Change Your Mindset TODAY To Live Your Happiest and Healthiest Life EP 1461

0:01Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jospree Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sincero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

0:44So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there. We are the creators of our lives and not the victims of our lives. Taking time in your life to invest in yourself is to invest in a future. And when you invest in yourself, you invest in your future. And when you believe in yourself, you believe in possibility. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

1:23And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

1:40Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

1:58I want everyone listening for the next seven days to try something. And if you could give one to three different things that we could think differently or eliminate when a thought comes to us or we react in a certain way. If there's something you think that if we eliminated one, two, or three things, and we did this every day for seven days, we would start to see incredible feelings differently. We would feel healthier, more lively, more loved. What would be those few things? Okay. Well, most people, number one, they get up in the morning, and the first thing they do is they think about the problems in their life.

2:34And those problems are memories from the past. So the moment they think about their problems, they're thinking in the past, right? Every one of those problems has an emotion attached to them so they start feeling unhappy or unworthy or whatever And how you think and how you feel is your state of being So most people's entire state of being is in the past when they start today So if in the familiar past they're gonna live in a predictable future, right? So they get up and they check their cell phone they check their text their whatsapp their Facebook They post something on Facebook. They tweet they Twitter they check the news Then they go to the bathroom get a cup of coffee take a shower get dressed check more emails drive to work the same way do the same thing.

3:10So they're in a program. They've actually lost their free will to the program. Wow. So if you start your day, and you start your day with this simple question, what is the greatest ideal of myself that I can be today? You ask yourself that question. Now listen, your body's going to go like, well, we've got to get a cup of coffee, and you've got to go, I'm tired, I'm tired, and you've got to go, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, body, you're not the mind, I'm the mind right now. You're going to sit here, I'm going to feed you, you're going to get your coffee, you're going to do all those things, But right now this is my time you're gonna obey me, right?

3:43So now the body's no longer the mind you're the mind and so when it wants to get up and you become aware of it And we turn back to the present moment every time you do that's a victory when you're changing some aspect of yourself so then Ask yourself I do this all the time write down four thoughts that you're gonna stay conscious of the whole day I can't it's too hard you'd be surprised the moment you become conscious of what those thoughts are how unconscious you've been to them all day for weeks on end write down what you speak how you speak for things you want to change how you act how do you how do you act do you complain you blame you make excuses you feel sorry for yourself that's a victim consciousness what emotions do you live by is it possible that you're so used to living by guilt you don't even know it's guilt it just feels like you do you allow your energy to drop become conscious of those states of mind and body and review them and say this is the old self then say what thoughts do i want to fire and wire in my brain and start firing and wiring and start feeling it what behaviors will i demonstrate today what choices will i make one day one lifetime and just like you did rehearse them rehearse the whole entire thing begin to install the neurological hardware in your brain and if you keep installing it the hardware is going to become a software program you start thinking and acting that way and then here's a tough part can you teach your body emotionally what your future is going to feel like before it's made manifest and don't get up until you feel that way now practice that for a few days and then see if you can stay in that state and watch all of a sudden all those weird doors start opening for you synchronicities synchronicities whatever they are number two take up time at the end of your day the end of your day before you lay down and give thanks for your life and feel gratitude and really teach your body what it feels like the emotional signature of gratitude when gratitude means you're getting something if I give you something that's a value you would say thank you because you would feel it right so when you're receiving you're giving thanks so gratitude is the Ultimate state of receiving hmm, so then people only accept believe and surrender to the thoughts equal to their emotional state So if you're in a state of gratitude Every thoughts gonna make it right down into your body if you're saying I'm healthy.

6:09I'm healthy I'm healthy and wealthy and wealthy and wealthy and your body's programmed in negativity It's saying no, you're not know you're not knowing that thoughts gonna stop right here. So as you elevate your state There are about 1200 different chemical reactions that go on in the body that begin to restore and repair the body in a state of gratitude and so we've done the research to prove that 10 minutes and just feel it with all of your heart that's it wow third thing and and very important take time whenever it is sit down close your eyes and begin to just open your awareness to the space around you and And just sense it and pay attention to it and become more aware of it.

6:53The act of opening your awareness begins to reduce the stress hormones and creates more coherent brainwave states. I'm doing it right now. It's just a practice. It's just a practice. And the more you do it, the better you get at it. Wow. Who's been your greatest teacher? Ooh, life. No doubt about it. I believe that life is our initiation. I mean, I do my best to see my life as a reflection of my mind. And I think that life is our greatest teacher. Reflection of your mind is essentially like what you've created is a reflection of how you've been thinking. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you're showing up sick physically, then that's what you've created in your mind.

7:36Look, I don't believe that germs make me sick. I believe I make me sick. I do. I mean, there's no germs with my name on it out there. I mean, they're called opportunistic bacteria because they're waiting for an opportunity for your immune system to be compromised. And so for me personally, you have to ask myself this question every day. At what point do I stop believing that I create my life? What is that point? So I'm always pushing that envelope a little bit more. So for me, I think life is our initiation. We don't need to go to any ancient school of wisdom in the Himalayas. Life is our initiation.

8:14And when you meet the challenges in your life from a greater level of mind, you're going to begin to move through those initiations. And what is the side effect of that? Wisdom. And that's what we take with us, being wise. Powerful. Wow. How can we connect with you online and go to your events? What's the best place to go to? So everything yeah, so my website is just dr. Joe the spencer comm dr. Joe the spencer comm and there's just a ton of resources there We have an online progressive course now I don't teach those courses anymore because my interest is in the week longs. So for people who come to a week long they do a Home study course where they get the basics.

8:54They understand what we're doing It's about 23 hours. They can do it in however long they want in there And then with that comes another study course, and then they can come to a week-long and join a community of people that are all about passion and the unknown. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. When's the next event? Well, the next event, gosh, the next week-long is in Toronto, September 1st through 7th, and it's pretty close to sold out. Then we'll be in Australia in October, and then the UK in November, and then Cancun, Mexico in December. And then I got a couple events that I'm doing here and there.

9:30Wow. Other things, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. A couple final questions for you. This one's called The Three Truths. Let me ask everyone at the end. If you imagine it's your last day many years from now, and you've achieved or created or been anything you've wanted to do. You've done it all, right? Everything you can think of has happened, created it, books, events, whatever you want to do, healed the world. You've done it all. Mm-hmm. For whatever reason, you've got to take everything with you. All your writings, your research, your material, videos, events. It's not available for anyone to have anymore.

10:06But you have a piece of paper and you get to write down three things you know to be true about your life or the lessons that you would leave behind. And this is the only lessons that they would have access to. What would you say are your three truths? Wow. Number one is that the divine lives in every human being. and that we have to make an effort to connect with it every day. And when we do, it answers the call in ways that we would just never anticipate. And I know that to be the truth and that nobody is so special to be excluded from that phenomenon. Number two is that we are the creators of our lives and not the victims of our lives.

10:47And that taking time in your life to invest in yourself is to invest in a future. And when you invest in yourself, you invest in your future. And when you believe in yourself, you believe in possibility. And I think that everybody secretly believes in themselves. And so taking time to understand that we are just works in progress and to find time to forgive ourselves and to forgive others and start fresh the next day is a blessing. It is a blessing. And finally, I think that it's not our purpose in life to be popular or successful or beautiful or intelligent. Our purpose in life is to remove those blocks, those vals, those limitations that stand in the way between us and that divine intelligence.

11:40And when we do, it begins to make its way through us and we become more like it. We become more loving. It is a loving intelligence. We become more giving. It's a giver of life. We become more conscious. It's a consciousness. We become more mindful. It has an infinite mind. We become more willful. It has an amazing will. Its nature becomes our nature. Its mind becomes our mind. And then we don't have to try to be liked or try to be important or try to be recognized. We're just happy for no reason at all. And I think that is the natural state of being. And I think that we innately know that on some level.

12:20what are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should and if they could do on a daily basis it would improve their lives and everyone's life around them what are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do yeah three habits that would improve everybody's lives on a daily basis it's so hard to give an answer like that because obviously everybody's you know, dealing with different stuff. But there are a few things I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from. So the easy answer would be, or the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don't think it actually has to be reading books.

12:58I think it just is the habit of learning something new. So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn't matter what version of that it is. But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that's going to improve your life. And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it's going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you're interested in. So a habit of some small habit of daily learning, let's just call it, learn something new for 10 minutes each day.

13:34Some sort of physical activity. This is, I think, an important realization about all habits, which is in most areas of life, there might not be a thousand ways to do something, but there's almost always more than one way. And, you know, I like working out in the gym, but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that's fine. You know, like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever. There's like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle. And you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you. Like in a, in a way that's the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is have you selected a habit that you're genuinely interested in that you're actually engaged with?

14:20Because if it's something that you actually care about, there are going to be like endless opportunities for improvement. If you're not actually care, if you don't actually care about it, if you're just doing it, cause you kind of feel like society's encouraging you to do it, or your parents want you to do it, or your peers are kind of subtly saying, Hey, this is something you should do, then even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore. So let's call it 10 minutes of learning something new, some sort of physical activity, whatever is exciting or interesting to you. And then I think the other one is a process, a habit of reflection and review.

14:59So it's very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff heads down or just have the next task come up, whether it's things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work, that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing? You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use? And boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing. You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot. And so the only way to discover that, like, I know I'm not smart enough to figure it out on the first time.

15:41Like I can't, I can't just sit down, give me five minutes and be like, oh, this is exactly what I should be focused on. It takes iteration. It takes refinement. It takes a process of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, hey, was that a good way to spend my time? Like, did I live a good life today? And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct. And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don't necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time.

16:11You know, like what you want shifts over time, the situation you're in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time. And so you need to keep coming back to this. Maybe it's every week, maybe it's once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this? Am I working on the right thing? Am I working on what actually matters? Um, am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way? Yeah. And how, how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves?

16:48Is it important to have self accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, social accountability, do those support habits, forming these consistent habits? And what other factors are in play there? They definitely support them or hinder them, potentially, depending on the people you're around and the group that you're a part of. Ultimately, the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability. It's almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself. like that almost always sets the baseline. You know, if you're, your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept.

17:30Now it's easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in a, uh, an unsupportive one. So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard, but ultimately the standard you hold yourself to is going to be the most important thing. Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to influence your habits in a really dramatic way. So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment. We're all part of multiple tribes.

18:08Some of those tribes are really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian. Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym. But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations. You know, they have a set of social norms. They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this is how you act in this group. This is what's normal and expected. And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more like appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, hey, look, I belong to, you know, like I'm part of this.

18:46And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them. And if people have to choose between, you know what, I have habits that I don't really love, but I fit in. I belong. I'm part of something. Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I'm cast out. I'm ostracized. I'm criticized. I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve. You know, belonging will, the loneliness will lose to belonging. And so you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.

19:25It is so true. And it doesn't mean you can't make it happen. There's a great example that came up this week. Someone on my team on our team call said, I asked, I asked everyone on the call. I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life? Like, what's one thing that's not serving you right now that you want to let go of? and this person said i want to let go of drinking drinking alcohol like or at least drinking as frequently as i do with the social circles that i'm in and um i thought that was interesting because i've never been drunk in my life i don't drink it's not it's not a part of my identity right i never did it from sports and then after sports i was just like why it didn't make sense to me nothing good or bad about it just wasn't fitting my values personally i have other problems which is sugar, right?

20:10It's like, I've got that. That's my vice, right? So no judgment here. But I was just like, this never stopped for me, you know, in every until maybe the last four or five years, where anytime I'd go out in college, after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, like all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking. And so I had to be so firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it. I just knew that people were going to try to influence me. They would try to say a joke. They'd be, I can't believe you never drank, all these different things.

20:49Try to get me to drink for the first time, all this stuff. I knew it would happen every single week. And I just realized, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I'm in, unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare. and which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend when we started dating I was like listen it's not gonna work if you like to drink I don't think I can date you like doesn't mean you're a bad person I just don't want to be in that environment for the rest of my life with the person I'm choosing to be with and so I had to make a conscious decision and she was like well I don't really need it like maybe I'll drink a glass of wine once a month I'm like okay that's fine but if this is a weekly thing like it's just not gonna work because I've chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life.

21:31And it's very challenging if there's something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability. So I think it doesn't mean you can't do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes, like you mentioned, that are supportive, even if it's the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be, find those communities as much as possible. If your family isn't as supportive, find these other micro tribes to support you in that habit form. So I think it's really powerful. And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies, we typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, oh man, I wish I had the discipline of that person.

22:13Or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever. But in fact, um, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least. That's like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are just not - Don't put cookies in your house, you're not gonna eat them, yeah. And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy. And if you do that for yourself, sure, you'll still have to put effort in, but it's gonna be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you're in a space and a context that's designed to support it.

22:56And that's maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don't need willpower at all. You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren't willing to do. You spent 10 years writing every week in an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched. And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche, and then start branching out in the space as well, and do it consistently over a decade, without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things.

23:41And then you came out with a book. And now this doesn't happen for everyone. But then you came out with a book. And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of the year of the most selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think this year as well. And it just continues to add value to people. And I think it's a testament to what you created for a decade plus of adding value. So congratulations on everything, man. Yeah, thank you. That's very, very nice of you to say. It's been a wild ride. There are a couple of things going on there. Like I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value.

24:16And if you think about in any business, but like in my business, writing books, the amount of what it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book. It's also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on. And whatever that total cost is, time plus money, that's like the amount they have to pay. And then whatever I get paid is what I make, but what they get in return should be well in excess of that. So the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there's some surplus there. And we could call it whatever, but I think about it as goodwill.

24:57And I always want to have a surplus of goodwill. And so everything that I create, whether it's an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to have this feeling that it's like, oh my gosh, I get so much out of this, of course, I would want to open the next email, or of course, I would want to buy the book. It's like such an obvious win for me. So I always try to give value before I ask for value. And I don't think that there's any one way to do this. Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example. But the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible.

25:35And then I was able, you know, I didn't have any credentials, right? Like I don't have any background for, and there was no reason for me to get a book deal. I was just a guy with a blog. And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience. And then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal. And then of course you have to execute well on that and create something valuable. And then, you know, ultimately the book being a hit was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever.

26:09And then it being released when the book came out. So to a large degree, I kind of think that's the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is upfront. You have to build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan and start to record interviews and execute on that. You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy. And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long. You know, I mean, it's probably depending on how you measure it, atomic habits took somewhere between like three and six years. Definitely at least three years, because that's how long it was from when I got the book deal.

26:46But I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal. So, you know, it's just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it. And so if you're willing to do that, then you can get a great result. thoughts that you say in your mind quietly every day and the words you speak out loud every day how important are they together and which one is more valuable if you can only choose one negative thoughts but positive words positive thoughts but negative words or do they both need to be in alignment towards your mission and purpose well um so i'll start with this your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head.