The 7 Steps To QUICKLY Get Out Of A RUT! (Never Be Lazy Again) | Lewis Howes

is there more to this horrible feeling of feeling like a loser can i change this and once you figure out i have the ability not to actually ask yourself if this is what you wanted or were you just used to it being used to something louis i think is the biggest reason why people don't here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that you can't practice this type of thinking if you're not getting out of a rut can be so challenging but in this video i bring together some of the most productive people in the world to share with you how to get unstuck in your life if you enjoy make sure to like this video subscribe and leave a comment below on your biggest takeaway [Music] how do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy yeah well at first it's know thyself because we all we're all different so one of the attributes i talk about in the book is discipline and what i had to do with discipline was um actively separate discipline from self-discipline what's the difference okay well the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused okay self-discipline is about is about managing one's self and it does it has very little to do with external requirements right so so you or i can decide to get in shape for example and we can change our diet we can work out every day the external environment uh doesn't have a lot of say in that you know in us in us achieving that accomplishment so self-discipline is about is about managing the internal uh discipline the way i talk about in the book is about achieving that long-term goal this is these are those long-term goals are going to take a while to achieve and the the external world has a say so getting that promotion writing that book becoming the famous singer becoming a navy seal right the external world has been starting a podcast right the external world has a say in whether or not you do that and that's and the discipline that is required to move through those wicked those wickets takes adaptability it takes flexibility it takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs the successes and not get crushed by the failures and continue to move towards that goal and what i found was because i'm a i'm a very unself-disciplined person i don't have a lot right um and so what i so i had to separate this because i've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life it's like what's the difference well the difference is um if you are overly so so those with very high self-discipline sometimes this is not exclusive but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because because the achievement of long-term goals often takes a an ability and an uh and by necessity to march into the unknown into uncertainty which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty the self-disciplined person the very self-esteem likes routine like certainty right that's how it's structure i mean that's what it is um and so and so moving towards a goal like that takes oftentimes uh being able to adapt out of structure you know and say well i i can't do that like i'm normal i'd have to just go in i have to go and unknowing right now the the best the most successful people those who have both self-discipline and discipline right um in terms of staying motivated for goal the way i would do it by knowing myself is i would i would uh understanding i'm not a very self-disciplined person i would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces right so if i want to if i want to lose weight you know then i can say well that's why cheat days are actually good for me right because i can i can i could say i can take this piece of it and move so i i chunk my reward system in a different way but i think i think the way the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective but it would in my uh kind of through my thought process my experience involve a an active or one to actively um map out a reward system that helps someone move through that sort of creating the reward system first for the for the goal in order to help you stay motivated yeah depending on your depending on your how you show up not to say like okay i'm gonna my goal is to achieve this thing it's gonna take me three years to accomplish it right and that's the only reward i'm gonna get in those three years but how can i reward myself every day for an action i take every month for a milestone every year if we're getting closer so focusing on the reward system yes and this is this is this is neurobiological because dopamine the neurotransmitter is you get you get hits of dopamine when you as a reward when you achieve things you know there's many ways you get dopamine but one of the ways is when you achieve things so if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you it can't be it can't be kind of inert right so so if i want to run if i want to run marathon and i haven't and i can barely run to the to my mailbox right um you know then maybe you know buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit yeah as someone who runs you know somewhat frequently and i you'd probably identify with this uh just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not gonna give us that dopamine we gotta we gotta extend that we're gonna extend that task a little bit so that we've already accomplished a lot of something so then you have to push beyond you have to push beyond it to get that that reward system so it becomes subjective what would you say 20 years as a navy seal at different levels uh and you were deployed how many different times are you going to talk about that well you know i mean 13 and some change yeah so deployments between what six months and over a year yeah i never did year long but anywhere between three months to six months usually um this is iraq and afghanistan for the most part yeah in other places maybe not a lot to talk about what would you say of that 20-year experience was the most challenging experience for you was it something within a mission was it learning how to develop as a leader was it having a relationship with your wife during that time what was the most challenging point yeah yeah the most challenging thing ironically wasn't the job because you because we were all so prepared for the job and you were around we were around just the best people in the world um so so the trust and the camaraderie was to this day you know i look back on it very fondly right wow um so not the day-to-day job i mean even just like the the missions you went out on yeah that wasn't that wasn't challenging uh i think i think if i were to if i were to say you know the first foremost was probably having to leave the family when you have to say goodbye to your family um for a stint you know whether it's three months or six months or some some folks are deploying for a year right um that is a rough deal that not many people can can capture not many people with families can capture that when you have to say goodbye to your kids and your wife for that you know okay we'll see you in however and then and then to add on to that understanding their stress or at least my kids were a little bit smaller but understanding my wife's stress knowing that i was going someplace and she just stayed in contact yeah well i mean luckily with today's technology contact was fairly easy but we found was you know again ironically we found that that um daily contact was never a good idea because what happens is you establish a routine you get comfortable you're comfortable so so something happens if i'm working i'm i'm overseas in something i have a mission that goes along or whatever and i don't get to call her that day well suddenly she's worried you know and it also makes time actually seem slower interesting yeah so we we decided we were only going to talk usually once a week my son who had a real trouble when he was young i mean he was you know he was born in um 05 so he was he was by the time he was two he was he was having trouble with me deploying um and and every time i went it was rough on him and we actually for him we actually almost had to what we literally had to just decide not to i was not i was not going to talk to him on the phone it was too hard for him he had to basically kind of forget me oh my gosh so he had a compartmentalize as a child yeah in order to help him compartmentalize survive yeah and not go depressed or be stressed because that's one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization yeah how do you do that if you're an emotional human being this you have these deep connections to your family and friends how do you just detach in a sense yeah and become more machine-like for a period of time and then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments well it never goes away and i think the attributes the the way i talk about comparabilitation and the attribute is more uh in is more kind of surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus i'm going to block something out so i don't have to think about it however um i think most team guys seals spec ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things you know block out things that are that are painful i know that about me um and i know that about my my uh my buddies um because you have to because war sucks you know and at the end of the day the mission has to be accomplished you know so if something gnarly happens on a mission um you can't sit there these these movies that show these extended scenes of people you know mourning when when their body goes down or whatever like oh my god yeah it doesn't have that but now you don't have that time you know you have to the the you have to win the gunfight right because if you don't and all of you won't make it home right so so you have to and i think i think the training allows you to do that the training is so intense and so um kind of uh so effective that it requires you to compartmentalize you know training teaches you to compartmentalize you become become very very good at it um now that could be a detriment in a relationship so uh i think those of us who were able to recognize that actively try not to do that with our families and so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic thing that just happens without us without us having control over it what was the the moment that was the scariest for you when you were deployed where you thought like um i may not make it um or our team may not make it or this is a really bad i guess you're training for bad situations all the time yeah but was there ever a moment you're like i don't know if we're gonna get out of this no i was i was fortunate not to have that moment i say that i say that with immense gratitude because i know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that that uh he can't say that they had those moments where they you know they said that but but no i i was fortunate enough to be um always in a position and my team was always in a position that we had prepared planned and executed in a way that was highly effective so that when things went wrong because things always go sideways we had complete you know or near complete control or we understood the pathways we needed to get to to go throughout it but but i say that also you know this is this comes back to comparabilization you know one of the things that you have to be able to do when when it goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up right the focus is not oh my god i don't think i'm going to get out of this because it's how do i get out of this but the so the mental acuity attributes which are situation awareness um uh compartmentalization task switching and learnability right um so that's how information is coming in how we're processing it and prioritizing how we're switching between the necessary tasks and then how we're learning from our from our from from our decisions right so i talk about the parachute malfunction in in the context of that um but ultimately comes to even be able to do that in the first place it requires a a a for brain dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight flight response and you're able to think through stress challenge and uncertainty in in the sense that say okay what what can i control right now and this is where trust in your teammates comes in because now i have a team i mean i i can say this with with um with great pride and gratitude i can remember literally walking in areas you know when we're overseas and thinking man this is a it's a bad area this is sketchy and having complete and utter faith right because i just i was around because i was with my teammates right i was around people who just i trusted i knew that if something went went wrong we'd we'd be able to handle it you know and so i think that's that's a necessity when you do this type of type of stuff when you're going out on a mission what's the process like of preparing for that mission are you planning more for all the things that could go wrong on how to get out of that situation or is it planning for here's exactly how we would like it to go right yeah but let's also have a exit plan or a plan for when things go wrong what do you think it's the latter it's it's it's you plan the mission as you'd like it to go um and then you uh inside of that planning you put together you build contingencies within each uh within each factory so when this doesn't go as planned so what are the three ways to get it yeah so you know just like i mean just like any um uh athlete would understand or so so a quarterback coming out of a snap would say well i have two or three or four plays i can fall back on depending on how this line shapes up right you have the same thing you know i you know this is where experience matters ever you do you do it over and over again it's okay well during as we're coming in on insertion you know we there's there's a few things that could go wrong so if this then that if this then that and you kind of do that throughout a phase throughout the phase planning but then there's what we call the 80 20 rule and that is you you get to 80 of certainty and then you recognize that 20 is just out of your control and that's where confidence comes you say if something happens outside that 20 percent we will we will figure it out because we're not going to figure out everything and and it's you know murphy's law will dictate that something happens that we haven't thought of uh so you uh so you prepare yourself to deal with uncertainty how do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment so that you don't freak out and freeze up but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal yeah the uh i was i think we're predisposed each one of us to what uh what i've called a human huberman i both have called this is the autonomic set point you know at what point do we start flipping into an auto into an autonomic response into fight flight where our where our system starts you know taking over and our forebrain starts coming offline if we were if you and i use boiling point as the average most of us might be average there are those who uh who start really freaking out at like 190 you know so 212 is the average at 190 degrees they're starting to freak out right there are people who take it it takes till like 2 30 to boil right i think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point first of all in other words we tend to when bad things start to happen we tend to slow down and start thinking through it versus get all hyped up it's funny it's funny you know i live in a neighborhood and in my neighborhood there's four other navy seals there's you know one across the street one down the road one must be nice well it is nice you know hey because they're great dudes and it's great they're great neighbors but i remember my wife once saying and she said hey i'm so glad these guys are here and i in the neighborhood i was like why so she said because if something went wrong i know i could go to them and they'd act like you act and i said well tell me i said because because if something happens they would immediately calm down and they'd start working the problem right and so so i think there's there i think we show up predisposed um training to it is difficult you know um and i i think so so here we are actually working on some stuff some stuff to help train have to help teach people to do that uh but it comes down to understanding your own neurology and it comes down to understanding that you know here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's going to be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that you can't practice this type of thinking if you're not in stress you need to put yourself you need to put yourself in that what are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them but it's actually preparing them i talk about every day i think you should be experiencing some type of pain something that's uncomfortable right seeking discomfort yes uh whether it be through a 10-minute workout whether it be through a longer run it doesn't matter what it is an uncomfortable conversation we should be doing this every day in a in a structured environment yeah that allows us to grow yes what do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves i i can't answer that because it's so subjective i can give some ideas and you just gave some i mean some people are are very social people so starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake right for me that would be hard right starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard so that might be something i do uh giving a presentation public speaking for people is tough so uh so volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because you know you know they that that makes them anxious you know so working out for some is like for some people they've developed a system where that that pain point of working out is something they highly enjoy right so they're not they're not practicing it yeah so um so it so someone should should look at their own makeup and ask themselves what what fright well in fear again it doesn't have to go all the way to fear fear is interesting because it's a it's actually a combination of two things it's a combination of uncertainty and anxiety and you can have each one of those and not have fear right so if you are anxious but not uncertain that would be i have to give this presentation on monday i hope it's go i'm nervous about it right that's you know but but there's nothing uncertain about it it's monday it's at two o'clock i know what i'm going to do i'm just i'm nervous about it okay um uncertainty without anxiety well that's every kid on christmas eve okay i mean so uh but it's when you combine the two that you start to generate fear well um the the idea is if you have fear if you have uncertainty plus anxiety and it starts to manifest into fear the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down okay anxiety buy down bite out which means decrease um anxiety can be decreased internally it's an internal response right so things like some of the tools your room talks about visual tools breathing tools so you can begin to you can begin to shift your physiology out of your sympathetic into your parasympathetic come off of the autonomic response system right so that's so that's how you could start you know kind of buying down on anxiety uncertainty is largely external okay that means something around you outside of you you don't understand there's unknown um the way the best way to do that and the way we do it uh in the in spec ops is we we control what we can control so some some people have referred to it kind of control your three-foot world right but it doesn't have to extend it's not a it's not a three-foot thing it's it's what in this moment can i control and then take control of that right because then you are grabbing onto certainty you're taking what is uncertain you're grabbing onto something certain as soon as you've controlled that as soon as you move through that then you have to make another decision what's what's the next thing this is basically kind of stepping through right stepping through this challenge right so uh so you can start to you can start to practice um coming off of fear or moving through fear by kind of understanding both of those those uh those pieces what do you think is the greatest lesson you learned throughout the 20 years for yourself that has helped you not only during that but also after being uh with the seals i think it's i think it's it's not fearing the unknown it's the it's the idea that i i you know when you go through something like you understand that hey i could pretty much do whatever i'd like to do um and i know that even though even though i don't know how i'm going to do it i know i can figure it out if there's enough interest if there's enough passion right you know i'm not gonna i'm not interested in becoming a pro football player you know right so so that's you know that's off my list right but i was interested in writing a book and that was a whole new process for me you know when i started when i left the navy i started public speaking i did not like public speaking at all right i did not like it but i knew it was it was it was an edge that i wanted to conquer you know and say okay well let me work through the things to conquer this it's kind of like your philosophy i think it's a really it's it's not only a deep one but it's profound because because if we are consistently moving deciding what our edges are moving towards our edge and then getting there um then we are we are growing yeah because guess what we're doing at that point we're looking for the next edge you know and that's the growth process it's continuing to move to our edges and and then finding the next edge i mean you say you don't like public speaking but don't you have to speak to your teams and guys yeah but that's not public that's like that's that's the guys so it's not it's not the same it's different yeah it's different there's a lot more you know when you're you know because you're in and and when you're in the in the military there's no there's no expectation of of you know kind of great articulation or or humor or you know it's just or what's actually yeah it's just what's the fact that here's the word and that's what you appreciate too there's like no one wants you to sit there and pontificate it's like hey guys this is this is what's going on um so there's there's a there's a directness that's appreciated and um and required you know so but that's not you know public what do you think was the hardest lesson you had to learn through 20 years something that you were struggling with or challenged with or you kept repeating until you finally learned the lesson yeah i think the hardest lessons the hardest lesson maybe not one the hardest lessons were just around leadership what it takes what leadership take what it takes to be a leader because again um being a leader and being in charge are often conflated they're not the same thing okay what's the difference well anybody could be in charge i was as an officer you know in the in the military i was pretty much in charge of something all the time it didn't didn't make me a leader you don't get to call yourself a leader it's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome okay someone else someone else makes that decision you can't you can't you can't designate yourself that way um someone else decides whether or not you are a leader okay and that's done through the way you behave in that position so if you are in charge and you're behaving in a way that causes someone to make a decision okay this is the person i would lead i mean if if if we think about the leaders in our lives the people who we consider leaders in our lives it's not because they were just in charge of us in fact we could probably think of people who we would follow uh into hell and back and there they have they have no place in the hierarchy of of our lives right they are just someone who just they've behaved that way in in a way that's made us kind of in in endeared to them so so the attributes i talk about in the book in terms of leadership attributes are all attributes that actually um cause behaviors that typically cause people to look at others as leaders what are the behaviors that most human beings admire the most that we want to follow that person or be inspired to be led by something that they're sharing or involved in a community of movement whatever it may be what are the three or four main behaviors that they have and we should be developing if we want to be better leaders yeah well i talk about five in the book in terms of that words the first is empathy okay and again i would say this there's not an exclusivity in terms of what someone will decide uh because there are people who will subjective right it's a subjective thing you know again it's someone's choice as to whether or not they think so empathy is one um selflessness uh is another and this is not just um you know so let's just back up here empathy um not just i know how you feel i feel how you feel right i can i can put myself into your shoes and and i and that reflects in the way i communicate with you and i care about it shows that you care about another human being what is the best way to to show that i mean give me an example as opposed to saying i know how you feel how do you feel empathize showing you feel how they feel well first deep listening and so so uh so we all so listening to another person but uh but true like deep full-on like listening like i i am hanging on every word listening oftentimes we listen to people and we're two things wonder one of two things is happening either we're thinking about what we're saying next right or we're thinking about how what that person is saying relates to our lives and it's not from a malicious standpoint it's really because we're trying to relate so we're trying to say okay you're talking about football i'm thinking okay wait a second you know did i play i played football in eighth grade maybe i could talk about that we're late yeah but what i'm doing is i'm not listening to you anymore you know i'm making what you're saying about me you know so um so what's what deep empathetic listening is i'm i've i have like a white board in my mind okay and as i'm listening to you speak if something pops onto the whiteboard i erase it and i move on i just keep on listening you know that is if you do if you if you empathetically listen like look into someone's eyes attentive behavior facing each other you are going they are going to feel cared for because you're exchanging now there's an exchange going on there's serotonin being released there's there's oxytocin being exchanged or at least released and all these kind of these bonding chemicals right so so that type of listening shows someone you care about them empathy is a little bit tougher for some some people are just wired we know some people are wired to be my wife is extraordinarily empathetic i mean she really feels other people i mean i am not she's i've had i've had to really try to develop empathy it's something that she's taught me in terms she hasn't taught me she hasn't taught me how to do it because she can't teach someone attributes but she's inspired me to kind of develop it myself [Music] i was afraid to talk to girls when i was a teenager i was afraid of uh dancing i was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people i was afraid of all these different things and so i said i want to do this i'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away sure and i feel like that's what more of us should be doing i'm hearing that that's what you how you live your life that's all it is man and it helps me feel so much more confident when you overcome that fear of saying this doesn't have control over me anymore sure it's like you can be at so much more peace it's 100 life most of like like for instance i never thought in my wildest dreams i could be a navy seal it's until you opened your mind open-mindedness creates that we all shut down our mind like for instance when i broke the pull-up record everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was four thousand and twenty pull-ups that's the first thing they did oh my god four thousand and twenty-four hours or yeah it's four thousand twenty pull-ups in 24-hour period yeah yeah the first thing i did versus closing my mind you're like oh my god that's crazy i went and got a penny okay how many is that every minute exactly every hour every second instead of taking life and making out to be this grandiose thing start breaking it down start breaking it down and most of us we live in a box and we don't want to go outside that box at all ever outside that box is all these possibilities of life what we do is we shackled our mind we are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all i can do this is all i'm good at and we we we take away the possibilities of you could be this you could be that yeah you could be all these things and i never thought that 300 pounds i could be negative wow so if my mind was shackled me and you would never meet there'd be no book right there'd be no book right there'd be nothing so what people understand is that they live for themselves not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives yeah by facing life by facing yourself and through that i i would die never knowing that i had the power to change millions of lives it will haunts me the most people ask me what haunts you the most what haunts me most is that if i would have died at 300 pounds let's say i was 75 years old i got to heaven and god has a chart like that on everybody's life god knows all let's say that i don't care what you believe in doesn't matter i'm not judging anybody let's say my thing is god you get to heaven i'm 300 pounds i sit down i was a cockroach terminator my whole life and we're sitting down just like this you're god and i'm david and he gives me that chart and he says look at this now look at this chart and on the chart it has all these different things but my name's on it but these things aren't me i was going to change the world i was going to i was going to set records i was going to be a navy seal i was going to be all these things in the military that i accomplished you're going to get the vfw award you could be honored here honored there i'm like god i was this isn't me like it says david goggins i was an ecolab guy i spray for cockroaches and i'm 300 pounds i said here i'm 185. it says here i got a a bachelor's in the masters it says all these things and god goes no that's who you were supposed to be wow my biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world and there's a final judgment and you talk to something much bigger than you i don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says you're in heaven this is what you should have been on earth and are you really in heaven now are you in hell thinking about how much i left on a table for fear for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall so my mind i believe that and god knows all at least i believe that i want god to be up there right now as we're speaking writing stuff down saying my god he exceeded even my expectations that's how i live my life i now know that there is no cap on the human mind there's no cap we cap it ourselves wow is our cap on the human body that's right is there one i i don't believe so because one thing i found out was i did for several years i gave myself a way out when you were 300. now 300 pounds and i was only up to 24 years old i would climb a mountain i fall back down i start climbing i fall back down for the first 24 years of my life i went to my first tel week my second hell week and then my third whole week came in seal training and the co captain bowen looked at me i'm on crutches i'm all jacked up he says hey this is your last time you're gonna go through buds this is it i had several stress fractures i had double pneumonia i was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal he said this your last time going through i shouldn't even let you go back through wow i started navy seal training with stress fractures stress fractures that's hard to finish stress fractures starting the hardest training argument in the world with stress fractures and this is when i started to not put a cap on the body if the mind is there every morning i wake up at 3 30 morning 4 o'clock in the morning go to my dive cage go in there before anybody saw me i'd get duct tape and i would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the middle of my calf and i would put two black socks on and so i ran not using the pivot oh my gosh and i ran my hip flexors so for the first 45 minutes to an hour i was in absolute excruciating pain but what motivated me through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that i'm in the hardest training in the world in the worst shape of my entire life what if i can graduate amongst these studs wow all these guys around me are studs they're stallions they're gladiators in my class they're all healthy most of them they're not broken like this they may have some you know everybody's sick going down training but if i can graduate it would change everything for me if i could start the hardest chain in the world broken and graduate so my mind fed off of that you are now from the weakest man you are now the hardest man to ever live if you can do this if you can do this life is one big mind game yeah and you're playing it with yourself is it true i don't care it got me through the hardest training starting out broken where most people quit i just started wow and when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around that's what made me powerful and my body followed and three months later my stress fractures were healed by running on them calcifying it just like i never had him since i'm 43 years old wow i ran 7 000 miles in 2007 haven't had stress fractures since and i'm not saying to do that i'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you didn't you don't give yourself a way out the only way out for me at that time was death wow i'm going to be a navy seal or i'm going to die or i'm going to die trying yeah period and my body said roger that we're going to get you through this so when the mind gives it no way out your body says okay okay i believe you now i have to heal i'm going to figure this out with you yeah do this it's going to be the worst part of your life but we're gonna you're gonna survive we're gonna survive wow and as you hear in that hundred mile race i did i started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one and i'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself don't take these words and flip them and say oh my god no it just be uncomfortable i call it suffering physically injure yourself yes not saying that and then be out for six months that's right that's no good that's not good i'm not saying i'm not saying do what i did yeah i was in a spot that life forced me i had a choice had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you i had choices i chose this path and you're still choosing it i'm still choosing to go back to that guy at any moment because i found out i found out something with those stress fractures i found out something dude facing all these things i found out a whole nother world which is why i walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack wow i found it a whole nother way a whole nother way of no matter how far you get in life you have to be able to go back to scratching your mind at a moment's notice you can never get so far beyond scratch what that means is when you accomplish something in life if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place where i once lived and visit that place for a long period of time if you were here when you went back to scratch you would now be here scratch is what makes you better scratch friction obstacles create growth there's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore you think there is that's right when you change so much the friction is is minor because why i'm sore i'm gonna get a massage today i'm hungry i'm gonna eat today the refrigerator is always full so your comforts are now so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the seven dollar a month place so you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now i'm not saying stay there and stay there visit visit it and then you raise your level take a day trip that's right yeah always take day trips yeah don't stay there that's right but take a day trip so when you complete some massive obstacle and challenge whatever the adversity that you force upon yourself because these are all curated experiences for yourself right you're scratching constantly what happens now since this was five years ago you would just leave you want to take the medal you would just go on to the next what happens now do you take you know a day to reflect a moment 10 minutes like how does the process work and then how do you get back to visiting the seven dollar uh you know place you lived in now i don't have to go back and visit it i don't have to think about it it lives with me now every day of my damn life that feeling that i had to go back and think about i found a way this habit how did you it's constantly there i have a self-talk i'm a self-talk it's called my cookie jar it's a constant reminder of david guy every day of my life i believe in quiet there's no growth outside of quiet the the world's too noisy your mind needs quiet for you to find who you are people what's my purpose why am i here you're not going to find it nowadays unless you lock yourself in a quiet room in your mind and find it it's too noisy for me i could be in a busy street in new york city horns honking and i'm walking around with like nothing it's me and myself yeah in a quiet spot and when you are constantly reflecting on who you are where you've been the journey you've gone through the journey you can continue going through the feeling is always there you don't allow the world to pull you so fast that you forget you don't allow yourself to pull you so fast that you forget it's not about staying in that moment it's about you want to get to the point where that feeling follows you like breathing it becomes a part of your life part of your dna but it's made like these calluses on my hands right now they're made yeah they are now all my brain this is now a part of me it's a daily process a part of me and how i go back to seven dollar month place all the time is now i go out and i dig fire line i'm a wildland firefighter i don't need to do it i'm a 43 year old man i work with 27 year old kids yeah i'm a rookie every day i'm a rookie feels like and why do you do it that's why i do it man there's a storm to tell you about why i do it so i make i have a good living now for me where i'm at in my life i was out on a fire in colorado and we were digging fire line on this like 50 like it was like on the side of a daggone mountain yeah and we're trying to keep the fire from moving and we're digging this fire line 14 inches or my fault 18 inches wide three miles long 12 of us digging and it is the hardest work you make 12 an hour wow okay nothing you set up your shop like when you're done digging you must lay down you go to sleep and you get up you dig some more really happens for two weeks longer what are you digging it's like a whole line so you're trying to get down to a mineral source so you're trying to get down to the to the earth so so that if that fire is moving it can't burn dirt really so you're moving fuels got it you know so so not only are you digging you're cutting down trees it's hard work but the moral story is i'm 43 don't need to do it at all this is why i do making money i'm making my own i i i have a good life i don't need to do it everybody asks me why i do it this is why it's 21 year old kid was out there and he wanted a pair of running shoes so he went with pair of runner shoes 60 70 100 bucks or whatever you know easy for us yeah bonus shoes he looked up at the mountain that we had been on for days digging this fire line and he said that take me five or six hours of work to buy those shoes except i'm not gonna buy them it's the perspective of life that perspective of life right there of that is the value that we lose when things start to come so easy in life it's the perspective that 21 year old have he looked about that mountain of thought he looked at his hands he looked at the at the amount of hours of pulling that pulaski that that tool and raking that ground and then cutting those trees and moving them and that hours of work he looked at his feet and said these old shoes would do it's that perspective in life that we lose and that's that story to most people may not mean anything it's that story i always want to have in my life you cannot lose perspective of where you've come in life yeah so true we were in guatemala was it this year last year last year we were in guatemala last year we we support a charity called pencil promise that builds schools for kids who live in poverty and all around the world and every year i take a trip to just see where our efforts are being you know felt and being and being made and uh these are the poorest places in guatemala laos and ghana places they have nothing there's no schools they're in little villages they live on dirt huts everything right and we go and we build these schools we actually the villages build them themselves we just fund the experience and they empower we empower them to do it so that they take ownership of it right but i'll be there for a few days and watch these kids so happy with just like a pencil right just so happy to just like have their family around and they'll go and they'll show us their huts and like they're just so happy to have community and then i'll fly back and go through beverly hills right over here and i'll see like these mansions you know i live right next to it and i'm just like it gives me so much perspective of like you don't need to have all these things to find peace and joy and connection and intimacy and all these and all these other things that we want you don't need these big mansions and to live in this nice place you know i like living here but it's not like it's perspective for me is what keeps me motivated as well to to keep doing the right things to keep showing up keep working hard and i think it's right most of us miss that perspective right in life we get so far away from reality so far and the reality is man when i was seven years old eight years old all i wanted was a 99 quarter pounder from hearties i know right and that made me happy as hell some curly fries that's it man that's it yeah the thing is a lot of us have been um conditioned or some of us grew up with wealth or grew up with comfort right so we're conditioned that way and we're growing expecting now that things should come a lot easier right that's a damn shame and we get we get uh frustrated when we don't get it right right quickly quickly yes yeah and i'm always talking about delayed gratification like the longer i can wait to receive gratification that's right the more fulfilled i am i'm a person so when i got sick like i did um i actually had to quit this race called bad water yeah 135 miles yeah death valley 2014 i got real real bad i pulled out the race at mile 50 i went to the emergency room and the docs were like you know we can't find this we can't find that we know what's wrong with you when i got in that bed so this is the crazy thing about gratification term i'm able to watch grass grow by finding out this i sat there couldn't run a half a quarter mile couldn't go to bed the only thought i had in my mind i i pulled out that race i told myself i'm gonna go back to bad water one day and rent it i'm gonna win the race haven't been back since haven't been back since 2019 i'm not saying i'm gonna win it i'm just now in the shape to go back wow haven't won a hundred mile race since 2014 wow because i've been that sick i'm just now imagine the gratification i'm gonna get by getting to starline that race and what if i can win it it'd be pretty sweet pretty sweet four or five years yeah imagine that i'm having that kind of deal of having that kind of self-discipline to everyday wake up and having these setbacks where i can't even run a mile wow but i'm thinking about running 135 i can't run one mile about thinking about running 135 and with that process guess what happens sooner or later you can run 10 miles it may take a year but it gives you more and more hope that it's possible and i'm at the point now where guess what it's right around the corner wow most people in that time frame that in that in that mindset i can't run anymore it's over no it's just gonna take a little bit longer you have to turn the negative into a positive because at the end of it all if you can sit back and wait if you can wait six seven eight nine 10 12 years when you get to that point when you finish that's the feeling for 12 years that's it it says they wait 12 years to get there that's what keeps you going is you got feel i want i'm doing it for one second years of pain for one second one second think about it you cross the finish line it's over one second most people do that and then one second isn't what they thought it would be and then they're pissed and upset and they keep going on to the next because they never reflect back on what they did it's not the one second it's the 12 years yeah it's the 12 years that i want it's not the race it's the 12 years why you did it it's not the winning it's not the winner not what place you got no but most of us focus on that's right oh i gotta win this right if i don't i'm gonna be upset i would achieve all my athletic goals for years and then 10 minutes later be the angriest person in the world so angry and frustrated nasty with people and i would delay my gratification for years to achieve what i wanted that's right and i never understood that either being a perfectionist is the worst thing that could happen to a person you never live like when i lost that 106 pounds in like two and a half months whatever it took me that was the biggest trophy in my entire life i didn't care if i graduated still training i didn't care what i just accomplished in that time frame it's massive yeah i don't know there was no trainer i i there was no like it was funny about this we talk about mental toughness nowadays it's like the biggest crave when i grew up it was just suck it up yeah it was just make it happen yeah you had to figure out it's called figure it out man and all these all these nuggets that i gained along the way that's what it was about it went about the trident you know about those daggone medals what about any of that and that's why i hate even talking about being a seal you know i mentioned stories people why talk about it didn't define me the journey getting there was harder than going through it yeah you know so that's the whole thing about life man it's that journey that that makes you who you are [Music] life is the sea between the b and the d and people listening thinking this guy speaks in tongues he's like okay i'll give you a hint what's the b and d b is birth oh and d is down so what's life is the c choice wow like let that sink in life is a c between the b and the d and c is choice life is all about choices because we are you are sitting here right now the sum total of all the choices you've made that's true that's true and i'm saying like everyone you know who you're gonna who are you gonna date are you gonna where you gonna yeah where are you gonna live isn't it crazy that you could be you know you could be making all the right choices your entire life and make one wrong choice and set you in a prison or make you go bankrupt or whatever or you don't blame the opposite right can make all the wrong choices and make one right choice to set you on a path of greatness because one step if you're going this way here to here and you take one step in another direction it completely changes your destination and your destiny so the good news is yeah you could make one choice that takes you off of tangent but one choice for the right about who you're going to spend time with what are you going to eat today you know whether you're going to move today if you're going to listen to this podcast if you're going to look at you're going to focus on crisis and and all the the terrible things in life are you gonna focus on like wow how people are stepping up and how they're doing other things but the second thing i learned besides out of my sleep doubling down on skills and capabilities you know i always tell people don't downgrade your dreams to fit your current reality upgrade your mindset your motivation your methodology to really meet your your your destiny the things that you want most in life how important are skills so acquiring new skills at any level absolutely critical absolutely critical even coming back to the second gift i got from lack of sleep the second gift besides doubling down on all my skills was protecting my time okay so here's something when you have a finite amount of energy and you only slept two hours or three hours or four hours last night you don't over commit and i find one of the things that drains energy from people that makes them stressed out of their mind is they are saying yes to way too many things and when you lack sleep every single day and you're exhausted you only do the things that you're supposed to do meaning that you don't have the luxury of saying like right now there's nowhere else i'd rather be no one else i'd rather be with than right here with you and there's a power in that so whether i got three hours of sleep last night or got off a plane last night or i'm still doing this with focus with energy it's because i made the decision to do this and everything as you've heard everything is like heaven yes or heaven no right like if you don't feel completely like yes yeah then you say no and here's the thing a lot of people feel they're burnt out because they're doing too much i don't think you're burnt out because most people are burnt out because you're doing too much i think you're doing too little of the things that make you feel alive you're doing too little of the things that really matter in your life and saying you're saying yes to things that don't matter exactly so the second gift i got out of years of not sleeping was you said no to everything yeah exactly and i only do the things that are important because one of the lessons i got from spending time with elderly because i lost my grandmother and i spent all the time in senior centers and nursing homes and training them and helping with them the gift i got back i always get a gift back from working with anybody is i heard stories and so much wisdom of generations that have gone through you know like real hardship right i mean our lives compared to theirs is you know now is it's there's no comparison but one of the things i do hear because i do believe genius leaves clues and when when somebody asks me what's the definition of genius i don't think it's iq it's not this number that you test at eight years old and that's your number when you're 88 years old you know i demystify you know iq and everything else in this book that everybody can learn to be better in all these areas interpersonally you know with their focus with their memory everything one of the things that i that i've learned is that um with working with these seniors is that you know there's a lot of regret at that place when you're at when you're taking your final breaths you know my definition of genius is pattern recognition that you could see patterns like you know someone who's you know a genius at greatness you see patterns and what you know everybody who sits across from you you see like they're doing certain similar things certain habits certain mindsets certain certain drives or they're eating a certain way there's a commonality with that so i believe genius leaves clues and geniuses can be built not born and that's a big part of part of my training but the other thing i learned from these these seniors is these regrets they come out and the biggest regret always is that somehow they lessened or limited their life because of other people's expectations because they were fearful of other people's opinions about them they didn't date that person or marry the person because of what society would think or they started a career because their parents wanted them and expected them to do that and and i'm here to remind everyone it's not a pleasant conversation but you know when we're thinking about our mortality and you know one of the things that was the impetus for this book was you know i was i had like a near-death experience like in a car accident and it made me think about legacy and ask a new question like i was like wow i'm gonna get this book out because shame on me if somebody's struggling and suffering the way i was with distraction with memory loss with overload overwhelm not feeling good about themselves and i didn't help them so i feel like what gets me on stage even if i am an introvert and shy is that i'm focusing on on them right right that's my focus but the regret people have when you're taking your final breaths at the end of our life none of other people's opinions and expectations will matter what will matter none of our fears will matter what will matter is how he lived how we laughed how he learned how he loved you know that that's really what's going to matter and one of my mentors dr steven covey another great book seven habits of highly effective people one of the habits of the most highly affected people is begin with the end in mind you know and then the ultimate end is like when we're you know when we're passing because when you think about being in that box that coffin there's no room in there for possessions and i'm all for people having toys and everything else like that but there's not you can't take that with you and in that coffin there's no room for regret you know one of the things i learned from jim carrey and i'm dropping a number of names and the reason why is because when you see their movies you see you know sonic hedgehog or or you watch another will smooth it reminds you of the lessons it triggers so that's how human memory works i was spending the day with him and he was like you know jim i want to get really smart before filming dumb and dumber i'm like that's that's that's ironic but that's really you know to play dumb you have to be really smart to do that right and so i spent the day with him at his home and we take a brain break a long time ago yeah it was when we were at his home we were taking a brain break and we make all these brain foods during lunch and i wanted to know motivation again i want to get into this model about motivation because i'm always curious what drives people and i found out i was like why do you do what you do and he was like jim he was like i act like a complete fool on camera so extreme because i want to give people watching permission to be themselves he's like my religion is to free people from the concern of others because that's what limits us and isn't that interesting how adults what keeps us limited are sometimes the expectation it puts us in a box right we don't want to look bad we don't want to make a mistake and yet children are really they have this limitless mentality right where they can do anything you don't look at a child you know for people who have children they're learning to walk or talk how many times do they fall thousands yeah exactly and never after the 500th time they fall do they say okay sometimes for me yeah exactly i'm not going to walk that's not right but as adults they just take a spanish list once and we still exactly they take a salsa lesson yeah and they're like okay this is not for me too much embarrassment and i always encourage people to at least you i'm telling you we have one life to be able to figure this out so you try new things the brain thrives on novelty right to build your brain cells two things just like your body novelty and nutrition and obviously rest and sleep novelty you give it stimulus you work it out and then you give it nutrition to feed that muscle same thing with your mental muscles to create neuroplasticity right you all you need to give is novelty you learn something new every single day and then you feed it the right nutrition so it can build but i would recommend everybody try something at least three times if you feel called to it i challenge everyone watching this and even post it on social media tag us both because i'll repost our favorite try things three times number one to get over the fear of it yes right number two like you know karaoke or you know be doing stand-up or something just to get over the fear of it number two just to get a little confident at it get get good at it and then try it a third time to see if you like it or not because we don't really find our passions like we have to put ourselves out there right and give ourselves stimulus just like with kids you know we have a whole you know we have a bonus chapter on how to be raised limitless children but part of it is giving them enough opportunity by giving them a stimulus to see what they get drawn to and what they want to be able to develop but my other thing with with sleep is i just got obsessed about you know like how do i honor my time and how do i say no so i can say yes to the great things right good degrade i'm going to recommend a lot of books right because we have a book a week club because we teach you know this three the speed reading program one book a week will change your life 52 books a year leaders leaders are readers but yeah good to great say no to good so you could say yes to great and again i really feel like say yes to great by saying no to a lot of things exactly because here's the thing especially for self-care a lot of people think that self-care is limited to bodywork and meditation part of self-care and self-love is when you say no and when you say yes to somebody or something make sure you're not saying no to yourself i really want this to sink in for people that part of self-care is when you say yes to somebody or something that you're not saying no to yourself right right part of self-care is putting boundaries and borders on your time borders and boundaries on your heart relating your emotions and everything because that it's so important and part of self-care is also self-love you talk about this so much right when you and i have conversations about you know about your previous books and everything it's just you know how can we fall in love with that person in the mirror who's been through so much but is still standing right because i feel like no external source of love is going to match what your soul needs from yourself yeah right yeah i this is i mean i've wanted to stop you non-stop for 20 minutes but it's also good i wanted to go back to uh the choices we make you know you we talk about choices you talk about habits mindset habits physical habits in here with food the way you think all these different things i really believe that habits allow us to make better choices automatically as opposed to should i make this choice today yes or no should i make that choice you know every day we have the opportunity to make different decisions and habits keep us on the right path to making better decisions and choices every day the mindset and you're you know you've got mindset motivation and methods which is your whole limitless mindset process the mindset will keep you on the right path the skills for whatever reason skills i think is one of the most important things more than habits in a sense because when you acquire new skills you become bulletproof limitless to any economic downturn to any breakup in a relationship to any career change you become limitless when you have a tool belt of skills at your disposal and it takes courage to create new skills and it takes learning how to learn to get a lot of skills because it takes time to master a skill if you don't know how to learn the right way and i've learned all the wrong ways over the years and found out for me that learning the right way is throwing myself in immersion of it yeah within three months going all in physically tangibly feeling it emotionally connected to it getting messy for me that's what works for me and when you have the skill you have it for life yeah you know it's like you learn how to ride a bike it might take you a few weeks it might take you a month of falling a bunch of times but i haven't been on a bike in years but i know i can go back on it maybe i'm not as fast as i used to be or maybe i don't have as much control or maneuverability but i'm 89 of the way there yeah same thing with salsa dancing i learned it it took me three and a half months of misery of embarrassment of fear anxiety of stepping on girls toes constantly but now i can go anywhere in the world not speak the language of the community but i can speak the language of salsa and i have it and i have that skill set where i feel motivated to put myself out there so yeah same thing with public speaking you know when you mastered it it's like now you can go into a room and even if you're not prepared for the speech yeah you know you can do a pretty good job yeah someone said hey jim come up here and teach us something for 15 minutes you've got the skill set and i think that gives us confidence that gives us self belief with the more skills we have and so how do we what's the process of then learning how to master a new skill when it's challenging when it's scary when it's uncomfortable when it's works i'm excited to learn spanish right now but i've tried to learn for 20 years yeah eight years of classes i you know i've traveled to different spanish-speaking countries it's just like man how do we learn how to learn something that we want but it's really challenging let's deconstruct this okay so this this is this is the key um so you mentioned two interesting words with confidence and confidence yes and in psychology there is a competence confidence loop that the more competent and skilled you get at something the more confident you get at it of course and because you're more confident you're more likely to do it and you get better at it and gives you more confidence right yes and so if i could play golf like tiger woods i would be playing a lot more i would get better i'd be more confident of it i remember years ago i get a call on a friday evening and i don't know the guy's voice i didn't know to see the number and i'll recognize so i pick it up and he was like you got you got to help me we have this mutual friend and this uh my speaker tomorrow in new york city cancelled because of an emergency and i need i need a speaker please and i'm like well this is not usually how you know the night before exactly it's usually like a six month in advance process but the mutual friend was a very close friend and i was like um you know look i maybe i could help you but what's the topic and he tells me what the topic is and i'm like i don't know anything about that topic why are you calling me he was like well he wrote a book i'm like so he was like well my friend says you're a speed reader and i'm like okay he's like well can you come a little early and i'll give you his book and then oh my gosh and i was like i was like this is going to completely crazy this is i have to do this but this is going to it's going to cost you but you're going to make a great story and what ended up happening was i show up at 10 o'clock i read his book and i give the keynote that afternoon and humbly it was the highest rated talk of the event wow and i don't take credit for that because i've never you know had training in public speaking but when you understand how people learn you could you know present it and so i read the book i remembered everything that i needed to say because i train a lot of ted speakers how to memorize their speech and i know how to be able to present in a way that that's interesting and and also sticks with people but i say that because that's what i mean about i don't have to you know just like will smith i know i don't have to get ready i i stay ready and that's the power of skill development and there's one skill to master it's our ability to learn it's called meta learning this book fundamentally was going to be called meta learning but people are like oh no they're not combined if that's learning and you know the title right and um but meta learning is learning how to learn and that's a meta skill and it helps you to learn salsa or spanish or anything else better and so let's deconstruct how to do that confidently the limit we'll start with the limitless model all right so this book used to be a book completely on skill development which was all methodology it was everything that i teach about how to read three times faster how to learn a language how to remember names how to do the things that how to get to inbox zero how to do the things that how to be focused concentrate critical think solve problems all the important things that really is our life right but then when i finished it you know i talked to friends like you and every and everybody else was like this is a really good self-help book but if somebody found it just on the street they still even they know what to do they still wouldn't do it like how come you want to learn spanish or something else and you put it off or it takes longer than you should because method is only one of the three parts and so this is the limitless model and i want everybody to think about a subject or some area of your life where you're feeling held back it could be your relationship it could be you're not making progress in your career it could be maybe in your physical performance or wellness think about one area where you're stuck in a box right now box is like a cage 3d box and 3d is three dimensions what keeps you in the box three forces and these are the three m's and i want everyone to draw a circle and in that circle we're going to draw a venn diagram you know what a venn diagram is three intercept circle circles and the first circle is your mindset 3ms and i always alliterate everything because it helps you to be able to remember it better first one is your mindset now your mindset are your assumptions your attitudes about something now let's break that down for me functionally what your mindset is about this subject i want people to make this very personal think about something an area you're held back this is what you believe is possible is your mindset it is what you believe you are capable of it is what you believe you deserve is your part of your mindset because that's a big thing that's your thermostat right if somebody has a mindset of like i could teach someone the method of how to remember names but their mindset is i'm stupid i don't deserve to remember names i'm not capable of it exactly or exactly or i'm too old or whatever it is that's their mind brain doesn't work that way exactly then the method won't hap won't take hold it won't matter exactly so this is this is the formula here how do you learn about how do you learn to believe that you are capable so what goat will go into this that's that's that's exactly what the book does i take people through a new a process called unlimiting it's a word that i coined years ago unlimiting is different than unlimited unlimiting is like the process of removing limits limiting beliefs exactly or behaviors or or are habits right so unlimiting is an active word where it's you're redrawing the boundaries and borders of your life limitless is not about being perfect limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you believe is possible [Music] why do you think that is in human beings that you know things are going bad we won't change if they're going good we won't change but it's almost like we need a massive breakdown near death experience divorce covid for us to see clearly to start changing well there's a really simple answer patterns so the thing about all human beings is that we are pattern learning machines and if you feel stuck or broken i guarantee you while you feel that way you're not you have a pattern of behavior or a pattern of thinking that is broken and we need to be disrupted because we love our patterns and even people that i know like i've heard pain even when we're in pain we're like pain's familiar for a lot of people yeah so a lot of people like you may be listening to lewis and i talking and you grew up in a super chaotic household maybe your parents argued all the time maybe your dad or mom were in and out maybe there was a lot of fighting maybe there was actual abuse i don't know what was going on but it was chaotic as hell and so as an adult you have vowed yourself you are not going to repeat that pattern but what ends up happening is because as a little kid you observed witness absorbed the pattern of chaos in your nervous system unless you go about the intentional work of breaking the pattern of chaos you will create it in your own life because it's what's familiar you won't understand why do i keep dating these why do i why do i go to these bosses that treat me like crap because you don't know what it feels like to be in a relationship with either a boss or a romantic partner or a roommate that is consistent because for the first 18 years of your life you lived in an estate called when's the next shoe gonna drop right and so wherever it is in your life that something is broken there is a pattern that you don't see yet that is making you continue to stay in a broken situation and so one of the things that you just asked which is why is a perspective change or losing a job or something like that that's so disruptive because those sorts of things covet 19 breaks every pattern yes yes black lives matter breaks patterns of thinking that you weren't even aware that you had about privilege or being anti-racist or what your black colleagues and friends and relatives deal with on a day-to-day basis and so having a breakdown is one of the biggest things on the planet because what you get is you get a break from your own and you can look objectively at where you are and for the first time look ahead and say well what do i want to go create and nine times out of ten if you're discouraged right now if you've got financial devastation if you've if you're facing something that is making this moment in time as hard for you as life was for lewis and i in 2008 during the last recession i beg you ask yourself honestly if what you had is actually what you wanted the thing that you just lost that that job that you brushed about all the time a relationship that was bad to you yeah yes or the friends you can't hang out with because it's convenient and you can't you're in court like actually ask yourself if this is what you wanted or were you just used to it being used to something louis i think is the biggest reason why people don't change i asked my mother i love my mother i love my parents i've been married 51 years which is a feat because they were my mom was a teen mom but uh i asked her once if she'd go to a personal development seminar with me what'd you say are you kidding me why would i want to change at my age wow i might discover i hate my life wow i was like okay i'm just going to leave that right there right i mean i think being used to what you have i mean i i i even our son is so i'm i'm here in vermont at my mother-in-law's place and our son is going to go to high school in vermont and so we're going to kind of split our time back and forth between my mother-in-law's place and our place in boston because god knows what business is going to be like and you know why would you need an office after coding 19. another amazing thing to realize um even that change i notice my own agitation my own anxiety coming up will i make friends will i like a slower lifestyle what happens if chris likes it up here and i hate it up here my own mind because it's not something i'm used to yet is making up stories to cling to the old way of life this is a moment in time everyone please this is the greatest gift the greatest gift is this moment of pause where you get in touch with what you actually want and if you don't have the skills for crying out loud look around and take an online course because if you need skills to prepare yourself for the thing that you want get them right now yeah what is the thing you really want then you've gone on this uh grab chase of opportunities that come your way not not a bad sense but it's like here are a way for you to share a message and be on thousands of stages and do a talk show and you know it sounds like it was your part of your dream but it was your was it a dream of like wow this sounds amazing or this is exactly what i want because i remember i remember you texting me uh a year and a half ago two years ago saying i'm working on the deal with sony it's i think it's gonna happen and then a couple weeks later it's happening and i see all the announcements it's exciting you know i had a talk show on facebook for a little while yeah it's exciting stuff and then you put your whole life into one thing and then it's over now you've transcended where you were before because of the skills you acquired and the opportunities you created for yourself and you've sharpened your coaching abilities and on-camera stuff everything has gotten better but how do you you know what do you think about that well so let me back up three years ago when i was last on the school greatness i had just published the five-second rulebook your support was was life-changing louis like you literally were the person if i had shimmy down into the kind of barrel of a cannon you freaking lit the match and she shot me i don't know about that you didn't oh yeah don't worry well and so i you know since then what i what what has happened and this is one of the things that i have i have reflected upon during these last 10 weeks that i've been off the road and i've been working from home which i've loved every single second of um everything that i have done since since we launched a five second rule book was in reaction to things that were coming to me so i never sat out and said hey the five second rule audiobook has been a complete uh like record breaker we clearly have an audio audience let's go pitch audible audible came to me which is fantastic um i never i always dreamt about having a talk show but i wasn't out pitching one sony came to me in fact the only reason why we got into courses online courses and we now have more than a half a million people that have taken our courses online um was because success magazine came to me and said let's do a course together remember i was there interviewing you for it oh that was i hated it because what i discovered is i hate being told what to do and so but that gave me the idea oh we should do courses ourselves and so this pause has made me stop and go what do i really want to do and the the truth is i want to go and make the biggest possible impact that i can and i want to collaborate with more people and i want to do events um and i i don't want to be the ceo i'm a terrible leader horrible leader the worst actually um because i'm amazing at coaching i'm amazing at uh creating i'm amazing at reacting i'm terrible at managing people i'm terrible at managing a project i have add i have dyslexia um i'm a bulldozer when i get anxious um [Music] i know we are that's how we would kill each other if we were roommates or business partners but but i think understanding yourself is really important and so there's a couple things that i've decided number one i'm going to consciously create the next chapter and what is that and i'm um well i'm still in the middle of doing it yeah but you're one of the events you want to do these things you're talking about yeah yes and i want to i want to collaborate more with a wider audience of people and i want to build a brand bigger than mel robbins yep i don't want it to just be me i want to build a platform based business that uh reaches more people because here's the thing that has got that got me through kind of the loss of the talk show and the way that i think about things that i hope helps um if you're listening you're kind of struggling with something um i believe and i went into the talk show saying this to myself because there's a 99 chance based on the history of people that have tried to have a daytime talk show that was going to fail and i went in there saying this i'm not doing this because i expect to have a successful talk show i'm going to put a thousand percent into it so that i have no regrets and i wouldn't change a thing but i'm going into this because i know that there is a skill a person or an experience i am meant to have that will help me for the next chapter that i can't see coming and the experience was number one meeting mindy borman who um is my executive producer now my business partner and ceo and it was also in working with a team of 130 people and finally being in the right seat on the bus lewis and not having to manage everything but being in your lane yes and having a team and you not being the one doing everything i know that feeling well it's not even that i was doing everything it's that i didn't have anybody managing me right and so your mind is gonna go into like opportunity opportunity as opposed to focus mode right and so if you ever wonder why it feels like we're running in circles it's because i'm the one leading us in circles right yeah and and and so it's a very hard thing to spot when you're in the middle of it yep but when i got into a machinery that operated in a way where i was in the right seat on the bus it was absolutely liberating and that was the biggest gift of all and then the third thing is i think the the daytime talk show and being face to face with your audience and having such a big daily audience um it was really amazing to be able to have an impact on a large number of people who feel forgotten because they're a little bit older if they're still watching tv and a lot of the folks who are still watching tv at home during the daytime uh do not have the resources that you and i have and may not have access to therapy or live in a community where it's stigmatized and so having a platform that was reaching people um that really appreciated this kind of content and also working with a really diverse range of experts absolutely incredible so i felt like i was organizing a killer dinner party conversation every day with real people's problems and the world's best experts and so you kind of do a similar thing here on your podcast so i know i want to continue to do that but i'm in the middle of creating it so if i said anything other than i know it's events i know it's more courses i know it's collaborating with more people and getting outside my comfort zone and i also know that as i set out to to write down what i want to do there is so much freaking fear that i have why is that because i think because i still feel like i'm not worthy i feel like i don't deserve it like it's old and i think that's the other thing about patterns everybody is just because you identify and for me as a kid for whatever reason i have my own version of feeling invisible and feeling like i'm not good enough and so my way of coping both with my anxiety and being a survivor of sexual abuse and um and wanting love which we all need is i was like an overachiever and so i'm the kind of person that's super busy and a go-getter because it got me attention and if i was the one that was super busy and achieving i not only got praise but it also insulates you from other people not picking you because you're the one in a leadership role doing the picking right and so there's a part of me at the age of 51 that is realizing that you know this these feelings of feeling unworthy and this hyper drive to try to achieve it's all coming from a place of feeling inadequate or like what i'm doing is not enough and so at 50 having the talk show having a best-selling book having the audible originals having the platform everywhere having the impact it still don't feel being the most booked female speaker in the world like you still don't feel so stupid it's annoying and human beings are annoying we are stuck with this wiring like if you think about it like all of the crap you believe is probably a hangover from age 0 to 10. that as adults we walk around thinking the same stuff we thought as kids and i can't stand that i feel that way but knowing it it allows me to catch it before it has me before it stops me from having an event or writing that next book or taking a risk what do you think the biggest fear is because you say you say not worthy or not feeling enough is that i mean it's just people liking me i think like uh you know being a people pleaser yeah um we're so similar in every way it's crazy it's great um i you know i love you i don't like you it's lonely dude um what happens to the price what happens if 99 percent of people like you and one percent doesn't like you oh i don't get about that okay but if it's like if it's 50 50 i think that the work that we all have to do every single one of us whether you bulldoze whether you people please whether you avoid conflict whether you're impulsive whether you yo-yo your decisions uh whatever it is that is your pattern you know you the the constant trashing yourself i think the the the journey of your whole life is figuring out how to truly like and love yourself yeah it's it's so true i mean i remember this was my whole life was never loving myself and needing to go prove to others originally that i'm worthy this was happening in sports and business until i started opening up and accepting myself and and taking off the mass when i turned 30 talking about sexual abuse and just kind of saying screw it i don't care what people think about me anymore this pain inside is hurting so much it's not worth living with it so i'm gonna start sharing and allow myself to heal and allow myself to finally love myself and it's so funny that we could just write a book with two words that says love yourself and that's all the book needs to say because a lot of us never remember to love ourselves remember to acquire skills which are important remember to love other people remind ourselves to take care of our health but if we don't love ourselves internally if we don't think we can give ourselves a hug because we're not deserving of it then none of this stuff is going to matter to the point of we're always going to need to do more to feel something right well nobody teaches you how to do it and see that's the thing and you know i mean if you look at human development we're the only species that literally can't survive without another human being taking care of you and so we are biologically hard wired to bond with other people and that is the ver from the very beginning of when you come out bonding with somebody else and making sure they pay attention to you is your survival imperative so you are born needing somebody else and i think what ends up happening is there's never that kind of clean break or pass off between needing your parents to take care of you needing your friend's approval to fit in to truly having ownership over giving yourself what you didn't get giving yourself what you needed and that's the piece that i've been doing a lot of during the the great pause is slowing down because so much of my busyness was fueled by uh you know praise me love me am i doing enough you know please tell me i'm doing okay okay i can breathe now i'm okay now and when i slow down and maybe it's a function of the anxiety that's when things get scary because that's when you've really got to be with yourself and so it's in getting off the road slowing down recognizing that i'm super grateful for all the opportunity and i know the work that i'm doing makes a tremendous impact and i particularly love hearing from mental health practitioners that the five-second rule i've heard from so many people in inpatient psychiatric words lewis that use the five-second rule in the videos we put on youtube in their group counseling sessions with people and knowing that it is helping so many people it is like the greatest gift on the in on the planet to know that it's making a difference but i know that in this next chapter that i consciously create i want to have more fun i wanna i really wanna love the process yeah i don't wanna make it so hard on myself and be gripping everything so tight and it's really easy for me to see it in other people because i know what it feels like in here i'm working hard to break the patterns that still hold me back and the big one that holds me back is um bulldozing [Music] we stumble before we walk and then on shaky legs we embrace the new habit and that's the very nature of personal transformation i mean every master was once a beginner every professional was once an amateur and so this this this idea that we need to be masters right out of the gate that we need to you know get up to 5 a.m and instantly it should be easy well falling like a great relationship isn't easy building a world-class business that stands the test of time isn't easy uh becoming a maestro or any kind of a virtuoso it's it's always a process i mean i know you you interviewed kobe well i think what made kobe kobe was his intense rigorous practice over many many years yeah you know he just out practiced out everyone around him and i think you know we live in a world of easy we want the easy morning routine versus the morning routine that'll give us the greatest payoff and i just there's a reason lewis that a lot of the great saints sages poets military leaders world changers got up at 5am and before the sun i think it's the quietest time of the day you if you look at willpower researchers we wake up with the most willpower when we first wake up you have the most mental focus before the phenomena attention residue takes over and cognitive bandwidth is high and you know it's uh it's it's it's been profound for me how does someone be consistent in their discipline you know when most people say i'm going to do this for three months or six months but then ah interruption covid ah um i got sick uh something someone in the family needs needs me and i'm up all night and what's the difference between what kobe did for two decades in the nba where he was disciplined how is he able to stay motivated and how are the greatest able to stay motivated where others seem to lack the motivation and discipline to be consistent because anyone can do it for a few weeks but how do you do it for years and decades what's the difference between that it's it's an excellent question and i and i would say first of all in covid right now may we give ourselves permission to be gentle with ourselves i think you know even this whole idea that we must be machines in terms of our morning routine or even our pre-sleep rituals this these messages that are out there that we must be mono maniacally consistent and flawless human beings for us to wear our badges of honor and society as leading members of the cult of productivity you know i'll just i'll confess right here to you right now i sure am no guru and i slip i slip you know i i slip on the 5 a.m club i have had uh those those evenings where i feel like a few extra chocolate croissants and i i just think we must give ourselves permission to be humans i think you know i was flying on a little plane um from white river south africa to this game reserve and the pilot let me fly the plane for a little while and he kept on saying you know the winds are going to push you off course and just you know keep keep that i think was the altimeter or whatever but just keep it in the center and so the the currents louis would pull me off course and then i just you know look at the dial and i'd come back and i really believe you know that's that's that's how we live our days as human beings i mean i'll get up and sometimes there's a current like you said you know a child who kept you up at night or it's in the pandemic so maybe you're worried or maybe you've lost a job and so those currents will take us off course and so our job is just to steer back on course each day we're we're not perfect human beings yeah so it's okay to sleep in once a week or to miss miss the routine once in a while it's not going to affect your overall you know results or process is that what i'm hearing yeah i think you know if you want to commit to the 5am club you want to commit to a world-class morning routine because the way you begin the day profoundly sets up the way your day unfolds and this again this is not an anecdotal you get up in the morning and you run the 20 20 20 formula that i explained in the book you will create the flow state you will release serotonin you will release dopamine you will release bdnf you will increase your metabolic rate you will boost creativity you will uh increase your willpower you you know all those things i mean we we want we all have the ability as human beings to arrive at our own original form of greatness we have not been schooled we have not been taught a lot of us have not been mentored on the mindsets heart sets routines rituals that will create and allow us to live our personal genius but you know if you look at the greatest women and men who have ever graced the planet these were so-called ordinary people who just set up their lives in such a way that their native gifts saw the light of day it's funny about how no one ever teaches this stuff unless you had a parent or an older sibling that's that you were able to model and mimic like oh my my dad gets up very early or my brother gets up and does his violin or practices sport whatever it may be and i want to be like that and i want to try that it's you know we're not taught this in school you know louis i um when i was a kid i wasn't believed in by a lot of people i marched to my own drum beat i had a different way of seeing the world i was very sensitive i was very creative very much a dreamer in many ways and i didn't fit in with the cool crowd and in grade five i had a history teacher and her name was cora greenaway and she was one of the first people in my life who believed in me and we all meet a cora green away and may you and i and everyone listening from around the world or watching from around the world may we be a cora greenway to someone else what i'm suggesting is all it takes is that one person who coincidentally shows up in our life and maybe it's a book maybe it's a podcast episode to introduce us to a new frame of reference and a new way of living might even be that's why i love reading so much you know it's it could be one idea in a 300 page book and that idea opens you up to a new galaxy of possibility and the hand that puts down the book is a fundamentally different hand i mean all it takes is one new insight to change the way you see the world that's very good and so yeah and that's why i'm on such a mission i've been on such a mission for 24 years to remind people of who they're meant to be martin luther king jr said if you have not discovered something you're willing to die for you're not fit to live and i believe we all need to find our mighty mission and our crusade it doesn't have to be lofty it could be delivering pizza by ubereats it could be a you know a teacher it could be a lawnmower it could be a coder it could be a gravedigger or a street sweeper all labor has dignity but you know there are no extra people on the planet i think you know that's why i appreciate the work you do so much i mean we do have greatness within us and society has brainwashed us and heart washed us into thinking that the great ones are cut from a different cloth and it's not it's not true as a matter of fact in the 5m club i say you know genius is less about genetics and and much more about your daily habits wow that's true that's i mean that's that resonates with me because growing up a kid that was you know dyslexic and still struggles with reading and writing today and was in the special needs classes i never thought i was going to amount to much and i didn't have belief in myself until i found a spark and belief in myself and then i started leaning into that gift which was sports and started to realize oh i have some vision and i have some coordination and i have some speed even though i was never the fastest or strongest i had some height and so i would lean into this gift that was here and see if i enjoy this gift and see if i like this gift and see if this brings me joy and it did and i continued and then i built routines and habits around that gift and kept pursuing it and as far as i could pursue it until it was no longer a dream or until the gift was no longer there so i wanted to pursue other things and i think um you know even if whoever's listening or watching even if you didn't think you were talented or smart enough at some point there's something inside of you that is talent you've just got to keep trying things and see what brings you that joy and that uniqueness at least that's what i would say well you know just uh just a hitchhike off without lewis i think no one will believe in in you until you believe in you and um you know as i'm writing this new book i'm writing you know i've been i've been looking at people like jk rowling for example i mean everyone laughed at harry potter you know no one will ever re read this and she believed in this character about a child wizard who who had all of these adventures and she was a single mother and she was suffering and she had no money and she wrote the whole idea for the harry potter concept came to her on uh on a delayed train ride and then i believe in edinburgh she wrote the first harry potter and it was rejected and we all know this but like you know just a gentle respectful loving reminder for everyone who's who's tuning in here which is every visionary is initially ridiculed before they're revered and look at jonas salk look at elon musk right now i mean look at shakespeare look at oprah look at martin luther king jr look at nelson mandela look at mary curie look at edison and einstein look at galileo these were all ordinary people who followed their joy who who came up with the vision and the very nature of a great vision means you're going to disrupt the status quo so you're going to scare people i mean if your idea is really good for that new business or that new relationship or that new fitness routine or morning routine it it's it's going to scare people who are card-carrying members of the status quo and so it's much easier to shoot the messenger than to embrace the message and so it's much easier it's much easier i mean i'll tell you completely candidly i spent four years writing the 5 am club i put my heart and my soul in in the book the models and the art that was done by this amazing artist and every line i wanted calibrated and you know people didn't understand what i was trying to do and when the book first came out i looked at the amazon reviews and they were terrible really why well and i just want to say now it's one of the best selling books in the world and it's almost as if the tide shifted once enough people read it and the narrative changed it was the most interesting thing but i i've actually that that really hurt when the book came out it's like holding your baby out into the world and you know everyone's looking at it going you know i just want to tell you your baby is really ugly not so clever not so pleasant to look at yeah and you know what i would say is jk rowling again she said for some to love you some must loathe you i would say also bob dylan don't criticize what you don't understand and so if you do anything that's disruptive and also if you put if you put out work that challenges people to leave their comfort zone to wake up to their genius if you if you challenge people to be more loving to stand for love on a planet that has too much hate if you challenge people to get up at 5am to spend one hour working on your mentality purifying any toxicity within your heart set upgrading your health and longevity mining your spirituality in a world of selfies and dancing cat videos and a lot of superficiality and a culture of comparison you're gonna you know i mean it's easier for people to shoot you down versus to embrace the message does when we're on unusual times right now does the 5 a.m routine uh and the 20 20 20 shift if things are there's an excuse i'm tired and then there's a shift in the world does the 5 a.m club shift at this time do people say you know what let me really take it easy for a few months or is that an excuse for too long to get back into your vision i think that's a profound question and i would say trust your instinct there are times for example as an artist when i'm writing and it's flowing and i just know this trust your natural cycles because your higher power call it your instinct call it your intuition call your artistry knows what it's doing so there are times to be productive and there are times to rest now i i very much believe in the 5 a.m club in the 20 20 20 formula i very much believe that it will create a pharmacy of mastery within your brain it's been proven by science you know even just the the simple idea of starting your day with some sweaty exercise why sweaty exercises because sweat reduce when you sweat it'll release the bdnf which john rady at harvard calls miracle grow for the brain but just that idea of exercising first thing in the morning will help you become more resilient peaceful strong during the day so yes do your morning routine yes run the 20 20 20 formula and then judge by results having said if you've been up at three in the morning because you've lost your job because you're just picking up on the energy of the world right now where there's so much here uh you're dealing with covid or you have a family member you've lost as a result of the pandemic self-love personal care requires that you rest recover and do what you need to do and i think you know that's one of the things i say this with great respect but when i read the books or see people saying you must be like a robot and follow a morning routine or nightly ritual or whatever your your best habits are i believe there must be room for the hard seasons of life and you know when my heart has been broken when i've gone through my periods of suffering i haven't been as disciplined i haven't been as rigorous i've i've had the inopportune pizza night you know and and here's what what i would always also say is my ego because a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul my ego says robin you're not being productive you're not on your a game you're not a warrior but you know what i've realized i might not be creatively productive according to the definition of society during those cycles or seasons of suffering but am i not spiritually productive am i not emotionally productive i mean when does a human being crack the shell of the ego that covers their hearts and learns the the human virtues i mean nelson mandela learned how to be nelson mandela in his robin island season yeah and so i think we learn honesty and compassion and vulnerability and creativity when things are falling apart not when they're in not in the seasons of sunshine yeah and i i look at uh life in terms of sports analogies and so for me there's four seasons in uh you know i guess the seasons of the year but then also in sports there's there's really kind of four seasons as well there's the the preseason to prepare you for the season and then there's the the playoff season which is where you're you're hustling you're all in you're you're you're only thinking about one thing and you're focused on that energy and you're you're not burning the candle on both ends but you're you're all in on that thing and less on everything else and then there's the postseason where okay the championship is done or that season is done and now we have the postseason the time to reflect the time to reevaluate our goals our life what worked this last season what didn't work do i need to tweak my routine do i need to you know be in different relationships who do i need to bring into my circle what do i need to eliminate in my circle so i look at life in terms of you know sports seasons um just because that's how i've lived my life but i think if and if we can we can do that then you're gonna have time to rest and reflect and you're going to have a balance in that kind of seasonal progression of life where it doesn't have to be robotic every single day you know for 20 years for the rest of your life so at least that's the way i look at it you know i think i think rest is a secret weapon there there's a line in the 5m club which is rest is not a luxury it's a necessity one of my favorite authors is haruki murakami the great japanese novelist and he said when i'm not writing the book i'm writing the book i mean you're an author but it's not any creative any productive we we beat ourselves up or maybe it's just me but we beat ourselves up if we're not doing but how can you calibrate world-class doing if you don't make the time for being and so and so those times where you know nature or our instinct or our inner artist says these are times to pull back from the world and sunbathe and read the classics and write in a journal and have four hour meals with the people we love then travel when it used to be safe to travel those are not times to feel guilty john lennon said time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time and so what i've realized is the greatest productives the greatest artists the greatest thinkers the greatest heroes they were cool with rest and recovery they understood that elite performance is not like a marathon it's more like a sprint and the energy project to give credit where it's due that's they've evangelized this you know when they talk about energy it's you know the greatest productives work in sprints versus marathons and so all i'm saying is you know you're right like life is a series of seasons and enjoy the seasons and that's what's going to actually allow you to play the game for a long time but also do your greatest work i mean my instinct now is i'm about three weeks away from submitting this manuscript on the new book and my instinct is to get into another book and this morning i realize i'm gonna take next year i'm gonna have great conversation i'm gonna travel hopefully it'll be safe to travel i'm gonna enjoy the fruits of my labor and enjoy life and that's gonna be incubation for the next book force multiplier is like um input goes in but you get exponential output from it it's like optimism being positive as a force multiplier sure right you know and colin powell said that and so certain things like learning how to learn like meta learning or improving your memory improves everything it improves your business improves like you know you can remember people's names you can remember sales presentations you could remember things about it people because like for example it's hard to show somebody for people who are watching this they're entrepreneurs right and they're wearing business development hat you know it's really hard to show someone you're going to care for their business their future their family their health their fitness whatever you're selling them if you don't care enough just to remember things like their name their name you know or something or their or their kid's name or their birthday so true you know so that's the memories of multiplier there of memories of multiplier and their relationships you know like relationships just remembering those those moments you know like you know not even just remembering anniversaries remembering to take off the garbage that kind of stuff but remembering you know the first time you and your loved one you know took that walk on that beat you know what i mean those kind of moments that make everything worthwhile yeah but it's it's wonderful for every area so yeah i do believe that two of the most costly words in business for example are i forgot you know i forgot to do it i forgot to bring it i forgot the meaning i forgot your name it's the worst like you could you could forgetting someone's name and i've seen this time and time again it could hurt a relationship it could kill deals i've had people call someone by the wrong name and they've lost multiple million dollar deals just on that i've had people email me and use a different name in my email right and it's frustrating i'm just like if you don't even if you're trying to reach out to me and you use mark because you weren't even paying attention you weren't present it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths you know i know i'm not perfect i've forgotten people's names and i've probably said the wrong name at times so uh you know what are some things people can do to remember names yeah okay so there are three keys for improving your memory three keys right so if you're ever forgetting something you forget things you feel absent-minded like senior moments are coming a little bit early you're in the shower you can't remember if you shampooed your hair you know so you end up doing it twice you misplaced your wallet your phone your keys or your car you know you see the people like where did i park my car yeah you know these kind of and they waste a lot of time too and they take away you know all the treasures and i don't mean just financial treasures i mean just important things you know in our life but there's three keys and remember mom m-o-m always remember mom so if you're ever forgetting something usually one of those three things you're missing all right so let's take names because when people say i want a better memory i i hear them say like oh i want to be better at sports you know because you're just you're such an athlete but it's like somebody comes like like well what sports specifically do you want to be better at because you they're different techniques and different training for different things so remembering names different than learning languages different pin numbers and passcodes and all the different things everything's different everything's different okay and so there's certain principles that are the same okay so the m in mom is this let's say someone has horrible names right but let's say that there's a suitcase of a hundred thousand dollars cash if you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet how many people are going to remember that person's name i i'll remember everyone right everyone and so that's the thing the m stands for motivation so it's interesting so all of a sudden everyone's a memory expert but it had nothing to do with their capacity or their potential everyone could do it it's just whether they decided to do or not if they wanted to it's almost it's almost like if it's worth it enough or the consequences are uh you know that big or the strengths are that big if you're gonna miss out on i'm not right it's the motivation exactly because because one of the things to learning we know with human motivation because i did this presentation and uh and bill gates was there like and we're talking about wealthy individuals right and so you know he i afterwards i talked to him and i was talking about the bridge between education and technology and i was like what's missing with the future of learning and he was like jim you know the key is is human motivation really understanding what drives people i was like wow you know that's really right because you know this people go out there and they can buy courses you know but a lot of people never open it exactly because it has everything to do with drive and reasons because motivation is like you know like what is your motive for acting sure right what's the fuel and i believe there's a success formula called h cubed that it goes from your head to your heart to your hands the people could visualize and affirm and see things here all the time and think about it but if they're not acting with their hands you know actually doing something about it then usually what's missing is the second age which is the heart the emotion the energy of motion i had a martial arts instructor to tell me years ago you can't steer a parked car you know you need fuel you know where's the energy that's going to do that and so with people's motor fractures so simple when people are remembering people's names ask yourself why do you want to remember this person's name because reasons reap results i've always found that in life reasons reap results because you need a big enough why sure you know like simon sinek's book you know start with why yeah and so you want to get that drive first all right so motivation the oh is something interesting you know i i have people do this i have them just kind of shake out their hand like this and i say make a fist and i say put it to their chin and then i go like this and everyone puts it here but i said chin and this is the difference the o stands for observation okay and i find that a lot of people blame their memory issues and they think it's like a retention issue but i find it's really a attention issue okay it's an attention issue present you mean or it is that that's a big part of it it's like you know let's say everyone uses a search engine like google every single day but a lot of people they use it 10 times a day if i ask them are you willing to bet your life you know what colors the letters are because that's that's an observation sure you know there's a difference between looking at something and seeing it really seeing it there's difference between hearing something and really listening you know like leaders like for example um i had this whole escapade with the x-men which was insane but i had to leave the the set because uh there i had to go to a charity event and one of the people that i think leaders the independent of your political bent who has an incredible memory is president clinton every single time i've met president clinton he's remembered my name you know what he does and how many people does he says hey how many people does clinton meet on a regular basis right and so that's a leadership skill though right and so fdr was incredible with names also he would walk around the white house and point people out and say hi to them say saying hi to their spouse and using by name i mean that's because think about the sweetest sound of a person's ears right it's their name right inside so anyway i asked him what's memory trick he uses he uses no memory tricks at all and he tells me this you know this amazing story yes and so he tells me this incredible story about how you know his grandfather you know in arkansas would get all the kids around and tell stories to them but then he would quiz them they'd really need to listen and be present and it's funny because i noticed that like he's bill clinton is in regardless of where you feel politically incredible communicator incredible charisma incredible connector right and he also this memory i find he has his incredible presence his powerful presence but i find that his powerful presence and his memory comes from being powerfully present his powerful presence comes from being powerfully present and here's the thing when people are networking because i know a lot of people there's they're entrepreneurs they're social entrepreneurs and millennials and they're going out there meeting people because really it's it's what you know and it's who you know but that's all memory what you know a lot of people go to a seminar two days later they'll forget everything yeah right eighty percent they're specific for getting her but also who you know and who knows you right but what the challenge is they'll be networking and how many times do you find yourself talking to somebody and then looking over their shoulder i hate that yeah i hear when people do that it's like annoying because you're distracting yourself all the time or if you're not just dragging yourself externally you're like talking to yourself what am i going to say next exactly right so the people aren't even listening now this is so key when people are communicating most of the times you find that they're not even really listening what they are is they're thinking about how they're going to respond you know and if you look at the word listen and you scramble the letters it becomes the word silent no yeah isn't that crazy people would just do that and i'm and we're talking about really fundamental things that's one of the things reasons you know i love your podcast is because some of these basics those are the biggest things that move the needle i mean just understanding why you want to remember something and being present and paying attention and being silent and really listening i mean that's not magic but that's just like going to the gym right we think about the fundamentals we're talking about exercise we're talking about sleep we're talking about you know a good diet yeah that's like that's right yeah the mindset that's that's 95 of it right there yeah that's incredible and then finally the the third m is is mechanics okay you know for mom so m is is motivation the o is observation and then the final m is mechanics and these are not the person that's going to fix your car but this is the tips the techniques the hacks if you will the strategies on how to learn a language how to speed read how to remember that person's name how to give a speech without notes right but the m and the o motivation observation so what's the mechanics then for uh you know say i'm going to an event and there's 10 people that someone's introduced me to and i'm yeah shaking their hand we've all done this before it's like hi hi hi hi what's the mechanics remember i mean we've all the experience so relationships all proximity and it's all who you know right yeah and who knows you back yeah right and one of the most stand out skills that i know of is walk into a room meeting 20 strangers and leaving saying goodbye to every single one of them with their names can you do that because we have fun because who because who are they all going to remember when you walk your room that's that's a standout skill that's and that's the thing that because when you remember people's name they feel like that you care because what's the opposite if you forget someone's name how do they feel that you don't care that they're not important and you know this is what i've been uh you know thinking my whole life because i've never felt like i've had the book smarts yeah but i felt like i've cared more than you know 99 of people yeah and uh i feel like that's what's been able to get me to where i want to be by showing people how big my heart is yeah as opposed to how much i know yes and i think that's could be the most powerful thing is like remembering and just being connected to people as opposed to telling them what you know and that's huge too because a lot of people a lot of traditional networking or business advice would be like oh you have to you know when you're going to people tell them all these amazing stories and and really be interesting to them i think there's a difference between interesting and interested you know what i mean when you meet somebody being interesting and talk about oh i can do this and then also being interested sincerely interested people love the person when they get to share yes and you listen yes when you just allow people to share their story and what they're excited about and you remember their name you don't have to say anything and they feel like you're the best person in the world clearly right yeah the the late uh stephen covey who had an opportunity to to spend a good amount of time with and share stage with he has that you know seek first to understand then to be understood i mean that that's huge that's huge this is what you want to do every time you want to go you go to a wedding you go to a conference you go to a networking event seven tips you don't even have to use all seven just any part of this will be better than nothing okay all right i want you to remember be suave so when you're people are going out and they're they're they're checking the mirror on their makeup and their their their clothing when they say i'm gonna be suave so the b stands for believe because you know this better than anyone believe you can or believe you can't either right you're right right and so here's the thing with beliefs what i mean by that is you want to kill the ants you know our friend dr daniel amen the big brain doctor talks about killing ants automatic negative thoughts because here's the thing like um you know with the name like quick i had to be a runner growing up you know like i always tell people my gym quick quick learning how people learn quickly and they're like quick really is my last name yeah that's really my last name because with like a name like quick your life and destiny was pretty much planned out had to be a runner back in school i have to i have to be careful when i'm driving because the worst name that you pulled over when you're speeding a little quicker yeah it's like you want to have that on your life since you're not going to talk your way on that ticket yeah and i get to teach speed learning you know speed reading speed memory and stuff are you a distance runner or sprinter uh sprinter so so i was i was preparing for a marathon and i was really excited about i was of course reading books on it and stuff like that because i read a book a day and i just have to learn it i was like oh it's like matrix scott style and everything i go to like barnes noble i'll pick up a book and then just read it put it back on the shelf and save a lot of money that way um but i was reading this book on running marathon and there's one chapter on the psychology running marathon and that's what was really interesting the mindset and it opened up with this paragraph verbatim because i'm a memory expert it said this your mind is like a super computer and your self-talk is the program it will run so if you tell yourself you are not good with names you will not remember the name of next person you meet because you programmed your computer not to i was like wow so b for b suave the b stands for believe believe you can believe you can't either way you're right because here's the thing that i've learned and here's the tweetable if you will is your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk your mind is always ease dropping you're probably on your self-talk all right so you want to monitor that so i encourage everyone to spend a week do a 30-day fast no negative thoughts or you have to regroup right so that's the b the e and b suave stands for exercise and i don't mean physical exercise although people who are more physically active will always do better on mental acuity memory exams because anything that's good for your heart is really good for your head right but i mean practice because practice makes progress practice makes progress it always does and so the bad news to remember names it takes effort the good news not as much as people think so bad news takes effort but any what's what's not valuable in your life that does that doesn't take effort sure right and so there's no magic pill like there's no magic memory pill but there is a magic memory process and that's what we're talking about there's no magic memory pill there is a memory process and so the e is exercise and so it takes about 21 to 30 days you know we learned in psychology the law of 21 practicing something for 21 30 days whether it's learning how to type or learning how to drive a car or what have you until you get to be second nature with it so you practice and where can you practice everywhere right just anytime you're flipping through the channels and people get introduced you're meeting people all the time you can practice all the time sure and so it doesn't take that much exactly you could go to the grocery store and see three strangers and just make up their name that's bob that's sue that's mary and then when you leave like you at checkout and you're at the bottom exactly yeah and then so that's the thing that's the difference right tony robbins talks about what you practice in private you're rewarded for in public you know so that that's what you do you practice so that's the e in b so b e um so b is believe e is exercise now the suave is the actual mechanics all right so the s in suave when you're meeting for this person for the first time the s is you say the name all right you say the name so hi my name is jim hey louis louis it's nice to meet you good to meet you too man if i was any better my name was my name would be louis house that's the video that's my stupid um so here so i'll say the name right away and just by hearing the name again helps me so now i heard it twice one from you one for me all of a sudden i'm going to remember it better my retention is going to go up i also want to say it because i want to make sure i'm going back to mom the o i want to make sure i observed it correctly sometimes you're networking a lot of things going on you meet someone named ted you say goodbye ed you know better get corrected up front than later on right so you say the name the you and swabs means use it you want to use the name very simple right you want to use it not abuse it but just you know because louis thanks for coming lewis we're going to talk about lewis's creepy right that's like a salesman right sales exactly it's try hard and it's like a seinfeld episode where like the close talker you know or there was actually a seinfeld episode i haven't thought about this in years wasn't there a seinfeld episode uh like a rerun you might have seen that he was dating somebody and was intimate with her but he actually forgot her name and every single time she would leave you to try to go into her purse and get her driver's license and and meet kramer and try to get the name to come out but here's the thing it rhymed with the part of the female anatomy and that was the famous that was the famous episode if you remember people watching us remember what that is um so you want to make sure that you use it three or four times in the conversation sure the a stands for ask and this is a really big one ask because what's everyone's favorite subject it's like it's not travel it's not entrepreneurship it's not even you know it's not shopping it's themselves right and you ever meet somebody and their name is a little different than you're used to like you've never heard that name before you know probably 80 of the people you meet you know lewis and jim they're pretty pretty common names sometimes you meet someone named afsal or ritager or isis or what have you you know then you ask about a person's name and what can you ask about a person's name you know you could ask like how do you spell it what does it mean what does it mean what does it stand for who you're named after related to this person you know all these questions and you know every for the most part everyone gets very complimented because the name and again is a sweetest sound to a person's ears right and think about why though like the psychology of it you know a child what's one of the first words they learned how to write they're not how much exactly how much how much love were they given when they did it right you know and all that emotion tied into like because i think you know one of the challenges people have like one of the biggest fears people have is not being good enough you know that we're not good enough and if we're not good enough we're not gonna be loved if we're not gonna be loved you know we're not gonna be we're gonna die or something you know and so but that name is like our identity right so you always want to be able to refer this you ask about a person's name and they're complimented so like for example i was uh speaking at the country's largest life insurance company about a hundred people in the room training director was there and her name was nankita and kita and i was like wow that's a really beautiful name sincerely right yeah and so i was like you know you know how is it where is it from i said what does it mean and she paused and she looked at every our co-workers and she says it means graceful falling waters and i was like whoa and i got like chills and then you know like half the audience was like making these sounds and it made me just spontaneously ask you know how long have you worked here you know uh she was like about four years i was like with all these people she was like yeah you know like a lot of people my good friends are in my wedding it's like that's nice how many people in this room knew that's what her name meant out of a hundred people how many people raised their hand zero none one none and that was one of my biggest clients because this one refers to me as a training director and so it brought me into all but that name was a bond right so that was sincere interest so you ask about a person's name okay and then finally the v and the e and suave the v is visualize visualize and this is a really simple memory tip where we tend to remember more what we see than what we hear right you go to somebody like their face you know i remember your face but i forgot your name you never go to someone say hey i remember your name but i forgot your face i wouldn't make any sense so you remember what you see in fact there's a chinese proverb that goes what i hear i forget what i see i remember and what i do i understand what i hear i forget i heard the name i forgot the name what i see i remember i saw the face i remember the face what i do going back to exercise and practice i understand right and so if you tend to remember what you see then try seeing what you want to remember so this is the trick that uh you meet somebody you take their name and you turn it into a picture so let's say you meet someone named mike and then for a split second you imagine them taking a microphone singing karaoke on the table top right you meet someone named carol and you imagine so you sing christmas carols right you meet someone named mary and imagine she's carrying these little lambs you know around and you do this in the privacy of your own mind right and people say well that's so childish who are the fastest learners on the planet children children how fast can they learn a musical instrument compared to that how fast can they learn like languages like that right so children that they do that they're playful they make fun of people's names right you know they could you know kids could be in therapy for 10 years because their name was maybe fun and they don't even know right so that's what you want to do you want to take someone's name turn into a picture so a person's name is david i use a slingshot for david and goliath you know someone named bob i imagine them bobbing for apples just something very see because here's the thing there's something called i call the six second syndrome six second syndrome is someone tells you their name you have six seconds to do something with that otherwise it's gone gone it's gone that's it if you don't practice it daily right you've got to lose it exactly and so here at least you're focusing on the person and you're focusing on the name so a person's name is john you could picture whatever do you remember what you used for me when we met when we first met so here's yes so yeah yeah so everybody has their their their own thing like that is so funny is like i use okay so you come up with a picture that works for yourself so when we met i actually use it's a slinky and i don't don't ask why because it doesn't sound like it or anything like that but one of my best friends growing up as a kid was lewis okay and all he would do is play with this slinky like this little toy this is all the time so i just think about them every single time i think about that so when i saw that i just picture it and i just remember now after you remember the person then the pictures just disappear but you need something just to hold it for six seconds and then you have it right and it's using the other part of reason why it works is that left brain part of your brain does logic and words and sounds we'll talk about this with speed reading that that's only using part of your brain but your right brain is like pictures and imagination and visualization and emotion that's activating more of your brain people say we use like 10 of our brain's potential we use all our brain but in terms of its potential you know like you know but no one shows us how to activate the rest of it but part of it is just using your imagination his imagination is more powerful than knowledge wow yeah einstein said that and so you want to turn into a picture and finally ian suave stands for end and that's going back to saying saying goodbye using their name going to a room meeting 10 strangers leaving saying goodbye to every single one so they all remember wow you okay let me see if i can remember this because i was trying to be president but also remember so be suave uh the b stand for belief please e i mean exercise exercise practice s is say it say it uh what's his swap u is uh use it use the name um a is ask about the name ask about the name b is visualized and e is end nice yeah man i'm picking it up as we go very cool and this is so what i'm saying is when people people they they experience this and they practice this you'll see a big lift and that's what i love about it and then all of a sudden once you have that competence it increases your confidence you show up differently when you're out that with other people yeah you probably don't have to use every one of them of course you just said i want to say it maybe just say it and visualize it and then you're done yeah you know so any part of it is better than most people which is nothing because if i say uh you tell me your name is jim i'm not gonna say that's an interesting name right you know exactly tell me more about who exactly who called you guys if you just imagine like me doing something funny with my you know like barbells or whatever like the magic of gym or whatever yeah and if people are motivated they're asked like they're asking like why they want to remember personally like i would ask myself for motivation why do i remember the person's name maybe it's because i want to i want to get some business or i'll show this person respect or maybe i just want to practice these these tips that i learned you know on this podcast what are some daily habits or rituals that you have to just sharpen your mind every single day that others can apply okay so um so i think here's the thing when it comes to your memory two-thirds of it is so people are concerned that they're growing older but i could say you can improve your memory regardless your age your background your career your diet level education your financial situation your gender your health situation your iq anything it can be improved here's the thing one third of your of your memory is is predetermined by biology and genetics but that's so exciting because that means two-thirds the majority twice as much is completely in your control that's cool and so the things that move the needle for example are like ten things that i'm thinking about that's gonna move the needle completely of that that two-thirds so it's it's a good diet right so a good diet because you are what you eat right and so there's certain brain foods that we know is it's good for your muscles good for your mind dr amon talked about that as well a lot a lot of that you know everything from from from blueberries to walnuts and everything right so there's good diet and number two killing ants killing you the automatic negative thoughts which is a big for a lot of people remember your mind is always ease dropping on your self-talk and it's a practice right so you want to be able to eliminate the negative talk and you can't just eliminate something you just you have to replace it with something else right exactly you can't just stop smoking you have to start doing something else so so my because here's the thing that you want to avoid a lot of people start taking pride in how bad certain things are in their life it gives them significance very much so you nailed it you know people start getting pride because they're they're my memory is so bad if i don't write my grocery lists and triplicates i won't remember it and like oh you think you're forgetful is how forgetful i am right or this is how bad people also have this with busyness it is so bad nowadays everybody has to be busy because that makes them mean so that person must be so important right and so that we got to get off that cult of being busy is that that's congratulations for being the most busy person right exactly like that everybody has to do exactly but if people start getting pride they start designing their life around being busy and they wonder why they're all stressed out all the time so automatic negative thoughts kill those ants number three that's good that you have to do daily is exercise yeah right because you know your body and your brain it's connected and there's actually certain exercises you could do to build your brain power so for example juggling extremely good for your brain it's been shown on oxford last year there was a study saying that jugglers actually have bigger brains you could actually build more white matter it's also a great tip for speed reading because as you're juggling three balls your eyes only have two of them you can't focus on all three so you have to soften your gaze and take in more like peripheral vision and trained you that way so you can actually take in more words as you're reading but it actually builds more white matter as you're doing it there's certain exercises also we teach people this is a field called educational kinesiology where certain body movements actually helps build your brain power which is these cross laterals and these kind of fun things even something simple like you know like we're always on the computer all the time so it's really important to keep your your your hands and your fingers kind of stretched but you know can you do one twice as fast like like literally like this oh that too you know something like that you know or something yeah or like you're pulling in energy like this but what if you had to do one forward and one back but there's been so many exercises for people like eating with the opposite hand is actually good for your brain brushing your teeth with the opposite hand very very good exercise actually build your brain power so exercise is really good but i mean just keeping physically fit is good for your brain right it's good for staving off a lot of brain challenges okay fourth thing that people need to incorporate is brain nutrients because a lot of people they're not getting it from their soil or maybe their food so maybe a supplement in certain things right number five this is a big one and i know you're you're big on this a positive peer group because you are what you eat you know and you are but you are also who you spend time with of course right so if you want a bigger brain you want your mind to be active and everything be around people that challenge you that support you that teach you things that that encourage you that are positive because we are the average of the five people as you know that we spend the most time with so positive peer group is good for your brain number six that's good for your brain is clean environment they find that and you know this like when people start cleaning their desk that their external world starts reflecting their internal world and vice versa right so a clean environment helps you be more organized and inside also as well number seven that's good for your brain in terms of lifestyle what i do every single day is things like sleep sleep is so important people that's where you're rebuilding you're rejuvenating restoring but we live there's this whole epidemic of sleeplessness and people aren't getting enough sleep and imagine i'm going through this list people should go through and this is common sense yeah but not common practice yeah that's the difference right people's like like there's there's some zones here that people like you know i'm not spending time with the right people or maybe you know i'm really not getting that much sleep or maybe my diet or my negative self-talk there's one or two things that if you fix it and you put energy there it'll just your your your business could double yeah because you're you're doubling that's number seven number eight is brain protection so important to protect your brain because you know people who are accident prone or they're doing like a lot of extreme sports you know they're active you want to make sure you wear helmets and just you know make because your brain is resilient but it's you know it's it's this controls every smash it you're done my father 10 years ago got in a car accident and he's still recovering he's not the same person he yeah he can't work anymore you know he's he forgets a lot yes and see that that that's why i do what i do because i never want people to suffer the way that i was struggling every single day for like 15 years straight yeah you know and just because it reflects on you know when i was in that hospital bed going through all that and then it was so funny like not not funny as in haha funny but when this when this young lady who read the 30 books in 30 days and saved her mother's life she gave me one of those books and inside the book was this photograph and it was she was using it as a bookmark and it was her mother in the hospital and it reminded me when i was in the hospital and so yeah take care of your brain yeah number nine is uh new learnings learn something new every single day never let your head hit that pillow being the same as it was when i woke up ever so so listen to podcasts listening to the podcast read exactly watch your ted talks you know uh take an email course or anything new learnings because here's the thing we've learned more about your brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2000 years and you know according to science neurogenesis that your brain can create new brain cells even as it grows older and neuroplasticity is saying you can make new your brains like plastic it's so malleable but just having a new thought creates more connections and so einstein's brain wasn't any bigger than anybody else's but he had more connections than people than most people in certain areas and those connections come from new learnings and that's all learning is is connecting something you don't know to something you know and making new connections like that so always new learnings and always challenge yourself and that's probably the most out of it and then finally number 10 what i try to practice every single day is stress management you know so one if you want to know what the biggest obstacle is for people's brains is stress stress creates cortisol adrenal in your body it's really good for fight or flight it's not really good if you need to take a test it's not really good if you need to study it's not really have to read reports and journals and learn something brand new or learn a language sure because that'll shut down parts of your brain wow so those are the 10 things that i focus on every single day before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day [Music] how do you think we heal trauma if we don't have the resources to go to therapy or do workshops or whatever it may be even if we do have resources we don't have the courage to put ourselves out there how do we start to heal trauma within our body excellent question so uh we did a whole uh project for audible original um called take control that was all about the thesis was this any area of your life that you're stuck i am willing to bet everything i have that you have a trauma pattern from your past that you've never healed um you've got a boss that is abusive guarantee you this has to do with a trauma pattern from your past you can't succeed in the areas you want you can't lose the weight there's some pattern from your past so the first thing is recognizing that you actually experience trauma and i am a huge proponent as so many people are of widening the definition because i think up until about five years ago most of us thought that trauma just meant okay you uh were in active duty or you were in a huge accident or incident that was highly traumatic or you survived some sort of uh physical sexual whatever abuse trauma is just about any kind of experience that you witness or you absorb that has your nervous system light up on edge and start warning you so if you've ever had like you could have a critical parent and you just brace for them you could have a parent that that drinks like crazy and you brace at five o'clock because you know they're coming home you could have been abandoned by a parent or have a parent that was mentally ill or have a parent that was so on your ass because they wanted you to be a pro football player and so you were constantly on edge it's when your nervous system fires up to a state of alert that now gets programmed into your body as a response there's a reason why so many couples at five o'clock at night start bickering and it has to do with the fact that at five o'clock is typically when a lot of parents 20 years ago were coming home from work and that's when the arguing would start and so what happens when you witness that or you feel it is as a kid you're now in a state where you're on edge wow i see you rocking in your chair wow that's crazy well i mean i just remember you know it's funny there's a there's a lot of good things that usually happen to our our childhood but we just seem to remember a lot of the bad stuff and it's because you know why right because the trauma just like and you're nervous yeah i guess and also your mind is wired in a way to prioritize the negative as a means to keep your ass safe from not experiencing it correct which is why you got to work on your positive mindset because your mind defaults to negative so you got to build up the programming deposit this isn't just this is actually science i know so i remember you know my the memories of the past i always have to remind myself of all the positive stuff that you know my parents did all the time and what they were going through and giving them grace and all these different things but i remember you know when my dad would get home it would be it was he didn't know what type of day was going to be for him you know it was like either a thunder coming through the the wooden floors with his wooden shoes and like being angry and upset or it was like the loving father that would take me out and play catch in the backyard so i have to constantly remind myself of like the pod which i'm i'm certain it was 90 of the time was good but those 10 of the time you know creates that clinching mode like you said well let me explain what happened so this really interesting concept called ghosts in the nursery and so trauma patterns get automated and because they're not experienced in your brain they're felt in your nervous system and so it's why you can have a pattern from your past but be completely unaware that it's running your life right now because it's stored not in your conscious thought but in your nervous system and you feel it in your body before it even gets into your head and so from there's this concept called ghost in the nursery which basically means there's all kinds of that goes on when you're little that you may or may not remember in your mind but your body remembers it so for example if you had parents that were just stressed out and they come home and they've been busy and you're sitting there playing on the floor and there's there's toys everywhere and mom or dad's reaction to a mess is to scream that creates this kind of thing in your nervous system now you may not remember that episode that happened on may 17 1972 but your nervous system remembers what it's like so fast forward you're now 51 years old and you walk in the house and there's a mess everywhere and even though you have said i'm not going to bulldoze and yell at anybody my body recognizes the situation so what do you do you repeat the pattern you saw and so what i'm working on right now is a pattern that is encoded in my nervous system i was trying to create a video yes or two days ago um for share the mic for share the mic now i'm trying to create a video and i'm like doing take after take because i want to get it right and my daughter comes waltzing into the room and was like how long are you going to be doing this and i was like can't you say that i'm working i literally like screamed at her and she looked at me louis and she goes you have a real problem wow how's your daughter 20. and i said i calmly said you're right i do when i get interrupted i lose control of the response and i'm working so hard and the way that you and i'm not clearly not mastering this yet but the way that you do it is as you feel it rise up you have to you know you can use the five second rule five four three two one you can use just take a quick breath you can notice the pattern and you've got to create a pause between the emotion rising up and the reaction that gets automated and for many people the reaction loss is to run away it's to leave the room it's to avoid the confrontation the it was just easy you know hold on let me let the clock go even though you you hate being interrupted by anything this is a great interesting i did like i didn't do i didn't do the bulldozer i was i was calm because i wasn't a human being i'm only mean to human beings um i know like i a lot of people run away they avoid conflict they say it's just easier but if running away and avoiding conflict continues to create a pattern where you feel invisible and your boundaries are trumped on that's a pattern and you know here's the other thing about patterns running away and being quiet might have saved you when you were little because if you were quiet and out of the room you didn't get hit you didn't get yelled at you were out of harm's way so when you were little it was a genius pattern because it protected you but the issue for adults is that again we walk around with the patterns that we created when we were eight years old in different situations than we are and now and now we are completely a robot to these patterns i i love that you um you had a great tweet the other day about boundaries because as uh as individuals both of us who try to help people break boundaries try to break their mindset that's holding them back try to get them to become uh greater than in their past all these different things you wrote a post that said your boundaries are there to serve you as you grow so will your boundaries what boundaries do you need to set up in order to help yourself grow why are boundaries important when we also have the mindset of like you should be breaking your boundaries all the time well i wouldn't say that br that breaking your like i don't call the the obstacles or i call them excuses and so i i think the hardest boundaries honestly are the ones that set with yourself to not drink during the week to not tolerate the bulldozing and immediately apologize and try to do better to um not waste hours on social media like all the things that the small promises you need to make in order to create boundaries with your old patterns and your excuses um to me the the hardest boundaries to set are those with myself i what was the question again uh you know breaking we we encourage people to break boundaries you know they feel like they're limited but you talk about uh your boundaries are there to serve you so obviously it's a different type of boundary but you know yeah so so here's the thing what boundaries do you need to help yourself to protect yourself and which ones do you need to grow past that are holding you back i think that the definition with boundaries that has helped me the most is understanding the boundaries are for me they're not for you and the single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship particularly romantic ones but also work related ones is we do not express what we need that's so true my girlfriend was telling me this the other day she's like i really want you to tell me what you need and when you want it and feel comfortable and confident saying it and for me i go back into trauma of past like when i used to say what i want need and it didn't get met it would have get let down my expectations i'd get hurt so i was like screw it i'll just do everything on my own which leads to resentment or whatever else yeah how's that working out for you it's like so so so louis that's an example of eight-year-old lewis created a pattern that worked when you were eight yeah but now that you're in your 30s and in a relationship that you really care about you've got to identify the pattern and break it and replace it and the good news is any pattern can be replaced change isn't personal it just feels personal change is just about identifying patterns and replacing them with new ones that's it and it'll take a little while because they're encoded in your nervous system and your default is to just do it yourself um but you have to you cannot as a rule punish other people for you didn't communicate right so i'll give you the perfect example so chris and i have been married for 24 years and when i was before the talk show and i made my living mostly by uh you know doing 100 speeches a year i would be on the road 150 days a year and when i would come home there was always something that pissed me off like what like ah the trashes are taken out the clothes are here or is it something else oh no i'm way worse than that are you kidding i would walk in after being gone for five or six days and there on the island in the kitchen was a vase that had dead flowers the ones that i had bought for myself a week before and it was as if everybody in my family had been walking around the island for six days as if there was some dead flower sculpture in the middle of the island and so i would come home and first of all the only person that's really excited to see me is a dog and my family did sit me down at one point they said you know you realize when you're not here we have our own lives so you don't put your lives on hold while you know for us and we're not putting our lives on hold so it's not that we're not excited to see you but we're not organizing our whole lives around when mom comes home right to be like the dog to be like the dog excited and running up and jumping in your arms and kissing you yeah yeah no no they don't but that but i think that's cool because that means that they're independent and doing their own thing they've set boundaries they've set boundaries with me perfect so for probably six months i would get pissy and i would walk in and put my bags down and i grabbed the flowers and i demonstratedly how many times has everyone done this throw them out loudly like everyone hears you communication yeah i'm getting my communication just throwing these dead flowers out communicate to you that you should buy me flowers like i'm not saying that but that's what the body language is right how dare i have been off i've been in four cities and then you become a mar like uh i'm disgusting when i tell this story but this is it this is like so well i see you've got some lovely flowers behind you that look alive so that's good to see oh that's nice so i do love flowers so finally i just said to chris you know what would make me feel amazing is if when i came home you had just bought some flowers just go to the just when you're at the grocery store it doesn't you don't have to order like i'm saying buy the five dollar pack of half dead tulips just something okay and and then he said why and this is the most important part of expressing and look you don't have to give an explanation if you're trying to like cut off a toxic person but if you want to express boundaries with somebody because you want them to understand you more deeply give them the why i said because it makes me think that you are excited for me to come home and that you knew i was coming because i'm starting to feel forgotten so underneath the anger louis wow was hurt and feeling like it didn't matter and so i'll be darned i walk in and um there they are and i literally feel so seen and you know the other thing to do is and like another thing for us too is like chris and i i learned on my talk show because chris was on it and we did a show all about men and what men think and the secrets they keep i learned for the first time that my husband prefers to have sex in the morning i get a lot of men do i didn't know that well see i didn't like it because i don't like bad breath in the moment my girlfriend says but i'm like why didn't you tell me and the reason why is because we're so funky about asking for what we need we're so afraid of getting rejected or denied or whatever or being vulnerable in that moment but the greatest thing that you can do is ask for what you need your friends need to know what you need your lover needs to know what you need your kids need to know what you need because then they can show up in a way where you feel seen and then you're gonna and they're gonna feel incredible yeah and you can't expect people to know what you need um or them to know what you need by communicating it through anger and this frustration of thro you know whatever like he's throwing away the flowers that way of communicating really unhealthy i'm i'm the blame there as well um and i think it's that's not a healthy way of of creating love within a relationship whether it's a friend a family member or a loved one but here's the thing you want to know why you let me let me let everybody off the hook yeah because here's the reason why this happens and this is what i want everyone to know what we're up against so louis is you and i sit here talking about the flower thing right and you got to communicate your bodies as we're having this conversation we are present and we're using the thinking part of our brain when i walk into the kitchen i am not thinking i am in the emotional traumatic nervous system robot part of my body and that's where your feelings and your triggers take over yeah and if you can start to identify the bulldozing the anger all that stuff you will literally change your whole life by just changing one or two patterns the other thing and you know you asked me about the talk show the single greatest gift of the talk show content wise is something called the word wheel so i don't have it right here but if you google word wheel or wheel of emotions you will find that um if you ask somebody name as many emotions as you can most people can name three happy sad angry there's literally like 113 of them from disgusted to hopeless to and if you if you start with a cor this thing allows you to start with a core emotion and go out because back to the flower example i was expressing anger that's not what i was feeling um i was feeling invisible and forgotten and so the word wheel is something that we used several times a week to help people go from the thing that they are expressing to control communicating what you're feeling which is a lot like the work that you wrote about in your book yeah around wearing masks getting to the root of the core emotion you're feeling but not expressing and that gets back to the the pause thing what have i seen that i am busy that i'm that i i am so have you ever wanted something so bad that you become paralyzed yeah i so wanna end the mental pain and suffering that people feel i so wanna help people heal their minds and to have the power to create a better future and i get so overwhelmed by how much i want to see that happen in the world that sometimes i become paralyzed and what happens for me a lot of the time is i feel insignificant in my ability to move the needle on that hmm yeah because there's billions of people who are struggling yeah and it's like what do you do to make the max maximum use of your time to make the maximum impact and also create resources to create more impact i get i yell at my husband to buy me flowers that's what i do i get to feel is this wheel of emotions is this something you created there's just something oh it's in the public domain wow that's cool that's really cool now i've been uh i think i mentioned this to you uh i've had some i guess i've had some paralysis or just a lack of focus around completion of my uh book proposal i've been working on for about a year as well about how to unite exactly about um you know eliminating self-doubt i think self-doubt and mental challenges kind of our cousins maybe of each other family members in some way and i think self-doubt i think self-doubt is the killer of dreams i believe when we don't believe in ourselves and our abilities eventually we're going to sabotage something and i hear you talk about confidence a lot a lot of your social media posts are about this and you say it a lot better than i do but what do you think are the reasons we doubt ourselves or what do you think is the steps to gaining more confidence in ourselves when we doubt um so i always thought that confidence uh was a thing that you feel and i have come to prefer that confidence is something that you do meaning that you know a lot of people a lot of people like to to think okay well you're going to feel confident first and then once you feel confident then you'll take the action and that's wrong it's not a chicken or an egg in my mind i think what happens is you have to force yourself in a moment of self-doubt to do something when you see yourself taking action the confidence follows so i have created my own definition of confidence which is confidence is the willingness to try and you display the willingness to try when you take action yeah it's a lot like the relationship between courage and fear you can't have courage without fear courage isn't the absence of fear it's acting in the face of it and confidence isn't the absence of self-doubt it's being willing to try even though you doubt yourself mm-hmm that's beautiful that's going in the book i'm quoting you in the past thank you baby make it your own i love that that's powerful yeah and i think um you know i'm sure you probably we're very similar in the sense that we do a lot and we build confidence because we would take action you and law school and public defending and all these different things you've done which like okay i'm afraid but let me go do it and do it and now okay i'm getting better now i feel more confident it's not just it's not just let me learn something or let me read a book and now i'm confident in a skill that i haven't applied i must apply it and fail a bunch and realize oh okay i've gotten better i have fallen over and over and now i'm standing and i'm actually doing okay and i'm doing even better now let me build my confidence there so yes and look you know here's the thing i think that preparation and studying something so that you feel like you have an understanding of something can be an important first thing that you try but don't let the studying of something become the reason why you don't actually take the next action well i need to get my masters i need to go to a business school i need to go to whatever and then never actually do it when you can start doing something much sooner before needing to have all the credentials necessarily yes there's very few things except for like being a doctor okay maybe don't do surgery correct yeah a chemist a doctor something that requires you to actually have accreditation and specialized knowledge an engineer or whatever but most things that you will master in life will not be mastered by reading a book you cannot learn how to ride a bike by reading about it you have to get your ass on that seat and find your balance that's how you find balance is by falling because balance is somewhere in between not being on the bike and falling or being on the bike and falling rather if you're looking for more greatness in your life make sure to check out this video right here and also check out our free pdf the three secrets to unlock the power of your mind to help you change your life download it right here we have these strong theories it's just the science suggests they're wrong like it's not like we're not putting the work in we're putting the work in in the wrong stuff

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 114,805

Rating: 4.8523865 out of 5

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation, how to quickly get out of a rut, how to become a productivity master, get more done, never be lazy again, how to get motivated, hot to get out of a rut

Id: HGzN1TSMJmA

Length: 162min 53sec (9773 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021