822 Optimism is a Superpower

LIFE IS GOOD. Being an optimist instead of a pessimist is a choice. You can wake up each day and focus on what’s wrong. Or you can choose to be grateful. Whatever you focus on grows. So if you are spending your time on things that make you unhappy, they will take over. But if you can cultivate gratitude, simplicity, and optimism, that’s what your life will become. Choose happiness. For this Five Minute Friday, I revisited a conversation I had with Bert Jacobs, founder of the Life is Good Company, where he shared a few of his ten Superpowers that are surprisingly simple and timeless. Bert has appeared on CNN’s Tips from the Top, CNBC’s Business Nation, and The Donny Deutch Show. Life Is Good has been featured in the New York Times, on the cover of Inc Magazine, and on NBC’s The Today Show. Bert is the second youngest of six siblings from Needham, MA. He credits his mother with teaching his brother and him to face the bumps in the road with a smile. The Jacobs brothers see simplicity, humility, and a sense of humor as the three keys to Life is good’s continued success. Learn how to live a good life the same way your grandfather and your grandfather’s father did in Episode 822. “Optimism is a choice.” - @LifeIsGood In This Episode You Will Learn: Why optimism is a choice (1:00) How openness is a superpower (1:30) What selling “Life is Good” t-shirts taught Bert (2:00) About the tools for living a fulfilling life (3:00) For videos, show notes, and more visit: http://www.lewishowes.com/822 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:10Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. My name is Lewis Howes. I am your host and we've got an incredible guest. His name is Bert Jacobs. He is the chief executive optimist of the company Life is Good. He and his brother John began designing and selling t-shirts in the street in 1989 by converting an old van and sold t-shirts dorm to dorm. They founded Life is Good Together in 1994. Their company has since become an internationally recognized lifestyle brand available in thousands of retail locations worldwide. They focus on guiding the company vision, creating inspiring content and growing a healthy business, all while helping kids overcome poverty, violence, and severe medical challenges.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  You know, the word superpower is kind of tongue in cheek. The whole idea behind Life is Good is that optimism is a choice, okay? Everybody wakes up in the morning and they can decide to focus on what's wrong with their life or what's right with their life.

• 1:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  And whatever you choose is likely going to be what grows.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  So you really want to pour your resources into a list of things that are wrong with your life? Or a list of things that are going to go wrong? Because that's what pessimism is.

• 1:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28Speaker 01

  And it's not helpful, okay? Now, rational optimism, it's not blind optimism that we're promoting.

• 1:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  We don't ignore that there's challenges in the world, right? Everybody has challenges. We just choose to focus our energy on what's working or what's going right, right? And we realize or came to realize through all these years of selling Life is Good t-shirts. We have a big customer base, millions and millions of people that write us letters and emails and share personal things. And we realize that that choice to be a rational optimist opens you up to a series of values that we call superpowers. So it enables you, right? Like when you're a pessimist, you've got your head down. Yes. So one of the superpowers is openness, just being open.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  You know, if you're a believer in what's happening and you're focused on the good things that are happening and you're searching for the good things that are happening, you're more open, you're actually more attractive. Right. You're more magnetic to people, right? So that's the first one, openness, right? I mentioned the sense of humor, you know? So, you know, optimism enables all of these things. Gratitude. One of the things our customers taught us that really surprised us and we didn't know is that the people who face the most difficult challenges in the world, they're the ones who have the greatest appreciation for life. Yeah. So if you and I had a sandwich today, Louis, right? It might just be a sandwich. Right.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  But if you spent six months in a hospital eating through a tube, it wouldn't just be a sandwich. It'd be the best meal I'd ever had. It would be the greatest thing on the earth. Right. And the people that go through chemotherapy and are lucky enough to come out the other side, they don't just eat sandwiches. Everything they do, you could have a barbecue in the backyard and it's the Taj Mahal to them. Right. Every day. They notice the trees and the flowers. They value their friendships and the people that they love. It's a heightened gratitude. So gratitude is a superpower. It's a tool that we can use. So all 10 of these superpowers, we call them superpowers, but they're not like bullet speed or Herculean strength. These are accessible to anybody. Of course.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  And I guess the other thing that's real important about these 10 superpowers is that they're timeless. We live in a day and age where you're expected to be on trend. You gotta be on trend and off trend, on time, every time, right? That's really hard. Right. We're not on trend all the time, at all. We try and we're running a business, so if the fit of t-shirts or whatever the trend for other businesses that we're in changes, we've gotta follow that like anybody else. But the basis of our organization and the basis of Life is Good the book. Is that the most powerful tools a human being has to live a happy and fulfilling life existed for your great, great, great grandparents.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  In fact, if they lived a happy and fulfilling life, they used these superpowers.

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And a cool thing is, they will exist for your great, great, great grandchildren. These are, these are timeless devices.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  And, and they're, it's not rocket science.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  It's not.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  I mean, I mean, my brother and I are simple people.

• 4:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  Simplicity is a superpower.

• 4:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  We live in a complex world, so we all have to cull down to what really matters. You know, we all have to choose what we love and choose who we love and put our limited time on this planet into that.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  So that sounds simple, but it gets away from all of us.

• 5:21Lewis Howes?

  Hey guys, if you enjoyed this inspirational clip from a past episode of the show, then you'll love the free book I'm giving away right now. It's called The Millionaire Morning. It includes some of my best tips for starting off your day with a millionaire mindset. Get your free copy at themillionairemorning.com and just pay shipping. Again, check it out right now, themillionairemorning.com.