Keys To Finding Abundance & Success EP 1385

https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today! Lisa Nichols is one of the world’s most successful motivational speakers, media personalities, and entrepreneurs, and her global platform has reached nearly 80 million people. From a struggling single mom on public assistance to a millionaire entrepreneur, Lisa’s courage and determination have inspired fans worldwide and helped countless audiences break through to discover their own untapped talents and infinite potential. This episode was one that resonated the most with you guys in the past and I’m excited for the value it’s going to bring you. I hope you enjoy it! In this episode you will learn,How self-care is the responsibility to your future. Why you must chase your conviction, even if it’s not convenient. How listening to others with open hearts and open ears is essential. How awareness can amplify joy. 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.

• 0:03Lewis Howes?

  If you feel like you're not living your most authentic life, not leaning into your purpose and not living the life that your future self would be extremely proud of, I've written a new book called The Greatness Mindset, and I think you're gonna love this. Through powerful stories, science-backed strategies, and step-by-step guidance, The Greatness Mindset will help you overcome all the different challenges in your life to design the life of your dreams and then turn it into your reality. Make sure to click the link in the description to get your copy today.

• 0:30Lisa Nichols?

  Your life doesn't just belong to you. You don't get to come in and leave without being responsible for those that you impact. And when you understand that, you're like, "Hold on, my life literally sends waves out into the universe and it impacts the way they choose to show up in the world." When you recognize that, then the question becomes...

• 0:51Lewis 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.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to today's special episode. Over the last 1,300-plus episodes, there have been so many impactful interviews that I've been lucky enough to have, and I always like to reflect on some of the most powerful. And this episode was one that resonated with most of you guys in the past, and I'm excited for the value it's going to bring you today as well. So I hope you enjoy today's episode.

• 1:38Lewis Howes?

  You talked about self-care in a recent tweet, the importance of self-care. I'm curious, what is just the definition of that for you, self-care? Because a lot of people think like, "Okay, is it getting your nails done if you're a girl? Is it getting a massage? Is it the way you think about yourself? What is self-care for you?"

• 1:54Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, so first of all, I think self-care is a reflection of the worth that I believe I have. So a lot of people, and I did this for a long time, I wasn't in self-care, but I realized my lack of self-care was connected to my lack of self-worth. So I believe to the flip side of that self-care is acknowledging your self-worth, acknowledging your value to yourself, acknowledging first to self, and then your value that you are, you have to the people around you. Then self-care is your responsibility to your future. It's so much bigger than nails done, it's so much bigger than massage, though those are nice. Self-care is saying, I want to be responsible for my future.

• 2:39Lisa Nichols?

  Meaning, I want to give my body, give my mind, give myself what I need, so that I'm playing the long game. That recognizing, self-care is recognizing, this is not a sprint. This life is a marathon.

• 2:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 2:55Lisa Nichols?

  You know, um, I always say that your, your, your, your job is to identify and, and, and, and, and have the courage and the tenacity and the resiliency to own your purpose. Your body's job is to get you there.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Snap.

• 3:14Lisa Nichols?

  That right there.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  So what I'm hearing you say, uh, it's your body's job to have the energy, the clarity, the focus to sustain the marathon of life, so that your purpose can be fulfilled and bring it to life.

• 3:28Lisa Nichols?

  Like, you, you have, you're, you have a responsibility to your body and your health and wellness. If you believe your purpose is important, or you're still discovering it, you want that dash between your birthday and your transition day to mean something, take care of your body.

• 3:43Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 3:43Lisa Nichols?

  Take care of your body, take care of your mind, so that you can, every morning I get up and I have the same gratitude prayer, every morning. God, thank you for giving me a mind that's sane and sound and logical. Thank you for giving me a body that follows my command.

• 4:02Lisa Nichols?

  That right there. That and if you don't think about it, like you're like, what, what, what has it? Try telling your hand to move and it doesn't move. Try wanting to run to a goal and you can't do it. And so every day, not one day goes by, I'm grateful and I share my gratitude for my mind, thinking logical thoughts, being able to rationalize and my body following my command. Your body is your instrument, it's your tool. It's the first person, the general in your army.

• 4:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. What happens when we live in a state of irrational thoughts or overly emotional thoughts? Especially, you know, there's a lot of people during this time that are freaking out from the pandemic and coming from an illogical irrational place with the uh, uh, social justice movement that are coming from, whether it's justified or not, it's not what I'm saying, but coming from an emotional charged energy.

• 4:57Lisa Nichols?

  Right.

• 4:57Lewis Howes?

  What are we saying to ourselves when we come from an emotional or irrational state of mind with our actions?

• 5:05Lisa Nichols?

  Well, it's simple. First, it's important to understand that uh, forward-moving individuals, leaders, abundant thinkers, change agents. And when you think of the Nelson Mandelas and the Dr. Martin Luther Kings and the Caesar Chavez and the Mahatma Gandhis and the Mother Teresa's and you think about the Michelle Obamas, you think about those people, the Barack Obamas, you think about those people. They recognize that inner, that, that, that emotion and logic cannot coexist and make a logical decision. That logic must lead, emotion and, and longing has to follow. So you make your decisions from logic and information, in fact, not longing and emotion.

• 5:49Lisa Nichols?

  You allow longing and emotion to fuel a logical decision. Does that make sense? So don't be without emotion, don't be without feeling, but every time you did something and it was just feeling that led, just emotional led, you probably said, oh. I should have did something different. I shouldn't have did that. I'm so sorry. I was angry. I'm so... Like, you're always apologizing if it's just out of emotion. And by no means am I saying, "Don't be full of passion." But also, make sure you're full of logic.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh. So, don't just be, "I'm outraged by this thing," whether it be a relationship-

• 6:24Lisa Nichols?

  Not enough.

• 6:24Lewis Howes?

  -or social justice, or whatever.

• 6:25Lisa Nichols?

  It's not enough.

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  "This isn't fair," you know, just getting out there and chanting your feelings. That's not enough.

• 6:32Lisa Nichols?

  It's not enough. It's not enough in any form, whether it's social justice, whether it's a relationship, whether it's, you know, a business or service. It's not enough. When you have logic in fact, you have... Logic in fact included gives you more of a chance to have longevity and impact. And so, yeah, I know people recently have wanted me to be

• 6:58Lisa Nichols?

  more emotional sooner than what they saw. And I found myself saying on social media very boldly, you know, "I choose my path." I found my stillness. I went into a place of stillness in some of the social injustice. I went to stillness first so that I can think about my movements. Because, again, a leader, a leader, a gladiator, a change agent, a change maker, all the things that I consider myself to be, or I aspire to be at the next level. I want my dash to mean something. You are not only responsible for your words and your actions, you're also responsible for your reactions. Now, that's game-changing.

• 7:43Lisa Nichols?

  And so, to those individuals who are driven by emotion, I say absolutely, allow emotion to be the gas in your car, but make sure logic and information are at the steering wheel.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  If you're emotional at the steering wheel, you're about to crash somewhere.

• 8:01Lisa Nichols?

  Exactly, something. You're not making the best decisions while you're inside of traffic going 100 miles.

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  Did you feel a sense of, what I'm hearing you say is that maybe you weren't posting or talking about your feelings of the Black Lives Matter or the social injustice that was happening quick enough and that some of your audience was pushing you to say, "Where's your stance?" Or "Why aren't you speaking up?" Or is that what I'm hearing you say?

• 8:25Lisa Nichols?

  Right. Well, I responded immediately, but I said I responded, when I responded, I said, "I'm praying. I'm praying for George Floyd's family. I'm praying for his children. I'm praying for his, um, the community. I'm praying for every mother of every child, every black male child slain, every black male daughter slain. I'm praying for them." Um, and I got some backlash, not a lot, but some backlash saying, you know, "Why are you just praying? We've been praying for so long." And so people were angry that I wasn't passionate enough. I wasn't publicly passionate enough. I was passionate. And you know, I'm a black woman. I was all day angry. I was hurt. I was disappointed. My grandmother's 91 years old. Why is she still seeing this? Why are we still here?

• 9:09Lisa Nichols?

  I had every emotion everyone else had. But because I, I'm, I need to be responsible for my thoughts, my actions and my reactions, because I'm gonna have a few million come with me. I wanted to make sure that I was doing something that was gonna be long lead. But before all of that, Louis, one of the reasons why I couldn't talk was because my son, 25-year-old, 6'2", 220 pounds, was driving 20 hours across the country from California to Seattle during the initial part of a lot of the protests. And so my baby's on the road, in the car, behind the wheel, huge African-American male.

• 9:53Lisa Nichols?

  So I couldn't even talk until he told me he got there safely and that took a few days. And so I was a mother. So I was, I was blown away with how scared I was. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think straight. I was calling him at 3:00 in the morning because he would tell me, "Mom, we're gonna get to the hotel, the next hotel about 2:00 a.m. or 1:00 a.m." So I, I'm up, I'm on the phone, like, "Are you there yet? Are you there yet?" And so, um... I got some backlash, I got more support than anything, but I realize that and in moments like this, Louis, where the woman sometimes wants to just speak out,

• 10:34Lisa Nichols?

  I have to stop and go, "Hold on, is that gonna do with the highest good for everyone?" And I'm not saying watering down my conversation, I have no desire on any level to water down my belief system, to water down my opinions, but I do have the desire to make the strongest impact. And so, you know, what you do sometimes isn't popular, but I never started doing transformational work, or to be a transformationist, to be popular. If I am any form of celebrity, if I am, it's a byproduct of doing, hopefully, good work in the world. But I'm not, I'm not doing things to be popular, I'm doing things to be impactful.

• 11:12Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, that's good. For anyone listening who's, maybe they're starting out, or maybe they're growing an audience of, you know, of some size, whether it's 10,000 followers, to 100,000, to millions, what do you say to them about, because at some point, they're gonna get pressure feedback about something that people don't like about them. What advice do you have for people who are leaders, or want to be leaders? And with that type of leadership comes some type of following or fanship, what advice do you give to them for not allowing the pressure of your audience to dictate your decisions, or make you feel bad about who you are?

• 11:51Lisa Nichols?

  Well, I'ma tell you what my grandmother told me. And she starts every statement with, "Baby, baby, other people's opinion of you ain't none of your business." So, and that doesn't mean you don't care, but it means you got one job, do you. But you need to find out what does that look like and feel like on you. You are a unique, unrepeatable miracle. That's what you are, unique, unrepeatable. And the moment you try to carbon copy somebody else, you gonna be a failure of yourself. And so, find out who you are, what's your belief system. Speak to inspire, not to impress.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 12:32Lisa Nichols?

  Like, like all day long, like speak to inspire and, and, and speak to disrupt, to disrupt for forward movement, forward moving conversations, disrupt for forward moving fi- uh, mindset, be willing to be unpopular at the cost, at the possibility that someone's gonna grow on the other side of it. See, my grandmother also says, and many people have heard me say this, your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block. I was just talking to a, a beautiful group of coaches, all white, all looked like they were probably over forty, right? And this one gentleman said something beautiful to me, he said, Lisa, he said, I wanna talk

• 13:13Lisa Nichols?

  to black people as a white man because I'm afraid of finding out that the white people that have been in my life, all my life, might be racist. He said, I don't know what I'll do if I find that out, so I promise I wanna talk to black people so that I don't find that out. I said, here is that moment when your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block. You have to be willing to be in convenience with new information in order to have an impact on the future. When you live like that, all of a sudden, your, your mind is at the highest level of consciousness, doesn't mean you're the smartest, doesn't mean you know everything, let me be

• 13:55Lisa Nichols?

  super clear, but it does mean you're always reaching for the highest level of service. That might come with some bumps. That might come with some bruises. As my doctor said, when I broke my right ankle, Louis, in three places, he said, Ms. Nichols, this will get better and you will be stronger, however, it's going to hurt first because I have to re-break your leg.

• 14:19Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 14:20Lisa Nichols?

  I gotta re-break your leg in order to fix your leg. And so I, I always pull back to that experience because the, in order for me to get to a healed leg, I had to break it first, meaning I had to walk through some pain. So if you are leading a group of ten, ten thousand, twenty thousand, ten million.

• 14:40Lisa Nichols?

  Be willing to lead even when you're not popular. Leaders lead even when it's uncomfortable to lead. You don't choose convenient leadership. You choose leadership. You don't choose leadership that won't cost you anything. You choose leadership. And if you don't want it to cost you anything, then sit down and don't lead.

• 15:00Lewis Howes?

  Uh, be a follower.

• 15:02Lisa Nichols?

  Cause it's always, it's always, the path is already made. There's nothing wrong with that, by the way. There's no judgment on a follower. But if you choose this path, I'm a unicorn. I'm a gladiator. I'm a change agent. I'm here to, to disrupt. I want to make this world a better place between my birthday and my transition day. Okay, then be willing. Someone's always gonna have this, this little thing right here.

• 15:25Lewis Howes?

  It's down always.

• 15:26Lisa Nichols?

  This little thing right here, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Your job is to wake up, look in the mirror and say, today I am enough. I'm smart enough. I'm bright enough. I'm chocolate enough. I'm moca enough. I'm cream enough. My hair is curly enough. My hair is straight enough. I woke up enough. Before you check any response on social media, you first like you. And then everybody else's like is optional.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 15:55Lisa Nichols?

  The first like and the only like, and I'm not saying disregard other people, but I am saying you are whole and complete. And everything you touch, you have to touch it from a whole and complete, even what you don't know, even in your ignorance about something. Right now, I'm educating more of my white brothers and sisters about having conversations across color lines. How do you want to do that? What are some things to say that can keep you in that safety net of, of connection? And that's what I should be used for. And that's what everyone's asking of me. Give us some insight. And in that, you're whole and completing your ignorance about that conversation. That doesn't measure your wholeness.

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. And to follow up with that, uh, follower leadership, uh, point, I guess in some ways throughout our entire life, we're all following something or collaborating with and following someone else's opinion or advice or teamwork. And we're all leading other people at different stages of our life as well, whether it's one person or. You know, millions of people, so we're always got to learn. I'm curious about this conviction convenience thing here. Because the last time it came on, you had a convenience in your life for a long time that you talked about, which was this weight. I think you actually called it a suit of some kind.

• 17:11Lisa Nichols?

  A jacket, it was my jacket.

• 17:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was, it had convenience for you and it served you for certain areas of life, but then it held you back from reaching new levels of leadership, of joy, of happiness, without assuming, but I'm, you know.

• 17:25Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  What is the area of your life that is convenient, that you need to step more into conviction to overcome that, to get to the next level right now?

• 17:36Lisa Nichols?

  Right now? Oh, what a great question.

• 17:40Lisa Nichols?

  This is so funny, because I would say, so I, I break my life up into four quadrants. And when I teach my students and I teach my, my coaches, who's coaching, I say, break your students' life down up into four quadrants. Health and wellness, business and finance, relationships, and spirituality. And then it's easier to chomp down. So when you asked me that question, I go to those four quadrants and I go, okay, which one? How is that one doing? How is that one doing? How is that one doing? And I can honestly tell you, this is going to sound funny, but it's in my health and wellness still.

• 18:16Lewis Howes?

  Still?

• 18:17Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, it's in my health and wellness still, a very different conversation in that area.

• 18:21Lewis Howes?

  Because you kept the weight off, right? I'm assuming.

• 18:23Lisa Nichols?

  I kept it off, yeah, I kept it off. It hasn't gone up and down, you know.

• 18:29Lisa Nichols?

  But I want my next level, you know, now I'm at my next level now. I want, you know, Angela Bassett arms and I want Serena Williams abs now. You know, first I just wanted to get this eighty-five pound jacket off my back, you know, I had another. Now that it's off and now that I'm inside of a fitness journey, now that I'm inside, now I'm like, okay, hold on, is it possible? So I find myself watching a lot of videos of women over forty who are just like beasts, right? Like, oh my God, right? Because I go, can I get that? Um, and I, and, and the answer is yes, yes, and it's gonna cost you something, right?

• 19:08Lisa Nichols?

  And so, um, I, I, I'm, I'm excited because during the pandemic, you know, I, I, I, I began saying when the, when the quarantine happened, I said, who, who do you want to say you were during this quarantine? Because we got about two months, three months, and on the other side of it, you have to say, when people say, what you do during the quarantine, you gotta answer them. So what you do during the quarantine? So I, I'm excited to say during the quarantine, I was a beast in my home gym. I created home bootleg gym. I was, I, I, I wish I had time, I, I, I'm gonna try to find it on my phone, but I took a broom. I took a, um, uh, uh, the, uh, stretch bands, you know, the band.

• 19:49Lisa Nichols?

  I took a resistance band and I took a broom and I, I put the broom through both ends and I put the broom on my shoulders and I was doing some squats with the resistance band. Then I was doing curls, uh, curls with the broom and the resistance band. And then I took the, the, the Arizona iced tea big jug. I filled it with water, I filled another one and I was doing, because we couldn't get out at all to do, to do weights. And I, we took the, uh, the, the, the plates that go on top of your roof, the roofing, you know, those, those big plates.

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Lisa Nichols?

  We found some of those outside. I just moved into this house, so I didn't know what was in the house. I moved into a furnished house, so I found the roofing outside. We stacked five roof, five roof plates and I would do five or four. I just got radical, you know, and as a couple of stores opened up, I went and replaced them with real, with real weights. And so that was, this is the first time since we met five years ago that I've been so like on, um, fitness training for toning and tightness and that next level. But one of the things that I realized, Louis, is that I had to honestly believe that I could get it. I had for so long, I just.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Believe you could get what?

• 21:06Lisa Nichols?

  That body, that, that, that, that, that level of achievement that way. Let me tell you why, because sometimes you're trying to outrun misery. For a long time and all you know is I want to be out of that discomfort. And so for so long, nineteen years, I was, I was overweight, right? And so for so long, I just didn't want to be fat. I just didn't, so I.

• 21:30Lewis Howes?

  Screw the abs, you just didn't want to be fat.

• 21:31Lisa Nichols?

  That's what I'm talking about. That's I, I Serena Williams ass, I ain't even thinking about that, right? I'm not even, I just don't want to, you know, have a keg. Forget a six pack. I'm trying not to have the keg, right? I'm trying not to have the double keg. And so that, that, that idea couldn't even enter because I was nowhere in there. So, once I got down, I was just grateful to be down. So, for the first two years, three years, I was, I was just in the, I'm not fat. I'm not fat. And then I, so, so, and I want you, if you're listening to me, to translate this into whatever it is for you. It could be the, I'm not broke. So, you're not running towards something. You're just trying to outrun something else.

• 22:15Lisa Nichols?

  You know, some people say they want to be in love, but they're single forever. Well, a lot of people are single because they're trying to not be hurt again.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Lisa Nichols?

  Come on, come on, like, like this. This translates to anything, relationships, health, wellness, finance. Like, if your energy is more on, you're, you're trying to not be something, then you can't pursue anything.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  We, in sports terminology, we, we say you're playing not to lose as opposed to playing to win.

• 22:42Lisa Nichols?

  Boom, look, I was an athlete. I was like, you're just trying not to lose. You ain't trying to win. You're not, you're trying not to be the loser. You're not trying to be the champion. Right, and so I, for a long time, I was grateful for not being fat anymore. I was grateful, I was so shocked that I was in a size six. I was so shocked that I was in a size eight. I was just shocked. So, I couldn't pursue anything. I was just like, I'm just grateful that it's just real. And I knew I would never go back. I wasn't ever worried about gaining weight again.

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  How do you, how do you determine that you're not going to go back? Or how did you set yourself up to make sure you never went back there? Because that's a nineteen year habit, it sounded like, and a nineteen year thought process that was a, around a belief system of, hey, I'm going to be this way and it's not okay, but I'm, I'm living with it and.

• 23:26Lisa Nichols?

  So, I'm going to shock you and say it had nothing to do with managing my food, my intake, my movement. It had nothing to do with that. Nothing, nothing. It was.

• 23:39Lisa Nichols?

  I was done.

• 23:41Lewis Howes?

  You were sick and tired of being sick and tired?

• 23:43Lisa Nichols?

  I was done because weight, you have to understand, I'm gonna be very transparent with you. For me, everyone has a jacket. Some people have a jacket of their success and it covers their need to be included or it covers their, it gives them a sense of, of, of, of, of success. It, it, it, it proves something to someone else. It compensates for the fact that they, they don't express emotion, right? Whatever it is, I'm not saying, we're all walking around, listen, we're all walking around managing perfect dysfunction. Like, let's just say that, like, there is no perfect. Pursuing perfect is a false pursuit that will always leave you disappointed. Right? And so, our job is to perfectly dance with our imperfection.

• 24:26Lisa Nichols?

  Like, I've learned how to dance with my imperfection. I tell people, me and my imperfection, we would do the electric slide.

• 24:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:33Lisa Nichols?

  Because I'm embracing it. And so, what I realized was, my jacket, my weight, it wasn't me, but it was me. It was, and I did it because a multitude of reasons. And I'll be quite, then I told you before, one, I have this personality. I've always had this personality. And I'm an alpha woman, so I got a personality that vibes with dudes and it vibes with women. And so, I would go into an event and the guys and I would vibe together because I'm, I'm not real frilly. I'm not gonna sit around talking about my nails. I'm not gonna talk about curl, I don't wanna talk about none of that. I'm not that chick. I wanna talk about.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  Trying to get results and impact.

• 25:10Lisa Nichols?

  I wanna talk about outcomes and results and investments and, you know, and so, I would vibe with the guys. And then with the ladies, I can, I can, I can laugh with you and I can, I can expand with you. And so, I found that when I was smaller, early on, women would always side-eye me and look, because I had all this personality, my personality is big. So, I gained the weight. Um, because it gave me a false, a, a false win. When I walked into-

• 25:34Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:35Lisa Nichols?

  Listen to this. When I walked into a room at two hundred and ten, two hundred and fifteen pounds-

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  You took up space.

• 25:41Lisa Nichols?

  I, and I was still vibe with the guys, but the women wouldn't worry about anything. Right? And so the other side to that was that with relationships, I had this amazing body. Like, like my body is pretty much like it was then, but imagine twenty years ago. I had this Serena Williams body and I also had this personality. So I would meet a lot of men and always, always, because I was, I was at the front of the room on stage. And I was doing, and so I would meet a room of five hundred, they would meet me. And I could never discern if someone wanted to get to know me or they were interested in all that package. And so I unconsciously eliminated the package unconsciously. So that when I began to meet even men, that I, they would go, you have a beautiful smile.

• 26:26Lisa Nichols?

  You have beautiful eyes. Because my body had morphed into something that wasn't necessarily super crazy attractive. It's a false, I, I, I've started this part with, we're all managing our dysfunction, remember? And we're all dealing with our perfect imperfection. It's your job, if you're listening to me, to find out what that thing is for you, that Band-Aid. So it was my Band-Aid. So it made women seem like they were less intimidated by me and it made men seem like they were more interested in my personality. It was a false win. That's called a Pyrrhic victory. Look it up. P H Y R R I C. A Pyrrhic victory. It's when you get the outcome that you wanted, but it cost you more than you needed to pay. Boom.

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  And what-

• 27:06Lisa Nichols?

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  And what is the price you had to pay to get to a place of removing the Band-Aid and shedding the weight? And shedding the psychological, uh, you know, pains that you were holding on to that held you back from the next level?

• 27:23Lisa Nichols?

  Um, so if anyone can relate to me on this one, I just want you, whenever you see this, I just want you to blow up the chat box. Blow up the, any way you can reach out to us. I, I realize, and if this is you, just let me know that I'm not by myself. And we like to use on my campus, Yana. Y A N A, meaning you are not alone. So y'all just Yana me, just let me know.

• 27:45Lisa Nichols?

  I, I, you know, I'd already made millions when I lost the weight. I had already been on Oprah, Larry King, Steve Harvey. I'd already been on all that. I'd already been international for years. I'd already written, I'd ar- I was on, I had six bestsellers, right? So I can't tell you that it stopped me from being any form of successful in the out, uh, in the external world, in the hour. I don't know. I mean, like, who's past Oprah, right? Like, I didn't know. What it cost me was who I knew myself to be in the dark of the night.

• 28:23Lisa Nichols?

  That who I went to bed with when I went to bed by myself.

• 28:27Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 28:28Lisa Nichols?

  With myself. It cost me the fear of saying, if I die in this big body, I would have played myself short. It had nothing to do with you, Louis. It had nothing to do with the world. It had nothing to do with the secret. I felt like I'd already done everything I, I, I, I've been serving big. It had to do with, I dare me leave this planet and let myself down.

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:51Lisa Nichols?

  Like this. It was all me. It was before I die, for me, I want to see me the way I know myself to be.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  So this wasn't a look yourself in the mirror and ask myself, have I done enough with my skills and talents for the world? Because you were doing that. You were showing up every day, ten, twelve, sixteen hours, working hard, serving for twenty years. It was, am I gonna be happy with myself if I die right now?

• 29:17Lisa Nichols?

  Listen, can't nobody grind harder than Sister. If you grind equal with me, let's do it. But like Will Smith said when he was being interviewed once, you know what I'm talking about?

• 29:27Lewis Howes?

  I'm about to die on the treadmill.

• 29:29Lisa Nichols?

  I'm gonna die on the treadmill. I'm gonna die on the treadmill. So I had no wonder. There's no more time anybody can give. I was opening the doors and shutting the doors. I would turn the light on in the morning. I would turn it out at night. I promise you, no, I, it wasn't that. It was, I know that I can touch more of me for me, not for anybody else. I, I had no guilt if I left this planet and I had only done what I did, only my time. I'm cool. I played full out for you. But I didn't.

• 30:03Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 30:04Lisa Nichols?

  Play full out for me.

• 30:05Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 30:08Lewis Howes?

  That's a strong, but you knew that for 20 years.

• 30:11Lisa Nichols?

  No, I didn't. I didn't know it for 20 years because for the first seven or eight, I was getting the response I wanted. Women liked me. I didn't get that.

• 30:21Lewis Howes?

  Men liked you for your, your, your skills and your.

• 30:24Lisa Nichols?

  Right. Well, women, women didn't feel intimidated by me. I, I went for years with women just kinda like, what's that? Who she thinks she all at? And I was trying to make them like me, trying to dim my light so that my light wouldn't be too bright for anybody. Right? But I didn't know I was doing it. And then in the relationships, I, I, well, you know, when women say there are no good men in the world. I say, I don't know where you been. I have dated some of the most amazing men on the planet. I just wasn't ready to get married or they weren't ready. I was in this crazy journey called, I'm gonna touch the world. And they're like, woman, you running too fast for me. I gotta go. So, but I met amazing men, but I met them inside of that body, that body.

• 31:03Lisa Nichols?

  And so there was a false illusion of victory. Y'all, you gotta hear what I'm saying, Louis, because so many of us, uh, so many, so many of us are living in that right now. These hollow victories. I mean, it's a hollow. It's called a Pyrrhic victory. P Y, P H Y R R I C, named after General Pyrrhus. When General Pyrrhus won two wars, he turned to one of his generals and said, I can't afford to ever win again. And when his general said, why? He said, because in winning these two wars, I've lost my best generals and my best friends. They're all dead. And so from that was derived the phrase Pyrrhic victory. And a Pyrrhic victory is when the cost of the victory actually outweighs the victory itself.

• 31:48Lisa Nichols?

  We see it in all the entertainers that we call successful, then they commit suicide. Or all the people we call successful, and then they, they, they binge out and they go on an alcohol bed, whatever that thing is. You said in their lives, it also can happen in ours. So for me, my Pyrrhic victory was about 90 pounds. It gave me what I wanted, but the cost. So the cost for me. Was every time I looked at myself on video and it's like man, when, when your body is not the way you know it can be. And then you get popular and you get some form of celebrity and everybody wants to take a picture with you. And then everybody wants to post a picture with you, of you, you get all these.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  Reminders.

• 32:30Lisa Nichols?

  This is who you are. So I would dress it well. I would dress it in three hundred dollar shirts and I would dress it. And I would bling it out and then I just got tired of dressing it, bling it, compensated for it. I got tired. I said, I'm done. And it was so crazy because when I lost the weight, I stopped wearing big earrings. I stopped wearing big necklaces. I was like, I don't want to wear none of that stuff. And then it was like, whoa. All that was a part of the costume so that you can feel comfortable with what you saw. And so, um, so yeah, it was, it was a journey and, and, and, and again, this is weight for me. Is it finances for you? Is it relationships? Is it being nice? A lot of people say yes. They say yes when they want to say no, so they can be liked.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna ask, yeah, I'm gonna ask you an unpopular question.

• 33:20Lisa Nichols?

  Go for it.

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  The self-love movement of loving yourself as who you are in this moment and accepting yourself for who you are. I truly believe that we need to accept ourselves. We need to accept our past, what we've been through. We can't hold on to pain forever and we can't hold on to the baggage of the past. And we've got to accept where we're at, but I'm always trying to improve where I'm at. And, and if I'm not fully happy with something, take a look in the mirror and ask myself, okay, what are the sacrifices, the prices I need to pay right now to see those improvements? It's gonna take time and energy. You gotta give something else up to get what I want. What, where are your thoughts on the self-love movement of, you know what? It doesn't matter if you're, uh, this or that, if you're broke or if you're a hundred pounds overweight

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  or if you're sick, you know, just love yourself and it's all good. What are your thoughts on kind of that vibe?

• 34:13Lisa Nichols?

  Um, so I, I, I, I have a, I have a very clear opinion on it. I could not, I could not take Lisa to her next level of greatness in her body until I learned to just accept, I could not hate my body the way it was and then do good for my body.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Ah, so you can't hate yourself and then do the work?

• 34:35Lisa Nichols?

  No, no, no. So I do, I do align with it. I do align with it. However, hold on. Wait for it, wait for it, right? So, so number one, love, self-love is the soil. Self-love is the soil. So have your soil. But please, brother, sister, plant a daggone seed and plant it and water it and give it some sunshine.

• 34:57Lewis Howes?

  Daily.

• 34:58Lisa Nichols?

  Daily. So trust, self-love is the soil in which you plant future contribution seeds in. And then daily grind, hashtag the treadmill. Daily grind is the life and the water required to be of some use and some, some possibility for those of us witnessing your life. So don't mistake self-love with, don't mistake complacency with self-love. So self-love says, I'm whole and complete and enough with where I start. But hold me accountable to where I'm going.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so don't, don't stay where I'm at right now and just be okay with it forever. Are you okay with where I'm at now? Accepted. This is what I've gone through. This is my challenges. This is my story. This is my problem. Okay, now that I'm aware and I own the moment, what am I gonna do moving forward?

• 35:55Lisa Nichols?

  And I'm enough in this moment. However, however, shame on me if I'm here in five years. Shame on me and shame on everyone around me who allows it. Who allowed me to, to, to do this sweet talking, this sugar sweet talking. Whether it be self-love or whether it be, I'm just standing still. When The Secret came out, everybody was like, I'm gonna sit and wait and manifest my life. What are you gonna sit and manifest your life on that couch? You, all you gonna get is a big dent in that couch. And now you mad at The Secret and mad at me. No, no, no, no, no. Awareness, awareness plus action equals transformation. Please don't skip that plus action part because action is the antidote for despair.

• 36:39Lisa Nichols?

  John Byers says, "Action is the antidote." Anything that's not working in your life, you have to be in some form of action. Not thought, not thoughting, not just thinking, not just talking, but action. So people get outthink, they're like, "Oh, I'm really been working on this. What you been doing?" "I've been analyzing." No, you ain't been, you ain't worked.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  Strategizing, thinking.

• 36:59Lisa Nichols?

  Strategizing and communicating. Hold on. Action is the antidote for despair, John Byers says. Lisa Nichols says, "Action is the prescription for success." At the bottom line, self-love is the soil. Self-action is the path to progress and movement for you and those witnessing your life. And when you remember that your life doesn't just belong to you, that's, see, see.

• 37:25Lewis Howes?

  This is huge. What does this mean? Your life doesn't belong to you?

• 37:28Lisa Nichols?

  Man, man, man.

• 37:30Lewis Howes?

  This is huge.

• 37:31Lisa Nichols?

  Man.

• 37:31Lewis Howes?

  People need to bookmark this. They need to put it on repeat.

• 37:35Lisa Nichols?

  Man, let me just tell you, if my life just belonged to me and I, and I knew it to be so, I wouldn't have done half the things I've done with all the discomfort it brought me, with all the inconvenience it brought me.

• 37:47Lewis Howes?

  Donuts all day, ice cream all night.

• 37:49Lisa Nichols?

  All the period victories, all the time lost. I'm talking just about the time that I have, I have had to surrender. The chill time, the bubble bath time, the time that I've surrendered so that my life could be of contribution. Man, your life just doesn't belong to you. Your life belongs to those people who are going to cross your path. And because they crossed your path, not anybody else's, but because they crossed your path, you inspired them to wanna be a better person. You inspired them to wanna express love in the way that they hadn't thought before. You inspired them to look another man, another woman in the eye. You inspired them to listen with open ears and an open heart because they crossed.

• 38:36Lisa Nichols?

  Your path, oh, your life doesn't just belong to you. You don't get to come in and leave without being responsible for those that you impact. And when you understand that, you're like, hold on. My life is, my life literally sends waves out into the universe. As a matter of fact, it sends waves to my cousins. It's sending waves to my siblings. It sends waves to my lovers. It sends, it sends waves to the people around me. And it impacts the way they choose to show up in the world. When you recognize that, then the question becomes, so what are you sending out? What are you doing with all your power? You're powerful. You're powerful. And leaders don't get to forget their power. See, I'll tell people, see, you don't get to have selective amnesia

• 39:21Lisa Nichols?

  about the impact you have on the world. You are powerful. You are a unicorn. You are a gladiator. You are a change agent. And, and, and the more you own that, and then you do the healing required. See, I had to do the healing required to own that. Oh, that's, that's like a dichotomy. So a leader has to heal. And a healer has to lead.

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  What was the biggest thing you needed to heal? And what do you still need to heal now?

• 39:50Lisa Nichols?

  So much. No, I'm serious.

• 39:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:54Lisa Nichols?

  Um, I had to heal not feeling like I was, um, good enough because, uh, because of my mocha skin, my full lips, my round hips and my curly hair. Um, feeling like, cause I felt the calling of my life to help humanity. But I didn't think that I was qualified as a black woman to help humanity. I, I, I didn't feel like I would be listened to by humanity. I thought black America would listen to me, but no one else. So when I see myself in Croatia and in Kazakhstan and in Kiev and in Ireland and in Kenya and in Dubai, I'm literally, I, whenever I go, I still go, wow.

• 40:40Lisa Nichols?

  Um, I, I needed to heal my image that, um, because I struggled in school. Because I, I am to this day functionally dislike, functionally dyslexic. Um, because I. I didn't graduate college, that I wasn't qualified to be of any great impact. I could be a local, I can be of local impact to a bunch of little black kids. But I wouldn't be of local impact to black educators. I wouldn't be regional impact and I sure heck wouldn't be national impact. Who am I to think I could be international impact? Heck, no. Little old me, South Central LA, Harlem Crip thirties, my neighbors.

• 41:24Lisa Nichols?

  Kick out of college because I didn't have the money. I didn't think that. So, I struggled with the, I am, I am the right person for this assignment. With all that I have and all that I think I should have had.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Lisa Nichols?

  I'm the right person. Um, I also struggled with, um, feeling like people would love me forever. Um, meaning that I was worthy of long-term. Like, I would hear about people who have twenty-five-year friendships and people who, and I hadn't experienced that, um, early in my career. Um, people of my past had been, were a part of my past. I, I had, and, and, and this world of transformation was all these new people in it. You know, because it wasn't the climate, it wasn't the conversation that my friends were having. So, I needed to find the people that were having the conversations like me, like you.

• 42:20Lisa Nichols?

  I needed to find the Jack Canfields, I needed to find the Marcy Schimows, I needed to find the Reverend Michael Beckwoods. I need to find, I need to find them, but I didn't know any of them a long time. And so, I began to miss, no one knows me, the, no one knows Lisa Chantay.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  The old me, yeah.

• 42:38Lisa Nichols?

  No one knows that.

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  They know me in the last two years, yeah, yeah.

• 42:41Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, and then no one, no, there's no one there to, for my bridge, for my bridge. And so, I begin to wonder, will I ever have, will I have long-term friends? Will I have long-term relationships? For a long time, that was a very silent worry of mine. Like, I want someone who just knows my history. They, I can leave the table. I would always say this to my friend, I want to leave the table, and if the waiter come, I want someone at the table to know what I eat. I go, it's just that simple. It was just that simple. And then I, um, I, I worried about love. Uh, as my career grew, I'm going to talk about the more successfully so, as my career grew,

• 43:22Lisa Nichols?

  uh, I began to feel like, um, it was harder to find someone that could hold my light without dimming my light. I need, I needed someone to be a container for my light without asking me to turn my light down. And, um, that was, that was, uh, that was a, a long journey. Uh, I'm fifty-four years old. I'm proudly fifty-four years old and I've just entered into the love of my life just two years ago.

• 43:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 43:57Lisa Nichols?

  And, um, and I'm grateful for every relationship that helped me get there. Every relationship gave me something. Either gave me a gift or gave me a lesson.

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 44:08Lisa Nichols?

  And, and I'm grateful for them. And I, I, I would never do, I would never do this, but I'm one of those weird people that I think it's an anomaly what, what can be done. I could throw a party and literally invite my former relationships and they would all come and we would have a great time.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  That is something to be said for right there.

• 44:27Lisa Nichols?

  That's how clean they are. That's how.

• 44:29Lewis Howes?

  I wish I, I wish I could say that about my, the past relationships I was in. I would like to, I would like to be in that space, but I would think they want to see me.

• 44:37Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how clean I left them. Because one of the things that I made sure is that we left the relationship leaving each other's dignity intact.

• 44:44Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, that's nice.

• 44:45Lisa Nichols?

  And that was a priority for me. And so in the onset of the relationship, I'd say, I don't see an end to this. Like I would love for this to last. And if it doesn't, can we make a commitment to honor one another's dignity and leave our, our dignity intact? Cause we may not be, we may be Mr. And Mrs. Right for each other, or we may be Mr. And Mrs. Right now for each other. And either is perfect. And so I opened it up with that. And so literally, literally if I, if I had a party, my girlfriends all want me to. I'm like, no, I'm not doing that. Um, but, uh, but that, so that was a, that was a thing. And, um, and then the last, the last thing I just have to say, cause I struggled was between my love of my child and the love of my career.

• 45:28Lewis Howes?

  That was a fear?

• 45:29Lisa Nichols?

  That was a, that was a pull. I felt like I, I didn't know, no one ever said they had both. Everyone talked about they having to choose. Everyone talks about having to choose between my career, my family. Everyone talks about being out of balance. And so I adopted it. And so I started with a fear that somehow my son would suffer because I was living my dream. Or somehow my dream would suffer because I'm a mother.

• 45:55Lisa Nichols?

  And so, um, my son, uh, my son at eighteen, remember, I don't know if you remember, they had the phones where you can put your, your, your Faye five in the phone.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:06Lisa Nichols?

  Early on. And my son, when he was eighteen or seventeen, he was talking to his cousins on the Faye five. And we have a very close knit family and my cousins, my, his, my nephew said, why, why I'm not in your Faye five? Why you only, why, why I'm not your Faye five? And, and my son said, I don't have room. And he goes, show me your Faye five, man. Show me your Faye five. And I could hear them in the background and, and he's showing my nephew his Faye five and I can hear my nephew go, dude, your mom? What is that about? And he goes, we cool like that. My son said, we're cool like, we're cool like that. And I, I, I, it was my first sign that I didn't have to choose.

• 46:48Lisa Nichols?

  That I made them both work. And so anyway, you asked the question, what, what were the things? Those were the three things that I struggled with.

• 46:54Lewis Howes?

  That's, that's beautiful. And how do we own the moment? And when things are horrible, should we own it and, you know, be in our suffering or, so you know what? We have a lot of things to be grateful for. What do you think about this?

• 47:07Lisa Nichols?

  So I love Benjamin Franklin's statement. He says, comparison is and will always be the thief of all your joy. So that's number one, that, that when you have a false sense of worth because you're stepping on someone else's break, breakdown, like, oh, I'm better than you. That's a false sense of worth. Uh, or when you are minimizing your greatness because someone is greater. Uh, my girlfriend, Suzie, has this great story. She talks about she and her girlfriends were on a yacht in San Diego and they got their martinis, they got their glasses, the sunshine and music's going and they're on there. I don't know, they're fifty five foot yacht, right? And it's nice. And, and they're sailing through San Diego. She said, and she had her shades on laying back and all of a sudden this shadow comes over her, her face.

• 47:51Lisa Nichols?

  And she opens her eyes to this hundred and fifty five foot yacht.

• 47:57Lisa Nichols?

  And the ladies up there, and the ladies up there drinking, and she comes down and goes hello. And she said she felt one hundred percent complete and whole and happy until that yacht came.

• 48:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:09Lisa Nichols?

  And she says, the woman didn't try to take her joy, she handed her joy to that woman, right? And so comparison will always steal your joy one way or another. The false sense of grandizing you on someone else's neck. I always say, can you be as tall as you need to be without standing on my neck? Like, can you do me that favor? Can you stand in your greatness without standing on my neck, right? And so that's that, that's every time you say, well, we're not as bad as such and so, you just put your foot on someone's neck. To stand just a little bit taller, right? And so, and then the other part to that, so when you're feeling great and when you're feeling joyful, what I like to do is I like to show awareness.

• 48:52Lisa Nichols?

  I want a hundred percent of my joy, I want a hundred percent of my bliss. I want to be able to share it, but I want to share it with awareness. So it looks like this.

• 49:03Lisa Nichols?

  Not everyone is having the same experience that I'm having. And I, and I honor that, and I celebrate that. And I want to celebrate the fact that right now I'm in the most fulfilling relationship I've ever experienced. I want to celebrate the fact that I, I found love in a way that I never even knew love existed. And I understand everyone is in a different place, and I honor that. I just wanted to give light and celebrate where I am right now. And so it's compassionate, compassionate celebration, right? So if you can celebrate with compassion, I don't want to minimize my light, I don't want to dim my light. I don't want to turn my light down, I don't want to walk in a room and go, hold on, let me turn my light down. Because your light isn't bright.

• 49:47Lisa Nichols?

  No, that's my light, I want to bring it in the room, but I want to honor you. And I want to, I want to acknowledge your light may not be the same wattage as mine. And so it looks like that, like everyone's in different places right now. I just want to celebrate where I am. I want to, I want, I want to expose it. I want to, I want to say it out loud. And, and so you do that. The other side is when life is hard and life is, you know, it's, it's hitting you.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  You've lost all your money, you're going through divorce, you're

• 50:15Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:15Lewis Howes?

  You gained the weight in two weeks and, you know, everything's down.

• 50:18Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah. So I think, one, you gotta watch out, because you, because you could be a dark light vortex. So you come in and you shine your dark light, you pull everyone into your dark light and all of a sudden everyone's swirling with you. I go, watch out, watch out, make sure your swirl is not the toilet bowl. Like make sure so you're not swirling with someone inside misery. And so there's a responsibility. And, and to me, I, I, I, I sandwich ugly stuff. I sandwich the ugly. I'll do the sandwich effect. I don't have a better name for it, do the sandwich effect. I grew up on sandwiches as a child. So sandwich effect. Sandwich ugly with possibility. This is how it sounds.

• 51:02Lisa Nichols?

  It's not gonna always be this way.

• 51:05Lisa Nichols?

  But right now, I feel like I'm in the darkest place ever. I feel miserable, I feel angry, I feel lonely. I feel frustrated. I'm always feeling like I want to scream. And I know that I am not taking out real estate in this location.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 51:23Lisa Nichols?

  I know.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  You're just renting it.

• 51:25Lisa Nichols?

  I know that this is a rent and not even a rent to own, that if this is a stop sign, I'm gonna do a rolling stop. I don't even want to fully stop here.

• 51:33Lewis Howes?

  Give me the ticket on the way.

• 51:35Lisa Nichols?

  Man, but I, that, I, sometimes I left my door buying the ticket. I'm gonna buy, I'm gonna get a ticket. I'm all right with it. And so you sandwich it. If you gotta share hard news, I was just on the interview just now, I told you, um, all white leaders. And they said, teach us. And I said, okay, I'm gonna share some news. First, I want you to know that we are going to get through this, that we are going to be a better human race because of this, that you are to be celebrated because you signed up for this call. Now, this might hurt a little bit. And then I gave them insight and then on the back end, I said, I'm honored to sit here with you as your sister. I'm honored to co-create what a future looks like.

• 52:18Lisa Nichols?

  I'm honored to be on the planet at the same time as you. This is the beginning, not the end, more to come. Sandwich, right? So if you're gonna deliver some dark energy, put it in a sandwich. Make sure you sandwich you a possibility. Even if you don't know what the possibility is, just say, I know there's better to come. It's my birthright. It's my birthright to have joy. It's my birthright to have abundance. It's my birthright to experience healthy love. That's my birthright. Right now, I'm not having that experience. But I'm gonna hold on to the fact that it's my birthright.

• 52:52Lewis Howes?

  How do we remind ourselves and actually believe in abundance for ourselves? When all the evidence points in the other direction of scarcity, lack of, lack, not worthy of, like, how do you convince yourself? How do you trick yourself? How do you, you know, is this a hack? Is this a, okay, I say this in front of the mirror every day, but I'm not making any money and I'm still.

• 53:13Lisa Nichols?

  Right, right, right. Um, so I'm gonna be honest with you. For me, it's a part of a spiritual practice. It's a part of understanding that your mind can't contain all the things that are happening in the universe right now. Like, and if you think that all that's happening in the universe is happening between your ears and you understand it, then that's a very ego-centered and a very limited universe, right? And so my faith, that's number one. My faith, faith is, you know, having, you know, having faith in what you can't see, right? So I'm not looking at all the physical evidence. I'm not looking at that. Cause physical evidence is just a manifestation of people's decisions. So people are helping that. There is a whole universe conspiring on my behalf that I do good. I believe in good.

• 53:57Lisa Nichols?

  I wanna bring good. So the universe is setting things up to support me because I'm operating in alliance with the calling on my life. That's what I know, like I know, like I know. I'm not asking for permission to believe that. I'm not asking for the way my day is going to confirm that. See, I woke up with that awareness and then my day started. So you have to, there has to be a part of you that's not triggered by what's happening. There has to be a part of you that's sitting in the what you know. I know, like I know, like I know, like I know. I'm not asking for permission to be used in this universe. I'm letting you know I'm going to be used in the universe for the highest good. Now today is a bad day. But I'm gonna be used for the high is good. You gotta stand on that.

• 54:40Lisa Nichols?

  You gotta let your knowing be like a pole that goes through the center of your head, Louis, all the way down through the center of your body, all the way down to the center of the earth. And no matter what happens, riots and outbreaks and, and, and quarantines and pandemics, you still gotta say, hold on, this is impacting my life experience, it's not impacting my life purpose.

• 55:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:07Lisa Nichols?

  So, when, when, when you operate like that, then you stop reacting. And your emotions are not in a reaction state. Your emotions are in a, okay, that came, okay, how do we operate with it? Okay, that came, and you'll still spin out. Like I spun, I, I, when they told me I couldn't get on the plane, I, I was like, okay, hold on. But then I begin to search for my grounding.

• 55:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 55:36Lisa Nichols?

  I begin to search for my center. I begin to search for my calm. And so you have to know where to find those things and how to go back and get them. You have a right to be, uh, to upset, to be scared, to be frustrated, to be angry. You got a right to feel all those feelings. Please feel them, so you know what they feel like. What you don't have permission to do, if you say you're a leader, a unicorn, a change maker, is to take up real estate in that feeling, to do a lease option buy. What you, what you don't get to do is stay in that state of emotion that moves you out of, be, out of being impactful. And so, um, it's a, it's an ongoing process.

• 56:12Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think it's easier for people to stay in, I guess what's the, the terminology is like misery loves company? Why is misery easier to stay in than growth, uh, you know, uh, achievement, uh, you know, consistency of positive things? Why do you think that is?

• 56:32Lisa Nichols?

  Because low vibration is the first vibration that if you're walking on stairs and it was fifteen flights of stairs and you saw a party on the fifth flight and no one's at the fifteenth flight, you're like, why isn't no one at the fifteenth flight? Because the fifth flight was easier to get to.

• 56:47Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 56:47Lisa Nichols?

  It requires less work. It drains your energy, it drains more energy but requires less work to think on a low vibration.

• 56:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 56:56Lisa Nichols?

  Every single one of us that are in a forward-moving conversation right now didn't land there accidentally, so you can slip into toxic conversation. You can do nothing and be average. You can do nothing and be average. That's why it's crowded. I'm not judging anybody, but average is crowded because it's level one. There's no elevator required, there's no stairs required, it's level one, there's no average, right? And so, toxic thinking and non-growth thinking.

• 57:26Lewis Howes?

  Gossip and...

• 57:27Lisa Nichols?

  Right, gossip and hating and just constantly reliving and putting new energy into anger. That's at a lower level. Think of those of us who are about forward-moving conversations. We have to climb, I had to be quiet for ten days, Lois.

• 57:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh.

• 57:47Lisa Nichols?

  I had to be quiet, do you understand the challenge of that?

• 57:52Lewis Howes?

  For you, Lisa, yes, I understand.

• 57:54Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, I had to be quiet for ten days and then when I did my first Facebook Live and if you go back in my May, you'll see it. I went back and did my first Facebook Live, I've never cried. I've never cried on Facebook like that, I've never quite... I've cried on stage like that, but I've never... I had so much emotion, but I had already made my way to conscious thinking. And now I gave myself permission to speak. And even at that, I felt, I felt the pull. I felt the pull pulling me back into... Woo.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  Back to level one.

• 58:29Lisa Nichols?

  Man, and I just kept going, no, no, no, no, not on my watch.

• 58:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 58:32Lisa Nichols?

  No, no, no, hold on, not on my watch, hold on. But I, when I tell you on my ankles, on that first Facebook Live that I did, on my.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  All the com- the negative comments are this.

• 58:41Lisa Nichols?

  All the negative comments, all the judgment, all the, all the hurt, all the fear that I had for my son and just angry that I'm still fearful for my son to drive. And so, all of that, all of that was coming up. And so, you ask, why do people do it? Because it requires less work. Um, uh, it, a- a- and, and we do it in, we're, we're, we're, we're communal people. So, we love to do things and we love to get people to co-sign with us. Um, and, and negative thinking is cancerous. Um, uh, and so, it, it spreads effortlessly. If you do nothing to cancer, it's going to spread, right? But, but if you do nothing with positive thinking, it doesn't spread.

• 59:27Lisa Nichols?

  You have to get up and shovel and scoop and plant and pull up the weeds and plant new seeds and get the water and water it. You gotta do all this stuff for positive. So, yeah, people decide, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hang out here in, in the negative world. And then, they watch successful people and wonder, why can't I have that? Well, let me just tell you something, your mindset is birthing your life experience. You cannot have a, a life in a castle with a mindset in the doghouse.

• 1:00:02Lewis Howes?

  Oh dang, that's the truth right there, Lisa.

• 1:00:07Lisa Nichols?

  You can't, you can't have a life, I wanna, I wanna have a life, I wanna live in.

• 1:00:10Lewis Howes?

  Say that one more time, you can't have a what?

• 1:00:12Lisa Nichols?

  You can't have a life in the castle with a mindset in the doghouse, in the dog pound. Like, you, you, right, you can't, you, you, it's incongruent. You incongruent. When the tongue in your mouth. And the tongue in your shoe are going in two different directions. You ain't going nowhere. When you align.

• 1:00:33Lewis Howes?

  Pull it, yeah.

• 1:00:34Lisa Nichols?

  When you align the tongue in your mouth to go in the same direction as the tongue in your shoe. Now we can move.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  How important is the thoughts that you say in your mind quietly every day? And the words you speak out loud every day? How important are they? Together and which one is more valuable if you could only choose one? Negative thoughts but positive words? Positive thoughts but negative words? Or do they both need to be in alignment towards your mission and purpose?

• 1:01:07Lisa Nichols?

  Well, um, so I'll start with this. Your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head. I'm gonna start with that.

• 1:01:18Lewis Howes?

  Can we just speak for like 24 hours on this? I love this.

• 1:01:21Lisa Nichols?

  Right, your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head. So if you said nothing but thought everything, your life is gonna show up to make your thoughts true. So you have one job. You have one job in your life for you to make what you think about life true. So that you're not wrong. You don't wanna walk around wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. You wanna be right about the life you see. So you're going to work hard, work hard to produce the life that you talk about in your mind. Whether that life is no one loves me. I'm all alone. You can be in a group of people and you will think I'm so alone. And, and, and you will feel alone and things will show up to cosign your loneliness. Just because you're looking for that.

• 1:02:05Lisa Nichols?

  And so, um, if you start with, I'm gonna say the mind, like the mind is that thing. The mind is the core engine. It starts all things. It shuts all things down. When I start thinking something different, I'm like, hold on, stop. I wanna think something, I shut down that behavior. I shut down that outcome. When I birth something, I birth it in my mind. I focus on my mind. I see myself there in my mind. Before I got on with you, I was doing guided visualizations. I'm recording them. So people, and I, and I mean, they're juicy. And I'm saying, see yourself here. Because if you can see it and then the, the, the key is evoke the emotion. As if you were there.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Yup.

• 1:02:47Lisa Nichols?

  Right? And that's why people are, who are sad all the time are sad because they're thinking of things that make them sad. And then the emotion follows the thought. So I'm gonna say, everything starts with your thought, Louis. But let me just say this. When you speak, you speak your future into the world. You speak your future. Whatever you say, whatever falls off your tongue, when, when you say, "I am," right? The unconscious mind says, "And you are so," whatever comes on the other side of that. And so you, you, you asked me a hard question. Which one is most important? It starts with the thought. I think the thought is that, that's where everything originates.

• 1:03:29Lisa Nichols?

  And then you add a whole lot of turbo boost to it with your tongue.

• 1:03:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Lisa Nichols?

  When you align the two, and then you add to it, like the B12, the B12 of action. Action is like, action is like, that's the nitro, that's the nitro, like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, right? And I see so many people, they think it, they write it, they journal it, they talk about it, and they do no action. And I go, you understand that the action is, that, that's like, that's like putting the flower in the sun. Cause it requires sun. And so, yeah.

• 1:04:03Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to bring back a question to the beginning and tie this kind of in a nice bow, if we could, uh, about self-care and self-worth. What do we say to ourselves when we don't do self-care? What are we saying about how much we are worth to ourselves when we don't, when we delay that for months and years of taking care of ourselves?

• 1:04:25Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I'm not important enough to put at the front of my own line.

• 1:04:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:32Lisa Nichols?

  You always are gonna have a line of people to serve, things to do. And you got one job, to stand at the front of your own line. Um, you, you're, you're saying that I, you're training other people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself.

• 1:04:48Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:49Lisa Nichols?

  And so you are saying, um,

• 1:04:53Lisa Nichols?

  You're saying that I, I still need to heal in the area of feeling important enough to prioritize my self-care.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:03Lisa Nichols?

  You also may be saying and can be saying, I still need to learn how to fall in love with myself. Enough to take care of me the way I take care of others. And that's so many people, you take care of those around you far better than you take care of yourself.

• 1:05:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. This is beautiful. You, you shared last time, I want to see if your three truths are the same. So at the end of every interview, I ask people what their three biggest truths are. If this was their last day on earth many years from now. And all of their content was, I had to go with them to the next place. And there was no more videos or books or anything of your message. But you could share three lessons to the world or three truths. I'm curious if your three truths have changed in this season. So I'll ask you, what are your current three truths?

• 1:05:53Lisa Nichols?

  You are greater than your circumstances.

• 1:06:00Lisa Nichols?

  It's your birthright. It's your birthright to have joy and abundance and love and fairness.

• 1:06:11Lisa Nichols?

  And it's your responsibility to leave this planet a better place than it was before you came by your contribution. And those probably are all different because I'm a woman, I change. I do right, I change hair, I change.

• 1:06:28Lewis Howes?

  I like it.

• 1:06:29Lisa Nichols?

  What, what, what, what were they for?

• 1:06:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the last, last time was you get, you get a thousand do-overs every nine nine nine. You get to press reset. Most valuable thing is to nourish people around you who love you and make your dash dance.

• 1:06:45Lisa Nichols?

  Yes.

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  Those are in alignment, yeah, those are in alignment.

• 1:06:49Lisa Nichols?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, all in the community.

• 1:06:51Lewis Howes?

  As a last question, which I'm gonna ask you here in a second, before I do Lisa, I want to acknowledge you for being an incredible human being of spreading positive energy. You talked about like, our life is not for us, it's for other people as well. And every action, every word, every intention you set creates a ripple and you've made a powerful impact on me. You know, I know Ben is watching and listening, our producer, it's made an impact on him and the millions of people that are listening and watching right now, this is gonna impact in such a profound, powerful way. I acknowledge you for your consistent growth, the consistent effort and energy you take to

• 1:07:32Lewis Howes?

  work on your health and maintain and improve to having the relationship you want, everything. I acknowledge you. You're amazing and I'm so grateful we're friends and you're alive, so.

• 1:07:43Lisa Nichols?

  Thank you so much. I appreciate the acknowledgement. I'm a reflection of you, brother. We are blessed enough to find like unicorns like each other so that we, we don't have to walk this planet alone wondering about our sanity because we play out in the universe. We don't play outside the box. We realize that there was never a box in the first place. So, thank you for making the journey feel good. I'm always grateful for the company I get to keep while I'm here and while I'm up to what I'm doing. So, I'm your sister in service, your sister in possibility. I want to find excuses to play together and call it.

• 1:08:23Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, exactly. I appreciate.

• 1:08:25Lisa Nichols?

  You've always been a safe space. I love the space you create. It's judgment free. It's ego free and it's full of intention of service and it's, that's the place I want to spend.

• 1:08:38Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. We'll do more of these for sure, frequently in the future. My final question, what's your definition of greatness currently?

• 1:08:47Lisa Nichols?

  Being willing to lift others as you climb.

• 1:08:52Lisa Nichols?

  Being willing to lift others as you climb. Being willing to speak even if your voice shakes.

• 1:09:03Lisa Nichols?

  Be willing to lift as you climb and be willing to speak even if your voice shakes. There you go.

• 1:09:10Lewis Howes?

  I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend, leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter

• 1:09:54Lewis Howes?

  and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, 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.