Pod Insights The School of Greatness How To Heal Your Past To Love Yourself & Thrive In Relationships EP 1369 About this episode Justin Baldoni is an actor, filmmaker and changemaker whose efforts are focused on creating impactful media and entertainment. Baldoni is the co-founder of Wayfarer Studios which aims to create purpose-driven, multi-platform film and television productions that elevate and speak to the human spirit. He’s well-known for his starring role as “Rafael” on the CW’s Jane the Virgin, but since that time has moved more behind the camera with such films as Clouds and Five Feet Apart among his directing and producing credits. He penned the 2021 book “Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity,” and co-hosts The Man Enough Podcast with Liz Plank and Jamey Heath which investigates the nuances of masculinity on a weekly basis. Check out Justin’s New York Times Bestseller: “Boys Will Be Human”In this episode you will learn,How to rewrite the story from memories of the past. The truth about the pain that comes with healing. About the significance of leading with vulnerability. The myth that we’ve been told about what love should look like. For more, go to http://www.lewishowes.com/1369Matthew Hussey on Breakups, Healing, and Dating Advice: https://link.chtbl.com/944-podJillian Turecki on The HARSH Truths About Relationships That You Need To Know: https://link.chtbl.com/1355-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX
Transcript 11,538 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 I think when you become a parent, especially your children or your teachers, and you start to realize the little mini events that happened over the course of your life that you never do.
0:15 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. In this episode, we discuss topics that include sexual abuse and trauma that might be triggering to some audiences. Please be advised.
0:47 Lewis Howes? What's been the thing that's held you back from your most peaceful, loving, calm self when the world happens? And I really look at like when events happen in the world, if we are triggered by them and it really affects us in a big way and we clench up, there might be something there. There might be a wound or something we haven't healed yet.
1:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:07 Lewis Howes? What's the biggest thing you've had to work on to help that healing journey, which is a journey?
1:12 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, so much. So I, probably three years ago or so, I started realizing that I just had a lot of stored trauma and emotion in my body. And I was somebody that didn't even know, I didn't even know I had anxiety. I didn't think, I saw people with anxiety and depression and I was like, I don't know what that's like. I don't know. It's not me. And then one day in therapy, I told my therapist, you know, sometimes I can't take a full breath.
1:44 Speaker 00 And I started having some weird back pain in certain areas. And then she's like, oh, I really want you to notice that and look at that. And then it would show up more and more and more. And I realized that, no, I've had anxiety my whole life. But as a former athlete, I just didn't pay attention to it.
2:05 Speaker 00 I didn't pay attention to anything that could slow me down or that could.
2:11 Speaker 00 Delay my greatness and whatever I was trying to accomplish. Come to find out, I did have anxiety. So then you have to go into the anxiety and you have to figure out where it is in your body and where it's coming from and what is it? And as I was, you know, writing my last book, I started sharing a lot of stories about my life in an attempt to help other men feel like they're not alone. I didn't have anybody ever model vulnerability to me. My dad was emotional. He was sensitive. He was kind. He was Italian, but he never like showed me vulnerability. I didn't know the things that were causing him stress or anxiety. And I didn't have anyone to talk to about the things that hurt me and caused me pain when I was young.
2:55 Speaker 00 And so as I wrote these things and I wrote about these things, a lot of, a lot of stuff came up for me in terms of, oh, man, sexuality, being 10 years old and finding porn for the first time before my body was ready and what that did to me in terms of the neuropathways that it carved in my brain and the comparison to feeling like, oh, I'll never measure up or I'll never be that thing that I saw when I was 10, to sexual situations that I was put in before I was ready.
3:34 Speaker 00 And to even at 20 years old, having my first real sexual experience, my first time not being consensual, having that taken from me in a way that I didn't realize until three years ago was a gross violation of boundaries because I didn't believe that men could get sexually assaulted. Because what are we conditioned as men to believe? Like, if she wants sex, you better be ready. There was no talk about not being emotionally prepared. So all of those things were in my body and I had no clue. I had no idea.
4:18 Speaker 00 And so over the last three years, as I've been healing, so much has been coming out and learning that I
4:30 Speaker 00 That I need to love myself enough to listen to the things that my body is saying, to the things that my soul is saying, to the things that I need that I'd never done before. So, yeah, and a lot of other stuff. I think when you become a parent, especially your children or your teachers, and you start to realize the little mini events that happened over the course of your life that you never healed as they play out in front of you with your children. So as an example, I learned that I was never really played with.
5:13 Speaker 00 Nobody ever got on their knees and like looked at me and played with me and like, there was no work, there was just like just me and that adult.
5:24 Speaker 00 Because I didn't know why it was so hard for me to play with my kids for the first couple of years.
5:28 Lewis Howes? That didn't happen to you, you didn't see that model?
5:30 Speaker 00 I had no idea what was wrong. I was like, wait, why can't I get on the ground with my kids? Like, why am I always worried about what's happening elsewhere? Or on my phone? What is this thing? And I realized, oh my God, that's because it wasn't their fault. Nobody was really on the ground playing with me. And these things inevitably come up, especially when you're the dad of a little kid. And two little kids at that. And then marriage, a lot of stuff comes up.
5:59 Lewis Howes? What, 12 years married, 10?
6:01 Speaker 00 This is your, we just celebrated nine years, so we're on the journey to 10, together for almost 12 now. But you know, you're in a loving, passionate, amazing relationship, and you know that that person is a mirror. And that person, if you're doing it right, I believe, will bring up all of the stuff that you haven't looked at.
6:22 Lewis Howes? That you haven't resolved yet, yeah.
6:23 Speaker 00 Or resolved or looked at. It will just all come up inevitably, and it's not their job to fix, it's your job to fix. So I guess that's my answer to your question.
6:34 Lewis Howes? If you could, you know, I saw, me and Martha saw you about a year ago in Cabo.
6:42 Lewis Howes? As we were kind of a few months into our dating experience. And we had talked with you and your wife.
6:48 Speaker 00 It was synchronistic.
6:50 Lewis Howes? It was crazy because we were just, we were sitting down for dinner and we're like, you did a post or something on Instagram that we both saw. And we're like, ah, it was such a beautiful thing that you were talking about. I think it was with your wife, your relationship, you guys were on a healing journey, something like that. It was like, man, that's really beautiful. And then like 20 minutes later, you walked down in Cabo and we're like, ah, what is happening?
7:07 Speaker 00 You're a powerful manifest.
7:08 Lewis Howes? You know, it was, it was cool because then we had, we hung out for a couple of days a little bit here and there, talking about our experience and your experience. And at the time, it sounded like you guys had gone through some, some darkness in the previous years, individually and then not darkness, but some challenges in the relationship and the marriage, where you were questioning things and there was friction and, and now you're on a, starting the healing journey. I'm curious, what is the, the biggest lesson you've learned about marriage? Since starting that healing journey, eight, 10 years into marriage, that you didn't do in the first few years of marriage?
7:46 Speaker 00 What I, what we, those first few years didn't do right, is that we expected the other person to do the work for us.
7:58 Lewis Howes? What work? Give me an example of what you expected her to do for you.
8:05 Speaker 00 So one of the things that Emily says is, that I love and I quote her all the time, is the greatest activism is self activism. And I, my wife is a sage, so I just, you know, she's a, she's my muse in so many ways. And I was really struck by that. Because you can't, you can't really show up for anything in this life. If you haven't done the work on yourself first. And when it came to me and Emily,
8:44 Speaker 00 early on, there were expectations that maybe one of us had for the other. And when that wouldn't be met, or when something would happen.
8:58 Speaker 00 She would be upset, or I would be upset. And so then you share it with another person, and then you expect them to change.
9:04 Lewis Howes? You share it with that?
9:05 Speaker 00 Yeah, you share it with your partner, and then you expect them to change. But in reality, what has to change isn't just the behavior, one. It's your part in it. So, a great example of this is, there is this thing that happens when you're married, and you have kids. And if there's any traditional gender role in the house, or whether, or even if both couples are working, or if both people are working, and you have kids, there is this thing that inevitably happens, which is, who's more tired?
9:40 Lewis Howes? Hmm, I'm more exhausted.
9:43 Speaker 00 Who's more tired? There's dishes to be done, there's laundry to be done.
9:46 Lewis Howes? Toys to be picked up.
9:47 Speaker 00 Toys to be picked up, the kids have to go to, if they're going to school, or whatever it is.
9:52 Lewis Howes? Logistics, travel.
9:53 Speaker 00 And there is a business in running a family, right? And then you have your business outside of the family. But, for many women who stay at home, or who have given up their dreams, or sacrificed to be able to stay at home and be with their kids, oftentimes, men don't see the amount of work that goes in to just managing the household. Just being the CEO of the Baldoni House, and the kids. And oftentimes, some women, and I can use my wife as an example, don't always see the
10:38 Speaker 00 other side of it, which is the work, and how hard it is for the man. And all of the hours that we're putting in, and all of the, you know, and being away from the family. And we had this conflict for a few years, early on. Cause I was like, you know, I was in the middle of my TV show, was building a company, I was directing movies during the hiatus, like I wasn't taking a break. And...
11:05 Lewis Howes? When you had kids?
11:07 Speaker 00 We just first started having kids. And at the same time, I was really missing my kids, and my wife, and being at home. And yet I would get home, and I was exhausted. And there was still stuff to be done, and there was conversations to be had, and, you know, we...
11:27 Speaker 00 She was tired and I was tired and inevitably like those conversations like, well, okay, but I was out working all day and she's like, yeah, but I did 5,000 things today. And we kept missing each other. We went to therapy about it, we talked about it. And in doing our own work and unpacking for me masculinity. And for me, looking at the system itself, looking at, okay, what is it in me? What is, what is it about my socialization? That makes me feel like I have to not just be an actor on a TV show, but I have to also go build a business and go direct movies and go do this. Where is this drive for success, for being the best coming from? Why do I have to do all of it?
12:12 Speaker 00 Why do I then have to write books? Why do I have to do TED Talks? Why do I have to be such an overachiever? That I have to be the best at whatever it is that I'm doing? And I have to have the most impact and heal the most people? Like, what is that? And I had to go into that thing and ask myself, what's really going on? Where is this all coming from? And part of it was it was absolutely a trauma response for me. I absolutely wanted people to love me and to like me. I wanted to be seen because I didn't feel seen when I was a kid. And the only place that I felt like I could be seen is if I was on the top of the mountain. If I had the money, if I had the cars, if I had the house, if I had all of it.
12:54 Speaker 00 That was where I would get respect and be seen and be valued and be loved. When in reality, where I was really seen and valued and loved was right at home. But my conditioning, my socialization, all of it was like, no, go, go, go, go. Now, it's not to say it was all a trauma response, but a part of it was. And the other part of it was, I believe that's part of my work as a soul here on this earth, is to help people recognize their innate enoughness. And just like yours is what yours is. And then she had to do her own version of that. And what we found one day in a conversation was I, with a bleeding heart and tears, told her how...
13:41 Speaker 00 I didn't feel she was acknowledging the way that the system is hurting me too.
13:49 Speaker 00 Because all of these things that I'm doing out there that are paying the bills, all of the providing that I'm doing and the protecting is taking me away from my children. I don't get to be there as often as she gets to be there. For the first four years, I experienced a lot of milestones via FaceTime.
14:11 Speaker 00 And nobody really talks about that. And for the first time, she had compassion for what it was like for me as a man to be walking through the world feeling like if I don't reach the top of that mountain, then I am not enough. Because I believe the way masculinity works is that it tells us that our worth is tied to our productivity. We stop being productive, we don't have value. Nobody wants us anymore. We won't be any good to our children or our wives or our friends. We won't be invited to places. We don't have money. We can't provide. What are we? So I've seen so many men our age and older taking their lives.
14:56 Speaker 00 They don't have a job. They lose their job. Something happens. They don't feel like they have value. Boom, we're done. Because masculinity can be taken from them.
15:06 Speaker 00 And so she looked at me in tears and I'm like, I would love the chance to stay at home. I'd love the chance to be able to be a stay-at-home dad and be there with my kids. Now, being fully honest, when I've done it, it's way harder than my job.
15:25 Lewis Howes? Well, it's not your natural state.
15:26 Speaker 00 I am so much, I get so much more tired doing that job, getting on my knees and playing with my kids and having conversations with a four-year-old all day long than I do at the other job because there's a part of that other job that's also fulfilling something in my soul.
15:41 Lewis Howes? 100%, yeah.
15:43 Speaker 00 And when she was able to see and understand that, it changed the dynamic. And when I was able to see and understand how hard her job really is. Putting myself in her shoes, looking at me out in the world, having conversations with adults and having fame and all of this while she is at home and the world doesn't recognize what she's doing as valuable. The world doesn't congratulate mothers the way it congratulates fathers. Otherwise, mothers would be considered the top prospect for employers, but instead they're at the bottom. Who's the top? Fathers. A man who's a father of a child is a hirable man.
16:24 Speaker 00 We want that guy. But a woman who's a mother, well, you don't want to hire her because, well, what happens when there's a doctor's appointment or the kid gets sick? Well, she's gonna have to leave work. But we've conditioned our men to believe that like, oh, well, a dad won't do that. A dad will stake him to do the job. We want the qualities that come from being a father. We don't want the responsibilities that come. So it was this combination of these two things that changed our entire relationship. And that happened fairly early on. I did my own work, she did my own work, and then we came together and we shared honestly without needing to change the other person. And when we had empathy and compassion for each other, it blew the doors wide open.
17:06 Lewis Howes? What would you say to the, if you could go back to yourself, obviously you don't want to change anything, but if you could go back to yourself the day before you got married, and you could have a conversation from this standpoint, right now, you, to that younger version of you, and you could only share three lessons of like, hey, these are three things I really hope you start doing from day one before the marriage begins, knowing what you know now, on how to create more harmony and peace and connection and conversation and alignment in the marriage. Not that you've had a bad marriage, but I'm just saying to just eliminate some of the frictions. What would those three pieces of advice be to your younger self before marriage?
17:50 Speaker 00 It would be, the first thing would be to do your own work, to really do your own work, to excavate and dig up the things that have happened to you because they are 100% influencing the way that you live. 100%. To really meditate on those things.
18:15 Speaker 00 It's not the other person's job to fix you.
18:18 Lewis Howes? Hundred percent.
18:19 Speaker 00 It's not the other person's job to heal you. It's the other person's job, as we talked about earlier, to hold space so that you feel safe enough to do that work on your own. And it's really hard when only one person does the work, as I know you know.
18:33 Lewis Howes? Very hard.
18:33 Speaker 00 As we've talked about. And when both people do the work.
18:36 Lewis Howes? It's amazing.
18:38 Speaker 00 It's... Emily and I, we keep saying it's getting better and better. We never imagined that we'd have a marriage like this. With this much love and compassion and empathy and fun and joy and like, safety. Because so many of us didn't get safety when we were kids. We don't know what safety really feels like. The world doesn't feel safe. So when you have that safety in a marriage. Oh, my God.
19:05 Lewis Howes? Beautiful.
19:06 Speaker 00 So, doing your own work is number one. Two is, um, loving the person the way that they want to be loved. Not the way that you want to be loved. That requires empathy and sensitivity. Requires listening and being observant. And thinking about what that person needs versus what you need. And that's not how we're raised. That's not what we see in the movies. It's not what most of us saw from our parents.
19:48 Speaker 00 The third thing that I would say to myself. Enjoy it. Relationships, marriages, I believe when you do those first two things are meant to be enjoyed. Enjoy each other. Like, find time for fun.
20:11 Speaker 00 We get lost, man.
20:14 Speaker 00 We get lost in this desperation and need to be seen from the other person sometimes. But I think when we see ourselves, then it makes it much easier for the other person to see us. And then just have fun. And that's the next phase for Emily and I is we're really learning to have fun. Because when you do as much work as we've done, when you have kids and there's businesses and all of this stuff, you can forget. So it's making time, it's making time to carve out fun. The other night, we went out under the moon and moved our bodies and just sat there for a second and just marveled at how magical this universe is and how small we are. And just that.
20:58 Speaker 00 I had to read a script and give notes on something and it was in between things. And she was like, she pulled me out of it and we just went and we just looked up. And just sat there in silence. And silence can be so filling when there's a container of love and safety. It just fills you up because you know that the person you're with has your back and you have theirs and you're together and connected in a way that nobody will ever understand.
21:29 Lewis Howes? Beautiful, man. And why do you think most relationships, you've been married again, you've been together for 10 years roughly, and you've been around a lot of people who've been in relationships, who've gotten married, who've gotten divorced, who've stayed married but suffered in the marriage, who've thrived in marriages. What do you think is the number one reason why people fail in relationships? What's holding them back?
21:53 Speaker 00 The best advice my dad ever gave me about marriage and relationships was that he told me that there were times in their marriage, and they're still married and have an amazing marriage. There were times in their marriage, and then my mom, where he...
22:13 Speaker 00 He didn't wake up feeling like he was in love with her.
22:19 Speaker 00 He didn't wake up with the warm and fuzzies and he didn't know if it was gonna work.
22:24 Speaker 00 And, now he didn't tell me this until I was married. This goes back to the vulnerability thing. I'm like, what could that have done for me if I knew? Which is why I put it in the book. But he said that he had to wake up every day during certain periods and seasons of their marriage, four years now, and choose to love my mom. He had to choose it. And that really struck me. Because love is a verb. Love is an action. Love is a choice. And I think the number one mistake people make is that they choose to stop loving.
23:02 Speaker 00 I think that there are a lot of relationships that could make it. But one of the two makes a choice. And we've been sold this idea, this myth, this mirage of what love looks like.
23:18 Speaker 00 And I think we have to choose. Just like we choose discomfort. Right? We have to, we choose these experiences. We choose to go to the gym. The gym's not fun. But I know I'm gonna benefit from going to the gym.
23:32 Speaker 00 And love is very similar. You're gonna change. Two people, you're not gonna ever be the same person you were yesterday. And my wife is gonna have moments where like she is just on her own journey way over here. And it's not my job to follow her. It's my job to be on my journey with whatever that looks like. But every day, the thing that brings us together is that we're both choosing each other. And I think that we forget to choose. And I think we forget that love is a choice and love is a verb and love is an action.
24:01 Lewis Howes? Do you think love is enough?
24:05 Speaker 00 No.
24:07 Speaker 00 I don't think love is enough.
24:09 Lewis Howes? What else do you need to have a thriving relationship?
24:12 Speaker 00 I think that love, love, there's a quote in the by writings, Abdul Baha, and I'm gonna butcher it. Abdul Baha says that, that love is the force that, that binds the planets and the stars.
24:29 Speaker 00 It's like the thing, if scientists could have strong enough microscopes to, to keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going, they would just find love. It's already there. So they keep looking for the thing that's originating the thing, and it's already there. You can't understand it. You can't touch it. It's love. But there are scientific principles, in addition to love, that give the world order, right? That create the atoms and the molecules that move. And I think it's the same thing in relationships. Like, you could have love, but there's lots of different kinds of love.
25:10 Speaker 00 So you need to have the, the building blocks of a healthy relationship in addition to the love. And I think if you have those things, if anything, it allows the love to, to grow and to thrive and to survive. Because there's a lot of things out there that are drowning out love. I mean, look, I have great friends who were married and got divorced. They loved each other, and they did certain things in their marriage that wasn't okay. Boundaries were crossed, but they found a way to love each other in a different way after they got divorced. That's still love. It's just a different kind of love. It's a love after boundaries were crossed and things that happened that shouldn't have happened, and that love has to change.
25:56 Speaker 00 So I think that the necessary ingredients are...
26:03 Speaker 00 The three things we talked about, you know? Doing the work, reciprocation, safety, honesty, communication. Like, you need all of those things in order for a marriage and a relationship to really work. So, no, love is not enough, and yet, and yet, love is all you need.
26:25 Speaker 00 If that makes any sense.
26:26 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
26:27 Speaker 00 It's both.
26:28 Lewis Howes? It's both. It's not enough, but it is what can keep it together.
26:31 Speaker 00 It's not enough, and yet, it's everything.
26:32 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
26:33 Speaker 00 And yet, it's everything.
26:34 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
26:36 Speaker 00 I actually believe that the number-one ingredient for a healthy marriage, and this is where, you know, I'm sure I'll lose a lot of people who are on this journey with me, but I believe that it's putting God in the middle. I believe that there are so many forces that are trying to distract us and take our attention in this world. And in the Baha'i faith, when you get married, you put God in the middle. Because the idea is that you are two entities. But when you come together, there's this third entity that's formed. Kind of like the sperm and an egg. Individually, right? You're just a sperm and an egg.
27:15 Lewis Howes? Right.
27:15 Speaker 00 But they have the capacity to be more. And it's when they come together, this new life is created. And it's very much the same thing with marriage. So, I believe that it's like putting God in the middle. You're coming together with an intention of this marriage is going to be of service to humanity.
27:32 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm.
27:33 Speaker 00 It is our love for something greater than ourselves that brings us together, that it allows the marriage the space to thrive and for that love to thrive.
27:43 Lewis Howes? Mm-hmm. I'm curious. I'm gonna ask you a question that may not make sense for you, but, because you don't like to measure things.
27:51 Speaker 00 It's not that I don't like to measure things, Louis. It's that what I'm trying to do is not compare myself to like the end-all, be-all, like...
27:57 Lewis Howes? I hear you. I hear you.
27:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:00 Lewis Howes? Because this is measuring you versus you.
28:02 Speaker 00 That is, I do like to do that.
28:03 Lewis Howes? Okay, so what I'm gonna do right now. On a scale of one to 10.
28:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:07 Lewis Howes? Let's call it the self-love peace scale.
28:11 Lewis Howes? Ten for you being ultimate peace and self-love. You don't beat yourself up, you don't speak nasty to yourself, you don't get anxious. You're in peace and you have ultimate self-love. Out of ten, one being you're in constant chronic suffering of, you know, how you talk to yourself and you don't feel self-love. Where are you currently on that self-love slash peace scale? In this moment?
28:38 Speaker 00 Probably a 6.5.
28:39 Lewis Howes? 6.5. What was the moment you were the lowest in your marriage? And the moment you were the highest on that scale? Can you remember the lowest days, weeks, months, a year? And the highest point?
28:57 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think, well, I think I'm at my highest point now.
29:01 Lewis Howes? 6.5.
29:03 Speaker 00 I mean, and I'm measuring 10 by, you know, I look at like the prophets of God. I look at, you know, the, I look at the,
29:13 Speaker 00 the folks who are, you know, I spent 10 years telling stories of people who were dying.
29:20 Speaker 00 And being with them as they went to take their final breaths and telling, you know, and learning from them. And there's something that happens to somebody when they're at the end.
29:33 Speaker 00 And I've learned from the dying in a lot of ways. And,
29:40 Speaker 00 and their families and the decimation of the ego that happens. When you have no place to go except to submit and to accept and love yourself.
29:57 Speaker 00 So I look at that as like, one day, hopefully, you know, I'm very old. I'm on my deathbed and I'm like taking account of my life and I've reached the point. And that's, I'm not there, I'm not, I have a long way to go in terms of healing still.
30:14 Lewis Howes? What if you didn't have a long way to go?
30:17 Speaker 00 You're telling yourself you have a long way to go, but what if you surrendered and allowed yourself to heal? Yeah, and that's And be whole now. And if we could do that, if I could just snap my fingers and go, boom! I am whole and I'm ready and I'm healed, I would do it in a heartbeat. It's a daily practice for me. It's, that's where meditation and prayer comes in. That's where a lot of this work comes in. It's where, you know, even the love I'm getting from my children and like the way they look at me in the world Must feel amazing. Comes in. The relationships and how I'm healing the relationships in my own family and like getting closer to my parents now at thirty-eight years old than I ever have been. That's where that comes in.
31:01 Speaker 00 But at the end of the day, it's a self-love thing. It's a recognizing that who I am is enough thing. So, so where I am is a six point five today, which is why I'm like, I'm not a ten. I could say I was a nine, but I, I still know that I have a long way to go. I've been, oh man, I've been in the, I've been in the, I've been in the cycle of addiction. I've been in the cycle of self-loathing and just, and, and, and I, this, my wife and I call it this inner critic. It just constantly reminds me that like, nobody's gonna care, I'm, I'm not enough.
31:44 Speaker 00 I've been, I know what it's like to be in that darkness and just to pretend to be something that I'm not.
31:54 Speaker 00 You still have that inner critic now? Yeah, but I'm learning what that inner critic really is. And I'm learning how to love that inner critic, which is really just little me. Yes. Little me that didn't get the love that he needed, wasn't seen the way that he needed to be seen, wasn't safe in the way that he needed to feel safe. And I'm learning how to have compassion for that little boy.
32:18 Speaker 00 Because that's all it is.
32:21 Speaker 00 It's just learning how to love that part of ourselves, learning how to love the, the, as our, my old therapist, who's just now a friend, Brad Reedy would say, our horrible rotten selves. It's learning how to love that part of ourselves, because we're not that, that's not who we are, but that's how we felt at some point in our lives. And that's what shows up. So, when I look in the mirror and I see the parts of myself I don't like,
32:45 Speaker 00 Which is what I did for my entire life. I would look in the mirror. And I'd be like, oh, my shoulders aren't big enough for like, oh, my nose is too big and all this. And I would just find all the things that were wrong with me. That's just a boy that wanted so desperately to fit in and to be liked and to be seen. And he thought that if I looked a certain way, he would be. Or that the girls would like him, or all of those things. Now, I wake up in the morning and I write down the things I like about my body.
33:11 Lewis Howes? That's beautiful.
33:13 Speaker 00 I literally write down the things I'm grateful for. And never in my life have I ever said, I'm grateful for my legs because I can stand up and carry my children up the stairs. Or I can get on my knees and play with my kids. It was always like, oh, I want strong legs so I can run a 4440. I want strong legs so that I can dunk or so that I can look good in a bathing suit or whatever it is. It was always about an outcome, which is why I'm trying to remove myself from like so much outcome thinking. And so now it's like, that's what I'm working on. Oh, no, I'm a good-looking man. I'm beautiful. I'm okay. Like, I just had, I had a skin cancer scare, so I had a huge scar. I have a huge scar on my nose.
33:57 Speaker 00 I had basal cell carcinoma. It came out of the blue. I had this, I saw this dot and I had a weird feeling. And because I'm doing so much work in my body, I could feel that there was something wrong. I went to my dermatologist. He said it was nothing. Something wasn't sitting right. I could feel it. I was thinking about it at night. It disappeared. I went back. He did a, he obliged. He took a sample and it turned out to be basal cell carcinoma. So we had this huge chunk taken out of my nose. And I was so devastated for a second. Because I was like, but I'm an actor.
34:33 Lewis Howes? Right, right.
34:33 Speaker 00 I'm not gonna be good-looking anymore and this. And I had to like really walk myself back to the point where I'm like, oh, but this scar now is actually a sign of maturity. It's a sign of growth. It's a sign of listening to my body and healing.
34:47 Lewis Howes? Self-love, that you took the action.
34:48 Speaker 00 I loved myself enough to go in. And so now I look at it and I'm like, oh. Ah, I'm grateful. And it's just, it's the spin. And that's what I'm working on. It's when the critic comes in. How can I spin that?
35:01 Lewis Howes? You know, it's interesting you talk about the critic and the spinning. I've learned over the last, I don't know, handful of years to be the coach that I always wanted, the positive coach.
35:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:12 Lewis Howes? In sports, I had some really, I'd say challenging, toxic, whatever you want to call it, coaches that, that led by fear. And screaming and
35:21 Speaker 00 I had the same.
35:22 Lewis Howes? And putting you down, like no matter how perfect you were in every play, if you missed one, then it was like an attack, you know? And that never worked for me. That always made me feel more anxious, more stressed and
35:33 Speaker 00 I feel that with you talking about it, because I know the, I know the exact experience.
35:37 Lewis Howes? It was not fun. And it made me feel like, no matter how good I am on this field or court, no matter how perfect I am, it's never gonna be enough if I mess up once, because I'm gonna get screamed at. But then I had coaches that were so loving and gave me the encouragement and gave me the, the words and also allowed me to make mistakes and didn't punish me or things like that and allow me to learn on my own, but also guide me, that I still think about today. I called one of them this morning, actually. Called a coach of mine from 25 years ago. Called him. And um, there was just a great leader, right? Not perfect, you know, he's flawed too, but overall, beautiful coaching in a positive way, not criticism, but coaching in a positive way.
36:23 Lewis Howes? Thinking about that spin, I was telling you right before this that I went to a seven day meditation retreat with Joe Dispenza, and you asked me, did I have any kind of like out of body mystical experiences? And I said, no. And I take it back halfway, because I didn't go out of my body, but I had an experience that just came up for me. Because for most of my childhood, I was putting myself down, right? I would
36:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:46 Lewis Howes? I was a critic in my mind and my heart, putting myself down, I'm not enough, you know, whatever I create is not good enough, all that stuff. I'm stupid, I'm, I'm, you know, not smart enough, I'm not talented enough, whatever it was, constantly. And I've been doing a lot of the healing over the last few years as well about letting that go and rewriting the story from the memories of the past.
37:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
37:07 Lewis Howes? And something beautiful happened on one of the last days of this retreat where I had, my father passed away earlier this year and I had a visualization during this process, one of these five hour meditations. And there were some beautiful moments from my childhood with him and there was also some scary moments, right? But I had this process where in my mind, I went back to all the memories of my mind from as early as I can remember with my father of like playing catch in the backyard and him taking me to the ballgames and him, you know, tucking me in every night and saying he loved me, all these different things he did and just going through every age that I can remember up until,
37:50 Lewis Howes? you know, my last memory with him, of him being there for me. It was just a beautiful experience. And I just embraced, okay, here are all the blessings and all the good things that happened from my childhood until now. And then something crazy happened. For whatever reason in this meditation, I went back and did it over again with me standing here now, going back to visiting my younger self. I'm getting kind of chills thinking about it because I went there and the whole time, I always had, I always had this critic inside of me, but there was always a voice that was like, keep going, right? I remember going to school and getting in trouble in elementary school and going to the principal's office and saying over and over again, I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead.
38:33 Lewis Howes? I would say it over and over again, I wish I were dead, I don't know why I'm here. When I always felt like something was wrong with me. So I had this inner critic, but then there was like this voice. It was kind of like this voice that was like, just make it another day, just treat, you're gonna figure it out. And for whatever reason, I went back as myself now and I was there and it was like, I saw all the moments where I felt like I was alone and afraid and scared. I'm getting it too. And through from five years old, from my first memories of sexual abuse until now. And I just flashed through all these moments with me running next to my younger self, like when I would train alone because no one would hang out with me, I was just like throwing
39:16 Lewis Howes? a ball against the wall for hours or running in the backyard alone, I was there with me. The adult version of me now is there with me as a child now. And I had this experience where I was just like, You know, lifting him up and putting my arm around him and hugging him and saying, "You got this, keep going." And I was like, huh, I wonder if that was that voice. It was my future self telling me to keep going because you never know where you're going to create, what you're going to go, what you're going to do in this life. And it was this beautiful experience of my father and then myself.
39:46 Speaker 00 So when I asked you, have you had a crazy experience?
39:48 Lewis Howes? That was it. Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't like-
39:50 Speaker 00 You said no?
39:51 Lewis Howes? But I didn't have this like-
39:52 Speaker 00 That is it?
39:53 Lewis Howes? That was it. No, it was powerful. But it wasn't like Martha had, where she like left her body and like transcended space and time.
39:59 Speaker 00 But you did leave your body and you did transcend space and time.
40:02 Lewis Howes? It was crazy, man. It was a beautiful healing journey.
40:05 Speaker 00 That is healing.
40:06 Lewis Howes? It was huge.
40:06 Speaker 00 That's what it is. So I don't believe that there's space and time, right? It's a construct of this world. Our souls are not bound by that.
40:17 Lewis Howes? It's infinite.
40:18 Speaker 00 And in the Bahri writings, we're told that to understand death, we have to look at birth, right? Number one. For every spiritual law, there's a physical counterpart. But to understand how we could have an existence outside of our bodies after this life, God gave us the sleep state.
40:36 Lewis Howes? To experience it, the field.
40:38 Speaker 00 Every single night, our body, our temperature drops, our breathing changes. We get as close to death as we do, like over the course of our lives, every single night, and then we travel, we dream, right? And there's a lot of this kind of stuff happening. My wife had a very similar experience where she was with herself the moment her dad died. And I believe with all my heart that we can go back, we can time travel through meditation, through prayer, and be there and heal the traumas and the parts of ourselves that need healing. And if you remember the voice-
41:21 Speaker 00 Why couldn't that have been you?
41:22 Lewis Howes? Could have been me.
41:23 Speaker 00 And that's like a whole, I mean, we just want to do a whole area. But like, this is where, this is like, this is where we're going. And it's a really exciting time to be alive because this is.
41:34 Lewis Howes? It's very exciting. And, you know, as a storyteller, as a writer, as a director, you tell stories, right? And we, our whole memory is stories. And a lot of times, the memories, we tell the story ten times bigger than it actually was. And sometimes, we think twenty years ago, something happened that didn't happen.
41:51 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
41:51 Lewis Howes? But we've embellished the story to be bigger or more painful than it was sometimes.
41:57 Speaker 00 Or because it was big in your body.
41:59 Lewis Howes? At the time. And now, we explain it with different terms, with different things, and we make it even grander, right?
42:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
42:06 Lewis Howes? And what if we could go back and tell that story in a different way? And find meaning from the story in a different way? It doesn't mean that we want that thing, it doesn't mean we want it to happen again to us or to others, or that it was okay, or these events were fun to experience. But what if we could go back and tell those stories in a different way? All those moments of trauma, or pain, or wounds, and rewrite those stories now, and tell them in a different way? Where we don't get a trigger response, where we don't feel like, you know, this happened to me.
42:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
42:33 Lewis Howes? Just so that we can have more peace and harmony now, as opposed to living in the past.
42:37 Speaker 00 We can. And I think, I think, I think we, we thousand percent can.
42:44 Speaker 00 I've experienced that.
42:45 Lewis Howes? Right.
42:45 Speaker 00 Completely. But I think that also, we have to be patient in those moments. Because I don't think that it, I think that different experiences have different wounds.
43:00 Lewis Howes? Yep.
43:01 Speaker 00 And healing is a deeply uncomfortable, nobody talks about like the painful parts of healing.
43:07 Lewis Howes? It's painful, man.
43:08 Speaker 00 And, and we need to normalize that. We need to normalize that, like, oh, okay, well, we know that there's gonna be pain in the gym.
43:17 Speaker 00 No pain, no gain. Right? Well, it's the same thing with healing. In some ways, it's the same thing in relationships.
43:26 Speaker 00 And as men were taught, oh, let's go into the pain in all these areas, but we kind of disregard it in these areas. Like, we have enough pain in these areas, but like, no, I don't want to have, I don't want to deal with discomfort in my marriage. I don't want to deal with discomfort. I'm fine. I mean, for a lot of men, this conversation is already too much. Because, well, we're not allowed to be broken. We're not allowed to have traumas, or pains, or things that need to be healing. We don't even go to therapy. There was like a, a number of men, it was like a crazy, what was it? 68% of men don't go to the doctor even though they know something is wrong. This was a Healthline statistic. So, we have to even get to the place where we understand that like,
44:09 Speaker 00 there are things that need to be healed, and make that mainstream.
44:12 Lewis Howes? Physically, as well as emotionally.
44:14 Speaker 00 Emotionally and physically. Like, there is a whole conversation that needs to happen, where we invite men in and say, it is okay that that happened to you, and that you have pain there. It's okay that you have anxiety. It's okay that you are sad. Because the only acceptable thing that as men were allowed to feel is anger. That is a socially acceptable feeling. But what's underneath the anger? All of that stuff. Okay, so let's just say that every, every person, every man in the world then, understands that, okay, I didn't have a perfect life. I'm still good. There's some stuff I gotta heal. I have some underlying anger issues. I have this, I have this. Whatever it is, it's not just gonna happen like that.
44:59 Speaker 00 I mean, you've been doing, you've been on this journey for years.
45:01 Lewis Howes? 10, well, it took me 25 years until I started opening up about the sexual trauma. And then it's been a 10-year journey.
45:07 Speaker 00 Yes.
45:08 Lewis Howes? That's unlocked new healing.
45:10 Speaker 00 And then you did a seven-day retreat.
45:12 Lewis Howes? I keep doing the work.
45:13 Speaker 00 And in that seven-day retreat, somewhere probably day four or five, you had this amazing experience where you were able to go back and rewrite your history. It didn't happen like that.
45:24 Lewis Howes? Right, it's a consistent process.
45:25 Speaker 00 It's a daily practice, which is why I said I'm at a 6.5. Because I don't know yet all of the things that are coming up and that I'm uncovering. I've been really surprised. And then there's things where I've like absolutely done that and I've healed. And then there's things that I'm not quite there yet, that I still have a little bit of a trigger with.
45:46 Lewis Howes? What's the thing that you feel like if you could let go of surrender or release would take you to a whole nother level? Spiritually, emotionally, physically?
45:57 Speaker 00 For me, between the ages of 10 and 13,
46:04 Speaker 00 and the discovery of porn, the situations that I was put in with specifically another boy
46:14 Speaker 00 that I read about in the book,
46:18 Speaker 00 and then what then porn did to me and what it gave me, and how I was so mesmerized by these images and by these things while feeling so terrible about myself.
46:34 Lewis Howes? Shame, yeah.
46:35 Speaker 00 Shame, and like, you know, I hadn't had puberty yet and these other boys had and I was being, you know, and being put in these situations. So there's a lot of, as I've gone into my work, there's this 10 to 13 period of my life.
46:51 Lewis Howes? So funny you're saying that, yeah.
46:52 Speaker 00 Where I am currently on the journey of loving that boy and reminding him that he's exactly where he needs to be. That his body is perfect and that it's exactly where it needs to be.
47:08 Speaker 00 Because, you know, look, that root chakra is our life force. That's our creativity. That's not just about sex and like relationships. It's about, it's everything. And when we have wounds there, it affects a lot of other areas. So that 10 to 13 area, and then there's also, there's also a period of around 16 that I'm going in and really... Really looking at and you know, there's parts of there's there's parts of myself that I'm healing that have to do with how I treated other people.
47:43 Lewis Howes? Sure. How you react to situations.
47:46 Speaker 00 I know, even like being in a relationship with other girls, you know, and seventeen, eighteen years old and feeling like I had no power anywhere in my life.
47:55 Speaker 00 And finding ways to feel powerful with women and with girls and taking advantage and hooking up with girls that I didn't like and care about and and going in and reconciling and forgiving forgiving myself for not being the best guy in my teens and twenties. And understanding that, oh, wow, I was doing those things because I felt like I wasn't enough, I felt like I didn't have power, I felt like nobody cared about me and that made me feel good, that made me feel powerful. So going in and even taking account and and forgiving myself for for the things that I've done is also a part of it, not just the things that happened to me. I think it's all of it.
48:37 Speaker 00 So so, yeah, but I could just list a hundred things, you know, I could go and list all the things that I'm working on. But that ten to thirteen and sixteen age range, I'm I'm definitely going into right now.
48:47 Lewis Howes? It's interesting you're saying that, I'm gonna show you afterwards, on my phone, I have on my screensaver on my phone is a photo of me when I was eleven.
48:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, interchild work, yeah.
48:55 Lewis Howes? Well, I started at five and from five to, you know, ten, and now I'm at eleven to thirteen as well. Cause I I feel like that was a massive breakthrough in my life. From probably eleven to twelve and a half, there wasn't, you know, again, and our memory does tricks on us, but I remember always feeling like I needed to steal something out of a store, like a candy bar, right? I wasn't stealing like a bank or something, but like a pack of gum or a candy bar or something, right? It kind of gave me that power, like I'm doing something, I knew it was wrong, but I felt like, okay, there's somewhere I can control something, right?
49:32 Speaker 00 Or attention.
49:33 Lewis Howes? Who knows, yeah, to brag about it, all these things, all these things that, you know, I was doing and.
49:40 Lewis Howes? And in my, you know, kind of therapy coaching, that's the stage that I've been working on the last three, four months is like forgiving that, that version of myself, healing that. It's one of the reasons why anytime I go out to, to eat, I feel like I need to pay for everyone.
49:56 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
49:56 Lewis Howes? And pay like, I can't, it's hard for me to let anyone pay for a meal. It's like, I always want to pay and I always overtip and I'm like, I just want to pay back.
50:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:05 Lewis Howes? Me stealing candy bars when I was 10 and 11, right? And, um, and I got in trouble once, I, I stole $20 from one of my dad's clients at his, his house. My dad's clients, he took me to like a client trip. And the guy caught me stealing it and it was probably the most, most shame I've ever felt stealing $20 from like a dad's friend.
50:27 Speaker 00 In front of your dad, too.
50:29 Lewis Howes? And it was, it was a breaking, it was a, it was a point where I was like, okay, am I going to go down and go worse? Or like never do this again? And I was like, I never want to feel this again. I'm never stealing anything. And if I think I've stolen something accidentally, I'll be like, how do I pay like 10 times more?
50:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:45 Lewis Howes? So in a way, like learning that, you know, and feeling that much pain at that time and shame and embarrassment of my dad. And like what I could have done to his business or whatever, made me say, okay, this is not the past. And when I hit 13, like everything started to shift. So those, those years were really, you know, meaningful for me too.
51:04 Speaker 00 I mean, that's what this book is about. I mean, middle grade boys, like we don't have, like, who do we talk to? Who do we have in our lives at 11, 12, 13, 14, when we're going through these things? I mean, we don't, most kids don't feel safe enough to talk, to talk to their parents.
51:18 Lewis Howes? Right.
51:19 Speaker 00 We don't feel safe enough to talk to advisors or teachers. Most people don't have older brothers to talk to, and if they are, they're not the best.
51:27 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
51:28 Speaker 00 So who do we have? And so. That's why I wrote "Boys Will Be Human", because I didn't have that person at 11 or 12, just like you didn't. And what if we had, what if somebody would have told me that all of the things, you know, all of the things that are gonna happen to me, all those things that, that nobody talks about. You know, doesn't, nobody prepares us for what life's gonna be like and...
51:50 Lewis Howes? Yeah.
51:51 Speaker 00 Yeah.
51:51 Lewis Howes? There's a lot of moms that listen to this show. And that play, the reason why we bleep out all swearing words is because moms email me early on and saying, "Can you make sure there's no swear words?" Because I play the show for my kids to listen to these conversations in the car to school and other places. So I know there's a lot of moms that listen.
52:11 Lewis Howes? What do you wish every mom knew about raising a young boy into a healthy, conscious man?
52:19 Speaker 00 First of all, I want every mom to know that they are amazing. I think, I think mothers,
52:29 Speaker 00 mothers, I know there, I'm sure there's a lot of people that say, "Mothers get all the credit. I think mothers don't get enough."
52:38 Speaker 00 Mothers are so important. I believe that we learn empathy and compassion and sensitivity and kindness, all of these like quote-unquote feminine attributes, which are really not gender-specific.
52:53 Speaker 00 We learn them from our mothers, normally.
52:57 Speaker 00 I want mothers to know that they don't have to turn their boys into hard men.
53:05 Speaker 00 A lot of moms are like, "I don't know how to raise my boy. He doesn't listen to me.
53:12 Speaker 00 I don't know what's happening to him at school. He just shuts down." And I just want them to know that like, it's really hard to be a boy.
53:19 Speaker 00 There's no section at the bookstore for boys. There's no, like, there's no material for young boys, because we just say, "Boys will be boys." Like, we can't change them. We can't, there's nothing we can do. They're just gonna become who they are. And I just disagree with that completely. I want moms to know that your boy is sensitive and sweet and empathetic. He has all those things, but the world's telling him he's not allowed to be. So the more that a mom can create a safe container, a safe space for that boy to feel all the things he needs to feel, without trying to fix him.
53:52 Speaker 00 The more I think that that boy will be willing and able to share the things that are happening in his life with her.
54:01 Speaker 00 Because it's really hard to be a mom of a boy. You don't have the life experience of what it's like to go through what we've experienced.
54:09 Speaker 00 It's also really hard, by the way, to grow up and be a girl. It's just hard to be a human being. Let's just be real. But, but, but men and boys don't have, don't have a sense of community where we can share about the vulnerable things that happen to us. And so we feel like we're alone. We feel like we are the only person it's happening to. I'm the only person that gets an erection in third period when I'm in eighth grade. Nobody else does. And so I'm ashamed and I'm embarrassed. I wasn't even thinking about a chick. It just happened. Nobody else gets erections except me, and then you feel shame.
54:45 Speaker 00 You name it. We just go through it and, and so I want moms to know. Also, I want them, if, if the boy does have a father, or if the mother is married to, to a man. I really think it's important for men to read this book.
55:03 Speaker 00 Not just moms. It's written in a way where it's like an amazing companion piece for men and their kids and for, you know, mothers and their kids to read together because it creates uncomfortable conversation. And it asks you, it prompts you, through my stories of like, really embarrassing things that have happened to me, to maybe share things that have happened to you. And those, that is where trust is built. The sharing of vulnerability, putting that on the table, saying, "Hey, son, I remember this thing happened to me." And then suddenly the kid's looking at his dad in a whole new way. "Wait, you're like me? You're not this like impermeable superhero that doesn't have feelings?"
55:46 Speaker 00 You, you know what that's like, and then you're closer. I mean, relationships are like that. Marriage is like that. That's why leading with vulnerability is so important. And it's also important, equally as important, to not punish those who display vulnerability. Especially if you are a man in a relationship with a woman.
56:05 Speaker 00 To be really mindful if you are vulnerable. Maybe that woman's not used to it. Maybe that's a new thing. Maybe it triggers something in her. But don't just not do it again if she punishes you for it. And for women to be really mindful to not punish their men for being vulnerable. And mothers, when a boy comes to them and says, hey, mom, I'm really scared. Or this happened to me, to not just brush it off because you want to create a strong man. I don't believe that strength and sensitivity are mutually exclusive. I think that real strong men are sensitive.
56:40 Lewis Howes? Love it, man. Boys will be human. A get real gut check guide to becoming the strongest, kindest, bravest person you can be. I want people to get this for, it's really for parents to read to learn more about kids. Is that really, or is it for boys to read also?
56:54 Speaker 00 It's really written for boys.
56:56 Lewis Howes? Which is hard for boys to, I never read anything.
56:58 Speaker 00 Like what boy, what 12 year old boy is going to the bookstore to pick up books? However, I keep hearing from the people that have bought it, that the boys are gravitating towards the book.
57:09 Lewis Howes? That's great.
57:10 Speaker 00 They're picking it up and I'm getting messages from moms and the book's been out for five days saying, I've never seen my boy read anything. And he's just, and he's wanting to read it because I think we're, we're starved for someone to talk to. We're, we want to be seen. We want our experience to be validated and we want, we want guidance. And I don't give, I'm not an expert. I just share what happened to me and what I've learned.
57:35 Lewis Howes? Well, you've got expertise in your experience, so.
57:38 Speaker 00 I've got expertise in my experience.
57:39 Lewis Howes? That's great. Pick up the book. You can go to anywhere on Amazon or manenough.com or social media for you, Justin Baldoni, everywhere. What's the main place you hang out? Is it Instagram? Is it TikTok now? I see you on TikTok a lot. See, creating some cool content over there.
57:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, honestly, I just am, I'm trying to detach from all of it.
57:57 Lewis Howes? I know, man.
57:58 Speaker 00 But, but I guess, but yeah, Instagram and TikTok are the things that I'm doing now. Thank God I have help.
58:07 Lewis Howes? I hear you, man.
58:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
58:08 Lewis Howes? I hear you, man.
58:09 Speaker 00 Trying to get off that screen as much as I can.
58:12 Lewis Howes? What if you could share one thing with every boy in the world? Hypothetical scenario. And.
58:25 Lewis Howes? And this is the only thing you can share with young boys. What is that message that you'd want to say to them?
58:33 Speaker 00 You're enough.
58:36 Speaker 00 Nobody can take your masculinity away from you.
58:40 Speaker 00 No boy can take that from you, no girl can take that from you. You can't be emasculated. Who you are as you are is enough. You don't have to prove your enoughness to anybody.
58:55 Speaker 00 You're good. You're beautiful, you're sensitive, you're kind.
59:01 Speaker 00 You're human.
59:03 Speaker 00 You're enough.
59:06 Lewis Howes? Sounds like something you needed to hear too back then.
59:09 Speaker 00 I wrote this for me.
59:10 Lewis Howes? Right.
59:11 Speaker 00 This work is for me.
59:13 Lewis Howes? A 12-year-old version of you.
59:14 Speaker 00 10, 12, 15, 38.
59:17 Lewis Howes? Yeah, exactly.
59:19 Speaker 00 It's the same thing I tell myself every day.
59:21 Lewis Howes? That's beautiful, man. I love it. Make sure you guys pick this up again. Boys Will Be Human. Check it out. Grab a copy for your friends as well. I think you'll find a lot of value from this, so make sure you guys check it out. Very honest, real book. Justin, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for your constant growth, your constant development, and you being willing to share and reveal these things on your own show, Man Enough, but also here and other places. It's really beautiful to see your journey and how you keep evolving. And I think it's something that I, that we all do, myself included, continue to evolve and grow and develop as human beings. I think the more darkness we experience, that's when we can develop the best.
1:00:02 Lewis Howes? You know, a photograph taken out of the darkness too soon doesn't look good.
1:00:07 Speaker 00 Doesn't fully develop.
1:00:08 Lewis Howes? So we've got to learn that our pain and our challenges are here for a reason, to give us wisdom and to blossom into something beautiful. I'm sure there's some quote in your High Faith that has something, says better than that, but I think that's part of why we go through challenges, is to find the meaning and the wisdom later in life to be of service in a greater way. So I really appreciate you showing up and being of service to young boys, to men, to moms, to help their boys grow, develop, and heal from their challenges as well. It's really beautiful, man.
1:00:38 Speaker 00 I really appreciate it. Let me give you that quote. Ready?
1:00:41 Lewis Howes? Give it to me.
1:00:42 Speaker 00 Calamity is my providence. Outwardly, it is fire and vengeance. But inwardly, it is light and mercy.
1:00:53 Lewis Howes? I love it. Beautiful, man. It's beautiful. Final question. I asked this before, but I'm curious if it's changed. And so if people want to hear your previous three truths, we'll link it up.
1:01:07 Speaker 00 Oh, God, that was so long ago.
1:01:08 Lewis Howes? We'll link it up in the descriptions. So you can go back and listen to that episode and that and those three truths. But again, another hypothetical question. If it's your final day on earth, many years away, you get to accomplish everything. You see your family growing to how they're supposed to be. And you live a life at a, you know, you get to a 10 on the scale. All these things happen for you.
1:01:30 Speaker 00 The 10 on the healing scale?
1:01:31 Lewis Howes? Yes, exactly. But for whatever reason, it's your last day. We don't have access to your books and your work and your content anymore. For whatever reason, in this hypothetical scenario, what would be those three lessons you would share with the world? Those three truths that you would share? If you can time travel right now into your future and share that?
1:01:53 Speaker 00 Oof. I felt that question.
1:02:01 Speaker 00 Meditate on your mortality.
1:02:08 Speaker 00 We all know we're going to go somewhere. We have a, we have a one-way ticket.
1:02:17 Speaker 00 And we can choose to pack for that trip or not.
1:02:21 Speaker 00 And I think we need to meditate on that and not delay, delay, delay, delay.
1:02:28 Speaker 00 I want to be prepared, so I'm going to develop all of the attributes.
1:02:34 Speaker 00 Because I know that's what I'm going to need where I'm going next. Number two, you know, a lot of people say like, "Treat others the way you want to be treated." This is just coming to me now. Who knows if I'm going to feel this way in five years or six years? But what's coming to me now as a second truth is, treat yourself the way you want others to treat you.
1:02:57 Speaker 00 And as somebody who has been really mean to myself, for the first six, seven years of marriage, my wife would say, "Be kind to my husband."
1:03:09 Speaker 00 She'd hear me talk about myself and she'd say, "Be kind to my husband." And it got me.
1:03:17 Speaker 00 I think as much as we want to be nice people and good people in the world, I think we have to be kind and good to ourselves.
1:03:29 Speaker 00 Otherwise, it's performative and it's not real.
1:03:33 Speaker 00 And the third,
1:03:38 Speaker 00 Abdul-Baha in the Baha writings says, "If a man has ten good qualities and one bad one,
1:03:46 Speaker 00 to look at the ten and forget the one.
1:03:49 Speaker 00 And if a man has one good quality and ten bad ones, to look at the one and forget the ten." And I believe we have to start to see the good qualities in people. I think we're living in a time and in a culture where the one bad quality that people have defines them. We heap onto that. "Oh, but they did this thing, so they can't be a good person," or "they did that," or "that happened." And I think we are disregarding that we are all beautiful and also broken and in need of love. And many of us haven't learned to love ourselves, or haven't had the love
1:04:33 Speaker 00 that we need to grow, like we talked about in those relationships. And I think that we need to start focusing on the good in people. Because when you see the good attributes in people, you see God. And if we see God,
1:04:49 Speaker 00 then
1:04:53 Speaker 00 life is complete.
1:04:57 Lewis Howes? They're beautiful. I think they're different than the last time.
1:04:59 Speaker 00 I'm sure they are. I can't ever say the same thing twice anyways.
1:05:03 Lewis Howes? Final question, what's your definition of greatness?
1:05:06 Speaker 00 Humility, humility.
1:05:08 Lewis Howes? Amen. Appreciate it. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter
1:05:53 Lewis Howes? and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.
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