How To Be Obsessed With Achieving Greatness w/ Dan Harris EP 1419

28:39And when I started to go all in on the fear of public speaking every single week until it became a superpower of mine. When I started to go all in on salsa dancing, because I was most terrified of salsa dancing the most, because I couldn't dance. And I thought, okay, here's a dance where I don't know the language, I don't know the culture, I don't know anything, and I stand out. I threw myself into the most embarrassing things that were for me, because I didn't want to be disempowered by these fears anymore. And when I started to do that, I was able to gain humble confidence because I had to be humiliated in some sense where I wasn't good for a long time.

29:17And so I gained a sense of humble confidence in these powers that once were making me feel powerless. You overcome self-doubt when you're in the greatness mindset. You heal past pain. You don't conceal them. And so that you can have a conversation about these things without it crippling you and making you tremble. You can speak more consciously on the things that used to cause you the most pain. They create a healthy identity. I don't know about you, Dan, but I used to be really angry 10 years ago. I was a fun, happy, loving, joyful guy, but inside of me was anger, resentment, frustration, a lack of forgiveness.

30:01So when the wound was triggered when someone hit my buttons What was inside of me came out Anger resentment frustration a lack of forgiveness a sense of unfairness That came out of me And I was a unhealthy identity I had with myself. I would tell myself all the time You're so stupid Why did you do this? What an idiot you were? I can't believe you made this mistake. What a dumb me. I used to beat myself up. When I was younger, I used to physically punch myself in the head when I would make mistakes because I thought, man, I can't make this mistake. I'm such an idiot. I would say these things internally to myself.

30:45And I don't know if you ever had these internal dialogues earlier in your life, Dan, but if people actually recorded these dialogues that a lot of us have when they're really negative and they played it in a loudspeaker, they would probably send us to like a mental institution or tie us up or something. And imagine if we said these things to the people closest to us. You idiot. What a dummy. I can't believe you made this mistake. And you said this over and over to the people you cared about the most. They wouldn't want to be in your life. And so it's hard to want to be in your own life when you speak this way, let alone other people wanting to be in your life if you spoke that way.

31:22So I had to create a new contract with myself. And I don't know if you've ever done an exercise like this, Dan, where For me, again, I feel like I've had to do some extreme things when I was in extreme breakdowns and internal suffering. So I started to look myself in the mirror and really say, like, who am I? Why am I doing this? And just ask these questions and start going through these healing modalities, workshops, meditation retreats, therapy coaching. I went and did it as many things as I could in the last 10 years, except for medication. I haven't done any type of drug therapy or hallucinogens, psychedelics.

32:05I haven't done any of that because for me, that kind of scares me. I don't know what that is going to do to my brain. And I have people that swear by it and they say it's amazing, but I also have seen too many cases of people that it's messed their brain chemistry up so much that they can't recover. So I feel like that would be a last resort for me. If I was suffering so badly and I felt like I tried everything I could, then maybe I would try that. But for me, I had a very unhealthy identity with self. And it was driven by fear, insecurity, and ego. The need to look good, the need to be right, the need to win.

32:46And I started to shift this 10 years ago. I created a contract with myself, a new contract of something that needed to be believable. I couldn't lie to myself and say, okay, I'm going to be this way. This is going to be my new identity. And it would be something that when it's really, I was faking it. I don't really believe in the term fake it till you make it. I think facing it until you embrace it is better. It's like facing the thing that you want to embrace and becoming that is more empowering for me. So I created a contract with myself. This was a literal writing it down on a piece of paper and signing it contract.

33:25And I asked myself, what is the healthy identity I would like to step into? And I said three words. I am a loving, passionate, wise man. Now, what was inside of me before then was love, but there was also anger. So I wanted to remove the anger and step more into becoming love I was more frustrated When I was triggered and I said but i'm also passionate So let me step into passion i'm a loving passionate and I always used to say to myself man You're so stupid louis. You're such a dummy. I can't believe you did this what an idiot you are I would say so many disempowering critical things about my intelligence Because I was in the bottom of my grade and in in school middle school and high school because I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade because of my dyslexia and the struggle that I just faced trying to remember things.

34:22So I used to be really good at being self-critical around my lack of intelligence and schooling. And so I said, okay, I can't say I'm a loving, passionate, smart man because that would be fake to me. It would be unauthentic. I'd be essentially lying to myself and that wouldn't work. But I said, what's the word that would resonate with me? Well, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man I have wisdom I have experience I've overcome stuff I'm good with people I have street smarts And so I became a loving, passionate, wise man Which became a contract I had with myself I didn't need to say this to the world I just said this to me Whenever I felt like, oh man I'm going back into that old self-critic And I said, no, I'm a loving, passionate, wise man.

35:13That contract written down, signed, became a new identity that I was becoming and stepping into and really allowed me to create a healthy identity, which is a part of the greatness mindset. And the final thing, part of greatness mindset is taking action with a game plan. Again, it doesn't have to be some extreme, hardcore, like burn yourself out game plan and taking massive action, hustling. but there are seasons to life and just being clear on what is the mission and what is the game plan. And when you can do those things within the greatest mindset, that's when you unlock a more sustainable, harmonic identity and life.

35:54I know you're not saying this, but I want to get you to accentuate it. Shifting into what you're calling the greatness mindset, This is not easy and overnight. I really wish it was, but it's taken me 10 years to be in the process. And in each phase of these last 10 years, I've grown and overcome certain things. But I don't know. For me, Dan, it usually takes me a lot longer to learn certain things. And I tend to make the same mistake over and over again until it gets extreme breakdown. So I've had to face these things and a lot more pain and suffering than I think I want other people to. So the goal is just to give people clarity and use my suffering and my breakdowns to your benefit.

36:41You know, one of the things that was extremely painful growing up was going to a prison visiting room almost every weekend, driving two and a half hours in Ohio in a car with my family to go see my brother. And I kind of smile about it now, but it was really, it was pretty traumatic to like drive to a prison, have to everyone get patted down, go through the metal detector every time, be in a waiting cell, and then go into a visiting room with 30 other inmates and their family for a period of time. watch your brother get patted down, coming out there in a jumpsuit. And experiencing that over and over again as an eight-year-old until 12, it wasn't fun.

37:27But looking back on it, his pain and his breakdown and me experiencing it made me never... He sold drugs to an undercover cop. That's what got him in jail. And he got sentenced on his first time getting his first defense. He sold LSD to an undercover cop. And he'd never done it before. He'd only done like, you know, trading weed with like a couple of college buddies every now and then. But then he got set up and the setup caused him to get caught to try to sell these drugs. And so I've never been drunk and I've never been high. And maybe that's extreme, but his pain caused me to see things differently and clearly and just say, I don't even want to tempt myself to go down this path.

38:13Even if I just minimally do a little bit here and there, glass of wine is fine and all this stuff is fine. I just got clear that that's not the life that I want to experience, the pain and suffering that it caused him, my family, myself. I don't want that. And so, you know, hopefully my challenges and me revealing these things, other people don't have to go through the same stuff as well. I think it's extremely helpful that you are, that you're pretty, that you're open about the stuff you and your family have gone through. Absolutely. In terms of making this shift into a sort of greatness mindset, what are the practical steps we can take to get out of powerlessness and toward greatness?

39:02The first step is getting clear on your meaningful mission. And if you're not clear on what that is, there is a healing journey throughout everything in my message, in my work, in the book, and being in greatness. Healing is not a destination, it's a journey. So it is a healing journey throughout everything. And I think it's first getting to a place of full love and acceptance and forgiveness from all of your past memories to your present. I just think it's really hard to generate, to create from a space of love and harmony and wanting to serve without first loving and accepting all the parts of you that you don't like.

39:54There was a lot of parts of me that I didn't like and a lot of things that I did not want to face. And those parts of me that I did not like were little wounds that were open wounds inside of me emotionally and psychologically. And anytime that someone touched the wound, I would react. I would use energy that did not serve a mission to defend myself. I would put myself out of my environment to defend myself, to justify, to make wrong, to compete, whatever it may be. And that energy pulled me away from taking action towards a meaningful mission. So this is, again, not a conversation of someone who's right or wrong, good or bad, and what you should or shouldn't do.

40:40It's about what is the most useful energy to serve a meaningful mission. If you have a big goal, a big dream, if you've got an idea to write a book or launch a show or put your art out into the world, but your wounds, are causing you to defend yourself, to react to certain situations, then it's just not useful in putting it out into the world. And you have less energy on a day-to-day basis. So for me, I did not want to. As a guy that cared about peak performance, about success, about winning, I did not think facing your past pain was a part of this. I was trained to rub dirt on the wound, to get up and play with broken bones, which I did many times, to not show people you're in pain, to not cry, to not show any emotion.

41:32That was the way I was trained in athletics growing up. That if you show pain, if you show weakness, you will fail, you will lose, you'll be laughed at, you won't be on the team, all these things. So for me, I had to uncondition myself because that way of being got a certain set of results, but drained the life and the energy out of me from feeling harmony and peace inside of me and fulfilled when I would actually accomplish these big goals that I was accomplishing. I didn't feel good still. I felt upset, angry. I was frustrated. And I didn't think at all facing these wounds, healing the pain, and creating new meaning around these scenarios would help me.

42:17So step one is really developing a meaningful mission through the practice of healing and creating new meaning around these wounds that cause you to doubt yourself, that cause you to be reactive, that cause you to be triggered. Meditation was a big practice of mine over these last 10 years, trying different types of meditations and allowing myself to calm the nervous system, to calm the anger, the resentment. But calming is one part of it Creating new meaning around those memories is what allowed me to have peace and total acceptance If I don't accept who i've been in the past I'm never going to feel enough in my present in my future If I don't learn to say man, I didn't like that.

43:01I feel shameful. I feel frustrated I did these things or these things happen to me If I keep that inside of me That's going to keep pulling energy away from me on my mission So I must learn how to accept and take full accountability and ownership of my feelings around memories, create these new meanings, these new interpretations that support and serve me in my meaningful mission. When I can do that, then I can start to follow a process of actually accomplishing the goals and the dreams I have from a place of new meaning. But I think if we hold on to the pain, it's just always going to hurt us.

43:43Step one, heal. If I want to make it simpler. Although, of course, that's not simple. It's not simple. It's been a 10-year journey of processing. It's been having different therapists, having different coaches guide me. It's been doing intensive emotional intelligence workshop retreats where I physically release things, reinterpret things, experience things, and allow myself to reflect and create new meaning. It's been doing every different type of meditation that I can essentially think of, from going to India and practicing for many weeks and becoming a meditation instructor, from doing intensive different types of yoga breathing, to Wim Hof breathing, to studying with Wim Hof in Poland, half naked climbing mountains, breathing mindset, therapy training with a group of men being vulnerable and opening up together, to neuroscience type meditation retreats like Dr.

44:44Joe Dispenza, breaking down all the data and the science behind the frequencies and the energies and how it affects the body, to the spiritual meditations, to talk therapy, to intense emotional coaches, and also 10 years of interviews from some of the top therapists and individuals in neuroscience, brain surgeons on understanding the brain-body emotional connection and just applying these things. So it's been a journey for me. And again, I feel like it sometimes takes me a little longer to face certain things. And that's why these last two years, I was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling this.

45:23I will do anything and everything. I will face it. I will address it. I'll do whatever a coach that I trust tells me to do. And that was an extremely powerful process because it set me free in a lot of ways. And freedom is a continual practice. It doesn't mean you're free and you're never to get trapped and into a feeling of suffocating or trappedness again. That's why I'm constantly practicing it. I think that's important. when you talk about having a mission, and the mission is made meaningful because it does include other people, how do you balance that with having what we might call selfish goals?

46:06How do you balance the selfish, unselfish divide as you think about achieving greatness in your life? It's interesting because this could be an ego thing just to say this right now, but this month I'm on the cover of Success Magazine and I'll be on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine next month. And if you would have asked me 10 years ago or 15 years ago or my 21-year-old self that this would happen, I'd have been like, you know, my ego would have been thriving and drooling. And I'm like, great, this is awesome that it's happening. And it's a cool, it's a byproduct of being of service so continually.

46:46It's kind of like if you wanted a six pack and all you did was obsess over the six pack because you wanted to impress others. You might get there, but you may always be obsessive over like, ah, but I'm still fat or it's not popping enough or someone else has got it better. I need that to feel more complete. As opposed to, I just want to be consistently healthy. I want to put in the reps daily because I want to live a long, healthy life and be a symbol of inspiration for those around me to live a healthy lifestyle. The byproduct is going to be a six-pack or a good-looking body. But the intention and the vision and the consistency of, I want to show up because this is how I want my life to be.

47:30This is the mission I have towards my health. It's going to create these other ego results. And so it's just focusing on the service and the mission first. And again, it doesn't mean it's not cool and you don't celebrate these moments. It's kind of crazy that I'm on these covers of magazines. And I can celebrate them for what they are and then put my ego back in check and say, you know what? Let's make sure that this is happening because I'm the face of this brand. But the message is to go and impact lives. The message is to direct people to the mission. And let's keep focused on that. So it's a balance of, yes, let's celebrate and acknowledge that we're in this human experience and the ego does run part of our lives.

48:15But if we get too caught up into it and too hyped up into it and thinking we are more than just a man, then we're going to be humbled very quickly and life is going to humble us. And I think it was Marcus Aurelius was at the story where he would go around and someone would just say in the streets, like, you're just a man because everyone was praising him and saying how amazing he was. I think that was the story. And I think it's constantly being a reminder that I'm just a man. I'm just a human being. And that doesn't mean I need to diminish myself, but it doesn't mean I need to expand upon, you know, my greatness of who I am and really focus on service and mission.

48:56I think, yeah, there was, I'm going to mangle this, but I think there was Marcus Aurelius or some returning conqueror in Rome walking through the streets in their version of a ticker tape parade. And you would have somebody walking behind the general whispering in his ear, because it was always men, his ear, you're just a man, you're going to die. Don't let this go to your head. Exactly. It's kind of like you with the 36 Emmys in your lap. It's like you can celebrate. We should celebrate and acknowledge the hard work that we've done consistently the efforts, the creativity, the genius, the masterpiece in all of us.

49:36We should celebrate it. And don't diminish these things and don't say, oh, this is meaningless. It's not meaningless. It's a byproduct of you showing up in your greatness, in your masterpiece, and putting yourself out there in the world in a courageous way to impact and change lives. That's what you've done, Dan. You've done an incredible job with the masterpiece inside of you that no one else can do in your specific way. There may be people that do things differently in other ways, but no one has done it in the way that you have. And being celebrated, seen, and acknowledged is a big part of being a human being.

50:09And so we should celebrate these things about us. Otherwise, if we're just doing it and we're just diminishing the acknowledgments, that doesn't help us either. Let's celebrate it but not hold on to it forever of like a constant brag and then go back to service. And that's why, you know, you got, you only have half of them behind you as opposed to all of them. That's, that's, that's the key. For podcast listeners, Lewis is gently calling me out for the fact that I, you, if you're listening, you can't see this, but I'm in my home studio, which is basically a closet. And in the background, you can see an Emmy that I got when I was a news anchor.

50:47And yes, it's a flex to keep that in the background. I didn't do it on purpose. I promise. no but i should i think you should have it if i had it i would put it in the background i'd be like look what we created you know but it's got to be how can you use it as a symbol to serve more and i think that's that's the key do you ever screw that up because i do um you know where i i'll i'll get too caught up in my own selfish stuff and lose sight of the mission like i'm not perfect at walking this path? I think for sure I have probably a lot of times. I think I'm a lot more mindful in these last few years.

51:26It's kind of weird. Just the example of the magazine cover, it's weird to even show my team like, hey guys, look at me. It's weird. So it's like, hey guys, this is happening. This is something that's happening. And the goal is to use it as an opportunity to promote what we're doing. And so it's not diminishing it. It's not me like just flashing it all day in front of my team or something like that. It's like, how can we talk about it in an authentic way and drive it back to service and the mission while also not disempowering what you've actually accomplished. And I think I have a great partner.

52:04My girlfriend, Martha is beautiful at giving me the praise that supports my ego, but also saying, hey, listen, make sure you're living a very humble and grateful life. Because if you don't, life will give you things to be humbled by if you're not staying humble. And I think she has been a great balance for me to navigate the growth of a personal brand, the growth of an audience, the opportunities and things that come your way that are fun for the ego, but reminding me that I am just a man. She praises me, but then she reminds me, hey, make sure you stay in a life of service and humility or life will humble you.

52:55You've chosen well. She's great. How do you think about the role of money in success? Is that a fair metric for success and greatness? Again, I look at success different than greatness. And I think you can make lots of money and be successful, and it can be useful, and it can solve money problems, but it doesn't solve the problem of loving and accepting yourself. It doesn't solve the problem of feeling like you're worthy and deserving and enough. And I think that's one of the ultimate problems or opportunities that we get as human beings to learn how to do. How can we know and learn the art of accepting and loving ourselves authentically and in congruency without being a narcissist?

53:43How can we do this? And so I think you know a lot of people that are extremely wealthy, mega millionaires, billionaires who aren't fulfilled, who aren't at peace, who aren't in harmony and alignment and congruence with themselves and their mission. They're extremely successful. They make a lot of money. And they've solved that problem. But during the pandemic, I lived in a building here in Los Angeles where there was a guy worth about a half a billion dollars, big TV producer, executive, connected to all the celebrities, extremely famous in the business industry. And he committed suicide. He jumped off the building.

54:30I drove back home one day during the pandemic, and there was a white tent covering the parking area. And I kind of jokingly said to the person parking the car, the valet attendant, I go, someone didn't jump, did they? And he said, yes, they did. And I go, oh my gosh. And then later finding out about it, this person had not solved the problem. He solved the problem of money, but he did not solve the problem of service and learning to accept and love himself for all of his past and his present. And I think that is the ultimate challenge we get to face. And this is why I love the mission you're on of bringing peace through meditation teaching and the wisdom that you teach.

55:17Because when people feel a sense of love, when they feel a sense of calmness in their hearts, they are kinder to themselves than others. They are more generous with their care, with their acknowledgement, with their gifts and their talents. and they tend to respond from peace when they have peace rather than anger, fear, frustration, and they don't want to hurt people. And so you're doing a great service to give people meditation and tools to meditate and tools to find peace and calm so that they can have that within them. And then when they're triggered and pressured in life, that's what comes out of them.

56:02I appreciate that. In terms of money, though, it's super complicated because you can have an increased amount of peace and still get crazy about money. and so i'm just curious you know given given you know your very unique perch where you're interviewing you know the incredible people all the time and you've achieved a great deal of success what are your thoughts on having a healthy relationship to money even as you uh you know have a healthy relationship to yourself i think i think uh this is the next thing i'm actually working on. So I'm actually glad you're asking me this because my next book I'm writing is about the relationship we have to money and essentially the mindset and the emotional sets we have towards what the meaning of money is to us.

56:58As I, at one point, had no money for about a year and a half of my life, living on my sister's couch in my early 20s, I had no idea on how to make money and I didn't have a good relationship with it. I was very scared of money and living in scarcity. And I started to find mentors who had more money to learn from and to create a new relationship and a new healthy identity with money. One of my mentors early on said, in a moment of devastation and scarcity where I was just like, man, I'm struggling. I have no money. I'm stressing out about this. I feel like a loser because I'm still on my sister's couch after a year and I don't know what to do.

57:41The economy, this is in 2008. So the economy, it was kind of like a crash like 2020 or right now kind of feeling where it was crashing. Housing market, they weren't hiring people with master's degrees. I didn't have a college degree at that time yet. I had to go get one still. And I was just like, I don't know how I'm going to make money. And one of my mentors said, money comes to you when you're ready for it. And if you're not ready for it, it'll ruin you. And I was like, I feel pretty ready to have some money right now. Like, uh, it doesn't feel good to be living off three credit cards and being broke in the bank.

58:15Like I feel ready. And he goes, it'll come to you when you're ready for it or to ruin you if you're not ready. And I started to realize this over time. And about a year, year and a half later, I started to make more money. I was making a 3000 a month and kind of 10 ,000 and then 20 ,000. And then eventually, you know, I was doing a hundred thousand dollar months in my business. That wasn't all coming to me personally, but I felt money started to come after I did a lot of things that I applied in the Greatness Mindset book of overcoming these fears and turning fears into superpowers. That's when the money started to come.

58:51And actually, that's when the confidence started to come in managing money as well. But I still didn't have the best relationship with it. It took me time because I didn't know how to invest. I didn't know how to save. I didn't know how to manage it. I didn't know how to lend money out to friends and family when they were asking for it. So I was still learning and navigating how to manage money as it came to me. But I realized that if it would have came sooner, I wouldn't have been ready for it emotionally because I didn't have a good relationship with money. It was funny. I was meeting with a friend of mine last week here in LA.

59:25He's got a, I think his home was worth$40 or$50 million. It's this unbelievable home. He had a big exit in the company, a massive exit years ago in a big company. And he bought this home. And I go, man, it must be amazing to live here. Like it's looking over all of LA. It's this beautiful, it's unbelievable. Every technology, gadget, everything you can think of, they have. And I go, it must be amazing. And he goes, yeah, but the saying is true, more money, more problems. and unless you have the emotional relationship to manage more problems in a healthy way, again, what is inside of you will come out of you.

1:00:08And they say those that make money, it just exposes their character more when they make it. So if you have a healthy relationship with yourself and others, you'll probably continue to have a healthy relationship. If you're stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, that's going to cause you to amplify that stress and anxiety and overwhelm when you have more money. So I feel like money is an amplifier of who you are in your way of being. And we've got to learn how to have a healthy relationship with it. It's interesting. I was interviewing this guy named Ken Honda. I don't know if you've had him on yet, but he'd be a great interview for it.

1:00:44I think he's sold around nine or 10 million books. He's got a book called Happy Money. and it was beautiful, beautiful conversation with him. And the book, he's originally from Japan. So he sold like 10 million copies around like Japan and Asia mostly. But it's gone like crazy. And it's about how to create peace around money and how to have happy money. So he says something around like when every time money comes in with him, he has a relationship to it. And he says we should have a conversation with our money and treat our money like we would our most sacred friend or intimate lover. And if we want to have a healthy relationship with our lover or our partner or our spouse, a healthy relationship means you've got to speak kindly to your spouse.

1:01:36You must invest in your spouse. You must appreciate and acknowledge your spouse. And what you appreciate tends to appreciate in value, if you've chosen wisely, obviously. And he says, I have a conversation with my money. Again, this might sound a little weird, but when money comes, he has a relationship, a mental and emotional relationship to money. And he says, thank you to the money when it comes to him. And I think a lot of people are afraid. They want money, but they're afraid of it, or they think it's evil or bad when people have it. And so if you think something is bad or you're afraid of something, why would something come to you?

1:02:12Why would you want to attract something if you're resisting it and afraid of it? So we must learn to have a different relationship and have a love for money in an authentic way. Not how I love you so I can go buy all these things and look better to the world because I don't feel enough. It goes back to feeling enough with where I'm at, accepting myself, and having a new conversation or relationship with money. So when money comes to him, he says, thank you, money. Where do you want to go? He says, thank you. Every time that he sees an amount come to him, a check or something coming to him, he says, thank you.

1:02:44Thank you. He has an appreciation for money and money continues to come to him. And he also says, I ask money. And again, this is kind of a weird thing that most people maybe haven't thought of, but this is what works for him. He says, I ask money, where do you want to go? Do you want me to spend you today on something? Do you want me to give you away to a friend in need? Do you want me to spend on a charity day? Do you want me to leave$20 on the side of the street for someone else to pick it up and have a moment today of needing something? Do you want me to put you in an investment account? Do you want me to put you in my living, my food?

1:03:21Where do you want to go? And he has a relationship with money. And it's like having a normal relationship with a friend and saying, hey, what do you want to do today? Where do you want to go? What should we do together as an activity? He does this with the idea of money. And again, it might sound a little weird. It might sound a little different than normal thinking. But I think when we can interpret it and take a different approach to how we relate to the idea of money, then money will start to relate to us differently. In preparing for this interview, I've been thinking about you quite a bit.

1:03:52And as I hope you know, I'm fond of you. I've spent time with you in person a couple of times. And you have a very different approach to these subjects than I do. I love it. And I think you're interested in some stuff that I'm not interested in. But you are extremely, in my opinion, really genuine and voracious in your desire to learn. And I have a lot of respect for that. Thank you. I appreciate it. That's a way of sopping you up for a hard question. Yeah. Which is when you talk about attracting things or the law of attraction, manifestation, that is a bit of a bugaboo for me. And so I want to come at you on that and see.

1:04:46Bring it. I love it. Well, when you talk about the law of attraction, what do you mean by that? um when i when i when i think of or talk about the law of attraction from my perspective i think about being very clear on what you want and taking massive action consistently over time in order to create it in order to seeing it come to you so if i have an idea in my mind that is not in the world right now i want to write a book i want to do an interview with you i want to make$100 and I have not done that thing, like that new thing has not come to me, then it's about being very clear on the intention of what I want, why I want that thing, and the meaning behind why I want it needs to be important.

1:05:37It can't just be for superficial things because, again, if we attract these things, it still won't be enough if it's from a place of a meaning out of ego as opposed to out of service. So I could attract and I can accomplish, but it still won't be enough. But the law of attraction for me means being very clear on the intention of what I want to create, feel, or experience in the world, having a deeper meaning of why I want it, and then taking massive action until I create it. And that could be following a game plan, getting a coach, doing something creative to make it happen, whatever. But attraction has the word action in it So it must be something you take action on consistently over time And the goal for me is really to say How do we attract things faster?

1:06:29How do we draw an idea that we have into us And put it out into the world A thought, thinking, and put it out into the world I want to write a book Okay, here's a thought Why? Well, I want to serve people with a message and I think it'll really help people heal, create, develop, do whatever it is, overcome this challenge. Okay, I want to put this out in the world. Here's why. Here's the mission behind it. Now, the goal is to how do I think something and the law of attraction is drawing it into me to physically manifest faster, right? Okay, I have this thought for the book, put the thought out.

1:07:08Now I want to draw this into me so it's actually in my hands. He's holding his book. How do I do that? Okay. I need to get clear on all these things and I need to take action. I need to find someone to help me write. I need to find a good editor. I need to find a publisher. I need to, all these action steps. And it's my ability to communicate effectively and be in congruence with my mission. My ability to relate to other human beings in the world. my ability to have emotional intelligence and meet people where they're at and communicate on their level allows me to act courageously and take massive action continuously to draw that thought back to me faster so that it's an actual complete physical thing in the world that I dreamt of.

1:07:58For me, that is the law of attraction, getting clear, taking massive action and then making it happen fast. Okay. So what I hear there is very commonsensical. You know, just you have a goal, you go for it. And yet when I was, you know, I spent a lot of time reporting on self-help gurus back in the day, James Arthur Ray and lots of other folks. That must have been interesting. Yeah. He had a bunch of - He went to jail for a few years, right? Yeah. He went to jail after some of his - Oh man. That's, yeah. Yeah, that's, he had like what, two or four people died in that accident, right? Yeah, I don't remember the exact number, but it wasn't good.

1:08:35It was sad. Anyway, what I often heard when people talked about the law of attraction or the power of positive thinking was you can keep this spotlessly positive mind and then get things through kind of this magic. You know, if you watch the DVD of The Secret, you see a woman looking in a jewelry store window. And all of a sudden it's on their wrist. Yes, all of a sudden the diamonds are on her neck. And so I think that's a very dangerous thing to tell people. But I'm not hearing you say that. Am I missing something? No, I just think that's the way that it's been framed by some people. But for me as an athlete, you don't dunk overnight as a seven-year-old.

1:09:25You can't jump. You don't have coordination. You're not tall enough to touch the rim. That was a dream of mine since I was seven. It was like, I want to be able to dunk one day. I'm watching on TV. This looks amazing. It took me eight more years until I was able to do it. Wait, you could dunk? Yeah, of course I could dunk. I'm 6 '4". Come on, Dan. Well, I haven't tried to dunk in my - I liked you until now. now i'm just jealous here's the thing that i haven't done it in like probably two years i haven't played basketball in a couple years since the pandemic so i'm kind of nervous because i'm turning 40 in a few weeks and i'm like i still want to be able to dunk after 40 i don't want my age to limit me from anything and uh but i just haven't practiced jumping so i i gotta get back out there and start seeing back and dunk again but side note um you know you got an emmy You got a few Emmys?

1:10:16Can you give me one? I'm kind of jealous. Just throw me one back here behind me. I'm just compensating for my lack of height. You know what they say about shorter men? The shorter men are usually way smarter, make way more money, and get the dream girl. That's what happens to shorter men. They get so much more intelligence, have so much more skills and capabilities that they have everything else they want except for the height. I got the dream girl, but the rest of it, I don't know. I don't know, man. You're selling yourself short. Ah, gotcha. No, I'm kidding. You did. So for me, I had this dream of wanting to dunk.

1:10:56This is just an analogy in a story, but I had to take massive action. I did jumping lessons constantly. I had jumping workouts. I was obsessing over this and acting for, I don't know, eight years until I turned, I think, 14 was when I finally, 15 when I finally dunked. Barely. And then it's a level of like, how do I get to that thing even more? How do I keep working at it and working on it? So for me, I take a very practical approach as an athlete. I know things take time. But in the world of possibilities, some things you can bend time. Some things may take longer. It doesn't take five years to write a book.

1:11:34It doesn't take that. You know, you can say, oh, it's just taking me a long time. but there are things you can do to shorten the attraction to it happening faster by taking different steps or different actions to, again, use a word called manifestation or attraction that a lot of people may not jive with because of the annotation that is attached to it. But for me, I'm able to do things faster now because I have more skills and I've overcome more fears and insecurities, and I'm just able to work in the world in a different way. but it used to take me a lot longer to do things when I had to learn certain skills.

1:12:11You just use the word fears. And this is the last thing I want to ask you about here is, you talk a lot in your new book about dealing with fear. And there's a whole set of exercises, the fear converter, the fear sit down, the self-coaching solution.

1:12:31Multiple choice here, you know, or sort of, maybe that's not the right word. pick one i'd just be curious if you could just walk us through and exercise for dealing with fear because at least for me that's that's a pretty constant companion yeah i mean i was crippled by fear most of my life and it consumed me it made me feel powerless in situations in certain social settings i didn't have courage or the abilities at the time to act to show up to be my authentic self because the fear crippled me. And so again, this was just me living in a more powerless mindset state momentarily until I was able to overcome a lot of these fears.

1:13:12And it doesn't mean that there's not gonna be new fears at different seasons of life. I'm not married, Dan. I don't have kids yet. And I'm assuming there's gonna be a set of challenges or call it opportunities for me to overcome certain fears or insecurities at a new season and stage. There's always going to be something that we're going to need to face. And so what I like to do is I like to create a thing called a fear list. Edith Edgar talked about this as well when I interviewed her, which I was really excited about when she said it. She's like, we need to create a list of our fears and start knocking them off.

1:13:48And I go, yes, this is something I've been talking about for a long time. She was a Holocaust survivor who wrote a book called The Gift, one of the mentees of Viktor Frankl from Man's First for Meaning. And she said, you know, these fears hold us back. And it's not until we actually face it. So she talked about going back to the concentration camp where she was, where she watched her parents get executed. And she said, it was still having power over me. I still had bad dreams until I went back and faced it, faced the situation, the scenario, faced the man who took my parents away emotionally and psychologically in my mind in that physical setting and allowed myself to create healing, forgiveness, and peace.

1:14:37For me, when we can list it and look at them, for me, public speaking was a big fear. Salsa dancing was a big spear. Reading and writing was a big fear. So the first three things I did, I said, I'm going to go all in on public speaking. And I did that every week for a year. I went to Toastmasters, which is a public speaking class. And it was humiliating. I could not stand in front of a group of people without stuttering, stumbling, sweating, and just sounding like an idiot. These were all professionals, and I was not one. So of course I'm not going to be any good. But by doing it every week for a year, I eventually got a lot better.

1:15:17And I'm facing it and checking it off my list of it's no longer a fear. It's now something in my tool belt that I can use that empowers me. It gives me even more confidence overcoming that one fear. I did the same thing with salsa dancing. Reading and writing was one of the biggest fears of me because I would get asked to speak aloud in class. I know you were in the top of your grade and you skipped multiple grades and you had the highest IQ and SAT and all these things. But I don't know if they did this with you, Dan, but with me, they, in our school, they would rank us of how well we did on our grade cards compared to everyone else in our class and our grade.

1:15:58And I was always in the bottom four, always in the bottom four. And most of the time, yeah, I'm not proud of this. Most of the time I would cheat on homework and quizzes and tests just to pass because when I would try to study so intently and do it on my own, I couldn't pass. I would fail. So this was just a survival mechanism to get through a school. And so when I would read aloud, they would ask us to stand up and read a, you know, chapter one and page whatever, read a paragraph. It would terrify me. I would try to do anything I could to get out of reading aloud. So when I became an adult, or I don't know if I was an adult yet, but in my early 20s, still figuring out life, I was like, I need to face this fear.

1:16:41I am going to write a book. and I was terrified of what people would think about me because I wasn't a quote unquote writer. So I studied it. I worked with a coach and a mentor that helped guide me. I practiced it. Again, I didn't just say, I'm gonna write a best-selling book overnight and then just manifest it with the law of attraction. I worked at it continuously and felt the fear and felt the embarrassment and felt the humiliation. But I had supportive feedback, positive coaches that said, hey, it's all good. It's a process. You're going to improve over time. And here's something you did better than last week.

1:17:19And let's work with this. By creating a fear list and knocking the scariest ones off first, one by one, you will start to feel fearless. And I think that's an exercise that I've continued to apply in my life that has given me a lot of confidence in the face of fear. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast.

1:17:59If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

1:18:34And now it's time to go out there and do something great.