Gabriel Iglesias Opens Up About MENTAL HEALTH, Moving On From RELATIONSHIPS, & Why He Almost RETIRED

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:13On a scale of 1 to 10, I call it the inner peace and self-love scale. Where would you say that you're currently at this season of life? From 1 being you, have 0 self-love and 0 inner peace, to 10 being a lot of self-love and all peace inside of you. Where would you say you're currently on that scale, 1 to 10? 1 to 10, I'm probably at a 6, 5, maybe close to a 7. I feel good, but I know that there are so many things that I could do to improve my quality of life, so many things that I could be doing to make myself happier, so many things I could be doing to just give myself a better place, if that makes sense.

0:53I know that if I was to wake up every morning and go take a walk, that would improve my health. I know that if I didn't drink, that could help, you know, certain things with like, you know, make organs feel better or maybe the skin will be, you know. I know that if I made certain choices, it would improve. As far as self-love, like, I feel pretty good right now. Yeah. But, you know, the week is young. When do you feel like you've been on the lowest on that scale, if you can reflect back? Like lowest on that scale is when I was trying to make people happy that weren't going to be happy and definitely weren't going to be making me happy.

1:36Killing yourself trying to please others is one of those things that I'm guilty of doing so many times. And I've given so many of the wrong people my time, energy, and love when I should have been giving that to myself. I'm guilty of giving till it hurts and giving till I hurt myself. I'm not going to get that time and all that back. and so the goal is to try to turn all of that and start doing more for me. Wow, that's beautiful, man. I relate to that just because growing up I felt very alone. I felt very alone. I felt very abandoned and abused. Now, that doesn't mean that's the total truth, but there were certain moments and memories that caused me to feel not enough often.

2:19I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I don't know. I've talked about this openly many times here. My brother was in prison when I was eight years old for four and a half years, so I wasn't allowed to have friends in the neighborhood because my older brother was bad and wrong and therefore parents would have let their kids hang out with me. I was in special needs classes. It was really hard for me to read and write and just remember what I was learning in school. So I was in those special classes with like three or four kids getting made fun of, getting picked on. You know, I just never felt enough.

2:50I never felt like I was good enough. And so that, I guess, those memories, those experiences, those wounds caused me to people-please a lot in my 20s and early 30s. Until it felt like it was going to kill me. Until I had heart palpitations, pain in my chest. I was making a lot of money to prove people wrong and succeeding externally, but feeling very insignificant, lonely, and sad internally. And it wasn't until I started to really break down, get some support, go to therapy, start to transform, heal. That's when I started to have more clarity and more peace. Do you feel like you know where a lot of that people pleasing came from for you?

3:35First of all, I'm sorry for what you went through. And I relate a lot to what you just said, especially the people pleasing and just trying to. If you're making people happy, then hopefully you'll feel happy and maybe they'll make you happy. And that's a tough one. It really is. I don't know where that came from because I do feel like, you know, even though I didn't grow up with both parents, I had my mom who was an incredible person. I miss her very much. She gave me everything I needed in life to be okay. You know, I didn't have all the toys, but, you know, my Christmases were not horrible, you know.

4:15And even though we lived in a rough area, she still protected me and kept me from becoming the environment. So I don't know where that comes from. I mean, I basically grew up an only child because my sisters and my brother were all much older. So by the time I showed up, everybody was already gone. They're all out of the house. So it's like it was just my mom and I. It sounds like you've realized this was something you were doing. You've stopped doing it, and now you're starting to give back to you. And this is very recent because, I mean, I'm still guilty of it. And I still, unfortunately, I still allow certain people to have behaviors that are not good for them and definitely not good for me.

4:58Why do you think you allow that still? Because I love them. Because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I don't want to feel bad for making them feel bad. Even though I know that this is not benefiting either one. I don't like the idea of knowing that what I'm about to do is going to cause ripples of unhappiness. Even though it's sometimes necessary to correct what's going on. And that's why it's like, ugh. And you always want to hope that they see it, they get it, they understand it. They'll change on their own. And yeah, so because of how close they are and how long they've been part of everything, it's really hard.

5:47Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:43Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.