The Peter Attia Drive - #245 ‒ Overcoming trauma, finding inner peace, and living a meaningful and fulfilling life ｜ Lewis Howes

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

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00:00:41.740 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,

00:00:47.800 here's today's episode. My guest this week is Lewis house. Lewis is a New York times bestselling author

00:00:55.380 and entrepreneur and a former professional athlete. He's best known for his work as a

00:00:59.160 motivational speaker and host of the podcast, the school of greatness. Lewis is also the author of

00:01:04.960 several books, including the school of greatness and the mask of masculinity. His new book titled

00:01:10.560 the greatness mindset is out March 7th this year. In my conversation with Lewis, we really talk about

00:01:17.500 Lewis's story, the traumas he went through as a child, and ultimately the lessons he learned

00:01:22.100 throughout his life as he worked through those traumas to improve his emotional health.

00:01:27.340 Lewis's story is one that I think a lot of people will relate to. And while the details are obviously

00:01:32.560 unique to Lewis, just like the details are unique to all of our stories, I think some of the takeaways

00:01:38.100 are very common. For example, in Lewis's case, he endured a lot of hardship as a child, and in some

00:01:44.780 cases, many more hardships than a lot of people would endure. And he channeled that into a lot of

00:01:50.660 success, driven by inferiority and things like that. But what he figured out, and luckily figured

00:01:56.760 out early in life was that ultimately, these accolades and these pursuits of success left him

00:02:01.100 feeling unfulfilled. This podcast really talks about that journey. As many of you listening to this

00:02:07.060 podcast probably understand, I place just as much of an emphasis on emotional health as I do physical

00:02:12.000 health. And even though more of our podcasts talk about the physical side of health, cognition,

00:02:17.140 different diseases, physical robustness, etc. It doesn't mean that emotional health is any

00:02:22.360 less important. And I think Lewis's story is such an important one. I'm very grateful for how he's

00:02:28.420 able to open up in this episode. And I'm hopeful that any of you listening who have some unresolved

00:02:33.260 issues, this episode might provide the encouragement that you need to address those to reap some of the

00:02:39.840 benefits of improved emotional health. So without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Lewis

00:02:45.360 House. Lewis, man, thank you for making time to sit down. I feel lucky that I'm going to be one of the

00:02:56.580 sort of first people to get to talk with you on the heels of your book coming out because we're

00:03:00.660 recording this in January. Your book is coming out at the beginning of March. I know that you're going

00:03:06.440 to be talking to a lot of people. And I've been thinking about this as I read your book, given this

00:03:10.560 is the first time we're speaking, not the first time we're speaking, but the first time I have you on my

00:03:13.880 podcast to talk about it. I also want to talk about things that precede this book in particular.

00:03:18.340 And I could think of no better way to start talking about it than to really go kind of

00:03:21.780 more deeply into your story, because I think your personal story is what is at least the substrate for

00:03:27.980 three of your four books. I think your first book was really kind of about optimizing LinkedIn.

00:03:32.200 We'll probably not get too much into that, given that I don't use LinkedIn too much, but

00:03:36.500 it'll probably come up as part of the others. So remind me, you grew up in, was it Ohio?

00:03:42.100 Yeah. Small town in Ohio, near Columbus. But then I bounced around. When I was 13, I left home. I

00:03:48.420 went to a private boarding school in St. Louis, Missouri. I begged my family, my parents to send

00:03:53.700 me away for about two months in the summer, just because there was a lot of turmoil, inner turmoil

00:03:58.960 and my environment turmoil. And I begged them to send me away. They didn't want to send me away.

00:04:03.400 Most kids get sent away for being bad. I begged my parents to send me away.

00:04:07.760 Sort of funny. Our daughter is half joking. And she's in eighth grade saying,

00:04:12.100 wants to go to boarding school for high school. And I'm like, yeah, that's not going to happen.

00:04:16.820 We have the rest of our lives to be away from you. We're not going to do it during high school.

00:04:20.640 You're going to stay with us.

00:04:21.560 I hear you, Ben. It was actually like, it transformed my life though, because there was

00:04:25.360 so much discipline. There was so much organization. You had to wake up at 6 AM. It wasn't like a

00:04:30.100 military school, but there was definitely strict rules and guidelines. And that organizational

00:04:35.200 feel gave me structure when I felt like I didn't have structure in my life necessarily. So it was

00:04:41.040 extremely transformational. But if you want to keep your daughter home, then keep her home.

00:04:45.960 I think she might be wanting to go because she thinks they'll have less stringent rules about

00:04:50.660 phone time or something.

00:04:51.760 Yeah, right.

00:04:52.760 Remind me, do you have siblings?

00:04:54.540 I know you have a brother.

00:04:55.260 Three older siblings.

00:04:56.120 Three older?

00:04:56.600 Three older. I'm the youngest of four. Older brother, two older sisters.

00:05:00.440 Okay. What was the relative differences between ages there?

00:05:03.400 My brother is 11 and a half years older than me. And then it's kind of a three and a half,

00:05:07.020 four year gap between each one of us.

00:05:09.340 And so that probably means you didn't play with your brother much growing up.

00:05:12.120 No. I mean, when I was eight, he went to prison for four and a half years. So I have a few fond

00:05:19.280 memories from five years old till about eight before he went away of him being,

00:05:25.320 essentially like a hero of mine, an older, bigger older brother, an older teenager

00:05:29.320 who was very gifted and talented in a lot of different ways, extremely intelligent. He skipped

00:05:35.460 a couple of grades in school because he was so intelligent and gifted. And so he was kind of like

00:05:40.780 a hero of mine. And when I was eight, he went away to prison. He was sentenced six to 25 years.

00:05:45.980 This was for, he was caught selling LSD or some?

00:05:49.680 He sold LSD, a sheet of LSD to an undercover cop when he was like 18 in college. It was an

00:05:55.240 unfortunate event because back in the, I guess it's the early nineties, it was the war against

00:06:00.460 drugs in America. It was like, they were just cracking down on anything and giving extreme

00:06:06.000 cases in jail, jail time to make an example for others. And so he got six to 25 years and it was

00:06:14.740 kind of devastating. I didn't grow up knowing anyone that went to jail or going to prison. You know,

00:06:19.140 I grew up in a small town and it wasn't like there were bullets whizzing by my neighborhood

00:06:24.620 every day. So it wasn't like something I saw unless you saw it in the movies. And you see

00:06:29.160 that in the movies when you're a kid and you're like, oh, these are really bad people. These are

00:06:33.140 people that kill or rape or murder and all these different things. And I was like, that's not my

00:06:38.320 brother. You know, he didn't do those things. You know, he did something illegal at the time,

00:06:42.700 but he, he wasn't bad like that. So it was very confusing in a lot of ways, very traumatic for my

00:06:49.080 parents and my siblings. We had the opportunity to go visit essentially like once a week, there was

00:06:56.100 visiting hours, visiting room. And that was kind of interesting because I don't know many eight-year

00:07:02.300 olds that go to a prison every single weekend for, you know, three to four hours and sit in a room with

00:07:07.640 40 convicts and their families. So every week we would drive a couple hours to the prison

00:07:12.320 for essentially four years, it was a wake-up call on just different cultures, different

00:07:19.300 ethnicities, different backgrounds, different experiences. And it was also a wake-up call for

00:07:25.600 me because, you know, I had a lot of judgments from, I guess, movies and TV and things like that

00:07:31.580 about convicts. And I actually met a lot of them. You know, they were extremely friendly. They were kind.

00:07:37.940 You know, a lot of them were with their families, reading the Bible. They'd been in there for a long

00:07:41.900 time. And they'd transformed in a lot of ways. Not all of them, but the ones that I were meeting,

00:07:47.220 it felt like, man, these are actually good guys, at least the way it came across. It was a dark time

00:07:52.280 in a sense because our whole family was just like overwhelmed by the trauma of it, the shame and the

00:07:57.420 guilt. And I couldn't really have friends during that time. Being in a small town, everyone knew on

00:08:02.760 our neighborhood. And so none of the parents on my block wanted the kids to hang out with me.

00:08:07.100 So it was just kind of a confusing time for me because I felt lonely and insecure and

00:08:11.380 never really accepted myself. It was just a confusing time.

00:08:16.020 You know, it's interesting. You said you had judgments and stuff about, you know, what prison

00:08:19.420 was or wasn't like. I mean, that's actually kind of a remarkable insight because when I think about

00:08:23.240 what I did or didn't know when I was eight, I can't imagine it was much of anything. This strikes me

00:08:28.660 as a very complicated introduction of factors that, because again, I think there's also something you

00:08:34.780 don't understand when you're eight, which is there's a difference between doing something

00:08:38.740 wrong and breaking the law. Yeah.

00:08:41.000 You know, there are a lot of people who do things that are wrong and awful, but they're

00:08:44.880 not breaking the law. And as a result of that, there's no consequence, right? At least there's

00:08:48.900 no legal consequence. Similarly, there are a lot of things that are against the law that

00:08:54.020 are really not morally particularly wrong. And yet there's an enormous consequence that

00:08:59.020 requires a certain level of maturity that wouldn't be expected of an eight-year-old.

00:09:02.600 I just think it was like, you know, you hear stories about people in prison and on the news

00:09:08.080 and you just see that they did horrible things. And so I was like, oh, wow. Okay. My brother,

00:09:13.200 he committed a crime, but I don't feel like he's a bad guy. You know what I mean? He wasn't like

00:09:18.140 trying to hurt people intentionally. He was just trying to make money as a college kid. And someone

00:09:23.340 asked him for some weed or something. And he to like sell a little bit here and there on the side to

00:09:28.860 make some extra cash. And then they were like, oh, do you have LSD? He was like, no, but it was

00:09:32.860 all a part of a bigger thing to like get a bunch of guys to go to jail. So it was just kind of part

00:09:37.400 of a scheme, an undercover scheme. It was his first time and he had six to 25 years on his first offense.

00:09:44.800 Do you remember what the impact of that was on your parents?

00:09:48.200 Oh, it's devastating. It was devastating. Again, my dad was a pretty well-respected

00:09:53.520 life insurance salesman in the community. Again, a small town. He was a part of Rotary.

00:09:59.000 We had exchange students living with us since I was five. We had like seven different exchange

00:10:03.900 students live with us from around the world for six months at a time. He was trying to be a part

00:10:09.020 of the community with Rotary. He was giving back to the community. He knew everyone in the community.

00:10:13.260 He was like the life insurance guy in our small town. And so it was kind of devastating. I can imagine

00:10:19.780 the impact it had on him and his business and his reputation. I can imagine like the guilt and

00:10:24.900 shame that my parents had from asking themselves, you know, where did we go wrong? Did we do something

00:10:30.900 wrong where he strayed away? In some ways he was extremely gifted and talented. He was one of the

00:10:36.960 top violinists in the country under 17 in national competitions as classical violinist. He was a savant.

00:10:42.700 He was a prodigy. He was like second chair, first chair at 16 in the Columbus Symphony as a 16 year

00:10:49.360 old. He just did things with the violin classically that people couldn't do. He was a mutant in the

00:10:56.040 violin. And one of the crazy, you know, the beautiful lessons that came from this. And I think all these

00:11:01.680 different tragedies in our life or challenges and adversities, you know, hindsight is always 20-20

00:11:06.800 and sometimes it's hard to have future hindsight now. Now that I've had so many different challenges

00:11:12.060 in life and I see the meaning of them later, anytime I'm in an adversity now, I try to think about,

00:11:17.800 man, this is going to be so meaningful in my future and it's going to give me so much more power in my

00:11:22.080 future to serve others and more wisdom. When he went to prison, he got sent to a prison with these

00:11:28.060 special facility that had a prison band. And because he was so gifted in the violin, he got sent to a

00:11:34.680 specific prison that allowed this kind of curriculum. And it's kind of like a Hollywood movie in my mind

00:11:41.460 because he goes to jail. He joins the prison band. He's a classical violinist white kid from Ohio. And he

00:11:50.920 joins the band with everyone who's not white. He's the only white kid. They're all playing hip-hop and funk and 0.67

00:11:57.040 blues and rap and R&B and jazz. And they all teach him the culture of a different style of music for four

00:12:05.240 years. So he gets a masterclass from other inmates who are talented and play and sing with their heart

00:12:13.300 and their souls with so much musicality and passion from pain and trauma. And they pour their hearts out

00:12:21.620 in this band. And we got to go watch him actually a few times. It was so inspiring to watch prisoners,

00:12:27.620 inmates, inmates perform like they were free men. It was incredibly inspiring to witness every time.

00:12:35.600 And after he got out in four and a half years on good behavior, so he didn't have to serve the full

00:12:40.580 25. And he, in the last 20 plus years, has completely transformed his life, goes all over the country and

00:12:49.640 all over the world to perform and teach at schools. He was a professor at Berklee School of Music, one of the

00:12:55.800 most prestigious colleges in the world of music. He played with Les Paul for 10 years in Times Square.

00:13:02.360 He played at Les Paul's Funeral. This is like one of the icons of jazz and invented the electric guitar.

00:13:07.640 He, again, has transformed his life to be of service and find meaning from that experience. And he would

00:13:14.800 have never been the greatest jazz violinist in the world had he not gone through that four years of

00:13:21.120 challenging education of being an inmate in prison.

00:13:25.340 You mentioned a moment ago that from as young as when you were five, your parents and your family would have

00:13:31.600 exchange students. I know you wrote about this in, I believe, your second book. You had a really traumatic

00:13:37.700 event occur when you were five, something that remained a secret for at least 20 years.

00:13:43.800 25 years, yeah.

00:13:45.020 Was that related to someone that came as an exchange student or was that unrelated?

00:13:48.200 It was unrelated, yeah. When I was five, I was actually abused by a babysitter's son. He was

00:13:53.140 probably like 16 or 17. Both my parents were working and they'd work till five, six, seven or

00:13:58.520 whatever. Because when I was younger, they didn't really have the financial abundance until I got to

00:14:04.680 be like 16. My dad finally started to get commissions coming in that were more than just kind of scrapping

00:14:09.720 by month to month. So both my parents were working while they had four kids and they sent us to

00:14:14.240 babysitter's after school. And so that was an unfortunate event that for 25 years left me

00:14:21.620 feeling with a lot of pain, a lot of insecurity, a lot of shame. I didn't think this ever happened

00:14:27.000 to any other boy. I didn't know of any other boy. I'd never heard of a man that I watched on TV or an

00:14:33.160 athlete talking about sexual abuse growing up in the 80s and 90s. No one ever spoke about it. You heard

00:14:38.080 about it from women in some cases, but I never heard about it from a male perspective. And so I thought

00:14:43.780 I was for 25 years that I was the only one who'd been sexually abused in the world, essentially. I was

00:14:48.440 uneducated and unaware. And I was left with a lot of shame and self-doubt that caused me to put on and

00:14:56.680 project a certain personality type that I wasn't, an inauthenticity for me to protect myself. So I wore

00:15:04.860 many different masks to try to fit in, to feel accepted, to feel like I belonged in my peer group.

00:15:11.280 I remember just always kind of feeling like angry, triggered, reactive when I felt like I was being

00:15:19.600 taken advantage of or abused in life. Whether it was actually happening or not, when I felt like it was

00:15:24.920 happening, I was on the defenses. And in some ways that drove me to accomplish goals and generate some

00:15:33.460 success in sports and then eventually in business. But I remember I would have these big goals in

00:15:39.920 athletics. I wanted to be an all-American athlete. I was a two-sport all-American athlete. I wanted to

00:15:44.280 be a professional athlete. I made Arena Football League and was a pro athlete. I wanted to go to the

00:15:48.760 Olympics. And I was on the USA handball team for almost nine years. We never qualified, but I played

00:15:53.920 against a lot of Olympic teams. And I remember accomplishing all these sports goals and still not

00:16:00.420 feeling fulfilled and joyful and happy inside. It was kind of like, all right, I succeeded,

00:16:05.200 but I never felt like it was enough. So I needed to go bigger. I did the same thing in business for

00:16:09.720 many years. I would accomplish goals. I would make money. I would get the accolades and things like

00:16:15.500 that. And it still didn't feel like it was enough. And it wasn't until I was 30 years old, a decade ago

00:16:21.800 now. When I started to have multiple breakdowns in my life, I was driven and fueled to prove people

00:16:31.780 wrong, to look good, to win, and to get acknowledged and to be kind of the one standing on top. That's

00:16:40.600 what it was fueled by because I thought that would bring joy, peace, and fulfillment. And it just left me

00:16:46.520 feeling more and more angry and upset the more successful I got. And it wasn't until I was 30,

00:16:52.480 I had multiple, let's call it breakdowns in life and an intimate relationship, a business partnership.

00:16:58.460 And then I was also just kind of reactive in life. When I'd play sports, I got into a bad fight one

00:17:04.640 time on a basketball court. And kind of all these things came together at once where my best friend

00:17:10.400 said, I don't want to hang out with you anymore if you're going to keep reacting like this.

00:17:14.140 And this is a guy that I played college football with and knew for a decade at that time. He was

00:17:18.880 like, I don't like the way you're reacting. It's not fun anymore. What are you doing? Why are you

00:17:23.380 getting so triggered? And that was a big wake-up call where I thought I didn't need additional

00:17:31.380 coaching or support. I thought I kind of had all the answers at the time. I had a massive ego

00:17:36.520 thinking that, you know, what else can I learn? I'm in the personal development space. I've made money

00:17:42.180 in business. I feel like I've got the answers. People just need to understand and accept me.

00:17:47.080 I started to take the advice from him and other friends. And I went to therapy. I went to a lot of

00:17:53.560 different emotional intelligence workshops. And I've been in the journey of trying and testing lots

00:17:59.700 of different healing modalities over the last decade that have been extremely powerful and inspiring.

00:18:04.060 In one of these workshops I took 10 years ago, I opened up for the first time about being sexually

00:18:09.700 abused. And that was the catalyst for me starting the journey of reflecting back on just all the

00:18:17.320 little T and big T traumas that I had faced, whether I thought they were a big deal or not.

00:18:23.240 Just allowing myself to reflect back on the different psychological stages of my life

00:18:28.600 life that wounded me, that created a scar, that created a type of open wounds. And it was extremely

00:18:35.500 healing, terrifying at the same time, but extremely healing when I started to open up about this in this

00:18:41.900 workshop and then went through a process of telling my family one by one and then close friends one by

00:18:47.560 one. And then eventually about a year later, opening up about it publicly on my podcast. And that was about

00:18:53.980 nine years ago when I opened up about it. And I remember thinking to myself before I did this kind

00:18:59.300 of episode talking about sexual abuse as a man, I remember thinking my life is over. My career is

00:19:05.600 over. My business is over. No one's going to buy anything from me ever again. You know, everyone's

00:19:10.400 going to make fun of me publicly and I'm going to be shamed. But I just felt like it needed to come out

00:19:16.680 of me. And if it could help a few men who had been through something similar, then it was worth losing my

00:19:23.080 credibility and my business and everything. And what happened afterwards was an extremely beautiful

00:19:29.900 experience for me. For weeks, I just got essays from men opening up about, for the first time, about

00:19:35.960 the traumas that they went through through sexual abuse. It was kind of like an emotional hangover

00:19:40.260 reading these essays from men because I didn't realize how much trauma men go through in their

00:19:46.480 childhoods. And the stats are one in six men have been sexually abused. It's one in four women.

00:19:54.160 The challenge for men is there has never really been a safe space until really the last few years

00:20:00.160 for men to be able to open up and talk about it. Again, it's traumatic no matter your man, woman,

00:20:06.360 who you are. But there's been more of a availability to talk about it for women over the last, you know,

00:20:13.380 decades. And I just never felt like there was a space for men. And I think more men are opening

00:20:18.180 up and talking about it. More people are talking about mental health in general and just healing

00:20:22.400 trauma. It's been a beautiful journey over the last 10 years to continue to heal, to continue to grow

00:20:29.220 and reconnect and reparent that five-year-old version of myself, the 10-year-old version of

00:20:35.200 myself, the 18-year-old version of myself, and talk about and talk to myself in a meditative

00:20:41.980 psychological state of how proud I am of that five-year-old for overcoming this, for how proud

00:20:48.880 I am of the eight to 12-year-old who didn't have friends for four and a half years because he was

00:20:54.720 facing challenges with my brother in prison. And for all the different stages of life that I felt like

00:20:59.800 I was unsure, uncertain, unclear. And being able to go back and have those conversations has been

00:21:05.760 extremely healing experience. What do you think it was, Lewis, that created that

00:21:11.800 crescendo when you were 30? It's not an unusual scenario, right? Which is these traumatic events

00:21:18.500 occur very early in life, but they don't, the maladaptive side, because I sort of describe what

00:21:25.560 you've explained is there were positive and negative adaptations to that experience. The positive

00:21:31.040 adaptations were the things that actually gave you discipline and gave you drive and probably enabled

00:21:36.400 you to reach a lot of your potential. But unfortunately, it came with these negative

00:21:41.420 adaptations that we'll call maladaptations. And that's what increased your temper and probably

00:21:47.420 created emotional distance between you and others and an inability to connect with people.

00:21:51.700 The thing that I find interesting is it took 25 years for that volcano to erupt. What do you think

00:21:59.220 that was about? Why do you think you were able to enjoy relative successes until you weren't? It was

00:22:04.820 sustainable until it wasn't. I love we're having this conversation because I don't really talk about

00:22:09.420 this as much. Most people don't ask me this stuff. So I'm glad we're talking about it because

00:22:12.680 I was really good at putting on a mask of the athlete mask of the know-it-all mask. Like I've got it

00:22:20.560 all figured out. I can take care of this kind of the success mask of like using success as a mask to

00:22:26.220 protect myself. And I think it's really hard to transform when things are good and when things

00:22:33.260 are bad. Like we get familiar with good. We get familiar with bad or low-level stress. It becomes

00:22:40.360 familiar. It's really hard to transform unless some type of event occurs. Maybe it's someone close to

00:22:47.720 you has a near-death experience. Maybe you go through a divorce or breakup or your business bankruptcy

00:22:52.040 or you lose your job. Whatever it might be, you get really sick, something happens. You lose a

00:22:56.700 grandparent that you're close with and you start asking yourself like, why am I doing the things

00:23:00.520 I'm doing? There's not enough time left. You start looking at life differently. And I think for me,

00:23:06.480 it was kind of a perfect storm of events that occurred. A business partnership broke up. Like I

00:23:12.120 almost got in a fight with my business partner at one point. In the middle of Times Square, I felt like

00:23:16.260 I was going to punch him because we were just not able to communicate. And it was kind of like

00:23:19.920 months and months of frustration and resentment and all these things. And again, I was immature

00:23:25.180 and had a big ego. And if I remember correctly from the book, this was a 50-50 partnership where

00:23:30.560 you were doing 80% of the work. That's my perspective, at least. Yeah, I was bringing in

00:23:34.260 the revenue. I was the one doing the sales. So I felt like the only reason that we're generating

00:23:38.460 revenue is because I'm doing the work, that work. So it wasn't that you didn't have a legitimate

00:23:43.080 concern. The problem was you weren't able to effectively say to your partner, hey, listen,

00:23:49.160 this doesn't feel equitable to me. How does it feel to you? Should we reconsider things?

00:23:54.420 Exactly. I didn't have the emotional tools to communicate maturely, really, is what it came

00:23:59.080 down to. I didn't have the tools to communicate my frustrations peacefully and with gratitude.

00:24:05.320 And it's funny because after I went through this transformational workshop and started practicing

00:24:10.920 these tools and learning them and practicing them, integrating the healing, I then later went back

00:24:15.800 to this business partner that I didn't speak to for months and had a meeting with him and just thanked

00:24:20.600 him. I just said, hey, I'm so grateful for you. I appreciate you. And I was able to sit with him

00:24:25.220 for a couple hours and find peace and actually then sell the business to him in a peaceful way.

00:24:31.460 But I didn't have the emotional tools on how to communicate effectively before then.

00:24:35.060 And afterwards, he was like, what happened to you? How did you communicate like this? I was so relieved

00:24:39.780 because I thought you were to come here, get arguing and all these things. And I had the perfect storm of

00:24:44.780 events. I was in an emotional up and down intimate relationship. I was in an emotional up and down

00:24:49.940 business relationship partnership. And I was using the frustration as an outlet with basketball and

00:24:58.420 sports. And I would kind of take all that aggression out on others in sports. That's what I knew. That's

00:25:05.980 what I did in football. You take all your anger out on someone else. You inflict as much pain on them as

00:25:12.380 possible, but in a legal activity. But you just spear them in their chest and their head as hard 0.99

00:25:19.760 as you could. You could hit people on the head back then, head to head, and there was no foul. 1.00

00:25:23.740 So you just head to head as hard as you can, which probably caused a lot more brain trauma than I

00:25:27.760 needed. And at that time, I was like, I can only do this through basketball. And for me, I kept

00:25:33.920 getting in more and more like kind of tiffs and shoving matches and eventually into a fistfight with a

00:25:38.520 guy. And this is literally just playing pickup basketball in a fricking Beverly Hills. It's not

00:25:44.160 like we're in the mean streets of Compton where there's bullets whizzing around or something. This

00:25:47.800 is just hanging out, having fun with a bunch of 20 something year olds playing pickup ball on probably

00:25:53.380 one of the nicest looking pickup basketball courts you can find. But for whatever reason, when I felt

00:25:58.240 like someone would give me a little like elbow to the side or they'd say something to me,

00:26:02.020 I felt like they were abusing me. It felt like I was five years old. The psychological child in me

00:26:10.240 felt like this is an act of abuse that could take it farther and farther. And I need to do

00:26:14.780 everything in my power to protect myself physically, emotionally, psychologically,

00:26:19.420 because I never want that feeling of being powerless again. I never want the feeling of being

00:26:25.540 taken advantage of again. And so it was a pattern that would repeat in different scenarios.

00:26:30.480 And again, like you said, that fuel of needing to look good, wanting to be right, proving people

00:26:37.840 wrong, like building myself up to protect myself allowed me to be so consistent, so driven, willing

00:26:44.400 to work unlimited hours to get results. But it left me feeling extremely empty, lonely, insecure, and

00:26:52.620 not free inside. I still felt like a prisoner internally. And so all these events came to a head.

00:27:00.480 Around the same kind of few months. And that was the wake up call. I don't think I would have woken up

00:27:05.840 if just one thing happened, but it was all of them at the same time.

00:27:10.020 So really, it's these big three things. Your best friend saying, you shouldn't be playing basketball

00:27:14.740 with us anymore. Business partnership and the girlfriend situation. Your business partnership

00:27:18.540 and the blow up with your girlfriend. So when you finally confront this harsh reality,

00:27:24.100 how do you then take the action? How did you even figure out what this workshop was? Did someone

00:27:30.560 recommend it to you? A few people recommended it to me kind of before this. And I was like,

00:27:35.780 nah, I'm good. And what was it called? It's called Mastery and Transformational Training.

00:27:40.260 And it's an emotional intelligence workshop in Los Angeles. And there's a bunch of different

00:27:43.960 these workshops out there. They're kind of like five-day workshops that essentially have a bunch of

00:27:48.300 different scenarios, games, and exercises to show you how you react in life. They're essentially

00:27:55.160 designed to see how you are and create a mirror of real world scenarios in a small group setting

00:28:02.240 with games, activities, one-to-one dyads, meditations, and all these different things.

00:28:08.680 So you go back into the different events that caused pain, stress, overwhelm. The things that

00:28:14.900 keep you from being your most joyful, authentic self now. What is holding you back from giving

00:28:20.880 your fullest self, from being the most loving human being you can be, from being your childlike

00:28:25.680 joy as an adult? What robbed you of your joy? What took your joy away from you? Who hurt you,

00:28:32.220 essentially, is what it's learning about. And everyone goes through their own journey and

00:28:36.880 their own experience. But for me, it was extremely powerful.

00:28:39.960 Well, actually, that's kind of interesting, Lewis. That's a bit counterintuitive.

00:28:42.780 I can totally understand why, for you, that was the journey. Was that the explicit journey

00:28:48.980 for anybody who joined that? In other words, was anybody who came to that workshop also put

00:28:53.440 through a framework of anything that today is not happening for you that should be is probably tied to

00:29:00.780 some, for lack of a better word, contamination of your true self as a child? Or was that kind of

00:29:07.740 more your journey? Some type of belief. I think everyone goes through the same exercises. And some

00:29:13.700 of them didn't resonate with me. I was like, okay, I got nothing out of it. But for other people,

00:29:17.580 it was like the biggest eye-opening experience. And then other exercises, I was like, oh my gosh,

00:29:22.480 this really impacted me in a big way. And it was a big breakthrough. And they're all designed to show

00:29:27.980 you how you show up in life currently. What's working for you, what's not working for you.

00:29:32.780 And what are tools that you can use moving forward to be a better version of yourself? It's

00:29:38.820 essentially what it is. Through leadership training, through emotional intelligence,

00:29:43.040 language, things like that. I got a lot out of it because, again, I think I had so much pain I was

00:29:49.080 holding onto for 25 years. And did you talk about it there for the first time?

00:29:53.280 I talked about it there for the first time. And I remember like no girlfriend in the past knew.

00:29:57.300 My family didn't know. I didn't tell any friends. Because I thought if people knew this about me,

00:30:03.340 no one would love me. No one would accept me. No one would be my friend. And that was one of my

00:30:07.320 biggest fears was people not accepting me. But really what happened was I never fully accepted

00:30:13.740 myself. I wasn't able to forgive, find meaning in that experience and lots of different experience

00:30:22.200 that occurred in my childhood. And so I was just filled with so much shame about these things.

00:30:28.240 And I thought if any of my like buddies knew these things about me, my college football teammates or

00:30:32.920 high school basketball teammates knew this, they wouldn't want me on the team. And all I wanted to

00:30:37.040 do was learn like how to fit in and belong. But I never learned how to belong to myself. And I think

00:30:44.680 that's something a lot of people over the last 10 years of me doing the research I'm doing and you

00:30:49.920 doing the research you're doing. A lot of people, from my experience, don't know how to fully love

00:30:55.200 and accept themselves with all the mess and all the stress and all the things they've been through.

00:31:00.480 And I'm not saying you need to be proud of the things you've done. There's many things in my past

00:31:04.480 I'm not proud of. But I can find meaning and accept and have compassion for the 11-year-old that

00:31:11.400 would steal candy bars almost every day for a year and a half and be like, okay, that's where I was in

00:31:17.340 my life. I'm not proud of it. But I can have compassion for the tools that I had, the stress I was

00:31:21.640 going through. And then I stopped it and I transformed in a certain way. So I love that person and I heal

00:31:27.880 that person inside of me so that I am not in shame of all these different stages of my life. Because I

00:31:35.080 don't think shame supports us in service. It doesn't help us serve and give to the people we care about

00:31:40.360 closest to us, to our communities, to our platforms, whatever we're creating in the world. It holds us

00:31:45.300 back. For many years, I couldn't sleep at night. I would just sit up at night for about an hour,

00:31:49.780 hour and a half, just ruminating. And it wasn't until after I started the healing journey where I

00:31:55.320 was able to fall asleep within minutes. It hasn't been a perfect journey over the last 10 years,

00:31:59.240 but it's been a powerful journey of constantly healing. Do you remember what it was in the moment

00:32:06.540 you were about to talk about this that gave you the comfort that said, in this moment,

00:32:14.860 I can do something that has seemed so taboo? Was it in part, Lewis, because they were strangers? I

00:32:21.280 mean, did that make it a little easier in that moment? Yeah, it was part of it. This workshop was

00:32:25.980 like two weekend workshops. So I did like a four-day workshop that kind of gave you some basic tools and

00:32:32.200 understanding. So we're kind of all on the same page of understanding like the language and tools.

00:32:36.240 Leadership distinctions of accountability, responsibility, ownership of your life,

00:32:41.780 things like that. It wasn't until the second weekend, which was like a week and a half later,

00:32:46.600 where it got extremely intense. I mean, people are opening up and extremely vulnerable and crying

00:32:53.320 and really sharing different things that had occurred. So once other people started to share

00:32:58.800 how messed up their life was, it gave me permission to be like, oh, wow, other people go through stuff

00:33:04.380 too. And way worse scenarios than I've gone through in certain areas. And I remember this was probably

00:33:10.520 like the halfway mark of this weekend workshop. And the first couple days of it, the trainer,

00:33:19.440 the facilitator of the workshop said, okay, we've gone back and addressed a lot of the different things

00:33:25.940 that have caused you to guard your heart, that have caused you to be more analytical in your mind

00:33:32.780 and be less peaceful and not own your peace and own your love and give your love generously to others.

00:33:41.340 A lot of people just guard themselves, right? He said, now we've addressed these different scenarios.

00:33:46.320 We've addressed your mom, your dad, different scenarios from childhood. We've done these different

00:33:51.500 exercises in the games. Then we have reflection and journaling time to start integrating these things.

00:33:57.840 And he said, now we're not going to go back into the past anymore. We've done enough. We're going to

00:34:02.720 start creating a vision of the future you want to create, the who you want to be, how you want to show

00:34:08.100 up in the world, what you want to create, the type of relationship you want to have, the type of dreams

00:34:12.820 you want to manifest. And we're going to start building tools into developing how to create that

00:34:18.600 and getting clear on the vision you want for your life. And he said, but before we do,

00:34:24.320 if there's anyone who has yet to clear of their past and talk about or address the thing, something

00:34:31.760 they need to talk about, it's kind of like now is the time or forever hold your peace because we're

00:34:35.960 moving forward. We're not going back anymore. Let's go on with our lives and start creating a

00:34:40.460 powerful vision we can live into. And the room is kind of silent. And I remember just thinking to

00:34:45.620 myself, man, I feel like I've been going all in on this workshop. I went all in talking about like

00:34:50.800 challenges with my parents that I had about, you know, my brother going to prison and what that felt

00:34:54.840 like about being dyslexic my entire childhood and being in special needs classes until I finished

00:35:00.740 college, you know, just like being picked on, being picked the last in sports, all these things that

00:35:05.960 were just kind of the painful memories. I was like, I talked about all of it. And I go, but why

00:35:11.860 have I still not talked about this one thing? Like why have I yet to talk about it? And for whatever

00:35:19.200 reason I'll go, it just kind of hit me. I go, I don't know if I don't talk about this now, I'll

00:35:23.140 probably never speak about it in my life. I'll probably keep it in my grave. And I think it was

00:35:27.720 just the environment, the setting, again, other people were opening up before then. It gave me the

00:35:34.380 courage in that moment. And I don't think I would have ever had the courage to speak to my future wife,

00:35:39.480 my parents. I don't think I would have told anyone because I didn't have the courage emotionally.

00:35:43.760 And I remember standing up, there's probably 40 people in the room. I remember standing up

00:35:49.780 and kind of walking to the front of the room. I didn't even like raise my hand. I just stood up

00:35:54.700 and walked to the room. And this is what I remember. I remember looking down at the carpet

00:36:00.280 and walking through this story for the first time, reliving it like I was in the bathroom being 0.96

00:36:07.820 sexually abused by this man. Almost like I could go to the scene 25 years prior. I could see the room,

00:36:16.980 the mirror, the bathroom. I could smell. I went back there. And I was so ashamed that I couldn't

00:36:24.200 look up at anyone's eyes. So I just stared down at the carpet and I walked through this kind of story

00:36:29.940 step by step. And I just said the whole thing. And I remember walking back to my seat, sitting down

00:36:38.140 and just erupting with tears. I just started bawling. And I didn't really cry that much.

00:36:43.580 I was conditioned not to cry as an athlete and as a man. And I just bawled. I was bawling so much.

00:36:51.280 And it was so beautiful because there was two women on the sides of me. They're crying. They're both

00:36:56.280 hugging me and embracing me. The whole room is like starting to cry. And I'm just like,

00:37:01.720 my life is over. That's what I thought. And so I run out of the room. I get so scared.

00:37:06.680 I ran out of the room and I left. I left the event. I went outside to the, you know,

00:37:13.180 out of this kind of hotel conference room. And I went outside this kind of back alley of this hotel.

00:37:19.500 And I'm putting my head on my hands, like on the wall in this back alley, just like sobbing.

00:37:25.580 And I was just like, I'm never going back in there. I'm done. I'm going home. Like my life is

00:37:31.200 over. And one of the most beautiful things that happened in my life, it was a beautiful moment,

00:37:35.580 was I felt this tap on my shoulder as I'm kind of like crying on this wall. And I turn around and

00:37:42.040 it's probably a 55, 60 year old man, big guy. And he's looking at me in my eyes. He's probably my

00:37:49.500 same height, eye to eye, staring at me, crying. And he said, you're my hero. I will follow you

00:37:55.520 anywhere. I remember this vividly. He said, you're my hero. I will follow you anywhere.

00:38:00.460 And I had everything wrong about you. Again, I was kind of showing up with an ego and, you know,

00:38:05.480 thought I knew it all and all this stuff. And he goes, I had everything wrong about you.

00:38:08.420 And he goes, let me tell you something. I'm in my late fifties. I've got four kids. I've been

00:38:13.180 married for 25 years. My wife doesn't know. My kids don't know. No one knows. This happened to me

00:38:18.200 when I was 11 for many years. It's still the deepest secret that I have. You're the first

00:38:23.420 person that knows. Thank you for having the courage to open up and give me permission to start talking

00:38:29.700 about it. I'm going to go tell my wife tonight. I'm going to start the healing journey. Thank you.

00:38:33.760 And I was like, I'm just kind of in shock. I'm still like emotional. I'm a wreck. He's hugging

00:38:41.140 me. We're crying together. And then one by one, probably like 12 or 13 men come out of the room

00:38:47.000 and they all come and give me a hug. And not everyone had been sexually abused, but a few

00:38:53.240 other guys had been. And they all came to me and said, this happened to me when I was eight. This

00:38:57.780 happened to me when I was 13. This happened to me when I was seven. These few other guys kind of said,

00:39:02.140 I've never told anyone. Thank you for opening it up. So this is back in 2013, 10 years ago when I did

00:39:09.880 this. And I was kind of like, wow. Okay. Other men have experienced this. And they started talking

00:39:18.600 about it. And it was very therapeutic and very healing for us to experience it. The weekend,

00:39:24.260 you know, I go on over the next few days and finish the event and have a powerful experience of just

00:39:29.680 catharsis and healing. And then sharing these vulnerable moments with other people who had

00:39:35.000 similar experiences, which was extremely powerful. But I remember thinking to myself, like,

00:39:40.240 I can't tell my family. Like, these are strangers. I never have to see them again. Like you said,

00:39:45.020 what's my family going to say? What are my friends going to say? Are they going to be as emotionally

00:39:48.780 available and courageous to be able to receive this information? That was a fear and concern of mine,

00:39:54.800 but eventually I ended up telling them all. I reached out to a therapist friend of mine afterwards

00:39:59.080 and I said, Hey, this is something that happened. And I started to open up about it, but I'm terrified

00:40:03.500 to tell my family and friends because I don't think they'll accept me. And I said, what's a process I can

00:40:09.300 use to connect with them to see if they're available to hear it. And this friend of mine said,

00:40:16.140 ask them all a question before you share with them, ask them this question. Is there anything I could

00:40:21.660 ever say or do that would make you not love me? And based on their response, if you feel like

00:40:27.500 they're receiving of it, then you can open up and talk about it. And so I did that one by one with my

00:40:32.460 family and then my friends. And, you know, it brought me closer to all of them. They started

00:40:37.640 to open up about things that I didn't know about them, things that they went through, I had no clue

00:40:41.720 about. It brought us closer together, created a stronger bond of intimacy and connection. And that was

00:40:47.700 really the journey where I was like, wow, I've been missing out my entire life, 25 years of true

00:40:54.360 intimacy and real authentic connection because I've been hiding myself from so many people. And it

00:41:01.180 doesn't mean you've got to reveal all your darkest secrets to everyone right now. And publicly, I'm not

00:41:05.960 saying that's the case, but I do believe that we are missing out on something extremely beautiful

00:41:11.720 and we will never be peaceful and fully free internally or externally until we can accept

00:41:17.900 the things of our past that we're most ashamed of and afraid of and insecure about. We will always be

00:41:23.360 a prisoner in our heart and mind until we can face it and accept it and embrace it.

00:41:29.460 Prior to this, this moment, what was your relationship like with your parents and your siblings?

00:41:34.900 I had a challenging relationship with my parents. It was kind of interesting. I mean, I loved my parents. I had

00:41:43.740 some great moments with them, but I begged them to send me away because I just grew up in a lot of a stressful

00:41:50.200 environment. My parents were kind of explosive with each other growing up. They should have probably never

00:41:56.840 been married. They got married when they're 18. They didn't have the emotional tools, things like that until

00:42:01.760 later in life. So they stayed together because of the kids and then just kept having more kids.

00:42:06.880 But they probably shouldn't have stayed married. That's probably not what it should have happened.

00:42:10.680 And so I just grew up in a lot of uncertainty and fear and I don't blame them. You know, they were

00:42:15.720 doing their best, but it's one of the reasons what made me want to leave because I was the youngest.

00:42:21.960 All my other siblings were out of the house now. I was 13 and I was just like, I don't want to be in this

00:42:26.580 stress. I want to be in a peaceful environment. So subconsciously, it was like the thing that wanted to drive me

00:42:31.300 away. And I was also doing kind of bad things as an 11, 12 year old, just stealing and just hanging

00:42:36.500 out with people that weren't the best people that were influencing me to do bad things. But I wasn't

00:42:42.500 accepted by like other people in school. So I just found anyone I could cling on to that would accept

00:42:47.780 me. And I was just like, I don't want to be in this environment. I don't want to live this life

00:42:51.440 anymore. I want to be around good kids, good people. My parents were great. They would show up to all my

00:42:56.360 sports games. They were extremely supportive. They encouraged me to follow my dreams. They taught me a lot of

00:43:00.420 great lessons, but their modeling of a relationship was not a good model for me. So that caused some

00:43:07.120 underlying stress. So again, I had a great relationship, but also a, I didn't want to be

00:43:11.340 around them, but I loved them kind of dynamic. And I was away from them for five years. You know,

00:43:17.500 I only went home for like a couple of weeks and Christmas and breaks and here and there,

00:43:21.500 they would come out and visit and watch games, but it would be for a few hours and then they're gone.

00:43:25.800 So I really lived alone with roommates from 13 to 18 and my siblings were all older. They were off

00:43:33.020 to college doing their life. So we had a good relationship, but I just didn't see them that

00:43:36.720 often. And I remember at 30, I was like, I want to reconnect with my family more and build stronger

00:43:41.800 bonds and stronger relationships. And so that allowed me to start that process.

00:43:48.380 And your brother, obviously by this point, he's long since back from prison. Sounds like he's got his

00:43:53.340 life completely back together. Were you guys close? You know, the age gap of 11 years, you know,

00:43:58.520 by that point, for all we know, he's got a family, he's kind of moved on. You're the little brother.

00:44:02.020 Let me rephrase this question, I guess. When you think about your siblings and your parents and your

00:44:06.380 friends, were you most concerned with who in that group of having that discussion?

00:44:12.340 Probably more my friends, to be honest, because I still wanted to like belong in society beyond my

00:44:19.120 family. You know, your family's got to kind of love you and accept you no matter what

00:44:22.440 at the end of the day. They're stuck with you, essentially. So I knew that like, okay,

00:44:27.900 I told my family first. And after I told them, I was like, in my mind, well, they have to accept me.

00:44:32.920 And after what my brother went through, of course, they're going to accept me no matter what.

00:44:36.400 But my friends, will they accept me? And that was probably the scarier thing to talk to them about.

00:44:41.820 But all of them were extremely like supportive and, hey, I got your back and open and loving. And

00:44:47.080 again, it just brought me a lot of inner peace, which I never had. I didn't have because I was

00:44:51.860 being inauthentic to who I was and to accepting myself, to fully loving and being acceptance of

00:44:58.140 myself. And therefore, others didn't know who I was. And so they weren't able to fully accept me

00:45:04.720 because I wasn't able to reveal who I was. And I think that was the challenge that I was facing

00:45:09.020 with, that I was always putting on a mask. Listen, I was a happy, fun-loving guy. I was the same as I

00:45:13.900 am now, but I just wasn't as vulnerable. But I was fun. I would like play, you know, all these

00:45:19.200 different things. But I just felt like something inside, like I wasn't revealing. And it was eating

00:45:23.620 me up constantly.

00:45:25.280 You know, I know you've had one of my best friends on your podcast, Paul Conti.

00:45:28.680 Oh, man.

00:45:29.020 Paul was probably one of the first people I met in medical school. So we went to med school

00:45:32.340 together and we've been largely inseparable since. And as you know, Paul's sort of what I would

00:45:37.080 consider one of the experts on the topic of trauma. One of the things I'm curious about,

00:45:41.220 as you think about the line between trauma, which would be probably net negative. Again,

00:45:48.320 I describe these things as some positive, some negative, but that's probably a net negative

00:45:53.100 versus adversity. Some positive and some negative, probably a net positive. Where do you draw that

00:45:59.820 line? And I don't necessarily just mean in your life, but I mean like as a person thinking about

00:46:04.560 their own experiences, where does one draw that line?

00:46:08.060 I try to think of adversity and trauma as where can I find the meaning in both of them?

00:46:13.860 And how can I find the useful tools that could come from them? Before, I think I was just afraid

00:46:20.440 of trauma and more embraced adversity. You know, the challenges of overcoming being down in a sports

00:46:25.860 game or getting a minor injury and fighting through it, playing with a broken wrist for 14 games as an

00:46:31.720 athlete, which is something I did, playing with three broken ribs. It was kind of like, that's the

00:46:35.020 adversity and you just got to tough it out and overcome adversity. Those are also kind of traumatic

00:46:39.620 events too, like breaking bones and just living with physical wound trauma. But I looked at it

00:46:45.520 differently than the emotional trauma, the psychological trauma, which really shaped my personality and my

00:46:52.700 identity. And as Dr. Joe Dispenza says, your personality becomes your personal reality. And that became part

00:46:59.740 of my personal reality based on these emotional and psychological traumatic wounds. It became my

00:47:06.920 inner world and then a reflection in my outer world of how I react. And so I really look at the now that

00:47:13.860 both of these events, adversity and trauma, can be extremely beneficial if we find meaning. And usually it's

00:47:22.500 harder to find the meaning from traumatic experiences and things that no one wants to go through. You don't want

00:47:29.180 your enemies to go through loss of people close to you, sexual abuse, psychological abuse, horrible

00:47:36.280 things that happen in the world, mass shootings, like these things we don't want to happen ever to

00:47:42.180 anyone. And it's hard to find the meaning, but I'm sure as you know, man's search for meaning with

00:47:47.380 Viktor Frankl and Edith Egger, who I've had on a couple of times, who was a Holocaust survivor. And when she

00:47:52.700 talked about watching her parents go into the, you know, the gas chamber and Auschwitz and the trauma

00:48:00.620 that she faced for so many decades, it wasn't until she went back there herself and was able to face it

00:48:08.140 and forgive herself because he essentially told the truth to the officer. And when the officer asked her,

00:48:15.600 is this your sister or your mom? And she said, my mom. And so she watched her mom go and be executed. 1.00

00:48:23.500 And if she just would have lied and said her sister, maybe her mom would have stayed alive. 0.95

00:48:28.600 And she had to like relive that, facing it and find forgiveness in herself for the teenager that was

00:48:37.940 fearful, insecure, didn't have the tools, wasn't to be able to navigate such a traumatic moment.

00:48:46.980 She was able to find peace and meaning from that and use the meaning to be of service to others.

00:48:52.680 I don't think any one of us are going to get out of this life without experiencing some type of

00:48:57.400 little T, big T trauma. And they can all be extremely overwhelming feelings. And I think it's

00:49:04.980 our mission and our goal to figure out what is the meaning from it? How could I benefit from it

00:49:09.360 and serve others in this meaning as well? You don't have kids, do you?

00:49:14.400 No, not yet. Do you think you want to? Yeah.

00:49:17.220 Yeah. So when you think about having kids, even though you don't have them, I'm sure you can

00:49:22.600 appreciate there's a very protective nature that comes up. I think every parent looks at their kid

00:49:28.080 and thinks, I want to shield them from the bad things that happened to me. And I want them to have

00:49:35.660 wonderful experiences. And yet, of course, there's always a fear that if we take that to an extreme,

00:49:42.740 we deprive them of something. Yeah.

00:49:45.620 You know, for me, and I've talked about this with Paul, I feel like that's a litmus test for me of

00:49:50.120 the type of adversity that is character building and valuable, maybe not getting picked for a sports

00:49:56.840 team. It hurts in the moment, but it also produces a lot of good versus the sexual abuse when you're

00:50:03.200 five. It's just hard to say, I don't think any parent under any circumstance could say, I'd be

00:50:08.260 okay with that happening to my kid, even if on the other side of it, it's going to become a huge part

00:50:15.400 of their defining characteristic and it will make them a wonderful and empathic person. You just

00:50:20.200 couldn't imagine them going through that as that child. And so I'm just kind of curious as you think

00:50:24.640 about what this means for the lumps and bumps in life. Those experiences could have ruined me,

00:50:32.060 you know, had I not had supportive people around me 25 years later to encourage me to talk about it,

00:50:38.100 to go get support, get coaching, go with therapy, try workshops. Like, I feel like I've done so many

00:50:43.340 different therapeutic experiences in the last decade and tried it all. And I'm like, I'm always

00:50:47.980 coming from a beginner's mind now since that 10 years ago workshop because before I thought I knew

00:50:54.420 it all. I thought I had all the answers and it didn't give me a sense of peace. Now I go into stuff

00:50:59.840 just like you do with how can I learn? How can I learn from anyone about something and how can I come

00:51:05.920 into it with a beginner's mind and be open-minded? You know, I would never want my kids to experience

00:51:10.980 what I experienced and I would have never want any kid to experience this. I don't think there's any good

00:51:16.000 that comes from it. I honestly don't think. I had to find meaning from the traumatic experience. I had

00:51:22.520 to, I got to find meaning so that I could have peace in my heart. And I realized if I didn't create

00:51:29.520 peace in my heart and find meaning, then it would have ruined me. I probably would have gotten in

00:51:33.880 more fights. I would have been more reactive. I would have blown up my life. And that's what was

00:51:38.680 starting to happen. I was accomplishing more and more. So I was becoming more well-known and I had more

00:51:44.520 to lose. And if I didn't learn the tools of emotional regulation, of healing, of effective

00:51:52.380 communication, and it doesn't mean I'm perfect and I've got it all figured out, but if I didn't learn

00:51:56.660 how to use those tools, then I probably would have done a lot more damage to myself and to people around

00:52:02.100 me because I would have been unwilling to process. And so for me, it was the meaning behind it all that

00:52:08.960 supported me and having more compassion and empathy because I didn't have that before I discovered the

00:52:14.280 meaning. Again, I don't wish it upon anyone. I don't wish trauma upon anyone. As Jordan Peterson

00:52:18.960 says, you don't want to protect your kids. You want to create a safe environment where they feel

00:52:24.500 loved by you and accepted, but you want to allow them to be vulnerable because that's how they get

00:52:30.700 stronger. That's how they can develop courage when challenging things happen, when you as parents

00:52:35.740 are not around and they can have the tools to take on the adversities of life. It's like a balance.

00:52:41.760 And I'm sure you've got more wisdom than me of, I see myself with my kids as wanting to give them

00:52:47.020 so much love and acceptance, but also putting them through the most adversity I can in safe containers

00:52:55.960 to give them tools of overcoming and learning how to do it on their own.

00:53:00.440 Yeah. I think my wife and I kind of talk about it. We have three kids, so five, eight, and 14.

00:53:05.640 The mental model I use is that of the immune system. It's really well known at this point. It was once

00:53:11.760 I think it's generally completely accepted that if you took a child when they're born and put them

00:53:17.200 in an environment where their immune system is never challenged. So for lack of a better word,

00:53:22.140 you just put them in a bubble and you think, well, they're never going to get sick. It's true.

00:53:26.100 They won't get sick, but something worse is going to happen, which is their immune system will turn

00:53:30.840 on themselves and they will develop ravaging autoimmunity.

00:53:34.760 Really?

00:53:35.620 Absolutely. So an unchallenged immune, because remember the immune system is, I mean, I'm probably

00:53:41.400 biased because I studied immunology, but the immune system is one of the most remarkable systems in the

00:53:45.660 body. This idea of selection, negative and positive selection, meaning how do we develop a system

00:53:50.500 that is so good at recognizing self from non-self? And you go through thymic selection with the T-cells

00:53:57.060 when you're an infant and all of these things, but it's a potent system. I mean, it's a very potent

00:54:02.260 system and it has remarkable killing capacity. That's what keeps us safe. I mean, especially from

00:54:07.320 viruses, you know, we really don't have good drugs to combat viruses the way we do bacteria,

00:54:11.620 but nevertheless, when children are put in a position where they do not have enough exposure,

00:54:18.600 and we see this with food allergies all the time. It's not a coincidence that we're seeing nut

00:54:23.000 allergies go through the roof as kids are having less and less exposure to nuts when they grow up.

00:54:29.360 So at the one end of the spectrum, you put your kids in a bubble and they don't get sick,

00:54:33.440 but something worse happens, which is their immune system attacks themselves. So they end up with

00:54:36.800 ravishing autoimmunity. At the other end of the spectrum, if you make them eat fecal matter all the

00:54:43.200 time and you put them in an environment that is the most filthy also, their immune system can't do

00:54:49.020 enough and they're just going to be so sick. And in fact, the reality of it is that's how we used to

00:54:52.880 die. Prior to the advent of antibiotics and things like that, and when we had no sterilization,

00:54:57.920 our life expectancy was literally half what it is today, largely on the back of infectious diseases.

00:55:03.840 So there's this happy medium where your immune system has to be honed to be strong enough to know

00:55:11.600 what is Lewis and what is not Lewis so that it always attacks not Lewis, but not so tuned that

00:55:19.420 it's always having to be on. And then you're overwhelmed by this. That's kind of how we think

00:55:24.180 about it with kids, which is it's pretty good when they don't make a sports team once in a while.

00:55:28.320 It's pretty good when they finish last in a race and they're embarrassed about it because

00:55:32.060 they didn't train that hard. Or it's pretty good when they blow a test. These things are really good.

00:55:38.720 But at the other end of the spectrum, for me, and this really comes from discussions with Paul

00:55:42.620 and a few others, it's something that you said in your story that I think really resonated.

00:55:47.640 The thing that we really want to avoid is children having a feeling of complete helplessness.

00:55:53.100 If I were trying to articulate it, I suspect that perhaps the most traumatic thing about your

00:55:59.120 experience as a child was the total helplessness. And I think the helplessness and the shame then kind

00:56:06.500 of compound each other. And I think that's the thing that is the root of all evil. And it's not

00:56:11.940 just sort of sexual abuse. I think children can experience that all the way. I mean, did you ever

00:56:16.000 take the adverse childhood event score, the ACE test?

00:56:19.560 No, but I should. I've never heard of it.

00:56:21.340 It's very interesting. So we have a lot of our patients take it. If it's something that we think

00:56:25.440 is interesting and relevant and potentially germane to their care, it's a standardized test of 10

00:56:30.220 questions. It's simple, yes or no. For example, have you been sexually abused? Did you grow up in a

00:56:34.700 household where your parents were divorced? Did you grow up in a household where one of your parents

00:56:38.520 physically assaulted the other? Did you grow up in a household where you were physically,

00:56:42.140 all of these things? You just keep going, going, going. You know, it's funny. One of the things is

00:56:45.460 not, did you grow up in a household where a parent went to prison, which I think effectively would be

00:56:49.920 true for you because an 11-year-old sibling is effectively a parent.

00:56:52.780 Yeah, 11-year-old or, yeah. He was 18. Yeah, I mean.

00:56:55.340 So if you go through the ACE, and we'll link to this in the show notes for our podcast as well.

00:56:59.860 Yeah. So if you go through and fill out the adverse childhood event score, there's basically

00:57:03.960 a histogram that shows for people who have zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,

00:57:08.580 or nine, 10, 10 out of 10, what is the predictive value of this on both physical health and emotional

00:57:15.880 health later in life? And it's probably not surprising that the more you score on that,

00:57:21.780 the worse your emotional health, meaning the greater the likelihood of anxiety, depression,

00:57:27.200 suicidality, and these things. That probably doesn't come across as a big surprise.

00:57:31.180 What I think comes across as a bit of a surprise, and admittedly there are confounders here,

00:57:35.540 is physical health, meaning the higher your ACE, the worse your physical health as you age.

00:57:43.620 And again, I suspect there's a component to that that's probably confounded by socioeconomic factors

00:57:48.640 that factor into this, right? We're going to see higher ACE scores in lower socioeconomic status,

00:57:54.580 and therefore that's going to also confound health status. But I can't believe that that's

00:57:59.860 it. It has to be that, at least in my experience looking at this in a small but relatively controlled

00:58:06.760 environment, that people aren't able to take care of themselves, which is a big part of health,

00:58:11.840 if they have so much unresolved trauma.

00:58:15.300 That's what I was going to say. I think if you live with a higher score, meaning you've experienced

00:58:19.580 more traumatic moments as a kid, I think, and you haven't learned how to heal and navigate them in

00:58:25.980 a healthy coping mechanism way, processing the trauma, healing, and being on the journey of

00:58:32.280 consistent healing. You know more than me, you've been studying the immune system for a long time.

00:58:37.420 Your immune system is so under attack, if it's in fight or flight, constantly reliving the past

00:58:42.660 traumatic events that you haven't healed yet. So if it feels like it's still a five-year-old,

00:58:47.460 eight-year-old, 12-year-old in these moments, and you're stacking all of them on your body

00:58:51.940 and your immune system at once, connecting the thoughts like Paul Conte talks about to the immune

00:58:57.360 system consistently, you do that for a long period of time, like your body probably just can never

00:59:02.220 fully process. It probably can't build the strength and recover and get rid of the bad cells the way it

00:59:08.320 meets to with that much trauma. And when I feel like we learn to create the environment

00:59:14.120 of peace and harmony and alignment in our heart connected to our mind, then the body will start

00:59:22.460 to follow. Obviously, we got to take the right actions and do the right decisions of our nutrition

00:59:26.720 and our movement and things like that consistently. But I just feel like there's a lot less pressure

00:59:33.560 in my heart. And I used to feel a lot of pain in my chest. And it wasn't until a couple of years ago-

00:59:39.400 Physical pain. Really physical, like sharp chest pain that would come and go. And it wasn't related

00:59:45.680 to working out. I remember the moment two years ago, I did a five-month intensive therapy coaching

00:59:53.160 experience. So I did lots of different modalities over the last 10 years. 10 years ago really helped

00:59:58.720 me kind of process the sexual abuse. And I practiced that for a few years and I really felt peace and free

01:00:05.180 around that experience in life. I processed other stuff with my parents at different stages in the

01:00:11.060 last 10 years. And I really felt like I did a lot of good work. But I was still having this chest pain

01:00:16.320 and this kind of like throat clenching, almost kind of like someone was strangling me at different times.

01:00:22.180 Not 24-7, but when there was a trigger, an emotional response to something happening externally,

01:00:28.040 I'd feel like a clench, like someone was strangling me or someone was like pressing a weight on my

01:00:34.940 heart. And it was kind of this chest pain. It was like I couldn't breathe fully. And this was

01:00:41.720 happening on and off because I still hadn't healed a lot of things in intimate relationships. I was still

01:00:48.580 afraid in intimacy with romantic partners over the last 10 years. And it wasn't until the last

01:00:55.840 relationship I was in that, again, it was kind of like a perfect storm of events happening over and

01:01:02.600 over again, where I start to finally recognize and have the courage that I was abandoning myself.

01:01:08.620 And I was repeating this pattern of abandoning who I was, my values, my vision, my identity,

01:01:15.580 my beliefs to please one person that I thought I loved and was in an intimate relationship with.

01:01:22.720 In order to make them happy and keep the peace externally with that partner and partners in the past,

01:01:30.940 I would change who I was to make them happy. And this was a pattern after multiple relationships

01:01:37.980 that I realized, oh, I am at the center. I'm the common denominator of all these previous relationships

01:01:43.460 of why they're not working out. I'm choosing based on a wound. I'm staying based on a wound.

01:01:50.760 And I'm abandoning myself on who I truly am based on wounds. And so two years ago, I said,

01:01:57.040 enough is enough. I don't feel stress or pain around the sexual abuse. I don't feel

01:02:01.320 stress or pain about being picked on as a kid in school anymore, all this stuff. Like I felt like

01:02:05.820 I was able to process that, but I still didn't have the courage to be a hundred percent who I was in

01:02:12.680 intimacy. And I'm so glad I found this therapist. She's more of a coach, but she does therapy work

01:02:18.420 too. And for the last two years, every two weeks, I do a session with her. And for the first five months,

01:02:24.040 I was going pretty much every week, I was doing five, six, seven hour sessions on Saturdays,

01:02:29.320 individual sessions and joint sessions in the relationship that I was doing as well. I was

01:02:33.980 like, this is either going to work or we got to get out of this thing. We got to figure out how to find

01:02:39.300 harmony together in the previous relationship. And after five months of doing this, there wasn't

01:02:45.580 any improvement. We weren't aligned on our values. It was so far, me and the previous relationship,

01:02:52.100 our values. When we start doing these sessions together in couples therapy.

01:02:57.360 And it got to the point where I just was finally like, I can't live like this. I can't be in a

01:03:02.480 relationship with someone and change all my values and beliefs to make them happy. It doesn't work

01:03:06.660 for me anymore. But I was repeating that pattern in previous relationships. And I was attracting

01:03:10.760 people that didn't have the same shared values, vision, and lifestyle. For whatever reason, there was

01:03:15.580 a wound that I was doing this from. And why do you think that was? I mean, do you think that you

01:03:19.300 were finding somebody that had a hole that you felt you could fill or?

01:03:25.760 Yeah, a hundred percent. Yes. I felt like, okay, they need me. There's something I can do to support

01:03:30.420 them and help them and feel needed in some way. And it wasn't even conscious, but as I reflect back

01:03:35.760 of it, it's an unconscious thing that I was repeating. There was a pattern that I was following

01:03:40.100 from the model of my parents' relationship. Obviously that had to be in there as well.

01:03:44.000 And I was trying to fix my parents through the relationships I was in. I was trying to

01:03:50.960 find a way on my five, eight, 10, 16-year-old self, because they got divorced too,

01:03:56.320 on how could I make it work? And they were never just aligned. And so that was the challenging thing.

01:04:03.660 And Lewis, was there, in this five-month period, even though that seemed like the relationship was not

01:04:07.940 coming to make amends, were you experiencing changes in you? Were you growing as a response to this

01:04:13.540 therapy? Well, here's the interesting thing. I feel like I have the opportunity to meet so many

01:04:19.600 interesting people to interview on my show that I'm interviewing Paul Conti. I'm interviewing

01:04:24.460 Dr. Romney on narcissism. I'm interviewing all these different therapists and experts on neuroscience.

01:04:31.040 And I'm starting to, I'm doing my own therapy. I'm interviewing people about trauma, relationships,

01:04:37.540 healing, and all these things are starting to connect the dots after about five months.

01:04:42.940 And there was a moment where I went away for a weekend to go to this like kind of business

01:04:49.540 mastermind with probably some people that you would know in the industry with Tony Robbins and a bunch

01:04:54.480 of people, you know, at this kind of private mastermind event in Florida. And the person I was

01:04:59.140 dating at the time, she was supposed to come, but like the day before she got mad at me for something,

01:05:03.620 it was like, I'm not going. And I remember going to this event and feeling so much love from people,

01:05:08.940 just feeling like accepted, feeling loved, feeling celebrated for the person that I was showing up

01:05:14.500 as. And yet I wasn't able to experience that at home and in this relationship. And I was forcing

01:05:20.340 it and trying to make it work and changing who I was to belong and fit in, in the relationship.

01:05:25.780 And I remember texting the therapist at that time being like, I can't do this anymore. I don't know

01:05:30.000 what to do. And she texted me back and said, you're starting to lift the veil. You're starting to

01:05:36.860 realize and see the things that aren't working. Whereas before I was just trying to make them work

01:05:42.940 and I was giving in and abandoning myself to please one person, but I was abandoning who I was. I wasn't

01:05:49.760 pleasing myself and I was letting go of my authentic highest self. And so over the next like month,

01:05:54.940 we go more and more deeper into therapy together, individually and together. And there was a moment

01:06:01.340 where I was doing it with the coach therapist and she was talking about my parents. And I was like,

01:06:08.340 I just don't want to feel trapped. I want to feel free. It was kind of this whole thing was connecting

01:06:12.940 the dots from like 38 years of life and my brother in prison and watching my parents be trapped in a

01:06:20.060 relationship, in a marriage and be unhappy. And I was afraid of being trapped and all these different

01:06:24.500 things. And for whatever reason, after five months of doing this, she said to me, Lewis, you're free.

01:06:32.280 You can walk away at any time. You don't need to keep forcing things. You are free. And for whatever

01:06:38.220 reason, it just somehow connected in my heart where I actually understood the concept because I didn't

01:06:44.460 understand the concept. I didn't believe that I could be free internally, even if things weren't

01:06:49.980 working out externally. And I thought I had to do whatever it took to make it work. I thought I had

01:06:56.720 to go all in even harder and sacrifice who I was to just please one person when we just weren't aligned

01:07:02.120 on our values and vision. And that's okay. And I lacked the emotional courage to walk away. I lacked

01:07:08.280 the emotional courage in every relationship before this to walk away when I knew we weren't aligned and

01:07:12.900 we weren't a right match. And in that moment, all the pain that was in my heart, I could feel the

01:07:19.440 pain this whole time somehow like disintegrated. I don't know how to explain this event other than

01:07:25.720 there was a pain in my chest for on and off throughout my entire life. And then it disintegrated

01:07:33.600 and I haven't felt this pain in the last year and a half. It come out like a ball of energy that like

01:07:39.760 you kind of felt like there was, I don't know, disintegrating throughout all my body.

01:07:43.900 I felt like I could breathe and I had peace internally for the first time. And I believed

01:07:49.740 it and I owned it. And the fascinating thing that happened after this is I started showing up for

01:07:55.700 myself and I didn't abandon myself again over the next, I don't know, few weeks of the relationship.

01:08:02.440 Then I got cleared. I was just like, no, this is my value. This is my boundary. This is what I'm

01:08:07.460 creating. She didn't like that. She didn't like me not giving in and not giving her what she wanted

01:08:12.260 all the time. She wanted me to be the person I was being to give her what she wanted. And I was like,

01:08:16.640 that doesn't work for me. And here's my boundary. And here's what I'm willing to do. And I'm not

01:08:20.180 willing to do this. And it became so clear to me that it was time to walk away. And I had so much

01:08:26.640 peace, even in the chaos of her not liking me ending the relationship. I was never okay with hurting

01:08:34.880 someone that I cared about before this. And so I would just kind of give in and mold to try to

01:08:40.720 make it work, abandoning myself in the process. And so it was such a beautiful thing getting to

01:08:45.720 interview Paul Conte and so many other experts as I was living this moment. And as I was experiencing

01:08:51.780 this physically, emotionally, and connecting the dots mentally and tying it all back to the childhood

01:08:56.960 stuff, it was like, wow, for the actual first time, I feel pain-free in my body. And it wasn't

01:09:04.740 because of something I was doing physical. It was psychological and emotional trauma and wounds

01:09:09.680 that were still hurting me that I hadn't faced and fully addressed. And as my coach and therapist

01:09:16.840 says, healing is a journey. It doesn't always happen overnight. There was a moment when the pain went away,

01:09:22.860 but it didn't mean there weren't tremors, some PTSD feelings that I had to keep breathing through

01:09:29.000 and practicing and integrating these lessons. Other moments that I was like, okay, am I going to go

01:09:34.540 back into fear and how I used to be? Or am I going to lean into courage, lean into owning who I am and

01:09:40.280 not abandoning myself? And every time I kept stepping into the emotional courage, speaking my

01:09:46.160 truth, being real to myself and to the people that were upset with me and just saying, well, I'm sorry

01:09:51.440 you feel this way, but this is my vision and we're just not a good match. It gave me so much more

01:09:56.120 confidence, peace, courage, energy, freedom that I'd never fully experienced in intimate

01:10:04.100 relationships. And it has been a complete game changer in every area of my life since integrating

01:10:11.780 these lessons and being consistent with it when I feel a sense of like, oh, okay, I could go back into

01:10:17.900 that old way of being, but I'm just going to show up. Know that it may be a little disturbance,

01:10:22.860 but I'm going to be okay. I'm safe. I'm okay. And I'm going to be able to manage it.

01:10:27.580 It's been a beautiful journey, but it has taken a lot of emotional training and consistency. I mean,

01:10:34.300 I did an eight hour therapy session one day on a Saturday to just say, I'm all in, I'm committed

01:10:39.740 to peace and freedom. And what I've realized is that it's truly hard to live a fulfilling, rich,

01:10:46.060 abundant, joyful life, peaceful life, unless we are willing to face the wounds, the fears, the insecurities,

01:10:55.580 the shames, the guilt, all that stuff that has held us back. The more I interview these experts who

01:11:01.860 study this much more than me, and the more I experience it firsthand and see the actual results

01:11:08.820 personally, I'm just convinced that when we face the emotional trauma, psychological traumas of our

01:11:15.800 past, and we own it and we process it, we will be free. One of the things I take away from this story

01:11:23.260 that I think is really important for anybody listening to you is that, and you've stated this,

01:11:27.740 but I think it's worth reiterating. These are not digital switches. So digital, it's either zero or one.

01:11:33.920 So it's not like in 2013, you went to this workshop when your life was about to implode, you obviously

01:11:41.260 had a very powerful experience there, and you reveal perhaps the greatest of the teas in your bag of

01:11:47.960 teas. Yes. But then you went to one and it was all good. No, it's actually, it's much more analog, right?

01:11:54.860 Analog is like it dials, and it dials up and it dials down and dials up and it dials down. The reason I think

01:12:00.400 that's important is it can be very discouraging, I suspect, when you make progress and then you take

01:12:07.780 a step backwards, right? Yeah. I thought I did a lot of the work and then I was like, well, why am I

01:12:11.880 still repeating this pattern in intimacy and relationships? And I was like, I healed this,

01:12:16.040 I healed this, but why is this still coming up? Life is interesting and funny in that way where

01:12:21.860 every new season or every new chapter or every new stage of life, sure, when I have kids,

01:12:26.580 I'm going to need to face things courageously that are from childhood still or from different

01:12:31.540 wounds that I had. I'm going to have to face and show up and have the courage and be able to sit

01:12:36.040 in discomfort when my kids are crying or when my kids are sick or when they're afraid. I'm going to

01:12:40.620 have to learn how to become a better emotional leader and lean into these things that held me back

01:12:46.660 in the past and have that emotional courage. And I think as we build our business, I'm going to have

01:12:52.260 to do things I've never done before and step into that emotional courage in relationship and

01:12:56.640 children, all that stuff. As we age, you know, everything is going to have to have more and more

01:13:01.820 courage. You know, it's funny you mentioned aging. You're obviously young enough that I guess you're

01:13:06.680 not at that point where you're thinking about mortality much or are you? I mean, how much do you

01:13:10.420 think about that? I think about it every day, multiple times a day. My father just passed away a year

01:13:15.220 ago. And when I was 20, 21, he got into a car accident that caused traumatic brain injury.

01:13:24.940 The car that he got hit by came on top of the windshield and the bumper of that car came through

01:13:32.380 his windshield and hit him in the forehead, splitting his head open. He was on a trip in New

01:13:36.840 Zealand with his then girlfriend at the time after my parents had been divorced years later.

01:13:41.600 He was cut out of the car, was cut open. They had to airlift him to a hospital in New Zealand,

01:13:47.860 and he was in a coma for three months asleep. And so this was another traumatic event that happened

01:13:55.640 to someone close to me, someone I cared about deeply, a mentor of mine, someone that was there

01:14:00.360 for me in a lot of ways. For many years, probably four or five years, I was really angry and upset and

01:14:07.340 afraid because he was, in a lot of ways, a big mentor and a teacher of mine and supported me

01:14:14.700 to chase my dreams. He encouraged me in every way possible to go after my dreams. He gave me a lot of

01:14:21.380 lessons when I was a kid. Some things I didn't understand until later, he never celebrated my

01:14:25.400 birthday. And when I was a kid, it upset me. And then when I was probably like 9, 10, 11, I was like,

01:14:32.960 Dad, why don't we ever have a birthday for me? There's all these other kids that have birthday

01:14:36.500 parties, but I never have a birthday party. And he said, I never want you to be limited by your age.

01:14:41.360 Most people I see make an excuse that they're too young to try something or they're too old and it's

01:14:46.320 too late. And I never want you to have that excuse. And so he gave me a lot of meaningful lessons.

01:14:51.760 And I was like, well, we can still have a cake, Dad. We can still have a party and just not celebrate

01:14:55.980 the age. And so when he went through his coma, it was extremely traumatizing for our entire family.

01:15:01.320 It's kind of like my brother going to prison, like that type of experience where it was this

01:15:05.920 uncertainty, this fear, this loss. He got out three months later, came back to the USA.

01:15:12.460 He couldn't speak for almost a year. So he could barely walk. He couldn't speak. It was so hard to

01:15:18.900 see, again, another hero of mine who didn't have the ability to live his full personality and his life.

01:15:27.740 And for many years, he did different therapies physically, psychologically, all these different

01:15:33.720 things. He eventually was able to talk again. He was eventually able to write some and function

01:15:39.840 minimally. But he could never work again. He stayed in home pretty much 24-7. Sometimes he could get out

01:15:47.640 and walk a little bit. But he had so many different broken bones and ammonia and collapsed lungs. And the

01:15:53.680 brain trauma was so intense that essentially he was physically alive, but mentally and emotionally

01:16:01.240 he had died. And so that was another hard thing to witness. My father, who was a hero of mine and a

01:16:08.840 big inspiration in a lot of ways, not perfect and made a lot of mistakes, but it's still a big

01:16:12.380 inspiration, unable to have a real conversation with him. Every time I'd see him, it is,

01:16:20.160 hey, son, where'd you go to school again? What sport did you used to play? Oh, that's right. You

01:16:26.480 played football. Or sometimes get me confused with my other brother and call me Chris. It was the same

01:16:32.960 conversation on repeat for 17 years until he just passed a year ago. And again, I don't wish that

01:16:41.380 upon anyone. I don't want anyone's father or loved one to go through a traumatic brain injury car accident

01:16:47.000 and to have them physically alive, but have to take care of them like a five-year-old,

01:16:53.920 change his diapers, take care of him, make sure he's not burning himself on the stove. He couldn't

01:16:59.300 drive. He couldn't do any of these things. It was such an emotional sadness to have that loss and see

01:17:06.720 him physically unable to live the life that he once had. When that happened, I got so clear

01:17:16.320 that I was going to do whatever it took. If I had any dream inside of me, I was doing it.

01:17:23.740 It was no fear or failure. It was just, I'm doing it. And if I fail, I'm fine with it because I don't

01:17:30.840 want to die regretting that I didn't do that, at least go for it. So shortly after that, and went and

01:17:36.840 tried out for professional football teams and made a pro football team because that was my dream.

01:17:40.940 Then I got injured. Two years later, I had this dream of playing the Olympics and I moved to New

01:17:46.220 York City. I figured out how to make money and moved to New York City to play with a handball

01:17:49.600 team and learn the sport of handball and try to make the USA team. I made the USA team a year after

01:17:55.040 that. I traveled the world with the USA team while I'm building a business and doing it digitally and

01:18:00.400 virtually, running webinars and things like that all over the world to pursue a dream that I'm not

01:18:05.620 getting paid to do. Just because I knew this is something that I wanted to do and at least give

01:18:10.220 it a shot. Playing in Spain and Israel and Luxembourg and Canada and Mexico and Uruguay and

01:18:15.200 Argentina and Brazil, all over the world, paying for my own travel to represent my country, wear USA

01:18:21.660 across my chest, be able to sing the national anthem and play against Olympic teams on a pursuit

01:18:26.720 of trying to make the Olympics. We never qualified. Just because the dream didn't come true

01:18:33.180 doesn't mean it wasn't a dream come true. The experiences, the lessons, the growth, the

01:18:39.020 adversity I faced, the injuries I overcame, all these things. And my dad never was able

01:18:44.060 to watch. He was alive, but he never came to a game. He didn't really understand what life

01:18:50.460 was anymore. So for 17 years, I went after everything in these last 17 years because I knew

01:18:59.900 that this could happen to me at any moment. I knew that my life is not guaranteed today, tomorrow,

01:19:05.340 and it gave me a lot of courage to say yes. I wrote a book before I was 25 and I almost flunked

01:19:13.740 out of English in high school, but I was just like, I don't care if I'm embarrassed. I'd rather be

01:19:19.380 embarrassed and give it a shot than be regretting that I never tried this and I let the dream die inside

01:19:25.700 of me. I really believe self-doubt is the killer of dreams. And people hold on to their insecurities

01:19:31.520 and self-doubt so much that they really never launch the dream or even try for it. And for me,

01:19:38.060 the results are irrelevant because it's about the things I learned about myself, the people I meet,

01:19:44.060 the connections, the moments that are meaningful along the way. And I know you hear that all the

01:19:48.880 time, but for me, it became so real when my father had this accident. And I had to learn how to accept

01:19:56.620 it after four or five years when it was just like kind of a suffering depression around my father,

01:20:02.720 hoping he'd recover, hoping he'd get back to who he was. I had to learn to accept it, that he sometimes

01:20:08.660 isn't going to remember who I am, that he's going to have the same conversation on repeat, that he's

01:20:12.400 going to forget. He lost a lot of his memory, so he just forgot about childhood stuff.

01:20:17.260 That he would never call me again, that we would never have a meaningful relationship. And I had

01:20:22.860 some great moments with him and some great conversations in the last few years before he

01:20:27.000 passed, but it was essentially a really sad time for 17 years. And it was almost like I didn't get to

01:20:32.860 grieve emotionally until last year, his death, even though physically he was alive, he was kind of

01:20:40.200 mentally and emotionally gone. And so I feel like these last two years, therapy, the process of death,

01:20:47.260 my father going through this accident 17 years ago, gave me so much clarity that I've got to take care

01:20:54.360 of my body, I've got to take care of my mind, I've got to take care of my emotions, that it could all

01:20:58.940 be gone at any moment. And I want to be proud of the actions I'm taking. And it doesn't mean I've

01:21:05.120 always been perfect, but I want to be proud knowing that I went after the dreams. So I think about death

01:21:10.980 daily. I reflect on it, I think about it, and I appreciate my life every day.

01:21:17.280 You know, just this morning, I ordered one of those calendars that is a week calendar for your

01:21:22.680 life. I'm sure you've seen these calendars.

01:21:24.660 Yeah. I saw you having the guy on Bill Perkins.

01:21:27.640 Yeah. So Bill Perkins, who's an amazing guy. And yeah, we got talking about that on the podcast.

01:21:33.020 And I was like, you know what, I'm such an analytical guy. And I feel like I know this,

01:21:38.820 but there's no substitute for the reminder every single day. And so actually just this morning,

01:21:45.640 you know, by coincidence, I ordered the calendar. I set my life expectancy at 88 years,

01:21:50.280 and I plugged my birth date in and it's already filled in the boxes that are, you know, because

01:21:55.560 I'm basically 50. So it's filled in the first 50 times 12 boxes. So I'm more than halfway there,

01:22:01.520 basically saying this is what 38 years more of life looks. But to your point, look, it could be

01:22:06.360 one month. We don't know.

01:22:08.060 Never know. My dad wanted this trip, not thinking he was going to get in this accident. And it's funny

01:22:12.380 because my friend Nas Daly, I don't know if you've ever seen this creator online. Nas Daly has worn

01:22:17.040 one shirt for the last like seven years. And it's a shirt that has like a battery and it says like

01:22:22.480 33% life. And that's how much life he's lived. And it shows you how much life he has. Every day,

01:22:28.760 he looks in the mirror, he wears the same shirt as a reminder to live his full life today.

01:22:33.820 And is it a shirt that he changes every year and reduces the percent?

01:22:37.040 Exactly. Every year it changes into a new shirt. He's got like 20 of them for the year and he wears

01:22:41.280 the same thing. He just doesn't wear anything else. In every video, it says the same thing.

01:22:45.660 Wow. One final thought just before we wrap up. I know we don't have all day as much as I'm sure

01:22:51.200 we would enjoy that. You've made a very compelling case for how different modalities of therapy have

01:22:59.540 changed your life. What do you say to someone who's listening to us or watching us right now

01:23:05.580 who says, hmm, I can really see how in Lewis's case that was necessary, but I don't think it's

01:23:14.180 necessary for me. I don't imagine I would ever need therapy. I mean, I never went through the

01:23:19.240 horrific things that he went through. And yeah, my relationships aren't perfect. I can be a little

01:23:25.260 reactive, but there can't be any upside in talking about this because there's nothing to really talk

01:23:31.100 about. I'm sure you encounter this all the time. How do you make the case to somebody like that? Or

01:23:35.800 what's the case that you make? I feel like I've tried a lot of stuff and I'm sure I could try a lot

01:23:39.480 more from emotional intelligence workshops for years to, you know, I went to India and studied

01:23:45.460 meditation to become a meditation instructor for many weeks. I took a bunch of guys to Wim Hof in

01:23:51.520 Poland and did like a private thing with him jumping in frozen rivers and doing the whole breathing and

01:23:55.980 meditation and ice training and mindset training. I've done, you know, seven-day meditation retreats

01:24:02.380 with Joe Dispenza. I've tried lots of different things and I've done coaching. I've had therapy. I've done all

01:24:07.860 these different things. And here's what I say. You know, I try to think of it in a practical sense

01:24:12.000 as an athlete and studying the great athletes and interviewing a lot of world champions from Kobe

01:24:17.700 Bryant and Novak Djokovic to Olympic gold medalists. All the great athletes who get to the top have

01:24:25.560 coaches. They have coaches in their field of expertise to support them in winning their sport

01:24:33.880 and becoming the best. When they win, they don't say, I've got it all figured out. You know, I'm at

01:24:41.260 the top. I've got it all figured out. I don't need coaches anymore. They actually go and hire more coaches

01:24:45.580 that are specialized in different modalities to improve the nutrition and mobility and strength

01:24:51.040 training and whatever it might be. They hire more elite coaches when they're at the top to continue to

01:24:56.360 sustain that and get better. They don't say, I've got it figured out. And for whatever reason,

01:25:02.340 in the matters of emotions, love, relationships, and understanding our own emotions and how we

01:25:10.400 interact with triggering events in the world, I don't really remember being taught how to

01:25:16.360 navigate that as a kid growing up. Sure, I was taught as an athlete in a coaching environment

01:25:22.920 how to overcome stressful situations and set goals and work with a team. But when it came to love,

01:25:29.780 when it came to intimacy, when it came to running a business, these aren't things that I learned in

01:25:34.320 school. Some of the things transferred over, but it wasn't really there. And coaches and therapy and

01:25:41.240 workshops have supported me in developing more tools that help me overcome my fears and insecurities

01:25:48.040 and become a better, more authentic version of myself that allow me to have more peace and more

01:25:53.740 abundance. And I think there's a lot of people that live a really good life, even if they have

01:25:59.000 stresses and they're not perfect, but they live a good life. But I think that holds people back from

01:26:03.980 living an abundant, joyful, peaceful life and being willing to just try new stuff. And it doesn't mean

01:26:11.160 everything I've tried works for me and it doesn't have to work for you either. You know, there's a lot

01:26:15.680 of people that talk about psychedelics and mushrooms and all these things, and that doesn't speak to me.

01:26:20.760 It's not something that calls me in my life at this point, maybe in the future it will.

01:26:24.640 So be willing to try stuff, listen to your friends and family. When they're listening to you on your

01:26:29.700 podcast, you've got a lot of great recommendations for these things. Learn from the experts. Paul

01:26:35.060 Conte is another great person. Learn from what he's doing and just try stuff. Maybe some of it works,

01:26:40.320 maybe some of it doesn't. But what I will say is do not wait until things get to the perfect storm in

01:26:45.340 your life. Unfortunately, that's what it takes for a lot of people to start doing the work on

01:26:49.180 themselves. But do your best to just be a constant learner and growing and developing in your emotional

01:26:55.260 journey. One last thing. You've used the word peaceful many times today. You continually talk

01:27:01.800 about a peaceful life and a peaceful transformation. And I don't believe that that's sort of a coincidence

01:27:07.220 or something. So tell me why that is and what that means for you. I don't know if transformation

01:27:11.400 is peaceful. I think it can be very stressful and overwhelming. And it can feel a lot when you're in the

01:27:17.100 transformation of reflecting on a previous identity of who you are, challenges, pain. It

01:27:23.160 can feel overwhelming. It can feel scary, messy, all those different things. But I think inner peace

01:27:28.660 is the greatest currency. I think in a world that we've been going through the last couple of years,

01:27:34.220 stress, overwhelm, COVID, isolation, economic crisis that's happening now, war, all these different

01:27:41.040 things. Mental health being talked about more than ever. I believe inner peace is the highest currency

01:27:49.080 that human beings can cultivate and can manifest and develop. There's a lot of wealthy, rich people

01:27:57.100 financially who have very little inner peace and they suffer emotionally and their relationships are

01:28:03.780 at risk and their health is at risk. There's a lot of wealthy people that die young because of the

01:28:09.700 stresses and the traumas that they have yet to heal. Inner peace for me is the greatest currency. It's

01:28:14.780 the thing that I think a lot of us want. It's the thing we seek, we desire, but a lot of us just

01:28:21.020 haven't been taught the tools. And so for me, I want to have inner peace so that I can take on the

01:28:27.440 problems and the pain and the stresses that are outside of me with more poise, with more grace,

01:28:34.540 with more mature leadership qualities, as opposed to reactive, frustrated, stressed, anxious,

01:28:44.000 overwhelmed qualities. And the great coaches that I've had were able to face adversity, challenges,

01:28:50.920 stress, multiple personalities of teammates with poise, with calm, because they had inner calm.

01:28:58.860 And those are the people that I respected the most because they were able to navigate

01:29:01.920 situations in life that were chaotic with grace. And I think that will support you in anything,

01:29:08.700 in your marriage, your relationship, your family, your friends, your community, your business online,

01:29:13.800 your platform, your career, and really just navigating your own life. So for me,

01:29:19.460 inner peace is the greatest currency. And I think we should all be seeking to develop it.

01:29:23.880 Well, Lewis, thanks so much. Because we didn't really talk that much about your book,

01:29:27.420 let's tell folks the title of the book, when it's out, and anything else you want to talk about.

01:29:32.280 Yeah. The Greatest Mindset. I'm excited about it. This is 10 years in the making, really, for me.

01:29:37.200 This is a culmination of all the research from experts like yourself, Paul Conte's in there,

01:29:43.720 a lot of different experts from neuroscientists to doctors to world-class athletes. And kind of tying

01:29:50.120 all the same things together, but set in different ways on how to get clear on your meaningful mission

01:29:56.340 so that your life has a lot of purpose and a richness and an excitement to it to heal the

01:30:03.100 different things of the past that have hold you back. And some of these things have actually helped

01:30:07.460 you get to where you are, but it's not helping you get to where you want to be in an abundant,

01:30:12.540 renewable energy way. And so figuring out how to do that in the process that I've learned over the last

01:30:17.760 decade to really setting clear what I call greatness goals to help you make a bigger impact on the

01:30:25.320 people around you. And, you know, for me, I always wanted to be successful, but I realized that success

01:30:30.180 was very selfish and me centric. And when I hit 30, I said, how can I make everyone else win around me?

01:30:37.820 And greatness became the thing I wanted to achieve more because greatness is about me pursuing my dreams

01:30:44.300 and impacting those around me in that pursuit as well. It wasn't about competition. It was about

01:30:49.540 collaboration. That's why I made a show that was about lifting others up and shining the light on

01:30:54.160 others. And so this has been a 10 years of research of helping people get clear on what's holding them

01:31:00.600 back, on the main cause of their self-doubt and the supporting on the frameworks on overcoming that

01:31:06.360 and living a more abundant life. Well, congratulations on getting it to the goal line. As a first-time

01:31:11.760 author, I know it's very difficult. You know the challenge. Yeah. And I'm sure folks will be

01:31:16.180 really happy to pick this up and have sort of a codified, distilled version of a lot of the stuff

01:31:21.040 we've talked about and more because there's more in there than obviously we haven't scratched the

01:31:24.180 surface of really the book. I think we've made the case for the book. And now really the question is,

01:31:28.300 can you go there and find the resources? So thank you, Lewis. I appreciate it. Thanks so much.

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The Peter Attia Drive - March 06, 2023

#245 ‒ Overcoming trauma, finding inner peace, and living a meaningful and fulfilling life ｜ Lewis Howes

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