15:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  You couldn't get him out of himself. Like he was intense, but he knew the shot was going. He knew that he would succeed. He knew that he was the most, he had the least amount of chaos in his body. When you see a situation to where like, uh, you see Dr. King and he's talking to someone. You might see people yelling at him. You might see people throwing rocks at him. You might see people, watch how he comports himself. He comports himself in a way because he is absolutely at peace with who he is. Even at peace with the fact that who he had to be was gonna mean that his life was going to be cut short.

• 1:16:19Speaker 00

  Peace gave him the opportunity to be completely dead set on what he was doing. And in the face of any adversity, never lose himself. So every single great person that I know makes you feel like things are gonna be okay. Makes you feel like, like you're at peace and confident with them when you're around them, right? And so that's what I look at it like. And that's kind of what this place has, man. It's a very peaceful place. I walk in here, I walk in here, ten minutes I'm in here, somebody showing me a picture of their son's first step. You know what I mean? Like you guys are peaceful and humble and ready to serve. So I think greatness is, is, is, is peace.

• 1:16:56Lewis Howes?

  My man, thanks so much for being there.

• 1:16:57Speaker 00

  No problem, my guy.

• 1:16:58Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it, bro. 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.