How To Defeat Your Self Doubt - Lewis Howes

Lewis Howes 0:00 The problem I wanna solve is helping people overcome self-doubt, because I believe self-doubt is the killer of all of our dreams. When we doubt ourselves, we can have all the talent, we can have all the people encouraging us around us, but if we don't believe, it's gonna be hard to accomplish what we want. Well, I wanna rid the world of self-doubt. (wind blowing)

Chris Williamson 0:19 Lewis Howes, welcome to the show.

Lewis Howes 0:20 My man. Thanks for having me. (hands clap)

Chris Williamson 0:22 My pleasure, dude.

Lewis Howes 0:22 You're, you're even better looking in person, even though you look good on screen, too.

Chris Williamson 0:26 For the people that-

Lewis Howes 0:26 You look jacked on screen, you know?

Chris Williamson 0:27 Thank you. Well, for the people that are just listening, we did actually decide that we're gonna dress the same.

Lewis Howes 0:31 Twinsies.

Chris Williamson 0:32 Yeah, it's cute.

Lewis Howes 0:33 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 0:33 Uh, thank you for coming to Austin to see me.

Lewis Howes 0:35 Thanks, brother. Thanks for having me, man.

Chris Williamson 0:37 What do you think most people misunderstand about greatness?

Lewis Howes 0:42 Most people go for success, and they realize that it's not the thing that's gonna bring them the most fulfillment. Success is a selfish game, something I played for 30 years. And there's nothing wrong with success. I think success is fine, but when we just chase success by itself, it's really about me. Look at me winning, succeeding, accomplishing, making money, getting the awards. This is a, this is a me game, and I played that game for a long time. And it worked. I got results. I got things, money, opportunities, success. But it didn't solve the, uh, the heart game. It didn't solve the game of, how do I feel about me? Chasing the success and winning or earning never felt enough still. So, I was doing it from a wound. And I think people... Again, there's nothing wrong with it, but I just think that greatness is different than success in the terms that greatness is a we game, success is a me game. And greatness includes going after what you want, but really making an impact on the people around you and empowering and lifting others up and helping them succeed and win, too. When it's just me versus the world, I just think that's a lonely game.

Chris Williamson 1:53 I would agree. There's a, a, a quote from our mutual friend, Alex Hormozi, that got me thinking, quite a while ago, about the tension between success and the desire to feel like enough. So, I'm gonna-

Lewis Howes 2:04 Yes.

Chris Williamson 2:04 ... give you, read this out to you. "Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. Here's the problem. We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which is supposed to get it, success. Failure can make you miserable, but I'm not sure that success will make you happy."

Lewis Howes 2:22 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:22 "One of the most common dynamics I see amongst high performers is this. Parents want their child to do well. Parents encourage their child to do well by praising when they succeed and criticizing when they fail. The child learns that praise and admiration is contingent on succeeding."

Lewis Howes 2:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:34 "That lesson metastasizes through early adulthood into, 'I am only worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging if I succeed.' Now, powered by internal feelings of insufficiency, this person is driven to achieve many things. They're prepared to out-work, out-hustle, and out-suffer everyone else because they're not just running toward a life they want. They're running away from a life that they fear."

Lewis Howes 2:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 2:54 "Success and progress ameliorates the feelings of insufficiency. Therefore, success and progress have become prioritized above everything else."

Lewis Howes 3:01 Yeah, and it's interesting because, um, Sara Blakely, who just sold her company Spanx for, I think, 1.2 billion, um, when I asked her about dealing with failure and how to overcome this fear of failure, she said that when she was growing up, her dad would have the family have dinner every night together, and he would ask the same question every night at dinner, "What did you fail at today?" And he would actually celebrate the failures, and he would encourage them, and they would actually get in trouble if they didn't have something to share about what they failed at that day. And she said that that framing around failure not being a bad thing, but actually a thing that helps you get feedback on how to get better, was the thing that was celebrated. You tried something. That's an awesome thing that you did this today. Not only praising when you succeed, but also praising that you tried, you put effort in, you had a good attitude. You failed at something meant you had courage. You weren't trying to look perfect. And keeping the failure up only means you're gonna succeed. You played sports growing up, right? You and I know that the only way to succeed was through failure. You know, Michael Jordan missed 50% of his shots. The best baseball players in the world failed 70% of the time, and they were the best. They missed 70% of the time. And we celebrate them for their successes, but they also failed a ton, ton more than they succeeded. And I think, um, in athletics, we were taught that, you know, failure is just feedback. It's a part of the process on how you succeed. I saw this m- this meme, I don't know, a few years ago online about a (laughs) it was a meme of, like, a baby kind of, like, wobbling and f- and falling over. And the meme said, "A child, when learning to walk, falls a thousand times and never thinks to himself, 'Maybe this walking thing isn't for me.'" He just keeps getting up and trying again until he figures out how to walk. And I think if we can take that approach on everything, like, "Okay, I'm just gonna fall a thousand times, but eventually I'm gonna walk," and I'm not gonna think, "This isn't for me," but a lot of the times we, we stop after one fail today. You know, we stop after one try, and it didn't work out because we got judged or criticized by someone.

Chris Williamson 5:22 Yeah, certainly a healthy relationship with failure-

Lewis Howes 5:24 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:24 ... I think, and reframing that. One of the problems that you have in the modern world is this asymmetry between what we see of everybody else and what we see of ourselves-

Lewis Howes 5:32 Yes.

Chris Williamson 5:32 ... right? And you don't really get to see the... You get to see the grand failures of people, you know, the bankruptcies-

Lewis Howes 5:39 Yes.

Chris Williamson 5:39 ... and the, the house going up in flame and the very public-

Lewis Howes 5:41 Being canceled.

Chris Williamson 5:41 ... marriage. Yeah.

Lewis Howes 5:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:42 You, you, you see all of the divorces. You see all of that. What you don't see are the ones that I think are actually a little bit more ruthless because it's death by a thousand cuts, the way that they made a promise to themselves that-

Lewis Howes 5:53 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:53 ... they weren't gonna hit snooze this week, and yet they did on a morning.

Lewis Howes 5:56 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:56 Or the fact that there was a cookie left out from last night, and they decided to have it for fucking breakfast. Like, "Why do you have it for breakfast?"

Lewis Howes 6:01 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 6:01 "Oh, well, it was there, and I'm sorry." And... Yeah.

Lewis Howes 6:03 Yeah. I know.

Chris Williamson 6:03 But you're saying it to yourself, right?

Lewis Howes 6:05 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:05 And those very mundane failures...... I think, are, um- it's hard to find the balance, and I think this is something that I really-

Lewis Howes 6:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:14 ... want to dig into with you today.

Lewis Howes 6:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:16 This balance between, um, feeling like we're enough-

Lewis Howes 6:19 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:19 ... and staying hungry.

Lewis Howes 6:21 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:21 And that's something I want to get into.

Lewis Howes 6:22 Yep.

Chris Williamson 6:22 But first, tell me

Chris Williamson 6:23 the story about Jason Redman.

Lewis Howes 6:25 (sighs) Have you interviewed him yet?

Chris Williamson 6:26 No.

Lewis Howes 6:26 Oh, he's amazing, man. It's inspiring. Um, (smacks lips) he was, uh... Yeah, he's a, he's an inspiring guy who was at war. And, um, he essentially got in crossfire. He was supposed to come home, like, a week or two later, but was deployed and, and had, um... He was supposed to come from- home for Halloween, I think, in a couple of weeks, and he was gonna be done with his deployment. But he had one final mission, and he got in this crossfire where he essentially got shot in the face, got shot in the body, got shot everywhere, and, uh, lights out. Woke up unconscious, trying to figure out where he was. Eventually got evacuated from the location he was in, and he was in a hospital. And was kind of in and out of consciousness, and as he woke up and heard one time, there were some doctors or nurses or people talking in the room, talking about how, "Oh, man. This is- this doesn't look good. This is not gonna end well." And, uh, "This guy's face is blown off. He's got no nose. He's got the side of his head blown off." You know, "His body's really damaged. Shot in the side multiple times," all these things. (smacks lips) And he, like, in a moment of consciousness, he heard this, and when he finally was able to communicate, he was just like, "This type of language cannot enter my room. This type of communication cannot enter me; otherwise, I would not get better." And he ended up writing this declaration, uh, this sign that he put on the outside of the room that said something like, "Whoever enters this room, you must enter with joy, peace, positivity, love, and service. Any type of negative attitude does not work for me. Uh, so you only enter this room if you believe in positivity, joy, and a full recovery. And I will recover to the my- best of my ability, and then 20% farther beyond that because I'm so mentally tough. But if anyone brings negativity in here, it's gonna o- only hurt me, so please do not enter." (smacks lips) I'm paraphrasing the actual quote, but that was the, uh, synopsis of it. And, um, he had this amazing recovery, and I think it's the more, the, the attitude and the mindset once something tragic happens to us really determines how the rest of our life goes. A lot of us have experienced trauma, pain, whether it be a huge trauma or just death by a million cuts, microtraumas, but it's how we interpret it and the meaning we give those, those events that really dictate how much peace and harmony we have after those things. So he's just an amazing example of... And again, he's still on a healing journey, but his attitude, his energy, his effort towards recovery and healing, and taking care of his mind is what's really inspiring.

Chris Williamson 9:10 That is the single sort of unifying criteria between most of the people I find that's successful.

Lewis Howes 9:16 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 9:16 That, you know, they all seem to be able to deal with setbacks-

Lewis Howes 9:22 Yes.

Chris Williamson 9:23 ... with difficulties, with challenges.

Lewis Howes 9:24 Yeah. It's Man's Search for Meaning. It's Viktor Frankl, uh, which is probably the best example of this. The- if you haven't read the book yet, I recommend everyone checking it out. I mean, how can a man who goes through so much extreme trauma around him, with thousands of people dying around him in a concentration camp, live a happy life after he gets out? How is that even possible? And he was able to create new meaning from the memory, from the wounds, from the traumas. And whatever we go through, if we hold onto any type of pain around that wound, then every time we feel abandoned, taken ac- uh, taken advantage of or triggered, we are going to react. And I'm not saying it's not justified. Uh, it, it could be justified, but is it useful? Is reacting with anger and negativity, stress, overwhelm, is it useful towards living a beautiful life, like Alex Hormozi talked about? Is it useful towards happiness, joy, abundance? Is it useful towards having more energy towards the mission we're on? And again, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not useful to hold onto that meaning in a negative way.

Chris Williamson 10:30 So the primary takeaway is a man who has a strong enough why can bear any how, right? From Man's Search for Meaning.

Lewis Howes 10:37 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 10:38 How do people find their why or their mission?

Lewis Howes 10:41 (smacks lips) (sighs) It took me a while to figure it out. But I think there's a- there's an exercise you can play with to start trying. For me, it's, it's first b- facing yourself and realizing that there are stuff that you might need to heal. There might be some wounds that you need to heal and being on that journey. We could talk about that later. But once you're on that journey and you're trying to figure out what is this mission for this season of life, it doesn't need to be, "I need to change the world or cure cancer or something crazy," but figure out where you're at right now. When I was 23, 24, I was on my sister's couch for about a year and a half. In that season of life, I couldn't think beyond just trying to find how to make enough money to get my own apartment. I couldn't think beyond that. I wasn't like, "I wanna go change the world. I wanna go do something crazy." I was like, "I just need to survive and get my own life together." So I had a season of life where that was my mission. But I was clear, "I need to figure out how to make enough money to get an apartment and get on my own." Then once I accomplished that mission, I could think beyond that. I could explore, "What is it that I want right now?" And when we're in that exploratory phase of not- uh, of trying to get clear on our mission, think about the three Ps. The first one is your passion, and this may sound kind of lame or whatever, but I really feel like when you're interested and curious about something, you're more willing to deal with the stress and the adversity that comes your way than if you're not interested or curious. So figure out what you're really passionate about and ask yourself those questions about curiosity. Lean into that. The second P is, um...... the, the power that you already have. Now, when I was on my sister's couch, I didn't think I had any talents. I didn't think I had any power. I was... Just got finished playing arena football, which wasn't even good enough to play the NFL, so I was making 250 bucks a week. I didn't have a college degree yet. I was one of the lowest in my... In every grade in school, so I didn't think I had talent. But you really got to assess, like, what are the invisible talents that you might have? An invisible talent was, I was really good at connecting with people one-on-one. I was really good at seeing things, organizing ideas, uh, setting goals and accomplishing them. But I didn't think that I could make money from it. But I just assessed my talents with my power. And the second part of the, the power is figuring out what makes you feel the most powerless. In my early 20s, I had a lot of false confidence. You know, I was athletic or whatever and thought I knew a lot, but really, I knew nothing. And I acted as if I was confident, but I was really an insecure, scared little boy inside. And so, I went through a period of assessing all my fears. I created a fear list, and it was a long list. Um, but one by one, I started going all in on these fears and making them a superpower, making the thing that made me feel the most powerless, the least amount of confidence in myself, I started overcoming them one by one. Public speaking was a big one, learning how to salsa dance was a big one, learning an instrument, all these different things that would create emotional humiliation, right? Social humiliation, for me, was a big fear. Judgment was my biggest fear. And so, by going all in on those things and actually overcoming them, they gave me a new skill, a new power, and actually more confidence because then I overcame the thing that I was the most afraid of. And so, whatever it is in your life right now, create a list of your fears and start making those your talents, not insecurities anymore. So, that's the second P, is the power. The third one, I really believe this is when you step more from success into greatness, is when you find a problem that you want to solve, the third P. So, if you're in a discovery phase of, like, "What is my mission? What is meaningful to me?" What is the thing you want to solve in the world or for this season of life? And when we do that, we feel more in service. We feel, we feel more useful when we're solving a problem. If it's a problem we don't care about and we're- we have, uh, a curiosity and a, and a, and a power around something, but we do it towards a problem we don't care about, it just becomes less meaningful. Doesn't mean we can't be successful or make money at a business. But if I was gonna go solve a problem of, I don't know, um, nail polish remover and go start a company, it just... I'm sure I could do it, but it's not useful and it's not a problem for me, right? So, it's figuring out, what is the thing? For me, the problem I want to solve is helping people overcome self-doubt, because I believe self-doubt is the killer of all of our dreams. When we doubt ourselves, we can have all the talent, we can have all the people encouraging us around us, but if we don't believe, it's gonna be hard to accomplish what we want. That's why I want to rid the world of self-doubt, help people have a new relationship and manage it, because I feel like that is gonna give them the courage to act on what they do, what they want to do. And I know you've heard a lot of people come to you and say, "Oh, you know, Chris, I've had an idea for launching a podcast for five years or for writing a book for 10 years. I've had this idea to launch a company for so long," but they don't have the courage to act. It's 'cause they doubt. And at the center of these three fears, the fear of failure, success, and judgment, is this doubt that I am not enough. And when we can get to the root of that, we can start to figure out how to overcome it, how to heal it. And again, solving the problem, finding these three Ps, the passion, the power, and the problem you wanna solve, will give you a sense of like, "Okay, here's a direction I wanna start going towards." And some people might say, "Well, I don't know what problem to solve." A buddy of mine, Rory Vaden, says that we are perfectly positioned to help the person we once were. So, if you had lost 50 pounds and you overcame this problem, or if you got out of debt, or if you figured out how to do relationships but struggled for a long time, you're perfectly positioned to help that person that you once were in the world. So, start evaluating with these three Ps in order to find your meaningful mission.

Chris Williamson 16:37 One of the easiest things that you can do if you want to, uh, alchemize suffering into something useful, if you want to transcend it, is to take the things that you've been through, the challenges-

Lewis Howes 16:50 Yes.

Chris Williamson 16:50 ... that you've been through, and then teach other people how to avoid the pitfalls or expedite the successes.

Lewis Howes 16:55 Yeah. Avoid the pain or, or get to the result faster.

Chris Williamson 16:58 Yes, precisely. And it's because you get to point at whatever caused the problem to you, you know, the childhood bullying, or the bad relationship with your parents, or the heartbreak at the age of 18, or the financial misery that you were through, whatever, whatever the problem was that you occurred, right? And you get to point at it retrospectively-

Lewis Howes 17:17 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:17 ... and say-

Lewis Howes 17:17 Point at yourself, yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:18 ... "Not only did you not get me, but you're not gonna get anybody else either."

Lewis Howes 17:22 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 17:22 "And I'm going to help." And that's one of the... It, it's a really easy thing, or a, a strange thing, actually, to do because being in service is something that we're told a lot of the time is transcendent. It makes everybody feel better. I- i- i- it's something that you, you know, the absolute top self-actualization of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but then the one above that would then be service. It would be, okay, not only if you actualize, but then you open back out into the world. And you think, "Well, that sounds great, but, like, I, I... Where do I start?"

Lewis Howes 17:50 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 17:50 Like, "Do you want me to go to a soup kitchen?"

Lewis Howes 17:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:51 "What am I supposed to do?" And I do think-

Lewis Howes 17:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:54 ... that looking at the pains that you've been through in your life as an identifier of if you went through it, there's probably a lot of other people that will as well.

Lewis Howes 18:02 Yes.

Chris Williamson 18:02 You are, by definition of having lived it, an expert in this particular field.

Lewis Howes 18:07 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:07 Especially if you've done some introspection and a little bit of-

Lewis Howes 18:09 Yes.

Chris Williamson 18:09 ... self-work around it. Use that opportunity to help people that have been through or are going through what you went through.... to avoid the pain in future, in their life.

Lewis Howes 18:18 Exactly. There's a good ex- example I talk about in the book with, uh, Robert Greene. I don't know if you had him on yet.

Chris Williamson 18:23 I haven't.

Lewis Howes 18:23 Rob, he's amazing. He talked about... He was my first interview 10 years ago, and I've had him on many times. But he's, he's been inspiring for a long time. You know, when I asked him, like, "How did you find your mission?" he was like, "You know, I tried a bunch of stuff. I tried a bunch of stuff that I thought I was curious in, that I thought would be it, until I realized it wasn't." So you might need to try a bunch of things, and you might need to do it to a one-to-one level. You know, maybe you're helping a friend overcome their weight loss journey and you got a lot of satisfaction from it and you saw results, and you're like, "All right, let me go take this to three to five friends." But when he was telling me about his journey, he said that he knew he was passionate about writing. He loved to write, he was curious about it, so he was in there. He was also, like, a talent of his. He got, like, good results and he got, like, some success from it in school. So he was like, "All right, I'm gonna go be a writer." And he started, I think it was at, like, a newspaper or something like that, a small town newspaper. He did that for a couple years, but he was like, "It's not really what I'm, like, loving, so let me try, like, writing for TV shows." So he goes into Hollywood, tries TV shows. He's like, "Uh, I actually don't like writing in these writing rooms. Like, my personality doesn't jam with, like, 10 people in a writing room," or whatever. It didn't work for him. "Let me try movie scripts." Tried movies and he's like, "I just don't like this industry." Then he tried writing novels, and he was, like, writing these books but they weren't really getting traction. And this was, like, 10, 15 years of him trying a bunch of different stuff until he said, "You know what? I've got this idea. Like, I wanna solve this problem, and I wanna write about a book in a unique way that I've never seen written before. And I wanna create this thing that I just don't feel like it's out there, but I feel like it needs to be." And he tried to pitch it and no publishers were really interested in this. Uh, but he finally got some traction, got it off the ground, and then 48 Laws of Power, you know, became this massive hit. And I believe that was his first kind of main book that he wrote in his series. And it was written differently, it looked different than all these other books out there, but it was solving a problem for him that he wanted for himself and he wanted to help others with. And then he's like, "You know what? I just figured out that I was gonna write these unique type of books in a unique way and solve this problem. Use my passion, my power, and solve this problem." It took him 10, 15 years to get there, probably more, and it keeps evolving, but trying a lot of things around his interests is what got him there.

Chris Williamson 20:43 And this is one of the best non-fiction authors of our era.

Lewis Howes 20:46 Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:46 Who dicked about and failed and sort of circled the edge of the-

Lewis Howes 20:51 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 20:51 ... the rim for a very long time.

Lewis Howes 20:53 Yeah. And maybe you gotta try a bunch of stuff in your interest to see, like, what's gonna work for you.

Chris Williamson 20:58 One of my friends, William Costello, says, "Research is me-search."

Lewis Howes 21:01 Absolutely.

Chris Williamson 21:01 Uh, he's an academic. Uh, he, he actually researches incels, so I'm not going to comment on whether or not that's-

Lewis Howes 21:06 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 21:07 ... that's true for him. Um, okay, so you've mentioned those

Chris Williamson 21:10 three big fears that are kind of wrapped around the self-doubt-

Lewis Howes 21:12 Yes.

Chris Williamson 21:12 ... conversation here. Self-doubt-

Lewis Howes 21:14 Fear of failure, success, and judgment.

Chris Williamson 21:16 Yep.

Lewis Howes 21:16 Yep.

Chris Williamson 21:17 How can someone do a post-mortem on their self-doubt? How can they-

Lewis Howes 21:22 Oh, man.

Chris Williamson 21:22 ... analyze where their negative self-talk and lack of self-belief is coming from?

Lewis Howes 21:29 Man, one of the hardest things I've ever done is just look myself in the mirror and say, "Do I recognize who I am?" And ask myself, "Who am I?" And really take a look and say, "What are the things that are holding me back emotionally and psychologically? What are the biggest fears and doubts that I have?" And it was hard to face this 10 years ago, and I've faced it many times since then.

Chris Williamson 21:47 How old are you now?

Lewis Howes 21:48 I'm gonna be 40 in two, three weeks.

Chris Williamson 21:51 Cool.

Lewis Howes 21:51 Yeah. So I kind of started this journey right around 29 of the school of greatness and just kind of overcoming myself from not feeling happy. Getting success, but not feeling fulfilled. And it's been a journey of allowing myself to be a beginner constantly and saying, "Okay, I'm gonna get feedback from as many different types of experts, therapists, healing individuals as possible to see what I can do to break through from the self that does not serve my highest self." So it's been a 10-year journey of healing and recognizing. And when I think I've figured it out, I'm humbled, and my ego is, uh, shattered over and over again. So now I just try to stay as humble as possible and say, "I, I don't know anything and I'm always a beginner." I have wisdom, but there's always a lot more to learn. Just like I think you do really well with your show, I think it's a beautiful thing. But again, going back to creating a list of all my insecurities was a big thing that helped me because that was the place where I was most reactive. I... 10 years ago, I had a belief, an identity that was unhealthy, that I was based on results in how I would respond and react. I was angry, I was frustrated. I would get, you know, depressed at times. I wasn't in a depressive state where I wanted to commit suicide, but I would be in my room for a week at a time kind of in a depressed state.

Chris Williamson 23:20 Based on results? What sort of results?

Lewis Howes 23:22 (sighs) Based on how I would react in situations. I would react with anger when I was triggered.

Chris Williamson 23:27 Mm.

Lewis Howes 23:27 I would get depressed when something didn't work out for me. And I would tell myself over and over internally and externally that I'm stupid, that I'm such an idiot. "I can't believe I made that mistake. What a dummy." I would say these words. So I was my own worst critic based on how I showed up. And 10 years ago, I created a new contract with myself. I started to have a lot of breakdowns in my life, and I went to a, an emotion intelligence leadership event that kind of kicked off my journey of healing and trying different healing modalities. And in this experience, I created a new contract. I was able to see and face myself and realize the narration I've been having with myself and to others about me has not served my happiness. If we recorded the things that we said to ourselves consistently and played it on a loudspeaker, they'd probably put us in a mental institution for most people.And if we said the things that we say to ourselves to our, our lovers and our best friends, they probably wouldn't be our friends. So it was creating a healthy identity with myself. I didn't know what that meant. I thought I worked hard and I was disciplined, I could out-train people, I could work hard, what all these things. But I couldn't... I didn't learn to accept and love myself, but also not be complacent. Right? How do you accept and love who you are and want to continue to grow to be more? So I created a new contract. Instead of being angry, depressed, and stupid, which was the results I was creating in my life based on the narration and the identity I had with myself, I created a new contract that I literally wrote down and said aloud and signed to myself on a piece of paper. And I said, "I am a loving, passionate, wise man." This is not a mantra to just speak into the mirror constantly. This is a new belief that I had to step into and become. And I had to create something for myself that was authentic, not a lie. I knew I was a loving guy, but I had anger inside of me. So I had to figure out how to get to the root of letting go of anger. But I knew there was love inside of me. I knew I was passionate, but I had a lot of kind of depressed energy as well that I was holding on to. So I had to learn how to get rid of that. I didn't think I was smart. I didn't believe I was smart because I was in the bottom of my class all through school, dyslexic growing up. It's very hard to read and write in general. So saying the word smart would have actually been a lie to me. I can't lie to myself. But I did think I was wise. I was like, "I have street smarts. I have wisdom from, from different experiences." And I believed I was wise. And so I said, "I'm a loving, passionate, wise man." And I, and I had to do a couple of things. It wasn't just shouting this as affirmation. As Goggin says, it's not something you do and just get better. I had to act accordingly every moment of every day to be those things. I had to create and reaffirm those things through my actions consistently, then I became them and I believed them more. Until, you know, letting go of the anger, depression, and the feeling stupid left me. It took time to integrate, but that practice of creating a new contract was huge for me.

Chris Williamson 26:43 Do you think that beliefs or action comes first?

Lewis Howes 26:50 Well, here's the thing, a lot of people can take action and still not believe. You know, I was, uh, I was in eighth grade playing basketball and I was watching the varsity, uh, team play, and sometimes I'd practice with them because I was taller. And there was this athlete who was the freakiest-looking athlete that I've ever seen in my life. Had a 45-inch vertical, could dunk at will at any moment, just ran into the rim and just 360 tomahawk jam it, could score at will, was one of the smoothest basketball players I've ever seen. He took the action, he put in the reps, he worked hard, all those things happened, but he didn't believe in himself. And it's interesting, everyone was like, "You're, you're like a god out here. You can do anything in practice." But when the games came, he didn't believe. So he had the talent, he put in the reps, all those things, but he still didn't believe in himself. And here's the thing, it doesn't matter if... It really doesn't matter if the world believes in us. If we don't learn to believe in ourselves, we may not create the results we want. But on the flip side, what is cool, it doesn't matter if the world's against us. If we learn to overcome it and believe in ourselves, we can do some amazing things. So there's a combination that once you take the action, you still have to learn to believe. And when we have that negative script constantly running, I think it, it's hard to overcome ourselves with that identity.

Chris Williamson 28:13 It's hard to overcome the negative script without any evidence that suggests the otherwise, though, right?

Lewis Howes 28:17 100%. Yeah, you can't fake it.

Chris Williamson 28:18 Correct. Yeah. Asking for confidence without competence is delusion.

Lewis Howes 28:21 Yes.

Chris Williamson 28:22 But having competence without confidence is what I call imposter adaptation. So-

Lewis Howes 28:27 Or wasted talent. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 28:28 Well, the, the, the... You have to-

Lewis Howes 28:29 You got all this talent, but then you don't take action.

Chris Williamson 28:32 You have to accept that after a while, if you continue to disprove all of the concerns and imposter syndrome that you have internally by succeeding in the real world, if every single time that you are faced with a challenge you overcome it, and yet your imposter syndrome still persists, you have to admit to yourself it's got nothing to do with your competence-

Lewis Howes 28:50 Yes.

Chris Williamson 28:50 ... and everything to do with your addiction to feeling like an imposter.

Lewis Howes 28:53 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 28:53 So, I think that-

Lewis Howes 28:55 And your inability to think in a way that serves you. You're thinking in a way and believing a way that discredits all the hard work you've done. You are being the worst critic when other people are like, "You're amazing. You've got this. We believe in you." But we have to learn how to overcome our own negative self-critic. And I think that's a hard thing to do, and they usually don't teach us how to do this in school or our parents may not teach us unless they have that skill. That's why I think it was so inspiring that Sara Blakely's dad was like, "Let me celebrate you when you fail and tell you that you are still love, you're loved, you're enough."

Chris Williamson 29:29 Yes.

Lewis Howes 29:29 "I celebrate you."

Chris Williamson 29:29 Yes.

Lewis Howes 29:30 "And great job. You tried something. You overcame something." And I think that's inspiring. But when we, uh, do all the hard work and we still say, "Uh, no, I'm not good enough," or, "Uh, I don't know if I can do it," then-

Chris Williamson 29:42 Yep.

Lewis Howes 29:42 ...why are you working so hard? Just go be lazy.

Chris Williamson 29:44 Yeah. It's, it's a very difficult one, man, because we know the, the strategies that got us here, wherever here is, even if it's step two, right, or step 2,000, we know that the strategies that got us here were probably paying very close attention to every small element of whatever practice it is that we're doing, we're scrutinizing our game tape-

Lewis Howes 30:06 Yes.

Chris Williamson 30:06 ... we're listening back to the podcast, we're looking at the traffic on the website, we're getting other people-

Lewis Howes 30:11 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:11 ... to read our article. Whatever it is that we do-

Lewis Howes 30:13 Yes.

Chris Williamson 30:13 ... right? Whatever the thing is that you do, you, you, you scrutinize it and you use a lot of cognitive effort to look at it. And the problem is that that same degree of scrutiny applied over a long enough time-... doesn't actually end up facilitating performance past a certain point.

Lewis Howes 30:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:27 And this is why I think that the tools that got you here won't get you there. There's a really interesting way to look at this stuff.

Lewis Howes 30:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:33 You look. W- when you start out, there are certain things you need to do. The degree of attention that you need to pay to the things that you do, the level of resolution that you need to look at things through is great. But if you now, podcast episode fi- 1,500 or whatever that you're gonna release next week, was looking at it through the same lens that you looked at episode one, everything would be moving so slowly.

Lewis Howes 30:53 Yes.

Chris Williamson 30:53 It wouldn't be as easy or as graceful.

Lewis Howes 30:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:56 So, I do think that there is this balance between belief and action. In my opinion, because I was someone, uh, that... and still does deal with chronic unconfidence at times, right?

Lewis Howes 31:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 31:09 Very, very unconfident, especially going through my 20s.

Lewis Howes 31:11 Really?

Chris Williamson 31:11 Hidden... Oh yeah, massively. Hidden behind a very brash, outgoing-

Lewis Howes 31:14 Even now?

Chris Williamson 31:15 Uh, less so now.

Lewis Howes 31:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:16 But the reason for that is because I've got a stack of undeniable proof that I am-

Lewis Howes 31:20 Right.

Chris Williamson 31:20 ... who I say I am.

Lewis Howes 31:20 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 31:21 To quote Homer again.

Lewis Howes 31:21 Evidence.

Chris Williamson 31:22 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 31:23 But a lot of people have evidence, and they still don't believe. They still don't believe.

Chris Williamson 31:26 I think so. It, it would be that imposter adaptation thing, where it's like, there is so much undeniable evidence-

Lewis Howes 31:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 31:34 ... that you are, that you literally have to be delusional to believe the opposite. Uh-

Lewis Howes 31:39 Or you don't, you haven't been trained on how to believe in yourself and accept who you are. 'Cause a lot of people are striving for perfection, and it hurts their performance. And we must think, "How can I just perform better and let go of perfection?" Perfection, I don't think, will ever happen. If it does, great. Maybe it happens for a moment or a few moments. But striving per- per- per- for performance should be the factor that everyone focuses on, not perfection, 'cause that's what's getting in the way of your results.

Chris Williamson 32:07 Yeah, I mean, there's a, a great quote from, um, Tiago Forte where he says that, uh, polishing thi- polishing things to perfection is a low leverage activity-

Lewis Howes 32:16 Very.

Chris Williamson 32:17 ... which is why some of the best performers in the world, their work has a rough-edged, half-assed quality to it.

Lewis Howes 32:22 Ooh, that's good.

Chris Williamson 32:23 Yeah. Because the difference between... For most people, unless you're in elite sport, getting from 95 to 97 is not actually going to make a massive amount of difference to your learning-

Lewis Howes 32:34 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 32:34 ... in terms of practice, or the way it's issued to the market or the audience or whatever. Uh, but it's going to take you twice as long.

Lewis Howes 32:41 So hard. Maybe even longer.

Chris Williamson 32:42 Yes, to get from 95 to 97. Now, if you are Usain Bolt, the goal is to get that hundredth of a percent-

Lewis Howes 32:48 Point- yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:48 ... thousandth of a percent, right? That's what you're playing with.

Lewis Howes 32:50 Yes.

Chris Williamson 32:51 But for most people, I think just time and attention and getting things done.

Lewis Howes 32:54 There's not one thing that I've done that's perfect in the last 10 years on my show. Not one thing. I could look back at every episode of man- uh, and cringe at everything that I do constantly, and be like, "Ah, I could have done that better." Or, "Ah, Chris did this better than me on this thing." Or, "Ah, I could have done this. It could have looked better," or, "Changed this up." I could compare to everyone in the world and be crippled by that comparison of it's not perfect yet. But the one thing that has served me was just being willing to put stuff out there consistently and improve over time. And I still don't feel perfect 10 years later. I still feel like, man, I got a lot of room to grow. There's a lot of stuff I can do to get better. But it doesn't hold me back from my performance. I still show up, deliver consistent results, and perform, as opposed to focus on being perfect.

Chris Williamson 33:38 What's the fear to conversion toolkit?

Lewis Howes 33:42 For me, it's really transforming your thoughts, your behaviors and actions into congruency and in harmony with moving forward towards your meaningful mission. Because a lot of fear holds us back from acting, the fear of failure, success or judgment. So we don't act because we don't believe we're going to get the results, or we believe something bad will happen. And at the, the core root of this fail- uh, fear of failure is, "I'm not enough." And so what we can convert that into knowing, "I am enough." Maybe I'm not where I want to be. Maybe I'm not as good as I want to be. Maybe I've made mistakes. Maybe I've messed up. Maybe I've hurt people. Maybe people have hurt me. Accepting the past and learning how to accept it, and say, "Okay, I'm not happy with where I am, but I can learn to accept who I am." Not beating myself up anymore. And start going all in on my fears until these fears start to disappear. When we can convert it into saying, "I am enough," and actually realizing it, which I think is one of the hardest things. That's why people lack confidence. That's why they beat themselves up. What's- why they harm themselves. That's why they go on antidepressants, 'cause they don't feel enough. So it's really learning the skill of feeling and believing we are enough where we are, and also not being complacent and not giving effort to improving and growing. It's both and, accepting where we are and saying, "I'm also going to take massive, consistent, imperfect action to improve over time." When I think we have fears that hold us back and we do nothing to do them, we're always gonna feel stuck or trapped in some area of life. So it's really paying attention to what are my biggest fears, creating a game plan and a system, with support, I don't think you should do it alone, in order to go all in on them until you start to overcome them. When we can do that, again, it's converting fear into confidence. Like you said, you have undeniable evidence and proof based on putting in the reps consistently. If you didn't have that evidence or proof, you still might be lacking confidence or fearful of certain things because you didn't take the action. And that's what, really what it is. A lot of us are unwilling to face the fear and acknowledge that something's wrong with us or something's not perfect or something's off. So we mask it. We put on a mask to fit in and belong to others. But what we are saying when we do that is we do not belong to ourselves. "I'm trying to do something for you to like me, 'cause I don't like myself. So I'm putting a mask on. I'm projecting a false sense of confidence."

Chris Williamson 36:14 Performative.

Lewis Howes 36:15 Performative. And again, this is not right or wrong, good or bad. I'm not judging people, because I did all these things most of my life. Is it useful? Is it effective towards your meaningful mission? Is it gonna help give you more energy...... feel more peace and harmony when you go to sleep. I don't know about you, Chris, but I couldn't sleep for most of my life until I hit 30 because I would ruminate for an hour, hour and a half almost every night, just staring up at the ceiling. Thinking, stressing, anxious about... myself and not feeling good enough. (smacks lips) And I would try to perform and work really hard to feel better, but it still didn't work.

Chris Williamson 36:50 Well, I know what it feels like to lay awake at night wondering if you're doing the thing that you're supposed to be doing-

Lewis Howes 36:55 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:55 ... uh, and wondering where your life's going and if this is actually how you're supposed to spend your days. And am I really fulfilling my potential? And, uh, w- why don't I have the things that I want? Why don't I feel the way that I should?

Lewis Howes 37:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:07 W- why is life not... I don't know.

Lewis Howes 37:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:09 D- d- it's, it felt discordant. It felt like chords that were being played out of tune with each other. Um, I do think one of the easiest ways... And this is me speaking to myself, but also anybody that feels like, "Okay, I don't have the self-belief, but I also don't, also don't have any proof."

Lewis Howes 37:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 37:25 For me, the easiest place to start is to do action. And the reason is for this-

Lewis Howes 37:30 Got to take action, man.

Chris Williamson 37:30 ... for the same reason that going to the gym is easier than meditating, that you can see the reps that you do, right?

Lewis Howes 37:36 Yes.

Chris Williamson 37:36 I, I know that I spent 30 minutes writing after sitting down for an hour and a half and procrastinating on-

Lewis Howes 37:42 Rum- ruminating, yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:42 Yeah. On, on writing my blog post, right?

Lewis Howes 37:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:45 On starting my Substack, on choosing the fucking logo for my website-

Lewis Howes 37:48 Yes.

Chris Williamson 37:48 ... or whatever it is that you decide to do. That is... it is so obvious to me that that is work that is done and it is more undeniable-

Lewis Howes 37:56 (laughs) Yes.

Chris Williamson 37:56 ... than I spent time digging through the trauma of my past-

Lewis Howes 38:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:00 ... introspectively and changing my beliefs.

Lewis Howes 38:03 Yes.

Chris Williamson 38:03 For me... and this may be different for girls, I'm not sure, but certainly for guys, I think that an action-focused, I did a thing today-

Lewis Howes 38:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:12 ... I can tick it off a list. You know, the, the-

Lewis Howes 38:14 Helps us.

Chris Williamson 38:14 ... inner autist inside all of us-

Lewis Howes 38:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:15 ... is going to be satisfied when we decide-

Lewis Howes 38:17 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:17 ... that we're going to have ticked off the, the boxes.

Lewis Howes 38:19 Yeah. Of course. Here's the thing, it's a both/and. I think it's taking massive imperfect action on building confidence and reps, but I think it's also... that can be a cover-up, that can be a mask if not addressing the wounds that hurt you at some point. So, it's... we don't have to sit here and think about our past pains and traumas every single moment of every day. There's a season and period of time to start and develop that healing integrating process. For me, it wasn't until the last couple years when I really went all in on every area of my life that caused me the most pain and re-imagining it, facing it, doing physical exercises with it, having a coach to support me emotionally process it to where I felt the most freedom and peace in my heart that I've ever had in my life. It doesn't mean I don't face challenges and stresses in my day-to-day, but I sleep peacefully at night and I am way less reactive about what happens in life. Whereas before, I used to be in fight-or-flight mode whenever I felt triggered or someone was out to get me. And so, I could still take action and build this unwavering evidence that I have put in the reps, I've got skills, I've... now I've got the confidence. But if I'm still triggered emotionally by someone cutting me off in the street, it's not right or wrong, good or bad, it's just taking energy away from being more effective. And being driven to p- to deliver results, using that anger, that fuel, that pain worked for 30 years of my life in getting success. But it didn't bring me fulfillment. So, it was unsustainable, the drive to prove people wrong, to win at all costs, to get back to the bullies or the people that made fun of me, uh, or to just overcome all the challenges I faced. It didn't give me peace. It didn't give me fulfillment. Actually, when I accomplished the goals, I became angrier 'cause I thought, "This is supposed to be the thing that brings me more joy. Why am I not feeling it? Why do I still not feel enough?" So, it's taking the actions so you build, build the confidence. But I think if you have a story or memory that still triggers you today, that thing has power y- over you.

Chris Williamson 40:30 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 40:30 That thing is still consuming and controlling your mind and holding you back from what I believe is your authentic self.

Chris Williamson 40:38 Talk to me about this balance between feeling like you're enough and staying hungry. There's certainly a sm- a big-

Lewis Howes 40:44 I think you do.

Chris Williamson 40:44 ... cohort of people that I know who internally have a fear of-

Lewis Howes 40:49 T- once they're the complacent, they don't wanna get complacent, right?

Chris Williamson 40:51 ... of dealing with their shit-

Lewis Howes 40:53 Yes.

Chris Williamson 40:53 ... because they know that the-

Lewis Howes 40:55 (inhales) It won't drive them.

Chris Williamson 40:55 ... chip on their shoulder-

Lewis Howes 40:56 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 40:56 ... is part of the fuel. Now, it's an incredibly toxic fuel, but it's fucking potent.

Lewis Howes 41:01 Yeah. I mean, you hear, you hear about some of the greatest athletes of all time. You see, you know, Tom Brady talking about, "I've always had this chip on my shoulder." And look at him, he's the greatest athlete. I mean, the greatest quarterback of all time, undeniably based on results, right? Um, but who knows if he's really fulfilled or happy. And I don't, I don't wanna sit here and judge either way, but it's like-

Chris Williamson 41:21 You've had Michael Gervais on the show, right?

Lewis Howes 41:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:23 Yeah. So, he... I asked him this question. I said-

Lewis Howes 41:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:25 ... "Do you think that most high performers-"

Lewis Howes 41:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:26 "... on average are happier or more miserable than the normal person?" He said, "Without a doubt, they're more miserable."

Lewis Howes 41:30 More miserable. Yeah, I think so. I think so, unless you find some other way to create harmony in your life.

Chris Williamson 41:36 Think about it this way. Think about how much of an outlier you have to be to be an unbelievable high performer.

Lewis Howes 41:40 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 41:40 And then within that cohort of the best in the world, there's outliers within that-

Lewis Howes 41:45 Oh, yeah. Another level.

Chris Williamson 41:45 ... that are the ones that have somehow managed to be balanced with it.

Lewis Howes 41:49 Yeah. (sighs) I just think... here's... I've had some conversations with some mutual friend of ours about this, "I don't wanna let this chip off my shoulder, because then it's not gonna drive me anymore."

Chris Williamson 41:59 Correct. Yep.

Lewis Howes 42:00 And here's the thing, I don't feel like... I really don't feel like I have a chip on my shoulder anymore. I did. And I don't feel like I do. I feel like more... I have a desire to fulfill my mission. And I have a desire to give my best to my creator. You know, if that's God, great. I, I'm here for a reason. I don't know... really know what that is. But if it is a reason, I wanna make sure I give it my all. And I wanna give my all to the mission of this season of life.And that's more of what I'm afraid of, is not, like, a chip on my shoulder about three kids from middle school that picked on me, or someone that picked me last on a dodgeball team, or the, the guy that sexually abused me, or all these things. It's not like, "I'm gonna go show them." What does that do for me? It doesn't do anything for me. It's more, "How can I be of service to my mission? How can I show up for my mission?" And by doing that, man, I'm gonna be super proud of myself. How can I show up for my friends, my family, and my community in a big way? Man, that gives me energy and fuel, knowing I'm making an impact rather than knowing I'm right, winning, or being successful. That gives me this, like, renewable energy. It gives me, like, this fuel that I feel like will never burn out.

Chris Williamson 43:12 I wonder whether part of the selection criteria for the people who have a forward, running towards something they want, as opposed to running away from something they fear mentality is to do with that group that they've got around them-

Lewis Howes 43:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 43:27 ... whether they have a support structure or not. Because a lot of the creators and, and, and other discussions that I see about this online, one of the common threads between the people that seem to have the more Lone Ranger-

Lewis Howes 43:41 Yes, lone wolf.

Chris Williamson 43:41 ... "I'm gonna use this chip on my shoulder" thing to drive me forward is that they don't have that support structure.

Lewis Howes 43:45 They don't have good community. They don't have good friends or family or community to really support them because they've kind of pushed everyone away of just of this obsessive nature, I feel like.

Chris Williamson 43:54 So, what do you say to people who don't have a strong

Chris Williamson 43:57 support system or community around them at the moment?

Lewis Howes 43:59 (sighs) Man.

Chris Williamson 43:59 What, what, what can they do?

Lewis Howes 44:01 (sighs) I just think this is, this is not a lone- this is not a one-man game. I just think it's a, it's a game we're supposed to play with other people, you know? And I used to be the, kind of the lone wolf, and, and it was me versus the world. It was me against the world with everything, and I always thought the world was against me. And I'm gonna have that feeling of anxiety, stress, and overwhelm when it's me versus the world, as opposed to, "We're all in this together."

Chris Williamson 44:25 You do realize how narcissistic that is for the people that have that viewpoint, right? "You think that the world is against you? The world doesn't think twice about you. The world doesn't-"

Lewis Howes 44:34 That's what it feels like, though.

Chris Williamson 44:35 Oh, I'm aware that it does.

Lewis Howes 44:36 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:37 I'm aware, and I see this online, and I had the same, I had this- the exact same thing.

Lewis Howes 44:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:40 This is me speaking to my past self. Like, dude, the world doesn't think twice-

Lewis Howes 44:45 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:45 ... about you.

Lewis Howes 44:45 They're thinking about their own stuff. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 44:47 Yeah. People, you, you would be way, way, way more self-confident if you realized how rarely other people-

Lewis Howes 44:54 I know.

Chris Williamson 44:54 ... gave a shit about anything that you did.

Lewis Howes 44:55 I know.

Chris Williamson 44:56 And yet, this- it is a, uh, incredibly narcissistic, victim mentality that, "Look at what the world is doing to me. Look at how hard I have it."

Lewis Howes 45:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 45:04 "It's me against the world. I'm gonna Sisyphus my way up this hill. I'll bear the brunt of all of it."

Lewis Howes 45:09 I know.

Chris Williamson 45:09 You know, s-

Lewis Howes 45:09 Carry the weight of the world, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:10 Yeah, precisely, this existential burden.

Lewis Howes 45:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:12 It's like, bro, you have had some traumas that are absolutely independent to you, and quite rightly, you require sympathy for that. But it's not like the world made this happen.

Lewis Howes 45:22 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 45:23 You know?

Lewis Howes 45:24 Who are- who is, uh, who are some top athletes, in your mind, that you think of when you think of sports and the greatest athletes of all time who are a couple?

Chris Williamson 45:31 Jordan.

Lewis Howes 45:31 Yep.

Chris Williamson 45:32 Brady.

Lewis Howes 45:33 Yep.

Chris Williamson 45:34 Uh, Cristiano Ronaldo.

Lewis Howes 45:36 Yep. And when they got to, you know, I don't know if you've had Tim Grover on, but he's, I wrote about him in my book, working with Jordan and Kobe. Um, when Jordan and Kobe won their first championship, they didn't get there alone. They had a coach, and they had teammates around them. And when they won their first championship, they didn't say to their coach, "Coach, thanks for getting me here. I'm gonna do this on my own next year." They actually went and hired more specialists, more coaches, more support to help them get to that 95 to 97%, right, that you talked about. And to stay on top, to overcome the challenges that come, they enlisted more support. But I think a lot of us, and I think that's wisdom, finding coaches, finding people that support you and give you real feedback, not criticism, but how to adjust to perform better. And when we try to do it alone, I just think we are exhausting our energy. I have a coach for almost every area of my life. I've got a business coach, I've got a fitness coach, nutrition coach, I've got an emotional coach, and I also just have mentors, friends, personal advisors that I lean on when I need support. I don't think it's weak to ask for support. I think it's wise. And when we can lean on mentors, like you said, or just watching your show is wise. When people watch you or listen to you, you're their mentor, or you're bringing on people that are their mentors, and they're learning things on how to overcome challenges faster. They're minimizing their time to accomplish things. They're dealing with less pain because of it. That's called wisdom.

Chris Williamson 47:05 (laughs)

Lewis Howes 47:05 That's not weakness.

Chris Williamson 47:06 Well, certainly for the people who don't have the resources to maybe be able to get five, five coaches for each area of their life-

Lewis Howes 47:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:13 ... you have the opportunity to surround yourself-

Lewis Howes 47:15 It's not a-

Chris Williamson 47:15 ... with the greatest minds-

Lewis Howes 47:17 Yes.

Chris Williamson 47:17 ... that you like, with your content crea- Uh, you know, I, this was me at, um, 34 now, and this was me at sort of 27, 28. You know, the advent of your Jordan Petersons-

Lewis Howes 47:27 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:27 ... your Sam Harrises, your Alain de Botton from The School of Lifes, and I was in a working class town in the northeast of the UK. I'd met about a million people throughout my career of running night, nightlife stuff.

Lewis Howes 47:38 Wow.

Chris Williamson 47:39 And I'd managed to have a handful of friends. So, I was-

Lewis Howes 47:41 After knowing a ton of people.

Chris Williamson 47:43 Precisely.

Lewis Howes 47:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 47:43 I was the guy on the front door of the nightclub. Every single person knew my name. Every single person in that city knew my name for a decade, and I had a handful of friends, because I was struggling to connect.

Lewis Howes 47:53 Yes.

Chris Williamson 47:54 And I knew that there was something wrong. I knew that I needed-

Lewis Howes 47:59 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 47:59 ... to find insight and answers and guidance-

Lewis Howes 48:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 48:03 ... toward a more effective version of me.

Lewis Howes 48:06 Yes.

Chris Williamson 48:08 And yet, I was in a world where those role models seemed to be quite scarce. Uh-

Lewis Howes 48:14 Really?

Chris Williamson 48:15 So, yeah, very much so. I mean, dude, nightlife, uh, believe it or not, nightlife is not exactly a hotbed for s- philosophical and life direction insight.

Lewis Howes 48:23 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:23 Um, and I'd come from, I talked about this with Goggins, the reverse role model, a world where I had...People like the sort of person I didn't want to be like, a lot.

Lewis Howes 48:34 Surrounding you?

Chris Williamson 48:35 Yeah. So, hmm, not that they were close to me. Mom and Dad were absolutely fantastic-

Lewis Howes 48:39 Right.

Chris Williamson 48:40 ... but, uh, you know, the sports that I played when I was younger, especially because in cricket, it's a game where physicality isn't a big deal. Skill is. Which means that you can immediately, at 13 or 14 years old, play adult level.

Lewis Howes 48:53 Wow.

Chris Williamson 48:53 So you get exposed to marriages and, and, and kids, and divorces, and breakups, and financial worries, and alcohol addiction, or, or, or gambling, or money worries. Y- all of these things you get exposed to. It's like a crash course in human life-

Lewis Howes 49:05 Wow.

Chris Williamson 49:05 ... at the age of 14 or 15. So, I started to see people where I thought, "Well, I... Okay, I don't want his relationship with money."

Lewis Howes 49:12 Right. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 49:12 "And I don't want the way that he shows up for his wife."

Lewis Howes 49:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:14 "And I don't want this and this and this." So those are way markers in the ground that taught me what I didn't want.

Lewis Howes 49:18 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 49:19 But finding a community that... Uh, a, a role model that you can admire, that you can look up to, that makes you feel like you have a direction that you're moving in that's effective-

Lewis Howes 49:31 Yes.

Chris Williamson 49:32 ... is hard, man. And yet, we have the opportunity now to find people-

Lewis Howes 49:37 Yes.

Chris Williamson 49:37 ... on the internet that are the exact big brother that you never had.

Lewis Howes 49:41 Exactly. Here's, here, here's how I did it early on, 'cause I knew going from sports into life, you know, after I was done playing arena football, got injured, on my sister's couch for a year and a half, I was like, "I don't know how to get a job. I don't even have a degree." This was in 2008 when the, uh, housing crisis was crashing in America, so the economy was, like, very shaky. I was just like, "I have no clue what I'm gonna do." School did not prepare me for life. So, what am I gonna do? Let me just think what I would do as an athlete. I need some coaches. I need to find a coach and go do this life thing. And early on, at this time, for a year and a half, I was just like, "Man, I'm so afraid of so many things." I created this fear list, and that was a long list, and I was just like, "I just don't wanna feel like a piece of shit anymore. I don't wanna feel like crap knowing that I have all these fears on this list, knowing that these things are consuming my energy and they hold me back from taking action." So, I found my mentors by going all in on my fears. One of them was public speaking. I met someone who was a public speaker, um, a professional speaker, went around the country speaking to colleges. And I asked him, like, "Man, I can't even get up in front of three people and give a five-minute conversation without stuttering and stumbling. What can I do?" And he gave me the path. He said, "Go to Toastmasters every week for a year. It's gonna give you..." Toastmasters is a public speaking class. "It's gonna give you tools and give you practice and give you feedback in a community." I didn't even know what it was, but I said, "Okay, cool, I'm going." I... He said, "Go to the... You know, go to a bunch of different Toastmasters clubs in this city." I was in Columbus, Ohio. He said, "Go check 'em out. Join the one that scares you the most, that's gonna push you the farthest." So I went to five different ones, and one of them, I was like, "Oh, this one is the one I do not wanna be in because everyone's a pro, everyone's in suits, everyone's, like, unbelievable. I do not belong." I got a backwards cap. I got a cast on, uh, on my arm in this position, you know, 90 degrees with a cutoff shirt, looking like a bum. These are all, like, 30, 40, 50-year-old pros actually getting paid to speak. And I go, "Well, this is where I need to be." By going there, I met a guy at one of these, kind of, events. There was, um, kind of, like, free appetizers and food in the back. It was, like, a guest event you can come check out.

Chris Williamson 52:03 Where I would have been, yes.

Lewis Howes 52:03 Yeah. So at the end of the, uh, the event, I went back there. This is when I'm on my sister's couch. I've got no money, three credit cards debt, student loan debt, a bum arm. I can't... I... You know, I'm in a cast for six months, got no job, no money. And there is a bunch of... This is probably one of my lowest moments just for me personally, um, is being injured, losing my identity, being on my sister's couch. In the back of this room, there's, like, all the, you know, whatever, carrots and broccoli and chips and things like that. I'm, I got no money for food. I'm stuffing it in my mouth, and then I get all the napkins, and I stuff food in my pockets. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:39 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 52:39 Stuffing all this food. This guy who spoke sees me. He goes, "What are you doing?" I go, "Uh, this is kind of my food for the day." And he goes, "Let me just buy you lunch. There's a diner next door." So, he k-... He bought me lunch. He had spoke that day, and I watched him speak. He became a mentor of mine and a coach in public speaking for that whole year. He helped me write my first book. He gave me the confidence and the courage and the coaching to then take action. I would not have met him had I not gone after my biggest fears. I did this as well in salsa dancing. Salsa dancing was a huge fear of mine. The-

Chris Williamson 53:15 Specifically salsa?

Lewis Howes 53:16 Specifically salsa dancing.

Chris Williamson 53:17 Why not ballroom?

Lewis Howes 53:19 Well, it's an element of ballroom, right? So salsa dancing is an element of ballroom. So, I... Here's why. Um, I couldn't dance growing up, right? And being a white dude in the middle of Ohio, you're not known for being, like, cultured as a dancer, right? That just wasn't it.

Chris Williamson 53:35 Yeah. I feel you.

Lewis Howes 53:36 And I lived in college above a... My brother was a... He's the number one jazz violinist in the world today. He's a, a master, and he's played all around the world with the greats, all these different things. When I was in college, I had an apartment that was a studio apartment, I don't know, maybe twice the size of this room. And it was, um... It was above a, a jazz club. It was, like, upstairs above a jazz club. So my brother got me the, the apartment 'cause he had stayed there a couple times or whatever, and he knew the owner. And so, th- every week, there was jazz music downstairs, like, being played, but one night a week, they had a salsa band. And all the salseros in Ohio would come out to Columbus, Ohio, and dance. So I would go down just curious, watching jazz, and then I saw salsa one time, and I go, "I do not belong here. I'm watching this. It's, you know... I'm the only white guy there. I'm a foot taller than everyone."And they are, you know, singing in a language that I don't understand. They are dancing a language that I don't understand. And I feel extremely vulnerable and uncomfortable. But I was just fascinated watching these individuals dancing together. And how can they just pick someone randomly and know how to dance? The language of it, I was just like, "This is fascinating." But I was so intimidated. I shit you not, for three months, I would go down there and sit in the corner. Kinda creepy, but not that creepy, because I wasn't, like, staring or gawking or just, I was just, like, mesmerized at the music and it was just, like, beautiful. And I got to know people over these three months, and they always asked me to come dance, these girls. And I go, "No way. I don't want to make you look, I don't want to humiliate myself or make you look bad." Because I can't dance like these other guys. And so that became a huge fear, because I was just like, "The thing I'm resisting, it has power over me. It makes me feel not confident just watching it, let alone thinking about taking a step on the dance floor." So that was another thing. I met a guy who I thought was the best dancer. And he was incredible. His confidence, his poise, like his charisma, just how he moved. And I was like, "It would be a dream to be able to dance like this guy." He became my coach and mentor for the next year. Finally, after three months, one girl, like, yanked me on the dance floor after trying to get me for, for weeks. I go out there, I am like drenched in sweat. I'm so terrified. We go into the middle of the dance floor, it's crowded, it's packed. Music is playing, people are swinging and dancing all around us. I am just stepping on her feet, I'm like apologizing constantly, I'm looking down the whole time. After about five minutes of just fumbling around like a giant idiot, she grabs my head and pulls my, my chin up and looks at her. She goes, "Louis, just look around. Just have fun. Look around." And I'm looking around, and everyone's dancing and smiling and laughing and having fun. And something I realized, no one is looking at me. No one cared about what I was doing. And even if they did, maybe they looked at me for a moment and said, "Oh, this guy's not that good," but then they went on to their own lives. They're dancing, they're having fun. And it was at that moment, I was like, "Oh, wow." It was just, I was so afraid of the fear of judgment, the humiliation that could happen. And who cares if a few people were making fun of me or laughing at me? I didn't even see it. And I was hooked. I started going out four times a week for the next six months. I started taking private lessons, group lessons, doing everything I could. This guy started coaching and mentoring me. And within six months, I literally became fluent in salsa dancing. And then for, I don't know, seven, eight years, I traveled the world to all these different countries, to the top salsa clubs in the world, and would enter not knowing anyone, and go find the, the top dancer in the club. And I would just watch and see who's the best girl dancer. And I would go up and ask her. This was a, a challenge that I gave myself. And most of the time, I'd get rejected. And I was like, "Awesome. Okay. Let me overcome this fear. Let me just get back into this." I'd find other people to dance with. And eventually, at the end of the night, those girls that rejected me would ask me to dance, 'cause they would see that I could dance. They didn't think I could originally. So I did this in so many different areas. Writing books, public speaking, salsa dancing, launching a business. I started to go all in on these things by taking action, the thing you talked about. Building reps. People found me. I found mentors and coaches in that process of action, of humiliation. And they said, "Hey, let me give you a few pointers. Let me give you this." Now, I took the action on what they said. I think one of the worst things you can do today is try to reach out to someone and say, "Hey, can I pick your brain for five minutes?" And then they tell you exactly what to do, and you don't do it. For me, it's the worst thing you can do, because a coach or a mentor or an advisor wants to know that you took action on the thing they told you and you got some type of result. So, I just said, "Whatever people tell me to do, I'm gonna do it. They've got results, I want to learn how to do this," and that's what I did.

Chris Williamson 58:42 Pretty much everybody is one DM away from-

Lewis Howes 58:44 One DM away.

Chris Williamson 58:44 ... a message that'll probably change their life.

Lewis Howes 58:46 Yeah. Exactly. But a lot of people just fear to take action consistently. And they don't want to humi- humiliate themselves or fail and lose over and over again. I was willing to humiliate myself every day for years if it was gonna give me freedom.

Chris Williamson 59:01 Have you still got the skills now? The salsa skills?

Lewis Howes 59:03 I can, I can dance with the best dancers in the world in a salsa club setting. I'm not a ballroom dancer. There's a different form and style and pose, uh, but if I, I can, you can drop me in any salsa club in the world, and in a moment, I can grab someone and I can do anything I need to do. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:21 That's cool.

Lewis Howes 59:22 But I've done it for 17 years. I put in the reps-

Chris Williamson 59:25 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 59:25 ... and for weeks, I would go two, three, four times a week for years. I mean, I obsessed about it. Just like I obsessed about learning how to read and write as an adult. In eighth grade, I had a second grade reading level, and I couldn't read or write even through college. And so I had to learn these things in my 20s in order to be effective as a writer and write books. If I had a, uh, a message I wanted to get out there, speaking, I had to overcome the fear of speaking. Same thing with writing. Same thing with interviewing. All these things were fears. I didn't know how to do any of these things, but I overcame them and continue to overcome them through action consistently.

Chris Williamson 1:00:02 What's the

Chris Williamson 1:00:03 Mindset in Motion cycle?

Lewis Howes 1:00:07 (sighs) Let me get to the page here, 'cause there's a graphic.

Chris Williamson 1:00:10 Get it up.

Lewis Howes 1:00:11 There's a graphic here for this. Um, let me find it here. Before I get to that actually, I want to talk about, um, the difference between a powerless mindset and a greatness mindset, um, 'cause I think this is, this is gonna be interesting. This is where I actually think people should start.... is, is going over the powerless mindset versus the greatness mindset. Then I'll get back to the-

Chris Williamson 1:00:38 Mm-hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:00:38 ... uh, this other part here, um, since this popped up for me. So, wherever you're at right now, whether you're crushing it or succeeding, or you feel like you're stuck and you're in beteen- in between transitions, maybe a career, a break-up, or you're, you just sold a company, whatever it is, on page 201, I have this graphic, um, and I can just share with you guys just so you understand it, is to assess and see, "Am I in a powerless mindset or in a greatness mindset?" And there's really six key factors. And this does not mean you are good or bad, right or wrong, as a human being. It does not mean you're not lovable or anything like that. It just means, is your mindset as effective as it can be, or is it holding you back? That's all it means. And a powerless mindset is someone who lacks a meaningful mission. I think your interview with Jordan Peterson was great because he talked about, you know, making sure you have a direction, an aim, something to go towards. A lot of people don't have a clear direction, where the direction isn't the right direction, it's an inauthentic direction. And so they might hit it, but realize it's not what they wanted. But either way, I believe a, a man without a mission is a dangerous man. When we have no clear direction, that's when bad things usually tend to happen. And you see a lot of our military who struggle and suffer after their mission ends and they come home and they don't know what to do next. And thankfully, there's a lot of programs for our men and women who are, who have returned, to get them back on a new mission. But I just think lacking a meaningful mission, we are in a powerless mindset. The mission can be, "I'm in a season of figuring out my life." Cool. At least you're clear that you're in a season of recovery, reflection, of trying stuff. Awesome. But when you're just like, "I have no clue what I want to do," you are in a powerless mindset. Number two, when we're controlled by fear. Again, that doesn't mean that there's not going to be fear that comes up. But when it controls us, we are powerless to it. So that's why we have a lot of exercises about overcoming fear. When we're crippled by self-doubt... Again, for me, I was crippled by it for a long time, the fear of judgment and not feeling enough, not feeling lovable, not feeling enough. And it was really me learning to feel enough to myself. I seeked it from outside validation, but still didn't believe it internally. So it was learning how to have a, how to have a new relationship with self and stop abandoning myself in this process to overcome self-doubt. The fourth one, I think a lot of people don't talk about when it comes to mindset, is concealing past pains. This is something that I think a lot of men struggle with, the idea of actually sharing their past pain. And I am just a big believer, based on all the science and all the research and all the therapists and neuroscientists I've interviewed, and talk about in the book, that when we conceal past pains, it hurts us more. It's more of a poison inside of us, and it affects us and our abilities to feel peace and abundance and harmony better when we have something in us that we're afraid to share. For 25 years, I held inside of me that I'd been sexually abused, until 10 years ago. I opened up about it, uh, privately with people, and eventually started talking about it publicly, because I wanted to give men more of a permission to open up about all their shames, their pains. Not in a public setting, but being able to talk to a good friend, therapist, priest, or whatever it is for you. When we conceal, it means we're afraid and we have shame around something that has happened or that we did. And I just think that keeps us powerless. Um, the fifth thing is being defined by the opinions of others. It doesn't mean don't get feedback and support from others, but being defined by them as our identity is what holds us back and makes us powerless.

Chris Williamson 1:04:23 That's an interesting balance there.

Lewis Howes 1:04:24 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:25 You know? The same as the, is it belief or is it action?

Lewis Howes 1:04:27 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:04:28 Is it fear of insufficiency or is it desire for more?

Lewis Howes 1:04:30 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:30 Is it feedback from the world around us, or is it completely reliant on what they think about us?

Lewis Howes 1:04:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:35 This is the virtuous mean, as Aristotle-

Lewis Howes 1:04:38 Yes. Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:04:38 ... called it, right? You know, the middling section where it's not so much that it's toxic, but not so little that it's ineffective. And that appropriate dose for certain things, like, to get feedback from the people around you or the world at large right, the actual band that you're-

Lewis Howes 1:04:53 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:53 ... playing with isn't all that wide.

Lewis Howes 1:04:54 I know.

Chris Williamson 1:04:56 It's really difficult to manage to find it right.

Lewis Howes 1:04:58 Did you, um, did you have any really good coaches growing up in sports, in cricket or anything else you played in?

Chris Williamson 1:05:05 So... No, not really. Not in terms of mindset.

Lewis Howes 1:05:09 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:09 I... What can I say, man? I mean-

Lewis Howes 1:05:11 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:11 ... the, the guys, they were fantastic at what they taught, but-

Lewis Howes 1:05:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:14 ... I never once learned the value of practice. I never learned the line between putting in work now-

Lewis Howes 1:05:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:05:24 ... that would facilitate a performance in the future. And I remember being... So, before I did the podcast, I, I was always a little bit resentful of the fact that I, I had this sort of drive. I wanted to do things. I f- I felt like-

Lewis Howes 1:05:36 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:05:36 ... I wanted to have a thing that I could commit myself to, and I didn't have a thing I could commit myself to.

Lewis Howes 1:05:42 Mm...

Chris Williamson 1:05:42 I- I'd, I'd run this business.

Lewis Howes 1:05:43 You wanted those things, but you didn't have it.

Chris Williamson 1:05:44 I didn't have a th- I didn't have a vector through which I could put this passion, right?

Lewis Howes 1:05:49 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:05:49 I'm good at being obsessive. I'm very good at being obsessive. And I remember being almost resentful about the fact that I didn't learn the line between practice and performance. I didn't-

Lewis Howes 1:06:01 Uh-huh.

Chris Williamson 1:06:02 ... understand the relationship between putting in reps and how that's going to facilitate you in the future. And now I felt like I was e- in my late 20s and, "What ho- what fucking hobby am I gonna find now that's gonna allow me, that's gonna be the-"

Lewis Howes 1:06:16 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:06:16 "... you know, the, the vector through which I can do this? Oh, fuck knows." And then the podcast came along. And Peterson, one of his rules is, "Commit yourself to one thing, to try as hard as you can, and see what happens."

Lewis Howes 1:06:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:27 Uh...

Lewis Howes 1:06:27 And maybe it doesn't work out the way you want it. Maybe it works out better.

Chris Williamson 1:06:30 Yes. (laughs) Sometimes that happens.

Lewis Howes 1:06:31 Or maybe you realize that's not what you wanna do, but at least you can cross it off the list.

Chris Williamson 1:06:34 And that's the Robert Greene thing, right?

Lewis Howes 1:06:35 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:06:36 But it's also the Steven Pressfield Turning Pro thing-

Lewis Howes 1:06:38 Yep.

Chris Williamson 1:06:38 ... or The War of Art thing, which is that when you do decide to commit yourself to one thing, you learn an awful lot just about the process in general.

Lewis Howes 1:06:46 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:06:46 And, um, you know, that... Again, I, I feel for people that have the desire to be-... great at something, to try hard at something. They've got the conscientiousness, the obsessiveness, the work rate. They've got those things. But they haven't found the thing.

Lewis Howes 1:06:59 The right avenue.

Chris Williamson 1:07:00 They haven't found the thing.

Lewis Howes 1:07:01 The mechanism.

Chris Williamson 1:07:02 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:07:02 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:02 And that's where... That, that's, that makes me feel really sad for those people, because you think, "God, d- dude, you've got all the raw materials, the core components."

Lewis Howes 1:07:11 The potential, the talent, all that.

Chris Williamson 1:07:12 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:07:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:13 So in that situation, that's where that, you mentioned it earlier on, the explore/exploit framework.

Lewis Howes 1:07:18 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:07:18 It's like, "Dude, just try..." Someone messaged me. A guy... I get quite a lot now, uh, uh, pieces of advice, requests, and stuff online. And this one guy sent a really well-meaning message. And I said, "I'm in my 30s. I haven't found the thing that I want to do. The friends around me don't seem like they've got my-

Lewis Howes 1:07:35 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 ... best interests at heart. I drink more than I want to because I don't have anything else to do," blah, blah, blah. I was like, "Dude, commit to one thing a month for the next year." Like, the first month you're gonna try improv. Then it's gonna be interpretative dance.

Lewis Howes 1:07:48 Yeah (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:07:48 Then it's gonna be-

Lewis Howes 1:07:48 Exactly (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 1:07:49 ... like painting. Then it's gonna be blogging. Then it's gonna be whatever. Because if you genuinely feel like you've got that, that fuel inside of you to be great at something-

Lewis Howes 1:07:57 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:07:57 ... and you haven't found the thing, that fuel is going to either get used to be, to drive an engine-

Lewis Howes 1:08:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:08:04 ... or turn toxic.

Lewis Howes 1:08:05 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:08:06 Because unfulfilled or unrequited life desires are going to murder you inside.

Lewis Howes 1:08:12 Absolutely, man. Yeah. And that's why I think we've gotta figure out what that meaningful mission is-

Chris Williamson 1:08:17 Yes.

Lewis Howes 1:08:17 ... and try a bunch of

Lewis Howes 1:08:18 stuff until you get clear. And even once you're clear, that thing might change a year, five, 10 years later, you know? I loved baseball until I didn't. I played from five years old till I was 17. And then one summer after the season was done, I was just like, "I don't think I wanna do this anymore."

Chris Williamson 1:08:35 Hmm.

Lewis Howes 1:08:35 It was part of my mission until-

Chris Williamson 1:08:37 It wasn't.

Lewis Howes 1:08:37 ... I had new interests, until it wasn't. I was like, "Actually, I'm not getting fulfilled enjoyment from this like I was." And that's okay.

Chris Williamson 1:08:43 That's a really interesting point to bring up, because I think a lot of people presume that what they're about to embark on now is going to be there forever.

Lewis Howes 1:08:50 No. No.

Chris Williamson 1:08:51 It's a very juvenile approach. And I have this... Again, this is me speaking to myself, not only now, but in the past. It's not... The thing that you're pursuing now can be periodized. It can just be for the next few years.

Lewis Howes 1:09:03 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:09:04 It can be... And David Deida talks about this in Way of the Superior Man. At the very start, he says, "The thing which used to light you up now no longer makes you feel, uh, alive." And it's like a crab outgrowing its shell.

Lewis Howes 1:09:16 Yes.

Chris Williamson 1:09:17 And all of the things and the, the routines, and you have to force yourself to go to the gym, to go to practice-

Lewis Howes 1:09:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:09:23 ... to see your friends, to go out and party, whatever it might be. And that's a signal. That's... You're being poked and someone's saying, "Dude, this, this isn't really aligned-

Lewis Howes 1:09:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:33 ... for you so much anymore. Maybe you gotta find something new." But the advantage of that is there is less pressure on you to get the thing that you choose. It's not got to be the life purpose-

Lewis Howes 1:09:42 I know.

Chris Williamson 1:09:42 ... for the rest of time. It can just be for the next three years.

Lewis Howes 1:09:45 What's the season? And that's why I love sports analogies. I mean, I'm an athlete, but I mean, you look at the guys who... I mean, JJ Watt's an example. He just retired. He was like an all-star NFL, one of the top NFL players in the last decade. And he realized, "I'd accomplished everything I wanted to. Like, this season has run its course." And that's why it's important to have an off season, to be able to reflect and say, "Is this something I wanna do anymore? Let me reflect on this and get clear on my mission for the next season." Or, "I'm in a new chapter. I'm discovering something new." And I think the other, the last part of the, uh, power of this mindset is when you drift towards complacency. When we stay in that place, we are just powerless to not having a clear mission and not wanting to grow and improve. And I'm not saying that we should be working hard and pushing ourself to the limit constantly every day in extreme levels, but if we stay complacent, I just know we won't also be happy and be joyful. Inconsistent complacency. You know, there might be a season of time where that's fine. In the greatness mindset, it- it's really... So it's reflecting. Do, do I have any of these six areas on a continual basis? And asking yourself, "Am I in any of these six at any moment? Do I lack a meaningful mission, control by fear, all these things?" If so, again, you're not bad and wrong. Nothing about that. It's just, are you using your talents to the best of your ability? And if not, now we're aware of it, and the greatness mindset is being driven by a meaningful mission. For me, I have one sentence that I'm driven by, and that's to serve and impact 100 million lives weekly, to help them improve the quality of their life. That's my mission. The mechanisms can change. It could be podcasting and YouTube today. It could be blogging tomorrow. I have no idea. Whatever that I'm passionate about and have power and talent in, I'm gonna lean into the mechanisms with that mission. But I am clear. And most people listening or watching, they can't tell their friends in one sentence what their mission is. They can say, "Well, I'm working this job," or, "I'm in this relationship," or, "I've got these goals," but what is the mission of this season of life? And I think when you get clear in one sentence for yourself and you can speak it, then you can act accordingly. It's really easy to say yes and no to things, because you know what's gonna serve the mission or what's not gonna serve it. So it's just getting as clear as possible. And again, you don't... It can be like, "I'm just trying to make a couple grand a month to get off my sister's couch." Okay, cool. Then you're clear on this mission-

Chris Williamson 1:12:12 Yeah.

Lewis Howes 1:12:12 ... until you accomplish it.

Chris Williamson 1:12:13 There's a, a really great insight from