TRANSFORM Your Mindset to MANIFEST More! (Let Go of THESE Beliefs!) | Erwin McManus

30:18Their art, they have a standard. They want it to be great. They want to outperform, they want to over deliver, and they want to do that consistently over time. Sometimes that can creep into a perfectionism and it wasn't good enough mindset or frequency or energy. How can we continue to develop and grow and innovate and drive beyond our grasp as human beings while also having grace for if we never reach where we want to go? I think that's a really important question. For a moment, you nuanced the people who are in the entertainment industry, like actors. I just want to just focus for one moment there, because you look at a great actor like Heath Ledger, who played the Joker and took on this really dark negative shadow frequency, which I think actually began to destroy him from the inside out.

31:13Because what he ended up doing is not acting that he was in that frequency, but actually taking on that frequency and translating that on the screen. I think one of the great challenges for great artists is that oftentimes it's that negative frequency that dries a lot of their creative expression. And then they're supposed to move into a positive frequency the moment they're done. And that negative frequency stays with them. But then I want to shift over to your question about pursuing perfectionism and giving yourself grace. I think when you pursue perfectionism, you're pursuing the outcome. I think that's a terrible mistake.

31:53And I think that when you pursue the beauty of the process, that's actually when you give yourself grace. Years ago, someone accused me of being a perfectionist, and I always think it's interesting. Usually people who have very low standards are the ones accusing people of being perfectionist. And I told him, I said, no, the way I knew I'm not a perfectionist is the moment it's done, I'm moving on. You're not obsessing about the outtone. No, because once it's done, it's done. And I obsess about the process. And I want the process to be true and honest and real and excellent. And my son, I think the other day, coined this phrase about elegant excellence, which I really love.

32:39And it's, no, actually it was effortless excellence, which is even better. He said, because when you achieve a level of greatness, it looks effortless. And what happens is that that person has been so committed to the process that the outcome looks effortless. And that's what I want to achieve in my life. I just want to love the process. People ask me all the time, how do I know I'm pursuing the right dream? Or how do I know if this is my destiny? Or how do I know if this is my calling? And for me, it's really simple. If you're drawn by the outcome, it's not your dream. If you love the process, it's your dream.

33:22If you're drawn by the outcome, it's not your destiny. But if you love the process, it's probably your destiny. And the same way with the calling. Some people go, oh, I want to do what you do. I've had so many people over the years tell me, I want to do what you do. And I go, are you willing to do what I did? And you're like, no, I'm not. It's a lot. It's a lot. And because I've had the opportunity to speak on stages to millions of people around the world. And I would have never imagined that opportunity. And it was never my ideal. I never thought, oh, one day I'm just going to speak to millions.

34:02I really, every day I was going, I just want to be able to communicate hope and meaning and life to whoever I interact with. And at first it was just one on one and it was one on five and one on 10. And being true to those moments is what prepared me for the next moment. Yeah. If you're only thinking about the outcome, the dream, the the results and that's where you want to be and that's the goal and if you're not enjoying the process when you get to the goal it's just going to be a miserable experience getting there you're not going to be enjoying the hard work and appreciating the process of how you're progressing so yeah because fame isn't a state of being it's it's a vapor and you can be famous in one moment infamous the next and you know so it's way better to pursue a life where you're worth knowing not a life where we're well known what's the difference between being worth knowing and well known because a person may only have 10 friends but we're worth knowing because their life has brought so much good to the people around them i some of the most extraordinary people i know have almost no social media following right they don't care and and they they just live their life to do good they're always serving their friends they're always bringing hope and inspiration to people around them.

35:24And if you focus on being worth knowing, then if your influence grows, it'll actually have value in the world. And I think one of the challenges with social media is that you can become famous just for existing. And I think that's where you will not have sustained success unless you actually begin to build who you are as a human being. When someone is famous for just existing, and maybe not for adding value beyond existing, which existing is valuable, obviously, but when you're extremely popular for existing without generating some type of value from people, what happens to them later down the line if they're popular, famous for existing as opposed to adding value?

36:17It's not even what happens in the line. It's what's happening to them right now. All their energy is being focused on their persona rather than their personhood. Everything's being focused on what other people see about them and say about them rather than who they're becoming, what they say about themselves. That's why you find so many people who have rapid fame have such deep self-loathing because they know that they're not what everyone loves. Wow. Interesting. And what people long for is to be loved. And what they'll settle for is to be admired or to be adored or to be worshiped. But what they really want is to be known and to be loved.

37:00But if someone has a big following or they're famous, will they not feel that they're loved by that audience? How do you explain how many artists have millions of followers that end up with such a radical drug addiction or alcohol addiction that their whole lives collapsed before they're 30 years old? Why is that, do you think? It's because human beings are not created to sustain a persona. And I used a psychological assessment that deals with image management. And what I found is that most successful people that I've graphed have an image management on a scale of one to 99 from 90 to 99. Okay.

37:42And so one of the great challenges is that they spend so much energy thinking about what other people think about them. And on that same scale, my number is an 11, which is kind of funny because my wife is in the 90s. I think it'll be okay to say this. And I was leading this marriage event in Mexico and we're dealing with this image management stuff. And my wife's like, I don't like the fact that my image management score is in the 90s. Like, what will people think of me?" And she goes, and I hate that yours is an 11 because that's half the problem in our marriage that you don't care what people are saying about you.

38:19So 100 is what? You care a lot what everyone thinks about you? Yes. 99 is you're spending all of your energy building a persona of what other people think about you. An image, a brand to your community. And then a one would be, I don't care what you say. I don't care what you think. And maybe they don't even have any social etiquette. They might need a little bit of image management. Sometimes there are people that say, I don't care what anyone thinks, but they actually care so much. So much. That's right. And that's true. And they're creating a negative image because it matters so much. But what's funny is so one day I went and worked out in the gym.

38:57We were playing some paddle tennis. And I came back and I groaned. You know, and I went, oh, she goes, what's wrong? And I said, I hurt my back. She goes, shave your beard. And I said, your beard. I started laughing. I said, honey, that's image management. You think that if I shave my beard and look younger, it'll deal with my back pain. To yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And, and she started laughing hysterically because it's so true, right? You know, it's that you, you can become convinced that if you can change your externals, it'll fix your internals. But it's so much... That's limited. It's superficial.

39:36Maybe for a short period of time, but not... It's so much harder to convince someone, change the internals. Yeah. And they will transform your externals. What do you... I mean, for someone that is a talented artist, an athlete, an actor, you know, entrepreneur, anything, someone that's got talent that's really like developing themselves and maybe they want to do something bigger. They would love to have a bigger audience that recognizes their art, talents, or unique abilities. What advice would you give to them right before they're about to pop off and have hundreds of thousands or millions of people all of a sudden aware of who they are, their gift, and their talent?

40:17So that they set themselves up to be healthy as opposed to reliant on the opinions of that audience. I think the most important thing is to have three to five really good friends before you're famous that you know are with you because of who you are and not what you accomplish. And they're not the ones that are riding on your success. They're the ones that are with you and are committed to your success. because I think what happens so oftentimes is we let go of those people. And then when we become famous, we surround ourselves with people who only say yes to us. And that becomes a real challenge.

41:03I mean, a huge part of what I do in coaching one-on-one is just tell people the truth. And it is so much harder than you think, right? Because I remember one time having a conversation with someone lasted a few hours. And when they finally saw it, actually it wasn't, it lasted about two months of coaching. And after two months, I gave them this insight and they said, how long have you known that? And I said, from the first minute. Right. Of knowing you or meeting you. Yeah. And they said, why don't you tell me right away? And I said, it's one thing to know something about you, it takes longer to get you ready to hear it.

41:44And you can say it, and if a person isn't ready to hear it, it doesn't go anywhere. And so what you want is you want people in your life that just tell you the truth and you don't throw them out of your life. And when Kim and I were friends, I was about to take off on a trip to New Orleans and we got in a fight and she said, you are so arrogant. And my immediate thought was, I don't need this. I can date someone who thinks I'm humble. But my backup thought was, I'm probably going to marry this person. Because it doesn't even matter if she's right or wrong. I just assumed she was right. And what mattered was that she cared more about telling me what she thought than the relationship.

42:29And we've been married 40 years. And I think one of the things that's really helped me is we married someone who would just tell me what she really thought. Really thought about me, really thought about my choices, really thought about my attitude, really thought about my journey. And that has given me a great relational compass in my life. And even when I would start some huge projects, like when I started Mosaic, there are four families. And I said, I'm a person that's going to make some radical changes. I'm going to innovate and create things that maybe have never existed before. But I want to make sure that these four families, they were not innovative or creative, but they had deep integrity.

43:11And I told myself, if these four families ever say to me, what you're doing is unethical, I will stop. And they were not my friends. they were acquaintances. They were just people identified as having incredible virtue. And I told myself, they're my benchmark. And 40 years later here in LA or 30 years plus, they're still with me. Wow, that's cool. It is very, very amazing. And probably 20 years later, I told them, you were my benchmark. Because you need to have those. You need to have some external benchmarks in your life. You'd have people to go, hey, Louis, you were okay, but you're not okay right now.

43:50Or I don't know if that decision is the best thing for you. And you have to have people that you trust and you can still disagree with, but you let the counsel kind of seep in and you process it and then you make your own decision, but at least you have those voices in your life. How does someone, when they've gained recognition, fame, or some type of audience or community, and they haven't had that advice beforehand and they're caught up in it now, how do they get back to a place of peace or wholeness or self-awareness about who they are as opposed to what everyone's thinking about their own identity?

44:29I think this is why there's been an explosion of masterminds. Because when you're already successful, you're not really willing to listen to everyone. But you are willing to listen to a peer group. And you're willing to be in an environment where people are as committed to excellence or success or whatever you're committed to. And I started this one mastermind for business guys. And I was at this event, saw this business guy, I think when he was 30 years old, he had his company at a hundred million. And then from his own description, due to his arrogance and character, he lost the entire company.

45:08His board voted him out. And then he rebuilt another hundred million dollar company. So it's pretty successful guy. Right. So we sit down and we're starting to talk. He goes, so what do you see? And I said, um, what I see is that you're going to die alone. Wow. And he just kind of looked at me and I, I said, um, you're super successful, but will you communicate to people through your essence is stay away from me. I don't need you. I'm not going to give you access to who I am as a human being. I said, I met you the same day and I named three or four really influential people. I said, all of them have become my friends and all of them have become each other's friends, except for you.

45:48You don't have to be my friend. I may not be interesting enough for you, but you need to have some friends in your life. And if you react to them the way you reacted to me, I know you're alone. And later on, some other business guy came up and said, hey, this guy told me that you, you know, kicked him to the curve, you know? And he said, no one talked to me like this. but I didn't have anything to lose. I wasn't trying to get anything from him. And I, I just looked at him and I thought, this is a really interesting human being who, if he could just make a small incremental shift in his life, could be super successful and not alone.

46:24And so he came up to me that night, he goes, so what do I do? And I said, start saying yes to people. So literally I never meant to start a mastermind ever. That night I decided to start a mastermind. I sent out a text and he was the first one to sign up. And I really started it for him and 11 men that I knew he would respect. And I think some of it is you need to have people in your life that you respect. And then you have to have someone in your life that maybe you kind of respect more than yourself, that maybe he's taken the journey a little further than you. And don't come to me to learn real estate.

47:08Investing in real estate. Yeah. Don't ask me about tech stocks or anything like that. But if you want to know how to live a whole life and how to have sustained success, that's something I'm good at. That's something I know. And so you have to find people who have an expertise in where you want to go in your life. Yeah. That's interesting because I'm a part of a mastermind peer group that there's a number of men and women that I've known for, I don't know, 15 years in this industry that I'm in, right? And there's a number of men in there who are probably 10, 15, 20 years older than me. And I said at one point when I was kind of sharing my turn at this mastermind, I said, you know, I'm really appreciative of the seasoned men in the room who have made mistakes and led the way with, you know, how to do things the correct way and all these different things.

47:59And so now every time I get a group text from them saying, us seasoned men, but I was like, well, you guys are just much smarter than me. So I don't know what you want me to say, you know? That's good. But I definitely think we need, we need to surround ourselves with people that we really respect and we look up to in ways that we can strive for. And it's what you did with that, those first four families when you were starting Mosaic, it's like you looked up to the way they lived their life and their virtues. Absolutely. And it doesn't matter if they're much older than you, your same age, or even younger than you, are they doing things you can look up to that they have been consistently doing over time and have that honesty, what you said, which I think is really cool.

48:40This guy sounds like he was really successful in one way. What was his frequency coming from in your seven frequencies? If you could share just the frequency. A commander. A commander. So he was like, I'm going to take charge. I'm going to get things done. Yeah. He had one frequency. Uh-huh. And that's the shadow... Or what's the shadow side of that? Dictator. Dictator. Yeah. And so when you live in the shadow side of your frequency, it sounds to me like you can create results, but there's always going to be some type of fallout somewhere in your life. Yeah. Everyone in succession was successful.

49:13Right. Yeah. Well, or completely unsuccessful. All right. Depending on how you measure success. It seemed like they were all lonely, alone, lacking love, lacking self-love, appreciation. Yeah, so much brokenness that was there. Yeah. And you could see where a life will go. Even with a negative frequency, it's very powerful. And I think in the 60s and 70s, a lot of football coaches really operated from negative frequencies. Yes. And it was acceptable. That's the way you're supposed to coach, is with negative frequencies. And now you have other coaches, I feel like Pop and Steve Kerr and even Phil Jackson, they began using different frequencies to teach, whether it's a professor frequency or a motivator frequency.

50:03Even to some degree, sometimes you feel like they have a combination of a healer frequency. Even some great coaches see their role as turning these young boys into men and helping them heal through their wounds and giving them a chance to really develop and grow. And I think even the world of athletics has shifted in the way people coach. And it's really just shifting from the shadow to the positive frequency in a person's life. And you've known, you can watch someone on stage, all right? Because you have a lot of people come speak and I'm sure they're not all exactly what at times you'd hoped.

50:39Sure. You can watch someone who is a motivator, but you're realizing wow the room isn't really being motivated because they're they're really performing and and what they're really needing is affirmation of love from the room and it's they're not trying to motivate the room they're trying to get the room to motivate them they're not affirming the room they're trying to get the room to affirm them have you ever seen that felt that you know or the challenger we realize you know the challenger can become a manipulator and and you can tell when there's a challenger on stage that's manipulating because they're they're not actually focused on on inspiring and and driving people toward their greatness but to do what you want them to do and and it's subtle but it's not as subtle when you pay attention to it and frankly this is my dilemma like i remember years ago i met with oprah's producer they were looking at maybe doing a tv show and and she said to do well on television you have to either be flamboyant or authentic.

51:41And she said, authentic is harder. And she goes, our dilemma with you is that you're authentic and you're not flamboyant at all. And I said, oh, does that explain Christian television? Because it's almost all flamboyant. And she goes, exactly. And my dilemma is like, as a person of faith is when I watch, quote, faith programming, I almost only see negative frequencies. Really. And it does concern me a lot of times because I think, what is it about one human being that we're actually drawn to negative frequencies? Why are we so drawn to the drama, the chaos, the breakdown? Because it reaffirms our negative frequencies.

52:19Because when we hear a negative frequency, it reaffirms our negative frequency and we don't have to change. Oh, man. Yeah. So you have to be careful because what you're drawn to tells you who you are. what you're drawn to tells who you are who you are man i was i was a broken person drawing you know drawing in all these relationships in the past man i was yeah real good yeah even when when the person has like a healer frequency but it's a shadow they become the guru and and they convince you you cannot be healed without them right and they become your source of healing yeah that's dark. Yeah. And even honestly, in the role I've had as a pastor, I'm always really hesitant.

53:05People go, I need you to pray for me. And I go, you actually don't. You need to pray. There's no difference between my praying and your praying because you have the same access to God that I do. I spent my life making sure that no one thought that somehow I had this magical power that I was the intermediary between them and God. I go, nah, I'm a mess too. Sure. I'm praying too. I'm asking God to do stuff and nothing happens a lot of times either. And I think it's really important. And as a healer, your focus isn't trying to get healed by other people's need for you. And I'm sure you've seen that when someone so desperately needs to be loved that they're needing to be healed and that healer frequency is inverted on them.

54:03And it's always a little, to me that's one of the most dangerous ones because that's how culture started is when that person with the healer frequency has a shadow frequency and they become the guru. Yeah. Why do you think hurt people hurt people? I don't know if you've heard that saying before. I have heard that saying. The problem with cliches is that they're quite often true. Yeah. You know, well, I think one, I think when you're hurt, you think anger is a strength. You think bitterness is a strength because if you stop and think about it, when you're bitter, you don't feel weak. See, when you're angry, you don't feel weak.

54:44You feel powerful, strong. Yeah. And, and so what happens is that these negative emotions hide your own vulnerability and weakness and pain. As long as I'm bitter, I don't have to think about the fact that I've been betrayed. As long as I'm angry, I don't think about the fact that I'm so deeply wounded. I can't even deal with it. And so we use these negative emotions to feel powerful. And it's the most terrifying thing in the world to let go of those negative emotions because now you're completely powerless. And you have to trust that if you can let go of hate that love is more powerful that if you can let go of bitterness that forgiveness is more powerful that if you can stop hurting people that you will not get more hurt but here's here's the problem whenever you love you risk being hurt so i can't say to someone if you'll just love you'll never be hurt right in fact i'm going to say the opposite if you choose to love you will be hurt But when you love, you have enough strength to overcome that hurt.

55:57Yes. And I think that's a part of the challenge of it is that the most dangerous thing in the world is intimacy. And it's what we long for the most. That's what we fear the most. And that's why it's such a dangerous place. And so it's so much easier, you know, Lewis, to judge people than to be honest with their own shortcomings. Right. Right. It's so much easier to hurt you so that you can't hurt me first. Years ago when, you know, we had the whole thing with the Unabomber, if you remember that, you know, and there's all these studies on people living in isolation and becoming mass murders. And what ends up happening is - Because you don't hear about someone who's fully loved and has a great community and friends becoming a murderer.

56:42Yeah. When you feel rejected by the world, you reject the world. Yeah. And when you feel that the world is your enemy, your only act of human engagement is violence. And that's the greatest danger in the human spirit. It could be violence towards others or towards yourself. Because the self-loathing is so deep that your only expression of yourself is violence. And that's why it's so important to not move toward isolation. Human beings are not designed for isolation. We're not designed for disconnection. We're designed for community. I mean, why do you think we are always finding ways to identify together?

57:30I mean, whether it's church or synagogue or temple or the Rams or the Chargers or the Lakers or the Clippers, everyone finds a community. Everybody finds a tribe. I mean, isn't it the silliest thing in the world for a full-grown man to be wearing jerseys of players that are... Half their age. Half their age. Right. But we're Rams fans, right? And I'm a Rams fan, and I have a wonderful relationship with Sean McVay. And so now we're like huge Rams fans. But you have whatever, 60 ,000 people, and they're screaming, and they all have something in common in that moment. It's not just the event on the field.

58:10It's the commonality in the arena that connects people together. We are designed for human community. We're designed for relation. The pandemic, if you could ever have a social experiment to see how humans do alone, the pandemic gave us that. The quarantine proved that human beings do not do well alone. We cannot survive isolation. And what's so funny is that when people, have you ever thought to yourself, I'm in the rat race, I'm moving so fast. I have all these responsibilities. I have all these obligations. If I could just get everything to stop, then I could really fix myself. I could really do my inner work and I could really be healed.

58:48So the whole world stopped and no one got better. Right. You know why? Because the problem isn't what's going on around you. The problem is what's going on inside of you. And when the world stopped, your inner world didn't change. You were now in a chamber, an echo chamber where all you could hear was the stuff inside of your soul. and it wasn't good. And I had so many people that just struggle with depression, anxiety, stress, even suicidal thoughts because of that quarantine, because of that isolation. And I made an internal choice. I mean, during the pandemic, I wrote a book, I wrote a graphic novel, I started a fashion company.

59:30I just kept creating the whole time. And frankly, it's because my inner world is a creative space. My inner world was actually a healthy space. And so during the pandemic and the quarantine, I actually found incredible space to create and to enjoy life and see beauty all around me and to serve a lot of people. And every Friday I took my smoker and I cooked in a food for 40 people and people would drive by my house and pick up dinner for their families. And I just kept finding ways to create. My wife went crazy. I mean, she put chairs in the front yard and had all the neighbors coming by and stopping.

1:00:07She would create these outdoor installations where people come and take photographs with their families. And she would just keep creating these beautiful moments where people all over Hancock Park could experience some joy, some laughter, and some community. And what you do know is that when you are finally by yourself, you get to realize what's really inside of you. And what I know is that I'm healthy, or at least healthier because I have community. Yes. And if I did not have community, I don't think I could have survived that experience at the same level of creativity and productivity. What is the, you know, based on the new book that you have now called Mind Shift.

1:00:49Oh, we're going to talk about the book. It doesn't take a genius to think like one. What is the mind shift that people in the world need to think about right now? after isolation and after lots of transformations and loss and grief and all these things, what is the mind shift that we need? And what is kind of the main thesis behind the book that I want everyone to get? Sure. There are 12 basic mind shifts in the book, but the overarching mind shift, which is what you're asking me, is that most of your limitations are actually internal, Yeah. Not external. And in fact, um, there's one page in the book.

1:01:32I think it's the first page. It's only one sentence. So the first page of the book is one sentence that says, the intention of this book is to destroy your internal limitations. The book has one singular purpose and that's to destroy your internal limitations. Because there are certain external limitations that may be limiting you in some ways. Yeah, of course. But the internal - They're the ones that matter. They're the ones that matter. Yeah. In fact, I had our friend Joel's bachelor party, right? And so he turns it into a mastermind where I end up teaching for three hours and then doing two hours of Q &A and then two hours of coaching.

1:02:11And one of the guys said, I'm working for this company and I just keep hitting this wall. and if I could just get past this wall, I could get this huge promotion and have this huge advancement. But I just can't break through this wall. Can you help me figure out how to break through this wall? And I said, okay, stop. I want you to imagine yourself right now on the other side of that wall. And just imagine your life, imagine your career. He goes, can you see it? He goes, I can. And I said, do you want that life? And he goes, no. And I said, you are the wall. and most of the time in life, we actually think we're hitting walls that are external, but the walls are actually internal.

1:02:53And Lewis, I can look at my life. Most of the ceilings throughout my life were all mine. I took the plaster. I put the bricks up. You put them up there, yeah. And then I yelled at the world and yelled at God for limiting me. And I created my own limitations. And so what I wanted to do in the book is I wanted to make these small mental shifts that if a person makes, it will unlock their life at a ridiculous level. And the idea of the book, you know when you write a book, you don't really know when you start it, right? The idea kind of is there for a while, but I know exactly when this book started.

1:03:30When? October 26, 1990. That's a long time ago. Wow. 33 years ago. On October 26, 1990, I was listening to sports radio driving through Dallas, Texas, and the day before on October 25th, Buster Douglas defended his title against Evander Holyfield. Eight months earlier on February 11th in Tokyo, Japan, Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in the 10th round. He has eight months to train to prepare to defend his title. He comes in a fight overweight, out of shape, unprepared. Gets knocked out, doesn't he? And then I think the third round, right? Yeah. He looks terrible. He was sloppy. Yeah. He was living that champ life.

1:04:12Yeah. He was like, he's from my hometown, Columbus, Ohio. Okay. So sports radio, they're talking about Buster. And one guy said - Before the fight or after the fight? No, after the fight. Okay. They're reflecting on this terrible defense, right? Really bad. Yeah. And they said, why do you think Buster didn't even try? Which is a really important question. And then the other guy said this, which was to my own embarrassment. He goes, Buster Douglas is like a great guy. He's even like a Christian. Oh, great. He's deeply religious. And then the third guy said, some people are simply structured for failure.

1:04:50And when I heard that statement, it shook me. Wow. And in that moment, it shifted from Buster Douglas to me. And I went, wait a minute. Am I structured for failure? Do I have the internal structures for failure or the internal structures for success? Yeah. Or do I have a combination of those and my internal structures for failure are warring against my internal structures for success? And that's why sometimes I'm succeeding and then I'm tripping over myself and failing. And am I creating pathways to success and then creating all the roadblocks for failure at the same time? And then what hit me with Buster Douglas is that he actually knew how to handle failure.

1:05:33He had lost, I think, five fights before that. So it wasn't failure that he didn't know how to handle. It was success he did know how to handle. And so on that day, October 26, 1990 is when I began writing this book, Mindshift, because that's when I began objectively studying internal structures of failure and asking the question, what are the internal structures of failure and success? And I'm like you. I'm a very optimistic person. I'm incredibly hopeful. So the moment I see negative, I see the positive right away. So I'm going, oh, wow, I'm going to study these negative structures for failure, but I'm going to actually begin to construct all the positive structures for success.

1:06:18And I was working with the urban poor at the time. I was working in the inner city with a lot of gangs, with a lot of drug runners and people trapped in poverty. And I knew that if I could change their internal mental structures, I could actually prepare them for a life of success. And I realized that poverty creates self-limiting structures. And one of the things you have to do for a person is not just give them opportunity. You actually have to change their internal mental structures so they can see those opportunities and take advantage of them. And you can't just give them what looks like success without changing those structures internally.

1:06:56It all begins internal internally before it begins to be actualized externally. And so I wrote Mind Shift because I thought, wow, if I had just known these things in my 20s or known them in my 30s or even my 40s, if I had had clarity about them, I would have accelerated my success at a faster level and I would increase my influence dramatically. So what is the main thing that you can see in someone that says they are structurally prepared to welcome success in their life and handle it and potentially stay successful versus someone that is not prepared. They're wired for failure or structured for failure.

1:07:39And when success comes, it's all downhill after that. What's the difference between those two? I'd say if I had to pick one word, because remember I have 12 chapters, right? One word, it's ownership. One of the chapters of the book is called, You Are Your Own Ceiling. And when you take ownership over your life, and I had some pushback on this the other day, because I spoke about this at the Global Leadership Summit, about that our limitations are self-imposed. You can have trauma in your life. You can have circumstances and situations that are dramatic, but the structures that are internal are self-created.

1:08:22They're your response to those circumstances, to those traumas, to those situations. And somebody said, that's so unfair. You're putting all the blame on the person. I'm going, no, I'm not. I'm giving all the ownership because if the limitations are external, you're powerless. You're relying on someone else to give you power. Someone's got to fix it. But if the limitations are internal, you're powerful. So to me, no, this is the most optimistic, positive, empowering mindset framework. If those limitations are within me and I've created them out of response to the world around me, then I can change them and I can redirect them and realign them.

1:09:04And so maybe I became bitter. Maybe I'm a hurt person who hurt people. And I thought hurting people was the only way to survive a world that constantly hurts me. But that's the mindset I created. But now I realize, oh, this is a self-limiting mindset. If I'm always going to hurt people, I will never be loved. If I'm always going to hurt people, I'll never know closeness. I'll never know intimacy. I'll never have friendships. I'm going to live my life alone. See, the moment you realize, oh, this self-limiting mental structure of hurting people because I've been hurt is actually costing me everything I want in life.

1:09:39And then you go, okay, it doesn't feel right, but I'm going to forgive. It just feels so counterintuitive. but I'm going to let go. I'm going to forgive people. And the moment you forgive and you begin to open yourself up to people and begin to trust people, your life changes instantly. It's radicalized. And you know this as an athlete, like one of the chapters talks about talent and what I find is people who are highly talented when they're young actually struggle with having structures for sustained success. They do because their talent is usually matched with external structures for success.

1:10:23So if you're a super athlete, they put you on a team and then they give you a coach and they create discipline in your life and they manage that talent. It's not self-discipline is what you're saying. No, it's an external structure. And that's why about 75 % of all pro football players five years after they're done with their career are bankrupt. It's why about at least half to three quarters of them are divorced, drug addicted, dead, or divorced within two to three years after their career's over because their talent did not require them to create internal structures. Interesting. Because they're external structures.

1:11:03See, I had the great gift of not having talent. and when you have low talent you have to create high internal structures because if you're going to succeed like you know if i'm going to match against someone who has high talent i gotta i have to have a harder work ethic it's extreme discipline i have to be more disciplined i have to have more determination i i have to be organized yeah a different internal structure because i'm at a liability and and so i have people in my life who were super talents when they're young. I grew up with them and I was considered nominally talented, average. And then the moment we were out of high school and the moment we were out of college and the moment we're in the real world, they actually lost momentum and I accelerated.

1:11:53In fact, they couldn't figure out how suddenly, now that we're in our 20s, I'd look like a super talent and they look like they lack talent. And the difference was that talent is a hallucinogen. It's an illusion that allows you to believe you do not need discipline and hard work to succeed in life. Right. But greatness is not the outcome of talent. Greatness is the outcome of discipline. And it's taking that talent and harnessing it to its optimal capacity. Yeah. I don't know if you've watched the sports documentaries Untold. I don't know if you've seen that one. It's on ESPN. It's on Netflix, but it's a series of sports documentaries.

1:12:32And there was one of Johnny Manziel that just came out. Oh, I just started watching that one. That one. Yes. So that's on Netflix of that series, right? And here's the guy who was the most talented, the first Heisman Trophy winner as a freshman in college, beating Alabama in Alabama. Talented, right? An incredibly talented guy. The next year plays, gets drafted in the first round, goes to the unfortunately my team the browns and um is that really a team hey you know you know you're a real fan when you're a supportive team that never wins you know for your whole life me with the clippers exactly um and he talks about i don't know if you finished it but at the end he was like they asked him how much film did you watch in nfl your whole time in the nfl and he says zero he didn't show up for film he wasn't disciplined he was partying on the weekends and he thought his talent would allow him to deliver at the next level and talent alone didn't work for him and he had it at an early age and so that's um that's definitely something that you know i felt like i didn't have the talent but i had the the work ethic the discipline the willingness to remove distractions from my life you know all these different things to to focus to show up and make the most of my talent as well so yeah i i think there's the curse of talent and especially when you are a prodigy at a young age.

1:13:55Yeah. Or you win Olympic gold at 16 and you're like, now what? And fortunately most of us, we have some degree of talent, but not so much that we begin to live in this mythology that we don't have to work hard. But it's such a small little shift when you think about, you go, oh, okay. I can accomplish almost anything if I'm willing to pay the price to develop the disciplines, to develop the skills to accomplish this. And so I actually think there's no limit, which is why for me, I've been able to went to film and did fashion and write books and speak and all these different things because I always know, oh, hey, I'm starting the same way no matter what I do, zero talent, a lot of determination, high learning mode.

1:14:48And I remember years and years ago, I said, look, eventually, determination gets mistaken for talent and hard work gets mistaken for genius, which is why the subtitle of the book, it doesn't take a genius to think like one. Because really, what's the point of having a high IQ if you don't make good choices every day of your life. And to me, the real genius is making the choices to give you the life that you've longed for. The optimal expression of who you are as a human being. And this is embarrassing, but they just downloaded TikTok on my phone. Don't get hooked on it. And so I started watching TikTok and all of a sudden I started getting a little addicted.

1:15:30And it started coming up on all these musicians that were auditioning for, I don't know, X Factor or some show. I have no idea. America's Got Talent or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And every time some unknown person sang, I started crying. And I thought, what's wrong with me? I'm like, this is like a product of age now, you know? And I realized what my passion is, is helping people discover their latent potential. like one of the things is i think is tragic is when people never live or um or have their like their genius or greatness identified and appreciated in life and so every time i see a small glimpse of that i actually get really moved and and i realized that no a part of my huge drive in life is to help people find these small granular shifts that unlock their own like genius and their greatness and their potential and their capacity.

1:16:27And I want people to be surprised. I want people to go, I never knew I was capable of this. Because I look back on my life now, Lewis, and I go, I just can't believe I get to live this life. I can't believe this happened to me. I can't believe that I've been able to accomplish these things. I can't believe that I write books and do all this stuff. And I can't believe I get to have a conversation with you. It's all like a dream for me. It's all a miracle. Life is fun. And it's so good. And I want that for everyone at the level at which they were designed to live it. Because I just think there's people right now that are living a life that's imposed on them.

1:17:09And there's a little voice inside of them just saying, you're created for a different life, but they haven't found the courage or maybe the encouragement to step into that. and and for me it's like if if i can help one person just find the courage or the encouragement to go i'm going to begin to to live this new life this life that i feel like i was created to live who cares if you fail it's so much more fun failing in a life you long for than a life you didn't want anyway 100 yeah um i want to make sure everyone gets this book mind shift it doesn't take a genius to think like one. And if you feel like you're not built for success at the levels you want, if you don't feel like you have the internal systems to sustain accomplishments and the success that you want in your life, this will support you shifting your mind in a way to set yourself up for success in a bigger way.

1:18:04So make sure you guys take a look at this. If you're afraid of failure, if that's one of the things that holds you back from your potential, putting your potential out there, get this book to support you in overcoming that fear and insecurity so you can build the internal systems stronger for the success you want in your life. Excited about this. I want people to go get a copy or two. They can go to erwinmcmanus.com for all your information. Also, we were talking about the frequencies earlier. You've got a program on frequencies and communication frequencies, right? Yeah. And if people want to access the seven frequencies of communication, we're about to come out with an assessment, which is going to be really exciting.

1:18:41Where can we get that? Well, the best thing to do is to join our learning community called The Arena and go to erwinmcmanage.com slash The Arena. There's a membership involved and all the content we create is accessible for free there. That's cool. And then we'll do live sessions. I'll be walking people through the seven frequencies. We're going to take people's messages, their talks around the world, and help them break down their talks based on different frequencies. Oh, cool. It would be fun someday to do something like that with you. For sure. And some of the maybe people at the summit. And we'll study some world-class speakers because I think the best speakers oftentimes use two frequencies at the same time.

1:19:17And they almost seem to be conflicting frequencies that create a huge powerful edge like healer and commander at the same time. It makes a uniqueness. It creates something really special. Yeah. And I really have a passion to teach people to communicate at the highest level possible. I think words are beautiful. It's an art form. I think communication should be both poetry and prose. It should teach us things, but it should also inspire us and create imagination and images in us. You're also on TikTok now, it sounds like. So I should follow you on TikTok and Instagram. I think my team's got that out there.

1:19:52I don't want to admit that. I was kidding. But we can follow you everywhere on Instagram, social media, or whenmcmanus.com. If you're in LA, go to Mosaic. It'll be one of the most inspiring hours, hour and a half of your month or of your year, especially when you are there speaking. So make sure you guys go to Mosaic, check it out. Very grateful for you. And I've asked you a question about three truths in the past before. So if people are interested in learning your three truths, we'll link up the previous interview where you can go listen to that and hear your three truths. I want to appreciate and acknowledge you for just your constant leadership, your constant support, your friendship.

1:20:35And it's just very special for me to be in your world. So I'm grateful for you. I'm glad we're friends. I'm glad I live in LA so I can go watch you at Mosaic when I have the chance and appreciate you constantly redefining, you know, your age, your 60s, your redefining 60s. you're still sharing, contributing, creating, serving at a high level. And I think that's what makes you so youthful energetically and so young energetically because of your level to commit to others, your service to others. So grateful for you. Appreciate you. Love you. Thank you so much for being here. Love you. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

1:21:18Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:22:02And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.