Conquer Your Money Neuroses | Lewis Howes

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Conquer Your Money Neuroses" with Lewis Howes on 10% Happier with Dan Harris

Release Date: May 7, 2025

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of 10% Happier with Dan Harris, host Dan Harris welcomes Lewis Howes, a renowned wellness podcaster and best-selling author, to discuss the intricate relationship people have with money. Drawing from his own tumultuous experiences—from overcoming financial hardship to navigating personal trauma—Howes provides actionable insights into transforming money-related anxieties into empowering financial strategies.

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1. Overcoming Setbacks

The conversation begins with Howes reflecting on his journey from financial instability to success. He shares personal anecdotes about living on his sister's couch and battling learning disabilities, bullying, and sexual abuse during his childhood.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (07:37): "I've always had a mission, and the mission is to serve 100 million lives every single week to help them improve the quality of their life."

This mission-driven approach helped Howes navigate periods of stagnation and discouragement, emphasizing the importance of having a larger purpose to sustain motivation during challenging times.

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2. Evolution of Podcasting

Dan and Lewis delve into the evolution of podcasting, noting how early challenges such as limited accessibility and low public awareness were overcome with the rise of hits like Serial, which significantly boosted the medium's popularity.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (07:14): "Podcasting was hard to get people to listen to back then... it was very hard. And people didn't have the awareness of what a podcast was, not until Serial came out."

This shift not only increased listenership but also made podcasting a viable platform for sharing meaningful content.

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3. Developing a Personal Mission

A pivotal theme in the discussion is the role of a personal mission in overcoming adversity. Howes stresses that a clearly defined mission provides the resilience needed to push through setbacks.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (07:37): "The mission is to serve 100 million lives every single week to help them improve the quality of their life."

This mission acts as a "North Star," guiding decisions and maintaining focus even when external circumstances become unfavorable.

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4. Habits and Mindset Shifts to Make Money Easier

The duo explores various habits and mindset shifts that can streamline one's financial relationship. Howes introduces the concept of identifying and modifying ingrained financial behaviors to create a healthier relationship with money.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (45:00): "There are three keys to improving your relationship with money: know your money story, reset your money mindset, and prepare for more money."

These steps form a foundational framework for listeners to reassess and enhance their financial well-being.

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5. Figuring Out Your Personal Money Story

Understanding one's personal history with money is crucial. Howes emphasizes that recognizing and addressing past financial wounds can lead to more informed and strategic financial decisions.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (41:57): "Most people don't reflect on their story. They don't write those wounds down just so they can see them and say, okay, here's some of my ghosts, here's some of my money wounds that maybe I thought don't affect me today, but they really do."

By dissecting these narratives, individuals can identify patterns that may be sabotaging their financial growth and take steps to heal and move forward.

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6. Money and Romantic Relationships

Money often plays a significant role in romantic relationships, and Howes shares his strategies for managing financial conversations with his spouse. He underscores the importance of transparency and proactive communication to prevent money from becoming a source of conflict.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (22:04): "We went to like a six-hour therapy session on Saturday once a month for the first year of our relationship and try to make it work."

This approach ensures that both partners are aligned in their financial goals and understand each other's money-related fears and aspirations.

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7. Clearing Unnecessary Stuff to Grow

Minimalism isn't just a lifestyle choice but also a strategic move to clear financial clutter. Howes discusses how eliminating unnecessary expenses and obligations can free up resources and mental space, fostering financial growth and personal development.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (77:52): "We hit a ceiling, right? And we're unable to mobilize to the next level as well, because we're doing it all ourselves. So it's learning to delegate."

By streamlining responsibilities and focusing on what truly matters, individuals can create a more conducive environment for financial prosperity.

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8. The Value of Generosity

Generosity emerges as a powerful tool for enhancing one's financial mindset. Howes argues that being generous with time, energy, and resources not only benefits others but also enriches the giver's own financial life by fostering goodwill and opportunities.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (57:00): "The more you are generous with your time, your curiosity, your presence, it pays dividends in return."

This reciprocal nature of generosity builds a supportive network that can be instrumental in achieving financial goals.

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Conclusion

In wrapping up the episode, Howes reiterates that achieving a harmonious relationship with money is an ongoing journey requiring continuous self-reflection, mindset adjustments, and strategic planning. By addressing past wounds, fostering generosity, and maintaining a clear mission, individuals can transform their financial lives, leading to greater inner peace and external success.

• Notable Quote:
  Howes (85:44): "Money is one of the most emotionally charged things that hurts marriages and hurts relationships. If you can create a new relationship with money for yourself, you can create a better relationship with others."

This holistic approach not only alleviates money-related stress but also enhances overall life satisfaction.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Identify Your Money Story: Understanding your past financial experiences is crucial for current financial health.
2. Reset Your Money Mindset: Shift from scarcity to abundance by adopting positive financial habits.
3. Prepare for More Money: Develop strategies and habits that facilitate financial growth.
4. Communicate Openly in Relationships: Transparent financial discussions can prevent future conflicts.
5. Embrace Generosity: Being generous can enhance your financial and personal life.
6. Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Financial strategies should evolve with your personal and professional growth.

Listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own relationships with money, identify areas for improvement, and implement the discussed habits to conquer their money neuroses effectively.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

This is the 10% Happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello my fellow suffering beings. How we doing today? We are coming back to one of my favorite subjects today. It's one of my favorites because it's a perennially thorny subject in my own life. How to conquer your money neuroses. How to rewire and upgrade your relationship to your wallet. My guest is a guy who has gone from being broke and living on his sister's couch to one of the most popular wellness podcasters on planet Earth. And those are not the only obstacles this guy has overcome. As a child, he dealt with a learning disability, bullying, and sexual abuse. Lewis Howes is the host of the School of Greatness podcast. He has written several best selling books and he's got a new book called Make Money Easy, Create financial Freedom, and Live a Richer Life. I like this because Lewis is not promising instant riches here. He's just talking about how to have an easier relationship to money and success, which is something I'm still working on myself after 53 years. In this conversation, we talk about overcoming setbacks. We have a little digression about the evolution of podcasting. We talk about how developing a personal mission can help you persist through challenges, which I've found to be really true in my own life. We talk about habits and mindset shifts that you can make to make money easier. Figuring out your personal money story, your history with money and how that can lead to a money strategy. How to continually evolve when it comes to your relationship to your money, and how to handle money and romantic relationships. Louis just got married. The art of clearing unnecessary shit off your plate so you can grow. And this is a little counterintuitive, but I love this. The value of generosity. Before we get started, I just want to let you know about something very cool that we're going to be doing in the second half of May. We are going to be doing a live meditation miniseries each weekday from Monday, May 19 to Friday, May 23 at 4 4pm Eastern. I will be leading a short guided meditation and then I'll be taking your questions. The whole miniseries is going to center around a set of practices that I often refer to as the Buddhist antidote to anxiety. And I'm not making this up. One of the key practices that I'll be teaching is loving kindness meditation, which the story goes was invented by the Buddha to help his monks who were dealing with a lot of fear. And loving kindness is part of a family of four related practices known as the Brahma Viharas or the divine abodes. I will admit when I first encountered these practices which are designed around cultivating loving kindness, compassion, something called sympathetic joy, and also equanimity. When I first ran into these practices, I was, as you might imagine, a little reflexively judgmental and dismissive. But I have really come to embrace these practices in a huge way over time, and they've had a massive impact on my life. And by the way, they've now been studied quite extensively in the labs and have been shown particularly loving kindness practice to have physiological, psychological and even behavioral benefits. Anyway, this is all happening [e-mail] Like I said, Monday through Friday, the week of May 19th. Like any good drug dealer, the first dose will be free. So Monday's session will be open to everybody. And then for the rest of the week you have to be a paid subscriber. So head on over to danharris.com and check it out. We'll get started with my guy, Lewis Howes, right after this. It's that time of year. We're coming up on Mother's Day, and if you're looking for a great Mother's Day gift for your mom or for yourself, or for your spouse or for a mom, you know, I can confidently recommend many of the products from our good friends over at Cozy Earth. My wife, mother of our child, has been swanning around in her Cozy Earth pajamas, looking legit. And pajamas are just one of the many cozy products they offer. We've got sheets from them, I've got sweatpants from them, T shirts from them. Basically, anything you're doing where you need to chill, Cozy Earth has got your back and they've got your back. If you're looking for a Mother's Day gift as well, I can tell you Bianca looks good in her PJs. Even though they are sponsors of the show, she doesn't care. She's a discerning customer, so you should take that as a serious endorsement of Cozy Earth. To celebrate moms everywhere, use code dan Harris for 40% off your entire order. 40% off because she deserves the best. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you're in business, it really is. This may be a statement of the obvious, but it really is important to have a very good website. And I've learned this sometimes the hard way over recent years because I've made mistakes. Might shock you to hear that, but now I love my website and you can love yours too. Squarespace is the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and Succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or you're trying to scale your business, Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings, grow your brand, and get paid all in one place. They have a ton of services. They'll do consultations for events and experiences. They'll showcase your offerings with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. Plus, they can help you streamline your workflow with built in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools. Everybody's talking about the importance of video today, and Squarespace can help you with that. They can help you upload and organize your videos, create stunning video libraries, even monetize your content by adding a paywall, which is perfect for online courses and exclusive tutorials and premium workshops and the like. So check out squarespace.com 10happier for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, you can use the offer code 10Happier to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go Squarespace. Lewis Hows. Welcome back to the show.

[A]

Thanks so much. All right, this is what, year 12 for you in the podcast?

[B]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I think eight.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You. You.

[A]

It's 12 years for me.

[B]

I didn't get into like 16 or 17. You got into 2013.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. This 12 year anniversary last month, you were every single week for 12 years.

[B]

How many episodes?

[A]

Probably what we'll talk about afterwards, right? Three times a week, not two new ones a week. And then I do like a mashup, like a mix of episodes on a Friday.

[B]

Are you getting tired of it or you still have the energy to do it?

[A]

I have the right team now where it doesn't feel tiring. Yeah. There were seasons where I was definitely like, man, this is becoming a lot. And there were seasons where there was like a dip where I was like, why am I working so hard if it's not growing? You know? So I had to learn how to like reinvent it and create better processes, not do everything myself over the years, all that stuff.

[B]

I'm interested in the dip part, part that you just said, because I've experienced that too, both in podcast growth and social media growth and all sorts of things. And I think a lot of people will relate to this. They're working on something. They have a burst of growth and then there's a setback. That setback can be so discouraging that you lose the will to continue. So how did you get through that? Those dips?

[A]

If there were multiple, I mean, as weird as it sounds. Or maybe lame as it sounds, I've always had a mission, and the mission is to serve 100 million lives every single week to help them improve the quality of their life. That's what I came up with in my heart, my mind. I don't know. 10, 11 years ago, once I launched the show, I was just like, let me try this as an experiment. Let me just try it once a week and try to interview inspiring people, mentors, people I want to learn from, to try to help me and share it with others. And then maybe a year or two in, I was like, okay, why am I doing this? What's the reason I'm doing this? I did it for a year, maybe it was two years. And I was like, I got to have something bigger than just, oh, I'm just curious now, because I'm really enjoying it. I'm really loving it. And then it was like, well, what would really scare me or excite me or motivate me to push through when things are challenging? And I was like, if I could reach a million people a week, that'd be a big deal. But after the first year, I had had almost a million downloads. It was 750,000 downloads of busting my butt every single week for a year. Year two is around a million and a half downloads. So it almost doubled in year two, which doesn't seem like a lot now, because you know the numbers that you have now and where we're at now. But this was 12 years ago. It was. Podcasting was hard to get people to listen to back then. Yeah, it was like on itunes, you had to, like, text a friend, some weird link. It wouldn't open right away. They had to go to another thing. It was like a weird way to listen back then. It was very hard. And people didn't have the awareness of what a podcast was, not until Serial came out, which was a few years later.

[B]

2014, I think. Right.

[A]

So, yeah, a couple years later. Then it became more like, oh, people know what a podcast is. That's when it kind of helped grow the space. My vision was, okay, what would really excite me? And is 100 million lives even possible? Is it even possible? And I was like, it doesn't matter if it's possible. It just excites me. So let's figure out how to get there. And it wasn't until maybe a few years ago, four years ago, when we did a hundred million downloads in one year, and I was like, okay, how do we do this in one month? And then how do we do this in one week? Whether I reach the goal, the mission or not is kind of irrelevant to me at this point. Like, I'm still aiming for that mission, but I just know that audio is challenging to go viral. It's almost impossible. It seems like unless it hits some cultural moment, it doesn't spread like video. So it's more encompassing. The long form video and audio kind of download and views, not clips or shorts, but, like long form listens or views. So it's really putting those together now and using video as an avenue to spread in a better way.

[B]

It's interesting you prefaced that comment as. I don't know if this is going to sound a little corny or cheesy or something like that.

[A]

Having a mission.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. Why? Why do you say that?

[A]

Because it sounds so basic and people are like, well, if that's what you're really holding on to when you're going through a dip or a challenge or a stressful time. And I'm like, yeah, that's really the only reason why we do anything. It's like the commitment to the vision or the goal that we set out. And you probably felt this a year and a half ago in the podcasting landscape. There was kind of a big reset with Apple and with, like, how things are downloaded. And so things went down almost like half overnight, it felt like. And then it just kept going down.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And. And it felt like you couldn't stop this moving train of destruction of, like, this is not going the way that it was. And everyone was texting each other, the podcasting world, like, hey, are you experiencing this? Are you? And everyone was freaking out. It was a very stressful time for the first, like, six months, because I was like, oh, this will stop soon. And it didn't. It just kept going. And I go, you know what? This is a blessing. This is a blessing. As much as it hurts, it hurts the business, it hurts revenue, hurts your ego, it hurts your soul. All these things you work so hard for for so long, it hurts. But I was also like, gosh, this is what I'm built for. You know, as an athlete, I'm built to endure getting punched in the face over and over again, playing injured, losing game after game when you're working really hard, when you're not skilled yet or whatever it might be. And so I was like, this is going to help clean up a lot of people that don't have a bigger mission, then they're doing it just for money or just for fame or just because they're trying to build their business, and it's like an avenue to do something. I was like, it's going to eliminate a lot of people that don't have a bigger calling for it. And it wasn't like, for me, podcasting was my calling. It's learning and educating others is something that I'm called to do right now to help people grow. And this is the avenue in which I can do that in the best way possible at this season. So it was just more like, okay, let me figure out how to reevaluate my process. How can I get better? How can I dive in deeper and appreciate the process, the people I'm interviewing? How can I set up my time and structure my time better, my team better? So it was a reevaluation for the last year and a half, and I finally feel like out of that, we hit. Not rock bottom, but we hit the bottom of where we were going to hit it, and now we're slowly starting to grow. So for me, it's like, okay, I can see the vision again, reemerging, which is exciting.

[B]

I want to go back to mission in a second. Just for listeners who don't know what Louis is referring to, about a year and a half ago, there was this moment where Apple changed its podcast algorithm, and longtime podcasters like Louis, like me, but Louis has been at this longer than I have. We saw our download numbers just get crushed.

[A]

Crushed.

[B]

And meanwhile, there was also this correction happening in the overall podcast marketplace, where basically we were getting paid less.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so our.

[A]

Less downloads, less money.

[B]

Less money and more competition. Yes. And so it was a. It was a. It was a very destabilizing moment for many of us.

[A]

How did you feel in the last year and a half during this time?

[B]

I was really hard, and it was actually, for me, it was happening at the same time as I was splitting from the meditation app that I co founded, so.

[A]

Which is like your baby.

[B]

That was my baby. I felt like it was my baby. And so to be leaving this company under, you know, I didn't want to be leaving, and it was really hard for me.

[A]

Really? You didn't want to leave?

[B]

No, I mean. And I want to be careful just because my co founders have their own story, and so. And I have a bigger microphone, so I want to be careful not to misuse that. So my version of events, which you should take with a grain of salt, obviously, because it's my version, is that, yes, this was not what I wanted, and it was very hard. And so that's happening. And then meanwhile, the podcast landscape seems to be like, on fire. So this brings me back to purpose and mission, because I think this is something for the listener that I think is genuinely useful. And it's interesting that you called it cheesy, and I get that, because it is a little cheesy. But if you don't have a North Star. If you don't have a North Star, when things get rough, and they will, you don't have a North Star. You're, you're.

[A]

And I think, you know, I just got married a week ago, so congratulations. Thank you. And I. It's interesting because we did. I don't know, I feel like I did a lot of learning about marriage before marriage, because I was really scared in my 20s and 30s to get married. I didn't feel ready emotionally. I didn't feel like it was safe to get married based on what I saw my parents go through. You know, just always fighting and arguing and never feeling like they loved each other. I knew that they loved me, but I didn't feel like they loved each other. And therefore it felt very unsafe to be in the environment. I left home at 13. I begged my parents to send me away to a private boarding school. It's usually the other way around. Like they want to get the kids out. My parents didn't want me to leave. I begged them every day for a summer, please let me go to this school. And I met some kids at a Christian camp during a summer camp at the beginning of summer that went to this school in St. Louis, Missouri. And I was just like, man, these kids are positive, they're kind, they're like goal oriented, they're accepting. And I was like, I just want to be around them. And it was a boarding school. And I was like, I just need to get as far away from my parents as possible. Even though I loved them, I didn't feel safe around them because they didn't love each other. And there was other chaos in the home as well. So I didn't feel safe about marriage. I wanted intimacy and I wanted connection, I wanted pleasure, all these different things. But I was afraid to be in a committed long term relationship because that felt like trapped. Felt like you were trapped and you weren't safe and you couldn't get out and you weren't free. And I wanted freedom. And there was a lot of things tied around money as well where I felt like money wasn't freedom because I didn't understand it. So I didn't understand marriage. And I Was like, why get married if it's just suffering and sadness? You know, it's like, because that's what I experienced growing up. Okay, when you have a model that is in a healthy model, you don't want to be around that thing. I needed a model around business. I needed a model around meditation. I need a model for everything that felt safe for me so I could jump into it. Before I got engaged, I was like, I really need to have these conversations with my girlfriend, then fiance, that now wife. And I learned so much about the process. She grew up Catholic, so we went to like pre marriage Catholic training, which was actually I was kind of resistant to. But then I was like, wow, this is actually really beautiful and powerful what I was learning about. And there were so many things I learned that made me feel more safe because we had courageous conversations. But the big thing I'm going back to is we created a mission together. We created these agreements and a mission where I could feel like, okay, when there is a challenge, I'm not thinking I'm going to bounce. Because we have agreements in place, we have alignment, and we have a shared mission for why we're getting married and what the purpose of this is beyond just me and her. And that is something that excites me around marriage, having a mission together. Not just, I love you, you love me, let's be together forever. Like, that doesn't work for me. It's got to be something bigger than that. Something that bonds us and holds us together when there's challenges.

[B]

That's. I think it's really interesting. And I've. I mean, I. I'm. I'm a believer in the power of purpose and mission. I had not thought about app it to marriage, but I think that's really compelling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Were. Were there concerns for you around money and marriage?

[A]

Yes, because she had built her own wealth and success and I had built my own wealth and success. And we both have assets and investments and properties and all these different things. And so it was more of just like getting clear. And my fear was I saw my parents split. My mom probably didn't get as much as she should have. She got some money, but she probably didn't get as much as she should have. And then my dad got into a relationship with another person. And then a few years later, my dad got a traumatic brain injury, got in a car accident. He was in a coma for three months. We didn't know if he was going to live or die. It was a very traumatic time. I was 22 years old. He did wake up. He recovered in the fact that he survived. But it was almost like he was physically here but emotionally gone. And he wasn't the same man. He wasn't the father that we all knew. His personality shifted. He didn't remember a lot, and he just didn't have the functionalities of his emotions and ability. It was kind of like he was a teenager again, almost. So you're taking care of a teenager emotionally. So it was very challenging. Every time I'd see him, he's like, hey, son, what's your name again? And where'd you go to school? You could talk to him, but you couldn't talk to him, Isaac. So it was very sad and depressing every time you see him because it was just like, he doesn't remember, and you have to tell him the story of your life all over again. It was heartbreaking. For 17 years, he lived like that.

[B]

And you lived like that.

[A]

And we all lived like that. And it was like we couldn't grieve the loss of our father because he was still alive. He passed a few years ago, and we were able to process a lot of that, but it was very, very challenging. But the point I'm getting to is he was with another woman at the time, and she took everything. She took all of his money, the life insurance policies that we had on us kids, took the cash value out and used it for herself and just kind of pushed us away. So it was very emotionally challenging and financially challenging at the same time. And it was at a time where I was just finishing college and I was confused around money. I didn't understand money. And my dad was kind of my money mentor at the time. We didn't have a lot growing up, but as my teen years, he started to make more. So he's starting to, like, show me a model of, oh, if you work for 33 years hard, he was a life insurance salesman. You know, in 25 to 30 years, you'll start to make some money. That was kind of like the model of his life. He started working in his early 20s, busting his butt in life insurance. And the last five to seven years, he was like, okay, I'm actually making some money that I can enjoy the fruits of my labor. He was going to show me how to do this after I was done pursuing my dreams. He was like, go play college football. Go try to do pro. When you're done, like, you can come, like, work with me. That was the mentality. I had this model that I was going to go to. And it was kind of ripped from me. So now my father is alive but emotionally gone. I don't have my mentor who's going to teach me about life and business and money, and I get injured. I'm sleeping on my sister's couch for a year and a half. I have no money. I'm living off of her feeling emotionally stressed, overwhelmed, and just, like, not sure, how am I going to figure out life. 24 now, sleeping on the couch. And I had a lot of fear around money, which was still like a money wound that I had to heal while going in my relationship with Martha early on and talking about all these things. To go back to your point of, like, were there any money concerns? There was concerns, but fortunately, she's very conscious in how she communicates. And before we got committed in a relationship, in the dating phase, I said, I'm not getting into a committed relationship again with someone unless we do therapy first.

[B]

Huh?

[A]

And are you open to it? And she said, yes. And so in our first year, year and a half of dating, we kind of did the reverse every month. We went and saw a therapist, a coach, and we addressed worries, concerns on both sides, talked about money, talked about kids, talked about religion, talked about all these different things early. Which people usually wait until, like, right.

[B]

Before they get married or right before they get divorced?

[A]

Exactly. They wait to do therapy until it's too late, until it's too hard, until they've been in too long or whatever. And I was just like, I don't want my relationship to be challenging anymore, and so I need to do things differently. It means I need to have all the courageous conversations up front. It doesn't mean on the first date, I'm like, hey, you know, how many kids do you want to have? I'm not, like, getting in there right away, but within the first few months, we were going very deep, and we were doing therapy within five months of knowing each other. Not because anything was wrong, but because every relationship I had before then ended in therapy and ended in me asking for my girlfriend to go to therapy with me and them resisting. And I was like, every woman would dream of a guy saying, I'll go to therapy with you. And none of them wanted to go. They didn't want to go. It took them months for me to, like, say, we have to. We're not finding a resolution together. Let's find someone to support us. So when she was like, yes, I'm down, that gave me a lot more peace. It gave me a lot more financial peace because I was able, she was open to communicating about all the messy stuff. And we had a mediator who could help us navigate if there was something in conflict. And early on, anytime we had like a disturbance or disagreement, we were like, hey, let's go talk about this to the therapist and create an agreement so we don't have any more stress around it. Because life is going to bring us stress and challenges. But I don't want us to have stress and challenges. Really. You know this. The only reason you have a conflict with an individual is if an expectation is not met and you're meant to do something that you don't do and then they get upset that you didn't do that thing. Whether it's a communicated or uncommunicated expectation, an assumption. Right. So I was just like, I don't want any unnecessary stress in our relationship. And therefore we need a vision that we can agree on. We need values we align to. It doesn't have to be perfect like 100%, but we need to be in alignment. And then any little day to day stuff, we need agreements in place. So one agreement is like, you can't bring anything stressful to me after 10 o'clock. My brain is no good if my head is in the pillow already. Do not bring up anything that's not like, simple. Because I want to be a good partner for you and I want to hear you. But if you're bringing this up at 10 o'clock and you're having me solve some algebra equation of our emotions, I can't do it. I'm exhausted. So tell me anything you want to tell me during the day before 10 o'clock. That's it?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because there was a first, you know, there was like months where she would bring stuff up and I was like, why are we having this conversation right now? But I want to be here for you because I know it's on your heart. So it's like, we're up till 1am I'm like, this is no good for either of us. So we created an agreement and now that doesn't happen. So it's just like creating agreements so we can try to facilitate an environment of peace as much as possible.

[B]

Were there agreements or are there agreements around, like how you deal with money?

[A]

Yes, there was different agreements in the beginning. Then when we were engaged, we had to create new agreements. And then before marriage, we were creating like agreements. Okay, what's it going to look like? Are we merging money? Are we creating different accounts together? My money wound was like, I had Previous relationships where I felt like people were with me because of my money. Right. Not because of it, but I felt like taking advantage of with my money. And so it always felt like I was underappreciated and over expectation on, like, what I was supposed to buy for people. I was never engaged anyone, and I was never married. So I was like, okay, I just had a wound around it. There's my money wounds. So that's why I wanted to talk through things to gain clarity on, hey, what are we doing? And it doesn't mean I don't want to be generous with my money. It just means I want to have clarity and agreements around what we're doing.

[B]

Yeah, but your wound went beyond tricky money issues with past girlfriends.

[A]

Oh, it's from parents, too. Yeah.

[B]

I'm just that stepmother.

[A]

Oh, of course. Yeah. Took everything.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And it was stressful. It was extremely stressful.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

And so a lot of it comes down to trust. A lot comes down to healing the past money wounds and having the courage to bring these things up. Because a lot of times we don't want to talk about the things that we're afraid of the most. We don't want to bring up our wounds. We don't want to look weak or whatever it might be. I was just like, I want to set my future self up for as much success as possible. Because the five previous long term relationships I was in, I never did that. I got in and made assumptions just like my partners did. We went in based on, like, the thrill of it, the pleasure of it, the fun of it. We didn't have the courageous conversations like, what is it you really want in the future? What are your priorities? More like, let's just have fun. This feels good. And then two years in, we're like, what are we doing? Oh, you don't want this. I don't want that. Why are we doing this? But we love each other, we care about each other. Let's try to make it work. And it's exhausting.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So I just tried to reverse all of that suffering and say, okay, let's go to a six hour therapy session on Saturday once a month for the first year of our relationship and try to make it work. And it sounds crazy.

[B]

Six hour.

[A]

We went to like six hours one time. Yeah. We would do like kind of workshopping one on one with the therapist. And a lot of it wasn't like, us figuring stuff out together was like, oh, what's coming up for me that I need to address? Irrelevant of this person.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's just a fear.

[B]

My wife and I, and this is my fault. We did it the wrong way. We got together. We moved in after three months, got cats after five.

[A]

No, the animals.

[B]

Animals make it so hard. We had a deal where whoever got dumped got to keep the cats.

[A]

We're going to suffer together.

[B]

And then we got married. It was all it was, was very happy relationship. And we had stuff. Of course, every couple has stuff. And she, to her credit, was like, we should go to a therapist. And for years, I'm talking. Even after I got into meditation, became like a semi guru of sorts, I was just like, yeah, I don't want to deal with that. And it was only in 2018 that we finally went to a therapist and we didn't even have, like an acute issue.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It wasn't like we were not on the cusp of divorce or anything, like.

[A]

Screaming at each other, this and that.

[B]

It was just we've always had a pretty placid relationship, except for, like a few moments where it got heated. But then we went to this couple's counselor. I'll shout him out. Michael Vincent Miller. He's amazing. He really pointed out just what you were saying, that you've got the issues between you, but you each have your individual issues. The way he describes it is we all have our ghosts. Another word for that would be demons. Right. And what happens when both sides get triggered in an argument is the ghosts are fighting. It's not even really you guys fighting. So I have money stuff too. Like I have a great grandfather who took his own life after losing the family fortune and being indicted.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

And the shame. Yeah, the shame. All that and the. The hustling and fear that went into him doing all the things he did. And that's in me. And, like, I have that hustler energy and the fear around money. And my parents, like, my parents were doctors, so we were not low income, but they, like, refused to heat the home in the winter because they were so worried about losing their money.

[A]

And they weren't low income, but they were scarcity.

[B]

Correct. So I have all this stuff too. And so, like, realizing this is not a Bianca issue. This is not my wife, this is my thing. And she's got her own things. And when we tangle, it's not really us tangling, it's our ghosts tangle.

[A]

Isn't that fascinating?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And so in the Catholic Church process of, like, pre marriage counseling that I went through, again, I didn't grow up Catholic. I didn't really know anything about It. But they talk about family of origin and you have to both sit down and draw like a map almost of like your family of origin story. Okay. So I have two parents and they had this many kids. And our family experience was everyone was over at the house all the time and we had parties or it was like I never saw my aunts and uncles and they had no relatives and it was very small family. So when you bring these two different family origin stories together, you're not coming together individually. It's like you have all this baggage, all these relationships coming into you in the marriage as well. And we had to create agreements and boundaries around everything.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And money is one of the most emotionally charged things that hurts marriages and hurts relationships. So it was a concern. I wouldn't say it was a fear. It was more of like, I just want to make sure this doesn't become something big like I saw my parents deal with. So let's talk it all out. And it doesn't mean we're never going to have problems. But if we have agreements, then we are in alignment. And that alignment creates harmony. When we're out of alignment, it creates pain. And so let's try to go through as much pain possible right now of having uncomfortable conversations.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And like, this doesn't feel good. And why don't you don't accept me right now. Okay, let's talk it out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then come to an agreement. And there were some nights where it was like it wasn't fun just going through all these conversations and she's sad and I'm sad and we don't get each other. But let's come to an agreement now. And now it's just harmony.

[B]

It's like it. I guess this is somewhat controversial, although it shouldn't be. But it's like a vaccine. It's like an inoculation. You get a little pain up front, maybe even feel like shit after you get a flu vaccine, but then it.

[A]

Reduces the pain later and hopefully protects you for life.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That's the goal. Right. Hopefully. It's like you never need to worry about it again.

[B]

Coming up, Lewis Howes talks about how you can figure out what your money story is and then also what your money style is and how this can all lead up to a money strategy. We also touch our long standing debate on the subject of manifestation. And we talk about the value of generosity. I like a snack. I think we all like a snack, actually. I knew a couple several years ago who had a cat named Snacks, which is really one of the best cat names I've ever heard. Anyway, if you like snacks, which again, most of us do, it can be really hard to find healthy snacks. Most so called healthy snacks are packed with seed oils and ultra processed ingredients that leave you feeling worse, not better. Masa chips are different. They're made with just three simple ingredients, organic corn, salt and beef tallow. They're crafted the way chips were meant to be. No seed oils, no fillers, just real food that tastes incredible. We talk a lot about the mind body connection on this show and if you want your mind to be operating at the highest possible level, you want to be somewhat vigilant about what you're putting in your body, try Masa chips today and taste the difference. Go to masachips.com happier and use code happier for 25% off your first order. The show is sponsored by BetterHelp. As you may know because I've said it many, many times, I'm a huge fan of an advocate for therapy. Just the other day I had an experience with my exposure therapist, a great guy named Paul where we rode around Manhattan on subways and then went to my friend Zev's house where he's got a very very very very small coffin like elevator and we rode up and down in Zev's building on that elevator because I'm really trying to get over my claustrophobia and panic disorder and having a therapist help you is incredible, incredibly, incredibly valuable. And this issue of therapy is particularly salient during May Mental Health Awareness Month. And I really just want to encourage you to take care of your well being and break the stigma if you or people in your life may have one around therapy. The world is better when you are happier. It's not self indulgent. You are more effective in the world if and when you take care of yourself. BetterHelp has over 10 years of experience matching people with the right therapists from their diverse network of more than 30,000 licensed therapists with a wide range of specialties. BetterHelp is fully online making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide. Easily switch therapists anytime at no extra cost. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.com happier to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp h l p.com happier so let's talk about some of the sort of terms in your book. You talk about money style and money story. Well let's start with money style and you have this like taxonomy of different styles. The director, the analyzer, the energizer the shepherd. And then each of these styles has their shadow side, like the bad version of them. Can you just kind of walk us? Give me a little primer on this?

[A]

I mean, I thought you might like that because it's more of like an analytical thing. I just wanted to give people an assessment within the book that allows you to figure out what is my kind of personality style with money?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

There's a book called Attached. I don't know if you've seen this book.

[B]

That's more of a seller list.

[A]

Oh, yeah. Sold a couple of copies. And it's kind of like your attachment style in relationships. And so I want you to imagine. First, let's imagine money was a person in your life. And let's imagine you can visualize the feeling of money and what the emotion and the feeling of money is for you. And put that on a person. And let's say, Dan, that person walked in the door right now. What would money be to you as a person, and how would you greet that person?

[B]

Well, I'm just thinking about my money style would be fearful and clinging. I mean, you know, okay, so what.

[A]

Would that look like? Name the person. Like, if it's an imaginary person, what is the name of money when they come to you and who are they? If it's an imaginary person?

[B]

Is this person embodying my style around money?

[A]

Yes. Yes. Like your emot towards money. Like, I'll give an example before you say it. I asked a friend this. I go, if money walked in the room and you were at a party, what would you do? And this person said, I would not make eye contact with it. I would run to the food section by the bar and go eat and avoid it at all costs. But then when I needed it, I would use and abuse it, and I would ghost it if it ever reached out to me. And I go, man, you don't have, like, a healthy relationship with money. That doesn't sound like a fun experience for money. Imagine money was a person. Yeah, I don't think money would want to be your friend. And she was like, no, probably not. I use and abuse it, and I ghost it and I avoid eye contact with it, essentially, if it was a person.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So again, you said you would cling to it and you'd be fearful. So what if it came in? Would you, like, be, like, holding on to it but also afraid to look at it at the same time?

[B]

Well, there are two images that are coming to mind. One is a dog humping your leg, and the other is as like, a toddler cling to the leg of a parent. So it's like, I think I would toggle back and forth between, like, lustful and fearful.

[A]

Interesting. Yeah, that's a great visual of, like, a kid, like, hiding behind his mom's leg, like, holding on and a dog, like, I need you, like, humping you. Right? And so if you could think about, like, so what is my attachment style towards money in the attached book? And I really wanted to bring the emotion side of money. This is not about, like, how to invest or how to make more money and, like, worry about tax strategies. It's more like, what's the energy of money in your life? And so if you think about your attachment style, there's anxious, there's avoidant, and there's secure. And so if you have an anxious attachment style, you're always clinging to it, right? You're needy, and you're in a relationship with someone. If you're clinging to someone, it's not sexy, right? If you're in a dating experience, if you're always holding on to somebody or texting someone all day long, they're like, give me some space. Let me relax. You're clinging on to me so hard, so tightly. And you're not in a relaxed state. And it's hard to receive if you're not relaxed. You know, in meditation, it's hard to receive the knowledge, the wisdom. It's hard to receive peace. It's hard to feel flow if you're not relaxed because you're holding so tightly onto an idea, a thought, an emotion, a person you're holding on. It's hard to flow if you're anxious. It's just not the best energy to be in a relationship with money. Now, this might sound a little weird, but we all have a relationship with money. It's our feelings, our thoughts, our emotions. How often we open our bank account, or are we avoidant? Do we never open our bank account? Do we never pay the bills on time? Because we're like, I just don't want to deal with it. I just want to avoid it and act like it's not there. We never know where money's at because we're so fearful of it in a different way, and it makes us anxious as well. I wanted to understand, like, my energy and my emotional connection to money, and it has evolved over the years, and in no way am I perfect around this. It's not like I've mastered this. A lot of the work that you and I do is like, what's my biggest Struggle. Let me go interview a bunch of people about this and see how I can improve. That was my journey as well. So these different kind of styles that we talk about in the book, the main style you have or the shadow style you have is more of just like an assessment to see how you show up, giving it a personality, giving it a name, allowing you to analyze yourself and see, oh, maybe this is how I kind of react with money. Your style, it doesn't hurt you anyway. It's just more to create clarity on how do I show up. You said you would hump it like a horny dog and be like a child, like clinging onto his mom or dad at the same time, like depending on what you needed. And so it's just information for you to be like, okay, how does this serve me? How does this support me?

[B]

When you say it back to me, it really sounds worse.

[A]

It sounds great. I like the analogy. It's a beautiful visual. Someone should make, you know, a gif. Yeah, gif. Or like some type of like animated version of this, of a baby and a dog. And what I want people to think about is like, start thinking about money in a different way. Because I don't think a lot of people analyze and reflect on their relationship with money. And so just so you have that information, it's like, okay, is this feel good to me? Do I like this personality style that I have with money, my money style? Do I enjoy it or do I feel like I want to improve my style? And we can improve our style when we get clear on our money story. I told you a little bit already. We didn't have a lot growing up. And my dad, after 30 years, finally started to get some money. Like, he worked so hard, he finally started to make some money, but then it was all taken away and there were these wounds. I have other wounds where I would steal candy bars in stores and I'd steal money every now and then when I was like 10, 11, 12, and I never got caught until I did. And the shame that I felt around getting caught and my dad finding out and waking me up at 3am in the morning with his presence powering over me, asking me, did you steal this money? And me looking up half asleep. It's probably why I don't have. When I have conversations in bed with Martha at the middle of the night. It's like all these wounds tied together, these ghosts from the past and me, like looking at my dad like I didn't do it, lying to him. That wound of like being out of Integrity, lying, stealing. All these things are like, oh man, it doesn't feel good when I put myself in that state. And so those are wounds of the past that are just a part of my story. And a lot of people don't reflect on their story. They don't write those wounds down just so they can see them and say, okay, here's some of my ghosts, here's some of my wounds that maybe I thought don't affect me today, but really they probably do. If I look deeper on why I'm reactive around money, why I didn't feel like when I give to people and I didn't feel appreciated, it hurt me.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So why? It doesn't make it right or wrong, good or bad. It's just like, why? And does it serve me? Does it support my life or does it create more stress in my life? And so this is all to evaluate, okay, your money style, your money story. It all adds up to how you show up with money today, your money strategy and how you execute with money in every relationship in your work, in your personal, intimate relationships with friends, with family, all these things are connected. You might have a different relationship with money in different settings. It's just to be aware and to see how you can make money easier for you as opposed to hard coursing.

[B]

Through all of this is a kind of non judgmentalism. Like, you keep touching on this. When you're evaluating what your money style is and then also thinking back about what your money story is, you're modeling this, There's a candor, but there's also a little bit of sense of humor, warmth. This seems crucial 100%.

[A]

And I think most people just never reflect on money in their past at all. They just think about, how do I make more money? Or they're stressed about money, or they're overwhelmed, or there's fights around money, or they avoid it, they just don't want to talk about it. And they're like, I don't know, I make the money and you handle it. I don't want to deal with it again. There's no right or wrong with how you're doing it. You just have to ask yourself, is it adding the most value to me? Is it serving me in my life and am I creating an energy and an emotional environment with my relationship to money that is allowing me to feel free, that is allowing me to feel abundant? Or am I more in scarcity with this? Like you said, your parents were in scarcity. They made money, but they wouldn't turn on the Heater, you know, so you're freezing at night. My dad was the same way. We didn't have air conditioning and he wouldn't let me put the fan on in the middle of summer heat in Ohio, similar to El to New York. So I would just be sweating with no sheets, no comforter on, nothing. He wouldn't let me put a fan on. And I was just like dying here. It feels like, right? Like trying to get breeze out of the window. There's no breeze, just humidity. That's a money story. It's a money wound. It's like, okay, now I'm like, the AC is on all the time. I'm paper academy. We all have these memories, and those memories create an emotion and how we think about those memories and how we feel about those memories create energy in the moment. And when I gave you a two dollar bill right before we get on here, I gave you your own two dollar bill. I have it here as well. You smiled right away.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You laughed. You're like, wow, this is amazing. Do they even make these anymore? This is like so cool. You were like, genuinely enjoyed it. And I love, I give people two dollar bills. I tip in two dollars bills because my dad did it. And there was always a motion that people would have. They'd be like, wow, this is incredible. I'm going to save this forever. This is so cool. This is so fun. It created a moment, it created an emotion, and it created a good feeling for people. And the whole goal is to make money feel good. Because a lot of people, money does not feel good. Money is hard. It's stressful. They don't understand money. And the ghosts of their past are tied to their money for today.

[B]

All right, so let's talk about how we can deal with all of this. Your formula in the book is that your style times your story, is your strategy? Yes. So can you just hold forth on that?

[A]

Yeah. So, you know, there's kind of three keys to improving your relationship with money. And the first one is to know your money story because most of us aren't willing to reflect on it and really kind of dissect it and understand what are these kind of money wounds. So when you can reflect on your story and start to just be aware of it, then it doesn't have to look as scary. You can have better conversations around it. You can start to mend it, all these different things. So you want to start to heal that relationship with money. Almost go to money therapy with yourself. You don't have to hire a therapist. And do this, but you can start this process with yourself. The second key would be to reset your money mindset. A lot of us are stuck in a pattern around money that's just been given to us from watching your parents, they made money, but they were in scarcity. So you probably grew up learning how to make money. You've made money, but you're still in.

[B]

Scarcity in some ways, actually, to be on. Well, yes, I am in some ways. And I also have this deep, deep reaction anytime people are being frugal.

[A]

How so?

[B]

I just.

[A]

You don't like it?

[B]

Because I grew up with so much frugality and so much haggling over, whoa, this costs too much. That I just won't go there. Like, really? I won't cut corners to save money. I don't like that.

[A]

Really? Give me. Give me an example. What does that look like in your life? Is that with your. With your wife?

[B]

With my friends, for example. Like, I'm never. Oh, you want to buy this? It's $8. You can't have it. That's too much money. I just won't do that with him, which I think has its downsides because I haven't fully taught him the value of a dollar because I spoil the shit out of him. That's a little unfair to me. But there is some of that. If we're in discussions where people are nickeling and diming.

[A]

You don't like it.

[B]

I don't like. I have a really deep reaction to that. On the other hand, what is the reaction?

[A]

Like, are you like, I'm just. Come on.

[B]

Are you like, no, it's just internal. I'm very uncomfortable with it. And.

[A]

Or if I notice, judge it.

[B]

I do judge it.

[A]

So you're like this person. They're so cheap or they're so frugal. Just spend the extra $10, whatever. Just like, in your mind, you're thinking this.

[B]

Yes. Or even the other day, I have some very wealthy friends who were, like, mmming and ahhing over the. They were like, tis tsking over the Uber to get it home. And I was like, you guys have a private jet. What is going on here? But the other side of that is I will be really frugal in that I will. For most the vast majority of my life, I lived way below my means, so I would never nickel and dime. Like, if you want to go to a nice restaurant, I want to do that. Or buy X. And yeah, thing. But like, I.

[A]

But because you saved, it's because you invested and live below Your means?

[B]

Yes. I could have had a bigger life, I guess, a bigger apartment or whatever, and I didn't because of fear. And at the same time, I was doing this somewhat paradoxical thing of. Or contradictory thing of feeling like anytime somebody was trying to save a buck, it triggered me.

[A]

Interesting. So everyone's got a relationship with money, even around other people's relationship to.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And your relationship was like, I'm going to live below my means. I'm going to save this much of my income every single month, and I'm going to invest certain amounts and I'm going to be safe for my future, but I'm going to spend however I want in this area of life, like, abundantly.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

If I want to have five coffees a day, I'm not going to worry about the price. And if we're going to go on a trip, we're going to really enjoy the trip and we're not going to nickel and dime this.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But in another part, someone might be like, oh, he's so tight with his money. He got, like, the tiniest little studio apartment and he's got 20% that goes to this account and this account every month. He's so tight with his. You know, maybe they're thinking another way.

[B]

I remember my agent. I was a network news anchor for 21 years. We lived in, like, a. It wasn't a hovel, but it was very modest apartment.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

After my son was born, my agent, who I'm still very close with, came to my apartment to my TV agent, came to my apartment to meet the baby and just say hello, what is his closet? Why do you live like this? And really, he wasn't being a jerk. It was. We have very warm relationships.

[A]

He's like, I know much money you make. I know. Yeah, Yeah.

[B]

I negotiate your salary like you can. Yes. So it was this paradoxical situation where on the one hand, I was insanely frugal, on the other hand, I was making it rain.

[A]

And it's so funny. So he had a relationship to your relationship with money. Like, his interpretation. And maybe he wasn't judging you, but he was questioning, like, curious. Hey, are you okay? Like, I know you started out this way 20 or 15 years ago, whatever, in news. And you've wanted to stay frugal, which was smart, but now you can enjoy it a little bit. So we all have this, like, opinion.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

As well. But anyways, it's. Resetting your money mindset is the second key to improving your relationship with money. And I really think that your mindset and it's going to shift at different seasons of life, you know, as you continue to earn and grow or lose money. It's like we have to keep reevaluating our money mindset. And the third step is to prepare for more money. Because if we want to make money easy, we need to prepare for it. We need to prepare to receive more money. And it doesn't mean we have to be thinking, okay, I need to make more money all the time and I need to obsess over this. That's not what it's about. It's just preparing yourself for more money. And there are these key kind of money habits that support you in preparing. And it's an ongoing journey. It's not like, okay, I've got these habits down and now I'm like a master of money. It's always evolving.

[B]

Okay, so you and I have a long standing, friendly debate over manifestation.

[A]

Yeah, give it to me.

[B]

I have my own wounds around this stuff because as a journalist, I covered prosperity gospel preachers who said, they give to me, give till it hurts. And they would preach, increase, you'll get increase in your wealth if you give to me. Then I also covered this guy, James Arthur Ray, who recently died, who was part of that crew. Culture secret. No, he did this. Remember the secret, which was the power of positive thinking or the law of attraction. And they had all these gurus who were part of it.

[A]

He was one of those.

[B]

He was one of them. He went to jail because he had this.

[A]

Is this the guy that sweat lodge gathering and, like, a couple people died?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So he died recently.

[B]

He died recently.

[A]

Really? I didn't know that. And there was a podcast about that too, right? About.

[B]

I think there was a whole documentary on CNN when I was a report. I covered primetime specials on this guy.

[A]

No way.

[B]

And so I spent a lot of time with his followers and I covered a lot of other preachers of the power of positive thinking. And so I got a really negative opinion about it. So I actually haven't read this part of the book where you talk about prepare for the more money. So I'm just asking you in advance, does it touch on this stuff?

[A]

It's all about, just give me all your money. That's how you prepare for it. No, no. In no way am I a guru here. I'm more of a researcher like you. I interviewed some of the wealthiest people in the world and asked just. I was curious, like, how do you turn a scarcity mindset into abundance? Mindset for yourself around money, the relationship to money. Right. We know people that have very little money but seem to have a lot of fun in life and are joyful and, like, have love and have beautiful relationships. And we also know people who have lots of money who don't have that.

[B]

And worry about the uber home.

[A]

Exactly. And stress, and there's fights and arguments. And so we see people like that who have unlimited money and unlimited wealth, but are poor inside.

[B]

So you're not. And I apologize because I'm coming from a place of ignorance about this section of the book. But you're not about to tell us if you get your mindset right and prepare for more money, it's going to be unlimited wealth.

[A]

No, no, no. It's. And again, it's not really about, like, the sky is going to open if you think about money in a certain way, and you're just going to be given riches. It's not what it's about. It's really about. The first step is the mindset. Habit is the first key to prepare for more money.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

And it's a mindset. It's allowing yourself. And again, I already see the judgment coming from your inner. Your inner humping dog, thinking about, okay, Louis. The law of attraction, manifestation. I'm done. I'm tired of these conversations. But you could appreciate the word mindset, I think, right? It was a way of thinking.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And everything starts with how we think about money and how we interpret money in our relationship. I really hope someone makes, like, a gif around, like, a humping dog and a baby at the same time. So the first money habit is the mindset habit. This is how I think about it. A lot of people think, well, when I make money, then I'll start being more generous with my money or more generous with my time or energy. Because when I have money, then I can have some to give it back. I can give my 5% or 10% back to my church then, or my community then, or causes I care about. Then I'll give money when I have more money, when I'm secure. That's what a lot of people think about. And I think the first habit is not thinking about giving money, but how can I give generously in my life? How can I be a generous giver of my time, my energy, my resourcefulness, my love, my presence, my curiosity? And when I was getting into this business world at 24, 25, 26, living on my sister's couch, I had no talent that was useful in the business world at that time, or at least I didn't know that. I didn't have a college degree. I had no money, I had nothing to offer. I was like the young guy going to these kind of conferences to try to learn from authors like yourself on stage and be like, how do I learn about life? How do I learn about business marketing? Which is what I was getting into. And somehow I would always figure out how to get backstage or in the right meeting room or in the right kind of like, all right, everyone's going to this restaurant. I'm going to show up and kind of like, get at the table. And I didn't have anything to offer except for my curiosity and asking questions and just being so fascinated by people and just being like, how did you do that? That's incredible. Tell me more. And for whatever reason, people like, hey, why don't you come to dinner with us later? And I want you meet so and so. And connecting me with kind of the decision makers in the industry. No one knew anything about me because I never spoke about me. All I did was ask people about them. They're like, man, this is like the most interesting guy in the room here tonight. Like, Lewis Howes. Okay, like everyone, you guys should all meet him. And I didn't say anything about me. I was just, like, bringing passion and curiosity and this kind of youthful energy to a space of, like, these older guys who were, like, just exhausted about being there or something, and they liked the energy and the curiosity. That was generous. That's all I could really offer at that time. I couldn't give them money. I couldn't give them anything else. And the more I was generous with my time, my curiosity, my presence, my, like, being very connected, it paid dividends in return. Not financially, right away, but eventually it did. And a lot of people are stingy with their time. They're stingy. If they have money, they're. They're more stingy with it. They're not as generous, or they're just not as generous with their care, their love, their appreciation. I'm always looking to acknowledge people at the end of every episode that I do on my show for 12 years. I acknowledge my guest. You've been on my show, and I'm like, dan, I want to acknowledge you for the journey you've been on, how you keep evolving, how you've gone through the challenging times, and you keep showing up, how you take these big risks. I know how hard it is going 21 years in TV and reinventing yourself at your age. That's got to be very scary. So I acknowledge you for the constant journey that you've been on. That is generous. It doesn't have to be. Even though I did give you money before I saw you, it doesn't have to be here's 100 bucks or here's $1,000 or I'll donate to every cause. It's not about that. It's about being generous with your spirit.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And again, that may sound a little woo woo or like Law of Attraction or something, but it's, it's like that is the first habit of money is the mindset habit.

[B]

It reminds me of the work of Adam Grant. And Adam Grant's first book was called Give and Take. It was a huge, huge impact on me. And it basically was that he showed through hard data that giving of your time specifically is a strategy for success in a workplace. If you're doing it the right way, 100%.

[A]

That book was very impactful for me too. And it's like you have to be able to receive also. And the more you relax, the more you receive, the more you relax. It's like if you are clinging to your mom as a child, right? Or you're the dog humping, you can only receive so much if you're holding on to something. If you're holding onto a thought, an idea, you're not open to receiving new ideas, right? You're holding on to that thought or idea. If you're clinging on to a person, you're only going to be connected to that person, not open to seeing more people, same things with money. And again, this might sound a little woo energy vibe, but it's like if you're clinging on to your money, you're being so tight and frugal with it, it's hard to allow more to flow in because you're not allowing it to go out as well. So it's allowing your money to come and go as opposed to holding on to all the money here. You can't receive more if you're holding on to all the money you have. I had this author named Ken Honda on when I was researching for the book. He wrote this massive bestseller called Happy Money. And it may be more in the Law of Attraction vibe, just the sound of it for you, but it sold over 10 million copies and massive in Japan and internationally and sold a lot of copies in the US as well. Something he told me when I interviewed him. He's like, most people don't thank money and again, it might sound weird, but when money comes to him, whether it's $5. Whether it's a check, whether it's just an automatic payment in his bank account, whether someone hands it to him internally, he says, thank you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So thank you. And the next thing he says is, where do you want to go? So he doesn't say, thank you. I'm holding on to you forever. Says, thank you for coming to me. Where do you want to go? Do you want to go to my bank account right now for years? You want to give you away to someone? Do you want me to invest you in an asset? Do you want to buy a property with you? Do you want me to just give this to a stranger on the street? You want to tip with this? And so he kind of internally says, where do you want to go? Thank you for coming. Where do you want to go? And some of it stays with him, some of it goes away. And that energetic process, I think that mindset of I'm going to be generous as a human being. Would it be a generous human being? And at this season of life, maybe it's not with my money, but with. With other things that I can give. As you grow in your wealth over time, if you make more money over time, it's going to amplify more of who you are. And if you're a generous person, you'll be more generous with your money and your time and energy. If you're a stingy person, it's going to amplify more of that energy. You're not going to be more generous when you have millions. You just could be like, this is who I am. So it's going to amplify who you are. So the first habit is really like, to prepare for more money is to flip the switch on what you think you should be doing when you don't have money, be more generous again. Give and take. Adam Grant. It's like, if you want to get ahead in your career or your business, you have to develop stronger ties, and you have to influence the weak ties in your career as well and give to those. Not just the people that are giving to you, but the people that you can do nothing for, you give to them and don't expect it to come back right away. It may take years and it may never come back, but you're hopefully planting seeds that will flourish and grow in the future.

[B]

And by the way, the generosity just feels good in the moment, so why not?

[A]

It's the greatest gift that you give yourself to. It feels good.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And again, this is not. I don't want it to be too fluffy. Like, I just want to feel good about money, but it's really about just building a better relationship with yourself and others.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And when you do that, you're going to bring in more opportunities.

[B]

I'm fully with you.

[A]

This go. Okay, good.

[B]

Coming up, Louis talks about two habits, the monetizing habit and the mastery habit. I'll let him explain after this quick break. You've heard me talk about quints before and I'm going to do it again because just the other day, and maybe this is tmi, but I needed some socks and underwear and I went to Quints. Just to be clear, Quints is an advertiser on this show. So sometimes I get free stuff, but other times I go there and pay just because I like their stuff so much. So, yeah, I ordered some underwear and some socks. The socks are great, really comfortable. There are the socks that you can wear with like low top Nikes and you don't see the socks, which I know is not the Gen Z thing these days. But I'm a man of a certain age and I like those kinds of socks. And the underwear, the boxer briefs. One of the big problems with boxer briefs in my long history of being alive is that they can bunch up on the leg. But somebody over at Quint's figured out new technologies so that doesn't happen with the underwear I bought over there. Again, I know a little bit of extra information you don't need. But if you're in the market for underwear or if you're not a male and you've got a male in your life who needs some underwear, I highly recommend it. Anyway, they've got stuff for all genders at really low prices. As I mentioned before in the show, there are days when quince is all I'm wearing head to toe. Quince has all the things you actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part, everything from quints is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quint's gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. And Quint's only works with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing processes and premium fabrics and finishes. Elevate your closet with quince. Go to quince.com happier for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's qui n ce.com happier to get free shipping and 365 day returns quids.com happier this show is sponsored by Liquid IV. I'm a big worker outer and so hydration is very important to me. It should be very important to all of us. Really good for your gut health, really good for your mental health. Really good for your energy levels. And when I'm hydrating, I really like to use Liquid iv. The product combines allulose and amino acids which can lead to more efficient absorption, helping your body retain more essential electrolytes for longer lasting hydration. Liquid IV's formula, which is powered by Live Hydra Science, is sugar free, delicious and it's clinically studied to maintain hydration better than water for up to four hours. You can visit liquidiv.com and live more with efficient hydration featuring the new new Raspberry Lemonade hydration multiplier. Get 20 off your first order with code Happier at checkout. I can tell you having used this product, it's super easy. You can slide one in your pocket as you're on your way to a workout and then when you're done, you can just rip it open and dump it into your water bottle and it makes the water taste fantastic. I tend to like their flavors on the lemony spectrum. And then of course you feel great, especially after a hard workout. I really, I really do love to work out and I love to hydrate. Post with liquid IV. Break the mold and own your ritual. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Three times the electrolytes of the leading sports drink. Eight essential vitamins and nutrients always non GMO, vegan, gluten free, dairy free and soy free. Give yourself the power of extraordinary hydration from Liquid IV. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to LiquidIV.com and use code HAPPIER at checkout. That's 20% off your first order with code [e-mail] I'm aware that we have limited time and there are a bunch of habits we want to move through. Let's do monetizing and mastery.

[A]

Sure. Okay. Well, mastery is the last habit and it's really, you're never going to be like, I'm finished, I'm done. It's kind of like with meditation. You've been studying it for what, 15 years now?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In some ways you've mastered it, but probably if you like wanted to go to a new retreat and just say, okay, let me learn something new, you're like, ah, I already know everything. I've done this for so Long. I do it every day. And you'd probably be like, wow, I'm such a beginner. If you like, really allowed yourself to go into like a three day retreat and look at it from a new place, you'd probably be like, wow, there's so much I don't know.

[B]

Mm.

[A]

And it's because you're a different person 15 years later than when you first started meditation. And you've been doing it. You've been in the routine just like with money. When I made my first thousand dollars, I was like, I am rich. I was like, this is incredible. When I made five grand, I go, I am the richest man in the world, right? I was living on my brother's house at that time, paying $250 a week after living on my sister's couch for a year and a half, not paying any rent because I didn't have any money. And I made five grand, my life overnight, my mind, like exploded. I had to learn once I made that $5,000, what do I do with this? I don't know what to do. Like, I was running around like, humping a, you know, dog, humping a leg or whatever. I was like, ah, what do I do with this money? I didn't know what to do at that level. So now I need to educate myself. I need to learn from someone who's already done it. I need to read a book. I need to go to a podcast and see, okay, what are the strategies I do with this money after what, 15, 17 years now of building business and being in the space? I have a certain level of knowledge and experience and wisdom and emotion tied to the money that I have now, a comfort level. I have a thermostat that I feel comfortable at right now. And I know a lot around this, but I don't know the next level of, like, wealth. I don't know family planning and tax strategies at certain levels. So I have to continue to learn and master these things by going back to step one. Okay, what is my mindset at this level? And am I being generous with my time and energy? Or have I gotten more tight, scarce, because I don't want to protect myself? Now I'm at this new level, it's just reevaluating the process again. Okay. If I want to take it to a different level, financial growth, am I mobilizing myself the best way? Am I monetizing it the right way? Am I following these steps still at this new level? And it's continually just like relearning, going back to the basics and saying, who are the people I need to learn from? What are the strategies that I need to learn to at this level to get to the next level? Same thing with meditation.

[B]

So mastery in this context is not a spot where you arrive. No, no.

[A]

It's a new floor.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And you gotta. There's a new ceiling, and it's like, you gotta follow the process again.

[B]

Got it.

[A]

You've gotten comfortable at this temperature of financial abundance in your life, but you don't know how to break through the next level. Okay, let's go back to the mindset habit. Where are you at? Let's reevaluate everything. Are there still money wounds that you haven't healed? Are there new money wounds? You know, at new levels? I'm sure your level, the exit of you and your meditation app that you created, that's your brainchild and your put all your time and energy into for five to seven years. There's a wound that opened up a big one in your heart, and I could feel it as you talked about. You're like, I don't even want to talk about it. Because they have a story. I have a story. But it's painful.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So it doesn't mean, like, you just sweep it under the rug and you don't address it, and it doesn't mean you, like, keep the wound open all day long. But it's like, how do I evaluate this wound? How do I process through this? How do I mend certain relationships? Maybe I don't mend these relationships. Then I just need to forgive myself, and I need to forgive others to a certain level so I can feel good emotionally and energetically around that situation. Maybe I'll never feel good about it. Maybe it's always going to leave a kind of a scar on my heart emotionally because it was something I cared about so much. I don't know the full story. I'm just creating context for people. There's new money wounds that open up all the time. If people go through a divorce, that's a big money wound.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You can't just be like, all right, on to the next. I'll be fine. You got to process these things. We got to go back to the basics. There's going to be a healing. There's going to be a reimagination of what's my vision for my life. My vision, my mission for my money. Now going back to the basics.

[B]

Just because I threw it out there. What's the monetizing habit?

[A]

The monetizing habit is when I Was getting started in my mid-20s, let's say I didn't know I had any skills to make money again. My whole childhood essentially was I want to go be a professional athlete. I pursued that dream. And so that meant I didn't pursue school at all. I was in the bottom of my class. I was in special needs segments during school, during lunchtime when kids were doing recess, I had to go reading classes like just me and a tutor because I was a second grade reading level when I went into eighth grade. So I felt very insecure about myself. I felt like I'm behind. I'm beneath.

[B]

Talk about a wound.

[A]

Huge wound.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So most of my teen and early twenties, early thirties even, I had a lot of self doubt. So my last book called the greatness Mindset was all about overcoming self doubt because that was one of my biggest insecurities, was not believing in myself. And I believe self doubt is the killer of dreams. When we doubt self, it doesn't matter how much talent we have or how many degrees or credentials we have, we still don't believe we are capable of doing it. We will sabotage and we won't reach our potential. So that's why I believe self doubt is the killer of dreams. And that's why I was like, I need to learn about this. And so the whole podcast for me school of greatness has been me learning from people about how they overcame self doubt. That's the root of the school of greatness. It's like you can work as hard as you want to work, but if you doubt yourself, you're going to be limited. That's the secret to me is learning how to believe without having over ego confidence, you know, still having humility, but confidence. So when I was getting into the business world, so again my, I'm on my sister's couch. My dad has this injury where he can't work anymore and doesn't have any money. I'm left thinking, what do I do now? My back, I get injured playing football. So my dream is shattered. So my identity is gone. Now I'm thinking what do I do with life? Why am I here? How is anyone going to pay me any money? I hadn't graduated college yet. This was 2007, 2008, the economy crashed, the housing crisis crash. I don't have a degree and I'm also no in my report card. I was always in the bottom four on our report cards because they graded the whole class. And so I was in the bottom for every semester for as long as I can remember. So I'm thinking, who's going to hire me? I don't have any skills. I'm not smart. This is the inner narrative. And I was really concerned. Luckily, I had an athlete mindset where I said, okay, if this was a sport, if life was a sport, what do I need as an athlete? I need a coach. So I literally just like, I need to find a coach. And then you find coaches, people that have the skills that I need to learn, and then I need to go through practice, and I need to get reps, and I just need to, like, figure out how to get better at these things. So I met a coach that was a public speaking coach because I was not able to speak in front of a group of three to four people without stuttering. I met another coach who wrote a book because I was like, someday I want to learn how to write a book. Because I was in the bottom of my class, and I almost flunked out of senior level English class in high school. I almost flunked at it. My high school teacher, she said, if you do not pass English your senior year English, basic English, you can't go play college football. You need to pass this, otherwise you will be held back a grade and have to do this again. So it was just like, the fear, the wounds that I had, right? So I was like, who's gonna hire me? I have no skills. The monetizing habit is. Is evaluating the skills that you don't think you have and turning that into financial opportunity. You may not know what your skills are. You may need to ask someone, and your skills may not be anything related to making money right now. If you would have told me, louis, you feeling like the dumbest kid in the world is going to make you a millionaire one day? I'd have been like, how is that even possible? If my future self would have said, all you have to do is. When you were in class, you never asked the questions because you were so afraid, because everyone laughed at you when you asked these dumb questions. Every kid, when you didn't know the answer to anything and all the smart kids around you laughed at you and joked about you and wrote notes to the people next to you, like, all you have to do is do that as an adult, I'd have been like, no way. Like, that's terrifying. I don't want to be embarrassed to the world or these people. As adults. It was horrible enough for 15 years in school, and my future self would just say, you know, yeah, but it's all going to be okay if you just ask dumb questions. And that's all I've done for 12 years.

[B]

I know. I. Well, I think your question.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, but it's. It's like ask the simple stuff that everyone's curious about.

[B]

No. You turned your liabilities into massive assets.

[A]

100%. And we just have to have the courage to lean into those fears, those concerns. But it's like, that was my skill. My. Also my skill. I didn't know being passionate about people was a skill. I was like, oh, it's just what I do naturally. Isn't everyone do this?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Give people big hugs. I'm connected to people. I asked them questions. I'm like, dude, how can I help you? I'm just like a curious giver. That is something that is a massive skill that I didn't think I could monetize.

[B]

We tend to. I mean, my parents used to talk to me about this when I was in my 20s. We tend to take our strengths for granted and not realize their strengths. I'll give you a story that has nothing to do with me. I was interviewing a fascinating woman just yesterday, Diane Musho Hamilton. She's a Zen master who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. And she was a young mom. So several decades ago, she was kind of adrift. She had a baby with special needs and didn't know what she was gonna do with her life. And somebody in her family just pointed out, you know what you're really good at? You're really good at, like, when we have a fight, you're really good at, like calming everybody down, like mediating it and relax.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

She became a professional mediator.

[A]

Wow. And she didn't know.

[B]

No.

[A]

She was probably the middle child or something. And like, that's what she just did growing up because like her younger siblings or older whatever, it's like navigating the parents emotions of stress. It was like probably the wound that was like her greatest wealth creation.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

When she leaned into it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

When she was like, learned to like master that skill and develop it. So if the monetizing habit is really just like evaluating everything about you, and even though it may say, I could never make money with this, just writing it down and evaluate it and asking others as well, what is it about me you think I'm really good at? That is just unconventional. Like, what is that thing? And it could be just you. Maybe you're just like, I was really good at analyzing problems and like being where I needed to be or just seeing where there's going to be challenges in the future and just interpreting it or analyzing it or, like, knowing where to go, whatever it might be. Just like. And we don't think it's a superpower, but it is. The monetizing habit is really like, getting clear on your individual assets, your inner assets that you can amplify and make money with potentially one day. Maybe it's not right away, but potentially, you could. All the things that were, you know, relationship building. I didn't think I could make money around that. Having curious questions. I don't think I could make money around that. But also just I was like, okay, I'm an athlete. How am I going to make money in a career being an athlete? Well, you're really good at setting goals and having a clear vision and overcoming adversity. Just like, when you get knocked down, you just keep showing up. I can't make money doing that. Oh, well, when the podcast world shifted, like, I kept going. I kept making money because I have that skill. So it's just learning to understand your own inner skills.

[B]

I love it. We got a little bit more time. What's the mobility habit?

[A]

So this is kind of like when I was doing the podcast. I didn't know any better, so I just did everything myself when I started, right? It's like, okay, I'm gonna learn editing. I'm gonna learn how to, like, record. I'm gonna learn marketing. I'm gonna learn, like, newsletters. I'm gonna do it all myself. And then we hit a ceiling, right? And we're unable to mobilize to the next level as well, because we're doing it all ourselves. So it's learning to delegate. It's learning to find people, a team of people to support. Support you in amplifying whatever is you need to do. Buying back more time so that you can elevate your skills, your assets, your business, your career to new levels so you can get new time to develop new skills, to continue to grow to the next level. So that would be the mobility habit right there.

[B]

Let me see if I can draw an analogy from my recent experience. There was a person on my team, a very important person on my team, who was feeling totally overwhelmed.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so we sat down and just listed everything she was doing. And I was like, okay, there are 18 things on this list. 12 of them are outsourceable.

[A]

Yeah, you don't need to do this.

[B]

We can hire other people to do it. Or it's not even necessarily a hire. It's like, there are contracts. TaskRabbit could do the Vast majority of these things to free you up, to put you into your most powerful.

[A]

That's it. That's the whole thing. And again, there's going to be new seasons. We're going to need to ask yourself, are all these tasks that I'm doing necessary for me to do? Or can I hire someone, a freelancer, a contractor, or even just eliminate this thing? Is it supporting me in generating more money? Is it preparing me for more money? Or just keeping me stuck or comfortable at this stage of money? It's hard to evaluate that consistently. But that is the key to creating real, real opportunity for more money in your life and more freedom. This is not about how to make money hard. It's how do we make money easier in our life. That's the whole premise of the book. And it doesn't mean you're not going to do hard work and you're not going to show up consistently for decades. Like, you have to be where you're at. There's going to be hard times. But we want to make the relationship with money easier by following some of these steps. And so the person you're talking about, it's like they had 17 things, 12 of them they didn't need to do. She was making it harder to get to the next level. That process of you evaluating is perfect. So finding time to evaluate on a consistent basis, quarterly, whatever it might be, yearly, and saying, okay, what are all the things I'm doing every single day? Is this going to help me get to the next level? Or can I outsource and delegate?

[B]

Correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I hear as a major theme of this whole discussion, but specifically when a pertains to money, this is a relational mission. It is not just an. We live in an individualistic culture, especially around money. You got to bootstrap it, do it yourself. But one of my favorite expressions is never worry alone. And that feels like in terms of evaluating, what is your. What are your secret strengths that could become part of your monetizing habit. In terms of evaluating what you could take off your plate. So you could. Your mobility habit could be in terms.

[A]

Of free you up for your time and your energy.

[B]

Your mindset habit is all about giving to others. To me, I hear like you're making money a team sport in a very key way.

[A]

I think life is a team sport.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If you want to enjoy it more. And it also means there's going to be challenges on the team. And there also means players on your team. Maybe you're starting Five, and then they may be on the bench one day and you might have to have a hard conversation as the player coach yourself, hey, you're not on the starting five anymore. In my life or in this business right now, that's kind of what happened to you in some way. It's like you were kicked off the team or however you want to interpret it. I'm not sure the whole story, but it's like you were removed from the team for whatever reasons, either yourself or they removed you. Whatever it is, you're not on that team anymore in the way you once were. That starting five, where you guys freaking were winning championship after championship and like the tournaments, and it was just like everything was growing for years, is no longer there. Your interpretation of that makes it good or bad. That is not a good or bad event. You know. You know through meditation that every event is neutral, and it's our interpretation of the event that gives it energy. So if you continue to reflect and think and worry and ruminate and frustration or resentment or lack of whatever, you're giving that event power. You're giving an emotional charge and energy. When you think and you feel about that memory, and when we can heal those memories and create a different relationship with them, it doesn't mean we have to like it. In, like, false. I love that this happened. It's like, no, there might be sadness and grief and loss, and it's okay. But when we can reinterpret it in our favor and say, well, this happened, it's unfortunate, it's sad, I didn't like it. And it's just going to be what it is, and I'm going to realign my vision and my values for what's next. Most people graduated high school and we were on teams or debate teams. I don't know what you were on, but something's way smarter than me. But it's like, you try to get on the starting five. You couldn't try to get on the junior varsity, then the varsity, then you're on the team, and then you graduate, and then a new batch of people come in, and then you've mastered high school. Okay, let's go to college. You start the new floor. All right, I'm trying to get on the team. I'm trying to, like, be the MVP of this sport. And then you graduate. All right, I'm trying to go to the pros. I got injured. Okay, now what? It's like, we've got to keep figuring out who's on our starting team, who's on Our starting five. And those people are going to come and go. Some people might stay her whole life, but we've got to evaluate that. And that's part of the mobility habit there.

[B]

This has been really fun. It's always fun.

[A]

Appreciate it. Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

[B]

Is there something. I mean, there's so much in the book. I want people to go read it. But is there something that you were hoping to talk about that we didn't get to?

[A]

No, I wanted to talk about what you wanted to talk about. And for me, this. This is a. This is fun for me, like, all these conversations. The main thing I want people to know is that they can have a beautiful relationship with money if they choose to and if they're willing to follow the process. It doesn't mean this is the only way to do it. This is just a way. From 12 years of interviews of some of the wealthiest people in the world, I have found a system that's worked for me to help me continue to evolve and improve my relationship. And in no way is it perfect. Still, it's a work in progress. At the end of the day, I know you care about humanity and you want people to feel peace. This is why you do what you do. You don't want people to feel stress or chaos in their life. You want them to feel peace and harmony. And that's my mission as well, is to help people improve the quality of their life and create harmony. It doesn't mean we're not going to have stress, adversity and challenge come to us. We are. But if we can have the tools to have inner harmony, inner peace, for me, that is the new rich. That is the wealth that we are looking for, the inner wealth. That's what this is about, creating that richness internally, where our thoughts and our emotions have more of an energy of man. Life is good even when it's challenging. I'm a blessed human being. Even though I'm walking through the streets of New York City and, you know, it's like it's freezing out here and I'm like, man, I miss home in LA right now, but I'm like, man, I get to go hang out with Dan today and, like, we get to chat afterwards and we get all this opportunity. I got a book coming out, like, life is a blessing. And so I know that's your mission. That's my mission as well, is to bring people tools and inspiration for peace. Harmony and money is one of the things that causes the most stress in people's lives individually, in Marriages, families and relationships. And if you can create a new relationship with money for yourself, you can create a better relationship with others. And that's what I want people to know.

[B]

Well said. Can you remind everybody of the name of this book and also your previous books and also your podcast?

[A]

This book is called Make Money Easy, Create Financial Freedom and Live a Richer Life. My previous book was called the Greatness Mindset and the book before that was called the Mask of Masculinity.

[B]

I want to stop on that just for a second because you. That was a very brave book. A very brave book. You talked a lot about stuff in your past that was very difficult to talk about. And I will put a link in the show notes if people want to hear our conversation about that. But please continue.

[A]

Yeah, and my first book was 10 years ago. Actually is 10 year anniversary this year is called the School of Greatness. So it's kind of the things I've distilled from my show and life lessons from the School of Greatness as well. So those are my four main books. Yeah.

[B]

And the show is.

[A]

The show is called the school of greatness 12 years in.

[B]

And there's also a daily version of the podcast.

[A]

So Daily Motivation, which is kind of like a five minute clip because some people are like, I don't want to listen to a full hour. So we create like five minute clips every single day for people. Just the best moments. Okay, Daily Motivation.

[B]

I'm gonna put links in the show notes to all that. Cool. Okay, awesome. See you, man.

[A]

Appreciate it. Thanks. Appreciate it.

[B]

Thanks again to Louis. I'll also drop some links in the show notes to past episodes I have done with Lewis because that I've done several over the years. And a reminder to go check out our live meditation miniseries that will be happening every afternoon from Monday, May 19 through Friday, May 23 at 4pm Eastern. You can get all the details [e-mail] as mentioned earlier, this will be centered around the four related Buddhist practices known as the Brahma Viharas. I will guide some meditations and then take your questions. Come check it out. Danharris.com and if you can't afford a subscription, just let us know. We'll hook you up. Finally, thank you to everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the Van island wrote our theme.

[A]

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