Your Pain Pushes You Until Your Vision Pulls You | Michael Beckwith

Michael Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center (est. November 30, 1986) and author of seven books including Life Visioning, The Answer Is You, and Spiritual Liberation, discusses his path from Morehouse College and USC psychobiology studies through Black Panther Party-aligned activism to spiritual leadership. Topics include his Synthesis Dialogues with the Dalai Lama, presenting Nelson Mandela the Season for Nonviolence Award, induction with Bishop Desmond Tutu into the Martin Luther King Order of Preachers, and United Nations addresses.

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

• 0:02Lewis Howes?

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• 0:46Lewis Howes?

  For those that don't know what Agape is, you started it when and what is it exactly?

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Our first Sunday service was November the 30th, 1986.

• 0:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Actually being a strong representation of diversity, inclusivity, spiritual community.

• 1:03Lewis Howes?

  You grew up in a church, Methodist church, right? And then you left when you were a teenager?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, I was attending Holman's Methodist Church as a child and also another church. And Holman's Methodist Church was where I actually met Martin Luther King Jr.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and my mother introduced me to him. I shook his hand and I said, Mom, he has such soft hands. And my mother said, baby, he does a different kind of work.

• 1:31Lewis Howes?

  He's not building buildings.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So yeah, I grew up there as a teenager. I left that the paradigm was a little bit small for me and the teachings were a little dogmatic. Not at home necessarily, but I went to a congregational church after that. So as a teenager, I left, there was too much politics and I was kind of agnostic. I was pretty much agnostic, atheistic, and I remember when I was attending Morehouse College,

• 1:57Speaker 01

  me and a friend of mine who's now an attorney, we used to go out and convert Christians to atheism.

• 2:02Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Because we knew that religion, as it was being espoused, was not the real deal. And we would break it down and show people how Jesus had nothing to do with this. You know what I mean? That Christianity came a couple of hundred years after Jesus came and left and that.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  Made by other men or women or whatever, yeah.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  And so it was shocking to me that a few years later, when I was attending USC, I had a spiritual awakening in which I could see the presence everywhere in everything. And again, I didn't relegate it to religiosity. I moved more into a much more of a spiritual outlook and began to realize what Jesus was talking about, what Buddha was talking about, and what all the great teachers were talking about. It wasn't about religion, it was about freedom, it was about spirituality, it was about awakened consciousness, it was about the greatness and the beauty and the light that's within us all, of which many people who go down a religious path suffer from a paradigm blindness. They can't see outside of that particular box.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  They have a fixed mindset.

• 3:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:09Lewis Howes?

  It's a fixed set of rules and beliefs and you can't expand beyond that.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Can't go beyond that.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Otherwise, you're wrong or you're judging yourself.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Or you think you're the only one.

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right. Wow, and community is such a big part of religion, right?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of good to say about community. Of course, there's the whole social interaction, there's the service, there's the inspiration, community assists each other. People that are in some kind of community have a tendency to live longer than other people. There's a stronger support system. So spiritual community is extremely powerful.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So when you started Agape, was it, what was the foundation that was based on the principles?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, Agape means unconditional love. Again, I heard that in a speech from Dr. King when I was a little boy.

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Because he's describing in the Greek languages, the different kinds of love. And Agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. It's an unconditional, all conditional, non-agenda love. It's a total givingness of the spirit. And so having studied in metaphysics, I combined the metaphysics teachings with the spirit of Agape love. And then that became the foundation of the rise of our community.

• 4:25Lewis Howes?

  And has it been kind of the same principles for the last 32 years? Or has it evolved as you've evolved and learned new things or?

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Well, it evolves because I'm always on the verge of new insights and new revelations. But the principles, you can't really change.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  You know, the principles of oneness, the principles of inclusivity, the principles that we have infinite potential that's within us, within everyone, and that we're here to unlock that, to unleash that, to set that free, and to make a mighty difference on the planet while we're here. The principles that a thought is a unit of mental energy that transmutes itself into perception, speech, behavior, ultimately the experience. I mean, these are spiritual principles that no one has a monopoly on. So I think with spiritual practice, you just have greater insight into those principles and you teach them more and more in a much more beautiful and elegant way.

• 5:19Lewis Howes?

  What's been the biggest challenge for you as a human being, living a spiritual path over the last, you know, 30 plus years? What's been your greatest human challenge?

• 5:30Speaker 01

  I think just dealing with human beings.

• 5:32Lewis Howes?

  We're complicated people, aren't we?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I mean, it's the best and the worst in the same package. See, human beings that are on the verge of great discovery, you see miracles, you see people coming out of the depths of despair and depression and illness and sickness and addiction rising. And then you see human beings who will criticize and complain and gossip and attack all in the same day. You may get the same deal, you may, you know. And so I've learned to not embrace either one of the imposters, which is praise or criticism. I don't run towards praise, I don't run from criticism, and I just don't deal in that area. You know, I just keep my attention on that which is real and keep moving forward.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  But as far as just being, being human, we suffer everything anybody suffers from. There's loss, people die, all of that is in the human condition.

• 6:26Lewis Howes?

  What's been, you know, with all the lessons you've learned and the principles you've, you know, been studying for years, what's been the hardest thing for you to overcome in terms of like maybe a loss or a struggle or a breakup when you were younger or a death of someone? Was there something specific where you're like, man, I know how to get through this?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Lewis Howes?

  But it took me months or years to like fully heal or fully process this.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  I would say two things. One, my mother passed about six years ago. And it's not that people don't pass, but it happened suddenly. I mean, it happened.

• 6:59Lewis Howes?

  She was good and then?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  In a couple of weeks and she didn't tell us. We knew she was a cancer survivor, but she didn't tell us that it had come back. Intuitively, I went over her house every night after, after I got off of work. I just started going by there all the time. And she would say, why, why you come by every night? I said, I don't know, I'm just gonna hang out with you. I didn't know that it was close.

• 7:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And then when I was called to the hospital to see her, and it was like, what? You're leaving? And she was like in the bed, she started talking to her ancestors that were invisible. And I remember her saying, no, no, not yet, not yet. I'm gonna go home first, then I'm gonna leave. I'm like, you're gonna leave? So she went home, within a couple of weeks, she had passed over.

• 7:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  And it shook my entire family because as the matriarch, she held everything together. So it took a moment to like adjust. My father is still adjusting.

• 7:56Lewis Howes?

  Really? Six years later.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Six years later, man, he went into kind of a reclusive kind of vibe.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  I've been going over there a lot lately, helping him do a lot of things that he's been resistant to because he's such an independent guy, he was a judge, you know. And so we just, the family's just now like breathing. And then at right this moment, I've been separated from my wife for the last couple of years and we're just now moving through the legal stuff. And that's been kind of difficult.

• 8:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, how long were you married for?

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Got married in 2000, end of 2000.

• 8:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  So, but you know, there's a lot of friendship, a lot of love.

• 8:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  A lot of really good stuff we did together.

• 8:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  So I'm not naive to think that people are supposed to stay together forever, particularly with the longevity rate going up and particularly with people learning their lessons faster.

• 8:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  You know, there's a lot of people that are staying together that should be apart.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  For too long.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  For too long.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  Decades, right?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  So I'm not naive in that sense, but it's, it's an interesting lesson.

• 8:59Lewis Howes?

  Do you ever feel a sense of shame or insecurity around teaching certain principles? If you're going through certain challenges like this yourself, like if people are looking to you for counsel or advice on relationships and it might look like yours is failing or it didn't work out? Do you ever feel any?

• 9:18Speaker 01

  No, because you know, you never let anybody else define your narrative for your life. So I've been married twice, so I haven't had two failed marriages. I've had two successful marriages. The first marriage, I have two beautiful children from it, grandchildren from, from one of the.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Kids and it was my high school sweetheart. Friendship is deep. I mean, I was with her on Christmas with her husband. You know, so it's all families, all celebratory. Second marriage, very successful. We produced a lot of music, a lot of programs, a lot of people. So I don't look at those as failed relationships. I look at those as successful relationships. And when that particular form is over, it's over. And some people try to hang on to the form, you know what I mean? And they cause themselves a lot of, lot of issues.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, failed relationship is one that stays together too long without either shifting or reinventing it or bringing that sense of peace and love together when you stay miserable. I feel, I feel like that's more of a failure.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  It's a deep failure.

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  Even though you stayed together, if there's not love and real respect.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  You know, you're not growing together anymore.

• 10:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  You know, I have a, had a friend of mine that him and his wife were together for, since high school. It was like, it was obvious after a while that they were just to be friends and move forward, you know what I mean? And they would never do it. And he ended up dying. I'm not saying he died from that. But I often thought that, you know, you didn't go for your life. You ended up wanting to live with an image that we were together for X amount of years and all of that.

• 10:53Lewis Howes?

  Why do we hold on to that so much? That image of like, we're gonna make it work or it has to look a certain way for us to be respected in our communities or?

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Because people have a tendency to care more about what other people are thinking about them than what their soul wants. And so they live from, oh, what is so and so gonna think of me? What's my mother gonna think of me? What's the society's gonna think of me? And inside, everyone has a destiny, bright, beautiful destiny. The soul is calling us to greatness, your name of your show, to be great beings, to be great lights, to live fully. And oftentimes, people will dim their light in order to fit in to someone else's paradigm and end up with crisis, end up with disease, end up with prolonged sadness.

• 11:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  When if you just step out of that, there's so much life to live, you see? So I think a lot of people are just run by what others are thinking about them rather than what their soul wants.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, powerful. I think when we shine our light, the challenge is sometimes there are people that try to take us down.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:59Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Listen.

• 12:01Lewis Howes?

  How do we handle that when, you know, it doesn't matter how much positivity you try to put in the world, how much good you try to do. If someone's always gonna try to take you down, how should we handle that?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, we have to be aware that, that mediocrity always attacks excellence.

• 12:15Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  It's kind of a rule. No one's attacking a couch potato.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  Right. No one cares.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  No one cares. If you're sitting on the couch eating potato chips and getting fat and, and doing nothing, no one says anything. But the moment you start to walk toward your dream and you start to break habits, you start to change relationships that no longer serve that dream, you start to be talked about. Now, many people are afraid of failure, which really means that they're afraid of being ridiculed. But once you become aware that you're gonna be ridiculed if you fail and you're gonna be talked about if you succeed, then you're able to put that aside. Cause you know you're gonna be talked about either way.

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  No matter what, yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  If you go for it and you fall, oh, he went for it and he didn't make it. Or if you go for it and succeed, they'll say, oh, it was luck, whatever they say about you. So once you get out of your mind or become aware that people are gonna talk about you either way, then you go for it, you see? And at the end of the day, you are different because you went for it. That you going for it actually brings out latent powers and gifts and talents within you that can't come to bloom unless you go for it. So then when you reach your next mountaintop, and mountaintops are endless.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  When you meet, when you reach your next peak, who's with you are the people that are supposed to be with you or could be with you based on what you have become. Now you go for another peak. And then the people that are supposed to be with you there are with you and all the naysayers.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  You might shed some people who came with you from the first.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Shed the ballast, yeah.

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Some people might come with you to the next mountain, but some people might be left behind, right?

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You keep your heart open. You never just jettison people out of your life. Your heart is open, but you're constantly growing and unfolding. So I think that when you're, you're going for a goal, it's not just achieving the goal. It's actually who are you becoming on the way to bringing that goal into manifestation? And then your new becoming, you have a different vibration.

• 14:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  And now the people at that vibration are hanging with you. They support, they love, they appreciate you, they cheer you on rather than tear you down. If you're living in a paradigm of scarcity and lack, you tear people down. If you're living in a paradigm of abundance and opulence, there's enough for everybody, you cheer people on. So your success makes me happy.

• 14:36Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  You know, oh, look at Lewis D. Oh, that's great. That's fantastic.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I'm not in the paradigm of thinking that because you succeed, there's less for me. I'm in the paradigm of thinking if you succeed, that's a shining example.

• 14:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:48Speaker 01

  What he did is possible.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  I can go do that or something else.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  I can do what I can do.

• 14:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:53Speaker 01

  In my life, you know, so.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing that you're most proud of, of who you've become on all the mountaintops you've reached?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  I think I have a, just a, a deep sense of compassion for people and I have a, a very, um, deep well of forgiveness.

• 15:09Lewis Howes?

  You do?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, where people are concerned. I, I just.

• 15:11Lewis Howes?

  You forgive quickly or?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Quickly. Nothing sticks. Nothing sticks to me. I was just recently with, um, a good friend of mine, Cicely Tyson. She, she comes to Agape when she comes in town and we're having a conversation and she was indicating, there were some things that had been done to her recently. She had no bitterness about it.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  And she's 94.

• 15:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Like someone attacked her or did something wrong by her?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Somebody stole some stuff from her. They preyed on her because she's a senior citizen and, and she said, I don't have time to let that burden me. I, I have too much life to live. She's 94 years old.

• 15:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  I want to be like that. I don't have time to hold the burden of rank or resentment if somebody says something or whatever the case may be. And I think I've always had a deep well of that, but being with her recently made me know that could go a little deeper.

• 16:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Is there ever a time to be angry in life?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's, there's a difference between just anger and righteous indignation. Righteous indignation, we should be indignant when we live in a country and there are people that can't eat.

• 16:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  You know, we live in a country of so-called wealth and we still have, uh, people that don't have universal healthcare or just the basic needs that can be provided by our society or the way we treat women or things of that particular nature. I think that there's a righteous indignation that's different from just being angry or living at a high level of hypocrisy all the time that only sends toxic chemicals through our body temple. So sometimes anger can be a masking emotion for fear. People can actually be afraid and they mask it with anger. So no, I think there's, there's righteous indignation, you know, with time that we need to act, time that we need to make a difference, need to let our voice speak about things that need to be changed.

• 17:03Lewis Howes?

  And what about the ego? You've been, we're talking off camera how you've been, you're a doctor, you've been knighted, served, I don't know, chief, you've got 500 titles of like the highest praise. How does someone manage their ego as they continue to climb in the world?

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, we have to understand the evolutionary context of ego. Ego is what protects us as we are evolving as a human species. It what protects you so that you're able to survive. So you're able to tell the difference between you and a sable-toothed tiger. Uh, you, back during tribalism, you know, you had to be able to have a level of differentiation for your safety. But now we're at the point where we have to transcend the ego's perception of separation. Because right now it's run amok. You know, we're separate from our environment, we're separate from the oceans, we're separate from the rainforest, we're separate from each other because of the color of the skin or nationality or where we were born. So we have to be aware that the ego's first job is to protect.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  But when that protection starts going to making us feel separate from everybody, then we have to keep it in check and we have to transcend it. And that's where meditation comes in. That's where prayer, that's where study, that's where fellowship, we're able to transcend the ego. So I can see, you and I are the same. We may come from different parts of the world, different skin colors, but at the bottom, we're both human.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  So once with spiritual practice, you don't let the ego go crazy. And it becomes not about me, it becomes about we, you know, it becomes about us, not just my family, but where does my family end? Does it end with just people who are black? Does it end with people just in the United States? Or does my family end just with people in North America? You know, after a while, you realize humanity's your family. And you don't want to do anything that's going to be detrimental to anyone on the family, even if it's the rainforest, even if it's the ocean water, you know? And so again, it's difficult for people if they don't have some modicum of spiritual

• 19:11Speaker 01

  practice because the ego will just come in, me, me, my, my, greed, stinginess, you know, I'm gonna protect mine. That becomes the frequency. But when you start to grow, you realize it's really a we vibe here.

• 19:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  It's not just a me vibe.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  Right. Two questions. One, why do you think we are here and why do you think you are here?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I believe that everyone has the same purpose. We all have different missions. We all have the same purpose and I'll say it in different ways. Uh, we can say we're all here to, to reflect the face of divinity or we're here to reflect the cosmos in a way that only we can. Everyone is here for that same purpose. And we all have different missions. Some people's mission is to teach, heal, inspire, uplift, to create some level of art that's gonna inspire, choreography. And we all have different missions, but every mission carries that larger purpose. How was my life reflecting the entire cosmos?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Because I believe all of us have the entirety of the cosmos in us and we're here to discover it, activate it, cultivate it and set it free. So we're all here to reflect the face of God, for lack of a, just to bring it down. Not God, not a man in the sky.

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And we're not that naive.

• 20:32Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right. Sure.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  But, uh, the presence that is never an absence. So everyone has the same purpose. Some people know their purpose, some people don't.

• 20:44Lewis Howes?

  How do you suggest people discover it if they don't know what it is?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  People grow into their purpose two ways.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Crisis or insight.

• 20:55Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  You know, because sometimes when your back is against the wall, you get a crisis, then you begin to ask different kind of questions. You know, why am I here?

• 21:02Lewis Howes?

  What am I doing this for? What's the reason?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Why do I keep doing the same thing over and over? And then you start to open up that there's something bigger that has your name on it, that's calling you. And sometimes people grow through it, they have an insight, they get inspired. Something happens and they're able to see, wow, my life is more than what I thought it was. So I think we grow pain insight. One of my statements is, your pain pushes you until your vision pulls you.

• 21:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  So we're actually pushed by pain until we're pulled by a larger vision. And so unless...

• 21:38Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:40Lewis Howes?

  So what if we're in the middle? What if we're like, well, I'm not pulled by anything, I'm not pushed by anything, I just kind of feel blah. Is it like eventually you're gonna feel pain?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:50Lewis Howes?

  So bad, you're gonna be like, okay, I need to step up and do something.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, because the universe, which is the outpicturing of the intelligence of the presence, is progressive. We're here on planet Earth. The Earth is circling the Sun, the Sun is moving through its solar system. Every heavenly body has a rotation. Now every time there's a complete rotation, the frequency of those heavenly bodies are a little higher. The Earth is vibrating higher today than it was 10 years ago. So everything is progressing. So if you're the same person that you were 365 days ago, you're not really the same person, you've actually gone backwards.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Because everything has gone forward. So since everything is progressive, it's creating a level of tension to create a level of uncomfortability and pain for you to grow.

• 22:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  So that blah will become a mess.

• 22:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll eventually turn into pain at some point where you're gonna say, enough is enough.

• 22:46Speaker 01

  You know.

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  I gotta end this relationship, get out of the marriage, I gotta lose the weight, I gotta do something to change.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  The body temple will betray you.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  Your emotional body will betray you. Something will happen that'll make you say, ooh, what's going on? I better, I better read a book. I better, I better be still, I better go talk to somebody.

• 23:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What would you say is your mission then?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Basically to help people wake up to the gift of divinity that's within them, to set it free.

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  How do we set ourselves free?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  First of all, you have to break the practices, the habits of mediocrity. The practices of mediocrity.

• 23:24Lewis Howes?

  What are some of those?

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Mediocrity is, means I'm just living a life in which I'm protecting myself.

• 23:31Lewis Howes?

  Scarcity, protection.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Scarcity, protective, protectiveness, fear, worry drives my life. And we move into practices in which we ask ourselves, how can I give today? You know.

• 23:44Lewis Howes?

  Serve.

• 23:45Speaker 01

  How can I serve today? How can I share today? If you ask the question, the universe will answer it. This is, this is a principle. That the universe, again, the universe is just the outpicturing of the intelligence of the mind of the infinite. If you ask a question, you'll get an answer. So if you ask, how can I give? Rather than how can I get? Then the universe is gonna provide not only answers, but ways that you have something to give. You see? And many people are still within their reptilian brain of, I don't have enough. So they're trying to get. So they end up creating a very small package of themselves, rather than a larger package of, how can I be of service, how can I give?

• 24:31Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we give more and are, and are living in service with every action we take? Obviously, we're gonna do things for us and protect ourselves and pay our rent and, you know, have nice things, but when we have the intention of, I'm here to serve in my career, my business, my team, my family, my mission is service, what unlocks for us?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Now you've opened yourself up that the presence through the universe, which is always giving, it doesn't compromise its nature, it doesn't contradict itself, now finds you worthy, I mean vibrationally worthy, we're all worthy, intrinsically, vibrationally worthy to express more through you. Doors open, you don't even know we're there. You meet people that you never even heard about. Things begin to open up for you. It seems as if it's magic, but it's not magic. You've come into a vibrational alignment with the way things work.

• 25:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  You know, so suddenly you're in a meeting with somebody, you're meeting somebody, it's a chance meeting, and something opens up for you and you're able to give your gift. You're able to share something, you're able to bring more prosperity into your life. More joy, more happiness. Because you're in alignment, how can I serve? How can I be more giving? How can I unleash the power that's within me? You see? Now, most people, when they're living in this, in the mediocrity, they ask disempowering questions.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Why me? What's wrong? Who's to blame? Those questions keep you very narrowly focused. Everybody's looking for a scapegoat. It's his fault. It's my parents' fault. They shouldn't have gotten divorced. They should have gotten divorced. This happened, my teacher did this to me when I was little, whatever. They'll look for a very limiting, they have a very limiting scope of perception. But if you begin to ask an empowering question, how can I share? What's trying to emerge in my life? What gift do I have to give? How can I cultivate that gift?

• 26:36Speaker 01

  The universe would love to answer that question.

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Because the universe, the universal presence, wants you healthy, wants you prosperous, wants you happy. Why? Because it gets to express more through you if you are. It gets to come into its own as you. Now, when you, when you're limited yourself, then it uses, then you're wasting energy. That means you're constantly going to the doctor because you're sick. You're constantly bemoaning your fate because you can't have friendships in your life. You're constantly worried about all that wasted energy that can be used for creativity. You see? So when you ask the right questions, as you indicated, you stabilize your structures first. You have a structure of prosperity, a structure of good health,

• 27:22Speaker 01

  a structure of ego management, so you can have good friendships.

• 27:25Lewis Howes?

  You mean structure, you mean habits or...

• 27:28Speaker 01

  We live in life structures. There's a life structure of health, body temple. There's a life structure of relationships. You see? There's a life structure of community, how you, how you work with others. You know, these are all structures that we stabilize, which means they're no longer liabilities, they're assets. So if you know how to be with other people without tearing people down and gossiping about them and stealing from them, you have a good foundation of friendships, it's part of your community. Take care of your body temple, not going to the doctor all the time because you're sick. You're able to, as you say, pay your rent, you're able to have a level of prosperity. Now, you're not here just to stabilize those structures.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Those structures are strong enough so that you can now give your gift.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  Because if you're always focused on stabilizing structures or your structures are in breakdown, you're never able to create and give your gift.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:22Lewis Howes?

  So you've gotta be able to have the structures down first, take care of your business, I guess, let's say.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Lewis Howes?

  And then you can go beyond it.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  Yes. Now you're strong enough.

• 28:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  You're strong enough to do things that people would say are impossible.

• 28:36Lewis Howes?

  If someone's got one of those structures that are broken, or they, maybe they've been struggling with it for decades. Maybe it's the relationships, maybe it's the prosperity, maybe it's their health. How can they overcome that to fix it or to stabilize it?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, two ways. One, you look at the area of your life that's working first. Because most of the time, our focus is on what's not working and the vibration of that. So you take one area of your life that, that works, and you feel into that vibration. And then you begin to what I call shape shift. You begin to take that energy and begin to feel that way about the area that's not working. Okay? And then you combine that with... An articulation of a vision. What would it look like if this area of my life worked? You begin to describe it. Now, the law says that you don't describe what you see. You see what you describe.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  So you begin to describe what that area looks like along with the feeling of an area of your life that does work. Now you have the feeling and the description both working. And you have, it's practice. You have to do that every day.

• 29:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  You have to feel it, describe it. Feel it, describe it. Feel it, describe it. And then that begins to be a new baseline for you. And now you begin to manifest.

• 29:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  At that area.

• 30:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Obviously, you gotta take a lot of action probably in changing certain things. But you've gotta do those, the foundation first.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  You do the foundational piece. And then what happens is you're kind of compelled to do different kind of action. Instead of procrastinating.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  You realize, oh, I can do this. I can do this one little thing. And that shifts the whole fulcrum of being.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  What's something in your life you feel like you procrastinated too long on? Maybe something in your life at some point. Was there anything where you're like, ah, I waited too long to?

• 30:32Speaker 01

  You know, I, when I started agape, I procrastinated.

• 30:35Lewis Howes?

  You should have done it 10 years ago or something, right?

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I, I, I just, I did not want to be a public person.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:41Speaker 01

  I liked my lifestyle. I was a, I, I was a spiritual therapist. So I had private practice. I taught at the university, faculty member. And I ran a prayer ministry. So I had these things going on. And I would do seminars. That, I thought that was enough.

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  So I kept being pulled into starting a community. And it was like, oh, I don't want to start a community. And so many things began to happen in my life. Breakdown.

• 31:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, just that forced me to say, okay, I'm going against the energy here. And then I called some people together. Some of my students, some of my clients, some of my friends. I said, okay, I, I'm compelled to start a community. And I started a vision group to start that. So interestingly enough, when that happened, I'll always remember this. I used to have a crook in my neck in which I couldn't turn my neck all the way to the right. I had like partial rotation.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could go all the way to the left, but I couldn't go to the right. And I go to a chiropractor. They fix it. It'd be temporarily fixed.

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  For a day or two, then, yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  The moment I said yes to the vision, my neck went pop.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  I had full rotation.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  You were like an owl.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, what? And I realized that this was a physical manifestation of my resistance.

• 32:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  And so I look at that at times in my life. And I might find me resisting something. You know, let me just jump into the fire of it. And eventually, things are gonna work out. Don't be afraid to jump into the fire.

• 32:13Lewis Howes?

  What questions should we be asking ourselves every morning when we wake up?

• 32:18Speaker 01

  First of all, when I wake up in the morning and when I, when I, when I turn and get out of the bed, I generally get on the bed on my left side. I stand up, I put my hands up. And I just go into a sense of gratitude for being alive in a way. I just, I'm just thankful that I exist. And that gratitude is not attached to anything. I'm not grateful that I have money. I'm grateful that I have, just grateful.

• 32:37Lewis Howes?

  Just being.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Just being.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And then I surrender to life. I just surrender my life to life. Now, some people can, you call that God. You can call it love. You can call it, whatever you want to call it. I just call it life. And then I say, what's my assignment? I ask, what's my assignment? And then I ask for the strength to do whatever my assignment is. So then, that's how I wake up. Then I'll go sit and I'll meditate. And then I'll go to the gym. I'll come back and have a longer meditation. And then I'll ask, the question is determined by whatever I'm working on that day. So I knew I was coming to see you today. Got in the shower and I was just saying, how can I be a bright presence on Lewis's show today?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  How can I be an instrument of articulation and fluency and love and harmony? Let that happen. So I just live in that question. And then I let the question answer itself through me as we met at the door.

• 33:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You know, hey, what's going on, man? Like we knew each other for a long time. So there'll be a larger question. And then there's a question that's more pertinent for whatever's on my calendar that day. The larger question is always somewhere in the, in the vantage point of, um, how can I serve? How can I be an instrument of peace or love? Or how can I reveal more prosperity in my life?

• 33:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  You know?

• 33:58Lewis Howes?

  When we are in flow and like, man, just everything's working. It's just like manifesting magic everywhere.

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:06Lewis Howes?

  What questions should we be asking at that time?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's, um, you want to stay in the awareness of how can, does it get better than this?

• 34:17Lewis Howes?

  Right. When it feels like this is too good to be true.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Lewis Howes?

  When everything is coming my way.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but listen, life is infinite.

• 34:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  So wherever you are is a new starting point.

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. That's when it comes to the ground floor now, right?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  You don't want to like relegate yourself and protect that, that particular spot. It's like, and you can ask that question whether things are going good or bad in your perception. You know, if things are, that is, ah, things aren't working out. This plan isn't coming together. You can ask, how does it get better than this? You'll get an answer. If you're in flow, how does it get better than this? And then you stay on the edge of becoming. So you're walking, you're walking in the, in the state of being and becoming. You're very happy about who you are. The state of being, I'm, I'm grateful. I'm in love with the state of being that I am right now. I appreciate it. And I'm becoming. There's more to me, you see?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  So if we ask the question, how does it get better than this? The universe will answer it.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now. And you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. There's definitely some moments where I have breakdowns and challenges and struggles and things like that. But over the last 15, 17 years, I just feel like magic occurs.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  Magic.

• 35:57Speaker 01

  But you feel that way.

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  I feel, I, I.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  I mean, your energy field is very, very big and it's very beautiful.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like there's, when I reflect back and think on it, like, what are the things that I've been doing? It's the things you're talking about. Every day, I'm expressing gratitude all the time. When I wake up, I do a gratitude practice.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:14Lewis Howes?

  When someone calls my cell phone and they get my voice message, I ask them what they're most grateful for and to share first with me before they ask what they want on the voicemail.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  That's beautiful.

• 36:24Lewis Howes?

  I'm just trying to evoke it out of people constantly. And at night, I'm always sharing what I'm most grateful for. When I'm writing down or I'm sharing with someone. So gratitude has always been a part of my life. Just because I came from a small town in Ohio and like, when things would happen, I was like, oh man, I'm so grateful for this.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:41Lewis Howes?

  The next thing I would focus on is, is really like the vision of what I want to be, what I want to become. I'd focus on that vision, kind of what you were talking about before. Just like, where am I heading? Where am I going? At least where do I want to go? If there's a different plan for me, okay. But where am I going? And focusing on the direction as opposed to where I'm stuck.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  What I'm lacking. And then the third thing that I really focus on is just joy.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  Like being joy. Just when you came in, I was just like, open my arms, like, hey, good to see you. And I think when you, when we reflect on those three things, gratitude, a vision of where we're going, who we want to become, and being joyful, we start to attract and.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  That's the pocket.

• 37:21Lewis Howes?

  And create magic, right?

• 37:23Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 37:24Lewis Howes?

  But sometimes we, we forget those things and we're stuck in our head or we're stuck in fear and anxiety.

• 37:29Speaker 01

  That's why we call it a practice.

• 37:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  You practice and when you get off, you come back to the fundamentals. Just like an Olympic athlete. They get off, they come back to the fundamentals.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  The warmups, yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  The warmups, the, the steps, or whatever it is, whatever your particular, you know, area is. You come back to the fundamentals and then you find yourself in flow. When you're not in flow, you come back to the fundamentals. Now, we've all heard the statement from certain parents, if you don't stop crying, I'm gonna give you something to cry about.

• 37:57Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  But the universe says, if you don't stop being grateful, I'm gonna give you something to be grateful for.

• 38:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  It operates the same way. So you staying in that vibration of gratitude, the universe is looking for something to give you. Oh my God, if he doesn't stop being grateful, I'm gonna give him something really to be grateful for.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And it comes out of the blue. It comes out of your present paradigm. Like, wow, you didn't see that coming, you know?

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So, so let me get this clear. When you were a teenager, you changed churches? You, you left church for a while, is that right? Or you always?

• 38:31Speaker 01

  From the age of 16 to, I was a senior at USC. So somewhere in my early twenties.

• 38:38Lewis Howes?

  And so you, there was a stage where you didn't believe in God?

• 38:42Speaker 01

  I, I wouldn't use the word God because the way people taught God was like a man in the sky, checking the list twice.

• 38:47Lewis Howes?

  You didn't believe in that?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 38:49Lewis Howes?

  The version of God?

• 38:50Speaker 01

  No. My thing was more affirmative values. You know, be a kind person.

• 38:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Don't, don't, don't mess with people. Don't steal. Be loving. You know, I didn't put that in any kind of religion. And it wasn't until I had that, I tell you, I was, um, when I moved back to LA from Atlanta, I was attending Morehouse College. I was a part of an organization that wanted to change the world by any means necessary. You know, it was a very revolutionary organization. And I was the propaganda commissioner for this organization.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm sitting, and we were closely aligned with the Black Panther Party, you know? And so I was sitting in this meeting.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  Is this in the seventies or?

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Seventies. So I'm sitting in this meeting. And someone behind me said, if you were to take over the world tomorrow, would it be any different? So I turned around to see who said it, but there was nobody there. I know I heard it. So I'm in the meeting and it says it again. If you, if you were to take over the world tomorrow, would it be any different? But it was coming from inside of me. And I said, oh my God.

• 39:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  So I looked around the room. This guy's sitting next to me. I said, this guy's a big ego. He always thinks he's right. This person is very territorial. This person is always contentious. This person, you know, I started looking around the room and I realized, if we were to take over the world tomorrow, it'd be no change. So I left the meeting.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  In the middle of the meeting or afterward?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  No, after the meeting I left.

• 40:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Never came back. The next week, at that meeting, somebody in that meeting shot somebody.

• 40:26Lewis Howes?

  No way. In the meeting?

• 40:27Speaker 01

  In the meeting.

• 40:28Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  They got into an argument, a guy pulled out a gun and shot somebody.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  But I wasn't there. To be a part of that legal situation.

• 40:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  I enrolled into USC shortly after that, 'cause I'd taken a break from. And I remember going to USC. I hadn't had the awakening, that was the beginning of the awakening.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:52Speaker 01

  And then things began to happen. Started having visions, I started seeing things, I thought I was, I thought I was losing my mind. This is, this was right at the beginning of transpersonal psychology. It wasn't popular the way it is now.

• 41:04Lewis Howes?

  You're 21, 22?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, 23 years old, 22, 23. And then I had a lot of experience, I would leave my body all the time.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  And, but I didn't know what that was. Now we know it's astral traveling or lucid dreaming, you know. But back in those days, it was like, this was very new.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  And so, I started having this dream, and in this dream, these men were chasing me. Three men. And every night, I would wake up right before they would get me. But they, every night, they were a little bit closer. So, one of the things I did, I stopped smoking weed. As a good college student. And I said, "This must be cannabis sativus." All these experiences and dreams and visions, but they intensified. Everything got more.

• 41:52Lewis Howes?

  When you stopped.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. More, more, more brilliant dreams, more visions. And I didn't tell anybody, 'cause I, I'm in the psych, I was a psychobiology major. So I'm in the psychology department. There's no way I'm gonna tell my professor.

• 42:06Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm leaving my body.

• 42:10Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna put you in a mental hospital.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll tell you a story about that. Matter of fact, I had an internship program, I'll get back to the dream. And we had to go into the mental hospitals as a part of our internship program to work with the people there. Write up our diagnosis and give it to our professor, all of that. So I'm playing ping pong with this guy, he's in the mental institution. And we're talking, and I'm asking why he's there, and he's saying, "Well, I've had these visions and dreams." He's describing some of the stuff I'm going through.

• 42:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  We're playing ping pong, and then I realized, for the last five minutes, we haven't been talking, it was all telepathy.

• 42:45Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 42:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. I put the ping pong paddle down to check myself out of there. I said, "I don't know what's going on with me." So, fast forward, I'm in this dream. Three men are chasing me, and I say to myself, "This is a dream." I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna force myself to wake up. I turned around, there was a small tent with all these people lined up to go into this tent. I mean, thousands of people. And I knew every single person in line. And I said, "Oh, these guys can't hurt me, my friends are with me." One by one, they turned their back on me.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  Two men held me down, and another one plunged a knife in my heart.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Holy cow.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  The pain was excruciating, physically and emotionally. And I screamed out, I mean, like a blood curdling scream, and I died. And when I woke up, I could see, the presence was everywhere. The beauty that's here is beyond description. The love that penetrated every cell of my being was beyond any love, I get emotional. Any love that you'll ever experience, the love of God just poured through my body. The light and the brilliance was everywhere. And everything was different.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  And from that moment on, I went on a path of discovery as to what had happened to me. And, and the process of integrating that into my life. And then that's led me step by step by step into where I'm at today. If people could only see what's really here. But we have paradigm blindness, the perception is so small. Most people only see a fraction of reality. And it's their beliefs, it's their perceptions, it's what they've inherited from their parents, societal fantasies. When all of this is available, we only see this.

• 44:44Lewis Howes?

  What is really here?

• 44:46Speaker 01

  The presence of abundance, infinite joy, beauty, love.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Sometimes a sound effect we have to do.

• 44:56Lewis Howes?

  Experience it, yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just all here, and we're using so much energy to block it.

• 45:02Lewis Howes?

  Why do we block this abundance of love and joy and?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  The ego does not know the difference between transformation and annihilation. It doesn't know that outside of the known, in the realm of the unknown, there's so much good. And so much power, so much abundance. It tries to eke its joy out of what's known. Whereas our good is actually outside of the known. You know? Matter of fact, it was Krishnamurti that had a book called Freedom From The Known. And he would, I used to go see him live in Ojai every year. 'Cause he was one that I could listen to, and I realized he was authentic. He knew, I could just listen, I could look at him.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I can go to any spiritual community, and I can tell you in five minutes if they know. Or if they know about, it's a difference between knowing it and knowing about it. Knowing about it can motivate, knowing it, it's different.

• 45:58Lewis Howes?

  Different feeling, yeah.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Krishnamurti, I said, "Ooh, he knows."

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, so, you know, I don't know what question you asked me, but.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  Why do we block the abundance of love?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, it's fear. We wanna live, we wanna basically.

• 46:13Lewis Howes?

  'Cause it's uncertain, right?

• 46:14Speaker 01

  It's uncertain.

• 46:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  We wanna control our life within the realm of the known. The good is in the unknown. If I hadn't said yes to Agape, I wouldn't have known all the beautiful people I've met and the things I've got to experience. I got to, I had a chance to facilitate the synthesis dialogues with the Dalai Lama four times, you know.

• 46:37Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I got a chance to meet and give Nelson Mandela the Season For Nonviolence Award. I got a chance to, to, to hang out with Bishop Tutu as we were inducted into the Martin Luther King Order of Preachers. I, I got a chance to, to run with and hang with Dick Gregory, you know what I mean? And so many beautiful people that had been a part of my life. I wouldn't have known any of that. I got a chance to go to the United Nations and speak at special assemblies many times, and, but all of that would have been locked into potential. You know, and I don't share those things as a brag, I just like, they're just part of my, woo, the chance to meet. It wasn't about me, it was about the people I got a chance to meet and hang out with. I wouldn't have met you.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  You know, we wouldn't have been here. I'd have made all my cow shit.

• 47:23Lewis Howes?

  You know, I grew up in a small town in Ohio, predominantly white neighborhood. But my parents had, they had seven exchange students when I was a kid. So I had people from Japan and Brazil and France and Philippines, living with us, teenagers, you know, for six months at a time. That would kind of like bring the culture and, and country to me.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:48Lewis Howes?

  And then, as I started to expand outside of my neighborhood and play sports. I was more of the minority as one of the white people, right? In that, in that, in that context. So for me, I never really understood racism.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  Like, I'm sure there's moments where I'm judgmental or racist in some ways, I don't even know if I'm aware of it. But everyone to me is a brother or a sister.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:12Lewis Howes?

  Right? It doesn't matter what color.

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:14Lewis Howes?

  Or where you're from, just 'cause I grew up with these older brothers and sisters from all over the world.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  Where is the root of racism come from for us? And why is it so hard for us to get past seeing color?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, a lot of it's, obviously it's learned. I mean, you don't see a racist or homophobic baby.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  You know, so it's actually learned.

• 48:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And, and there are people inadvertently or on purpose that teach that. Because they're living in the perception of they are the other. They're darker, they're lighter, whatever the other is, they're from that country.

• 48:58Lewis Howes?

  Different language.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Different language, different culture, different religion, whatever the case may be. So people live in the context of other. And they haven't yet matured into realizing there really isn't any other. There's only variations on a theme. It's all music, you know what I mean?

• 49:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Some's jazz, some's classical, you know, some's R and B, whatever the case may be. Just variations on the theme. So it's not other, it's just, we're, we're the same inside, but we get to express. Now why is that? Because the infinite is infinite. It doesn't repeat itself, it doesn't do do-overs, and it doesn't make mistakes. So, all of us are unique expressions of the infinite. It would be boring.

• 49:44Lewis Howes?

  We all look the same.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  We all look the same, you know what I mean? And we were all the same, I mean, can you, first of all, can you imagine going through eternity? Being exactly as you are right now, without any growth?

• 49:54Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  It's called hell. So, if you can imagine that if everyone was exactly like you, or exactly like me, and we just stayed the same forever, that's called hell. So the presence, which is infinite, recreated itself after its own image and likeness according to its infinite nature. We have such a variety of beauty and love and joy, and that's what we wanna celebrate. And people that are in fear, are bigoted, racist, they're mainly living in fear. And then they promote that fear. You know, "Oh, the Mexicans, oh, the Arabs, oh, the black people," whatever, you know what I mean? They promote that fear, and they end up living in a very small world.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How much of a role does religion play in creating fear in each religious community of people that aren't in those communities?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  It depends on the maturity of the spiritual teacher. Religion itself mean, the word means to return to the source. So religion itself is supposed to be a vehicle that brings people back to the source.

• 51:05Lewis Howes?

  Back to love.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Back to love, back to connectedness. However, it is sometimes used as a sense of separation, depending on the maturity of the spiritual teacher. So it's supposed to bring you, it's a boat, or, yeah, a boat or some kind of vehicle to bring you to an encounter with the transcendent. Once you have an encounter with the transcendent, you can celebrate the broth that brought you there, but you're not trying to hang on to it. So it's like, sometimes we'll say things like inadvertently, well, he was a Jewish mystic, or he was a Christian mystic. Now, actually, when a person becomes a mystic, they kind of transcend the boat that got them. There is no such thing as a Christian mystic. There's no such thing as a Buddhist mystic. There's no such thing as Islamic mystic.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Because once you become a mystic, that means you've transcended the boats and you realize we're all one.

• 51:57Lewis Howes?

  Right, you've transcended the religion.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Religiosity.

• 52:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  And you can still honor.

• 52:02Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  You honor it.

• 52:03Lewis Howes?

  The principles and the foundation.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you honor where you came from, but you're not trying to convert everybody to that anymore. So religion in its highest practice brings people together. In its lowest practice, it separates people. And you have people that become fundamental and they'll say things like, this is the path. If you don't walk this path, you're going to hell. That's a very limited perception. Now, how does a person get there? And there's fundamentalism in every religion. A fundamentalist simply believes that what they believe may or may not be true. So they have to convert you because they're afraid they might be wrong.

• 52:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  You see, but once you know something, you don't convert. It's like, you know two plus two is four.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  So if you go into a room and your teacher is teaching and everybody's talking, no, two plus two is five, no, two plus two is eight, you're gonna back out of that room. You're not gonna get into an argument because you know two plus two is four.

• 53:03Lewis Howes?

  You know the truth.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  You know the truth, so you just say, peace and blessings, you do your math, and I'll do mine.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  But if you're fundamental, if you just believe two plus two is four, if you don't really know two plus two is four, but you just believe it and you become a very high believer, two plus two is four, I'm gonna convert you, then you can, you run into trouble there.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  So our religions take us beyond belief, which we practice, into a deep knowing. And then you have tolerance and appreciation and compassion for people who are stumbling along their path.

• 53:39Lewis Howes?

  What if it's a family member that is, has a strong belief?

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:45Lewis Howes?

  And you're like, gosh, that just doesn't make sense, or that's not the truth, or that's not the knowing. How do you have compassion for someone that's so aggressively, I don't have this in my life, but I'm just curious.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  No, but it's pretty common.

• 53:58Lewis Howes?

  Right, where there it's like, family members, or friends, or partners, where they're so against a different belief and it tries to pull you apart. How do you have that type of compassion, or what do you say to those people?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, if they're so against something, that means there's fear there. So we have to understand what compassion is. Compassion, I define compassion as the understanding of the lack of understanding.

• 54:23Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, yeah, the understanding of ignorance, or the understanding of the lack.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  It is understanding. You don't have, you don't agree, not in alignment with it, but your heart stays open and you're blessed. And you realize that you cannot assist an unreceptive mind. You can't convince, you can't convert, you can't do anything. So you just leave them alone, you just love them. One day, and you live your life so good that you're shining, you're glowing, and then one day, they may ask you, why are you so happy all the time? I just heard that this bad thing happened in your life and you're still grateful.

• 55:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  What, what do you have that makes you strong enough to do that? Now, that's a receptive mind. Now you can go back and say, well, you know what? I wake up every day with gratitude, I'm in appreciation for life. But if you try to teach somebody before they're receptive, they will take what you teach and use it against you. And so compassion means, I understand the lack of understanding. I'm not gonna argue with you.

• 55:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  It's gonna let you be.

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  When have you felt the most loved in your life?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Well, besides that moment of the encounter that continues to undulate through me a lot, I'm very fortunate that I came from an unconditional loving family. My brothers and I, we could have made the biggest mistake, but there was never any withhold of love. You know, I remember being arrested.

• 55:50Lewis Howes?

  From your parents.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  From my parents, yeah, I remember being arrested and my father came to see me, he kind of smiled.

• 55:57Lewis Howes?

  Just loved you anyways.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Just loved me anyway, my mom was there, it was like, I'm waiting for, you know, whatever. Not that they didn't discipline or all of that that they're supposed to do, but there was never any withhold of love, so I come from a baseline of love, which I think is very fortunate, many people don't come from that. There was abuse, there was neglect, or whatever. I didn't have that. So I have a strong baseline of love and I have a strong baseline of inclusivity because my mother was very involved in the civil rights movement, so a lot of the meetings were at my house.

• 56:28Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  So we had Mexicans, blacks, straight, gay, Jewish people. Everybody was in my house all the time, talking about the next thing we were gonna do. We were gonna picket this store, we were gonna do this or that. So I didn't really have a, I didn't come to a lot of places where I am now through some kind of revelation. It was just part of my upbringing.

• 56:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:50Speaker 01

  So when I, I remember being in junior high school and people were attacking this guy, he was gay, and I was like, what are you guys, what are you guys doing? So what? What's it got to do with you? Are you afraid of him? What, you know? But that was just in my household, so it wasn't, you know, so I think I just, the baseline of love of my parents, my grandparents, you know, was just part of the deal. So I was always, I probably was more shocked when I went out into the world and can see brothers and sisters who don't talk to each other. You know what I mean? It's like, you haven't talked to your brother in eight years? What happened? You know what I mean?

• 57:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  And that was like.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  Didn't make sense, yeah.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  No, like, my daughter and my son are like, I don't know how many years apart they are, like nine years apart, they're like best friends. You know what I mean? It's like, they just love each other, it's just, and I'm always shocked, not anymore, but it's like, you don't talk to your brother? You don't have to agree with him?

• 57:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Just love me, don't talk about that subject.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  Talk about else.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think, I think the parental vibration, I'm very, and the more I'm on the planet, the more I appreciate it.

• 57:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:57Lewis Howes?

  I want to ask a few more questions, this has been really inspiring, I appreciate you opening up.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  When someone is in a relationship that isn't working, an intimate relationship that isn't working, or there's some tension for a few months and there just seems to be a lot of conflict. And when someone is looking to start dating something, someone, start to get together, both instances.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  You're talking two different people here? Are you talking the same?

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Let's just say two scenarios.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Two scenarios.

• 58:28Lewis Howes?

  You're, you're in a relationship, you've been together for a while, but now there's a few months of conflict. Or there's a period of time that's conflicting and you're not sure whether or not you should stay in that relationship.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Okay, that's one scenario.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  One scenario, and the second scenario is, two people meet and they're about to start dating. What should be the questions that you should ask each other? When you just meet to see if it's a good fit to, to come together and be partners? And what should the questions be? You've already been together for a while, but there's some conflict and you're not sure about the future.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Right, so in the one scenario when people are just meeting, there has to be an understanding of what the intention is. Is the intention to be in relationship? Or is the intention just a booty call? Is it just, we just wanna have fun, we don't want, you know, so there's, so depending on what paradigm a person is living in, we have different kind of questions. So if you're interested in a relationship.

• 59:23Lewis Howes?

  Let's say you're interested in a relation, in a relationship, yeah.

• 59:25Speaker 01

  Then the question is, first of all, what is, we have to define relationship. You know, a relationship is what we call a joint participation in the good of life. It's a participation in something larger.

• 59:38Lewis Howes?

  I like that.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Okay?

• 59:39Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  So it's not just, so when we understand that, that I'm not trying to get my good from you, I'm not trying to get my love from you, and you're not trying to get it from me, we're bringing it to the table, you know? It's like this, if two fish are swimming in the ocean.

• 59:55Speaker 01

  And one fish says to the other fish, "Baby, if you give me, if you give me what I want, I'll give you all the water you can handle." So they're swimming in water.

• 1:00:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  So we're swimming in love.

• 1:00:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  So I can't give it to you. But I can participate in it and I can bring that to the table. My loving can bring that to the table. So that means, that means when people come together, they're actually coming together to grow and perfecting their loving.

• 1:00:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  It's a much more mature state of being. When we're younger, we actually think, "That person can make me happy." That person can't make you happy. You have to bring happy. That means you have to work on yourself and you bring happy to the relationship. You bring peace, you bring love, you bring forgiveness, you bring compassion. You know, so when people are first coming together, we have to see, are we at the same level in terms of wanting to grow together?

• 1:00:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Okay? And then we, and then we're happy, we support each other. I'm gonna support, I'm gonna love to the best of my ability. So it's the same question. If a person's, if a relationship is in breakdown, then are we still growing? Or has the growth stopped? Is there a chance to keep the growth going? Do we, are we interested in each other? Are we interested in each other's growth? Has the path diverged? This person is really more interested in this. This person is more interested in that. Has the growth stopped? You know, if the growth has stopped and we've gleaned the lessons, then we have to look at that. Now, the Western culture, America, America's like a very young country. It's a couple hundred years old. When you look at indigenous cultures,

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  some of the Native American cultures, some of the other cultures, thousands of years old, they have renewal. For instance, in certain Native American cultures, every seven years you renew.

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  Relationship.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see, do we have more juice here? Or do we not? Now, if you don't have juice, there's no fault. There's no like, "You culprit here, you don't love me anymore. You didn't do this," or whatever. It's like, you know what? We've learned this, this, this, and this. We're both better people. Let's go another seven. Or, hmm, it's time to go our separate ways in this form.

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  In African culture, there's a space where the people, maybe, maybe this is over. And they'll come to the community and then they gather with the elders and the elders will do divination and say, "You guys have finished."

• 1:02:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  "You guys have done your job. You can stay together if you want, but you don't have to." Or they'll say, "No, no, no, no, no. You still got a lot of work to do in this area." You know what I mean? So in the Western culture-

• 1:02:37Lewis Howes?

  So there's no like blame, or guilt, or shaming, or wrongdoing?

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  That's in Western culture. We're young, we're babies. People think 200 years.

• 1:02:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  There's been cultures on the planet thousands of years, you know what I mean? That, that have a deeper insight into the unfolding of the soul. Not just getting your house, two kids, and, you know, retiring and dying. You know what I mean?

• 1:02:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  It's an unfoldment of the soul.

• 1:03:01Lewis Howes?

  This is powerful.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  We'll have to have you come back on and do a whole thing on relationships sometime in the future. I'm curious, at the end of this year, let's say it's New Year's Eve this year.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  What would the thing that would make you the most proud of who you've been, become, or created in this, in this life?

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Well, I'm always inviting a greater insight into reality, a greater understanding of the awakening process and who I am. So I always want to keep that going. In terms of my, so in terms of my, my personal movement, that, that would, it's always forefront. You know, just, I want to be more myself at the end of the year. When I look back at this guy sitting talking to you today, I don't want this guy to be sitting here. I want another version to be sitting here. When I look at my community, I want Agape community to be more stable. We're in a permanent, permanent temporary place. It means we can be there as long as we want. But I want to be closer to actually building our legacy building and our legacy community where people come from all over the world

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  and celebrate the divine, divine together. I want to be closer financially where that is concerned.

• 1:04:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  You know, in terms of a goal. Yeah.

• 1:04:12Lewis Howes?

  That's cool, that's cool. This is a question-

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  I want to be finished with, I want my book to be out too.

• 1:04:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool, yeah. Well, you have three books right now that you brought here.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I think I've written seven, but those are three.

• 1:04:21Lewis Howes?

  These are the three that are, yeah, three that are here. You got seven books, machine. One's called "Life Visioning: A Transformative Process For Activating Your Unique Gifts And Highest Potential." Make sure you guys check this one out. I'm gonna read this one today. "The Answer Is You." This is gonna be a good one, I'm excited because it's shorter. That's why I read that one. And then "Spiritual Liberation." So if you guys want to feel free, make sure to get this book as well. We'll have it all linked up on the show notes. This is a question, one of the final questions that I ask everyone at the end. It's called "The Three Truths." So you've written seven books, you're gonna have an eighth one this year. I'm sure you'll have 50 books. But imagine it's your last day on earth. Many years from now, you can go as long as you want.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  But at some point, you gotta go.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Hypothetically, right? And your physical body anyways. And you've written everything you want to write. You've said everything you want to say. You've met everyone, you've been knighted 50 times. You've got a copy, you've got a huge theater, that's a forever legacy. You've done it all. You've seen your grandkids grow. Everything has happened. Complete life, right? But for whatever reason, you gotta take everything with you when you leave.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  I gotta take it with me?

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  You gotta take your information, your work, your books, your words, your videos, all the content you put out in the world. It's gotta go with you.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  So no one has access to it anymore. But you get to leave people with three final truths. These would be the three truths or the lessons that you've lived through your whole life. And this is, this was all people had to, to remember in a written form. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  One, fall in love with who you are, with what has been created. You didn't create yourself. There's a presence, there's a presence that created you out of itself. So you have to fall in love with that, with that presence. Two, you have to cultivate that potential that's within you. You don't want wasted potential. If you have potential, you have to cultivate it. You don't want to, you don't want to leave and realize, "You know what? I should have cultivated that."

• 1:06:31Lewis Howes?

  And left it on the table.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  I left it on the table, I didn't go for it. I didn't even try. You see? And three, you want to live with, not how much you've got, but how much did you give away before you left? How much did you give away? I think that's the game that we're being asked to play on the planet right now. Not how much we can get, but before we leave, how much can we give away? Now, if we fall in love with ourselves, activate potential and give it away as much as possible, we'll be in bliss. Because bliss is the function of the activation of potential.

• 1:07:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Those are great truths. I love those. Imagine everyone in the world is putting on headphones right now. And everyone can understand English for a minute.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Or they hear it in their own language.

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, they hear their own language. And you get to share one message with the world where people put their phones away, they're not watching TV, they put on their headphones, they flip on a switch, mic comes on. What is the message you would share in under 60 seconds for the world and what we're living through right now, what we're going through in this time and age? What would be a message you would say?

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  I would let people know that there's a, there's a paradigm that's dying right now. Whenever a paradigm is dying, it makes a lot of noise. So right now, we have the paradigm of greed and hate, separation, supremacy of all kinds of levels, really loud, which means it's at its deathbed. And there's a paradigm that's emerging. The emerging paradigm is a paradigm of unity and oneness, of which now our quantum scientists are now echoing what the mystics have been teaching for thousands of years, that we're all one, that the separation is only in our mind, it doesn't really exist.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  So I would say, stay strong, don't give in to fear, don't give in to worry. Worry is mentally and emotionally rehearsing what you don't want to happen, you see? So stay out of worry and fear and realize that we're passing through a phase of a dying of the old and a birthing of the new. Stay true to the vision of unity. Have conversations about it. Let that be your conversation. And watch as you look back at this time in history and the things that we were so afraid of will be in museums. People, you'll have kids in museums saying, "Mommy, did people really hate each other because they were in different religions? Mom, grandma, you mean people didn't like each other because their skin colors were different?

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  Mom, did that really happen?" And grandmama will say, "Yeah, many years ago, that was the ignorance we were living in, but not anymore, babe."

• 1:09:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow, yeah. That's powerful. I want to acknowledge you for a moment, Michael, because- This is just like, for me, this is so awakening for me. You know, everything you've been sharing has been resonating deeply with me. And the fact that you've been living your life in such a level of high service for the last thirty-plus years is a great example of what's possible for all of us. We don't have to go start spiritual centers the way you have, but we can do things to live in service every single day with our families, our friends, and the people, the strangers around us.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:57Lewis Howes?

  And so I acknowledge you for showing up the way you did today, for your constant level of service. Everyone I talk to who knows you just says how giving of a human being you are. And for showing me what's possible when all the good that comes your way, you don't have to wear a mask and think you're that much better.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  No, yes.

• 1:10:18Lewis Howes?

  And so I appreciate and acknowledge you for constantly showing up in service and humility and gratitude. It's a great blessing to be with you right now.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Man, thank you. Appreciate it.

• 1:10:27Lewis Howes?

  Check out these books, Spiritual Liberation as well, The Answer is You, Life Visioning.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, Life Visioning, this is the book that Oprah, she picked fifty, out of her thirty years of being on TV, she picked fifteen books, as she said, were the best fifteen books to help an individual solve a problem, and Life Visioning made that fifteen cut.

• 1:10:47Lewis Howes?

  Oh, maybe I'll read this one today then. This is great. I appreciate it. Life Visioning, very cool. Final que-- and you're on social media.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Facebook, Instagram, Michael Beckwith.

• 1:10:59Lewis Howes?

  Michael Beckwith.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Twitter, the whole, the whole deal.

• 1:11:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  And they can go to agapelive.com to actually livestream my services. They can actually see me live.

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  Anywhere in the world.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Anywhere in the world. Most of the congregations around the world.

• 1:11:11Lewis Howes?

  Agape Live.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  I mean, they have a few thousand every Sunday, but most of the people are in Canada, Australia, New York, and they're all around the world.

• 1:11:19Lewis Howes?

  Great. So go to agapelive.com. You can watch it live on Sundays.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:24Lewis Howes?

  If you're in LA, if you're visiting LA.

• 1:11:26Speaker 01

  You gotta come.

• 1:11:26Lewis Howes?

  People can show up to Agape, if they go to agape.com, is that where it's at?

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can, they can find it at the Saban Theater.

• 1:11:32Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  Right there on Wilshire and Los Angeles.

• 1:11:35Lewis Howes?

  And when you go and you meet Michael, make sure you heard him on the show.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, tell him to come up and say, I heard you on the show.

• 1:11:41Lewis Howes?

  Let him know. Final question for you, Michael, is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Definition of greatness is constantly being superior to your former self. So you're never in competition with someone else. You're only competing with your former self so that tomorrow, next year, two years from now, you're actually releasing more life energy than you were two years ago or a year ago. So it's, so you're really becoming more you on a regular basis.

• 1:12:12Lewis Howes?

  My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact a hundred million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you, and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally,

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.