Live Fully in the Present Moment, Let Go & Achieve ABUNDANCE

0:00Your entire life unfolds in and as the present moment. that all there ever is. If your relationship with the present moment is dysfunctional, your entire life is dysfunctional. Make the present moment your friend, then your whole life begins to change. The main mistake perhaps that people make is... Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And 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.

0:43Welcome 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 gonna be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

1:01What type of application or what do people need to be aware of and then take action on in order to start working towards inner peace and harmony? Right. Yes, good question. Well, a good entry point is the present moment. The present moment is the, I sometimes call it the portal into that state of consciousness that we call presence, awareness. now the the the egoic mind as I call it the egoic mind is not really interested in the present moment and it usually tries to obscure the present moment it's interested in some other imagined moment past the future yes it ignores the present moment but the first realization is

2:04the absolute importance of the present moment in your life. It's the foundation for everything. And your relationship to the present moment determines how the future evolves, what we call future, which, by the way, never arrives, because when it arrives, it's again the present moment. So the realization that all you ever have, all that you can ever experience, is intrinsically linked with the present moment. It's inseparable from the present moment. Your entire life unfolds in and as the present moment. that all there ever is. The past, when the past happened, it was the present moment. It couldn't happen anywhere else.

3:01And when you remember the past, you remember it in the present moment. The future, when the future comes, when tomorrow comes, it won't be tomorrow anymore. It will be the now. There was a British pub in London that I lived in London for many years, they had a sign on the bar that says, free beer tomorrow. And of course, tomorrow never comes. So the sign is always true. That's funny. You go the next day, say, no, tomorrow. Tomorrow. Wow, that's funny. So tomorrow actually never comes. Of course, we need to make plans on a practical level. the future is indispensable. We needed future for us to get together here, to talk, to stipulate day and time for connecting.

4:01So on a practical level, we cannot do without future. But on a deeper level, on a deeper psychological level, it's important to realize that the future as such does not actually exist, because all you can ever experience or have is the present moment. Yes. So that's the starting point. It begins with the realization of the absolute primary importance of the present moment. This is all you ever have. So you might as well have a good relationship with the present moment because if your relationship with the present moment is dysfunctional, your entire life is dysfunctional. Right. So how do we, if someone watching or listening is saying, well, my present is really challenging right now.

4:47yes i'm i'm i've got a lot of debt i've you know i feel i've got some sickness in my body and my health is not there my you know i'm going through a divorce or breakup the career is not as good as i want it to be there's some type of pain in the present yeah how can i actually enjoy the present when i'm in breakdown everywhere yeah let's let's leave aside for a moment physical pain that's a It's another story, but the psychological pain that's there is, again, associated with certain situations. It's associated with your life situation, which may be problematic on some level, whether it's financial or relationship or work situation or living situation or health situation.

5:38it's very likely that at any given time your life situation will be problematic problematically on at least one of these levels right and sometimes it's a lot one is two or three or four becomes really problematical you you lose your all your money you know you're because you lose your job your wife leaves you you or use your home these things can do sometimes happen. So you have that. And again, that's usually these life challenges, situational challenges are usually perceived as being part of the present moment but they're not really the present moment. They are what I call your life situation.

6:28But other than your life situation you have something that I call your life. life situation exists in time life is now and never not now and since your life is now you have to ask yourself yes i have all these problems i don't know how i'm going to pay the rent maybe or my relationship is problem i have to i'm in the middle of divorce proceedings all these things that happen to people. Or I've just been let go, or my company has collapsed, or whatever, or it might collapse. Maybe it's doing well, but it may not do well next year. All kinds of things that are perceived as problematic, which sometimes are real and sometimes are just imagination.

7:15Again, we need to differentiate between when people say they're having big problems, sometimes they are just in the mind because they think of things that might go wrong. At other times, there are actually real challenges happening around you. But here again, it's to single out the present moment and not to ignore action that you might take or have to take in order to change certain situations. Is there any action that I can take? That's a secondary question. It's important, but it's secondary. The primary question I often ask people, what problem do you have at this moment? And then they usually start by saying, well, I'm running out of money, or I'm living in this unpleasant place.

8:08They say, no, no, running out of money is not just this moment, right here and now. What problem do you have here and now, in this moment? And then you look around, maybe you become aware that you're breathing, and you look around, and then reluctantly sometimes people have to admit, well, okay, I'm ready to admit that at just this moment there isn't actually a problem. The next one there might be, but the next one is again this. Of course, at this moment you may have a challenge that you immediately need to deal with. If you're going for a walk and you encounter a wild animal coming towards you, you don't say, I don't have any problems at this moment.

9:07That's a challenge that you need to deal with, but we wouldn't call it a problem. I mean, I sometimes go for walks in the forest, and usually there are bears here. So if you encounter a bear, that is not a problem. It's a challenge, and you deal with it. Either you run away or you don't, whatever you do, deal with it. The problem lives in the mind.

9:37So to get out of that is to give much more attention to the present moment and realize that in the present moment, the problem cannot survive. Say that one more time, in the present moment? The problem, any problem you have cannot survive in the present moment because problem is a burden that you carry in your mind, your mental emotional field. That's what a problem is. The rest is situations and circumstances. Either you leave them alone if there's nothing you can do, or you take some action. But they're not a problem. Either you act or you don't act. And if you don't act, you take your attention into the present moment and see that it's actually okay.

10:25and I've had to I've had often get correspondence from people in prison they're in prison and they we have through my foundation we are sending thousands of thousands of books to to prisons and so and for prisoners to read I often get communication people realize that in their prison cell they realize that actually I have no problem in other words they come to a complete alignment with the present moment there's no longer an entity that this should not be happening because that's where the suffering arises uh and of course present is a situation where you can't probably can't take much action where you can try to escape but you probably won't succeed right right right you've got to accept and surrender yes so there's always the action may need to be taken, but if no action is possible, then you come to a place of surrender.

11:29But it's positive surrender, not negative surrender. Positive surrender is an uncompromising yes to the present moment. An uncompromising yes to what is. That is a place of great inner power that arises with, yes, this is what is. That's the starting point. So you're not arguing with the isness of things, because that's insane. You cannot argue with what is. And this constant arguing with what is, this actually amplifies the ego, the egoic consciousness. The ego loves to argue with what is. It needs to. It loves enemies. and the ego makes the present moment into an enemy. Right. Can you see how insane that is?

12:24You make the present moment into your enemy because that's all you ever have. It means you make your whole life into an enemy because your whole life is the present moment. Right. So I sometimes say, make the present moment your friend, not your enemy. Make the present moment your friend. Then your whole life begins to change. because what we call future is just an extension of your state of consciousness in the present moment. So if your state of consciousness is negative, it is very likely that you will experience much more negativity in the so-called future. Right. If you're in the present moment, you're in a place of acceptance, of positive acceptance, then it's very likely that the so-called future, I always say so-called future because the future as such doesn't exist.

13:23It's always, when it comes, it's a now. So the so-called future reflects your state of consciousness in the present moment. So that's really a very important realization. So that is the absolute importance of your state of consciousness here and now. What is your state of consciousness now? Rather than thinking that something else is more important than my state of consciousness. So in any situation, you're faced with any situation, what is the state of consciousness with which you face the situation? Are you in a state of resistance or negativity towards the situation? Because in any endeavor that you undertake, inevitably, obstacles will arise in anything.

14:15You want to create something new. Obstacles come in many forms, sometimes in the form of human beings who don't like you to do what you're doing. or it can come in the form of other structures that are in society, the rigid structures. So you get all kinds of bureaucratic obstacles or whatever the obstacles are. So how do you face an obstacle? What is your state of consciousness when an obstacle arises? Do you immediately become angry? Do you become despondent? Or do you start complaining in your mind? of people and talking about others, how awful this situation is, and complaining? Or are you able to just immediately say, this is what is?

15:01So you face the obstacle, not in a state of resistance, come from a state of power. This is what is. And then when you are in that state of presence, very often a right action arises spontaneously. and you do you find yourself doing the right thing because you're not making the situation into an enemy and this is very important in any if you want to achieve great things and a huge obstacle for people is to start complaining and building up stress when things go wrong with this. In other words, things shouldn't be happening. So they become negative. They become unpleasant. They become unpleasant to people, colleagues and people they work with.

15:54And a lot of negative energy can build up in a company and so on. And that is not some of the most effective people in this world, there are perhaps a few, they don't work with negativity. They work immediately with a positive attitude. They don't make the present moment into an enemy. They might never have heard any spiritual teaching, so perhaps that is some kind of innate wisdom that they have, or maybe they've learned this lesson in a vast lifetime, who knows? So, the importance is to always start with the present moment, and again, what problem do I have now? Is there a problem here and now, just this moment?

16:49Well, actually, no, not really. The problem isn't here. The problem is in the mind, but it's not here. That's a place of power. And then you become aligned with the power of now, the power of the present moment, which is the power of consciousness itself beyond the ego. far far powerful. The ego is only like the reflected light. The moon reflects the light of the sun and the ego reflects the light of consciousness. It's not power. There's no power in ego itself. In the same way, there's no light in the moon. It's just reflected light. Wow. Yeah. That's powerful. This has been fascinating so far.

17:38I'm sure we could talk about consciousness and suffering for hours, but I want to get to a few other concepts here. One of them being about the law of attraction, because you mentioned kind of synchronicities and serendipities and kind of this idea of when we align ourselves to consciousness and to more harmony thoughts, to more peaceful thoughts. In my experience, things just come. You know, the right things that I'm intending, they happen very quickly and unexpectedly. I would love to hear your thoughts on your definition of the law of attraction, but also maybe the three habits that you see people doing the most that hurt them from attracting effortlessly using the law of attraction.

18:32Right. Well, the main mistake perhaps that people make is not coming from a place of fullness, but coming from a place of neediness and putting too much attention on what is the undesirable conditions that they want to get rid of, but mentally almost continuously focusing on the undesirable condition, like not enough money, for example, which is a problem for many people. So let's use money for the example then, the law of attraction with money. How could we attract more wealth or financial abundance in our life using the law of attraction? Yeah. Well, first of all is the acknowledgement of abundance that is already here and now.

19:32And not focusing on the lack of abundance that is here now, which you could find by thinking about it, but to actually focus on where is the abundance that I can find here and now. And that is all around you. It is in nature. When you look at the abundance of nature, the multiplicity of life forms, the wonder of nature, the abundance of evil, or let's say you're in a city, you can look at, appreciate all the things that you see around you. You don't need to necessarily own it or buy it, just appreciate it. So this, the appreciation of the goodness of life that is always all around you, even if you have no money, there's still the goodness of life is all around you.

20:29You see it all around you. The sunshine, I mean, the sun is the ultimate symbol of abundance because it gives energy of itself almost eternal. I mean, eventually the sun will die, but as far as we are concerned, but it's virtually eternal, it calls out energy continuously. And at some point, we will realize that even on the level of energy, the universe is infinitely abundant. So, we will no longer need things that we're using now, fossil fuels, and those things we have access to other forms of energy that are more helpful.

21:16So how can people let go of their frustration of really wanting something to happen now versus knowing when it's the right timing for it to come into the world? Right. So the difference is just simply belief. So you have to believe you have it already. So if I explain what my belief was like, my belief was a notch above believing it had already happened. Mine was knowing it had already happened. What's the difference between believing and knowing? Because knowing is the highest you can get. And it's actually knowing is beyond the mind, but you can manifest with believing too. So I didn't just believe this had happened.

22:00I absolutely knew it. Wow. And I knew it and I knew what it was going to do. And I, I, how can I, it felt, I knew it so much that I felt like I had already lived the entire journey of making it and it coming out and that I had such a great time that I was reliving it. But what I'm hearing you say is believing can really help you in a big way, but knowing is what unlocks manifestation into another level. Yeah, knowing it's just done. I mean, there have been times for everybody when they knew something, they absolutely knew something was going to happen before it happened. So let's say... And how do they know that?

22:58Yes. How did you know that? and you don't know how you knew it. It's like an intuition or a feeling or something. Yeah, right. You knew it. Like somebody is having a baby and they don't know what sex it is, but you're like, oh, I know it's a girl. I absolutely know it's a girl. And everybody thinks you're just guessing like everybody else. No. You're like, I know it. I know it's a girl. Or there's a spinning wheel and you all of a sudden you're like, I know it's going to be number 11. I know it. And it's number 11. But you knew it. How does that happen? Yeah, because it's above the mind. It's above the mind.

23:37So you definitely know it. That's crazy. So you don't have to be at knowing to manifest. You just have to be at believing. And might I just say that you just have to be more believing than not believing. So that person who's not, you know, they're waiting and it hasn't manifested and they're here and here. The difference is they're not believing it is done already. The moment they're believing more that it's done than it hasn't arrived, it'll manifest. How do we stay patient? See, well, if you need patience, you're not believing it's manifested, right? Interesting. thing. So is there, can you give me an example?

24:27So you're done for right there. So give me an example. Give me an example. If there's an example in your life personally, or something you've seen from a friend or someone who's read the book where they were like, man, I've been waiting for this to happen. It's been 10 years. I feel like it's supposed to happen. I believe it's happening, but I haven't got the thing that I've wanted yet or haven't, it hasn't happened yet. It hasn't come to fruition yet. Should I have more patience in manifesting? Should I expect it's already here now? What should I do? Okay. So I've definitely had some people do that.

25:00One in particular, she was wanting to have a baby and get pregnant. She had visualized, visualized, visualized, visualized getting pregnant. She had been doing affirmations. She'd been grateful that she was getting pregnant and she's like, still, I'm not pregnant. Now, I just, and I think she'd even done IVF and that hadn't worked. And so she'd sort of given up. Yeah. And I just knew that for a woman who can't get pregnant, getting pregnant has a lot of resistance around it. Because when you've not been able to get pregnant, get pregnant, get pregnant, there's like real resistance around that getting pregnant and so much so that the resistance was outweighing her her resistance that i'm not pregnant yet was outweighing her visualization all the other things so i said to her i don't want you to visualize that i want you to visualize holding the baby because that's the outcome right that's the end result you don't want to be pregnant for the rest of your life, right?

26:12You want to be holding the baby. So I said to her, I want you to visualize holding the baby. I want you to hear the baby. I want you to feel it in your arms. Wow. Pregnant in a month. Wow. And I've done that with a lot of women. This is, you know, even you saying that, I'm not a woman, but it's like imagining, you know, a child coming into my life from my partner and hearing the baby, having the baby against my chest being born you know feeling the heartbeat of the child yeah next to my heartbeat having this beautiful moment like i'm already seeing the future happening now yeah by experiencing that feeling as opposed to like i'm feeling it oh i know you better be you better be careful you better be careful i know right do you want to have children now i do at the right time yes okay at the right time yes yes okay yeah but it's like when you feel that and you really imagine and experience that feeling it's as if it's already happened or it's happening yeah and you're feeling it and therefore you're allowing that to come to you and you're allowing that as opposed to resisting it yeah where this person or friend of yours was like i really want this come here come here but uh but like it's not here yet because so many disappointments you see you know women i know go through a lot who can't get pregnant so there's just one disappointment after another or maybe they got pregnant and they miscarried and um somebody else they're two two australian girls uh volleyball players and they're playing in the olympic games and these girls were just so brilliant, so clever.

27:59They were not at all the favourites, far from the favourites. They were way down the chart. And what they did was they filled their entire apartment with gold awards. They got everything gold leading up to the Olympic Games and they had gold everywhere. They bought all these awards everywhere, gold. Do you think anyone could have beaten them at the Olympic Games? Wow. No chance. Wow. The ball was going to bounce in the perfect way. They were going to be in the exact perfect position. You see, because. So when we talk about action, the kind of action that you have to do for when you have used the mind, that action's effortless.

28:51That's why writing the secret book was effortless. It's effortless. But if you go out into the world and you're like, make this happen and you want to do all the action, oh, you're going to struggle. Oh, it's going to be hard. You might get there eventually, but it's going to be harder than it should be. Yeah, and you'll get there eventually, but you only get there eventually because you think it gradually, bit by bit. That's the only reason you get there, because you had the thought, oh, things are getting better. I'm starting to see success is coming. You're having these little thoughts along the way.

29:24That's the only reason you make it. You cannot do anything in the world without thought. Nothing. You show me one invention that's happened without thought. Right. You have to imagine it first. Right. You have to come up with it in your mind, and then you alchemize and create it in the world. Exactly. You have to think it first. Yeah. So for those girls, you see, they lived with that gold and saw themselves winning gold. And so that, that, and they, I bet if you ask them, they would say winning that gold was effortless for them, that they just got the right breaks that everything happened the right way for them, because it would.

30:02Wow. And, you know, sports people are so amazing at visualizing winning, right? And then it does look effortless for them because they're in the flow. They're not working hard. They're effortlessly moving to their desired result, right? How do we navigate the ego when, let's say, when success comes our way? You know, whether these girls who win the gold medal, you know, an athlete and you selling millions of copies in the first year or months or whatever and getting all these opportunities. How do we navigate the ego from not consuming us, but success actually allowing us to multiply into greater success?

30:49Yeah, really good question. How did you navigate that? You just you certainly have to remain humble, you know. and humble and grateful. And I think we've all seen people that have had success and then just find themselves in the most awful drama of, you know, terrible situation where they made one mistake and just everything, you know, the whole world turned against them. So you have to remain humble. otherwise truly just you're in for a really rough ride and you could visualize all the most wonderful things and you could you know achieve all of that and manifest all of that but if you don't remain humble because if if you look at it anyway you never did it on your own like even if you just look at physically in the world I mean I knew we had the universe behind us I felt it with every step that we took.

31:52But even I've got the most incredible team. I mean, we did intentions meetings at 11 o 'clock every morning and where we intended. And in those meetings, we were celebrating the secret having swept the world and having become a global phenomenon. That's what we did in those meetings. Before the book came out. Oh yeah, but we danced and we celebrated that. that's what you've got to do you had the feeling of joy and excitement and gratitude that was already done wow yeah if you want to go traveling if you want to see the world and you're like i don't have any money how will i ever go traveling straight away law of attraction says okay done you know i don't have any money or but if you want to go traveling get out your suitcase This is the funniest thing you said is because my my fiancee, Martha, she's Mexican and grew up in this Mexican traditions.

32:51And over the holidays, I don't know. This never happened to me growing up in America. But over the holidays, they would do this thing around Christmas and New Year's. Her family, I believe this is a Mexican tradition, but her family, they'll all get out suitcases during the holidays and say, where do you want to go next year? and then we leave the house with the suitcase and say we're going to Japan. We walk out and we skip down the sidewalk with a suitcase, me and Martha did, and then each family member does this and tells the experience of where they went. I'm going here and this is where it's going to feel like in the experience and it's this joy and excitement talking about the trip.

33:37And we take the suitcase out the door and then we come back and we tell the experience. and we said this this last year japan and now i i believe we literally just booked our trip to japan happening in like a month oh i was gonna say you are going to japan yeah it's happening no it's happening yeah well but even though i didn't know when or how at the end of last year we set an intention he did we celebrated it we talked about it and we allowed the universe to open up to see when is this possible how is this possible what are we going to be doing right and things are coming to us in a way that's going to create a beautiful magical experience oh so fantastic but we took our luggage out and so i don't know if this is like a mexican tradition so literally what you said they do every year is really cool because it sets that intention yes acting as if is what it is it's acting as if you already have it like i remember there was this lady who wanted to be in the audience on the Oprah show when I was going to be on there and the audience was completely full it was it was booked out but what she did was she got her suitcase out and she got a flight to Chicago I mean this is somebody really really game and she gets a call a message on her phone when she lands in Chicago to say come to the studio we've got a seat for you.