The Science of Building Confidence & Self Esteem w/Harvard Psychologist Amy Cuddy EP 1198

Today’s guest is Amy Cuddy. She’s a social psychologist, award-winning Harvard lecturer, expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice and best-selling author of the book Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.In this episode we discuss what it means to have personal power and how to develop it, why it’s important to overcome trauma from the past, how to stop being afraid of going after your dreams, the science behind body posture and power posing and how it can affect your confidence, and so much more! For more go to - www.lewishowes.com/1198Read her book - https://www.amazon.com/Presence-Bringing-Boldest-Biggest-Challenges/dp/0316256587Check out her website - www.amycuddy.comMel 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 episode number 1198 with Amy Cuddy.

• 0:07Lewis 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.

• 0:29Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, my friend. I have been wanting to have today's guest on for many, many years. And I'm so grateful that we got to spend some time together and she did not disappoint. Her name is Amy Cuddy. She is a social psychologist, award-winning Harvard lecturer, expert on the behavioral science of power, presence, and prejudice, and bestselling author of the book, "Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges." In this episode, we dove in on what it means to have personal power and how to develop it, why it's important to overcome trauma from the past, how to stop being afraid of going after your dreams,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  the science behind body posture and power posing, and how it can affect your confidence, and so much more. This was so much fun for me. I hope you enjoy it. Please spread this message of greatness to your friends, to your family. You can text people, post it on social media. Make sure to tag me and Amy Cuddy as well if you're enjoying this. And let me know your feedback on this. I want to give a shout out to the fan of the week who left a review over on Apple Podcast. This is from Jen, and Jen said, "I go to Lewis when I'm happy, sad, needing guidance, or to just learn in general. And I haven't been this entertained properly until I met the podcast and his guests. He throws great questions out there, and the people he brings on are the best of the best. I can always depend on him to help me grow."

• 1:57Lewis Howes?

  So Jen, thank you for being the fan of the week and sharing that. We're always looking to bring amazing, inspiring leaders of the world on this show to help us all grow, myself included. I'm here to learn just like you, and I'm so excited for today's guest. So in just a moment, I bring you the one and only Amy Cuddy.

• 2:20Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. Amy Cuddy is in the house. It's so good to see you.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Thank you, you too.

• 2:27Lewis Howes?

  We have so many mutual friends. And as I'm getting to know you more, we have a lot of things in common. Both former professional athletes. You both have family members who are at Berklee School of Music. My brother was a professor there. He was a professor of jazz. Taught jazz violin there. Your son is a student at Berklee School of Music for the guitar. Both love psychology and human behavior. And are both trying to make an impact on the world. So we both had surgeries recently this year. And we both love roller skating.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  You do?

• 3:04Lewis Howes?

  Every Sunday, growing up, my mom would take me and my siblings to the roller skating rink. And I fell in love with it. We did it until I was probably like 13.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Oh, I love the roller skating rink.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Love roller skating.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  It's so fun. Did you have like slow dance nights?

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Slow dance? They would always do a few songs. Yeah. Going backwards was like the coolest thing to do when you were nine, you know?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  I know I'm older than you. It was like Jesse's girl, like Rick Springfield. We had like the greatest 80s.

• 3:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I'm excited you're here. And you have, in the last, I guess, nine years when your TED Talk came out, was it nine years ago? 10 years ago?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  Nine years ago.

• 3:38Lewis Howes?

  Nine years ago. The second most watched TED Talk of all time?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  It's third.

• 3:42Lewis Howes?

  It goes back and forth, huh?

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's third.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  Who's keeping score? But you know.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, I feel like I don't, like when people introduce me and they say second, I'm like, it's third. I just want to be accurate.

• 3:52Lewis Howes?

  And then the next month, it's third.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, who knows, right?

• 3:55Lewis Howes?

  But it really, it's been a cultural phenomenon. I saw you in, mentioned in my favorite show, Ted Lasso. I love that scene. You've been in Grey's Anatomy five different times. You've been in all these different shows with references to your message and your work. But I really had to improve confidence because a lot of people are feeling insecure. They're feeling like imposters. They're feeling like they don't belong, which is a big part of your talk. And I think we were talking beforehand about how the last year and a half, people have been more in a funk and they feel like they really don't belong and they're not sure how to gain that confidence.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:29Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, what have you learned in the last year and a half about getting back to like just being a confident human being in the world? Not even like performing well, you know, in a sport or a business, but just like, how do you just walk around with confidence?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  I think, well, I think that in the first couple of months of the pandemic, people were in this phase that psychologists call the emergency phase of a long-term crisis, where, you know, adrenaline's pumping basically and you, the threat is concrete and people have shared goals and they're really working well. It's sort of like in a war, it would be like the first battle.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  And so there, people study combat soldiers and find that like during battles, they perform really well because they're on the same page. That's the threat. This is what we're doing. Teams work well. Good leaders are great leaders, but so that's how people were for the first couple of months. They're like, I can do this. And then you deplete what psychologists call surge capacity, which is this sort of network that keeps us going during acute threats.

• 5:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  And so we depleted that. And then we all sort of went into this regression phase or, you know, I mean, at different times. But it, it had a lot to do with the depleted nervous system, but also just the lack of control. We just, we lost control of our lives. I mean, there were external forces that we couldn't control. And that lack of real power, I think, translated into a lack of the feeling of power, of this more internal sense of agency and power. And so people, you know, really started kind of shutting down. So for me, I think as we kind of reemerge, and it's not going to be like, this is the end day, let's go celebrate in the streets.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  We know it's not gonna, it's this, we're in this constant flux right now, which is also draining.

• 6:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  But as, the only way we're going to reemerge is if we regain that sense of personal power. I mean, people have to feel that they have the ability to make change in their lives, to do things. I know it seems so simple, but. You know, we talk a lot about well-being. And we're usually talking about happiness. And, you know, good physical health, health and lack of stress. That's, that's like, high well-being. But I think another component that's really important is this feeling of power. And I don't mean power over others, personal power, right? Not power over others, not zero-sum power, but just personal power.

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  How do we get to, what does that even look like? What is, what is personal power? And how do we start to build it?

• 7:10Speaker 01

  It, I think, you know, it is the feeling that you are entitled to bring your, you know, your best self to challenging situations. But that also involves knowing who your best self is. And that's difficult, too. But it's like, so it's, it's, I think often we don't even feel that we sort of deserve to, to be there. And so we can't fully show up. So personal power is, is the feeling of sort of being in control of our internal resources. Our, to, to bring our skills and abilities forward, to be the most sort of generous, open-minded version of ourselves. That's, that's personal power.

• 7:54Lewis Howes?

  But if we don't have, if we don't believe that we are deserving to have power, how do we get there? How do we change the belief? To deserve it? And then start to have that?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  I, I mean, and let me say first, I don't think personal power does, is not a substitute for skills and, and knowledge. And, and I think that sometimes people mis-hear me when I talk about this topic and think that I'm saying you can just, you know, you can just fake it. You can't. Like, for me, personal power is, is, is about, it is about revealing the skills that you already have. But it also gives you, it gives you more bandwidth to build more skills. Right? So it's self-reinforcing as well.

• 8:41Lewis Howes?

  Because there's a lot of people that already have developed skills, but they don't believe that they're deserving, or they don't know how to effectively communicate those skills. Interesting.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:51Lewis Howes?

  There's so many people that I've Heard from that say they've had a dream for five, 10, 20 years and they have the skills to do it, but they don't have the courage.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:02Lewis Howes?

  To put it out there.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  So is personal power connected to courage as well?

• 9:07Speaker 01

  I think it absolutely is and it's, you know, sometimes they say sometimes we have to get out of the way of ourselves so that we can be ourselves.

• 9:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Like we get in our own way, but you know, I'm now writing about social bravery, right? Not physical bravery, but social bravery, like standing up for people who are, who are being abused, who are being mistreated or, you know, and, and it is hard and it's harder in many ways than physical bravery. There's, there's not a lot of glory that comes with it. You're risking, you know, being kicked out of the tribe, but think about it in terms of like bystander intervention, like the studies of, you know, when do bystanders intervene in an emergency? The best predictor of, of adult, adults intervening when another adult is being bullied online is sense of power, right?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So, yes, so when people feel powerful, they also feel more courageous.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And so I think, you know, that's, that, that, yes, I think these things are very, very similar and I think that we are in a collective sense of powerlessness right now. And so I, I just think it's, it's everywhere and people seem like agitated at each other. They turn on each other. We are turning on each other. I mean, you, you see it at the sort of group level, but also at the individual level. And, and that's what happens when people feel powerless.

• 10:32Lewis Howes?

  So what is the thing that we should be thinking of first? Is it, let's focus on healing the wounds of our past that have made us feel powerless? Let's work on developing new skills to make us feel more confident and competent. Let's focus on knowledge.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I don't, it's hard to say like what's first for, for, it's idiosyncratic to the person. So certainly for many people, you know, powerlessness comes from trauma.

• 10:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And obviously, you know, there are different parts of the dealing with trauma process, but part, part of it obviously is understanding what happened and where that came from and that that's not who you were born as, right? And that you are allowed to undo this, right?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So there is that, and I don't want to neglect that that people who are suffering from, you know, post-traumatic stress, they have to be able to deal with that.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  What happens if we never undo or heal the traumas of the past? Whether it be, you know, little micro traumas that just continue to build, or bigger traumas, abuse, you know, accidents, you know, big breakups, things like loss?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  I mean, they just, they build on each other. It's sort of that simple. Like, you know, it's, you know, traumatic events, the idea of triggers, right, is that when when something reminds you of that traumatic event, that sort of neural pathway gets activated, and all of the feelings that went with that trauma that happened when you were 12 are now being activated when you're 40.

• 12:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  And they're not helpful to you now, right?

• 12:08Lewis Howes?

  They make you more powerless.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  Or reactive.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  They might have helped you to kind of survive when you were 12, but not now. So, you know, I think that we

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I'm sensitive about this because

• 12:25Speaker 01

  people have just endured enormous trauma.

• 12:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  And so I don't, some of it you just never get rid of. But not addressing it, I think, only shuts us down more and probably makes it harder for us to know ourselves in many other like, we become afraid of ourselves. And that, that makes it, I think, harder for us to be, you know, a good partner in a relationship, a good member of society, you know, to be somebody who's helping others.

• 12:58Lewis Howes?

  What do you think we can do to reveal ourselves to ourself better? So that we can fully accept who we are, or what we've been through, or had done to us, or done to others, or whatever it is, the shame and guilt we're holding on to, so that we can have more personal power and an authentic Way moving forward in those relationships.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Well, I think one, I mean, this is just a simple exercise. So there's, there's this research on what we call self-affirmation. And I don't mean, like, in, I don't know if you remember the old Stuart Smalley skits on Saturday Night Live. He was like a motivational speaker and he'd say like, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I'm doggone it, people like me. It was daily affirmations with Stuart Smalley and by the end, he'd be in a shame spiral. So he'd be trying to talk himself out of it by saying, I'm great, I'm great, I'm great.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  That doesn't really work.

• 13:50Lewis Howes?

  If you don't believe it.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. In fact, then you're just lying to yourself and now you trust yourself even less. Right? So saying, I'm great, when you feel self-doubting, in a way is the worst thing you can do.

• 14:02Lewis Howes?

  What's the best thing you can do?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Well, here's one of my favorite tasks. So actual, like, the, the theory of self-affirmation in psychology is not about saying, I'm great. Or, you know, I'm gonna win this event, whatever.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  I'm the best.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  It is about affirming to yourself what your values are, who you really are, like, what do you, what makes you you. So the task is so simple, and there's so much research on this, that doing the simple task helps people perform better in totally unrelated tasks. So the task is to first list the, maybe the top three things that you care most about, that really, that, that, if I took them away, you would just no longer be yourself, right?

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  What would those be for you? Couple of things?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  I have a kind of pathological optimism. Like, I think, I am upset when somebody does something that hurts someone else in a way that some people might think is naive, but I'm glad I feel that way. I like, I'm, like, I, I am so... Hurt that people behave badly. Like I'm troubled by it. And I'm glad that I'm troubled by it. Because I'm gonna keep on trying to change that. I think it's a kind of earnestness that people find it irritating. But I'm totally okay with earnestness. And actually, this is one of the things that Amy Purdy and I have in common.

• 15:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Like she is like this too. You know, she's just like sad when people are mean.

• 15:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes. She's got such a great heart.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Totally, but she does stuff. She's not just sitting there being sad. Anyway, I would say that that is one of the things that makes me who I am. And if somebody said, you're just, you know, you're naive and you really can't move forward in life if you hold on to this belief that people can be good. I'd be like, well, then I'm no longer who I am. Right? So the task of self-affirmation is you list like three of these things. And then you rank them. And, you know, and you may, maybe only ranking them based on how you feel today. But then you take the top one. You write a paragraph about why it matters to you. And then you write another paragraph about a time when you were able to express that value, that belief and what it felt like to do that.

• 16:19Speaker 01

  That's it. That's self-affirmation. And so, you know, some people might say, you know, being creative, like art is important to me. Or, you know, helping people in my community, whatever it is. When people do that, they then are less anxious in stressful situations and they perform better. So for example, college students who do self-affirmation at the beginning of the semester, perform better on their midterm exams. And, you know, have lower, lower levels of epinephrine.

• 16:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Than, than students who don't do that task.

• 16:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  So self-affirmation is basically you shoring yourself up. And what happens is that when you go in to take like, say, this calculus exam.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  You know that no matter what happens during that exam, you will still be you when you leave. Like, no one's gonna... This... How you do in that calculus exam is not gonna change who you are.

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, your value of who you are.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Exactly, I'm still gonna be this person who wants people to be nice to each other.

• 17:20Lewis Howes?

  So whether you win, or get an A, or get an F, or you lose...

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  Either way, you still have that value.

• 17:26Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  You're affirming the value that you love about yourself.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  Not related to the result or the outcome.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. But if you said like, "Oh, I'm going to say that I love calculus", and then you... That would never work, right?

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  So it's about knowing who you are. You're not... You can't be great at everything, sorry. You can't be perfect at everything.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And that's okay.

• 17:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Right? You will still be... You are allowed to be you.

• 17:55Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. It's interesting, it reminded me of a... I had Kobe Bryant on the show, and he mentioned that earlier in his kind of basketball years, when he was a teenager, he... One summer, he was like playing at a basketball camp, and he didn't score one point. When he was like 13 or 14, I can't remember exactly. But... And then four years later, he's in the NBA, right? So he was like 12 or 13, and he didn't score one point. And his dad, before he went to this kind of basketball camp, said, you know, "Whether you do well or not, I'm gonna love you." Like, "Your results are not determined based on like my love for you." So, like, "I want you to do well, but just have fun and get better.

• 18:40Lewis Howes?

  Just improve every day and work hard, and your value is not based on the results."

• 18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:46Lewis Howes?

  And he scored zero! But he felt like, "Okay, I just wanna go back and keep playing 'cause I love the game and I wanna improve."

• 18:52Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  Not because I'm looking for approval from my father.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:56Lewis Howes?

  And I think it's... As friends, partners, parents, if we can continue to instill that value of the person, not their results, then I think that it's gonna help people wanna get better results.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:10Lewis Howes?

  So, without feeling like they're never good enough.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Right. What do you think... Like, what would you list?

• 19:17Lewis Howes?

  So the thing of my values or the thing that I want to get rid of?

• 19:21Speaker 01

  No, sorry, no, your values. Like if you were doing self affirmation, I mean, what would you feel like what's the thing that, you know, makes you who you are?

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  I think that I really care about people, like having a big heart. I really care about people. I want people to feel good about themselves. I want people to have the confidence and the courage to go after what they were uniquely built and designed for and having, you know, the curiosity to explore what it could be.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:47Lewis Howes?

  For me, it's, you know, we were talking about this beforehand that it's, I wasn't the biggest, fastest, strongest, but I had dreams and I pursued them to as far as I could in sports.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:57Lewis Howes?

  And I have no regrets. Where there's a lot of guys that I knew that I played with were way more talented than me that didn't have the courage. And I felt like, man, but you kind of wasted this potential, just like to see what could have happened. Whether you failed or not, or succeeded, doesn't matter for me. But it's what was I able to create in that process?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  And I want the world to be able to do that for whatever it is for them. Whatever that dream is for them, it can be, it doesn't have to be some grandiose dream of being some top athlete, but whatever that is, you're unique in this world. Can you go and have the courage to figure out what that is? And it's scary.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:34Lewis Howes?

  So I care deeply about people overcoming those challenges.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  I love that. And so, but imagine how it would feel if somebody was like, I'm taking that characteristic away from you. Like you no longer have that.

• 20:45Lewis Howes?

  I would just be like, I don't know, egotistical.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  But you know, you would just, you would be a shell, right?

• 20:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it'd be tough.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And so, you know that. So this is the great thing about self affirmation is it's kind of the flip side. Well, I'm telling you that that's not never going to be taken away from you.

• 21:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Right? You can always be that person.

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  You will always have that value. And so that helps you then to be more present and less anxious and to perform better in other situations.

• 21:11Lewis Howes?

  Why do you think people are so afraid of the pressure of not performing well or failing or getting made fun of or embarrassed or laughed at or being told, said, I told you so. You shouldn't do this. You're not good.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  There's a lot of, like, you kind of answered the question in the question. Because they are afraid of being told.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  They're afraid of not doing well because they're afraid of being ashamed. Like, of being ridiculed, of being... I think, like, it's mostly about how others perceive them. Like, the fear of being rejected, the fear of being kicked out of the tribe, which is a terrible feeling, right? Like, I mean, that, people are more afraid of that than they are of, you know, physical injury.

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And it's, you know, it's sort of related to what we were talking about before the camera started rolling. Which is that, you know, this idea of bumblers and pointers.

• 22:03Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Which a psychologist named Dan Gilbert just casually talked about once on Twitter. He said there are two kinds of people, bumblers and pointers. The bumblers are the ones just trying. Even if they don't do it well, they're trying. And the pointers are the ones making fun of the people who are trying. And so, and he said, "I would rather be a bumbler. I would definitely rather be a bumbler than a pointer." But people are afraid of the pointers, right?

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the critics that aren't actually bumbling.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  Not only fumbling around in the world.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  They're not bumbling because they're not doing anything.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Right. Except for critiquing.

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And I, I think it doesn't divide quite as easily as that. But, but, you know, that's what we're afraid of.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  But why are we so afraid of pointers? People pointing at us when it's like, why? In general, are people so afraid of, like, it's two people or one person that's holding them back from a dream they've had for years.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, you know, I, I mean, I can make an evolutionary argument that we're attuned to that kind of rejection because it, it, it would indicate that you're at risk of being kicked out of the tribe. And if you're kicked out of the tribe, then you can't, you can't support yourself.

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  Then for yourself or something.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  But that's not true anymore in this world, right?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  No, right. So we still have, like, you know, some sort of primitive responses that are no longer adaptive. And, you know, we're not, like, for example, and I'm sort of moving away from the shame a bit to fear, you know...

• 23:29Speaker 01

  When we go into that fight, flee, or faint mode, that is adaptive if you're being chased by a tiger. But usually, we're not being chased by a tiger.

• 23:38Lewis Howes?

  Being pointed at by someone on the internet is not that scary. I mean, psychologically, it is.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  Well, it is.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  Physically, it's not.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  At the same time, I don't want to dismiss the emotional damage of actual abuse and bullying.

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes, but criticism.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Criticism, right, is not actually deadly. But our bodies, our nervous systems feel like it's deadly.

• 24:02Lewis Howes?

  Is there a psychological strategy that you've seen or research that's shown how to actually practically overcome this?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I mean, there are little... I'm very much about the micro, like one of the little things that you can do. I mean, I'm not a clinical psychologist. I'm a social psychologist, so I can't speak to therapy. But I do think it's about the way we carry ourselves. Realizing that how we carry ourselves, physically, how we move, how do we interact with people, like how do we carry ourselves? That shapes who we are.

• 24:45Lewis Howes?

  Physical body language.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Physical body language and even just how we choose to interact with, say, someone who's serving us a drink at a restaurant. Do we choose to look them in the eye and say, "Thank you," and recognize them as human? Or do we not have the time for that? Carrying ourselves in a way that is both powerful and also with grace, I think, makes us more powerful and makes us kinder people. Sorry, I got onto a different sort of...

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Sure, you're talking about the micro instances on how to overcome this if we're feeling like we've got something we want to put out in the world, but we're afraid of one or two pointers, critics, that aren't going to physically beat us up or kick us out of their lives. But what's something we can do?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Let's take an actual...

• 25:47Speaker 01

  I often ask people, what is your biggest challenge? Like, what is the situation that you approach with dread? And that you execute with anxiety? And that you leave with a sense of regret?

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  And so if you look at all of the... So dread, that is you projecting yourself into a future that's not gone well. So you're borrowing trouble, basically.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  You know, the anxiety in the moment is you thinking more about what the other person thinks of you than what they're actually just thinking. You know, you're worried about what you said a minute ago, or what's gonna happen afterwards. You're not able to be in the present. And then regret is, or what we call post-event processing. You're going over it, wanting a do-over, going, I didn't show, I wasn't seen. They didn't see who I am. You know that feeling like, oh, they didn't see who I am? And you wanna go back in. And like, in a rom-com, you get to have a do-over.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. In life, sometimes you don't.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  So that sense of regret becomes like a piece of baggage that you carry into the next similar situation. And, you know...

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  And then you're worried, because you don't wanna, you don't wanna do the same thing. So you put more pressure on yourself.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  What if we could, you know, approach with a sense of, you know, composure? And execute it with a kind of calm and grounded confidence?

• 27:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  And leave feeling satisfied? Even if we don't get the outcome that we want? We know that we did everything we could to show up. They saw who I was, and it wasn't the right fit, or whatever.

• 27:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  And I can accept that outcome. So you can both accept the outcome and not have that extra piece of baggage.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  I was watching a TikTok recently about a mom like asking her daughter to go and, I can't remember, do something by herself in a store. And this was like an 18 or 20-year-old. I think she was going to like rent a car, or buy a car, or something like that. She was an older, you know, teen or early twenties. And she was franticing. She was like, I cannot go in there alone. Will you come in there and do this for me? Will you come help me? I can't do this alone. The sense of like, social interactions online, but the inability to actually be in front of someone and be rejected, or looked at funny, or learning how to navigate in-person social interactions?

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like people are going to be struggling with overcoming these fears more because of the internet and social media? Or how can they continue to navigate? That fear of like the tribe in person, not just online.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  I don't even know where to begin with the interview. It's because there are also, first of all, like if I make any statement about where I stand on that, there will be a million people telling me I'm absolutely wrong.

• 28:34Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  But that's like, and the truth is complicated, right? And in some ways, social media, like, so, you know, my son's on TikTok. And I can't believe the courage he has now to just put a video out there. And, you know, sometimes it goes and sometimes it doesn't. And he's not, he's fine if it doesn't, if it doesn't go, if it doesn't move. So I think that that's actually been really good for him.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  It's, he doesn't feel rejected. He just feels like, well, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but I'm never gonna know if I don't put myself out there.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  So I think in some ways, young people have become more courageous at trying things. I mean, you know, yes, I would like them to spend less time on it. And I like that he's doing music, you know, he's like putting out, my kid's doing quality content.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  No, but, but I think that in some ways, it's actually given young people an opportunity to be braver.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  To express themselves in certain ways.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And to sort of, to be rejected and see that they've survived, right?

• 29:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  But rejection, the rejection that I'm talking about is a video, a TikTok video not going viral. It's not that it's, which is not the same as nasty comments, like being rejected and trolled. That's a different kind of rejection, right? And that's not good.

• 29:56Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. What about the, just the anxiety of

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  putting yourself out there, whether it be going into a store and just interacting with people, whether it be going, giving a speech online, putting up, you know, something in human interaction in person and feeling embarrassed or rejected or made fun of?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  How do we learn to overcome that anxiety or stress about it? Is it, is it as simple as just you gotta practice it and just know that you're alive?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  I hate to say something so simple, but yes, like, I am, I, I am just not afraid to embarrass myself.

• 30:32Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  And I I have to sometimes like hold on to that like because I think it's I think it was really important for my son to see that like to me modeling that was really important.

• 30:49Lewis Howes?

  Not being embarrassed.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, being like be you know making mistakes being goofy like doing something goofy in the grocery store.

• 30:57Lewis Howes?

  And be okay with it.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, another one is is it's being okay with like chatting with a stranger and maybe they don't want to chat and that's fine then you move on but like why not? Try those I think doing those things. First of all, I think it's great to model that for kids, but I also think it's good to do it just to see the you've survived. You're fine.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  No one cares. Exactly. No one even cares.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  And not remembering this for the rest of their life.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  You might have made somebody smile.

• 31:28Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Right, so.

• 31:30Lewis Howes?

  I'm all about social like creating social challenges for yourself. Like if you're terrified.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's a good one. I mean, like chat with someone on the train or and I know it's hard right now.

• 31:41Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. Do something consistently.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, or like ask someone. Ask you know if you're if you're I don't know why grocery stores seem like places where lots of silly things can happen. You know, if if someone's like checking out checking you what do you?

• 31:59Lewis Howes?

  Checking you out.

• 32:00Speaker 01

  Checking you out, but that sounds funny checking you out.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  Checking out your groceries.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And they they are looking down and they seem you know grumpy. Instead of deciding they're not friendly. Consider the possibility that they're having a bad day and and literally like pause and say. How are you? You know, or like try to connect with them without being intrusive, make eye contact with them, thank them. You know, make eye contact. Maybe they'll just be annoyed and not make eye contact back, but I feel like that kind of thing is really important to try and those are things that are create sort of social benefits for others as well.

• 32:40Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. This is something you've been studying for, I guess, decades now, which is just mastering confidence, body language, overcoming these challenges. What's been the biggest challenge for you in the last 10 years that you've had to overcome? Knowing the research and practicing these things and talking about these things yourself, what's been the challenge for you, whether career, personal, or?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  I think the challenge for me has been adjusting to, you know, being more well-known than the average academic, right?

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And, and actually, you know, leaving academia. You know, I still teach, but I'm not, you know, I'm not a...

• 33:21Lewis Howes?

  Full-time.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  No. You know, I teach in executive education at Harvard, but I'm not, I'm not a professor. You know, I'm a lecturer when I lecture. Leaving was hard.

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  So, I mean, it was a big, it was a big leap to say, to leave that security. But it wasn't, it just was not the right world for me. But I think the biggest challenge really has been dealing with becoming higher, sort of having, becoming higher profile and the kind of backlash that I endured as a result of that.

• 33:52Lewis Howes?

  Criticism.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Which is not, yes, and, well, yeah, I mean, criticism's fine, but bullying is not, you know?

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  And I know that this is common, like, this happens to, in fact, it happens to a lot of junior professors who give TED Talks.

• 34:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's funny, somebody just wrote to me yesterday, she has a popular TED Talk, and she, you know, she said that at her university, people started calling her TED Girl and, like, sort of talking down to her.

• 34:19Lewis Howes?

  Even though it was a popular, well-respected TED Talk?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Well, because it was popular, right? Like, it's, it's like if it had been, if it had not really hit the radar, it would have been okay.

• 34:29Lewis Howes?

  Really? But because she had some success?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so people had to sort of diminish her in a way, you know? And, and I experienced a lot of the same stuff. So, what became hard for me was talking to colleagues, right? Like, standing up for myself. And you, you know, the truth is, we need to stand up for each other, right? When people are in an acute bullying situation, they really can't stand up for themselves. But I'm still figuring out...

• 34:57Speaker 01

  How to engage with other people in academia who weren't necessarily bullies, but might have been bystanders who didn't do anything. And but but to be able to to say, I still deserve to be having this conversation. I I deserve to have the beliefs that I have. I deserve to defend, you know, this massive area of research on body mind feedback, of which, you know, like I like I contribute a tiny bit to. Just because these people don't like it doesn't mean I can't, you know, say, well, here's why I do believe it. Here's that's really hard for me.

• 35:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  That is the thing that I I would approach with the most dread, I think.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  Were you able to implement and integrate some of your own practices and and teachings when those things happened to you? When you were getting, whether it be criticism or bullying or, you know, any of the stuff you were facing, were you able to actually integrate the

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  the body language for yourself?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  I mean, for me, the thing that works the best is, I mean, certainly, I, you know, I do, like, I walk expansively, like, I, you know, like, long strides before this kind of stressful thing. I do, I won't sit, sit down with my hands in my lap.

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Like, even putting your hands behind your chair, like, this is

• 36:13Lewis Howes?

  Kind of opens you up a little bit.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  But it forces you to open up, just doing that. But the thing that works the best for me is is breathing. And I know there is so much on breath work now, and I don't want to, you know, I'm not an expert, but the relaxation response that's triggered by by certain breathing patterns is incredibly effective for me. And so, basically, it sends your nervous system into this rest and digest state, which is the opposite of fight, flee, or faint. And and so, the one that I like best is called four, seven, eight breathing. And we can do it right now.

• 36:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, let's do it.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  So I'll, so basically, for four counts, you inhale. For seven, you hold your breath. And for eight, you exhale.

• 36:55Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  So I'm going to count, and you do it.

• 36:57Lewis Howes?

  Okay, four inhale.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Seven, hold it.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  And eight.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Eight, exhale.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

• 37:15Lewis Howes?

  And you repeat that a few times.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Three times. Like, one time, you feel it.

• 37:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  It will put me to sleep at night. You know, if I'm relaxed, it makes me sleepy. But if I'm anxious, it calms me down. So that just, I mean, there's just so much research on the relaxation response and breathing. And but what I think is interesting about it is that that kind of breathing is expansive. Just like what I talk about, you know, like expansive posture. That's expansive. You're breathing deeply and slowly. You're taking up more temporal space. You're expanding your, you know, like your physical body more. And when we expand, we tend to feel more confident, more powerful, more calm.

• 37:58Lewis Howes?

  Should we always, not always, should we be frequently be in an expansive postural state? When we're, you know, kind of nine to five-ish out in the world, doing our activities?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  What we should be in is having good neutral posture. So it's, before stressful events, you know, that's when I say, find a private space. I think I said in the TED Talk, find a bathroom stall.

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Which I honestly think, just like, I thought of at the moment, but I can't tell you how many emails I get from people like, I was in a bathroom. You know, or like people who see somebody in a bathroom with their arms up in the air. Like, are you power posing in it?

• 38:35Lewis Howes?

  I think Ted Lasso was saying, she goes to the bathroom and does that, right?

• 38:38Speaker 01

  I know. I loved it so much. You can't imagine. Like, I love that show and I had no idea.

• 38:43Lewis Howes?

  You had no idea it was coming.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  I was like sobbing. I was like, oh my god.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  What's so cool that you, Brene Brown, and Essa Perel,

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  who I've had both of them on as well, were all featured in there. And I'm just like, that's amazing.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I know. And I think all of us were absolutely beyond thrilled.

• 39:00Lewis Howes?

  Like, this is cool.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  I mean, to have that, and I know, I was telling Brene this, but the first time I saw that show, I, at the end of the first episode, I turned to my husband and I said, I love Ted Lasso.

• 39:11Lewis Howes?

  It's so good.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  And he goes, that's because you are Ted Lasso. And I was like, well, I guess I had good self-esteem then. But I am Ted Lasso, and so are you.

• 39:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes, exactly.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Right? You are. It's funny, because Brene says that she's Roy Kent.

• 39:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  She's Roy Kent.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  You can see a little bit.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  But anyway, yeah, so before these stressful situations, the ones that you approach with dread, that's when you find some space and really make yourself big.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  Expansive.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Like, whatever feels comfortable to you, expand, you know. In front of other people, it comes across as really aggressive and domineering and off-putting. But if you're in, you know, the privacy of your own bathroom stall, or office, or whatever, you can do whatever you want. You don't have to worry about cultural norms, or, you know, putting people off.

• 39:59Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  In our everyday lives, we spend so much time like this, you know, like with our phones. And that is really bad. At first, it's bad for us, just our posture, and it's creating this sort of fixed thoracic stoop.

• 40:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  But, you know, physiotherapists used to only see in like elderly people, and now they're seeing it in like 15-year-old boys, um, from, you know, gaming, things like that. And that's something, like, you can't just be like, "Oh, I'm gonna sit up straight." You have to, like, work that out.

• 40:29Lewis Howes?

  For years, working it out, yeah, and align your body, yeah.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Totally. But, so, it's, it's, it's not only hurting our posture, but I, it, I, I believe that it is affecting our mood. And so, you know, fi- you know, even just set up your workspace, so that you can be more expansive.

• 40:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Um, but you, we neglect our body language when it's, when we're alone, because it's language. And if we're alone, we're not talking to anyone.

• 40:55Lewis Howes?

  We're talking to ourselves, though.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  But we're talking to ourselves, right? So, it's really important, I think, for us to be minding our posture. Also, the, there have been a couple of meta-analyses recently, which basically are just, you know, studies that look at, at all of the studies on a topic, and, and come up with a sort of, an average effect size. Like, they say, "Yes, this is affected, this is a real effect, um, and this is how big the effect is," right? So, studies that have looked at power, meta-analyses of power-posing studies, show really clearly that it, it affects the way we feel. Like, so, it's, you know, expansive-

• 41:33Lewis Howes?

  By shrinking our body.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  It's shrinking versus expanding.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Affects the way, whether in a positive or-

• 41:38Speaker 01

  More expansive, more confident and power, more powerful psychologically, you know, shrinking, less powerful, less confident. But, what's interesting is that there, there are two meta-analyses. One of them shows that, that more of the effect is driven by the difference between neutral and expansive. The other one shows that more of the effect is driven by the difference between, you know, contractive and neutral. So, I'm not, I, we still-

• 42:10Speaker 01

  In short, there's evidence that both of those things matter. But certainly, neutral is better than contracted.

• 42:16Lewis Howes?

  Shrinking, yeah, yeah, contracting.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:18Lewis Howes?

  And it's probably, you know, even if you were doing a meditative breathing technique, if you're closing your body off and breathing, you're still probably limiting yourself.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:28Lewis Howes?

  So you can be breathing and trying to relax the nervous system, but you're closing your body off, it's hard to feel like more alive and confident and calm, I'm assuming, right?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 42:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  It's funny, I once, this woman wrote to me, she said, um, I teach people public speaking, and I had this student who was really stressed out, this man, and so I got him to power pose for a minute, and he said it made him feel worse.

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And she said, but then, then I watched, we watched the video, she, I, she said, I videotaped him, and we watched the video, and I was like, were you breathing? He said, no, I didn't breathe, I held my breath the whole time.

• 43:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  He's like, well, that's all, not gonna work.

• 43:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're gonna pass out, you're gonna faint.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. So he had been like completely still in this power pose, and she, I mean, she was laughing about it, but yeah.

• 43:15Lewis Howes?

  How long, how long should we be in an expansive postural states for?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, I, I really emphasized two minutes in the TED Talk, because that's what we had done in, in those first studies. Um, I, I think actually, less is more.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Like, we've gone out to five minutes. I think that, I think that it just gets awkward. It's, it's, it's that silly, like, you feel weird, but also, like, your body get, you get sort of stiff, so I, you know, I just think it's, I don't even think you have to be still. I think you can be moving in an expansive way.

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  You know, I think there's, it's the whole, I, I sometimes wish that I hadn't called this power posing, because it was so, it's such a sticky idea, right? It's got alliteration, it's like, you know, exactly.

• 44:02Lewis Howes?

  Great branding.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, but, but at the same time, people got fixed on, on like, standing like Wonder Woman, or in the victory pose, and it's not, it's... Being expansive is more expansive than than this.

• 44:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  You know, it's it's in whatever way works for you.

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the tighter you are, the probably less likely you're perform relaxed.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  And and football, training before games and in practices, they would always tell us to be loose. You know, to move our body, to be flexible, to be expansive, but in a loose state of mind and a loose body. Not like rigid or you can't catch the ball if you're like too tight. So how can you be expansive, confident and relaxed at the same time?

• 44:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:43Lewis Howes?

  And practicing that in life with the power poses, I think is great.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Lewis Howes?

  And tell her, she did a great, she was like, ah, it was like a monster pose or something.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  I think she was like.

• 44:53Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing, yeah.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  She made this facial expression that I thought was great.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  She's a great actor as well.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  She's so, I wonder if that was like so, like if they're like, just do a power pose.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  Off the cuff, yeah, she probably did.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  I just feel like.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  She was great. She was great. When, um, was there ever a time where you didn't implement this strategy? And you realized, oh, I had, I could, I should have done, I could have done better had I done this, but I just thought I'd had it figured out?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Um, only, you know, it's, so I really love public speaking and I, it doesn't. It's like my favorite professional thing to do.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  It doesn't make me nervous.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So for me, I think a lot of people assume that speaking is the thing that makes everyone nervous. So for me, it's not, it's not that.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  What makes you nervous?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Um, you know, interpersonal conflict, like one on one. Or, um, I get nervous in like smaller groups. I don't.

• 45:51Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it interesting, like five or 10 people, I feel the same way.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Talking to three people, I find much more stressful.

• 45:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Than talking to, you know, 3,000 people. Um, so I don't like to sit in a room for a long time before I'm going to get up and talk to people. I don't want to sit there in a cold room, these rooms are all been cold. And, you know, you're going like this and you're totally sort of stiff. And then you get up and you're like, ooh. So I've, I had that experience enough times to learn. I need to be moving around. I need to be warm, not cold. And, uh, and come in sort of. You know, right before I get up to present or to discuss. So yes, I've had the experience of being still and kind of, you know, hunched up for too long.

• 46:37Lewis Howes?

  So we've got the affirmations we talked about, self-affirmation, affirming who you are, not just making up lies about yourself. We've got, what's the actual technical term now, not power posing?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I don't, I mean, I call it postural feedback.

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Postural feedback.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  And I think the idea is just to keep in mind your posture is, is sent, like, there is feedback to your nervous system telling you either you're, you know, I'm safe or I'm not safe. That's kind of that simple, like, you're safe or you're not safe.

• 47:08Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, I learned a technique 11, 12 years ago, about 2009, when I got into the business world and I started going to events and conferences and networking events. I remember feeling like I'm a nobody, I'm this young kid who was just playing football. I still didn't have a college degree, I was 24, and going into a room with all these professionals and executives, I was like, why would anyone talk to me? Kind of had this feeling early on.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:32Lewis Howes?

  And I learned from someone, he said, every time you walk into a door, just act like you're trying to connect the top of your head to the door and just walk in.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:41Lewis Howes?

  And stand like, every time you see a door at any time in your life, just practice you're walking, you're entering a room, just with your, you don't have to put your chest all the way out like crazy.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:51Lewis Howes?

  Shoulders back just a little bit, your head just a little bit taller, like you're trying to touch the top.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 47:55Lewis Howes?

  And just, and he said, walk in with a smile.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  And every time I do that, I practice it just all the time now, it's like, it just makes you feel a little bit better, more courageous to actually say hi to someone. A smile, a little taller, your shoulders back just a little bit.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:10Lewis Howes?

  It really helps with that. So it's something that I learned early on that helped me kind of just gain courage.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Well, it's, you know, in ballet, it's, you know, it's very much like imagining

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  It's like a string, right?

• 48:21Speaker 01

  But, but another technique that I think works really well for me, that I learned in ballet, is you're looking at the people in the balcony.

• 48:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And, and that opens you up, right? And it also makes you more aware of, of this interaction and there's also kind of magic and chemistry in the interaction, right? You're not alone.

• 48:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  And that, that. That's a whole other, well, not a whole other thing, but it's, you know, that ability to be present with people is, is like, it feeds on itself, right? Like, you become, the energy level picks up more and more, the more you can build that intimacy with an audience. And so by opening up to them, you're much more likely to create that intimacy.

• 49:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And so, okay, so we've got the self-affirmation to self, we've got the postural feedback, if we can start implementing these strategies.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yep, I got another one.

• 49:15Lewis Howes?

  Give me another one.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  All right. I love this one. So this was research done by a woman named Alison Woodbrooks, who's at Harvard Business School, she's a professor, and she was like a wedding singer before she went to grad school. And she just didn't get nervous, and she was really interested in stage fright. Like, she was like, why, I know it's kind of funny, she's like, this isn't hard for me, why is it hard for you? No, but she's, she's very confident, but she was really interested in stage fright. And she realized that-

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  And learning why people have stage fright.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Right. And she's a very positive person. And I think that what happened, and I, I don't want to tell her story for her, but my understanding is basically that she realized that for her, the nerves, the, so basically, emotions have two dimensions, arousal level, like, it's a high arousal or a low arousal, right? Exactly. And positive, negative. I mean, there's more than that. But like, think of it, those are the two dimensions, and emotions can be clustered around those. So she realized that she was having the same high arousal feeling in her body before

• 50:26Speaker 01

  she sang, but for her, she interpreted it as excitement, not anxiety. And so she realized that it's not that she really was having a totally different experience, it's just that she was like, I must be excited to do this.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  It's the interpretation.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. So she did experiments-

• 50:44Speaker 01

  She had people do singing contests using like, what was the video game? Rockstar?

• 50:50Lewis Howes?

  Might have been Rockstar, yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  She had them do like debate competitions. I think they did a math test, maybe different studies. But she she assigned them to say to themselves before they did the the thing, I am anxious or I am excited. And the people who said, I am excited, just said, I am excited to myself. They did much better.

• 51:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  So she calls that reinterpreting anxiety as excitement. So reframe it like, so before you go on, her name is Alison Wood Brooks hyphenated.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  And, yeah, so anxiety is, reframe anxiety as excitement. And this is definitely one of my favorites. And I think, I think that that that helps a lot of people. The other one is.

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  I love that.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Kind of related a bit is, is that a lot of times when we go into these stressful interpersonal situations where we know we're being evaluated and where the stakes feel high. So like a job interview or or giving a talk or speaking in class or teaching, whatever. It get the dread leads us also to interpret other people to see them as potential predators, as people who don't want us to do well.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  And the thing is, mostly in life, people actually want other people to do well. Yes, there's schadenfreude. We sometimes like to see somebody fail, right?

• 52:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  But for the most part, people are there because they they want to learn something. They want, they want you to do well. And so, you know, it's not comfortable to watch people not doing well. And so when I started teaching at Harvard, I'd been, you know, I taught at Kellogg for a couple of years and, you know, that's an intense place. It's a great school. But there's something about Harvard Business School that has this reputation, you know, that the, so I got there and I was like, I don't know, 32 or something and. Anyway, I was like mid 30s.

• 52:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Not that much older than the students, right?

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right. You're still like...

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And...

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  You could look like you could be a student.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  And I was, you know, I'm not big and, you know, blonde, I'm a girl, all that stuff. So, people were like, "You cannot show weakness."

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Like, you cannot, "A drop of blood in the water, the sharks will come in for the kill."

• 53:12Lewis Howes?

  That bad, huh?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  So, that was sort of, that's what I was told, right? And so, I prepared like crazy for that first class.

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  For these 18-year-olds, you mean?

• 53:19Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, they're like 20, this is HBS.

• 53:21Lewis Howes?

  Grad students.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  So, they're like, they're like 28.

• 53:23Lewis Howes?

  Okay, got you.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  They're pretty smart, they're pretty accomplished.

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  They've already accomplished stuff in their life and their...

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I really prepared, like crazy, but I realized that I was approaching it with this like, as a warrior. And, like, first of all, that's not who I am.

• 53:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  And second...

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  The roller skating warrior.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, the roller skating deadhead warrior.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  I, I like people, you know? So, I'm like, "Why, why would I assume that they are looking for me to fail? That they're like sniffing blood? That doesn't make sense. They paid a lot of money to go here.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  Come on!

• 53:55Speaker 01

  They worked like crazy to get in here. They want to have a good experience, not a bad experience." So, I decided to go in with blind trust, like blindly trusting them. And not try to sort of fake this, you know, badass, you know, personality that isn't who I am. Instead, to go in and be who I am, assume they want me to do well. And so, I went in the first day and I said to them, "Here's what I've done, here's what I love doing. You know, I've not done this before. And I'm a little nervous about this, but I think that we are all in this together and I think we want to have a good experience." So, just kind of letting you know where I am.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And I feel, I'm, I'm in touch with so many of the students from that year, that, that first year. I think...

• 54:45Lewis Howes?

  Was this pre-TED Talk?

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like... A year or two, a couple, three years maybe before my TED Talk. And that really taught me that if I trust them, they give it back to me. Right? You build trust. So I go in with blind trust. I mean, if you think about like in life, you can either in these situations, trust or not trust. Like which, which mistake would you rather be, make? Would you rather trust and be, and be wrong or not trust and be wrong? Like I'd rather trust and be wrong. Usually it's not that dangerous. I mean, there are some situations where you probably shouldn't trust. But I'm talking about just like average situations. Why not just trust and occasionally you'd be wrong and somebody actually is.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Right?

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  They humiliate you or they are.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  But it's totally, but if you go in and you don't trust anybody, nothing good comes of that. If they're, if they're trustworthy, you're not going to build a relationship with them. If they're untrustworthy, you're not going to build a relationship with them anyway. I would just rather make the, that the error of over trusting than under trusting.

• 55:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool. What did you learn from that first year of teaching at the Crazy Shark?

• 55:58Speaker 01

  First of all, they're not, they're, they're people just like everybody else. Like they've got insecurities too. And, and you know, like 75 to 85% of HBS students at some time feel imposter syndrome. Like they're insecure as well. Like, I mean, I don't, they're, they're no more insecure, but they've got the same stuff that they're dealing with. And you know, there are a lot of like really wonderful people in there. And the more they, the more you give them trust and get it back, the more they're building trust with each other. So I, I, I just learned to go into every audience and assume that they want me to do well.

• 56:34Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 56:34Speaker 01

  And that of all the things, it's funny because my, my son. You know, he gets performance anxiety, like probably every musician. And it's funny because people are always like, can't you, like, this is your thing. I mean, to me, they're like, how does your son have any performance? Like, well, he's human, but also I'm his mom, right? So it's not easy to learn this stuff from your mom.

• 56:57Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  But that's the one that works the best for him. I said, why would you go in to a performance situation, a musical performance situation and assume they want you to fail? They don't want you to fail. They want to see you do well.

• 57:10Lewis Howes?

  They want to be there.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  They really want to be there, right? Exactly. So he says that's the one that helps him the most.

• 57:15Lewis Howes?

  And just having that thought in your mind before you enter that. They want the best for me. They want to have a good time.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  Something I was nervous for a long time was public speaking. And I did, I did a social challenge for myself where every week I went to Toastmasters.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:28Lewis Howes?

  And the first week I wrote out word for word my five minute speech, which is called an icebreaker. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Toastmasters or if you've been before. And I remember saying to myself, I prepared for two weeks for a five minute speech. I was so terrified.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:43Lewis Howes?

  Again, I was 24, going in to a room of really great speakers, who were all much older than me, executives, you know, professional speakers. And I chose that one. I went to five different Toastmasters clubs in Columbus, Ohio. And I chose that one because it was the scariest for me.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  Ah, that's interesting.

• 58:03Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, I don't want to go to the easy place. I want to go to a place that's going to really like challenge me. And it terrified me. I remember I wrote it out word for word and I practiced it for a couple of weeks. And I could not look up the first time. I had to stay here, like looking here word for word and dripping sweat, just humiliated and embarrassed. But luckily, they're there to give you positive feedback. It's not a bad crowd.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Right, they are, that's true.

• 58:27Lewis Howes?

  It's not like I'm putting myself in front of, you know, critics that are really going to make me feel bad. They're there to say, you know, here's what you did well. Here's what you can do better next time.

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  But I did that for a year until I felt like I had the confidence and I could go out and get paid to do it. And for years, I would go speak in front of big audiences and get paid well, but I still had a little bit of nerves. And I was like, why have I not gotten rid of this? And I called one of my coaches, this was probably like five years ago. I called one of my coaches and I said, I don't know why I'm still nervous before these events. I've been doing this for so long, I shouldn't be, now I'm beating myself up. I shouldn't be nervous now. And he said, "The reason you're nervous is because you're still worried about what people think about you. You're still thinking of you, like, making sure you remember that joke, or making sure you're funny here, or you don't mess up, or what if I forget this thing?" You're thinking about-

• 59:15Speaker 01

  That's the distraction, right?

• 59:17Lewis Howes?

  And he was like, "If you just put your attention on, how can I be of service, knowing I'm not gonna be perfect? How can I help and add value and entertain or educate, knowing I'm gonna forget a joke, or knowing that the pause isn't gonna be there, or knowing that I'm gonna stutter? Just let it go, and just be of service." And when I came from that place, I was like, "I'm just gonna serve, and I know I'm not gonna be perfect."

• 59:40Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 59:40Lewis Howes?

  And that has helped me let go of those nerves. I still feel like, you know, the excitement feeling-

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:47Lewis Howes?

  But it's more like, okay, every time I feel like I'm nervous or anxious, this is all about service.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:52Lewis Howes?

  And my friend Rory Vaden says, "It's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service."

• 59:57Speaker 01

  That's so true.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  And so I just give your heart to the audience.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  That's the sort of, I mean, it's very related to this trust piece, right? Like, they want to get something out of this.

• 1:00:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  That made me think of two things. One was that I once asked the person at HBS who I thought was like the best teacher, I said to her, "When did you realize that you..." Like, it's clear that she knows she's really good at this, right? "When did you realize that?" And she said, "I went from being a good teacher to a great teacher. The moment that I stopped thinking about what they were thinking of me, and started just thinking about what they were thinking."

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh!

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Right? So I cared about what they... Like, I started watching their faces, where they confused about something that I said. Like, so it wasn't about me, it was about the content-

• 1:00:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:52Speaker 01

  And helping them to learn.

• 1:00:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  And I thought that was really good. You know, stop thinking about what they're thinking of you, and start thinking about what they're thinking.

• 1:00:59Lewis Howes?

  Why is that so hard for us to do in general?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's back to that social rejection piece. Because we're environmentally like, sorry, evolutionarily attuned to looking for signals that we're gonna get kicked out.

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  And I don't know why we're still like that, you know? And I don't know of a culture where people aren't like that. You know, it's not like I can think of a society where people aren't, don't have that happening.

• 1:01:23Lewis Howes?

  So that was one thing you said you were gonna say. Do you remember the second thing?

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  No!

• 1:01:27Lewis Howes?

  That was a great example.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I did remember, actually. It's that people love... Okay, so the best performances are performances that have never happened before and will never happen again. So in front of a live audience, like when you go see a show... Part of why I love The Dead, The Grateful Dead, The Dead and Company, is because they have never played the same show twice. Like every single show, thousands of shows, is completely different. They've never played the same setlist for the entire setlist twice.

• 1:02:00Lewis Howes?

  They always change it?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Never, yes.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  Might be one song different and replaced, but they always...

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  No, no, it's really mixed up. Like it's really changed. And there are all these jams in between. So I mean, there are just no two shows that are even close to being identical.

• 1:02:13Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And that's part of what people love about it. They don't... Yes, sometimes, sometimes they forget the lyrics. But that's because they've got like, you know, 500 songs in their catalog, right? So, but nobody cares. In fact, like last year, I mean, sorry, last night at Chula Vista, Bob Weir forgot the lyrics.

• 1:02:30Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  It just like for a minute, and people loved it. The crowd like roared. They love that.

• 1:02:36Lewis Howes?

  They're cheering him on to remember it again.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's just like, you're real, you're here with us, you are being here with us. So I always say, give people an experience that has never happened before and that will never happen again. That doesn't mean you have to rewrite a completely new speech, but know that audience, know who they are, and don't be overscripted. You know, people want it to be a bit raw.

• 1:02:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  And, you know, they remember the performance where somebody, you know, dropped their Katari pick and had to pick and didn't have another one, or that's... It's like, I got to see that thing.

• 1:03:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the mic went out and you had to scream or whatever, yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  So I think that making mistakes actually is not only not bad, but it's, it makes you more human and relatable.

• 1:03:20Lewis Howes?

  More interesting.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  More interesting, right, and more memorable, for sure, more memorable.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  Identity came to my mind just now. And I'm curious about your research or just your personal findings on shaping our own identity with ourselves, shaping our identity, having an identity, and how that helps us, how that either helps us or hurts us with our confidence and our personal power.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there's so many different kinds of identities that we can have. I think that when we get, I mean, there's...

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Is it important to have a specific type of identity? Is it important to have a wide range of identities, of things that we're into?

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Tell me what kind of identity you're talking about.

• 1:04:02Lewis Howes?

  Like, an identity is, you know, I'm a man from Ohio. I grew up in Ohio. You know, I love football. You know, I love park, you know, all these different things that are our likes, interests, and that we identify as.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Well, I think that we, like, the self-affirmation stuff is all about values. And so, your identity, like, your identity is your values. And that, I think, is great. Being true to your values is great. The values I'm talking about are not values that need to be flexible, they can be wide, right? But I think that when we get really identified with a certain group or interest, it can get dangerous. I mean, I think first, we stop thinking for ourselves, and we start becoming much more, much more concerned about remaining part of the group than about...

• 1:04:52Lewis Howes?

  Our value, our personal value.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, we compromise ourselves to be in the group. And, and I think that that can be really dangerous. Like, we're losing our sense of agency, for sure, but also, you know, might be doing things that are not, are not good.

• 1:05:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Like, not healthy for us or for other people. So, that, that, I think, can be, I think we need to stay in check around, around identity in that way. Just because it's what most people in the group are doing doesn't mean it's what I need to be doing.

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  What is something we can do, I guess, to reflect on or give ourselves feedback on, on a, you know, yearly or monthly or daily basis that's, that supports that?

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I think, and this is not empirical, I'm just, this is kind of off the cuff, but I've been thinking about this a little bit lately, like... You know, thinking about what are my identity groups that I chose? Like, what are my chosen identity groups? And, you know, are there things that have happened in those identity groups that I don't agree with? But I didn't do anything to correct it? Or I kind of let it slide? Like, how can I keep myself honest about these identity groups?

• 1:06:04Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  You know, so...

• 1:06:06Lewis Howes?

  Because you may like the Grateful Dead.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  But there may be things that happen at the concerts that you don't acknowledge or you don't like.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:06:15Lewis Howes?

  But you don't want to be, "Well, I'm never going to watch or support the Grateful Dead again because this happened."

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:06:20Lewis Howes?

  But how can I make sure, yeah? I can enjoy a hobby and an interest, but not the identity of that thing.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  That's right. And, yeah, and so I think that, yeah, there are things that happen at shows that I, you know, haven't been liking lately. Like, you know, we talked about this a bit, like, people being very territorial in the front space, which is called the pit. You know, about their space and being really nasty to each other. That kind of goes against, to me, the whole sort of essence of that community.

• 1:06:49Speaker 01

  And I get angry about it. Like, you know, and I... Part of it feels like righteous anger, like, "I want you to not be that way." But I also need to check myself. Like, I don't want to contribute to the anger either. But it also doesn't, like, because it's imperfect, doesn't mean that I have to leave it.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Right? Because I get into that trap sometimes. I sort of get into the, like, "Oh, there's something wrong. I probably shouldn't do this anymore." And I need to accept that nothing's perfect. And I'm still allowed to love imperfect things as long as I'm checking myself.

• 1:07:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 1:07:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it makes sense. No, it makes sense, yeah, yeah, for sure. There's the, um, we talked about this a little bit earlier, about the kind of fake it till you make it thing. But it's more of like facing it till you make it, I think, is what, how you reframe it, right?

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  I say fake it till you become it.

• 1:07:41Lewis Howes?

  Fake it till you become it?

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Because it's hard to, well, it's... What, you know, why is fake it till you make it harmful? If it's like, I'm gonna just keep faking and hopefully that'll happen.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  I think the problem, and it depends on how people interpret it, I realize. But the way I interpret fake it till you make it is kinda like, you know, sort of, you know, the slick salesperson who like really does not buy what they're selling, but they're gonna sell hard.

• 1:08:13Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:08:14Speaker 01

  And, and never, and they're going to be faking, they will, yeah, making it might be, you know, being promoted or making a lot of money. But they're, they're, they're still faking it, right? You, you don't really ever, faking it till you make it means faking it, getting the promotion and continuing to fake it.

• 1:08:34Lewis Howes?

  Faking it, yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 01

  Right? Fake it till you become it, and it's also about what you're conveying to other people. Faking it till you become it, the way that I think of this is you're, you're tricking yourself into believing in yourself, right? You're tricking yourself into, you know, like incrementally,

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  be a little bit more courageous.

• 1:08:57Lewis Howes?

  Every time, yeah.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  And eventually you become the person that you are in your mind's eye as your best self. Right, so you're not becoming, you're basically, it's like,

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  I kind of think of it visually, like, you know, you're this, you know, we're, we're not just shells, but think of yourself as a shell and you're sort of half-full. You know, faking it till you become it is sort of filling that, filling that shell more and more and more.

• 1:09:24Lewis Howes?

  You're partially, you're partially, but you're not fully yet.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  You're getting there.

• 1:09:27Lewis Howes?

  Because imposter syndrome is a, is a term that's been thrown around a lot in the last couple of years.

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Lewis Howes?

  I'm hearing it all the time, everyone's saying, not everyone, but a lot of people are saying, I feel a sense of imposter syndrome, like I don't belong, or I'm not ready, or I don't have the, whatever.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:42Lewis Howes?

  For me... I have, I felt like I had nothing at the beginning and I was just like, I'm just gonna throw myself in and if it works, great. And if it doesn't, I have, I have nothing to embarrass myself because I had nothing. I was living on my sister's couch for a year and a half. I had no money. I didn't have a college degree. So I was like, there's nowhere else I can go that's worse than where I'm at.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Lewis Howes?

  I didn't have anything to lose.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Lewis Howes?

  I was just like, I have nothing to lose, so I'm gonna throw myself in there and hopefully certain things happen. So I didn't feel like an imposter. I felt like I'm an experience and I need to figure out how to gain experience. By learning skills, by finding mentors, by reading, by consuming content and developing more confidence.

• 1:10:21Lewis Howes?

  But why has imposter syndrome been, become such a popular phrase? And is there a way to actually overcome it? Or are we always gonna kind of feel like imposters if we're constantly growing? Because there's a new thing that next year I've never done and I'm gonna try to do that I am an imposter because I've never done it. So I'm gonna feel a sense of, oh, well, I've never done this, so here we go. If I'm growing as an individual, right?

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Well, it's

• 1:10:47Lewis Howes?

  We should always feel it in a sense.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Definitely. So I think, okay, to the question about, well, I don't know why it became, it's again, it's a catchy, it's a sticky, it's a sticky term to describe an experience that's pretty, pretty universal. And so it became, it's funny because it's, to social psychologists, it's like a thing that's, we've talked about since the 1970s. Not that I was talking much in the 1970s, but, but it, you know, that it was coined in the 1970s. And it's so, in academia, it's something we talk about. But it really got sticky in the last, like, you know, I, I do think that like, I, that I talk about in the TED Talk. I think that was part of it. I think there were some other books that came out that were talking about it.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  And, and it, it just captures the experience so well of feeling like an imposter in your own life, right? But the interesting thing is that, well, first, the woman who coined the term, Pauline Clance, who was teaching at Oberlin at the time, in the 70s.

• 1:11:46Lewis Howes?

  Really, in Ohio?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ohio.

• 1:11:48Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:11:50Lewis Howes?

  My identity.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Your identity?

• 1:11:51Lewis Howes?

  My identity.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  She, well, first of all, she said, She says that she wishes she had not called it a syndrome. Because a syndrome implies that it's pathological. And rare, like it's unusual. And it's actually so not unusual.

• 1:12:12Lewis Howes?

  It's common, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  There are different estimates, like seventy-five to eighty-five percent of people feel imposter syndrome. Also, women do not experience it more than men. Men are just less likely to openly talk about it. So when it's anonymous, which is a burden, I think.

• 1:12:27Lewis Howes?

  And then they hold on to it.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  Because they think they're the only ones feeling it.

• 1:12:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes, they feel alone.

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  And then women get the burden of being like, oh, you always feel like imposters, right? So it cuts both ways, in bad ways. But I don't think many people stop feeling it if they keep on trying new challenges. So in my book, I interviewed Neil Gaiman, the amazing author of, you know, many, many, many, many bestsellers and, you know, super award winner. And anyway, Neil really had bad and bad. Part of why I interviewed Neil, he's a lovely human, but he's one of the only men who talked openly about having imposter syndrome. And so I wanted to talk to him for that reason.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Also, he has a way with words. But he said that in the beginning, when he first started writing and was successful, he kept being afraid that somebody was going to come and tap him on the shoulder and be like, are you Neil Gaiman? And he'd say, yes, I am. Say, oh, sorry, you know, we made a mistake.

• 1:13:32Lewis Howes?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  We're taking all this back. And then he said he finally got to the point, he'd written American Gods, which was like his big novel, he said, like that was the big, grand novel. And he said he thought he'd finally conquered imposter syndrome. And he spoke to one of his mentors and said, I think I finally conquered this. And he said, you never, I finally conquered writing a novel. And he said, you never conquer writing a novel, you just conquer writing the novel that you're writing. And so, so next time, so now a lot of his books have been turned into really wonderful television series. And he's a showrunner, right? And that was a whole new thing for him.

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  So he said, it's just, it just pops up. You see it on your desk, you're like, oh, there's the imposter. And he'll go away. And so you, you keep, you experience it every time you start something new. It just goes away faster. You don't, you don't get hung up on it. You don't become anxious about the imposter, the imposter feeling.

• 1:14:35Lewis Howes?

  And I think the more you're living your life and creating and building, if you can start to reflect on like, look at all the times I was feeling imposter syndrome, and look what I was able to create.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46Lewis Howes?

  And the, the results I got and the success or the impact that I had from making this thing or creating this thing, I can do it again.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  It's like looking backwards to see the results.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Right, so you have this transferable sense of agency. Like self-efficacy is, I mean, the way it's defined in psychology is like, it's your feel, you know, it's your belief that you're able to do this certain thing. Agency is wider than that. And this feeling of being agentic, like, and I think that when you conquer imposter syndrome again and again, you, that feeling does become transferable.

• 1:15:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Right, and, and you, you're like, this is a totally new thing, but like, I've never been part of this rodeo, but I think I'm gonna be okay.

• 1:15:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, yeah, exactly. You just know, okay, I've done this before many times, I can do it again.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  And if not, I'll be okay.

• 1:15:34Lewis Howes?

  I'll be all right, I'll survive.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:15:36Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, I'm a big believer that self-doubt is the killer of dreams. I think when we doubt ourselves, we're not breathing correctly, we're shrinking, we're not taking any actions, we don't have the courage because we're just constantly in self-doubt. Do you think we can ever have too much self-belief?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, geez, that's a tricky question. First, I think what you call self doubt, I think of as personal powerlessness.

• 1:16:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  And what happens is that it activates what we call the behavioral inhibition system. So it leads us to, you know, be more pessimistic, to be more fearful, to think more narrowly, less creatively, to not take risks, to see people as predators. It inhibits us in every way, even physically, like we can tolerate less pain when the inhibition system is activated.

• 1:16:31Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, really.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Feeling personally powerful activates the behavioral approach system, which does all of the opposite. It's like, instead of seeing a challenge as a threat, we see it as an opportunity.

• 1:16:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Instead of seeing other people as potential predators, we see them as potential allies and collaborators. You know, we feel optimistic instead of pessimistic. Now, you could, you can get to the point of feeling too powerful.

• 1:16:55Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  And, you know, in that case, I think that one of the things that, what we know that one of the things that happens is that people, they're not as good at taking other people's perspectives. So they're not as good at perspective-taking when they become really, like, and this is a lot about social power. So when people have both social power and personal power, they're not as good at taking other people's perspectives because they're...

• 1:17:23Lewis Howes?

  I mean, their feedback, or their information, or their ideas, or...

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Just understanding what other people are like.

• 1:17:28Lewis Howes?

  Or feeling.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  So it's, honestly, it's really more about social power.

• 1:17:31Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  As people gain social power, they're less dependent on others, and so that when you're, when you have not much social power, when you're at the bottom of the hierarchy, you really need to be able to read other people's minds. Like, you really need to understand what they're thinking because you're dependent on them. And as you gain more power, you're less dependent, and so you're more likely to stereotype people, you're more, you're less likely to be able to take their perspective, you just kind of forget what it feels like to be where they are.

• 1:18:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  And so I think that's, that's a problem.

• 1:18:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I think, you know, there's a lot of research on overconfidence versus confidence, and overconfidence is, um...

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  I don't even really fully understand like where it comes from. And I don't, I, I, to me, I don't think it is overconfidence. I think it's a different thing altogether.

• 1:18:26Lewis Howes?

  It's like ego.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Yes, or like arrogance, you know, it's, and overconfidence, arrogance is often coming from a place of feeling threatened and defensive.

• 1:18:39Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  And it's a smokescreen for insecurity, right? So yeah, I say it's a smokescreen for insecurity. And it's, it's a, it's a way of deflecting. It's a way of preventing people from challenging you. Because, because honestly, they don't find you pleasant. They don't challenge you because they don't like you, not because they believe you, right? So, you know, I always say confidence, not arrogance. Confidence allows, allows room to be wrong. So you, you, you can, you can hear people. When you're confident, self-affirmed, you know who you are. You're able to hear feedback, you know? You don't feel like you have to steal the, the microphone all the time.

• 1:19:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, confidence plus curiosity. It's like being willing to be, okay, I feel confident, but also I might have a beginner's mind.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Totally, and if you're confident and you, you're excited about an idea, you should want that to be as good as it can be. And so, you know, if you're around people who are offering you good feedback, confidence allows you to hear the feedback, which I think is really interesting. Like, so I love watching Shark Tank.

• 1:19:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  I love reading the body language. Yes. Jonah, my son and I used to watch this, like, when he was younger. He loves reading the body language and guessing who's gonna do well. And, and I know you've talked to people about like the body language of lying.

• 1:19:54Lewis Howes?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, it is so fascinating. I, I think like this body language of arrogance is, is really...

• 1:20:01Lewis Howes?

  You can read it, you can feel it.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, it's also, you know, body language is also non-verbal vocal cues, like a certain way of speaking and, but it's, it's like...

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  It's when they don't buy what they're selling. If you don't buy what you're selling, nobody's gonna buy what you're selling. You know, if you don't believe your story, nobody's gonna believe your story. Not at least in the long run.

• 1:20:22Lewis Howes?

  How do you learn to buy what you're selling?

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, when people say, "Well, how do I sell something that I don't believe in?" I say, "Don't."

• 1:20:30Lewis Howes?

  Don't sell it.

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  You shouldn't be doing it.

• 1:20:32Lewis Howes?

  Go find a different vision.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  That's what I think, right? I mean, you can try, but I don't think you should. You need to check in with yourself about that. Like, you know, the whole, like, for, okay, there are different reasons why we don't buy what we're selling. You could not buy what you're selling because you're actually self-doubt. You doubt your ability to sell anything.

• 1:20:51Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  Right? And that's different.

• 1:20:54Lewis Howes?

  Than the product or the vision?

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Right. Or you're, it's just not interesting to you. It's not something that you would use. But it's not that you think there's anything wrong with it. So there are a number of reasons that you can fix, right? You can, you can learn to understand, "Well, this product, you know, really is helpful and valuable to these other people, and I need to understand their perspective." Right? That's, that makes you a more effective, you know, salesperson.

• 1:21:21Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  But there are also reasons that should lead you to go, "I shouldn't be selling it."

• 1:21:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  So you need to figure out, like, is it because I don't, I don't relate to it? Or I don't believe in myself? Or is it because there's something wrong with this thing?

• 1:21:35Lewis Howes?

  Who are the people on Shark Tank that you see after their one or two-minute pitch where you're like, "They're gonna get someone interested." You know, if the numbers line up and everything works out, just based on their body language, their belief, what do they have in common where you're like, "Yes, I would invest in them"?

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  There is, well...

• 1:21:52Lewis Howes?

  Or I like them, you know?

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Okay, there are three kind of characteristics. The one, the first is that they believe, they just, you feel that they believe their story. That they just so deeply buy what they're selling. They really care about this.

• 1:22:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  And it's with their body language. Sometimes they say it... And I'm not sure that helps when they like say like the I mean and I I don't think they're necessarily lying when they say it saying it isn't it's you can just feel it. They convey it with their body language.

• 1:22:22Lewis Howes?

  Their energy, their postural feedback, everything.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  Right, there's also they're confident and not arrogant. And so they are open to feedback.

• 1:22:31Lewis Howes?

  They're not like this is the greatest thing in the world.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Completely like the arrogance is just it just kills the it kills the whole the all the energy no why would a shark want to invest if you're clearly not open to feedback if you think you have all the answers.

• 1:22:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  And if you start conveying that right away, you're out.

• 1:22:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, why are you here in the first place?

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  Right, so you have to buy what you're selling and convey that you you have to you have to be confident and not arrogant.

• 1:22:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  And and that is like I said, you show your confidence through your openness, your willingness to be open. It's not insecurity, it's not like oh I mean if you don't if you don't know the numbers, you're out. You do need to know the numbers, you need to know certain things. But you can't know everything, that's why you're there.

• 1:23:15Lewis Howes?

  Right, because you need support.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Totally, and the last thing is that their their their verbal and nonverbal language is synchronized. So what they're conveying with their words, the feelings they're conveying with their words match the feelings they're conveying with their body language. And you know, if you see somebody like trying to you know demonstrate like deep care in an issue, but their body language just doesn't line up with it.

• 1:23:44Lewis Howes?

  They're crossing their arms, they're turning their side or whatever, yeah.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, or or or if they're trying to convey, I don't know, like you know, confidence, but they're showing fear that when we when we are you know, fully present and just you know, in in it, that stuff becomes synchronized. We're not scripting our body language, we're bad at scripting our body language. We're best at scripting our words, second best at scripting our facial expressions-ish.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  But below the neck, we forget about it all. Like, you know, like, people don't know what to do with their hands, for example. Right? There's like, I don't know what. There used to, there was a 30 Rock episode about this.

• 1:24:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  About not knowing what to do.

• 1:24:27Lewis Howes?

  Will Ferrell is just like, he's like in the...

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  I can't remember, I just remember there were so many, yeah, there was a whole episode about not being able, not knowing what to do with your hands. But, and people really don't pay attention to what they're doing with their feet and their legs. Like, I don't know if you...

• 1:24:40Lewis Howes?

  How important is body language with the feet and the hands when building trust and confidence with others?

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  It's funny, have you ever had Joe Navarro on?

• 1:24:48Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Do you know who he is? Former FBI agent?

• 1:24:51Lewis Howes?

  I want to have him on, yes.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  You should. He's great. He's such a character. I love Joe. He's a great guy also. But he, he has many body language books, but one of them is called What Everybody Is Saying.

• 1:25:03Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  Which I love.

• 1:25:04Lewis Howes?

  Great.

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  It's clever. And, you know, he really gets into the nitty gritty, but he says one of the things as an FBI agent, I think he did like counterintelligence, was, was to pay attention to people's feet. Like, so if they, if you're questioning, and I'm not saying that this is, and I don't know what the, what the empirical evidence is on it. But that, like, if somebody looks like, if their feet are turned away from you and they, like, they want to run, he's paying attention to that. So he, like, if they're, but it's more if their feet are turned toward you and they don't seem afraid, he's more likely to believe them. Right? Like, if they, if they, they...

• 1:25:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  Right? But if their feet...

• 1:25:48Lewis Howes?

  They're not hiding something, yeah.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  That's the asynchrony.

• 1:25:50Lewis Howes?

  Hey, I'm here, open body position.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  If they're like, I'm fine. Exactly. And their feet are, so, yeah, he thinks the feet are really important.

• 1:25:56Lewis Howes?

  More than the hands?

• 1:25:57Speaker 01

  Um, well, only because, only because people are so unaware of what they're doing with their feet. So it's not that necessarily...

• 1:26:04Lewis Howes?

  You can hide your hands, you can put them in your pocket, yeah.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. They're just not thinking at all that my feet are going to give me away. Just kind of interesting.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  But yeah, but also I think there's really a lot of evidence that that you know that feet being grounded is is really important to how you feel, right? So like, you know, walking around if you're speaking or something, I know this is like I'm kind of switching a bit here, but feet can really help you feel better, you know, not like sometimes people will stand with their ankles crossed or not totally balanced. Like make sure that your feet, you feel that you're grounded and you feel that string, right?

• 1:26:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  I have a friend named Rachel Kossar, who used to be a professional ballet dancer and a rhythmic gymnast, and she does body language training now. And she's really into the that feeling of being grounded and how much that helps you. Like, yes, you're connected to the ceiling, but you're also safe. You're you're connected to the floor.

• 1:27:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  Like, you're not going to fall through it. There's no trap door. You know, allow yourself to find energy in that feeling grounded.

• 1:27:15Lewis Howes?

  It's fascinating how how many psychologists talk about body language, the power of body language to him just improve the quality of your life. I know Jordan Peterson, I think in his book, 12 Rules for Life, I think one of the first rules is

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Sit up straight.

• 1:27:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, put your back straight.

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've heard that.

• 1:27:29Lewis Howes?

  Put your back up straight. It's like the rule of life.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  That's the whole just

• 1:27:32Lewis Howes?

  Put your shoulders back.

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Neutral posture, right?

• 1:27:34Lewis Howes?

  Right? It's just like

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  The funny thing about that is

• 1:27:36Lewis Howes?

  You'll have more confidence. You'll you'll get more opportunities. People will like you more. It's like

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I think that like the the funny thing about sit up straight is that, you know, a lot of us heard it as kids from grandparents.

• 1:27:49Lewis Howes?

  We resented it, right?

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  But also, I think part of it was because we were told to do it out of to show respect to others. And and the thing is, it's actually more about showing respect to yourself.

• 1:28:00Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Like be selfish. You like that one?

• 1:28:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's good.

• 1:28:05Speaker 01

  Sit up straight to respect yourself.

• 1:28:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  And if you respect yourself, you're more likely to be able to respect others. You know, it's, it's, you have to feel good about yourself to be able to treat others with sort of generosity and respect.

• 1:28:20Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  So I think if we tell kids, well, you know, if you sit up straight, you know, you're gonna feel better about yourself. They're more likely to be open to that.

• 1:28:30Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna feel more confident, you're gonna love yourself more, you're gonna feel happier. You're gonna have more to offer others as well.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:36Lewis Howes?

  When you respect yourself, like you said, you're gonna have more generosity, hopefully.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:40Lewis Howes?

  Or more.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  So the whole like, sit up straight, you're being rude. If you don't sit up straight, you know, kids are like, well, then I'm just gonna be rude.

• 1:28:48Lewis Howes?

  It's so funny because, you know, the, the, our parents' story of make your bed in the morning, you know, was something that I

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:28:55Lewis Howes?

  I never did until I actually went to a boarding school that was kind of similar. They graded you every morning in the dorm.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Oh, geez.

• 1:29:04Lewis Howes?

  To make the bed at six thirty. It wasn't military, but it was like, it was just a strict kind of boarding school with rules and, you know, dress code and all that stuff. And I remember just like, after that, when I went to college, I was like, I'm just gonna, you know, wake up and let the bed be messy.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:19Lewis Howes?

  And then when I got to, I think it was like in my late twenties, I was like, I just don't feel good when I come back and look at a messy space. Let me try this out. Let me just start making my bed every morning and just spending two minutes, even though it's kind of a hassle, like, let me do this. So I can come back and just feel at peace in my, my resting space.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:36Lewis Howes?

  Not messy.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:38Lewis Howes?

  And then I'm like, I wish I would've wrote the book Make Your Bed, because that came out like five years later and it became like this massive speech and phenomenon. And I was like,

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:29:46Lewis Howes?

  What our moms told us growing up, you know, for me, I was like, this has gotta be a routine. Every time I don't make the bed, I feel like I have a sloppier day.

• 1:29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:54Lewis Howes?

  I feel less productive, I feel less proud, because I disrespected my sleeping space.

• 1:30:00Speaker 01

  Yes, there's little routines like that really help. I mean, I mean, that's the whole, the whole thing about being sort of neat is, is that it's self-respecting, right? And I mean, it also, I know there's, yes, it clears your mind, right, to not have to worry about clutter. But I think the self-respect piece is a big part of it. Although for me, I was like a, I was like a, an OCD bedmaker as a kid.

• 1:30:24Lewis Howes?

  Oh, so you were like.

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  It wasn't good. Like, people could, if somebody sat on it, I'd be like.

• 1:30:29Lewis Howes?

  Cleaning it?

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was weird. I had, you know, a lot of kids have, can go through OCD periods and not have it as an adult. But I definitely had some weird.

• 1:30:38Lewis Howes?

  Do you still have it as an adult?

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:40Lewis Howes?

  You can hug people, you can be messy.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Sadly, I don't with the bedmaking.

• 1:30:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, now you're messing bed, yeah, but.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's funny, because to me, you know, being a grown up is about having freedom, you know.

• 1:30:53Lewis Howes?

  You're like, I wanna do what I wanna do now.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it's like, I have a lot of flexibility right now.

• 1:30:57Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  And my son, like, called me the other day, it's like 10 o'clock, and he's like, "Are you still in bed?" And he's, I'm like, "Yep," and he's like, "Why?" And I'm like, "'Cause I'm a grown up."

• 1:31:06Lewis Howes?

  'Cause I can do what I want. Yeah, I can do what I want.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:31:09Lewis Howes?

  So funny. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it's more of like, just what are the routines that are gonna help you be the optimized for that day? And that season of life.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:19Lewis Howes?

  There's certainly months where I'm like,

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:31:21Lewis Howes?

  "Okay, I'm just gonna sleep in, and I'm not gonna do what I wanna, you know, what I know I could do to be optimal performance." But that's the season where I need right now, rest recovery season.

• 1:31:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:31:30Lewis Howes?

  So it's, it's being okay with that as well, and not being so militant, like, every moment. Which I think that's not helpful either.

• 1:31:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Lewis Howes?

  You're too obsessed.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  No, for sure. I, absolutely.

• 1:31:40Lewis Howes?

  Gotta hit every routine, all the time, and every minute.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  Yep, absolutely.

• 1:31:43Lewis Howes?

  Wake up at the same, you know, that's a lot.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  They have to be your routines that work for you.

• 1:31:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  I was talking to a, a friend of mine who was a, an Olympic skier, and a national, national champion in, in women's downhill.

• 1:31:56Lewis Howes?

  Lindsey Vonn?

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  No, but her name is Alex Wubbles.

• 1:31:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  And she's a fascinating person, because she also, she had a second wave of fame.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  I mean, she was pre downhill skiing, getting a lot of attention, right? So that was like, 98 to 2002 was like her era. Her maiden name was Schaefer, so, anyway, but her married name is Alex Wubbles. She became famous again about five years ago because she she's now an emergency room nurse. And she was working at a hospital in Utah, the University of Utah. And a there was a there was a an act a car accident, there was a patient, she specialized in burn victims. He was badly burned, he was unconscious.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  And a police officer wanted a blood sample from him to see if he was he had alcohol in his system. By the way, it turned out he did not, and it was the other person who was drunk. But really not the point. The point was that you cannot take a blood sample unless you have a a warrant. Or verbal permission.

• 1:33:10Lewis Howes?

  He was unconscious.

• 1:33:12Speaker 01

  Right, so he couldn't get verbal permission, and they did not have the authority to do it. And she was defending this man and and it nobody else really was. I mean, they they weren't they were they were kind of being bystanders. And she was doing exactly by the books what she was supposed to be doing. Her voice is shaking. She's clearly really scared and not getting support. Yeah, sorry, it's all in video. And this police officer eventually he's just. This is this is not a statement about police officers. This is just an agitated guy, okay? And who was just like, I'm gonna get this blood sample. He throws her against the wall and handcuffs her.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  And throws her into his cruiser and arrests her. And she's screaming, it's like ninety degrees outside the window. It's a it's a really upsetting scene. And she absolutely did the right thing. So she became, you know, known as people as a super brave person and who what she is. And I knew I wanted to interview her for my next book. And but I didn't know her. I'm giving a talk at the Association of Critical Care Nurses. It's like ten thousand people. It was it happened to be in Boston. And I did, I think, the longest book signing line of my life. Nurses really relate to this material, I think.

• 1:34:38Lewis Howes?

  Grey's Anatomy, it's been on there five times, so they watch it.

• 1:34:41Speaker 01

  I think that like, there's a lot of power stuff going on in healthcare. It's tough and.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  They're exhausted and anyway, I did the sign line and there's one and I was really tired. I loved signing lines. I love talking to people, but I was like exhausted. After five hours, you're like, okay. It was a few hours and I, there was one last person and she was with a man. And the man walks over and as she approaches, I see who it is. And he says, I don't know if you know who this is. And I just like. Wow, you're already tired. Yeah, yeah. She's crying. Like, I knew exactly who it was. We embraced. I mean, we just like held on to each other. And she's like, you mean so much to me. Like, you've helped, your work has helped me so much. And I'm like, I am such, you know, I'm such a fan of you.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  And I wanted to reach out to you. Anyway, it was Alex Wubbles. I did not know at the time that she is, she was an incredibly good skier, you know, and national champion many times. And I love skiing. Anyway, it turned out then we lived in Park City for seven months through the pandemic. And, and she lives very close by and we've got to be very close friends during that time. Anyway, what's interesting is that she's a physically brave and socially brave person. Like, to ski like that. Also, she's like the nicest person on earth. Like, she gave us, she would give us ski lessons and be like, well, what do you want to achieve today? Like, just for fun, you know, and like my husband wanted to be able to get his hips on the ground, you know, and she's like, we're gonna make that happen. And by the end of the day, and she like, she cheers,

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  you know, she's cheering for you. She's a great person. But I said, what is, like, what are the similarities? You know, physically, you know, going down the mountain, you know, 70 miles per hour and being brave in that situation. And she said for her, it's about like following her own kind of rulebook. She said, the best skiers are not skiers who, who have like a one size, like, take a one size fits all approach. Like, you know.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  You know, Lindsey Vonn, you know, she, she likes fashion. She likes style and people were really critical of that.

• 1:36:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  And it's like, she's got to be able to be who she is to be the best at what she does. Why are you bothered that she likes to wear makeup and, and, you know, have nice clothing? Why, why does that bother people? The more she was able to be who she was, the better skier she was. And Alex said it was the same for her. The more she was able to do it her way.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  And she had a coach who recognized that, like she could not, she needed an off day before, before, um, races. And he, he was like, okay, I'm not going to force you to race. Like, I realize that for you, you're going to perform better if you can do it that way. The bravery thing, but there is, there's this, this, she said, for me in that moment, I knew that like, I could not live with myself if I did not, like this was just the right thing to do.

• 1:37:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  And, and I had no, she said, there was no question that I was going to do this. And, and she said, I was following my rulebook. She said, to me, that's what's important. I knew that, that justice was important, justice in this sense of, you know, protecting this man's, you know, sort of freedom.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  His rights. And she said, I, um, I, I just knew that. And I knew when I was skiing that I had to do it my way. And that allowed me to be, you know, brave and perform at my best. So I think that that's really important. You got to figure out like, what are your, again, it's back to like, what are your values? Like, and how can you be true to them? But she's just, yeah, she's pretty.

• 1:38:25Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 1:38:28Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I could talk to you for another few hours.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:38:30Lewis Howes?

  But I want to, I want to bring us home here. And we're going to have you back on when the book comes out.

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  God.

• 1:38:36Lewis Howes?

  And have you on for another long session. Where we're both recovered from surgery and yes.

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:38:45Lewis Howes?

  But I feel like actually the pain has been going away throughout this.

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  Good.

• 1:38:50Lewis Howes?

  Early in the day, the pain was heightening, but with you, I feel like I've just been so excited about learning this. That this, this information's been so powerful. I've got so many notes here.

• 1:38:59Speaker 01

  Oh, good.

• 1:38:59Lewis Howes?

  Uh, so I'm just excited to go back through all this stuff.

• 1:39:03Lewis Howes?

  Uh, this is a, before I ask the final couple of questions, again, I want to thank you, Amy, for being here. This is.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 1:39:09Lewis Howes?

  Really inspiring.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Thanks for making this work.

• 1:39:11Lewis Howes?

  Heard so many great things about you from all mutual friends over the years.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Likewise, yes.

• 1:39:14Lewis Howes?

  I'm glad we were going to make this work.

• 1:39:17Lewis Howes?

  How can we, before I ask the final questions, how can we be of support to you right now? What's the thing that we could do to?

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:39:23Lewis Howes?

  Is there somewhere we can go on your? What's social media are you most active on? Your website? Can we opt in for your newsletter? Can we get your books? Is there a speaking tour you're doing? What can we do?

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  You know, follow me on social media. I'm on LinkedIn for sure.

• 1:39:37Lewis Howes?

  Is that your main place?

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  It's funny, I have the most followers on LinkedIn. And I don't post that often because I, you know, I want to post like really good, like high sort of longer, high-quality content on there. Twitter, Instagram, you know? Keep up with me on social media.

• 1:39:52Lewis Howes?

  Amy Cuddy everywhere, right?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  And, um, yeah. And, you know, be, like, for me, it's just like sort of, be brave. Like, that, that would make me really happy. And it's okay if you say like, you know,

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  you tag me when you do it. Like, I wanna, I wanna see it happening. But, you know, when you see, for example, somebody being like bullied on social media, the way to handle that is not to attack the person attacking them. It's say something nice about them in the comments. Like, support them. It could be totally unrelated. Just say, you know, say you see something, somebody being, you know, trolled or whatever, and, and there's a pile on. Because that, that looks like the norm. So more and more people are doing it. Change the norm by being nice. Say, hey, um, so-and-so, you know, I really liked that thing you shared last week, and this is how it helped me. And you'll, you'll, it's amazing. What you'll see is more and more people will start being positive. That's a way of being brave.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Like, be the one to make the first positive comment to turn things around.

• 1:40:57Lewis Howes?

  I love that.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  That would be, that would make me feel supported.

• 1:41:00Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Yeah, so if you're on Instagram, make sure to share this and tag Amy. Again, Amy Cuddy over on Instagram. Tag her that you're watching this or listening to this over on YouTube. Leave a comment below. Leave something positive about this. The thing that you enjoyed the most about this over on YouTube as well. Okay, there's a question that I ask everyone at the end. It's called the three truths question.

• 1:41:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:26Lewis Howes?

  So it's a hypothetical question.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:41:28Lewis Howes?

  Imagine, many years away, it's your last day on this earth. You've lived as long as you want to live, and you've accomplished all the dreams, and you have the life you want. But for whatever reason, everything you've ever created, your written word, this video content, has to go somewhere else. It's not on this earth anymore.

• 1:41:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:41:46Lewis Howes?

  So it goes when you go.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 1:41:48Lewis Howes?

  Hypothetical. And the only thing you get to leave behind are three truths. Three lessons that you've learned that you would share with the world. What would you say would be those three truths for you?

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:42:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes, off the cuff.

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, this is really hard.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  The whole haters gonna hate philosophy, like the idea that people are just, they're just bad people and, and people are just gonna be bad, don't buy into that. Just keep trying. That, the, the, the only thing that makes that absolutely true, is if we believe it's absolutely true. You know, so keep trying to be, to, to be a better person, to model better behavior, to be optimistic about people, to, to, to have grace.

• 1:42:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  That's the, I think that's the most important one.

• 1:42:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay, that's number one.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  The second is, you know, you know, I'm gonna quote Maya Angelou, "Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances." So, uh, that is, again, Maya Angelou, not me, but I love that, what it captures, which is, carry yourself with a sense of pride and, you know, and, and, um, and self-respect, and you will become more self-respecting and you will treat others better.

• 1:43:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  That's the second.

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  The third, I think, is, like, we just leave room for people to, um, to be weird. Like, you know what, let people let their freak flags fly. Like, don't put people in a box. Let people be different. Like, appreciate it. Just, just stop judging, like do your thing, let your freak flag fly and let other people do the same thing. Like if they're being, if they're not hurting other people, you know, I just, I like give people space to be themselves.

• 1:43:39Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:43:40Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:43:41Lewis Howes?

  Those are powerful. I love those truths. Before I ask the final question, Amy, I want to acknowledge you for all that you've done, all the research, all the work, all the giving back to serve people and helping them gain confidence.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:43:54Lewis Howes?

  And improve the quality of their life.

• 1:43:57Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:43:57Lewis Howes?

  That's what my mission is with the School of Greatness, is to help people improve the quality of their life. And it's to bring people on like yourself that I've been inspired by for a long time to teach what you know. You have this information, this knowledge from deep research, practical experience and teaching it to so many people that this audience could really use. So I'm grateful for your consistent dedication. I'm grateful for you being weird and starting to express that more on social media in the world and accepting that, you know, socially by posting the stuff that is unique to you, the things that you love and, and reminding us that we need to continue to be unique to ourselves as well and be willing to share that.

• 1:44:38Lewis Howes?

  And acknowledge you for the generosity you have with so many people. Again, I have so many mutual friends that say you're an incredible giver, incredible kind human being.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:44:49Lewis Howes?

  So I really acknowledge you for the impact you've made on my friends.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 1:44:54Lewis Howes?

  And the person you've become. So I hope, hopefully we can be friends after this and have you back on many times. And I want to see you continue to, to, to spread this message far and wide.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. What a pleasure. It's been great.

• 1:45:08Lewis Howes?

  Final question is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  I think greatness is, it is a, it's, I think people might think of it as sort of about being the most, the sort of the best, the most competent. I think it's a, it's a combination of being, yes, your most sort of effective self, but also your most generous self. So greatness has to combine those two qualities, right? It's, it's about, it's about being both generous and, and, you know, capable.

• 1:45:38Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening. 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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, 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.