Pod Insights The School of Greatness 3 Hacks To Manifest Success, Peace & Abundance In Your Life [MASTERCLASS] EP 1437 About this episode https://lewishowes.com/mindset - Order a copy of my new book The Greatness Mindset today! Today’s Masterclass revolves around the topic of manifestation and how we can use it on a daily basis to reach new levels of peace and abundance. Stay tuned for three of our favorite guests discussing how they’ve manifested success in their own lives. Sadhguru, a Yogi, mystic, and visionary, explains why it's okay to feel empty-minded and how to take the power back over your emotions. Bob Proctor, the late best-selling author & lecturer, teaches the path to turning self-doubt into confidence and how to reprogram our minds for success. Dr. Tara Swart Bieber, Ph. D neuroscientist and former MD examines the many intricacies of the human brain, and how to hack our brains for abundance. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1437In this episode you will learn,How to define “The Mind”. If education and wealth equates to happiness. Why do we obsess about comparing ourselves to our neighbors? What we should really be worrying about in times of crisis. What’s happening to our brain on a biological level when we learn something new. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they have become. Particularly Western societies have become such slaves of their intellect. Because of that...
0:14 Lewis 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.
0:38 Lewis Howes? Welcome to this special master class. 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.
0:56 Speaker 00 Are we stressing our minds? No, there is an entire... there is a mind across this body. What is it that you call as a mind? A certain combination of memory and intelligence is mind, isn't it?
1:07 Lewis Howes? So our whole body is mind?
1:08 Speaker 00 Yes. In yoga, we see physical body, mental body, energetic body, etheric body, bliss body, like this. Everything is body. Because it is right across, it is not in any one place. Only intellectual activity is here, okay? Right now, because modern societies, particularly Western societies, have become such slaves of their intellect. Because of that, they think everything is here. Intellect works only with the data that you have gathered. You cannot function beyond your data. That means you will remain so small. Because even if you've read the libraries on this planet, what you know in terms of data is miniscule compared to what this cosmos is.
1:52 Speaker 00 With that miniscule, you think you're very intelligent because you're analyzing and processing. Anyway, all these people who think they're intellectually very smart are going to feel dumb, stupid in the next five years because your phone will be far more smarter than you. Already, people are calling it a smartphone. See, why would you call somebody or something smart? Only because it's smarter than you, right?
2:15 Lewis Howes? Right, yeah.
2:16 Speaker 00 Otherwise, you wouldn't, all right. So, right now, too much dependence on intellect, because our education systems are crafted like this, not exploring other dimensions of intelligence at all. See, intellect, if I ask you this simple question, would you like your intellect to be sharp or blunt? Choose, choose quickly, I'm gonna bless you.
2:36 Lewis Howes? Sharp.
2:37 Speaker 00 Yes.
2:38 Lewis Howes? Sharp.
2:39 Speaker 00 So, essentially, intellect is like a knife. If you want to dissect something, it's very good.
2:44 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
2:45 Speaker 00 So, now, the only instrument that you have is a knife in your hand. You want to stitch your clothes. If you stitch your clothes with the knife, what will happen? You will be in tatters.
2:56 Lewis Howes? Right.
2:57 Speaker 00 This is what is happening to people's lives. They are trying to fix everything with their intellect. The harder they try, the more tatters they have become. With all this education, tell me, uneducated people are more unhappy or educated people are more unhappy? In the world.
3:14 Lewis Howes? It depends what type of education.
3:17 Speaker 00 No, generally, illiterate people in the rest of the world, tribes and this and that, even in India, many, many people.
3:23 Lewis Howes? Whenever I visit, I go to Guatemala almost every year and I visit small villages and the kids seem so happy.
3:32 Speaker 00 Yeah, because they didn't go to school like me.
3:37 Lewis Howes? They don't have much, but they have family, they have community.
3:40 Speaker 00 What do you mean, they don't have much?
3:41 Lewis Howes? I mean, they don't have much in terms of the material world.
3:43 Speaker 00 They are not environmentally disastrous, that's what you're saying.
3:45 Lewis Howes? Right, exactly, yeah. They don't have a lot in the material side of things, but they have a lot in their hearts, richness, connection, community, love, and they seem very happy.
3:55 Speaker 00 Essentially, uneducated people or illiterate people are happier than the educated people. With education, your life should have become better, isn't it? Unfortunately, they're becoming unhappy simply because they only have sharpened their knife. And a sharp knife in your hand and your unconscious, you're cutting yourself all the time. All the time, cutting yourself.
4:19 Lewis Howes? That's painful.
4:19 Speaker 00 You don't need any outside help.
4:21 Lewis Howes? You could stab yourself.
4:23 Speaker 00 Yes. So, people come to me and say, "Sadhguru, my boss is horrible, my mother-in-law, she's not even human, my wife, she is such a pain, my husband like this." I say, "You come here to the yoga center, I'll make sure your boss, mother-in-law, wife, husband, nobody enters this place, just you. I'll give you a nice place to live, good food to eat." Nothing to do, just be happy, that's all. Yeah. You must be just joyful. I'll make random checks on you. If I find you unhappy or miserable, then I won't feed you because I don't believe in feeding misery. If you remain joyful, I will feed you for the rest of your life and take care of you like you're my prized guest.
5:06 Speaker 00 But if you show misery, we won't feed you. Well, you leave them in one room for 24 hours. You will see in how many ways they'll twist themselves out is unbelievable. Because when you're alone, if you're miserable, obviously you're in bad company, isn't it? Right. I'm with you. I'm miserable. I think it's because of this guy I'm miserable, this guy I'm miserable. I'm sitting here alone and miserable. Now who? Right. Who, who is causing misery? How do we get out of that though? No, essentially, one must understand human experience is caused from within, not from outside.
5:48 Speaker 00 What we do, arrangements we do outside in the form of home, family, automobile, this, that, these are arrangements to facilitate our activity. They are not going to make you happy or unhappy. But right now, the car sellers are telling you only if this is joy, this car... I'm sorry, I'm not against any brand. I like the brand. They say this car is joy. Another somebody else says this car is love. Oh, all the best. This is power, this is, yeah. Power is okay, car has power. But where is love exuding from the engine? Or joy exuding from the engine? All right? Power, all right. But right now, if you, you know, this is something I've been noticing.
6:32 Speaker 00 It's only in recent times, probably last 10, 15 years. If you look at any car, I look at every advertisement, whether they're selling an automobile, or a machine, or a crane, or an earth mover, because I'm interested in anything that works. Not that I'm going to buy them. So when I look at it, car ads, nobody's telling you what's the engine, what's the transmission, what's the power, what's the torque? Nothing. They're talking about the leather, they're talking about the wood paneling, they're talking about the stereo. Are you buying a sitting room?
7:07 Speaker 00 You want to buy a drawing room or do you want a car? If I want a car, I would look at the engine, how it is made, what does it do? No, nothing, only...
7:18 Lewis Howes? Why is that?
7:19 Speaker 00 Because they are buying a car for neighbors envy. They are not buying a car because they love to drive a good machine.
7:28 Speaker 00 It's always about being better than somebody else.
7:31 Lewis Howes? Why do we obsess over that in general? And is that mostly in America or do you see that all over the world?
7:36 Speaker 00 No, no, it's everywhere. America kind of setting the, you know, path breaking.
7:40 Lewis Howes? The standard, we're the best and trying to be the best.
7:44 Speaker 00 So, this is unfortunate cultivation that is happening from kindergarten. If you are going to school, what your parents will say, you must be number one. If you are number one, what about all the other thirty, forty kids who are there? They must be below you.
8:00 Lewis Howes? They're losers.
8:01 Speaker 00 They're losers. So, your joy is only in other people failing. When your joy is about other people's misery, that's not joy, that is sickness.
8:14 Speaker 00 Right now, whole world is invested in this. It's not just America. America kind of displays it like that. Not that it's not there everywhere else in the world, everywhere it's there. But here it's being shamelessly displayed. They are little shy everywhere left of the world, but still they got it.
8:33 Lewis Howes? What would the world look like if we chose to lift everyone up and celebrate other people succeeding or being happy? Or whatever it looks like for them to succeed, what would the world look like?
8:45 Speaker 00 See, I see in America, everybody keeps talking about family, family, family. But you've forgotten, just maybe a century ago, yeah. Maybe a century ago or even seventy years ago or fifty years ago, if you said family, it meant crime.
9:02 Lewis Howes? Why?
9:03 Speaker 00 Because the families were running the crime, you know.
9:05 Lewis Howes? Oh, wow.
9:06 Speaker 00 The cosa nostra...
9:07 Lewis Howes? The family crime got you there.
9:08 Speaker 00 They always refer to crime as family. Because family is a crime.
9:14 Lewis Howes? Really?
9:16 Speaker 00 Let me come to that, I know this will get me to trouble. Let me come to that. See, there is only one crime and there's only one evil in the world, that is limited identity.
9:30 Speaker 00 How much crime you will commit simply depends on how empowered you are.
9:35 Lewis Howes? Say one more time, how much crime you...
9:37 Speaker 00 Commit, simply depends on how empowered you are.
9:41 Lewis Howes? How empowered you are.
9:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
9:42 Lewis Howes? So do I want to be...
9:43 Speaker 00 If you are highly empowered and your identity is very limited, you will do terrible things. So, the most important thing is to enhance or to expand one's identity.
9:55 Lewis Howes? How do we do that?
9:56 Speaker 00 See, for example, traditionally in the yogic culture in India, before we start education for a child, the first and foremost thing is that he must take a cosmic identity.
10:10 Lewis Howes? A cosmic identity.
10:11 Speaker 00 Yes, he has to take that.
10:12 Lewis Howes? What does that, what does that look like? So if I'm a child and you're teaching me this...
10:16 Speaker 00 So the thing is, one thing is, there is a mantra which says that, that he has to say it again and again. He has to look at the sky and say it, he look at the earth and say it, look at the air and say it, look at the fire and say it, all the elements of water and say it, because these are all the composition of the cosmos. You look at empty space and say it, you look at water and say it, you look at fire and say it, you look at the earth and say it, so that you understand your identity is limitless. Why this is being done is... Why this is being done is, education is seen as an empowerment. You should not empower a person who has a limited identity because he will cause havoc.
10:59 Speaker 00 I'll take the worst example which will get me into trouble.
11:02 Lewis Howes? Sure.
11:03 Speaker 00 See, everybody talks about, you're not even supposed to mention this name, Adolf Hitler. Well, many people have been there who caused enormous pain to other human beings. But I don't think anybody managed to organize it, mechanize it, and really deliver it like a factory of misery, like this man did, all right? It's a factory.
11:26 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
11:27 Speaker 00 Literally, a factory of misery, manufacturing misery, properly organized. But do you think there aren't thousands or hundreds and thousands of people with the same mindset in the world?
11:40 Lewis Howes? Absolutely.
11:41 Speaker 00 They are, only thing is they are not empowered like him. Competence is the only thing that's lacking. Tyranny is there in people's mind.
11:50 Speaker 00 They are as much tyrants as Adolf Hitler. You may find them in your school teacher. You may find them in your parents. You may find them all around you in your neighborhood. Only fortunately, they are not as potent as that man. That man is super competent. That is the problem. So, right now, human competence becomes a terrible problem simply because you have a limited identity.
12:11 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
12:12 Speaker 00 So, you invest your identity in a family. You invest your identity in a community, race, religion, nationality.
12:21 Lewis Howes? Your relationships, your...
12:22 Speaker 00 Tell me, in the name of nations, in the name of race, in the name of religions, in the name of communities, how much terrible... How many terrible things have we done in this world?
12:34 Lewis Howes? It's still happening today.
12:36 Speaker 00 No, the most terrible... Leave what's happening today. Just look back in the last hundred years.
12:40 Lewis Howes? All for someone's identity, pride, country, city, state, religion, all these things.
12:46 Speaker 00 How... Just take 20th century. Okay, one century passed. 21st century is just progressing now. 20th century, take it. In the name of race, what all have we done to each other?
12:56 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
12:56 Speaker 00 In the name of religion, what all have we done to each other? In the name of nationality, what all have we done to each other? Just look back and see. We have literally killed half the world's population in 20th century.
13:07 Lewis Howes? Because of identity.
13:08 Speaker 00 Yes. Of a philosophy, of an ideology. People have killed, all right?
13:13 Lewis Howes? Right.
13:15 Speaker 00 So, limited identity and empowerment is a disaster. But we are continuously cultivating this all the time. So, I said family is crime because family is the first identity that you take. After that comes community. After that comes maybe race, or religion, or nationality. Right now nationality is reasonably the largest identity you're taking. Within this nation, it looks nice that you are committed as an American to the well-being of America.
13:45 Lewis Howes? Right.
13:46 Speaker 00 But just see who is fighting who in this world? A good Indian is fighting a good Pakistan. A good Hindu is fighting a good Muslim. A good American fighting just about anybody.
14:03 Speaker 00 Because you never fought a war here, you go out and fight all over the world, all right? Well, you will find reasons as to why you fought that war and the heroic nature of it. I know people who lost their lives believing that they're doing the best thing in their life, yes, but I want you to know that man that you think is horrible, that terrorist, that miscreant, that militant, or whatever you want to call him, that guy also, like a suicide bomber. See, anybody, for every human being, or even for an ant, its life is precious. You try to catch him, see, he'll do everything possible to save his life. So, somebody to throw away their life like this, obviously, what they believe in means much more than their life. Crazy. Right?
14:48 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's not crazy. See, if they do it your way, you're... it's heroic. If they do it their way, it's crazy. I'm not trying to support terrorism or something, I'm just telling you, it's limited identity. Genocides have been committed because of limited identity. Nations have been razed down because of limited identity. Evil things we have done to each other on individual level, simply because of limited identity. So, this is what yoga means. Yoga means union. That means you consciously obliterated the boundaries of your individual nature and your experience of life expanded. Once you sit here and you experience everything around you as a part of yourself, after that
15:31 Speaker 00 you do not need any morality, you do not need any commandments, "Thou shall not cut that tree, thou shall not kill this man, thou shall not rob this," this is meaningless to you when you have experienced something as a part of yourself. So, the entire system of yoga, and when I say yoga, I mean yoga, all right? Not the yoga that's happening in Los Angeles studios. I have nothing against them, but I'm saying we've reduced it to something just one aspect... To build an identity around... Yes. Yeah. Twisting and turning your body, it's good for you, you'll become flexible and maybe healthy, that's good for you, but I want you to understand, would you not wish that Adolf Hitler was a sick man instead of a healthy man?
16:14 Lewis Howes? I would not wish that, yeah. I wish he was a healthy man.
16:16 Speaker 00 Huh?
16:17 Lewis Howes? I would wish he was a healthy man.
16:18 Speaker 00 He was healthy, that's the problem I'm saying.
16:20 Lewis Howes? You wish he was a sick man?
16:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, wouldn't you be happy if he got cancer at twenty-five?
16:26 Lewis Howes? Oh, I see what you're saying.
16:26 Speaker 00 And he wouldn't kill all these people, wouldn't set up this factory?
16:29 Lewis Howes? Yeah, I wish they would have died.
16:31 Speaker 00 So I'm saying, health becomes a curse.
16:34 Lewis Howes? Really?
16:34 Speaker 00 Competence becomes a curse, individual, intelligence becomes a curse. Why? Because you have limited identity.
16:41 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
16:41 Speaker 00 It's in that context I said, family is crime.
16:46 Speaker 00 Family is a wonderful place where people are supporting each other.
16:53 Bob Proctor? Although you cannot change conditions or circumstance, you don't have to let them control you.
16:59 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
17:00 Bob Proctor? We can't control what's going on outside, but we can control what's going on inside. You know, and unfortunately, I don't think many of us have been raised to really understand that.
17:11 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
17:12 Bob Proctor? And it's a lack of understanding that's causing all our problems. You know?
17:17 Lewis Howes? But how, I mean, how can you say that to someone who's like, "Well, I don't feel like I have control on the inside", when it seems like everything has power over me? What's something that could start to shift?
17:28 Bob Proctor? You see, the truth is, for that person, that would be true, that they're being controlled by outside. We, look at it this way, we are the only creature on the planet that's totally disoriented in our environment. All the little squirrels, the birds, the every, all the animals are completely at home in their environment, they blend in. You and I are totally disoriented in our environment. We've been given the mental faculties to create our own environment. However, we go right through school and we've never learned that. We have higher faculties and the average person has no knowledge of how to operate with them,
18:12 Bob Proctor? how to develop them. We have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory and intuition. Now, those mental faculties, they're not just words. They're actually mental faculties that we can use to take control over our world and to create the environment that we want. But unfortunately, we grow up, we don't know that. We've been raised to live through by what we see, hear, smell, taste and touch, our physical senses. And we've been raised to be controlled by what's going on outside. As little kids, will you listen to what I'm telling you? Will you look at this? And so it's all outside. We get our report card and that tells us what kind of student we are.
18:57 Bob Proctor? But it really tells us where our mind was at for a few minutes, three weeks ago. Got nothing to do with who we are. So, I think we're, we're raised in ignorance, actually. There's a very small percentage of the population that have a reasonably clear understanding of who they are and what they're capable of doing. But the ones that do are in the minority. Our whole company has been dedicated to teaching that to people for the last 50 some years.
19:31 Lewis Howes? Powerful. You talked about the five faculties, five mental faculties. And I think you touched on this briefly in our, in our previous interview. But I'm curious, I have a new question for you. Which of the faculties typically is the hardest to, I guess, master or, you know, become efficient in, to use to your advantage in a positive way? And which is the one that you feel like hurts us the most when we don't master?
19:56 Bob Proctor? Well...
19:58 Bob Proctor? I think reason is probably, it's the one that's spoken about by almost all the great leaders.
20:05 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
20:06 Bob Proctor? They've all been complete unanimous agreement that we become what we think about. It's our reasoning factor that enables us to think.
20:16 Bob Proctor? Ford says thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few people engage in it. Dr. Ken McFarland, who's gone for a long time now, but he was a great educator down in Kentucky. He one time said 2% of the people think, 3% think they think, and 95% would actually rather die than think.
20:38 Bob Proctor? Now, you know, that sounds cute, but it's true. If you stop and listen to what most people are saying, it's going to be fairly obvious they're not thinking. If you stand back and watch what most people are doing, it's fairly obvious they're not thinking. Or they would never say or do what they're doing.
21:01 Bob Proctor? Most people today have their television on the news and they're just soaking up all the stuff that's going on that's dominating the media right now. So they've become a plaything for what's going on outside. And that's why they're living in such fear.
21:22 Lewis Howes? By consuming the media of whether it's true or accurate or not true, you're being manipulated in a sense, yeah.
21:29 Bob Proctor? It's not a matter of whether it's true or not. Is this how you want to spend your life, just listening to that?
21:37 Bob Proctor? That doesn't mean you should deny it. It doesn't mean that you should say, "Well, that's all false."
21:44 Bob Proctor? I don't know whether it's true or false, it's just bad news, I don't want to be involved in it.
21:49 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
21:49 Bob Proctor? Am I aware that it's there? Well, you'd almost have to be dead not to be aware that it's there. But that doesn't mean you have to spend your time thinking on that. I would much rather activate some of my creative faculties and do something that's constructive.
22:05 Lewis Howes? In a time, in a time under crisis and worry and fear for a lot of people, what should we be thinking about? How should we be using our imagination in different ways as opposed to fixating on the bad news?
22:20 Bob Proctor? Well, I think a good idea right now would be spend some time thinking about how are we going to adapt when this is gone?
22:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
22:28 Bob Proctor? Because we're going to live in a different world. We're not going to be in the same world when this is all blown over than we're in right now. It's going to be quite different.
22:40 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
22:41 Bob Proctor? People are not going to be rushing out to big events where there's a lot of people. They're not going to be rushing to restaurants. I think they're going to be very careful about what they do, where they think, where they're going. I was listening to Sinek and he said, "If you're a public speaker, don't look for a stage for a little while because you're not going to have one."
23:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
23:05 Bob Proctor? Now, this also presents great opportunities. It's for us, for my company, we're going online, you know, full speed ahead. Now fortunately, we built the studio four, five years ago, so...
23:25 Lewis Howes? You're prepared.
23:27 Bob Proctor? We're equipped and we're ready.
23:29 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
23:29 Bob Proctor? We can, we can broadcast. We were, we had a training class going in here just last week with about 300 of our consultants all over the world. We had a three-day training program for them and it was very effective.
23:46 Lewis Howes? Online?
23:47 Bob Proctor? You didn't have to come together.
23:48 Lewis Howes? Yeah, yeah.
23:49 Bob Proctor? We did it from right here.
23:50 Lewis Howes? Yeah. I mean, you're known for doing these powerful transformational workshops in person. So for someone, I mean, it's very inspiring for me, for someone at your age where would be the excuse of most people your age to say, "Well, I don't understand this technology thing and I've been doing this, this way of business for so long. It's always worked this way and I'm not going to try to reinvent or evolve and pivot and grow in this way." So it's really inspiring to see someone your age with your level of experience and say, "You know what? I'm embracing it. Maybe I don't like it. Maybe you do like it, but you're embracing it and making the most of it as opposed to resisting." Because what happens when we start to resist in our life? What truly happens?
24:30 Bob Proctor? Well, while we resist it, we create it in our mind. That's all we think about. And you see...
24:39 Bob Proctor? I guess my age really has nothing to do with it, but I formed that attitude a long time ago.
24:44 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
24:45 Bob Proctor? I didn't like the idea that when you've lived for so long, you've got to cut out, you've got to stop. I thought, I don't like that idea at all. And first of all, I think we're, I believe we're here to do God's work. God's work is creation, you know, expansion, fuller expression, greater goodness.
25:10 Bob Proctor? And if we're gonna do that, we're gonna be working at it all the time we're here on this planet. We never stop. So age should have no bearing on it.
25:22 Bob Proctor? I had a couple of people ask me when we started to build this place. We put a couple of million dollars into this and somebody said, "How old are you?" And I think I was probably 83 when they started to break ground. They said, "You're 83 and you're gonna spend $2 million building a studio?" And I said, "Yeah, like, why not?" I mean, you see, we let things that really have no concern, we let them bother us, we let them control us. Age is a dumb thing to let control you.
25:57 Bob Proctor? It's our thinking that controls everything. That's the one point every great leader of the red on. We become what we think about. Well, what's a person thinking? "I'm thinking if I get old, I gotta stop." Well, then you'll stop. Or I'm thinking, "Well, if I've been here a long time, I've got a lot of experience. I want to utilize that experience to keep me going as long as I am here."
26:20 Bob Proctor? I mean, anybody had their head screwed on right a few years ago would know that this thing's gonna take over.
26:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
26:28 Bob Proctor? And if we don't learn how to use it, we're toast.
26:33 Bob Proctor? So, you know, I was doing seminars on my iPad because I can run it right on to a monitor and out through to the universe.
26:43 Lewis Howes? Yeah. What should we be thinking about the most right now in your mind?
26:47 Bob Proctor? I think we should be thinking about our future. I think we should be thinking about the greatness, like it's the school of greatness. I think we ought to be thinking about the greatness that we've got locked up within us and bring it to the surface. Everyone has deep reservoirs of talent and ability within them and they can bring it to the surface to accomplish anything they want. Now to sit in fear and wonder what's going to happen, that is a dumb waste of your talent and your time.
27:22 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
27:23 Bob Proctor? And unfortunately, that's what most of the media is promoting right now. To believe in fear is to believe in something you can't see. To believe in faith is to believe in something you can't see. Well, if you have a choice, I think I'd choose faith over fear.
27:42 Lewis Howes? Absolutely.
27:43 Bob Proctor? I think I believe where I can really see something happen. I believe we're going to have a phenomenal year in our company.
27:49 Lewis Howes? Wow.
27:50 Bob Proctor? In fact, I am business partner, Sandy Gallagher, and a very bright lady, was a securities attorney prior to joining us. She run a program this morning for our entire company. We have about 70 people in the company. She was teaching masterminding to them all and saying how this is important, that every one of us get involved in this, that we learn the basics of masterminding that Napoleon Hill brought to the world, let's say, way back in the 30s.
28:27 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
28:28 Bob Proctor? Now, I think that's what we should be teaching people. Sandy was on the right track there. So I think we ought to be thinking about what we're going to build, how big are we going to do it, where are we going to do it, when are we going to start? Our goals have not changed. They're very big, they're very ambitious, and we're not letting this virus slow us down one bit.
28:52 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
28:53 Bob Proctor? As a matter of fact, we're trying to figure out how can we use this to speed it up.
28:57 Lewis Howes? There you go.
28:58 Bob Proctor? Since it's here and you can't get rid of it. Use it to your advantage.
29:03 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
29:03 Bob Proctor? There is a way we can use it to our advantage. People are more dependent upon the phone. Uh, I've got a computer here. They're dependent on their phone, their computer, more than they've ever been.
29:14 Bob Proctor? We can reach them anywhere in the world through those mediums.
29:17 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
29:20 Lewis Howes? Yeah, use them to your advantage. You told, you talked about fear for a second. I'm curious, when we live in a state of fear, what does that do to us? And when we, the second part to this, when we feel that fear and we become aware of it, what should we be thinking or doing or acting on in order to shift into a more positive state?
29:40 Bob Proctor? You know, that is one of the good questions. And it's a question most people are not able to answer. First of all, the cause of fear is ignorance.
29:53 Bob Proctor? That is the cause of fear. And so if you follow the ignorance, it doesn't start out as fear. The ignorance starts out in a conscious level as doubt and worry.
30:06 Bob Proctor? That's on a conscious level. We're doubting or we're worrying. Then we take whatever image comes into our consciousness of the doubt and the worry, and we turn it over to our emotional mind. That's what causes the fear. Well, that fear then has to be expressed through the body. Through the only instrument it can be expressed through, our physical body. It sets up a vibration known as anxiety.
30:32 Bob Proctor? Anxiety is not expressed. Anxiety becomes suppressed.
30:37 Lewis Howes? Ooh.
30:37 Bob Proctor? We suppress it. And the suppression then turns to depression, which turns to disease, which turns to decay. You see, you're talking about a track a person gets on. It's a very negative track.
30:54 Bob Proctor? It's ignorance, don't worry, fear, anxiety, suppression, depression, disease, disintegration.
31:04 Bob Proctor? Now, the polar opposite of all that, the opposite of ignorance is knowledge.
31:09 Lewis Howes? Hmm.
31:11 Bob Proctor? There's only one way to get to knowledge, and that is to study. Now unfortunately, uh, school didn't do the job that it was designed to do for most of us. School should teach us to love to study.
31:31 Lewis Howes? Not to dread studying and homework and tests.
31:35 Bob Proctor? They should teach us to love it, because study leads to the opposite of don't worry, which is understanding.
31:45 Bob Proctor? See, it's study that leads to understanding. We understand how to handle the fear. It's understanding that enables us to cause us to understand where the fear starts. The understanding, then, we want to say, what do we understand? We want to understand this whole universe operates by law. One of the laws is the law of opposite. The opposite of don't worry is understanding. Now, if the don't worry leads to fear, what's understanding leads to? Understanding leads to faith.
32:19 Bob Proctor? The faith leads to expression, well-being and expression. It's not depression. It's not suppression. It's not anxiety. The faith leads to well-being. The well-being then is expression, acceleration, because we're at ease, we're not at, there's not disease. So you're dealing with polar opposites. There's two different sides to things. And when we understand that, our world starts to change. It's by understanding that that we learn how to deal with these pandemics when they hit.
33:00 Bob Proctor? And they will hit. There will be others. There always has been, all down through history. If you look back, there's been things like this happen in the past. And unfortunately, the masses are sort of paralyzed by it.
33:17 Bob Proctor? And as a people, we add to that paralysis by feeding them more of what scares them. What we should be doing is helping them understand what the hell is going on.
33:28 Lewis Howes? Why do we do that as people? Why do we feed people more of what scares them as opposed to what you and I do?
33:34 Bob Proctor? Because that's what people want. That's what they buy. People don't buy good news. People buy bad news.
33:42 Lewis Howes? Why though?
33:42 Bob Proctor? Can you imagine if everybody that tunes into CNN tuned into the School of Greatness every week?
33:50 Lewis Howes? It'd be amazing.
33:51 Bob Proctor? Can you imagine if everybody that tunes into Fox tuned into your School of Greatness every week? Have you any idea the impact you could have on the world?
34:00 Lewis Howes? That's what we're trying to do.
34:01 Bob Proctor? It'd be enormous. It'd be enormous. People want bad news. It resonates where their mind is programmed. They're programmed with negative information. Their paradigm is all bad news. It's what we're programmed with. Now, is everybody... No. There's a small, select group of people that don't fall into that category, and they are always working diligently trying to lift everybody up. It's not an easy thing to do, but every Nancy Llewellyn or Lewis Howes would come along and start a School of Greatness, and he'll call in different people that feed into that concept, that are in harmony with that, that resonate with that, and so it makes it interesting for the listener, and then that's how it goes.
34:44 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
34:45 Bob Proctor? And that's what you're doing, and that's what I'm doing.
34:46 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
34:48 Bob Proctor? And it's not a losing battle. It just appears like it is. I'm winning. I think you're winning. Now, we're not drawing the numbers that CNN's drawing, but the ones we draw are saying, "Absolutely.
35:06 Bob Proctor? You got it."
35:07 Lewis Howes? You got it. We're making an impact on them, for sure. I'm curious...
35:10 Bob Proctor? We are.
35:11 Lewis Howes? I want to ask you more about self-doubt, because this is something I've been fascinated with for the last few years, as I spent most of my life dealing with trying to understand how to overcome doubting myself and achieve the sports goals, business goals, relationship goals that I had throughout my younger years. And I became obsessed with learning how to eliminate doubt. And I've been researching this more and just trying to learn from people like yourself on how you have dealt with self doubt over the years and how you think anyone who feels like they're doubting themselves, what can they do to go from doubt into confidence? What do you think is the path?
35:49 Bob Proctor? Okay, that's a good question. It ties in with the previous question you asked. What do we do with fear? Fear comes from the doubt. So the doubt becomes the cause of the fear, which is the cause of the anxiety, etc. The doubt is the cause, fear is the effect. What is the polar opposite to doubt? Understanding. It's understanding. That's the opposite of doubt. So what is it we want to understand? Well, if it's me that's entertaining doubt, why am I entertaining doubt? If I were to find out who I really am and I believe everything that's been taught down through the centuries, I would have no doubt.
36:33 Bob Proctor? I would be realizing that I could do anything. And the only thing that's causing the doubt is a lack of understanding. So I'm going to keep studying. I'll gain a better understanding. I don't doubt myself. I don't doubt what I can do. Does that mean that I can do everything? No, when doubt appears, I'll eliminate it. And I'll eliminate it fast because I'm going to figure out how to do whatever it is I'm doubting.
36:58 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
37:00 Bob Proctor? And you see, if it's me that I'm doubting, it's because I don't understand me well enough. I did a broadcast the other day. It was all over the place. We had thousands in it on self-image. And we've got to get a better image of ourself. We have to get a true image of ourself, understand who we are, how our mind functions. Realize this physical instrument we're living in is nothing but an instrument. It's the instrument of the mind.
37:29 Bob Proctor? And the mind expresses itself with and through this thing we call our body. Well, let's understand that better. This thing, you're gonna have power in your one hand to light up that building you're in for probably a month.
37:42 Lewis Howes? Wow.
37:43 Bob Proctor? There's about 11 million kilowatt-hours per pound potential energy locked up in the electrons and the atoms of the body. Well, that's the invisible power that's in me. I wanna understand that better. How, what, that's the physical side. What's the higher side? Higher side is my intellectual side. And that is the intellectual factors that I run through earlier. Perception, will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. There's six of them. And as I understand those more, as I understand my intellectual factors, I'm using the things that I'm utilizing and developing the things that separate me from all the rest of the animal kingdom of which I'm a part. Then I can tap into the spiritual essence of who I am.
38:28 Bob Proctor? Because we're spiritual beings. And that's where the greatness lies.
38:32 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
38:33 Bob Proctor? It lies in understanding the spiritual essence of who we are. You see, our spiritual DNA is perfect. It requires no improvement. It requires no modification. Our spiritual essence is perfect. And that perfection is within us. So the trick is figuring out how to express it in a greater way.
38:53 Lewis Howes? Yeah, and not get trapped into a different type of expression through bad news, or friends, or parents' beliefs, or whatever it is that
39:01 Bob Proctor? Exactly.
39:02 Lewis Howes? tries to shut us down, correct?
39:03 Bob Proctor? Exactly.
39:04 Lewis Howes? So
39:05 Bob Proctor? And they will try and shut us down. Because we're coming up and we're saying, "I'm gonna do this." They'll say, "You gotta be out of your mind. You're gonna quit that good job? Are you crazy?" We gotta be strong enough to say, "I'm gonna follow my dreams."
39:20 Lewis Howes? What is happening when we are in the field in our mind? And the grass, we start walking over the grass and then we start putting, you know, then it's muddy, then you put stones down and then you have a paved road. What is happening to your brain? When you start to learn something new that is challenging? And you get to a level of mastery or close to mastery on this? What is happening to the brain? What is happening to the body? And everything else?
39:47 Dr. Tara Swart? So what's happening to the brain is that you had a pathway that was established either from childhood or later in life. And the brain is obviously a small percentage of your body weight. Like two to five percent for most, you know, generally. But it's a very energy hungry organ. So it's using up 20 to 30% of what you eat.
40:12 Lewis Howes? Wow.
40:13 Dr. Tara Swart? And again, yeah. And so, you know, I think, you know, having been a sportsman, you would think about what should I eat so I can have big muscles? Or, you know, what should I eat so I have lovely skin or whatever? But actually, you should be thinking, what should I eat? So I can make the best decision today.
40:27 Lewis Howes? Wow, interesting.
40:29 Dr. Tara Swart? So when you're asleep, your brain is using up 20% of the glucose that you have ingested that day. When you are focused on a task, it's using up 25% of your dietary intake. When you're stressed, it's using up 30%. So, you know, in terms of, you know, I sort of like to live in a brain first kind of way. Because if you're doing that, everything else is going to fall into place. Your cardiovascular system, your gut. So, you know, hydrating foods, good fats, all that kind of thing is going to feed your brain. And so, you know, what's happening in your brain and body is that you are creating the pathway, that dirt road into the paved road. That should become.
41:10 Dr. Tara Swart? The default pathway for your brain. So your brain is going to go down the most energy efficient route because that's that's easiest and what it knows and what it likes and it's using up less glucose. So what you have to do is build the pathway so that it's so strong that it's stronger than the pathway that's been there since childhood.
41:29 Lewis Howes? Hmm. How do you do that?
41:31 Dr. Tara Swart? Okay, you're not going to do that with Spanish because you're never going to be better at Spanish than you are English, right? But in terms of things like emotional regulation, if you were the person, and there's so many people like this who would cry and yell and slam the door and walk out and then come back, you can actually change that. You can become somebody who's got good boundaries, who's got self-worth, who feels that they deserve love. And you do that through neuroplasticity and building the pathway, giving yourself the examples, and acting like that in life until you do believe it. And just going back to the two things I remembered what the other one was, which is what I have found personally
42:13 Dr. Tara Swart? is that when you have no choice but to do the thing that you have to do, you do it. So I would say, I would ask you, have you gone to a Spanish-speaking country on your own, to a village where nobody speaks English?
42:31 Lewis Howes? I've been, I mean, I have been on my own in Mexico recently, where my girlfriend speaks Spanish. And so I'm like, I practice with her. But this is the thing, when I go to Mexico with her, she's a crutch for me. Right? Because I'm like, I gotta order this thing. And then I'm just like, I just want the chicken and vegetables. Can you let us? And and there was some days where I was alone, because she was off working. And I was like, okay, this is an opportunity for me to practice, to mess up, to be embarrassed, you know, and be okay with it. And just and by doing it, I felt like I was getting way better. Because I was forced to practice and try and ask questions and listen intently and not just speak in English and translate it. It's powerful.
43:17 Dr. Tara Swart? I mean, at your age, you will always, the way that your brain will speak Spanish is to translate it from English. So there's three types of being bilingual. And one is, you know, if you're bilingual from the time that you start speaking. And one is if you learn it. So for me, the Indian language and English. And then the second one is a language that you learn as a child, but you're not, you already speak another language. So that's French for me. And then my adult languages. And so I learnt Afrikaans when I was about twenty five, which is like Dutch. And then Danish when I was a bit older. And I was saying to my friend, who's a professor of neuroscience in London. But when I tried to recall a Danish word, and I'm struggling to recall it.
44:02 Dr. Tara Swart? I always think of the Afrikaans word, but never the French or the Indian. And he said, isn't that fascinating that your adult language is stored in a different part of your brain? And, you know, so for a neuroscientist to understand that my adult language is stored in a different part of my brain to my childhood languages, that at, you know, at a certain point with Danish, I reached that tipping point where I wasn't tired and hungry from, you know, trying to do it. And I'm going to admit that I then gave up Danish.
44:29 Lewis Howes? You did it. Too hard.
44:31 Dr. Tara Swart? Yeah. But I've, I've changed my brain.
44:34 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
44:35 Dr. Tara Swart? And that's actually what I wanted. That's why I was doing it.
44:36 Lewis Howes? Sure, sure.
44:39 Dr. Tara Swart? So, yeah, and with so many things in life, like, you know, when I gave up the regular paycheck of being a doctor in the NHS.
44:48 Dr. Tara Swart? A lot of people said to me, you could just go and do a locum for one weekend and you'd be able to pay your rent and your bills.
44:54 Lewis Howes? A what for a weekend?
44:55 Dr. Tara Swart? A locum means when you just do like a temp, temp, temporary job, you know, you just go and like sub in for a weekend or a day or a night. But for me, that would have meant failure because it was going backward. And I had to force myself to make the new business work.
45:10 Lewis Howes? You had to burn the boats.
45:11 Dr. Tara Swart? Yeah.
45:11 Lewis Howes? You had to burn the ship that got you there. So you couldn't go back into the old, you know, the land.
45:16 Dr. Tara Swart? And that's not for everyone. I'm not saying that if you want to start up your own business, that you shouldn't have another job on the side. But for me, I had to, I had to burn my boat.
45:25 Lewis Howes? I was talking to, I was watching this TED Talk recently of a guy who was teaching about how to be fluent in a new language as an adult and why it's so challenging and things like that. And he said, listen, the reason why most people fail is because they keep speaking their native language so frequently. And you take a 50 minute class three times a week, you're not going to become fluent. And he's like, the only way that I was able to do it, and he's like, I tried this for years and all these things. And so I finally went into a program where I think it was three months, something like that, where you get kicked out if you speak any other word other than the language you're trying to learn.
46:02 Dr. Tara Swart? Yeah.
46:04 Lewis Howes? And he was, he's like, if you say a word in English at all, you're gone. So it's like total focus on, okay, I just need to learn how to survive. And this is not even allowed. And if I'm doing this for three, and he was like, I was completely fluent in three months, or something quick like this, three, maybe six months, but it was like a full immersion program. You can't translate anything. Maybe the teacher is able to, but you're not allowed to say anything in your language. And he was like, it's because I was forced, like you were saying, to go to this other country essentially by myself. I had to learn how to survive. And it was faster because I couldn't just go back to the place where I was comfortable.
46:45 Lewis Howes? So, uh, I don't know, I haven't had the time to do that yet, but I still need to use my language, but,
46:51 Dr. Tara Swart? Yeah.
46:52 Lewis Howes? Um, but I'm sure it'd be, it's amazing what the brain can do under these types of conditions, I'm assuming.
46:57 Dr. Tara Swart? Yeah. And, and I think that sort of, you know, speaks to what we were saying earlier, which is none of us want to go through hardship. We don't want to see the people that we love and care about go through hardship, but it can be taken as an amazing opportunity.
47:12 Lewis Howes? Mm hmm.
47:12 Dr. Tara Swart? Um, and even with the hardest thing that I've ever gone through in my life, that there has to be an opportunity that comes out of it, otherwise it was for nothing.
47:25 Lewis Howes? Right.
47:27 Lewis Howes? What is the thing you're learning this year? What's the new thing?
47:31 Dr. Tara Swart? So, yeah, I've been sort of navigating a personal journey and I want to do some different things with work. So, you know, I was, I, I had a break and it's so tempting to go back to doing the keynote speeches and taking on the high net worth clients. And, you know, I've been tempted. I have sort of like done a little experiment and gone down a keynote and, you know, sort of met a new coaching client. But I think this, you know, belief that I had for a long time, that I'm not creative, it's really important for me now at this stage of my life to, to, to live that dream and be the creative person I've
48:16 Dr. Tara Swart? always wanted to be. So I've actually co-written a song with my colleagues in a music studio.
48:24 Lewis Howes? All right, look at you, look at you.
48:27 Dr. Tara Swart? And the C O O of the business said to me, you know, I need you to sign a document because you're a songwriter now. And that was like, I never ever thought I would hear those words. You know, when you go to medical school when you're eighteen and
48:39 Lewis Howes? The arts are not in your cards, yeah.
48:41 Dr. Tara Swart? And, you know, I get why and I'm very, very grateful for my education, but my parents were immigrants from India to England and they wanted me to get an education and be professional. I never had the luxury of being creative or doing sport. You know, I, I was like always in my sports clothes once I was an adult, but that wasn't something that was valued by my parents. So it wasn't a big thing for me at school, um, at high school. So, yeah, art, creativity, sport, um, I'm the trustee of a charity for gynecological cancers. That's, you know, again, something that I sort of thought that, you know, you
49:22 Dr. Tara Swart? have to be a very privileged person to be able to, to do that. So, yeah, I think this constant journey of reinvention, of really being like the maximum that I can be. And in my book, The Source, I talk about the six ways of thinking, which are logical, emotional, intuition, physicality, creativity and motivation. You know, trying to have, trying to build all of those pathways in my brain and not
49:49 Dr. Tara Swart? And I think it really comes back to like where we started with you saying about the woo woo, which is that my logical pathway is well built. I don't need to build that pathway anymore.
49:58 Lewis Howes? You've got that. 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. And
50:43 Lewis Howes? now it's time to go out there and do something great.
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