Achieve 70% MORE SUCCESS: 3 Visualization HACKS to Boost Your CONFIDENCE

24:34Yep. Is there anything that you would do differently with yourself, in the relationship, or as you were starting to have kids about emotions, connection, intimacy, receiving, giving love? Is there anything you'd change? Tons. The biggest one is my lack of presence. Really? I was always in the future, which is a good place to be. I'm not a guy who's in the past a lot. Because then you're innovating, you're resourceful, you're creating something from nothing. It's powerful. Yeah, I'm not a past guy. But I'm a future guy. But the truth is, the best people are able to be in the present and still operate, be in the future, but be present in the present time.

25:11And I didn't do that very well. There's a lot of times, man, when my kids would do things. And now Christine goes, do you remember when Bella? And I'll go, I don't remember. She goes, but you were actually there. But I wasn't. So would I change that? Yes. I should have given myself the gift of being more present where I was. And I do that very well now. I'm very much a present person. You turn your phone off after you get home and you put in your car or whatever you do. You spend 10 minutes closing things out and then you go in the house and you connect. Yeah. I do. Yeah. I have strategies for it because I know me.

25:41And then anger. You were angrier then? Way more. I'm an intense dude. In fact, people who see me now on social that knew me back then will be like, wow, man, you've really changed. I just thought that my intensity and even what moved into anger was strength because I saw it in my dad. Because he got results, certain results. And I think I modeled it a little bit. My dad was a yeller before he was sober and even a little bit after, truth be told. And my dad would operate. My dad could go to anger pretty quickly. Yeah. And I used to think that's what a man did. I've watched my dad in many physical fights, many.

26:15Angel games. I watched my dad inside of the freeway. We came out of church one Sunday. St. Dennis Catholic Church in Diamond Bar. Some guy said something my dad didn't like in the donut line. And we got in the car, and my dad calls the guy over to the car and says, Hey, what did you say? Bam! And headbutts the guy at church in the parking lot in front of all the other parishioners. So I think I modeled a little bit. I didn't do anything like that. But I modeled, hey, anger. Men can do that thing. Don't disrespect me. That whole thing. And so I had a lot of that when I was young. Like, don't, you know, I'm going to assert my authority.

26:53And as I got older, it's almost become funny to me. And what the change for me was having kids. I'm like, if someone ever spoke to my daughter or my son the way that I have talked to some of these people that have been around me. And for someone like you that knows me now, they'll be like, there's just no way, man. No, man, I really did. I really said things I regret. I really did things that were out of anger too often. And I don't like that guy. He hasn't been around for a while. but every once in a while he'll rear his head a little bit he can be there once in a while but what makes you angry today anytime i see someone operating out of anger i think they're afraid yeah and so for me it's uh when do i get angry i got angry today today is a i said recently i had one of those episodes so my show got posted today and someone on my team posted it incorrectly and it wasn't on youtube oh yeah okay and so my default when that happened was anger who did this what happened.

27:46You know the feeling, right? Of course. But what was I really? I was afraid. I was afraid the show wouldn't do well. I was afraid it would be embarrassing. I was afraid the guest was going to be upset with me. So when I operate out of anger, it's always fear. I'm always afraid. But what about back in the day when you're hard on people? I was afraid I was going to be broke. I was afraid we were going to lose the business. I was afraid this situation was going to happen. I was afraid someone was going to shame me. So I'm going to get in front of it and be angry with them. So for me, anger is just a manifestation of fear.

28:12And when I see it in other people, men or women, And I have empathy for them because I know they're afraid. Yeah. And I really do believe that. I think anger is always a result of some type of fear. What do you think is the biggest things that hold all of us back from achieving our dreams faster? Three biggest things. Well, one is the proximity to it. We really do believe it's further away. Like we honestly believe this thing is like a 20-year thing. And so because we believe that, we keep it there and we miss out on these possibilities in our life. The second one is I have a chapter in the book called On Equanimity.

28:43I say one more level of equanimity. Equanimity is our ability to be calm under duress. So I said earlier, slow things down. The greatest athletes that we admire can slow things down under pressure. They're calm. If you think of a Tom Brady, who's everybody's example in this age, is that when it's the noisiest and the crowd's the craziest and it's the playoffs and it's the highest stakes, for the average person, everything speeds up and they lose control. A good friend of both of ours, Michael Chandler, fought this last weekend. It's a great win. Great win. And normally, Michael, he's one of the greatest fighters in the world.

29:16But when he has been in duress in some of his fights, things speed up and he starts to do this brawl mode. And I watched him in this fight. Things started to not go his way. And he slowed things down. And he started to show some equanimity under duress. And that's when things slow down and we can perform at our best. So the second thing I would say is equanimity. The third thing is I have a whole chapter in the book on the way you manage time. and this is just there's so many heavy things in the book but the idea that still people manage a day in 24 hours is hilarious to me that this archaic concept that a day is 24 hours is bananas like the 24-hour day was just made up by somebody about the sun and the earth going around each other building you know 100 million years ago or whatever it was and this is before there was electricity there were cars there was the internet there was a smartphone so you're going to tell me I should measure my day the same duration of time.

30:08I calibrate time when the same dude didn't have the internet. I used to have to do a project in high school. We'd have to go to the encyclopedia, go down to the library and research for hours. My kids can Google something in 10 seconds now. I can text message you instead of mailing you something that takes a month to get to you. So I've shrunk my days. My days now are from, my first day is from 6 a.m. to noon. In that day, it's called a mini day. 6 a.m. to noon, I get into that day, whatever I want. Some days are chill. Some days are faith. Some days are working out. But we've all had that morning where we go, I've got done more this morning than I have in three weeks.

30:39I know. Right? So why can't that be every day? And it is, I can tell you. So my first day is 6 a.m. to noon. At noon, the clock goes off. We're in day two. And I reevaluate really quickly for five seconds. What just happened? What did I do? What do I need to do more of? Next day is noon to 6 p.m. I'm going to get the same amount of business, context, faith, fun, whatever it is in that ecstasy in that day. Third day is 6 p.m. to midnight. It's a third day. This gives me three days in one day. I get 21 days a week. If I get 21 days a week, you get seven, stack that up over a month, a year, five, ten years, I'm going to smoke you in life, right?

31:14And I've vended and manipulated time so that my accountability is different. It's not the end of a day or end of a week or end of a month. It's at the end of basically a six or eight hour window. That's interesting. And other people respond to you differently because what is scarce is valuable. People begin to respond to you differently when your time is more scarce, when it's more precious. And so it's completely changed my life the last 25 years running many days as opposed to 24 hour days

31:43Here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting what you're trained to think about when you think about manifesting is Vision boards and when you hear the word vision boards you think about the big stuff Should you have big dreams? Of course you should should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean if that's your thing? Yes, should you dream of the log cabin? Yes, if you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Bronco, should you? Yeah, yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about it? Yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. Dream about the end, you make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life.

32:22That literally as you're sitting in your studio apartment with the cat box that hasn't been changed in two weeks. No food in the fridge. No food in the fridge, and you're looking for a job, and you're staring at a mansion going, someday, it's going to make you feel like a loser. Yeah. Because the gap between where you are and where you want to go seems insurmountable. And so what happens, based on the research, is when you only visualize the endgame, Lewis, it's demotivating. At first, it's really fun to have a bottle of wine and make your collage. I'm going to visualize. I'm going to slap this up.

32:57There's my vision board. It's fabulous. Law of attraction, baby. Come on. I'm off. Think about it. It's going to come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for two days. I'm still in this apartment with the cat box that needs to be changed. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go. The bridge. Yes, and particularly the horrible stuff. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends that you're not going to go out tonight because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work.

33:33Visualize sitting at a seminar and learning from other people. Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserable. Like literally that's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through because that's going to help you do the work. Isn't that cool? I think that's great. Yeah, visualizing. So in order to manifest what you want, don't just visualize the good things happening. Visualize the bridge, all the things it's going to take together. Yes, and the hard parts of the bridge because then you're ready for it. Then you're like, I didn't expect it to be this hard.

34:07I mean, it's still going to be hard. Right, right. But you're less likely to quit. Yes. So what have you done in the last five years to help you manifest after the first book? Were you doing this as well? or kind of once you get on a rhythm and build momentum, does it become easier to manifest in your opinion? Well, so I am constantly training my mind to work for me. And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of the beginning of having a high five attitude. And a high five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low and to flip yourself back up into a high five attitude.

34:46The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen. You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is. And so I do this thing where I, this is again, it's going to sound so dumb, but it's a way for me to introduce you to the power that your mind has to change in real time. We've talked a lot about negative self-talk. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain called the reticular activity system.

35:42This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it. We've experienced it, but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So first let me tell you what the RAS does. Then I'm going to give you an example of when you've experienced it in your life. And then I'm going to explain to you how to use it to get what you want in life. This is like the super attractor manifesting and it also works for interrupting negative self-talk. Like it's going to supercharge all the work you're doing with the mirror and interrupting thoughts. So first let's talk about the RAS.

36:21So the RAS, imagine a hairnet on your brain, only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now, the RAS has one job, and the job is block out 99 % of what's going on and let in 1 % of what's going on. Our brains at this moment in history are having to process about 34 days worth of cell phone data in one day. Crazy. It's crazy. And so your RAS has a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in. You can come in. And you've experienced this. So have you ever shopped for a car? Yes. Okay, so what's the last car you bought? Tesla. Oh, Tesla. Oh, fancy. Lewis Howes. I like that.

37:04Well, I never had a nice car until three years ago. I had a$4 ,000 car for five years before that. Yeah, yeah. And then I was like, you know what? I have no Bluetooth. It's like I just needed an upgrade. Yeah, no, I love it. You deserve it. It was a 1991. Dude, you deserve it. I had a 1991 Cadillac. And I was like, okay, I'm going to buy a car. So I bought a Tesla. Right. And so before you thought about buying a Tesla, you drive down the road, you don't really think about it. The second you're like, you know, I think I'm interested in a Tesla. What do you see everywhere? Teslas. Yes, everywhere.

37:33Everywhere. My husband just bought a pickup truck. I never even noticed him. Now I'm like, there are baby blue pickup trucks everywhere. What is going on? That's the bouncer in your brain. And let me tell you how this works. There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RAS. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowded place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis and you're like, huh? Somebody call my name? That was the bouncer in your brain. The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this.

38:07That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in. The third thing that gets let in is when you sense that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else. You're like, Chris, stop looking at her. You know what I'm saying? You kind of pick up on the signals. That's the bouncer from your brain. And the fourth one, and this is where, this is the billion dollar thing that everybody needs to know. The bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you. So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like I'm interested in a Tesla. Your brain's literally like, oh, let's let all the Teslas in.

38:51Come on in. Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important? Examples that mean you're a bad person. So I'm going to give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean, well, I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't. And let's say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment. I'm like, oh, I got to pay the 25 bucks. I had to reschedule that thing. That kind of blows.

39:34That's all I think. And then I go on. My daughter, who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person, this is a real example, by the way. She oversleeps, misses a dentist appointment, and it becomes, see, I always screw everything up. I'm always messing things up. Like everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person. She finds proof and evidence. Yes, that's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself, it changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't. that helps you with the other things that you're doing.

40:15The high five in the mirror, the I'm not thinking about that, the pathetic mantra. Hey, you know, just because I missed the dentist appointment doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I'm doing the best I can here. Give myself a break. High five. You know what I'm saying? Shake it off. Get back in there. Well, it's true, right? Right. Because it's these little things. Somebody cuts you off. Somebody reaches for the last thing, a cereal, that you wanted to buy at the grocery store. You think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you. This is all your story and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating.

40:50And the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite. Like high five yourself, even though you don't feel like it. Interrupt the crap that you keep saying. Put your hands on your heart and settle your body down. Yeah. All of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves, when they think they deserve to be treated with kindness, when they think they deserve support, and when they realize they need it. And when you start to build yourself back up, you'll show up very differently in other relationships. Absolutely. If you tolerate this kind of treatment from yourself, you'll tolerate it from other people.

41:31It does begin with you. And when you create boundaries and you don't abandon yourself, then you won't abandon yourself with other people either. You won't let them cross the boundaries. Correct. Like if you stand in front of the mirror every single morning and you're like, I look like crap. I am not good enough. I'm unhappy with my life. And then you step into a relationship and somebody leaves you on read and they ghost you for three days. Like you come to expect that because that's how you believe you think you deserve to be treated. when you stand in front of a mirror and you're like, hey, you're awesome.

42:07We got this. I got you. I know it's hard. We're going to go do this. Or, hey, this is a big day today. I've got this huge presentation. I am going to destroy this. You get into it. You're excited. Then you're creating momentum for yourself. Otherwise, what? You're going to stand there and be like, oh my God, I'm going to screw this up. I'm not prepared. It's like the negative morning routine. it leads to negative actions. Absolutely. So this training thing, training your RES. So here's what I want you to do. Starting tomorrow, after you wake up and make your bed and kind of settle your nervous system and high-five yourself after setting your intention, so now you're like sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way with a calm-down nervous system and intention and this boost of feeling supported and loved and celebrated.

42:59I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape as you go through your day. I saw this in your book. Yeah. It could be a stone. It could be a leaf on the ground. It could be a cloud shape. It could be a coffee stain. It could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage. It could be a spot on a dog walking by. I want you to tell your mind, let's find a heart. Let's see if we can find a heart. And something weird is going to happen. You're going to see something. And then I want you to literally supersize what's going on in your brain. And what you do is when you see the heart, I want you to then take a moment and literally congratulate yourself.

43:42Like feel like, oh my God, I found it. Like whatever you believe in God, the universe, like greater connection. You put that there for me and I found it. And I want you to feel this kind of wave of that's kind of cool yeah i just saw a heart and then that positive thing remember how i told you the bouncer in your brain pays attention to what's important to you when you get your nervous system celebratory involved that makes your brain really pay attention just like trauma makes your brain pay attention it does so you supercharge the experience by celebrating it and then look for another one around.

44:20I see hearts all day long. And what happens when you start to play this game is you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it. There are opportunities. There are signs. There are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out. Yes. And we can all sit in this moment, Lewis, and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. The coolest thing about practicing the high five habit, this training of finding hearts and the high five attitude, is that you start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life.

45:08And it is leading you somewhere incredible. And when you start to have that kind of high five attitude, that there are signs, whether it's the little hearts that you're now seeing or it's your ability to catch guilt or people pleasing or insecurity or the negative self-talk and be like, nope, not going down. Not thinking about that. Five, four, three, two, one. Let's get that high five attitude back. I can do this. I can have my own back. It's not going to be perfect, but I can keep going. When you stand in front of a mirror and ignore yourself, you're like the losing NBA team. Oh, interesting.

45:38Selfish, on your own, isolated. You're not in partnership with the person you're staring at in the mirror. You don't have your own back because you're ignoring yourself. There's another study, and this one is, I think, even more powerful. So they did this study where they wanted to know what's the most motivating thing to help somebody get through a really big challenge. The researchers divide kids into three groups, right? And they gave each of the groups of kids very challenging problems to work through. And they wanted to measure, okay, how resilient, how long would they work? What were their attitudes like?

46:14And then they measured it based on, well, what form of praise or support are we going to give each one of these groups? And let's see what's the most empowering. First group gets what we know to be the fixed mindset stuff. The praise was all verbal praise and it was simply about a trait. Louis, you are so smart. Louis, you are a super student praising something that is just sort of a compliment about you. The second group of students working on a challenging problem got praise based on work ethics, so something in their control. Oh, Louis, you're working so hard. Louis, you got such good perseverance.

46:51Louis, you're really just grinding away over there. Good job. Those guys did better than Louis, you're smart. Louis, hardworking, better. The third group. The researcher simply walked up, did not say a word, and high-fived the kid. Really? That's it. That's it. That group literally, exponentially, more motivated, worked longer, worked through more challenging problems. Now, here's the big question. Why? Why would a simple high five with no verbal praise be more empowering and motivating and inspiring and develop more resilience and confidence and motivation inside somebody? And the reason why is this.

47:33A high five affirms your deepest fundamental needs. It's not just a gesture. When you high five somebody, particularly somebody who is either blown the free throw shot or is working on something difficult or going through a really hard time. When you high five them, you're saying, I see you. When you high five them during a challenge, you actually are acknowledging, I know this is hard. So the person feels heard. And because it's one to one and you have to be really intentional. Like if you and I go to high five, like we have to focus on it. That was a good one. If you miss it, what do you do?

48:14You got to do it again. Correct. So there's an intentionality behind it. And that makes you feel like you're being affirmed as a unique individual. Interesting. And so all of those things are in that one gesture. Now it goes even more. So, so there's even more here. So I was talking to our buddy, Dr. Daniel Amen. Right. And so one of the world's leading experts on brains, He's got like 60 ,000 brain scans. I think it's like 120 ,000. Oh, is it at this point? Yeah, it's crazy, yeah. So he was so excited about the high five habit. He completely geeked out. He's like, oh my gosh, yes, yes, yes. He's like, yes, anaerobics.

48:50Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So we then, he said, let me tell you what else is going on now. And I'm like, really? There's more? He said, yeah. He said, you know how when you do it, you said you felt like a little kind of boost in your mood. He said, well, there are two things going on there. He said, first of all, when you cross a finish line in a race, what do you do? Put your hands up. Yeah. What do you do when your favorite team scores? You high-five someone. Yeah, you high-five somebody. What do you do at a musical concert? Yay! What do you do? You know, you're raising your hand in celebration when you high-five somebody or fist bump them or put your arm around them.

49:23That raised arm gesture in a positive sense triggers your nervous system to tingle with celebration. It's the energy of celebration even if you're going through something difficult. And even more, you get a dopamine drip when you do this. And so part of the reason why you feel this kind of shift in your mood and you feel a little bit of like, oh, okay, I can face this, I can do this, I got this, is because of the dopamine, it's because of the nervous system, and it's because of all of this positive programming associated with that gesture. Isn't that crazy? That's powerful. That's powerful. I mean, so what does someone do, though, if they just constantly have the negative self-talk on their mind that they're no good?

50:06Do they go in front of the mirror, you know, every 10 minutes and do this? No. Or is there another strategy behind the negative self-talk? Well, okay. So first things first, definitely make this high five in the mirror a habit, okay? So start practicing it. Give it five to 10 days and start to see what happens. The second thing that you can do with negative self-talk is you need to start to interrupt it. So the thing about negative self-talk is that it is typically something you've engaged in since you were yay high. And in addition to it being wired into your brain, it is also something that can get triggered by your nervous system in stressful situations.

50:51And so the first step, and we can talk more about the filter in your brain and how the filter in your brain is causing you to stay stuck in a lot of this negative self-talk and how to use your mind to help you. But the first step is you got to do the awful part of getting self-aware of what the voice is saying. And the way that you do that, there's a couple techniques that you can use to create what researchers or psychologists call objectivity. You want to separate yourself from the voice. So you can do what Lewis is doing. He's writing down right now in a journal. You can keep just a little notebook with you.

51:29And you can kind of catalog when your attitude tanks and what are you actually saying to yourself. So should we write down all the things we're saying? You could. Negative about ourselves? You can. You can. I personally do it this way. So I start to notice when I feel down or I start to notice when my energy drops. And then I tune into what I'm thinking about. And if it's negative, I go five, four, three, two, one. Yeah. I literally notice, oh, you're sitting there thinking you're a bad person again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that somebody's mad at you again. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you screw everything up again.

52:04Oh, you're sitting there thinking that nothing ever works out for you. Oh, you're sitting there thinking that you've blown it. Interesting. And then I go, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and I go, I'm not thinking about that. That's the most basic technique to use because what I want you to do, since this is like operating on autopilot, it's encoded right here when you're not really thinking this is what's running, kind of like the soundtrack of your life, when you just start to notice that you have a thought that's not helping you, you can't control that it popped up, but guess what you can do? you can smack it down.

52:39And so I use the five second rule, which we've talked about a lot on your show. Count backwards, five, four, three, two, one. The counting backwards awakens your prefrontal cortex. It gives you a moment of control. And then the way to build distance, Lewis, is say, I'm not thinking about that. And here's why. You're so used to thinking this way. I can't just say, stop thinking you're fat and start thinking that you love your body. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. So you've got to go, oh, there I am. I'm trashing the way that I look. I'm telling myself that I'm overweight. I look like I'm hideous.

53:11Nobody's going to love me. Be like five, four, three, two, one. I am not thinking about that. It's an act of defiance. See, I want you to go from these negative thought patterns to a more positive, empowering high five attitude. Because if you continue to live in, I'm fat, I'm unworthy, no one's going to love me, I've screwed up my life, that will be your life. And the trick on this is I'm not saying change your thoughts and unicorns appear. I'm saying change your thoughts so you stop the 24-7 beatdown and learn how to lift yourself up so that you can face the things that are going on in your life and so that you can take the actions that you need to take to change your life.

54:08Because the reason why you're not changing is not because you're not capable. It's not because of the trauma or your past or anything else. It's because of the beatdown. That's why you're not changing. It's draining. It's draining. It's demoralizing. It is, and by the way, if you constantly are like, I'm unlovable, I'm worthy, I'm this, I'm that, why on earth would you feel motivated or do you think you deserve to change if that's the thing in your mind? It doesn't work. And so pay attention. When you feel your energy go negative, be like, oh, okay, what am I, oh, whoa, that's disgusting. Five, four, three.

54:44I'm not thinking about that. You don't have to insert anything else. The second thing you can do is once you kind of get good at interrupting it, I want you to name, like, let's turn it into a character. So I did this with our son Oakley when he was struggling pretty profoundly with anxiety when he was in the fifth grade. He named his anxiety Oliver. And then we asked him to describe Oliver. And Oliver was like this pimply faced kid that, What is that? The Diary of the Wimpy Kid kind of bully looking kid. And whenever the negative worries and stuff would come up, he would literally, you could literally hear him go, Oliver, shut up.

55:29And it is the ability, what's happening when you name it and picture the person is that you're able to detach yourself from that voice in your mind that's talking. Because that voice is typically a caregiver that either talked to you that way or talked to themselves that way or some bully or some trauma experience or some nasty coach that beat this into your head. It's from somebody else. And so we want you to separate yourself so you can be like, oh, that's what Oliver sounds like. That's not actually how I want to talk to myself. Right. And so identifying it, interrupting it. And then you can get into the really incredible magic of rewiring your brain to work for you.

56:15I think we can all agree we all want more. We have dreams, we have goals. We got to ask yourself first, more what? And that starts, I think, by going and answering that question, what do I value the most? and so look at the things that you already got in your holster that you value because you don't want to be reckless with those things and cast them off and let all the weeds grow around those and then all of a sudden you can't even recognize that garden so if you I think that the first things were about taking care of things that I that I value they were very personal they would take care of myself they would take care of my mom take care of the family take care of my relationship with god they were very very very personal things to me that i knew and believed would be lifelong maintenance journeys and that things that i believed at that time that no taking care of those is never going to go out of style for you but pick out the things that are not not not the fads because we'll write things down those three maseratis yeah hey man you get 20 years from now you don't like maserati it's not like a bugatti you know what i mean so don't write maserati You know what I mean?

57:21Watch out what proper nouns we're using. Because some of them may be just fickle. You know what I mean? So those, the proper nouns, family, God, myself, Jesus, those are things that I gave value to and gave me value and meaning in my life. And so I was like, I was already in the midst of those. And those are things I said, I'm not going to forgive these. And I'm not going to, no matter who I become, I'm not going to say, oh, these are no longer on my plate. I don't need to worry about these. Like you said, the Oscar, that's a new one. That's something that was out there. That's big. Becoming a father, that's out there.

57:55But since I was eight years old, the one thing I knew I wanted to be was a father. I knew I wanted to meet the right person, right woman for me. Didn't have her, hadn't met her yet. That point, it's far from.

58:14So start with the things that we got in your saddle that you do already give you about, that already give you meaning and value in your life and double down on those project forward and if that happens what will what will what what i would i dream of it to become and then if you're going to talk about i think when we're talking about a career

58:40we've got to ask ourselves first i think this would be really valuable for everyone and ask yourself first, what do you have an innate ability for, an innate talent for? And what are you willing, is that the same thing you're willing to work for? And then thirdly, which is a little bit more of an asterisk, is that something that the world would demand? We're going to go straight capitalism, supply and demand. but we often look at things and I've done it I'll bust my hump for it but I'm like I'm really not that good at it okay or I've got something that sometimes we have things that we're really good at but I'm kind of just a natural, I don't want to work at it if you can find something that you have an innate ability for we love doing things we have an innate ability for we have an innate talent in our DNA for and then go, now I'm ready to educate myself, learn, hustle, go after, see, create opportunities, bam, bam.

59:49It's going to be in the prism of my, how I measure every situation where I am going forward. Hunt it down and do what you got to do to get better at it. And then if it's hopefully something that the world can demand, you're... That's a sweet spot. Now you're paying your rent, man. Now we got food on the table. Now we're rolling. Now we're waking up with some purpose. Now we're waking up with, you know, yeah, it's going to be a hard day today, but I don't, I can't, I'm not dreading Monday morning, you know. May want to sleep in, but I got, I'm building something. I'm building something here. I'm in construction.

1:00:25One of the things that you, I want to connect that to this thought here. 622, Matthew 622. If nine I be single, the whole body will be full of light. Yep. I believe that's your favorite passage. Yeah, yeah. um you went on a journey you know after the it was either in the middle or at the end of the tail end of your rom-com you know stardom and you went to on a trip went on a journey with yourself yeah i think for 20 22 days 22 days uh in the amazon yeah and there was a moment in the book where you talk about essentially you had to kind of have a coming to you know moment with yourself where you had to shed all the identities that you were holding on to your rings your heritage your background, your clothes, I'm famous, I'm a rom-com guy, I'm an actor.

1:01:13You had to shed all of it. Yep. And what was the thing that you found when you let go of your identity in the outer world? That I was a mammal.

1:01:25A mammal and for me as a believer, a child of God. That's it. I baselined it.

1:01:37and the mamma we can all agree on right the child of god that was for me and any other believers but the baseline i got rid of i remember my dad's ring which had m on it gold melted down from my mom and dad's class rings and gold from my mom's teeth meant a lot to me yeah but it was an identity marker i'm a mcconaughey this is about my dad i have my american cap that i'd worn for two decades i'm an american i'm gonna get rid of that got rid of all these little talismans that were identities and titles that meant something they weren't random they were healthy ones yeah but i stripped them all off it was like bull no you're not famous and no it's not you were what before you were ever an actor before what are you what were you before you were mcconaughey before you were texan before you in america before you an actor before you're a movie star before you a celebrity well come on get it all off and I it was a purge basically and I ended up that was there I was a naked sweating mammal I was like you're a mammoth child of God and that's what you are so we've stripped off all the accoutrements we've stripped off the ornaments here we are and that is the night that I was like this has happened a couple times in my life and I think this is important for us all to do at some point that's when I was like okay and what other truth do we know McConaughey tell you what another truth I'm realizing right now is that you're the only son you can't get rid of so we're going to duke it out for the rest of our life here or are we going to figure out how to get along what are we going to forgive right now and what are we going to say the buck stops here no more I'm not putting up with it because I'm tired of playing grab with yourself I'm going to cut the shit man let's get along I can't get rid of you everybody else, every other relationship out there is a choice you're the one person I don't have a choice to hang out with so let's work this shit out and just like going back and saying the embarrassment and shame turned into giggles I began to go like, man, maybe you're being too hard on yourself on this thing.

1:03:59You know what? Get that monkey off your back. You're human, man. Forgive yourself. And these other things, dude, you've been a repeat offender. It hadn't been paying you back. You've been regretting that choice every time you make it and you keep freaking making it. Cut, man. Evolve. Turn the page. No more. And next morning, I remember even the Sherpas and stuff in Peru. I came out of the tent and they also gone, La Luz, La Luz. Light. The light, light. And they were talking about me and the way I was moving. Interesting. And I went for a walk. And for the first time during that trip, I didn't give a time about what was around the next corner.

1:04:45You weren't thinking about the destination. I wasn't thinking about the destination of getting to the Amazon and how it's been 11 days. When are we going to get there? Mind you, this 11 days prior, I had not really been present in the trip because I was thinking about the result, getting to the destination so much. And then this morning, after that night, I'm walking. I'm not even thinking about what's around the next corner. And when I did turn the corner, I was stopped by this sea of atomic plugged in neon blue like a puddle like a bubbling puddle in the middle of my jungle path and it stopped me and I looked at I've never seen colors this this neon and bright it was like it was not man-made it was glowing I'm completely so this time no I lost no way out of that this is straight eyed right and it stopped me and as I stared at it for about 30 seconds all of a sudden it started to flutter and rise and dissipated it was tens of thousands of these amazonian butterflies wow and I stayed there for a minute and then this little word words came into my brain from the prime mover that said all I want is what I can see and what I can see is in front of me

1:06:15I was free I was light it was magical I walked I turned the corner went down the trail and there was the Amazon I finally made it I made it to the river right after that moment. Did not know if I was still days away, weeks away. Stuff like that happens. We got to listen. Those are some of those truths that come that you go, nobody else was here to witness that. That was not for the whole class. That was not on the speaker. That was not on the bulletin. That was not on the nightly news. That was not even at church on Sunday with the congregation. That wasn't at school. that wasn't sitting around the dinner table with mom and dad learning lessons.

1:06:57It wasn't from a mentor. That was for me in this moment. I must heed that truth. Wow. You've been on this journey of a lot of people seeing you on screen and your personalities on screen and your talent in characters. But now over the last three to four years, you've been revealing yourself more and more through your book, through all of your amazing content online, all the interviews you've been doing and all the solo content, which I think is amazing. Please keep doing that. Oh, I did. Thank you. I think it's amazing, these lessons that you share. You know, the last story you just told, you know, had the entire room just like in awe and in shock and just silent here.

1:07:31As you were talking about this truth that you realized from within, essentially. Came through God and you realized from within. No one was around you. And I mentioned this quote before that. If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light. Right. Matthew 6.22. What does that mean to you? If thine eye be single, thy whole body will be full of light. And that light came to you in that moment. And these Sherpas were saying, you know, la luz, la luz. You were radiating light after this came to you. Why is this your favorite passage? And what does it mean for you? And how can we start to step into that?

1:08:16So the Mandorla, this is what the Mandorla is. So we see, we so often are seeing life in contradictions, right? Future, the past, heaven, hell, technology, culture. And we see them as contradictions. And when in truth, that's two eyes, right? And there's judgment on either side. and there's a duality there with the truth

1:08:51is in that third eye. Interesting. Where they overlap. And that's not a shade. So we go, oh, that's a shade of gray. No, it's not a shade of gray. What the verse is saying, what I get from it is that's where all the colors live. All the colors of the truth live. That passage, when I always tell myself, keep a high eye, keep the high eye. It's third eye. It shows up in all the religions too. It shows up everywhere.

1:09:20It's a way of perceiving the truth, I think, which lives in the paradox. And paradox is a word that some people go, oh, don't get into paradoxes too, I don't know, academic or whatever. No, paradox is where it's both are true. Two things can be true at the same time. It's today we could utilize it. It's like if I seek to understand you and where you're coming from first, I'm probably gonna, before I seek to be understood, we don't usually, it has to do with listening, has to do with how we see things, it's how we judge. It's very easy, and especially today, I think we love to be judge and jury on others and ourselves.

1:10:04It's a very arrogant thing for us to do. and this passage if i be single and not a dual contradiction and seeing the contradiction things have gone oh this is true and that's true and instead of or right there's that's where the truth lives i believe um and it doesn't mean that you just straddle the fence and you're non-committal about anything right that's not what it means it doesn't mean you know you're just mystery in between so that's true and that's true and it's all okay no you can then have judgment but see both first see the overlap of the truth and understand it from both sides and then be understood and you can then have judgment but see it through that lens first because we just don't do it we come in with one eye or we me us versus them me versus you my idea versus yours left versus right democrat versus republican even how far can you go can you go down to Right versus wrong, good versus bad.

1:11:07I mean, we see them as contradictions and they're not. We all know. We all got a little good in us. We all got a little bad in us. It's a choice we make where we then have judgment. So that passage has elevated my POV quite a bit. And it's one that I daily remind myself of. If I'm getting a low eye on somebody, if I'm condescending people, if I'm objectifying people, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hi, buddy. Come on, open that third eye. You're not, it's not, it's not open. My kids can see it in my eyes when I'm talking to them. If I'm talking at them, or if I stop and really look at them, and maybe there's something, maybe it's a form of discipline.

1:11:53But then they can see if I'm looking at them like, I love you, man. This is why I'm trying to teach you this. All of a sudden they go, my son said it. I see your third eye. I have to fly. really 622 I'm like yeah yeah it's like I heard you I didn't hear you before when you were talking just at me you know so it's a great it's a great reminder Matthew 622 the whole body will be full of light and you will move lightly and with discernment doesn't take away discernment it doesn't take away judgment just saying see it through that lens first and understand that that truth is where those overlap. Yeah.

1:12:34And then make your decision. Wow. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

1:13:13And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. Bye.