Why Willpower Never Actually Changes You | Peter Crone

22:42Lewis Howes:There's no challenge. There's no conflict. I'm like, damn it. I'm fucking up the whole system. I'm giving everyone complete freedom. So no, I kind of enjoy it to a certain degree now that, of course, it's not my sort of main event of my life. Whereas before, loss, fear, inadequacy is not enough. They were all present. And now it's become, I often say, you know, these bigger questions of life, what's the meaning of life, I think is a relatively easy question. It's like, whatever your brain is wired to make it mean, right? We all live in our own universe to some degree. I'm not saying that we don't share the same objective world, but we're always going to see through the lens of what we see.

23:21Like we don't look through our eyes, we look through our perspective. And so we see the cognitive bias of how we're wired. Then I say the purpose of life really is to break free from our constraints, right? It's the ultimate sort of cosmic Houdini. You know, we're trapped in our own straight jackets of our insecurities, inadequacies, and scarcities, and we get the opportunity to break through. That's such the accomplishment, like conquering our own hell to step into heaven. Or as I say, heaven is a place on earth. You just have to go through hell to get there. Then the purpose of life, or no, that was the purpose.

23:51The opportunity of life is then to help bring the same to others. So I feel like I'm very much in the season of my opportunity.

23:57Lewis Howes:So there's kind of three stages. What was the first one? Is the meaning. The meaning. Is that we grapple with that, right? Like this is wrong or right beliefs, dogma, you know, the religious wars that have plagued and killed millions over this, you know, asinine. Oh, I believe in this God. You believe in the other God. So we'll kill you. You know. And then the purpose. Is to break free from the constraints with which we arrive. To create freedom, essentially, right? To discover our own true nature. Namaste. The divine in me recognizes the divine in you. Awakening, enlightenment, whatever you call it.

24:25To realize that I am the kingdom of the Lord. The Buddha is who I am at my core. As I talk about this 2.0 world is what I'm bringing, right? The two-point essence of who you are as a soul experiencing yourself through the lens of a human. So that's where I become misidentified with the human as suffering. Re-identification with the essence of who I am is liberation. And then the opportunity is to extend that to others. And I feel that that's the season.

24:49Lewis Howes:That's kind of where we're both at right now as well. Yeah, totally. And that's why there's so much simpatico. We both went through a lot of hell, man. A lot of suffering. Boy, are we enjoying fucking heaven right now. It's so nice, man. I dip my toe back in hell every night I go. Just so I can relate to people. Okay, but they don't want to go there too much. Yeah, they don't want to stay. But a lot of people will try to change their life through willpower, it sounds like. It's like, okay, I'm going to will myself to changing habits or changing a positive mindset. But if you are stuck with a wiring or a subconscious mind or nervous system that is still stuck in a past trauma or past belief or past identity, Yeah.

25:28Why will willpower not work? Beautiful question. I hope I can sum it up quite quickly and succinctly for people. So willpower is an aspect of the ego based in survival. So I make a distinction. I love to sort of use language to help people unpack things. So willpower is based in the energy of force. Even if you look at it anatomically, force physiologically is eventually going to create lactic acid. It's not an efficient energy system, right? It's not sustainable. It's not renewable.

25:54Lewis Howes:It's not reusable. No, you're going to collapse, right? Which is what happens when we're coming from ego. You hit your head up against the wall. You go to work in a job you don't love. You're in a relationship and fuck it, right? And then the second one is power. Like I always say, like with my athletes, I always, which I know you've got a lot of background and I'll ask them to say, I'm forceful. And I want them to feel that. How does that come across? If you are competing at whatever your chosen sport is and you're coming from a forceful place, describe that. They're like, I feel tense. I'm pushing hard.

26:21I'm not in flow, da-da-da. I'm trying to make things happen. And then I said, you're powerful. And they're like, wow, I just feel so at peace, right? So they're the distinctions. But to answer the question directly, why it doesn't work, is I say you can use force to temporarily override habits, right? That's all that force is doing. Willpower. You're inspired by someone. You know, you go to a coach. You talk to a therapist. You watch something on TV. Listen, hopefully, to many of your shows that are inspiring. And they're like, you know what? Fuck it. This is my month. I'm going to get in shape.

26:52Even the beginning of the year, right? the misnomer that January is the time that I should get in shape. I mean, it's all just made up. It's ridiculous. But most people cancel their membership in February, like the stats speak for themselves. So you can use force to temporarily override habit, but you can never violate

27:10Lewis Howes:identity. And when people get that, like that's the self-fulfilling prophecy of your own programming. So how do we shift from the old self, the old identity that has strategically helped us get to where we are, helped us survive. These strategies have served us in certain ways to survive, to get to a certain level. Then eventually we all figure out that, okay, that level has limits. And so how do we shift an old identity into a new identity if it's not willpower? One word, death. Kill the ego? Yeah, it's death. I mean, it's really the ultimate metamorphosis. Without physically dying. No. Well, no, in a way, right?

27:54And this is a powerful distinction for people to understand. Death, I love talking about death. I studied much of the Eastern philosophies. There's a book called, or books called the Upanishads, which is sort of this spoken distillation over generations, the orators, the gurus that would pass on through spoken word, these different powerful distinctions, right? So there's a group of books called the Upanishads. And there's one called the Katha, K-A-T-H-A, if anyone wants to read it. And where this little boy goes to talk to the death God or the God of death to discover what is this thing. And he talks about the only way to be free of death is to die to the idea of death itself.

28:32And so again, we get poetic and it's really the eternal nature, I would assert, is who we are. Form comes and goes. We've been talking for, well, an hour and a half before, which is beautiful, and 20 minutes maybe on air. But in that period, we're not the same physical person because millions, millions of cells have dying and to the degree that our cells are able to replicate without any kind of compensations or compromise, we stay young. This is the whole world of longevity, right? Like in telomeres and you know, real cell replication, if you really understand it, is without the context of we have an arc of existence.

29:08If that wasn't there with telomeres or whatever is really sort of the trigger switch for us to eventually leave this paradigm, then cell application means you sort to live forever, right? Which is what longevity experts are trying to tap into. Funnily enough, that's really what happens to a cancerous cell, right? It sort of replicates perfectly, and then it overtakes. And we can get into that. But I think cells that are in that state are living in a hostile environment. So that's physiologically, for me, the quintessential expression of survival is a cell that's like, I'm out of here, I've got to do my own thing, which is no different than a kid that runs away from home in a hostile environment.

29:41So if you look at it physiologically. But to come back to death, really, what I'm talking about is the death of identity, which is based in linguistics. It's the death of the idea of yourself. Or as I say, the only way to stay really alive is to constantly die to previous iterations of yourself. So to overcome identity is... How do we do that? Step one, awareness. Carl Jung, great quote. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will drive your life and you'll call it fate. So when it's like, oh, I knew that would happen, too good to be true. I knew it wouldn't last. But as though it happened to us, not realizing our programming is the precursor to the unfolding of the manifest world.

30:17So without fault, and I said, can't be held accountable for that which you're oblivious to, that breeds compassion. It's like, oh, by virtue of my conditioning, I think, feel, act, and then create the life that is now what I see on the screen that I'm trying to adjust without realizing the projection room is behind me and the 35 millimeter screen, which is my, or the film is my subconscious, which is informing the way I see things.

30:40Lewis Howes:Based on the programming that I've had for my whole life. And even prior, I believe we arrived with these constraints. So it's through awareness. Two main buckets of my awareness. Bring the unconscious conscious. Oh, my God. 30 years, I thought I wasn't enough because my brother was a better athlete. My sister was a greater academic. And I always noticed that they got the attention. I felt like I was less than. And my less than has informed my compensation patterns or my resignation. And it's fascinating in the ego. I realized started my work as these 10 primal prisons where we're not something.

31:11I'm not enough. I'm not loved. I'm not safe. I'm not worthy, right? When we're not something positive, the compensation is do more of that. If I'm not loved, what am I going to do? Try and become lovable. But there's a shadow side that came into my work maybe a decade ago. Like it was like, I was like, how come I'm talking to thousands of people and some of their conditions seem so much more macabre and dark and destructive. And I realized that there is a statement where I am something negative. So the antithesis of I'm not good enough, which would lead to the compensation of the perfectionism, the people pleasing, the hardworking, the guy who's got the corner office and he's a C-suite executive, but still dabbles with porn or drugs or is on his second marriage and unhappy and has anxiety.

31:53The darkest side is I am bad. And when we are something negative, it's self-fulfilling. So we have to bring, first of all, these codes, unconscious, conscious. Then the second step is to investigate the validity of that. Is it a truth? And this is the, I'd say, proprietary part of my work. If I cut Lewis open, I'd say, is it true that you're not going to? Born in Ohio, am I going to find a manufacturing label that says, Lewis, born in Ohio, I'm not good enough? No, you kind of scoff. Of course, you're not going to find that.

32:21Lewis Howes:OK, but it's a reality. But it's a belief that we, you know, I might have believed that for a long time, that I'm not lovable or I'm a bad kid or whatever. Yeah, and that would have informed the choices. Now, you've obviously taken, I would assert, the strategic compensation route or the success, the joy, the work, the beautiful wife, the kids, what you've created here, which is phenomenal, right? But nonetheless, I mean, I now know, having spoken to you for 90 minutes before, you've done so much work that you may equally, like me, be sort of on the zero to one level of suffering, right? And get occasional blip of - But for years, it was coming from a place of proving that I'm enough.

32:58Lewis Howes:So let me go accomplish, achieve, succeed, build based on a lack of not feeling good enough. But when I did that for, I don't know, seven, eight, 10 years, and it was still never enough, I was like, and then it came to an awareness moment of like, okay, it doesn't matter how much money or success or whatever I have, I still don't feel good enough. And I still have anger, resentment, rage inside of me. Yeah, beautiful. You know, so the strategy worked to accomplish something, but it didn't help me feel peace. And I think all we want at the end of the day is to feel like we're enough and feel we're lovable and we have peace inside of us.

33:37Lewis Howes:It doesn't mean we're not going to have challenges and things to like overcome, but in our emotional and psychological and identity level, are we enough? And I never felt that for a long time until I was about 30. Yeah, which is a transitional period. We all go through Saturn return without getting into astrology. So I love that you saw that. So that's bringing the unconscious conscious, investigating the validity of it or through your own wherewithal meditation, realizing, wait a minute, I'm trying this. It's sort of like the definition of addiction I use. You can never get enough of something that almost works.

34:09It's the hungry ghost, right? If you're being informed by I'm not enough and then you develop your patterns of proving harder work, whatever it is, you're actually being informed by something that can't be satiated. That's an addiction. Ultimate addiction is the idea of ourself, as I tell people. So that's why it's never, I can work with, I think, over 20 billionaires, you know, and you might think they're successful, but they're not. To me, true success, the new form of success is what you just said, peace. To be okay with whatever, not to be at the effect of life. And it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, Krishnamurti, who's one of my first teachers, dead, but like from his writings.

34:43He was often asked, how come you're just so at peace, you seem totally unaffected by life. He would do shatsangs and have his ashram and people would come and sit and he would say, or his expression was, this is my secret. I don't mind what happens.

34:58Lewis Howes:Whatever happens is going to be. And that's peace. And I don't need to be attached to an expectation that I wanted to happen that did or didn't happen or resentful that I didn't get something and someone else did. Yeah. Why are we so conditioned to react to everything? Yeah. Everything in life. Everything, yeah. Instead of be okay with whatever happens, even if it's through the lens of a horrendous thing. Yeah. Or your interpretation of this is a horrendous or bad thing. Yeah. Why do so many people react from that space versus have peace with what is? Because that's the opportunity of the game.

35:45One of my favorite quotes that gets shared the most is that life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you're not free. That's why we're here.

35:55Lewis Howes:That's so true. And that's why. Isn't that powerful? So true. Is there where in your life right now has life revealed where you're not free? it's been a minute. I mean, even on the back of the retreat, it's kind of funny. Like, we were talking about this before, and I'm always happy to share anything. I'm an open book. I have nothing to hide. And during the course of the retreat, day two, a guy stands up and he shared, he said, I just want to point out who this guy is on stage. I don't think many of you realize, like they're all here. They've flown across the world. They spent money that they probably have, grapple to put together in ways that they're really committed to the work.

36:35And it means a lot to me. I think you probably experienced this as much as my star has risen, I would say commensurate with that is my humility. I've gone the other way. I was probably more cocky when I was insecure. Now I'm like, I'm just so flattered when anyone stops me and says, thank you. So I stood on the stage, never spoken to this guy. He's been in my mastermind. And he said, I don't know if you understand. He said, I'm in finance. I've done the math. I want you all to realize how much this guy cares because he's pouring his heart and soul out helping you transform lives on stage live Holding space for people who've been abused hit sexually assaulted With all the care in the world and he's losing money on this event.

37:15I just started crying And so I would say there's a component and i'm sure you can relate to this as a leader that You know, I don't i'm not particularly religious. I think that's part of your background and I love pulling tenants from powerful dogmas and stories and great leaders before us. And I love the expression Jesus said, where forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do. And so sometimes I realize I have a gift that I can't even explain, but I'm grateful for. I feel like the luckiest man alive to be able to do what I do. But at times it means that people can't see what I see. You know, there's the expression of talent can hit a target no one else can hit.

37:55Genius can hit a target no one else can see. and it's what's the target you're trying to hit for me there's no it's no more trying for me like i'm hitting a target no one can see that's the gift right like people like how can you change someone's life so quickly someone you've never met they stand up in a live they talk about an eating disorder that started with sexual abuse and now they're da da da da that's your gift yeah yeah but what i realize is there's still the human part of me which i love is that sometimes for that reason, I don't get seen in a way that is.

38:29Lewis Howes:Oh, because people can't see it. Right. When they see it, they don't understand it. There's applause, like how many people love you? Millions, millions, millions. And now I'm starting to reach similar numbers. So you don't feel seen even though you're impacting so many people. Sometimes. But I do feel like, so it's a - When he stood up, he saw you. He saw a part of me that no one else addressed it. Yeah. Because there's an assumption, right? I'm sure you had this now. Maybe early on, it was more meaningful where it's like, oh, Lewis Howes. he's fine like he's got tons of money and there's this assumption he has no problems or whatever yeah exactly and so that really hit me in a way that yeah yeah it's like the little boy came out yeah yeah well for a minute rather me carrying the world which is a is an it's an honor it's you know to feel charged with the fact that i can authentically say i know i can shift the course of humanity yeah you know that's not sort of a small project it's like oh that's cute you know it's like a real calling but then to see wow a man stood up and held me and it obviously moves you i can see that right that's really beautiful

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41:26Lewis Howes: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. Well, it does because when you went, we were talking for 90 minutes, I think about my wife because you went up and used the restroom right before we came on here. And I just checked my texts and she texted me. And she does beautiful things like this. The thing you said, we all want to be held, seen, and heard. Yeah. And she just texted me like, thank you so much for the life you've given us. And it's like.

42:00That would, immediate waterworks for me.

42:03Lewis Howes:So when you said this about the guy, I just started thinking about that text for a moment and it made me feel emotional. Dude, that's beautiful. Because I'm like, man, this is essentially what I always wanted in a relationship and never had. Yeah. And I get this all the time now. And I never take it for granted. Yeah. I never take it. You know, like. Yeah. Maybe people do it in the beginning of a relationship. But we're five years in now. And it's been like, it's been a heavy year. Nine months. Twins. She was in the hospital twice. Emergency room after the kids were born. Ups and downs. Like life messy stuff, you know.

42:34Lewis Howes:Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And she still shows up in showing me that I'm held, seen, and heard. Yeah. In a way that works for her and me. And it's such a gift. And again, like you said, not many people do that in my life. Even my mom is kind of like, you know, what do you get the guy who can buy anything for himself? Right. What do you, you know. Exactly. Lewis doesn't need anything, right? No. And it's, like you said, as leaders, like we're providing for so many people. Whether it be intimate families, extended families, friends, communities. Like we're constantly giving. Yeah. And it's a blessing and a gift to be in a position to give to so many people.

43:14Lewis Howes:It's an incredible honor and joy. Like there's so much good from giving, right? Yeah. But sometimes, you know, in that position, everyone can just think, oh, they've got it all figured out or everything's good or they don't need the acknowledgement. but it's just as empowering and important to receive it when you're giving so much. Yeah. As with the person who maybe is just getting started in their career and they need to be acknowledged as well. I think even more so, and it's why it might seem strange, well, I love you. It's like it reminds me of Paul Rudd and Jason Segel, I think it is, and I love you, man.

43:51Yeah, yeah. It's so beautiful. You look at the arc of their relationship, which they capture. So, and there is that, you know, that camaraderie that I feel like I found a brother, you know, in a way. And I just love that that touched you, you know, because it's like I get closer to you, you know, because it's easy for us all to walk around with our ambassador. And, you know, it's like how people show up on a first date and you've got your greatest outfit on and you're wearing your favorite cologne or, you know, shit that you normally, you know, you take people home and your house is tidy that it's ever been for fucking months, you know, because you're trying to impress.

44:23and eventually you're going to revert to the old habits, which is really more beautiful because it's you, you know. And it's not to say that we don't all have room for improvement in those arenas, but like it's authentic, right? And recently all these studies are talking about the highest expression of a human experience is way beyond love is authenticity. And so when I broke down there on stage, I think, of course, people there adore me. I mean, I've got this book that is, I mean, it's like a tomb of like thousands of Polaroids that people have taken at my live events at retreats and they write the most, I mean, what a keepsake.

44:55I was flicking through those pages with tears of like where people have come from every corner of the globe. So there's endless. This is not like the sort of hungry ghost of my own like need for approval. It's not that. I know I'm loved and revered. And I just did a podcast today and the guy who was hosting it, he said the sweetest thing. He said, you know, when I asked people about, I said, I've got Peter Crone on the show today. He said, I get one of two responses. Either I fucking love that guy or who's that? And I said, well, that's a good pool sample, right? It's not like, ah, he's an asshole.

45:26I hate him. I was like, I can deal with both of those. And she said, my girlfriend said the sweetest thing, to know Peter Krohn is to love him. And it really touched me. And I don't know who that person is. So I think where to come around to your question, where I'm still seeing maybe not quite free, is with the people that are the most meaningful and why what you just shared touched me. Because your wife, which I'm so happy that you found based on what you kindly shared with previous relationships where we have a lot of synergy, for her to see you get you I think is the most priceless gift that she can especially a man of

45:57Lewis Howes:your stature incredible man we don't need much I mean we need a lot but we don't need a lot you know it's like we yeah I don't need her to buy me anything to do anything for me like I'm good you know I can take care of myself but if we're fully invested in a relationship yeah if we're fully in relationship with ourself and then we're fully vested in a relationship with another person yeah we've committed our lives to them which is something i've done that's really the only thing i need you know it's like honesty yeah loyalty yeah shared values and being seen held and heard isn't that beautiful that's i don't need you to like do anything extra special or like find me new box of shorts you know like no i don't need any of this stuff hundreds of them so i think that's where i saw something actually this morning or yesterday which was white beautiful in that arena which is i'm adored by millions but at the same time it's when it comes to those intimate relationships where you and i so easily step up we so easily provide i like somebody in the retreat is like dude it's like i'm watching work with people it's like you're 15 steps ahead and it's like it's crazy it's like even i started your work and i you take a twist that i never saw coming and boom that person flood of tears yeah yeah in awakening and whatever epiphany and release the trauma so i i realized with my team i put them all up on stage and this is no slight to them because some of them might watch this but i'm acknowledging them for 10-15 minutes i go through each of them how much they mean to me bawling right and then i realized not one of them you know it's they love me but it's not it doesn't get reciprocated you know and there's that little little part of me which i love really yeah so you know you just wanted them up there but then i'll do the same for you afterwards?

47:40Not directly.

47:40Lewis Howes:It's more interesting. They do. Thank you so much. You're amazing. There is a lot of that. And listen, don't get me wrong. There's, there's, you know, I have my core team and then I have all of these sort of extensions, people running different cohorts and yeah, all of that. And there's like women who are in tears and thank you. You've changed my life who work for me now. And I could never have seen my, there's this one woman who came to my first retreat last year. She was the first person I spoke to and she's a mom and she was bawling saying, you know, I almost booked a flight home today. This is the first evening.

48:06You know, she hadn't even attended. She's like, because I feel like I'm a horrible, a horrible mom because I left my kids.

48:10Lewis Howes:To be here. To be in the state. She was from the UK. And now she's running my 2.0 mom program. Wow. That's fun. Wow. Cool. And she wrote in the diary that next day she came in and she stood up and she said, you know, after, because I coached her and helped her see the complete antithesis that she gets to be a better mom by virtue of being here and the guilt she feels for kids is, you know, there's multiple facets to that. They learn self-reliance, dependence, independence. They get these new skill sets by the absence of you, but you also - Yeah, you don't want to be absent for six months, but it's like, okay, a week is okay.

48:42Lewis Howes:Yeah, three days, it's fine. And she had actually written in her journal after this revelation, she the next morning stood up, took the mic and said, I realized yesterday I changed my life. Wow. I changed my life. Yeah. Do you think that's worth you leaving your kids for a few days? And now she has, I mean, she'd written in that later that day when she'd found this new sense of herself, by next year, I'll be working with Peter Crone. And she showed me yesterday. It was incredible. So I think it's more the intimate circle. I know my team loves and draw me. But what I hear from them is what could be improved?

49:12What went wrong? Where some behaviors weren't right in whatever happened at the retreat? So I'm the leader. Of course, it's their job, but no one turned around. How are you doing? My back was out. I've been standing for hours. My voice is gone.

49:26Lewis Howes:Energetically ported, helping everyone heal and hold the space for days. I mean, a guy's eyes fucking colored, you know, changed just because of the profound release of trauma. He stood like three inches. He was like, like all the women like, ah, you know, like this real man occurs, like just out of nowhere from this little boy energy. And I'm like, yeah, that just happened. And then I was like, oh, yeah, you know, but the pens aren't working and people are worried. I'm like, really? So that's where you're still not free. Is it wanting to be able to receive that from people or knowing that you will never receive?

49:57Lewis Howes:because you're a leader, the price of leadership is not getting everyone understanding you and seeing you all the time. There's incredible rewards for being a leader in your life. Endless. But there is a price for leadership as well that you won't be understood by everyone. Very few will see and acknowledge it and give you that. But is it that knowing that, hey, I may never get this, the really seenness that I'm looking for. When it happens, it's going to be like, wow, it took me six months to finally get someone to say this to me after pouring my life into this. What is that for you? I think it's all the above.

50:40I think meeting you is another form of inspiration. I think we have a myriad of ways that we evolve. I mean, there's traditional learning information, and then I think there's internal insight and understanding others opposed to an understanding of like intuition insight and then I think there's you know inspiration that is like someone like yourself who you know just love the speed with which we're getting to know each other and to hear and to see you be moved to tears about the text you just kind of shared like there's a feeling that I know that's part of my future you know so really I always say the last stages of this sort of evolution of our own personality the hardest qualities to really embody are trust and patience you know like to know that there's the unfolding like that that's coming and so to see it with you given the similarities of our our timelines is that I know there's a woman out there who's going to adore me and all of my imperfections as much as I hold space it's just to be in the eyes of another and to be seen fully and I know my team adores me and you know one guy who he's one of the mentors he you know he said look I've done all my acknowledging I've got like you know 20 people I've thanked you know plus and the volunteers and you know and so he took the mic and he said and we just want to say that we're all here just because of you and you know you make us feel safe and it's yeah and it's beautiful but it's like and i know listen i know my team adores me but there's no like exactly where you're at you know yeah and so to answer your question a lot of people don't have the the skill exactly maybe i was

52:10Lewis Howes:gonna say ability but everyone has the ability a lot of people haven't developed the skill of seeing, holding space for someone emotionally, energetically, spiritually, because it is probably the most vulnerable thing to do. To put yourself out there and say, I see you, I acknowledge you. What you just did there was so powerful and profound. Thank you for the gift that you are. Most people don't have the awareness or the skill set to say it because it is scary. It's scary. It's hard to do. And I think at an even more subtle, primal level, they're too busy trying to survive. Of course. The power of acknowledgement, if you really understand it, it's a very generous act.

52:53I don't think, you know, for people like yourself, and, you know, I work with the best of the best in all walks of life, right? And so I've seen this with my athletes. I've seen this with my VIPs where there's this assumption that they're just good, right? Like as you said earlier. And yet there's still that innocence of a child, whether it's unreconciled trauma or just the fact that we carry that with us. You don't forget what you went through, even if you've transcended it or integrated it. And so that's where I feel like the ability to acknowledge speaks volumes about somebody's own work to have transcended their own need for recognition or survival.

53:29And there's not many people who've gotten to that. And so it's not like I'm missing. It's just, it's kind of nice even for me, like, you know, people come to me with all sorts of questions and woes. And I love that. I feel very privileged that I get to hold space and even people. And to serve. Yeah, yeah. And to serve. And people are like, you know, I had a live event a few months ago. And every person who stood up, it's predominantly a female audience, I think, for a number of reasons. I think the female archetype is a little more evolved. They're more intuitive. And they get this work. And they want to be the nurturers.

53:59They want to understand. men are too busy trying to you know conquer and survive and they love challenges and they're out in the world and the women are more the inner work right and but these three women stood up in my life and every single conversation built upon itself in vulnerability like the first woman stood up and it was so profound in terms of her talking about not having a cycle for 20 years and how that had obviously created like so much doubt and judgment and it had stemmed from an eating disorder that she developed because she saw once on a TV show these women with eating disorders and they got attention.

54:32She thought, finally, if I stop eating, I'll get attention from the mother who didn't see her. But that was even preceded by sexual abuse. And this is heavy stuff. In front of an audience, and then another woman shares about relationships and love and the devastation of thinking she was in love with someone. And then the last woman stood up and she said, you know, I struggle with orgasms. You know, and this is really having them. She can't have them. And it's impacting my relationships because my boyfriend's feeling adequate because I can't have a vaginal, you know, orgasm. And then she opened up and said, you know, and I think a lot of it's tied to the fact that I have herpes.

55:08Lewis Howes:Oh, the shame of that. Yeah, yeah. The shame, the guilt. And really what I impact was one of these primal prisons is that there's something wrong with her, right? Like fill in the blank. Anyone listening right now, they're going to have their vaginal. They might not have herpes, but they're a little overweight. They've got cellulite. They've got acne. They've got receiving health. They're abandoned. They were abused. They were something. But the fundamental story that I'm inadequate, there's something wrong with me as a bigger context, right? And then we compensate, hide, prove, disprove. And so, but at the end, this therapist, like a traditional licensed therapist came up to me and said, I've never seen anyone hold space for such a big group and for three women share some of the most vulnerable stories.

55:43And you did it with such exquisite elegance. She said, you know, it's inspiring as somebody who has a practice. And, you know, that was a form of acknowledgement that fills my bucket. It's like a thank you.

55:54Lewis Howes:Someone who knows how hard that is to do who's like a practitioner as well. Yeah. So it does show up, and I am open to receiving that. And I think it's also incumbent upon us, you and I, to share vulnerability. Like with athletes, you and I go back to the statement of we can definitely hit targets that is based on talent, but we also hit targets others don't see. And I think it's that ability to acknowledge, to see, to be the 15 steps ahead. And for that, I'm grateful. And forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do. You know, he's even having a chat with our AI friends out there in the world.

56:24And, you know, like, what is this? I love to dissect, you know, what am I missing or what am I? And he said, it's like a concert pianist, you know, who's practiced for 30 years. And then he doesn't have anyone who can play music as beautifully for him. You know, and it's like, it's, it's.

56:40Lewis Howes:Yeah, it's like no one could do what he wants them to do. And it's not their fault. It's just where they're at. And you're going to go through this in the arc of your beautiful journey now as a dad is that you're going to see the potentiality. And I think we both have fallen in that trap of a girlfriend who we saw the potential of, wanted to usher. Yeah, that was my wound for 20 years. And I just kept repeating it in different women. Yeah, yeah. And so to be able to have that humility. And also, I think, to some degree, to share our needs, right? Which you've done a great job, it sounds like, with Martha.

57:10And what do we both want? What are we, of course, are we aligned on with our values? But where can I show vulnerability of what I need? I think we've become so self-sufficient that it's almost become our downfall.

57:22Lewis Howes:And early on in my relationship with Martha, I've said this many times here on the show, but she asked me a question, the old, what are your priorities question? Every woman asks a guy at some point, like, hey, what are your priorities in life? And in this relationship, and I told her, are you sure you want the truth? Because if I tell you the honest truth, you're not going to want to be with me. Are you going to be upset or are you going to cry or something? Because this is what's happened to me in the past. yeah no woman wanted to hear what i had to say or they were they were hurt by it yeah or overwhelmed overwhelmed by it right yeah she said you know then now she got worried she's like what do you mean what's gonna you know what are you is this some dark thing or something i go no but i was like my you know my priorities 라고 And when I say them to people, it sounds really selfish.

58:13Lewis Howes:And I just don't think you're going to be, you're not going to want to be with me after this. So, you know, I was actually getting sad before I said it because I was like, man, this has been a great few months, but it's like, it's over probably. A little courage. And she was like, no, I want to hear it. That's, you know, I said, okay, my number one priority in our relationship will never be you. And I don't know any woman that doesn't want to hear, that wants to hear from the man that they're in a relationship with, that they are not number one. Yeah. And I said, my number one priority is going to be always be my health, or at least I want it to be my health, physically, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically.

58:50Amazing.

58:51Lewis Howes:I want to have great health. Yeah. to serve my number two priority, which is still not you. And no woman doesn't want to be number one or number two. But I said my number two priority, at least at this season of my life, is my mission. What I believe is my purpose, my mission from God, or my calling, and that is to impact humanity in the way that I do it, right? And I don't know how long I'm going to be driven to do this. Maybe it's a year. Maybe it's 20 years. I don't know. but this is the current mission and calling that I'm on. And if I feel pulled away from my mission, I'm going to be resentful and unhappy.

59:29Lewis Howes:And I'm not going to be able to give my best to my number three priority, which will be my intimate relationship with you if we're choosing to be together. And I said, if you can accept that my priority is to make sure I'm healthy as a human being, basically spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, that I just give myself time to be healthy. Yeah. That if you accept that I'm a driven human being to serve humanity the way that I uniquely do it, and you're not trying to pull me away from that, then you will feel like the number one priority in my life. You'll feel like number one because I'm going to always try to be my best healthy emotionally.

1:00:06Lewis Howes:I'm going to be present with you. I'm going to give to you abundantly. When I'm with you, you're going to feel so loved, seen, held, and heard. But if I'm not healthy and I'm not on purpose, I'm not going to be good to you. yeah and so and she got and she was like i love it you know right away she was like i love it because i've never been with a man who who had a purpose yeah they always made me their purpose yeah and i was like no what's the thing you're meant to do in this world yeah yeah yeah and she always attracted men who lacked purpose and so it lined up i was like okay as long as you accept that yeah yeah and again it doesn't mean like you're last on the totem pole like no no no i'm giving you my life.

1:00:45Lewis Howes:I'm committing to you. I'm all in. But just don't pull me away from my mission and let me work out. It's like, that's it. It's so beautiful. And again, I don't want to sound like we're starting some bromance, but I'm so glad that we're having this conversation and we've connected in the way that we have. But it's rare for me to listen to another man. And I don't mean that in some sort of superior way where I can be inspired and even go, I'm going to borrow of that, but it's also beautiful how it correlates to what I teach, which is health, wealth, and relationships, right? In that order, which is what you just basically said, right?

1:01:21Like health, mission, wealth, and wealth in all arenas, like your contribution to society and then relationships. And I would assert the absence of those, like if you're not healthy and you're not in your purpose and actually you don't have a partner, you have a mother, right?

1:01:35Lewis Howes:Exactly. Or a father or whatever, yeah yeah um and you're dependent on someone else right it's like you're you're codependent i guess like on them providing for you yeah to survive yeah no it's beautiful and i really appreciate sharing that and and it gives me great context and hope you know not that i was ever lacking it but it's sort of given my track record and i've had the most beautiful partners i'm so grateful but then i don't blame any of the people i was with but i chose partners that needed to feel i would they were number one at all times, 24-7, no matter what. Any type of breakdown, even if it was just the littlest thing, I needed to be there.

1:02:14Lewis Howes:Otherwise, I didn't love them. If you listen to what you just said, right, if you look at the energy of it, it's quite interesting because especially now as a dad, that really is the experience for the child, right? Like they stop everything. They are the number one now. Yes. Based on what you shared, maybe Martha steps in and that's more her role. Uh-huh. But even you, if you're in the place and the kid, da-da-da, you know. I'll be there. boom. Yeah, I'm there. And so that energy, if that's their child, they're not, you know, a child in a 30 year old, you know, body. Yeah. They're a child in a nine month old body.

1:02:47Lewis Howes:And so the context, the role and responsibility is to serve that child for survival. Yeah. But the challenge is most, most of us, myself included, are running on a child wound programming in adult bodies. And we stay stuck in that survival strategy with adult partnerships. But we're both children in a sense. Yeah. And this is why I'm so excited. I announced with my, again, the group that I was with, this whole context of 2.0 world, this new entire paradigm for people to like, this new operating system that I'm sort of channeling. And within that, there's all these specialties, like there's going to be 2.0 mom, 2.0 dad, 2.0 athlete, 2.0 leader like what is it to be this new type of human you know and it's just such a joy like the guy i helped transform on stage like he literally went from a boy to a man in a split second as he realized the stories he'd been living in that were keeping him scared dependent and basically cut off his mom and he thought he had quote unquote by removing which a lot of people do if i remove the person i'll be okay but the wound is within you not there right hatred is a curved blade as Shakespeare said.

1:03:52Hatred is a what? Curved blade. Hatred is a curved blade, yeah. So we hate someone. It's like saying, I drink the poison, hoping it will affect them. Yeah, yeah.

1:04:02Lewis Howes:My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now, let's get back to the conversation. Guys, we got to talk about your secret late night internet searches. You know, the ones bumpy leg rash, hair loss, trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers.

1:04:42Lewis Howes:We all do it and it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history, and it can even get you care 24-7. So call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful. So you've always wanted to have a backyard oasis. Here's the thing. If you get smart with your money, you can do things like that. With Empower, you can start making the most of your money so you can go out and live a little. Isn't that why we work so hard? to have some fun with our money, like treating yourself to something special or spontaneously doing something extra for a loved one.

1:05:25Lewis Howes:So use Empower and get good at money so you can be a little bad. Join their 20 million customers today at Empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored. A beautiful lesson. I'm not saying everyone do this, but a beautiful lesson I learned in a previous relationship was I really wanted to leave because it was just getting, it was just not good. And I really wanted to leave because I was like, I just want to have relief. I want to be pain-free. I don't want to suffer anymore. And my therapist at the time was like, you can do whatever you want. This is your life, your journey. I'm not telling you stay or go.

1:06:04Lewis Howes:Yeah. But I recommend creating boundaries and peace within the relationship within yourself when there's a reaction from your partner, when there's a breakdown, when there's a silent treatment, whatever the strategies that she's doing, you learning to feel safe within yourself in that environment instead of running away or removing yourself or however you want to call it. And I was so resistant to that because I just wanted relief. I just wanted to get out. But I'm so glad I did because I learned how to be peace under chaotic environments. environment instead of stressed and reactive and, okay, I need my space and this and this.

1:06:48Lewis Howes:But no, I'm going to create the space within me. Now, obviously, if it gets dangerous, that's a different thing. But if it's just emotionally stressful, how can you stay in peace? Now, if someone's watching or listening and there's some domestic stuff, get out of there. Yeah, for sure. It was more of an emotional psychological response that I was living in fear. Yeah, it's so powerful. It reminds me, like really when I started my journey, it brings a smile to my face because of what transpired, which I share. But I was sitting in a yoga studio with 20 people that I was walking to versus thousands now in an auditorium.

1:07:24And I think some of them probably showed up thinking they had a yoga class and they weren't even coming to listen to me. But I was talking about relationships and I made a very similar distinction to your obviously very wise therapist. I said, the only time to really break up a relationship powerfully is when you're both happy with each other. Yeah.

1:07:43Lewis Howes:Or a piece in it, I guess. Either one, yeah. Yeah. I still wasn't happy with her. Bedfellows. But I was happy with myself. It's more accurate. I was still early in my career, so I chose different words. Yes. As I shared that, I was sort of halfway through, and my friend who was in town from New York, it was here in LA, she walked out about five minutes after I'd said that. And she'd come to support, and I was like, where's she going? Anyway, I carried on. And then she called me like an hour or so after I'd finished and said, you know, I felt so bad leaving. But she said, what you said touched me so much that I was in a relationship.

1:08:15And at that moment, we were in a good place together, but I knew it wasn't the relationship. So I wanted to take the opportunity to be with them in a place of peace and say, I love you. I thank you, but I'm moving on. Wow. And it was so beautiful. So otherwise, yeah, we tend to drag those patterns into the next, you know, wherever you are, wherever you go, there you are, you know.

1:08:34Lewis Howes:Yeah, and they may not respond with peace. If you're ending a relationship, most people are not going to be aware or conscious enough to be like, okay, I love you. Thank you. You have a great life too. No, sadly, it doesn't typically work that way. But for your evolution. Yes. I think it's important. And again, I always come to these quotes that come through me. I say true security is the absence of the need for external security. Yeah, it's true. And that's peace. I don't need circumstances to be a certain way in order for me to be okay. Okay, but that takes a very advanced state of mind that I'm not at the effect of life anymore.

1:09:08Lewis Howes:And it's accepting whatever will be afterwards. It's learning to accept, like, you may not enjoy it, but accepting this is how they're going to react or respond or whatever, you know. This is my secret. I don't mind what happens. And I created an addition to that, you know, just, you know, Krishnamurti is a legend. But, you know, that was really, for me, it gave me the sense of freedom from. I play with freedom, obviously, a lot. And I say freedom from is, you know, sort of this monastic kind of view of life where I'm not at the effect, I'm at peace no matter what. And that's powerful. I mean, relative to most people, reaction, as you said, it's all reaction, reaction, reaction.

1:09:41Someone cuts you up in traffic, you're like, you and all the, you know, it's just unconscious reaction is what I call it. But then I was like, okay, that's beautiful. I can get freedom from, which is, I don't mind what happens. I'm at peace. Can I be with this? Whatever's unfolding. That's an advanced state. But for me, I think in my journey now with some of the questions you were asking earlier of where am I Discovering, excuse me, where I'm not free. It's like freedom with Which is freedom with life to have purpose and as a masculine like to have direction right to have acceptance remove suffering But to have a sense of commitment gives direction And so that's really what i'm playing now with at the masculine, you know

1:10:20Lewis Howes:Do you feel like you're not clear then or something or what? No, I hadn't been, for sure. I was Mr. Chill. Like, nothing really fazed me. Even with girlfriends who got really upset, I would listen compassionately, which itself was a problem for them because I didn't show any reaction. They'd much rather... They wanted the reaction. Yeah, they wanted me to get pissed off. And I would just understand. I get it. I'd want to work on it. But then I was making the joke, that's kind of like talking to somebody who's customer service at British Airways. We're sorry you had a bad flight. And it's like, that's not going to work with a partner.

1:10:50So that was an evolution for me. But now it's like direction. You know, holding, having a real sense of commitment towards something is real leadership, you know, even in the face of adversity. And I'd say adversity is part of that, right? The things that we've been through. You know, if there aren't any challenges, I often joke, I take one of my great athletes into a gym and I give him two one pound dumbbells. I'm like, let's pump out 10. It's like, what do you get from that? Like nothing, you know? So it's really the adversity that creates the man, you know, even though a lot of men try to do everything they can to mitigate suffering or adversity.

1:11:22It's like, no, dive right in, you know?

1:11:26Lewis Howes:Yes. You spoke about manifestation for a second earlier about most people don't understand manifestation or they're doing it wrong. Yeah. What is manifestation and what's the right way to do it? Great question. So I would say manifestation is a word that's attributed to something that the ego thinks it's incumbent upon itself to do, right? And that's really where the ego comes from, right? It's like, okay, I am going to manifest. but to your great question earlier about how do we overcome these deep ingrained programs and conditionings we can't do it through willpower i'd say for that reason manifestation has become a bedfellow with willpower right i'm gonna manifest my dream partner the dream home the yacht the money so really if we look at the mechanics of it like not being a spiritual teacher but a physicist your conditioning if we look at the chain of creation of like the genesis of anything i would assert that there's consciousness to begin with and there's subconscious constraints that lead to our conscious thinking built in with our limiting beliefs that create our emotional body, our actions, and our outcome.

1:12:24That is the chain of manifestation. Where most people get stuck is we see experts, teachers, like, do this, don't do that. We're in the realm of action, which is so far downstream. It's like stage five, right? Like, you know, you can with willpower. Okay, the doctor told me this, don't do that. Stop eating in and out burgers. Or what are people are doing? I'll bring my cholesterol level down. But you're never actually going to be able to sustain that because you can't violate identity, which is way upstream. with your subconscious.

1:12:48Lewis Howes:Or you'll always fall back into your programming. Have to, right? You can't violate. So you might be able to get results, but then eventually you fall back into programming. Temporarily, fall in love. You've got all of this new enthusiasm for life. You're like, this is the time, or this is the new year, and I'm going to get it. Whatever it is, we get these momentary glimpses of greatness, you know? And it's like, but it can't be sustained because the wiring is like, yeah, that's cute, but wait till we can kick. So manifestation is really understanding that chain. I look at the three arenas of time, space, and identity.

1:13:18If manifestation is, it's usually something outside of us. I want to manifest, fill in the blank. It's always based in time because wanting as an energetic creates time. Wanting is a future-based proposition. We don't have. If we want, we don't have.

1:13:32Lewis Howes:Is it coming now? Is it coming in a year, 10 years? When will it come to me? Either way, it's in the future. It's not here. It's something we lack in the moment. And it's always, that to me is one of the predominant prisons that I talk about, which is our relationship to the present moment, which is the lens of this isn't it, right? That's the default. Factory settings there. What we have now isn't it. It isn't it. But I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm working really hard. I've got, I subscribed to this new magazine that's going to help me to, you know. Lose five pounds. Yeah, yeah. Men's health, six pack abs, how to get them.

1:14:05Three decades of telling you that you still don't have them. so they're the three arenas where there's this mona misnomer it's outside of me uh it's based in time right it's going to take a while and it's incumbent upon me so they're the big i have to do something but the doing if we look at the cascade subconscious beliefs feelings actions do something outcomes right it's way too late so true manifestation is really the revelatory process of understanding your wiring that you are doing nothing but manifesting all day. That's it. All you do as a human is manifest. So it's not like I'm manifesting because of my wiring and then I, big sort of ego, am going to manifest on top of the manifestation that's happening automatically.

1:14:51Something else. Yeah. So that's where people are like, oh my god. So manifestation isn't outside of us. It's a frequency that we adopt and we realize like frequency precedes form, as I tell people, like in the quantum, we're bringing that which is unmanifest through the chain of creation into the manifest. So manifestation is really that which is based in the way that we're currently wired. So if you want to manifest, you shift your wiring, which leads automatically to different conscious thoughts, different feelings, different actions, and different outcomes. It's not based in time. It's instantaneous.

1:15:23It's a shift. Like the guy,

1:15:25Lewis Howes:this was it happens instantaneously it might take you time to realize to see it shift yes but that's because the external world is way more dense right like that's where i used to transform bodies which was fun it's easy i study human biology exercise physiology i understand all of the energy cycles i know background in pilates yoga all of it whatever calories in calories out but it takes time. I did a live event previous last week prior to my retreat. And this woman, it's always touching, but she was talking about some of the things she was struggling with in her business and coaching and also relationships.

1:16:05And she thought the problem was that she has Lyme, right? And I said, well, when did that happen? What do you think happened? She said, well, I remember that 13 years ago, I think it came on because of a choice I made that I haven't forgiven myself for. And she openly shared, which was courageous of her, and she had had an abortion. She was very young. It was a scary time. We didn't need to get into the details. And she said for that reason, she thinks she's a baby killer. And 13 years later, she's still living in that energy. And so she thinks that Lyme came on, And I kind of talked about the energetics of a compromised system that's lost its integrity, a hostile environment, which is easy for outside forces, whatever they might be, whether you're sick, a disease, a virus, to attack you.

1:16:53You've lost, it's like the building here. If there was a weak spot in the structure, that's where it's going to fall, right? And so we talked about it as tears, you know, asking her to see, was she bad because of her choice? Like, is, you know, cutting you open, is this really your identity or is that just how you feel about yourself? She got relief. And I said, what would become available for you if you didn't carry guilt and shame, if you could be okay with profound acceptance? And what I typically want and what I'm looking for is freedom, peace. I could love myself. And she said, I would be someone that a partner could accept, right?

1:17:31Which showed me another side of where she's stuck, right? That she, with her world, if she's bad, why would anyone love her, right? But I said, oh, interesting. I said, well, okay, I'm not denying that. we'll get to that but like let's just stay with you right now if you could get over the idea that you're a bad person because of what you did and there's a much powerful more distinction about embracing our history like i explain to people all of your problems are because of memories right if you have no memory you have no problem because you're not being informed by anything your memory is the artifact of your programming which only sustains your identity we get to be right the the other quote i say like being right is a poor man's version of self-worth right one of my golfers I'll come back to her.

1:18:11But I helped triple his winnings in two seasons, which is significant, right? Because he found freedom. But he hadn't had a win. He'd gotten top five, seconds, thirds, making$3.6 million compared to$900 ,000. It was significant. And he said, why haven't I won yet? And he said, why don't you caddy for me? And you can see what's happening on Inside the Ropes. You caddy for him? He was on the PGA Tour.

1:18:32Lewis Howes:You caddy for him? Yeah. For one whole weekend? One whole tournament. Four days? Yeah. Wow. When was this? Now, this is way back when, this was probably 15 years ago. Okay, cool. When I started a lot of athletes. Wow. So it was significant, right? And then I was getting a lot of athletes. I got on a contract with a major league baseball team. What did you realize then when you were the whole weekend while caddying with him? So that comes back to the point, and the girl, and the self-fulfilling prophecy is he'd hit the green. I don't know if you're a golfer, and I don't want to bore your audience if they don't play golf, but it was a par four.

1:19:02He'd hit the green in two, but he had a long part, 50 foot, right?

1:19:05Lewis Howes:To try to hit a birdie. Yeah, which is ideal. You want to make the one stats of that over 50, you know, it's like 1%, whatever. But unless it makes two, we move on and make a par. But he, as I handed him the putt, he said, watch me three putt this. Oh, man. He's already projecting the result he's going to get. And the reason that was happening is not him. It's conditioning. It's automatic. He didn't choose that consciously. It's an unconscious reaction to a survival instinct of the fear of making a mistake, which is embarrassing to a professional. But three put, if he says, watch me three put, if he three putts it, he's right and he's safe.

1:19:40Hence the poor man's version of self-worth.

1:19:42Lewis Howes:Yeah, yeah. Even though he's bogeying, which he's meaning. Which you actually don't want from your heart, but you do want from your ego to be right. So you mitigate shame. That's how insidious it is. Isn't that crazy? So anyway, coming back to the woman, which was beautiful. So she said, you know, at least I would be someone that could have a partner, which showed how she felt she didn't deserve that. So anyway, I picked up on that and said, okay, let's get to that. But really, like if you realize truly there was nothing wrong with you, you've never done anything wrong. I'm not, again, I'm not mitigating consequence, right?

1:20:13Like people do stuff. I borrowed my dad's car when I was 15 because he'd started to teach me. He was at work one day and I thought, you know, I'm just going to back it out of the garage because it'll be fun. That's what a 15 year old does. And I knocked down the fucking garden wall, right? That's consequence. And I had to, you know, mow the lawn, wash the car, make the money to build it, right? And then I learned responsibility. was it bad? No, it's exactly what a 15-year-old who's excited to learn to drive should do, right? Like, you know, your girls at some point are going to be scribbling on the walls, you know, and you seem like a very organized...

1:20:45Lewis Howes:Don't project that. Don't program that. And it's just, you know, that's what we do at Dipper State. So she got to the place of self-love and acceptance. And I think one of my more popular quotes would say, what happened happened, couldn't have happened any other way because it didn't. And it's a way to really find profound acceptance for all of our behaviors, notwithstanding that consequences can hurt people and we want to be responsible. So she got to that. And then I said about the partnership, can you now see that, yes, I understand that if you have self-love, which we talked about earlier, is the precursor to really having a profound relationship.

1:21:16She's like, amazing, da-da-da. She feels great. Tears, laughter, relief. Everyone claps. Great, we move on. And I start talking to someone else, and there's probably another hour of conversation. At some point, she's obviously gotten up. She's gone to the bathroom, whatever. And so we're done. We wrap. Thank you for coming. Da-da-da. Everyone's happy. We move on. And there's a ton of people that wait, selfies. They want to say thank you. It's beautiful. And she was in line. And she came up to me. And I shit you not. She said, you know, about 10 minutes after we spoke, I had to go to the bathroom.

1:21:45And so when I came out of the bathroom. The herpes went away. Huh? The herpes went away. That was a different girl.

1:21:51Lewis Howes:This is the abortion woman. I'm sorry.

1:21:58I've seen some fucking miracles. That stuff could happen though. That can. I literally, I am mad enough. I said to her, because she's living in the world, there's something wrong with me. You understood the energy, right? Like this girl thinks she's bad. Therefore, she's open to outside entities, right? And I said to the girl, if you really get that there's nothing wrong with you, even having the energy of, in this case, herpes, herpes has got nowhere to live anymore. And so it will leave your body. The frequency changes, the timelines that I talk about, a future that wasn't previously available to you becomes available because you've shifted frequencies, right?

1:22:29No. that's okay sorry go ahead so her herpes is gone because she never had it yeah yeah but a lime was still there but no she came out with lime yeah this is the one with the line you're doing great tracking it's unbelievable and so she comes out she comes to me and said i came out of the bathroom and a guy asked for my number wow so the instantaneous now i don't know that they're going to get married forever but that she had shifted frequencies attractive to someone else too she was available if you're in the world if i'm bad you're just not available right?

1:22:59Lewis Howes:Your energy is pushing away. Yeah. You're in a relationship with your own conditioning, which means you can't actually be going back to in a relationship and not in relationship. So that stuff happens quickly. That's manifestation. That's shifting timelines where you adopt. It's like a radio. I love that analogy. It's very simple for people to follow. If it's 105.7 FM is classic rock or whatever, and you want R &B, you have to change frequency. You know that. The information, the intel is everywhere. We're surrounded by data. But depending on what you're tuned into will be the precursor to what you manifest.

1:23:31And so when you get that,

1:23:33Lewis Howes:it's, you need to shift the identity, the belief around your identity first.

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1:25:06Lewis Howes:Because knowing your logistics are handled lets you focus on everything else. Visit USPS.com slash Ground Advantage to start shipping with confidence. USPS Ground Advantage. We mean business. So if anyone watching or listening right now has some type of negative belief that is connected to their identity, current state, they have a memory from the past that made them believe that they are bad and wrong. Whatever it might be, abuse, abandonment, they cheated, they did something wrong, someone did something wrong to them. And they believe they are not lovable, they are bad, they are wrong, they are not enough.

1:25:47Lewis Howes:And they've held on to that for 10, 20, 30 years. how would you coach someone watching or listening right now no matter what the belief is around i'm not enough yeah i'm not lovable i'm not worthy how would you speak to them no matter what the story is on how to uncover that that's not true when they've been their whole life they've said this is true yeah this is my identity this is who i am yeah how do they pull back the curtain and realize that they can shift into a new identity that is lovable and enough. Yeah. Beautiful question. And it really, I think, speaks volumes about you, the host, the man, you know, who's so committed to helping people.

1:26:27And even at the beginning, when you asked me, you know, what would be the byproduct of what would make this a powerful conversation? And maybe this is that moment where we can, in my response to you, is that we really help nudge the needle from suffering to freedom for millions of people. So it's slippery. It's not impossible. But not many people are walking around thinking they're not enough. It's different thoughts of, I won't get the promotion. I'm not lovable. I'm not going to find someone. I'm not going to get the success that my parents wish I had. It's typically a subtle step away.

1:27:02Lewis Howes:Guys always leave me, or I always choose the bad guy, or whatever it might be. Yeah. So we need to do a little subtle reverse engineering. So whatever the circumstances are people dealing with, as I said, health, wealth, and relationships are the big three buckets. Whatever it is that you're dealing with, as best as you can, sit quietly, look at what must be the underlying fear. And it's usually a negation. So someone broke up with you. What does that mean? They broke up. Inherently, no suffering. The story that's associated with it is, I'm not attractive enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable.

1:27:33I'm not funny enough. I'm not successful enough. Something I'm not. The darker side is, I'm a horrible person. I am trash or whatever. So try and find that. If you could write it down, that would help, right? To get it out of our head.

1:27:46Lewis Howes:That belief that you have the interpretation around it. Yeah. And the way I phrase it, it's not so much a belief. Beliefs belong to the you that you are for yourself is the way I phrase it. It's not something you believe. It's the you that you are that has that belief. That's the subconscious foundation of the building. We see the building. You see your conscious thoughts of, well, nothing good's ever happening to me. I knew it was too good to be true. Those statements belong to the deeper you, which is, I'm a loser. No one loves me. And that will be associated with something from their childhood.

1:28:16If you can locate that, even more powerful. Well, like I said earlier, my brother was always a better athlete. My sister was a better academic. So I've always felt like I was less than. I'm the black sheep, da, da, da. Whatever the story. So we're looking for that piece of code, the programming. So if you can find that, next step is now we want to investigate the validity of that statement, the way I do it, my sort of proprietary method. If I cut you open, Tom, Danielle, Sally, Bill, whoever's listening am I going to find a physical manufacturing label that says, in your case Lewis, born in Ohio I'm not good enough sit with it, right?

1:28:51Like really, it's important to see the physical no, we're going to find bone and tissue and blood we're not going to find a label that says you're a loser, you're not loved okay, great so it's not part of your hardware that's the distinction where does it live? well, it's in my head it's what I've thought it's what I believe it's what my parents said Like how many kids, it so breaks my heart. Oh, you were a mistake. Or your father wanted a boy and it was a girl. You know, that's a lot of the trans stuff where somebody's trying to become somebody different and, you know, like stuff like that. Or not even that, where people are cutting themselves.

1:29:21They abuse themselves because they think that who they are is wrong or mistake. Like very heavy stuff, right? Fundamentally trying to get out of their own skin.

1:29:28Lewis Howes:So it's in their mind or is it more in their nervous system? Both. So not mind, nervous system, one and the same thing, right? Brain being the biggest extension of that. Now, this is a powerful distinction. I don't want to overwhelm people. This is the brain. When I say, where's your mind? Most people go here. No, that's the brain. The mind is something around us. It's a world we live in. So just like we're in this building, it's obviously a beautiful building. But if it had mold in the drywall, we're at the effect of that mold because we live inside of it, right? And to depend on your constitution, if you're built like an ox, you'll get away with it.

1:29:58If you're very sensitive and you have a respiratory-like compromise in your genes, it's going to impact you more. But if you walk around 24-7, which everyone does, in the state of mind, in your state of mind at the deepest level, which it is because you're human, I'm not something, then you are, to whatever degree, acquiescing to that, destructing yourself.

1:30:17Lewis Howes:You're manifesting from that state of mind. Hence, you see, that's the manifestation chain. So we want to discover that. It's not part of your hardware. It's not a label. But it is the mind and the world that you live in, which is this fundamental, what I call 1.0 operating system. And it's not a belief? No, it's before the belief. It's an identity. It's an identity. So identity is first. Identity has beliefs. You, the you that you are. Tied to the identity. Correct. They're synonymous. They're extensions downstream. Then the beliefs become the thoughts that create the emotions that create the actions that create the outcomes.

1:30:49That's the cascade.

1:30:51Lewis Howes:But the first thing is identity. Is there anything before that? Consciousness. Consciousness. Then your individual identity. Yeah. Then your beliefs. Yeah. Then your thoughts, feelings, emotions, actions, or behaviors. People just get that, change their life. So when we see an expert specialist, again, there's amazing people out there who want to help. Typically, they traffic in the domain of action and behavior. Do this, don't do that. Oh, okay, you've got high cholesterol, so you have to do this. But high cholesterol will have all sorts of energetic connotations to the way that people are holding on to something because they've got trauma that they haven't accepted or released.

1:31:28And so there's an emotional component, right? Like, you know, the whole sickness, psychosomatics, it's a big thing. The autoimmune that people throw in the allopathic world as a label on top of really it's you attacking yourself. Like I said, the hostile environment that most people live in, which is the world of self-betrayal and self-abandonment. And I'm a bad person, right? Inadequacy, insecurity, and scarcity. That's informing physiology more than anything, right? We live in a toxic world. We're all going to get bombarded with all the shit in the sky and the soil and the water and blah, blah, blah.

1:31:57Lewis Howes:You can shift that by how you interpret it and how you defend yourself, I guess. Yeah. And just being in a state of harmony with life. Like I always say, I have an intimate relationship with reality. I'm not fighting reality, which puts me in sympathetic mode. I can't digest food. You don't sleep. All of that. Inflammation, right? Resistance. So anyway, so now if they can isolate that, if you can find the knot or even heavier, the I am something negative. I'm bad. I'm a loser. I'm worthless. But typically, it's I'm not this. I'm not attractive enough. I'm not young enough. I'm not successful enough.

1:32:28I'm not loved. I'm not wanted. The big one is really, I'm not going to be okay. That's the fear of a future that hasn't transpired yet, right? So then we look at that. And then we want to ask the question, is it a truth, an absolute truth, undeniable that you're not good enough? Regardless of everything. You have, well, this and this, and my dad said this, and my dad. I don't care about the reasons of justification. Is it an actual truth? Appeal to your own intuition and your intelligence. Is it that who you are as a being is not good enough? Or is that something you've adopted with all the justifications from childhood?

1:33:00Lewis Howes:Or just something you believe. Yeah. And the belief is really thoughts over time, right? It's the accumulation that has become now an identity. The evidence that you've compiled and said, see, look at those evidences of why. And why it's so insidious is because once we start to accumulate, you know, when I work with teams, especially when I was working with the major league guys and still work with a couple of players here and there, managers, owners, you know, CEOs would always like, what's going on when we have winning streaks and losing streaks? And I say winning streaks, the absence in winning streaks is accumulation.

1:33:32In Ayurveda, which is a healing science of yoga, like Chinese medicine, there's six stages of disease and stage one is accumulation, where we start to build up an imbalance. So someone committed to your health, you might find that fascinating where you're more a fire type, fire on earth. So if you have too much heat, alcohol, stress, spicy foods, that you start to feel the symptoms, which is aggravation is second stage. Little acid reflux, belching, you know, can't sleep at night and a little bit of loose stools or maybe your skin starts to break out and it starts to spread through the system, right?

1:34:05But then emotionally, if you recognize the accumulation over time of evidence is what eventually creates the personality, right? But it's self-fulfilling because the lack, the insecurity, the inadequacy creates the thoughts, feelings, emotions, da-da-da, which then you get the outcome that's like see i told you i was a loser yeah all right yeah so

1:34:24Lewis Howes:now it builds upon itself and as dr joe dispenza says your personality is your personal reality exactly and then your personal reality reinforces your personality so to break that cycle takes a you know discernment it takes like a serious amount of commitment to like wanting to break free which is why i said again there's no greater adversity or challenge you'll ever face than your own identity. It's the ultimate addiction. So now that hopefully somebody has written down, I have believed that I'm not enough for years or that I felt that I wasn't wanted because I was adopted or my parents said I was a mistake or that I feel like I'm not worthy because, you know, I was mocked or I was in a school of different ethnicity and I was bullied or, you know, so I don't fit in, I don't belong.

1:35:04Like it can be the do not, like I do not belong, right? If we can find that now we want to investigate the validity, which is a fancy way of saying, is it like really true that you don't belong? And here's the answer. The catchphrase, it's never true, right? It's always no. It's the way that you've identified, right? So now the next question is, okay, double negation. I'm not not good enough. Who could I be in the absence of the constraint is the next step. So if that's gone, you're not a loser. You're not not loved. You're not not wanted. The dissolution process, who could you be? That's when the breathing patterns change, tension comes down if we were measuring metrics, which hopefully one day I will in a show or something, you'll see the heart rate drop, the blood pressure drop instantaneously.

1:35:49Not because you're on a beta blocker, but because you shifted from an energy of hostility to one of love and acceptance. Then it's like, wow, oh my God, what becomes available? I don't have anything to prove. I could be anyone. And that then takes practice. So awareness, unconscious, conscious. We negate the constraint that we've been living in somewhat obliviously for decades. We see it's not true. We now tap into what I call the 2.0 operating system, which is the inherent qualities of the soul that you are. You start to live from love, not trying to get it. You start to live from worth as opposed to trying to justify it.

1:36:24You start to live from power versus trying to force your way in life. And so that's the shift. And that's a different world.

1:36:31Lewis Howes:Yeah, it is a different world. And it can come in an instant once you unlock the realization, but it could also go fall back in an instant to an old identity that you've held on to for 30, 40, 50 years. For sure. So how does someone stay in a new identity? Is there an integration phase? How long does it usually take to stay in a true new identity versus going to the old self? Yeah, for sure. And this is why, you know i don't know how many people see in the matrix i'm sure you have but there's a great line in there where you say we don't free a mind after a certain age because the degree to which somebody has lived in this evidence with the self-feedback loops of like i told you so so hard so hard it becomes actually uh sort of like this you know um what do they call it like during the whole covid like this cognitive dissonance right like it just doesn't even make sense i can't believe that there's nothing wrong with me because that's all i've known it's like in shulshan redemption the old guy Brooks, you know, when he's left out, he's been in prison for 60 years or something.

1:37:30And he goes to work in the grocery store and he's like, please, sir, can I use the bathroom? So conditioned that he doesn't even have any sovereignty or independence. So, but it depends on a couple of things. The severity of the suffering that's precursor to it, right? Like if someone had like, when I held this man on stage, who was, I think 36. And so he'd been estranged from his mom through his own choice. According to him, it was really a reaction to the fear that he's trying to avoid. For seven years, not talking to her. when he really got that he's been living in the world of it's all my fault for two plus decades, the tears, like I got up to hold him because he was sobbing and literally everyone could see his body convulse like a baby who's just weeping.

1:38:12And so in that moment, the shift was sufficient that his whole physiology changed. As I said, I know it sounds a little bit -

1:38:20Lewis Howes:He released it all. Yeah, he released it. I would say there's probably still some, you know, like it can be really profound. Like, Like, you know, it's like, it's a crass example, but like if you're driving on the road on a road trip and you haven't used the restroom for a while and the next rest stop isn't for 15 miles. You know, it's like the relief from the degree of suffering previous has commensurate relief. So that's one part. If the awakening or the unconscious conscious process is so profound because of the previous form of suffering, then the ability to integrate is way more powerful.

1:38:52You may never go back because now you see. It's like you can't unsee. Now, you can never unsee. You'll have that moment. But if it's a little bit more benign or it doesn't have the same degree of trauma, and it always has to be some sort of somatic release, like because it is part of the body. It's not enough to just intellectualize these things. Whenever I'm working with someone, I see respiratory patterns change. I see, again, I can feel their body soften, their facial features even, like especially when guys have furrows and like anger. Yeah, you look younger. Totally. I mean, this guy was taller.

1:39:19Like, you know, the absence of the weight that he was carrying of guilt and shame manifested in a physiology that was a bit stooped. And suddenly, this man shows up, you know, and even some of the women like, whoa, I didn't even find him attractive. And this is unconscious, you know. So that's part of it. But then, yeah, it's the older someone gets, the more established those neural networks have become, the more evidence they have. It's like a child. You know, when I work with younger people, like when they see it, it's like, boom, they're on a different timeline immediately. because they don't have sufficient evidence to justify the old identity.

1:39:51So yeah, it's profound stuff.

1:39:53Lewis Howes:How do our mental stories and emotional fears manifest in the physical body? Oh, that's a whole podcast. I mean, dis-ease. Okay, so I'll break down the current operating system, what I call the one-point-on mindset, which its predominant imperative is survival. So it's based in limitation, which we've covered ad nauseum today, which is limiting code. I'm not something like a limitation in the language that we use to identify ourself creates the predominant emotion of fear, right? That's the cascade. Limiting language, it's a survival instinct. And therefore we are to some degree, it's a cascade, you know, terror and panic at one extreme and mild concern and worry at another.

1:40:34But overall, it's a fear based relationship to life. Looking out for don't want to get in trouble with the missus, don't want to upset the boss, don't want to lose my job. It's language. Language is the limitation. How that shows up in our emotional body is predominantly fear. Now, people are walking around and say, oh, I'm not scared, but I probably, if you booed them or, you know, they got some news about they're about to be fired, they would go into fear, right? It's there beneath the surface. As I say, other people's words don't upset you. They just reveal what you already believed about yourself, right?

1:41:06Fear then gives the overarching experience, which we've discussed again, certainly now and then prior, suffering. Suffering, first noble truth of Buddhism, I think. You know, to be human is to suffer. Inextricably connected. It's like saying, I'm going to jump in the ocean, but I don't want to get wet. You can't, right? To be human is to suffer. So limiting code, subconscious 1.0 construct. Fear is the predominant emotion. Suffering is the overarching experience, which then leads to dis-ease, the absence of ease. That's how it cascades into the physiology. So it's unavoidable. And sickness, and again, I talked about cancer, which I know is a sort of sensitive subject for people, but that's the way I look at it.

1:41:43But whatever anybody creates, not consciously, so there's no guilt or shame, because a lot of people go into this woe is me and they start berating themselves. Oh, it's my own fault because of the way. It's not -

1:41:52Lewis Howes:That doesn't help you create more ease. Doesn't. You can't, again, can't be held accountable for that which you're oblivious to. There's a distinction between fault and responsibility. Fault is all about shame and guilt. It's up to you. It's incumbent upon you. Responsibility is, in ways that I don't even comprehend, I'm nonetheless curating the events of my life and everything that's happened. And that's power. I might not know why this thing, but if I can take responsibility, I was one T-bone by a car that went through a red light and I was on a Vespa. Don't have to be a rocket scientist to know who won that fight, right?

1:42:21I spread across PCH. Fortunately, I was okay. I was wearing a leather jacket, which was an anomaly. I was going to the premiere of the documentary Heel that I was in many, many moons ago. So thankfully, I was wearing a leather jacket. I still had tons of road rash. Clearly, on the human level, the guy, sweet guy, He's like, we exchanged details, insurance, his insurance, pay for a new bike. And it's so funny. I love this about myself. Like the insurance company kept sending me emails and letters. We need to get your medical bills. And I'd already submitted them. It was like 2 ,500 bucks from my Chinese medicine acupuncture day.

1:42:55Because people play the game and they were expecting 200 grand and MRIs. And I'm like, no, I'm good. I take care of myself. And they're like, no, there's got to be something wrong. But I took responsibility for the fact that my soul, for whatever reasons, was in that moment. And therefore, there's something from that experience that I'm looking to learn from, that I'm not a victim of what happened. Yes, on the human level, he takes responsibility and liability. He went through the red light. Fortunately, he wasn't going so fast. I might not even be here to have a conversation. But I still, at the deepest level, own the fact that I'm in that moment of life.

1:43:27That's power. That's true responsibility. Otherwise, as I tell people, it's an on-off switch. You're either a victim or you're responsible. Choosing 100 % responsibility is not easy, but it's powerful. So then to come back to this sort of understanding of like, we're doing the best we can with the limits of our current awareness, right? But then we want to see who could I be in the absence of those concerns? And that's where we bring these unconscious, so the beliefs that we have are an extension of the identity that we are. And so the events that we curate are nonetheless for our own emancipation fundamentally.

1:44:02They're here to help us break free from these constraints. So that's the manifestation, the self-fulfilling prophecy. And yeah, it's not for the light of heart, but it's powerful.

1:44:14Lewis Howes:Do you think a lot of suffering, physical suffering, comes from mental disease? I would say the majority, like the question about disease. Like hit by a car or something like that, but I mean. Yeah. And the way I distinguish it, to keep it simple, I think words are helpful if you really look at them from their ontology and where they maybe come from. Like I associate pain with physical suffering from emotional and psychological. So I can't get rid of pain. I'm going to have my own pain. I was standing up for like, you know, eight plus hours a day doing this retreat. My back was sore, right? There's pain.

1:44:49But then if I had had a conversation on top of the pain, which is like, this is bullshit. This is unfair. I don't want to be up here. You'd suffer on top of the pain. Now it's amplified. So that's why I can't in any stretch of the imagination proclaim to be able to get rid of pain. No one's ever going to do that. But I do feel confident that I can end suffering because suffering is the relationship to life, pain being one of those. So disease, dis-ease, the absence of ease and how it shows in the manifest world of our bodies and health is really to understand that cascade. So people can at least be empowered.

1:45:21Like of course, there's a myriad of different other contributing factors. Like we have compromised DNA. People have MTHFRs, their metabolism, their methylation pathways, things I know for myself that like, you know, that I don't have strong immunity in my gut or my lungs. My serotonin is slightly dysfunctional. My mitochondrial don't clear very, like I've done my deep dive on my DNA, but I haven't taken medication ever, you know, like, I mean, apart from like something acute, right. You know, but I'm, I don't take drugs. I mean, it's not medication. That's another distinction. If anyone's doing a refill, it's not a medication anymore.

1:45:55It's a drug, right? medication is curative or preventative so that's no slight on people but maybe if you want to be well let's look at what are the underlying causative factors the disease where are you in a state of the absence of ease which is a byproduct of suffering fear and limitation which is why i've seen the most ridiculous i mean one of my favorite stories a woman in my mastermind she had stage four endometriosis 29 the world the mind that she lived in that was creating limitation was that her needs don't matter like that's how she felt in her family she was dismissed and horrible for a little girl.

1:46:26But what better way to manifest physically down the chain of creation than her needs not mattering as a woman than the inability to procreate, perhaps the greatest gift for a woman. Two months after the mastermind went back for test, zero endometriosis. Wow. Yeah. And I mean, you've heard these stories, I'm sure. Joe's a friend of mine as well. And he does a lot of that in his retreats. But that to me is not a miracle. It's a miracle to the cognitive dissonance of somebody who believes things aren't possible. But as I tell people, what we believe is possible is not what's possible, right? And so I have learned over the years to become more friendly, familiar, and accepting of the word miracle because to me, it's less a miracle.

1:47:05It's more just physics. If you shift frequencies, your body's gonna shift.

1:47:09Lewis Howes:It's alignment. When you get back into alignment, your body aligns to a state of healing, a state of wholeness rather than a state of disease or some type of cancerous result, whether it be skin rashes or cancers or anything else that's hurting you outside of a car crash or something like that. It's like that quote, I think, from Einstein. It says you can't solve a problem from within the same level of consciousness that created it. And so I would assert with healing, with all the best intentions in the world, and I have so much compassion for people who've been on journeys with what they call chronic conditions, which is another misnomer.

1:47:47There's nothing chronic. Chronic is just the illusion that helps the ego to hold on to the evidence over time. And if you really get that, then that adds the strength of attachment of the ego that I have a chronic injury. No, you have pain. Like somebody in my group has often said they had chronic pain until they realized they didn't have pain when they have it, and they don't have it when they don't have it. Chronic just creates the significance to it, right? But when we realize that likewise that we can't create, we can't solve a problem from the same level of consciousness that created it, you can't heal from the same within the same level of limiting code and emotions that created it.

1:48:22So this is both beautiful and maybe confronting for people is that people right now out there listening to this who are trying to heal, don't take this the wrong way, but the you that is struggling can't heal. Healing is on the other side of the you that is the precursor to the current sickness and disease that you're experiencing. That's both the bad and the good news because I'm trying to heal, but the I that is the identity founded in limitation, fear, and suffering and disease is the obstacle to the healing that is wanting to happen in the absence of the constraints that you've become identified with.

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1:51:01Lewis Howes:Just answer a few questions and get matched with a therapist. and you can feel confident knowing BetterHelp therapists have at least three years and 1 ,000 hours of hands-on experience. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com slash greatness. That's B-E-T-T-E-R-H-E-L-P.com slash greatness. So how does someone heal themselves then? They don't. The body knows how to do that. They have to get out of the frequency, which is the precursor to the sickness in the first place. That goes back to the exercise I took everyone through. So, you know, the idea of consciousness to identity, to beliefs through that process.

1:51:42Yeah, to get to the eventually the I'm not something. So even in that case, people who have been struggling with something for a long time, one of the biggest obstacles to healing is the belief that they're never going to be okay. If you live in a world where I'm never going to be okay, that is complete and utter devastation, right? How disempowering, disheartening, like if I'm never going to be okay, I'm just going to do the best I can. One of my most powerful distinction I say to people is, in that case, you can only become the best version of your limited self. And that's what humans are doing.

1:52:10Lewis Howes:And you're always a victim. Always. But you're a victim, again, not a circumstance, not of the condition, but of your own perspective, which is reinforcing, reinforcing the very thing that you proclaim with all the best intentions in the world that you want to get away from. Yeah, you don't want. You don't want. But again, this is a hard thing for people to hear. Most people don't have problems. They protect problems. Wow. Why is that? because the number one way of being right, right, the self-value, being right is the poor man's version of self-worth. Wow, man. They protect their problems. Yeah.

1:52:42That should be like an ouch and a wow for many people.

1:52:45Lewis Howes:Most people don't have problems. They protect their problems. Because the identity, which is illusory, the very idea of ourself is built on the foundation of lies, and therefore, in order to sustain it, you have to keep finding evidence, otherwise it falls apart. I took people through an exercise in my mastermind where they have to tell their story over and over, typically only takes two or three times until they become sick of their own sleep. They're like, oh, yeah. In the presence of someone loving. One person at the retreat, she even forgot her story on the second go around. She's like, oh, my God, I just realized.

1:53:11I can't even remember what it was. We're holding on to these stories for so long, right? It's exhausting. Exhaustion is the number one word I hear from people when they look back and realize that they've been living in a lie. How do you feel? I'm just so exhausted. Because you're fighting the invisible ghost. I say it's like getting into a ring, a UFC ring or whatever, a boxing ring, and you're being told that their world's greatest fighter is opposite you, but they're invisible. You're in a perpetual state of anticipation of threat. Wow. And you never actually fight them. Because there's no one there other than your own illusion.

1:53:44Lewis Howes:Wow. Can't help but laugh, I tell people, until you realize the only thing you're fighting is your own imagination. Isn't that crazy? Your own perception of what may or may never happen, right? Yeah. Yeah. Women, I feel for women, you know, because we as men, and I know you're a stand for this as much as I am to get my brothers and fellow men to like get out, at least get out of the world of abuse, even if you can't step into the lover, provider, protector and lover, you know, to at least stop beating up on women. But for that reason, women, the number one constraint I see in women is that they're not safe.

1:54:14And they have all the evidence for it, right? And so how that manifests, particularly with women who struggle in the arenas of cancers that show up, and particularly in these sensitive areas of the female body, is that they're in a constant state of flight. But if you're in this world of I'm not safe, then you have no choice but to constantly be on guard. And typically, that's going to lead to where women, I tell people they shift from resilience, which is the inherent capacity of a woman. And like women are insane. Like you've just seen this with your wife, like the delivery and God forbid now for the next 18 years, who she has to be, how she has to show up, right?

1:54:49And beyond. But then resilience when it's coupled with one of these subconscious constraints of inadequacy or lack of self-worth or not good enough becomes tolerance. And for women, when they see that, it's like, oof, I become way too tolerant, you know? And so for me, for the men to be able to step up and to hold space and realize, wow, in my own partnerships, my own wives, my girlfriends, my mothers, my sisters, Where am I a threat to their safety? And that's not an easy thing for a man to look at. But it is the access to the evolution of who they get to be as a real man.

1:55:20Lewis Howes:We've got a couple of final questions for you. Sure. It's been very powerful. I thought we could go on for hours. Yeah, I know. I want to keep going on for hours. I want to have you back on in the future. But you've worked with a lot of elite athletes, billionaires, CEOs, and people who have accomplished incredible external success. what is the number one thing that has allowed all of them to reach it? And of all these top billionaires, CEOs, and famous individuals, what is the thing that most of them are suffering with the most? Wow, two sides of the same coin, right? Meaning, so I would say it seems antithetical, but one of the things that has created their success is fear.

1:56:04You know, there's a great line in Batman something rising or Batman rises, whatever it is. And I forget, but they're in this like big hell hole, right? Like they're all thrown into like a deep, deep well and there's these men, right? And Batman, I've forgotten the characters, Christopher Lee, is that the actor or whoever it was?

1:56:23Lewis Howes:Not Christopher Nolan, that's the director. Yeah, yeah. Christopher. Is it Christopher something? Anyway. Good looking dude. He's a star. And he's trying to. British guy. Yeah. Yeah, Christopher something. So he's trying to get out, right? But he's got the rope around. And so then he speaks to the guy, the sage, who represents that wise old man who's like, do it like the kid did it. And he's like, how's that without the rope? And so fear, whilst it can be our greatest sort of self-destruction and our compromise and our unbecoming, is nonetheless, for athletes with talent can be the motivating force for often as sad as it is to say to disprove those who we felt didn't have our loyalty or didn't have our backs you know the dad or the high school teacher that mocked the child I'm going to prove them wrong right so so often I've worked with again like in the world of material success billionaires who nonetheless have sicknesses disease third marriages kids with addiction and a lot of anxiety or medications that they're on, drugs that they're taking, but have amassed external success, but in the absence of internal security.

1:57:32And so that was the way that the hungry ghost, the addiction where you can never get enough of something that almost works, in this case material success, has nonetheless never fulfilled on the hole that can ever be filled. And so that also, as I said, two sides of the same coin. So that is the motivating factor for a lot of accomplishment, but then can leave to the lack of fulfillment because it's never actually something that can be overcome. So I've seen that. And what's so beautiful is that when I get to work with people who have an immense amount of skill or immense amount of success or immense amount of talent or whatever it is, that then when they tap into this living from love, living from expansion, the impact, the freedom, right?

1:58:12The absolute freedom that then ironically becomes the precursor to even greater success. I'll never forget the story. When I first started with an MLB team, and I grew up in England with a soccer ball at my feet. I didn't know, you know, baseball from a hole in the road. And my friend was joking a lot. He's like, what exactly are you going to tell people? He was hysterical. He's like, you're going to just tell them to keep their eye on the ball? Like, no, these are guys who command$200 million between them and a team. But there was one guy who called me soon after I'd done my spring training talks and he was struggling.

1:58:42And it was actually a couple of months into the season because for three months in the previous season, he hadn't had a home run. And for two months into the next. So it was almost a whole season of six months across two. And he was a middle-of-the-pack kind of home run guy. He wasn't a first baseman who does the 30 hits of homers. And he wasn't small like shortstop and a guy who gets six or seven. He was a good solid 15 to 18 per season. He hadn't had any. And so, you know, the nature of a locker room with men who are like, you know, jeering and competing and messing around with each other. And he was getting a lot of stick from the guy.

1:59:12Don't worry, you're not a power player. And, you know, they're messing with him. And it was starting to grind. And so he called me one day. He was sitting in the parking lot of the stadium. And I tend to bring a lot of tough love, especially to my guys. So he's telling me the situation. I said, so what if I told you for the rest of your career, and you probably had another five, six seasons in him, that you never, ever hit another home run? Will you be okay? Or do I need to call your mom? Right, right, right, right. And of course, you know, the immediate resistance, which is there, the reactions that we've talked about, is like, dude, no, that's terrible.

1:59:43Like, I'm getting paid millions of dollars to perform. How could I? just even in the course of this almost season, it's horrific. I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed. I feel terrible. I'm not sleeping, all the ramifications. And I said, no, no, no, you've got to listen to the question. If for the rest of your career, six, seven season, five, six, seven, you never hit a run, are you going to be okay? And eventually you got to the right answer. Yeah. I know it's not what you want. I know it's not what I want. I know it's definitely not what the team wants who are paying you a million dollars to perform, but are you going to be okay?

2:00:12and so the exercise was to take him to the peace and the relief and the profound acceptance that even in the absence of what we desire that we realize that we're going to be okay even if i fail i'm going to be okay yeah yeah and that profound capital a acceptance of i don't mind what happens let i mean i could hear him excel on the phone right we were it was with the diamond backs at the time and we were playing the cardinals his second at back boom biggest home run The next game. No, that game, that night. Wow.

2:00:45Lewis Howes:That's crazy. Freedom. He had freedom. He had complete freedom, which is why my whole work is about freedom. He had found peace with a future that he was otherwise trying to avoid. There's three stages of the way that we relate to time, as I tell people. Past, we're holding on to things we haven't reconciled. Present, we're resisting what is. And then future, we're trying to avoid the pain that we haven't yet reconciled. This is the way that people live through life. So he was in a state of holding past trauma, resisting the way things are, and concerned and fearful of a future that hasn't happened yet.

2:01:15In that one conversation, we reconciled all of it, mitigated any of the resistance. He's an athlete who has hit millions of home runs over the course of his life, you know, from being a kid, you know, and certainly in his dreams and his visions and his practice. His body knows what to do when a ball's coming at him at 79 curveball, 89 fastball, whatever. Like, he knows how to respond, not react. and so he said it was the easiest home run he's ever hit in his entire career yeah let it go because he was not attached to any outcome wow yeah but it's so hard to not be attached to an outcome when you want it so badly right and that's that balance that is the the eternal dance to your question of like what do i see as a quality in those who attain success and what do i see as their downfall it's one and the same thing is how do you find that balance between commitment which gives direction and a sense of unstoppability, but then also profound humility for when things don't go your way.

2:02:13Lewis Howes:It's high engagement, low attachment. Yeah. And so the quote, which I don't readily give out, but like, you know, for my athletes, they say fully committed, totally unattached. Yeah, yeah. That's good. And that's a tough balance. That's tough, man. Yeah. It's tough. That is freedom. Yeah. It's like the quote, just to finish that, because he's the greatest golfer of all time, which is Jack Nicklaus, right? Better than Tiger. Tiger obviously changed the sport, but Jack has got the biggest accolades. One of his quotes was one of my favorites to this point. He said, one of the greatest parts of winning is being okay losing.

2:02:48He said he didn't say I want to lose. He didn't say I'm focused on losing. It's like, you know, the old adage of like, winners focus on winning, losers focus on winners. And when I saw that, it was so profound. He didn't say I'm okay with it. He didn't say I'm focused on it. He said, I'm okay if it happens. When you're okay with any outcome, you have nothing that's holding you back. Yeah, yeah. You play free.

2:03:07Lewis Howes:You play more free. Yeah. Yeah. What do you wish everyone knew about fame, success, and money?

2:03:19They're not what you think they are. And they're never the ultimate destination. You're not looking for some external exogenous form of accomplishment. You're looking for the experience you think that's going to bring you. and that experience is available to you right now because it's the essence of who you are.

2:03:36Lewis Howes:We've got a lot more questions. We'll have to have you back on another time to go over them. But this has been really powerful, Peter. And I want to acknowledge you for bringing so much wisdom from all the years you've been doing this work to this conversation, this interview, and for breaking down things that seem extremely challenging for people to understand with great stories, lessons and ideas that I hope that people can connect to and simplify things that seem so challenging for them to understand. So I want to acknowledge you for bringing that today. Thank you. I appreciate that. And for all that you're doing for so many people in the world through your programs, your coaching, your events.

2:04:17Lewis Howes:And you've got a three-month mastermind coming up pretty soon. and you'll have these ongoing in a new membership platform called 2.0 World. Where can people go to be a part of this or learn more about your content? Firstly, thank you for the words. It means a lot coming from you and especially in the vein of what we were sharing earlier of that little sort of Achilles heel where it's nice to be seen, so thank you. No, I really care deeply and I remember when I was younger, not that long ago, maybe a decade or so, I really thought my caring was a shortcoming, you know, and I realized, no, actually, it's a superpower.

2:04:55So people can find, you know, through all the usual channels, Instagram, Facebook, my website is all my name, Peter Crone, at Peter Crone, Peter Crone.com. And the Mastermind, you know, for those who want to go deep and do the three-month journey, I do theory, coaching, profound, you know, the deep philosophy about how we are as humans and what holds us back and how to break free. And then the 2.0 World is my new membership platform that will probably be out in October or so. And then next year, I'll be taking people through the entire upgrade of the new operating system of Freedom, Love, and Possibility.

2:05:29Lewis Howes:Do you have a book also? I'm writing it. I've been writing it for those who've followed me for a while, for way too long in their mind. But it's the greatest marketing campaign. This might be one of your blocks. Because I was thinking before, I was like, I don't think you have a book. No. And I know you've probably thought of it for a decade plus. Yeah. I've got a series of books. And I think the issue is that I keep doing all the templates simultaneously versus just locking in on the one. Just do one. Yeah. So I'm doing that now. Just do one and give yourself a deadline. Yeah. And just, it's got to come out next year.

2:05:55Yes.

2:05:56Lewis Howes:No matter what. We're way closer because now at the point of the proposal, the deal versus me just being in my own little silo writing. Sure, sure, sure. And now I'm engaged with publishers. And so it's actually on the track. Okay. All right, cool. Yeah. Thank you. I'm going to hold you to that. Yeah. It's got to come out. Absolutely. Peter Crone everywhere. Make sure you guys follow him. Check it out. I love your content. You got a lot of great stuff. And people can see you coaching people live on your content as well, which is really cool. Yeah. That seems to be the stuff that goes really viral because people can relate.

2:06:22That's the beauty of even the mastermind is thousands of people from around the world, but I only coach a few. But everyone can relate to the story, the resonance of what it is to be human and the fundamental fears everyone can relate to. Beautiful.

2:06:34Lewis Howes:Two final questions. This one's called The Three Truths. Uh-oh. Hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want to live in this earth. You get to create and be, do, have everything you want to create. But it's the last day, many years away. Yeah. And for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your content with you. Okay. So we don't have access to this conversation, all the books that you end up writing, all the content you have on your social media, it's gone. Yeah. Hypothetical. But on the final day, you get to leave behind three main lessons that you would want to leave behind.

2:07:05Lewis Howes:Wow. I call it three truths. Wow. And that's all we would have to remember you by with your content. Yeah. What would those three truths be for you? That's a great question. I never even heard. Number one, I love you. I really want people to know that. And not in any way to dismiss who somebody is, but my nature, and I would assert our nature as beings, is to love. And I would, in the most poetic way that I say, it's like we all love. Again, I'm paraphrasing myself and I forgot. Everybody loves everybody. It's just most people don't know that yet. So I love you, number one. Number two, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you, despite how much you try to defend that and prove it.

2:07:54Lewis Howes:What if you've done a lot of bad things, though? That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. It just means that there's consequences of your behavior to take responsibility for. For your actions, yeah. And even the things that you've done that are bad, I would assert, are an extension of the conditioning that wasn't necessarily yours, but things you've inherited based on the lessons that you're here to learn. So either way, you're a beneficiary of your own behaviors if you choose to look back on them and grow. And the third thing? It all works out. Yeah, in your favor. The old expression, it all works out in the end.

2:08:33That's true. And if it's not the end. If it hasn't worked out, it's not the end. Exactly.

2:08:38Lewis Howes:Final question, Peter, what is your definition of greatness? Oh my gosh.

2:08:49God, I love words so much that I really want to articulate this in a way that honors the platform and the man that I'm with. My definition of greatness, I would say it is when a soul has discovered its own existence. It has transcended the constraints with which we arrive to realize that the very essence of who we are is always what we've been looking for. To live from that space of true freedom, love, and possibility and to impart that onto others so that they might discover the same within themselves.

2:09:28Lewis Howes:Peter Crone, my man. Thank you, brother. Appreciate it. Thank you. It's powerful, man. Much love to you and to everyone. Thank you. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you. And I can't wait to see you in the next episode.

2:10:03Lewis Howes:I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. 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.

2:10:41Lewis Howes:And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now, it's time to go out there and do something great.

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