Introduction:
Coming up on this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Lewis Howes:
No right or wrong, good or bad, no judgment, but how is a powerless mindset working for you? How is being crippled by fear and doubt working for you? It might have some benefits, but there’s still a lack of something inside of you. So, this takes courage to step into greatness mindset, but that’s the decision we need to make.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Welcome to The Doctor’s Farmacy podcast. I’m Dr. Mark Hyman. That’s Farmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. Now, if you’ve ever had trouble getting your head straight and doing what you want to do in life, and if you get in your own way, this is the podcast that’s going to matter to you because it’s with my good friend, Lewis Howes-
Lewis Howes:
My man.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… who is all about how we can fix our freaking heads to get what we want in life. He wrote this amazing book called The Greatest Mindset, and he’s also a New York Times best-selling author. He’s written about toxic masculinity. He’s a keynote speaker. He’s got an incredible podcast. Lewis Howes podcast with over 500 million downloads. He was recognized by the White House and President Obama as one of the top hundred entrepreneurs in the country under 30. Although he’s a little older now.
Lewis Howes:
That was a long time ago.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
He’s also a two sport all-American athlete, performer, professional football player, and a member of the USA men’s national handball team. Holy cow. Well, welcome, Lewis. Good to have you.
Lewis Howes:
Thanks, man. So glad to be here. I appreciate it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think I just finished writing my book, Young Forever, and it’s all about a map for how people can activate all of their ancient healing systems in their body. It’s not that hard, but the biggest challenge for people is their head and making the changes in their life, changing their habits, their beliefs about themselves, about what they can do, what they can’t do, and they end up often struggling to make the simple changes that are going to have profound effects on their life, right? I mean, I just see people with this sort of inner dialogue that if they had it broadcast out loud, they’d either be put in a mental institution, or they wouldn’t have any friends or-
Lewis Howes:
That’s true.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… if they said what they said to somebody else, they for sure wouldn’t have any friends-
Lewis Howes:
That’s true.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… if you talk to yourself like … I talk to them like you talk to yourself. So, I think, how did you come to understand that we can master our mindsets? How did you end up getting your head straight? Because you went through a lot of (beep) when you were younger.
Lewis Howes:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You talked a lot about it and abuse and real trauma and ended up somehow figuring out how to not get trapped in that place of victimhood and blame and just a loop of not being able to do what you want in life.
Lewis Howes:
Well, I think it started with I always wanted to be successful my whole life. The goal was to be successful, but I was driven to succeed in order to prove people wrong and to fit in or belong, and so I was committed. I could set goals. I could work hard. I could show up early. I could make these things happen and be successful in sports, and then I did that in business, but for whatever reason, I still didn’t feel good about myself once I would accomplish these big goals. This success wasn’t fulfilling to me, and I didn’t understand why. So, I just kept going for bigger goals, bigger dreams.
So, I didn’t have the fear of doubting myself. My fear was the judgment of other people, needing to people-please, needing to walk on eggshells, and really most importantly, judging myself, which I had a lot of shame, insecurity and doubt tied to my past. I created meaning that was hurting me. So, there was a wound based on all the meaning that I created from these experiences, lessons, stories, and moments. So, for years, I was driven by success and it was working in the terms of I was accomplishing, but I still wasn’t feeling good. I was mentally off.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, yeah. Looked good on the outside but on the inside, wasn’t so happy.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly. Exactly. About 10 years ago, I started a healing journey. This is why I love the work that you do because you talk about healing from the inside out really is what it comes down to. When I think about it, our thoughts and our emotions and the meaning we give our memories from the past play a lot into how we feel about ourselves.
When I had you on my show recently, I asked you about a healing journey that you’ve been on. One of the things that you talked about, what I thought was beautiful, as 40 years in a medical practice and in the field of pharmacy and healing, you talked about how love, intimacy and relationships and healing that part within you allowed you to feel younger, allowed you to heal the physical ailments, allowed you to have more flexibility and mobility, allowed you to flow in your work more effortlessly. I was forcing a lot of things to achieve success to fulfill something where I didn’t feel like I was enough in my life. It wasn’t until I started studying-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, like there’s an empty hole that you fill with all this success, right?
Lewis Howes:
Exactly. It was a wound. It was a wound. You talked about this. When you touch a wound, it hurts. If it stays open for decades, it’s got to keep getting triggered, and it’s going to poke you, and it’s got to hurt every time that happens, that situation happens, that memory gets triggered. So, I had to go through a journey of redefining what success looks like for me.
I started to think about greatness. What is greatness? Well, greatness is actually going after your goals and dreams but making a positive impact on the people around you, in the process, lifting others up. We talked about before, being in collaboration as opposed to competition, being in abundance as opposed to scarcity, and finding ways to find joy and happiness and fulfillment in the process as opposed to blame, shame, beat up. criticizing yourself, which doesn’t do you any good or anyone around you any good. That’s where it started about 10 years ago, this journey. It’s been a journey of really eight years of mistakes, highs, lows, until in the last couple years, I feel like I cracked the code for myself where-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Someone gave you the combination.
Lewis Howes:
I mean, I gave myself the combination by constantly making mistakes and realizing this isn’t working. In some ways, it would work and I would improve, and in other ways, I still needed to find solutions. A lot of it starts with the healing journey and creating that new meaning from past memories. I’m a big fan of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. He went through horrific experiences.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
The concentration camp.
Lewis Howes:
The concentration camp, and yet he lived one of the most fulfilling, rich, abundant, healthy lives after that. It’s all about the meaning from the events, the memories, and mending the memories, but I wasn’t willing to face my shames, my insecurities, and the things that hurt me the most. I could some of them but not all of them. So, I would have this kind of ball of pain in my chest that would come and go in certain situations. I’d feel my nervous system triggered or reactive.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You’re feeling your body.
Lewis Howes:
In my body physically, but it was tied to a memory and an emotion that I had yet to mend and create new meaning around. So, step one was really figuring out what is the process or methods or therapies that I could dive into, and I’ve done a lot of them, that would support me. Don’t stop. Once I feel like I’ve figured it out, keep diving in and improving. That’s really been the 10-year journey for me to where I just realized that self-doubt is the killer of all dreams for people.
When we doubt ourselves, it holds us back from taking action, from getting into the relationship with someone we care about, from having a courageous conversation with someone, from getting out of a toxic relationship, from launching the book that we want to launch because we’re afraid, and self-doubt holds us back. At the root of the self-doubt is I’m not enough. So, when we truly believe I’m not enough, it’s going to cause pain in some way in our life. Resistance. It’s going to cause a block. When we can heal emotionally and mentally, when we can find alignment and harmony internally, then we can start to create abundance externally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s such a beautiful description of this process you went through, and I sort of just reminded of what Gabor Mate said, which is trauma isn’t what happens to you. It’s about the meaning you make from what happens to you.
Lewis Howes:
Yes, exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
We are all meaning-making machines. We often interpret our experience and reality in a way that doesn’t serve us. It may have been right in that moment at that time, but we generalize it to everything. So, if we were traumatized by somebody in our childhood, then we feel the fear of being traumatized by everybody and everything. I know, for example, my childhood, I learned that my stepfather was a rageaholic, and I learned to people-please very young to avoid the wrath and the pain and suffering that went along with what happened. That people-pleasing was probably helpful and adaptive in that situation, but it was a (beep) way of living my life and didn’t actually help me in the rest of my life. It sounds like you went through a really similar thing.
Lewis Howes:
A hundred percent. Yeah. Judgment was my biggest fear. There’s three main fears based on the research I’ve done. The fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment. These are the things that cause us to doubt ourselves the most, right? I wasn’t afraid of failure or success because as an athlete, I knew you needed to fail your way to success. The greatest baseball players failed 70% of the time. They have a batting average of 300 something, and they’re the best in the world.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, right.
Lewis Howes:
Michael Jordan misses half more than half of his shots that he ever took. He failed 50% of the time, right, but he still was the greatest by failing half the time. So, I knew as an athlete that you just make mistakes, and you readjust to get back on course. So, I was never afraid of the failure. Success wasn’t a thing for me either because I wanted success, but I wanted it because I was doing it based on a wound though. I wanted to prove people wrong. So, that’s why when I would accomplish it, I’d be angry.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You wouldn’t feel good.
Lewis Howes:
I’d be angry like 30 to 60 minutes after I accomplished some big goal where I was like, all right, I should be excited, but why do I still not feel good internally? Well, there was a wound that I was creating this from to prove people wrong, to look good, to be right, or whatever it might be because I was afraid. I was wounded, and I was driven based on that wound. So, I would go for more success, and it just wouldn’t fulfill what I needed, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
[inaudible 00:10:45] It’s like a big bowl with a hole in the bottom.
Lewis Howes:
It would solve money problems, but it wouldn’t solve the problem of feeling good enough, feeling worthy and deserving. So, that’s when I started to really dive into when I started having multiple breakdowns in my life emotionally, mentally, relationship stuff. I was like, okay, I’m the root of all these breakdowns. I got to figure out the solution, and that’s where this really started.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Can you talk specifically about what were the kind of breakthrough moments you had in the last eight years?
Lewis Howes:
I mean two years ago-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What were the things that you did that helped you shift the most?
Lewis Howes:
Yeah. I mean, meditation has helped tremendously. I think being a guy that likes to do a lot and pack my schedule and create and work hard and filled the plate, that helps in getting things done, but it didn’t help me reflect and figuring out what was missing or where I was off in some way in alignment. So, I went to India and studied meditation. I did Dr. Joe Dispenza’s meditation, seven-day meditation retreat, which was powerful. Those two were really helpful, and it gave me a daily practice of even just 15, 20 minutes a day to be in peace, to be in stillness, and to reflect on, how did I do the day before and how can I do today?
So, just having that practice has been helpful, but also, I’ve done a number of different therapy modalities. An emotional coach that I started working with a couple years ago, she really guided me two years ago when I felt emotionally trapped in a previous relationship that I felt like I couldn’t get out of. I was just people-please … I was still living in the past of people-pleasing, and I was giving up who I was to try to make one person happy, this need to be liked by one person that I cared about. This felt like the final thing that I still hadn’t mended or healed because I kept repeating the pattern in relationships.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Over and over, the same thing.
Lewis Howes:
I was the common denominator. So, I found her as a coach, and I just said, “I will do whatever you tell me to do. I will do anything you tell me to do. I will meet you once a week. I will meet you five times a week if I need to. I want peace, freedom, and clarity,” because I didn’t feel free, clear or peaceful. I felt trapped, and I didn’t know how to go beyond it. I worked with her for five months intensely every single week, sometimes four or five-hour sessions at a time-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Lewis Howes:
… where I was like, “Put me through any exercise. Put me through any experience. Put me through any journaling, reflection, spiritual experience. Whatever you want to try with me, I will do it. My intention is peace, freedom and clarity.” I just kept showing up with that intention and showing up. I remember being frustrated after many months because I was like I’m not getting what I want. I’m not getting what I need, and it’s not working.
My desire to have something happen quickly was blocking me as opposed to surrendering to a process, trusting a process, and continuing to go in. So, I just kept trusting. Eventually, there was a moment where this ball of pain in my chest that was there kind of off and on almost every other day, eventually, all these things started to connect and integrated into my heart and into my mindset really, where I was like, I am peaceful, I am free, I am clear. It finally resonated with me in harmony to where this ball of pain literally disappeared and disintegrated throughout my whole body.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s amazing.
Lewis Howes:
I don’t know. I’ve never felt this pain since then. This was about two years ago. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know where that … It was an emotional pain trapped somewhere in my chest. Then, I felt free. So, it was five months of training and coaching and then practicing stuff and then integrating it, and then feeling my nervous system flare up in certain scenarios, and then breathing through it and practicing again until finally, I was in coherence with my higher self.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I mean, you had to rewrite your software code, and it’s really hard to do.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly, and it took time.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
So, there wasn’t like this healing thing overnight in one moment. It happened in a moment after a lot of connecting the dots, and then I keep processing and integrating it because it is a journey. I think healing is a journey. So, that’s been a big thing for me over the last couple years.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I think it’s such a powerful story because so many of us struggle with childhood trauma, whether it’s big trauma with a big T or a little trauma with small T, or it’s neglect or just not being loved the way we needed, or whether it’s actual physical or sexual emotional abuse. We all have something. Some people can have really horrible physical things happen, and they seem to manage, and they don’t make the meaning out of it. Others can have what you think would be relatively benign childhood experience. Maybe their parents just weren’t that attentive, and they can be highly traumatized.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
They’ll have severe mental illness from it and-
Lewis Howes:
Whatever the meaning we give it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, Viktor Frankl, you were mentioning before. You said between stimulus and response, there’s a pause, meaning between something that happens to us and how we react to it, there’s a pause. In that pause lies a choice. In that choice lies your freedom. I think that’s a very powerful idea that is not about not recognizing what happened to you or minimizing things that are going on, but realize that you basically determine the quality of your experience by your beliefs and by the meaning you make of things and-
Lewis Howes:
Right. Do you want to be free, or do you want to hold onto it and be blocked?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. Then, we make all kinds of justifications because then we get to blame other people. We get to be the victim. We get to not have to change things. We get to not look at ourselves, but what you did was super courageous. It’s inspiring because you have been through a lot. Those traumas that you had when you were younger that you’ve talked about, incest and other things are actually really tough to deal with. I was also a victim of incest, and it’s crazy.
Lewis Howes:
It messes with your brain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It messes with your brain and how you look at the world, but what you mapped out in your book, The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today, which is out now … Everybody needs to get a copy right now. Pause this podcast. Get your copy. It’s such a powerful story of how someone who’s even very successful could have things that were unsolved and that you can actually start to heal those things and change the way you’re thinking about things because we have a thinking problem and a feeling problem. We don’t have a map to sort of work through those things. Your book is an incredible map of how these-
Lewis Howes:
Thank you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… things can be healed and developed in ways that change our mindsets from somebody who’s really stuck and unhappy versus someone who’s having the life that they want.
Lewis Howes:
Thank you. Yeah. For me, I wrote this for myself 10 years ago. I wrote this for myself when I was 21 in transition and confused and not sure about, why am I feeling this way? Why do I have so much pain? Why do I feel trapped? Why do I feel emotionally stagnant? Why am I reactive so much? Why do I feel so hurt? Why do I keep abandoning myself? Why do people not understand me? All these emotions that I had, I wish I had the map now that I created for my younger self.
Now, I have the guide for me 10 years from now when I’m in a new transition, in a new season of life and I’m going through certain changes. So, that’s what I really wanted because I think a lot of people don’t have a clear, meaningful mission for their life. This is step one. If we are not clear in one sentence what this season’s mission is in a meaningful way, I just think we’ll have more stress and overwhelm than we need. We’re going to face challenges and adversity, but if we don’t know exactly where we’re heading, we’ll never get there. So, step one for me is identifying, are we in a powerless mindset or a greatness mindset? If we’re in a powerless mindset, how do we move there as fast as possible to greatness? Step one is defining a meaningful mission.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So, it’s so important. It reminds me of a quote from Marianne Williamson, Our Greatest Fear, right, and most of us don’t lean into our light. We kind of lean on our darkness because it’s comfortable, it’s familiar. We know how to navigate. We kind of are afraid of actually the greatness that we could have. Your School of Greatness, your podcast about greatness, your book, The Greatness Mindset is such a beautiful bookmark and a way that points to how we can actually embrace that greatness. She says, “Our greatest fear is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
So, I think … and she goes on to say, “It’s not our light. It’s our light, not our darkness that most frighten us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
“Who are you not to be that? You’re playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We’re born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some us. It’s in everyone.”
Lewis Howes:
Yeah. I love this. The reason I love what Marianne says there is because the challenge is most people live either a good life or a bad life, but both of those are hard to break through into greatness because when you have a good life, when you’ve got a good family, you’ve got kids, you’ve got a good job, you’ve got things that are good, you get comfortable and familiar like you said. It’s hard to break through from comfort and familiarity. People with struggling relationships call it bad, right? They’re still familiar with the bad, and so they stay in the bad. It’s really-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Oh, I do that.
Lewis Howes:
Right? Because you’re … So, some people will stay decades in a relationship or decades in a career that is bad, and they don’t find joy in it, but they stay because it’s familiar, and it’s not bad enough yet. Most people are-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I call it any peace syndrome, not enough pain.
Lewis Howes:
Not enough pain, right? Most people-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
People don’t change because they have any peace syndrome.
Lewis Howes:
Most people are not willing to strive for that next step of greatness because it’s familiar and comfortable even if it’s good or bad. Very few do, but it’s hard to say, “I want to take a look. I want to go deeper. I want to work on myself.” It’s just a challenge, but a lot of times, it takes some type of extreme pain for us to want to open up and say I need to make a change.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. It does, unfortunately, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
Lewis Howes:
It doesn’t have to.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It really doesn’t. I think if we all took a moment to look at ourselves and go, where are the places where we are unhappy, where we don’t tell anybody what we actually feel, where we doubt ourselves, where we lack self-love, where we feel insecure, where we’re worried about what other people’s thoughts are about us and our place in the world. I mean, it’s so easy to be knocked off-center of who you are by all this unconscious subtext of what’s going on in our head and our inner dialogue. You see the real difference in the mindset between someone who’s stuck like that and someone who’s achieving what they want and are leaning into their greatness. Can you talk about the differences in the mindset?
Lewis Howes:
Yes. There’s a whole page I give on 201 of the book where I give this framework between powerless mindset and the greatness mindset. So, if you feel like you’re not accomplishing exactly what you want or you’re not on the path, because my mission is big and I know it’s going to take time, but if you’re not feeling fulfilled internally, if you don’t feel peaceful, if you don’t feel in harmony and alignment with what you’re doing, then that means you’re more in the powerless mindset versus greatness mindset.
The powerless mindset includes you lacking a meaningful mission. So, you’re not clear in one sentence, what is the season of life and what am I doing? What’s the direction I’m going? So, you lack that meaningful mission. So, I’d ask yourself in one sentence, are you clear on what you’re doing for this year or these five years or your season of life? It doesn’t need to be curing cancer or changing the world. Just what is it for you?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
What is this season for you? It could be an exploratory season. Okay, at least, you know that you’re exploring. It could be I’m trying to graduate from school. Okay. That’s your mission right now until the next season. So, just being very clear. A powerless mindset is being controlled by fear. When we have a number of fears that hold us back from acting courageously, it keeps us feeling powerless and a victim like you talked about. So, being controlled by fear, crippled by self-doubt, conceals past pains. This is a part of the mindset-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m good. I’m fine. Everything’s good. Life is great.
Lewis Howes:
This is a part of mindset … There’s over 20,000 books on success and mindset. Most of them don’t talk about the pain of your past. They don’t talk about healing past pain. They talk about here are the seven strategies to be more successful and have a growth mindset. Yes, but I feel like you can’t just layer on top of pain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You can’t.
Lewis Howes:
At some point, it’s going to topple over. So, conceals past pains, defined by the opinions of others is a powerless mindset and drifts towards complacency. So, when we first need to be aware of, am I living in any of these spaces, there’s no good or bad or wrong here. It’s just let me be aware of it and see, is this supporting me? Is this serving me, and is is this serving the people around me?
When we are aware of it, we can start to make a new decision and commitment towards stepping into the greatness mindset. The greatness mindset includes that you are driven by a meaningful mission, driven by that, not by fear, not by what everyone else is doing but by your mission. No Olympic gold medalist did it by accident.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
They had a mission. [inaudible 00:24:55].
Lewis Howes:
No world champion said, “Oh, I’m just going to show up and do this by accident.” They were clear on their mission, and they lived accordingly. They turned fear into confidence. I have an example in the book where I talk about creating a fear list. I did this in my early 20s. I was afraid of a lot of things, but I was scared to even admit it to other people.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You were afraid of letting know people you’re afraid.
Lewis Howes:
Because that was fear of judgment. I didn’t want to be looked as weak.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right. Right. By the way, those who know what Lewis looks like, he’s like six foot five, looks like a brick wall. You wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
He’s a sweet guy.
Lewis Howes:
But you turn fear into confidence by making a fear list. You write down a list of your fears, and you start going all in on them. This is scary. It’s uncomfortable. It’s hard. I was afraid a lot of things, but I started going all in on them, and it turned into confidence. It turned into a power of mine because I overcame it. You overcome self-doubt as well. So, you figure out what those insecurities are. You don’t live in insecurity. This is the greatness mindset. You heal past pains. That’s the greatness mindset because you’re not driven by pain anymore. You’re driven by purpose and mission and love and abundance and solving problems.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s huge. Not driven by pain but by purpose.
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s a very big idea because so much of the suffering in this world is because people are unconsciously driven by their fear and their pain, and it blocks them from actually getting what they want.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly. The part of it is you can be driven by a purpose to solve problems in the world. The problem could be the pain you once experienced. You want to make sure that others don’t experience that pain. I can talk about that in a second, but you create a healthy identity. Something you talked about in the first three minutes of this show is if people heard the things we said about ourselves or if we said these things to other people out loud the way we speak to ourselves at times, they would put you in a hospital. They would call you crazy. They’d be like, “Something is really off,” and they would medicate you for those conversations. They would cancel you online if you said these things.
All these things wouldn’t work, but we continue to say critical things to ourselves and put ourselves down and degrade ourselves, which is a unhealthy identity. So, we need to create a healthy identity. Then, they take action with a game plan. This is the greatness mindset versus the powerless mindset. When we can first be aware of which mindset am I in more frequently, again, no right or wrong, good or bad, no judgment, but how is a powerless mindset working for you? How is concealing these things working for you? How is being crippled by fear and doubt working for you? It might have some benefits, but there’s still a lack of something inside of you. So, this takes courage to step into greatness mindset frequently, but that’s the decision we need to make.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think that’s true. I always say disease is often the body’s best attempt to deal with a bad set of circumstances. Our kind of distorted thinking is often because we needed to do that in order to deal with a really bad-
Lewis Howes:
Protect ourselves from moments. Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… circumstance. Right. Then, the question’s, how do you rewrite that? Because it’s one thing to say, don’t have self-doubt, love yourself, believe in yourself, have a mission. It’s hard to get from here to there.
Lewis Howes:
Very challenging.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, you mentioned a few of the ways you did it through coaching, through journaling, through meditation. There’s a lot of practices, and I think you go through them in detail on the book about how do you break that cycle.
Lewis Howes:
I don’t think you can do anything hard on your own. I just think it takes support, enlisting support, and finding whatever modality works for you. I tried a lot of them because I felt like I was really messed up and needed the support. I continue to have an emotional coach every couple of weeks to support me to maintain peace, to prepare for future challenges that might arise so that I’m ready for these things.
I’m a big fan of emotional coaching or therapy, but there are a lot of different strategies you can do, but for me, it’s having somewhere you can have accountability, you can process it in a safe space, and you can have a game plan for actually taking action to integrate the lessons and healing, not just reflecting by itself but taking action to practice the healing journey. That’s what it’s about.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. What struck me about what you said is that there was a somatic piece to this.
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was not just in your head.
Lewis Howes:
Full body experience.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was a full body like-
Lewis Howes:
Full body.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No way you can think your way out of it.
Lewis Howes:
You can’t think your way out of these things. Now, it was five months of full body exercises, experiences, catharsis, all these different things and then a moment when she was speaking to me, my coach, where it finally clicked intellectually in the body. It finally, okay, it makes sense, and I feel it at the same time. That’s when the ball of pain disintegrated throughout my body. I was like, something just happened, but it wasn’t for me sitting here and just taking notes and analyzing my stuff. It was experiencing it. She put me through exercises. She put me through processes. She put me through reflections. She put me through going out into the world and trying things and calling back on it and saying, “This is what I experienced, what I learned, and here’s the benefit and the problems that came from it.”
It was facing the most uncomfortable parts of myself, the most uncomfortable parts of my fears in relationships in the present and acting on it as a peaceful man even when I was under stress. It was facing these things. It was not running away or hiding from these things. That was the hardest thing to do, but the more I did it week after week for months, that’s when things started to unlock.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it does. It totally takes months or years of really unpacking and doing the work and exploring different modalities. For me, it was very, very interesting. Very similar. I had this driving kind of desire to know why I felt this sense of emptiness or lack and why-
Lewis Howes:
Really? After all the York Time bestsellers, after all the success?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It doesn’t matter.
Lewis Howes:
After all the credibility, after all the podcasts, everything.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, believe it or not. Believe it or not. Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
So, you still had that.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I had this sense of emptiness, and it was really more round love. It wasn’t so much in success in the world. It was really this just sense of lack or emptiness or some hole I need to fill. It drove me crazy to try to figure out what is driving that, what was the original cause of that, and how do I heal that? It took a long time to unpack it, but once I kind of unpacked my parents’ relationship, my mother’s relationship with her parents, because she was a hearing girl in a deaf family like the movie Coda-
Lewis Howes:
Wow, that’s … yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… and was the parent to them.
Lewis Howes:
As a …
Dr. Mark Hyman:
As a daughter.
Lewis Howes:
That’s tough.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
They call it a parentified child and-
Lewis Howes:
That’s traumatic.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, for her. Then, she did similar thing to me, being very depressed and using me as her therapist, and that then-
Lewis Howes:
She repeated the pattern.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So, I was taking care of her.
Lewis Howes:
Oh, that’s probably what got you into medicine and [inaudible 00:31:53].
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. For sure, there was some definitely side effects that were not bad, but I think it was intellectually something I knew, but until I started to actually feel it on my physical body to go through this real catharsis and just get it, it was like a big shot in the head and a shot in the body to break that cycle. Like you were saying, it’s different for everybody to get there. Sometimes, it’s doing medicine journeys. Sometimes, it’s meditation retreats. Sometimes, it’s coaching. Sometimes, it’s all the above, right?
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think one of the things that’s really exciting about your book, The Greatness Mindset, is you really help map out how we get into trouble, why this happens, and how to rewrite that.
Lewis Howes:
Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, how does someone who’s from perspective of what you’ve learned and what you’ve read about, how do you reshape their beliefs and their meaning they make and their identity if they’re-
Lewis Howes:
Yeah, it’s interesting. I interviewed a brain surgeon and a PhD in neuroscience, Dr. Rahul Jandial. I’m not sure if you’ve met him yet. Done over a thousand brain surgeries but also a PhD in neuroscience, so studying the mind. The mind and the brain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
The mind and the brain. Yeah. They’re not the same.
Lewis Howes:
I said after a thousand brain surgeries and all this work of understanding the mind, what is the greatest skill you think human beings need to learn? It’s interesting. He said emotional regulation.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Lewis Howes:
So, he studies the brain and the mind, but the emotions tied to the way we think-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Wow.
Lewis Howes:
… hold us back. If we can understand how to navigate the emotions … So, the greatness mindset really doesn’t work until we start to navigate our heart as well and connect the emotions that we have in our heart to our mind, to our mindset, and putting them in alignment and harmony. So, we can think one way, but if we don’t feel in alignment, it’s not going to work, so creating a-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Thinking and feeling and doing all.
Lewis Howes:
They need to be in harmony. If you’re constantly in the past, living in a belief or having a story about something in the past, you’re going to be disconnected and you’re going to be out of harmony and out of alignment somewhere. You’re thinking, “I’m smart on this. I can do it, but then I don’t feel like I can.” So, we must create harmony with both thinking and feeling. We must learn to heal the heart first.
For me, the greatness mindset is about healing first and then unlocking what you can step into. It’s not just thinking I’m great or these things but healing the wound that causes you to feel out of alignment with your thoughts. One of the things that I-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right, which is what we’re just talking about.
Lewis Howes:
Yeah. One of the things I learned about 10 years ago in one of these kind of workshop experiences that I took allowed me to create a new identity with myself. Before, I had the belief that I was dumb, that I was reactive and angry. That’s how I was showing up in the world. I just felt like reactive, angry, and I didn’t feel like I was smart. That was the identity that I continued to say to myself and reinforce.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Even though the world didn’t see you that way.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly, right? I created an experience in one of these workshops that allowed me to go through the healing journey. This workshop allowed me to open up about sexual abuse for the first time and create a new healthy identity. What I did from this workshop was I created a new contract with myself, a new contract around my identity that I wanted to step into. It wasn’t where I was at the moment. It wasn’t what I would’ve been living in the past, but it’s what I wanted to step into, and it is what I was becoming on a daily basis. So, instead of being angry and resentful and not forgiving and stupid, which is what I was believing my identity was, I said I’m a loving, passionate, wise man.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s a good one.
Lewis Howes:
I didn’t fully experience it yet, so there wasn’t evidence proving it internally yet, but I said I am a loving, passionate, wise man. I started to live into that on a consistent basis. When I felt like I’m being angry, I’m going to live into this new identity, and I’m going to start showing up as if and embracing it fully. Now, I don’t feel like I’m stupid or angry or resentful or these things. It took time, but I started to show up as a loving, passionate, wise man and started to create a new healthy identity. Any time my thinking would say, “Ah, there’s a lot of smart people in this room. I don’t know if you really belong here. You didn’t do well in school. You think people are going to listen to you?” I shifted it and said, “Yeah, but I’m very wise. I have wisdom in other ways. So, I’m going to step into this belief, this identity, which I truly own.” I felt like I have great street smarts. I feel like I’m great in relationship, understanding people, which is a different type of intelligence.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
A much more important kind.
Lewis Howes:
Right, but before, because I did so poorly in school and always needed tutors until I graduated, I thought I was stupid, and people would make fun of me because I couldn’t do well in school. So, I had this identity. It was unhealthy, and I started saying I’m loving, I’m passionate, I am wise. I would lean into that identity, and it would allow me to make a bigger impact.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, you basically kind of changed your thoughts. I mean, the power of positive affirmation, I think, is real but-
Lewis Howes:
You got to heal first.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. How-
Lewis Howes:
I think you got to heal first.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. You can’t just kind of talk yourself into being great. You have-
Lewis Howes:
No, because you still won’t believe it if the feeling is about doubt, if you’re doubting the belief. So, you need to really be on the healing journey and whatever it is that’s holding you back because if your emotions are still going to be reactive and triggered if someone’s cutting you off in the street or whatever or if you feel like someone’s abusing you or abandoning you or whatever, or if you’re abandoning yourself, then this new identity is not going to work fully.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
It might help you in some ways, but then it’s still not going to feel enough. So, we must get to a place of I am enough as I am, and I’m still in a process of growing and improving. Not saying I’m complacent and I’m not going to work on myself, but I’m enough where I am. I accept everything from my past up until now. I maybe don’t like it. I maybe regret certain things or I wish I didn’t do certain things, or I wish certain things didn’t happen to me, but if I can’t accept it, then it’s going to hold me back. So, I must learn to accept, to forgive, to take responsibility for things, whatever it is, and own the past so that I can move forward in peace.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was like to rewrite your belief history.
Lewis Howes:
Yes, you got to rewrite it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Your belief history. You can’t rewrite your history, but you can rewrite the beliefs that you formed out of the experiences you had that led to having maybe time and adaptive response to the situation where you’re in. It might not have been good, but it doesn’t serve you now. We just carry that forward with us in a way that limits us and prevents us from having a great life.
Lewis Howes:
One of the things that, you always hear people say hindsight’s 20/20, and there are probably instances that happened in your life 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago that weren’t fun to experience in the moment, but now, you can be like, “Gosh, if that didn’t happen, I wouldn’t be where I’m at now.” Right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh, for sure.
Lewis Howes:
There’s probably a number of things you can think of.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Everything.
Lewis Howes:
But maybe they felt like they’re these horrible experiences or drawn-out challenges or relationships or career, and it’s just like, why am I suffering through this? But then now, you’re like, oh, I know exactly. So, the concept I talk about in the book where people feel stuck or they feel like they’re just trapped in this feeling is to have future hindsight, is to look out-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Future hindsight.
Lewis Howes:
Future hindsight.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What’s that?
Lewis Howes:
So, I started thinking of this concept a few years, about four years ago as I was going through one of those periods of time where I was like, I do not want to be in this experience. I do not want to feel this. I feel like people are questioning me and judging me, and they’re not understanding me. I feel like there’s unfair things happening to me. I remember feeling really frustrated about four, four and a half years ago or so about what was happening in my life.
I remember talking to a few men who were probably 20 year my senior who gave me some wisdom. They’re like, “Listen, this is all going to pass one day. Think of it as a spiritual purging. You’re purging relationships that no longer are supportive to you. You’re purging your ego. You’re letting go of things that … an identity that you want everyone to like you. This is a healthy thing and just know it’s going to benefit you.”
I started saying … and they all said like, “Is there anything in the past that has been horrible that you’re so grateful now today you actually experienced?” I go, “Yes.” So, I was like, man, I need future hindsight. I need to see myself five, 10, 20 years from now and know that this is exactly what I needed for me to do something greater in the future, for me to have more-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So, whatever your experience you’re going through, however crappy it is right now, to reframe it in a way that-
Lewis Howes:
Reframe it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… as maybe the catalyst for something great in the future. Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly what you need and if you said this is the thing that is exactly going to set me up for my greatness, then you’d be more excited about it. It’s still not fun to be in pain or to experience people shaming you or questioning you or whatever it is or a breakup or a divorce. Those things aren’t fun and enjoyable, but if you can see the future and say your future self is going to benefit so greatly for the rest of your life because of this moment, you’ll look at it differently. You’ll give yourself a little bit more grace and peace, and you’ll see that there’s going to be beautiful things in the process.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, that’s such a beautiful way to think about future hindsight.
Lewis Howes:
Future hindsight.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So, you talk a little bit in the book about the kind of thoughts that you can start to cultivate to attract what you want in life and the dream that you have for yourself and your life. Can you talk about how we do that?
Lewis Howes:
Yeah. I think it all starts with gratitude. I think gratitude unlocks abundance. It unlocks love. It unlocks all the things that you want. Starts with gratitude for yourself, for everything that you’ve done to get here. Most of the times, we aren’t appreciating ourself and what we appreciate appreciates in value. So, if we are depreciating the hard work we’ve done, we depreciate in value. If we do that to others as well, they do as well. So, I’m a big fan of gratitude of self, gratitude of others, and acknowledgement. Acknowledgement is a tool that unlocks relationships, connections and opportunities.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Gratitude.
Lewis Howes:
Acknowledgement. Gratitude and acknowledgement. So, when I started getting into rooms, I don’t know, 14, 15 years ago in the business world and going to industry events and things like that, not having anything, no platform, no skills, no money, just a young guy trying to figure out life, entering in the business world, I would enter these rooms, and I would somehow get to the late night dinners with all the influencers or the industry leaders. Somehow, I’d be invited, and I would be there hanging out all night, learning from these masters at the time,. For me, I was like, man, these are some great leaders.
I would do a couple of things. I would listen intently and be extremely curious about their success. I would express my gratitude for being there. I’m like, “Hey, thank you guys so much. I’m so grateful to be here. Thanks for inviting me and including me.” I would acknowledge them. What I saw was possible in them. This is when I was like 15 years ago, and I still do this today. At the end of every interview, I acknowledge my guests for what I see in them. You don’t have to be smarter than people or more skilled or have credentials.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
People want to be seen.
Lewis Howes:
They want to be seen. Gratitude unlocks abundance. Acknowledgement and appreciation appreciates in value. So, when we appreciate ourselves-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, it’s an asset that you invest in that actually grows in worth.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly. If you do it towards your thinking or your efforts, your habits, your emotions, and you do it towards others’ thinking efforts, habits, and emotions, it just creates a better bond in life. It creates more fulfillment, more peace, more love.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s such a simple fricking thing to acknowledge somebody-
Lewis Howes:
Simple.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… to call out what’s good in them, what you see in them. They don’t even see themselves. You start to shift their way of seeing themselves and their wellbeing.
Lewis Howes:
That’s it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It creates such a positive feedback loop.
Lewis Howes:
Most people never heard what they wanted to hear from their parents. They never heard, “I’m proud of you,” consistently, or they worked so hard just to get it a couple times a year on their birthday or Christmas. Most of us craved that as kids, and then we crave it as adults. For whatever reason, human beings lack the courage to look someone in the eyes and say, “I appreciate you. I acknowledge you for this gift, for how you show up consistently. I acknowledge you for your efforts here.”
When we have the courage and learn how to do that effectively, it’s an art. You don’t want to make sure you’re doing it as a sleazy way to get something, but if you do it generously from a place of appreciation, gratitude, love, and peace, true honesty, it just unlocks different things inside of you and the other person. So, it’s not about … Again, success is, for me, success is selfish. It’s not good or bad, right or wrong, but it’s, for me, to accomplish success, it’s me winning, it’s me making money, it’s me getting the goal, it’s me having the credibility or whatever it might be, but greatness is about accomplishing your goals and also being in service to the people around you and lifting them up as well. It’s impacting people with your journey to success and making sure they’re feeling seen, heard and acknowledged also and appreciated. It’s a beautiful journey when we can think and feel in this way differently through gratitude, appreciation, and acknowledgement.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. Really, these are such simple things, and you know what? They’re free.
Lewis Howes:
Free, free. You don’t need a master’s or a PhD. You do need it in human psychology, I guess, and understanding your own emotions.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s powerful. I was thinking about a range of people out there. Those people who just are doing pretty good but just have a little bit stuff to work through and those people who have really severe mental illness and personality disorders and severe attachment issues and depression and addiction and trauma.
Lewis Howes:
It’s really hard to experience depression when you’re grateful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
It’s hard to be stressed out when you’re focusing on the thing that you’re most grateful for consistently. So, the more we can step into that, this is why I do this in the morning, in the evening, I focus on and practice gratitude not just for myself but with my part partner, Martha. I try to express it as frequently as I can when I’m around other people because usually, people are stressed and anxious or worried about their problems, but if you can get people out of that through saying, “What are you most grateful for?” On my voicemail, I’ve had this for a decade.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I love that.
Lewis Howes:
When someone calls me, I usually don’t pick up especially if I don’t know number. I’m more of a text guy now, but when someone calls me and if I don’t pick up, they get a voicemail from me that says, “Thanks for calling. This is Lewis Howes, if you want a response, let me know what you’re grateful for today.” I’ve had that for a decade.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Amazing.
Lewis Howes:
I always get the most amazing voicemails because people are like, “Wow, thank you so much for that question and asking me. I’m so grateful for this, this, and this.” When people speak with gratitude, it’s hard to think about problems or stress or depression. It doesn’t mean you still don’t have challenges to face-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Sure, sure.
Lewis Howes:
… but it unlocks your heart into a peaceful flow and energetic state of abundance.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Lewis Howes:
Gratitude is that key to support you. So is appreciation and acknowledgement.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. That’s all true. I think it’s just changing our thinking is hard, but I was sort of doing research around dealing with really tough mental illness, and this attachment theory is just fascinating because it talks about how to heal it in a way, a very similar way that you’re talking about is, how do we re-parent ourselves? Because you basically said, we want to hear what our parents never said to us.
Lewis Howes:
Exactly. Then, he beat ourselves up that we’re not getting it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
One of the strategies in the healing modalities that my coach gave me, Clara, she’s amazing, she had me put a photo of my five-year-old self on my screensaver. So, I had this photo on my phone for like, I don’t know, six months as I was really doing the intense work. I was going back to the really the first painful memories. I got to a place where I was re-parenting myself as an adult to that psychological wound.
It was a beautiful … and it’s kind of weird to talk about it maybe on this type of a podcast, but it was a beautiful experience to re-parent and actually imagine my five-year-old self standing in front of me and saying what I needed to hear back then now-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s so important.
Lewis Howes:
… and giving myself an emotional hug and imagining what that would feel like and mending that and marrying those two beliefs. So, yeah. It’s all a journey.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. I mean, and what’s really striking is that when you’re talking about it are ways that we can heal a lot of these things through simple practices, but no matter where you are on the state of your mental health, your anxiety, depression, trauma, there’s ways to actually work through this.
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Re-parenting yourself is key and their methodology if you do this, getting your thinking straight, which is a lot of what you’re talking about, mindset. They talk about attachment theory, creating new metacognitive skills that allow us to look at our beliefs and attitudes in a different way and change that. Then, there’s other part, which is really interesting, which is how do we learn how to work with others through verbal and non-verbal behavior in a collaborative way? Because a lot of people with trauma, they are not very good in personal dynamics or relationships.
Lewis Howes:
No, they’re awkward, or they’re afraid to go out or whatever it might be.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. So, it’s exciting that we now have the language and the roadmap to actually not heal these things. It’s not just about how to win friends and influence people and how to make a million dollars and all these different things. That can be fine, but I think you really are talking about a much different kind of greatness.
Lewis Howes:
A hundred percent.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Inner greatness.
Lewis Howes:
Inner greatness. There’s a lot of people that you know who’ve made billions of dollars who still aren’t fulfilled.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Oh my god. Two of the most unhappy people I ever met were two of the richest guys in the world so-
Lewis Howes:
So, what is the game then? The game is the emotions, the thoughts and emotions that create meaning to the success we have. If we can’t figure out the game of marrying those two thoughts and emotions together, it doesn’t matter how successful we are, we still aren’t great. We’re not great unless we feel great. Everyone else can think we are, but if we don’t feel it, then what’s the point? I just think it’s interesting when you were talking about the attachment styles and attachment theory and everything like that. There’s another book called The Body Keeps the Score, right?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. The Body Keeps the Score. Yeah.
Lewis Howes:
It’s all these emotions are trapped in the body, and we’ve got to release the emotion to the physical pain or the physical trauma or whatever happened. We’ve got to learn to release that emotionally, psychologically, both combined. Otherwise, it’s going to keep traumatizing us. We can be driven by this fuel of pain, fear, and trauma, which a lot of us do to go get the degrees or the sports championships or the money or whatever it might be. We can be driven-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Or get addicted or-
Lewis Howes:
All these things. We can driven by that, but usually, we need an addiction to numb the pain that we’re still feeling inside. If we just heal the wound, the emotional wound, we don’t need the addictions, or we can minimize those things because we know how to self-soothe. We know how to re-parent the emotional wound. I think that is the whole game of the greatness mindset.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It’s such an important book at this time because there’s just so much unhappiness, so much mental illness, so much loss of direction, lack ability to kind of live lives that are fulfilled and that are meaningful.
Lewis Howes:
Meaningful, full and peaceful.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
As I was researching my book Young Forever, it was really shocking to find out that literally having meaning and purpose in your life is-
Lewis Howes:
It’s like the number one factor almost for most people.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Pretty much. It’s more years of life extension by having meaning and purpose than if we eliminated cancer and heart disease from the face of the planet.
Lewis Howes:
Crazy, right? It’s like purpose and community.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. That’s so true. I think you talk about some of the challenges to getting to greatness and the enemies of greatness. What are those?
Lewis Howes:
Yeah, I feel like these three fears hold us back. Again, I believe self-doubt is the killer of dream. So, the fear of failure, the fear of success, and the fear of judgment, other people’s opinions. When we can figure out which one is holding us back the most, those enemies hold us back from acting courageously. At the root of each one of those three fears, failure, success and judgment is I’m not enough. I’m not good enough, worthy enough, smart enough, intelligent enough, whatever it is enough.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Good looking enough, whatever.
Lewis Howes:
Good looking enough. All these things.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Right.
Lewis Howes:
Therefore, if I’m not enough, then I cannot take action courageously because I’ll never be enough. So, we must learn to rewrite the story of why we believe we’re not enough in those areas within those three fears. When we can start acting courageously, it’s all about mending. It’s all about creating new meaning, mending, rewriting these stories. When we can do that, then those enemies don’t hold us back. So, for me, I wasn’t afraid of failure and I wasn’t afraid of success, but I was people-pleasing, and I would abandon who I was, my values and my vision to make someone like me.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What would be an example of that?
Lewis Howes:
Usually, intimate relationships.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
What would be an example of how you would do that?
Lewis Howes:
If someone would get mad at me for working late or going on a trip for a business trip or just not doing something that they wanted me to do-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, not being who they wanted you to be.
Lewis Howes:
They wanted me to be. Yeah. I forgot to do this thing, or I didn’t do that thing, and they had an expectation that I did not meet. When they would get upset at a missed expectation that was not communicated, not like I did something horrible, but they just thought I was going to do something and I didn’t do it, and when they would react in whatever way, screaming, silent treatments, name-calling, whatever was.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Fun stuff.
Lewis Howes:
All this stuff. I would abandon myself to make them happy. I would do whatever I could to create peace, but you cannot buy peace. You must be peace. So, I would abandon who I was, my value, my vision to make sure that one person was happy, but no matter what I would do-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It didn’t work.
Lewis Howes:
… they would never be happy. I would do it, and then they’d find something else and something else and something else. So, it would come to a point … I don’t blame any of these previous partners. I take responsibility for staying because I lacked the courage to leave. I lacked the courage to say this doesn’t work for me, so I would just abandon myself.
So, there was the fear of judgment where I’m not enough, the root cause of that one fear, the enemy of greatness that caused me to really be less than in relationships, to drain my energy, to be on eggshells, to be worried. It would bleed into the rest of my life. It would bleed into my mission. It would bleed into my health and all these other things because of that one enemy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You weren’t being authentic with yourself.
Lewis Howes:
I wasn’t being authentic with myself. I would repeat this partner after partner after partner, thinking it was the partner but really-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Me too.
Lewis Howes:
… but really, after all these relationships for 15 years, I was like, well, I guess, all right. It takes me a long time to learn sometimes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I’m the common denominator.
Lewis Howes:
I’m the common denominator.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Don’t worry, Lewis. I’ve been married, divorced three times. It took me 40 years to figure it out. You’re good.
Lewis Howes:
Right. It took me a long time to learn sometimes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
You only took 15. You’re way ahead of me.
Lewis Howes:
I realized, okay, it wasn’t a fear of success or failure, these other enemies that people have. It was a fear of intimate love, them not accepting me, but really, I wasn’t accepting myself. I wasn’t fully accepting who I was and therefore, I was trying to get the approval of someone that I was in a relationship with. That is a losing game that only sucks the energy and the life out of you. This is what caused me a lot of pain. I literally felt a ball of pain in my chest and then like a tightness in my throat coming and going throughout 15 Years. Any time I was single, I felt peace and freedom. So, I had this belief that, oh, when you’re in a relationship, you’re trapped. You’re going to experience pain.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
No, you shouldn’t be like that.
Lewis Howes:
My parents … It’s all stemming from the model that I had meaning around with my parents and having to rewrite a new story around that. So, this was my enemy of greatness that it’s took me the longest to overcome. Again, it’s always going to be a journey of healing in your life.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Now, in that same situation, when someone is unhappy with your behavior, how do you respond differently?
Lewis Howes:
Well, now, I have tools, and I have … My nervous system is at peace. So, if someone’s … Let’s say … Martha’s never done this, but let’s say my girlfriend Martha was to scream at me or yell at me or, which she’s never done or give me the silent treatment or not talk to me for a day, which has happened all the time in my past, which would cause me a lot of stress and just want to fix it, if something like that happened with anyone in my life, I would just sit with it and notice it. I would reflect on it and be like, “Okay, that’s interesting that they’re acting this way,” and I would try to find a resolution with them and say, hey, that wasn’t my intention, or I’m sorry, or I didn’t mean to make you feel this way, but I’m not going to go out of my way to solve the problem so quickly. I’m going to have conscious communication.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Just curious about it.
Lewis Howes:
I’m going to have conscious communication and say, “All right, I hear you’re upset, or I hear you had an expectation. I’m sorry you feel that way. Let’s talk about it. Let’s address this,” and doing it from a place of peace, knowing that I don’t want to ruin any relationships in my life. I don’t want to have anyone leave my life, but I’m willing to walk away from a relationship if they’re asking me to be out of alignment with who I am.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That’s really important.
Lewis Howes:
I’ve never had the courage to not be liked before the last couple years. Now, it’s a practice of just being like, okay, if they don’t like me, that’s okay. I don’t need to get them to like me. I don’t need to justify something. I don’t need to please them overly and go out of my way to make sure they feel whatever by me. It’s being at peace, knowing that I am good with me. I love my company. I have my core friends. I don’t need everyone to like me, and I’m okay with that, but it took me a long time.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, it’s true.
Lewis Howes:
I don’t know if you ever experienced that type of like-
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Totally.
Lewis Howes:
… I want to please everyone.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Totally. That was one of my-
Lewis Howes:
What if he’s upset with me? Let me me fix this.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
That was totally my MO. People-pleaser. I was just the worst because it was a survival mechanism in my childhood that I had-
Lewis Howes:
Me too.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… had to deal with a very chaotic, unstable, unsafe scary environment.
Lewis Howes:
At home.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It was unpredictable.
Lewis Howes:
Yes.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
So, I learned to try to make everything okay and not … or hide in my room.
Lewis Howes:
Right.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I think that-
Lewis Howes:
That worked then, but it doesn’t work as an adult.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, no, it really was a drag. It caused me to be [inaudible 01:00:24] with myself, to be-
Lewis Howes:
Suffer internally.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah, betraying my own needs and wants and desires. It was really a form of self-betrayal. To be able to come back in alignment and go, okay, well that’s enough. I’m just enough. I think, you talked about this, which I think it’s important to bring up. You talk about greatness and achievement and mission and purpose, but the truth is we don’t have to do anything to be enough-
Lewis Howes:
No, exactly.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… or to be great. We can just be.
Lewis Howes:
Absolutely.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Once you get to that where you don’t actually have to do or make or create or achieve anything-
Lewis Howes:
To accept and love yourself. Yeah.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… it’s just the coolest thing because then you just get to go on the ride on this crazy life that’s called being a human being.
Lewis Howes:
Well, then you can create and make something from a place of love and acceptance and peace as opposed to I’m not enough, so let me go feel enough by doing something. I’m not saying we should be complacent and just sit around all day and be lazy. It’s about creating a mission that’s meaningful for you. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing, but what’s the thing that’s going to light you up and others up around you, and doing it from a place of self-love and acceptance and wanting to improve along the way as opposed to, I don’t feel good enough, so let go write a number one New York Time Bestseller or do this business or date this person, so I’m going to feel like I’m worthy now.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
It ain’t coming from outside.
Lewis Howes:
No, it’s not. No.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
I just had a friend. I don’t know if you know him, Colin O’Brady. Do you know Colin?
Lewis Howes:
Of course. Yeah. He just did a darkness retreat.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Yeah. He is a guy who’s, in my podcast, who climbed every tallest peak on every continent in the shortest amount of time in history, who rode across Antarctica on a little rowboat to the ocean that was just like 40-foot seas. He skied unsupported across Antarctica.
Lewis Howes:
Yes, Antarctica as well. It’s crazy.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
He was the first man, person to do that. Listening to his experience of doing … because nothing, because those are all outward accomplishments, right? He literally went into a cave, darkness-
Lewis Howes:
This was like a week ago, right? I’ve seen it.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… for seven days of nothingness, like no podcast, no books, no light, no, nothing. He got to sit with himself.
Lewis Howes:
What was his takeaway?
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Coming out of that was this incredible sense of peace and enoughness and gratitude and things that you wouldn’t expect. I think the first bits were a little bit rough, and then he got to actually get into the bliss of what it was to just be enough and alive and be a human being. That’s really where greatness comes from. It’s not from all the things that we see on the outside.
Lewis Howes:
It’s like, okay, if you can create from that space of enoughness, then all the other accomplishments are amazing. It’s fun, and it’s fulfilling as opposed to I need to create more and more to make myself feel something. You already feel enough, and you’re doing it as an expression of enoughness.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Totally. Yeah. So great. Listen, this is such a great conversation. You’re really a brave man to talk about the things that no one wants to talk about in society and especially men. Women tend to talk more about their feelings. They talk about their history, their past-
Lewis Howes:
Sure, sure.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
… but to be a man in the society and create an example of someone who’s powerful but also vulnerable and real and authentic, and dealing with all the challenges that we all face and creating a roadmap for how to think about it through the lessons you’ve learned and all the things you’ve done, it’s really quite amazing, Lewis.
Lewis Howes:
Thank you.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Your book, The Greatness Mindset: Unlock the Power of Your Mind and Live Your Best Life Today is out now. It really is a must-have if you want to get your head straight and do whatever you want to do, whether it’s climb a mountain, sit on your porch and read a book and be happy, or build a company or have a great relationship. You’ve got to get your inside straight.
Lewis Howes:
Absolutely.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Your mindset is the key. I think you really have given us a gift with this book, The Greatness Mindset.
Lewis Howes:
Thank you, brother. Appreciate it very much. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Of course. So, if you love this podcast, please share it with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment. How have you gotten your head straight and fixed your mindset? What have you learned?
Lewis Howes:
That’s good.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Maybe we can learn from you.
Lewis Howes:
Yeah. Tag both me and Mark, so we can stay in touch and see who’s receiving this and who’s getting a lot of value out of this. We’d love to hear from you guys.
Dr. Mark Hyman:
Absolutely. Thank you so much, and we’ll see you next week on The Doctor’s Farmacy.
Closing:
Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week’s episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you’re looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you’re looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It’s important that you have someone in your corner who’s trained, who’s a licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes especially when it comes to your health.
