1
SPEAKER_02
 I see all of these things like a balancing act and it's like which force will win.
1
SPEAKER_02
You don't have to be a hundred percent mature, but if you're 60, 40 and that's the words that come out your mouth, that's a good place to start.
1
SPEAKER_02
And fortunately in that moment, my maturity won.
1
SPEAKER_02
The next thing is she sits me down the next day and goes, I've been sleeping with someone.
1
SPEAKER_02
 Since we broke up.
1
SPEAKER_02
Ha!
1
SPEAKER_02
Zing!
1
SPEAKER_02
Now let's see that pressure.
1
SPEAKER_02
How are you going to show up with that pressure?
1
SPEAKER_02
The scales!
1
SPEAKER_02
And again my chimp shows up.
1
SPEAKER_02
It says finish her.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
1
SPEAKER_02
It says manipulate, games, tell her off, make her feel like s***.
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh wow.
1
SPEAKER_02
That's my ego.
1
SPEAKER_02
It goes, go on Steve.
1
SPEAKER_02
But, fortunately.
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh man, what did you do?
1
SPEAKER_02
 I gave her a kiss on the cheek.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was like, I understand.
1
SPEAKER_02
I understand.
1
SPEAKER_02
We're in a co-working thing.
1
SPEAKER_02
We carried on doing our work.
1
SPEAKER_02
By the way, at this point, we're not romantic.
1
SPEAKER_02
So we're not, I'm just, babe, it's okay.
1
SPEAKER_02
Give me a hug.
1
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for telling me.
1
SPEAKER_02
You didn't have to tell me.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I literally looked her in the eye.
1
SPEAKER_02
I remember saying to her, she'll listen to this.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was like, I know that must've been hard to say to me.
1
SPEAKER_02
So thank you because you've told me, you didn't have to tell me, but you've told me because X, Y, and Z.
1
SPEAKER_02
 we carried on working.
1
SPEAKER_02
That day, tough.
1
SPEAKER_02
Next day, this is where- But you ended it with her, it's been a year, what's she gonna do?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_02
But your ego doesn't care.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, of course.
1
SPEAKER_02
Your ego doesn't care if you ended it, if it was your fault.
1
SPEAKER_02
Your ego gets triggered, especially, I think this is quite a masculine thing from what I've read as well, we get triggered in a different psychological way because of various prehistoric reasons which I won't go into.
1
SPEAKER_02
 And then the last thing was, I realised that she was going to stay here.
1
SPEAKER_02
She wasn't interested in me, so I was going to leave.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I sent her this really wonderful message and a voice note, which I've played before publicly on stage.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I said, I'm leaving Bali on Saturday, but listen, you're on your journey.
1
SPEAKER_02
It's been amazing to see you, et cetera, et cetera.
1
SPEAKER_02
She responds and she says, she's surprised, but she says, OK, OK, can I see you before you go?
1
SPEAKER_02
 My ego shows up.
1
SPEAKER_02
Don't let her see you before you go.
1
SPEAKER_02
That's your last chance of getting a victory.
1
SPEAKER_02
Do not let her see, make her feel bad.
1
SPEAKER_02
Play a game.
1
SPEAKER_02
You've got the power there, Steve.
1
SPEAKER_02
She's giving you- She wants something.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
You've taken away from her.
1
SPEAKER_02
You've taken away from her.
1
SPEAKER_02
That's one last ego restoring victory.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then reflection, asking myself who I am and who I want to be, what my values actually are and what has succeeded and failed me in the past.
1
SPEAKER_02
I said, sure, you can see me before I go.
1
SPEAKER_02
And in those three days, everything changed.
1
SPEAKER_02
 What happened?
1
SPEAKER_02
She made plans for us over those three days.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was like, and I'm not sure if this is a karmic thing or a spiritual thing or whatever it is, but it was like she realised...
1
SPEAKER_02
 I'd finally learn how to love her.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it was like life had sent me these three tests to check if I still had that ego, if I was still immature, if I was willing to hold a safe space.
1
SPEAKER_02
And because I passed those three tests, those last three days, everything changed.
1
SPEAKER_02
And we have been wildly in love ever since, to the point where I'm sure she's my wife.
1
SPEAKER_02
I'm sure we're gonna have kids.
1
SPEAKER_02
I could have ruined that on three occasions.
1
SPEAKER_02
There was three challenges life sent me.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was testing you, whether she was thinking of a test or not.
1
SPEAKER_02
She would never think of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Right.
1
SPEAKER_00
She's too pure.
1
SPEAKER_00
She's too authentic.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's the human experience to say, well, I don't fully trust this.
1
SPEAKER_00
OK, I'm going to maybe not thinking, but it's just the body's response probably.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
It just comes out.
1
SPEAKER_00
It taught me something about the nature of the world.
1
SPEAKER_00
And she would know if you would have reacted differently in any of those three, you should have been like, something's not safe here.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Like she would have not trusted you to be able to want to get back in a relationship.
1
SPEAKER_02
But is the world not doing that to all of us in all facets of our life?
1
SPEAKER_02
Is it not sending us tests whether it's the barista who you might be rude to that day that turns out to be the daughter of the person that you end up going and trying to pitch business to in three years time?
1
SPEAKER_02
Is life not testing us at all times to see what we're ready for and what we deserve?
1
SPEAKER_02
And that's kind of the broader picture lesson I learned was like Mel never had to change.
1
SPEAKER_02
In fact,
1
SPEAKER_02
 Nothing externally needed to change for me to get the results I'd always been looking for in my life.
1
SPEAKER_02
I had to change.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then the world sent me things, and this sounds very woo-woo, and I'm the least woo-woo person you'll ever meet.
1
SPEAKER_02
The world sent me a different set of things.
1
SPEAKER_02
It said, because you've changed, we're gonna mirror a different set of results.
1
SPEAKER_02
 It's that old Einstein quote about doing the same thing and expecting different results.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yes!
1
SPEAKER_02
You've taught me this as well because you have a huge amount of self-responsibility when it comes to your relationships.
1
SPEAKER_02
You say, I did that.
1
SPEAKER_02
I said this to you last time we spoke.
1
SPEAKER_02
When you're talking about your past relationships that have failed, you said, but that's on me.
1
SPEAKER_02
And you say, because I picked them.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think about that so much because
1
SPEAKER_02
 I had my hairdresser come to my place in LA the other day and he walks in starts cutting my hair says my girlfriend she's not really interested in me she's been you know she's been talking to a lot of other guys and she's been going for this guy just because he's got money and he walked in and when he walked in he had this two thousand dollar sneakers on a Louis Vuitton bag dripping in diamonds and gold and I thought
1
SPEAKER_02
 You've got what you deserve.
1
SPEAKER_02
And people hate that.
1
SPEAKER_02
The concept that the people that they've attracted into their life, the results they've attracted into their life, are a mirror of who they are.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I said to him, I said, well, what did she do?
1
SPEAKER_02
Well, she's a hostess in a nightclub.
1
SPEAKER_02
Okay, and how did you meet her?
1
SPEAKER_02
Well, I was at one of the tables in the nightclub, and I was one of the big spenders, so they put her on my table.
1
SPEAKER_02
 So you're attracting from that space, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
That's what you've attracted.
1
SPEAKER_02
So if you did some work on you to figure out why you need to wear diamonds all the time, where that comes from, that need for validation or whatever it is, you could drop the diamonds, you could stop buying the Dom Perignon in the nightclub, and you might end up in a different environment and attracting someone else for other reasons and values.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it was the same with me throughout my entire life.
1
SPEAKER_02
Until I did the work on me, I attracted all the wrong people.
1
SPEAKER_02
Really?
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh God, of course.
1
SPEAKER_02
Attracted all the wrong people that wanted me for all the wrong things.
1
SPEAKER_02
 that wanted me for the mansion in the countryside, or the Range Rover, or the car.
1
SPEAKER_02
The car you have now is pretty sweet.
1
SPEAKER_02
Funnily enough, I don't actually have a driving license, so I have a driver, but I can't drive.
1
SPEAKER_02
I lost my license, I thought, I don't need it anymore anyway.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think about that a lot now, because I had to do the work to find the love I was looking for.
1
SPEAKER_00
 You can't blame others.
1
SPEAKER_00
You gotta take responsibility and ownership.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that's why I said with you, it's like for me, maybe there was things that I didn't like about these other relationships I was in, but I was the one choosing those relationships.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was the one staying after six months, 12 months, two years when it wasn't working and things weren't shifting, and I continued to repeat the patterns that I was bringing into the relationship.
1
SPEAKER_00
 We all have choices, but when we blame others, it's really easy.
1
SPEAKER_00
But when we take responsibility, it's much harder.
1
SPEAKER_02
What are you scared about in your relationship that you haven't fully healed from that might end up being fatal to your current relationship?
1
SPEAKER_02
What patterns do you see in yourself when you go, oh, I'm going to address that before we go down the aisle?
1
SPEAKER_00
I feel like, I mean, we are so, we talk about these things all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I feel like because I have emotional accountability with my therapist every two weeks, she has it with her therapist every two weeks or whenever she does it as well to work on these things.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like even last night we were talking about, you know, what's the thing that you think you still need to work on that you haven't talked to?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because we had this incredible vacation in Costa Rica and I was like, and we both had therapy last night at different times and I go,
1
SPEAKER_00
 I don't know what I'm gonna talk about.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, everything's great.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, what do you talk about when everything's great in a relationship?
1
SPEAKER_00
And for me, just like you were sharing, there's different levels to my childhood, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
There is the zero to seven ages, which I feel like I've fully addressed and healed.
1
SPEAKER_00
And life has tested me, let's say, with different scenarios that could trigger me and would have triggered me from those things in the past.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And let's say I pass the test, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Most of the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or to a high level degree, I pass the test.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think everyone has a breaking point or something, you know, at some point it's like, okay, let's move on from this.
1
SPEAKER_00
But let's just say I pass the test and we're talking about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when my therapist was like, you know, I haven't really talked about this phase of my life from 10 to 12, my therapist said, well, that's the next phase.
1
SPEAKER_00
 you go through the different seasons of your life to meet up to where you're at in this moment.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you heal those different scenarios, those different ages that kind of shaped or split parts of your psychology to make you feel like you were masking something, you had to protect yourself, you were defending yourself, you were doing something that wasn't out of your most authentic self, your highest version of love.
1
SPEAKER_00
 your joy, your light.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so that was a season of darkness, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I'm not stealing cars.
1
SPEAKER_00
There's levels to the darkness, but there was something in me that needed to steal something every time I went into a store.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was a rush.
1
SPEAKER_00
There was the challenge, the, oh, I'm going to get back at the system or whatever it was I was feeling.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was a pain inside that I needed to heal.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And that gave me a feeling, it was a coping mechanism, to feel something better than what I was feeling.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just like we do with drugs, or alcohol, or sex, or porn, or whatever it might be.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was my thing, and I haven't addressed or healed that yet.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I have on my phone, I showed you this, and she told me, I have on my phone, I've showed this before many times, on my phone I've got a photo of myself from when I was that five to seven range, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
 And it's funny because I talked about this on your podcast, which I want everyone to subscribe to, Die or Receive EO, which is amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Some man posted a photo on his Instagram of his self when he was like five or six.
1
SPEAKER_00
And he said, thank you for talking about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm now working on healing that part of me where I was sexually abused.
1
SPEAKER_00
 when I was that age, where my parents were arguing all the time.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's made me kind of guarded in my life, right, from that period of time.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so now my therapist was like, okay, Louis, I want you to find a photo of you when you're 11, and we're gonna put that on your screensaver, because this has been on here for almost a year.
1
SPEAKER_01
Really?
1
SPEAKER_00
A year.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every day, I look at this, and I see this,
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I feel like that season of my life, I've healed now.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it's taken a year of integrating the healing lessons and being tested by the universe, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
 Relationships, conversations, uncomfortable conversations, challenges to be like, am I still triggered from that wound?
1
SPEAKER_00
Or have I opened the wound, looked at it, it's painful, and then allow it to heal fully so there's a scar, but it's going away every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it fully healed?
1
SPEAKER_00
I feel like it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Again, if the universe tests me,
1
SPEAKER_00
 The whole thing for me around that age was was abuse the sexual abuse made me feel like I was getting taken advantage of right So I would always feel taken advantage of in different scenarios And I felt like I needed to defend myself.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't feel the need to defend myself anymore Like if people say nasty things about me i'm like, okay, that's their opinion Can you think of a scenario that might trigger you if someone says a comment online or says something about me?
1
SPEAKER_00
 that I feel like, oh, they didn't get that right.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like they were, they don't know the whole story, they didn't get it right, or they're assuming something that's not true.
1
SPEAKER_00
That used to be the main thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I might see that today, might have a moment of like, oh, I wanna correct them and tell them the full story.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I don't do that anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there's a moment of like, oh, I'm aware of it, okay, but I don't need to.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so it's an awareness, it's like, okay, maybe there's a moment of the trigger where you're like, I'm used, my body is so used to this kind of nervous system response.
1
SPEAKER_00
 but I'm in a safe place, and I go back to looking at the photo and say, I got your back.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it's integrating the healing from the child's psychology to the adult, and bringing the adult in the room.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so now it's, okay, let's see if there's things to uncover from ages 10 to 12.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I'm gonna put a photo, I gotta look for a photo, put it on here, of that age range, where I'm like 6'3", goofy, skinny looking, you know, being made fun of all the time, and I'm sure there's gonna be stuff where I need to open a wound,
1
SPEAKER_00
 and be like, man, this is painful, and I don't wanna have this wound here, but like address it, look at everything, and then allow the wound to heal, full recovery.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then there'll be a scar, but eventually the scar will go down, and it's more and more healed, and it's stronger.
1
SPEAKER_02
What's the process of finding out?
1
SPEAKER_02
So when you get that photo view at, what, 16, is it?
1
SPEAKER_02
10 or 12.
1
SPEAKER_02
10 or 12?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
How are you gonna know what the sort of limiting self stories are that you're still carrying from that time?
1
SPEAKER_00
 I'm not going to know until my therapist does multiple different exercises with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
She'll do a set of exercises in person over Zoom where she'll have me think about those times and journal and have me bring up stuff from parents.
1
SPEAKER_00
I have no clue what she's going to bring to me, but she's going to walk me down a journey.
1
SPEAKER_00
 and the journey of rediscovery, of reliving parts of my past that I don't want to think about anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
For 25 years, I didn't want to think about the sexual abuse or the trauma.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn't want to think about being in that bathroom with that man.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn't want to think about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it was a movie that played in my mind every day for 25 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I never told anyone until I started to actually address it and open that box again.
1
SPEAKER_00
 It was extremely painful and scary, but every day after that became easier and easier.
1
SPEAKER_00
The more I did the exercises and integrated the healing journey, and it was the hardest thing I've ever done.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so now I feel like I have this courage, like I can take on the different stages of my life, from 10 to 12 or 16 or, you know, the different relationships, all the different relationships I've been in.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm gonna go back to all those seasons as well at some point.
1
SPEAKER_00
 and see, okay, where did I mess up?
1
SPEAKER_00
Where can I take more responsibility?
1
SPEAKER_00
How could I heal that?
1
SPEAKER_00
And rewrite the story of every chapter of my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
 So that's more integration towards peace.
1
SPEAKER_00
Towards peace.
1
SPEAKER_00
That's the key.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I don't know how long it's going to take.
1
SPEAKER_00
It might take a couple of weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
It might take a few months.
1
SPEAKER_00
It might take a year with me having that photo on my screen.
1
SPEAKER_00
What I'm committed to is the growth.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I'm willing to do whatever it takes to set myself up to be the best leader for my life I can be and the leader I can be for the people around me.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And I know that takes me doing the self-awareness, healing, and being on that constant healing journey.
1
SPEAKER_02
But you can't see yourself ever leaving therapy, can you?
1
SPEAKER_00
At this point, but I remember before the call last night, I was like, do I need to take this call?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, everything's great.
1
SPEAKER_00
Everything's amazing.
1
SPEAKER_00
We just had this seven-day trip.
1
SPEAKER_00
I've never, and I told my girlfriend this, I go, I've never been on a trip.
1
SPEAKER_00
 where there wasn't some type of blow up or some type of in a relationship where there wasn't some type of make wrong or you didn't do enough or you should have done this better as opposed to the partners that I chose being grateful and appreciative of what we were creating.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like look at all these good things we did over the last five days but you're focusing on this one thing that I did or didn't do.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And that always made me upset.
1
SPEAKER_00
And Martha and I liked that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was just like this beautiful experience.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I don't know why I need to go to therapy right now.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I'll wait a few more weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I think the consistency of it, and things came up for me last night.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like there was new stuff to work on.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, there's always a different level.
1
SPEAKER_00
And my therapist says, you know, look for the pebbles in the shoe.
1
SPEAKER_00
There may not be a big rock, some big thing that you need to address.
1
SPEAKER_00
There might be like a little grain of sand.
1
SPEAKER_00
 that you kind of notice it, but not really for the first few hours.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then after a day, that sand starts to create a little blister.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you're bleeding after a week from a little grain of sand, like a little pebble, with some little stones that are really not that big of a deal.
1
SPEAKER_00
But then they build into, like, you can't walk in a year.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you just get a drop of water,
1
SPEAKER_02
 and you just drop it on like a piece of stone.
1
SPEAKER_02
Nothing happens tomorrow.
1
SPEAKER_02
But over a million years, you can create Grand Canyon just by a flow of water.
1
SPEAKER_02
And that's kind of how I see it.
1
SPEAKER_02
If you're allowing something to flow in your life, although it won't be destructive today, it is corroding you gradually and it's building a pathway.
1
SPEAKER_02
You can think about it from a neurological perspective.
1
SPEAKER_02
It's building a pathway of bitterness or resentment or grudges neurologically.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was really fascinated when I wrote that book about
1
SPEAKER_02
 water because it seems so irrelevant.
1
SPEAKER_02
It's the thing that's carved up the world.
1
SPEAKER_02
It's the reason we have a Grand Canyon.
1
SPEAKER_02
 and it can destroy anything if you allow it to persist long enough.
1
SPEAKER_02
Even a drop can destroy anything, which is pretty fascinating, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and a drop of water turns into a river that cuts through a whole country.
1
SPEAKER_02
Cuts through a country?
1
SPEAKER_00
From a drop of water over thousands of years.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you've got to turn the tap off.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don't know if I would stop therapy.
1
SPEAKER_00
 pause it for periods of time, I might say, you know what, I'll go a month or six weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don't think I need it every two weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
There might be a season in life where that happens, but every time I do it, I feel better.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And there's always something to be addressed from life.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was going through this challenge with like a teammate of mine in my company or this happened to me and it kind of made me feel like a little frustrated and I just wanted to talk about it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn't react and I didn't blow up but there was a little trigger there inside of me that made me, I didn't like that, let's address it.
1
SPEAKER_02
 Do you write the things down as they happen during the week and then, like in your notes or something, and then take it to your parents?
1
SPEAKER_00
No, it's kind of just like a mental note.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it's like, is there a pebble?
1
SPEAKER_00
She's like, where are the pebbles?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I'm like, I don't think there are, you know?
1
SPEAKER_00
And then it's like, I have to really dig.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it's because I'm doing it every two weeks, I'm addressing things consistently so there's no big rocks.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's like, oh, I keep talking about everything and letting things go and allowing things to flow.
1
SPEAKER_00
It's a thing of emotional accountability I feel like I never had until
1
SPEAKER_00
 really in the last year.
1
SPEAKER_00
I did therapy at Seasons of Life for the last 10 years.
1
SPEAKER_00
Every relationship I've been in the last 10 years, I did therapy with them.
1
SPEAKER_00
And none of the people wanted to do therapy with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I would suggest it because there was a rock in our relationship.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm like, I think we need therapy.
1
SPEAKER_00
They'd be like, no.
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SPEAKER_00
But that was my responsibility for choosing these types of individuals that didn't want to grow in this way, that didn't want to look at themselves.
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SPEAKER_00
Because I was like, I will address anything wrong with me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I know I'm not perfect.
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SPEAKER_00
I've made lots of mistakes in this individual relationship.
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SPEAKER_00
And I want to talk about them.
1
SPEAKER_00
 And so, but I've never did it consistently every two weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I've done it for the last year every two weeks.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think I told you, we did like a five hour session together a few weeks ago.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you said.
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SPEAKER_00
Not because something was wrong, but because everything's great.
1
SPEAKER_00
We did a five hour with my therapist, in person, exercises, like many kind of games, eye gazing and really sharing vulnerable stuff and practices and creating agreements.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I felt like, man, it's so powerful to create agreements when things are good.
1
SPEAKER_00
 not when there starts to be like some some downfall reactively so i don't know if i would end it but the ego would get i could see the ego saying you know you figured it all out lewis do you have them on retainer this is it sounds like an interesting question but there's actually a truth to it because i think that
1
SPEAKER_02
 For a lot of people probably not yourself, right?
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SPEAKER_02
Because I know you're doing very very well But for a lot of people i've seen my in my friends they factor in the fact that's going to be expensive So I was thinking with therapy that there might be some logic in block booking it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Uh-huh Yeah, i've already paid for the whole year.
1
SPEAKER_02
That's that's what i'm saying advance for the year and you schedule It's already in my calendar like every two weeks for the next like four months
1
SPEAKER_00
 because I've seen my friends think about whether to go and then factor in the cost that they're gonna have to pay and I go no no no no no you're that you know you don't want that force coming into your your growth so block book it ahead of time and then you won't have that guilt associated with the expense yeah and I'm a huge fan of emotional accountability whether that's a therapist a coach a mentor a friend having a place where you can go especially as men because in general I will generalize most men don't
1
SPEAKER_00
 have these types of conversations with their guy friends on a weekly basis, where in general, women tend to do this on a daily basis with their girlfriends or their mothers, to have conversations about vulnerabilities and securities.
1
SPEAKER_00
When did you ever do this growing up with your guy friends?
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SPEAKER_00
I didn't do it growing up with my guy friends.
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SPEAKER_00
Absolutely not.
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SPEAKER_00
You're trying to survive.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Exactly ask a woman to say ask a woman most women say imagine going a month without talking to a girlfriend about how you feel your challenges your insecurities your You know relationship issues your body insecurities, whatever might be your stuff at work They say it'd be horrible to not be able to talk about it for a month.
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SPEAKER_00
I go imagine going a lifetime Yeah, that's so many men in the world go years with never sharing how they truly feel with one friend and
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SPEAKER_00
 And imagine, they were like, I feel like I wanna kill myself.
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SPEAKER_00
Imagine how a lot of guys feel.
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SPEAKER_00
And I'm not saying like, what was the weight of the world on all these men, but just imagine not being able to express your emotional feelings.
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SPEAKER_00
And that's why I feel like emotional accountability is so powerful.
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SPEAKER_00
 To have that for each one of us and so and with therapy, I feel like it's a powerful tool To have emotional accountability So, I don't know if I would end it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I would not do it as frequently But I really want to do the work on these different chapters of my life And then maybe I would extend the times of of going but are you doing it consistently?
1
SPEAKER_00
No, are you doing it at all?
1
SPEAKER_00
No
1
SPEAKER_00
 Do you feel like it'd be worth it?
1
SPEAKER_02
I've started to think about it in the last two months, and I've started to look at things.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I've started to make comments to my team about doing it.
1
SPEAKER_02
I spoke to a therapist and said, how would it work?
1
SPEAKER_02
And I think part of that is the adjustment, the adjustment of my life that I've talked about over the last three months is I now need to learn a new set of tools to adjust to the adjustment that my life has seen.
1
SPEAKER_00
What is the ultimate goal you wish you could have internally?
1
SPEAKER_00
Imagine your life, you accomplish all of your dreams,
1
SPEAKER_00
 And the fame doesn't slow down, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
1
SPEAKER_00
So imagine what you've experienced in three months is a hundred times.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because of the growth of your business, your brand, your podcast, the books you create, the impact you have on the world is so massive that this is not three months, this is a hundred times this is three months every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
 What is a tool you feel like you're gonna need or three tools that will support you to staying in peace?
1
SPEAKER_02
Or is peace the goal?
1
SPEAKER_02
When I think about the tools, it's whatever tool is gonna help me deal with a lot of sometimes factually incorrect, sometimes bias-ridden external feedback.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I'm actually really good with dealing with it.
1
SPEAKER_02
 But even I struggle with it sometimes.
1
SPEAKER_02
When you were saying that a thousand times, a hundred times, whatever, I was thinking about what it must have been to be Barack Obama.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was thinking who's the most criticized, the highest pedestal one can climb to, where you have literally 50% of the country hate you.
1
SPEAKER_02
 and then you have wars to contend with, you have economic issues, you have all of these challenges, you have personal challenges, you have your kids, and you're still trying to stand up in front of the nation and be a man of integrity and character.
1
SPEAKER_02
So the word sounded like, the tool sounded like perspective.
1
SPEAKER_02
It sounded like a greater sense of perspective on what actually matters and what
1
SPEAKER_02
 what to tune in to and what to tune out of, I think that's probably what I'd need to survive at that level.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I guess a therapist could give me that, so.
1
SPEAKER_02
Do you feel like you have perspective right now, though, or?
1
SPEAKER_02
Clearly not.
1
SPEAKER_02
Clearly not.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Evidently not, because if I had a greater sense of perspective, I don't think things would bother me at all.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think, so when I say this, I want to be clear that I'm not the type of person that will ever reply to anything.
1
SPEAKER_02
I'm not the, if I see something and it's, Steve Baller is a whatever, I won't reply to it.
1
SPEAKER_02
I won't.
1
SPEAKER_02
 get involved.
1
SPEAKER_02
But it'll affect you.
1
SPEAKER_02
But I'll think about it.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I'll think about it for a little bit longer than I'd like to.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it varies in the amount of, like, the length that I'll think about.
1
SPEAKER_02
If it's a big newspaper writing something about me, then I might think about it for two days.
1
SPEAKER_02
It might just keep popping into my head.
1
SPEAKER_02
And I don't like that.
1
SPEAKER_02
I want to be able to control my calm.
1
SPEAKER_02
 Even if there's chaos outside of me, I want to find that calm within my chaos.
1
SPEAKER_02
I want it to be a place that I can go back to as a choice.
1
SPEAKER_02
And if it's not, then I'm going to be dragged like a plastic bag in the wind for the rest of my life around by whatever someone else is saying or doing.
1
SPEAKER_02
There are practical steps like change the notifications on Twitter.
1
SPEAKER_02
So you can't see most of the stuff, which I've done.
1
SPEAKER_02
I've done that on LinkedIn and my other channels.
1
SPEAKER_02
I don't search my name ever, but there's always going to be a friend that sends me something.
1
SPEAKER_02
Steve, have you seen this?
1
SPEAKER_02
 And the curious brains will be like, oh, what are they saying about me?
1
SPEAKER_02
And it's not true.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then if it's my mom or my dad or my sister, I have to then give them perspective.
1
SPEAKER_02
I go, listen, don't worry.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then I get back into it.
1
SPEAKER_02
So just getting systems in place to deal with that, because I want to be able to pursue my mission without consciousness or fear of consequence, because my mission is authentic.
1
SPEAKER_02
It's genuine to me.
1
SPEAKER_02
The things I want to do in my life,
1
SPEAKER_02
 I believe them to be the truth, whether it's my truth or in terms of my content, I believe it to be the truth.
1
SPEAKER_02
So I don't want to try and have to caveat myself or speak or live or exist in fear, limiting myself because of what other people might think.
1
SPEAKER_02
So that requires a little bit more, I guess, perspective on what that noise is.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
I'm curious about your mom and dad.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was the greatest lesson your mom taught you growing up that has supported you and the greatest lesson she's taught you that you don't want to repeat?
1
SPEAKER_02
 interesting so i'll give it in the context of business and then maybe personal so the best lesson she's taught me in terms of business was unbelievable hard work my mum would um
1
SPEAKER_02
 wake up in the morning at her shop after sleeping on a bag of rice.
1
SPEAKER_02
She would go run her little corner shop, and then she'd go back to work in the UK.
1
SPEAKER_02
She'd go back to her bag of rice where she'd sleep in the back room.
1
SPEAKER_02
And she was doing that because she was being racially abused so much that she, and the shop was being broken into, she'd realized that if she went home, then they would come in.
1
SPEAKER_02
So she just slept, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
 And I remember being there as a kid looking down at this bag of rice on the floor and I was like, why is it all chewed up?
1
SPEAKER_02
And she was like, there's lots of mice and rats back here, but she didn't care.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it was so bizarre that she would give so much.
1
SPEAKER_02
 for this one little corner shop, which was selling Mars bars.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it wasn't like a business that ever made any money.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was like a corner newsstand with like a- It was like nothing.
1
SPEAKER_02
It was a tiny little selling Snickers and Mars bars and maybe a toilet roll, really random things.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then that business would fail and she'd start another one.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then that would fail.
1
SPEAKER_02
And she did that for 25 years of my life.
1
SPEAKER_02
None of them ever made any money.
1
SPEAKER_02
They actually destroyed our finances as a family.
1
SPEAKER_02
 to the point where our house, for example, was smashed to peat.
1
SPEAKER_02
We were in a perfect white picket fence neighborhood, but our house was, the windows on it, the front of my house, were smashed for 15 years.
1
SPEAKER_02
Grass was six foot high, there was fridges in my garden, and we were the only black people in that neighborhood.
1
SPEAKER_02
So it made you look even weirder, like.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the context, everything is about context, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
And you would determine value of anything in your life by the context in which you see it.
1
SPEAKER_02
I've said this before, but if you see a Nokia next to five iPhones, the Nokia is a piece of, you know, bull.
1
SPEAKER_02
 But if you remove the iPhones, if you go back two decades, you would be astounded by such a contraption.
1
SPEAKER_02
I was the Nokia in a village of iPhones, so I always felt that's why I wanted the mansion and the Lamborghini.
1
SPEAKER_02
So that's the one lesson of hard work.
1
SPEAKER_02
What's the lesson that she taught you that you don't want to learn, that you want to unlearn?
1
SPEAKER_02
 Okay, so her relentless hard work and always starting another business taught me the importance of hard work, but at the same time it taught me a bad lesson.
1
SPEAKER_02
Well, it's actually a good lesson now that I've learned it, which is the cost of lack of focus in life.
1
SPEAKER_02
My mum's businesses sequentially went bust and that put our family into hardship over the space of 25 years because she never focused.
1
SPEAKER_02
 And her shop, she'd have her shop, and because it didn't make her a millionaire straight away, she would start something else because someone walked in and said, you can make a lot of money from furniture businesses.
1
SPEAKER_02
She should go, okay, I'll go start a furniture business.
1
SPEAKER_02
That meant that the shop went under because she left it alone and it lost her focus.
1
SPEAKER_00
 Maybe you could have made a lot of money if she put 10 years into it.
1
SPEAKER_02
Honestly, some of those businesses were smash hits.
1
SPEAKER_02
They weren't showing up in terms of the bottom line yet, but she started this one restaurant called Tropical Sensation, which I used to work in as a kid.
1
SPEAKER_02
Smash hit.
1
SPEAKER_02
The only African jerk chicken place in our little village, and it was a smash hit, but she got unfocused, started something else, and the restaurant went bust.
1
SPEAKER_02
 We had that restaurant for about four years.
1
SPEAKER_02
If she had applied us, focused on that, there'd be a chains around the UK.
1
SPEAKER_02
So she taught me that lesson.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I mean, a lot of them I talked about earlier with my dad, but just like how to communicate and those kind of things, I guess.
1
SPEAKER_02
And your dad, biggest lesson he taught you?
1
SPEAKER_02
Love unconditionally, even if a woman is screaming in your face.
1
SPEAKER_02
Really?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
Even if my mom was screaming in his face for, honestly, when I say seven hours, if you met my mom, you'd understand there's no exaggeration.