Be Irresistible, Click Here Lewis is the host of The School of Greatness podcast and the author of The Mask of Masculinity. An icon ...
Lewis is the host of The School of Greatness podcast and the author of The Mask of Masculinity. An icon of American ...
could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person am i doing everything in my power to live the way i want to live because if it could be over in a moment i got to shift my attention to things that really matter our next guest has quite a resume a former professional football player turned lifestyle entrepreneur who was making millions of dollars in helping others achieve their dreams new york times best-selling author school of greatness please welcome lewis you have been very very open about the abuse you suffered when you were five i mean i knew something was wrong i knew something was off every single day for 25 years i thought about it i needed to heal the memories of the past in order to create a healthy relationship with myself and others in the present the challenge is most men have not been taught how to effectively communicate their guilt their insecurities constantly working on yourself is huge in intimacy in relationships what is the single biggest killer of relationships i'm gonna say something right now that you're probably not gonna like so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music] lewis i have to start with a with a point of gratitude which is thank you so much for doing this you are and i don't say this lightly but you are one of the real inspirations for me in this whole podcasting content space because you've been you're like the goat in my eyes you've you're the guy that did it first in in our space and did it best at the same time but not just that when i got to meet you maybe a month ago in dubai i was pretty much in awe of a bunch of things that i noticed about you that really set you apart one of them was this real unbelievable self-awareness which i talked to my team about before you got here i said he's one of the most self-aware guys that i've ever met because he's done and doing the work and the second thing is there's actually probably three things that come to mind the second thing is your genuine curiosity about humans on a very deep level because we'd be having we were having a conversation at 2 a.m in a bar and if there was a moment of silence it would be interjected by you with like a tell me three things that you're your biggest failings in life or three things and i just thought this is a guy that doesn't want to mess around at surface level with small talk and things that don't matter and then the third point which kind of links to those two in some way is your unbelievable ability to speak and deliver a concept or an idea with wisdom and a personal anecdote attached in a way that's captivating to the point that people don't tune out when you're talking and i don't i'm not blowing smoke up your ass but i genuinely was like i need to learn this specifically that delivery of ideas and having seen you on jay's and tom bill used podcasts i saw it then again and it's a culmination of all that self-awareness and practice but there was something else which you showed me when we were in dubai having that conversation at 2 am in the morning which is where i wanted to start our conversation today which was the the screen saver of your phone that really stayed with me yeah can you tell me what the screensaver of your phone is this is uh yeah i don't know if you guys for those watching on youtube i don't know if you guys can see this but this is a photo of myself uh when i'm probably about five years old and i put it on there a year ago because i was doing some intensive i would say inner child healing with a therapist i was working in in a in another relationship that i was ending i was ending a relationship and i realized that in relationships in the past i was repeating a pattern of people pleasing of saying yes to things that i didn't want to say yes to of changing and shifting who i authentically was in order to try to please or make someone else happy and a lot of it came from the dynamics of my childhood from being sexually abused from having just a challenging let's say family dynamic with parents and things like that and so for years i was never taught on how to deal with my inner child i never was taught how to heal the things that i was really wounded as a child and so having these experiences of intensive emotional intelligence and therapy training on dealing with previous relationships and then in the current relationship was extremely helpful for me and my my therapist said we got to heal that part of your life that is attached to a memory of a wound and unless you heal that you're to keep repeating certain patterns and so that's why i have that on there and i'm actually going to change it to a different period of time in my life when i was about 11 to 12. that's the next phase of growth for me is to actually heal that next stage so that's why i do it what was the world and the perception of the world that that five-year-old lewis house saw and felt what was he feeling and seeing oh man he was abandoned he was abused he was taken advantage of he was unworthy he was unlovable and that was what i believed and so it's hard to create a meaningful relationship with myself and with another person if that story or narrative or belief was still there for me which it was unconsciously so i needed to heal the memories of the past in order to create a healthy relationship with myself and others in the present and where did that story come from that he was unlovable i've heard you describe yourself even as thinking you were dumb thinking you you couldn't you weren't worthy of friendships and things like that where did all of that i mean it was all from real life experiences and results that i was experiencing so just getting picked on as a kid feeling neglected from parents and family members feeling you know again sexual abuse that i dealt with and struggling throughout school my entire childhood until it took me seven years to finish college i was in the bottom of my class in school elementary middle and high school and so the narrative was there were real world results that were showing me that i was unlovable or being taken advantage of or abused or these things and so that stayed with me and this is why i built a persona or really a mask i tried to mask it and defend myself by becoming a great athlete by getting bigger faster and stronger so that i could defend myself against the feeling of being taken advantage of or abused but that didn't leave me feeling fulfilled it left me feeling angry and resentful when you were you you have been very very open about the abuse you suffered when you were five from a babysitter's son i believe yeah did you understand at the time that it was abuse no i had no idea i mean i knew something was wrong i knew something was off but i didn't know i mean as a five-year-old i don't think anyone really knows how to emotionally handle that or emotionally regulate or understand what's really happening at that time but it was something that i lived with for every single day for 25 years i thought about it i thought about the instant whether it be consciously or unconsciously it was coming up it might be a second or it might be minutes long of a memory but it came up pretty much every every day for 25 years until i went through it a transformational workshop experience that got me to finally face it and it wasn't until i faced it and started to integrate the healing of that moment that i felt like i was a prisoner for so long until it set me free of actually talking about my shame expressing it communicating it with my friends my family and then eventually i did a podcast about it which took me about six months to publish because i recorded it and i waited six months because i said if people knew this about me no one would love me my business is over i'm gonna have no friends if people actually knew how shameful this thing was for me and i think that was the biggest fear but what i realized this was back in 2013 i mean the end of 2013 early 2014. and i thought my i literally thought my life was over i was like no one is gonna love me but i i also thought to myself i can no longer be a prisoner inside with this information i need to let it out and if i can help one man heal from what they've been through then it's worth it i'm happy to lose everything if i can help one man and it was one of the most profound experiences and and really spiritually freeing experiences of my life was opening up talking about it and the aftermath was so powerful for weeks i was getting essays from men opening up saying you know i'm married i've got three kids i'm 55. my wife and kids don't know and i've been holding this with me for this long it happened to me when i was 11. you know men opening up about all the different experiences of sexual abuse or trauma that they face with the challenge is most men have not been taught how to effectively communicate their shame their guilt their insecurities there's not many guys that grow up i don't think you had guy friends when you were 12 15 18 23 saying you know what can we just have a coffee and talk about how shameful i feel about my my uh my past right now or i don't only feel that good today let's talk about it or my body image is kind of off like we don't do that generally as men we're not taught how to do that in society but when you ask women how often do you meet with a girlfriend on a weekly basis to talk about your shame your insecurities the challenges you're dealing with in your relationships struggles at work whatever it might be women typically say they they meet with their girlfriends every week if not every single day they'll have a conversation with a girlfriend a sister a mom about a challenge or just what's on their mind but we just haven't been taught that so i started i really wanted to change the narrative and be a model there was no one that looked like me growing up that talked about these things there was no athlete that i admired that was like on tv saying i've been sexually abused or i went through childhood trauma or i didn't love myself or i struggled with insecurities growing up i just didn't see that growing up as a kid so my goal was to be a model of saying you know i'm willing to lose everything if i can help men heal because i truly believe a lot of the pain caused in the world is caused by men who have massive wounds who are reactive because they don't know how to handle or regulate their emotions and so they react in certain scenarios whether it be domestic violence domestic abuse war uh just reactions on social media causing more stress screaming in a workplace whatever it might be driving here in london just people honking at the horn because they're they don't know how to handle their inner wounds their emotional regulation and i feel like if all humans but men specifically can continue to learn these tools it'll be powerful but we weren't taught this in school there was nothing in school that was like okay emotional regulation 101 class there was none of this it was just suck it up be a man toughen up don't you know we don't talk about these things so and i think the world has been shifting over the last four or five years as well where it's more acceptable for men to talk about it with you know social media in a good sense allowing men to be more vulnerable and kind of lifting these conversations up about mental health so i'm seeing that shift but i just didn't see that or have a model when i was growing up in terms of models when you were growing up could you tell me a little bit about the dynamics of your parents as well because i've heard you describe the early life and um yeah the quote that i read from you was that they were miserable times and the tension in the house impacted you and your siblings yeah i mean i grew up it's challenging because my father just passed away a month and a half ago and for 17 years he he got in an accident 17 years ago with a car accident where a car came up on his car hit him through the windshield and split his head open he was in a coma for a few months had severe brain trauma stayed alive miraculously but just had a challenging 17 years where he never fully recovered so it was a it was an interesting dynamic with my dad the last 17 years growing up as the youngest of four my siblings i feel like probably had it worse than me they had to deal with you know 20 year old parents my parents were 20 when they had my brother and then 24 when they had my sister and then 28 when they had my other sister then they had me at 31. so they had to deal you know grow up with parents who didn't have these tools either so i have a lot of grace for my parents because they didn't have the tools of emotional regulation or how to communicate effectively or how to process wounds and i think if you don't know how to process wounds it's going to be hard to just interact without being defensive or reactive or you know all these different things passive aggressive so i grew up for the first 13 years of my life in fear in fear i knew my parents loved me but there was this like energy that felt fearful and i was afraid of my father he was pretty angry he was an angry guy and he would he was super loving but then he would explode at times because he didn't know how to process emotions and he had wounds and so that was the challenging thing it was it was confusing and they weren't loving towards each other so i didn't feel safe my brother went away to prison when i was eight years old for for four and a half years so every weekend we would travel two years two hours to go to a prison visiting room and see my brother for a few hours so i was exposed to things that i probably shouldn't have been exposed to at eight years old until 12 which expanded my mind and my my my world view and my perception of people but also it's just challenging to have a sibling in jail for that long and dealing with the dynamics of that yeah it was just a it was a challenging time but at 13 i begged my parents to send me away i went to a private boarding school at 13 uh from middle school and high school and i couldn't get away fast enough they didn't send me away because i was a bad kid i begged them to send me away because i didn't feel safe at home i really want to dig into that what was it your dad's anger and his anger directed i guess uh you or your siblings or all of us yeah all of us but it wasn't all the time you know so again he was a loving guy he would tuck me into bed at night he would play catch with me in the backyard but then there'd be but then it'd be an explosion and we just didn't know when it would be and so the beautiful part about my dad is he had a massive transformation when i turned 13. he started to dive into the emotional intelligence training workshops and and seeking wisdom on how to process his emotions and he had incredible you know healing transformation so from 13 to 21 i had this incredible relationship with my dad he would fly out to all my games he would be so loving and supportive he wasn't angry he wasn't reactive he had this transformation so it's almost like i had two lives with my dad the first half of first 13 years i loved him but i was also afraid of him 13 to 21 he was like my best friend and so when he got in his accident when i was around 21. it was devastating because now i didn't have a mentor that now was showing up in a different way was loving was vulnerable i saw him cry a lot more i saw him just be sensitive so when he got his accident i didn't have that anymore he wasn't able to have that relationship with me because of the brain accident and this was a time when i felt like i needed it the most right i went to go play arena football i went to go chase a dream i got injured in at the end of the first season had a surgery with my wrist and at that time was 2000 end of 2007 2008 the economy was crashing in usa people weren't hiring those who had master's degrees i barely graduated with a you know just a general degree i'm living on my sister's couch for a year and a half i've got no money i've got no mentorship from my father and so in a sense it was almost like this is the weird thing when i reflect back on it because i don't think i would be the man i am today without his accident although i wish he didn't have the accident i don't think i'd be in service i don't think i would care about people as much i don't think i'd be on a mission to want to change lives and serve millions of people around the world i don't think it'd be doing an interview show or a podcast i don't think you'd be writing books or all these things but something shifted within me because he was physically alive but emotionally and mentally not there so i didn't have that access to a relationship something shifted in me where i couldn't rely on him for money for kind of that wisdom i had to i just had to unleash something new that was that i didn't think was inside of me and i don't know if your parents are still around or if your dad is still oh yeah yeah something shifted in me 17 years ago when my dad got in the accident and then something shifted even more in the last month and a half when he passed that it's hard to explain i don't know i haven't really fully processed it it's still kind of a processing time and there's some a lot of gratitude and memories but a lot of sadness tied to it but i just don't think i'd be the man i am without his accident because it made me unleash something inside of me that was untapped when i met you in dubai every topic you talked on you talked on as if you'd processed it and done work on it and you had a perspective on it and then when you spoke about your dad it was like the end of what we call a cul-de-sac getting to the end of the street where there's nowhere else to go it was like you hadn't the conversation ended there and you would look down at the floor yeah and i knew i'm so sorry to hear of your loss by the way but i could see that it was still something that you're like there was two kind of suspicions i had one was that you you were still processing it of course yeah but the second was that there was a profound lesson somewhere there because of the pause you took and the way that you looked at the floor and but on every other topic you were like illuminated it's the best way to describe it you see what i mean yeah i think one of the things that it taught me 17 years ago was that my dad also felt larger than life i don't know if your father felt that way it feels that way as well yeah but he felt large in life he was extremely intelligent and smart he was a very charismatic he was resourceful talented he was he he was a big lover he loved people and he gave his heart in a big way after this transformation and he cared deeply about relationships like i witnessed things he did that brought smiles to people's faces all the time which is probably a lot of things that i've like translated in my own life but one of the things that taught me was that if this can happen to a guy who feels larger than life in a moment when he was on vacation with his then uh you know partner at the time not my mother they got divorced but they were on vacation having a great time if this could happen in a moment at any time then it brought so much urgency to my life to make sure i pursue the things that really are meaningful to me and for years there were things that i had to do that i wasn't like love i had to work really hard to get to that place when i was broke and had no money on my sister's couch it wasn't like this all just unfolded perfectly it was years of effort work late nights all that stuff but it made me just say what is my mission what's my intention for this season of my life and am i doing everything in my power to live the way i want to live because if it could be over in a moment i got to shift my attention to things that really matter and so that was a big powerful shift for me and when he passed last month it made it even clearer you know there's so many opportunities for someone like yourself and myself at this stage of our life and our careers and a lot of opportunities can seem incredible here's a big money-making opportunity here's a cool project i can do with someone here's these things that are coming my way but if it's not aligning to my mission of something greater if it's not aligning to my ultimate level of joy and authentic power then should i be doing it right now if it was all over in a day and a month in a year is this something i would say yes to and so it's just bringing me closer to that awareness that how it could all be over in a moment and it brings the energy back to like my relationship with my girlfriend i'm like if it was over tomorrow am i doing and saying what i need to say today and that's been a powerful thing for me there's a real i mean i always reflect on this that brony ware who was the palliative nurse who interviewed people in their last days and the retrospective clarity people must have in their last days about what they did and didn't do yeah right is so so empowering but as you say there one of the things that terrifies me is my dad is ill he's like not in good health and he's he's outlived his siblings and his life if you look at it in any kind of comparative measure was way more stressful than them and his brother died of a heart attack and his brother died younger than he is now so this thing is haunting me almost in the back room and the haunting thing is like what should i be doing now my relationship with my dad isn't particularly strong um you know what i mean how often do you see them a year through three four times okay this my friend jesse etzler made this example one time to me uh and to like the audience he said and his father just passed away actually a couple weeks ago and he said my my parents are old they're in their 80s or something like that and um you know maybe they have five or ten more years but it's really five or ten more times with them if you only see them once or twice a year it's not five or ten years if you see them two three times a year maybe you have three times if it's a year maybe you have ten times if it's four years that you experienced a moment in person with your dad yeah hopefully he lives 10 20 years but two to three times a year is really 20 times left with your dad and when we put it in i just got chills thinking about that when we put it in perspective like that are we giving as much as we could to the relationship are we opening up and healing certain things that maybe aren't aren't healed yet are we having the conversations that are unspoken and i think i feel like i did the best of my abilities to do that with where he was at emotionally and mentally and i would encourage you or anyone listening or watching to to ask themselves on a scale of one to ten how is my relationship with my father my mother and if it's not above a seven right now what can you do not about them even if they're the parent what can you do to reach out and communicate how can you take responsibility for your part of that relationship and you just never know in any moment what if someone's not listening to this now and they think well my parents or my dad or my mum or whatever was abusive or toxic or whatever to me is i think you got to ask yourself if they died today would i be happy with how i communicated how i showed up and maybe that means you need to disown your parents for a season of life because you're not able to get along but are you still happy if you did that with everything you tried to do from a loving calm healed place it's your healing journey it's not about what they do or what they didn't do it's about your healing journey and i look at it as a gift from everything i experience from my childhood you know i don't look at it as a painful thing anymore you know i'm not living in fear from the memories of my past anymore i look at it as god i'm so grateful that i grew up feeling insecure unlovable and really dumb because i care deeply about loving other people i care deeply about being a good listener and showing people how much i care i care deeply about wisdom and knowledge in a different way not just from school and books but from interactions with human experiences adventure learning new skills and hobbies and just progressing as a human and i think you know even from the sexual abuse i'm not mad at it anymore i'm not hurt by it anymore i hope it never happens to anyone in the history i don't wish it on anyone but i also know that it gave me an incredible gift because i've healed from it i've taken my power back from that and i know that it's benefited me now because i've rewrote in the story about what it means about me and i think if we can rewrite those stories in an empowering way then we are not powerless we're powerful to that point of your healing journey though you describe your life in these three sort of sections right you've got the i think it's the the preteens yeah and then it's like the team to 22 and then it's the is it for and then the 20s and then the 30s right yeah the 20s phase as i read it as i read through the whole all the experiences on you you know your sister's sofa the linkedin stuff you've done felt a little bit like you were finding yourself yeah of course yeah and then post 30s it's it feels like the work really started to begin i mean 30 is when everything started to change because that's the moment i allowed myself to be vulnerable for the first time i just thought i had it figured out and what i realized is i knew nothing there were symptoms of an internal conflict that suggested to you that you didn't have it figured out of course yeah i mean i mean getting in fist fights on a basketball court in a in a pickup game that's supposed to be fun and reacting so much to someone jabbing me you know in the ribs or or smack talking me talking bad or just like talking trash and being so reactive she's getting it like you're extremely explosive again it was more of like i didn't heal a lot of things from my childhood it wasn't like one thing for my dad or the sexual abuse it was kind of like the entire childhood all the stories and all the examples that made me feel like i'm not lovable or i'm someone to be taken advantage of was still inside of me so it wasn't just one thing or one experience it was all of it that was building a case for me to be reactive and explosive and feel like uh you know the the world was just out to get me or something and when i learned the art of emotional regulation that's when everything started to change and i learned a part of that at 30 until 37 but in intimate relationships i still hadn't learned how to fully love and honor my authentic power i still gave in because i deeply wanted people to like me i deeply wanted the person that i was giving my heart to to love and accept me and yet i was choosing people based on a wound still from my parents from my mom you know giving in from my mom not feeling probably loved and accepted and kind of repeating that pattern of her with my dad i was finding partners like that and i was taking on the mother role like kind of what my mom was taking on and i was giving in i watched her give in over and over and over to my dad and never stand up for who she truly was you know this is all unconscious it wasn't until about a year ago when i started to learn this and process it so i was choosing partners that after a period of time they would get upset at me over and over of lots of different things they just weren't happy with who i was or the actions or decisions or things i did in my business or whatever whatever it was that made them feel like they were insecure or something same and so i would say okay i'll change this to make you happy okay you don't like me doing this okay i'll stop doing this okay you don't like me salsa dancing you don't like me traveling you don't like me speaking you don't like me doing okay like whatever's gonna make you happy because there was love there and i thought that when you love someone you'll do whatever you can to make that love stay to make it last and so i would give and give and give up who i was in order to create peace and love and what i was doing was creating incredible pain resentment and anger and frustration was inside of me of the person of the relationship and of myself because you were abandoning yourself abandoning myself over and over again and i didn't know how to say no and how how to be around someone who was unhappy with me in intimacy i could do this in business and friends but in intimacy when there was love i didn't know how to say no and so i just gave in to create peace and what i realized is that you know i was looking to create to buy peace by abandoning myself but you can't buy peace we must be peace and if someone is okay with that great if they're not then maybe you're not in alignment and that's okay but i was not willing to let go of the feeling of love it was a false love it wasn't authentic love because authentic love is accepting the person for who they are and them accepting you for who you are it's not trying to change the person if you're trying to change someone you shouldn't be with them we should be elevating each other to grow but if there are fundamental things about you that i don't like and i'm trying to change you why am i in a relationship with you go find someone that you don't need to change and vice versa and so my girlfriend martha i was like listen we started dating and i'd done months of this healing work and finally started the process and feel this inner peace i said listen i'm going to be 100 authentic to who i am i'm going to obnoxiously be myself around you and i'm letting you know i want to i want to be so obnoxiously myself that i i hope you run away i hope you run away because i'm never going to change i'm not going to change for you or anyone else i'm going to evolve i'm going to constantly improve grow i want you to be willing to give me feedback but i'm not going to change of something you're unhappy about about me here are my values here's my vision here's my lifestyle this is what i'm going to be doing i'm not going to change this stuff just letting you know and it's been a beautiful journey because it's amazing just to see what it's like having authentic trust and someone receiving you for a hundred percent who you are and feeling like i can be myself i've never felt this until now it's beautiful it's such a important conversation because it's crazy man you described the reasons why in your trauma that that made you a people pleaser and do you know what's really interesting is when you told me that you were a people pleaser um i couldn't believe that i'm like what you big tough athlete man people pleaser carrick you know what i mean but it just it goes to show that that sort of that trauma in us yeah um is kind of agnostic to to our mask or absolutely you know certain and i when you told me that because we had a little bit of this conversation just a hint of it in when we met in dubai i realized that i've been a people please actually but i never thought i was in all of my relationships i think the significant reason why they failed is exactly what you've described i've gone in trying to compromise everything really oh my god just just to keep them and try and keep them happy um with me and in the short term that day fine you go any kind of mid to long term time horizon and it's resentment you know i take full responsibility for every relationship i've chosen and been in and stayed in because i could have gone out of any relationship at any moment but i was afraid and i lacked the really the self-confidence to step away because i was afraid of losing love but it's not real love if it's inauthentic if you're having to change who you are to make someone happy i just don't feel like that's real love i'm all for making adjustments in alignment with certain things but it shouldn't be changing your core essence of who you are to make someone happy that's not real love you said something to me which um really puzzled me because i've never heard it before which was when i said um i started talking to you about what things i should be compromising in my relationships and you went no compromise i mean for me i don't believe in compromising who i am yeah if you're like listen this week i want to go to this place for a restaurant and next week you can choose that's i guess a compromise of like activities yeah yeah but not compromising your core values and your authentic power if we are compromising our authentic selves we are essentially saying screw you to our creator you've created us for who we are and no i don't want to be this way for one human being because it doesn't make them feel good or makes them unhappy or they're afraid or scared as opposed to who can i be if i'm 100 myself in life and i'm not saying like if you've got flaws adjust those and prove those like i'm all willing to improve and adjust all my flaws but if it's something that's at my core is my personality i'm not changing for anyone why i want to be changing for one person that just doesn't seem like a good i don't know situation and i've done it for too long and with with martha your current partner yeah um you had a conversation very early on about your unwillingness to compromise your core values yes and my priorities and your priorities yes so tell me exactly what you mean by your priorities yeah how that was received man i told her probably like three months in as we i knew in the first night i met her i go i wanted to be single i was like just got done this healing journey get out of a relationship i was like i really want to be single for like a year and just be single and i met her before that time and i remember thinking uh crap there's something unique and special here on a different level more than just sexual attraction there's a spiritual connection there's something deeper that i can see a vision of something incredible that i couldn't do on my own right and i was like let me just string this along as far as i can before i get committed right let me just give it some space not jump into this thing too fast like let's just take it slow and after about three months i said to her i go listen i'm gonna tell you something that i don't think you're gonna like and i said this many times to her i go i'm gonna say something right now that you're probably not gonna like and i don't think any woman wants to hear this from a man i'm just letting you know and she's thinking i'm about to drop a bomb or something and i'm like you may not want to continue dating me after you hear this she was like what is it you know she's freaking out i go you will never be my number one priority never and i had an explanation i said listen my number one priority needs to be my health because without my health i can't fully show up for my number two priority which is my mission or my calling from god oh god he wasn't even number two louis and i said you're not number one and you're not number two you're number three and no woman wants to hear i'm the third priority in some man's life they need to make me number one i need to be thinking they need to think about me all the time i'm number one priority otherwise i'm out of here and it's not that she's not a number one top priority but health needs to come first at all times that doesn't mean all day i'm doing my health it's just i need to make sure every day i'm taking care of it this is a top priority if this is number two number three number 10 i'm not going to be good for you in our relationship i'm not going to have energy i'm going to be more moody so i need to make this a priority first for the second priority which is my mission my calling from god the universe the world whatever you want to call whatever's speaking through me into the existence because if that is not a high priority for me then i'm going to be unhappy because i'm gonna feel like there's something calling me in the world and i'm not doing it because i'm giving more time and attention to one person but if i'm healthy and working on myself if i am putting energy and time into my mission then you're going to have the most incredible relationship of your life because i'm going to be of service to you in such a high beautiful authentic way that you're going to be feeling like you're the number one priority but you just have to be an awareness that this is where i'm coming from and it doesn't mean i'm not going to be spending all my time with you and i'm free and we're not going to have an amazing life but you got to be aware this is my priorities and the crazy thing is right when i finished she said that's the most amazing thing i've ever heard because that's exactly what i've been looking for i've been dating guys with no purpose none of them had a purpose they made me their purpose and i was like no what's the thing you want to do in the world what's the calling you have and none of them had a calling they had stuffed activities they had hobbies but it wasn't like a main calling in the world and she was like you're the perfect match for me because you have a mission to serve the world and i'm cool with that were you trying to scare her off in a previous relationship i was trying to scare her off by saying i'm never going to change who i am based on a previous release based on five previous relationships it was based on every relationship before where i abandoned myself to try to make one person happy and create peace in an environment because there was never peace and it's my responsibility is my decisions by choosing these relationships by staying and by not leaving sooner and so it's never because i just wanted to fix the relationship i was like okay how can we make this better what mask have i got to wear exactly yeah and so man it's it's liberating and freeing and the only way this works is because this sounds bad i want to say something probably sounds bad i think my girlfriend would be okay with me saying this but the only way this works is i'm willing to walk away at any moment i don't want to walk away i want to be with this woman she's incredible she's a gift in my life but if it's not in alignment with her values her vision her lifestyle my values my vision my lifestyle and we don't fully accept who we are then we shouldn't be together and i want the best for her and i want the best for me so as sad as i would be i'm willing to walk away at any moment if it compromises giving up who i am and it brings me peace because i'm not attached i'm committed i'm holding it loosely you know i've got my hands wrapped around the relationship but i'm not suffocating the relationship i'm not squeezing it to death i'm like okay you can you want it you don't need it yeah i want it i'm committed i'm all in but i'm not going to change who i am yeah to force it i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete and that has about 100 calories in total while also giving you 20 grams of protein if you haven't tried the keel protein product do give it a try the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my life thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one when you talk about priorities i was trying to in my head think of a a use of words that might be more um received better and it's funny because i was thinking about this table i was thinking there's this table now has two levels right the first foundation of this table you could call health right without that nothing else can sit on the table the second foundation could be mission and then the relationship sits on top of both and it's enabled by the foundation of my my health and my mission absolutely man i think if you kind of flip it it kind of sounds better like because effectively you're putting your health at the bottom which is yeah well sources still your foundation but i completely get that because at any time in my life where i've abandoned my my sense of mission i can only do that for a short period of time i can only fake that before i start to lose orientation in my mind and you resent yourself you represent the person you present the relationship and you're like you're not in love as much with the relationship because you feel like you're not it's not lifting you to your highest calling amen and i think the beautiful thing about martha in our relationship i think should be open with me talking about this but every relationship i've been in i was like i wonder what it would be like to start therapy in the beginning when everything is perfect so with martha i said in the beginning i said listen i'm doing therapy every two weeks i did this for the last year on my own individually i'm going to be doing it for this next year and years just as emotional accountability for myself in life business friends family like anything i need to process it's just good for me to clean the energy and not let things pile up and i said i'd love for us and she was doing this individually i said i'd love for us to do this together as we start to develop our relationship when things are great and actually see if we are in alignment and so two weekends ago we did a five hour session together with my therapist talking about expectations agreements values dreams vision and just processing anything we needed to process and it was such a powerful experience that when things are going good to continue to talk about vision casting what we want to build together not when things are going bad and it's really to talk about things that maybe we haven't fully been comfortable talking about yet and putting it out there as opposed to hiding things or waiting for things to come out later and it was such a powerful five-hour experience i mean it's very emotional and you're processing a lot and we're we're diving in deep exercises eye gazing talking about things like it's an emotional relationship workout yeah you'll save a lot of time and headache by going to therapy when things are great as opposed to when things are bad it's like that prevention versus reaction once it's read his ugly head and there's been some bust up you go to the gym not because you're sick but because you're healthy yeah to stay healthy you know not what not when your weight to get sick now i need to go to the gym yeah and i think who does that in relationships i don't know anyone who's done that you hear people say like before marriage we do like a pre-marital maybe relationship training with the churches or like a therapist but that's after a few years usually i just wanted to experiment i have no idea where it's going to go but i feel like um something's something's happening underneath the surface by both of us doing this together when things are good men just don't do this stuff lewis i'm thinking about my guy friends and i i can imagine some hesitancy towards them 100 because they just not it's all the things you've described they've won a mask of toughness we put them we keep keep the emotions in the back room you know what i mean and and also do you know what you know what as well guys don't love conflict with love fun man so they would probably see that as oh my god i'm going to get told off oh my god she's going to give me [ __ ] for that thing i do it's so hard man what you've described there that doing the making the roots go deeper again something i have to thank you for because we had a conversation about vision values and lifestyle oh and when i got back from dubai how'd it go i had a conversation with my girlfriend and she was all for it so on that table there and i said i spoke to louis and he talked about vision values and lifestyle so we sat there one night on the weekend lit a candle we were making some like pottery stuff and we said after we've done this we'll just write down our visions values and lifestyle and we'll go through them one one by one so like i speak on one you speak one that's beautiful it took about three hours and there were tears oh my god moments of joy [Laughter] but the conclusion was exactly what you've described there was all these little things i'll give you some detail give it to me how we when we go to sleep at night i like to go to sleep a certain way so i like something playing she likes silence oh but you haven't talked about it probably hadn't talked about it wow and it was one of the things just about like our sleep routine we're obviously gonna have to sleep in bed for many many years and we hadn't discussed it and i knew it was conflict i was getting in bed and knowing if i play this she's not gonna be happy but she might not say anything and so just talking it through and going look babe the reason why i listen to something when i go to sleep is because i've had 29 years of doing that when i lived in the countryside in plymouth i had a radio in my room and the kid in me found comfort in hearing a voice when i went to sleep you've had 29 years of doing it another way we've got to ask ourselves is it really a problem and we and that was the discussion like is it a problem if i say if i put an airport in because i'm not going to compromise right and if you you know you won't even hear it is it really a problem and then we discussed why she thought it might be a problem does that impact her intimacy well intimacies are suff you know and eventually we came to this conclusion and it's not an issue anymore and it was an issue in our relationship for about a year it was that niggling little you could feel the contempt and resentment slowly building and you guys were a long distance too right so so it wasn't like you weren't sleeping it wasn't every every every day for months no so you like a couple weeks at a time yeah but when you're gonna be more together consistently it could be a problem yeah that's one of the list of about 30 things that we we addressed and worked through and more than anything coming out the end of that exercise which is something i've never done with any partner i've ever had i've never even had the conversation you just crash no you don't i didn't learn this until like two years ago yeah you just just you just get on with life right you just try to keep having fun experiences and avoid conflict the conflict i've had so many uncomfortable conversations with with martha that it's like a muscle you got to practice it and every time an uncomfortable conversation comes up i have to breathe i'm like oh man i feel tense yeah i don't want to do it i don't like it i don't think anyone likes it but the more we do it here's the thing we've created a safe space where and the reason i don't like to do it or haven't like to do it until now is because every time i would have an uncomfortable conversation before the partner i had could not handle it so i'd say here's how i'm feeling and they couldn't handle it or there'd be an explosion or reaction or something so it didn't make me feel safe to have the uncomfortable conversation so i would avoid it amen and with martha i said to her listen like the first one come from a conversation i go she asked me a question about something that was kind of like i can't remember exactly what it was but i remember like hmm should i tell her the truth or should i cut us a little bit of the truth you know and i go do you want me to be 100 honest with you and she said yes always i go are you sure you want me to be 100 honest she said yes and i go okay let me ask you one more time and the reason i'm asking is because i've never met someone who can hold the space for my honesty without reacting or crying or screaming or running away so are you saying you're you're emotionally available to hold the space for my honesty and truth she said yes i'm a grown woman i go interesting okay well here it is she was like thank you for your honesty and it built a one step okay let me try this again one more time and make sure she can really handle it and the more steps of her holding space for my honesty my vulnerability and not exploding or reacting makes me feel like okay i can say anything and she may not like it it may be uncomfortable but she's not explosive and that's a powerful thing of how can i be comfortable in the discomfort while also feeling safe that's huge and you've got to learn to practice that yourself in a relationship and not be reactive if a partner is telling you stuff about their past you don't like or what they did or this and that you got to be okay and practice it and they've got to be and that's where constantly working on yourself is huge in intimacy and relationships and if one person's doing that and the other person isn't there's going to be conflict yeah do you have a trainer when you work out yes have you had a business coach in the past or mentors would you stop getting coaching in business even though you've been so successful you want to stop even though you've got all this money and businesses and startups and investment you know dragons then you'd keep hiring a coach or have a mentor in business why would we not do that for our emotions and our heart it is the most powerful energy that we have emotions and our heart and yet we have a stigma around having a coach or mentor or a guide or a therapist whatever you want to call it of emotional regulation and accountability and people make so many mistakes in their lives by not having that regulated their reactions can have consequences for years people go to prison for one reaction people lose their entire business for one reaction people lose their marriages because of one emotional reaction this is one of the most powerful currencies in the world in my opinion is having power over your emotions not stuffing your emotions not saying they don't exist not acknowledging them but expressing them in a healthy way and in a healthy environment and when we learn that and i've been learning that over the last couple of years it's been an incredible shift in every area of my life and i also just feel an incredible sense of peace i'm not saying that i'm always going to be perfect in the future around this but showing up to someone twice twice a month and processing makes me a whole lot better you just reminded me of something that really stuck out to me when i first met you was when we were sat there and you're doing it again today you've done it three times today is you would say something and then you'd say and that's my responsibility so even when you were talking about previous relationships you've been and whatever else you would not blame the other person you would like aggressively not blame them in a in a really remarkable way so you'd say this happened this happened this happened this happened where any other human being i've ever met was was in their right to attribute the blame to the person and you would always end the sentence as you've done three times today with and that's on me or and that's my responsibility yeah why because i chose it i chose those experiences i chose those relationships i chose the environment i chose those people i chose to stay and it's my responsibility on how i show up and how i react how i respond and how i stay or leave but even when someone was toxic or whatever to you you say that was on me it's my responsibility because if someone does that and i stay with them that's on me that's me not standing up for myself it's me abandoning myself that's not on them they're living their life they're doing what they do naturally it didn't line up with me but i stayed so that's on me i can't expect someone else to change i can't expect someone else to respect my values my vision and my lifestyle they have theirs and they're showing it through their actions and their behaviors and so for me if i'm able to witness that and be aware and not have the false sense of love and be attached to the false sense of love that i'm feeling i'm having this feeling about this person and i want to get back to this healthy environment with this person i got to learn to let that go and that's why i say i can hold love in my hands loosely committed and excited about it but if it's not meant for me i shouldn't hold on to it and abandon myself and i think i did that too many times so that's 100 my responsibility can you run me through then because i know there's gonna be people that people listening to this that i've just had we both done this exercise and it was amazing and they're gonna they're now thinking what is the values part what is the vision problem what's the lifestyle part yeah i think the values is really about well for me the values is like okay i value health in my life i'm i'm gonna be focused on my health i value my mission my team my business like that's a conscious mission i value spending time with friends i value all my hobbies and activities that's salsa dancing that's traveling that's all these different things i enjoy doing i value conscious conversations like i want to have conscious conversations i can't have superficial conversations i literally met someone this morning before i came here um who was a part of a big company here in london and within two minutes i probably like shouldn't do this but i don't know if all british people are this way and it's not a bad thing but it's very good with like surface talk you know oh how was your how was the flight and uh what was the world order some or whatever it is you know and it's like which is fine but i just can't handle it after a few minutes so right away i i'm the person saying next to me i was like how's your marriage you know i just i was like how long have you been married for you know and she was like i've been married for like six years and i go what's three questions you wish you would have asked i literally did this i go what's three questions you wish you would have asked the day before you got married that you didn't ask because i'm just fascinated by people you know i'm curious i'm like how amazing has marriage been how's it been has it been healthy have you had challenges is there anything you wish you would have changed or talked about sooner and right away she's like opening up and like being vulnerable and i was like sorry to put this on you right now but i'm just fascinated because i want to learn from everyone and um so i was like i want to have conscious conversations it's one of my values so we have these deep intimate talks all the time and so i write down a list of all my values the vision is this is the vision for my personal life so personally i want to be working out i'm going to be healthy as an individual my vision is my my mission which is building a conscious business to serve millions of people to help them improve the quality of their life and this is a major priority to me this is my one and two priority this is my vision and also our relationship vision which i think is extremely important to talk about with your partner here's the vision i have for our relationship for these these couple years and for the future this is what i see with flexibility nothing's set in stone but this is what i see what is your vision for our relationship because maybe her or his vision is different one person wants to have kids the other person doesn't one wants to get married the other doesn't one wants an open relationship the other one doesn't want that one wants their family around every weekend the other one's like i don't want to be around your family every weekend so what is the vision of our shared relationship and then lifestyle i love you know traveling do you like to travel i love to watch these types of movies i like to eat these types of foods i like these types of experiences this is a lifestyle that i live if you have a completely different lifestyle that's going to be hard for us if you like to do none of those things if you like to stay at home every day where i want to go out and network with people and travel that's just going to be a top we're going to be butting heads a lot and there might be maybe it works but it might cause some friction and distance in the future so are we in alignment of values vision and lifestyle it doesn't have to be 100 perfect but is there alignment in each category and i think the more alignment you have the more potential for a better healthier relationship and on things like work this is obviously a big one for ambitious people when they um when they're running a business they're career driven they're vision or mission driven and they have a partner i want to know from a work perspective what kind of conversation you've had with martha and vice versa because i know you're a guy that travels a lot does a lot of speaking is very you know in pursuit of yourself and your potential so how do you then balance like being a boyfriend being present going on dates and stuff what's the conversation when i first met her i said one of my values is alone time like that's one of my values as well is having alone time having enough space in our home so that i can go in the room and do what i want to do and watch sports or chill and you can do what you want to do and i feel like we have space it doesn't mean i don't want to be around her all the time but i also value my space and alone time and so does she so it's having those conversations and with with business i said listen if you can come on any trip like you're more than welcome to come i'd love for you to come but she's doing her own thing she's traveling as well back and forth from atlanta so um and she'll be filming two movies later this year and gone for two months at a time so i'll need to travel at those times and she'll travel with me and that's the season of our life right now and you're anticipating another season at some point i imagine at some point yeah i mean it may evolve may change in the family and all these other things so it's like when that season happens there may be less travel for her how do you feel about that about what about the next season that family because there's a smoke on your face which is why this is something that i say to her i go listen i'm really intentional about building a deep strong foundation let's keep building a strong foundation and everything else will follow if i feel a sense of peace i feel a sense of safety in this relationship just like you then all these other things are going to happen naturally and they'll probably happen fast naturally once we both have a deeper foundation and just experienced life more so have you historically had a commitment challenge 100 man 100 percent well actually i haven't had a commitment challenge because i've always been committed i've been in very long-term community relationships but i've had a commitment challenge in seeing around family and kids because i never trusted the person i was with fully so i couldn't see myself having kids with them and i kept waiting to see something to shift to where i felt like this was kind of where my head would go this is maybe weird but i would say if something ever happened to me could i trust this person would take care of my kids and i just never felt that because i never felt like i could trust him with me like again i take full responsibility and accountability because i chose people that didn't accept me fully that weren't happy with who i was and so that's on me and i never felt like i could go to the next level with any of them because i was like something's off inside and i feel like ah i'm changing who i am to make them happy and they're still not happy so i can't have kids with i can't see myself living like this for you know 20 years with someone so and that kind of trauma that niggle is is that still inside you there somewhere as you think about it i think it was in the first maybe a few months of us dating but i don't feel like it is anymore yeah i feel like every day i create more and more peace and connection and safety and she's just an incredible person like she's just a great human being and trustworthy and so it's like even if something happened to me she could be incredible you know incredible mom so of all the things you've learned from your good and bad relationships if you were to have if i had to if i said to you that what is the single biggest killer of relationships what would your answer be uh i would say the biggest killer of relationships is being out of integrity with your authentic power and abandoning yourself to create peace in the relationship because if one person's doing that or two people are doing that there's some type of codependency there's some type of wound on why we're doing that that's creating that so for me the biggest killer is not healing that's the biggest killer whatever wounds we have be on the healing journey it's not it's not going to happen overnight it's not like a moment it's a journey of healing and i think the more people are willing to dive into their heart and their emotions and whatever insecurities wherever they feel triggered that's where you need to lean into because that trigger's going to come up into relationships big time if you haven't healed it so it's the emotional healing i think it's one of the most powerful things it's funny i interviewed a brain surgeon who'd done over a thousand brain surgeries and studied the brain and he's also a phd in neuroscience so he studies the mind and thoughts and he's a brain surgeon and i said what's the number one skill do you feel like human beings should learn to master and his answer was beautiful he said emotional regulation i was like i 100 agree because if we don't have the power to regulate our feelings around a situation and environment something that happens in events then that event has power over us as opposed to us over that moment and if it has power over us to where we react so strongly we need to ask ourselves why am i so triggered where is that one that's a wound somewhere where is that wound and how can i start the healing journey i'm not saying that things are gonna happen in life and you're never gonna feel something but just not react and be overwhelmed emotionally to where it takes you away from love and takes you away from your mission but if something is so strong that it causes you to lose sleep for three days or causes you to react in a negative way it's pulling you away from your heart from love and from your meaningful mission i think we just got to get back to okay why is this stressing me out how can i process this and integrate healing in a healthy way so that when life happens it doesn't pull me off my mission and that's something i've experienced for the first time in the last three months is really like life has happened in a big way for me it's sidetracked me a little bit but it's not pulling me off like i'm i'm needing to face it and deal with things and process but it's not like defeating me to where i feel like i'm exhausted and that's because i'm holding myself emotionally accountable and doing the work if i if someone's listening to this and they don't have a therapist they don't have the resources or whatever to have therapy how else can they go about developing the self-awareness required for that emotional regulation journey there's definitely things you can do on your own i would i would uh read a book called how to do the work by uh nicole lapera which gives you a lot of exercises and practices and things like that on how to do the work yourself so you can get the book for 25 bucks and start there and start your own ritual and healing process whether it be journaling whether it be you know other different types of meditations things like that they have she has different rituals in there you can do but i would recommend i don't think there's anything more powerful than sitting in front of a human and talking to someone about how you feel or what you're going through so whether that's a priest or a parent or a teacher or you know a friend that you trust someone you feel like who has a little bit more wisdom than you i would start there until you can afford the therapy and in terms of emotional journeys you cite that you're still on one absolutely what are the things that you're now talking to your therapist about that you're trying to solve in yourself i had this photo for the last year i'll just show the camera the photo of my five-year-old self and in the last session i did with her it was all about um healing the inner child right it was all about healing the inner child and doing the the work i mean i did some weird stuff like putting myself in spiritual and mental environments where i'm talking to my five-year-old self and looking at my five-year-old self hugging my five-year-old self integrating my five-year-old self with my adult self and kind of re-parenting that psychological child some weird stuff but whatever reason it's worked for me because now i can look at a situation and say okay do i feel triggered oh where's that coming from is it from that hurt child if so all i need to do is have a conversation with that part of my mind and say i'm an adult now and the adult is here and i got your back i can take care of this i know how to process and soothe things in a healthy way i don't need to lean onto an addiction or reaction or whatever it may be to process i know how to handle this i know how to breathe i know how to take a walk i know how to have a conversation and process you're safe you're okay it's all going to be okay whereas before i didn't have that ability to communicate with a wounded part of myself and so now she said we've healed the five-year-old version of you that was sexually abused because i don't get triggered about it i don't get reactive to it i'm not defensive and guarded anymore and i'm also shifting the way i don't please people in relationships anymore so i've done a lot of things to do the work about intimacy and relationships and just in life she's like now and i go okay am i done because this is a lot of work you know it's like it's a lot you're diving into your emotions you're tapping into uncomfortable stuff you're like crying it's all these things she's like this is a journey do you want to go to the next level in your life are you satisfied i'm like okay you got to keep going you know there's always something else and so she's like we want to tap into the 11 to 12 year old self and she's like find a photo that's my next homework is to put a photo of myself when i was 11 or 12 and start healing that part of my life and there was a bunch of different stuff that happened in that phase that i haven't fully healed or forgiven myself and so that'll be the next work to do and it'll be like stages of life until i meet myself to where i am now interesting and healing and working on the evolution of all the memories of the past that wrote a story and developed chapters in a book that did not serve me it's like a script wasn't it yeah and rewriting the script and not diminishing the things that happened but acknowledging them and healing them in a different way and processing it in a healthy way so that i can meet myself where i'm at now and then really start elevating how much has doing a podcast where you sit with these people but also yeah right it's a game changer when i get the biggest like neuroscience i've had so many and this year has been like the year of therapists and neuroscientists and spiritual gurus and just being like figuring out more and more about emotions about regulation about healing about inner child work because i have people on there i'm like when i'm struggling with something in my life i bring those people on i'm like teach me how to like overcome this right it's incredible yeah and so my audience would be like oh louis is going through stuff with this oh louis is going through a breakout oh lewis is in a relationship it's amazing the other thing that i am i know a lot of people will will struggle with is the confidence to overcome some kind of fear you talked a little bit there about ourselves story and how that limits us one of the the fears i know you had in your life which is almost impossible to imagine based on the man you are sat in front of me today was that fear of public speaking huge fear man and i could not stand in front of two to three p friends in school and really even have a conversation like i didn't know how if someone asked me a question i would get nervous i couldn't even respond with really a small story just because i was so the story i told myself that i was so used to being made fun of and picked on growing up that i just didn't want to speak that much because i didn't want to be made fun of i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewelry brand and they make really meaningful pieces of jewelry the really wonderful thing about crafted jewelry is it's super affordable it looks amazing the pieces hold tremendous meaning and they are really well made i think i've worn this piece for almost a year it hasn't broken hasn't changed color because it's really really good quality and it costs roughly 50 quid people will be surprised when they hear that they'll probably assume that all of my jewelry is like solid gold and cost thousands and thousands of pounds but what's the point when you can achieve the exact same effect from a piece of jewelry that's high quality and cost 50 quid that's why i buy crafted to put in context of where you are today you're an international speaker you're getting honest you're getting paid big six figure numbers to speak once yeah and i just want to put that in context because you went from someone that basically couldn't have a conversation kind of like an international public speaker yeah i don't know if um it was like this in school in the uk but in america at least in ohio where i grew up the teacher would sometimes say okay we're gonna have you guys read aloud right and okay lewis open up chapter one paragraph one and stand up and read in front of people and it got to the point where it was so terrifying because i would get up and i was not able to read until really about 10th grade no joke when i went into eighth grade that private boarding school they tested me reading and comprehension and everything and i had a second grade reading level so when i was in school it was so hard for me to stand in front of the class and read aloud because the simplest words i didn't know what they were what they were dyslexic so it was just challenging to read and then i'd feel nervous and then i would sabotage it and then kids would laugh because i couldn't read and so it's just kind of like a traumatizing thing that i had to learn how to let go of and heal and so i just never wanted to speak in front of people and i remember this is funny i was also um i was also terrified to dance and i started salsa dancing obsessively because i wanted to overcome this fear and when i was learning this skill of salsa dancing to overcome that fear i met a guy who was a public speaker and he got paid to speak around the country and i said how do you do this and he said meet me tomorrow at this coffee shop and all and i'll answer any question you have because we're literally like in the middle of the dance floor and i'm asking this so i meet him at this coffee shop in columbus ohio and he was like if you want to overcome the fear of public speaking you need to practice it every week and i recommend joining this thing called toastmasters where you can practice in a safe environment where they're not going to laugh at you and he said go every week for a year and come back to me when you're done and that's what i did i went to a toastmasters club every week for a year and i remember it was terrifying for the first few months but the more i did it and just messed up i just kept messing up but i found someone to mentor me there i practiced it consistently every single week my next speech i would put myself in uncomfortable conversations to just be made fun of or just feel like i'm so stupid around these people but every week i'd show up i'd get a little bit more confidence a little bit more confidence to the last week of the year i remember i had no notes no props no nothing and i was extremely poised and confident and got like the standing ovation at the end of the year because they saw my journey the first speech i had everything written out word for word word for word i look down at behind a podium and read word for word i didn't look up once on my first speech to the point where i was like okay i'm writing a speech and then looking up a couple times while reading it to then it was like just note cards then it was bullet points so then it was a slide to then it was nothing but it was mind-blowing because it took a year to kind of get a baseline of confidence and it took every week showing up but i'm telling you if i could do something like this it's possible but you got to be willing to be so uncomfortable to overcome these fears sometimes there's two things i was reflecting on as you were speaking then it's the first is how that you know repetitions rewrites this new kind of subjective evidence about who we are what we're capable of which results in mastery but it starts with repetition which creates new evidence and then you've got the mastery point but also just that that wasn't just a lesson about public speaking it's a general lesson about what happens when in life we arrive at the crossroads of fear and one side says turn right to go back to comfort which is never do this thing ever again because it's humiliating and the other is like it's the lights are off down that path but it's like into the fear and this happens every week in everyone's life in your job in your relationship in someone offers you oh do you want to come and do this thing and you go that's not south sudan's and or you go through a hard relationship and you're like i can't open my heart up exactly love vulnerability um but so evident in your story and even the fact that you write down your biggest fears every year it's so clear that you continually chose to go into the fear and that resulted in tremendous growth yeah it's always it's always and the amount of confidence i have over the last 15 20 years really of just taking on these different fears that i thought i would never be able to do let's talk salsa dancing you know i started that 17 years ago it's opened up a world to me i've traveled the world i've salsa dance in every major city around the world over the last 17 years i've met incredible people i have had so much fun i get to just go and dance and have fun and it gives me an incredible sense it's a tool that i can take out at any moment whenever needed it's a language that i can speak to so many people that speak that language and it's given me a level of confidence that i never had without that because it was a fear and now it's something that's fun that i've mastered it's incredible same thing with public speaking i remember thinking before i started toastmasters like if i want to get a job i need to learn public speaking if i want to like improve in the career that i go into i need to be able to communicate in a board room and get my ideas across even if i'm an employee i just need to be able to communicate or if i'm a ceo one day i need to be able to inspire if i want to be on stage i need to be able to get a message across to influence and impact people so i was like if i want to accomplish my dreams i need to overcome this fear and it's brought me so many opportunities because i spent a year obsessing over this and failing again it's brought me incredible financial resources it's put me in front it's i've traveled the world because of speaking it's brought me business deals i've met and collaborated with other speakers that i've met on stage at these events it's given me confidence you know by having this skill so every fear that i have if i master it and i go all in on it something magical and beautiful happens on the other side same in relationships after the previous relationship i was like okay i can be afraid and be single for a year and like guard my heart or i can open my heart keep it expansive not closed off after this pain and challenge keep it open and see what's possible and when i met her i was thinking to myself ah i don't know if i want to like go into this but i was like let me keep it open and explore and it's been magic and beauty on the other side because i've gone on that as well every time it's just something magical happens when i think about that crossroads analogy where you've got you arrive at the crossroads of fear and it says turn right if you want to go back into certain comfort oh turn left it's dark in there yeah it goes go into the fear and address it went through it i think the people the reason why people turn right into certainty and to comfort or really go back right is because they've miscalculated what the actual risk is so in the case of say being vulnerable in your relationships it seems like the the low risk path is to like keep the mask on just please them and whatever yeah however when you zoom out that is the existential risk of the relationship is faking and being inauthentic to yourself that was actually the risk but people like they mis they don't know what the risk is and generally in life it's people when they say to me oh you're so courageous for dropping out of university and starting this business i've reflected on that over the years because i've really struggled with this concept of people thinking i was courageous in my mind the risk was staying in university going into the corporate rat race and not pursuing myself and then having a mid-life crisis when i'd abandoned myself that was the risk the easy cowardice thing to do was leaving university and pursuing myself and i think the refraining of it yeah is really probably the most potent way of getting people to understand that in fact the dark left side of that fear crossroads is actually the least risky path to take if you zoom out absolutely and you see what's on the other side yeah what's possible for you what's available on the other side yeah exactly or even if you see what certainty and comfort will exactly deliver it's about having a short period of pain versus long period of pain and the short pain is diving into the fear maybe the pain is a week a month or a year in order to overcome that fear until you overcome it and transcend it or having this numbing low-level pain for the rest of your life by not choosing that which one do you want you know for me i just can't live that way and it's not just a one right so if you if you if you fake it in work and then your relationships then your friendships then you're gonna have in your health yes you're gonna have ten loans exactly which is gonna what happens then depression yeah crippling anxiety exactly panic attacks behavior all these you know addictions everything man as you look off into your future then lewis you're thinking about how lewis house shapes his future what he's pursuing how he finds his meaning and happiness on an ongoing basis what is the answer everything is based on mission the the mechanism is kind of irrelevant how i do it is irrelevant the mission is to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life that's the mission that's your mission that's the mission that's been the mission for about eight years it's been consistently that why 100 million people ask me that i think when i came up with that number it's because i'd already impacted millions at the time and whenever i ask people like what's your dream and they say they want to change the world it just doesn't seem real like okay what does that mean and then some people say i want to change billions of lives okay it just seems like it's hard to measure it's hard to measure that quickly like how fast is that going to happen but i'd already impacted millions and i was like okay what would it look like how long would it take me to reach 100 million people at once like in a year and then how could i what would it look like to do it in a month and then in a week and then how could i repeat that every week what's the mechanism right now it's podcasting youtube social media books events all those different things maybe in the future there's another mechanism for me i'm not attached to the mechanism i'm committed to the mission and so i'm flexible and open on how i want to make sure that i'm a a messenger and i'm a facilitator of messages with other messengers and that's the mission for this season of my life until something shifts inside of me where it says you know that's not your calling anymore then i'll listen to that next mission two questions then the first question is why does that matter to you why does helping 100 million lives a week matter to you what are you going to get if that happens if you succeed well helping one person matters to me when i wrote my book the mask of masculinity i remember thinking to myself this probably isn't going to sell 100 million copies right it's about how men can be vulnerable like most men don't want to buy that book it's this one here yeah so the mask of masculinity i once i started opening up about my healing journey and seeing the impact and the responses that men were having i was like gosh i need to write about this don't i internally i was like this needs to happen next my book agent was like let's go do another book about business or marketing and i was like i just can't do it like even if i make no money this has to come out of me because if we can help one man heal their internal relationship with themselves and then heal their relationship with their family and their marriage whatever it might be then it's worth it to me and so i just felt like i needed to put it out and so i'm happy to help one person and i feel accomplished i feel purposeful useful i feel like my talents were for something meaningful but i know there's something more inside of me and so i'm striving to serve 100 million lives one of the reasons that's meaningful to me is because i believe that we're all here for a reason i believe that we all have a certain unique set of gifts and talents and i want to see how far those talents can spread i just feel like that's part of my calling at this season of my life and i'm a hundred percent happy and fulfilled with all the efforts i've had to this moment because it's everything i've been able to do but i know there's so much more so this is just something for me to aim towards to reach towards it gives me a target it's something i can measure it's not too unrealistic it's a big number but i feel like yeah how things are going maybe it could happen in a year maybe it's 10 years i don't know but it gives me a focus and it keeps me in alignment on the things i say yes and no to does this decision project interview partnership serve 100 million lives or get me closer to it or is it a distraction so it helps me get clear on saying yes or no to things as well and what happens today if you get an email when you leave here and it says lewis good news we've we've we're now reaching 100 million lives a week i say great we gotta we gotta repeat this over and over again for a while until i feel like okay what's the next goal i mean i mean if we get 100 million lives weekly then i'll be like awesome it's been i'm doing this podcast for nine years now it's like i've been doing this for a long time last year we got over 100 million views just on our youtube channel alone so we're in the hundreds of millions a year of and i don't calculate it as like a like or like a one second view i'm like what's a 20 minutes of some an interaction we had over 100 million just on youtube of 24 minute watch time so for me that's a deep encounter of someone introspective learning diving in you know overcoming something and trying something new that's meaningful to me and so if we can do that weekly for a while then i'll i'll take an assessment and say okay where am i at my life this season am i striving for more am i maintaining am i shifting you know i'll reassess it then would it be a really happy day i'm happy today i'm really happy today because gary vaynerchuk said to me he said my goal is to buy the new york jets and in the same breath he said it will be the worst day of my life right because there's no more chase it's no more thing to work towards and here's the thing i'm happy today because i have inner peace and i think there's no goal that i've accomplished in the past that has brought me into peace when i accomplished it i felt depressed and anxious with a lot of goals from the past now i feel happy with just showing up and giving my best day to day it's as lame as that sounds the healing work has allowed me it doesn't mean i'm like satisfied i still am driven and i'm hungry for more but i'm just in such a beautiful place in my relationship with myself and my relationship with martha and my relationship with friends and family my team i just feel like man if this was it i'm in a peaceful place and that's beautiful amazing and i i truly feel it i truly feel it in everything that you said yeah and it doesn't mean i'm perfect and it doesn't mean i have it all figured out it doesn't mean i'm not going to make mistakes in the future it just means that's the path of one we have a closing tradition on this product okay which is the previous guest writes a question for the next guest into the diary what is the most frequent piece of advice people ask you for and what is the answer i mean what do people ask me for what is the most frequent piece of advice people ask you like the question they ask me for like a piece of advice yeah what's the most frequent piece of advice i mean it's like what would you do if you were starting all over again you know if you were 21 and or you started your podcast again or you know you were getting started again in your business what would you have done differently is what i get asked and then what's the answer i mean the answer is i don't know if i would have done anything differently because it's all given me a lot of wisdom and experiences to where i'm at now i wish i would i guess i wish i would have like known this stuff sooner but i think we all need to learn things as they come to us what i will i guess what i wish i'd known differently is how to have inner peace i wish i would have had that skill because i think i would be farther ahead and i would have been happier sooner inside had i learned that skill of healing of inner peace emotional regulation all these things that kind of held me back from being 100 my authentic self and in my power towards building everything that i'm doing i sit here with people a lot and i remember speaking to gary and gary talked to me about the importance for him of legacy yeah is this something that's important to you the concept of legacy does it take yes and no it is in the sense that like with my dad passing i think about his legacy right and i've had a lot of like sad moments and i've also had a lot of beautiful grateful moments thinking about his life and his legacy and what he how he lived what he taught during his his life and what he left behind in terms of wisdom and lessons and i think it's important to for me that's valuable in the sense that i'm going to be around you know my siblings going to be around his grandchildren are around who experienced him they're going to have we are going to have memories and an imprint based on his life and how he lived with us and now it's all about how we show up through his legacy you know i'm a part of his legacy he was a part of my foundation and now i'm going to be a part of that and i think about that because i want to make sure that my last name is meaningful and it would make him proud you know to make sure that am i doing things in alignment with what he taught me would make the world a better place would be good for our community am i living to the highest level of the values not the stuff that he didn't do well but the stuff he did well do well and so i think it's important because we're going to be interacting with people and when we're gone they're either think of us in a positive way or negative way and they might be acting like we acted in either of those ways so i think it's valuable and important and i think about it in that sense but i also think about that it's not important because in 200 years no one's going to remember maybe you know like someone has like a memory of in a history book and they talk about you but no one you know is going to know you in a in a hundred years no one you interact with is going to know you so and the the big scheme of things you know it doesn't it doesn't matter after a hundred years really but it matters because everything is a reflection of our past it's like dominance yeah my grandparents influence my parents their traumas and their beauty influenced them which influenced me and i felt like i had to heal the traumas of the past legacy as well just like i'm carrying with me the beautiful parts of the past and and leaning into those but also healing things that were brought down that they never healed so there's an impact with the legacy yeah i my answer is very similar to yours in the sense that i i've never understood why people care about what people like what people will say about me when i'm gone right right like i don't care because i again if i engaged in that thinking it's the same as caring too much about what they think about me now yeah like i'm not gonna be there i'm gonna be dead so but i i've never heard it and it's really refreshing to hear that kind of domino's analogy where like actually the way that i the way that i show up is going to impact my kids they might impact 10 then it's 20 that's 50 and then that's how the world is created yeah and i think the traumas that our parents you know had or didn't heal are going to be felt in our childhood in our adulthood until we heal it so and that might be their grandparents and their grandparents who'd like pass it down so we either need to heal it now otherwise we're going to pass it down to our kids lewis thank you um you're a very very special individual for so many reasons but i think having had this conversation with you the the most and also you know it's a reflection of your book as well the mask of masculinity is your ability to be open and vulnerable is i think like the most powerful service especially men can be doing in this world for all the reasons we've described because that like being emotionally in touch and being willing to be open is the foundation of all of our interactions our happiness our mental health our even our physical health and as as is the case in this country at the moment the thing that is unfortunately killing most men under the age of 45 is themselves suicide is the biggest killer of men in in our country under that age group so and it's a reflection of i think the lack of um vulnerability absolutely and the lack of openness and the lack of ability to process and regulate our emotions so having a light like you in the world that is leading that crusade in such an open way even though i know the feeling of discomfort it can even gives me to talk about things like my mental health or how i'm feeling or all those things inspires me and you've inspired me to be more open and in fact you've actually inspired me to go on the journey of like having therapy just for the sake of not because there's i'm like oh i need to fix this but because of the prevention and because of all the unknown unknowns absolutely man so thank you thank you you're an inspiration to me and so many others and it's been a joy to have you on my podcast thanks brother appreciate it [Music] [Music] [Music] ...
