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The High Performance Podcast

19 Sep 2024 · 1h 6m

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Lewis Howes: How to Re-Wire Your Brain to Overcome Self-Doubt (E291)

In short

In this episode of The High Performance Podcast, hosts Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes engage in a deep and insightful conversation with Lewis Howes, a former professional athlete, best-selling author, and host of "The School of Greatness." The discussion revolves around Howes' journey to overcoming self-doubt, the evolution of his understanding of success and greatness, and practical strategies for personal development.

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0:00Watch it early on the High Performance App. Available now, Roman Kemp, the broadcaster, opens up a powerful conversation on success and mental health. Winning at all costs is not high performance. Having the most money is not high performance. But I feel like that's what's allowed me to get closer to actualizing my vision and my mission, is through those energies of love as opposed to anger, resentment, or competition. You need to create a list of all your fears, and you need to start knocking them off your list. Go all in on the fear until the fear disappears. I just think inner peace is the new rich.

0:38You know, I think harmony is the highest currency. That is the host of School of Greatness, Lewis Howes. This is High Performance, the show that unlocks the minds of the most fascinating people on the planet. I'm Jay Comfrey and alongside our expert, Damian Hughes, we learn from the stories, struggles and successes of our guests, allowing us all to find our own version of high performance. And Lewis has spoken, like us, to hundreds of incredible people on his own show and now he combines all that incredible wisdom as he joins us on our show. Enjoy this conversation with Lewis Howes, recorded when we recently visited Los Angeles on High Performance.

1:21Welcome to the show. Thank you guys, appreciate it. Thanks for having me. What do you believe high performance is? I think it's running on optimal of your body, mind, spirit, and soul towards a vision and a purpose that you have. And also not neglecting the other important parts of your life. So making sure you're optimal in your health, your relationships, and your vision or your purpose or your vocation. And I think it's similar to greatness in effect for me because I think some people can be great in one area but neglect a lot of other areas and so maybe you can be great at your career or at your business or at your talent or at your sport but then if you're horrible in other areas are you really high performing are you really optimal in your life and it's hard because people talk about balance like how do you perform at a high level at all areas of life i think that can be very challenging.

2:20And it's not about balance, it's about alignment. Am I in alignment with the purpose that I'm supposed to be living? Am I in alignment in the relationships that I'm having and having clear communication about what I can and cannot give at this season of life? Am I in alignment with my career or my business or my sport as well? Understanding the season of life that I'm in. So that's what I really think about when it comes with high performance. And I want to delve into all of those things that make high performance or make greatness. First, can I just say it's quite surreal for us, having watched you from across the pond for a long time in this studio.

2:56We're here, man. It's a small of greatness. We're here. Suddenly, it's like life goes by fast. It felt like this was being planned months ago, and suddenly here we are. So thank you so much for inviting us into your space to record this conversation. Welcome. And I wonder whether actually we've been on quite similar journeys, because when we first started High Performance, we couldn't wait for people to find out about the grind and the hard work. You know the Any Given Sunday, you've got a claw for that inch. We thought that's what high performance was. We thought that's what high performance was.

3:23And we couldn't wait for people to find out about the hard work and the grind and getting punched in the stomach and coming back for more. And it's only through having conversations we realize that that's not high performance at all. You know, the person that has the most fun is always going to be the winner, right? Yes. I wonder whether your relationship to greatness has been on maybe a similar journey, that what you thought greatness was compared to what you think it is now is maybe different. Yeah, it's interesting. I used to want to be successful growing up. I wanted to win. I wanted to look good.

3:52I wanted to be right. And I wanted success, whatever I thought that meant. And I learned in the last 11 years of doing my show and kind of interviewing people the same way you guys have, is that success is a very selfish thing. It's about me wanting something for myself. And there's nothing wrong with being selfish, but it is, in fact, a selfish act. Success. It's about me, self. And I think the success only takes us so far. Greatness can be a sustainable, renewable energy that lasts forever. Success, you can burn out on. Greatness, you can continue. You continue to evolve. And because it's not based on just me.

4:33It's based on my talents, my gifts, my energy, my purpose in the service of others. And I think when we live in the service of others through our talents and gifts, that is true greatness and high performance. Because success by itself or high performance for selfish reasons alone, there's only so high of a mountaintop you can get to. And it's lonely. And there's not many people that can relate to you because you become unrelatable by being so successful. But when you think about greatness, you think about I'm bringing others with me to the top or the tops of whatever mountain I'm going on. I'm also not leaving everyone else behind because I'm doing it in service for everyone at all levels, whether at the top of their life, they're struggling in the valleys.

5:21I'm connecting with and communicating with the people in my life on all different levels. I'm not isolating through success. And I think that's the difference. It's not about being successful. It's about being great and performing at a high level through service. I love that. I'm interested. It's more sustainable. You know what I mean? But there's a word that really jumped out in your initial answer, Lewis, which was alignment. And it reminded me of John Maxwell, the writer who talks around the three A's of alignment. So you start with your aspiration or what some people refer to as your purpose.

5:55Then it's about your ambition, how you're going to measure that. And then finally, it's about the actions you take, the daily habits that you get into. And I'm interested if we could explore that sense of alignment. How would you describe your aspiration or your sense of purpose then? My personal aspiration is to serve 100 million lives every single week to help them improve the quality of their life. That's my purpose, that's my mission. And I do that through the actions of media currently, right? So what's the mechanism of how I'm going to get there? So I start with the vision, the goal, whatever it might be, to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life.

6:33And I ask myself, why is that an important mission for me? Because everyone can throw out a reason for their goals of like, I want to make a million dollars, I want to win the championship, I want to be the top of my career, but why? So I'd ask myself, why is this meaningful for me? Why does this fuel me and give me hunger and desire to serve? because if there's not a deeper meaning why underneath it, then it's just going for success for vanity. And that is going to burn out. That's going to make me burn out. Were you ever doing that? 100%, yeah. My whole life growing up was like, how do I be the best?

7:07How do I win to prove people wrong? And that's the second most powerful driver of life is anger, resentment, proving people wrong. That will get you very far. It'll help you accomplish, but it won't help you feel peaceful and harmonious and aligned. Alignment comes from love. Alignment comes from peace, an environment of enrichment, not an environment of anger and frustration and resentment. And so when we're out of alignment, we're using energies, emotions, and actions based on fear, stress, anger, or lack. And so we are out of alignment of our true nature, which is love, harmony, peace, joy, abundance, generosity, collaboration.

8:00All these things are higher level frequencies and energies. That's high performance. Winning at all costs is not high performance. Having the most money is not high performance. but actualizing yourself and your talents and your gifts through the energy of love appreciation generosity gratitude bringing others with you care thoughtfulness these energies are renewable energies anger is not you burn out and we were talking earlier it's just like the only way that i could be going for every single week doing interviews for 11 years is because I love it. If I hated it or I was doing it to try to beat others, I'd be burnt out.

8:46I'd be exhausted. I'm healthier now than I was 20 years ago. I'm in better shape now. I have more love in my heart. I have better relationships now. It's because I'm always learning and developing. But I feel like that's what's allowed me to get closer to actualizing my vision and my mission is through those energies of love as opposed to anger, resentment, or competition.

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10:54I'd really like to know what you would say to someone who's listening to this, going, that sounds fantastic, but I'm angry at my boss. I resent my upbringing. in. I'm frustrated with my level of income. I'm disappointed with my relationships. How does someone begin on the journey that you have been on? Maxwell's great. I've had him on a number of times. If I was to add something to the alignment section of his three A's, I would add assessment because you want to take inventory of your life and assess, okay, where am I at on a scale of one to 10 with my closest relationships, with my career, with my boss, with my health, with my finances.

11:33Assess would be one of the steps in here. And ask yourself, okay, if I want to be an 8, 9, or 10 out of a 1 of a 10 scale in these categories, which one is the lowest? Why have I allowed it to be this bad? Why am I allowing my relationships, my health to be so out of alignment? Why? And assess it. When we can assess it, then we can measure and track on how to improve it. We can start to think about the actions that we need to take to improve our alignment. And we don't assess where we're at. It's hard to know where we want to be. And you still do that despite the busyness and the businesses? I'm constantly assessing every season of life.

12:11We track everything every week with our team of where we're at and our metrics based on our mission. But I'm also just tracking my health. I'm taking blood work. I'm measuring things. I'm checking in with my fiance and asking, where are we at? How can I be of better service to you? What do you need? How do you feel in our relationship? I'm doing this as, I'm not perfect in every area, but I'm constantly in assessment, whether internally or externally. And that just gives me information. It just gives me feedback on what I need to do to improve. But you also said, if we can explore this from a different angle for people that are listening to this conversation, in your first book, The School of Greatness.

12:51You spoke about when you were a high school champion and you said the best teams, if I can quote to you, you said it's successful and unsuccessful people don't vary very much in ability, but they do in desire. And you spoke about how you even did this as a team exercise of getting that alignment. So I'm going to assume you do this with your team here. Absolutely. It's really desire and belief. I was in eighth grade playing basketball and and the affiliated high school, I would go watch the varsity teams play. And sometimes I'd get to practice with the varsity as an eighth grader because I was this tall when I was in eighth grade and I was pretty advanced as a basketball player.

13:32Wasn't good in school, but I was good in sports. And I remember practicing with the varsity. These are 17 and 18 year olds. I was 13. And there was this one guy who was a freak athlete. He was the greatest athlete I'd ever seen. He could 360 dunk. He could shoot from anywhere. He was just a freak of nature athletically. He was so talented, but when he would get in the game, he didn't have the confidence and the belief in himself. And it didn't matter. Everyone on the team, all the coaches were like, you're the guy, you're the best. But he didn't believe in himself. And it doesn't matter if everyone believes in you.

14:07If you don't learn to believe in yourself, you're never going to actualize your high performance abilities or your greatness. the beautiful thing on the flip side of that is it doesn't matter if everyone doubts you around you if you have that belief you can overcome all those doubts and insecurities that others try to limit you with so it's learning how to build the belief in self throughout the journey towards high performance and how do you do that i really think of it as um one creating a fear list of all the fears that hold you back. Because most of us have a list of limitations, limits, or insecurities that cause us to say, I'm not that good.

14:52You know, I was always in the bottom of my class, so I'm stupid. That was a limit of mine, right? I used to get made fun of when I would speak aloud in front of the class and try to read aloud because I couldn't read and write. So I was like, I'll never amount to anything as a speaker because I can't do this. So when I got in my early 20s, I realized that I had so many fears and insecurities. I thought I was talented. I thought I was smart. I thought I was confident until I broke my wrist playing football and realized my dream and my identity as an athlete is no longer here. I can't lean on this identity anymore because I'm injured.

15:28So I realized, wow, I'm just a scared little boy as an adult. And my limits and fears are really consuming and controlling me. So early on, I had a mentor said, you need to create a list of all your fears. And you need to start knocking them off your list one by one and start with the scariest fear. Go all in on the fear until the fear disappears. And I was just like, I don't know if I could do this. I'm scared of everything. You know, I thought I was confident, but I was really scared of so many things. I'd also be scared of, I've written down all my fears. I've got no idea how to eradicate them.

16:02Like, you go all in on them until they disappear. How do you mean? So one of my biggest fears was public speaking. Yeah. Another one was writing, like writing a book, because I almost failed out of English class in high school. And so I said, I want to write a book, even though I could barely read and write. And I also said, I'm going to be a presenter on stages, even though I cannot stand in front of a group of three peers and speak without stuttering. So I said, how is this even going to be possible? How can I write a book before I'm 25 when I don't even know how to write a three-page paper?

16:34How can I stand in front of an audience of thousands if I can't even do it in an audience of one? And I said, well, you got to practice and fail over and over again. And the first thing was finding coaches and mentors who had already done these things. So I found someone who had written many books, and I said, can you guide me? I found a person who was a professional public speaker, and he guided me. And I said, tell me everything I need to do, and I will do it. And the speaker said, you need to go to a thing called Toastmasters, which is an international speaking workshop. And every week, they hold classes.

17:08You need to go every single week for a year. I was like, but I don't know how to do it. And he said, they will guide you. And you're going to fail over and over again. I went every week for a year and practiced. And I was horrible. I was miserable. And I felt so insecure and felt like I was the worst speaker every time I presented. But after a year of doing this, while having a coach every week, while filming myself every week, while giving myself feedback and reviewing my game film like an athlete, while practicing and rehearsing the next week's speeches. After a year, I started to feel a lot more confident.

17:44I started to overcome the fear. And now I get paid handsomely to go speak in front of audiences. But if I did not go all in on the fear until it disappeared, I wouldn't have gained confidence and belief in self. I did that with writing. I did that with salsa dancing. So many different things that I was afraid of. I had to humiliate myself in order to overcome the fear. How's your salsa? It's pretty good. I mean, I've been salsanating this for 17 years. It's pretty good. We'll get a demonstration at the end of the conversation. It reminds me very much of a conversation Jake and I were lucky enough to have with a fascinating psychologist in the UK, a lady called Dr.

18:21Pippa Grange. And she was renowned for working with the England soccer team. And one of the big areas that she's renowned for is working with people and facing their fears. She wrote a brilliant book called Fear Less. Ah, that's good. And when we spoke to her, she spoke to us around, there's two fears that show up in our lives. You're describing very much one of them. One is that in-the-moment fear where we just, a truck is bearing down on us, we just have to get out of the way. But the other more insidious one is not being good enough. Yes. So the fear of being stupid, looking ridiculous, not being able to speak in front of a group is very much around not being good enough.

18:58And I'm interested in when you went and faced these fears of speaking in front of groups, starting to write, books, when did it feel like you became good enough in your own head? You had that belief? It's interesting. I mean, I want to answer that question in a second, but I want to speak into the first thing you said there, which is kind of these two fears. I really, through my research, I really found that there are three fears that cause us to doubt ourselves the most. I call it the doubt diagram. So it's the fear of failure. If you made a diagram, you put doubt diagram in the first circle, failure would be the first one.

19:36A lot of us are afraid to fail, right? And so we won't start something, we won't launch something, we won't put out a podcast or a book or go over the thing we want because we're afraid of failure. And when I speak and ask people, like, raise your hand if you've ever been afraid to fail, most of the people in a room will raise their hand. It's a natural feeling. As an athlete, I was never afraid to fail because I was taught early on through coaches because failure is just feedback. It's just information telling you what you still need to work on. And failure is something we practiced. It was just like, okay, rep after rep, like catch the ball, shoot the ball, whatever it might be.

20:14If you fail, okay, why did you fail? Why'd you drop it? Why'd you miss? It's not a bad thing. It's just information, intel. So when I started to learn that this is like only way you get better and succeed is through failure, it wasn't a bad thing. But most people are afraid to put themselves out there. based on fear number three, but fear number two, a lot of people have the fear of success. Well, that's interesting. Right? I never thought like, huh, why are people afraid of success? And I've always struggled with this one. I can't figure it out. Right. Well, I'll tell you what I've researched because I always wanted to be successful growing up and I'll tell you why I wanted to be successful in a moment, but I knew failure was the only path to success and success was what I wanted.

21:00So I was never afraid of the thing I wanted. But as I started to ask people, like, why are you afraid of success? Because I'd say, how many people here are afraid of success? Almost half the room would raise their hand. And it would always blow my mind. And then I watched this documentary called Weight of Gold. You guys should check this out. It's about Olympic gold medalists who have, over the years, after they win the gold medal, either commit suicide, go through extreme depressions, mental disorders, ruin their lives. and it's this psychological phenomenon called the weight of gold. When you become successful, and I'm sure you guys have seen this with people you've interviewed, everyone wants something from you.

21:39Everyone expects you to be this perfect role model. Everyone expects you to have the answers. Now you've got to pay for all your friends, all your family. You've got to bring everyone with you. Everyone's success is based on your success now. And if you fail again, you're going to hurt everyone around you. Also, as I started chasing my dreams of being a professional football player, I remember noticing a lot of college teammates stop talking to me. And I was like, wait a minute, you're not happy for me to go after this dream? But sometimes when you go after the thing you want, people get insecure because they're not going after what they want.

22:13And you make them feel less than. You remind them that they're not doing what they want when you go after what you want. And that makes people feel upset with themselves, resentful to themselves. So there's all these pressures of success. You see this with child stars and people that win early on in their early 20s in big sports. Like, they have a rise and they usually have a fall. They're not trained for the success yet. No one's prepared us for fame, success, and money until you get to that place. So there's a pressure and a weight, right? The third fear was always my biggest fear. It wasn't failure.

22:50It wasn't success. It was a third one, which is judgment. Opinions of other people. And I'll tell you a great example. When I launched my first couple books, I remember I would get a few nasty reviews. I'd get a lot of positive reviews and a few nasty reviews. It was almost like I wanted to defend myself with every critic that said something nasty about my work and tweet them and be like, you're wrong about me and how dare you? And it was just like, I was so afraid about what people thought about me. And so many people have this fear and insecurity. What are they going to say about me when I'm not around?

23:24What are you guys going to talk about me when you're back on the plane back to the UK? Did they like me? Did they not like me? Did I think I was whatever it might be? This fear of judgment. And that used to hold me back when I was speaking on stages for many years. And you asked a question, when did you feel like you were good enough, right? Now, if you go to the fear of failure, success, and judgment at the center of this doubt diagram, The three main causes of fear is I am not enough. It's this common belief, fear, failure, success, or judgment. We all have one of those at some level. I'm not good enough.

23:59I'm not enough. And we all have that until we go all in on the fears until the fears disappear. That's step one. The second step is learning to heal the wounds that cause us to feel I am not enough. What are the stories? What are the memories? What are the experiences that are bonded inside of our bodies that make us reactive, make us worry, make us flinch when we want to do something? What is the memory stored within our mind or in our bodies that cause us to feel not good enough? Most of us, I'm not sure if in the UK this is becoming more of a thing to talk about mental health and therapy and healing.

24:40But as a boy growing up in the middle of America, I was never allowed to talk about my feelings. It wasn't something you could do. And I'm assuming you guys had something similar. You weren't allowed to say, man, I feel off. I feel bad. I feel scared. I feel worried. I feel insecure. I wasn't allowed to do that. When I started to heal those memories, those wounds of the past, as opposed to keep them open and triggered, every time something triggered me, it would poke the wound. It would poke the trauma. It would make me reactive or guarded or protected or ego-driven, you know, make me want to defend myself.

25:15when I was able to heal those things, I felt worthy. So it took many years of achieving and accomplishing at a high-performing level to realize, oh, success is not bringing me peace. It does not make me feel whole. It does not make me feel loved. Maybe there's moments of like, Like, oh, I proved people wrong and I showed them and look at my success. But it didn't make me love myself and feel good about me still. Selfishly, yes, but not spiritually. And when I started to heal the emotional and psychological wounds and rewrite the memories, the stories of the memories that caused me to be triggered and integrate those lessons into alignment, that's what allowed me to make decisions and act from a place of love consistently.

26:14The actions, as John Maxwell talked about, it made me have behaviors and actions that were consistently in alignment with harmony and service, not success. And when you do that consistently, the world will look at you as successful. You know, good things tend to happen here and there. And so there was a moment, to answer your question again, probably seven years into me, I'd been speaking for a long time now, getting paid a lot of money to speak. And I remember I was giving this speech in front of, I don't know, four or 5 ,000 people. It was probably five years ago. And I remember calling my coach 30 minutes before this speech, thinking, gosh, why am I still nervous?

26:58Why am I still feeling a little insecure? I'm like the keynote speaker at this event. There's thousands of people here. I'm getting paid a ton of money. And I've been doing this for now a decade. Why am I still nervous? And I call him and ask him this question. And he said something that I'll always remember. He said, you're still thinking about yourself and not others. You're thinking about trying to be funny in the first few minutes. You're thinking about that good story you're going to tell at the end. You're thinking about trying to get the standing ovation. You're thinking about you and not the people you're there to serve.

27:28and he said, know that you're going to mess up. You're not going to be as talented as a speaker as someone else. You're not going to be as funny. You're not going to be as interesting. You're not going to have all the data and all the cool stats on stage. Like, let go of all that. You're going to forget stuff. You're not going to be perfect. And when you can just let go of the idea of I need to be the best and I need to be perfect and I need people to think highly of me and instead put that to the side and say, I'm here to serve one person in this audience. And I'm going to connect with them and I'm going to emotionally be with them.

28:03And I'm going to try to do that with each person I connect with. And if a few people feel connected to my message, that will typically impact the entire audience. But stop thinking about being perfect and just think about serving. Did that give you a bit of freedom walking out on the stage? Incredible freedom. It felt light. I was like, okay, I'm not going to be perfect. People may not like me. And it's not about me. It's not about me. Not everyone's going to like everything I have to say. But if I come from an intention of alignment to serve people the best of my ability at this moment in my life, with the skills I have, the knowledge I have, the preparation I have, that's all I can give is give my best to serve and be okay if I look silly.

28:44So can I, for people that are not familiar with your story, again, and that was a really fascinating answer, you spoke about trauma and I think it's worth touching for people that need to understand it because that idea of not thinking of yourself but others has answered a question in my head about the trauma that you famously shared. Yep. Would you tell us a little bit more about that so it gives people context? Yeah, I think we all experience some level of big trauma or little traumas. You know, big T or little T traumas throughout our lives. And I can only share my personal experience, but I know people have experienced far greater traumas.

29:29But for me, I was sexually abused when I was five. It was one of my first memories and my oldest memories that I still have. This was by a man that I didn't know. A few years later, my brother went to prison for selling drugs to an undercover cop. And he was sentenced six to 25 years. He got out in four and a half years on good behavior. But every weekend we had to go, we went to the visiting room of this prison. And I wasn't really allowed to have friends during this time from 8 to 12. Because it was a small town, small neighborhood, everyone talks. You know, your older brother's in jail. Can we trust you?

30:03All these different things. Parents went through divorce, but they were always fighting and arguing. And it just felt like, it never felt like I was in a safe environment. Emotionally or physically. I knew my parents loved me and they did the best they can, but I just never felt emotionally safe. So just a combination of those traumas, you know, it's like when you break your wrist or you break an arm or a bone and you never heal it, you're going to be in constant chronic pain until you heal it. I was in emotional, psychological, and physical pain from these traumas because I didn't have the tools on how to heal and and navigate those experiences.

30:46So I drove towards like, how do I be successful? How do I find self-worth through success? Because then people will like me, love me, and I'll be safe. But the more I succeeded and achieved, the more angry I became because it didn't help me heal. It didn't give me peace. It just made me more frustrated and angry that I wasn't feeling whole. So I would go after bigger goals and bigger dreams and bigger success. And it just never did anything for me. It helped me pay more bills, but it didn't give me the ability to feel more whole. And that's when I started to say, I need to figure out more about me.

31:25The first 30 years of my life was about success and winning and looking good. And it wasn't the answer. So I said, I need to start deconstructing who I am and try to understand how to feel more harmonious. and that's been a 10-year journey of healing and therapies and experiences of integration and realignment into actions and purpose. Can I ask you the moment you made the decision that just achieving great things was never going to be the answer? Something else had to happen? When was that moment?

32:03It was about 10 years ago. Yeah, it was about 10, 10 and a half years ago. a lot of things were just breaking down in my life. Relationships, business partnerships, health. Things were just in breakdown. And I was like, why is everything, why does it seem like everything is against me? It's kind of this victim mentality that I had. Why is this person against me and this person? It was kind of pointing the finger at everyone else. And I was like, oh, who's the common denominator in all these breakdowns? I am. And so, you know, I had some good friends in my life and family that were like, hey, we're worried about you.

32:41And instead of pushing back and having an ego like I did probably my whole 20s, I said, you know what? Let me try some stuff. I'll go to some workshops. I'll try some therapies. I'll try some stuff. I'll be willing to explore. And that journey started me right around the same time I launched the podcast. Simultaneously got me into diving inward as opposed to pointing the finger outward. word can we talk then about the podcast about the school of greatness about how all this began yeah um i love reading your story that you were kind of you were a low ebb a particularly low ebb before this began um and you went on linkedin right yes and then just started reading and reaching out to people uh-huh and it reminds me of the power of collaboration i think that so often we think that we have particularly now everyone we see across all social media look what i built look what i've done look what i can achieve on my own i think without collaboration none of us can really achieve anything 100 we interviewed arnold schwarzenegger recently who said never call me a self-made man and i'd love to find some thoughts from you about collaboration particularly from the incredible people who sat by this table in this room the collaboration is the only way that i've been able to accomplish anything in my life is is through the relationships with other people.

34:00First from sports, I learned this. Like I can't win a team sport. You can't win a game without the team, right? You need a great coach. You need great teammates. And so I took that sports mindset into business early on. And so for the first five years of launching a business before I launched the School of Greatness, I was on LinkedIn. I was connecting with people. I was doing live events. I was just saying, how can I add value to as many people as possible? And I just started learning. This was you asking, how can I add value to their life? Yes. Not how can I add value to mine. Because I didn't know, I didn't know 100%.

34:34Yeah, I was all about how can I add value to them. But I didn't know how I could do it because I didn't have any skills. I went from playing football and I was like, I don't know what to do in the business world. So I started doing my first year of kind of business. I hosted 20 different events around the country. And these in-person networking events in 2008 and 2009. And I called them LinkedIn networking events. LinkedIn was still early. It was maybe 7 million people, 8 million people on back then. But everyone was using Twitter to do these Twitter meetups. I don't know if you guys remember this back in 2007, 8, 9.

35:07And I was like, huh, I'm starting to build these groups on LinkedIn, and I'm building relationships with people. Wanting to bring everyone that I'm connected to on LinkedIn around the country together and just help them find opportunities. So I'd host an event. Three to 500 people would show up. And I would greet every person at the door and say, hey, tell me who you are. what's your business and what's your biggest challenge right now they'd tell me what they do and their biggest challenge five people would come down and be like oh i'm so and so and they would meet that exact challenge or need of the other person and i would just go and connect them right away i just became a connector early on because i didn't have skills or talents yeah i was an athlete what can i do to bring this to business i'm going to add value to people by connecting them and then i learned how to monetize events i learned how to you know charge at events get sponsorships, get consulting from events.

35:57And then I wrote a book about LinkedIn. I sold my product at events. So I was just, how do I make more money? I was doing deals with the venues, getting commissions, all these things. And that turned into another business of online education and courses. And then I did that for five years until the School of Greatness began. And that began because I was going through these breakdowns and I felt stuck in my life. And I'd made a lot of money. I'd built an audience and all these different things through relationships. through meeting smart people who had already done it. They were willing to give me this kind of coaching because I was just helping them make more money and connecting them to people they needed to meet.

36:34And so they would ultimately be like, what can I do to help you? And I'd just be like, well, I'm trying to figure this out. Got any advice? And they'd tell me what I needed to do, and I'd come back three to six months later and show them all the results I did by taking action. Going back to Maxwell, I just would take the action on everything that these people would tell me. through that my business grew pretty fast and people were like lewis you were like a bum two years ago how did you build this multi-million dollar business i go i met people who had done it before they told me what to do and i did exactly what they told me without the fear of failure or success so it wasn't holding me back from taking the actions and i kept thinking to myself man if people could just hear the conversations that i'm having with these people that helped me get to where I'm at, they would be able to do this as well.

37:22And that's where the School of Greatest started.

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39:32So you describe yourself in many ways. I think Malcolm Gladwell would have said that was a super connector. And I'm interested in if you break that down for anyone that is in the audience. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like when you don't have any talent, learn to build relationships. Yeah, go on. So tell us how to do that. I didn't have a skill set. You know, everyone was smarter than me in school. I was in the bottom of my class, couldn't read and write. And I just felt dumb. I really felt dumb and insecure based on school standards. But I was talented and gifted as an athlete. So I used that for my confidence building.

40:07But when that identity was dawned and I couldn't play anymore because I got injured, I was like, I have no skills. I didn't have a college degree yet. This was 2008, 2009 in America. The recession was happening. The housing crisis was happening. And I was just like, I'm screwed. I'm living on my sister's couch for a year and a half, living rent-free, not contributing, feeling like a bum, thinking, how am I going to make anything for myself? The only thing I could think of was, I've got a few relationships. Let me build those relationships. Let me go to events. Let me network with people. Let me go on LinkedIn and email people and try to get on the phone and see how I can add value.

40:48And I just learned early on, if I can ask, what is your biggest challenge you're faced with right now? And I can get you to tell me. And I can go find another person who can solve that problem for you and ease your pain. I will become the champion of your life. you will thank me for years, and you will remember me for eliminating your biggest pain in your business or your life. And so I would just think about what is someone's pain, and how can I help them overcome that pain by connecting them to the solution? Not me being the solution, but being the connector of the solution. And when you do that for hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of people, good things start to come in return.

41:30And so I learned, so I was just doing that for free for years. And I remember someone gave me a hundred dollar check after connecting them to someone. They're like, you have no idea how this is going to change my business and my life. I go, really? You'll pay me for this? I just wanted to help. And it was like, okay, how can I do more of these events and connect people? How can I create online courses and education? How can I teach people what I'm learning now? And so that became the progression. Brilliant. So you're passion is connecting people right improving other people's lives sharing knowledge but that's not everyone's passion right but we should all have one so what would you what would you say to our audience about finding your passion what are the things that we can do to do that you know for me i just felt called into connecting with people because i like people yeah i like people i like being around people.

42:26I like listening to people and I like observing to them. Connecting to people was not my skill set early on. It was actually a big fear of mine because I used to get picked on and made fun of because I was in the bottom of my class. So it was actually like my weakest thing is the thing that I enjoy doing the most. But when I was in elementary school, middle school, and high school, and I'd get picked on and I felt alone and isolated a lot, I would sit in the hallways and observe people. You know, it might sound a little weird or creepy, but I would sit there and just watch like the popular kids or this group of kids, and I'd just watch and observe people.

43:02And I'd pay attention and I'd listen. Why are they reacting this way? Why are they connecting with this person? Why are they saying this to this person? I'd just watch. And I never knew that just being an observer of life and a listener, because I didn't have any friends, would actually be the skill that helped me build the thing I'm building today. Listening to people, observing people, seeing how they're responding, seeing what they're not saying and responding to that. And so it was just an insecurity that turned into a skill set. So it might be an insecurity that you have that becomes a passion because you're curious about how to overcome it.

43:40It might be just something you love to do, that you're talented at that, and that becomes your passion. It might be something that your friends say, you know, you're so good at this thing, you should go into this. And asking your friends, what am I good at? The thing that may not be obvious may be the thing that you're really passionate about as well, that other people think you're great at. And I think one of the ways of finding this is to be intentional about it. Don't just think, well, I'm just going to float through life as I am now, and my passion will appear to me. Yeah, yeah. Try stuff.

44:08And in this book, Unlocking the Power of Your Mind and Live by Your Best Life Today, The Greatness Mindset, which is a great book, and we both really enjoyed it, you talk in there about the perfect day itinerary. I think that's a useful thing to share with people that might be thinking, Where do I begin? Well, maybe you begin with the perfect day, I didn't know. Yeah, in a perfect world, in a perfect day, what would that look like? And just dream and imagine. And literally write it down. I like to have a two-part process to this. Write down in a piece of paper or a journal, just free write. The moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed, description.

44:42Expressive description. What does this look and feel like? You know, I wake up with a smile on my face and I'm looking over the ocean and I'm waking up next to the person in my dreams and they're smiling at me and we hug each other and we have this beautiful morning when we go and make coffee together and we talk about our life and appreciate life. We do meditation together and then I go to work on the things that I care about the most for these hours and I come home and I see my kids and we play games together. Whatever it is for you, dream and visualize and express it through the written words so you can really feel this perfect day experience.

45:19that's not going to be every day you know you're not going to have this perfect day ever you're not going to be on a trip in italy you know on the beach every single day but you want to imagine what it could be like and the feelings you can create from this experience on a day-to-day basis then you know i grew up in the sports world where everything was based on an itinerary when i got into the locker room of football practice american football the first time there was a schedule on my locker first day of practice that said every five to ten minutes what we were doing as a team. You know, we're stretching the first ten minutes.

45:52We have a water break. We have a coach's talk for two minutes. We have 15 minutes of warm-ups. Then we have offense. Then we have defense. Then we have special teams. Then we have individual sessions. Then we have another water break. Everything was scheduled to help us accomplish the goal. So if we want to accomplish the goal of living a perfect day or a perfect week or a perfect life, we've got to schedule this thing. So the second part of this itinerary is writing down, okay, the exact time you wake up, every 30 to 60 minutes, what is happening. Going back to John Maxwell, what actions are you taking to actualize the alignment of your perfect day?

46:29And then your schedule will tell me how your life is going based on what you put in your schedule. The key here, though, is to understand that that's not going to give you perfection, right? No. And I think your story, actually, is one of fault versus responsibility, right? There's loads of things that have happened in your life that are not your fault. You know, your sexual abuse as a kid is not your fault. Right. Your brother going to prison is not your fault. Your injury that ended your football career is not your fault. The car accident that changed your dad forever is not your fault. Right.

47:01But you realize that all of those things remain your responsibility. 100%. My responsibility is how I learn about them, how I respond to them, how I interpret them. It's really a game of interpretation. So you have a bad day. Give us the messages or the tools that you use in that bad day to be able to move forward. Because my concern is people will do this, have a bad day, and go, well, that didn't work. I've had a bad day. One of your top three guests that you told me that you've had on is Robin Sharma. I was going through a bad season of life about five, six years ago. the first time I had Robin Sharma on.

47:39And I was going through a breakup, and just a lot of people, it felt like they were questioning me or attacking me based on what was happening in this breakup that I was having, this relationship. And I was getting some heat online, right? I was getting people questioning me and all this different stuff. Because the person was kind of talking bad about me online. And it felt like it was unfair, right? This is a personal matter you're talking about online. And it really frustrated me because of how people were questioning me. And this was before I learned, and it was the exact thing I needed to learn how to overcome the fear of judgment.

48:11Because I was so afraid of what people thought about me. And so it was a lesson in my personal growth, right? And I needed it. And it was a beautiful thing. And I remember it had happened the same week that Robin Sharma came on my show. And I'm meeting him for the first time. And I'm like a big Robin Sharma fan. You know, the monk who sold his Ferrari and all these different things. So I was like, man. He's like, how you doing, Lewis? And I'm like, to be honest, I'm going through it right now. I'm struggling. I'm like trying to figure out how to navigate this season of life, and I'm having a bad day, right?

48:41Bad week, bad season. And he just kind of like paused and had to take. You know, he's a very wise, like thoughtful human being. He's like, you know, I'm not sure if this is going to help you at all, but a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. And it just hit me, and I was like, man, you're so right. it's like a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul and I was like man you're so right for whatever reason like that connected with something in me that shifted every bad day from that moment on until today to why I really haven't had a bad day there's been stressful moments and challenges and pain but I remember in that conversation like I started thinking and something came, opened up to me, and I said, man, a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul.

49:32That just stuck with me. And I thought about my injury, literally in this conversation, of being injured. I thought about my dad going through his car accident, and all these bad moments that I had growing up. I thought about sexual abuse that I went through. I thought about my parents getting divorced, my brother being in prison. All these traumas came back in my memory during this conversation. For whatever reason, I was just like, you know, what's fascinating to think about, and I was just thinking about it for the first time ever, is that most of the time we say hindsight is 20-20. And what if future hindsight was 20-20?

50:10What if we could go into the future and not wait till the future arises, but go five, 10, three years into the future and say, oh, if all of these things that have been bad in my life have actually been incredible gifts because of what they taught me, what I overcame, what I had to let go of, who I transformed into because of these bad experiences, then actually there is no bad experience because I wouldn't be here without my dad going through his accident. I wouldn't have had to have the courage to create something on my own because I always had him as a backup. If I didn't get injured playing football, I wouldn't be impacting millions of people through this platform that my team gets to impact and serve.

50:54Maybe I would have gotten injured in a worse way. Maybe it was protecting me from something else. If I didn't go through this bad breakup and deal with this stuff, I'd still be fearful and insecure about how people think about me. So I needed that ego death to let go of that fear of insecurity. And I wouldn't be in this beautiful, peaceful, harmonious relationship if that relationship didn't end. All these things are happening for the betterment of my higher self. Because I was out of alignment, that's why these things probably happened. Even if it wasn't my fault, I needed to get back into alignment and make sure I remove things from my life and overcome them.

51:34And so I started thinking, why don't we have future hindsight now? And why don't we start thinking that a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul every time you have a bad day so we can have perspective about the experience and know this is going to benefit me and I'm going to figure out anything I can do to make sure this is happening for me in a positive way. And so, yes, I go through challenging moments and pain and stress and adversity, but at the end of every day, I'm just like, man, my life is still so blessed compared to so many. I go to Mexico often because my fiance is from Mexico and there's just so many kids that are working on the streets that are five, six, seven, eight, and all they do is work all day to try to survive.

52:16And I'm like, my life is blessed. It doesn't matter. Yes, it doesn't mean there's not challenge and pain that I get to figure out how to overcome. But perspective is a blessing. And I'm so blessed. And even if I have a bad day and I lose some money or someone's talking nasty to me or something's unfair or unjust towards me, I still am so blessed because I have so many good things to appreciate. and your answer there hints at the second way of not only just identifying your passion but also your values and we've read about in your book the first book The School of Greatness your personal principles declaration I'm really interested to find out a little bit more about how we go about doing that yeah I just think you know it's interesting I started in my relationship with Martha my fiance you know maybe three months into the relationship we went on a trip together to Sedona in Arizona.

53:15And it was before we had gotten committed as a couple. You know that time we're just dating someone for a while and you're trying to figure each other out. We weren't fully committed in a relationship yet, but we were spending a lot of quiet time together. I took a journal with us out to nature and I said, hey, I want you to write down separate of me on your own, your values, your principles. I want you to write them down. and I don't want to look at them. I don't want to see them. I want you to do it and then I'm going to do it after you separately and see after a few months where we're at because I know from all my previous relationships that I chose out of alignment of my values and their values.

53:53It doesn't mean I was wrong or they were wrong. We just weren't in alignment with values and it's probably going to create more friction if we're together and we don't have similar shared values. It doesn't mean everything has to be perfect but 70-80 % need to be in alignment. And so she wrote down her values and then a few minutes later I wrote down mine on a separate page and then we opened them up and we looked side by side. And thankfully we were like 80 % aligned a lot of the same values. And I think as individuals we should be creating this personal principle declaration for ourself. We should be writing them down and just saying this is what I stand for this is what I feel I represent and this is going to be my word.

54:39You know, I'm going to live by these values. There's been many years of my life where I thought I had certain values, but I didn't live by them. And I was out of alignment with myself. And if I felt something was off, you know, and there was friction. And the more I can live by my word of my values for self, my personal declaration, the more peace I feel. The more I'm in alignment of values with my business partners, my intimate relationship and all these different things, the more harmony and peace I have. And I just feel like inner peace and harmony is the highest currency that I value today.

55:18And when I'm out of alignment with my principles, my values, then I am at dis-ease with myself. And so it's just making sure I'm staying in alignment the best way possible. So what are your top three? My values, my current values is health. Number one value is optimizing my health, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Because if I don't have my health at the highest level of the best possible ability, I'm going to feel frustrated, I'm going to have low energy, I'm going to be stressed, I'm going to be anxious. And if I want to serve my purpose, which is my second highest priority, is to live in purpose of service.

56:04If I don't have my health in alignment, then my service and my purpose is going to suffer. And then from there, it's high-value relationships. I value relationships and being in integrity and showing up in generosity and being kind and thoughtful. And so those are the first three, my health, my purpose, and my relationships. There are certain values of honesty and integrity and being my word that are my values as well. But those are kind of the three main things that I focus on. But you also said my current ones. So that indicates that they can move. Of course, yeah. I don't have kids right now.

56:40Maybe my values are going to shift when I have kids or if I'm not... You value sleep when you have kids, bro. Right, exactly. I value sleep. But that's health. That's number one. Yeah. And so I just don't feel like I'm going to be the best person I can be without good health. Yeah. We had Shane Parrish on our show when he came to the UK. and I spoke to him about the fact that loads of great stuff was happening but I felt like I was just like walking through treacle, like trying to fight through sludge all the time. And he said, well, what matters to you more than anything? And I said, well, number one, my kids.

57:09Number two, my wife. Number three, my health. And he said, cool. What diary do you have? And I said, oh, I use my phone. And he said, great, show me your phone. And he said, show me tomorrow's diary. Schedule, yeah, yeah. He goes, right, number one, you've got 14 things happening tomorrow. That's ridiculous. Number two, where is any time in here built for your wife, your health, or your kids? And you just said to me, you show me your diary and I will tell you. Your priorities. And that has changed the way that I think. And that goes back to the perfect day itinerary. It's like if you say you want something, it better be in your calendar and your schedule.

57:44And that's why I think expressing this visual expression of here's what I value. I'm going to write it down. And then is it scheduled in? If not, then do you really value it? And that's why I work out first thing in the morning. If my health is my number one priority, then that's the first thing I do. Now, people may not have the luxury to schedule that. I wake up at 6, and it's early, and it's hard, and it's energy, and you've got to go to bed earlier, and you've got to prioritize it. But I'm so grateful for my health because it gives me energy to be present for my purpose. My purpose brings me fulfillment, and it gives me appreciation to love my partner even more and appreciate my partner even more because I'm not coming home angry that I'm not doing something I enjoy or tired because I haven't taken care of my health.

58:36So when she asked me, you know, Martha, my fiance, she asked me around this time, what are your priorities? And I don't know any woman that asks a man what their priorities are. if they're not number one, is going to like it. And I told her, are you sure you want the truth? Because one of my values is to be truthful to you, but I don't think you're going to like it. She said, yes, I want you to be truthful. And I said, okay. We may not hang out anymore because people I've shared these truths with before don't like it. And so you may not want to be with me, but it's nice knowing you. Here we go.

59:14I said, number one, my first priority is my health, just what I told you guys. And I told her why my health. And I said, number two, it's not going to be you. It's not going to be this relationship. It's going to be my purpose and my mission to serve. Whether that's an inner calling, whether that's God telling me that I need to do something, whatever it is, I feel drawn to serve people to help them overcome the challenges in their life. With the mechanism that I'm doing it right now. Number three will be my intimate relationship with you. You know, if we're going to be together long term, it'll be our relationship.

59:48And I said, again, I don't think any woman wants to hear this from a man, that they're going to be the third priority on their list. But if you understand that when the top two I'm fully in, then you're going to feel like the number one priority. I'm going to have more appreciation for you, more gratitude, more love, take more time for you. And it's not like you're going to be at the bottom of my top three. You're going to feel like number one because I'm going to have energy and presence to love you fully. you can ask her today almost three years later and she's like yeah i feel like i'm a top priority and i love that you have a purpose because all the men i've been with before didn't have drive or purpose they made me their priority i was like no what's the thing you want to do with your life what's good at like calling you go do it and so i think you just got to be with the people that are in alignment with your values as well and i never did that before i was with the courage of you two actually yeah he's a braver man than you all right listen before we move on to our quickfire questions we've spoken so much about about people what have you learned from the conversations you've had around this table from the personal relationships you've had outside of this room about choosing the right people around us about removing the negative people from us you know we've spoken a bit about robin sharma i remember him saying to me you can either live a positive life or you can have toxic people in your life you don't get to do both right It's true.

1:01:13Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I've had so many beautiful conversations just like you guys. I just think inner peace is the new rich. You know, I think harmony is the highest currency. And if we don't have those things within ourself, because we're surrounded by people that want to bring us chaos, it's just going to be so hard to fight against that. And it may be tough because you may have known these people for your whole life. So you may have to have courageous conversations with them and reassess your relationship with them. I'm not saying cut people out of your life, but have the courage to face them and say, hey, listen, I know this relationship has worked for us for a long time, but it doesn't work for me anymore in the way we do it.

1:01:54And I'd like to create new agreements. You know, maybe this would be the fifth thing with John Maxwell's alignment is agreements. I'd like to create new agreements with us. And this is something me and Martha did early on. We were both bringing our stuff of life to each other in a relationship, and 90 % was working, but 10 % was like there was friction. And it wasn't until I said, hey, or she said, hey, you know, these types of conversations don't work for me. Or when we are up till 2 a.m. talking about something that's disturbing us, that doesn't seem to work for us. Can we create an agreement to have these conversations during the day, not when we're exhausted at night?

1:02:31Can we have an agreement to check in with each other once a day as opposed to not hearing from each other for 24 hours. Can we have an agreement? Creating agreements brings you so much peace and harmony, but sticking to agreements is where values come into play. So it's like I honor my agreements. And you can renegotiate agreements at any time, just like you can renegotiate values. And someone can agree or disagree. And then you can choose your relationships based on those agreements. So it really comes down to courage and being willing to have those courageous conversations with everyone from your organization, your team, your family, your friends, and creating boundaries that cause chaos in your life.

1:03:11Very good. Right. Some quick fire questions, if you don't mind. Your three non-negotiable behaviors that matter the most to you? Positive attitude, loyalty, and generosity. What advice would you give to a young Lewis just starts it out. Learn how to heal the emotional wounds that cause you a lot of pain. Because until you learn to heal them, you'll continue to suffer no matter how much success you have. What's your biggest strength? What's your greatest weakness? Two things I'm in between. I think one of them is my vision, my ability to see things before they come to fruition and see where things are going to be before I take action on them.

1:03:59So my ability to see things in the future and actualize them into existence. I'd say the second thing is my ability to deeply listen to what someone is not saying and understand them without them having to say what is they're experiencing and being able to relate to someone from that place of understanding. understanding the biggest weakness it's probably my lack of patience it was the first thing that came to mind and um it's something i've been working on but i i don't have a lot of patience what's the single best piece of advice you've ever received of mine i mean the raman sharma quote you know a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul i think is just one that's resonated in my life over the years because I think a lot of people live in suffering and they don't know how to get out of suffering.

1:04:56And I think if they could have perspective and think about this, if they can look back in their life and say, man, all those challenges that I experienced actually benefited me in some way in the future, then knowing that the thing I'm going through is for my benefit, you'll appreciate the challenge. You'll be like, man, this is actually a beautiful thing because in two years, it's going to help you skyrocket in another area of my life. So a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. And the final question, to leave ringing in the ears and eyes of our audience, your one golden rule you'd love to leave them with for living a high-performance life?

1:05:32Don't live a life of success, live a life of service. Brilliant. Lewis, thank you so much.

1:05:41Damien, Jake, you know what? The thing that I enjoyed the most about that conversation with Lewis was the fact that he spoke so much about generosity and kindness and relating to other people. And I think sometimes there's that phrase, I don't believe what you say because I see what you do, right? And I think it's important to share with our audience that before the conversation started, I was just sitting having a chat with Lewis. And we all work in the same space, right? We host, not just host podcasts and shows, but we host podcasts and shows of a kind of similar genre. And we started talking about how do you do this?

1:06:18How do you do that? What does success look like? What have you learned in this or that area? And there was not a single moment where he was like, well, I'm not going to tell you that because you do a similar thing to me. It was total openness, honesty, generosity. I think it's important to share that with the audience because I think sometimes you hear someone say all the right things. Yeah, yeah. But then you see them behave in a totally different manner. And I think it's, I just want people to understand that his behaviour absolutely matched the things that he said, you know. And what helped me make sense of that, because I agree with you, I think it's powerful, is the doubt diagram.

1:06:53So not afraid of failing, because you saw it as part of the journey to being successful, not afraid of success because of what are the consequences it brings. But also that idea of judgment. If you're not afraid of being judged because you're comfortable in who you are, that means you can share freely and I think there's something very powerful for that that how many of our guests have spoken to us about the David Brooks the second mountain that that's where real happiness comes about when you start to learn to give and contribute towards communities and I think the community that Lewis has built can only happen when you're at a place of peace with yourself when you've when you've done that healing I think the final thing that sticks in my mind is I know I always know that there's people listening to our conversations thinking oh that doesn't apply to me I can't possibly do that I don't know how to begin I think the lovely thing there from Lewis was not only is he now talking from a place of humility and gratitude and happiness and serenity but he was not in that place a few years ago so I think that's a really important thing to remind people of you know Lewis was in a dark hard difficult place struggling with his physical health his mental health and everything else so there is a way out of it.

1:08:02I think the second thing which I remember is Lewis talking about like the processes in this thing you know like I want people to realize that just thinking it'll mend itself will not mend itself it's about doing the specific things that Lewis spoke about and trying and error like give it a go you know this is your one shot your one opportunity your one chance and if if you look you know if you if you write down a list of what your life looks like and feels like and you mark everything out of 10 and you're getting lots of ones and twos don't just think well that's me that's what I deserve realise that you deserve to be where Lewis is now not where he was and where our listeners might be It's powerful and if there's one idea I'm going to steal shamelessly is the future hindsight exercise Yeah You know I was thinking of an incident that related to me from six years ago that still makes me cringe internally now I behaved in a way that let myself down with a friend where I felt I should have spoken up a lot earlier about something that I was unhappy about but when I think about that now in future hindsight my friendship with that individual is a lot stronger because I eventually did address it but it was comfortable, it was uncomfortable and horrible at the time and I think what Lewis described, the future hindsight gives you a sense of perspective, it gives you a sense of learning even when moments are uncomfortable so that's a lesson anyone can take away and apply I'm sure it was bad for your ego but good for yourself very bad thanks man thank you mate

1:09:35and that's it for today's show thank you so much for joining us please just do me one favour hit the follow button it helps to grab our show we can reach even more awesome guests and impact you as much as possible and you can hear from other podcasters on here as well from the likes of Grace Beverley Fern Cotton Elizabeth Day Stephen Bartlett Chris Williamson we've spoken to so many fascinating people in this space so take a look through the High Performance Archives and see what you like the look of. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon.

1:10:26at capella university learning online doesn't mean learning alone you'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella.edu.

From the publisher

Lewis Howes is a former professional athlete, best-selling author, and host of the top-rated podcast “The School of Greatness”. Known for his passion for helping others unlock their potential, Lewis has built a reputation for diving deep into personal development and peak performance.


In this episode, Lewis Howes joins Jake and Damian to share his journey to greatness and the lessons he's learned along the way. He opens up about how his understanding of success and greatness has evolved over time. Lewis also discusses the differences between chasing success for validation versus living a life of purpose, and how these realisations changed his outlook.


He reflects on his personal battles, including overcoming trauma from his youth and facing his fear of public speaking, which once held him back. Lewis also dives into the story behind his podcast's success and shares strategies for those seeking to transform their lives.


This conversation dives deep into the essence of living a truly great life, providing valuable advice for anyone navigating difficult times and looking for ways to overcome them.


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