This Mindset Will Make You Never Feel FEAR Again | EP 923

0:00There are two big things happening at one time that I've never done before. I'm going on a book tour for my new book, Make Money Easy, and I'm doing a podcast tour at the same time. It is going to be big, and I'm going to seven cities in 10 days. Get your friends, get your family, bring everyone you know to these cities. I'm coming to Austin, Texas, New York, Boston. We're going to Nashville. Then we're going to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Make sure to get your tickets right now. go to lewishouse.com slash tour. Again, bring everyone you know if you're looking to create more financial freedom and abundance in your life and you want to see a massive guest live on the School of Greatness show.

0:45Get your tickets. I can't wait to see you there. Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:58The human brain does a lot of amazing things for us, but its primary responsibility is our survival. Yes. It's to keep us alive. The brain has a security system within it, and within that are two different alerts, one of which we know is fear, one we know is pain. Fear is the alert of pending danger or a potential threat. Like something bad could happen. you're now scared. I need you to be scared of that to stay away from it. Pain being the alert of damage or impairment, right? Because the brain wants us to survive. Knowing that our brain is there because it wants the comfort zone, like homeostasis, like the medical term.

1:39It wants things nice and predictable and sustainable and forecastable. And let's just keep things all nice and calm here when it comes to even our heartbeat, our red blood cell count. It doesn't want change. Recognizing that and then knowing that if we've set our sights on something righteous, something of ambition, something that is unlikely, unprecedented, there are going to be times when we have to ignore our brain and listen to our heart and our soul. And one of the greater challenges of life really is knowing when to take that risk and asking yourself in that moment, in real time, like right now, are you willing to take the risk of doing this particular thing, knowing the potential hazards, but then also knowing the potential effects.

2:29Has anything become harder since you lost your leg? And has anything become easier or better since then as well? Countless specific tasks were really hard to relearn and are still harder today, even after having learned them and doing them now for almost a decade. I mean, walking is harder now than it was prior. I think generally speaking, the hard comes from a willingness to accept that you don't know how to do something right now and that's okay. And not letting my pride and ego get in the way of that, slicing off a massive serving of humility, be willing to take that risk of embarrassment, you know, and when it comes to fear, sure, we're fear of physical damage, but I would argue fear mostly comes through the lens of emotional damage, fear of failure, fear of embarrassment, you know, self-judgment, I think most of that.

3:27So most tasks, certainly anything that involves me being on two legs are more difficult today than before. But I look at the life I have now, man, and, you know, particularly my family and my boys and my wife and this is amazing. I would not undo a single thing because there's just a chance that I don't end up where I am here right now. Like talking to you with my family at home, I live such a fulfilling and loved life that I wouldn't change a thing about this. So I'm big into jujitsu and I started as a two-legged guy and competed. Jujitsu was a huge part of my recovery, which began in the hospital, certainly physically, range of motion, flexibility, humility.

4:11Also your spirit too, just camaraderie, competition, all that stuff. Yeah. Huge aspect. You know, jujitsu is a weight class sport. And although, you know, I walk around now today at around 220 pounds, I'm missing about 45 pounds of leg. Right, right. I was able to leverage my upper body strength and whatnot when I would compete as an amputee. And if you looked at me versus some of my competitors from the waist up, you'd be like, there's no way these guys are in the same weight class. It's impossible. My degree of confidence is actually probably higher now than it was as a two-legged guy. Wow. Wow.

4:47Why? How? I think you could summarize confidence into two words, like training and preparedness. When you put in the reps and you've got the resources in place to deal with the what-ifs, I think drastically increased the level of confidence as I began to fail repeatedly in front of those in which I wanted to impress, like my teammates and my commanders. I eventually got to a place where I was okay with failing in front of people. Like when I first got back to my unit, I was only in the hospital for a year. I got back to my unit. I was still really raw. I would not be seen without my prosthetic on my body.

5:24No one would see me without a leg. Why? Because in my mind, that would be seen it as weakness. I would be seen as a liability. I would be seen as, and there's no way this guy can stay in this community. So I struggled with that for a while. And there was a time eventually when my teammates came over and I was hobbling around. I clearly needed to take my leg off and like let it chill for a minute. And he came over and he's like, dude, why don't you just take your leg off and like, like sit down for a second. He knew why without me having to say it. He's like, listen, dude, everyone here knows you only have one leg.

5:55If you take your prosthetic off, it's change anything and that was like step one and i just did that and i looked around and no one cared no one cared yeah getting comfortable with the uncomfortable absolutely yeah the fear of embarrassment or the worry what are people going to think yeah no one cared no one cared they just want you healthy happy they want you feel ready to go that's it and then from there it just kind of began to snowball where i would push myself harder and i would trip and fall or my leg would come detached or i was i would fail on this deadlift or i'd be out trying to learn how to run and i'd fall down and I began to just care less about the opinions of others.

6:30Yeah, if you fell down, it didn't matter anymore. It didn't matter. Like my teammates, my family, my loved ones, they love me regardless. So I just began to build up, you know, a greater sense of confidence because I was callousing my mind to a degree where, no, I can do this. I can be vulnerable. I can mess things up. Not only is it okay, but it actually inspires people around me and makes them want to dig a little bit deeper.

7:09Thank 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.

7:59Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.