47:17Ed Mylett · Talking Head
Best of Ed Mylett's Motivational Speeches
A 47-minute compilation from five live stages, built around one argument: the pain you survived is the skill that makes you worth listening to.
April 9th 2023The argument in one line.
The thing holding most people back is not fear itself but the meaning they attached to a fearful event years ago -- change the story, and the emotion that depends on it dissolves.
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
- You have been stuck in the same pattern for more than a year and cannot name exactly why.
- You know there is a more capable version of you that is not showing up yet.
- You spend more time calculating what change will cost you than what staying the same is already costing.
- You carry a private story -- a past failure, rejection, or trauma -- that quietly shapes your behavior without you discussing it.
- You want practical frameworks for reframing fear rather than generic positivity advice.
SKIP IF…
- You want a single tightly argued thesis -- this is a compilation with six distinct voices and loosely stitched segments.
- You are looking for tactical business, productivity, or skill-building content.
- Long motivational monologues wear you out quickly.
The full version, fast.
Fear is not false evidence -- it is real, and some fears are wired in for a reason. The problem is the story you attach to the fearful event, which creates an emotion that outlasts the event itself. Ed builds the central reframe: stop evaluating cost and start evaluating worth. John Assaraf provides the neuroscience -- the Frankenstein brain (amygdala) hijacks the Einstein brain (prefrontal cortex), and two innercise techniques interrupt that pattern in seconds. The 51% rule cuts through the paralysis: you need 51% excitement, not zero fear. Robin Sharma adds daily micro-bravery as the compounding practice. Lewis Howes closes with a rare account of carrying a 25-year secret -- the thing he was most afraid of people knowing became the thing that made them trust him most.
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00:00 – 00:11
01 · Subscribe bumper
Weekend special intro and subscribe CTA.
00:12 – 09:50
02 · Cost vs. worth
Ed solo: what are your fears costing you, poor vs rich mindset around price tags, walking dead framing, meeting the real you.
09:51 – 20:00
03 · Story to emotion to behavior
Ed solo: it is not the event, it is the meaning you attach. Baseball career, orphanage, reattaching meaning to past events.
20:01 – 35:00
04 · John Assaraf -- brain science
Frankenstein/Einstein brain model. Take Six breathing innercise. AIA framework for interrupting fear patterns.
35:01 – 47:00
05 · Fear is real -- the 51% rule
Ed at SiriusXM: false evidence appearing real is false. Fear is biochemically real. 51% excitement threshold. Butterfly moments reframe.
47:01 – 55:00
06 · Robin Sharma -- hug the monster
Himalayan grandmaster story. Daily micro-bravery practice. Discomfort of growth vs illusion of safety.
55:01 – 1:10:00
07 · Lewis Howes -- vulnerability and the masculine mask
Dodgeball identity wound. 25-year secret. Going public with trauma. The thing he feared most became his greatest source of trust.
1:10:01 – 1:20:00
08 · Jen Gottlieb / Tom McCarthy / Rachel Hollis -- identity
Whose voice is that? Unearned confidence. Identity as critical story. Women, calling, and shame. Resourcefulness over readiness.
1:20:01 – 1:30:10
09 · Faith over fear -- close
Ed and guests close on faith over fear, heart vs head, choosing your own voice at the end of the day.
Lines worth screenshotting.
- The price of staying the same is always higher than the price of change -- you just feel the second one more acutely because it is in the future.
- Most people die at 75 but stopped living at 21. The body gets buried decades later.
- You cannot love yourself if you do not know yourself, and you cannot know yourself if you are not being yourself.
- Cost versus worth is a subtle but total difference. Poor people ask what something costs. Wealthy people ask whether it is worth it.
- Fear and excitement produce almost identical chemistry in the body. The difference is the story running on top of the chemistry.
- You do not need to eradicate fear to act. You need 51 percent excitement versus 49 percent fear -- that is the actionable threshold.
- The discomfort of growth is always to be preferred to the illusion of safety.
- An emotion cannot survive long-term without a story attached to it. Change the story, and the emotion starves.
- Unearned confidence is a pretty good substitute for earned confidence -- and most people never give themselves permission to use it.
- The thing you are most afraid of people knowing is usually the thing that makes people trust you the most when you finally say it.
- Every great moment in your life was preceded by butterflies. Chasing butterflies is therefore the same as chasing great moments.
- One in six men have been sexually abused in some way, and almost none of them talk about it -- the silence multiplies the damage.
- If you want something, you will find a way. If you do not, you will find an excuse.
- The threshold for how prepared you think you need to be before acting is the single biggest variable separating people who get results from those who stay stuck.
- Identity is your most critical story -- and you do not have to keep the one you were handed.
Seven frameworks for moving through fear instead of around it.
WHAT TO LEARN
Fear is biochemically real, but the emotion that keeps you stuck is not fear itself -- it is the story you attached to a fearful event, and stories can be changed.
02Cost vs. worth
- The cost-vs-worth reframe is the master key: most people evaluate what change will cost them and never ask what staying the same is already costing them -- flip the question.
- An emotion cannot survive long-term without a story attached to it. If you are still carrying a feeling from years ago, there is a story running underneath it -- find the story and the emotion loses its fuel source.
03Story to emotion to behavior
- It is not the event that defines you -- it is the meaning you attached to the event. The same factual circumstances can carry entirely different meanings, and changing the meaning changes the emotion and therefore the behavior.
04John Assaraf -- brain science
- Fear activates the amygdala and suppresses the prefrontal cortex, making clear thinking physically harder. Six slow nasal breaths is enough to interrupt this response at a physiological level.
- The AIA sequence (Awareness without judgment, Intention for the next ten minutes, one small Action) provides a repeatable path from paralysis back to agency.
05Fear is real -- the 51% rule
- You do not need to eliminate fear to take action. The 51 percent threshold -- slightly more excitement than dread -- is all that is required. Waiting for certainty is the most common form of inaction.
- Fear and excitement produce nearly identical physiology. Renaming the sensation as butterflies or anticipation is not denial -- it is a neurologically legitimate reframe that shifts which story gets told on top of the chemistry.
06Robin Sharma -- hug the monster
- Daily micro-bravery practice compounds. Doing one thing you are afraid of early in the day reduces the power of that category of fear over time, not because the fear disappears but because familiarity changes how threatening it feels.
07Lewis Howes -- vulnerability
- The thing you are most afraid of people knowing is often the thing that makes them trust you most when you finally say it. Vulnerability converts private weight into public credibility.
- Identity is a story you can edit. Most people are living out an identity assembled from a handful of defining wounds -- those events do not have to keep generating their original meaning.
08Jen Gottlieb / Tom McCarthy / Rachel Hollis
- The threshold for how prepared you need to be before acting is almost always set too high. People who consistently get results act sooner, iterate faster, and treat preparation as a tool rather than a prerequisite.
- Whose voice is it? When fear says do not act, it is worth asking whether the voice belongs to you or to a parent, a partner, or the abstract crowd of strangers on the internet. You cannot live someone else caution.
Terms worth knowing.
- Frankenstein brain
- John Assaraf shorthand for the amygdala and fear-response circuitry that activates when real or imagined danger is detected, triggering fight-flight-freeze.
- Einstein brain
- Assaraf term for the prefrontal cortex and rational thinking functions that get suppressed during a fear response but can be reactivated through deliberate breathing and awareness techniques.
- Take Six / AIA innercise
- Two sequential exercises: six slow nasal breaths to deactivate the sympathetic nervous system, followed by Awareness (observe without judgment), Intention (name what you want), and Action (one small step toward it).
- Butterfly moment
- Ed Mylett reframe for fear-adjacent feelings before high-stakes action -- the same biochemistry as fear, renamed to cue forward movement rather than retreat.
- Hug the monster
- Robin Sharma daily practice of intentionally doing one difficult or fear-inducing thing early in the day, based on the principle that monsters shrink when you run toward them.
- Cost vs. worth
- Ed Mylett central reframe: poor-mindset people evaluate the cost of change; wealthy-mindset people evaluate the worth. The same action looks different depending on which lens you use.
- Mask of masculinity
- Lewis Howes concept from his book -- the protective persona men construct to avoid vulnerability, often traced to a specific early wound like rejection, abuse, or public failure.
Things they pointed at.
20:40bookInnercise (John Assaraf)
20:30productThe Secret
47:45bookThe Everyday Hero Manifesto (Robin Sharma)
1:00:00bookThe Mask of Masculinity (Lewis Howes)
Lines you could clip.
05:08
“Most people die 75 or 80 years old, but they really stop living at 21 or 22. We just do not put them in the ground until they are older.”
07:31
“Cost versus worth is a subtle difference. Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to let go of these memories?”
47:07
“You do not have to eradicate all fear. You need to get to 51 percent. That is all it is.”
48:30
“The discomfort of growth is always to be preferred to the illusion of safety.”
1:03:00
“The thing I was most afraid of people knowing was actually the thing that when I shared it, people trusted me more.”
Word for word.
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00:00Hey, everyone. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show.
00:03Hit that like button, and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel so you never miss my show. Whether it's Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday, now on with the show. Welcome back.
00:13So good to have you with me here today, and I'm honored to spend this brief time with you. I think I have something important to ask you about and for us to visit about today. So let's get right into it.
00:23What are your fears costing you? I think it's time to evaluate that. Like, you and I right now.
00:30What are your fears costing you? You know, we have these weights that weigh us down in our life, these burdens, these fears that we have.
00:39Have you ever stopped to think about what it's actually costing you to have these anchors and these weights wearing you down, these fears? You know, people ask me all the time, Ed, is making your dreams come true, the work you put in, the sacrifices you made, the people that let you down, all the dark times in your life, all the times you went broke, both financially and emotionally, is it worth it?
01:04It's a very interesting question because they always phrase it that way. Is it worth it? Yet in our lives, we spend most of our times evaluating and contemplating what it's going to cost us.
01:14So let me say something to you upfront. The price you will pay to become the person you're worthy of, the price you will pay to become the real you, the price you will pay to make your dreams come true and your vision a reality and the people around you blissful and happy, that price, and there's a severe price, is infinitely smaller than the price you're gonna pay if you don't and that others around you will pay.
01:39You know, I don't think God gave you another day in your life because you needed it. I think he added another day to your life because somebody needed you. But here's the thing.
01:49They need the real you, the authentic you, the one who's playing all out in their life and pursuing their dreams. I can tell you the answer to that question is as good as you think it'll be to make your dreams come true and dreams that you can't even imagine right now, visions of your life.
02:03But maybe even more importantly, as good as you think it would feel to meet the real you, the one you were born to be and and remember this, you were born to do something great with your life. But to finally get introduced or reacquainted or reintroduced to that person, maybe you, years ago, knew them very well, that version of you, But things have happened.
02:21These anchors, these fears, these toxic relationships, whatever they might be, these disappointments in our life, we've moved so far away from that person that we're capable of becoming that we don't even recognize them anymore. As good as you think it'll be to meet that person for the first time or once again, it's a million times better.
02:39Now here's the hook. You have to start thinking like a rich person, and I don't mean just financially. I mean rich in spirit, rich in emotions, rich in relationships.
02:48And for many of you, including me, we wanna be rich financially. People ask me all the time, Ed, why do you put out all this free content? I mean, you put out the best content in the world.
02:56Everybody else charges for inferior content. You put out the best stuff, and I appreciate when people say that, and you don't really charge for it. Um, this is free.
03:04I do that because I believe in the law of reciprocity. I also wanna make the world better. And I believe I put out enough good stuff.
03:09If someday I ask you to come to an event or participate in something, you probably wanna come. But I wanna pour into you because I don't think God gave me another day because I needed it. I think he gave me another day because people need me, and they need you.
03:21And you need to remember, you were born to do something great with your life, my brother, my sister. You were. And I wanna remind you of that today.
03:30But I think it's time to evaluate what are my fears, my patterns a toxic person in a relationship that I'm in with right now that's weighing me down.
03:39What's it ultimately costing me? Because it's just your life. That's all we're talking about.
03:43It's just you. Just your life. And by the way, you're not getting out of it alive.
03:49You are not getting out of this alive. So all these things that are weighing you down are truly silly. Because at the end, we all end up in the same situation where our body eventually ceases to exist, and, hopefully, our soul goes to heaven.
04:03But in your case, you gotta stop thinking like a poor person. And I I'm talking to me as much as I am you. Let me tell you what I mean by poor.
04:10Poor in spirit, poor in emotion, and poor financially. See, when I was broke financially, when I would go into a store and I wanted something, I wouldn't get what I wanted.
04:20I would get what I could afford. Sound familiar? So I was the guy who would flip price tags over.
04:26Oh, it's this. It's this. And I would evaluate what it would cost me, not what it was worth.
04:32And so oftentimes in life, people ask me, Ed, was it worth it? But in their life, they spend most of the time contemplating the cost. It's gonna cost me this.
04:40It's gonna cost me that. You know, maybe I wanna become the person that would be able cost me losing this person in my life. It'll cost me time.
04:46It'll cost me my hobby that I like spending so much time in. It'll cost me pain and emotion and whatever it might it'll cost me I'd have to let go of my fears. I'd to let go of my patterns.
04:56And these invisible things that weigh us down in our life, they kill us. And so there's a lot of walking dead in the world.
05:05There's this old saying that they say it about men, but it's people. Most people die 75 or 80 years old, but they really stop living at 21 or 22 or 23 years old.
05:16We just don't put them into the ground until they're older. Too many people are walking around like this, and maybe you relate to it. Maybe you relate to a percentage of it.
05:25These fears, these relationships, these things we worry about, these invisible boogeymen, what are people gonna be thinking about me? Do you wanna get to the end of your life? And if someone asks you honestly, how did you live your life?
05:35Do you wanna answer truthfully, scared? I lived afraid, afraid I wasn't good enough, afraid I wasn't worth it, afraid of what other people would think about me, afraid to lose people around me that didn't even love me or care about me or want me to be my best.
05:51I lived my life afraid. Or at the end, you wanna say, man, I maxed out my life. I got all the emotions, all the memories, all the achievements, all the richness in every area out of my life.
06:04I maxed out my life. Well, I could tell you this. If you hold on to these anchors much longer, it's gonna keep costing you.
06:09And the longer you do it see, even these things sometimes what holds us back is our feeling bad about things we've done in the past that we're not proud of. And we use these memories as weapons against ourselves.
06:20We stab ourselves with it over and over or somebody's cheated on us or made a mistake. We we use it as weapons against ourselves, and it that's what you need to be asking yourself whether it's worth it. Is it worth it to make your dreams come true?
06:32Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to grow? You bet it is.
06:35A million times better. Because when you make your original dreams come true, you don't understand the ripple effects of all these other things you can't even think about right now that happened. When you meet the real you, it's spectacular.
06:46You have to remember this. You can't love yourself. Everyone here, man and woman, macho man, and every single buddy listen to this.
06:54K? You can't love yourself if you don't even know yourself. And you can't know yourself if you're not truly being yourself.
07:02And these anchors cause us not to be us. I'm personally haunted with the thought of getting to the end of my life and never meeting me, never getting introduced to me.
07:14I wanna meet that man. I'm interested in who he is, and I wanna do the things every single day.
07:20Because once I got wealthy and I was rich and I went into a store, I didn't look at price tags anymore.
07:27I looked at whether it was worth it, and I got what I wanted. And our lives are a perfect metaphor of that. We're constantly evaluating the cost instead of whether or not it's worth it.
07:38Cost versus worth is a subtle difference. Is it worth it to change? Is it worth it to let go of these memories?
07:44Is it worth it to drop your fears? You'll never meet you otherwise. Some of us are held back by crappy programming our parents installed in us when we were young.
07:52Remember this. Most things in life are caught, not taught. We catch a way of thinking.
07:56We catch a way of having emotions. And we have to ungo. We have to unleash ourselves and let go of those things in our life.
08:04So what's the thing for you? What's the thing? Is it a person you need to let go of?
08:07Is it a fear you need to let go of? Is it an operating pattern? Is it a memory as a weapon you're using against yourself?
08:13Is it just you're just not sure? You gotta remember who the hell you are. And if you've never met him, you need to get introduced, and you need to get acquainted.
08:22Because I could tell you, of all the jets and islands and cool stuff I've accumulated in my life, all the accumulations are wonderful, and I want you to accumulate the things you want that'll provide memories for your family if they matter to you. The donations you can make, the people you can be there for, all the different things you can do when you get financially secure.
08:38All those things are incredible, but they don't bring us fulfillment. They can bring us temporary happiness, and there's nothing wrong with temporary happiness, but fulfillment.
08:47All of that stuff doesn't add up to meeting you. Finally meeting you. At some point in your life, don't you wanna meet you or get reacquainted because you once knew her?
08:58There was a time in your life where you knew her or him. You'll never meet them otherwise. And so I have to tell you something.
09:05You have to start you have to start to make a bold move in your life because you're worth it.
09:12Your family's worth it, and the world needs you. You were born for a reason.
09:18You were born to do something great in small ways and in big ways in your life. And oftentimes in our lives, what hold us back sometimes is the stories we tell ourselves.
09:29See, it's not the events of our lives, circumstances that define us. It's the meaning we take away from those events.
09:37And those meanings create an emotion. And that emotion drives our behavior, that emotion of fear, that emotion of anxiety, that emotion of sadness. Or it could be an emotion of bliss, of confidence, of increase, of belief, of being guided, of being protected.
09:56But you have to ask yourself that question. See, it's not the event. It's the stories we tell ourselves.
10:01And listen to me. Uh, an emotion cannot exist long term without a story attached to it.
10:08You've had a lot of things happen in your life that were emotional, but the story didn't stick or you didn't take away the wrong meaning. And so that emotion doesn't stay. If you're feeling one of those emotions, it's attached to a story.
10:20It's a story you're telling yourself. The emotion can't stay without the story, and the story is just the meaning you took from the event. It's just a meaning you took from an event.
10:31So sometimes the story you're telling yourself is, I don't wanna be alone, so I'm hanging on to this person that still weighs me down. Or where I'm at is good enough because I don't wanna risk what I've got, and that's a story. Or I've made this mistake before or someone hurt me, and what it meant was x y z, and you have a feeling about it.
10:48These anchors are actually lies we tell ourselves that are anchored in a story that doesn't serve us that causes an emotion that sticks. So if we change the story, either we take a different meaning from an event and say, could it have meant this? See, when I was a young man with my dad's drinking, I thought this means our family's less than and we're dysfunctional and all these things I attached to the to the the meaning I attached to that story that was happening.
11:16And then at one point, I realized, no. What was actually happening was god was using that to teach me how to learn to be present with people and read people and be empathetic with people and believe in people and that god was using that story for me. When my baseball career ended, I I was injured.
11:31It probably ended a career that would have ended anyway, quite frankly, but I was a pretty good player. And when I got injured, I remember thinking, man, this is my only dream of my entire life.
11:42Right? God doesn't answer prayers. Right?
11:44This was my prayer to do this. Right? The meaning of this is I just was never good enough.
11:49The meaning from it was it just wasn't meant to be. I wasn't meant to be somebody. I wasn't meant to do something great with my life, and I attached all these meanings to what was a pretty traumatic event.
11:58But I could have attached the meaning of that time that God's got something bigger in store for me, that there's something bigger and bolder for me, and that Ed Mylett I thought I was was not gonna be a baseball player, but the Ed Mylett I thought I was could be this other person who contributes to millions of people's lives.
12:13So once I attached a meaning to it, that what God really did was I probably would have played three or four or five more years and then been released and then been in my mid to late twenties, and maybe I wouldn't have taken advantage of a lot of the opportunities that came along.
12:27So that career ended right when it was supposed to so that I could start to redirect my life in a direction. And from there, I got a job at an orphanage, and that orphanage changed my life.
12:39Because of that orphanage, I met these young boys that looked just like me. These boys were all wards of the court. They were taken from their families, so their families were incarcerated or dead and had molested them at some point in their life.
12:50And so baseball ended. I'm finding myself making $6 an hour at an orphanage. And I'm thinking, god, you took multimillion dollars playing in front of hundreds of thousands of people a year, 50,000 people a night from me to be with eight children in a cottage making $6 an hour?
13:07And that's exactly what he was doing because what I needed to be was I needed to be connected with people. I needed to love people. And what's even crazier about it is the way I connected with those boys is they had grown up with all this pain and suffering and dysfunction in their homes, and that's what I grew up with in a different way with my father being an alcoholic when I was young.
13:25My career had to end that exact day it ended so that I would end up in that exact house with those exact boys, and they could have someone who understood them, who could see them, and knew who they really were because I was just like them. I recently said to Jesse Lee on my podcast, I said all people that go through any pain in their life, especially when they're young, we have different eyes.
13:47We just have different eyes. Our eyes just say, please love me. Please protect me.
13:53Please be good to me. Please be kind. Please be gentle.
13:56Please believe in me. We have these different eyes. And I remember when I walked in there, they had my eyes.
14:01Not the same color eyes. My my boys were of every ethnicity, every background.
14:07We had those eyes.
14:09And when I meet someone who's gone through pain in their life, I see those eyes. But I found out something. We don't just have the same eyes.
14:17We actually have the same heart. We have the same heart, and every single human being has that heart.
14:22It's whether or not they'll unleash it. Unleash the real them. Release the real them.
14:27Or will they continue in their life to suppress the real them and settle for this less than version of them because they've created a bunch of stories and a bunch of fears and a bunch of relationships in their life that they hide in these stories, they hide in these emotions, and they never unleash the real them. I figured this out.
14:47All I've ever wanna do is change how I feel. I didn't like how I felt. I wanted to change how I feel so I would accumulate and achieve and do things to change how I feel in my life.
14:57And as I've gotten older, I've realized if I can change how I feel, I can get all those things the easy way.
15:07And that's what I've started to do in my life, maybe from 40 to, right now, 52 years old. So I wanna challenge you today. Evaluate this thought.
15:15Evaluate what are your fears costing you? What are these anchors costing you?
15:19I want you to really pray about it. Really think about it. If you're on a walk right now, you're driving in your car, just what's it costing me?
15:25And what would my life look like potentially? And by the way, you don't even really know, just so you know. It's gonna be so much bigger, so much more beautiful, so many small things that are gonna happen along the way of you meeting you.
15:36And by the way, what's great is you continue to meet new versions of you. See, when you start to live your life without all these fears, without all these people anchoring you down, with all these patterns and stories, what's great about it is there's a new you that shows up every couple years.
15:50And there's this new version of you, an improved version of you every year. One of the things I'm excited about is to meet the 55 year old me because I didn't die at 21 or 22 like most people getting around to bury me at 85 or 90.
16:05No. No. No.
16:05No. I'm reborn all the time. I can't wait to meet the 55 year old me.
16:10I'm chasing that guy. When I get there, I can't wait to meet the 60 year old me. But the 25 year old me was nothing like the 30 year old me.
16:17Mean, a similar character, but different life, different contribution, different thoughts. Too many people are exactly the same person they were two or three years ago, and that's what it's really costing you, isn't it?
16:30And the reason you're not happy or as happy as you could be is you know this isn't you. You know this isn't you. You know there's more in you.
16:39Deep down in your heart and your soul and your spirit, the reason you're not happy isn't these other people, isn't your boss, isn't your job, isn't your body, isn't your lack of money, isn't any of it. It's that you know this really isn't you.
16:54You know this really isn't you, and it's time you meet him. It's time you meet her. It's time at least you get reacquainted if you once knew them.
17:00I wanna challenge you to do that today. I wanna challenge you to step out and drop whatever that anchor is or multiple anchors or these weapons you're using, these mistakes you've made, these choices that you regret, blah blah blah.
17:12Stop it. That's not who you are. Your destiny is now.
17:15It's in the future. It's moving forward. And there's something great waiting for you.
17:20And is the price worth it? Absolutely. Is the cost worth it?
17:23A thousand percent. Because eventually, you start getting what you want, not just what you can afford in your life.
17:30And here's the truth. You can't afford to get to the end of this life without meeting you because only then will you love you. When you're being you, you can meet you.
17:40And when you meet you, you can truly love you. It's time for you to step up. Remember, once again, I'm gonna tell you, he didn't add another day for you because you needed it.
17:49He added another day because some other person in the world needs the real you. Alright. Welcome back to Max Out, everybody.
17:55What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. I guess probably the thing I admire most about him is that he came to the space I think similarly to how I did, which is that almost reluctantly, he was a person building businesses and becoming successful in the real world applying the things he was learning from personal development and making those things a reality in his life.
18:19And then after he had business success being sought after enough, he decided to start to teach the things that had helped him become successful. And I love that there's a track record behind the incredible things we're gonna cover today.
18:31Multiple time New York Times bestseller company called NeuroGym that you're gonna fall in love with everybody, bunch of different books. This recent one I read in two days called Innercise, I highly recommend you all get this.
18:44Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from The Secret, he's one of the stars if not the star of The Secret, bunch of different books, The Answer, so many great things and it's an honor to have him today because I consider him on earth one of if not the greatest expert on the brain, on the inner mechanics of the brain, mindset and peak performance.
19:05So I know it's what all of you wanna talk about. So I have John Asarath here with me today. John, thanks for being here, brother.
19:10Ed, it's so good to be here and thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you. Pleasure is mine as you know. We're going go right into the good stuff here with this man.
19:20There's too much gold there to kind of go to generalities. Well, we were doing this during the COVID pandemic and people will watch it at any given time, it could be two or three years from now, but I want to talk about fear to start.
19:34A lot of people are afraid right now and whether they've lost a job and they're afraid it's not coming back, they've lost money, their business is going potentially backwards, maybe they've lost the fitness they achieved and some of the weight they had lost is returned possibly.
19:51And in innercise, you teach these first two exercises and if you could talk about take six calm the circuits, if you would start, we're going right to the good stuff, Plus everyone's gonna wanna get the book after we do this.
20:03So could you talk about fear and some help that you could provide people in that regard?
20:07Sure. If, um, if everybody can imagine for a moment you're driving a car and everything's going great and all of a sudden a light pops up on your dash. Now the average person won't take a hammer and hit the light to turn it off.
20:21An average person will take a look at what is that light? Am I low on windshield wiper fluid? Am I low on air in my tires?
20:28Is my back trunk open? What what's going on? So just like the signal in a car is meant to make you aware, fear is a trigger in our subconscious mind that real or imagined danger has percolated in our brain.
20:47And so fear, there's nothing wrong with fear. We can actually use fear as fuel.
20:53Now I like to, you know, give people visual. So imagine if you have, you know, two parts of your brain. There's many more, but imagine these two.
20:59We have the Einstein brain and we have the Frankenstein brain. And when fear gets activated, let's assume that that's our Frankenstein brain going, what if what if you get hurt?
21:12What if you lose money? What if you die? What if you get embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, or judged?
21:19And so why does Frankenstein even get activated? Because we're not born with those fears.
21:25And so if we're not born with those fears, that means that something in our brain is triggering this reaction automatically without our thought. And that is what we call as the fear response.
21:38And we also know that that fear response causes something called the sympathetic nervous system to activate, which causes us to wanna fight, freeze, or run away.
21:51That's just the absolute at a biological level of what is happening.
21:56Now, when we want to deactivate that sympathetic nervous system, there's several what I call our inner sizes that we can do that actually gives us more control, more power, and the ability to reactivate the Einstein part of the brain.
22:11So inner size number one is really, really simple. It's called take six calm the circuits.
22:17So as soon as you catch yourself in a state of doubt, fear, worry, anxiety, stress, that means that Frankenstein's activated.
22:28If you just took six deep breaths in through your nose as slowly as you could, and then you exhaled as if you're exhaling through a straw in your mouth.
22:44If you just add that did that six times, that very simple innercise would deactivate the Frankenstein brain and allow you to reactivate your thinking, imagination, Einstein part of your brain, and then you can do the second innercise which puts you right back in control.
23:02And that one I call is Aya, a I a, which is now a matter of awareness. Awareness of my thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, or the behaviors that I've just taken or the one I'm afraid to take.
23:16And in a pure state of awareness without judgment, blame, shame, guilt, or justification. Let me repeat, without any judgment, blame, shame, guilt, or justification of the feeling or the thought of the behavior, now I'm empowered again because now I can observe.
23:33And now in this observational mode, I could say, okay, what's my intention? Let's say for the next ten minutes. Well, my intention is to be happy.
23:42Great. My intention is to, you know, take action on this one thing that's gonna help me towards my goal and dream.
23:49So in the awareness and in the intention, then if I say, what's one small action step I could take towards what I want instead of what I don't want.
24:01So all of a sudden I've interrupted a fear pattern. I've created this state of awareness. I've set an intention, and now I'm taking action towards what I want versus being paralyzed by what I don't want and a fear that may or may not be real.
24:17So awareness is what actually gives us choice,
24:20and choice is what actually gives us freedom if we make the right choices. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So every once in a while, a topic keeps coming up in the questions.
24:29So at edmylett.com, we get a lot of questions. Ed, please cover this topic.
24:33Instagram, we get a lot of DMs. And the number one topic easily the last ninety days has been fear. So many people are scared right now about their lives, about the economy, about the world, about not making their dreams come true, just fear in general.
24:48And there's so much BS out there in the personal development space on this topic that I wanna look it right in the eyes, I and wanna deal with it today. And I wanna give you some strategies that can help you, like real ones, and also just discuss the topic in general.
25:02You know, one of the things that frustrates me, especially in self help, personal development, entrepreneurship, is people say, fear isn't real. You ever hear that before?
25:10And immediately, your BS meter goes off. Of course, fear is real.
25:14You ever heard that analogy? They love to give you this one, the old school. Right?
25:18False evidence appearing real. Fear.
25:22What a crock. Like, totally wrong.
25:25Fear is very real. And if you've ever felt it, it's visceral. And if you've had a really deep fear, you know absolutely it's real.
25:33And by the way, some of the things we're afraid of, nobody's gonna tell you this in personal development. You're always supposed you can overcome every fear.
25:39You ever heard that before? You can overcome all of it. Listen.
25:42Some fears are there for a reason. They're wired into our DNA, into our neurobiochemistry for a reason, which is to help us focus, which is to warn us of threats, of things that could be very, very real.
25:55You ever had somebody trying to break into your home and you feel fear, that's real, and they're trying to break into your home. Now there's a difference between hearing a noise in the middle of the night and beginning to imagine someone's trying to break into your house and someone really trying to do that.
26:12It's imagining something that's not true that's dangerous. But many fears are real, and fear is not necessarily a bad thing.
26:21It's not a fun thing almost ever, it's but not necessarily a bad thing. So it's not false evidence appearing real every time.
26:28It just isn't. Sometimes it's real evidence appearing very real, and you have every reason in the world to feel scared or have fear.
26:36So let's just get real about that, number one. Let's get that off the top. This BS that it's false evidence appearing real.
26:42So the question is, what do we do with fear when it rears its head? What is it? How does it work?
26:47It's a really interesting thing because here's how real fear is. As soon as you recognize fear, here's what happens.
26:54The amygdala, which is a really small organ in the middle of your brain, it goes to work immediately. It alerts your nervous system, sets your body's fear response in motion. Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline are pumped through your body.
27:07Your blood pressure and heart rate increase dramatically. That's what happens to you. Matter of fact, you know what else happens to you?
27:14All the blood begins to move from your heart to your extremities, to your hands and feet so that you can fight. It's literally what's happening in your body.
27:23And so sometimes fear is very real. My fighters, my UFC fighters that I work with, my boxers, people ask them all the time, do you get scared before you come into the octagon?
27:31People think all the time. These these men and women are bulletproof. They're just different than us.
27:35They're freaks. They're never scared. You know what most of them say?
27:39And by the way, a 100% of the honest ones, yes. I'm scared. And if they weren't scared, they wouldn't perform as well, ironically.
27:47Fear does not always cripple performance, especially in athletics. Because like I said, it moves the blood from your heart to your hands and your feet so that you can begin to act and punch and move faster and stronger. Now but thinking, critical thinking, processing information, that's a whole different story altogether.
28:05And when you're pumped full of adrenaline, you're pumped full of cortisol, right, you don't think as clearly. So we need to really look at this fear thing in its eyes.
28:14Now here's the good news. Fear and excitement are cousins.
28:21They're related. What actually goes on in your body when you're enthusiastic, you're excited, call it even anxious, you're pumped up.
28:29Right? In your body, from a biochemistry standpoint, is almost identical to fear.
28:35The difference is what you're thinking and what you're processing and your ability to process information, but your body really moves the same way.
28:44And so the question is, can we shift ourselves from a completely fear based state into an enthusiastic, pumped up, excited state?
28:53And by the way, don't have to move all the way there where you've eradicated fear completely. Here's the misnomer, and this is why most people never take action. They think if I can't eliminate fear altogether, I can't start that business.
29:07I can't get up there and do public speaking. I can't go overcome my fear of heights. I can't ask that person out on a date.
29:14I can't write my book. They think I have to eradicate all fear. Right?
29:19It's actually not true. You have to get to 51%. That's all it is.
29:2451% excitement and and enthusiasm, when 49% of it's fear, you can take action in that state.
29:31This notion that you have to have this threshold of you've eliminated your fears, you're you're gonna live a long time before all of those are gone. People ask me all the time before I speak in public.
29:42They'll say to me, you know, because I, you know, I speak 80 nights a year. Do you get scared? Are you afraid?
29:48My answer is always, yeah. I do have fear. Uh, I I'm I'm afraid I won't serve to the level that I can.
29:55Maybe I'll forget a story or something I wanna cover. I don't wanna let people down. I don't wanna embarrass myself.
30:01My biggest fear of my life when I was young in college as a dramatic introvert is public speaking, and now it's one of the things I do 80 times a year, and I'm in front of a camera probably a 100 more times a year. That's actually not true. Probably 200 more times a year.
30:16So it became something that could cripple me if I didn't learn to face it, if I didn't learn to dance with it, which is what we're gonna talk about today. I'm not trying to eliminate it.
30:26So what I normally will say is I'll say, yeah. I have fear, but it's a little bit more like excitement.
30:33It's a little bit more like I'm anxious. It's a little bit more like, um, kinda looking forward to what's gonna happen in that magic moment.
30:41So I try to get at least a 51% excitement of my thoughts and 49% fear.
30:48Now I'll be honest with you. The more and more you do something, it becomes 60% excitement, 40% fear. A little bit longer, a little bit more reps, it can be 80% excitement, 20% fear.
30:59You might even get to a point in your life where you're no longer afraid and you're just excited. But the reason I point this out to you is this notion that you have to have a 100% of the fear gone or dealt with it to take action is really one of the most misunderstood, really detrimental thoughts that's been sewed into society and culture.
31:20You gotta overcome your fears. You're not gonna overcome every single fear. Maybe you need to face them.
31:26Maybe you need to dance with them. I'm gonna give you some strategies in a minute. Maybe you need to deal with it.
31:30Maybe you need to run it all the way to its conclusion in your mind. But it's really a matter of changing some of our thoughts. And by the way, that's not easy to do either, but I'm gonna show you some of the ways how.
31:39You ever have somebody say, hey. Calm down. Calm down.
31:42Does that help you calm down? You know? Hey, man.
31:45Just think positively. Think positively. I'm afraid of heights, and we're up here in the mountains.
31:51You think positively. Right? So what ends up happening is your physiology overrides your thinking.
31:57So thoughts can impact physiology, right, and action, but physiology could override a thought most times.
32:05Not all the time, but most of the time. Physiology will be the driver. Okay?
32:09So we gotta change what we think, but we probably need to do a few things deeper than that as well. So calm down doesn't work. Think positive doesn't work.
32:16These are not things that work. So really what fear is, it's an alert to your nervous system. You know what I say?
32:23Let's listen to our fears all the way to the end of the story. You know, when I was a little boy, I, um, I was always afraid there was a boogeyman in the house.
32:32That wasn't a completely unfounded fear. I mean, someone could do that. But I remember my dad would come in, and he'd open my closet.
32:39He'd go, Eddie, look. There's no boogeyman in the closet. There's no boogeyman in the closet.
32:44But then he said something more important than that. He said, and if there was, daddy will handle him.
32:52Daddy will handle him. And that gave me some comfort. What he did is he reframed the story.
32:58So the first thing is we did a little BS check. Is this a real fear? And a lot of times, the boogeyman you're afraid of isn't real.
33:05But he could be, or they could be, or it could be. But then he took me to the end of the story, basically saying everything will be okay.
33:13Everything will be okay. It's not that bad. And when you begin to stare the boogeyman of your life in the face, almost every single time, you will find out it's not as bad as you think.
33:26And that's how you learn to shift to excitement, anticipation. See, call it that Friday night feeling before I speak now, before I do anything I'm afraid of.
33:36I call them butterfly moments. I wrote about butterflies in my first book called Max Out, and I've learned after fifty plus years on this planet that all great things in my life have been preceded by butterfly moments.
33:49You know those butterflies you get? Like, when you're dropping down in a roller coaster, you get the butterflies. I call it that Friday night feeling if you were a high school football player if you were a guy, you know, or you were a lady and you played soccer or softball or you were a guy or a lady before a high school prom or a dance or your first date.
34:07You get those butterflies in your life. Those butterflies, that's your chemistry changing, your biochemistry changing, your neurobiology changing, and what that is is it's fear.
34:19It's fear. But it's a lot different when you don't call fear fear and you reframe it and name it a butterfly moment. A butterfly moment and by the way, think about your own life.
34:30All of the butterfly moments of your life, all the great moments of your life were preceded by the butterflies. That beautiful first date, your wedding day, the birth of a child.
34:41Right? The starting of your business. Even things that didn't work out, the best memories of your life were preceded by butterflies, which means they were preceded by what you call fear.
34:52But butterflies, I believe, are that beautiful mix of fear, anxiousness, excitement, and enthusiasm as one package reframed.
35:01Not eliminating fear, dancing with it, facing it, knowing that without fear without fear, there's no great moments of our life.
35:11Almost none of the great moments of our life didn't come with some kind of butterfly moment. So I actually chased the butterflies in my life.
35:19And the more that becomes your pattern of not running from the butterflies but chasing them, the more that becomes, the more familiar you become with butterfly moments. The more it's reframed into a butterfly moment as opposed to terror, complete fear. And I'm gonna show you how to make it a butterfly in your life where it's excitement and enthusiasm.
35:37It's basically just slightly different thinking with the same chemistry going on in your body. And it's not a trick.
35:43Doesn't mean the fear isn't real. It doesn't mean I couldn't mess up the speech. It doesn't mean you couldn't fall off the mountain.
35:49Doesn't mean that. Doesn't mean there isn't a boogeyman in the closet. It doesn't mean that the person's not gonna reject you.
35:55It doesn't mean that you couldn't mess up your vows on your wedding day, all these things that are fears. What I'm saying to you is it's the entire juice of life. You strike me.
36:04It's interesting. You have the most you have such modern information you give, yet you are sort of counterculture to the modern world in the sense that you you do live.
36:14I do sense this about you that you do live a simple life, that you do take time for yourself, that you aren't chasing every shiny thing that comes your way. I think that makes you very, very unique. So you actually lean you actually hit on one of the questions I had to ask you before we leave because I think it holds so many people back from becoming this hero, from revealing their genius, which is fear.
36:33And so just talk a little bit about how you do lean into fear every single day.
36:38So there's a chapter in the Everyday Hero Manifesto called hug the monster.
36:42Mhmm.
36:43And it starts with a story, and there's a grandmaster walking up a Himalayan mountain leading a crowd of people, and they're going to this great temple looking for great answers. And as they go higher and higher, more people start to follow the grandmaster, and they go higher and higher and more people start to follow this little movement up the mountain.
36:59Once they get to the temple, Ed, they notice there's a courtyard. And before they can get into the entryway to meet the supermaster, they see there's three violent dogs on leashes.
37:12So the group starts to move into the courtyard, but all of a sudden, the dogs break free of their leashes, and they start running towards the group. They start to run faster, and all the other people start running down the mountain terrified.
37:24The grandmaster does who is leading them does something very interesting. He starts to smile, and then he yawns, and then he starts running towards the dogs.
37:32And dogs start running even faster. Grandmaster picks up his space, his pace, looks at them, starts running even more quickly.
37:41Yawns again for good measure. Dogs run even faster, he runs even faster. Now he starts to dance a little dance, a little tick tock dance along the way.
37:49Eventually, these dogs get frightened because they feel his power, and they run away. And I think as human beings, we construct a reality of these straw monsters that have been taught to us.
38:03If you love too deeply, you will be hurt. If you build a great business, you will be attacked. If you try to change the world, cynics will laugh at you.
38:12I mean, our job is to take the stones that people throw at us and build monuments to mastery that stand the the test of time. I mean, that there that's what the troll deconstruction is about. I mean, you know you're doing very well when you're being laughed a lot.
38:27Every visionary was initially ridiculed before they were revered. So the point is, you know, someone said to me the other day, but this all sounds so hard.
38:34And you know what? I went back to my hotel room, you know what I thought about? Misery and unfulfilled promise is a lot harder.
38:42And I think the discomfort of growth is always to be preferred to the illusion of safety. So what I would say is the things that all of us are scared about, that's where your growth lives and your freedom lies.
38:56Very good. And I think, you know, it it starts with a awareness, and then it begins with daily bravery practice.
39:02Let's call it micro bravery practice, but consistently doing difficult things.
39:08Yeah. Getting good at consistently leaning into the things that make our palms sweat and our hands shake, and that becomes a practice. And if you practice it long enough, you get brilliant like it just like being a a chess master.
39:20So it's almost like every day you go down the steps to the cellar, you turn on the light, and you hug the monster. And if you hug your monsters,
39:28guaranteed, you'll realize they were much smaller than you thought they were. So damn good. That is absolutely a billion percent right.
39:34Oh my gosh. The price you'll pay for not becoming the hero you're capable of becoming is far smaller than the one that you will pay if you never become that person.
39:42It's worth hugging that monster every single day. How do you do it? I lean into it.
39:47I actually do what I call feared things first, and it is a habit that I do. I like to get something done early in my day habitually that I'm a little bit afraid of, that I'm a little bit uncomfortable with, that I have some anxiety with. I find that once I hug that monster, it was usually smaller than I thought, and it creates unbelievable momentum for the rest of my day.
40:03Oftentimes for the rest of my month. And so I do do that. I also have become familiar with these monsters, and the more you're familiar, I think you become with hugging them on a regular basis, the more they sort of lose their power over you.
40:13Exactly. I've seen this guy before. He's not so bad.
40:16Yeah. I've seen this one before. So the more you face him and you do these difficult things, the more you become familiar with them.
40:21It's just like, uh, I think it's someone in the NBA who's gotta hit a shot with two seconds left. First time you do it, there's a lot of work. Kobe Bryant hit a whole bunch of them by the end of it.
40:28He was pretty comfortable hitting that shot under that pressure. And I think the more you put yourself under pressure or duress, you become comfortable in it. And you find what I call equanimity in those moments, which is the ability to be calm and to function at a high level in it.
40:41So I love it. I that's one of my favorite conversations ever. I was gonna be honest with you.
40:45I I've loved today and I know everybody else has. I think you're remarkable, man. I really enjoy your company as well.
40:50You gotta you have this thing that I just I love about most of my good friends, which is that I think they have this nuance between real confidence and presence about themselves, but yet combined with a huge dose of humility at the same time.
41:03I think people that have a ton of confidence, one of their humility, sometimes it's off putting, and they're not curious enough to keep growing and learning because they think they know everything. And then our friends that have this tremendous humility, but they just never step forward with some confidence and build that hug the monster mentality in their life.
41:20Sometimes they're tough to be around too, but that combination is what you really you nuance that so well. I sent you I I sent you a good person. Thank you.
41:28Thank you. You know, and that that really comes through in the conversation. Thank you.
41:32And that doesn't come easily. It's like hard hard won
41:36hard one effort to get to a place where you're living your values the way it's it feels like you're living your values. I appreciate that, brother. And that's mutual.
41:44Thank you. You had a piece of content. I think it was this week.
41:47That's brilliant. I wanna ask you because I think people this is a fair question. How do you distinguish between when something is fear Yeah.
41:53And your intuition talking to you saying, you should not do this? So how do you know it's not intuition instead of fear?
41:59This is a tough one. Mhmm. Because fear is really sneaky, and it's a really, really, really good liar.
42:04And it'll come in and it'll convince you, like, oh, no. No. No.
42:06This is your intuition. You really shouldn't do this. What has helped me, and this has helped me every single time I heard this from somebody, and I don't even remember who it was.
42:14I wish I could quote them. I don't remember who told me this. But I was really battling through is this in my intuition?
42:21Is this, like, my gut telling me that I should do this thing or I shouldn't do this thing or or or is this fear? And the question is that I ask myself now is whose voice is that?
42:32Whose voice is telling you that you should or shouldn't do it? Is it your voice, or is it your parents' voice? Is it your husband's voice or your wife's voice or your friend's voice or the random people on the Internet's voice?
42:42You don't even know who they are. A lot of the times, it's that for people, what they will think, and we don't even know who they are. Right?
42:47It's like, what will they think? Or maybe Susie from college, right, or, you know, my cousin from ages ago that go they're gonna think of me on the Internet.
42:56And we care so much about that, and it's a normal human experience to care what other people think. We want to be liked. We want to be approved of.
43:03We want people to say good job. We do, and that's okay. Mhmm.
43:06And if you're sitting here listening like, oh, that's a bad thing. I don't wanna care what people think. We're going to.
43:10Yep. I do. Yeah.
43:11We all do. Mhmm. But here's the thing.
43:14We don't wanna wake up I I love how you talk about you think about death often. Mhmm. I don't want to wake up on my deathbed one day, my hundredth birthday Yep.
43:23And say, oh, I let all the random people on the Internet or people that I didn't care about dictate my actions. Mhmm. And I let the fear of what they would think of me override my gut intuition of what I knew I was meant to do on this planet.
43:38And so I ask myself, is it my voice, or is it the voice of somebody else? So good.
43:43And when I hear my own voice in there, I you know you know your voice. But when I hear, like, oh, that's my husband Chris' voice. You know?
43:52And even though I love Chris, and I care so much what he thinks, and this is for everybody with a partner out there, like, I I've done it before where I have made lots of decisions based on somebody that I was in a relationship with and what they would think of me. But now I know better, and I'm like, that's Chris' voice.
44:05Chris, was your voice telling me that I shouldn't, but my voice Yeah. Who I I will be proud of myself at the end of this night when I get in my bed and I look up at the ceiling. I'm like, did I squeeze the juice out of the lemon today?
44:15Did I do it all? Did I lay it out all in the field, or did I did I did I phone it in today? Mhmm.
44:21As long as I listen to my voice and I stay true to who I am Mhmm. I'm always okay with myself at the end of the night. So good, Jen.
44:27I love this idea if we're gonna get into the bed at the end of the day. I Well, so I have time on my wrist. Yeah.
44:32So I tattooed this on my wrist, not because I wanted a tattoo. It's my only tat, and I, uh, and it's actually fading off, which is crazy. I don't even know how that happens.
44:40I tattooed this on my wrist to remind me that no matter what, time never stops. Gosh.
44:48Discomfort is only temporary all the time. No matter what, we're both gonna end up tonight in our bed. This interview is gonna be done no matter what.
44:56No matter if it was amazing or if it was bad or if it was scary or if we were uncomfortable, no matter what happens today. Mhmm. This too shall pass.
45:03You will end up in your bed. But the person that you become through the uncomfortable moments, through the wins, through the losses, through the hard times, through the ice baths, through the fireworks, through all the stuff that the hard conversations you have to have or maybe, oh my god, the face plant that you made in front of all those people.
45:19No matter what, you being able to withstand all of that stuff and get into your bed at night and understand, wow, I, like, I can do this Mhmm.
45:28No matter what, I'm gonna end up here. Mhmm. That's what powers me through.
45:31That's what makes you who you are. And that growth that comes with that, that's permanent.
45:36K. If you're driving your car right now, just check the miles per hour because you're going too fast. I can just tell you.
45:41You get that fired up listening to somebody, so just slow down a little bit so that you don't run off the road. That's so good. You're such wisdom for such a young woman.
45:49It's like, I I wish I had it when I was your age because it's profound what you're saying. Identity. We both talk about identity a great deal, and I think it's almost invisible to most people.
46:02So, you know, when you really listen to someone or you watch them, you can begin to hear their identity. I'm working with a couple new athletes right now.
46:10And people ask me all the time, what do you work with when you're with athletes? Or what do you work with when you're with a CEO of a company or an entertainer or whatever?
46:17It might be say my name, say my name, which I think might be Beyonce. I'm not completely right. Am I right about that?
46:22Probably. Yeah. I am right about that.
46:23The fact that I know that is pretty bizarre. And if I'm wrong, it's close enough everybody. But it was rattling in my head.
46:27Yeah. So anyway, I might be right.
46:30It's it's close. But what I work with usually when I'm talking with athletes or working with them, there's all kinds of different techniques. But at the end of the day, if I distilled it down, it's both their confidence and their identity.
46:40Mhmm. At the top levels, people still struggle with confidence. When you see an athlete go in a slump, it's that they don't know how to hit anymore.
46:48Yeah. No. Couple negative results happened.
46:50They started to move towards that story. Mhmm. And all of a sudden, they're lacking confidence.
46:54And so if you have to work on your self confidence or your identity, welcome to being a human. And I'm talking about people that have led big countries Yes. Run big companies, are the top athletes in the world.
47:05I think a lot of people think, well, I struggle with my confidence so I'm not like these other people. It's natural to them. Yeah.
47:11Right. Until they have a big setback and then it's not so natural. Yeah.
47:14Or they just have this amazing identity. And they just have more yeah. Until they don't anymore.
47:19Until the success is stripped of them. So how does one begin to build a new identity and how important is it?
47:27It's everything. You know, your identity is your most critical story that's inside of you that Mhmm. Shapes everything you see.
47:34Like, we think we see the world with our eyes. Right?
47:39We think we hear things with our ears, but you really don't. You hear with your your story. Right?
47:43You see with your story, and identity is like your truest, most, uh, precious part of your story, the one that you're gonna, like, stand up for day after day.
47:55And a lot of people do have identities that are not supporting them. Uh, you know, they have identities or belief systems around like, I've I've written a couple books on speaking, public speaking.
48:06Right? I've been speaking all around the world for years and years and years. And so we'll train somebody and they'll go, you know, I always get nervous right before I speak.
48:15And and I and and what I try and do is, like, that can't be the way you think about this. And they go, well, no.
48:22And I get over it. I go, yeah. But nervousness, you're either in one of two emotional states.
48:29I'm gonna generalize here a little bit. Mhmm. When you do anything, you're either in a protective state.
48:35You're walking in. Like, if I come in here and I'm going, alright. I don't know this guy.
48:38What's he gonna ask me? Mhmm. You know, I'm in a protective state.
48:41I'm not gonna be as good. Words aren't gonna flow. The mind's not gonna work.
48:44Or I'm in a growth state. Right? Like, they I've already flubbed some words, made some mistakes.
48:49I don't even worry about that when I'm speaking. I don't even worry about that. I probably made, like, 84 mistakes already.
48:54I don't think so. Right? If we've been counting.
48:55Yeah. I'm I'm just kidding. I've been counting.
48:58Mhmm. But it doesn't bother me, right, because I'm not worried about that. My identity is is not that I've gotta be perfect every single time.
49:05My identity is just I give everything I've got. I'm gonna just pour everything I have into this, and we're gonna have some fun. But my identity, and I'm sure yours, has shifted a lot, you know, from childhood.
49:14I was that person that thought life was hard. I thought I was that person that thought life wasn't freaking fair, man.
49:22Why do how come I don't have a dad? I just shift that. I just shift that.
49:25And at the core of who we are is our identity. And and when you really get clear on what that is, you can and if you don't like it, you don't have to stick with it.
49:35Right? You can shift it and change it. I love what you were saying earlier.
49:39It's to me, it's like carving away at something. Yeah. So I don't look at it as like one and done.
49:45Right? You know, I know there's some lag time, but I'm just gonna carve away today. Carve away.
49:49Carve away. Carve away. And then it does start feeling more and more real, and then you're living it.
49:55Yeah. And then life is so much easier because you're not even seeing the same world you used to see. So true.
49:59It's a completely different world you're experiencing. And that may be hard for people to imagine. Like, what do mean it's a different world?
50:04Like, everyone sees the same thing. No. They don't.
50:06Yeah. I had a friend I was in a a car accident. Well, it wasn't bad, but we were in Hawaii.
50:13This friend of mine, CEO of a company, was driving. His daughter was in the back. She's, like, six years old, and somebody hit him in from behind.
50:20Mhmm. So his experience was he's pissed off. Like, gets out.
50:24You know, he's kinda angry. And I'm sitting in the car. His daughter in the back, you know, she called me uncle uncle t.
50:30She goes, hey, uncle t. He goes, can we go out and look? She goes, this is so exciting.
50:35Right? You know, this is so I've never been in an accident before. So people don't see the same thing.
50:40They do not. Yeah. Yeah.
50:42Dude, brother, that is such a good example. On identity, there's little pieces of ourselves that
50:47we begin to realize. Like, I used to hear people say here, give you one little subtle thing that might help everybody. Was just thinking of it when you said Why hear and I say this often too, like my a lot of my the separation is in the preparation, say.
50:59Or like, you know, a lot of my confidence comes from how prepared I am. Yep. It's a real fine line with that though because years ago, it it drifted into something dangerous for me.
51:09So, yeah, I do think you need to be prepared. But I think a lot of people, what holds them back is the threshold of what they think they need to know before they act. Yeah.
51:17You agree with that? Absolutely. So like they they get this preparation thing conflated where they go, yeah.
51:22And so I'm just preparing. Yeah. And if I just knew a little bit more about it, if I was a little bit more prepared, if I had a little bit more knowledge, if I went to one more seminar, if I read one more book, if I just had one more exercise, then I take action.
51:34What I find is the identity level of people that do find bliss, do find successes, their threshold for what they think they need to know before they leap is lower. That's right.
51:45And the people that struggle, the threshold of what they think they need to know or be prepared or capable of is so high that they never quite meet that threshold to take a leap. That was just a subtle thing for me to take. Great point because I you know, there's people in life that
51:59yeah, whatever they do, they just seem to get the ball in the end zone. Yes. Right?
52:03And and, you know, were they more prepared? Maybe, but a lot of times they weren't. And then there's people that and they're good people, but they always need that extra little thing.
52:12And Mhmm. And that, you know, they're never quite ready, and everything looks good, and then it doesn't work out. Yep.
52:18I do a little test with this stuff on me, and I'm sure you do it on you too. But I do some crazy things. Right?
52:25Like, I was asked years ago actually, it's 2005. So was many years ago.
52:29Was asked to play in this poker tournament. Now I'd played poker exactly one time in my life, and it was back in college. So it was twenty years before.
52:37Yeah. And and these guys are saying, you know, come on. It's gonna be great.
52:39There's gonna be some world series of poker players that play in the world championships that are gonna be there. And I'm like, guys, I don't even know how to play.
52:47Like, I don't even remember anything. They go, oh, yeah. Come on.
52:50You're gonna be fun. So I said, alright. I'll do it.
52:52And I said, you gotta spend I told one of the guys, you gotta spend ten minutes with me. Mhmm. And and just show me the hands, like, and remind me of the rules and things like that.
53:01Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
53:02Exactly. But I didn't watch and and, you know, because I'm not I I don't play poker. I haven't played since.
53:08But I didn't watch tutorials. I didn't read books. Yeah.
53:12I only had, like, a week to prepare. But here's what I did. Every time because my identity was at first, it was like, I'm gonna suck at this.
53:19Mhmm. I'm gonna embarrass myself. I'm gonna lose early.
53:22And I'm like, no. Stop that. Stop.
53:25I said, put a new thought process in. Put a new belief system in.
53:29And, literally, this is crazy. But I told myself over and over again that I made great decisions, and I found a way to win.
53:36And every time I thought of it and I didn't, you know, I didn't proactively think of a lot. But every time I thought about all that things coming up, yep. I made great decisions, found a way to win.
53:43Now when I said it, though, I was, like, in a confident state. Right? I made sure I matched what I wanted to the this the emotional state that I wanted to have.
53:53And I literally believed that I was gonna win the damn thing. Right?
53:57And so I I remember I'm getting ready to leave, and my so my wife knew I'd never played before or played once. And she I said, hey. I'm getting ready to leave.
54:04Go to that poker tournament. She goes, what time does it start? I said, 06:30.
54:08She goes, I'll see you at seven. And so, anyways, I went I didn't even let that. Right?
54:12Because you got the naysayer. Now she was just playing with me. Yep.
54:15We've been married thirty years. You just met her. Yep.
54:18I went. And I just you know, I had this confidence, like, unearned confidence. Yeah.
54:23Totally unearned confidence. But people are making mistakes, and I'm I win my table, and and then I get, you know, finally the championship table. And now I have one guy left.
54:33I had, like, this huge pile of chips, and he didn't have as many, but he was, like, you know, one of these really good players. And people are saying, oh, you're this guy's beating you. Doesn't you know how to play?
54:41And the guy's getting pissed off. And he goes all in. I go all in, and, you know, I win.
54:45And That's awesome. My friends are picking me up, and I got this, you know, big huge trophy. I and bracelet and all this kind of stuff.
54:51I love it. And so I come back. It's, two in the morning.
54:53I open the door of of the bedroom. My wife's long asleep. Turn the light on.
54:58Guess who you're sleeping with tonight? Love it. Now that I'm not saying I could have done that 10 times in a row.
55:03Yeah. But literally, I I consciously burned all the boats.
55:08I did not allow a thought that was going to lower my confidence in any way, and I did it for about a week. Right?
55:15So Great. Yeah. But but that's what happens.
55:18Right? You know, that you you and even if I wouldn't have won, I know I would have played a heck of a lot better because I had done that.
55:25That's the thing that most people don't get. Well, I didn't win. Well, were you better?
55:29Yeah. Okay. Then do it.
55:30That's the whole point. By the way, I love that term unearned confidence.
55:33Obviously, the highest form of confidence is something you've earned. But let me tell you something, unearned confidence is a pretty damn good substitute. It's a whole lot When you gotta go by the way, what most people think, this is what they say to themselves, I've earned lack of confidence.
55:47And so you think you have to earn this confidence thing all the time. It is absolutely not true, and not enough if you give yourself credit for your intentions either. You don't give yourself enough credit just for your intentions to serve, your intentions to contribute.
55:59It's a huge, huge thing. I I I love that story because, you know, for me, I where does it come from for me often?
56:07Had two friends the last week say something, man. Have a couple things I'm I'm ill prepared for. Like, I have no life experience preparing me for a couple things, kinda like this poker tournament Really good friend of mine, John Gordon, said and by the way, we've talked a lot about energy today.
56:19I'm also a Christian, so I have both. And John's and he's a good Christian friend of mine. He goes, Ed, faith over fear.
56:24Mhmm. Choose faith over fear. I'm like, yeah, it feels good, man.
56:26Yeah. And then, like, three days later, my next door neighbor at the beach, Jerry Jerry, you're listening to this, thank you for this gift. He's like, hey, man.
56:32I've just all my life, I've chosen faith over fear. Yeah. And it just was like, wow.
56:36Now that's that vibrational frequency thing. Right? Like like all of a sudden, both of these messages were being directed to me.
56:42For me, that applies to my Christian faith. But for some of you, it might be, I'm gonna have faith in the work I've put in. I'm gonna have faith that, you know, that everything always works out for me.
56:50But sometimes, it's just a matter of taking a leap and going, I'm gonna choose faith over fear. Because what is holding you back is the fear. So I just wanted to share that with everybody.
56:58And one thing one thing on that on two ed is
57:01turn fear into faith. Because fear is energy, but use that energy, shift that energy and turn it into faith. I I Mhmm.
57:08Used to sometimes, you know, way back in the past, be a little bit jealous. Hey. How'd that person, you know, accomplish that or do that?
57:14And I'm like, hey. That's not a good use of energy, and I turned jealousy jealousy into prosperity.
57:22Right? You know, I just whenever I will, you know, see someone doing well, I'm like, woah. Great.
57:26Hey. This is proving that I can do even more too. So good.
57:29And literally just shifting energy into another form. I have this philosophy too. Don't know if you share this or not because I want the
57:35women to hear this. I think the symptom oftentimes is our addiction to other people's approval.
57:43Mhmm. I feel like the disease sometimes is we don't have our own. Yeah.
57:46We don't feel like god has our own, and so we seek it outside of us. Now what you said that takes it a level deeper for me is that this is programmed since I was little. Yeah.
57:54Right? I didn't just become this way. It was sort of I was told that my value is if other people approve of me.
58:00Right? So I think it's an internal game. I think the way you change that isn't just deciding.
58:04I don't care what other people think. I think that layer past that is I need to begin to think better of myself. I need to begin to build my self confidence.
58:12I'm a big believer that self confidence comes from keeping promises that you make to yourself. That if you can start by just keeping the promises you make to you Yeah. You begin to build a reputation with yourself of, I can trust me.
58:23I like me. I'm good. Right?
58:24I I can achieve. How can that apply for a woman in any in any area? What would be some of your recommendations of how to change that?
58:32It's a hard question. Yeah. No.
58:33We'll see. What are some practical ways somebody can begin to change that? So I'll tell you for me, the big realization
58:39was it all comes down to I want love. I want approval.
58:44I want notice. I want all of these things. And I was drowning.
58:50This is where the anxiety came from. I've I had this desire in my heart to be an entrepreneur and build something big and write books and do these things. And our family, our extended family on both sides wanted me to be a stay at home mom.
59:03Mhmm. And they really, really struggled and were very vocal about the fact that I wasn't because that's what their lives look like.
59:09Yep. And so for me, I was just drowning in that feeling of, I think I'm called to do more.
59:16Mhmm. So I will pursue this version of more, but I'll do it kind of in secret. Good card needle.
59:21I'll work really hard, but I won't ever talk about it. And it was I was being pulled in too many directions. And when I finally I had this realization, like, oh, I'm going to choose to be so full of love, to love everybody else so well that I don't seek it out in other people.
59:39Exactly. Like, I'm gonna love you so hard, everybody, even the people that disapprove of me. Very good.
59:44That I don't need your love because I've got enough for both of us. Very good. Like, it sounds a little cheesy, but that really was what changed it for me Mhmm.
59:54Was you don't have to keep chasing this thing. Mhmm. It was also the understanding that God made me this way.
1:00:02Yes. And for the longest time, I felt shame because Mhmm. I didn't wanna be as I'm like, I respect the crap out of state owned moms.
1:00:09It's a hard job in the world. I know you do. But it's just not my thing.
1:00:12Yes. And so I I had shame about that. Yeah.
1:00:15Like, massive shame about Don't you think the reverse is also true? There are some stay at home moms who feel shame that that's their calling.
1:00:22Neither one of those should be shameful. Go ahead. Yeah.
1:00:25So for me, it was,
1:00:27oh, if if god put this desire on my heart and he called me for this Mhmm. Then I I can't be wrong at my core. Of course not.
1:00:35Like, certainly, you could that could manifest in unhealthy ways Sure. Or you could but but maybe this is for a reason.
1:00:43Like, maybe that like, I said this all time on stage to women, like, man, maybe that like, you keep feeling that tug on your heart. That's there for a reason. You got it.
1:00:51That's god. That's your potential. That's, like, trying to say to you Yes.
1:00:55Step into this. Yes. Like, it that is your heart, like, begging your mind to, like, get out of way.
1:01:01Like, come on, man. Yes. We were called for something.
1:01:04So for me, that understanding was like, you know, you are loved and worthy and enough, like, as you are.
1:01:12That's beautiful. And that means you don't need to become someone else. That means, like, who you are at your core Mhmm.
1:01:18You're doing okay. Yeah. That is so beautiful.
1:01:20It's amazing you say I made a I I just wanna acknowledge a few things. Like, I love that, and
1:01:25no one's ever said that to me ever. And some of the stuff you say gets me, girl, just so you know.
1:01:31Because I I over these years of seeing all these precious beautiful women in the crowd and then struggling with feeling guilt, like men don't have that. Like, whatever we wanna change, we have no reason to feel guilty about it.
1:01:43And men listening to this let me say something to the men listening to this. Would you stop once in a while and just start to tell your lady how amazing she is and how much you love her and how beautiful she is? Yeah.
1:01:52I'm talking about your sisters. Yeah. Your mother.
1:01:55Yeah. Your wife. Not just your wife.
1:01:56Right? Tell the women in your life how spectacular they are. Yeah.
1:01:59Acknowledge them a little bit more. They're always acknowledging us. Yes.
1:02:03So proud of you. Look so handsome. You're doing so well.
1:02:06Thank you for all you do. And we we very rarely acknowledge Yeah. Our women.
1:02:10Let's make sure we're doing that, man. But the other piece of it that that struck me in what you said right there was, you know, women, I think, oftentimes never give themself any quiet time, whether they have kids or noise or their job.
1:02:24And, like, if you would just get quiet Mhmm. For you and I, it's prayer. For other people, it's meditation.
1:02:30For some people, it's just solitude. Yeah. Like, if you'll get your head out of the way, as you said I made a post about this today.
1:02:36People win with their heart, not their head. Yeah. You're gonna be happy in life with your heart.
1:02:40And the more your head begins to take over and convince you of your deficiencies, what your setbacks are, what you're not good at, what your life is, what people will think. Yeah. The more your head takes over your life, even though you gotta be smart and execute and all that, the more your head takes over, it kills your heart.
1:02:52And when your heart stops beating, you're dead. Yeah. And so you could be living, but you're really dead.
1:02:58And so what you're really saying is get quiet, listen to your heart. Yeah. And don't be ashamed of it.
1:03:02Yeah. It's I love it. So Good.
1:03:04Okay. Let me give you a couple more things you've said that this is kinda hard.
1:03:10Our society makes plenty of room for complacency or laziness. We're rarely surrounded by accountability. We're also rarely surrounded by sugar free vanilla lattes.
1:03:21But when I really want one, I somehow find a way to get one. What did you mean when you said that? Uh, you know, the idea that
1:03:28if you want something it's like if if you really want something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. Yes.
1:03:34Yeah. Yes. So You gotta get resourceful.
1:03:36Yes. And I think there is this, um, I feel like the tide is shifting and I hope that this is true, but so often I feel like women especially like, it feels like their life is living them.
1:03:50It it like it feels like life is it's all just happening to them. They're sort of getting pulled along with the tide. They're not making any choices.
1:03:56They're not taking control. So and it and it's the norm.
1:04:01Right? It's it's normal to go you're exhausted because you were dealing with the kids all day and then you're gonna go watch, you know, Netflix all night and drink too much and numb yourself to what's going on and then wake up tomorrow and do the same thing again. And it because they don't ever have that space, because they never take a step back and look at their life from like 50,000 foot view, they don't even understand that they have control of how to change it.
1:04:23Oh, boy. And you might not have the tools. I'm gonna quote your podcast to you again, or I think it was yours.
1:04:30But Joe Dispenza Yes. Said, in an age of this much free information, ignorance is a choice.
1:04:38Correct. So you might not know how to change things. Yep.
1:04:41You might not know how to get healthy. You might not know how to change your marriage. All of but it all exists on the Internet right now for free.
1:04:47So true. Like, you didn't,
1:04:49Gosh. You're good. So, like no.
1:04:51But I wanna say this to you. Like, you didn't know how to blog when you started. People say, man, how'd you build this giant podcast that I have?
1:04:56Let me tell you how this actually started. I went you're gonna think I'm crazy when I say this, but I wanna validate what you've said. Okay?
1:05:02I've never said this before either. People ask me, how'd you get this big podcast? I said, I didn't even know what a podcast was.
1:05:07Yeah. And I googled how to start a podcast. Here's how stupid I am.
1:05:11I'm like, how does what I'm saying get into the machine? Yes. And how does that machine put it on the Internet?
1:05:18Mean, how do people get like, I was that basic. Yeah. And I googled how to start a podcast, and there was a the first search was Tim Ferriss.
1:05:25His toolbox for how start a podcast. It it said go to Amazon and buy this equipment. Yeah.
1:05:29I bought the equipment, and I started talking into the microphone he told me to buy. I love it. And then but he didn't tell me, how do I get it out of the machine onto the Internet?
1:05:37So I that's but I'm just resourceful. You just start taking the steps. Yes.
1:05:42Men, do me a favor. Ask your woman what she'd like. Yeah.
1:05:47Ask her, babe, what do you want? What would make you happy? Is there anything we should be doing together or you should be doing to fulfill you more?
1:05:54Like, just ask her. Yeah. Because they ask us all the time.
1:05:56Yeah. One of the masks Lewis talks about in the book is men, you know, with their masculine wearing the masks of different types of people, whether it's the material mask or the athlete mask or the stoic mask.
1:06:06And it's such a fascinating read. It is for men, but to be candid with you, I think it's a fascinating read for women to understand. Exactly.
1:06:14So many women are telling me that they finally understand their husband, why their father never showed them the affection, why their sons don't look them in the eyes. So it's like trying to understand men a little better. It's a brilliant man.
1:06:24And and so there's this story in there that stuck out to me. And I could picture you as a little guy when this happened, but you talk about and it's interesting. It could be a nonevent for some people, but it was for this dodgeball game.
1:06:34It was defining, man. It was because you want to be remember, this guy ends up going on to become a college and professional athlete. Right?
1:06:40And if you draw back all the way where that mask started, it started in a damn dodgeball game. Yes. In elementary in elementary school,
1:06:48you know, I was still trying to find my way and just have a couple friends, just try to fit in. Mhmm. And one day, the teacher of our class, there's probably 30 kids in the class, about 50 men 50% men and and boys, boys and girls, they say, okay.
1:07:03During recess, we're going to play a team dodgeball game, and we're gonna split it up into two teams. So everybody's had that game at school. Right?
1:07:10Right. Yeah. Everyone's playing dodgeball or something.
1:07:12Right? And he said, okay. I'm I'm picking you two boys as the captains.
1:07:15Mhmm. Pick one at a time. Mhmm.
1:07:18I don't think it was his intention to do this. He was just like, yeah. You gotta split up the teams.
1:07:21K. So we're all waiting to be, like, called out. Right?
1:07:24Yeah. And these two popular kids one at a time start picking each boy. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm one of the taller kids.
1:07:31I feel like I'm pretty athletic already. Yeah. They've got to pick me.
1:07:33I'm one of the first people. So I'm standing up there in front like waiting to be called and they pick all the boys one by one until it's me and the last boy.
1:07:41And this boy, like, he was not athletic at all, essentially. I'll keep it at that.
1:07:46And they pick him. And so now I'm the last boy to be picked. However, as you know in the story, they pick a girl next.
1:07:54Gosh. And then and then they pick another girl, another girl until it's me and the last girl. Mhmm.
1:07:59And I'm like, there's no way I'm gonna be like, this they're gonna pick this girl before me. This girl has like zero athletic ability. Right?
1:08:06She can't even walk. Right. And they pick her, and then I'm not even picked.
1:08:11I'm just by default. Yeah. Nope.
1:08:12You know, just go on the next team. Mhmm. They didn't even pick me as like What's going on here?
1:08:16Are you raging? Are you raging? You raging.
1:08:18I'm already a kid that feels neglected, that feels like the youngest who doesn't get any attention. Yeah. You know, didn't have any friends.
1:08:25So at this point, I said, I am going to destroy everyone on this team. Like, give me the ball. I'm just like slamming it in people's faces.
1:08:32You're already a big dude. Yeah. Yep.
1:08:34And I'm just like destroying people. I And go, and never again will I be picked last. You can see it at midnight right now.
1:08:39Can see it in your physiology. Never again will I ever get picked Mhmm. Last in anything.
1:08:43Mhmm. Right? And that's what I told myself.
1:08:45And I just become a training machine every day after school. I would go to the playground, go to the gym, go play basketball Mhmm. And train until my mom would have to call me in at like 09:00 and say, you gotta come home.
1:08:57And you think that game has something to do with you end up being a professional athlete? I think it I think it was one of the triggers of just, like, always feeling like I was abused, left behind, not good enough.
1:09:10It was just one of those triggers. You're saying you face change even when you just said that. It's interesting.
1:09:14It's just like it's one of those moments that I can remember. Yeah.
1:09:18You know, it was many moments like that. Yeah. But that was a moment where I was like, okay.
1:09:23I just never wanna feel this again. Yeah. It literally defined part of your whole identity.
1:09:27Absolutely. Right? It was one of these masks.
1:09:28Like, I wear this one well. And so I put yeah. Right.
1:09:30So I put the athlete mask on and I said, never again am I gonna lose. Mhmm. And I also needed to be right.
1:09:37You know, for me, being wrong was losing. Mhmm. And so I was like, I need to win at all costs.
1:09:42I need to be right at all costs. And anytime I lost in a game, I was the worst loser. Because my self worth and my value was tied to winning or losing.
1:09:53Mhmm. And even when I won, sometimes I wouldn't be happy because I would beat myself up about how I could have been better. Amazing.
1:09:59So I couldn't appreciate the journey. Yeah.
1:10:02It was just always gotta get better, gotta get to the goal, gotta get to the goal. Yeah. Everybody that's listening, including me, frankly,
1:10:08a lot of us relate to that. Yeah. And we're gonna talk about some solutions there too.
1:10:12Or those of you that are watching this, you certainly know someone like us. Sure. Sure.
1:10:15And and it's it's interesting because you have that event. You have a brother who goes to prison.
1:10:20Mhmm. I didn't know, but you go to a boarding school when you were 13. You had a it's amazing that you end up becoming one of the most sought after people on the planet to improve people's lives.
1:10:29And Right. Yet you have these events that you didn't allow eventually to define who you were. There's a significant one though, as you know.
1:10:36Yep. I think it's the genesis of the book Mhmm. Probably.
1:10:39Yeah. If you don't mind taking them through this, you had some sexual abuse happen when you were a very young boy. Yeah.
1:10:46I mean, I mean, very young. So Yeah. You had the 13, you had the brother go to prison, you have the dodge ball game.
1:10:51But the the biggie Yeah. When I was five yeah. I was here's the thing.
1:10:56When I was five, I was raped by a man that I didn't know. And and for twenty five years, no one knew about it.
1:11:02Is it I wanna ask you this because I've not heard you answer this. Are you telling me, literally, you didn't tell anybody? I didn't tell anyone.
1:11:07Not your I told a socio
1:11:09professor my freshman year in college. I said, you know, something happened to me Mhmm.
1:11:14But I didn't tell them what. Wow. So mom and dad definitely did.
1:11:17Parents didn't know friends didn't know. I never told anyone exactly what happened. Wow.
1:11:21I was too afraid to let people know. Mhmm. And so, for twenty five years, I'm 34 now.
1:11:26When I was 30, I went through a bunch of different challenges in my life with a intimate relationship I was in, a business partnership I was in, and just everything looked good on the outside.
1:11:38Mhmm. You know, people were like, man, you're crushing it, Lewis. Yeah.
1:11:41But I was suffering on the inside and I didn't know why. And I don't know if you've ever felt that when your business took off, you're like, why am I not fulfilled? I I absolutely do.
1:11:48Yes. You felt that before? Of course.
1:11:50And for me, I was taking all of this I was just angry, constantly angry. I was doing great in my business, but angry because I couldn't figure out how to cope and understand my emotions.
1:12:04Mhmm. So I took all this frustration out on the basketball court. Every day, I would go play basketball a few blocks away.
1:12:11Mhmm. And every day, it was like I was looking for a fight.
1:12:14You know, college when you're like Yeah. You're just like, I hope someone looks at me. Yeah.
1:12:18Looking like yeah. I'm gonna slap you. Running for me the wrong way.
1:12:20Right. Like, I'm gonna beat you up. Yeah.
1:12:22I was just I was looking for a fight. Mhmm. And I think that was the only way I knew how to express myself was through physical aggression.
1:12:30So many people are relating to this right now. That was my life. Football was my ability to just destroy people in a legal way without getting in trouble.
1:12:37Mhmm. I could get it out every single day. Wow.
1:12:39So when you don't have that anymore, it's like, I need to go play basketball and like rough it out. Yeah. Because I didn't know how to cope with my emotions or what I was going through.
1:12:46I just didn't have the skills or the tools. So every day, I would go out and play basketball and I just constantly someone would yap at me and it was like, had to step to them like I was the alpha dog and like shove them, and scream at them, and just show them that they weren't gonna mess with me. It's a just to tell you, because being in your presence and being around you I'm not that way.
1:13:04Yeah. And we're mutual friends, and no one would describe Exactly. This right Right.
1:13:08And, you know, I'm typically I was typically not that way either. Like, I'm always a very loving, like, happy person. But there's a trigger thing.
1:13:15It's a trigger. Like, if you cross the trigger Yeah. It was like, you're gonna go down.
1:13:20Yeah. Or I was gonna do go down or something. Yeah.
1:13:22And so every day, it was like, waiting for someone to hit me, and they wouldn't hit me. Mhmm. I would like push at them.
1:13:29I would scream back at them. I'd be like, don't talk shit to me. Don't do this.
1:13:32Don't like whatever. Yeah. To a no stakes pick up basketball game in West Hollywood.
1:13:36It's not like Yeah. Great. Anything's on the line.
1:13:38Yeah. It's like and one day, after a few months of this, I'm guarding a guy who's much bigger than me, older than me.
1:13:46K. And we're getting in a heated battle back and forth. He's fouling me hard.
1:13:50I'm fouling him hard, like Mhmm. But it's kinda like this this what you do in the street ball. Right?
1:13:54You're kinda fouling each other hard, but it's it's all good. It's fair game. He's calling it.
1:13:58I'm calling it. It gets down to the last point, game point for both of us, both teams. He gets a ball down, getting ready to shoot a layup.
1:14:06I I fouled him hard. You know, I grabbed his arm down so he can't score. Yeah.
1:14:09So the game would be over. I guess it was enough was enough for him, and he came at me and headbutts me.
1:14:15Now this was the trigger that put me over the top and said Incredible Hulk is coming out. Snap City. Snap City.
1:14:21It was like, I can't even remember because I just put him in a headlock and just started UFC pounding him, throwing him to the ground on top of him just like Oh. Unleashing all this anger. Wow.
1:14:32It had to come out somewhere. Yeah. And this was the moment it exploded.
1:14:36Mhmm. Because I didn't know how to let it come out any other way. Now afterwards, I remember it was shaking so much because it got up and there's blood gushing out everywhere, all over the court.
1:14:46Yeah. The police station was right across the street. Okay.
1:14:49It snaps back into me like, I have everything to lose here. Right. I could go to jail.
1:14:54Like, what if something happens? What if I actually hurt him Right. Really Whatever.
1:14:58Like, what if my whole life could be over from one moment? Mhmm. I know what happened to my brother going to prison from one drug deal that he was involved in.
1:15:07Wow. One thing he got caught, which put him into prison. Mhmm.
1:15:10Sentenced six to twenty five years. He got out in four and a half in good behavior. So all of a sudden, I'm like, how stupid can I be to allow my emotions to get the best of me to react?
1:15:19Mhmm. After that point, my friends were like, you know, you need some help, man.
1:15:27Really? Like, you need some help. Know?
1:15:28It wasn't that bad, but they were like, why are you doing this? But that shouldn't happen. Right?
1:15:32Why are you allowing this to happen? Did you know why then? Do you think you knew?
1:15:36I think I was just like angry at everything. Like No matter how successful you are, you're still there's this angry piece of you. Because I would achieve all these things that I wanted, but then I was angry, right, when I'd achieve them.
1:15:46Mhmm. Like, didn't fulfill me. Yes.
1:15:48Yes. So I was like, I need to get bigger. I need to make more.
1:15:50I need to Yes. Get more goals. I need to do this.
1:15:52Like, maybe then I'll feel good. Mhmm. And none of it made me feel good.
1:15:55I don't know if you felt that way. I need to get 10,000,000, then a 100,000,000, then then then I'm gonna sell my company Yes. And then I'm gonna feel great.
1:16:01And maybe it felt great, maybe not. But If it does, it's temporary. And Yeah.
1:16:05You're exactly right. Everybody watching this that's had any level of achievement that thinks once I get something else, right, get to this place, then I'll be happy. Then I'll be happy.
1:16:13Be happy. And it does I don't know anybody. And you and I also both know lots of very wealthy people who are completely unhappy.
1:16:19Yes. They're like Tony Robbins talks about all the time, success without fulfillment is complete failure. That's it.
1:16:24Right? And so I relate to that level of failure. So do a lot of people.
1:16:27And those of you that are chasing your dream, you've got to find a way, and we're gonna talk about this in a minute, to to enjoy you now.
1:16:35You now. Yeah. Because when you get to these different places, guess who arrives there?
1:16:39You. And if you're there with the same damage, with the same masks on, the amount of money you have just sometimes frankly magnifies
1:16:47the pain that you're in. I think because you can act out different ways. Right.
1:16:50Yeah. So go ahead. So you you have this event.
1:16:52So my friends start saying, and I kind of come to an awareness of like, I remember running back from those courts like up into my room up here like looking in the mirror shaking because I've got like blood all over me and I'm like, what am I doing? The last fight I was in was on I was like 15 or something and I'm like, why am I doing this?
1:17:08Look Look at myself in the mirror literally like, why why are you doing this? Who are you? K.
1:17:12And who do you wanna become? I was just asking myself this over and over. Mhmm.
1:17:16And I started to say, okay, need to take a deeper look of why I'm so resentful, why I'm so angry, why I'm so frustrated, and why I'm triggered. Why am I triggered when someone steps to me Mhmm.
1:17:26Or says something to me, or leaves a negative review online, or Yeah. Why do I always have to defend myself? Mhmm.
1:17:33So I started calling some some therapist friends of mine that I knew, some spiritual coaches that I knew. I started going to workshops. And I went to this one emotional intelligence workshop that similar like what Tony does Okay.
1:17:46Where it had us address kind of our past. Okay. Past with our parents, past with girlfriends, past with friends, like childhood, and just kind of addressing it all.
1:17:55K. We recreated and reenacted situations Mhmm.
1:17:59To face ourselves in those moments. And and and recognize why we've come that way.
1:18:05And after I was in this five day workshop and after the third day, we had done a lot, you know, addressing our past. I've cleared with my parents internally. I cleared with, like, relationships.
1:18:17And the facilitator of this workshop, there are about 50 people in it. He said, okay. We're moving forward to focus on our vision for our future.
1:18:25The things you wanna create, the person you wanna become. K. We've addressed everything in the past.
1:18:29But if there's anything you haven't addressed yet, now's the time to talk about it. Otherwise, we're moving forward. Like, get on the ship.
1:18:36K. And so I'm going through in my mind at this moment. Like, it's a pause in the room.
1:18:41And I'm going through them like, my parents getting divorced. Yeah. Like, pretty much everyone has done that.
1:18:46Right? Okay. I went through that.
1:18:47Feeling bullied and picked on. I talked about this. Feeling like insecure in school.
1:18:52My brother in prison. Like I talked about all these things and I was like, what about the time I was raped by a man? It just kinda came on my mind.
1:18:59Mhmm. And this was always in the back of my mind. You know, every week, I would think about that moment.
1:19:06It would come up, like, just kind of randomly pop in and out of my head. Mhmm. And I would just push it to the side.
1:19:11And I I remember thinking to myself, if I don't say this now, I'll probably never say it to anyone.
1:19:18Like, the setting was perfect. I had gone through enough challenges and breakdowns in my life where I was like, I'm willing to figure out whatever it is.
1:19:27I'm gonna go there. Mhmm. And so I just stood up, walked to the front of the room.
1:19:31I didn't even ask for permission or anything. I just stood up, walked to the front of the room. And I remember, Ed, that I couldn't look anyone in the eyes.
1:19:37Mhmm. So I was staring down the entire time at the ground. And I walked through for the first time just looking down.
1:19:45Know, You when I was five years old, I was at the babysitter's. The babysitter had a son who's a teenager, and I just walked through the entire thing.
1:19:52Mhmm. And I couldn't look up because I was so embarrassed and so ashamed of people knowing this about me. Mhmm.
1:19:59And when I was complete, I said it pretty calmly. You know, I just kind of said it very calmly.
1:20:04And when I went to walk down, it's like almost the moment I sat down, it's like I erupted of tears that I've never had in my life. And I just couldn't stop crying. I was just like crying over and over again.
1:20:15Thankfully, there were two women on either side of me that were holding me. They were crying. I was crying.
1:20:21I was embarrassed and ashamed of what I just said, of people knowing this about me, because I wasn't perfect looking anymore. Mhmm. I wasn't just like all American guy who had it figured out anymore.
1:20:30Mhmm. And I remember running out of the room outside.
1:20:34It was in a hotel conference room. I ran outside because I just needed some fresh air. I had my head up against a wall outside.
1:20:42And one of the most beautiful things that ever happened to me happened next.
1:20:47One by one, the men who were in the room came up to me outside and just gave me a big hug, looked me in my eyes, and told me that I was their hero. One by one, they said different things like that. Mhmm.
1:20:59And the crazy thing, the thing that I'm I was afraid of people knowing about me the most was actually the thing that when I shared it, people Yeah.
1:21:10Connecting with me even more and trusted me more. Mhmm. And people kept saying that.
1:21:14They're like, wow. I thought like something completely different about you, but now I trust you. Now I'll follow you anywhere.
1:21:20Like they said these things to me and I was like, what? That makes no sense. Wow.
1:21:24You know, everything that I was afraid of, that I was taught not to be a little bitch, a little girl, a little pussy, a little fag, whatever the words were that made you wrong Yeah. That made you different, that pushed people away from you.
1:21:36I was taught to like fit in by like being manly, having it figured it out, you know, winning like talking bad to people, whatever it may be. Mhmm. And none of those things served my heart.
1:21:46Mhmm. And it it started to awaken everything in me.
1:21:51Like when I finally opened up about that, I just said, you know what? I'm gonna open up about everything. How?
1:21:56Because the freedom it gave me to realize, wow, you still accept me Mhmm. For who I am or the things I've been through and you still you still like me. You actually like me more.
1:22:06You trust me more. I was like, what? Wow.
1:22:10This concept of like being real. Yeah. You know?
1:22:13Yeah. Not that I wasn't real. Yeah.
1:22:15But I think I was always like had a little bit of layer of a mask hiding behind. We Alright. You we all do.
1:22:21Yeah. What's amazing Sorry. I'm getting a little choked.
1:22:24But of all the I mean, I read all these personal development books. I listen to all these guys.
1:22:29It's the most compelling story I've read. I'm just gonna tell you. I appreciate it.
1:22:32No, it is brother. Because the courage think I it takes courage when you're five, but Yeah.
1:22:37To carry it and carry it and carry it and then release it like this massive Yeah. That's a gargantuan amount of courage.
1:22:45Right? Thank you. It does, Yeah.
1:22:46And I think for those the people that are listening to this because this is corny to say, but like often in our life, our greatest test would is actually our defining testimony of our life.
1:22:57Like, that was the greatest test of your life, and it's really the testimony of your life. Mhmm. Like, everything you're becoming Right.
1:23:03Was unleashed because you finally took your mask off. That was the big mask you Huge for me. It's the thing I was the secret I was carrying around my whole life that I didn't want any I want anyone to know.
1:23:13And here's the crazy thing.
1:23:15You know, the people in that workshop were like, you should tell your family. And I was like, there's no way after that.
1:23:21I was still scared to let anyone I was like, this is a safer container, you know. It's like confidential. Like, no one's gonna hear about this.
1:23:27Yeah. But I was willing to explore and see what I needed to let go of to see what I could create in my life. Eventually, I I was like, okay, I'm gonna tell my family one by one.
1:23:37Mhmm. And it was terrifying. Yeah.
1:23:38But again, when I told them, they opened up to things about me that I didn't know. We built a stronger relationship as a family. Then they were like, you should tell your friends.
1:23:47I was like, no way. My family has to love me. You know what I mean?
1:23:51Yeah. But my friends are probably not gonna accept me Yeah. Anymore.
1:23:53But I'd started doing it one by one. What was it like? Was it It was did you go into them like think I went back to like just being terrified as a kid.
1:24:01Like, what if they don't accept me? Same thing. Yeah.
1:24:02Same thing. Was like the fear of what if people don't accept me. But one by one, people accepted me even more.
1:24:07Mhmm. And they trusted me even more. And they were there for me more and had compassion.
1:24:11You know, humanity is a powerful thing when you show vulnerability. I I truly believe that other people who have deep hearts, like, are gonna open up people. So do I.
1:24:20You know, there may be some people who are gonna be so guarded they can't receive it, but usually, most people have a great heart. You're right. And my friends started saying, you gotta share this publicly.
1:24:29And I was like, no fucking way. Well, now you're Right. They're like, you should tell this on your podcast.
1:24:34I was like, no, it's gonna hurt my business. Like, what people are really gonna think weird about me. Yeah.
1:24:39But after six months of me just saying, you know what, I need to continue to talk about this because it still has power over me. Mhmm. Because when I talk about it Yeah.
1:24:46I quiver, I palpitate my heart, like it still owns me. And I don't want this thing to own me anymore.
1:24:53I wanna own it. And so so I finally had enough courage to just kind of tell all the close people in my life, my friends and family.
1:25:01And it wasn't a hard thing anymore to talk about it. You know, it's still a moment that I wish no one to go through Of course. But it doesn't take over my body.
1:25:11And so I said, you know what? I need to do this publicly because I felt like I've never seen another white straight male jock looking guy open up about this.
1:25:21Yeah. I've never seen it. Maybe it's happened, but But I I just nor have I.
1:25:25I can't think of like Yep. Some personality or athlete or Yep. Business leader who has opened up about it.
1:25:31And one in six men have been sexually abused in some way. One in six. And yet, it's not acceptable to talk about it.
1:25:38Whether it be, you know, to friends and family or publicly or whatever. It's just and I'm not I'm not saying everyone should publicly talk about it.
1:25:46Sure. But I felt like for me
1:25:49I love what you said about it still owning you. It it did it was owning Yeah. Yeah.
1:25:53And I was just like, I felt a a duty, a responsibility to continue to talk about it. Mhmm. Because and here's the thing that happened.
1:26:02When I put it on my podcast, I I talked about it on my podcast. I did a whole episode about it four years ago. I shared it out and at night, I posted it out at night, like 11:00.
1:26:13I was right here in this room. I posted it out and I went out and sat on that patio right there. And I sent out one tweet, and I just said, I'm gonna leave it up to the universe to see what happens.
1:26:22So I didn't promote it anyway. I just put one tweet out. And I was like, wanna go to bed and see hopefully, one watches this.
1:26:27You know? I was like, hoping that no one saw it. You wanna do, but you don't.
1:26:30And the crazy thing is I went outside, and it was like it was 11:00 at night, but it felt like it was daytime. It was the largest moon in the last hundred years that happened that night.
1:26:39It was a supermoon. And it was like, I didn't know this was happening at that time. I just decided I needed to post it then.
1:26:45It kinda gives me chills thinking about it. And I was looking up the definition of like, what's a supermoon mean? And it's like, supermoons like shifts the world.
1:26:53And like and I was like, this is crazy. Right? And over the next couple of weeks, I was getting hundreds of emails from men sending essays telling me, I've been married for thirty five years.
1:27:05My wife doesn't know. This is what happened to me. Been in this relation for this long.
1:27:09I've never told anyone. Mhmm. You know, this had this happened to me for years when I was a kid.
1:27:14This had, you know, the craziest stories I've ever heard made mine look like a Disney movie Mhmm. Compared to some of the stuff that men were emailing me. Yeah.
1:27:22But it's like I gave these men who listened Yep. Permission for the first time to talk about it. Because if a big jock looking guy like me Yeah.
1:27:29Right. Good looking big jock, athlete, successful. If I talk about it, then maybe someone else can talk about it.
1:27:35Wow. And the healing that started to happen from within of these men, where they finally started to talk to their partner about it, where they finally started to address it, where they finally started to not be so stoic or so driven by sexual mask or the material mask to make themselves feel better. They started to communicate in healthier forms.
1:27:55Mhmm. And and just show a little bit of emotion. Show a little bit of vulnerability.
1:27:59Mhmm. And heal from within. Mhmm.
1:28:02And they got healthier physically. Their businesses grew. Yeah.
1:28:05Their relationships thrived. Yeah. Because they were able to communicate.
1:28:08Yeah. And I think as men, we've been conditioned not to share certain things. Mhmm.
1:28:12To be tough, to be these things, to not be weak, to not be soft. Yeah. To not show emotion, to not show affection.
1:28:19Mhmm. You know, as a kid, I was always pushed away from my friends when I would be like, it's so good to see you.
1:28:24Yeah. I know. You know, I would put an arm around a guy.
1:28:26Yeah. Not in a sexual way, just like buddy buddy. Yeah.
1:28:29And be like, get off me. What are you, gay? Yes.
1:28:31It's interesting. I was gonna tell you something because I'm that way too. Have touchy feeling.
1:28:34Yeah. Especially, it's funny. Especially with, it's like when I see my buddies, I I wanna say something about what you said there because it's just I think we all want people to like us.
1:28:43Mhmm. You know? And I think that when we wear these masks, I think the more honest we are about who we truly are, the more people actually love us.
1:28:51Yeah. The real us, you know. And I think what I love I want the men listening to this.
1:28:56This is a real man. A real man is vulnerable. A real man is honest.
1:29:01A real man's transparent. And not all of us have big muscles and are big guys like that, but I'm attracted to people and I think everybody is who are their their authentic selves.
1:29:12Yeah. Right? And you have this big big story and I love what you said about more men came to you and I just want to acknowledge it, man.
1:29:20Like, I think it's made a huge difference in the world. Thank you. Appreciate I think those of you that are watching this, I I always advocate for somebody on my program, but I think there's a I know when I'm with a genuine good person who cares.
1:29:34And like, I think if if if Lewis is this honest about this, imagine the kind of transparency honestly you get if you were reading his books, if you were Yeah. If you were part of his podcast. Become a part of his community because I think when you're like this, I think you get this out of your guests.
1:29:47I think you get it out of the people that you interviewed too.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Ed Mylett opens not with a story but with a direct provocation: stop asking whether change is worth it and start calculating what staying the same is costing you right now. The question lands differently because most people have never done that math.
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:32concept
Cost vs. Worth
Stop evaluating the cost of change and start evaluating the worth.
Steal forsales pages, offer framing, motivational hooks
21:00model
Frankenstein / Einstein Brain
- Frankenstein = amygdala/fear response
- Einstein = prefrontal/rational thought
- Fear activates Frankenstein
- Innercise reactivates Einstein
John Assaraf two-brain model for explaining how fear hijacks rational thought.
Steal forexplaining decision paralysis, workshop openers
24:00model
Take Six / AIA Innercise
- Take Six: 6 slow nasal breaths exhaling through imaginary straw
- AIA: Awareness without judgment, Intention for next 10 min, one Action step
Two sequential exercises for interrupting a fear response and returning to rational agency.
Steal forworkshop exercises, coaching, anxiety content
47:07concept
51% Rule
You need 51% excitement vs 49% fear to take action. Most people wait for 100% certainty that never arrives.
Steal forlaunch content, overcoming perfectionism, just-start messaging
49:00concept
Butterfly Moments
Every great moment in life was preceded by butterflies. Reframe fear-adjacent feelings as butterflies to cue forward movement.
Steal forpre-launch content, stage presence coaching
47:50concept
Hug the Monster
Robin Sharma daily practice: do one thing you are afraid of early in the day. Monsters shrink when you run toward them.
Steal formorning routine content, habit building, overcoming avoidance
1:11:10concept
Whose Voice Is That?
When fear says do not act, ask whose voice is speaking. Parents, partner, internet strangers -- they are not the authority on your life.
Steal forself-doubt content, identity work, coaching programs
How they asked for the click.
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