170 Become Superhuman at Any Skill with Tim Ferriss

"You don't need to be superhuman to get superhuman results." - Tim Ferriss If you enjoyed this episode, check out the full video interview (bonus clip included!), show notes and more at www.lewishowes.com/170. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 170 with number one New York Times bestselling author, Tim Ferriss. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  What is up everyone? Thank you so much for joining me today. On today's episode, we've got a very special guest. His name is Mr. Tim Ferriss, and he is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, an incredible human being, extremely intelligent. And for those that don't know him yet, I don't know where you've been because we've had him on here a couple of times before. This is his third time on, and he has done some incredible things in the business world, the entrepreneurial world. He's an investor, author, now TV show extraordinaire host. He's got a show out called The Tim Ferriss Experiment. We're going to have it linked up with the show notes over at lewishouse.com/170. Make sure to check it out, but you can go over to his blog, forourworkweek.com,

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  and see The Tim Ferriss Experiment right there. You can get it all on iTunes right now. We did something different for this episode. I took questions from all of you. I asked you guys on our online program, School of Greatness Academy, I asked you guys, you know, what are the questions that you really want to know from Tim that you haven't heard anywhere else on any other interview? And we dive into a lot of those things today. Again, some pretty interesting questions that we had submitted and we asked, and Tim really gave some insights that I feel like he probably has never shared before, and he really dove in deep on a lot of these things. So I hope you guys get a lot out of this. Also, we've got the full video interview over at lewishouse.com/170.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  Also, we've got additional video clips where Tim and I go head-to-head in a staring contest and rock, paper, scissors. And I'll give you 20.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Points for who can ever guess what happens at the end of each one of these competitions. Again, pretty cool. Make sure to check out the show notes over at lewishouse.com/170. And also check out the Tim Ferriss Experiment over on iTunes. And let's go ahead and dive in guys with the one and only Timothy Ferris.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about today's guest. We've got my man, Tim Ferriss on the show. What's up, brother?

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Hey, man. Good to be back.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  Very excited. This is your third time on, I believe. And we've talked about pretty much everything that I could ask you to ever kind of think of. I've talked about on the show, we just had lunch, we talked about a lot of stuff I've wanted to ask you for a while as well. Off the show, off the record. And so I asked the School of Greatness members, listeners, what are the most important questions that you have for Tim that you think would be really interesting? Not just for our work week type stuff, but something that, um, you know, you don't think you've ever heard him talk about before. So we've got a list of questions, you know, we're going to kind of see where this goes. But also before that, I want to talk about what you've got going on. You've got something you want to promote that's coming out. It's not a book.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  It's not a book for the first time in a lot of ways.

• 3:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  After many years of effort, the TV show that I did, 13 episodes, is going to, by the time people hear this, should be available on iTunes.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  And on your website.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  And on my website, people search for the Tim Ferriss Experiment. So that was basically the, the video equivalent of The Four Hour Body. So each episode features me doing some type of crazy experiment where I try to tackle parkour or golf or

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Drumming was one of them.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Drumming, professional poker in a week. And I go from zero to hopefully close to hero with the help of unorthodox teachers. And then in a few episodes, I actually am one of the teachers to show that it's not me, it's a toolkit. So we take other beginners for say, uh, someone who can't swim, try to turn them into an open water, open ocean swimmer in the span of, you know, four or five days. They can't swim a lap in a pool, but can we get them to swim like a mile in the ocean and like 50 foot deep water in a week? Type of experiments. And it was shot and edited by the team that does all of Anthony Bourdain's stuff. So it's very super cinematic. Very, very gritty and really proud of it. So it's, it's been a long time coming to get everything lined up, but now.

• 4:40Lewis Howes?

  Year and a half, two years now since you started.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, at least. And it's, there's a lot of bonus content too. So on iTunes, if people get the season pass, they probably get a couple of hours of additional content.

• 4:51Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. And what, let's talk about that for a moment before we get into questions. What is the, the, the task that you took on or the challenge you took on that was, you thought was going to be the easiest challenge, that was actually the hardest challenge that you're allowed to talk about right now?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I can talk about all of them. I think that I severely underestimated. I thought they were all going to be difficult. I didn't expect any of them to be easy because that would defeat the, the point of the show. Anyway, I want, I want people to see me sweat. I want people to see me risk failing. And I will say that I don't succeed in all these episodes. Like people get to see me crash and burn in a few.

• 5:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And I severely underestimated how physically punishing parkour would be. That, that I will just, I still have injuries to this day from that episode.

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  Travis Brewer let you get beat up?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Uh, well, Travis is bulletproof. He's, he's a ninja and very, almost immune to injury, it seems. But I have a lemon sized cyst inside my right knee.

• 5:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Right now from impact damage from that episode still today.

• 5:53Lewis Howes?

  Whoa.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  So that was a super intense episode.

• 5:56Lewis Howes?

  What happened?

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Surfing with Laird Hamilton was also pretty insane.

• 5:59Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Which was awesome and terrifying because I didn't learn to swim until I was in my thirties, which is embarrassing to admit. That's true.

• 6:05Lewis Howes?

  Did you get up on a wave?

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Uh, I did.

• 6:08Lewis Howes?

  Or is that a cliffhanger?

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I did. I did. I did get up on a wave and.

• 6:12Lewis Howes?

  Did they film it as a record of this?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  There's a lot more falling. But, but it's, the point of this show, I mean, the premise is that you don't need to be superhuman to get superhuman results. You just need a better toolkit. So I wanted people to see in real time, not just in retrospect. It's the four hour body. It's like, I do this stuff for months and years and then I write about it after the fact. This is where people get to see in real time, like how am I adapting? It's like, if I tear my arm and I can't use my left arm for something and then I have to do a drumming episode, like what do I do? How do I adapt? What do I jury rig together? Like Iber style. So it was a very, very, very fun show to put the other. So I hope people enjoy it. If they go to, I think it's just iTunes.com forward slash Tim Ferriss or they can just search Tim Ferriss Experiment.

• 6:56Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Or on your blog, fourhourweekread.com, right?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 7:00Lewis Howes?

  And one of the questions in here, I'm trying to find it right now, reminded me of this about, and I can't find it, but I remember them asking, you know, what's the one superhero that you connect with the most and why? Cause you're talking about these superhero results.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say growing up, the superhero, or one of the superheroes that I, most of the superheroes I connected with were tortured in some way.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Wolverine, I mean, I was a, a serious comic book collector and married for a long time. I still have probably 10,000 polybagged cardboard backed comic books. At, at home at my parents' place from my first, I suppose, business in a way, I collected comic books. But I was a fanatic about Wolverine, Punisher, Punisher War Journal. And I liked these, I wouldn't call them anti-heroes necessarily, but these, these extremely impressive superheroes or characters who were also very fallible human beings. They had these internal conflicts because I can't identify with, with say a Superman, although I'm sure he has some conflict.

• 8:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  But these, uh, these sort of pictures of perfection that some superheroes ended up being represented as in these comic books, I couldn't identify with, and I much preferred the characters who overcame their own internal struggles and hardship and doubt and self-loathing to do incredible things. So the fact that like Wolverine would get his ass kicked and granted he has adamantium claws and some pretty amazing preventative capabilities, but he would screw things up and then he'd have to fix it. Same thing with, uh, with I guess Frank Castle in The Punisher, so.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  So which one was your, would you connect with the most, you say?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Wolverine.

• 8:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  He's just a badass too.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Wolverine's amazing. And I was so worried when the X-Men movie was coming out that they were going to screw up the casting.

• 8:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And then, um, Hugh Jackman just nailed it.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  Perfect, yeah. He's so good.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Perfect casting, yeah.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  Speaking of overcoming your own inner battles and adversity, what were, what was like the biggest challenge you were facing internally growing up for the reason why you were able to connect with that message of, you know, being tortured?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Uh, I think that, uh, I spent a lot of time alone. It was by choice at a later point, but I was a runt growing up. I was really small until about sixth grade. I got my ass kicked a lot. And I escaped into books and whether that was comic books or Dungeons and Dragons or marine biology. I was really fascinated by sharks and all sorts of fish. So I, I would sit outside. I remember even in first grade with this book called fishes of the world and I would stay away from recess because I didn't want to get, you know, wedgie'd or punched in the face or whatever. And I would, and I would read. So that was my escape. But I think spending a lot of time alone gives you time to, uh, meditate

• 9:50Speaker 01

  on the good and the bad. And I think in excess isolation, uh, can be detrimental and poisonous. You just end up chasing your own tail a lot or beating yourself up. So in lieu of having other people beat myself, beat me up, I would beat myself up. You know, why wasn't I stronger? Why wasn't I faster? Why wasn't I bigger? Why couldn't I go out and stand up for myself, et cetera? And, um, you know, eventually wrestling was a huge tool that allowed me to overcome some of those types of self doubt because it was weight class based. I could actually, I could actually win. Whereas if I was getting, yeah, if I was getting picked for a kickball team or a football team or something like that, there was no way that I would be able to shine. I would just get decimated. And then when

• 10:32Speaker 01

  I finally had a massive, massive growth spurt, I think it was after my fifth grade year and I, I grew, I'm not, I'm not exaggerating. The span of three months, uh, grew something like five inches and gained like 50 pounds of muscle and came back and needless to say was, was, uh, I'd been fueled by Punisher comic books. So I was, I was ready to exact, I was ready to exact retribution on every bully in the class, which was, uh, pretty splendid. I'm not gonna lie.

• 10:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool. Um, can you tell me about, this is another question from our listeners. Can you tell me about one of the people who's been the kindest in your life?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  The kindest? Well,

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Someone who's like just always been so kind, loving and generous and maybe never really expected anything in return.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Uh, the, the first people to come to my, are my parents, but I don't want to give the, the expected answer. Uh, that, that would definitely be in first place, but you know, hopefully for most people, that's a given for them as well. Uh, I would say there were three people who come to mind immediately and there are many more, but the first was a wrestling coach named John Buxton at, uh, St. Paul's. So it was the second high school I went to. In Jersey? Uh, I was, no, that was before Jersey. So I was in New Hampshire. Okay. And, uh, Mr. Buxton produced very cohesive teams and he pushed each individual wrestler to the breaking point and beyond to prove to them that they had more inside them than they

• 11:57Speaker 01

  thought they had. Uh, but he was much more than a wrestling coach. He was an English, uh, teacher. He was also in charge, uh, at least in part for raising an incredible endowment. I mean, he grew it from like 50 to 500 million dollars, something like that. And, uh, is now the dean of Culver Academy. And the, if you look at the kids who came out of his program, uh, under his guidance, it's pretty astonishing to see how well a lot of them have done, even compared to everyone else in, in the same class, same, the same school. So my wrestling partner, for instance, was, uh, for, uh, for a good period of time, probably a year, he graduated before I did, but, uh, Charles Best, who went on to be the founder of DonorsChoose.org. That's pretty cool. The first nonprofit ever to be on the, the cover of Fast Company for their most innovative companies.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  You wrestled with him in high school? He was my partner. Yeah. He beat me by like one or two points every time until he graduated, uh, which was really frustrating. His long, lanky legs. Uh, and, uh, so I'd say, uh, could focus on that. Two other, there, there are a bunch of other people who come to mind. I've, I've been very fortunate to have mentors who've helped guide me away from big mistakes and towards better paths. Uh, I'm not particularly religious, but a reverend, actually, uh, Richard Greenleaf, uh, because I went to an Episcopal boarding school for the second half of my schooling in high school. Uh, he was based, he was my resident advisor, my guidance counselor. And even when other teachers didn't believe in me or didn't think

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I could say get into Princeton, which I ended up getting into, uh, he was always there to support me and give me that extra bit of confidence when I was lacking it myself. And, uh, what you have to realize is And looking back, it's very obvious, you know, my, my, my, my college guidance counselor at this school, St. Paul's, it's a very well-known school, but he is, he was incentivized to be able to say to parents, you know, 80% of the students that I advise got into their first choice college. Okay. Now, how do people game, how would you game that if you're just a normal human being? Not a bad person, but if you want to be able to say that, the easiest

• 14:05Speaker 01

  way to do that is to get students to drop their, their sights from really, really tough to get into schools to B, B-class schools or C-class. Making that their first choice. To make that their first choice. And so that's what he tried to do with me. Interesting. And I politely left that first meeting and we never had another one. But Mr. Greenleaf was really there to be like my backstop so that I wouldn't start listening to those voices that this guidance counselor had planted in my head. You know, no, this is going to transfer. You took a year off to go to Japan. I think your, your reach schools should really be, or your backup schools should be your first class, your first choice schools. And Mr. Rutgers or something. Yeah. And Mr. Greenleaf is just like, what are you, that's ridiculous. Like, there's

• 14:49Speaker 01

  no harm in applying. That's ludicrous. So those, those are two. I could keep on going. I've been very fortunate with those two people who come to mind. That's cool. And, and I should point out though, that it was, there, I think there are two types, and this is not something that I came up with myself, but there, there are two types of, of love and support. And you could typify them as sort of motherly love, which is unconditional. And then there's the fatherly love, which is conditional. Like, you have to, you have to earn it by doing something. And I think you need both. One is not better than the other. You need both types in, in life. And the US, I think, is very prone culturally, for political correctness and other reasons, to just giving everyone a pat on the head,

• 15:30Speaker 01

  no matter what. And I don't, I think ultimately, in the long term, that can be very detrimental. If that's the only type of support you give someone. Right. And so Mr. Buckson is like, if you need to go and puke in the corner into a bucket and then keep working out, it's like, all right, we'll get your puking done because we're on a clock. Right. And then come back and keep training because I know you can. Sure. And so it wasn't always fun, but it was exactly the medicine that I needed. Yeah. And looking back, it was hugely formative for me.

• 15:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's pretty cool. And would you say you're a pretty introverted person then from coming up from this being alone when you were a kid?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  I would say that I am hardwired as an introvert. So I find it very draining to be in big groups for a long period of time.

• 16:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Uh, conferences, I find very, very exhausting. Uh, small conversations or alone time, I find recharging. So I can, I can perform, I can teach. And I enjoy teaching. So I can get on stage and become what people would perceive as an extrovert.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  To accomplish that, but it's very, very draining.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  It's draining. Yeah.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  I'm an introvert.

• 16:31Lewis Howes?

  And one of the questions to follow that is what's your best method for working with opposite minded people? So maybe working with extroverts or people that don't think the way that you think about things. What's your best method for working with them?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Well, I, uh.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  Cause I would say you're very unique, the way you think and the way you do things. There's not many people that work and think like you.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Oh, then sometimes, sometimes people work and think a lot better than I do. Uh, or there are different ways to, to skin the same cat. And I really don't know where that expression came from. It's such a brutal expression, but there are multiple ways to skin that cat. Uh, and, and I would say that the most important lesson I've learned and repeatedly learned is that setting expectations. So whether you're dealing with someone who's more say artistic and less operational, someone who's operational and less creative. Or chooses to be less creative, right? Because they're stood in the execution of, of a very ambitious plans.

• 17:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Whether you're dealing with a left brain person, a right brain person, or someone who has a different Myers-Briggs. Making sure that the, the expectations, if it's a professional relationship, sort of the, the goals are agreed upon. The methods are agreed upon. Uh, what decisions they can make autonomously are agreed, are agreed upon.

• 17:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  How progress is going to be measured, say on like a Monday and a Friday, like, okay, we're gonna, you're gonna give me an update on the KPIs on.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  By this time.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Performance indicators, i.e. the numbers you want to move on Monday. And then on Friday, you're gonna send me a recap of how we did for that week.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And you know, what went wrong, what went right. I think setting expectations, and this goes, this applies to intimate relationships as well, personal relationships.

• 18:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Uh, I think as long as you, you do your best to set expectations upfront and, uh, do that.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  In writing so that there's no subjective, he said, she said later. That.

• 18:28Lewis Howes?

  Via email, so you can recall back to.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, via email. And if you have conflicts, and I'm very aggressive and very impatient, and I don't, I don't think that's always a good thing.

• 18:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  It can, I think it has helped me to accomplish a lot I wouldn't have otherwise accomplished.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And I'm glad that I have a streak of perfectionism in me, but it can make working with me very, very difficult. I'm not gonna lie, I mean, I'm not, I'm not the easiest guy to work with if you don't have that hardwiring yourself.

• 18:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  And so the other thing for me is that like, if I'm pissed off, and again, this is just me.

• 18:58Lewis Howes?

  How does someone get back on your good side when you are pissed off?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  If I'm pissed off, it's, if you make a mistake, you have to own up to that mistake.

• 19:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  And a lot of people don't, and it's, it's surprising to me.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  That pisses you off even more, probably.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  For sure. But I would say that I, if I get upset, what I have learned is don't send the email. Because everyone has to learn this lesson.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  I've done that so many times.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  If you're pissed and you've had a bad day and you're short on sleep and you've had too much cup of fear, i.e. coffee, don't send the email. Like.

• 19:29Lewis Howes?

  Nothing good will resolve.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  If it's true in that moment, it's going to be true the next day. So let it sit. And like, put on your calendar to write it tomorrow, or give them a call and get on the phone. And this is one of those lessons that I need to repeatedly learn.

• 19:43Lewis Howes?

  And remind yourself, yeah.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  But certainly, like, if you're pissed off and you, the, the lesson, or I should say, the mantra that, again, is not something I invented, but I forget the attribution, was do not, do not ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. So it's like, if someone did something, don't assume they did it to like, get you because they don't respect you, or because they wanted to cause a problem, or they're like, trying to screw up your plans for some reason, just assume they're disorganized, or they're overwhelmed first.

• 20:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  And, and depending on the assumption that you make, the, the tone with which you read their emails is totally different.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Right?

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, why do sometimes I just assume and take everything personally? When someone, when I feel like someone's just that idiotic, you're like, oh.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Sure. And it's, it's very, it's very, very tough. And

• 20:35Speaker 01

  so that's, that's a continual meditative practice for me.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Okay. Another question from a listener. What would Tim tell his younger self if he could go back and change anything about the past or tweak it to make anything better? Is there anything that you would do or anything you'd do differently?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  This is a question I struggle a lot to answer because

• 20:56Lewis Howes?

  Because you're so successful with everything that's happened.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Well, it's not, it's not that I'm a, I mean, we all have our own, well, I shouldn't speak for everyone, but I mean, I certainly have my own neuroses, my own weak points. And there are things I feel like I need to work on personally. I've been very fortunate in the last however many years, seven, eight years to have had some tremendous opportunities and some tremendous success. And I think a lot of that can be explained through probably just coincidence and serendipity and, and, and luck. I think there's

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Timing and

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a skill component, hopefully a competence component. But the, I would be, I'm quite happy with where I am in life.

• 21:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And I would be afraid of tweaking anything.

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Because the butterfly effect and the ripple effect of that, I think is completely unpredictable.

• 21:44Lewis Howes?

  Could change everything in your life.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Could change everything.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  And I'm quite happy with where things are. But if, if I had, let's rephrase it. If I had to.

• 21:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  I would probably, I think that I would probably go back, not to necessarily my childhood, but go back to when I was really cramming and just working 24/7 prior to writing The Four Hour Work Week after graduation. And I would mandate that I spend 30 minutes a day like outside, barefoot on the grass, just

• 22:17Lewis Howes?

  During that time.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yes, just

• 22:19Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:19Speaker 01

  Get outside, barefoot, be grounded, get out of rubber soles, spend a little bit of time outside every day. I think that would have, I think that, I don't think that would have sacrificed anything. And it would have improved my mental wellbeing and I think just general quality of life.

• 22:34Lewis Howes?

  Well, would you still be taking phone calls on the grass? It doesn't matter, just at least on the grass.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Just get on the grass.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Could it, I could have been Still be working or whatever.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Or like, I mean, these days, for instance, in San Francisco, I'll batch, people who've read The Four Hour Work Week know that I like to batch similar tasks together whenever possible. And I will batch phone calls in such a way that I can go for a one to three hour walk through San Francisco.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  And You're making the phone calls and if you don't need a visual reference in front of you,

• 23:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  You might as well be walking outside, getting some exercise.

• 23:06Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  And I think walking is also very, very underrated. We've made a lot of evolutionary trade offs to be able to walk extraordinarily long distances.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Even compared to other, say grazing mammals. Like we can go for a very long time and that's by evolutionary design, for lack of a better word. So I feel like we should exploit that and utilize it.

• 23:27Lewis Howes?

  I like it. What is it? What do you feel when you get barefoot on the grass? What does that give you?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I think it, what it does for me, among other things is there are people who talk about grounding and the effect of getting out of rubber soles. That, that I think is up for debate, the sort of scientific basis for that, but it helps me to feel grounded in a more perhaps metaphorical sense. And that is feeling connected to the earth, not disconnected as some type of robot who's been programmed to reply to emails. So just like getting outside and being like, you know what?

• 24:03Lewis Howes?

  Nature.

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Am I allowed to curse?

• 24:04Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  But it's just like, you know, this, this, whatever bullshit I happen to be obsessing about, like it really doesn't matter. I mean, like a year or two from now, like if that guy who didn't reply to my email and I feel slighted.

• 24:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Probably like, who knows? His grandmother probably died. Get over it. Get over yourself. Like at the end of the day, it's, it's so trivial. And for whatever reason, being in nature and having that connection with the rest of the world and feeling not separate from it and cloistered in some type of office is, is medicine, has a medicinal effect for me.

• 24:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. Another question here. I'm interested to hear this answer. Someone said, I've listened to nearly every podcast Tim has done. And Tim rarely, if ever, talks about being spiritual or having a spiritual life. So do you have a spiritual practice or do you believe in a spiritual practice or is that not something you're really into?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Well, let me, let me unpack this because this is, this is a good question. And I would say that I, I generally don't talk, there's.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  There's a, sorry, there's a second part of this question I missed. In fact, he frequently uses the semi-negative term woo woo to describe anything remotely close to it. So.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Maybe speaking all that. Sure. All right. So there are a few different ways to look at this. I'm not particularly religious and I think what I like to, I like to define terms whenever we get into potential touchy territory. Of course. Because you'll have, I think that religion and politics, and I know people listening are probably saying, well, spirituality and religion aren't exactly the same thing. And we'll get there. But when, when I get into very touchy territory, whether that be politics or religion or otherwise, people tend to have very, very strong opinions coming into a conversation that they are not going to change. Yes. And particularly if they're emotionally vested and haven't reasoned themselves into a decision.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Doesn't have to be religious related. It could be anything. There, you can't reason them out of that position. There's no open mindedness. Right. Exactly. And I don't find those conversations productive. So part of the reason I don't talk about, say, religion much, although keep listening to my podcast, there are some coming up that do touch on this. It's mostly because I want to have a productive conversation where people can borrow routines and habits and so on from these people. One could argue, I think, and it depends on how they define spiritual. I don't use the word spiritual or spirituality because I feel like it is so overused as to be undefined.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  There, I don't think most people who use the word have a consensus of usage and I avoid that like the plague. Right. In the same way that I would avoid the word sort of toning and exercise. I'm like, what is toning me? Let's talk about exactly what that means before we debate it. Sure. Do I have a spiritual practice? I don't have any type of organized religious practice. I do meditate on a daily basis. One, I think, could argue that that is a spiritual practice of some type.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  Or a transcendent practice, if we call, if, if, if we're looking at those as the same. If you look at or listen to, for instance, my episode with a PhD named James Fodderman. We talk about the use of psychedelics for therapeutic and mystical.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Purposes.

• 27:28Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  And obviously, I'm not a doctor. I don't play one on the internet, but that that I think touches on a curiosity and interest of mine, and you could call it a belief that there's a lot more out there than we perceive normally with our our our senses.

• 27:45Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Two eyes or two ears and so on. I have had experiences that lead me to believe there's just a lot more going on around us and inside us than is immediately observable.

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Is that remote viewing related? Is that some inherent aspect of multiple dimensions and string theory? Is it a grand creator of some type? The short answer is I have no idea. But that is a long answer to a short question.

• 28:16Lewis Howes?

  Do you have a more? Do you have a belief as to which one you lean towards or which one you want to believe in or?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I don't. I don't. And I mean, I have what you might call sort of karmic guidelines that I choose to believe because I find them, I find it helpful for me rebounding from challenges in life and for making moral decisions. So I tend to believe that what goes around comes around.

• 28:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  If you do good things, good things will return to you. You do bad things, bad things will return to you.

• 28:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  But the those are hard to empirically prove.

• 28:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  And as someone who's spent so much time in the world of science, and science is really just a regimented way of testing your own assumptions. It's not sterile. It's it's a way of thinking that I that I find very helpful for avoiding confusion and delusion.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  Having spent so much time in that evidence based world and manner of investigation and thinking, I try not to accumulate too many beliefs that I can't show evidence for.

• 29:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  Because I think that that's it's a slippery slope and you can very quickly get bugs in your software that way.

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  But have I had experiences where I have, I feel like I have touched on things that are very, very hard to explain, or even entities that I have, I cannot, after the fact, prove exist whatsoever? Yes, I have had those experiences. And I'm very curious about these things, but I just, I don't accept. I like to investigate. Controversy and

• 29:54Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  And test it whenever possible. And I'm a big fan of direct experience. But you know, if someone tells me that the, you know, like the flying spaghetti monster visited them last night, I'll be like, that's fascinating. Like, tell me more. And hey, if there's, if there's a way we can replicate that, I'm all for it. But

• 30:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Very, very long-winded answer to the question, but I, I definitely think there is more to our reality than, than meets the eye.

• 30:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of physicists would agree with that. I think that certainly any type of, for lack of a better description, spiritual practitioner would agree with that, whether they be a priest in the Vatican or a shaman in, you know, Tarapoto in Peru. I think that they would both agree. The difference, however, I think is that most people who are listening to the priest do not have a direct experience of which the priest is referring to. Whereas you might have more of a, a, a direct empirical experience with, with the latter. But it's, it's all subject to debate. But I, I tend not to talk about this stuff too much because people get very, very upset. And quite frankly, I've had death threats.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  When I've, I, when I've publicly talked about this before, mostly from very deeply religious people. And there's, so the risk benefit for me of talking about this stuff is just generally, it's just generally not there.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And they could just debate forever.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's like, look, I have, I have tons of friends who are deeply religious. But I surround myself with people of all sorts of diverse opinions and backgrounds. But what they share in common is an open-mindedness.

• 31:38Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  And that's important. Like, we can sit down and I can completely disagree with, say, how someone behaves in their marriage. But if, if they're willing to like, come to bat and defend it, but they're still open-minded, like, okay, I'm open to being convinced that there are other ways to do things. And I take the same open-mindedness.

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

  And it's a cool conversation.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's cool. Another question, what are you afraid of most? And what's your brain's mechanism for handling that fear or any fear?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  What am I afraid of most? Uh, afraid of getting eaten by sharks.

• 32:11Lewis Howes?

  Cause you, you live on the ocean right now.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  I live on the ocean and I've spent a lot of time studying sharks.

• 32:15Lewis Howes?

  That's why you haven't gone in the ocean.

• 32:16Speaker 01

  And I have, well, you know, I don't think I've told you this, when I was in South Africa, at one point in Cape Town, my brother and I were gonna go surfing and we called it off at the last minute. And literally about like 15 minutes later, a guy 500 feet down the beach was bitten in half.

• 32:29Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  By a great white, by a 16 foot great white shark. Uh, and one of my fans actually saw it live and tweeted. He's like, holy shit, just saw a guy get bitten in half by a great white shark.

• 32:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this, he was in chin deep water. So, uh, that's, that's one.

• 32:44Lewis Howes?

  That is scary.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  I do have a persistent fear of being eaten by sharks, but if it happens, meh.

• 32:48Lewis Howes?

  Is that why you haven't gone in?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Uh, part of the reason, quite frankly, there are a good number of sharks around here, including, uh, I'm in Manhattan Beach in particular, but, uh.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  Especially when you see dolphins going over.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, dolphins and seal. I mean, where there are seal, there are generally predators that like to eat seal. So I, uh.

• 33:05Lewis Howes?

  So how do you handle that then?

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Well, in that particular case, I'm gonna go swimming, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna do it when there are other humans further out. Yeah. Who might be, uh, more sitting ducks than myself.

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  Use your bait.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Use your bait. Uh, the, uh, but that's not something that's a persistent fear. I think that I, I worry, and maybe that's the same thing, about watching my parents get older and about getting older myself. I don't worry about death. I worry about the descent before death. And that's.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Like, do you mean not being able to do certain things or like as you get older, you're unable to be, you know, physically active?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. Just the, the decrease, the slow decrease and descent, uh, into sort of senescence and, and being non-functional.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  And just be like, well, my time's coming.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Or mentally.

• 33:51Lewis Howes?

  It's coming soon. I might as well.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  And I watched both my, uh, my pairs of grandparents with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  So tough.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  And, uh, so I, I worry about that more than the end. So to speak.

• 34:02Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it's, I mean, I think I listened in your episode with Peter Thiel where he talked about his mission is now to like, figure out how to extend life, basically, or how to like, live longer. He's like, I feel like most people either accept it or whatever, but he doesn't accept it. He said something like that, right? Do you believe?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Doesn't accept it, yeah. And there are a number of very fascinating thought leaders in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who are getting very strongly involved financially and otherwise in backing technologies and companies, they think have a shot at extending functional lifespan. I haven't publicly announced this yet. I'm getting very involved with one of them. And I'm doubling down and tripling down in a very serious way. The news on that will come out shortly, I'm sure. But I'm not sure. I think that it's up in the air as to the future of some of these technologies and how quickly they will be safely applicable

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  to even a small subset of the population.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And, but I'm curious to see it. You know, I think that AI and autonomous cars and all that, that is going to come a lot sooner than people expect. And with that, I mean, hopefully, we're gonna be, we're gonna, people think when Chris Wall talked about, you know, nanobots in the blood 10 years ago, 15 years ago, people thought it was crazy talk. It was just nonsense. And I think we'll be there very, very shortly. And now the, what effect that will have on aging per se, which is really a combination of many, many different factors that kind of go sideways.

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Who knows? I think, I think we, we like to believe we understand the human body better than we actually do.

• 35:44Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. It's very complicated.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  The body is very complicated.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, if you, if you can't solve cancer, how are you going to prevent people from dying?

• 35:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  I mean, how long, how many billions, trillions maybe have been spent on cancer research?

• 35:57Lewis Howes?

  That's true. Now, if you could take something that would extend your life for another 100 years safely and, you know, in a healthy way, would you?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Probably, just because, I mean, this is gonna sound really, really morose and depressing, but I mean, if I could always Hemingway myself, if I was like, you know what, I'm done with this, right? We're gonna be boiling in our skin because we didn't take care of these following, you know, environmental issues. Like, I suppose I can always, it's easier to end it than to extend it. So, yeah, sure, why not?

• 36:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure, okay. Nice, okay. Someone asked about lucid dreaming experiences. How can you replicate for clarity on vision and capacity for carrying out life goals in lucid dreaming experiences? And have you done a lot of lucid dreaming yourself?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  I have, yeah. Lucid dreaming, I think, is an incredibly underrated tool. And this actually comes back to the spiritual mystical experiences, because you can have some very unusual experiences in lucid dreaming that make you question whether or not you are really dreaming in a lot of ways. But lucid dreaming, for those who are not familiar, is becoming conscious of the fact that you're dreaming while you're dreaming. And most people have had this experience, like, oh, I'm dreaming, weird. And then they wake up. What you can learn to do over time, and there's, there was a professor, I think it was a professor at Stanford named Stephen LeBerge, who wrote a very good book, which is a good primer on this, called Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. And actually, if people Google lucid dreaming 101, and my name, I wrote

• 37:21Speaker 01

  an article on this. You can, you can, there are very pragmatic ways you can, you can initiate and extend the duration of lucid dreaming. And I got to a point in high school, late high school and college, where I could experience three or four different sessions of lucid dreaming that roughly coincide in one night, which roughly coincided with my periods of REM sleep. And I would use those, for instance, to, this is, sounds nuts, but since I could extend the duration, I would actually, I was training for Nationals in wrestling at that point in high school, and I would train with an Olympian named John Smith in my dream on low leg attacks,

• 38:04Speaker 01

  and it's very specific types of techniques with him in my lucid dream to get additional training time that I would hopefully take on to the mats the next day. And it transferred pretty well, which is insane.

• 38:16Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  But if you think about the benefits of visualization, well, if you, if you take the documented performance benefits of different types of guided visualization, and you

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Translate that into lucid dreaming. Well, now you have a full

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  Century kinesthetic reproduction.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Not just visualization.

• 38:35Lewis Howes?

  It's like you actually experienced it.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're basically.

• 38:37Lewis Howes?

  Physically.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  In your dream. That's powerful.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that that is just one of many different applications, I think, of lucid dreaming.

• 38:46Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. We talked about, you talked about visualization in the previous podcast, one of the previous two we did, so I'll have that linked up as well for people to hear that one.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, but lucid dreaming, I'd encourage everybody to to check out and it's it's a very meditative practice also when you, the the way that you get good at lucid dreaming, I won't drag on too long with this, but you have to get very, very astute at distinguishing between a dreaming state and a waking state. And there are ways to do that, like looking at the direction that bricks are laid in a floor pattern, for instance, and if you look away and look back, if it's a dream, the orientation will very often change. Or a digital watch display or any type of writing, you look away, you look back because your mind is recreating the landscape constantly, the writing will change.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  And when you get good at this type of observation, you you become very calm because you're generally doing what are called reality checks several times per day of that type. And it's like hitting pause and checking in with yourself and your surroundings. So it's a very, it's a very meditative practice. I find the benefits of lucid dreaming training to be very similar to meditating twice a day.

• 39:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Very similar.

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  So just talking about it makes me want to get back into it.

• 40:02Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. And someone, someone asked another question about dreams, asking, you know, you speak many languages. What language do you dream in?

• 40:10Speaker 01

  Usually English. I have had dreams in other languages, but almost always in English.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay, cool. I wanted to ask the question, someone asked a question about being lonely. You talk about how being lonely is often a big downfall of being a writer. So how do you deal with loneliness, being an introvert as well?

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, it's, it's a constant challenge for me because I want to recharge on my own, but it's easy for me to fool myself into thinking that that's what I need, when in fact I need to get out. And we've talked about acro yoga, but doing some type of of communal activity, whether that be joining a pickup, or I shouldn't say pickup, but like a

• 40:54Lewis Howes?

  Club.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  A club sports team of some types like soccer or

• 40:59Lewis Howes?

  You play once a week.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Taking dance lessons. I think physical contact, not sexual. I mean, it could be sexual, I suppose, but some type of of physical contact. And this comes back to the the feet on the grass, just like getting back, getting out of the prefrontal cortex and doing something that is very sort of gratifying on an ape-like level, dancing, acro yoga.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  Playing.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, jujitsu, something that has some element of physical play and touch, I think, is hugely restorative.

• 41:30Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  So I try to do more of that. It's a lot easier where we are. I mean, right now, we're in Southern California.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  It's a lot easier than in some places where you're freezing your ass off. Or even in San Francisco, where it can get really chilly. I like to do it outside. So it's been part of the reason that I'm spending more time here in Southern California is for that reason. I think when people think of becoming happier, or, and I'm not convinced that that alone is a great goal, but for people who want to increase their quality of life, they think a lot about what to do, who to spend time with. The wear of happiness, I think, is very underappreciated and underexamined. So the the the location in which you plant yourself often dictates a lot of those other elements.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  So it's kind of the lead domino. And so for me, I've been experimenting with that type of geographical focus. And yeah, so Cal is pretty hard to beat.

• 42:18Lewis Howes?

  It's pretty sweet here. I'm curious, two questions, I guess. This might be a trick question for you. What's the best investment you've ever made in yourself? And then what's the best investment you've made in someone else?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  That's a tough question. Best investment I've made in myself would be any time I schedule and record workouts consistently. That is just the scaffolding that allows me to do everything else more effectively. So anytime I get serious about training, all the other pieces fall into place. But despite that fact, it's very easy for, I think, everyone to drop that hat as soon as things get a little hectic. Like, no.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  I don't have time to work out.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Which is exact. It's completely the most counterproductive decision to make, yet it is a sin that I commit repeatedly. So I have to, but I do catch myself. And that would be. That would be an incredible investment anytime that I do that.

• 43:18Lewis Howes?

  And you say recording it though, you say that's like the second part of it is.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  Right, tracking it, so writing it down, not necessarily recording the video.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  Tracking it.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  But having a system for determining progress or lack thereof, for planning, et cetera. It just gives me positive feedback in a very concrete way that compels me to continue doing it. And I also think that exercise allows you to diversify your identity a bit. So what I mean by that is if you have all of your eggs in the one basket that is the book you're working on, or the startup you're working on, or fill in the blank.

• 43:51Lewis Howes?

  Or your family.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Or your family. If you have all of your eggs in one basket, if anything takes a turn for the worse, and it could be for factors outside of your control, you can become depressed and your self-esteem can take a huge hit. You can feel like a failure. I find it helpful not to scatter your focus, but to have a couple of buckets or baskets, maybe even two, but where if you have a good day or a good week in the gym, and you know it's good because you've been tracking it and you put 15 pounds on your deadlift or whatever it might be, even if other things go sideways.

• 44:22Lewis Howes?

  You've got something good.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  You can feel like you succeeded for that week.

• 44:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I like that.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  In terms of the best investment in other people, I view my books as an investment in other people. And maybe that's a cop out, but I do one-on-one work with a lot of startup founders, for instance, and I do work with charities like Build, where I've taught entrepreneurship classes to at-risk youth in Oakland, and I've done that type of thing. But if I'm looking for the Archimedes lever that allows me to not just help other people, but provide them with a toolkit that allows them to hopefully be far better than I am at whatever I'm teaching, I think the books are that lever for me. So I'd say I view the books I don't write for me, the books I write for that purpose explicitly.

• 45:09Speaker 01

  I want them to be a guidebook that help the readers to be, to far exceed whatever I've done with the tools that I'm sharing.

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  Do you have an idea for a future book?

• 45:19Speaker 01

  I always have ideas for future books because it's an affliction and I write the books because I only write books when I feel like it's easier to write the book than to keep it in my head as this nagging voice. If the book has to be written, then I'll write it. But I find writing very, very difficult. So there are a couple of ideas I'm kicking around, nothing that I'm prepared to share just yet, but there would be no four hour at the beginning of the title.

• 45:44Lewis Howes?

  There you go, a different chapter.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Very different from my previous books.

• 45:48Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Very different.

• 45:49Lewis Howes?

  What do you think is the number one skill or asset that everyone should have that will always further them in life? If you could say there's one asset and skill that you need to have in your life for business, relationships, whatever it may be?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Being a good writer, good communicator in the written word. Yep. And I don't think it's hard to improve that. I think that a regular practice of writing, it could be journaling in the morning for five to 10 minutes with something like morning pages. People can Google that. You can actually Google what my journal looks like. So what my journal looks like literally and then my name and some examples will pop up. But having a regular writing practice, and it could be just an assignment that you give yourself once a week and you're going to write three to five pages and then you're going to pay someone to edit it or to review it. And that could be a teacher at a local college who does say creative writing classes, or it could be a friend who's a lawyer

• 46:46Speaker 01

  or a lawyer. Lawyers are very good at, not all of them, but they're very good at spotting sloppy language or sloppy thinking. Words that are unnecessary, words that are easily confused. And just that practice of tightening up your writing will tighten up your thinking. And so if you want to improve your thinking, the most concrete, tangible way to do that, that is easy to manage, is having a regular writing practice of some type. And the goal isn't to become a better writer. The goal is to become a clearer thinker. And no matter what you're doing in life, you are going to have to, especially in a digital world where email is going to remain

• 47:29Speaker 01

  king for the foreseeable future. And if not email, it's going to be text. There will be a text component because people can answer it asynchronously.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Then you need to be a compelling communicator. And there's a book called On Writing Well that I think is a very good investment for people. There is a book called Bird by Bird, which is hilarious and very, very good for dealing with some of the neuroses that writers have, particularly if you're interested in fiction, which is an area I want to get into. But and then I would suggest very closely related to that is getting good at negotiating. So communicating, negotiating, they're two.

• 48:04Lewis Howes?

  So written and then verbal communication.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Written and verbal. There's a program called Secrets of Power Negotiating by, I think it's Roger Dawson. And the audio version is exceptional to listen to because you you are able to pick up the nuance of the intonation and the delivery. And then you role play that. And I mean, really, you, I'm blanking on my quotes here, Archilocus, I think it was a, must have been a Greek of some type, general perhaps, let's just say it's a general. But his quote, and I'm paraphrasing this, was something along the lines of, we do not, we do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. And you have to practice. You can't expect to read a book on negotiating, walk into a huge negotiation that you're nervous about and knock it out of the park.

• 48:51Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  You have to role play it. You have to practice. So I think with the one asset would be honing your clarity of thought by some type of regular writing practice.

• 49:04Lewis Howes?

  Sure. I like that. As, you know, two guys sitting here, former bullied elementary school kids here, what do you think are some good ways to increase confidence for anyone? Or what are some ways that you did to increase confidence along the way? And what are some things other people can do?

• 49:20Speaker 01

  Increase confidence for people in general or for kids?

• 49:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, in general. Let's say adults, people listening, 18 and up.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  I I really think that I think that positive thinking is overrated. So what I mean by that is, or let me phrase that a different way. I think positive thinking is necessary, but not sufficient. So what I've noticed, and this is very common, for instance, in the meditation world. You'll see people, I mean, I've met some tremendous meditation teachers. And some of them defy this, this, this description, but they're, they're outside of the action. Right? So they're at a monastery, they're, they're somewhere very, with minimal inputs. And they're the, the picture of patience and calm and so on. But I've seen some of those people.

• 50:11Lewis Howes?

  Not in traffic all day long.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. When you throw them into the front, you know, onto the front lines. And people are telling them to fuck off and they're honking behind them. They lose their shit. And I, I think that you need to make yourself uncomfortable. So if you have a, and that's why in the four hour work week, these comfort challenges are so important. I mean, and they seem silly, but there's a, there's a very, there's a very transcendent or important benefit that you get from, say, going into a Starbucks and laying down on the floor for 20 seconds and not saying anything to someone and then just getting back up. And that's a comfort challenge. Most people do not want to do it and they'll do that and they'll get up and they'll be like, wow. I was so nervous about that and nothing bad happened.

• 50:53Lewis Howes?

  Nothing happened.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. And when you expand your sphere of comfortable action by doing things that make you marginally uncomfortable.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  You get better at asking yourself and answering the question, what's the worst that could happen?

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  And you realize not much, like really, I've done all these other things. I thought were going to be these horrible experiences and I was totally fine.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Great. So let me try A, B, or C that I was, that I am worried about.

• 51:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Or was previously worried about. So I think that you, you have to inoculate yourself against fear by exposing yourself to fear. It's the only way, it's the only way you can do it.

• 51:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. When I was, I think I was 15 or 16 in the summer, going to like junior year of high school. I was really, I was starting to like get into my body and I was terrified of women still. Like I could talk to them, but I couldn't go up to strangers, right?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I'm still terrified of women.

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  And I remember being like, I'm sick and tired of not being able to talk to girls because this is pissing me off. All these other guys are like able to talk and just go up and have fun. I couldn't do it. So I gave myself this challenge and I wish I would have read the book. The book would have came out, you know, 15 years ago, I could have done it. But I gave myself the challenge of every time I see a girl that makes my heart flutter.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 52:05Lewis Howes?

  Or that I'm like nervous by, I have to go up to her and ask her for a number. And start a conversation with the intent of asking her for a number.

• 52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  And I'll tell you what, man, at the end of the summer, I was really good. It was so terrifying the first week.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:18Lewis Howes?

  Because I was like, what's, you know, what's going to happen? They're going to reject me. They're going to laugh at me. They're going to talk about me. But it wasn't that bad.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  Even when I did fail, I was like, oh, well, on to the next girl.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 52:28Lewis Howes?

  And I really believe in that.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  It's a practice. It's a practice. You can't, I don't think you can. Your subconscious is really, really on point and honest in a lot of ways. And you can't fool yourself into being confident just by repeatedly telling yourself to be confident.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  Positive, you've got this.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  You have to go, you have to incrementally do things that make you routinely uncomfortable.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  And so it's like one that actually in the TV show, the Tim Ferriss Experiment. So one of the episodes is on building a business and we, and so Noah Kagan and I of, of.

• 53:01Lewis Howes?

  AppSumo.

• 53:01Speaker 01

  AppSumo.

• 53:03Lewis Howes?

  Love Noah.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, tutored this, this woman, I'm not going to spoil the, all of the details, but who's building a business. And one of the things he had her do, like right on the spot, she had no prompting for it. He's like, all right, go inside and get a coffee and ask for 20% off. And see if you can get 20% off of, off of your coffee. Just, just, and.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  So. Download the episode to see what happened.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. There's a lot more. Yeah. You want to talk about comfort challenges. There's a lot in that episode. But the, just the act of doing these little things that make you uncomfortable, hugely, hugely valuable.

• 53:38Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Very cool. I want to get to a few last questions. One that you ask, I think sometimes I've heard you ask this at the end of your episodes is, I think you say the question like, I'm going to ask you something and then you just give me the first response. And one of them is punching someone in the face. I think that's a question you ask, right?

• 53:56Speaker 01

  Who's, who's, whose face comes to mind when you think of the word punchable?

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  So who is that for you right now?

• 54:01Speaker 01

  Oh, man. You know, and I realize why this is a tough one to answer because people don't, there's another expression, friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. And let me think about that. I'll give you a real answer. So I'll give a general answer. And but it's true. And this, this is, I've really, I feel like I've aged 10 years just fighting this battle internally. Pretty much every kind of mid level, big company bureaucrat who's tried to veto creative decisions of mine makes me so furious. It's hard to even verbalize how angry that makes me.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Because they've never had their own skin in the game. They've never had, they've never had to stand on stage and risk getting booed. They've never had to put out something and risk, not even getting booed, but just getting crickets. They've never, they've never had to like stare down the barrel of the gun and potentially bite that bullet. They've never had to do it.

• 54:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  And so for them to veto or interfere with any creative decision, my part just makes me fume. And it's, I'm not saying it's helpful for me to fume, but that's my response. So definitely it makes me want to punch.

• 55:10Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Okay.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  And kick and elbow and knee and stomp and the whole nine yards. So far haven't acted it out.

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  Another question, if you were given, let's say $50 billion right now, handed to you, and someone said, the only thing you can do is use this to help the world, what would you do to help the world with that money? You couldn't use it for yourself, but you had to use it for

• 55:32Speaker 01

  50 billion. First thing that comes to mind is focusing on the global literacy X-press, or something very closely aligned with that. So determining how to create a software program that is open source, that can be put onto smartphones, any type of, say, Android device and beyond, that allows Children in any country in the world to develop basic literacy and numeracy skills without a teacher. So, software that they can pick up, figure out, that will take them through the teaching of these things in some type of compelling way that competes well against all the other things they can access.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  I think that that would be the first place I would focus, but quite frankly, I would get a bunch of people in the room who are smarter than I am, who have had to make decisions like this. Maybe not with 50 billion, but with billions, certainly. And I would sit down and be like, okay, what are the biggest mistakes that people make when they're put into this situation? But I think the building, I would basically take my goals that I have already with the books and Four Hour Chef and with the Tim Ferriss Experiment, the TV show, all of these are aimed at providing people with a superior toolkit that makes them world-class innovators and problem solvers. And if you can take hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions

• 57:00Speaker 01

  of people who currently do not have the capability to be far-reaching problem solvers because they don't have basic literacy and numeracy, and you provide that to them, it also helps prevent, I think, a very large percentage of them from becoming problems. And they become contributors instead of just pure consumers. So, that would be where I would focus, at least offhand, that's the first thing that comes to mind.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Okay. I consider you probably one of the most elite problem solvers out there.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 57:29Lewis Howes?

  And, yeah, and besides the not having a solution of living forever, what's the one problem you have yet to solve that eats you the most, eats at you the most?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  How to do side splits like Van Damme between two chairs.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  That is pretty sweet. Although I don't think you could do that anymore.

• 57:48Speaker 01

  It's been on my to-do list for 30 years, but I think I may just have to give up on that. There isn't really any pragmatic benefit to me doing that, but I've always fantasized about being able to do it. Bloodsport style, but the other problem that I haven't been able to solve. Well, I'm working on it, but quite frankly, and this is not something I expect people to sympathize much with, but I'm good at saying no, I have to get 100 times better. I mean, I say no to 99 out of 100 things that come my way. Yeah. But I have to get to the point where I'm saying no to 999 out of 1,000 things. Yeah, I mean, I saw your email backlog is insane. Even with all the filters, all the structures, the The assistants, the gatekeepers, the

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Even with all of that, the volume is incredible. And I think that How do you solve that? I have to create systems and I also have to, I think ultimately upset a lot of people. And I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to being able to sort of politely decline a lot of things. And some people will take it personally, but it's going to have to get to a point where nobody on my team even acknowledges receipt of 99% of what we get. And people will get very upset by that. Wow. And it's, it's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting transition for me. I mean, I, there's a great book written by Derek Sivers. I think it's Anything You Want. I could be blanking on title. It's very, very short.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Derek Sivers is a fascinating guy who built up a company called CD Baby, sold it for, I think it was 24, 27 million. Gave most of it to charities, I understand. And just like a philosopher king of the first class, a really fascinating guy. And one of his chapters, which I think started as a blog post, but he talks about, he talks about the few situations he's been in and then saying no, if it's not a hell yes. So if it's not a hell, like an enthusiastic hell yes, it's a no. I like that. There's nothing in between. It's not okay paying me in two months. It's not maybe, why don't we talk about it next quarter? If it's not like, oh my God, I have to do this right now, it's a no. It's a no. And That's interesting. That you end up having to throw out a lot of very cool opportunities if you take that lens. It's not a hell yes. Uh, right.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  And particularly when, let's say I get a cool opportunity to come to me or even an email introduction from somebody I know. Yeah. But it's one of 999 other such introductions. If I even Reply.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:00:12Speaker 01

  Uh, it'll turn into another two or three emails.

• 1:00:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Very oftentimes.

• 1:00:15Lewis Howes?

  Literally.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Because people have been taught to be persistent and I will tell you with busy people, being overly persistent is not a good thing. You have to.

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  Have patience.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  Hear the message.

• 1:00:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  And, uh, in retail, location, location, location with reaching out to busy people, it's timing, timing, timing. Like wait until the timing is right. And how is the timing right? For instance, like if I want to reach out to a, a, a list celebrity to be on my podcast. I am going to try to figure out through back channels or their managers or whatever, when they are going to be doing press junkets to promote something they're doing, because that is when they'll be scheduling all of this stuff. And I will not waste my breath and infuriate the team by trying to be insistent outside of those pockets of time.

• 1:00:58Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  Uh, because they are just as busy, if not more busy than I am.

• 1:01:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  So that was a long, long answer, but the, the saying no, I have to get much better at, and I think I'm, I'm going to have to publish pretty soon. A couple of sort of public declarations of.

• 1:01:14Lewis Howes?

  A manifesto.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Email, email bankruptcy. I'm taking a startup vacation for the next six months. Like don't, don't send me any email intros, et cetera, et cetera.

• 1:01:20Lewis Howes?

  And if you email me in the last six months, I'm not getting back to you.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  Sorry, I can't get back to you. Yeah.

• 1:01:24Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  And it's going to piss off a lot of people, but I think at the end of the day, you, there, there is a point where you have to choose between your own sanity.

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  And pleasing everyone else.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  And pleasing everyone else. And even if you try to please everyone else, you can't. So it's really no choice at all.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  Please yourself.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or just save yourself as a starting point.

• 1:01:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think, but was it Warren Buffett who said, the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no. Almost a hundred percent of the time.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. He said that. And then also I think it was Steve Jobs who said, uh, oh God, it's, and I'm, I'm misquoting, but it's something along the lines of, you know, to, to do anything great, you have to say no to a thousand things. And.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  Say no, say yes to one thing.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that, that's something that I think I'm very good at. I'm better than. I think the vast majority of people I've bumped into generally, and that's by training, not by any innate ability, it's just through training, but I have to get better.

• 1:02:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, okay. All right, a couple of quick questions left. One is if all of your books and all of your writings were deleted, everything you've ever put out there on a blog post, it's the last day of your life, 150 years from now, because you've extended it, everything's deleted, and you had three truths about life to write down and pass on to your family and to the world, what would those three truths?

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Jesus, man.

• 1:02:49Lewis Howes?

  And you couldn't, all the information you've learned, all the stuff you've written, you know, the millions of books you've sold, what are the three things that you'd say are true about life as you know it?

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  That is a very large question, Louis.

• 1:03:08Lewis Howes?

  I said it was a quick answer.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Long pause followed by short answer.

• 1:03:15Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't have to be perfect, but what comes up for you?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I'll give you two. So the first two that come to mind are, you're the average of the five people you associate with most.

• 1:03:23Lewis Howes?

  Like that?

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  You know, financially, physically, emotionally. And if someone tells you you have to do something or should do something, ask them, ask them for the evidence. Ask them what evidence suggests that. And the underlying theme being test assumptions. You have to test assumptions. I have to do this or this. Really? Like, what evidence do you have that suggests that, that I'm limited to those two options? And if they can't answer you, they don't, then you shouldn't take that advice.

• 1:03:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  There's a lot of speculation and just, just making up of the rules as we go along. And I think that people, people get trapped in prisons of their own making because they accept limitations that other people place on them, or that they place on themselves just as often. So, you know, if you or someone else says you have to do X, or you should do Y, ask what evidence is there to support this?

• 1:04:17Lewis Howes?

  Okay, that's great. Do you have one more that came off the top of your mind? One more truth?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Treat health is number one, because without it, everything else will fall apart. And with it, everything else becomes easier.

• 1:04:28Lewis Howes?

  I like that. Very cool. Three books you'd leave behind if you could only leave three besides your own.

• 1:04:36Lewis Howes?

  What would the three books that you would recommend if, you know, you couldn't even have the three truths and no writings, but you're just like, here are family and friends. Three books is all you get. What would that message be?

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Uh, it's toughy. Uh, the first three that come to mind, I mean, I, I'm a book lover. There are many, many books that I love, but the first would be, uh, Letters from a Stoic, uh, by Seneca. The second would be Zorba and the Greek, or I'm sorry, Zorba the Greek, excuse me. Zorba the Greek, which is a novel with a lot of similar messages, I feel. A close cousin to that would be Vagabonding, but, uh, so I'll give one.

• 1:05:14Lewis Howes?

  What you gave to me, I have over here somewhere up on the shelf.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great book. So, so, uh, Letters from Stoic by Lucius Seneca, which is 2,000 plus years old, then Zorba the Greek. And then last, just one for us, both business career purposes, the 22 immutable laws of marketing.

• 1:05:34Lewis Howes?

  That's a good one. Yeah. Very cool.

• 1:05:36Speaker 01

  I think that's, I think those, those will take people pretty far.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. I like it. Well, okay, let's, let's wrap it up. Again, make sure to go to your site, but also to iTunes and get the show.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, definitely. So the Tim Ferriss Experiment, you can search for it on iTunes or it should be available if you go to iTunes.com forward slash Tim Ferriss also.

• 1:05:56Lewis Howes?

  Very cool.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  But when in doubt, you can just search, search the Tim Ferriss Experiment. It should pop up somewhere.

• 1:06:01Lewis Howes?

  It's on your blog as well.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Lewis Howes?

  And what is a question you want to ask for the listeners that they will answer on the comments of just about any question you may have them.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, well, sort of in the, in the spirit of the show, uh, trying to show people that they can do a lot more and much in very short periods of time than they ever thought possible. You know, if, if you could become world class at any skill in the next six months, what would that skill be? And particularly if it's something that you dreamed of and dreamed of and put up on a shelf and gave up on. What is one skill you'd like to become world class at in the next six months, which means top 5% in the general population in the world? So if it's tennis, you don't have to win the, you don't have to win Wimbledon. Right. It's not, don't measure yourself against professionals, but like top 5% in the general population. What is one skill in the next six months? Because I think that's plenty of time to accomplish that type of thing.

• 1:06:54Lewis Howes?

  And that's what the show is about for you.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:06:56Lewis Howes?

  Teaching that. That's cool. So answer in the comments below. I'll tell you guys what that link is here. Before I ask the final question, which you've answered a couple of times, you know, I don't think people acknowledge you enough. So I want to acknowledge you for a moment for, you know, you've changed so many people's lives. You've inspired so many people through your books, through your writing, through your information, through everything you put out there. And you've definitely been a huge inspiration for me. I can honestly say that everything around me, being here, what I'm up to in my life right now would not happen without you, Tim.

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Thank you, Lewis.

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  So I want to acknowledge you for being so committed to greatness in your own life and educating others how to do it for themselves. Because it comes through in your work and it's definitely, a lot of people have benefited from it. And a lot of friends that I know have read your books and read your blog and listened to your podcast. It's changed their lives. So I want to acknowledge you for being an incredible human being and giving us great tools to be great as well. So.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Thank you, Lewis. It's humbling and certainly an honor to hear that. And you've, you've, you've really done an incredible job of passing on your learnings to your audience. So keep up the great work.

• 1:08:08Lewis Howes?

  Nice, man. Yeah.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:09Lewis Howes?

  And final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  My definition of greatness.

• 1:08:16Lewis Howes?

  In the moment.

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  In the moment is trying to be just a little bit better, inch by inch, millimeter by millimeter. Whether it's the next day or the next week and not beating yourself up about it. If you fail for an entire week, for an entire month, just get up and sort of brush the dirt off and, and get back to it. It's, it's not a straight line. It's a very jagged. Intimidating, sometimes exhausting experience. Nobody who does huge things just takes off like one smooth rocket shot. It's a roller coaster.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  And I think people should keep in mind that whether it's the biggest names you can imagine, you know, the billionaires and the icons and the rock stars. All of these people have self doubt. They have moments where they want to give it all up and quit and just sleep under the covers and knock it out of bed for the day. So my definition of greatness is recognizing that's part of the human condition. You're not a failure if you feel that way. I certainly feel that way quite a bit. And we were talking even today. I mean, I'm really worried about the and anxious about the TV show. I've been fighting for this show for longer than I've worked on a book. And it's very intimidating and I don't think that goes away.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  But in face, it's not overcoming your fears all the time. It's facing your fears and being like, okay, I'm afraid, but I'm going to keep on plugging away anyway. So, you know, facing your fears and not necessarily worrying about always overcoming them, but just being confident enough or not even confident enough, having taken the leap of faith to at least stand up and face your fears, I think is my definition of greatness.

• 1:10:05Lewis Howes?

  Tim Ferriss, thanks for coming on, brother.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 1:10:12Lewis Howes?

  And thank you guys again so much for listening to this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Again, make sure to check out lewishouse.com/170 to check out the full notes from this episode and all the extra video footage from me and Tim facing off head to head in a battle of the fittest. Really just a battle of staring contest and rock, paper, scissors, but it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to do more competitions with Tim in the future. Again, please guys, share this out with your friends. Again, lewishouse.com/170. Get the word out. I think a lot of people who know Tim have never heard and seen this side of him and heard these answers before. So I really think your audience is really going to enjoy it. Make sure to share this out over on Twitter and Facebook.

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Facebook and obviously tag Tim everywhere online to let him know you're listening to the School of Greatness podcast and that you appreciate him coming on. Again, thank you guys so much for joining me today. Super blessed and grateful for Tim to come on and share his wisdom. We've got some great guests coming up. Make sure to share this one again, LewisHowes.com/170. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.