Overcoming Your Insecurities To TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE | Russell Brand EP 295

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

0:10Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful, transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:53So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

1:13When did you feel in your life the most insecure? And when did you fully start to understand how to overcome your insecurities. Many of these negative emotions and feelings have like a wisdom in them, don't they? Because even like the most ferocious forms of chemical dependency that I've experienced, crack and heroin addiction, are kind of about melting the boundary of who you are. Look at the idioms around it. Get off your face, get smashed, destroy yourself. that on some level again using inappropriate means you are trying to transcend and become free of the self it's a spiritual impulse i may have to talk people through that more slowly because it seems sort of stupid to think of some hunched drunk or junkie slumped in a doorway as being on a spiritual quest but when you think that spirituality is simply the valorizing of the inner life over the outer life, the need to connect, the need to feel something truthful and real, then anyone that picks up a drink ever or smokes a joint is after a spiritual experience.

2:24They're trying to feel better. I've felt insecure and worthless a lot of times in my life. It happens to me again and again and again. I'm lucky that I'm an addict because the addiction shows you, it takes you to extremes. So you're confronted with the fallibility of the choices you're making, that these choices won't work for you. I think a lot of people, and I wrote about that in the recovery book, are able to struggle along with moderate addictions, moderate addictions to food or sex or success or whatever, never, ever reaching the point of crisis that would facilitate transformation, metamorphosis, real change, real change.

3:00You know that book, Revelation, I'm telling you about that moment that you talked about going down to that place in Skid Row, the union mission, you know? I was doing a craft thing there with my wife, so i was very much just in an assistant role the first time i went there yes it was to talk to them kids and i thought like i didn't feel qualified and i didn't feel good enough to do it i felt somewhat ashamed because this union mission is the only one of them missions that takes families that's what it is the others take either men or women or adults or whatever this one takes whole families there's a lot of people in there more than there should be in any civilized nation when you're there you want to tell them look this isn't your fault it's not your family's fault you're a byproduct of a economic system that simply cannot generate uh well it can generate enough wealth but it doesn't it doesn't distribute wealth fairly for a number of complex reasons and you are the end of that you know and i can't describe explain that to you it's patronizing and somehow dismissive and but more importantly that day that i went to do the craft i sort of saw or maybe even someone told me it maybe i didn't have this realization maybe someone said it to me they don't know they're poor they don't they don't have that contextualization they're just children they're just children and it was sort of beautiful and amazing and since having kids as I said I don't do what I used to do a lot me I love children I've always loved children I used to get right and I didn't have kids till like I was 40 so I was very much like if I was around my mates kids or whatever really play with them and like get into characters with them and do a lot of joyful play but that day like I held it down because my wife was doing this stuff with the mums and the kids and I felt the heaviness and I felt the shame of the adults and I was um lifted by the joy of the children but I held back you know like I was just helping them they were making play-doh together and all this kind of stuff and doing these craft activities and then when that finished I let myself off the hook a little bit I let myself be a dinosaur and a monster and be all crazy with these kids and monkey around with them you know and like there's one bit where like all these little five-year-olds and six-year-olds and seven-year-olds they pulled me to the ground and they was beating me up and stuff and I sort of looked up for a moment and all I could see my whole vista was filled with children's faces and they were smiling and they were full of joy and this is when I felt God is here God is in this room look at this isn't there's nothing but joy and love and play and happiness in this lowest of place where people are suffering poverty to being disregarded neglected and the whole room my whole experience is filled with love and this is just one moment in time of course I know that those children have got whole lives ahead of them and have whole lives behind them but in that moment there was an absolute realization of something sublime and divine and for me this is an important force of important energy that has to be mobilized valorized brought to the forefront exalted in our culture made the emblem and the driving force and the raison d 'etre of the way we live not marginalized neglected to the sidelines so people can plunder the earth and look at the earth as a resource and look at human beings as a resource and fortify systems of elitism for me the basic idea the sesame street values kindness and love kindness and love instead of the values you know that currently dominate selfishness greed this is what's at play now

6:14Thank 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.

7:10Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.