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Okay, so if you haven t heard the news yet, I ve got a new book out called The Greatness Mindset.
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Unlock the power of your mind and live your best life today.
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It s coming out soon and I m pumped to invite you to be a part of the launch team for this book.
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This is a rare opportunity to get your questions answered and network with other champions of greatness in this exclusive community of conscious achievers.
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If you re ready to receive early access to the first few chapters of the book, behind-the-scenes updates from me, plus VIP access to bonuses and giveaways, then this is for you.
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For instructions about how to join this greatness launch team, make sure to go to lewishouse.com slash launch team right now.
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Again, make sure to check it out at lewishouse.com slash launch team right now.
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And that s maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don t need willpower at all.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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I m curious, in your opinion, what are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should, and if they could do on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone s lives around them?
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What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do?
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Yeah, three habits that would improve everybody s lives on a daily basis.
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It s so hard to give an answer like that because obviously everybody s, you know, dealing with different stuff.
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But there are a few things that I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from.
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So the easy answer would be the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don t think it actually has to be reading books.
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I think it just is the habit of learning something new.
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So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn t matter what version of that it is.
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But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that s going to improve your life.
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And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it s going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you re interested in.
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a habit of some small habit of daily learning, let s just call it learn something new for 10 minutes each day.
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Some sort of physical activity, you know, this is, I think, an important realization about all habits, which is in most areas of life, there might not be 1000 ways to do something, but there s almost always more than one way.
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And, you know, I like working out in the gym, but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that s fine.
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You know, like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever.
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There s like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle.
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And you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you.
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Like in a way, that s the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is, have you selected a habit that you re genuinely interested in, that you re actually engaged with?
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Because if it s something that you actually care about, there are going to be like endless opportunities for improvement.
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If you re not actually care, if you don t actually care about it, if you re just doing it because you kind of feel like society s encouraging you to do it, or your parents want you to do it, or your peers are kind of subtly saying, hey, this is something you should do.
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Then, even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore, you know, so let s call it 10 minutes of learning something new, some sort of physical activity, whatever is exciting or interesting to you.
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And then I think the other one is a process a habit of reflection and review.
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It s very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff heads down, or just have the next task come up, whether it s things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work, that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing?
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You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use?
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And boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing.
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You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot?
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And so, um, the only way to discover that, like, I know I m not smart enough to figure it out on the first time.
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Like, I can t, I can t just sit down, give me five minutes and be like, oh, this is exactly what I should be focused on.
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It takes iteration.
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It takes refinement.
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It takes a process of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, Hey, was that a good way to spend my time?
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Like, did I live a good life today?
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And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct.
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And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don t necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time.
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you know, like what you want shifts over time, the situation you re in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time.
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And so you need to keep coming back to this.
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Maybe it s every week, maybe it s once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this?
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Am I working on
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the right thing?
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Am I working on what actually matters?
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Am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way?
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Yeah.
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And how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves?
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Is it important to have self-accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, you know, social accountability?
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Do those support habits, forming these consistent habits?
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and what other factors are in play there?
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They definitely support them or hinder them potentially, depending on the people you re around and the group that you re a part of.
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Ultimately, the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability.
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It s almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself.
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That almost always sets the baseline.
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If your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept.
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Now, it s easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in an unsupportive one.
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So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard, but ultimately the standard you hold yourself to is going to be the most important thing.
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Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to,
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influence your habits in a really dramatic way.
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So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment.
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You know, we re all part of multiple tribes.
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Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian.
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Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym.
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But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations.
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You know, they have a set of social norms.
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They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this is how you act in this group.
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This is what s normal and expected.
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And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more like appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, hey, look, I belong to, you know, like I m part of this.
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And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them.
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And if people have to choose between, you know what?
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I have habits that I don t really love, but I fit in.
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I belong.
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I m part of something.
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Or I have the habits that I want to have, but I m cast out, I m ostracized, I m criticized.
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I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve.
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You know, belonging will, loneliness will lose to belonging.
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And so you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
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It is so true, and it doesn t mean you can t make it happen.
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There s a great example that came up this week.
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Someone on my team on our team call said, I asked everyone on the call, I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life?
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What s one thing that s not serving you right now that you want to let go of?
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And this person said, I want to let go of drinking alcohol, or at least drinking as frequently as I do with the social circles that I m in.
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And I thought that was interesting because I ve never been drunk in my life.
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I don t drink.
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It s not a part of my identity.
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I never did it from sports.
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And then after sports, I was just like, why?
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It didn t make sense to me.
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Nothing good or bad about it.
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It just wasn t fitting my values personally.
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I have other problems, which is sugar, right?
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It s like, I ve got that, that s my vice, right?
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So no judgment here, but I was just like.
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This never stopped for me, you know, in every, until maybe the last four or five years, where anytime I d go out in college, after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, like all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking.
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And so I had to be so firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it.
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I just knew that people were going to try to influence me.
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They would try to say a joke.
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They d be like, I can t believe you never drank.
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All these different things.
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Try to get me to drink for the first time.
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All this stuff.
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I knew it happened every single week.
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And I just realized, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I m in, unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare.
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And which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend, when we started dating, I was like, listen, it s not going to work.
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If you like to drink, I don t think I can date you.
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Like, it doesn t mean you re a bad person.
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I just don t want to be in that environment for the rest of my life.
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with the person I m choosing to be with.
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And so I had to make a conscious decision.
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And she was like, well, I don t really need it.
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Maybe I ll drink a glass of wine once a month.
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I m like, okay, that s fine.
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But if this is a weekly thing, it s just not gonna work because I ve chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life.
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And it s very challenging if there s something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability.
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So I think it doesn t mean you can t do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes like you mentioned that are supportive, even if it s the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be,
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find those communities as much as possible.
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You know, if your family isn t as supportive, find these other micro tribes to support you in that habit form.
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So I think it s really powerful.
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It s so much, um, easier to stick to a habit if you re in an environment that supports it.
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And there s this whole chapter in atomic habits, uh, it s called the secret to self-control.
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And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies.
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We typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, Oh man, I wish I had the discipline of that person.
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Or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever.
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But in fact, um, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least.
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That s like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are cookies in your house.
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You re not going to eat them.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy.
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And if you do that for yourself, sure, you ll still have to put effort in, but it s going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you re in a space and a context that s designed to support it.
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And that s maybe one of the biggest hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don t need willpower at all.
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You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren t willing to do.
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You spent 10 years writing every week an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched.
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And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche and then start branching out in the space as well and do it consistently over a decade without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things.
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And then you came out with a book.
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And now this doesn t happen for everyone, but then you came out with a book.
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And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of the year of the most selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think this year as well.
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And it just continues to add value to people.
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And I think it s a testament to what you created for a decade plus of adding value.
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So congratulations on everything, man.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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That s very, very nice of you to say it s been a wild ride.
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I, there are a couple of things going on there.
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Like I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value.
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And if you think about in any business, but like in my business, writing books, the amount of,
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What it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book.
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It s also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on.
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And whatever that total cost is time plus money.
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That s like the amount they have to pay.
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And then whatever I get paid is what I make.
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But what they get in return should be like well in excess of that.
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So like the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there s some surplus there.
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And we could call it whatever, but I like think about it as like goodwill.
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And I always want to have a surplus of goodwill.
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And so everything that I create, whether it s an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to be to have this feeling that it s like, oh, my gosh, I get so much out of this.
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Of course, I would want to open the next email or of course, I would want to buy the book.
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It s like such an obvious win for me.
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So I always try to give value before I ask for value.
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And I don t think that there s any one way to do this.
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Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example, but the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible.
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And then I was able, you know, I didn t have any credentials, right?
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Like I don t have any background for, and there was no reason for me to get a book deal.
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I was just a guy with a blog.
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And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience.
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And then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal.
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And then, of course, you have to execute well on that and create something valuable.
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And then, you know, ultimately, the book being a hit was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever, and then it being released when the book came out.
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I to a large degree, I kind of think that s the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is up front.
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You know, you have to build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan and start to record interviews and execute on that.
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You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy.
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And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long.
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You know, I mean, it s probably
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Depending on how you measure it, Atomic Habits took somewhere between like three and six years.
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Definitely at least three years, because that s how long it was from when I got the book deal.
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But I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal.
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So, you know, it s just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it.
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And so if you re willing to do that, then you can get a great result.
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And here s the challenge, though.
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Sometimes people are willing to do that, and they don t get the result that they re looking for.
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They go all in.
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They take two years or four years working on the book.
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And it s not maybe a flop, but it doesn t get the expectation they might have of like, oh, it s going to sell 10,000 or 20,000 copies or 100,000 copies.
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And they realize actually how hard it can be to sell books.
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And that can be discouraging for people, too, and say, well, OK, this didn t work.
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I m not going to do it again.
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But I think that s not the way to look at it.
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It s like, whenever I do any project, and I remember I started this with my podcast 10 years ago.
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It ll be 10 years in January.
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I said, if this impacts one person in a positive way, it s worth it for me at the time, right?
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And I think about that with my books and my work, where it s like, if this can
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Yes, I have goals and yes, I want to do certain things, but if it can impact a few people and really support them and getting out of a lot of pain or overcoming some challenge that s been a hurdle for a long time, then it ll be worth it for me.
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You know, yes, I want to make money.
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Yes, I want to make, you know, a return on my investment, all those things.
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But I think when we get caught up in that focus, we lose sight of the true purpose of it, the mission of why we re creating something.
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Well, the two things are connected.
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Part of it, like I was just saying, if you do a good job of delivering value to people, solving their problems or helping them in some kind of genuine way, then it tends to be the case that those sorts of products sell better and spread wider.
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I mean, Atomic Habits is sold over 10 million copies.
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My audience, you know, my email list now is 2 million people.
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But like, where are those other 8 million coming from?
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And not, you know, I m not even saying that everybody in my audience bought it.
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Right.
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So it has far outpaced my ability to promote it.
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And the only way that that happens is if the product is good enough that other people feel like, oh, I have to tell somebody about this.
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You know, it s like it s been so useful for me that I have to share it.
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And so ultimately it always comes back to creating the best possible product.
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And, um, I like Seth Godin s little like measure for this, which is if you want word of mouth, then you need to create something remarkable.
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And that means that it s worthy of remark, you know, that it s worth talking about.
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And so, uh, ultimately it comes back to word of mouth.
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And the only way to really get that is to actually deliver on your promise to actually create something super valuable.
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Now that said,
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There are tons of people out there who pour their heart and soul into a product or to try to their best to deliver value.
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And maybe still don t see the outcome that they want.
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And so you do need that.
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Like that s kind of the first hurdle to clear.
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But there s a lot of other stuff going on behind the scenes with a product like Atomic Habits.
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Obviously my ability to promote it in my audience, but again, that s not enough on its own.
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I think a couple of things that are really like working in my favor.
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So the first is the frame of the book or just the topic that you choose.
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The example I like to give is there s a chapter later in atomic habits where I talk about deliberate practice.
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Now it could have been a book about deliberate practice where I talk about habits, but instead it s a book about habits where I talk about deliberate practice.
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And the difference in how those two books would sell is enormous because I don t need to convince anybody that habits are important.
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Like you just kind of get from growing up in society that having good habits is favorable and having bad habits is unfavorable.
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And so it taps into a desire that people already have.
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And what I have to do is to say, hey, this is the best possible solution for that problem.
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This is like if you want the most comprehensive guide on the topic, if you want to see all the tools and strategies laid out in an easy to understand way, and if you want these strategies to be easy to apply, this is the book that will help you do it.
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But I m not trying to convince people that it s worthwhile at all.
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And I actually think even though most authors don t think about it that way,
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a lot of the time they are kind of fighting an uphill battle.
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They re trying to convince people to care about a topic or a framing or a positioning that they re just not naturally interested in.
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So I think that s just one of many things that you can look for is like, yes, you need to try to provide excess value, but you also need to position the product in a way that
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you re swimming with the current rather than against it.
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You know, like it s so much easier to promote something if the wind is at your back.
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You could write the best book, but if the framing is not in alignment with what people really want and need.
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it s gonna be a hard sell consistently.
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You might get your core audience to buy into it, but then it s gonna be hard to spread if it doesn t have that effect.
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My friend Rory Vaden says this as an example for himself all the time.
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He did a TED Talk that did, I don t know, like five or 10 million views about multiplying your time.
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And then he wrote a book essentially around the TED Talk that s called Procrastinate on Purpose.
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And he s like, if I would have changed the title to multiply your, like how to multiply your time or whatever, something around multiplying time.
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He s like, it probably would have sold a lot more, but it was the same content, but a different framing and a different cover and a title that people are like, why do I need to procrastinate on a purpose?
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It doesn t make sense to me, but I want to multiply my time.
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And so it could have been more advantageous.
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I mean, I think this is a little insight about it applies to any product, any type of entrepreneur, not just books, but certainly it applies to books, which is people don t buy the actual book.
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They can t because they haven t read it yet.
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They haven t read any of the pages inside.
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They buy the Amazon listing.
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They buy the cover.
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They buy the promise of what is inside the book.
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But they don t buy the actual book.
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Now, you still need to deliver in the actual book because of what we just mentioned a minute ago.
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People recommend it because of what s in the actual book.
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Word of mouth is driven because of what s in the actual book.
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But the initial sale is only made because of how it s positioned and what they see on the cover.
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So you need both.
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You can t just have one or the other.
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And sometimes you ll hear authors kind of complain about this, you know, like, oh, you know, I m a great writer, but people just don t see it.
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Or I put so much effort into this book and it s not selling.
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And my view is like, you know, I get it.
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You know, you spend a lot of time and energy on it.
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Like, I m not trying to dismiss that, but it s kind of like complaining about like trying to make cookies, but not including all the ingredients.
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You know, it s like, oh, well, mine didn t.
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Well, it doesn t matter that you had like really great eggs, you know, like you need the other ingredients, too.
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And so it s it s all of those things that make the recipe work.
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It s not just one.
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And making a book or making a successful product is like a thousand.
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a thousand ingredients that all need to be put in together.
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And how do we, you know, we mentioned this, I don t know if it was before we started or in the beginning about.
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how to make high leverage choices so that our time is maximized for greater outcomes in the future.
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How do we learn to develop, I guess, that skill or figuring out what we should be doing with our time to make the highest impact for the future?
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Because it seems like a lot of society is just scrolling and distracted and doing actions that don t support their future self.
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So how do we figure that out?
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I like the way that you framed it there at the end doing actions that don t support their future selves.
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I think it comes back to asking yourself the right questions again.
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And some of the questions that I like to ask to try to get to these high leverage choices.
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So the question I like the most is what is the work that keeps working for me once it s done?
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So when Atomic Habits came out, I wanted to do everything I could to try to propel the book to be a success, you know, try to get the word out.
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So I did all kinds of interviews.
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And some of the interviews that I did were on radio.
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And I don t really do radio interviews anymore because when I put the time in and like, you know, spend 10 minutes on a segment or whatever it is.
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As soon as we go off air, the work that I just put in evaporates.
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Nobody s listening anymore, it s gone.
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Whereas when I do a podcast interview, it gets recorded.
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And even right now, as we re talking, there s other podcast interviews that I ve done that people are listening to right now as we re sitting here.
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And so in a sense, there s almost like multiple versions of James out there, you know, that are like still working for me.
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The past James is still those hours that he put in are still delivering value.
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And so if you can take that question seriously, what is the work that keeps working for me once it s done.
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And you don t even have, you don t need every minute of the day to be spent on things like that.
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But if you can do something each day that will continue to work for you after it s completed.
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you can turn around in a year or two years or three years and you just have this enormous high leverage asset of all your previous effort continuing to work for you day in and day out.
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And so if you make that commitment and you stick to it consistently and try to do your best each time,
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you get like three or five years down the road and getting results becomes even easier because you have so much, like you have this like tidal wave of previous effort that s still working for you.
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So I think that s the core question to ask for, for taking high leverage actions.
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I think that s so, I m so glad you said this and I m going to ask my, one of my producers, either Chris or Mike or Travis to, uh,
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Just type in on my notes page right now, how many views the last interview with James got on YouTube total, and then also in the last month, how many views did it get?
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So an action we took four years ago, how many views did it get total, and then also in the last month, just type it in at the end of my doc so I can see it when you guys get that.
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My friend Rory Vaden has this acronym, this kind of method he calls D.A.R.E.S.
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That we as entrepreneurs, or individuals, should be creating D.A.R.E.S.
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in our business.
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Digital, automated, reoccurring, evergreen, and scalable.
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And I love the evergreen, scalable, automated, you know, something that you can take action on now.
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A blog post that you wrote 10 years ago,
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It s still getting traffic today.
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It s still serving you today.
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It s still getting you opt-ins today for your newsletter.
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It s still getting you book sales.
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It s something you did 10 years ago.
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It s still helping and serving you today.
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And this is why I love your analogy about radio versus a podcast or YouTube or something like that or a long-form article.
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you know, something we did as on our show years ago, started recording and filming and putting on YouTube serves us today because it keeps getting views and shared and things like that.
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So I think it s really cool that you said that.
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I m seeing the total views that we have just on the YouTube is over 300, almost 360,000 views in the last 30 days.
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30,000 views.
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So something we did four years ago got 30,000 views in the last, oh sorry, last 30 days, 8,000 views, and yesterday, 250 views.
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So something we did four years ago, 250 people watched it yesterday, and who knows, maybe five people bought the book, or even if it s one person.
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It s still serving.
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Sure, and if you think about that in real life, if you give a talk to 250 people, you ve got this full room, and it s like,
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we re in a sense, it s like we re doing that every single day, you know, and that, that, but just, that s just for like this little version of James and Lewis, you know, it s just that day s work.
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And you can do that again the next day and the day after that.
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And you, you know, you can see how, uh, a commitment to those kinds of high leverage activities can really compound over time.
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I love this, man.
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Uh, I got a few final
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Final questions for you, then we ll wrap it up, because I know you ve got to get out of here in about seven or eight minutes.
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Before I get to those final questions, make sure you guys get the book, Atomic Habits, if you haven t got it yet.
3
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If you re not one of the 10 million people who have already bought this, make sure you get it.
3
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There s going to be at least one chapter in here that will serve and support you now, and your future self will thank you.
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So make sure to get this and get one for a friend.
3
SPEAKER_00
Also, your newsletter is extremely inspiring, powerful.
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Over two million people have subscribed to it.
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321 newsletter, make sure you guys go to JamesClear.com and you can subscribe.
3
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It ll be up there in the homepage and you can find a place to subscribe to it there.
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I also love all your social media stuff.
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I don t know if you ve got a team doing that for you or what, but it s like,
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If you guys want more bite size from the newsletter, you post all that stuff, you do it on Facebook and everything else.
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I love all that.
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So make sure that people follow you on your social media.
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You don t do a lot of personal stuff there, but your content is there, which I love.
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So they re always, yeah, it s a very weird Instagram account.
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There are no pictures of me.
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It s just, uh, it s just ideas.
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I that s partially just cause like, I m not interested in, in really being out there, uh, in, as an individual.
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But it s also because I feel like it s a useful handicap, you know, like if I only if the Instagram account or whatever is only text.
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the ideas better be good because you don t have, I don t have anything else to hide behind.
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You know, it s like, listen, this either is providing enough value that people are going to follow this weird account that only has text or it doesn t.
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And I like kind of putting that sort of, um, challenge on my, on my shoulders.
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And it s like, listen, you got to deliver this week again, you know, because, uh, the text is the only thing there.
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SPEAKER_01
So, um, yeah, it s, uh, anyway, but yes, feel free to check that out and, uh, and feel free to check out the newsletter.
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How else can we, we as an audience community, be of service to you in the best way in the next year moving forward?
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Oh, that s a nice question.
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I m very generous, but honestly, like the main thing is I m just trying to be useful.
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You know, like I, people have written about habits for a long time and they re going to keep writing about them for a long time after me.
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And I m just trying to add my little bit to the pile.
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You know, like my contribution is very small in the grand scheme of things, but I m trying to be useful.
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I m trying to be actionable.
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And, um, you know, the best thing you can do for me is, uh, sign up for the newsletter or buy the book.
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SPEAKER_01
And, um,
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take action on it, you know, try to implement it, make some positive change in your life.
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Like that s the thing that makes me feel best is people taking the ideas and running with them and making them their own.
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So yeah, just sharing some of your time with me is the biggest gift you can give.
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Love that, and leave a comment below also on YouTube or if you re on social media and you re listening to this on audio, post on social media somewhere.
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The part of this episode and interview that you enjoyed or inspired by the most are the biggest takeaway for you.
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Share that below.
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I m sure James will enjoy seeing that one day.
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James, this is a question I believe I asked you last time, four years ago.
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So I m gonna ask you again from a different stage in your life.
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You just launched the book when I had you on, I think, four years ago.
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or recently.
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You didn t have kids then, now you ve got kids.
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This is the question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths.
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So it s fitting towards your 3-2-1 in a way.
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Imagine a hypothetical scenario.
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It s your last day on earth, many years away.
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You live as long as you want to live, but for whatever reason, you know, now s the time.
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You got to go.
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You re however old you want to be.
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And you ve accomplished and done and seen everything you want to do and see and experience in your life.
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But for whatever reason, you ve got to take all of your works with you.
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Your blog, your articles, your content, your books, everything you create, for whatever reason it goes to this other place when you die.
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Hypothetical scenario.
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And we don t have anything to remember you by.
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We don t have any of your work or content.
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But you get to leave behind three lessons or three things you know to be true
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from your experience?
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What would be those three truths for you that you would share?
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All right, the first lesson is, I m happiest when I m creating something.
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So whatever it is, find what you want to create, find what you can make and contribute to society.
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The second lesson is, it is impossible to be a human and not have a body.
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So take care of your body.
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It s the only home that you have while you re here.
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And you cannot get a new one.
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You can t trade it in.
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You can t sell it, but you can renovate it.
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You can upgrade it.
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You can improve it.
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So the better condition your physical body is in, the more likely it is that you ll be able to make whatever contribution it is that you want to make or spend your time in whatever way it is that you want to spend it.
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And then the third lesson is all you have is time.
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And so the way that you spend your days is the way that you re going to spend your life.
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And a lot of the time people start by asking themselves what kind of results they want, but don t actually think about how do they want to be spending their days.
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And I think that s the first question to ask yourself.
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You got this precious amount of time, this little sliver of life in the grand scheme of history.
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So how do you want to spend those days?
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Hmm.
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That s powerful, man.
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Great lessons.
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I love those truths.
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Before I ask the final question, James, I want to acknowledge you, man.
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I want to acknowledge you for how you consistently show up even after the massive success that you ve created in the external world.
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I think it s really powerful that you consistently show up true to yourself.
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You know, you ve stepped into fatherhood, you ve stepped into being a family man in a beautiful way from my personal experience, where it doesn t seem like you allow the success of your business and your books and your writing to consume you.
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And you ve stayed true to your personality since the person I met you, you know, 12, 13 years ago and who I ve
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known, you know, casually over the last decade, to our interactions, to everything that you do, you stayed consistent to being a good human being and the best version of yourself that I think that you can be.
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And it s really inspiring to witness, man, because most people, when they get successful or they make a lot of money or they get the fame or whatever it is,
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You see a lot of people shift and change their personality.
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You see people come more guarded, things like that.
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And you ve stayed consistent from before to now.
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So I really acknowledge you for how you show up, man.
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And I know it s not perfect.
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And you got stuff to work on and new habits and all that stuff.
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But you ve done a great job.
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And I just acknowledge you for that.
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Yeah.
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Thanks, Lewis.
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I really appreciate that, man.
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That s like probably one of the nicest things that someone could say to me.
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So thank you.
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I, um, you know, I m just trying to be useful and helpful and, um, produce things of value, but also like my career should serve me.
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Like I m not trying to serve it, you know, like it s, it s just a tool.
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It s just a, it s just a thing.
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Like, again, atomic habits can just be a project and the business can just be a business.
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It doesn t have to be everything.
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And, um,
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I m trying to do my very best with it when I m working on it.
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But also like life is multidimensional and there s a lot more to it than that.
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And I have this whole new dimension now with my kids.
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And so, yeah, like I lived a good life before this, but also this is this version is even better and it feels it feels even bigger.
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And so
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Yeah, there are many ways to live a successful day, and I m kind of exploring some new ones now after having worked so hard for the last 10 years.
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I love it, man.
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Final question, and then we ll let you get your kids up from a nap, get back to your real day job right now.
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Final question, what s your definition of greatness?
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Honestly, the longer I sit with it, I kind of feel like greatness is consistency or greatness is longevity.
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There are maybe two things that came to mind.
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The first is, I know quite a few people who had really good days or really good years with their blog or something like that, but there just aren t that many people who ve had a really good 10-year span or really good 20-year span.
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It s just continuing to show up and do whatever your thing is, whatever your craft is.
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For a long time, it s kind of like consistency is great is its own form of greatness, you know longevity is its own form of greatness.
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So that s the first thing.
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The second thing is,
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In a way, greatness only reveals itself on the hard days.
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It s really easy to complain about, like I was talking earlier about how I had that difficult period writing Atomic Habits or whatever.
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But that kind of was the period that made the difference.
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The days when it s easy to write, or the days when it s easy to work out, or the days when you feel good,
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Everybody has those days.
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And yes, you still need to show up on those days, but that s not really creating any separation between you and everybody else who s showing up when they feel good.
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The days that create the separation are the hard days.
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And so in a sense, I almost feel like the bad days are more important than the good days, because if you can find a way to show up on the bad days, even if it s less than what you ultimately hope to do, but you just figured out a way to like not throw up a zero that day,
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that counts for a lot in the long run.
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So, uh, I think those are, those are two ways of thinking about greatness.
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I love it.
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James clear.
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Thanks so much, my man.
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Appreciate you for being here.
3
SPEAKER_01
Of course.
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SPEAKER_01
Thanks Louis.
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SPEAKER_01
Appreciate it.
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I hope today s episode inspired you.