993 Learn to Love Yourself (the BLUEPRINT to Acceptance)

“Nothing else matters if you don’t find a way to love yourself for who you are.”On today's 5-minute Friday, Lewis discusses the importance of accepting yourself and addressing your shame. He shares a plan for learning to love yourself, even if you struggle with self-doubt, anxiety, and uncertainty. Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-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.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  I want to start this with a quote from Richard Bach, who said, "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly." Now, I've just been going through a lot of conversations with friends lately about, man, just overwhelm and stress, and a lot of things are boiling up inside for people that they've been able to mask for years because they haven't had to deal with being alone by themselves. And I want to emphasize how nothing else matters if you don't find a way to love yourself for who you are. You can have external struggles, but you can still love yourself, and you can

• 0:48Lewis Howes?

  be seemingly successful and yet hate yourself on the inside. Being in tune with yourself is essential for a truly happy life, and creating what you want and having great relationships all start with loving yourself. And you'll always be attracting the wrong relationships if you don't love yourself because you'll be seeking something to validate what's missing inside, always, in every relationship, friendships, business partnerships, intimate relationships. And I was having dinner with a friend recently, I won't mention their name, but he was going through what seemed to be like a lot of great things happening in his life. He's got a few business ventures that he's launching, he's got a lot of great influencers and celebrity friends he's connected to, and he's in great shape, and he's got

• 1:32Lewis Howes?

  cool cars, and he looks cool, and he's got the clothes, everything. And he's a super nice guy. I really like him. And at the end of our conversation, as we're literally getting up to leave, I say, "Hey, man, it sounds like something is, like, something's off, like, there's something you want to say. Is everything okay?" And he sat back down, and he almost broke into tears. And he said, "To be honest, just between me and you, I've been driving around in this fancy car that I've always wanted and secretly wanting to get in an accident, hoping for someone to get in a car crash, to feel something, to wake myself up." And I said, "Whoa, that's, you know, that's a, that's a heavy thought, man." And he goes, "I know, and I'm not sure what to do, and I've been just running

• 2:13Lewis Howes?

  and running and trying to do things that look impressive, and I've been trying to distract myself with working out and going on dates and doing all these different things." I spent the next hour, hour and a half with him, just asking him more questions and asking him, you know, what's going on and how can I support? And you might be feeling a sense of loneliness that you've never felt in your life in this moment. And I want to let you know it's okay. And you should definitely reach out to someone if you're feeling lonely. You should not be holding this inside and you should not be trying to mask it through doing more things, through making more money and accomplishing things and going on dates with a bunch of people or whatever it may be to try to fill you up. You should not be doing those things. You should be looking yourself in the mirror and asking yourself a set of questions.

• 2:58Lewis Howes?

  And I'm going to share this four step process to loving yourself, no matter what is in just a second. Because a lot of us don't actually look at ourselves in the mirror and truly look from a place of peace and truly look into the person's eyes that we see. The first step is we need to become aware of the things that are hurting us, that aren't serving us. And create a list of everything in our life, every person in our life, every time sucking distraction, every physical thing that we have, material thing we have, is it serving us or is it not serving us? Is it hurting me and feeding this need and desire to be loved? Or is it supporting me? And create a list of these things that support you and don't support you in your life.

• 3:41Lewis Howes?

  And really sit down and take the time to reflect on that. The second thing is to really start to heal those things. And this is easier said than done. And it's taken me 25 years to heal certain things because of how painful and challenging it is to accept it. But you've got to learn to forgive. You've got to learn to forgive yourself, forgive others, move on and accept. And find gratitude and peace in the pain of where you're at. If you have shame inside, guilt, resentment, it's going to cripple you. It's going to become a disease. It's going to take over and have power over you. And it's going to start influencing you to making decisions that don't support you, being in relationships that don't support you, buying things that don't support you. And they're all going to hurt you long term.

• 4:24Lewis Howes?

  And it's going to scar you until you start to share your shame, until you start to confess, until you undergo some type of therapy. Experience to let it go. So you need to learn how to heal those things. Step three is creating a personal greatness practice. Some type of routine, some type of process to encourage self-love. You know, the reason why AA works so well for alcoholics is because there's a process. There is a ritual, a routine, a community of people to lean on when you feel like you're going to go back into drinking. And when you find your personal greatness practice, you get to create this, a process of eating well, living well, sleeping well, thinking well, speaking well.

• 5:08Lewis Howes?

  When you create that, it becomes your GPS, your greatness programming system to guide you in your life. And this will support you staying on track. When you are just saying yes to every opportunity, you just say yes to every date, when you say yes to every person in your life or thing or meeting, just because it tries to validate something you're lacking, you're going to hurt yourself. You're going to be walking around purposeless. So this is the key. Take time to write down and imagine the greatest version of yourself walking up to you and looking you face to face. What does that person look like? What does their energy feel like? What are they wearing? What are they saying? How are they smiling? What is the life that they're living?

• 5:52Lewis Howes?

  And imagine that person walking up to you, looking at you face to face and see your reflection of what is possible. The masterpiece of you is standing right in front of you. Write down what that person is doing, how they are being, the way they love, the way they give, the way they serve. Write that down. So you can always reflect back on, am I living the life that I choose to live? And that's step four is to live your authentic truth moving forward, your purpose. Because if you're not living this authentic purpose, if you're living a lie, if you're living to impress other people, then you're always going to be feeling super lonely and depressed and insecure and never enough. And I don't want you to feel never enough. I want you to feel loved. I want you to feel whole. I want you to feel complete.

• 6:33Lewis Howes?

  And it's always going to be a process. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to continually be a process. So become aware of these things that are hurting you and that aren't. Serving you. Start to heal them, create a personal greatness practice and then start living in your authentic truth moving forward and watch what happens and always, always find accountability and support. I got your back here every single week. I'm here to support you how I can through our podcast, through our YouTube, through our social media, our courses, our membership site, our events, everything. We do our best to have your back. And if this is inspiring for you and helpful for you, then please let me know because I'm going to create more information and content like this for you. Leave a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you

• 7:14Lewis Howes?

  felt about this, how we can continue to support and serve you. And if you want weekly inspirational messages from me to keep you motivated, keep you on track of your purpose and your goals, then text the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960 because I'm telling you right now, you don't need to live in this world alone. That's not what you're designed to do. That's not what you're made to do. You're here to create connections with other people and you can't create the ultimate connection with other people if you don't open up and become vulnerable with who you are by living your truth. And I'm so grateful that my friend opened up to me and started to share some of these challenges he's facing because it can be a lonely world when no one else can see or hear what you're going through. You are worthy. You matter. You are loved. If no

• 7:57Lewis Howes?

  one has told you lately, please remember that. And I want to leave you with this quote from cartoonist James Thurber, who said, "It is better to know some of the questions than to have all the answers." I love you so very much and go out there and do something great.