Navigating the Path to Inner Peace | Rainn Wilson EP 486

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

0:13When did you feel like you actually got into that space of practicing it? When did you start to say, oh, this is all happening outside of me, but let me start to nurture and tend to this garden inside of me for more peace and inner prosperity, not outer prosperity? I'm going to be really honest with you. I know I don't look it. I'm 57 years old. Great, man. 48, 49 is when that started. So, 59 years ago. When I was really able to put into practice, um, some of the spiritual guidance that I had been studying, some of the therapeutic and positive psychology studies that I had been studying. And for those, and I want to say for those watching at home that might have a problem with spirituality or God or religion, and first of all, spirituality and religion, they are separate things, then that's fine.

1:11Put that aside. And there's a wonderful reservoir of information that you have drawn on on all 1 ,400 of your episodes from the positive psychology movement. And so, positive psychology always arrives at the same data points that ancient wisdom from faith traditions arrives at. It goes through a different way, but when you can learn a great deal from following great teachers, it's the same wisdom, it's just kind of packaged a little differently. Sure, sure. I wish I got to learn these things a lot sooner as well, but it wasn't really until two years ago when I felt a sense of peace in my heart that I haven't never felt.

1:51Wow. What happened there? I only felt peace when I was single. But when I was in relationships, I felt trapped and I felt a sense of not enoughness and never going to be able to live up to someone's standards and people pleasing and all these things that you mentioned as well, similar things. And I never... Sounds like a little codependence going on there too. Yeah, and it was, you know, I was afraid because my parents were trapped. And so I grew up watching a model of them not really accepting or loving one another. And I didn't know which night, if it was going to be, like, peaceful or chaotic.

2:25You know, every night you just didn't know how they were going to be screaming or reacting or cold shoulders. So I just didn't have a healthy model. I don't blame them. It all developed me in a certain way to be a curious learner of this and try to, like, support others going through the same challenge. It's one of the reasons why I left home at 13, because I was like, get me out of here. It was just very up and down, chaotic, at home. My brother was also in prison for four and a half years when I was eight until I was 12. So it was just like a lot of sadness, grief, loss, pain within the family dynamic.

2:59And I know lots of families go through their own unique family dynamic of dysfunction. So this was just my own perspective. I just went after a feeling as opposed to being the feeling. I went after wanting something and desiring people and then needing to make sure that it worked out and going all in on it, even when I had to change who I was to try to make them quote-unquote happy, the partners I chose were never happy with me. They didn't accept me for who I was. And I don't blame them. I chose them for a reason. I needed to learn the lessons. And it wasn't until I became fully peaceful and happy and on a healing journey of who I was and everything about my past, really grieving all the different parts of me, that's when I felt peace.

3:44I just want to say, like, see, I think this is super important that you can share with your audience your struggle. And to say, here I am not really kind of figuring out how to be at peace in a relationship until my late 30s. I don't have it all figured out. I struggle. I think that's so great that you're willing to share that. So you talk about the inner child work. Did you do some therapeutic? Yeah, nine years. nine months, I was like, I had a screensaver on my phone of my five-year-old self, you know, not from a narcissistic point of view of like, oh, look at me as a kid, but more of like, oh, look how sad I was.

4:22And look how much I was suffering and unsure of myself I was. And always asking, why am I even here? What's the point of this? And, and just getting into trouble a lot. And so having compassion for my five, six, you know, seven, eight-year-old self and putting myself in the mystical situations spiritually where I'm there having a conversation and comforting my five-year-old self as a 38-year-old adult with the wisdom and experience that I have now. Yeah. Those experiences reunited me with a broken memory, a memory of mine that was broken, bruised, and hurt psychologically, emotionally, spiritually.

5:05and this allowed me to create harmony and congruency with the parts of myself that I was most ashamed of. This was also the time when I was sexually abused by a man that I didn't know, five years old. My second memory is of being sexually abused in a bathroom by a man that I didn't know and I never grieved that. It wasn't until 10 years ago when I started to open up and talk about that and process it with support. That released a pressure valve within me that had been building up for 25 years, which drove me to be, to excel in athletics and business and getting results. So it's like, I'm going to prove them wrong.

5:43No one's going to hurt me ever again, but by not acknowledging or grieving the pain and the sadness of the five-year-old, the nine-year-old, the 13-year-old, the 27-year-old, you know, and all these different breakdowns I had and always going to the next point without grieving a loss, it caused many breakdowns in my life, physically, relationally, financially, when on the outside things looked good, but on the inside it was a one, two, or three.

6:25Thank 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 Podcast 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.

7:15Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.