Heal Your Trauma or Stay at War With Yourself | Robin Sharma

Everywhere I go, airports, events, walking down the street, people stop me and say, Lewis, this show got me through one of the hardest seasons of my life. And it's one of the coolest things when people come up to me. So if you see me, please come up and say hi and let me know how this show, The School of Greatness has impacted you. It lights me up because our mission at Greatness Media is to impact 100 million lives every single week. So if today's conversation hits home for you, do me a favor and push the follow button right now. It means that the next conversation will be delivered to you and will find you exactly when you need it. Again, thank you so much for being here and listening to The School of Greatness. Make sure to follow right now to stay up to date on the latest and greatest. Welcome back, everyone, to The School of Greatness. We've got one of my dear friends, Robin Sharma, in the house. Robin, good to see you, man. Amazing to see you. I'm so grateful you're here. you came on the show a few times, but the first time you came on, you were, you came on during a period of my life where I needed to go through a spiritual purge. And you came on, I was like the most vulnerable and raw right in front of you. I was just like, here's what's going on. Here's what I'm struggling with. You came to my mastermind and spoke as well. And I was, I was in it. I was in the stress, the overwhelm, the purging process, going through a relationship breakup and all these different things. And we were just talking about how, you know, I'm in a much more peaceful place. I'm curious for you, when has been the time in your life where you needed to go through a big spiritual purge? And what was the lesson you learned on how to get through that? I think it's a brilliant question. First, I'd say I'm really happy for the place that you're at. Thank you. And yet the place that you were, you once were, had great magic to it as well. Absolutely. A bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. Ooh, that's good. And I think, you know, we are closest to our greatest power when we are on our knees. And if you look at the Mandela's and the Mother Teresa's, the book is the Everyday Hero Manifesto. Those are the celebrated heroes. Right. But if you look at the great ones, they have one thing in common. They suffer more than most people. So suffering, you know, Khalil Gibran in his wonderful book, The Prophet Lewis, he said, your joy is simply your suffering unmasked. Suffering unmasked. Unmasked. So your joy really flows from your pain. Yes. Our greatness really flows from our disconnection to who we are. And so I'm really happy to see you so peaceful and you're so clear. Yeah. You're just radiating this great vibe. I wish everyone could feel it. And yet the place where you were is, I would respectfully suggest not to be discounted. It's okay to not to be okay. And it is the times in the valley of darkness that teach us the great virtues that make us heroic. Absolutely. It's our suffering that teaches us how strong we are. It's our pain that teaches us our true power. It's our difficulties that birth our creativity. It's the tragedies that give us wisdom and teach us love. So enjoy your time in the sun. Absolutely. And I hope no more valleys of darkness for me. You know what's interesting? I'm sure you're the same way. Whenever someone has gone through a lot of pain or challenges or suffering or events that occurred in their life that seemed overwhelming in their life, if they look back 10, 20 years later, if it's 10, 20 years has passed, a lot of people say they want to change that darkness. I know for me, I wouldn't have changed all the things that happened in my life because I don't think I would care as deeply about human beings as I do. I wouldn't want to serve and create something to help others. I'd probably be just more into myself. I don't know, like, what can I make for me? What can I gain for myself as opposed to how could I create to serve? When you look back on the most painful valleys of your life, do you wish you could change them? Absolutely not. It's the old question I get asked a lot, which is, do you have any regrets? And of course not. When I look back at my life, I see it almost as a set of invisible hands creating a magical orchestration and a life school perfectly designed to carry me kicking and screaming into the human being destiny wants me to be. And I'm very practical. The Everyday Hero Manifesto, it's part playbook for exponential productivity. I talk about the seven threats to world class. I share a lot of the methodology I've shared with billionaires, sports superstars, and empire makers. And having said that, the book is also a call to arms on being a spiritual heavyweight. Because what's the point of being top of the mountain but losing your soul in the process? And what I want to bring to as many people as possible is you can be uber productive. You can be an empire maker. You can dominate your domain. You can materialize your primal genius. And at the same time, you can be so loving to people. And you can care about the earth. You can care about service. you can care about becoming the person your higher power wants you to be. And if you can marry those two universes, then I think you've done your job. And so my difficulties, and I've gone through a lot of them. There's a chapter early on I mentioned before we went on. That time, 10 years of my private journals were vanished. and Louis I'm a daily journaler and I've been doing so for 20 going on 22 years and so I had in those journals I had my dreams my hopes the times that I was heartbroken I wrote about my difficulties my weaknesses my fears I wrote about my travels I wrote about my learnings I wrote about my struggles everything was in those journals because that's what journals are for. And one sunny Friday, I went into the cupboard and they were all gone. Where'd they go? Well, you know, I'm going to protect the unpresent because we all do our best based on the place that we're at. And I'm not going to judge. And I have absolutely no bitterness or anything because it served me again. It was a platform for possibility because that taught me one of the most powerful lessons I think a human being can learn, which is the ability to let go. It's okay. So what? Someone sees them. One of my favorite movies is a Jeremy Renner movie. And in it, he says, you know, you look inside every person's life and what you see. The movie is called Kill the Messenger. And he said, look inside anyone's life and what do you see? A three ring circus. And so what are they going to do? If they look inside my journals, they see a man who has dreams and ethical ambitions and aspirations and wants to live beautifully. And they see a man who's flawed and scared sometimes and has things to work through and has struggles like anyone. And that just makes me human. What's the biggest fear, insecurity you had about what people might know about you from those journals? or what people might know about you now of fear and insecurity that if people knew that would make you feel, I don't know if they really want to know this. I think just how much pizza and chocolate I eat. No, no. I would say, well, there's another thing I write about in the book, which is the whole idea about being good enough. And we all have our own struggles based on our own ancient wounds. But one of my core themes that I've been working on for many years is just not feeling, it's not imposter syndrome, but it's just not feeling good enough. Like no matter what I achieve, what's the next mountain top? How long have you felt that? Probably since I was a little kid. Really? Yeah, and it's served me well in the sport that I'm in. Yeah. Right, because you just keep on pushing. And I think if you look at the great ones, the Michael Jordans and the Kobys and the Muhammad Ali's and the Bobby Fishers and the Hedy Lamars and the Mandela's, I mean, I think they all share a similar wound. I think what can be a curse can also be a blessing. But for me, you know, just because you've asked, it's that feeling like no matter how many books I write, no matter what I do, what's the next mountaintop? mountaintop and that can lead i think i'm a very happy content person but it can lead to to a frustration i mean 20 million copies sold of your books how many books do you need to sell in order to feel like you're enough well ask james patterson and paulo coelho and no i'm joking you know it's and that's where and what and how can you know i'm asking this question for you, but also for everyone listening. It's like, okay, if people haven't written one book that they've been trying to do, if they haven't done a fraction of what you've created, how can they feel enough if you can't feel enough? I think part of our neurobiology is progress. Yes. So I think, you know, when you look at the healers and the emotional pundits, they say heal the wound. And I understand that. And there's a very powerful tool in the Everyday hear a manifesto that has served me dramatically as well as my high-level clients. It's called the AFRA tool. And it allows you to move through micro and macro trauma in very profound ways. How do you use it? It takes a while to explain it, but basically you go into the body, you get very, very present. Let's say it's a situation where you get activated, you get jealous, or you don't feel enough. You're triggered. You're triggered or activated. And you literally go in the body and afra is a you find the awareness so you're located in the body where's the pain where's the tightness the tension it is because what i mean it's such a long conversation but we are taught in our society not to feel so what do we do we become machines yes and that's why we hurt our brothers and sisters and that's why we become selfish versus giving to the world we become machines so we live in our minds we get disconnected from our hearts when we are disconnected from our hearts. We are disconnected from our truth. And our truth is creativity. Our truth is heroic productivity. Our truth is decency. Our truth is to serve the world. When I was growing up, my dad said, Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. He said, son, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. This is all our truth. But through the micro and macro trauma that we pick up and then swallow, We develop what I call in the book a field of hurt. And I think this is really powerful because we all read books on productivity, elite performance. We all want to be less distracted. But I think the missing link to personal mastery is not in the head. It's not a new technique. It's doing the emotional healing that releases the blockages that build intimacy with who we truly are. and as you do that through the AFRA tool and the other tools that I talk about each day there's a payoff and it's that there's a metaphor I start off the Everyday Hero Manifesto with and I actually saw this monument but I was in Thailand and I heard about this golden Buddha and long story short there was this incredible priceless golden Buddha incredibly towering and the monks loved it and the nationals of the country loved it, and then they heard there were going to be these warriors coming in, so they had to protect their national monument and their treasure. So one monk hatched a plan, and he said, let's cover it with layer upon layer upon layer of soil. So they said, that sounds good, and they did it. Eventually the invaders came in, and they walked right by it. Many years later, someone was passing by, and he saw a glimmer of gold shining out from this mountain of mud, and he started digging and he started moving through the layers. And every time he moved through the layers, there was more and more and more gold that began to shine. And he got very excited and he brought his friends together and they started moving through the layers and layers and layers of golden Buddha until eventually there was this magnificent monument that was gasp-worthy. And I cannot think of a more honest metaphor for us as human beings. We are born into genius, but many of us get resigned in apathy and mediocrity. And it's these layers of doubt, disbelief, fear, the program we are taught that create these layers over our gold. But this work, whether it's the effort tool, whether it's meditation, whether it's prayer, whether it's sweat lodge, whether it's acupuncture, whatever it is, these modalities allow us to move through the layers if the teacher is right and the discipline is good. so we reclaim that golden Buddha, which is really what the everyday hero is about. We all can be heroic. We just don't know how to get there, and then we're not willing to pay the price to stay with the program. What's the biggest thing that gets us in the way of getting to our heroic adventure? Is it fear, doubt, insecurity, shame, pain, hurt? What is it? Self-forgetfulness. What does that mean? What it means is from the moment we are born, the world does a con job on our greatest self. Our early caregivers, well-intentioned as they start messaging their programming, their scarcity, their belief system onto us. We also pick up this micro and macro trauma. You're in grade five, you don't get invited to your best friend's party. You remember it for years. You remember it for years. Someone, you're singing loudly in biology class or whatever, and someone says, you sound terrible. You carry that wound for a lifetime. You say, I want to be a billionaire or an astronaut or a movement maker. I want to change the world, mommy or daddy or teacher or best friend. And they laugh at you and they laugh at you for the next three weeks. And then a story gets set up about your undeserved ability. And here's something that any great psychologist will tell you. Your daily behavior is always matching your deepest beliefs. Lewis, it is our story. our story that we can't be in the NBA our story that obviously you need certain physical attributes but your story that you can't build a startup your story that you can't change the world your story that you can't find love because your daily behavior if you don't think you can find love you're not going to ask the person out for a date that's right if you don't think you can launch the startup that will be the next billion dollar or trillion dollar unicorn you're not going to pick up the first book and so I think what it is it's we forget who we are and then we buy into a story that was taught to us and then we keep rehearsing the story intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually daily until it creates a brainwashing and a heartwashing and we hypnotize ourself against us for who we truly are and then we walk out in the world and we see the Mandelas, the Mother Teresas the Rosa Parkses or the kind people on the street or the startup entrepreneurs or the great artists or the amazing bakers. And we say, but they are not cut from a cloth that I can wear. And then we resign ourself to average. Self-forgetfulness. Forgetting who we are and the stories we tell ourselves. What were you saying? It's the deservedness, like the behavior, the daily behaviors are what? You're saying something around that deservedness. Our daily behaviors reflect our deepest beliefs and our income and impact are always aligned with our self-identity. Our income and impact are aligned with our identity. Can you share more on that? It's this inner story. So if you don't believe you are deserving, then you won't find great love. If you don't believe that you have been infused with talent and power because you've been put down all your life, then you have a self-identity of apathy and victimhood. I think a through line through the Everyday Hero Manifesto is you walk out in the world every day and you have a choice. You can subscribe to being a victim or you can subscribe to being a hero. You've got a whole chapter on that, victim to hero leap. Absolutely. So how does someone go from that leap where maybe they've been stuck or they've been kind of just going by, following the rules or just doing what they think they're supposed to do? They've been forgetting who they are and they're not either having the career or the love or the health that they truly want. How do they go from the victim to the hero leap? Well, I mean, there's so many ideas and there's so many modalities that I share in the book. If you were to ask me, where do you start? You trust your instinct and you start with the first move. I know that sounds simple and I'm trying to be so honest and of service, but people always ask me, where do I start? Well, you start, you stop asking. And I know you didn't ask this question, but it's you stop asking people, how do I start? And you take the first step. Lao Tzu said the thousand mile journey because we're in the single step. It's a symptom of fear to say, how do I start? It's giving away your power. You trust your instinct versus needing someone to tell you what to do. And you read that first book. You've read that first book. You take that first step. You make that first phone call. You get that first mentor. You take that first jog. You buy that first journal. You ask that first person out on a date. So I think that's where we begin in terms of tactics, I would say, language. there's a chapter in the book it's called it's stop calling your genius shi t and we live in a world right now it's like lewis you did an amazing podcast great amazing interview your friends will probably say you murdered it you uh you have oh yeah see you've got you've got sick kicks sick sick. Oh, that shirt looks dope. Oh, you did great. Your work is great. You're doing great SHIT. And if you just look at it, so many of us, we use the language of victim speak versus leader talk. And our words program our self-identity. This is just one way to do it, but it's like, start cleaning up your vocabulary. Words have incredible power. If you look at the great leaders, these people did it through the power of words. And so the words we use to ourself are signals about possibility. Clean up the vocation. I wouldn't call my work S-H-I-T. Like, you know, hey, you're doing great S-H-I-T. I mean, this is my craft. It's who I am. So I think words are very, very powerful. I think your routines are, that's how you start as well. Your morning routine, your pre-sleep ritual, your daily workflow. Another thing that's powerful is your ecosystem. You know, saying goodbye to the top. This is a big one. Saying goodbye to the energy vampires, the dream stealers. Cleaning out the news, cleaning up your diet, working in light-filled workspaces, going to places that make you feel alive, reading books that lift you up versus tear you down, following people who inspire you? Yeah, just a few things. Just a few things. I think the language is a powerful one that I want to talk about because I believe words have an energy. They have a frequency. When we speak them, when we hear them, when we're consuming them and using them all the time, they have an energy. And what we say about ourselves, whatever we say after I am is a very powerful message, a frequency that we're confirming or relying out into the world. And so using the proper language is powerful. I don't think I'm there yet. I think I'm, you know, 85% there. You know, I think there's a lot of things that I could still clean up with my language, which is a good reminder for me. And I think the, anything else you want to add to the language that you've learned or maybe you didn't have the cleanest language before? You had the, what'd you call it, the victim language and now you have more the leadership language? Well, there's a story in the book about, I was giving a presentation in Spain to a large media company, and the gentleman who was driving me back to the airport was wonderful. We started talking about incredible Spanish food, pan con tomate and jamón serrano and iberico. Paella. Exactly. And then I said, what's your dream? And he said, oh, I want to move to Canada. But I know it's impossible. And then this, and they said, I know it's impossible. And he repeated it probably 10 times. And so I would say cleaning out that victim speak that your language reveals the way you see yourself. And he had sold himself a bill of goods that moving to Canada was impossible. So get rid of the can't. People who say can't and people make excuses like your excuses are nothing more than the lies your fears have sold you. And if you repeat your excuses long enough, like I can't do this and I'm too busy to do this. and there'll be a better time for this, and I'm not the kind of person who can join the 5am club or who can build a business or build an amazing life, then we do hypnotize ourselves into believing our excuses are real. What should we be hypnotizing ourselves in instead of this? Well, our heroism. We should be... Here's a really powerful psychological principle. It's easier to behave yourself into a new way of thinking than think yourself into a new way of acting. So act first, and then you'll start to think and believe it, as opposed to think and believe and then start acting. Practice being spectacular long enough that unspectacularity has no ability to enter your orbit. Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, how do the great athletes become great? You know this, you're an athlete. Practicing nonstop. It's just practicing nonstop, and the behavior researchers call it automaticity. Right? You practice. People go, well, how do I get discipline? Well, discipline is a muscle. Someone's undisciplined, and then you get out of the bed, and you get up early, or you make your bed, or you do 25 push-ups, or whatever, and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, through the power of neuroplasticity, the malleability of the human brain. It's almost like a metaphor for anyone who wants to make a change and who says, I can't do it. Well, your can't do it is the reason why you're not doing it. Because the can't do it is your weaker self versus your heroic self. So it's almost like a metaphor. You wake up in the morning, you know, and you want to do something. Let's say it's to be a better, more focus, better performer, because an addiction and distraction is the depth of your creative production. So it's almost like a wide open mountain meadow. And the first time you practice turning off your phone and practicing what I call in the Everyday Hero Manifesto the five great hours rule Forget working more than five great hours a day Five sweaty intense hours They say you want to practice that It almost like you walking in a mountain meadow and it's a pure mountain meadow. You do it after a few weeks, now the meadow becomes a trail because you've practiced it. Eventually the trail becomes a road and you keep on practicing it and eventually the road becomes a highway. And if you keep on practicing it, the highway becomes a super highway And then if you look at the neurobiology, you've got this circuit and around it starts to form a fatty tissue called myelin. And some people believe, some neuroscientists believe that myelin is the secret of genius. That's why Wayne Gretzky could send the puck to where it was going versus where it was. That's why Steve Jobs could see around corners. And he was this favorite word I love, prescient. He could see where everything was going before anyone else could. It's not because these people are cut from a different cloth. It's because they run different protocols, think different thoughts, and they do different things. And what I'd say to wrap that up is to have the results only 5% of the population has, we've got to be willing to be brave enough and faithful enough to do what 95% of the population are unwilling to do. What are they unwilling to do? What would you say are the three habits they're unwilling to do, most of the population? I'm not judging because I'm on my path too. So this is just, but you asked me the question, I would say too many good souls have forgotten that what makes us human is growing every day. Yeah. And so victims love entertainment, leaders and heroes love education. You know, when I mentor the billionaires and the A players, they don't show me their big TV after dinner. They show me their extraordinary library. When I have dinner with a tight enough industry, tight enough industry. If I come in just 10 minutes before we're supposed to meet, they've got a stack of books or they're reading. So education is inoculation against disruption. And if you want to double your income and impact, triple your investment and your personal mastery and your professional ability. So I think one thing people, I'll put it this way, people could do to take things to the next level is remember we come most alive when we are curious. And it's when you read and when you learn And when you listen to podcasts like The School of Greatness and when you just are, you fall in love with trying to get better every day by learning, it makes you feel better. You bring more value to the marketplace. You discover yourself, et cetera, et cetera. So one thing we could do is more growth versus playing with our phones and chat, you know. More growth over just entertainment, mindless entertainment. Absolutely. Not that anything's wrong with it. I mean, listen, I was watching a Netflix series last night and love a little downtime and a good series that inspires me. It almost allows me to pause from growing because I'm growing all day long. It's like I need to give myself, my brain, some time to just be because I think I'm too much growing. But for those that aren't growing on a consistent basis and they're more on autopilot, what happens to the majority of those people? And what about the people that are saying, this seems like a lot of work, Robin, and you're tiring me out with all this growth talk. And, you know, I just want to live a simple life and, you know, I'm happy with where I'm at. But what would you say on the pushback on that? I would say, are you really happy or have you seduced yourself into thinking that you're happy as a way to survive? The truth is the truth is the truth. If someone comes up to me and says, I am a gardener and I am chasing my bliss and I've got the life I'm handcrafting, I will get down on my knees and salute them for their honor because all dignity has labor and who am I to judge someone else's journey? Yes. If they are truthfully happy, they are far wiser than I am. but if it's a mask, if it's I'm happy, but they're not really happy, unconsciously perhaps their heart is broken and they've just given up on life, then I would say, you know, yes, this sounds like a lot of work, but actually if you do it, it's incredibly fun. Yeah. I mean, here's my experience. It might not be all your viewers' experiences, but getting up in the morning and running the 5M club protocol is fun. You know, like dopamine pulsing through my brain is fun. Serotonin is the antidote to unhappiness. It's fun. Reducing your cortisol is fun. Being fit is fun. Reading amazing books brings me alive. Following my craft is fun. Serving people is fun. Getting to travel is fun. And on the point about, well, what about when you just want to watch Netflix? What about when you just want to eat a pizza? What about when you just want to rest? So much of the Everyday Hero Manifesto is so disruptive against the hustle and grind culture. I'm not, I believe live your life in seasons. There's a time to be super productive and there's a time to just enjoy the fruits of your labor. John Lennon said, time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. So I spent 16 months of the pandemic living and breathing the Everyday Hero Manifesto. And after that, four-hour meals with the family, watching Netflix, eating what I wanted to do, sleeping a little bit more because I was cognitively empty, traveling, and just sort of navel-gazing. And I think that's a great way to be versus 24-7 on. Absolutely. So growth is one of those habits on a daily basis. You feel like 95% of people aren't doing consistently, that they could be adding. What would you say are two more habits that the 95% aren't doing? Well, again, you know, even the question makes me feel like to answer it would be almost like I'm disrespecting people. Because I don't want to sound like I'm talking down, but I'd say for me or the people that I mentor, growth is a key habit. I call it the 60-second student, like at least 60-minute student, at least 60 minutes of learning every day. is very, very powerful. I think another great habit is the five great hours rule that I talk about in the book. It takes most producers two weeks to do five world-class hours of work because we haven't set up our ecosystem, because we're not getting into flow state and transient hypofrontality, because we're constantly checking our phone. If you look at the great geniuses, they all had one thing in common. They spent long periods of time alone in their work lab thinking about solutions to their biggest problems. So this five great hours rule, it's set up your workplace so you cannot be distracted. Set up your devices so you can do real work versus fake work and do five sweaty, intense flow state hours versus playing around. And then after that, you've got the rest of the day off. You know, if you start at eight, you finish at one, you can go mountain biking, be with your family, enjoy your life, do all those kinds of things. So that I think is a great habit. You know, I'm going to obviously get it saying getting up early and installing the 5 a.m. club method. It takes 66 days, according to the research of University College London, to install a new habit. Imagine getting up at 5 a.m., doing your morning protocol of exercise, supplementation, journaling, prayer, meditation, etc. Sounds like a lot, but learning chemistry the first time sounds like a lot. Learning Italian the first time sounds like a lot. Falling in love when you're clueless sounds like a lot until it becomes easy. So once you do these kinds of things, a good pre-sleep routine is good. I mean, there's just so many different habits. You've learned so much. You've accomplished so much. What do you think is the thing that's holding you back from your next level of your genius, of your greatness? I've got a great family life. I've got a great partner. I've got wonderful children. My parents are in their 80s. My dad was a family physician for 54 years. He's retired. They're healthy, thank God. I get to do work I love. I'm, you know, I'm not this financial titan, but I love my craft. I love serving. I get to live in the places that I want to live. I live a relatively simple life. So I'm in a good place. I just want to I don't know if there's a lot of blocks I just want to keep on writing after I finished the everyday hero manifesto I thought it was my last book but I think right now I want to you got five more in your mind now I got 47 more in my mind when do you doubt yourself the most? when I'm tired when I'm tired I think it's probably the cortisol pulsing through my through my system I doubt myself. When I'm in a season in my life where I'm meant to have not productive growth but spiritual growth, I start to doubt myself. When you're pushing more in something as opposed to spiritually growing, you mean? Well, I actually believe we have a higher power. And a higher power isn't necessarily God or spirit or the universe as people call it. I believe we have our wounded self. Well, we get knocked around in life, so we forget who we are. So we've got our wounded self, call it our egoic self, and we've got our heroic self. And to me, that's our higher power. And every single person on the planet today has a higher self. This is the part of us that actually knows the answers to our deepest questions. This is the part of us that knows we need to be good. It's the part of our self that instinct is so much more powerful than intellect. So it's the part of us that is the instinct, the silent whispers of, here's what you should be doing. We have this higher power is the part of us that's unbreakable, even if physically we're broken. It was Albert Camus who said, in the midst of winter I discovered within me an invincible summer. We have this. when we do the work to move through the layers and start to reclaim ourself does it happen in a day no but day by day by day we get closer and closer and closer we connect with this higher power and i believe this how higher power when we let go of control yeah and we just say okay i'm i'm going to be led by this instinct or to be to be tactical you know follow your joy But I found in my life, there are just seasons. It could be two years, it could be five months, where I am meant to be writing books and recording courses and doing social media posts and getting up before 15 in the morning and working out with trainers. And I trust that lead. And then almost naturally, natively, and I think I've got better at this, there's a time where I'm supposed to sunbathe more. There's a time when I'm not supposed to work. I don't have any ideas. you know I'm more and I just trust that that's a season where I'm not supposed to be producing and then there's times where I just feel frustrated sorry sorry but to answer your question it's like there are just times where frustration comes up I don't feel like I'm doing enough I don't feel like I'm honoring my talents and that to me is a symptom of okay this is a season where I'm going to go out of the world into the wilderness and I'm meant to do some spiritual healing. And the last thing I'd say about that is sometimes you can feel guilty because you're not producing. But what I say in the Everyday Hero Manifesto is please let us start to discern and get to know when we're supposed to be spiritually, when we're supposed to be worldly productive. And if we're not worldly productive, but we're being spiritually productive, that's even more valuable. Yeah. And I don't think crops are guilty right after they've been harvest and there's nothing to produce, you know, for the next few months. You've got to take the time for the soil to recover. You've got to plant the seeds again and then you've got to water it and you've got to grow it until it's time to harvest again. And I'm a big sports guy and my whole, you know, life has been based around sports growing up. And there was a time that you want to peak as an athlete going into the playoffs. You want to peak. You don't want to be burned out going into the playoffs. But then after the playoffs, there's a natural season of rest, recovery, reflection, where then you see, okay, what do I want to do for the next season? And I remember I was big into baseball my whole life until my senior year. I was like, I don't think I want to play baseball this year. I went and did track instead. And there was that rest, recovery, and reflection season after the season that allowed me to clear my mind and see what do I want next with my life? What's my vision moving forward in this new chapter of my life. So I think that's important that you talked about that. I'm curious to that, you mentioned the time of spiritual reflection, having these space and time. What would you say was the biggest wound that your ego had to face in the last five years? And maybe it was small compared to certain things you've had in the past, but just in the last five years, again, you've been, people look at you as this extremely successful individual, leader, creator, author, with all the results you've created in your life and so many other people's lives. In the last five years, what would you say? Well, there have been a few things. I would say a number of years ago, maybe like seven or eight years ago, I was in a long-term relationship that I chose to walk away from. That was very difficult for many reasons. And I spent a lot of time journaling and praying and meditating and being out in nature and reflecting on, first of all, my part in the situation, but what I could learn from it. And then using the current situation to heal ancient wounds. I mean, that is how you can be an alchemist of sorts and turn tragedy into triumph. By using, like fear came up because of that situation. Sadness came up. But sadness could not come up if it had not been pre-existing. There's a wonderful idea, if it's hysterical, it's historical. So we know the size of the pre-existing wound by the size of the current overreaction. So if we have the awareness and then choose to use the difficulty to remake us and transfigure us, then you triumph over adversity. So that was something that was really big for me. I'd say also... What was the lesson from that experience? Well, we'd have to spend 10 hours time. There are like thousands of lessons. You know, like if you don't go full in, you actually are creating self-fulfilling prophecy. There was the lesson of being a better communicator on both parts. There was the lesson of picking. One thing I learned is I don't believe in opposites attract. for me, I've learned that compatibility... Alignment attracts. It's massive. Discompatibility can be very fun and very fiery. In the first six months, and then you're like... I watched this. I was reading this article about this very famous divorce lawyer, and she had a line in her interview, and it was powerful, Lewis, and I think you might find it interesting. She was talking about relationships, and she was asked, you've seen so many relationships fall apart. I don't know what she said. She said 10,000 dinners. And the interviewer said, what do you mean? She said, well, you've got to ask yourself. I mean, looks fade and all these other things fade. You've got to ask, look at that person that you want to be with and ask yourself, do you have the compatibility and do you have the friendship and do you have the great conversations required to enjoy 10,000 dinners with that person? So those would be some of the things I learned about that over the past number of years. like any person who's running a business. I've had partners completely let me down who promised things that they didn't deliver. I've had people betray me and take advantage of me, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I think that's just part of life. One thing I do want to say is I work with a lot of billionaires and many of the billionaires have one formula. They have lost 80% on their investments. I'm not giving financial advice, but they've lost 80 or 90%, but they invested in a few companies that caused them to become billionaires. And it's very easy when you make mistakes to think you're doing something wrong. And what I want to say to all your many, many millions of followers and watchers and listeners is failure is the price of greatness. Failure is the highway to success. You've got to get in, like you've got to leave no stone on terms. You've got to develop this hardiness and resilience and anti-fragility so that you are willing to make mistakes. You won't always have the right teammates. You won't always have the right partners. You won't always make the right decisions. Lick your wounds and move on. It's far better. The discomfort of growth is always so much more value than the illusion of safety. Oh, yeah. The discomfort of growth is more valuable than the illusion of safety. Right, because all those people you asked me, not judging but just reporting, living life saying it sounds like a lot of work. Growing sounds like a lot of work. Building great relationships sounds like a lot of work. Emotional healing sounds like a lot of work. Setting your intentions and goals sounds like a lot of work. Being an excellent person sounds like a lot of work. But what's the alternative? You get to the last hour of your last day and you look back on your life and you think about all the potential and genius you've left on the table. You think about the experiences you didn't have, the food you didn't eat, the music you didn't listen to. And part of building, like in the season of productivity, part of building is not that you get FFA, fame, fortune, and applause. Part of building is you get to know your strengths and you get to know your talents. that's the reward, not the outer win. Yes. If opposites don't attract them, what were you attracting in the past? Very dangerous question, Lewis. No. Well, I was trying to say opposites don't attract for me. Okay. I know a lot of relationships where opposites work out perfectly. What was I attracting in the past? I was attracting, I assume you're talking about romantic partners, and I was attracting the partners perfectly designed to activate the emotional wounding that needed to be healed. Like, you know, they were my spiritual teachers. They were my soul friends. Like, you know, I usually don't talk about this, but I do believe in karmic contracts. I believe I'm a very practical person and if anyone's watching, it's fine. I'm just sharing my truth. But I believe there are karmic contracts and I do believe, I mean, that's why you meet someone and you've never met them and you just go, how do you know my favorite food? And whoa, that's your favorite song too? And it's like you spend hours in the sunshine just going like, I found someone, you know, and I believe we have, I didn't plan to go here. I believe we have soulmates and twin flames. And I believe the soulmates in romantic relationships. They come to us to shatter us and open us and bring us incredible joy, but transformational exponential growth. And where would our lives be but for those people, even if they knock us down for a long time? And then we have the twin flame, which is, that's the person where, you know, relationships are reason, season, lifetime. And I think the twin flame is that's like it's easy and it just flows. Like I don't do drama anymore. Yeah. You know, and it's just, it just works. Yeah. I'm all about the peace. Peace. I'm all about the peaceful relationship where there's, yeah, there's no need for drama. There's no need for stress. There's no need for anger, yelling. There's no need for that. And that was the previous me that experienced that from partners being yelled at all the time. And I was like, always trying to fix something, you know, or trying to buy peace in a relationship. And I realized you can't buy peace. You've just got to be peace and then co-create that in alignment with someone else who is peace. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode. And the School of Greatness drops new conversations every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday around money, mindset, healing, manifestation, and relationships. And if you're not yet following the show, then you're missing all of them. Please tap the follow button right now and you'll get notified the moment every new episode drops because the next one might be exactly what you need. Now let's get back to the conversation. I was going back to you reminding me. I don't know if you ever met Wayne Dyer. Did you ever meet Wayne? I had dinner with Wayne Dyer. I shared a platform with him a number of times. So you knew of him, you were friendly, but you weren't like buddy, like close, super close. Yeah, we weren't going to SoulCycle together. You know, we weren't doing sushi. Right, but you guys respected each other and you knew of each other. That's it. Yeah. That's it. He had a quote in one of his, I was listening to an audio book of his recently, where you gave the analogy, I'm not sure if this was his original analogy, but he was talking about, you know, when we are triggered, you know, whatever's inside of us comes out. You know, kind of like if you have an orange and you squeeze an orange, orange juice comes out, right? Whatever's inside of you comes out when you're under pressure. When something pushes you or hits your button or triggers you, that's what comes out, whatever's inside of you. What do you think was inside of you in the past when you're in kind of these previous relationships that maybe were soulmates but not the next level? Like what was the wound? You mentioned the wounds. What was the wound that was inside of you that you had yet to transform into a healthier version of Orange Juice, I guess? Sure. Just an amazing question. I would say, first of all, it takes two to dance. When you can do solos, you can do a solo dance on the dance floor. You can do solos. So I would say, you know, I was attracting partners in some cases that loved drama. Yeah. And I think there was an addiction, and that's in many ways an addiction to adrenaline. And there's a term you've probably heard about it, but it's called crisis-oriented living. And people who suffer from crisis-oriented living, if it's peaceful, you and I seem to love peace incredibly. But people who are dealing, and I'm not judging, I'm just reporting, and then I'll tell you about my side of the equation. So people who love crisis living even if it the most peaceful moment no especially when it the most peaceful moment subconsciously, they will create an issue. Why is that? Now you say, why? Nothing's wrong, just be in peace. You say, why? You have everything. Be in peace. I know. This is such a, such a, they do it because they feel safer in the crisis than in the peace. Makes no sense. It does. Because if you look at the childhood background, there were always instances where in the next moment they didn't know what would happen. There was so much crisis going on. So as irrational as it sounds, they created the crisis because that was safe. I think that's incredibly powerful. Maybe it's familiar. Well, that's what I mean. safe, familiar, they knew it. And people always gravitate towards what's familiar, even if it's the most dangerous thing in the world. So that's what I think in some cases I was attracting. And these were, I must say, noble, beautiful, loving people, but we're all flawed. We're all in a flawed state as we stumble and kick towards enlightenment. I think I was similar in attracting certain, And, you know, I think all great individuals, nothing to say negative about them. Yes. But it was all my choosing to attract and choose to be in relationships with those individuals. Totally. Why do you think you attracted that? And I'm curious because maybe I can reflect on why I was doing that also. Sure. So, yeah, I mean, I'm glad you didn't let me off the hook and I was going to. So my part of it was there was something attractive about that to me. There was like an energy, what was just like interesting or exciting or felt it wasn't boring or something? Yes, I think something in me was attracted to that kind of energy. And I think there was all the positive things because these were just incredible human beings. Incredible. But we get attracted to the light and we get attracted to the dark. And I hadn't planned to get into relationships, so I'm not happy to talk about it, but I'm not a relationship expert. But for me, I worked with a spiritual healer 15, 20 years ago. And she was a guidance counselor. And she said, you know, this is the most interesting thing. She said there were these two people at other ends of the playground. And she said, I watched it happen. and it was almost like they beelined to each other and they were attracted. And so there was a lot going on under the surface in relationships that is incredibly powerful. And if I may, this brings up a really contrarian point, which is I want to link this emotional healing in the Everyday Hero Manifesto. There's chapters on the big lie of positive thinking. I'd love to get into that if you want to. There's chapters on trauma is a teacher. There's this model that I've been teaching. It's not only mindset, but heart set, health set, and soul set if you want to really own the game. But I want to link what we've been talking about, which is emotional healing, because you have a lot of entrepreneurs and business builders who follow you. And I want to link this work about moving the layers over the gold. This work about the Afro tool that I talk about. This work about going back to what activates you, and rather than blaming your partner when so-and-so freaks out about the garbage, you actually say, what was activated within me, and use that as an opportunity to heal. or you're going through heartbreak, disease, loss of a loved one, loss of a business. Rather than blaming the world, you say, what's coming up for me? Why am I so scared? Why am I so helpless? Because you're going, that's an activation of a previous time when you felt helpless. It's an incredible opportunity to use what's been brought up to make you greater, stronger, more creative, more productive, wiser. But I want to make a linkage between as we use the moments of every day that disempower us and we heal that emotional activation, whether it's the shame, the guilt, the anger, the sorrow, the disappointment, those toxic feelings that come up every day or every week when something goes wrong. As we start to move through those, we start to heal. When we start to heal, we start to release these repressed emotions that were toxic. I call it in the book, the field of hurt. Every time we do some healing, we release more of that baggage. Carl Jung, the legendary psychologist, called it the shadow side. We all have a shadow. Now, there are many great productivity experts in the world. There are many great people teaching people how to build world-class companies in the world. There are many people teaching how to free yourself from distraction so you do great art. But I believe, and I've been teaching those things for 26 years, and a lot of it's in the Everyday Hero Manifesto. Having said that, if you do not clear out the shadow side and the field of hurt and all of that repressed and suppressed toxic energy in the form of shame, guilt, doubt, disbelief, fear that has built up from the moment you were born. Yes. then you will always be at war with yourself. The neurobiologists call it limbic hijack. And so then if you haven't done that healing, you can read all the books and learn all the hacks, but you will never have the intimacy with your true self. You only have it with your worst self. And so you don't really get the ideas that allow you to dominate your domain. You don't have the energy to do amazing things. Your productivity is sabotaged because you've read all the things, you've got all the productivity apps, but you still are attracted to playing with your phone because it's an escape from the pain of potential unexpressed. And if you've got that pain of potential unexpressed, you're gonna be dealing with it subconsciously. You're never gonna be exponentially productive, creative, loving, et cetera. Yeah. So how important is being in a constant journey of healing? Most important job of life. And what happens if we don't continuously heal? Or we just block ourselves from wanting to heal, wanting to face those shames, insecurities, past pains. What happens if we block those out for years or decades? It's our choice. I'm not going to judge. I do believe there are only two reasons while we are alive. And I think if we strip away the accessories and the trinkets that the world sells to us as the metrics of success, like how many social media likes do you have? How much money do you have? How much fame? In the book, I say JPF is always more valuable than FFA. Joy, peace, and freedom is a million times more valuable than fame, fortune, and applause. and ask anyone who has fame, fortune, and applause what they would be willing to give for joy, peace, and freedom. So we get to live. The great thing about being human is we get to live as we wish, and I'm in no position to judge how anyone's living. Personally, I believe when we get to the last hour for our last day and we strip away all the things so many people are chasing, I deeply believe only two things will matter. Number one, who did you become? As compared to our promise, how much of it did we materialize through the work we're talking about? And number two, how many people did we help? I mean, you know, to me it's like, and they're connected because the more you own your truth and move through the layers of fear, doubt, disbelief into your most creative, productive, powerful, loving, decent, noble self, the more you will start to see yourself as an instrument of service to the world. I think that's our fundamental nature. It's to give. What happens when we don't look at our life in service to other people? If we don't think of ourselves as I'm here to be of service to my couple of friends or my family, in a smaller group at start, or if we just don't look at our life from a place of being of service, what happens to us? I think we incrementally die before our death. I definitely believe in living a beautiful life. I definitely believe in doing good for yourself and your family. It's incredibly important. I've written a book called The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, but there's nothing wrong with getting a Ferrari. I don't have one. I'm more interested in this little Fiat 500. It's this iconic little car that, you know, I did some research and there's one for sale for 4,200 euros, you know, so that's kind of where I'm at in my life right now. But I, you know, we're sensory, sensual beings. If you want to live a beautiful life, good, you know, materially, awesome, I'll help you do it. Having said that, so, so much joy comes from service. I mean, my life changed when I stood in Nelson Mandela's prison cell a number of years ago and it was just stunning how small it was. Here was this man incarcerated in Robben Island for 18 years of 27 years of incarceration he said his greatest regret was his son was killed in a car accident and they wouldn't let him out of prison to attend his funeral etc. just tortured in so many different ways. So I asked the guide, I said, did you know him? And he said, yes, I served with him as an ANC prisoner for eight years. Come on. Yes. And I said, of course, well, what was he like? And he paused and he said, oh, that man was a humble servant. I've never forgotten that term, to be a humble servant. it. So on my good days, I remember it very, very deeply. And I think if we could all in our own way, you know, be humble servants. And the paradox is, if you want to be a billionaire, if you're coming from a place of love, humble service, wanting to see the people who put food on your table, rise and transform. Your apps, your products, your services are going to be magic. And the job of an entrepreneur is to push magic into the marketplace in a world where most business people push mediocrity. This is why doing the work to come from a place of service and love. Again, turning down the ego, learning the tools to turn up the voice of your heroism so you build intimacy with who you truly are. This is not just a recipe for happiness. It's a recipe to materialize whatever you want. Because then you start following your bliss, doing what you're going to be best at, working with love and excellence and mastery. Your energy is tireless, but you push masterwork into the world. I was in Florence recently and I saw Michelangelo's David. How was it? Nice. No, it was amazing. But, you know, that was a work of love, not a work of, not a cash grab. Oh, yeah. He wasn't doing it to make money back then. If you do something to make money, your focus, time, energy, and intention is off pushing the magic that will actually make you money. So what should we focus on instead? Pushing beautiful work into the world, working with honor, seeing your job as a craft, getting better every day. What are, you talk about in the book, is it the eight forces of wealth or the eight forms of wealth? Eight forms of wealth. Eight forms of wealth. What are these forms that we should be thinking about then and applying to our life? It's an absolutely revolutionary model that has helped my highest level clients, like the billionaires, the titans, the sports superstars, the movement makers, terrifically. because a lot of them come to me and they're frustrated. They're saying to me, for example, I've got $14 billion. I've got the yacht. I've got the private jet or two. I've got six homes. And I've filled my life with so much complexity. Stress. And stress, I'm not enjoying any of it. And so the eight forms of wealth, I'll just, if you like, I'll go right through. So the model is in the book, but the first one is self-mastery. The context is our society has told us you are successful if you have a lot of money. Essentially, that's it. Even if you hear sometimes people introducing podcasts, we have so-and-so here. Whoa, I can't wait today. He's a true billionaire. Well, what about the ditch digger? What about the firefighter? What about the teacher? But our society has hypnotized us. I can't believe it. Today I'm talking to a billionaire. So money is only one form of wealth. The other forms of wealth. Self-mastery. I mean, why did the great saints, seers, and sages talk about self-knowledge? It's one of the greatest forms of wealth. The Temple of Delphi had a little inscription at the entrance. Know thyself. Once you know it, we've been talking about self-knowledge. That's a lot of work. It's the secret of joy. So self-knowledge, self-mastery, incredible form of wealth, getting to know yourself, getting to know your true powers versus your fake powers, your creativity, your heroism. Second form of wealth is family. My partner and I, we went to her grandmother's 90th birthday a while ago. I had a chance to sit down with her. I try to sit next to elders on airplanes and on trains and interview them. I said, what's the most important thing you've learned from life after 90 years or 89 years? And she said, family. And for me, family is so important. What's the point of being a success in the world if you've lost your family in the process? And serving your family and creating what I call perfect moments for your family. So family is incredibly important. Third form of wealth is health. someone once said to me health is the crown on the well person's head that only the ill person can see i've worked with super rich people as their mentor they got sick because of what it took to get there now you can do it with balance and health of course great health but they lost their health and now they don't care about their money all they're doing is traveling the world looking for healers and doctors to try to get their health back so health fourth form of wealth is craft. It's such a great form of wealth to fall in love with what you do. I was sharing before we started, even when I journal about my work, it's in air quotes, because it's not work for me. It's a privilege. So your craft, like just each day being on the process of getting better, learning more, reading more books, watching more podcasts, polishing, refining, optimizing, It's such a great source of joy. Pushing yourself to the razor's edge of your highest talents is such a source of enthusiasm. Next form of wealth would be money. Of course. It's important. It allows you to do amazing things. It gives you freedom to make wonderful choices. And it allows you to get involved in philanthropy, which I'm a big proponent of philanthropy. helping children with leprosy rise is my focus right now. Next form of wealth would be adventure. We are nomadic. We are meant to travel. We are meant to take risks. We are meant to grow. We are meant to seek awe and wonder, even if it's just an L.A. sunrise. Did you see the sunset last night? Every night's pretty magical right here. I mean, if you go out and watch the sunset here, you're going to be like, ah, for like 10 minutes. It's spectacular. The way it hits the mountains, the way it hits the ocean, it's special here. Yes. And I think adventure, even if it's just a conversation with someone interesting. So that would be the next form of wealth. Your circle of genius, your COG, spending time and surrounding your life with people who are living the lives you want is a form of wealth. be stripping out the energy vampires the dream stealers streaming stripping out the toxic people stripping out the people who don't get you can we talk about the place you're at in your sure so you you told me you're feeling so much peace in your relationship right now can i ask you a question yeah does your partner get you like no one else has ever got you she understands and It's a success for me 100%. 100%. And it's beautiful. I think a lot of it is partly half my responsibility of entering the relationship saying, this is 100% of who I am. This is everything from my past that I'm proud of, that I'm not proud of, my mistakes, my flaws, my insecurities. I'm not changing who I am. I'll grow and I'll be on a journey of growth forever, but this is who I am? And she was like, I love all of it. And I was like, okay, cool. Let's hang out for a while and see if that's actually true. And her actions and behaviors kept matching that in her words. And I was like, okay, this is amazing. So it feels beautiful, peaceful. And understood, but also celebrated for who you are. That's something she does in a big way. That, and I'm sure you realize it, but that is worth all the gold. That's incredible. It's incredible. Often we need to, I've seen this with my clients, they get to a place of wealth to realize economic wealth is not that wealthy. I mean, how much does it take to live a beautiful life? Not that much. So then why do people need as much as they think they do? So what you just shared with me, someone who gets you is an incredible form of wealth. So the next form of wealth is circle of genius, being surrounded by your love partner, your family, friends, etc., people who get you. And I know some people are going to go, yeah, but what if my family doesn't get me? That's another conversation. And then the final one is service. I used to call it legacy. There's a chapter at the end of the Everyday Hero Manifesto where I actually, everyone's talking about legacy right now. Joseph Campbell, to live in the hearts of those you leave behind is not to die. I used to believe in it so much. What will be your mark on the world? Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, he says, it does not matter what the chattering tongues of prosperity say about you. And as I say in the chapter, I say, we're all going to die. We're going to be a pile of dust, whether you're a billionaire or a street sweeper, we end up as a pile of, I don't know how big it is, but I'm just, you know, for the purposes, we all end up as a pile of dust in someone's urn next to their Little League trophies above their fireplace. That's all we are. So it doesn't matter how we live, how we're remembered after we're dead. What matters viscerally is how we live and serve and create and produce while we are alive. And so the chapter is just like legacy doesn't matter. It's a sport of an ego. Getting your name on a hospital wing is a sport of an ego. True giving is anonymous giving. And so the final form of wealth was like leave a legacy, but now it's just service. And I believe, you know, I've lived a fair number of years and I really believe that It's an incredible form of wealth to serve people who are in need through your work. Absolutely. I'm a big fan of that. And I think some of the greatest joy comes from when I am in service anonymously. And I'm also a big believer that, and maybe I need to learn more here, that it's okay to share when you're making an impact sometimes. There's a lot of times when I'm making donations or just helping out things that no one ever knows about. But then there are certain times where I'm like, I also want to inspire others to do the same. So here we are, you know, building schools or something with an organization, or here I am doing something with another charity. And some things I want to share and hope that others will see, oh, there's a lot of joy in giving. Maybe I can do more of this in my life. So maybe I'm wrong there in that thought process. But I think it's always checking in. Am I doing this to try to look good? Or am I doing this to try to inspire others to do the same? And I think that's where I try to come from. To me, it comes down to what I call the root intention. So what I hear you saying, Lewis, is your root intention is to inspire others, which I think is very noble. I think I could definitely learn from you on that point, which is I have a belief system, which is, oh, if I show that I'm giving, then I'm showing off. That's the Canadian background. It's very Canadian and it's also my family. Of course. I'm all for that. I think there's the intention behind it. It's like, but how can we also as individuals trying to make a bigger impact, inspire others to be more giving? Inspire others to get out of their comfort zone and serve at a greater level in their communities, their families, the mission that they're on. That's my belief right now. I may be wrong. It's a great point. I'd love to ask you as honestly as possible, and you've always been so honest every time I've interacted, but at your deepest core, where you're at, what do you want your life to represent or stand for right now? Like when I'm done or in the moment? Right now. For me, it's being a symbol of inspiration. I want to be, you know, I remember when I started the School of Greatness, I was coming up with ideas for like, okay, I'm going to do a show, this podcast thing, which at the time, nine years ago, no one really knew what a podcast was. There wasn't many of them out there. This was pre the multiple waves of, you know, podcasts have come out in the last nine years. I had to tell people like, hey, I've got a podcast, go here on your computer, click on this thing, go down, you No, there was no easy way of accessing it. But I remember thinking to myself what do I wanna call this And I called a few friends and they like why don you just call it the Lewis Howes show And I don think there anything wrong with calling your show or anything your name or your company I don think there anything wrong with it But I remember thinking to myself, going through like an ego transformation at the time, and I'll probably always be going through that, but at the time going through a big ego transformation where a lot of my 20s was about me accomplishing, succeeding, winning, being acknowledged, being clapped for, all those things, excelling, winning awards. I realized that there was something missing inside of me. There was something that was not... I never felt good still. I would accomplish all these things. I was like, but why am I not happy still? Why am I still angry? Why am I still upset and needing to like prove people wrong still. So I went through my own journey of healing on a few things there. And then when I started this, I was like, I want this to be a symbol bigger than me. I don't want it to be about me. I want it to be about others. I want to put the spotlight on everyone else. I want to shine the light on people like yourself, Robin, and bring wisdom from other people to an audience that I curate and cultivate and facilitate. So it's not going to be the Lewis Howe show, although maybe in the future I do a show called My Name. I don't know. But I remember thinking, I'm going to call it something else with me in the School of Greatness was about the things I wish I would have learned growing up as a kid that I didn't have access to, the tools, the skills, the knowledge that I wish they would have taught me in school. And that was something that rang true for me nine years ago, that I wanted to be a symbol of inspiration, bigger than me, not about me. And today is the same thing. and in this world of social media and marketing there's a balance of building personal brand and putting yourself out there so people are aware of you and your message and the content you're building and also trying to just continue to put the spotlight on others so it's it's uncomfortable for me to post like photos of myself by myself on social media it's just become uncomfortable because i haven't done it that much i've always just posted everyone else and put out their message. Like there'll be a clip of us and it'll be about you on my social media. But I'm starting to do more of sharing my story because I think people want to see more of me. They're following me as well. So I'm trying to post some of that also. But it's a dance where I don't want to be too, you know, self-promotional and make it about me. But I also know that's what brings people in to share the message. So, but my intention right now is to be a symbol, a symbol of inspiration to help people improve the quality of their life. That's the message. That's the intention. You already are. Right. And I'm smiling too because I was thinking root intention. Because on my Instagram, I've started posting more pictures of myself. Yes. But my root intention isn't to show off. Like this morning, I did pictures of me doing a video of me doing terrible push-ups. But it's exactly your intention. It's just to inspire. Absolutely. And what I've realized is if I can show pictures of me and my family, me on a walk or whatever, whatever, people do want to get that inside look at what books are you reading? How do you live? What supplements do you take? What is the morning routine? And I think it can be an incredible mechanism of service. Like this is my 26th year in the leadership and personal mastery field. And I just, I've seen it change so much. and social media is an incredible, incredible blessing. And it can be a tyrannical and vicious master. So I think used wisely, technology is a beautiful thing. You just want it to be your slave and not your God, I believe. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so that's where I'm at now. Well, see, I love these eight forms of wealth. What do you think is the most, if you could only focus on three? Let's say you had to get rid of the other five. And what are the top three most important forms of wealth? I'd say four because they're all so important. I know, but if I had to fall away. Okay, I'd say self-mastery is, I think it's the main aim of life. It's to discover who you truly are through the times in the valley of darkness and the times at the mountain in the sunshine. So working on yourself. number two family. Not in order, but family. I just feel so blessed to have a great family. And it provides me with so much joy. And like setting, like I love great, great food. And I love great experiences and setting out meals where I might cook some buccatini alamone and getting just the candles right. And I make a playlist for it. And it's just seeing them, you know, seeing them eat, especially when I cook for my kids. You know, I know it's, it's very special when I make, they love pasta. So I'll do like a, like a ketchup pepe or something like that. One of my favorite pastas and they're watching me cook and this and all of a sudden when they start eating it and there's total silence in the room, you know, it's like one of the, like, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, you know, it's just so joyful to cook and see them enjoying the food. So I'd say family. Craft, Lewis, is so central to my well-being and my joyfulness and my ability to continue. I love, I mean, I rewrote the Everyday Hero Manifesto, I'd say 22, 23 times. times. You'll see there's models in there on productivity and on spiritual heavyweightness, on living a world-class life. There's one chapter in there called the Titans Deconstruction, which literally deconstructs why superstars and world-class companies fail. There is a process that sports superstars, business titans, movement makers, great companies go through where they decline. And that's one of the models in the book that I've been sharing for years at my events and that. But I wanted to share pretty much like every part of my methodology. I tried to get every word right. I tried to get every line right. I don't know. It's just, it makes my craft feels, makes me feel incredible. It's like you're showing respect for people. So that's three. And then the fourth, without a doubt, is service. yeah it's it's you know if there's someone in need i learned this from pal gasol he's great when he was the center of the lakers there's the picture of him and i at the end of the book because we were having dinner together and i he's great he's great he came to one of my live events and i drove him to the airport and i noticed when he walked in there everyone saw who he was of course people were giant right people were running to him asking for autographs asking for pictures and he gave picture after picture. He had endless patience, smile on his face, graciousness. As he was at the boarding gate, I said, pal, you stopped to sign every single autograph. You took every single picture. You were limitless patience. And he said something to me that I love. He said, Robin, it takes so little to make someone happy. Yeah. And there's a quote in the book. It's like, I will only pass this way once. Therefore, if I have the opportunity to make someone's life better, may I do it because I may not have the opportunity again. So to me, service, especially in the world that we're living in right now, just showing some acts of humanity and being kind, as simple as it sounds, is incredibly important. Yeah, it reminded me of The Rock, talks about this almost every month on his Instagram. He's like, one of the best parts about fame is getting to make people's day. like just bumping into someone and giving someone a photo or just saying something nice for someone or you know video chatting someone who's going through a hard day and him just getting to light up their day he's like it's the best part about being famous and i never take it for granted so it's cool about pow it's great um and uh pow just seems like a great guy we've messaged a few times i'm trying to get him on the show as well but he seems like a great guy um what was the you mentioned just something in there about from BlackBerry and Apple. And you mentioned that every business at some point goes through a decline. Maybe it's a seasonal decline, maybe it's a years or decades, but there's a dip somewhere. What takes a great company or a great human for that matter to go from a decline season to, you know, incredible growth? Well, the first thing is Andy Grove, the co-founder of Intel said only the paranoid survive. And I think one must be an optimistic paranoid in business. You want to hope for the best, but you never want to lose the fire in the belly. Because there is such a small fall from world class to obsolescence. And so it's hard enough to get to world class as a human being and as a business. But the game of the legends is to sustain world class. because the key to legendary is longevity. Yeah, not just a one-hit wonder, one year at the top, but consistently. Absolutely. How many Frank Sinatra's are there? How many U2's are there? How many Kanye's are there? How many, we could talk about hotels or restaurants. They're hot for two, they're the place everyone wants a reservation to for two years. How many places can do it for 50 years? To me, that's like business-wise, that's where I play. Like, that's what I'm fascinated by. Like, I deconstruct how do the entertainment legends, maybe it's DiCaprio, maybe it's De Niro, how do they do it when other people truly are one-hit wonders? And there's a recipe. If you want, we can go through the model of the Titans decline. And here are the elements. So let's say it happens to a lot of sports stars. Let's say they become world-class. And that's why I love the last dance with Michael Jordan. They lost in the finals. And the next day, he said, rather than taking the summer off, 5 a.m., he was in the gym practicing. And that's what made Jordan Jordan. So let's say you get to the apex of world class. The first thing that happens is the contamination of arrogance. You think you're the hot stuff. Exactly. It's called hubris. And it is a human attraction and such a seduction that is to be avoided at all costs. it's like you made it everyone everyone tells you you are the best you are celebrated you get everything you want you get the best table and the best restaurant etc you start to believe your own media clippings and that's the beginning of the end so in ancient rome there was a military commander called the dux and he had a slave that would stand behind him and do one thing lewis He would whisper in the ear of the military commander and he would say, memento homo, memento homo, memento homo, which in Latin translates to, remember, you're just a man. The Olympics, right? They put a crown of laurels over your head and they say, don't rest on your laurels. This is such a huge snare. It's like the thing about a master is she never believes she's a master. She always protects the white belt mentality. So the first part of the decline is a contamination of arrogance. And it could be culturally in the company as well. It's like everyone starts believing, drinking the Kool-Aid and thinking they're the best. And they stop wowing the customer. They stop innovating. They stop getting up early. They stop over delivering. They stop learning. But it definitely happens to people when they get to the top. They stop going to seminars. They stop listening to podcasts. They say things like, yeah, I don't need to go. I've heard that before. Dangerous. The next step is resting on laurels. So you just, here's the key. You've done more than most people ever thought you'd do and that you thought you'd do. It's so hard to keep on going, to develop an anti-retirement mentality. I mean, how many people get to the top and still do the very things that got them to the top? Hard practices, strong training, early mornings. When Mike Tyson was at the very top, he said he only did three things. He trained with Customato, he'd eat, and he'd sleep. Next step on the decline in the model is mediocrity creep. You see this with hotels, you see it with airplanes, you see it everywhere. It's like broken window syndrome. There was a place, it was a suburb of New York, there was a broken window, no one cared because it's just a broken window. Because there were broken windows, other broken windows happened. Because there were broken windows, they allowed junk on the thing. Because junk and trash was allowed, and crime soared. How many times do you see that with people? They get to the top and they lose the OAD, obsessive attention detail, the commitment to excellence, pushing the limit. And you see it in companies all the time. Like you go to a great restaurant that was iconic. They don't go to the same place to get the fresh food. The manager, the owner is no longer walking the floor, shaking hands. The people at the front no longer care and welcome like royalty. I don't know if you've experienced this, but you go to the restaurant or you go to the store and you feel like they are doing you a favor taking care of you. Then there's dimming the best in world fire, loss of extreme training. and then you get to self-generated obsolescence. Self-generated obsolescence. Once you stop doing all these things, you become a thing of the past. People forget about it. You become irrelevant. I think the kiss of death as a creator, as an artist, is you just become irrelevant. You're not part of the conversation anymore. How does a creative or artist not worry about being irrelevant but just focus on creating and putting out good work even if people don't give it attention. But if you love it, how do they overcome that fear of no one cares, no one matters, or they cared five years ago when I did this one thing, you know, the musician has to sing the hits from 20 years ago as opposed to the new creations. How do you overcome that? Well, one of my favorite movies is with Will M. Defoe. And it's called At Eternity's Gate. and Will M. Defoe played Vincent van Gogh and Vincent van Gogh was poor his entire life. There's a scene in the movie, Lewis, where Vincent van Gogh was put into an insane asylum for his habits and his work. Vincent van Gogh. Wow. And there's a scene where, I think it's Michael Madsen or something Madsen and he's playing the curator or the head of the psychiatric institution. He says, I want to speak to Vincent. He's got one of Vincent's etchings. He said, Vincent, do you really think this is art? And he looks at it, and he said, yeah, I do. And I share that point because Vincent Van Gogh, I believe he never sold a painting in his lifetime, or he might have sold one. I cannot think of a better story to answer your question, which is the real artists don't do it for the glory, they do it for the art. The real makers and creators and titans, they do it for the beauty and the honesty of honoring what's in them, even if the world doesn't understand it. Because every visionary is initially ridiculed before they're revered. It's sad that some of the great visionaries are only recognized three generations later. Maybe even the greater the visionary, the less the status quo will understand it. There's a chapter in the book, The Troll Deconstruction. It's the same thing. How do you deal with trolls? I deconstruct it into 10 points. But one of them is, Dylan said, don't criticize what you don't understand. and J.K. Rowling said, for some to love you, some must loathe you. So what I'd say is if you're doing really amazing work, do it for yourself and what it makes it for you to produce the magic into the world. And if people hate you, maybe that's just testimony to the fact you've released a masterwork because fear screams loudest when your magic is closest. Is there anyone in the world who just is putting out great work that doesn't have haters or leaders in the world and business or politics or music or art that doesn't have critics trolls haters is that possible i don't i don't think so mother teresa's of the world that you know the people that are doing the most good do they all have haters and trolls also yes i i was in um mother teresa's mission and um there's a sort of a model of her praying, on her knees praying. And in the area, I did a prayer. And I posted that picture, I don't know, two years ago. And it was incredible. Like, I was stunned. It was incredible. All the criticism of her work, right? Mother Teresa. Yeah. It was incredible how many people felt she wasn't who she professed to be. And I'm not judging or so I think the very light attracts angels and it attracts moths. And I believe the more you shine your light, the more you will evoke and attract the dark forces because you'll activate. Cynics are degenerated dreamers. So as you show your possibility through your art and your magic and your work and your light and your love, people can either celebrate you and you can be a model of possibility or you can activate the pain of their potential unexpressed and they're not aware enough of it. And so they throw rocks at you. And I think our job is to take the rocks people throw at us and build them into monuments of mastery. That's beautiful. Man, I'm loving all this. I feel like we can go for hours on this, but you've got this book that's got so many nuggets in here. I love this style of book because it's, you know, two pages, three pages for a chapter. So for me, that helps my brain get through it. You can just open it up to any page and you've got like three to five pages of wisdom in here. So a lot of great stuff in here. It is called The Everyday Hero Manifesto. Activate your positivity, maximize your productivity and serve the world by Robin Sharma. I hope you guys get a few copies of this book because it's going to inspire you. It's something you can pick up from time to time. You can read it all the way through. You can just pick it up on the copy table and be reminded of your greatness. So I want you guys to get a few copies because this is a great playbook for optimizing your life. Check this out. They can get it everywhere online, but is there a specific website you want to send people to to get it or anything else? Amazon, Audible. People are loving the audio book. Bookstores around the world. I do want to say a portion of my royalties goes to help children suffering from leprosy. so people not only learn how to live their greatest life in terms of productivity and happiness and decency and impact, but they also help kids who are really in need. That's cool. That's very cool. Robinsharma.com. You're all over social media and now putting yourself out there in the world. Instagram, is that your main place? Robinsharma on Instagram? I like Instagram. Instagram and YouTube. There you go. So make sure you guys all follow Robin everywhere on social media. I've got a couple of final questions. before I ask the two final questions, I want to acknowledge you, Robin, for constantly showing up. Again, you've sold 20 million copies of your books. You've done events for 26 years now. You've been creating work, art, courses, all this stuff for a long time. You don't have to do any more of this, but you keep showing up in a creative, genius way of putting out new information in a way that we can understand it, consume it, and improve our lives. So I really acknowledge you for showing up authentically, beautifully, and living a magical life yourself. You know, you're doing the work, you're traveling the world, you're enjoying your life. So I really acknowledge you for being the example and sharing it with all of us with these books and the work that you do. Thank you very much. Of course, man. Thanks, nice. And I asked you this before, but let's see if you've got different truths this time. So I've got them in front of me. So if people want to see what your three truths were previously, we'll link up the episode in the interview we did from your previous three truths. But I don't know if you remember this question, but if it was your last day on earth, hypothetical scenario, many years away, you accomplish everything you want to accomplish and live your life, but for whatever reason, all of your work has to go with you or goes somewhere else. But it's not here on this earth. Your books, your content, your courses, audio, everything's gone. But you get to leave behind three lessons with the world that you would share. What I call three truths. What would you say are those three truths for you? Number one, there are no extra people on the planet. Everyone can be an everyday hero if they do the work daily. Secondly, I would say small daily seemingly insignificant improvements lead to stunning transformations when done consistently over time. Third truth, it comes from the founder of Rotary. And it's the person that serves the best profits the most. Ooh, that's a good one. I like that a lot. That is true. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? Having the wisdom, guts, and self-love to honor your promise at all costs. Robin, appreciate you, my man. Thank you, Robin. My friend, I hope you're enjoying this episode right now because we are on a mission to impact 100 million lives every single week. And every follow here on this podcast helps us reach more people. Make sure to hit the follow at the top of this show's page right now. It's the single biggest thing that you can do to support the show and the impact of us reaching you every single time we have new episodes. I appreciate you and I can't wait to see you in the next episode. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.