3 BRAIN HACKS to Control Your Thoughts & Emotions

Lewis engages in a discussion with three notable guests: Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist from Stanford University, Dr. Susan David, an award-winning Harvard medical school psychologist, and Rainn Wilson, who shares personal insights on healing from early childhood trauma. The episode delves into understanding the human mind and unlocking its power, particularly during stressful situations. Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He also runs the Huberman Lab, which studies how the brain functions, how it changes through experiences, and how to repair the brain after injury or disease. Andrew and I dive deeper into understanding the amazing human mind. We talk about how to unlock its power — particularly during really stressful situations. Dr. Susan David is one of the world’s leading management thinkers and an award-winning Harvard medical school psychologist. She’s the author of the bestselling book, Emotional Agility, which describes the psychological skills critical to thriving in times of complexity and change. Rainn Wilson shares how he healed from early childhood trauma and shares his insights on how self-awareness and the ability to manage emotions can lead to better decision-making and stronger relationships. We explore practical strategies for understanding and regulating one's emotions, emphasizing the importance of mindfulness and self-reflection. Buy Rainn’s book, Soul Boom. In this episode you will learn,Steps to develop emotional agility in your life. How to respond in moments that we feel triggered. How to use the mind to our benefit when we experience stress, fear or trauma. The two types of stress and how to deal with them. Different breathing techniques you should be practicing on a daily basis. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1517For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960FULL EPISODES:Andrew Huberman: https://link.chtbl.com/1455-podDr. Susan David: https://link.chtbl.com/1297-podRainn Wilson: https://link.chtbl.com/1431-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So I think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just want to continue to geyser up all the time.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 0:09Speaker 00

  But we can introduce a positive thought.

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:36Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  Say I feel cold and ice, right? I'm in ice, it's 30 degrees. Can I control my mind to say, you know what? This is actually a hot tub and you feel warm and you're feeling hot right now? Or is it too much physiological barriers to break through that?

• 1:13Speaker 00

  To some extent, you can. So I think the question that you're asking is a very important one. It's actually the question, which is to what extent does our subjective narrative?

• 1:25Lewis Howes?

  The story we tell ourselves.

• 1:27Speaker 00

  Actually mean something for the body? And to what extent does the body actually mean something for the subjective narrative? So this gets into some areas of work that we're doing now. And so I do want to highlight that it's ongoing work. But I think, you know, the old narrative, meaning a few 10 years ago, was that if you're feeling depressed, just smile. Well, if that worked, we would have a lot less depression than we see out there. Now that does not mean...

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  Most people actually who are depressed just aren't smiling as well. Like when you change your physiology, doesn't it also start to change the way you think about yourself a little bit?

• 2:06Speaker 00

  The reason I call it a brain-body contract early on is that the brain and the body are constantly in dialogue. So, you know, the idea that when we're depressed, we tend to be in more defensive type postures. When we're feeling good, we tend to be in more like relaxed and extended postures. All true. But it does not mean that just by occupying the extended posture that I'm gonna completely shift the mind.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  That's a first step. Think about like two interlocking gears. It's one gear that turns the other, but then they need to kind of dance together before you can get the whole system going.

• 2:36Lewis Howes?

  So how do you get it to dance together?

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Exactly. So, subjective, there is one way in which subjective thought and deliberate thought is very powerful over states of mind and body, to answer your question. Can you think your way out of the ice bath being cold? So a couple of things that are important. First of all, just to go a little deeper on what thoughts are. Thoughts happen spontaneously all the time. They're popping up like a poorly filtered internet connection. But thoughts can also be deliberately introduced. For instance, right now, I can say, "Okay, have a thought that, just decide to write your name," and you can do that. "I'm gonna decide to write my name," and you can do it. So that's a deliberate thought, which says that you can introduce thoughts.

• 3:21Speaker 00

  So I think it's very hard to control negative thoughts directly by trying to suppress them. Generally, they tend to just wanna continue to geyser up all the time. But we can introduce a positive thought.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  Can you think of two thoughts at the same time?

• 3:34Speaker 00

  Probably not.

• 3:35Lewis Howes?

  So you can only have one thought at a time?

• 3:36Speaker 00

  Right, but they come very fast.

• 3:38Lewis Howes?

  But it comes and goes. So you have to constantly be intentional and deliberate about what you think, otherwise, and a spontaneous thought will pop back in, based on your experience, based on sensory, based on how you're feeling or perceiving something, your environment, it's just gonna keep popping in.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  So how do we deliberately have a positive thought more often?

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Right. So I'm a big fan of wellness and I think it's a great community, but it tends to run in absolutes and there aren't a lot of operational definitions, as we say in science. And what I love about your questions, you're asking for, really getting to the meat of things, asking for the operational definitions. One of the most dangerous ideas in wellness and in popular psychology is that your body hears every thought you have. What a terrible thing to put on people. You know, what a challenging thing. I don't think people should try and suppress their negative thoughts. I think there is great value, however, to introducing positive thought schemes. Now, the reason is, not because I think it's, just because I think so,

• 4:38Speaker 00

  but because there's actually a neurochemical basis for controlling stress and actually making stress more tolerable and extending one's ability to be in bouts of effort. And that relates to the dopamine pathway. So the molecule dopamine is a reward. It's released in the brain when you win a game. You close a deal. Someone likes your photo. Someone likes your photo, the great love of your life. You complete something. But most of our dopamine release is not from achieving goals. It's actually released when we are en route to our goals. We're in pursuit of our goals and we think we're on the right path. This is why a lot of people get depressed after they achieve a big goal. Because they feel like I'm supposed to feel something greater.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  I felt this thing for two minutes and now that's it. That's right. High achievers know to attach dopamine to the effort process. To the pursuit, the day to day tasks, the growth, the lessons, the losses, like everything, right? Well, and it can be to some wins along the way. But growth mindset, which is the academic discovery and laboratory discovery of my colleague Carol Dweck at Stanford. Is the hallmark of growth mindset is really two things. One is I'm not where I want to be now, but I will, I'm capable of getting there eventually. The other is to attach a sense of reward to the effort process itself. In fact. Don't reward the result, reward the effort. That's right. And if you look at true high performers, people that are consistently good at what they do.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  They don't peak and go through the postpartum depression and crash and come back. And their life is a cycle of ups and downs. But really people who are on that upward trajectory consistently. Those people attach dopamine to the effort process. And actually Carol's, one of her original studies on the discovery of growth mindset was these kids that loved doing math problems that they knew they couldn't get right. So it's like the people love puzzles, but in this case they knew they couldn't get it right, but they loved doing it. And incidentally, or not so incidentally, these kids are fantastic at math when there is a right answer. Because they feel some sense of reward from the effort process.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Now, the cool thing about dopamine is that it's very subjectively controlled. We can all learn to secrete dopamine in our brain in response to things that are in a purely subjective way. Our interpretation. Our interpretation. And but it has to be attached to reality. So, you know, one should never confuse. What is real? Right. So if you're thinking about the effort you're expending. So let's say somebody right now is financially back on their heels and they're setting up a new business, for instance. And it's hard. If they can take a few moments or minutes each day to reflect on the fact that the effort

• 7:27Speaker 00

  process is allowing them to climb out of their hole potentially, that it's giving them an opportunity, that it's somehow they are on the right path, or if they're not in movement along that path, or at least oriented on the right path, they're not lying in bed all day. They're taking a step forward. They're taking a step. If they can reward that process internally, two things happen. First of all, the brain circuits that are associated with building subjective rewards and dopamine get stronger, so you get better at that process. And second, and most importantly, dopamine has an amazing ability to buffer adrenaline and buffer epinephrine. And what I mean by that is, there was a study that was published in the journal Cell, excellent

• 8:11Speaker 00

  journal, Cell Press Journal, a couple of years ago, showing that with repeated bouts of effort, we use and we release more and more epinephrine. It's kind of adrenaline, but in the brain. With more effort, we release this. Every time, every time you put in effort. So every time you make, for this, let's keep it, if I were to keep it in the business context, every time you make, write that email, every time you, let's say it's a person who's a craftsman or a craftswoman, every time you're working in the, in the shop and doing that, every bit of effort, you're taking a little bit of money out of this epinephrine account. You're spending epinephrine. At some point, those levels of epinephrine get high enough that you, you feel like quitting. It feels exhausted. And this was done in a beautiful study, actually, where they control the visual environments

• 8:56Speaker 00

  and they have the subjects exert effort, and they can control the visual environment. So sometimes the effort of, of taking steps and moving forward, this is actually kind of pushing forward and kind of swimming motion, would give them the sensation that they were actually making progress. And other times, it was an exercise in futility, where they would just keep the, the visual world stationary, and they would expend effort and they didn't think they were going anywhere. Epinephrine's climbing, climbing, climbing, and eventually, they quit. Now dopamine is able to push back on that epinephrine and give you, anyone, the, that feeling that you could continue, and maybe even the feeling that you want to continue. And you've seen this, actually, like football's a good example.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  Two teams play, say the Super Bowl, both teams are max effort the entire time. Yeah. Max effort. The team that wins, suddenly, in a moment, has the energy to jump all over the place, party for days, they can talk, I mean, they have energy. They're exhausted right before that. Well, that wasn't glycogen or stored energy of any kind, except it was neural energy. And what happened was, effort is this adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline, adrenaline. Eventually, people quit. They just quit. The dopamine is able to suppress that. And so then you're expending effort, but you're doing it from a place of feeling like you have energy for it. So we need dopamine to keep the effort going, is that what I'm hearing you say? That's right. Dopamine is not just about reward. It's one of the biggest misconceptions.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  Dopamine is about motivation and drive. It's like a jet that propels you along a path. How do we get more dopamine? You practice subjectively releasing dopamine in your mind. Like, how? Okay, so, that's a great question. First of all, there are ways you can get more dopamine release, through thoughts, or through drugs, or through supplements. I want to be really clear. There is a drug, there are two drugs actually, that will cause massive release of dopamine. They're called cocaine and methamphetamine. That's what gets us addicted, because it feels so good. The problem is, exactly. The problem is, cocaine and methamphetamine stimulate so much dopamine release, that the drug becomes the only source. It becomes the goal and

• 11:06Speaker 00

  the path. It becomes the path and the destination. And you look at people's lives when they do a lot of cocaine and methamphetamine, and that baseline on their life goes down. Because there's no reason to work hard at anything else, because you feel good. That's right. And that's the greatest feeling you'll have, so why do anything else when you can have that feeling? That's right. And if you think about, remember, these neurochemical systems, adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine, epinephrine, they weren't designed to keep us safe from tigers, and to hunt and gather, or to build Fortune 500 companies. They were designed to do anything. They were designed to be generic, so that, depending on our circumstances, we could adapt. So, in an animal context, an animal that, let's say, is hunting, or

• 11:49Speaker 00

  it needs food for its young, it's gonna feel agitation, that's stress, that's cortisol. Like hunger, my babies might not eat, I might not eat. Maybe it's looking for a mate, it's gonna feel agitation and start looking and roaming and searching. Foraging is called in the animal behavior world, it's foraging. At some point, it might catch a smell of something. A potential mate, or berries, or a stream if it's thirsty. At that moment, dopamine is released. And now, it has energy to continue along that path. Whereas there's a specific pathway in the brain that's involved in depression and disappointment. That if it goes to that place, and turns out it was the wrong path. There's a signal that actually suppresses dopamine so that you don't repeat that mistake again.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  So you don't give up? That's right. You just don't repeat it again? That's right. And those events that- So it reminds you like, that's not the path to go down? That's right. Interesting. And we're sort of veering towards neuroplasticity here, which is the brain's ability to change itself in response to experience. Dopamine is one of the strongest triggers of neuroplasticity. Because it says, those actions led to success previously. You're gonna repeat those. Go do those. Those actions led to failure previously, and don't repeat those. So dopamine triggers us to stay on the right path? That's right. So you asked, how do you do this? So to really make it concrete. And is there too much, is there too much thing, is there such thing as too much dopamine? Well- If you're not on drugs? So cocaine and amphetamine are bad, because they lower the baseline on life.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  They make people very focused on things outside of themselves. That's the other thing that dopamine does. It can be positive or negative. But when we have dopamine in our system, we tend to be outward facing. And in pursuit of things in our environment. You can look at somebody on cocaine and realize that that's the extreme version of that. But, but the, you know, I love social media for the reason that you see the molecules in the memes. So it's like, get after it, you know, what do sharks do on Monday, or I can't remember the specific things. Or then they're the, like, sometimes it's just time to chill. Well, that's a different molecule. That's serotonin, right? And then dopamine is the get after it molecule. And epinephrine is effort. So if we were to break this down really concrete. We'd say adrenaline and epinephrine are about effort.

• 14:02Speaker 00

  Just effort, with no subjective label on them, good or bad. Effort, whether or not it's stress, or you're pursuing something you want to do, it's just, it's exerting effort. Dopamine is about reward, but more so about motivation and pursuit of rewards.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we bring the two together? Grief and sadness and gratitude?

• 14:26Susan David?

  Well, yeah. So what the research shows in this expressive journaling is that when people journal on it, you can even journal, you know, 20 minutes a day for three days. And you start finding these kind of effects, which is, which is it starts moving you from just being focused on the past into a presence with yourself, into a seeing with yourself. And in starting to, you know, what you start to recognize when you start to analyze people's writing, when they've gone through this expressive writing is, and you start to say, well, like, what is it that predicts people who do better versus not?

• 15:06Susan David?

  It's what predicts people who do better is that they, they aren't being a Pollyanna. They aren't just being, oh, everything's great, everything's fine. I should just be grateful because at least I got to spend 15 years with my father.

• 15:19Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:19Susan David?

  They're not doing that. What they're doing is they are holding their beautiful, positive experiences alongside their tough, difficult experiences, the pain, the regret. And they're starting to generate a sense of insight and meaning. So for me, as an example, and I want to come back to this teacher because it was such a remarkable thing that she said to me. The example was, I kind of found not to force it or not to contrive it, but when I was doing this writing, that over a period of time, I started to connect with like a sense of resilience in myself. So it was like, I would write about these difficult experiences and then I would, and

• 16:04Susan David?

  then I would like, over time, start recognizing that I just had this like inner sense of resilience and connection. And so circling back to your word calm, I came out of the writing with a sense of having seen the self, a sense of calm. Does that make, does that?

• 16:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. It's interesting because when my father passed earlier this year, and thanks for reaching out and sending me a text, it was really thoughtful. When he passed, I remember everyone was asking me like, how are you doing? And I was like, to be honest, I'm sad and grateful.

• 16:37Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  I kept saying like, I'm really sad that it happened this way and that he was in an accident for, you know, 17 years and I didn't get to have the relationship that I had with him. And I'm trying to find sense of that and make, find the meaning in that process. But I'm also really grateful because there were some beautiful times we had together. So I'm sad and I'm grateful. And I was just, I kept saying that. I'm like, I'm sad and I'm grateful.

• 17:03Susan David?

  Yeah, and it's, there's bothness, isn't there? And I think that's the beauty. It's like, this, this circling back to what we were saying earlier about this narrative that they're good and bad emotions. What this does is it sets these emotions up against each other. But, but we are, we are, you know, that beautiful, we contain multitudes. Like, we experience more than a single emotion. We can simultaneously hold these things. And so the way that we move into a space of holding them is not by making one of them good and one of them bad,

• 17:41Susan David?

  but rather recognizing that what you feel is what you feel. There's, there's such power in the acceptance. I don't mean passive resignation. I just mean acceptance. Like, this is what I feel. And there's such power. I just wanted to quickly circle back to something that this teacher said. Years later, so this is this teacher, I'm fifteen. Years, years, years later, I go to a conference and there's someone at this conference who gives a talk and she, and says, you know, there're going to be people in your life who've really shaped who you are, shaped your experience. And if that person doesn't know that they've shaped your life and shaped your experience, reach out and let them know. So I tracked down this teacher.

• 18:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:25Susan David?

  And, and I find her and I send her, you know, a bunch of flowers and I like, in this card say like, you saw me. You know, you saw me. And in seeing me, you allowed me to see myself. And I said to her, but one thing, I always wanted to ask you is, Lewis, I would write this journal and I would write it in pen. I would like scroll and poetry and, you know, all this kind of like teenage, fifteen year old and I would scroll it.

• 18:58Susan David?

  Every day, we had this like secret silent correspondence because every day I would hand this journal in and the teacher would then send it back with notes, like saying, you, you, you, you sound really sad or you, you, you know, she would have these notes, but she always had. Her notes in this like almost imperceptible pencil. It was like you could barely make out what she was writing.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 19:19Susan David?

  This really light pencil. So, so I said to her, I said to like when we reconnected, I was like, why did you write in pencil? And she said to me, which I thought was so beautiful. She said to me, Susan, it was your story. It was your story.

• 19:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:39Susan David?

  And I was simply being witness to your story, but you were crafting your story.

• 19:49Susan David?

  And it reminded me a little bit of, um.

• 19:54Susan David?

  Cause I know you wanna dig into emotional agility and often people say to me, you know, what is emotional agility? And I say, well, you know, I can, I can give the nerd definition, but ultimately what my work is about. Is my work is about seeing. It's about seeing and unseeing.

• 20:10Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 20:11Susan David?

  Seeing the self.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by that? Yeah.

• 20:12Susan David?

  Well, it's about seeing yourself in ways that are healthy and whole. And seeing all of you and loving all of you. And in seeing ourselves, we are then more able to see others too.

• 20:28Susan David?

  And.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:30Susan David?

  It reminds me a little bit of.

• 20:35Susan David?

  Primo Levi, who was a survivor of the Nazi death camps. Just in case you thought you were gonna have a light conversation.

• 20:46Susan David?

  So Levi describes, Levi was in a death camp and when the camps were liberated. He, you know, literally on the verge of death was, was released. And so he and his fellow death camp survivors boarded trains back to their hometowns. And Levi described how as the train pulled up into his hometown in Italy.

• 21:19Susan David?

  There were a whole lot of people waiting on the platforms for them to arrive.

• 21:25Susan David?

  And the people on the platforms were so horrified by how emaciated and skinny and bow and like haggard and deathly the people on the trends were, the the people who'd been released were that they were so horrified by it that they they turned away.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:52Susan David?

  They turned away and they turned away because they were they were unable, they were unable to metabolize, they were unable to process, they were unable to see. And Nifa described how in many ways that experience that he had was in many ways even more

• 22:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:14Susan David?

  more devastating, more heartbreaking than the experience itself.

• 22:20Lewis Howes?

  No way, wow.

• 22:21Susan David?

  And and I think that like for me, when I talk about seeing versus unseeing,

• 22:29Susan David?

  it is really about this this the the thread, which is what does it take for us to see ourselves? What does it take to see others? Because here's the thing, we we live in a world that that really gives primacy to goals and objectives and success and all of these things, but the way we deal with our inner worlds,

• 22:51Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:52Susan David?

  the way we see ourselves, the way we deal with our difficult thoughts, like a thought might be, I'm not good enough. An emotion might be, I'm sad, I'm depressed, I'm grieving. A story might be a story of do I even deserve love? Am I worthy? The way we deal with our inner worlds drives everything. It drives how we love, it drives how we live, how we parent, how we lead, our health behaviors, our ability to achieve those goals, it drives everything. And that is the centrality of my work, which is about healthy seeing. And and just to kind of, so healthy seeing is about firstly, holding both the joy and the discomfort together.

• 23:40Susan David?

  And recognizing that we don't need to be owned by any of it because we are more than those things as well and we are able to move forward towards our values.

• 23:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, I think a lot of people would probably admit, maybe not publicly, but they probably admit to like someone close to them, if they were truly honest with themselves, that for a period of their life, they didn't believe they were worthy of love.

• 24:05Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 24:06Lewis Howes?

  There's probably a good amount of people in the world that don't, that aren't as adults good at receiving love, they don't believe they deserve it. And maybe there's a whole another spectrum of people, you know, that's all they do is they love themselves too much. You know, it's like very narcissistic or something like that, but I think there's a lot of people that doubt themselves. They doubt themselves by certain stories that told themselves, certain things that have happened in their lives that confirm they're not deserving of love. They picked on, bullied, parents, whatever it might be, broken up with boyfriend, girlfriend, all that stuff. How do we believe we are worthy of love? How do we learn to believe that we as an individual are deserving of love?

• 24:46Susan David?

  Yeah, that's such a powerful question. And I just want to kind of circle back. You gave narcissism as an example of self-love.

• 24:54Lewis Howes?

  They actually hate themselves the most.

• 24:56Susan David?

  Actually narcissism is a manifestation of very often low self-esteem. I think one of the most important aspects of this fight for worthiness, really, because that is what it is. And I think that's.

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  Before the interview continues, 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 below in the description to get your copy today. Okay, let's get back to this video.

• 25:48Susan David?

  All of us as humans at some level fight for worthiness. And I think the really important part of, you know, when I talk about agility versus rigidity, you know, my work is on emotional agility. In contrast to emotional rigidity. And so I think what becomes really important in that is. If we think about the kinds of thoughts that people have, I've given some examples of like. I'm not good enough, or there's no point in trying. Okay. Emotions, emotions like grief and anger. Or stories, stories about whether I'm worthy of love.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:25Susan David?

  So. A really important part of actually being able to move forward in the world with integrity. Is. Recognizing that. These are normal. Okay, and and this is really, really important.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  This thought or this feeling that I'm not enough.

• 26:45Susan David?

  Any of it, any of it and all of it is actually normal. There is nothing. Good or bad, right or wrong about. Sank yourself. Or the the automatic thought that says like. Gee, I'm gonna stuff this up. Okay, there is, that is literally. Your body and your psychology. Doing the job that it was meant to do.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:11Susan David?

  Which is to help you to. Make sense of the world. To adapt and respond. If you were never concerned about how you sounded.

• 27:23Susan David?

  You would have no friends.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  You you wouldn't get anywhere.

• 27:25Susan David?

  Okay, you wouldn't get anywhere. If you were never concerned about whether you should be fearful about something or not.

• 27:33Lewis Howes?

  You'd be dead.

• 27:34Susan David?

  You'd be dead.

• 27:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Susan David?

  Okay, so this whole narrative, which is that there's some thoughts that are good and some thoughts that are bad and some emotions. Is actually like a a um. It's a completely false narrative.

• 27:46Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 27:47Susan David?

  And so one of the core ways we start to dismantle the narrative. Is by recognizing that these thoughts, emotions and stories are normal.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:57Susan David?

  They are normal sense making machines. You know, you are absolutely, your brain is doing its job. When it's helping you to kind of judge, be curious, assess, understand. But what happened that like that's your brain doing its job. So when do we become hooked, when we, when do we become rigid? When are we now being unhealthy?

• 28:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, when it's holding, when it's holding us back.

• 28:20Susan David?

  When it's holding us back and when we start. Being imprisoned by them.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 28:24Susan David?

  Okay, so in psychological terms, the language for this is fusion. Or in my book on emotional agility, I call this hooked. So, so.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  Hooked meaning like trapped in your feelings, thoughts, you can't progress in life.

• 28:37Susan David?

  So, so let's, so, so.

• 28:39Lewis Howes?

  You're suffering in it.

• 28:40Susan David?

  The thought of I'm not good enough.

• 28:45Susan David?

  Or am I gonna succeed at this? Or maybe all the, these are normal. Okay, normal. Fusion or being hooked is when you say, I'm not good enough. Therefore, there's no point in me trying.

• 28:59Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:00Susan David?

  Okay.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  Believe it a hundred percent.

• 29:01Susan David?

  So, yeah, so what you're starting to do is you're starting to take this normal thought emotional story and you are starting to let it define you. Hence the word fusion, you know, you are now fused.

• 29:13Lewis Howes?

  Becomes your identity.

• 29:14Susan David?

  It becomes, becomes, it's literally like the, the emotion owns you rather than you owning it. And this is really important. We own our emotions, they don't own us. So when you talk about how do we move into a space of generating a sense of, of connection with self and self-worth. Firstly, recognizing that the way you've often responded doesn't need judgment. It just needs compassion because it's hard to human. It's, do you know what I mean? It's hard to human.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:53Susan David?

  So, so there's firstly that. The second thing that becomes important is, is, and this again connects with this idea of rigidity, which is recognizing that when you were that five-year-old child

• 30:09Susan David?

  and you were learning how to survive.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:14Susan David?

  That those strategies that you used at that age were actually functional.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:23Susan David?

  In other words, those strategies probably protected you.

• 30:26Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:26Susan David?

  You know, if you were bullied and therefore you stopping vulnerable as an example, that strategy actually was protective. So it was actually a functional strategy. What happens is we start.

• 30:40Susan David?

  Moving into a point where we, the strategy is no longer helpful to us. So now imagine you've developed these strategies of defensiveness, of um always wanting to be right, of like all of these things that we developed.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  Competing and.

• 30:55Susan David?

  Competing, like whatever it is for us. So we start developing these strategies and then we move into a different part of our lives. Now we, now we've got someone who really loves us.

• 31:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Susan David?

  And who wants to be with us and where our once functional strategy of shutting down and of being protective is now no, not functional.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:21Susan David?

  In other words, we've outgrown, just like we outgrow our shoes, just like we outgrow our clothes. When we move into different phases of our lives, we outgrow strategies. And so it becomes really important, this is where these emotional agility skills come in, to recognize that when, when we are hooked, we are often not sensitive to the context. We're often on seeing the person in front of us.

• 31:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:50Susan David?

  We're seeing the five-year-old who is fighting for survival.

• 31:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 31:56Susan David?

  And so what does that mean? That means we uh really owe ourselves huge amounts of compassion, compassion for that child. And we, we also, there's this beautiful uh,

• 32:14Susan David?

  there's this beautiful quote by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, who, he describes this idea, he says, you know, as a human being, you can never step into the same river twice.

• 32:24Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 32:25Susan David?

  And what is that saying? It's saying the world is always changing. Technology, the economy, politics, like the world is always changing.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:36Susan David?

  And we as human beings are changing. If we didn't.

• 32:44Susan David?

  There would be something wrong with us.

• 32:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 32:46Susan David?

  And so with change comes confusion, comes difficult emotions.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:53Susan David?

  Comes um the.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  It's uncomfortable to change, you know.

• 32:58Susan David?

  It's uncomfortable and it's because it's uncomfortable that it's so important to be gentle with it. Because because it's like you being gentle with you holding hands with yourself in your walk through life.

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, interesting.

• 33:14Susan David?

  And and as opposed to staying stuck where you once were. And so when you're walking through life and you're walking to a new place, whether that new place is a new job or a new career or a new idea or a new relationship, there's there's such beauty in holding hands with yourself.

• 33:31Lewis Howes?

  It's uh going back to what you're just talking about, it sounds like the memories of our past that are connected to a painful emotion hold us back or could potentially hold us back in the future to not feel those pain those painful emotions again, right?

• 33:48Susan David?

  Yes.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  It's it's these stories that we have attached a memory with an emotion, I guess.

• 33:54Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  From these events.

• 33:55Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Lewis Howes?

  Right? Whether it's on some people's point of view extremely traumatic or something smaller, but it could still be very traumatic.

• 34:04Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 34:05Susan David?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  Those memories seem to hold us back. It's almost like if we could, you know, erase all the memories of our past and enter in the world as this human being without those memories, would we be able to be more unapologetic in taking action on things we want to take action on? Will we have more confidence?

• 34:24Susan David?

  Yeah, I think it's that's such a powerful question. I mean, I think that like the memories hold us back and certainly but that also that also move us forward. I mean, there's there's there's the memory of.

• 34:35Lewis Howes?

  That protects us too.

• 34:36Susan David?

  Protect us, that they're all of these things. But I also um but we we can be hooked by a past, but we can also be hooked by today. You know, we know that when people are experiencing a lot of stress, when the world is changing quickly, when your job's changing and there's like yet another. You know, yet another transformation, yet another, whatever it is. When human beings experience huge amounts of stress, um, or, or even normal amounts of stress, normal amounts of confusion, there actually tends to be a cognitive narrowing. And so what I mean by this is we tend to, as we experience more ambiguity and more stress or more technology,

• 35:21Susan David?

  it's almost like the technology has outpaced our human capacity to deal with it. Because human beings, when human beings, if we think about the evolutionary, um, survival mechanism, when we are experiencing stress and threat, our, there is a perceptual narrowing, literally a cognitive narrowing. So there's a focus. And that focus might be, I'm hooked on being right in my Twitter feed. I'm, you know, I'm stuck in my emotion today because there's a, there's a, there's a narrowing. So we can be inagile and rigid because of past experiences, but we can also be inagile and rigid because there's just a lot of stuff coming at us.

• 36:03Susan David?

  And like, the, the World Economic Forum talks about these emotional agility skills as being the skills of the future for exactly this reason.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  When did you feel like you actually got into that space of practicing it? You know, how many years did it take for you to find out that like, okay, you know, this, this pinball machine is going everywhere, ups and downs and success and ego and fame and losses. When did you start to say, oh, this is all happening outside of me?

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  But let me start to nurture and intend to this garden inside of me for more peace and inner prosperity, not outer prosperity.

• 36:48Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be really honest with you. I, I know I don't look it.

• 36:54Speaker 03

  I'm 57 years old.

• 36:55Lewis Howes?

  Great man.

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Forty-eight, forty-nine.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  Is when that started.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  When I was really able to put into practice,

• 37:07Speaker 03

  some of the spiritual guidance that I had been studying, some of the therapeutic and positive psychology studies that I'd been studying. And for those, and I want to say for those watching at home, that might have a problem with spirituality, or God, or religion, and first of all, spirituality and religion are totally separate things. Not totally separate, but they are separate things. Then that's fine. Put that aside. And there's a wonderful reservoir of information that you have drawn on on all 1,400 of your episodes from the positive psychology movement. And so positive psychology always arrives at the same data points that ancient wisdom from faith traditions arrives at.

• 37:53Speaker 03

  Goes through a different way, but one you can learn a great deal from following what, you know, great teachers, you know, like, you know, Jonathan Haidt has the happiness hypothesis, and so many great books on happiness and podcasts on happiness and well-being, and Arthur Brooks, and David Brooks, and all the Brooks. There's you, those, it's the same wisdom. It's just kind of packaged a little differently.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Sure. Well, so about eight, nine years ago is when you've kind of started to

• 38:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:28Lewis Howes?

  tend to your inner garden.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  Isn't that pathetic?

• 38:30Lewis Howes?

  It's not pathetic.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  I should have had it at 33.

• 38:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay, Jesus. Yeah.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  I think, you know, I wish I got to learn these things a lot sooner as well, but it wasn't really until two years ago when I felt a sense of peace in my heart that I haven't never felt.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  And when I hit 38, I just turned 40.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  What, what happened there?

• 38:53Lewis Howes?

  I only felt peace when I was single. But when I was in relationships, I felt trapped and I felt a sense of not enoughness and never gonna be able to

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Right.

• 39:01Lewis Howes?

  live up to someone's standards and people pleasing and all these things that

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:05Lewis Howes?

  you mentioned as well, similar things. And I never

• 39:08Speaker 03

  Sounds like a little codependence going on there too.

• 39:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and it was, it was, you know, I was afraid because my parents were trapped. And so I grew up watching a model of them not really accepting or loving one another. And I didn't know which night, if it was gonna be like peaceful or chaotic, you know, every night you just didn't know how they were gonna be screaming or reacting or cold shoulders. So I just didn't have a healthy model. And I don't blame them. It all, it all developed me in a certain way to, to be a curious learner of this and try to like support others going through the same challenge. It's one of the reasons why I left home at 13, because I was like, get me out of here. It was just very up and down, chaotic. At home.

• 39:49Lewis Howes?

  Uh, my brother was also in prison for four and a half years when I was eight, so I was 12. So it was just like a lot of sadness, grief, loss, pain, uh, within the family dynamic. And I, and I know lots of families go through their own unique family dynamic of dysfunction. So this was just my own perspective. And, um, I just went after a feeling as opposed to being the feeling. I went after wanting something and desiring people and then needing to make sure that it worked out and going all in on it. Even when I had to change who I was to try to make them quote unquote happy. The partners I chose were never happy with me. They didn't accept me for who I was. And I don't blame them. I chose them for a reason. I needed to learn the lessons.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  And it wasn't until I, I became fully peaceful and happy and on a healing journey of who I was and everything about my past, really grieving all the different parts of me, that's when I felt peace. Going back to the first thing you talked about, which was grieving. I did about, I don't know, nine months of inner child feeling and therapy and, you know,

• 40:54Speaker 03

  I'm sorry to interrupt, but I want to please

• 40:55Lewis Howes?

  Go ahead.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  pick it up from there. But I just want to say like, see, I think this is super important that you're, you can share with your audience, your struggle. And to say, here I am, not really kind of figuring out how to be at peace in a relationship until my late 30s. I don't have it all figured out. I struggle. I think that's, I think that's so great that you're, that you're willing to share that.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  I share, I share, I don't hear all the time about all my struggles. I kind of am like the guinea pig of breakdowns, you know, here's what I'm, how I'm suffering and struggling and what I'm, you know, working out with my health, relationships, money, spirituality. So.

• 41:31Speaker 03

  So you talk about the inner child work. Did you do some therapeutic?

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, nine year, uh, nine months. I was like, I had a, a screensaver on my phone of my five year old self. You know, not from a narcissistic point of view of like, oh, look at me as a kid, but more of like, oh, look how sad I was. And look how much I was suffering and unsure of myself I was and always asking, why am I even here? What's the point of this? And, and just getting into trouble a lot. And so having compassion for my five, six, you know, seven, eight year old self. And putting myself in the mystical situations spiritually, where I'm there having a conversation and comforting my five year old self as a thirty eight year old adult with the wisdom and experience that I have now.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:16Lewis Howes?

  Those experiences reunited me with a broken memory. A memory of mine that was broken, bruised and hurt psychologically, emotionally, spiritually. And this allowed me to create harmony and congruency with the parts of myself that I was most ashamed of. This was also the time when I was sexually abused by a man that I didn't know, five years old. My second memory is of being sexually abused in a bathroom by a man that I didn't know. And, and I never grieved that. Like you said, going back to grieving, I never even acknowledged it for twenty five years. It wasn't until ten years ago when I started to open up and talk about that and process it with support.

• 42:58Lewis Howes?

  That released a pressure valve within me that had been building up for twenty five years. Which drove me to be, to excel in athletics and business and getting results. So it's like, I'm going to prove them wrong. No one's going to hurt me ever again. But by not acknowledging or grieving the pain and the sadness of the five year old, the nine year old, the thirteen year old, the twenty seven year old, you know, and all these different breakdowns I had, and always going to the next point, without grieving the loss, it caused um many breakdowns in my life, physically, relationally, financially, when on the outside, things were good,

• 43:41Lewis Howes?

  but on the inside, it was a one, two, or three.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Wow, that's powerful.

• 43:45Lewis Howes?

  And so ten years ago, right when I started this show, was a part of that journey of healing and finding people that could share their stories, so I could try to learn from them and apply some of these lessons. But two years ago specifically is when I went even deeper.

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  Cause I was just, I was really struggling in a previous relationship. And so I did about six months of intensive weekly therapy of healing the inner child within myself.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  That's great.

• 44:12Lewis Howes?

  And then doing it from the different parts of my childhood from twelve to eighteen and twenty seven, kind of marrying all those memories, creating new meaning from them into where I'm at now. That's what allowed me. There was a moment after about, I don't know, six or seven months of this therapy practice I was doing.

• 44:31Speaker 03

  What was it called?

• 44:32Lewis Howes?

  It was just working with a coach.

• 44:34Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, therapist, yeah.

• 44:37Lewis Howes?

  And but it was just very intense. I was doing like seven, eight hour sessions, you know, on Saturdays. I was just like, I need to figure this out. I'll do whatever it takes. I'm sick of pain. I'm sick of the suffering. Tell me what to practice, try, do all of, whatever you want to do, I'll do it.

• 44:50Speaker 03

  Okay, let me, let me, let me tell you. Yeah, yeah. Can I tell you a story along those same lines? People are watching, they're like, when did Louis turn into Oprah?

• 45:02Speaker 03

  So when I was struggling a lot, this is a while back, I went to this therapy retreat center called PCS in Scottsdale. And I did a couple of different weeks there and different kinds of sessions and different kinds of work. One of the things they have you do there, not for everyone, but they do inner child work. It's therapy twelve hours a day. You stay off site, but you're in, and it's very intense.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 45:27Speaker 03

  They have you on the first day, go to the mall to the Build a Bear workshop. And you build your inner child.

• 45:33Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  So I went and I built my inner child.

• 45:37Lewis Howes?

  That's amazing.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  As a bear.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  I love this.

• 45:39Speaker 03

  And you name it.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  And you have conversations and you carry it with you the entire week.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  That is a beautiful exercise.

• 45:47Speaker 03

  The entire week. So it's like kind of embarrassing like because I was like walking around.

• 45:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I know. Here's the thing. A lot of people that are watching or listening, they've heard me talk about this stuff for a while, but if there's. I'm always trying to be a Trojan horse. You know, you look at me, I'm this big like, you know, jock looking guy, six, four, you know, former athlete, all these different things. And I try to draw.

• 46:07Speaker 03

  Dufus looking, look like an IQ of thirteen, like farm hand, kind of.

• 46:13Lewis Howes?

  My IQ was pretty low. My EQ is high, but IQ is very low.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

• 46:17Lewis Howes?

  But the goal was to, the goal has always been to draw people in. That want success, that want greatness, that want, you know, money, all these different things and talk about these things, but also talk about the healing modalities that allow you to feel peaceful. And enough when you have the championship, when you have the money, when you have the role at the office. Because, you know, I was great at sports and accomplished a lot, but I'd never felt. I loved myself or that I was lovable, kind of like what you talked about. Then I transitioned it to making money and building a business and I built a multimillion dollar company and all these different things, but I still didn't feel lovable. So I was like, well, how do I get to this place where I can actually accept and love me?

• 47:00Lewis Howes?

  And so this process, which sounds similar, but I love the idea of having. A physical representation of your inner child. That is a beautiful experience. And, and I'm assuming you had conversations and did exercises and did some weird things that left. If people were watching, they'd be like, okay.

• 47:18Speaker 03

  And if you.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  You're crazy, man.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  And if someone was doing it and left and left their inner child like on the couch or. Even went to like go get a cup of coffee and left it, they would, the therapist would be like, what the are you doing? You're going to leave your child there? Like, and it was this training of like. Wow, I in heart and when I was a child, I was so vulnerable and I suffered so much trauma. And pain, but guess what? I get to re-parent myself.

• 47:45Lewis Howes?

  Man, this is beautiful.

• 47:46Speaker 03

  I get to hold my own hand.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  I get to see baby Rain, baby Louis, and give him the love that he didn't get when his mom took off when he's a year and a half old and my dysfunctional dad was stuck with this beard, big weird looking toddler, you know? And I, I get to be part of that process and uh, it was, it was really powerful.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  This is beautiful.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  A lot of really intense stuff.

• 48:13Lewis Howes?

  Here's the thing, when I was 21, if I would have watched this conversation or heard this, I'd have been like, what a bunch of, you know, a bunch of wusses.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Suck it up.

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  Don't be such a baby, right? I said like, whatever, because I was just in more of an ego mindset. And I'd have been like, just tell me how to make money. Just tell me to be happy. Just tell me to like, just, I want to be successful.

• 48:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:33Lewis Howes?

  Just teach me that. Like touch with us. What are those steps? What are those skills? And um, I hope people watching or listening, you know, specifically men, if you're watching or listening, that you can just listen and, and hear this perspective. You don't have to listen to me, listen to you and hear this perspective of, I truly believe that the highest form of currency right now is peace. Is it, you know, because you said you can have lots of money and still be miserable and unhappy. The highest form of currency I think is peace. Peace with your relationships, peace with your career choices or the business you have,

• 49:16Lewis Howes?

  peace with your health and peace with yourself. And when we don't have that, it just becomes harder. And so for me, it's figuring out how to stay in congruency and alignment with self and be in a peaceful state. It doesn't mean we're not going to experience stress and challenge and overwhelm and let down and all these things. But doing the best to stay in peace will allow us to feel better, make the people around us feel better and make better decisions in our lives. So I hope people are listening. I hope the women listening share this with their, their male friends.

• 49:51Lewis Howes?

  And and know it from two different individuals of different backgrounds. You as the career and you know, and acting and all these different things that you've done in media. Me from sports and business. That it it matters to make money. But if you're miserable and you're hurting yourself in that process. Then it's just amplifying the pain that you already have. And so this is the work in my.

• 50:15Speaker 03

  Amen.

• 50:16Lewis Howes?

  You don't have to, you don't have to go to Build a Bear and make an inner child, you know, physical representation and hold the bear around all day. But I feel like do something that works for you.

• 50:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:25Lewis Howes?

  Do something that works for you. And for me, doing intensive therapy weekly for months supported me. For you, this experience, this two week experience worked for you. And it's an ongoing journey of healing from my experience. It doesn't just happen overnight and you're healed. For me, it's an ongoing practice.

• 50:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 50:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's beautifully beautifully said, really. And so important, and I love that currency of peace. Like, if you can gain peace in your inner garden, I like to use that metaphor. Uh, and and well being and feel like I am enough. Um, you know, I've shared this before, I actually, our mutual friend, Justin Baldoni, I talked to him about this. That, uh, when I was first starting the therapy process. Uh, my therapist was having me say daily affirmations.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 51:12Speaker 03

  And gave me a list, here's a list of like them. And it's just, oh, give me a break.

• 51:16Lewis Howes?

  Like, what were the few things?

• 51:17Speaker 03

  Yes, like, um, I'm a good father, I'm worthy of love, I'm blah. The first one on the list is, I am enough.

• 51:24Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  And I picked it up and I was like, I am enough. Nope. Not doing that. It was so hard for me to look at or to think about saying that. And he's like, well, that's the one that you have to say is I had to hang in on the mirror. Every morning I had to get up and brush my teeth and look in the mirror and go. I am enough. And it's, do you remember Stuart Smalley, that that that Saturday Night Live character is like, I'm good enough.

• 51:48Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 51:48Speaker 03

  Gosh darn it. And I.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 51:52Speaker 03

  Al Franken played this character Stuart Smalley. Insert clip.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 51:57Speaker 03

  Uh, but, uh. It's it's corny, it's schmaltzy, but it it really helped me, but it also helped me to see like, wow, I really don't believe that I am enough.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  That's the interesting thing. How do you? Because I think when we say a false affirmation that we haven't actually believed yet.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Sometimes it's like, okay, well, we're lying to ourselves when when you don't believe it. And yet you're looking at it, you're saying it over and over again. So I love that practice, but it's like we have our our emotional state has to catch up to it and actually learn how to process, grieve, heal, and actually believe it. So how did you build yourself? In your in overcoming the insecurities or the self doubt in order to actually believe that you were enough? Not just say the affirmation every.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Well, that's a really good point, and I hadn't thought about that, but I I agree with you. I think it can be dangerous to kind of say a bunch of affirmations that you don't really believe. Like, you're going to manifest them, but you don't have that organic, authentic kind of kernel of belief inside your your gut. But I think that what it did for me is it kind of. It's kind of like in the show Kung Fu, which I reference in the book Soul Boom, is one of my favorite television shows of all time. That he's like, when you can snatch the pebble from my hand, then you will be ready to go. And that it's a runner through the show, and finally, Kwei Chang Kane is able to snatch the pebble from the hand, and he leaves the Shaolin monastery and goes to the Old West and fights a bunch of racist cowboys.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  Anyways, another another topic, but. It's like when you can snatch the pebble from my hand of really believing I am enough, then you're ready. You know, then you're really ready. So for me was. I would say it, and I was not getting the pebble. I and I recognized. Oh, I don't believe that I'm enough. I really don't, and I I've got work to do. So it was helpful for me to kind of go like, it was. Oh, my God. I mean, it was a good. It was a good, you know, 10 years of me saying I am enough when I didn't believe it, until it started through the work that I was doing to kind of believe it in the last like.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Eight, nine, 10 years, I've I really have come to believe that I am enough.

• 54:16Lewis Howes?

  Well, I mean, there's there's there's some beauty in this.

• 54:21Lewis Howes?

  For people watching and listening that I think there's a lot of people that don't believe they're enough, which for me, my mission is to give people the, the tools, the inspiration, the expertise, the, the, um, knowledge, the science, the research from others on how they can start to believe in themselves more. I believe self doubt is the killer of dreams. I think it holds us back from going after what we want. It, you know, when we doubt ourselves, we lack the courage or even worse, when we accomplish the thing and we don't feel enough, it's like, what will make me feel enough? You know, I was accomplishing in sports, you were accomplishing in acting and you still weren't feeling enough with like the height of your career with the, that show, right? It was like, okay, why do

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  I still not feel enough? And I believe when we can overcome that insecurity and doubt, that's when we can start to really step into a beautiful way of being. And it's been a process and a journey for me. I'm curious.

• 55:23Lewis Howes?

  What do you think it was that allowed you to start to believe that you were enough? After all those years of kind of saying it and practicing it and the modalities and the training, was there one thing that where you're like, okay, now I'm starting to feel it? Like, what was that letting go or skill that you learned?

• 55:39Speaker 03

  That's a, that's a great question. And I wish I had kind of like some, some nugget, but it just, it just was, it was a shift, you know, it was a lot of work. It was like, you know, it's like, you put in the work, you can, you know, use athletics as, as a metaphor, like you.

• 55:55Lewis Howes?

  Practice.

• 55:56Speaker 03

  You know, you just, you practice and you work at it and you fail and you struggle and you, there's ups and downs. And, you know, it was finding a really good therapist and doing some retreats and doing some reading, working with my wife a lot. I learned a ton from my wife. She's much better at this stuff than I am.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 56:59Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.