Why You Always Have To Work On Yourself | Terry Crews EP 738

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show. Today's episode is all about healing your past. Our past is what made us into who we are today, but that doesn't mean avoiding it is ever the proper solution. Healing past trauma can be extremely transformational for so many people. And I invite you to give yourself grace and find healing today.

0:35I had a dog who would eat its poop, and I hate it. It was just like, oh, my God. Every time it would do it, and I'd see it licking on a kid's face. I was like, stop, stop. But again, I was mad all the time. Always angry. Dude, it's me. I'm alone with the dog. The dog starts pooping. Turn right around and starts going to town. I'm like, dude, I ran outside, and I threw this dog across the lawn. This was a blackout moment. The dog flew across the lawn like a frisbee. My kids walk in. The moment the dog lands, the kids come in from shopping with my wife. It was ridiculous. It was over the top. The dog didn't deserve it.

1:29It was like a child. It was abusive. It was crazy. The minute I threw him, I regretted it. Like, ah. All I remember sitting there just going, why? How did I do this? Like, why didn't I? I was in tears, man. Like, how am I? I can't control myself. You know, like, there's nothing scarier than knowing there's something in you that could push the nuclear button at any time. And wait, you can't stop it? I mean, I have no control over my own life. And I'm going, wait a minute, I can't tell myself no. I have no control over anything. And that hit me. I was going, holy cow. And my wife was just like, Terry, what's wrong with you?

2:17And man, I can't count the number of events, theme park gatherings, different stuff we give it to family and one thing would make me go off and I'd ruin the whole day for everybody. In 2010, it was the end of our marriage. We had been married 20 years. And this whole time I had had an addiction to pornography and I had never told her. And 10 years earlier, I had, you know, basically cheated on her at a massage bar. But I vowed I'd never tell anybody. I vowed. I said, man, I'm taking this to my grave. I knew that I wasn't living right. I mean, the one thing is, it's almost like, you know, you say one lie and it turns into two, turns into 10.

3:05It eats you inside of you too. You're talking about 10 years now. I vowed I'd never tell anybody. And my wife was always like, she would just bring up stuff like, what is it? What are you doing, man? I don't know. You ever cheat on me? Stuff like that. And I'm like, nah, I don't know what you're talking about. You know, and angry, angry. And what you would do, and one thing that I would do is project. So I was like, why are you saying that? Are you thinking about cheating? You know, in turn, and again, this manipulative game that you could play with the people you love, the people who love you or you claim to love, just so you can keep your thing together.

3:46You know what I mean? And this thing, Lewis, is that I realized that the image of Terry Crews was more important than who Terry Crews was. Dang. And I had to worship that image. And it ran everything. Well, my mindset, I had a play. I was like, I'd lose everything. First of all, my wife would leave. People who knew me would be ashamed. People who knew me would be, they would run away. Everybody would be done. All of it would be finished. if people found out who I really, really was, then it would be the end of me. So I decided, and we're going to put this image up and we're going to prop it up.

4:27And it's like having an image on it, these really weak posts. You know what I mean? And we get bumped and it's like way swaying and you're doing everything you can to hold it. I got to put another beam up on there just to hold it up because it's getting rickety. And the longer it goes, the more rickety it gets. and it all fell 2010 and my wife was like i'm out because what happened was she finally asked me because we had just been getting farther and farther apart yeah over the years and she said you know what is it i don't know about you terry cruz and i told her i told her about what happened 10 years earlier not in my head i'm like hey it was 10 years ago but for her it was today and she was like I'm out don't come home and what I realized is that she had married an image and what she realized is that she didn't know me and I let her stay in that what we're looking for is intimacy like literally someone who knows us inside and out and loves us anyway.

5:40But if you never reveal who you really are, you can never, ever have intimacy. It's impossible because you have to know who you are. When my wife left, I was at my wit's end. I said, man, I got to try this therapy stuff. we all think we as people are as good as we are. We just take me as I am. We make songs about you are like Legos. Okay. Legos come in a box. You shake the box. It's just pieces. And in a very competitive world, people tell you you're broke. Hey man, look at your box. You broke it. But what I learned is that you're never, you're not broken. You're just not finished. it's up to you to assemble yourself you have to work on you you have to take off parts that are bad or that don't fit because nothing's broken, it just things don't fit and you pull it off and you put it back together the right way and you can rebuild yourself

6:58I am so excited for you to finish the rest of your day strong. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description and it'll take you to the full episode of my other show, The School of Greatness. Make sure to come back tomorrow for another episode of The Daily Motivation Show.