8 SECRETS To ACHIEVE Your Most AMBITIOUS GOALS Today | Lisa Nichols & Lewis Howes

when the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two different directions you ain't going nowhere when you align pull it yeah when you align the tongue in your mouth to go in the same direction as the tongue in your shoe now we can move don't pursue the things pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come i promise you awareness plus action equals transformation please don't skip that plus action part because action is the antidote for despair see some people you haven't pushed non-negotiable yet you're still optional i really would love to be successful and so you want to be successful i want to be successful i want to make money i want to make money i want to be healthy but it's not non-negotiable yet let me just tell you can't take the elevator to the top right in a number stairs if you've been feeling stuck with no sense of purpose in your life this video with lisa nichols will break down the secrets to how to achieve your dreams and change your life [Music] i love your message i love your insights i love your wisdom i also love your story and i want to dive into it before we begin the process of how to be abundant because you didn't start out abundant right no not at all i'm curious now growing up who is the most influential person in your life and what was the biggest lesson you remember them teaching you my grandmother my father's mother my grandmother bernice and she taught me that she said she prophesied over my life meaning she spoke life into me when i didn't see it for myself and she said several things but one of the key things was she said baby as you grow up you're going to impact lives and they're going to write about you i have no idea how she knew and many people are going to talk about you she said do yourself a favor take everything they've written about you and put it in the file cabinet don't read it she said and when you get older my age sit in your favorite rocking chair grab a cup of tea and be entertained by who they thought you were while all the time you knew who you were and she just instilled this sense of humility like you are a servant leader and i don't care what they call you expert guru master you are a servant leader you remember that because they'll say a lot of things and so she has been my anchor you know she's long since deceased but she's been my anchor and that was just one of the most powerful things and then she also said baby you can get all the knowledge in the world she said but only time will give you the wisdom that i have well i was like whoa i was like i think she just grandma checked me you know and so i still to this day with all the knowledge that i've acquired from great books like yours and great books like stephen covey's and great books but from phil jackson 11 rings and howard schultz onward you know all these great pieces of work i still sit at the feet of seniors i still sit my spiritual mentor i sit at her feet once a quarter i sit at people's feet when they're 20 years older than me or more because they have something i don't have which is wisdom time yeah so she's she anchored me in two things which both leave me in humility wow okay what's the wisdom you have from all your time so far um don't count the number of times you've been knocked down get attached to the number of times you get up hmm all right i'm gonna get these truth bombs all day right right boom boom boom boom i love it um i'm curious now because you didn't start out you know with a lot of money and with a lot of abundance mindset did you right um it wasn't just not a lot of money you know it's one thing to be fiscally broke it's another thing to be emotionally broken two very different things and i was broke and broken and in 1994 i had to go get on government's assistance just to feed my my newborn baby um i had to get on wic women infant and children and i still say it and you know i say it often i'm interviewed i was interviewed 155 times in five months for my previous book no matter what and it still hits me in the same place i i was ashamed to stand in line with all the other mothers some fathers to get free butter free cheese free milk free pasta but at the same time i was grateful that there was such a service to help people like me that i knew this wasn't where i was going to stay right but it was where i was in that moment i wasn't committed to take up real estate there but it was my current address and broke and broken it kind of hit the i i felt like i hit the bottom you sometimes you feel your back on the bottom like i think that's the bottom right um and then there's always a deeper yeah right so when i was getting uh uh when i was getting uh food stamps i thought i was at the bottom mm-hmm and then you went uh i went to the atm i ran out of pampers for my son jelani and i went to the atm to get money to go buy pampers and it said insufficient funds and i had 11.42 cents in the bank what's the minimum you take out 20 bucks exactly you need 20 in to get 20 out and um i had 11 dollars and 42 cents and so i went home and i had to wrap my son jalani for two days in a series of different tiles that that was my rock bottom and that was because as a parent all you want to do is provide that's it it's simple i just want to provide safety and food for my baby somebody else was providing my food and i didn't even have pampers and i remember on the second day of wrapping my son in the towel louis i put my hand over his stomach and i said don't worry jelani with tears streaming down my face i said don't worry son mommy will never ever be this broke again and so um you talk about um having financial resources i realized that i needed to first believe that i could do something different that wherever my mindset was my bank account was going to follow so i needed to change my mental zip code what was your mental zip code then scarcity lack i was born and raised in south central l.a i grew up between the harlem group 30s and the role in 60s i had three fights a week to get home from school my highest grade in school was a c-plus and 12 years of school my highest grade was a c-plus and so if you ever tell the story to anybody don't forget my plus don't think y'all don't forget my plus it's very important to a c student the a student i was a i was a c a d to an a student it doesn't matter like plus plus whatever but to a c student the plus matters man i get it so um so i struggled everything in my life was about a hustle everything nothing was easy except the love for my family that was easy and effortless and graceful and bountiful and but everything else outside of that it was a hustle get her get god it was the environment i grew up in and i'm not saying that you have to grow up in that rough environment to have an amazing future people say well lisa i didn't have it rough could i have a listen i would have traded my background in for anybody like don't think i chose that so i can have this and so i didn't know abundance i didn't know abundance existed i didn't know abundance could happen to people who look like me a woman geographically from my neighborhood i didn't know abundance can be that i didn't see it around me i didn't know abundance can be for someone that that was in my culture everything was about survival and hustle so so many things and spiritually i didn't know that someone who loved god who had a spiritual foundation can also have prosperity without being perceived as greedy i mean everything in my environment said not me everything said not me if i listen to the sound effects right and sometimes you've got to turn the volume down and listen to your heart right so what was the conversation you would tell yourself during this time when you're in this scarce zip code someone like me can't have it them over there that that guy right there he comes from the right family that girl right there her skin color is the right complexion that i'm full figured a a a mocha skin full lips round hip kinky hair girl nah not me not now i get other things i get i get a a bountiful family i get a i get great children if i want i get closeness to god but i don't get abundance and and i realize that so much of that conversation was embedded in me before i was i was five i mean it just comes with the territory i would watch my grandmother make a dime going 20 different directions and i never wondered about having 21 dimes i just want to grow up and make my dime going 20 different directions to be like grandma and so so much as culturally inherited gender inherited as a gender as a woman you're not raised to make millions you're raised to either get a good job or get a man with a good job you know especially in the 80s and 90s absolutely absolutely and that's how we were raised spiritually you're taught you know in my background my religious background now i'm spiritual i'm not attached to a religion at all but growing up in the mount tabor missionary baptist church it was you know money is the root of all evil who would want a lot of that and that um exactly who wants evil and if that's what you say then i learned that i don't need it and sister brown i watched sister brown and sister brown was the most godly woman in the church and she was always selling fish dinners and and barbecue dinners to make sure she had enough money and so unconsciously i wanted to be like sister brown because that woman can pray the heavens down and so then again i'm looking at that and then in my neighborhood it was the moment you get a little extra you give it away you give it away still to this day i kid you not i one one of my last opportunities i don't call them challenges opportunities is i'm in the top one percent earners in america and i say that humbly i'm grateful and my job now is to learn how to keep it and grow it because i love to give it away and i know it's a learned behavior it's a learn and i give it away to good things i just put eighty two thousand dollars and revamp my grandmother's whole house because i know she wasn't gonna move she's gonna lift she's gonna that's where she's gonna rest she's gonna stay right there she's been at that house since 1968. she's not going anywhere so i just re-did the entire house gutted out the entire house and and and put spent close to a hundred thousand dollars doing it and i'll do that over and over and over and over again because i also was taught give it away so now i'm going to people who are more powerful in money in terms of i know how to make a lot i know how to keep a lot now i learn how to grow a lot you know and be willing and being humble enough to say that's where i am i got the first two down because money has three levels how do you earn it how do you keep it and how do you grow it and so you know um i had a conversation for a long time in many different ways and then it's the conversation as a woman if i make so much it's going to be hard to be that big d word you know and so as an african unapproachable exactly and men are taught as i've taught as a woman about money you're taught as a man be the provider well you know it's kind of hard to provide for a g like me you know when i come in i go how about we just put it together because i'm kind of cool on the provision thing you know and so i realized that men have to also feel comfortable with the fact that that that's a 80s conversation and in 2015 she might 16 now right 2016. right you're the book tour last year i started the book tour and i have like you have to at every moment tell me the date that we're exactly right we're living in all right i feel you i feel you right you know you just you uh there's your freedom of time um so i'm curious what was this moment then that you realized okay i need to shift the way i'm thinking the conversations i'm having uh how i'm showing up who i'm being in every moment from living in the scarce environment that i've lived in for 20 something years to all of a sudden shifting into an abundance mindset and way of being what was the moment you experienced the thought the idea the catalyst that broke that i like how you say a moment like i got a the ceiling opened up and the lights came in and the angels came no maybe it was over time right it was there was a moment when there was a moment when suffering became too painful there you go so mine didn't necessarily come in a glory moment it came with 11 and 42 cents and watching my baby wrapped in a towel a towel i i felt like i was being unfair to him see because 30 days before the tile really tell my stuff for 30 days before the tile his father called me and when i answered the phone i never forget i said hello he said lisa i'm in l.a county jail well i don't do jail and i don't do people in jail and i don't know people who have a possibility of going so how did you get there because i met you in corporate america and you were a professional how you got there is his business i don't know but now i'm a single mom of a son whose father is now in prison rock bottom rock bottom again so 30 days later when i had my son wrapped in a towel i was done i was just done you're sick and tired of being sick and tired i was done so you know the concept of bankrupt is there's nothing left that's the concept of bankrupt so i like to explain it i was bankrupt in my mess i was bankrupt in my chaos and i was bankrupt in every sexy because my excuses are sexy by the way i've been a linguistic specialist for years i could talk my teachers into doing things right i mean that's just been my gift my father used to say lisa please promise me you will use your powers for good and so i was bankrupt in all of my excuses so if you ask when it was probably about three hours after i told my son we'll never be here again on day two of being wrapped in a towel in 1994. and then i said how the next question was how if i'm done with this i'm not even sure what that looks like i just know over there a bunch of abundant thinkers living an abundant life having abundant memories with a surplus of everything you need because abundance is to be an overflow of the things that you have abundance is just about overflow it's about overflow that means that if there were a saucer under this cup abundance would be everything um this tea flows over into the saucer and i can feed you from my saucer cause i have full my filled my cup up enough i use my cup for me and i feed you from my saucer and abundance is saying i have a saucer in my relationships filled with great experiences there's a saucer in my health and wellness i have so much bountiful health and vitality that can show up for you there's a saucer with my spirituality that i can pray for you i can forgive the perceivingly unforgivable and love the perceivingly unlovable and then there's a saucer for my finances and that in every area because abundance is a 360 experience see wealth is singularly focused wealth is about your money and your possessions that's wealth okay but abundance is 360. i have a lot of very very wealthy friends who are miserable and happy who are who are not abundant who are not abundant they're well scarcity yeah they're wealthy they're not abundant and they don't understand that and they come to me lisa help me with my relationships with my family or whatever and so um i i i had to learn something different louis i didn't know what i didn't know and so i that that became the moment when i said what do i need to know to have something different what do they know that i don't know and how can i get it and i became a hunter so what was the first discovery um that there's a mindset that comes with abundance that they think differently they don't just do something different there's not a hookup first of all what camera do i look into is it that anyone anyone there is no such thing as a hookup i am still waiting on mine and if you know where it is my phone number is so there's no hook up yeah there's no hook up like it's not true like you got a 297 million chance in one to win the lotto and within five years the people win the lotto earn more debt than they were before they won the lotto so that ain't even a hookup right and so um i realized that i needed to change my mindset i needed to learn something different and i needed to know it at a cellular level all that stuff i just told you about my color my gender my i had to unlearn people are we're we're information junkies because we got all kind of access to information online and we're learning all this stuff but we're not implementing anything i'm sorry i might step on a few toes that's what i do and so i realized that i had to at a cellular level first before i went to get any more information i had to be willing to divorce and evict some belief systems that i already had that they had taken me as far as they can take me and now they're holding me back it's almost like you wear a size 11 you have 11 foot and you tried to fit it back in a size 7 shoe you you passed that a long time ago and and that's gonna be a very uncomfortable day i was in discomfort i was very uncomfortable with my thinking and so i i'd start diving into books the first book i died i dove into was stephen covey's seven habits of highly effective people and it disrupted me it disrupted everything i didn't know it was like it was like a double door opened up and then a wall opened up and i'm like what are they they know that like why nobody told me that like i felt like i was out of a club and really you are i'm just going to tell you abundant thinkers think a certain way and they don't go around trying to trying to convert you like people like you and i go let's open it up to everyone but here's what i i know about the human spirit is that the human spirit has a power choice and most people don't want to choose this kind of thinking because it cost you something what's the cost the cost is you got to get up earlier you get up earlier than average guy your day what you do in the day is what some people do in a week but you do in the mornings and some people do a 12-hour day you got to be willing what you're willing to do on your book tour to get on the new york times some people say i gotta do all that i don't want to do all that it's a lot of work okay great then have your life like you have to you sign up for your life experience there's no way like you were when i realized that i was a culmination of all my decisions that's like straight with no chaser that's like getting it with no cookies and milk i was a culinary you're a culmination of all your decisions and then when you up level your decisions and now that's even harder times when you go god why am i always single you're a culmination of your decisions you're a combination of your actions why can't i keep any money you're a combination of your decision your life so i wanted to make better decisions because my son being wrapped in a towel me having 11.42 cents me being overweight me my my son's father being in prison i i couldn't shake it i was a culmination my life experience was a combination of all my decisions and it was undoubtedly a hot mess and so i went let me go learn from somebody's life don't seem like it's a hot mess and then let me adopt some of their behaviors when i began to hunt i went to conferences i and and i was scared at the beginnings out of me these conferences i'd never been to conferences before i went to entrepreneur conferences i was the only i was one of four women at an 800 person conference and i was the only woman of color so it was all older white men and me and i was like okay well they they're not afraid of money seems like they're talking money and business and corporations and roi and ppms and term agreements and no i blah espanol i don't know what that mean but i am not leaving until i figured this out and i went to the same conference when i say do what other people won't do so and you'll have what other people don't have i went to the same conference those 42 times i told you i was a c student so i took me a minute and i kept getting sponsored back to the i didn't have the money to go to the conference i started volunteering at the conference i would be on stage teaching because they loved the way i spoke then i get off and i'd help clean up because i had to pay my dues to be there i was okay i ate my slice of humble pie every day because i was bankrupt see some people you haven't pushed non-negotiable yet you're still optional i really would love to be successful and so you want to be i want to be healthy but it's not non-negotiable yet because the moment the rubber meets the road and you feel a little skinned and it gets a little tender and a little blood may show up and you don't want to give blood you don't want to give sweat you don't want to give tears let me just tell you can't take the elevator to the top right in a number stairs [Music] i'm curious you talked about self-care in a recent tweet the importance of self-care i'm curious what is just the definition of that for you self-care because a lot of people think like okay is it getting your nails done if you're a girl is it getting a massage is it the way you think about yourself is it yeah what is self-care for you yeah so so first of all i think self-care is a reflection of the the worth that i believe i have so a lot of people um and i did this for a long time i wasn't in self-care but i realized my lack of self-care was connected to my lack of self-worth so i believe to the flip side of that self-care is acknowledging your self-worth acknowledging your value to yourself acknowledging first to self and then your value that you are you have to the people around you then self-care is your responsibility to your future is so much bigger than nails done it's so much bigger than massage though those are nice self-care is saying i want to be responsible for my future meaning i want to give my body give my mind give myself what i need so that i'm playing the long game that recognizing self-care is recognizing this is not a sprint this life is a marathon you know um i always say that your your your job is to identify and and and and have the courage and the tenacity and the resiliency to own your purpose your body's job is to get you there snap [Laughter] that right there so what i'm hearing you say uh it's your body's job to have the energy the clarity the focus to sustain the marathon of life so that your purpose can be fulfilled and bring it to life like you you have your you have a responsibility to your body and your health and wellness if you believe your purpose is important or you're still discovering it you want that dash between your birthday and your transition day to mean something take care of your body take care of your body take care of your mind so that you can every morning i get up and i have the same gratitude prayer every morning god thank you for giving me a mind that's sane and sound and logical thank you for giving me a body that follows my command and if you don't think about it like you like what what has it try telling your hand to move and it doesn't move try wanting to run to a goal and you can't do it and so every day not one day goes by i'm grateful and i share my gratitude for my mind thinking logical thoughts being able to rationalize and my body following my command your body is your instrument it's your tool it's the first person the general in your army what happens when we live in a state of irrational thoughts or overly emotional thoughts especially you know there's a lot of people during this time that are freaking out from the pandemic and coming from an illogical irrational place with the uh social justice movement that are coming from whether it's justified or not it's not what i'm saying but coming from an emotional charged energy right what are we saying to ourselves when we come from an emotional or irrational state of mind with our actions well it's simple first it's important to understand that uh forward-moving individuals leaders abundant thinkers change agents and when you think of the nelson mandelas and the dr martin luther kings and the cesar chavez and the mahatma gandhi's and the mother teresa and you think about the michelle obama's you think about those people the barack obama you think about those people they recognize that inner that that that emotion and logic cannot coexist and make a logical decision that logic must lead emotion and and longing has to follow so you make your decisions from logic and information in fact not longing and emotion you allow longing and emotion to fuel a logical decision does that make sense so don't be without emotion don't be without feeling but every time you did something and it was just feeling that lag just emotionally you probably said oh i should have did something different i shouldn't did that i'm so sorry i was too angry i'm so like you're always apologizing if it's just out of emotion and by by no means am i saying don't be full of passion but also make sure you're full of logic so don't just don't just be uh this i'm outraged by this thing whether it be a relationship or not enough justice or whatever this isn't fair not you know just getting out there and chanting your feelings that's not enough actually not enough it's not enough in any form whether it's social justice whether it's a relationship whether it's you know a business or service it's not enough you have when you have logic in fact you have logic in fact included gives you more of a chance to have longevity and impact and so um so yeah i i i know people uh recently have wanted me to be um uh um more emotional sooner than what they saw and and i i i found myself saying on social media very boldly you know um i choose my path i i found my stillness i went into a place of stillness and some of the social injustice i went to stillness first so that i can think about my movements because again a leader a leader um a gladiator a change agent a change maker all the things that i consider myself to be or i aspire to be at at the next level i want my dash to mean something you are not only responsible for your words and your actions you're also responsible for your reactions um now that's that's game changing and so so so to the to those individuals who are driven by emotion i say absolutely allow emotion to be the gas in your car but make sure logic and and information are at the steering wheel oh if you're emotional at the steering wheel you're about to crash somewhere exactly something you're not making the best decisions while you're inside of traffic going 100 miles per hour did you feel a sense of what i'm hearing you say is that maybe you weren't posting or talking about your feelings of the of black lives matter or the social uh unjustice uh that was happening quick enough and that some of your audience was pushing you to say where's your stance or why aren't you speaking up or is that what you say right well i i i responded immediately but i re i said i responded when i responded i said i'm i'm praying i'm praying for george boy's family i'm praying for his children i'm praying for his um the communion i'm praying for every mother of every child every black male child slain every black male daughter slaying i'm praying for them um and i got some backlash not a lot but some backlash saying you know why are you just praying we've been praying for so long and so people were angry that i wasn't passionate i wasn't publicly passionate enough i was compassionate and you know i'm a black woman i was all day angry i was hurt i was disappointed my grandmother's 91 years old why is she still seeing this why are we still here i had every emotion everyone else had but because i i'm i need to be responsible for my thoughts my actions and my reactions because i might have a few million come with me i wanted to make sure that i was doing something i was going to be long-led but before all of that louis one of the reasons why i couldn't talk was because my son 25 year old six to 220 pounds was driving 20 hours across the country from california to seattle during the initial part of a lot of the protests and so my baby's on the road in a car behind the wheel huge african-american male so i couldn't even talk until he told me he got there safely and that took a few days and so i was a mother so i was super i was blown away with how scared i was i couldn't sleep i couldn't think straight i was calling him at three in the morning because he would tell me mom we're gonna get to the hotel the next hotel about 2 a.m or 1 a.m so i i'm up i'm on the phone like are you there yet are you there yet and so um that i i got some backlash i got more support than anything but i realized that um and in moments like this louis where the the the woman sometimes wants to just speak out i i i have to stop and go hold on is that going to do with the highest good for everyone and i'm not saying watering down my conversation i have no desire on any level to water down my belief system to water down my opinions but i do have the desire to make the strongest impact and so you know what you do sometimes isn't popular but i never started doing transformational work or to be a transmission to be popular if i am any form of celebrity if i am it's a byproduct of doing hopefully good work in the world but i'm not i'm not doing things to be popular i'm doing things to be impactful that's good hey it's louis here and i would love to connect directly with you text me the word youtube to my number 614-350-3960 to receive weekly inspirational messages from me and for anyone listening who's maybe they're starting out or maybe they're growing an audience of you know uh of some size whether it's 10 000 followers to 100 000 to millions what do you say to them about because at some point they're going to get pressure feedback about something that people don't like about them what advice do you have for people who are leaders or want to be leaders and with that type of leadership comes some type of following or fanship what advice you give to them for not allowing the pressure of your audience to dictate your decisions or make you feel bad about who you are well i'ma tell you what my grandmother told me and she starts every statement with baby baby other people's opinion of you ain't none of your business so and that doesn't mean you don't care but it means you got one job do you but you need to find out what does that look like and feel like on you you are a unique unrepeatable miracle that's what you are unique unrepeatable and the moment you try to carbon copy somebody else you gonna be a failure of yourself and so find out who you are what's your belief system speak to inspire not to impress oh like all day long like speak to inspire and and speak to disrupt to disrupt for forward movement forward moving conversations disrupt for forward moving fine uh mindset be willing to be unpopular at the cost at the possibility that someone's gonna grow on the other side of it see my grandmother also says and many people have heard me say this your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block i was just talking to a a beautiful group of coaches all white all looked like they were probably over 40 right and this one gentleman said something beautiful to me he said lisa he said i want to talk to black people as a white man because i'm afraid of finding out that the white people that have been in my life all my life might be racist he said i don't know what i'll do if i find that out so i find myself want to talk to black people so i don't find that out i said here is that moment when your conviction and your convenience don't live on the same block you have to be willing to be inconvenienced with new information in order to have an impact on the future when you live like that all of a sudden your your mind is at the highest level of consciousness doesn't mean you're the smartest doesn't mean you know everything let me be super clear but it does mean you're always reaching for the highest level of service that might come with some bumps oh that might come with some bruises as my doctor said when i broke my right ankle lewis in three places he said miss nichols this will get better and you will be stronger however it's going to hurt first because i have to re-break your leg oh i gotta re-break your leg in order to fix your leg and so i i always pull back to that experience because the in order for me to get to a healed leg i had to break it first meaning i had to walk through some pain so if you are leading a group of 10 10 000 20 000 10 million be willing to lead even when you're not popular leaders lead even when it's uncomfortable to lead you don't choose convenient leadership you choose leadership you don't choose leadership that won't cost you anything you choose leadership and if you don't want it to cost you anything then sit down and don't leave be a follower because it's always it's always the path is already made there's nothing wrong with that by the way there's no judgment on a follower but if you choose this path i'm a unicorn i'm a gladiator i'm a change agent i'm here to to disrupt i want to make this world a better place between my birthday and my transition day okay then be willing someone's always going to have this this little thing right here it's down always this little thing right here don't worry about it don't worry about it your job is to wake up look in the mirror and say today i am enough i'm smart enough i'm bright enough i'm chocolate enough i'm mocha enough i'm creaming enough my hair is curly enough my hair straight enough i woke up enough before you check any response on social media you first like you and then everybody else's like is optional oh like in the only like and i'm not saying disregard other people but i am saying you are whole and complete and everything you touch you have to touch it from a whole incomplete even what you don't know even in your ignorance about something right now i'm educating more of my white brothers and sisters about having conversations across color lines how do you want to do that what are some things to say that can keep you in that safety net of of connection and that's what i should be used for and that's what everyone's asking me give us some insight and in that you're whole and completing your ignorance about that conversation that doesn't measure your wholeness right right and to follow up with that uh follower leadership uh point i guess in some ways throughout our entire life we're all following something or collaborating with and following someone else's opinion or advice or teamwork and we're all leading other people at different stages of our life as well whether it's one person or you know millions of people so we're always going to learn [Music] i want to talk talk a little bit more about relationships because i feel like for my success my growth has all been about um relationships and building quality relationships in the process i've lost i would say a lot of friends from college to after college you know it's like a lot of people don't understand it they don't get it right and when you try to connect with them and educate or just lift them up and say hey this is possible for you rescue 9-1-1 it's almost scary for them and yes a lot of judgment happens a lot of negative talk behind your back jealousy things like that have you lost a lot of relationships over the years from family to friends um and how do you handle a situation when someone that you're very close with no longer um wants to grow wants to learn wants to be in this abundance mindset what do you do in that situation do you just cut them out do you add new people to your life how does that work so because i know you have great relationships and you're constantly connecting with people i do and i nurture them yeah and there's there's probably just a few years between us just a few um but they've taught me something yeah and um i'm happy you asked that question because i've been looking at that lately and so there are three types of i talk about this in a deep dive this in the book there are three types of relationships there are um life-giving relationships now i'm going to speak to friendships and i want to speak to romance maya sure of course because yeah what we talk most about are relationships what many people think most about it is money those are the two anchors that just kind of consume a lot of energy yeah right there are three types of relationships there are and i'm happy to answer the friendships that i've lost and what i've done but i want to kind of give this context because i think this is going to be a liberator for someone someone came to this podcast just for this like this is your nugget everything else is bonus this is it there are three types of relationships there's a life-giving relationship and that's the friend or the romance that lasted one day to two years and it was they were in your life just to remind you you still got it that you were and you know that friend you made and it was like fire fire for like six months and then they're gone yeah and you because you can't even sustain it it's it's too combustive you know it's too demanding it's too chaotic it's too it's the turbulent the the joy is high and the turbulence is high yeah exactly and so it was it can't it can't exist past two years but that's called a life-giving relationship and some won't last for one day there's there's a stranger that passed in your night and it was delicious right or two and and with no judgment on that that that's just life they're life-giving they're there to remind you stay in the game that fire you had in your belly when we played or skated or made love or sang keep that fire in your belly that's a life-giving relationship number one relationship number two is a lifetime no matter what you do someone's going to bury the other person friends romance it's just meant to be lifetime they can get on your last nerves you ain't going away and then this third type is the type that there's the most disruption in the most chaos in the most sadness and the most discordant and it's the relationship we're in the most of it's 80 of 80 of our relationships are in this category and probably about 99 of our chaos and discord is in this category and that's called a purposeful i hope you're writing this down by now that's called a purposeful relationship and a purposeful relationship is a relationship that was brought together to serve a purpose whether the purpose was to birth a business to grow each other up to have children to learn how to love madly there's a purpose and that relationship lasts anywhere from three years to 15 years to 25 years it can be a long time however where the discord comes in where the sadness comes in where the disgruntledness comes in is that once you know what i'm gonna say once it's a purposeful relationship full of purpose purposeful once the purpose is fulfilled the relationship will forever take a shift it won't necessarily be over but it is in the beginning of its decline now can you stay together for a lifetime after the purpose is fulfilled yes you can but it will have a flat line it will just have a flat line and then most people a lot of people the relationship ends because something just isn't right because someone's saying why can't we just go back to the way it used to be right well we learned it we used to be serving and fulfilling the purpose yeah it's all ready for in that beautiful juicy great content didn't even come from me i learned it years ago and i adopted it to save my own life um and so in that context i do have friends that have been with me for years and i have friends that have moved on and they were purposeful and that was the only thing i could give it to find peace because there is this gap right there's this hole there is i wish i would have got them but let me share something with you louis i realize that my job in my friend's life and in my family members life is not to rescue them now this is where the distance in our years comes a little bit i realize that i can have all this information in your beautiful book i can have all this information and what i wrote in mine and when i show up to them with them they just want their girlfriend they just want their home girl right they just want their niece they just want their cousin they just want their daughter they don't want me to rescue them right that i had to retire from the converting business because i suck at converting people they are going to be who they want to be in this to no disrespect to them but no one drug me to this place of awareness so who am i to drag them and i know we get excited because we we see the light and the reality is all we all your job all my job all your job all your job is to be the light not try to pour it on people but to be the light so that we get to serve them again from our saucer and they pick up on it last night i had a book signing but they've got to want it and when they're ready in their time last night i had a book signing and i don't know if my family's going to be watching this but if they are i'm grateful more people from my family showed up to my book signing last night than any other event in the history of my business i've been doing this for 21 years well any other i've been inviting them why why now i don't know i'd ask them i was just grateful yeah i didn't even ask and then today i got a text from my cousin who i grew up with six months difference my ride or die she's the one i got in trouble all the time right right or die never interested in coming to my work and it would kill me to see her life kill me to see her suffering kill me to see her struggle kill me to see her not happy and today she sent me a text and she said i'm going to read your book because i'm ready for a change i read it like three times and then i texted my friend my cousin my cousin first cousin and i i text her back i said nothing would make me more happy to support than to support you in your journey let me know what i could do that's awesome when you're ready when you're ready yeah and so i stopped trying to convert my friends because i was driving our friendships away i it was a hard lesson learned um and then i started thinking my work was so big and so so so meaningful that they would understand if i didn't have time and i realized people don't care about what you're doing for the planet right you need to nurture this friendship of course so i let some die on the vine so their relationships that you've let down the vine because you didn't invest enough in it you thought the plant would live without water i thought the plant would live without water because i was watering everyone out here but i forgot to turn the water back around to my friendships and so if they died away i am 100 as responsible as my friend yeah of course what do you think is the most purposeful relationship you've been in the one that's are you gonna turn around and ask me the most life-giving one too i gotta check i gotta check this question out sure all right right right um purposeful relationship that i've been in um i'm gonna tell you three uh um so one is uh with a girlfriend of mine who taught me to trust other people her name is denise did you not trust people before um i don't know if i distrusted i didn't just didn't try to trust i i was i was queen of i could do it yeah i could do it don't worry about me i'm good don't worry about me which we don't think that's lack of trust we just think that's i'm a superhero mm-hmm did you say this out so much i got this i realized if i don't i think it was a part of no truck but it was unconscious i would never say i don't trust people i just said i got it okay don't worry about me yeah you're good don't worry about me i'm good i'm good so she told me how to trust um and my ex-fiance who abused me uh taught me how to fight for my life without fighting with words i fought without fighting i fought i i grew up like this i grew up like this and i had to learn how to fight with uh strategically he made me realize how much i wanted to live and how much i had to live for and how willing i was to go out of my norm to make sure i was around so and um my son doesn't fit in purposeful because he's a lifetime but my son has taught me i had a consultant come in my company and fraud my company that's the worst it cost me several hundred thousand dollars but that's money's just dirty paper that was that that was the easy part the feeling of betrayal the emotional part yeah the ego in the way the resentment when i told my son and i'm crying i couldn't fake it my son knows me so well he's 21 now he can look at me and go mom something's wrong and um i i was trying to fight it off and he's like something's wrong and i just started bawling and crying and my son took my hand and said mom let's just pray and we're not religious we're spiritual but we we we he was raised praying and my son started praying for us and then then he did something that rocked my world he started praying for the guy i never i thought about doing a lot of things to this man was not one i'm just telling you my son prayed for him and my son prayed for his children interesting my son cracked my cracked my compassion wide open i started bawling even more but i started crying for a different reason i started crying because i had no compassion i had no forgiveness in my heart at that point it's hard to when you feel like someone yeah deliberately but we do hard things every day and day we're athletes on top of life athletes we're athletes athletes sign up get dressed and go out to hurt exactly i mean it was many days i played football right i was allowed to physically man there are many days i made a personal phone call to earl on the side on the side of the track i knew when i did 800 breakdown i was going to make a direct line call to earl yeah exactly and i signed up for it so we know hard i i didn't as hard as that was i wasn't entertaining it so my son is the other person he's a lifetime relationship but he taught me like in that moment and that was recently that was in the last 12 months he taught me i don't care how much you're hurting still open up your heart to compassion don't ever stop forgetting where they might be that would cause them to live in that kind of dark place mom it's not your job to leave them there mom shine your light on them even if they don't know it's your light even if they violated you you still live in the light living in the light is not optional when you choose the light stay in the light you never ever take the train down to darkness because someone betrayed you you don't ever leave the light that's what he said basically that was powerful at 21. you know mom let's pray and i'm like he's praying for him and so amazing and then i'm not telling you like um life-giving relationship um you know it was romance for me it was romance it was um it was at a time where is this pg or is this r what is this 13. some kid's like 13. okay mom share this with the guys all right man i'm good i'm i can do pg-13 i wasn't going too far but well thank you we can bleep stuff right right right right no no no no i think not maybe um there was someone in my life and and still is he's a great friend and um it was at a time that um i didn't see myself through the lenses he did like he saw me far more beautiful than i saw myself and it and it speaks to a bigger picture that sometimes you have to borrow someone else's lenses and look at yourself through their lenses um he was significantly younger than me and that was a big thing for me because i felt like and he was phenomenally beautiful he was it's african-american and french just a delicious blend that's all i must say everyone over 21 knows that look and what it means and um i would look at him and literally lose my breath wow i would lose my breath when i would look at him and i would watch him look at me and lose his breath and i kept wondering what he saw it was the craziest thing i kept wanting to go go behind him and look at me like you know i don't know if you understand but i just wanted to see what he saw and i was i was 78 pounds heavier than i am now oh i haven't been in this body long so i'm still um i'm still getting used to being under 210 pounds wow so for him to see me so beautiful then where'd my napkin go hmm where'd you sit it i'm here we go you got me there yeah you got yourself there yeah well you you opened the door i want you to stay in this moment because uh you know i'm curious how for it sounds like to me for a long time you know this is her first time connecting yeah but it sounds like to me that's the last yes i hope not sounds like to me for a long time you were living in abundance in a lot of areas of life but in except the health category absolutely absolutely 100 1 percent and how are you able to navigate that process the conversation right right right i don't see myself the way this man sees me right and my body isn't showing who i'm being right it was incongruent i'll say it it's a grown folk conversation it was incongruent with who i knew myself to be it was what i call my kryptonite you all have it it was my kryptonite right right right a lot of people's kryptonite you can't see you could see my kryptonite and i wore it well if you well sometimes i had some bad outfits i mean in the book cover you don't even look like yourself right now right right i ca i was still in the work you know they needed a cover shot and i'm like okay i'm in this work of transformation you can take it now but that's not who you're going to see when the book comes out and i was committed to keep going you've never been this weight but i mean before in the last 20 years when i ran track right literally at my book signing last night i had five people from my high school and they said you are but they've been back in high school right hello now what right right so so i it's all over facebook now with my high school my high school track members they're going lisa this was you running track i was like i know i'm actually a little smaller than i was you have to change all the videos on your side by the way i know i looked at the videos before and then there's a video i know of like you with a party in the background i was like wait who is that right who's that like a fan girl i was like oh wait that's her right right right you could say fine girl um so you know how many videos i have out on youtube so many videos so many times no one's gonna recognize no one's gonna recognize me and so um but i appreciate the question how was i able to navigate through it and and feel like because i was congruent i know what you're going to feel congruent like i was honest well what i said was i'm still in the journey with my health i'm not going man i don't want to now is that a like a mask or something that you just continued to say for 20 years like no it was a it was it was it was i i thought my weight was just weight just i'm not saying it's bad or wrong no no no no i appreciate the question no i i love the question i i i didn't know what i didn't know that's number one so my truth was my truth based on what i knew up until that moment yeah so for years i would say i don't know how to lose the weight because i couldn't be consistent but for years i just made it about what i ate and what i did and i never let it be emotional weight like when i realized i don't say i lost weight as much as i say i released it because i wore a jacket a 78 pound jacket and i didn't know why i was wearing the jacket 78 pounds yeah why would you oh you mean i thought you meant literally no that was the weight i thought he meant literally i was like literally but i would be like on top it was the weight like this is who i am and did you lost 78 pounds i lost that i released 78 pounds and i it took me 11 and a half months to realize that's great and so um but what i didn't realize was that there was an emotional weight that preceded the physical weight and i put the jacket on 21 years ago for a reason and i never looked at the reason what was the reason you are all in my business like for real for referral absolutely so i told you my son's father went to prison and when he went to prison i put the jacket on i never acknowledged that i was wildly madly in love with him and that i saw myself with him for a lifetime and so i put a jacket on almost immediately after he went in i didn't put all 78 on immediately but it slowly came on because i actually didn't want to be attractive to anyone else and i wanted him to come home and after 10 years it was a 10 year mark i realized i'm not going to date him again because my in my opinion he was institutionalized or whatever and i i was nev i was never a fan of prison never found people in prison never found it my brother was in prison for four and a half years right right right i never was a fan i didn't go visit him for the first eight years i only went to visit him when my son said mom i want to touch my dad now i let him talk to his son every single week every week i was all about fostering the connection and um i realized that i unconsciously was trying to hold myself and stay unavailable protect yourself protect myself until he came home and and in the on december 12 of 2014 i called him after leaving the steve harvey show and on the steve harvey show i was supposed to coach a woman on relationships which i got i could do that relationships money got it got it got it at the last minute she didn't show up or she canceled and the woman to replace her they asked me to coach her on weight loss zing and to drive home the point that you open with i sat in the green room keenly aware that i wasn't qualified to coach her i would be in congruent if i did so in the green room i'm having a slight meltdown not good for the couple a couple million people are going to watch me be incongruent not good for the expert coach exactly and i wasn't willing to be in congruent i wasn't willing i wasn't willing i never opened up health and wellness as a deep dive conversation i never i said the four quadrants of your life that you need to master i talked about all four and i said in the fourth quadrant i'm in that i'm living that i'm working through that the health quadrant the health card so here we are at the only focus on this squadron and so i committed to her that i would take the journey with her interesting i i i i put myself out there i bust myself out i exposed myself i said i can't coach you talk about accountability oh i said and steve's sitting there steve harvey's sitting there looking at me like this are you sure what you're about to take off she's over there and he's looking at me like what are you doing yeah and i said i can't coach you i'm i'm over 200 pounds i don't qualify to coach you but what i do qualify to do is walk with you and i said so let's do it together every sunday i'll meet you on the phone i said and how about we come back here in five months and i commit in five months i'll be 47 45 pounds lighter wow that's a ballsy commitment i think you know play bigger go home of course and so i did that and i went home and i sat still and i said what do i do and i started sitting on why did you put the jacket on and it and i tracked it back tracked it back oh my god because before then i was an athlete 13 years i mean i was i did track i swam competition i was a state champion and city champion and and freestyle and swimming i did water ballet for seven five years and so why did i put the jacket on i looked at it and so it was because of him and because of my emotions around him so i called him and we talked for an hour and a half and i told him everything i told him how much i loved him and i waited on him i told him that i released him at 10 years but i didn't know how to release the weight and that i've been waiting you know i just said everything he cried i cried we cried i sat with my son i told my son i cried he cried we cried and then i was okay to take my jacket off and then people asked what did you do then i did everything i've been hearing for the last 20 damn years to do i just did it better you worked out right i was consistent i ate smaller meals i didn't work out for an hour a day i didn't do that because an hour a day would cost me two hours a day in time and two hours a day will cost me around about forty thousand dollars in money and time time was my highest commodity right and so i may i i consistently agree to work out 15 minutes a day and because 15 minutes i can do and every win built on the next win every day i completed my goal which built momentum yeah i did it it was just 15 minutes but i did it so i was consistent the length of time wasn't my big deal it was the consistency traveling on planes i was on the road 321 days oh my goodness the same year i lost the weight wow the same year i lost the weight it's not easy to lose weight while you're traveling no eating all the junk food no no no and so i i ate smaller meals i made my meals in the morning while i was at home i stayed home for 90 days i didn't travel i wouldn't travel for 90 days to jump start my weight loss because i had to get off 45 pounds before five months and so um i was radical i made all my meals small meals and i set on the side i looked like all the little athletes like you fell off these many meals and and then i worked out mm-hmm i slept in my sweat sometimes i took a shower and got in my sweats so i can get out of bed that's the whole track days yeah that's your high school college workout that's so hard am wake up right right i can't even think about getting dressed i'm gonna wake up dressed yeah and then i didn't use any weights and i didn't go to the gym i used my body weight i used my car i got enough of it at the time i had enough of it i jumped jump jacks jumping jacks and lunges and crunches i just said everything i have i just believed what every trainer said everything you have is right here so that when i did start traveling i was okay yeah i conditioned myself you have the tools to use in the in your hotel room or whatever anywhere oh listen let me tell you i got radical i was lunging through the airport sure yeah i don't care people see me you can call me crazy man so you gotta get it you can call me crazy i don't care if you call me crazy yeah do you understand i'm fighting for my life now and so um i went back to steve harvey in five months and i wasn't 45 pounds lighter i was 57 pounds later there you go and she was 56 pounds lighter and then it became a big conversation like thousands and thousands of women began to follow me interesting and so i publicized my workouts i wasn't trying to be a workout guru i'm not that people still tell me let's do a program i'm not i'm not i'm not the teacher i'm the student yeah i'm clear yeah i'll go follow that 10 years after you've mastered it i don't even need to do it i just need i i'm the student watch me as a student yeah i got ugly workout pictures of me online still on facebook i got you know early morning you know crazy shots and then people want to do shows with me television shows me i don't want to make any money off of it yeah this was for my liberation yeah this is so i can tackle all four quadrants do you know how powerful i feel today very do you know right you show up lately in the line thank you amen and hopefully humble and grateful of course you know but now now now game on yeah gang freaking on now now game freaking on now i'm going man i i built a multi-million dollar business wrote seven best sellers traveled the world all of that carrying two over 210 pounds all of it almost as big as me all of it right now what do i do now watch out [Music] and what is the price you had to pay to get to a place of removing the band-aid and shedding the weight and shedding the psychological uh you know pains that you're holding on to that held you back from the next level um so if anyone can relate to me on this one i just want you whenever you see this i just want you to blow up the chat box blow up the any way you can reach out to us i i realize and if this is you just let me know that i'm not by myself and we like to use on my campus yana y-a-n-a meaning you are not alone so y'all just yeah me just let me know i you know i'd already made millions when i lost the weight i had already been on oprah larry king steve harvey i'd already been on all that i've already been international for years i'd already written i'd our i was on i had six bestsellers right so i can't tell you that it stopped me from being any form of successful in the out in the external world and i don't know i mean like who's past oprah right like i didn't know what it cost me was who i knew myself to be in the dark of the night that who i went to bed with when i went to bed by myself myself it cost me the fear of saying if i die in this big body i would have played myself short it had nothing to do with you louis it had nothing to do with the world it had nothing to do with the secret i felt like i'd already done everything i i i've been serving big it had to do with i dare me leave this planet and let myself down wow like this it was all me it was before i die for me i want to see me the way i know myself to be so this wasn't a look yourself in the mirror and ask myself have i done enough with my skills and talents for the world because you were doing that you were showing up every day 10 12 16 hours working hard serving for 20 years it was am i going to be happy with myself if i die right now listen can't nobody grind harder than his sister if you grind equal with me let's do it but like will smith said when he was being interviewed once you know what i'm talking about i'm about to die on the treadmill i'm gonna die on the treadmill i'm gonna die on the treadmill so i had no wonder there's no more time anybody can give i was opening the doors and shutting the doors i would turn the light on in the morning i would turn it out at night i promise you no it wasn't that it was i know that i can touch more of me for me not for anybody else i i had no guilt if i left this planet and i had only done what i did only like i'm cool i played full out for you but i didn't play full out for oh man that's a strong but you knew that for 20 years you knew that i didn't know it for 20 years because for the first seven or eight i was getting the response i wanted women liked me i didn't get that like your your skills and your right women's women didn't feel intimidated by me i i went for years with women just kind of like what's up who she thinks she all at and i was trying to make them like me trying to dim my light so that my light wouldn't be too bright for anybody right but i didn't know i was doing it and then in the relationships well you know when women say they're no good men in the world i say i don't know where you've been i have dated some of the most amazing men on the planet i just wasn't ready to get married or they weren't ready i was in this crazy journey called i'm going to touch the world and they're like woman you're running too fast for me i got to go so but i met amazing men but i met them inside of that body that body and so there was a false illusion of victory y'all you got to hear what i'm saying louis because so many of us so many so many of us are living in that right now these hollow victories i mean it's a hollow it's called a peric victory p y p h y r r i c named after general periods when general periods won two wars he turned to one of his generals and said i can't afford to ever win again and when his general said why he said because in winning these two wars i've lost my best generals and my best friends they're all dead oh and so from that was derived the phrase pyrrhic victory and apparent victory is when the cost of the victory actually outweighs the victory itself we see it in all the entertainers that we call successful then they commit suicide or all the people we call successful and then they they they binge out and they go on an alcohol but whatever that thing is you said in their lives it also can happen in hours so for me my period victory was about 90 pounds it gave me what i wanted but the cost so the cost for me was every time i looked at myself on video and it's only man when when your body is not the way you know it can be and then you get popular and you get some form of celebrity and everybody wants to take a picture with you and then everybody wants to post a picture with you of you you get all these reminders this is who you are so i would dress it well i would dress it in 300 block shirts and i would dress it and i would bling it out and then i just got tired of dressing it blinging it compensated for it i got tired i said i'm done and it was so crazy because when i lost the weight i stopped wearing big earrings i stopped wearing big necklaces i was like i don't want to wear all that stuff and then it was like whoa all that was a part of the costume so that you can feel comfortable what you saw and so um so yeah it was it's a journey and and and again this is white for me is it finances for you is it relationships is it being nice a lot of people say yes they say yes when they want to say no so they can be liked i'm going to ask yeah i'm going to ask you an unpopular question go for it the self-love movement of loving yourself as who you are in this moment and accepting yourself for who you are i truly believe that we need to accept ourselves we need to accept our past what we've been through we can't hold on to pain forever and we can't hold on to the baggage of the past and we've got to accept where we are but i'm always trying to improve where i'm at and if i'm not fully happy with something take a look in the mirror and ask myself okay what are the sacrifices the prices i need to pay right now to see those improvements it's gonna take time and energy you gotta give something else up to get what i want what where are your thoughts on the self-love movement of you know what it doesn't matter if you're this or that if you're broke or if you're 100 pounds overweight or if you're sick you know just love yourself and it's all good what are your thoughts on kind of that vibe um so i i i have a i have a very clear opinion on it um i could not i could not take lisa to her next level of greatness in her body until i learned to just accept i could not hate my body the way it was and then do good for my body ah hate yourself and then do the work no no no so i do i do a line with it i do align with it however hold on wait for it wait for it right so so number one love self love is the soil self love is the soil so have your soil but please brother sister plant a daggone seed then plant it and water it and give it some sunshine so you can eat something daily so trust self-love is the soil in which you plant future contribution seeds in and then daily grind hashtag the treadmill daily grind is the life in the water required to be of some use and some some possibility for those of us witnessing your life so don't mistake self love with com don't mistake complacency with self love so self love says i'm whole and complete and enough with where i start but hold me accountable to where i'm going oh so don't don't stay where i'm at right now and just be okay with it forever be okay with where i'm at now accept it this is what i've gone through this is my challenges this is my story this is my problem okay now that i'm aware and i own the moment what am i going to do moving forward and i'm enough in this moment however however shame on me if i'm here in five years who shame on me and shame on everyone around me who allows it who allowed me to to do this sweet talking this sugar sweet talking uh whether it be self love or whether it be i'm just standing still when the secret came out everybody's like i'm gonna sit and wait and manifest my life what you gonna sit and manifest your life on that couch you all you're gonna get is a big dent in that couch and now you mad at the secret and mad at me no no no no no you awareness awareness plus action equals transformation please don't skip that plus action part because action is the antidote for despair john bias says action is the antidote anything that's not working in your life you have to be in some form of action not thought not thoughting not just thinking not just talking but action so people can out think they're like i've really been working on this what you've been doing i've been analyzing no you ain't then you ain't worked strategizing thinking i'm strategizing and communicating hold on action is the antidote for despair john bye says lisa nichols says action is the prescription for success at the bottom line self love is the soil self action is the path to progress and movement for you and those witnessing your life and when you remember that your life doesn't just belong to you that's see see look this is huge what does this mean your life doesn't belong man man man this is huge the man people need to bookmark this they need to put it on repeat man let me just tell you if my life just belonged to me and i and i knew it to be so i wouldn't have done half the things i've done with all the discomfort it brought me with all the inconvenience and problems donuts all day ice cream all night all the peric victories all the time lost i'm talking just about the time that i have i have had to surrender the chill time the bubble bath time the time that i've surrendered so that my life could be of contribution man your life just doesn't belong to you your life belongs to those people who are going to cross your path and because they crossed your path not anybody else's but because they crossed your path you inspired them to want to be a better person you inspired them to want to express love in the way that they hadn't thought before you inspired them to look another man another woman in the eye you inspired them to listen with open ears and an open heart because they crossed your path oh your life doesn't just belong to you you don't get to come in and leave without being responsible for those that you impact and when you understand that you're like hold on my life is my life literally sends waves out into the universe and matter of fact it sends waves to my cousins it's in waves to my siblings it sends waves to my lovers it sends what it sends ways to the people around me and it impacts the way they choose to show up in the world when you recognize that then the question becomes so what are you sending out what are you doing with all your power you're powerful you're powerful and leaders don't get to forget their power see i tell people if you don't get to have selective amnesia about the impact you have on the world you are powerful you are a unicorn you are a gladiator you are a change agent and and the more you own that and then you do the healing required see i had to do the healing required to own that oh that's a that's like a dichotomy so a leader has to heal and a healer has to lead what was the biggest thing you needed to heal and what do you still need to heal now so much no i'm serious yeah um i had to heal not feeling like i was um good enough because uh because of my mocha skin my full lips my round hips and my curly hair um feeling like because i felt the calling on my life to help humanity but i didn't think that i was qualified as a black woman to help humanity i i didn't feel like i would be listened to by humanity i thought black america would listen to me but no one else so when i see myself in croatia and in kazakhstan and in kiev and in ireland and in kenya and in dubai i'm literally i whenever i go i still go wow um i i needed to heal my image that um because i struggled in school because i i am to this day functionally dislike functionally dyslexic um because i i didn't graduate college that i wasn't qualified to be of any great impact i could be a local i can be of local impact to a bunch of little black kids but i wouldn't be of local impact to black educators i wouldn't be regional impact and i sure heck wouldn't be national impact who am i to think i could be international impact heck no little me south central l.a harlem crypt 30's my neighbors kicked out of college because of i didn't have the money i didn't think that so i struggle with the i am i am the right person for this assignment with all that i have and all that i think i should have had yeah i'm the right person um i also struggled with um feeling like people would love me forever um meaning that i was worthy of long term like i would hear about people who have 25 year friendships and people and i hadn't experienced that um early in my career um people of my past had been were a part of my past i had and and and this world of transformation was all these new people in it you know because it was the climate it wasn't the conversation that my friends were having so i needed to find the people that were having the conversations like me like you i need to find the jack canfields i need to find the marcie shine off i need to find the reverend michael beckwits i need to find i need to find them but i didn't know any of them a long time and so i begin to miss no one knows me the no one knows lisa shantae the old me yeah no one knows that they know me in the last two years yeah yeah no one no there's no one there to for my bridge for my bridge and so i begin to wonder will i ever have will i have long-term friends will i have long-term relationships for a long time that was a very silent worry of mine like i want someone who just knows my history they i can leave the table i would always say this to my friend i want to leave the table and if the waiter come i want someone at the table to know what i eat i go it's just that simple it was just that simple and then i um i worried about love uh as my career grew i'm gonna talk about the more successful lisa as my career grew i began to feel like it was harder to find someone that could hold my light without dimming my light i need i needed someone to be a container for my light without asking me to turn my light down and um that was that was uh that was a long journey i'm 54 years old i'm proudly 54 years old and i've just entered into the love of my life just two years ago wow and um and i'm grateful for every relationship that helped me get there every relationship gave me something either gave me a gift or gave me a lesson wow and i'm grateful for them and i i i would never do i would never do this but i'm one of those weird people that i think it's an anomaly what what can be done i could throw a party and literally invite my former relationships and they would all come and we would have a great time that is something to be said for right now that's how clean they are that's how i wish i i wish i could say that about my the past relationships i was in i would like to i would like to be in that space but i don't think they want to see me yeah yeah yeah that's how clean i left them because one of the things that i made sure is that we left the relationship leaving each other's dignity intact that's nice and that was a priority for me and so in the onset of the relationship i'd say i don't see an end to this like i would love for this to last and if it doesn't can we make a commitment to honor one another's dignity and leave our dignity intact because we may not be we may be mr mrs right for each other or we may be mr misses right now for each other and either is perfect and so i opened it up with that and so literally literally if i if i had a party my girlfriends all want me to i'm like no i'm not doing that um but uh but that so that was uh that was a thing and um and then the last the last thing i just have to say because i struggled was between my love of my child and the love of my career that was a fear that was a that was a pull i felt like i i didn't know no one ever said they had both everyone talked about they having to choose everyone talks about having to choose between my career my family everyone talks about being out of balance and so i adopted it and so i started with a fear that somehow my son would suffer because i was living my dream or somehow my dream would suffer because i'm a mother and so um my son uh my son at 18 and remember i don't know if you remember they had the phones where you can put your your fave five in the phone yeah yeah early on and my son when he was 18 or 17 he was talking to his cousins on the fade five and we have a very close-knit family and my cousins my his my nephew said why why i'm not in your faith five why are you only why i'm not here for a five and my son said i don't have room and he goes show me your fave five man show me your faith bye and i can hear them in the background and and he's showing my nephew his face five and i can hear my nephew go dude your mom what is that about and he goes we cool like that my son said we're cool like we're cool like that and i i it was my first sign that i didn't have to choose that i made them both work and so anyway you asked the questions what were the dogs those were the three things that i struggled with [Music] you know i'm a big believer in visualization and obviously in the secret that's something that was talked about i haven't watched secret in 10 years when it came out but i mean this is something i practiced as an athlete to visualize my results before the game would happen to see myself scoring the touchdown in the track meeting i'm sure you did a lot of similar things how important is visualization in abundance um but then also how important is taking action right so i have five visualization exercises in that book just because it's so important visualization is a gift to your heart and your soul it's a gift because if the the idea is the seed visualization is the is the um it's the fertilizer it's the fertilizer because when your thoughts are connected with an emotion see you would visualize yourself winning and you would feel all the emotion that came with that and all you're doing now is you're not chasing a foreign emotion you know the feeling and now you're just doing what's necessary to get back to that feeling in real time exactly and so what what a good friend of mine vishen um who of the ceo of mine valley who you know um i would i did a visualization with him we were in bali and um he said to me afterwards i never get emotional he does it he doesn't get emotional he's like right right yeah well he was like i cried i got emotional he goes i figured it out it's visualization a good visualization brings an emotion he was like that's how you do it and so um i i love doing visualizations because and it's real important in the visualization you can't see it over there you have to see it right here feel it you got to feel it right here like i am it's all i am i am i am in my dream home i am in my dream relationship and then unpack what that looks like but most importantly unpack what it feels like and when you have that that emotion in this moment all of a sudden you stir up something that i don't think will ever go back to sleep it'll go okay let's go get that and what it really does is it sets up a state of cognitive dissonance and cognitive dissonance is when you see something in your mind and you see yourself in a way that your behaviors are not currently leading to and so your mind becomes disrupted and it goes okay can we get there right because i'm not there right now not there right now and that's not comfortable your mind wants to literally be congruent what it thinks is what you're doing what it thinks is what you're doing and so when you set up a constant and abundant thinkers like you and i we do it unconsciously we cut we're constantly keeping ourselves in a state of cognitive dissonance meaning okay what else and i'm seeing lisa over there and i'm going okay let me go wow while being grateful for my now yeah it's not in that i'm gonna be whole and complete when i get over there i'm holding complete now i just know i'm supposed to be over there so let me do what's necessary to get over there and let me let me evict any behaviors or characteristics that are stopping me and let me adopt any new ones that i need right right how does someone discover their unique calling because you talk about that in the book discovering your unique calling what if people are like i don't even know what i want i know i want to be out of the place i'm in i want to be abundant wealthy healthy great relationships right but i don't know what my purpose or calling is right now i think that people put too big of a a notion on purpose in that they think that it has to look like uh nelson mandela or a mother teresa or oprah or uh you or i and and a lot of times what you're really good at is right in front of you what you're really great at is right in front of you and to recognize that your calling and your purpose can change right that it can change you have a long lifetime it's not going to be the same calling the whole time and so allow yourself to evolve allow your purpose to evolve what's that thing you do effortlessly that you give no credit to because you're you're just looking past it oh it can't be that because it's not hard well how about it doesn't have to be difficult how about the fact that you're a great listener how can you take that and use that and expand it and and don't compare yourself to someone else comparison i think benjamin franklin's a comparison is the thief of all joy it's all when you look left or right you know people are always comparing me to oprah winfrey or jan levanzan or or les brown or tony robbins i said listen i will if you want me to give you oprah or janla or tony or les i'm always going to 1 000 fail you but if you're ever interested i do a damn good lisa i do i do a good lisa nichols yeah and so when you look at what are my gifts what are my unique gifts i knew very early on i was a gifted speaker i wasn't certified as a gifted speaker i haven't passed any courses as a speaker matter of fact the last time i took a speech class i got a d-minus and my speech teacher told me miss nichols i recommend you never speak in public that you get a desk job that was in my freshman year of college the last speech class i took so a lot of times your gift and your purpose you've discounted it either because someone else discounted it or what's more common is you don't know how to monetize it yes and sometimes the greatest gift you have to give is not for fee it's for free you watch people like you and i and go why can't i get paid for it well not every gift you're supposed to get paid for nelson mandela did not get paid for leading 27 years when he got out of prison he got paid after that but he was a great leader while he was in prison and martin luther king he was a he he got paid from the church but his right his fight for civil rights that was a free one and he paid the highest cost and you can go on and on to the some of the greatest leaders mahatma gandhi it wasn't a paycheck right and so and i'm not and i know we're scaled down to our version but don't get attached to having to get paid for your gift right yeah i started this podcast as a way of i'm going to do this for free for a year i'm not going to take any sponsors i'm not going to do anything i'm not going to sell anything i'm just going to create and facilitate great conversations and that's it and now the the money is coming in because of how it's impacted people's lives your intention was in the right place yeah but i wasn't like how can i do this right now to make money it was how can i serve the maximum number of people that right there that when people live in a place of servant leadership my grandmother said when i was 24 if you leave and how you how can you serve the most people when i sit with my team i go how can we serve more people how can we last year we were able to touch 30 million people and that's all our question now as we serve our platform gets broader but how can we serve don't tell me how we can make more money i'm not interested in that i'm not sure how can we serve more because if i do the right thing for the right reasons everything i need will be a byproduct of that exactly so i think we get caught up in you know society allows us to have us has us looking at possessions and so we begin to measure our joy and our abundance on possessions i i have a friend who's worth he's worth 14 billion dollars how do you even write that i had to write it down so i could see it maybe zero zero right a lot he's worth 14 billion dollars i checked my email on my phone before we started and he's on my phone asking me please come visit me because he's lonely he's rich but he's not abundant yeah he flew from canada to to come to my house for new year's just to be around people who were celebrating and wanted nothing from them and so don't pursue the things pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come i promise [Music] they're a big struggle right now besides the health is there like a psychological or a belief that you're still limited or have some limiting beliefs around um or is it just all timing it's just like you know it's all happening it's just gonna take the time it takes and um no i mean i really want to find an answer for you because i believe that when people are um on a platform of leadership and and we i'm not saying i'm a superhero at all but sometimes people tend to give us a cape i believe it's important for you to understand what we're still working with so i want to work hard to find something for you you know i i believe that everyone the person looking at me and looking at you right now they they deserve that um there's no arrival place for me i i am a constant stream of of motion and acceptance and growth and now um i i said 17 years ago lewis i want to live on white sand beaches and i want to have blue clear water 17 years ago wow with no indication of how i would get there with no uh and with not no indication that it would happen and so when this occurred this was the day i moved this was the day i moved the day i pulled my truck up to the house we just walked right across the street and took a picture and um i've lived there now for um six months and i would just watch the water out of my window but i didn't give myself permission to go in the water why not you you ask me what i'm still working on you ask what i'm still working on i'm still working on this and so i began to process myself why are you not you can't get any closer you can't you're 30 feet away yeah and oh by the way and you're on quarantine so ain't nothing happening like the beach it's empty it's quiet you don't like no one's gonna look at you no one's judging you no one's you can wear your bathing suit you can even wear your two pieces right so so um i start processing what is going on why and i realized that i and i'm looking for another picture i've traveled all around the world right i've been on every continent that can be populated by humans right right i mean like and then i realized that a lot of times i'm at resorts and i don't get in the water right i just i just want i was once in in jamaica and i was in the presidential suite it was mind-blowing it was it was probably 5 000 square feet of of of space at the top of this hotel and on my balcony it had a it had there there was a um jacuzzi on my balcony and if you look out onto the beach you would see this cabana bed sitting out in the water um and i would look at it every day like wow that bed is amazing wow that bed is laying it i never went down to the bed but i wanted to lay in the bed but i only looked at the bed from the uh from the balcony that bed is amazing get this the last day three hours before i'm to leave for the airport i go down i walk on the beach i walk to the cabana bed i just want to see it up close there's a sign at the edge of the cabana bed it says this space reserved for lisa nichols shut up i did not say that it came with the presidential suite oh the whole time it was yours the whole time and i never got in it oh man because i assumed from the balcony it couldn't be for me and so on my birthday in may i finally gave myself permission to go and get in the water it was a liberating day wow wow and the reason why i realized i wasn't in the four months later the reason why is because i the fact that i had this life had already blown my mind and i didn't know could i participate because i've always watched other people on tv who didn't look like me who didn't come from my neighborhood who maybe wasn't dyslexic who surely didn't get kicked out of college so i began to go i unconsciously louis still working you asked me am i still working on stuff i'ma be honest with you please y'all don't judge me we all working on our stuff that's still when i bought the house moved to the bahamas got the great family did the work i still go oh you get to get in the water now get in the water is my story what's yours so i talked my family my bonus family into getting in the water with me i just got to show it to you wow in the water too wow what a beautiful family my bonus kids and my man wow um so i'm i'm still working to now i worked hard to get here and now it's to to take it in and enjoy it that's my that's my work this is this is powerful and i had a question for you about this and you know we're like brother and sister because i'm a function i love what he called functional dyslexic because that's how i am as well and i was in the bottom of my class all through school and no matter how many tutors i had and yeah i get it it was just graduating high school as a a huge success for me exactly and you talk about you know i'm hearing you talk about owning your how you feel and finding your joy and a lot of people i do this as well and a lot of people do this where we um we have a lot of good things happen but then we don't celebrate it because we know other people are suffering or are struggling and then we have bad things happen and we say oh but other people have it worse and so i should be grateful for what i have this comparative joy and comparative suffering how do we own the moment you know it's quarantined who cares if everything is working well for you and the world is crumbling like should we own it or be embarrassed by our success right and when things are horrible should we own it and you know be in our suffering or say you know what we have a lot of things to be grateful for what do you think about this so i love benjamin franklin's statement he says comparison is and will always be the thief of all your joy so that's number one that that when you have a false sense of worth because you're stepping on someone else's breakdown like oh i'm better than you that's a false sense of worth uh or when you are minimizing your greatness because someone is greater uh my girlfriend suzy has this great story she talks about she and her girlfriends were on a yacht in san diego and they got their martinis they got their glasses the sunshine and muse is going and they're on there i don't know they're 55 foot yacht right and it's nice and and they're sailing through san diego she said and she had her shades on laying back and all of a sudden this shadow comes over her her face and she opens her eyes to this 155 foot yachts and the ladies up there and the ladies are there drinking and she kind of looks down and goes hello and she said she felt 100 complete and whole and happy until that yacht came right and she said the woman didn't try to take her joy she handed her joy to that woman right and so comparison will always steal your joy one way or another the false sense of grandizing you on someone else's neck i always say can you be as tall as you need to be without standing on my neck like can you do me that favor can you stand in your greatness without standing on my neck right and so that's that that's every time you say but we're not as bad as such and so you just put your foot on someone's neck to stand just a little bit taller right and so um and then the other part to that so when you're feeling great and when you're feeling joyful what i like to do is i like to show awareness i want a hundred percent of my joy i want a hundred percent of my bliss i wanna be able to share it but i want to share it with awareness so to me that's one of the things what does that mean with awareness i'll give you an example so listen i'm a c student so i'm always going to give examples hey i'm going to compare myself to you you're better than me so so it looks like this not everyone is having the same experience that i'm having and i honor that and i celebrate that and i want to celebrate the fact that right now i'm in the most fulfilling relationship i've ever experienced i want to celebrate the fact that i i found love in a way that i never even knew love existed and i understand everyone is in a different place and i honor that i just wanted to give light and celebrate where i am right now and so it's compassionate compassionate celebration right so if you can accelerate with compassion i don't want to minimize my light i don't want to dim my light i don't want to turn my light down i don't want to walk in the room and go hold on let me turn my light down because your light isn't right no that's my life i want to bring it in the room but i want to honor you and i want to i want to acknowledge your life may not be the same wattage as mine and so it looks like that like everyone's in different places right now i just want to celebrate where i am i want to i want to expose it i want to i want to say it out loud and so you do that the other side is when life is hard and life is you know it's it's hitting you um you've lost all your money you've gone through the divorce you're gaining the weight in two weeks and you know everything's down yeah so i think one you got to watch out because you because you can be a dark light vortex so you come in and you shine your dark light you pull everyone into your dark light and all of a sudden everyone's swirling with you i go watch out watch out make sure your swirl is not the toilet bowl like make sure so you're not swirling with someone inside misery and so there's a responsibility and to me i i i sandwich ugly stuff i sandwich the ugly i'll do the sandwich effect i don't have a better name for do the sandwich effect i grew up on sandwiches as a child so sandwich effect sandwich ugly with possibility this is how it sounds it's not gonna always be this way but right now i feel like i'm in the darkest place ever i feel miserable i feel angry i feel lonely i feel frustrated i'm always feeling like i want to screen and i know that i am not taking out real estate in this location oh i know you're just renting it i know that this is a rent and not even rent to own that if this is a stop sign i'm gonna do a rolling stop i don't even wanna fully stop here give me the ticket on the way man but i that i sometimes i left my door buying the ticket i'm about to get a ticket i'm all right with it and so you sandwich it if you gotta share our news i was just on the interview just now i told you um all white leaders and they said teach us and i said okay i'ma share some news first i want you to know that we are going to get through this that we are going to be a better human race because of this that you are to be celebrated because you signed up for this call now this might hurt a little bit and then i gave them insight and then on the back end i said i'm honored to sit here with you as your sister i'm honored to co-create what a future looks like i'm honored to be on the planet at the same time as you this is the beginning not the end more to come sandwich right so if you're going to deliver some dark energy put it in a sandwich make sure you sound you a possibility even if you don't know what the possibility is just say i know there's better to come it's my birthright it's my birthright to have joy it's my birthright to have abundance it's my birthright to experience healthy love that's my birthright right now i'm not having that experience but i'm going to hold on to the fact that it's my birthright how do we remind ourselves and actually believe in abundance for ourselves when all the evidence points in the other direction of scarcity lack of lack of not worthy of like how do you convince yourself how do you trick yourself how do you you know is this a a hack is this okay i say this in front of the mirror every day but i'm not making any money and i'm still right right right um so i'm gonna be honest with you for me it's a part of a spiritual practice it's a part of understanding that your mind can't contain all the things that are happening in the universe right now like and if you think that all that's happening in the universe is happening between your ears and you understand it and that's a very ego-centered and a very limited universe right and so my faith that's number one my faith faith is you know having you know having faith in what you can't see right so i'm not looking at all the physical evidence i'm not looking at that because physical evidence is just a manifestation of people's uh decisions so people are helping that there's a whole universe conspiring on my behalf that i do good i believe in good i want to bring good so the universe is setting things up to support me because i'm operating an alliance with a calling on my life that's what i know like i know like i know i'm not asking for permission to believe that i'm not asking for the way my day is going to confirm that see i woke up with that awareness and then my day started so you have to there has to be a part of you that's not triggered by what's happening there has to be a part of you that's sitting in the what you know i know like i know like i know like i know i'm not asking for permission to be used in this universe i'm letting you know i'm going to be used in the universe for the highest good now today is a bad day but i'm going to be used for the high is good you got to stand on that you got to let your knowing be like a pole that goes through the center of your head louis all the way down through the center of your body all the way down to the center of the earth and no matter what happens riots and outbreaks and and and quarantines and pandemics you still got to say hold on this is impacting my life experience is not impacting my life purpose yeah so when you operate like that then you stop reacting and your emotions are not in a reaction state your emotions are on okay that came okay how do we operate with it okay that came and you'll still spin out like i spun i asked when they told me i couldn't get on the plane for i was like okay hold on but then i begin to search for my grounding yes i begin to search for my center i begin to search for my calm and so you have to know where to find those things and how to go back and get them you have a right to be upset to be scared to be frustrated to be angry you got a right to feel all those feelings please fill them so you know what they feel like what you don't have permission to do if you say you're a leader a unicorn a change maker is to take up real estate in that feeling to do a lease option buy what you what you don't get to do is stay in that state of emotion that moves you out of b out of being impactful and so um it's a it's an ongoing process why do you think it's easier for people to stay in i guess what's the the terminology is like misery loves company why is misery easier to stay in than growth you know achievement uh you know consistency of positive things why do you think that is because low vibration is the first vibration that if you're walking on stairs and it was 15 flights of stairs and you saw a party on the fifth flight and no one's at the 15th flight you're like why wasn't the 15th flight because the fifth flight was easier to get to it requires less work it it drains your energy it drains more energy but requires less work to think on a low vibration wow every single one of us that are in a forward moving conversation right now didn't land there accidentally so you can slip into toxic conversation you can do nothing and be average you can do nothing and be average this that's why it's crowded i'm i'm not judging anybody but average is crowded because it's it's level one there's no elevator required there's no stairs required it's level one there's no average right and so toxic thinking and and and and non-growth thinking gossip and right gossip and and hating and and and cont and just gir just constantly reliving and re putting new energy into anger that's at a lower level think of those of us who are about four moving conversations we have to climb i have to be quiet for 10 days lewis i have to be quiet do you understand the challenge of that for you lisa yes i understand yeah i have to be quiet for 10 days and then when i did my first facebook live and if you go back in my may you'll see it i went back into my first facebook live i've never cried i've never cried on facebook like that i'm never quite po i'm not i've cried on stage like that but i've never i had so much emotion but i had already made my way to conscious thinking and now i gave myself permission to speak and even at that i felt i felt the pull i felt the pull pulling me back into oh man i can level one man and i just kept going no no no not on my watch wow no no hold on not on my watch hold on but i when i tell you on my ankles on that first facebook live that i did on my all the comp the negative comments are this the victims the judgment all the all the hurt all the fear that i had from my son and just angry that i'm still fearful for my son to drive and so all of that all of that was coming up and so you asked why do people do it because it requires less work um uh it and and we do it in we're we're we're communal people so we love to do things we love to get people to co-sign with us um and and negative thinking is cancerous um uh and so it it spreads effortlessly if you do nothing to cancer it's going to spread right but but if you do nothing with positive thinking it doesn't spread you have to get up and shovel and scoop and plant and pull up the weeds and plant new seeds and get the water and water in you got to do all this stuff for positive so yeah people decide i'm just gonna hang out here in the negative world and then they watch successful people and wonder why can't i have that well let me just tell you something your mindset is birthing your life experience you cannot have a a life in a castle with a mindset in the doghouse oh dang that's the truth right there lisa you can't you can't have a life i want to i want to have a life say that one more time you can't have a what you can't have a life in the castle with a mindset in the doghouse in the dog pound like you you right you can't you you it's incongruent you ain't congruent when the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two different directions you ain't going nowhere when you align pull it yeah when you align the tongue in your mouth to go in the same direction as the tongue in your shoe now we can move [Music] let's talk about the four e's what is this principle the fouriers that you talk about in your book yeah yeah yeah so um so that i i like to break up my life in quadrants and i help my students i do a lot of coaching i do personal development and professional development coaching and no matter where you cut where you come to me whether you come to me for personal development or whether you are want to turn your passion into profit in this professional development and business development for entrepreneurs we go over the four e's because abundance is holistic it's a holistic experience so the first is enrichment of self that you are only going to go as far as you think you're worthy i can push you can push you you can have the greatest product but if you don't feel worthy you will work hard to sabotage that relationship you don't know everything right you don't know you're doing you think these are the things i need and you're driving that guy away you're driving that woman away because your self-worth says they weren't going to stay forever anyway or self-worth around money you have a cap that you feel like you're worthy of a million dollars you will always get to 999 000 and you will stop because your self-worth says it so enrichment is number one what's a good exercise or process that we can follow on a daily basis maybe something simple to enhance our enrichment absolutely worthiness absolutely i did this for six months every single day right after i brush my teeth and and it's the icu exercise and you get in the mirror now it it's not necessarily simple because because you're dealing with yourself of course and as complicated as you are we'll be the mechanics of it the mechanics are very simple yes i appreciate that distinction um you get in the mirror and you complete three different sentences you want to write this down the first sentence you look at yourself and you say your name so you say louis and you complete this i'm proud that you and find seven different things every day to celebrate yourself for seven different each day you can do the same thing you did the day before but each day do seven different things to be proud of the second sentence is gonna knock you down a little bit it's gonna come from your gut um louis i forgive you for and cut the shackles to blame shame guilt regret and anger in that sentence you cut those five shackles not the first day maybe not the third day but by the 21st day by the 13th day you'll feel some relief so louis i forgive you for and go back five years 15 years 20 years do that forgive you for that thing don't nobody know about but you go ahead and cut those shackles because if you can still think about it it's still in your energy space and then the third sentence is louis i commit to you that before you make a commitment to anybody else throughout your day you make seven commitments to you so the first sentence is i'm proud that you you're celebrating yourself first we are under celebrated as a as a society we look for acknowledgement they enter they interviewed a hundred executives that all made over a quarter of a million dollars and said would you like a five percent raise next year or would you rather be told thank you more often 100 100 said keep your money i'd rather hear thank you so we're under celebrated but first celebrate you be the example when i was on oprah when she said what do you do i said i recognize that i'm the example of how the rest of the world is supposed to treat me and it's my job to give the world the best example of how i like to be treated so celebrate yourself forgive yourself cut the shackles and then commit to yourself before you commit to anyone else that right there powerful that right there will begin to fill your cup up to get to your salsa i love that where did you start to learn that process was that something you just started to practice yourself and started looking in the mirror and trying different things and you boy you asked the question um i was in a relationship engaged to be married and it became abusive i was emotionally abused and then um he picked me up and threw me three feet across the room and choked me until i passed out i don't tell a lot of people that um and i was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder and my mother asked me to go to the doctor strongly recommended i go to the doc drug me to the doctor and after the assessment of me in manhattan beach um my doctor said that i was clinically depressed and i i said how did i get here me that don't even fit with my name i was head cheerleader in my high school i was i was the captain of the track team i was i'm always the person to get people going it didn't fit how did i get here i don't know if you've ever found yourself saying how did i get here i was sitting on the table in the doctor's office saying how did i get here and when she wrote me the prescription she handed me the prescription and i read the prescription and it said lisa nichols prozac it was like i was looking at a foreign statement my name in prozac and i asked her i said can i try something for 30 days because i i realized i was just sad i lost me i had lost me in him i had lost me in being a mother i lost me in being the mother of a son whose father was in prison and trying to hide that shame and then trying to make this man happy and then beginning to fend for my life i lost me so i needed to discover me i needed to remind myself who i was and so i just realized i i didn't celebrate me i was beating myself up i was really mad at me and i was showing up for everyone else so i just made up these sentences and i did it to rescue myself to turn my crawl into a walk and i ultimately was able to turn my crawl into a walk in my walk into a run and i run into a sore but it started as a crawl so i don't offer the how i got to that exercise often unless someone asked thank you very much thanks for sharing yeah and opening up i've i've i've long since learned four things this to me this is the road to true freedom i have nothing to prove i have nothing to protect i have nothing to hide and i have nothing to defend that your perception of me after i tell my truth is actually none of my business my perception of me that i go to bed as whole and complete as i woke up before i check how many likes i have on facebook that i like me first and every other like is bonus there you go like it that was a long road to get to long road sure long road yeah and we probably have to constantly be reminded of it you know and then when i get in that place and then when i when i live like i'm forgetting you have to have accountability partners stashed in the corners of your life and you have to give them an assignment on your high day you have to give them an assignment on your high day if i look like i'm slipping well my ego's in the way get in my face get in my face right get in my face and remind me of the man of the woman i said i it to be don't let me off the hook for the 2020 version of me because we're humans it's gonna happen as long as we're breathing we're gonna be out of integrity at some point come on your humanity's gonna get in the way your ego our ladies your she-go is going to get hooked your resentment your your smallness just smallness it all fits in smallness yeah i'm i'm human and so i i'm the best thing i did was to keep people around me to hold me accountable to the woman i said i want to become sure that's great i love that that's why i have a lot of people from the midwest who who work with me on my team support me keep me grounded right right right right right like don't get to hollywood exactly don't get caught up in the lights and the cameras in the daggone headset exactly exactly absolutely okay enrichment that's the first part uh the second part is enchantment relationships are going to define the quality of your life when you're on your bed and your last days you're going to want to know who's going to be around you bottom line you're not going to care about another podcast you're not going to care about another sponsor i'm not going to care about another book or the freaking new york times best it matters to us now but the relationships in your life are going to determine the quality of your life and so mind your relationships and so in the book abundance now i teach you how to how to heal broken relationships that matter to you how to get back level set i give you this great um this great tool um called um it's a it's a it's a a conversation to heal a broken experience so it's called a communication charter i use it in my company i use it at my house and um so just is about how do i keep great relationships and then the third area is engagement work engagement you're going to spend so much time and work and we're so emotionally attached to our work and most of the time people are attached in such a dismal way that why would you have that dismal energy around something you're going to spend so many hours in so i teach you how to shift your energy toward your work so that you no longer look at it as your work now it's no longer your jlb like everyone in my community all everyone in my tribe they no longer say they have a job they say i have an investor and when you look at your job as your investor you really rename it as your investor and it's investing in your breathtaking future it has the capacity to buy anything you want for your future if you mind your money right right right it can buy your freedom and all of a sudden you start treating your investor better and you're more excited about going matter of fact you're grateful you're grateful for yourself feel like work man my investor was la unified school district that was a hard place to be when it was a job i'm just telling you but as an investor for three and a half years i wrote myself a check and i put in the memo line funding my dream i didn't even know what the dream was i wasn't even clear i just knew whatever my dream was it was going to cost some money and i needed to pay and i need to have some money to pay and that if i was going to ask other people to invest in me i had to be my first investor who am i to ask someone to put money my way when i didn't put money my way right so i want to ma i wanted someone for them to match just match my investment in me i got 10 in can you put 10 in i got 20 and can you put 20 in and so when you look at your job your work engagement as an investor into your breathtaking life all of a sudden there's a different energy around it yeah and then the last one is money endowment and to recognize more than the dr seuss family and the disney family and the mcdonald's family and the lawrence welk family has a right to an endowment when you get the understanding and i really unpack it here where you kind of go what like i'll i'll make you do a couple of scooby-doo looks in the book like row row when you look and go i can do an endowment like i like because we think it's for them remember i started this conversation with abundances for those people over there especially when it comes to an endowment or a living legacy like in your book and be a create creating a legacy to recognize that wait a minute there's a lewis endowment and a lease endowment and a don and john and tanya endowment and fill in the blank here endowment and i need to live my life to set up my endowment all of a sudden you become responsible for generations to come responsible for changing the trajectory of your family's life that's some bold stuff when in your lifetime you do a needlepoint move for your family in my lifetime i was able to do a needlepoint move for my son like he's a nichols child he's one of many nichols men but that's a nichols man who now knows what it feels like to cook in italy and in tuscany and in in florence and in venice and in rome that's a that's a nichols child who knows what it feels like to go surfing on the gold coast of australia that's a nichols child understands what it feels like to stand on the tallest mountain in africa like his life i asked him this morning i said jelani can you when you get married and have children can you stay in california so mommy can really see her grandchildren he goes well mom that's kind of restrictive it's restricted to stay in big california because he knows the world yeah his his paradigm shift has occurred he won't ever live like another and he'll take everything he's learned and expand the nichols male child experience so in in my generation in my lifetime i was able to change our family experience for him and so i believe that we have a right to look at our legacy and create a living legacy and then create a legacy [Music] how important is the thoughts that you say in your mind quietly every day and the words you speak out loud every day how important are they together and which one is more valuable if you can only choose one negative thoughts but positive words positive thoughts but negative words or do they both need to be in alignment towards your mission and purpose well um so i'll start with this your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head i'ma start with that can we just speak for like 24 hours on this i love this right your life is a physical manifestation of the conversation going on in your head so if you said nothing but thought everything your life is going to show up to make your thoughts true so you have one job you have one job in your life for you to make what you think about life true so that you're not wrong you don't want to walk around wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong you want to be right about the life you see so you're going to work hard work hard to produce the life that you talk about in your mind whether that life is no one loves me i'm all alone you can be in a group of people and you will think i'm so alone and and you will feel alone and things will show up to co-sign your loneliness just because you're looking for that and so um if you start with i'm gonna say the mind like the mind is that thing the mind is the core engine it starts all things it shuts all things down when i start thinking something different like hold on stop i want to think something i shut down that behavior i shut down that outcome when i burst something i birthed it in my mind i focus on my mind i see myself there in my mind before i got on with you i was doing guided visualizations i'm recording them so people and i mean they're juicy and i'm saying see yourself here because if you can see it and then the the key is evoke the emotion as if you were there yep right and that's why people are who are sad all the time are sad because they're thinking of things that make them sad and then the emotion follows the thought so i must say everything starts with your thought louis but let me just say this when you speak you speak your future into the world you speak your few whatever you say whatever falls off your tongue when when you say i am right the unconscious mind says and you are so whatever comes on the other side of that and so you you you ask me a hard question which one is most important it starts with the thought i think the thought is that that's where everything originates and then you add a whole lot of turbo boost to it with your tongue yeah when you align the two and then you add to it like the b12 the b12 of action action is like action is like that's the nitro that's the nitro like right and i see so many people they think it they write it they journal it they talk about it and they do no action and i go you understand that the action is that that's like that's like putting the flower in the sun because it requires sun and so yeah yeah i had this is a beautiful explanation and i had a navy seal on uh six seven months ago his name's chad and he he talked about as a seal uh he used the tongue as a rudder and a boat he said what you speak is going to lead you down you know the ocean or the river or wherever on the boat you're on and so he never says anything negative out loud because it's so powerful in the navy seals you talk about how powerful it is no matter how much pain they're experiencing in hell week and all this stuff they're dealing with they never allow the tongue to speak something negative otherwise they'll ultimately quit and give up right right right too painful to deal with what they deal with right to then say ah i'm hurting i'm tired ah i can't do it right right don't don't don't speak that don't speak that into the unit you just because whatever you speak feels like it expands of course energy grows where energy goes it expands so speak life speak possibility there is not one dark situation that doesn't have a glimmer of light it doesn't mean it's going to be convenient to see that's true most of us are looking for convenient light yes oh man i want to speak for like five more hours with you but i wanna i wanna try to finish with a few final questions here um even though i don't want to finish this we'll want to come back on yeah we'll bring it back up again i promise it won't be as challenging to get me in the future i promise my friend i want to talk about uh for a moment purpose because i feel like right now we're seeing a lot of people with scattered purposes especially with everything that's happening in the world over the last three months six months i'm seeing so many big influencers go through divorce who are publicly had great relationships i'm seeing people's businesses go under because of they were in the events business or whatever and they weren't able to adapt and shift i'm seeing uh people scattered with their purpose and unclear right how can people let's speak to this because i think it's two different questions one is how to truly figure out what your purpose is because i think it's seasonal you know what your purpose was when you're 10 is different i agree it's seasonal so it's hard for it's a very broad question and i don't want to set you up with that uh because i think it's unfair when people ask you that for me but if you know if you think i know what my purpose is like i know i'm meant to go do this thing i think i think i'm supposed to go after this i feel like maybe i should try this thing but i'm afraid how do you how would you coach someone who knows what they're supposed to do or at least they think they do until they figure it out and it's not it or it is it how do you coach people or encourage people to actually do it to actually overcome that final hurdle of fear whether they're afraid of failure or afraid of success afraid of judgment whether they've got a really good life and a really good job but it's just not their it's not pulling them to their ultimate purpose where do you where do you share in that line so um one of the first things i do is i ask them to please let's quantify and give life to what does it cost you to stay still oh so you know i'm a i'm a i'm a straight no chaser kind of girl all right i'm i'm a i'm i'm we're not just going towards something we also have to realize that to the same degree that you asked the weight loss uh why did i do it i because what would it cost me with all my success what would it have cost me to stay in that 220 pound body what's the cost and so when i saw that that's why i responded if i l if i didn't give myself this right i was very clear with the cost so number one i would say what does it cost you and i and my students know me i do this in my in my workshop my trainings for my my platinum level students and my coaches and students that are getting certified to be a lisa nichols uh trainer and i i ask them hard questions what does it cost you to stay in that mindset and they have to list it and i say what part of the price have you already paid and they just give visceral like ah and i say so how long i don't know whatever you want how much longer do you want to pay that price right two years ten years two months or are we pif are we paid in full now [Laughter] are we pif i painted full and i'm key pad exactly and so i i use this metaphor that if you went to the store and bought a dozen eggs and you went home and you scrambled all the eggs and you cooked the eggs and then you took the empty carton back to the grocery store and you said i'd like to buy these again the the cashier will go but you already bought them why are you buying why are you paying for it again that's what we're doing we're paying for the same behavior over and over again and so one get clear that your pif that you're paid in full for not being in action like i i i've already paid it i i i've been three years of wanting a dream and not have whatever your reasons are right number two is let's talk about everything that happens if you fail let's just unpack that you go back to where you're at now yeah right oh actually you never back to where you are now because now you got some kind of lesson that you didn't have yeah right you got some kind of experience so so what happens if you fail okay great so what lessons can we pull out of that so now let's agree to if we fail let's fail forward so then let's define what does failing forward look like so then we get very descriptive on what does failing for look like what will i do with the lessons um what will i i'll document four to six things i did right and i'll document two to three things that i can improve upon and i'll implement them all on the next go round so then we take out all the possibility and i even go as far as saying so what if people judge you i unpack it what do people judge you let's say they like they talk really bad about you on social media for like uh three days like it goes a while well then what happens well um on the sixth day i get up and do it again so all of a sudden i take all the all the juice out of the out of the out of the balloon of all we just deep dive into the darkness of your illusions deep dive into the darkness of your mind so like what okay well my i'll lose this money okay you lost how much forty thousand okay all forty thousand gone so now what i don't know okay well let's let's let's figure out a plan because you already lost the money we lost the money let's let's now i can start saving again i can do whatever okay great so then every all these big possibilities are now just situations then i go to so what can we do to eliminate the possibility of that occurring so now we go into strategy so i'm real big on strategy i'm real big on milestones i believe that you should not set a macro goal without setting several micro goals so i live in micro goals like my number that i want to generate this year i don't ever look at that after after november of the year prior after november 2019 i don't really look at it i look at every monthly goal because that's my milestone i know that goal and i know that goal is tied into my annual goal so i have to worry about it so i'm saying if i'm on track all track launcher because i can handle that that's palatable right so then a lot of times entrepreneurs set like like big bodacious gold and you have a release of endorphins when you first said it but then it goes away because you don't even know how you're going to get there yeah and so i'm real big on my like just on my campus i'm real big on three things a strategy right milestones and accountability buy when dates buy when by who right and so make it doable make it so you can see it set it up in 90 days and so uh i i i think that purpose comes with a plan and oftentimes we live we leave purpose so big and so ambiguous that it feels difficult to touch and so if you're supposed to inspire millions okay great so for august how many are you going to touch toward that million we're going to get to millions we're going to get two million but are we touching 5 000 are we touching 50 000. and then by november did you grow your social media platform by 3 or by 30 like less something trackable and measurable so that you can see that purpose being fulfilled so you can trust your picker so many of us haven't had enough indicators haven't had enough uh evidence that we've done it the way we thought we would do it or better that now you're starting to pull back on trusting your picker well you need evidence if the court of law sends a man to prison because of evidence or lets a woman walk because of lack of evidence then why not use evidence in your life that you're ready for such a time as this but you have to set it up in such a way where you can see the trackable evidence what do we say to ourselves when we don't do self-care what are we saying about how much we are worth to ourselves when we don't when we delay that for months and years of taking care of ourselves yeah yeah yeah um i'm not important enough to put at the front of my own line you always are going to have a line of people to serve things to do and you got one job to stand at the front of your own line um you you're saying that i you're training other people how to treat you by the way you treat yourself and so you are saying um you're saying that i i still need to heal in the area of feeling important enough to prioritize my self-care yeah um you also may be saying and can be saying uh i still need to learn how to fall in love with myself enough to take care of me the way i take care of others and that's so many people you take care of those around you far better than you take care of yourself yeah yeah this is beautiful you you uh shared last time i want to see if your three truths are the same so at the end of every interview i asked people what their three biggest truths are if this was their last day on earth many years from now and all of their content was i had to go with him to the next place and there was no more videos or books or anything of your message but you could share three lessons to the world or three truths i'm curious if your three truths have changed in this season so i'll ask you what are your current three truths you are greater than your circumstances it's your birthright it's your birthright to have joy and abundance and love and fairness and it's your responsibility to leave this planet a better place than it was before you came by your contribution and those probably are all different because i'm a woman i change i i i change hair i change i like it what what what were they for yeah the last last time was uh you get you get a thousand do-overs every 999 you get to press reset most valuable thing is to nourish people around you who love you and make your dash dance yeah i love those those are an alignment yeah those are the linemen yeah yeah yeah okay and the last question uh which i'm going to ask you here in a second before i do lisa i want to acknowledge you for being an incredible uh human being of spreading positive energy you talked about like our life is not for us it's for other people as well and every action every word every intention you set creates a ripple and you've made a po a powerful impact on me uh you know i know ben is watching and listening our producer it's made an impact on him and the millions of people that are listening and watching right now this is going to impact in such a profound powerful way i acknowledge you for your consistent growth the consistent effort and energy you take to work on your health and maintain and improve to having the relationship you want everything i acknowledge you you're you're amazing and i'm so grateful we're friends and you're alive so thank you so much i appreciate the acknowledgement um i'm a reflection of you brother um we are blessed enough to find like unicorns like each other so that we um we don't have to walk this planet alone wondering about our our our sanity because we we play out in the universe um we don't play outside the box we realize that there was never a box in the first place so thank you for making the journey feel good i i'm always grateful for the company i get to keep while i'm here and while i'm up to what i'm doing so i'm your sister in service your sister in possibility i want to find excuses to play together and call him exactly exactly i appreciate it you've always been a safe space i love the space you create it's judgment free um it's eagle-free um and it's full of intention of service and it's yeah that's the place i want to spend time i appreciate it we'll do more of these for sure frequently in the future my final question what's your definition of greatness currently being willing to lift others as you climb being willing to lift others as you climb being willing to speak even if your voice shakes if you want more greatness in your life then you gotta check out this video right here mental resolve i think that everybody needs that because when you have goals and dreams there will be resistance an airplane cannot fly without the resistance of air walt disney filed bankruptcy seven times and had two nervous breakdowns

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 63,681

Rating: 4.8485179 out of 5

Keywords: lisa nichols, lisa nichols speech, lisa nichols interview, lisa nichols motivation, lisa nichols mindvalley, lisa nichols purpose, lewis howes, lewis howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inpspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success habits, success advice, success motivation, wealth, law of attraction, manifest abundance, how law of attraction works, step into your purpose

Id: oLAX1nPSNSM

Length: 141min 39sec (8499 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020