The Golden Equation That Turns Desire Into Reality | David Bayer

15 Jul 2026 · 1 h 17 min · 34 chapters

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In short

How to turn any desire into reality by removing “non-resistance” (inner resistance) and shifting from primal states (fear-based) to powerful states (joy/calm), using mindset, belief audits, and daily emotional regulation.

Guest

David Bayer is an entrepreneur and best-selling author who teaches people to unlock potential by “raising their frequency.” He describes his own path through venture-backed tech success followed by recovery from drug/alcohol/sex addiction, and later health challenges (high mercury from an all-fish diet; mold exposure). He credits Alcoholics Anonymous, 12-step work, and personal growth/healing with transforming his beliefs.

Key claims

Desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. Resistance is driven by limiting beliefs (e.g., “money is scarce,” “I’m not good enough,” “I never felt safe”). The brain interprets the absence of the desire as proof of failure, creating a psychocybernetic loop. People must take consistent action, but detach from focusing on the lack. Success without inner healing leaves an “empty hole.”

Notable examples

Bayer’s podcast underperformed for a year until he stopped fixating on it after his son was born; within 90 days it “took off.” He also recounts finding books during recovery (Buddhist “four noble truths,” “Kingdom Principles,” and Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich”) that mirrored AA steps.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

Transforming Desires into Reality

3:41 to 6:16

Learn how to align your desires with personal growth practices.

“The moment you have a desire, two things enter your awareness.”

The Scarcity Mindset

6:16 to 8:04

Discover how childhood beliefs shape our relationship with money.

“It's like, you know, there's no personal development store that you walk into, right?”

Core Programs and Trauma

8:04 to 10:40

Understand how core traumas influence our behaviors and beliefs.

“About 70 % of people who just heard that question answered scarce.”

Healing and Personal Growth

10:40 to 14:01

Explore the journey of healing from trauma and developing self-acceptance.

“And so, and this actually isn't a problem.”

Transformation Through Acceptance

14:01 to 17:08

Learn about transforming self-acceptance and embracing personal growth.

“All of it is really designed for my greatest growth, my greatest prosperity, and my greatest evolution.”

Harnessing Modern Growth Technology

17:09 to 17:56

Explore how modern tools facilitate personal growth and awareness.

“I am big on simple daily habits that support how you show up.”

Harnessing Modern Growth Technology

17:59 to 19:03

Explore how modern tools facilitate personal growth and awareness.

“These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

Harnessing Modern Growth Technology

19:10 to 19:21

Explore how modern tools facilitate personal growth and awareness.

“That's quince.com slash lewis for free shipping and 365 day returns.”

Redefining Success and Healing

20:24 to 21:58

Discuss the relationship between success, self-love, and healing.

“You know, I think a lot of people can resonate with what you shared around being really good at accomplishing success, but not feeling good at loving yourself.”

Desire and Non-Resistance Equation

21:59 to 23:06

Understand the formula for transforming desires into reality.

“You know, I remember walking in the landmark forum the first day that I did that and going to Tony's events.”
Show all 34 chapters

Overcoming Resistance to Achieve Goals

23:07 to 26:28

Learn how to address and overcome internal resistance to your desires.

“If you can become psychologically and emotionally non-resistant to the desire, 100 % of the time consistently and predictably, you will crystallize that desire into your reality.”

Understanding Reality and Action

26:29 to 28:05

Explore the relationship between desires, actions, and understanding reality.

“I need to conspire the world and people around me to support me in this in some ways, but also not be attached to the result.”

Understanding Resistance and States of Being

28:05 to 30:49

Explore the concepts of primal and powerful states of being and how they impact our desires.

“delivery guy is going to deliver a million dollar business to my front doorstep while I'm watching Netflix and eating cheesy poofs on the sofa.”

Navigating Through Primal States

30:50 to 35:31

Learn how to recognize and transition from primal to powerful states for better life outcomes.

“What is the thing that gets you in a primal state of being the most?”

Lessons from Personal Journey and Healing

35:32 to 38:03

Hear about the speaker's journey through addiction, healing, and self-discovery.

“Whether it's Buddha or Christ or whoever.”

Exploring Thoughts and Healing

39:21 to 42:00

Discussion on how thoughts and beliefs shape our reality and the healing process.

“And it didn't stop because I tried to stop it.”

Understanding Patterns and Limiting Beliefs

42:00 to 44:20

Explore how early life experiences shape our beliefs and impact our current behaviors.

“condition or you're living in financial scarcity, your reaction to that reality are the same programs that you had back then.”

The Journey of Surrender and Unconditional Love

44:20 to 48:20

Discuss the importance of surrendering limiting beliefs to a higher power for personal growth.

“What would you say is the number one limiting belief of most people then?”

Communion Journaling as a Spiritual Practice

48:20 to 54:40

Learn about the practice of communion journaling and its role in developing a relationship with God.

“And what's beautiful about that is when you reach that inflection point and you start to find that unconditional love, the next natural step is to forgive your parents.”

Desire and the Nature of Fulfillment

54:40 to 56:00

Examine the difference between head-driven and heart-driven desires and their significance.

“I feel like I'm in a relationship with my higher power when I'm doing it.”

Exploring the Nature of Desire and Identity

56:00 to 59:40

Understand how our desires and identity shape our experiences and what we can carry forward in life.

“And so, yeah, you know, she has another really wonderful affirmation that says what was mine from the beginning is mine now and ever shall be mine.”

Understanding the Roots of Addiction

1:00:40 to 1:04:20

Explore how unresolved emotional distress contributes to various forms of addiction.

“What do you feel like is the core root cause of all addiction?”

Personal Transformation Through Recovery

1:04:20 to 1:10:00

Learn how personal experiences and structured recovery can lead to profound transformation.

“For, for me, I haven't, I haven't felt that way.”

Vision for Whole Human

1:10:00 to 1:10:51

Learn about the vision for a regenerative system that enhances human connection.

“And so, um, so that was the vision I had for whole human that God spoke to me.”

Finding Purpose Through Desire

1:10:51 to 1:12:12

Discover how to align your desires with a non-resistant mindset to uncover your purpose.

“What does someone do if they're wanting to find purpose?”

Navigating Purpose and Obstacles

1:12:12 to 1:14:39

Explore how to determine when to persist or pivot in your life’s purpose.

“Give us some time, like a dash of patience and you'll become clear on what your purpose is.”

The Importance of Timing

1:14:39 to 1:16:11

Learn about the distinction between time and timing in relation to personal growth.

“You're not going to figure it out today.”

Compounding Growth and Longevity

1:16:11 to 1:19:15

Understand the concept of compounding interest in life and personal development.

“So if someone is trying to figure out whether to keep pushing through or whether to pivot, I would say step away and see what happens.”

Transforming Limiting Beliefs

1:19:15 to 1:21:38

Discover how to identify and shift limiting beliefs through a new decision-making process.

“But I do think it is important to understand that no matter where you are in your life, the accumulation of your lived experience has set you up for such extraordinary growth moving forward.”

Transforming Limiting Beliefs

1:22:44 to 1:22:56

Discover how to identify and shift limiting beliefs through a new decision-making process.

“From groceries, gear, random things you didn't even realize you needed until the last minute?”

The Three Truths Question

1:24:00 to 1:25:11

Learn about the impactful question of what truths one would leave behind.

“they can go to your podcast called A Changed Mind.”

David Bayer's Journey and Wisdom

1:25:11 to 1:26:42

Hear David's insights on personal transformation and sharing wisdom.

“I think one truth or encouragement is to believe in the certainty of the goodness of the future.”

Defining Greatness

1:26:42 to 1:26:59

Explore David's personal definition of greatness and authenticity.

“Final question, what's your definition of greatness?”

Defining Greatness

1:27:45 to 1:28:10

Explore David's personal definition of greatness and authenticity.

“Feeling stuck with rising ad costs and flat results?”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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2:47Lewis Howes:So if today's conversation hits home for you, do me a favor and push the follow button right now. It means that the next conversation will be delivered to you and we'll find you exactly when you need it. Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to The School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest.

3:09Desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. So whatever your desire is, if you want to make more money, if you want to heal your chronic health condition, if you want to find your soulmate, it doesn't matter what it is. You can become psychologically and emotionally non-resistant to the desire 100 % of the time consistently and predictably will crystallize that desire into your reality.

3:31Lewis Howes:He's an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and an expert teaching people how to unlock their potential by helping them raise their frequency. Please welcome David Bayer. The moment you have a desire, two things enter your awareness. Number one is, of course, the thing that you want. But number two is the absence of it. And the brain will give a meaning to the absence of it. Well, it's not there because there's not enough time. Well, it's not there because I'm not good enough. Well, it's not there because money is hard to make. If you can identify what the resistance is and do the inner work to transform it, you now become completely aligned and congruent with the outcome itself.

4:05Lewis Howes:What is the program or the belief that most human beings live by today? Well, I think there are two.

4:15Lewis Howes:Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring David Bayer in the house. Good to see you, man. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Welcome to the show. If someone watching or listening right now is feeling stuck in their life, they're feeling like they have a big scarcity wounds, they feel like they're just low energy, they're maybe anxiety consistently in their life. what would you say are three actionable steps they could take right now to get out of that scarcity state and feeling more abundant? I mean, I think the first thing at a root cause level is to get into personal growth, right?

4:49Like really start to understand the dynamics of mindset, how you think, your belief systems, because that malaise and that anxiety and that depression is, it's being driven by one thing, one thing only, which is your thoughts, right? Your thoughts create your emotions. Your emotions produce your results. Uh, and so, um, you know, if, if somebody is feeling stuck in their life, they've, they've got to get into personal growth, right? And, and that, you know, that's a, that's a process. You normally, you start with the books and you become a card carrying member of personal growth and then you start going to events and, um, you find the tools that work for you.

5:28You start living in a community of people who are focused on their personal growth, but that's really important. I think that's the second thing too, is it's counterintuitive, but you know, if you want to become abundant and you want to start feeling better, you have to hang out with abundant people or people at least focused on abundance and people who are committed to feeling better, right? So number one is understand, you know, get into personal growth. Two is surround yourself with other people who are headed in the same direction. It's really common sense. I think when we look at any other area of our life, it's like, if I want to get good at yoga, I go to the yoga studio and I hang out with yogis.

6:01If I want to get good at, you know, recovery, which was part of my story, I want to get sober. You start going to 12 step meetings and you hang out with other people who are trying to get sober. But for the most part, we don't really think about that in terms of our emotional states. And frankly, it's not as easy. It's like, you know, there's no personal development store that you walk into, right? But, but we are seeing more and more emergent communities. Your communities that you've built, community that I've built, right? So I would say that's the second thing. And then the third thing, which is really related to getting into personal growth, is just begin to audit your belief systems because you are creating your reality.

6:42We are creating our reality. We create through the mechanism of our habit of thought, our habit of emotion, and those are driven by our beliefs, right? People call those programs, traumas. And so if you want to change your life, If you want to start moving out of scarcity into abundance, you got to take a look at the programs that are driving those emotional states and creating that reality temporarily in your life.

7:05Lewis Howes:What is the program or the belief that most human beings live by today? Well, I think there are two. So let's talk about the, you know, you asked about abundance. I think it's important for someone to answer this question, not overthink it, but it's a really simple way of doing an audit or an inventory. And that is to answer the question, when I was growing up, money was blank. Right? When I was growing up, money was blank. Do you have anything come to mind for you? I know you've obviously changed your money consciousness, but when you were growing up, money was what? Scary to me. Yeah. Was what?

7:44Scary. Scary. Yeah. I didn't understand it.

7:46Lewis Howes:It was scary. It seemed like it was better than me. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the - It caused tension in the family. Like it caused stress. Right. All those things. So if that's what money is, at powerful subconscious levels, your entire system is going to keep you away from money. Yeah. Right? About 70 % of people who just heard that question answered scarce. So it's the number one answer. So for most people, when they were growing up, money was scarce. which is an interesting way to complete the sentence because we don't use scarce a lot in our day-to-day language. Unless it's like there's no food.

8:23Correct.

8:24Lewis Howes:Yeah, yeah. Correct. Food scarcity. But that's, I mean, I've asked that question to tens of thousands of people, whether it's online, offline speaking events. And scarce is far and away the most common response that people have, which... Around money. Around money. Yeah. Which explains why we see a handful of people with all of the money in the world than most people are without because if your beliefs are creating your reality, that would just make sense. You asked for the belief that most people have. Belief of the program. Belief of the program. And so it varies, right? Scarcity is a big one.

8:58I would also offer that another really powerful program that does vary from person to person, although we see about 18 to 20, it's called the core program. It's really your core trauma. And it's, in fact, your personality is a compensation mechanism for this early trauma. You actually have become who you are as a way to cope with this original trauma. And that is to answer the question, when I was growing up, I never felt blank. Right? When I was growing up, I never felt blank. So, for example, my answer is safe.

9:30Lewis Howes:Never felt safe. When I was growing up, I never felt safe, which is interesting. I mean, I grew up in an upper middle class, Orange County family. My parents were not physically abusive, sexually abusive. I didn't experience any type of physical or sexual abuse growing up, but there was this sort of constant hum of like, don't make a mistake, like don't do it wrong. My mom never felt like she was good enough. And so that created this emotional climate where I never felt safe. Right. I always felt like I was going to make a mistake or that I was never good enough. Right. So, so, so that, um, those two, right, really drive a lot of human behavior and a lot of what we create in our reality.

10:07Lewis Howes:Yeah, I think that was probably, if I was going to answer that question, it probably would be the same for me as well. Same. When I was growing up, I never felt safe. Never felt safe or maybe like safe or seen or supported, but I think safe is the core wound. Yeah, and it is for a lot of people. Now, how that then compensates into our personality varies. So someone might be a people pleaser. Yeah. Another person might chase success. Another person may actually just be living in depression or anxiety as a result of not feeling safe. Or all of them. Or all of them. Right. Or all of them. And so, and this actually isn't a problem.

10:43You know, what we have seen is that whatever happened in terms of the original wound, once transformed, becomes your superpower and your gift. Right?

10:54Lewis Howes:Give me an example. Yeah. So, part of my core program is that there's something wrong with me. That's how I felt when I was growing up. I remember when I was in, before fifth grade, when my parents moved me into this sort of gifted and talented education program with the other nerds, like I always felt like I didn't belong in the regular classroom. I always felt like there was something wrong with me. I also grew up with a dad who was, you know, was the best dad he could be. And according to a lot of measuring sticks, a really good dad. My dad was an attorney. He was super smart, critical thinker.

11:33We would describe him today as not having a tremendous amount of emotional intelligence. and so he was a great problem finder, but when you're on the receiving end of that, you sort of experience like, I'm never doing it right. There's always a better way to do it. There's something wrong with me, so I grew up with - There's not much affection, or there's - Right. It's more results-driven. Results-driven, yeah, it's a great way to describe it, so part of my core makeup was there's something wrong with me, and - Did he say it out loud,

12:02Lewis Howes:or was it more just an internal feeling? It was an internal feeling, um i didn't have a self-awareness until probably my early 30s when you know i was running a venture back technology company i was chasing success i was like i'm you know everybody expected me to be really successful because i was a bright kid and i and i and i felt like i needed to do that in order to be loved so like i was always you know kind of good uh at at my career but as that overdeveloped itself within me. And as I continued to not realize that below the surface, there were these wounds that needed to be healed, I was dealing with it through drug abuse, alcoholism, sex addiction.

12:47And so in my early thirties, when I hit my bottom and I got into recovery, I started becoming aware that, wow, in all these different areas of my life, the observation that I'm making subconsciously is there's something wrong with me. So I started becoming aware of it in my early thirties. And then what was also interesting was, um, in my late thirties, uh, I ended up getting, um, a variety of like odd health challenges. Um, I think it was in 2016, uh, I ended up discovering I had really high levels of mercury from an all fish diet. Uh, and then I started getting mold and mold exposure and like all these things.

13:26And my reaction to these health challenges was, there's something wrong with me. So there's something wrong with me was manifesting into my body.

13:34Lewis Howes:And you were reinforcing it and experiencing it by finding evidence as well. Yeah. That's described as a psychocybernetic loop, right? It's like you have a belief system. And so that's what your brain focuses on, right? There's that part of the brain, the reticular activating system. You find evidence for it. You ignore all evidence for it. And it just continues to build momentum. them. So how did that transform into my gift, right, was the question. And as I've done personal growth work and healing work, I have come to realize there's not only nothing wrong with me, but that I'm really amazing just the way that I am, that I'm loved by a power greater than myself, that there's actually not only nothing wrong with me, but there's nothing wrong with anything that happens in my life.

14:29All of it is really designed for my greatest growth, my greatest prosperity, and my greatest evolution. And so I sort of transformed this idea that there's something wrong with me to I can accept myself for who I am, and I trust life, right? So I was living in this consistent fear that I wasn't good enough, but as I was forced to confront that, it became the resistance training for a development of an unshakable faith that's been building inside of me. Faith in myself, faith in my higher power, faith in life. And I think that's one of the things that I came here to learn. Like I'm, I'm a big believer that we sort of choose what our outcome is as we come in.

15:09And, and, and we're, we're born to parents who will set us up for that journey. Um, there are experiences that are almost predestined in our life that occur. I very much see it as a resistance training module that we go through in order to become the opposite of the environment that we were born into in these original core programs. So we were born into the contraction, which some people might describe as the shadow side. And at some point it becomes unbearable. Yes. And we start seeking a solution to it. And we transform that shadow into what some people might describe as the light, which is the expansive energy.

15:44And then we ultimately become who we came here to become. Yes.

15:48Lewis Howes:Or we perish. Or we perish. Or we don't take the call to adventure. Correct. We don't go on the journey. We don't do the healing work. We go darker into whatever the addictive abuse it is that we're into. Correct. And we lose ourselves. Correct. Which is also okay. Because we get to the end of this life and we reflect upon it. And we learn from that experience. Which then motivates a desire for the next life. And we play the game again. Right? Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. But it would be nice. You know, that's kind of like playing Super Mario Brothers and having to do the same level over and over and over again.

16:23Right. It would be nice to progress. And we have more access than ever before to this progression technology. Right. Because I think about my parents' generation. I mean, they don't really have that. Maybe someone could stumble into a Jim Rohn seminar or, you know, find some new thought movement book. Right. And there are those folks. And you see that their kids have been raised fairly well versus most of us. but I think that's what's so amazing about what you're doing and the technology that's available and social media and YouTube and all of these things is that consciousness and the laws by which consciousness functions and how this game works are more available to us than ever before and that is a part of this awakening that we're seeing which is occurring simultaneously to this massive breakdown of the old system right these two things are happening simultaneously which makes this a really exciting time to be alive 100 % Yeah.

17:12100%.

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17:53Lewis Howes:Nature's Bounty, it's in your nature. Learn more at naturesbounty.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. One thing about summer is that everything just feels easy It's the season for comfortable going to wear pieces that make getting dressed simple That's what makes quince such a great fit for the season They focus on well-made essentials that you'll actually live in all summer long And Martha and I have the European linen duvet cover set from quince and we love it It's super soft breathable and in the summer that makes such a difference I can't deal with hot sheets, so I need cool sheets.

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19:18Lewis Howes:quince.com slash lewis. You know that old saying, it isn't what you say, it's how you say it. I've always believed that. Anyone can talk about ambition or determination, but the real question is how you show up. your presence, your energy, the way you move through the world. That's what makes the difference. Lending power, poise, and performance just like you, the Range Rover Sport was designed to make an impact. With a distinctly British design, the Range Rover Sport is built to take on roads anywhere. Free from unnecessary details, its raw power and agility really shine. It combines a dynamic sporting personality with elegance and agility to deliver an instinctive drive, and its assertive stance hints at an equally refined driving performance.

19:55Lewis Howes:Defining modern luxury. The Range Rover Sport features the latest innovations in comfort and convenience. The cabin air purification system, alongside active noise cancellation, creates a new level of quality, comfort, and control. Terrain Response 2 offers seven terrain modes to choose from, fine-tuning the vehicle for challenging roads ahead. And it's available with a choice of powerful engines, including a plug-in hybrid with an estimated range of 48 miles. The Range Rover event is on now. Explore enhanced offers at RangeRover.com. You know, I think a lot of people can resonate with what you shared around being really good at accomplishing success, but not feeling good at loving yourself.

20:33Lewis Howes:Do you believe that success is enough for someone to overcome their wounds, their traumas, their insecurities to actually love themselves? Like making the money, accomplishing the big dream? Is that enough? No, clearly the answer is no. And from a coaching perspective, those are the huddled masses that end up in our seminars, right? A segment of them are very successful people. High achievers. Right. And that'll really mess with your head because when you think that that's actually the solution and then you get there and it's not. You're like, I just spent 20 years chasing this thing. Yes. And I still have an empty hole inside of it.

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21:11Correct. I mean, one must imagine it's a terrifying moment, right? Horrific. Yeah. It's like the worst feeling. Yeah. Right. And so, So, and there's an opportunity, which is a lot of what you do to like even slow down for a second and go like, well, wait, what are we even talking about with success? What is success? Right? What is greatness? Because there's a good portion of the world that is, you know, measuring it by how much money is in your bank account still. But I think we would talk about it in a language of like, you know, being authentic, being vulnerable, being in the service of others, being willing to do the uncomfortable healing work that allows who you truly are to emerge, right?

21:50Like that's perhaps the best definition of greatness is like you actually become who you came here to become. And the beautiful thing is it's not about going out there and trying to figure out how to kludge together who you were meant to become. It's all here. It's all there, right? Which, you know, there's a distinction that we teach that I'm so grateful for because Because having been in personal growth and healing for the last, I don't know, 15 years, and doing all the stuff, reading the books, going to the seminars. You know, I remember walking in the landmark forum the first day that I did that and going to Tony's events.

22:28And, you know, then getting into meditation and breath work and dragging my poor wife, who was my girlfriend at that time, to India because I thought, well, maybe, you know, some monks can solve my problem for me. or doing the ayahuasca or the psilocybin or the therapeutically facilitated MDMA, like the whole thing, all the stuff, right? The stuff. What I became aware of was a really simple equation for me, and this is what we teach, that distills down all of personal growth and success principles into one formula, which is desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. So whatever your desire is, if you want to make more money, if you want to heal your chronic health condition, if you want to find your soulmate, if you want to have more intimacy in the relationship that you're actually in, if you want to become prime minister of Canada, whatever the desire is, it doesn't matter what it is.

23:22If you can become psychologically and emotionally non-resistant to the desire, 100 % of the time consistently and predictably, you will crystallize that desire into your reality.

23:32Lewis Howes:What does that mean? How do you do that? You have a desire or a dream or a goal. Yeah. And you become non-resistant to what? To the desire itself. Because what happens is the moment you have a desire, two things enter your awareness. Number one is, of course, the thing that you want. But number two is the absence of it. The lack. Yeah. It's not there yet. And the brain will give a meaning to the absence of it. Well, it's not there because there's not enough time. Well, it's not there because I'm not good enough. Well, it's not there because money is hard to make. Like, well, it's not there because there's something wrong with me.

24:03Well, it's not there because other people have it and there's a limited amount of it in the world. There's an explanation. We're great explainers, right? And that explanation is actually a limiting belief. And as long as that limiting belief exists, it's not that you can't produce the result because reality is very gracious with us. Like, nobody has a perfect mindset. it. Um, but as, if you can identify what the resistance is and do the inner work to transform it, you now become completely aligned and congruent with the outcome itself.

24:34Lewis Howes:So give me an example of this around either love or money or. I'll give you a personal example for me. Yeah. I started my podcast back in, um, July 4th. It was, it was the 4th of July in 2023. Okay. And I was recording an episode, uh, every single day, Sorry, every single week. Every day. Can you imagine? It's kind of me. Almost. You're like, yes, I can imagine. Almost every day. Yeah. And it was about a year. And it just wasn't performing the way I had expected. Once a week for a year, you're putting out there. I'm putting an episode out there. And I'm like, I don't really understand. I took some Ali Abdaal YouTube optimization course.

25:13And I'm doing all the best practices. And I'm looking at the content. I'm like, it's good content. The hook is good. and I'm looking at other shows. I'm like, I think it's as good. Maybe it's even better than this other stuff. Why isn't it performing? That's all the resistance. The desire was a podcast that reaches a lot of people. The resistance was, why isn't it reaching more people? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with it? Why isn't it happening sooner?

25:38Lewis Howes:Maybe it'll never happen. My son was born. And when my son was born, I stopped really paying attention to a lot of other things in my life because my son was here. He's what mattered. And I stopped making the underperformance of my podcast matter because that was the resistance. One of my mentors said, what you make matter becomes matter, right? That's what we do. We're human beings. We are able to take something and create it in nothing and create it into something. And so what I was making matter was the underperformance of my podcast. As soon as I withdrew my attention from the underperformance, in other words, I dropped the resistance and I redirected my energy over to my son within 90 days my podcast took off right and this is the challenging thing we're supposed to as napoleon hill talks about have a burning desire for something but then not pay attention to the absence of it and be kind of unattached and be unattached yeah so um now you're hard to do when you focus your energy on a desire that you want something correct and in some ways you should be obsessed about it correct some ways to be like i need to master this setting to develop consistent habits and actions towards it.

26:49Lewis Howes:I need to conspire the world and people around me to support me in this in some ways, but also not be attached to the result. Correct. And the lacking of the result not happening right now. Yeah. It's the challenging art of a human being. It's the challenging art. Neville Goddard talks about this, right? He's like, ignore your reality, right? Have a desire, but then ignore your current situation. Because if you keep paying attention to your current situation, you keep paying attention into the absence of the thing that you want. Yes. And you get locked into the absence of the thing. So what do we do instead?

27:21Lewis Howes:Instead of the focusing on what we are lacking, no matter how hard someone's working, how much they're trying and it's failing and it's not working yet, the podcast, the relationship, the financial success, the health, whatever it is, how do we detach from the result not being in our lives now so that it shows up now? Well, I mean, the first step is understanding what we're talking about. You know, the greatest challenge human beings have is that we don't understand how reality works. We don't understand that we are given the right to have a desire and that if we get out of the way, 100 % of the time, the desire must produce itself.

27:55Now, some people will think that that means, okay, Dave, my desire is a million dollar business. And so I'm just going to write it down on a note card or visualize it. And the Amazon delivery guy is going to deliver a million dollar business to my front doorstep while I'm watching Netflix and eating cheesy poofs on the sofa. That's not what I'm saying. So we are meant to take daily consistent action towards the goals that we have. But notice when we start to move into resistance.

28:23Lewis Howes:And what does resistance actually look like? Is it an emotional feeling? Is it a frustration? Is it a thought? It's a great question. Is it a lacking of action? What is that? I have a feeling I'm going to give you three distinctions today. Okay. The first one is desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. I would call that the golden equation. Okay. That's how all outcomes are produced. So the question is, well, how do I know when I'm resistance? And for that, we go to a distinction called the two states of being. Primal versus? Powerful states. Yeah. Right. There are only two states of being, primal states and powerful states.

28:56Primal states are states of being that don't feel good. States like stress, anxiety, overwhelm, anger, jealousy, depression, anxiety, boredom. That's when the sympathetic expression of the nervous system is active. We're in fight or flight. And then there are powerful states of being, states like joy, curiosity, excitement, enthusiasm, peace, calm. Those are states of being that feel good. And that's when the parasympathetic state of the nervous system is active. You are always in one state of being or the other. You're never in two states of being at the same time. And what's interesting is that what determines what state of being you're in is not the experience.

29:30It's the meaning you're giving the experience. It's the thoughts that you're having about money, the thoughts you're having about yourself, the thoughts that you're having about life. Why is this important? Because everything that you want to create, all change that you desire, your vision board, your dreams, your goals, those will be produced from a powerful state of being. That's when you're connected to intuition, inspiration, health, vibrancy, prosperity, abundance, presence, intimacy, connection. It's all in a powerful state. You don't get any of that when you're in a primal state. And so when we're in a primal state, we're in resistance.

30:06So if we're playing the game called desire plus non-resistance equals desired result, what we start paying much more attention to is what state of being am I in? And a root cause foundational way of starting to navigate life, which is a practice I'm in not all the time, but a lot. is noticing when I've moved into a primal state, knowing that the only thing that is moving me into a primal state is my own thoughts and my own beliefs, and then observing those thoughts and beliefs and using whatever tools I have to move back into a powerful state of being. That's the practice. It's wax on, wax off.

30:46If you do that consistently, eventually you'll produce the desired result.

30:50Lewis Howes:What is the thing that gets you in a primal state of being the most? Me? Yes. Physical sensations in my body that I don't like. My health has been one of my mountains to climb. Like pains or like? Heart palpitations, aches, pains. So it puts you in more of a fear mind rather than a powerful frame of mind. Correct. It moves me into a primal state. Yeah. But there's plenty of things that move me into a primal state. You know, I have expectations on how my Tuesday is going to go and it doesn't go that way. Um, you know, somebody doesn't do a thing that they're supposed to be doing or marketing campaign doesn't work the way I expected it to work.

31:31And I move into a primal state, right?

31:33Lewis Howes:It's a, it's a, what does that feel like when you go to primal state? Is it a anxiety? Is it a depression? Is it, I'm not good enough? Is it, uh, something's wrong or what's the. Sure. It could be anything from frustration. So emotionally, well, let's back up because thoughts generally create emotions. the thought might be, why aren't they doing what they're supposed to be doing? What if this doesn't work out? How come they did it this way? Am I doing something wrong? Right? All of those thoughts are conducive to some sort of what you could call negative emotion, right? A primal state. The emotions for me that are habits are frustration, anxiety, some other form of fear.

32:20shame and guilt, right? Those are my go-tos. And really what we're talking about in all this work, there's so many ways to describe personal growth, but what we're talking about is building a different neurology. I think about how amazing it is as human beings. We're able to use our minds to reorganize and rewire our nervous systems and our brains. And so every time you catch yourself in a primal state and you observe the thought, and we have a great set of tools, but there's a lot of great teachers out there to sort of interrogate the thought, and you actually see that the thought isn't necessarily true, you're building a new nervous system.

32:58You're building a new capacity. And so many people want to have more in their life, but like, are you capable of handling it? Right? And so this is a beautiful logical process that whatever you believe our creator is created for us, which is, you know, we start to see the deep unreality that we've been living since we adopted those early age programs. And you start to reorient yourself to a proper perception of reality. And the reward for that is you get to create more of what you want to create. But the real reward for that is you start living in joy. Joy, peace, harmony, abundance, freedom.

33:34Lewis Howes:Freedom. I think a lot of people don't feel free in their life. And if you grow up not feeling safe, that means you don't have freedom. For sure. Right. For sure. And at least that was for me, I didn't feel free. And it's like, I wanted to create my own sense of peace and freedom. That not feeling safe and not feeling free is pervasive in the nervous systems of human beings. And so, you know, not only do we create our own realities where you end up in a career where you don't feel safe, you end up in a relationship where you don't feel safe, you end up with a bank account where you don't feel safe, you end up in a body where you don't feel safe.

34:09Yes. But look at what we're collectively materializing at a macro level. Does the world feel safe? No. No. I mean, you could pick whatever you want. You could pick the war in Iran. You could pick what's happening in Gaza. You could pick the way the government is run. You could pick inflation. You could pick... All of these things are crystallizations of the unsafety that we have not as human beings yet learned to metabolize in our nervous systems. So we're never going to change that out there. We will change in here. And as we change in here, those changed people will have new thoughts and new ideas to create a new system that feels safe for everyone.

34:42But that's the big mistake right now is everybody, you know, there's a war on terror, there's a war on drugs, there's a war on this, there's a war on that. It's all more resistance. But we're told, and by the way, you know, my equation is a derivative of the great teachings, right? We're told to be non-resistant. Like Christ says, turn the other cheek, right? That doesn't even make any sense. You're telling me when I'm confronted by something that I don't like in the world, I'm actually supposed to turn the other cheek, give it my cheek. And if you really look at what I think that teaching is, it's when you notice something in your life that you don't like, or you notice something in the world that you don't like, which would be your enemy, you turn the cheek, which is you turn your attention in the other direction.

35:21You use the contraction or the problem in your life as an inspiration for a new desire and a new solution that you can now crystallize into reality. Right? It's a beautiful teaching. Yes. But they're all there, right? Whether it's Buddha or Christ or whoever. I mean, you could pick your guy or your gal, right? non-resistance. But now we can see that it makes sense because behavioral psychology tells us what you believe you think, what you think you feel, what you feel you do, and what you do are the results. And so if you're thinking and feeling resistance, you're going to produce a resistant reality.

35:54Yes. Right?

35:55Lewis Howes:So it all starts with a belief or does it start with healing the past so you can create new beliefs? My own journey was starting with my beliefs. And you were what, around 30? In my early 30s. You were very, you were successful in your career, making money, accomplishing. I wouldn't even call it successful. I would say like, look, if you think a guy running a venture-backed technology company is successful, fine. But that same guy was only paying himself$80 ,000 a year, had$3 ,000 in his bank account, two homes in foreclosure and had been single for 10 years. Like how successful is that? Right.

36:30But yeah, I guess if you, if you took a quick look, right. Um, but you know, I, it was the craziest thing. I was at Miami international airport and I, I, I just, I'd gotten about 18 months of sobriety under my belt. And I was like, man, if, if I can change this much, like, cause I never thought I was going to stop doing drugs and alcohol and sexing and everything that I was doing.

36:53Lewis Howes:And how old were you then? 33. 33. Right, especially pornography.

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39:33It's a phenomenal healing framework. and not only was I looking at my limiting beliefs and my resentments and healing them but I was also as I was clearing out starting to find a relationship with a higher power I didn't grow up in a family with a higher power so I had all of that and I was like man if this is possible like what else is possible like maybe I could actually become wealthy maybe I could actually find a soulmate maybe I could actually and so I was in this inquiry and I went to Miami International Airport, I was flying somewhere. And you ever have that experience where like, there's a book on the bookshelf and it like decides it's going to have a relationship with you.

40:09Like you just feel it. And I walk over and I grabbed this book and I look at the back cover and it had four statements. It said, life is full of suffering. I was like, okay, I can relate to that. The suffering is going to happen to you. There's a way out of the suffering. And the way out of the suffering is the eightfold path of virtue. And I was reading the four noble truths of Buddhism. And I turned this book over and it's called Awakening the Buddha Within. it's got Lama Surya Das I buy the book I read it cover to cover on the airplane I was like holy cow the message here with this eightfold path of virtue of buddha is very full what is eightfold path of virtue eightfold path eightfold path of virtue right it says eight steps and I was like this is almost the same as the 12 stats of Alcoholics Anonymous and I get back to my office and my social media manager at the time left me a book and I was not a reader right so these are miracles.

40:57And it was a book called Kingdom Principles by Miles Monroe, where he's explaining the teachings of Christ. I'm like, it's the same steps. And so I go to Barnes and Noble and I don't think I'd ever been into a bookstore, to be honest with you. I go to the little lady at the front desk and I'm like, do you have a place for people who are like trying to get their life sorted out or whatever? She's like, oh, the self-help section. I'm like, what a wonderfully named section. Yeah. And there was a little book laying on the floor in that section called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I just picked it up.

41:24So I, you know, I came into healing through thoughts and beliefs. I think eventually you go back and look at where these beliefs originated and you find forgiveness or you find proper perspective and you heal it, right? But you don't have to go back there because those things that happened then are showing up in your life right now. Yes. You know, you're, you're, every man you meet is dad and every woman you meet is mom. And those are your conflicts. And you know, if you're, um, living with a chronic health condition or you're living in financial scarcity, your reaction to that reality are the same programs that you had back then.

42:08So we can work with the program at any level of the timeline. Right. I do think eventually we end up going back and cleaning up those early misunderstandings. Sure. But, uh, that, to me, that can be a little bit harder than just working with the raw material as it's showing up on a day-to-day basis. It's right there for you. Yeah. You know, you don't have to get into a deep hypnosis or get into EMDR, all great tools. Right. But like, Hey, it's showing up right now with the thing on Tuesday. Yeah. Yeah.

42:34Lewis Howes:What would you say then is the, the number one habit that most people are living and living by on a daily basis that they think is positive, but is actually harming them in some way with their energy or their frequency to creating more. Again, it'll vary from person to person. But if, if we like focus that question on high performance, because I know there's a lot of high performers that listen to the show. You're a high performer. It's, it's this, let's look at a bad equation. It's desire plus hustle and grind equals desired result, right it's desire plus sacrifice your health and relationships for success equals desire and resolve and so and that's reinforced by a lot of um hustle culture i mean you can throw a stone and find it on youtube or instagram it's like you know if if if you're not working somewhere someone is and when you meet them they will win and like i'm like okay well maybe but probably not because Christ said, my yoke is easy, right?

43:36So like, there's got to be an easier way. There's got to be prosperity and abundance and possibility available for all of us. And so that was a big part of what I'm still down-regulating my nervous system towards, right? Is this idea of like, no, I just need to be, do more or there's not enough time. People are living in time scarcity all the time. Like you can't even breathe. And so again, going back to what I have come to learn is like, no, I don't need to hustle grind. I don't need to find more time. I don't need to do anything that would insert itself into that desire plus other than non-resistance.

44:10And everything that shows up in that space that is not non-resistance is the resistance that needs to be worked on.

44:21Lewis Howes:What would you say is the number one limiting belief of most people then? I'm not enough. Yeah, being not good enough. And it makes sense when you look at what happened when we were children. So, you know, you've got beautiful eight-month-old daughters. I've got a three-and-a-half-year-old. And what I see in my son is his expectation, rightfully so, of unconditional love from me. So we all expected unconditional love from our parents. but I don't care who your parent was, how good they were. And there are plenty that, you know, weren't great on paper. Um, but your parents are never going to have unconditional love for you.

45:04They're conditional, right? There, you have the condition of your career. You have the condition of your relationship with your spouse. You have the condition of being a single mom or a single dad. You have the condition of your own trauma. You have the, you have the condition of so many things. So there are always going to be times when a child expects the parent to be present for them and the parent is absent because of conditionality. In that absence, the child subconsciously believes it has something to do with them. And so that is why we find I am not enough or I'm not good enough everywhere because it happened to all of us.

45:39But, and this has become one of my passions, like really understanding the structure of reality and the structure sort of like a metaphysical version of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey? Like what's really happening here? Because if reality is loving, how do we explain all of these things that seem to be absent of love? How do you explain it? Well, my own experience and what I've seen consistently with other people is that not being enough creates a compensation, which we talked about before that becomes your personality. And so you embark upon this journey with a nervous system that - To prove or to - To prove or to please or to whatever.

46:24Lewis Howes:Yeah. And what seems to happen is that compensation that comes out of feeling like you weren't enough, which is your personality, works for a while. It's a good strategy. Yeah, it's a strategy and it has strengths. It has gifts. But also remember, it is a neurology. It's a nervous system. And so as it works, it starts to be applied into more and more areas of your life. Yeah. And what happens is at about 40 years old, there's this emergence of what we would call the core program. It's between 40 and 60 where people would describe it as, I don't understand the thing that I've always been good at that got me to where I am is starting to be the thing that's suffocating me.

47:08Lewis Howes:It's making me a prisoner. That's the core program. Yeah. Yeah. It's a overdevelopment of that neurology and that will bring you to your knees. So people, people have their long dark night of the soul or they hit their bottom. It doesn't have to be with drugs or alcohol. It's like, I just can't keep pleasing people. I've given no time for myself. And so now, um, the aspects of myself or my health are starting to degrade or someone has built up this personality that is, I'm the one who's able to bring order to chaos, but now there's so much chaos that chaos just beats them down. And in that beat down, which again is a by-product of this overdeveloped aspect of your nervous system, you are incapable of solving it on your own.

47:57So it doesn't matter what great personal development tool that you have. It doesn't matter what pills or potions you take. It doesn't matter what shaman you find with a great playlist. None of it works because that is meant to actually bring you back into relationship with the higher power of your own understanding so that you can finally experience the unconditional love that is there for you, but was never meant to be given to you by your parents. And what's beautiful about that is when you reach that inflection point and you start to find that unconditional love, the next natural step is to forgive your parents.

48:32Because it was our misunderstanding. Understandably so, right? We were kids. Trying to survive. But it was our misunderstanding. And so the core program is not actually, like if you think about the super limiting belief that emerges between the ages of 40 and 60, it's not a thing that you're meant to get rid of yourself. You're meant to surrender it to your higher power. And now you get into this concept, which I think a lot of people don't understand, which is surrender. And so it requires these pieces, right? Surrender to what? To who? To a higher power. Well, how do you find that relationship?

49:01Well, you hit a bottom and you have nowhere to go other than look up, right? So this is all this beautiful arc of how every human being's life emerges. And the challenging thing is when you don't understand the arc, it's like trying to fight an invisible boxer in a ring because you have no context for it. And that's why I think so many people who get into personal growth or the work that we teach, they're able to actually start changing. It's not just about going, yeah, okay, I know I have my limiting beliefs, but how do I change them? It's not about like, yeah, I understand that forgiveness would be good for me and resentment is bad, but how do I actually forgive?

49:36That's the integration piece that I think up until now has been missing in a lot of the historical motivation and inspirational part of personal growth. right?

49:45Lewis Howes:Yeah. Cause when someone is feeling typically when someone's feeling pain, resistance, stress, overwhelm, if they don't go to God or a higher power, they go to some other numbing mechanism, drugs, porn, sex, alcohol, success, money, whatever it is, um, workaholicism or whatever it might be. And they, you realize after five, 10 years of doing that strategy to try to numb and feel better, it doesn't work. It's not giving you the peace or the harmony, the results that you want. And it's by going more into that and people are going to let you down and addictions are going to let you down. And all these things are going to let you down from giving you that unconditional love.

50:27Lewis Howes:So that's why we either need to be broken down or we need to create some type of awareness when things are good before it gets bad to say, oh, I'm not having everything I truly want inside of me. Let me connect to a higher power. Yeah. Amen to that. Yeah. The higher power thing is interesting too, because we have a lot of, there are a lot of people who it's where I started. I think I probably would have considered myself atheistic and then agnostic. And then I started building a relationship with the higher power. And for me, the higher power was the universe. But what I've learned over time for me, I'm not, I don't have to put this on anyone else is I was really inspired by the story of David in the Bible.

51:09I was like, I want that. I want that personal relationship with God. I want to be able to stand up to the Goliaths of my life and say, you know what? I know who my father is. I know what he does for me. And today I'm going to show the whole world that there's a God in my life, right? I wanted that. Because prior to that, it was the universe. Like I was in new age and law of attraction and all that stuff is great. Like I'm a huge Abraham Hicks fan. Like all those things are amazing. They're a part of the journey. But I felt like there was a difference between having a relationship with the creator and the created.

51:41The universe is created. By the creator. By the creator, right? And so I didn't really know where to find that. And I just started, you know, but I had seen in my life that when I ask, I receive. There is this response. Not always as quickly as I would like it to be, but, and so I started just really saying, hey, I want to know what it looks like. What can I do? What is available to me to have a personal relationship with God?

52:06Lewis Howes:And what showed up for you? Well, we talked about like, you know, my mountain is my body and my health, right? And so I - You're 50 now, right? I'm 50. Well, that's not why, but yes. No, but you're starting to feel - Yes. Well, yeah, no, there's a real thing, which is why, you know, focusing on longevity, like we talked about, is so important. But in 2019, I had this ayahuasca ceremony that I did. And it was probably like my 12th ceremony that I had done. Well, people counted as days. So it was like three or four ceremonies because some of them were many, many days. Right. And it was super intense.

52:43And about three weeks later, I like lost my sleep. I just couldn't sleep. Oh man, that's not good. Yeah, it's not good. So my sleep has gotten better over time, but I still wasn't sleeping great. And so I'm in this inquiry of like, I want to have a personal relationship with God. And I had a week or two where I wasn't sleeping well. And my wife was like, why don't you just get up early and journal? And, you know, rather than just go back to bed, I'm like, I don't want to get up at five o 'clock and journal. Like that's when I kind of squeeze in a few hours of sleep. Then I had revisited Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi.

53:16in an autobiography of a yogi, Paramahansa wakes up early and he writes. So it was like, okay, I'll wake up early and write. But I was like, no, no, no, no, this doesn't sound convenient. Then I did a breath session, a very deep transformational breath session remotely with a woman that I work with. And in the breath session at the end, my body sits itself up. My hand comes out with like with a pen in it and I start writing. And I was like, okay, three times. I don't need to get struck by lightning. So the next day I get up and I go down into my podcast studio, which is like my man cave. And I just start writing and it just came out.

53:50It started out with dear father, thank you. And I started, I started thanking God for all the beautiful things in my life. And it was such a unique experience because I've written gratitudes before, but this was like a love letter that had been building up for, for 48 years. And I was just like, thank you for all these beautiful things in my life. And then I started asking for things. And you know, it's interesting when my son asked me for something, he's a hundred percent convinced he's going to get it. There's no doubt because I'm his dad and I can deliver on anything. Right. He's like, no, I want.

54:23And I started writing and I felt this frequency of like, I know who I'm asking. So I know I'm going to get it. There was no doubt. There was no resistance. And then the third piece was once I felt that I started asking for other people, I started praying for other people. And so this has become my journaling process. I call it communion journaling. I feel like I'm in a relationship with my higher power when I'm doing it. Do I do it every day? No. Should I do it more than I do? Yes. But it's there. And so that was the answer to the asking that I had. And it has really helped me deepen my relationship with my God.

54:58Lewis Howes:What if you ask for something and it's not given to you? um you know there's a great teacher in the early 1920s i just did an episode about her florence scovel shin she wrote a book called the game of life and how to play it one of my top five books it's a great book and still alive and no and she um so she she you know basically says and i'm i'm not going to do her affirmation justice i just wanted to give her some credit but the idea is is like if it's mine it's mine and if it's not mine i don't want it so if i ask for something Now, I may go kicking and screaming for a while, but at some point I realize - It's not for me.

55:36It's not for me. Let it go. And at some point -

55:39Lewis Howes:Why do you have the desire in your heart then if it's not for you? Well, I think there's two types of desires. I think there's a desire that comes from a head and I think there's a desire that comes from the heart. For sure. Yeah. I think authentic desires aren't things that we invent. They're transmissions that we receive. And that's part of the discernment that we develop as we do the healing work. is you start to feel the difference. And so, yeah, you know, she has another really wonderful affirmation that says what was mine from the beginning is mine now and ever shall be mine. So whatever is mine can't be taken away and whatever isn't mine, I don't need it.

56:16Lewis Howes:Yeah, and at the end of the day, it's not yours anymore. Right. You know, whatever you receive, I guess you don't take it with you. I mean, not that we're aware of. I mean, it's like you can't take the physical things with you. Yeah. So no matter how much money or the relationships you have, of like that stays in this world. Right. It's gone. Hopefully what we get to bring is who we've become. Right. Which is why this work is so important. Yes. Right. Like your essence, your soul, your spirit, um, so that you can just continue to progress. And I think that makes sense. Like if you look at a lot of the great teachings and you talk about, uh, incarnation and, uh, multiple lives, it seems to make sense in this life.

56:51I can see that I've, I've gone through many lives and each time I've learned and each time I try to get better. And so it would make sense that i would do that life after life and that we would actually do that as a as a as a collective consciousness as a way of just evolving consciousness do you feel like you've had your biggest transformation yet never really never really thought about that you kind of say

57:15Lewis Howes:like in your 40s to 60 you go through this big kind of wake up typically for most people it's funny it reminds me of something my friend said where he realized that every time he goes through a transformation. It's a contraction and then he gets into the expansion. So he's afraid to ask for any more. Because it's going to be painful. Because of the contraction. So have I gone through my biggest one yet? I don't know. Besides death, I guess. Probably not. I mean, look, drug and alcohol and sex addiction was really challenging. That was 30 years of momentum that had been building up. Yeah, maybe there's something that's going to be 60 or 70 years of momentum that I'm not aware of, but I do feel like, you know, if you think about personal growth is almost like cleansing.

58:02That one felt like a pretty big cathartic type of experience.

58:05Lewis Howes:How long were you addicted to drugs, sex, alcohol? I would, you know, I, I started looking at pornography when I was 13. Uh, and then college was, you know, was, was drugs and alcohol. Drugs for me was marijuana, but it was a cocktail. All of it though, sex addiction was a really challenging addiction to overcome. Like I went to AA meetings and Narcotics Anonymous meetings, not to take anything away from those programs, but the people that I saw in sex addiction recovery, I could see why it was part of my intelligent design because unlike drugs and alcohol, technically I could like not call my pot dealer or not go to the bar.

58:43But the neurology of sex addiction continues to deepen even if you fantasize. Oh yeah. And so that you're still

58:52Lewis Howes:living as a sex addict by not even having sex. Correct. And, and you're, and you're still deepening those, those neural networks. So it really required a psychological, a level of psychological mastery. Discipline, mastery, awareness, shifting your attention constantly. Correct. Correct. And fellowship. I mean, there's no, there's no way, you know, I could have done it without other people. And I think that's a really important part of healing work is being in a community with other folks. You know, you and I talked about the stages that we're at where we don't, you know, don't have, aren't spending a lot of time with big groups of friends like we used to, but that's something that I realized recently I really need to get back into is, is, is fellowship around personal growth.

59:31Yeah.

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1:00:19Lewis Howes:And Southern New Hampshire University can help. Southern New Hampshire University offers over 200 career-focused degree programs online. Plus, Southern New Hampshire University has some of the lowest online tuition rates in the U.S. So balancing school, work, and life actually feels achievable and affordable too. Find your degree at snhu.edu slash greatness. That's snhu.edu slash greatness. What do you feel like is the core root cause of all addiction? Unresolved emotional distress, you know. For anyone who's an alcoholic or sex addict or porn addict or whatever. It always is, which is, you know, there's a lot of ways to recover outside of 12 step.

1:01:02There's great programs out there, but that's, what's so interesting is like, you, you don't, the 12 steps aren't about trying to get you to stop drinking or drugging or sexing or eating or whatever it is. the 12 steps are about identifying the underlying root causes, which are the unresolved emotional trauma, uh, and transforming them. Right. And so when you do that, then you're no longer using in order to cope.

1:01:29Lewis Howes:In the 12, the 12 step program, it's with AA, right? 12 step program. It started with Alcoholics Anonymous. Yeah. And you have all these other anonymous groups. Yeah. In the 12-step program, in your mind, what is the one step that if you didn't have, the 12-step program wouldn't work? Obviously, you need it all, but what is the one step? Like, okay, if you had these 11, but this one was not there, you'd still be an addict. It's not exactly a step, right? Because there is a step which is admitting we were powerless over our addiction. and powerlessness is a funny thing for people. But it's just the acknowledgement.

1:02:11It was the acknowledgement that I have a problem.

1:02:13Lewis Howes:Really? Yeah. The acknowledgement that I have a problem and I've been unable to solve the problem on my own. Do most people feel like they don't have a problem when they're addicted to something? I mean, yeah, I think for the most part that's, you know. They don't think they have a problem. Yeah, and the challenge with that is twofold. One, we've normalized drinking. No, man. We've normalized sexual behavior. And to some extent, for me, we normalized cannabis, right? And so there's this normalization of these - You legalize it. Yeah. There's a normalization of these behaviors. And so that already creates a frame of allowance.

1:02:51And then it's a slippery slope. So you don't notice it's the frog boiling in the pot, right? So yeah, the majority of people out there either don't think they have a problem or there are these glimpsing moments, right? Like if I have a problem and it's like, ah, it's not really an issue for me. I'm not really an alcoholic. I remember when I had a conversation with an outpatient treatment group in Winter Park, Florida. And I sat down with the counselor and he's like, you're an alcoholic. I'm like, come on, man. Like that doesn't even make any sense. I'm not one of those. I'm not an alcoholic. I'm functional.

1:03:26I just go out on the weekend and I drink with my friends. And then I chase girls and I smoke a little bit of pot. And he's like, cool, stop. stop. And I'm like, well, I can't. He's like - You're an alcoholic. Why? Yeah. You're an alcoholic. Why don't you think you could have stopped? Well, I tried. You did? I had the awareness for years, right? There was a period of time where it's like, okay, I don't have a problem. Then I knew I had a problem, but I couldn't stop. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

1:03:49Lewis Howes:Was it just, if you stopped, then what would happen? If you stopped the addiction, what would you have to face? I'd stop for a period of time. I'd stop for 30 days and then something great would happen. so I'd celebrate or something bad would happen. So I'd go cope. It was just, it was, it was well, well worn into my, into my nervous system. Wow. Yeah. When was the moment you felt like this no longer has a hold on me, this addiction? Uh, or is it still like once you're an alcoholic, you're always an alcoholic. For many people, for many people it is. For, for me, I haven't, I haven't felt that way.

1:04:25I, I don't, you know, I'm, I'm not particularly interested in drinking or smoking pot over the last 15 years since I've been sober. Have I done it? Yeah. Like on occasion, I've had a glass of wine with my wife or, you know, had a gummy at some event or something, whatever it was. Um, pornography, I couldn't treat casually for sure, but that was my real addiction. That was my core was sex addiction. Um, and so, yeah, it's just become a lifestyle. The other thing too is like when you start allowing God in your life and then you start getting your mission from God and then you start seeing what the rewards are for like living your mission in the world, even though that has its own challenges and its own insecurities that it brings up.

1:05:02It's like, it's just a better game to play.

1:05:04Lewis Howes:Yes. Yeah. Than chasing the high. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When did you feel like you got your calling from God? And how does someone, if they don't know what their purpose is, tap into what their purpose from God really is for them? Um, okay. Two part question. So I, I don't know that I started that my wife and I started the, the current business we have, the coaching business that has really been what we've been portraying to the world. We probably started trying to do it in like 2015. We had our first event in 2017. Um, and then we had a business and I knew it was what I was meant to do. I wouldn't describe it as a calling from God yet.

1:05:48The calling from God came in 2021. In late 2021, I had a, well, I don't even know if I was in my midlife at that point, but I had a crisis. Five years ago. Yeah. I had a chapter. What was the crisis?

1:06:04Lewis Howes:Yeah. So we just moved. You're at 45 then, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. COVID had hit. Our business had to pivot to virtual. We were doing a lot of live events. Um, financially the business was starting to contract. My wife was pregnant with my son. Um, we were having a lot of friction. Um, some of it was chemical. Some of it was just where we were in our relationship. We bought the home I told you about in Puerto Rico, but we were remodeling it. So we were living in an apartment in old San Juan with my mother-in-law. So you don't have stability. Your business isn't stable. You're spending more money than it's coming in.

1:06:38Lewis Howes:All the stuff. The relationship. And I had a bunch of health challenges going on. Yeah. So it's all It was coming from every direction. And I had this episode where I felt all the stress in my body. I tried to walk it off. I tried to breath work it off. And I couldn't shake it off. And so I got in the shower, cold shower, and I just started yelling. Because I needed to get the energy out. So yeah, my wife and my mother-in-law come running in. They're all freaked out. Yeah, you can imagine, right? And so long story short, I had a bunch of really amazing people around me with a lot of different resources.

1:07:12Um, but one of the people was my brother and he said, look, right now your life feels unmanageable. Why don't you go back to where you were able to, um, reestablish yourself when things got unmanageable before. And I was like, that's a good idea. So I started going to AA meetings. I hadn't been in years and I called up a buddy of mine and I said, Hey, you want to work the 12 steps with me? And he said, sure. What are you, are you drinking again? Are you sexing? I said, no, I realized I'm a chronic worrier. So I want to work the steps around worry. so we work those 12 steps and man i worked them seriously and i saw things i had never seen before like what um resentments that i had um uh limiting beliefs that i uh had doubt that i had in my relationship with my higher power and i also saw saw how the 12 steps connected beautifully to the frameworks that i had been building from the golden equation to two states of being to some other ones.

1:08:06And, and I, and so I, what came to me was a 12 step structure for personal growth. It's called the whole human framework. And so we created this 12 step structure and I started putting folks who've been in our community for years, whose lives had transformed through this 12 step structure. And they were like, holy, like, this is the most transformative thing that we have ever gone through. It included the core program. That's how I discovered the core program was through this process. So we had people who were like, one guy was so funny. He said, look, I've climbed the mountain with T. Harbekar.

1:08:36I've meditated with the Maharishi. I've walked the hot coals with Tony Robbins. He goes, I've done it all. He's like, but this thing is what I've been looking for my whole life. And so as people started going through it, what we found was that they wanted to be in a daily rhythm and a practice around it. And so we created a community called the Whole Human Network. And the network had the opportunity to facilitate the framework for other people. And so it just started growing. And what I saw at the same time, I've sort of been a student of power in the world and how power works, centralized power.

1:09:10I had a lot of young kids who were conspiracy theorists who worked for me, you know, years ago. And then I realized there's nothing conspiracy. They're not, they're not making stuff up, right? Like this is how a lot of the world works. And so I realized that like, Hey, if we want to change the world at a macro level, we need to heal ourselves. And there's two things that are required to create an alternative system for humanity. Number one is we have to liberate our attention. Because if you don't have attention sovereignty, you cannot consciously create. And our attention is being hijacked all the time, intentionally.

1:09:43And in order to prevent the hijacking of your attention, the solution is heal. Because if you can metabolize fear off your nervous system, fear cannot grab you anymore. and now you become an intentional creator. So I was like, okay, if we can do this at scale, now we've got tens or hundreds of millions of people who have liberated attention, who can direct it wherever they want. The second thing is we have to start building the scaffolding of a new system, regenerative financial system, regenerative healthcare system, a system that is not about extraction, but we're like one plus one equals three.

1:10:16And so, um, so that was the vision I had for whole human that God spoke to me. so that through that extraordinary compression and the vision that i've been given which is what we're focusing on now we have the coaching company we have whole human whole human is this distributed economy of consciousness where people help other people awaken utilizing this amazing framework and then supporting entrepreneurship in an ecosystem that begins to become a parallel system to the one that's out there right now that's falling apart wow what do people do if thank you for letting me share that i'm obviously super enthusiastic about it but that's that's God speaking to me.

1:10:53What does someone do if they're wanting to find purpose? Again, it goes back to the golden equation. Desire plus non-resistance equals desired result. What is your desire? My desire is I want to know what I'm here to do. I want to find purpose. I want to know what my gifts are and how to leverage them in the world. I want to become financially abundant. I want to be in service of other people. But what, you know, it's inherent in all of us. What am I meant to do here? So great, desire. Now be non-resistant to it. Well, what does that mean? Well, notice if you start moving into, but what if I don't have a purpose?

1:11:25Well, why haven't I discovered my purpose yet? Well, other people seem to have a purpose. Well, what if my purpose is already taken? What if my purpose is already passed? That's all the inner chatter. That's the limiting beliefs that is the resistance. So if you have a desire, meaning you ask and you're patient, you'll receive. it's 100 % consistent and predictable how will it occur for me David well you'll have some thoughts and ideas you'll see something on YouTube somebody will say something to you an opportunity will show up you'll have the courage to follow it it'll be baby steps it won't show up all at once right but hold on to the desire to know your purpose and notice when you become resistant to that desire and use whatever tools you can to drop the resistance.

1:12:12Give us some time, like a dash of patience and you'll become clear on what your purpose is.

1:12:17Lewis Howes:How does someone know when they should continue on their purpose versus pivot on their purpose? Because when you are clear on your purpose or you feel called towards something, usually in the beginning, there is some luck, there is some signs and people supporting you, or there is some, oh, I tried this thing and it actually worked to get you going. But then there's usually some type of resistance or obstacle or challenge or hurdle or whatever it is. So how do you know when you're supposed to continue through the challenges and obstacles and continue the patience of all the challenges and obstacles that may come your way versus this just isn't for me anymore.

1:13:02Lewis Howes:Let me pivot towards something else. Because also we change over time. Of course. Right? So you grow and evolve. And so your purpose grew. Like, look at mine. At first I thought my purpose was building a coaching company, which it still is. Now it's whole human. Right? And looking at that story, I was running into a lot of friction and resistance with the coaching company. So it had to evolve. So it had to evolve. And the answer is step away. the answer is step away like i don't i don't think i think we give ourselves a lot more credit for things than we deserve in other words you don't pivot the pivot happens to you and so how do you allow the pivot to happen to you it's like well like you said if you're working through the obstacles and it feels exhausting you step away from the problem right and as you step away from the problem you disentangle yourself from it you give space for your consciousness to renormalize and in that space you'll have new perspectives new thoughts new ideas now you may go back to the same obstacles and overcome them you may move in another direction sometimes you move in another direction like I started Whole Human in 2021, it was too early.

1:14:26And I came back to the coaching business. But we're very rigid about these types of inquiries a lot of times too, right? It's like, do I keep doing the obstacles or do I pivot? It's like, relax a little bit, right? Give it some time. You're not going to figure it out today. It may not be this week, but we're learning, you know, Bruce Lee talks about being like bamboo, right? Bamboo is strong because it knows when to be rigid, but it also sways in the wind, right? And so we're learning to do that as human beings because we grew up with so much rigidity. So, you know, there's also that quote from Einstein that people quote all the time.

1:15:01You can't solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it. So you got to step away from your problems. And I would say, get into solution frequency. What is solution frequency? Well, it's the beautiful things in your life. Because at one point in time, the absence of them were problems. Now they've shown up in their solutions. And that's why when you're trying to hammer through an obstacle or you don't know whether or not to pivot and you go for a hike in Runyon Canyon, you have clarity. Yes. Right? You know, you go play with your furry friend and something hits you. You go get a good workout in and it hits you.

1:15:30But the other important piece in all of this is, man, give it some time. Like we're all living in so much time scarcity. And one of the things we teach entrepreneurs is to stop paying attention to time and start inquiring more around what creates timing. Because timing is so much more powerful than time. meeting the right person, running into the right opportunity, having the right resource show up. We all have 24 hours in a day, but time is a measurement of change. Timing is a measurement of alignment, calibration. So if you can become aligned and calibrated, which is living in a powerful state, which is trying to live in non-resistant as best as you can, we're not going to do it 24 hours a day.

1:16:08You start to activate timing, the timing of thoughts and ideas and coincidences. So if someone is trying to figure out whether to keep pushing through or whether to pivot, I would say step away and see what happens. And you know what? If you pivot, you can always come back to it. And if you keep pushing through on something, you can always pivot. So we make it a much bigger deal than it is.

1:16:26Lewis Howes:I love the idea of timing versus being afraid of like times running out. And it's, you know, I guess we're technically, I mean, I'm 43 or 50. It's like, all right, we're getting close to halfway done or who knows, you know, maybe there's more time, but it's not like we're seven years old and we have all of our lives ahead of us, right? So we have to start looking at life with a different perspective, I guess, through a different lens, where how do we not get scarce around time if you feel like it's running out or you don't have your whole life ahead of you and focus rather on timing? How do you do that when you're not 12 years old?

1:17:10Well, I think there's a couple of things. I was having a conversation with chat gpt that has all my labs and everything that i was doing and i said hey based on my labs and based on current how long do i have based on current technologies based on how healthy i am because i'm actually an incredibly healthy human being yeah uh and based on the current technologies that are out there stem cells crisper technologies all the stuff and what's coming and what's coming uh and granted ai can hallucinate yeah i was like give me an estimate of how long i'll live so in terms of like health span like living well 125 years wow okay so that's my intention.

1:17:43If it's 125 years, I got 75 years to go. But like, I have such insane compounding interest at 50. Like if you ever look at how compounding interest works, right? If you were to set aside$100 ,000 a year, which is a lot of money for some people, and it's not a lot of money for others,$100 ,000 a year, and you just put it in some combination of the S &P 500, Bitcoin, gold, 8 % average return. You could have a defensive position because the world seems like it's a little bit crazy right now. But if you just get an 8 % annualized return and$100 ,000 a year that you put into that over 40 years, you're worth 22,$24 million.

1:18:22But what's interesting is that if you live 10 more years, it's another$32 million. That's crazy. So I'm just starting to hockey stick. So that excites me. Like, I don't think I can even fathom what I can accomplish. So I could look at it as like, I'm almost halfway through or we got 75 years, bro, let's go. You know? So that's the way I look at it. And again, part of it is turning it over to my higher power. Like it's, it's a very edging got out type of conversation to have, but it's certainly, I mean, when I turned 50, believe me, I had it with myself of like, like, where am I at? And, you know, checking, am I as far along as I wanted to be now?

1:19:04And how much time do I have left? And your mind will do this mental calculation, right? But the mind doesn't understand the compounding interest. So, you know, we just, that's why longevity is so important. But I do think it is important to understand that no matter where you are in your life, the accumulation of your lived experience has set you up for such extraordinary growth moving forward. And we don't give credit to that reality. Yeah.

1:19:31Lewis Howes:You've got an amazing book out called A Changed Mind, which is go beyond self-awareness, rewire your brain and re-engineer your reality. This came out about a few years ago. What is the one thing in this book you feel like if people took away one idea, it would help them more than anything else? I struggled with limiting beliefs for a long time. There were some that I had shifted, but others that I didn't. And, uh, I was in this burning desire inquiry of like, man, there's gotta be an easier way to shift my beliefs. Like, what is it that I need to know? My wife and I were going for a walk one day and it's a two millimeter distinction.

1:20:08So it's, it's easy to miss, but it is just absolutely, um, dramatically changed the way I do my personal growth. And I see feedback from folks who've been in our work that it's this distinction. It's the distinction that beliefs are decisions. So when we were growing up, we came to the conclusion when our little buddy didn't show up at the drinking fountain that we can't trust people, but it was a decision. And as a result of that unconscious decision, we've been living in a hallucination ever since. We've only been paying attention to anything that supports that decision and we've been ignoring everything else.

1:20:40And if that's true, then at any point in time, I should be able to identify a limiting belief and make a new decision. And so we have this wonderful process in the book called The Decision Matrix that helps people identify the limiting belief, make a new decision, which is always the opposite of the limiting belief. And then ask a really simple question, which is what evidence do I have for the fact that this new decision is true? And what you'll do is you'll actually source those memories that you've been filtering out. And as you do that, you build evidence for the new belief. And most often by the time you're done with that little process and you look back at the limiting belief, it doesn't even make sense anymore.

1:21:17But the idea that beliefs are decisions, I think demystifies the concept of beliefs, because we can get into trauma and this and that and all these things, but ultimately they were unconscious decisions. And as an adult, you have an ability to respond or responsibility when you find a limiting belief, and that is to make a new empowered decision.

1:21:37Lewis Howes:The decision matrix. The decision matrix. That's great, man.

1:21:45Lewis Howes:This podcast is supported by Ring. Know your home is safe when you're away this summer. With Ring, it's protected. And you know those moments when you're out of town for a few days and part of your mind is still back at your house? For me, it's the little things. Did a package show up that I missed? Is everything good by the front door? And what's happening outside of my house in general? That's what I love about Ring. When I'm traveling, I can check in right from the Ring app. Battery doorbell helps you keep track of deliveries at the door so your packages are there for you when you get back.

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1:23:34Lewis Howes:Visit t-mobile.com slash home internet to check availability and get your home internet delivered today. Same day delivery for most internet eligible customers. See if it's an option during checkout. Fastest according to Ookla speed test intelligence data, second half 2025. All rights reserved. I've got a couple of final questions for you. This has been really powerful. I want people to check out your work before I ask the final questions. they can go to your podcast called A Changed Mind. You're also on YouTube. You've got a great YouTube channel sharing a lot of this information. David Bayer 33 on Instagram and YouTube.

1:24:14Lewis Howes:And wholehuman.com slash greatness for anyone here watching or listening. Your team's created a free assessment that identifies people's two biggest limiting beliefs and gives you a powerful tool to transform them. So guys can, anyone can check out wholehuman.com slash greatness to check out the free assessment as well. Um, this question is called the three truths. Imagine you live to 125 healthy, whole human life, but it's the last day. Your creator says time to go here to the next place. And you get to create and manifest anything you want from now until that moment. But for whatever reason, you have to take everything with you.

1:24:54Lewis Howes:Nothing can be left behind your book, your work, your content. No one has access to this information anymore, but on your final day, you get to leave behind three truths, three things you know to be true or three lessons that you would leave behind, what would those three truths be for you? Oh man, I've heard you ask this question on so many episodes. Now I have to answer it.

1:25:21I think one truth or encouragement is to believe in the certainty of the goodness of the future. That would be one. The second truth would be that life is always working for your greatest growth, your greatest prosperity and your greatest evolution. Um, and I think the third, uh, truth, uh, well, I think Jesus said it best. All things are possible to he that believe it. Yeah.

1:25:47Lewis Howes:I want to acknowledge you, David, for the journey you've been on. You know, for me, it's like you're, you're 50, you have a child who's three and a half and you've gone through a big transformation in the last five years. You've got a lot of wisdom to share. So I acknowledge you for putting it in the book, for doing the weekly podcast, for sharing this information, and for creating frameworks around the suffering and the pain you've experienced to try to give peace and resolution for people in their lives so they can understand how to go through the process better. And I think when people have gone through enough pain and shame and guilt and beating themselves up and have done the work like yourself and all the different programs, you can take kind of the best of those programs and share what's worked for you.

1:26:31Lewis Howes:So I want to acknowledge you for doing that work, for suffering for as long as you did, and getting through it on the other side, finding more peace and purpose in your life and helping so many people. It's been really cool to connect and hear more about the book. I appreciate that acknowledgement. Of course, man. Final question, what's your definition of greatness? Greatness is becoming who you came here to be, living your authentic self. My man. Thanks for being here, brother. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Yeah. Powerful. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

1:27:05Lewis Howes:Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

1:27:45Lewis Howes:And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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From the publisher

The gap between what you want and where you are isn't bad luck. It's a belief you made as a kid.

David Bayer, author of A Changed Mind, calls it the Golden Equation: desire plus non-resistance equals your result. The block isn't the wanting. It's the meaning you attach to not having it yet.

Somewhere between 40 and 60, the exact strategy that made you successful starts to suffocate you. Bayer calls it the Core Program, the compensation you built around a childhood wound that's finally asking to be healed.

He spent years numbing himself with drugs, alcohol, sex and pornography before hitting bottom at 33. What got him sober wasn't willpower. It was learning to stop fighting his own thoughts.

You don't need more hustle. You need less resistance. This conversation shows you exactly where yours is hiding.

David's Website

David on Instagram

David on YouTube

Take The Limiting Belief Assessment!

A Changed Mind: Go Beyond Self Awareness, Rewire Your Brain & Reengineer Your Reality

In this episode you will:

  • Learn the Golden Equation for turning desire into consistent results without hustle
  • Discover why your Core Program hijacks your success between ages 40 and 60 
  • Overcome limiting beliefs using David Bayer's Decision Matrix from A Changed Mind 
  • Recognize the difference between primal states and powerful states in your nervous system 
  • Build a personal relationship with a higher power through David's communion journaling practice

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1954

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