 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Now, right now, some of you are struggling, whether it's related to your job, your family, or your health. Just remember, you are not alone. But as hard as things can be, I want to remind you that every cloud, believe it or not, has a silver lining. It just may not feel like it right now. But it's now a perfect time to focus on your health and to take a few simple steps to transform your life and pursue some things you maybe always wanted to accomplish. And my guest today is a great person to help guide you on that journey of self-discovery. Lewis Howe is the New York Times best-selling author and the host of the hugely popular The School of Greatness podcast. And today, he and I are going to talk about ways you can emerge from this COVID-19 crisis mentally stronger than you've ever been before. We'll also discuss the best advice Lewis has ever gotten. Can't wait to hear this. And the one simple thing you should start doing today to take back control of your life and health. Lewis, it's so great to finally have you on my podcast. Thank you, thank you. Very grateful to be here. For our listeners who don't know your story, tell me a little bit about your journey. You know, 12 years ago, I was pursuing a dream of mine to play professional football. I ended up getting injured in 2007, playing arena football, indoor football by diving into a wall to catch a football as a receiver and broke my wrist, played for the next 14 games with a broken wrist, got surgery afterwards. The doctor said, you know, you probably should have got surgery a long time ago. They did a bone graft, took a bone out of my hip, put it into my wrist and was in this position, you know, a 90 degree angle with my arm for six months trying to let it to recover and heal. And that was a time where 2008 came quickly after that. The recession went big. Everyone was losing jobs. People weren't hiring people with masters. It reminds me of this time right now. It's kind of like I was in a very dark place, depressed. My identity was shaped around football. That was over. My self-worth was identified around my accomplishments in sports and I could no longer put that into sports. I was living on my sister's couch at the time for a year and a half during this just trying to figure out what am I going to do next? What's my next steps? How do I get out of this situation? How do I make money? How do I get a job? I really had no clue what I was going to do. But within a few years I had some great mentors and coaches. I had a hunger and a desire to get out of that darkness and through that built some businesses, created the school of greatness. And here we are, you know, 10, 12 years later during this kind of downturn in the economy. So we're going to talk about this later, but this is a good segue. How, when you're down in that dark hole, I mean, nothing's going right. You know, your career, it's over. How, and you said, I just had that drive. Help our listeners to understand. Okay, come on. How do you get the drive? Yeah, where's the drive? Oh, I didn't get any, I didn't have any drive for about a year. I literally laid around and ate macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles, everything you're not supposed to eat with the Gundry diet. Oh, yeah. And watched bad TV for a while and just allowed myself to be depressed and kind of down and out. And angry, you know, I was angry at the world. I was angry at my coach who put me in this play where I broke my wrist. I was thinking everyone was out to get me. No one understands me. Why did this happen to me? And that type of thinking kept me stuck and kept me down as opposed to a different type of thinking, a creative thinking, a thinking of service, a thinking of, okay, well, this happened. Let me accept it. Now what skills can I build up that I don't have that will support me for my future? And that was really after a while of this. I just, the hunger came from really not having any options. My dad had just gotten into a car accident where he was in a coma for many months and he's still alive today, but he's not the same person. So I didn't have my father as an emotional, mental or financial support anymore. So I didn't have another backup plan. And so everything came down to, okay, I don't have family to lean on beyond sleeping for free on my sister's couch. I don't have, you know, these opportunities here with my dad or this or that. So what will, what am I going to do with this time? And instead of being angry about everything, I started to first grief. And I'll just kind of share the process for me. It was like, okay, my whole life and dream was to be a pro athlete. I did it for a short amount of time. I didn't get to the level I want to and it stopped quickly. I need to grieve this. And it took me some time to really like accept that I wasn't going to be that person anymore. And I think when you have a vision in your mind for 10, 15 years like I did, it's hard to let go of something. It's hard to let go of your career or relationship, whatever it may be that you're holding on to. So for me, I started to learn how to grieve and I did it poorly. I got angry as this and then I finally learned how to like let it go after years. And I started to, I started to find the right mentors and find the right group of people to spend time with and learn from. And from those mentors, they talked to me about the importance of perspective. And you got to hear other stories about people who went more tragic experiences in their life and that gave me a sense of gratitude. So I started to say, okay, you know what? What can I be grateful for? You know what? I got to live my dream and play sports professionally. Most people don't get to do that. I have a sister that allows me to sleep on our couch for a year and a half. I'm not homeless. It's finding that perspective and gratitude. And the next thing was really creating goals. I think this is a perfect time to create new goals for yourself. The plans, the goals you had are broken. You can't do them anymore. And I started creating goals. The first goal is how do I make $100? And then it became how do I make enough money to get out of my sister's place and get my own apartment? How do I, you know, what does that look like? I just started really small. I had big thinking, big dreams, but I had to start small on these baby steps. And those goals, I've heard of research from people. You probably know better than me, but having goals is actually decreases depression for people. Just having something to work towards that you're inspired by decreases depression, decreases anxiety, all these different things. And so by having new goals, it will set you up for more peace in your heart. It's not going to be easy, but it's going to set you up for less frustration. Okay, so you talk about mentors. I mean, what do you do? Phone a friend? Yeah, I didn't have many mentors at the time of I didn't have access to resources with people at the time. This is 2008, 2007, 2008. What I did have was who I knew. I knew coaches from the past from college and high school that I really respected and admired. I called my coaches. I called a couple of teachers. One was the headmaster of the small university I went to called Principia College, who I really respected there. I called him and I talked to a couple of my dad's friends. I was just like anyone that I could talk to who do I respect, who knows more than me? I talked to my family. So it started small, but then one mentor said, why don't you check out LinkedIn? This is in 2007. He's like, go make a profile. I think there was 10 million people at the time on it. And he goes, I hear people are getting jobs there. So go check it out. So I just started saying, okay, I'm going to take the words of the mentor. I'm going to take massive action on their information. I'm going to try things, make mistakes and learn as I go. LinkedIn ended up being my greatest asset for the next few years because it was there where I was able to find CEOs, executives, founders, leaders and email them and message them and get responses and get on the phone with a lot of them, meet a lot of them in person and build new mentorships from actively reaching out on LinkedIn to people. And it was one of the greatest places for me for many years. And that's what I did. I started just being, how can I build a profile that's so unique and creative that people want to respond to me and want to connect with me? And what can I offer them? When I felt like I had nothing to offer, how can I offer a mentor value? And that's the process I took. So you created a profile. I mean, did you lie? I mean, come on. You know, in every great resume, you usually try to, in every great dating profile, you show your best photos. You don't show the stuff where you made your mistakes. You put your best foot out there. And so for me, I was like, okay, who do I want to connect with? In the time I wanted to be in the sports world. I wanted to do a sports job at a sports marketing degree that I eventually got. So I was like, okay, if I'm going to get a job, I want to work in sports because it's what I know at the time, it's a 24-year-old. So what do I need to position in my profile that's going to get me in the door with people at sports companies? You know, big CEOs in the sports world. And I just led with being a professional athlete. Even though I wasn't the NFL, I was a professional athlete. I got paid in the Arena Football League. I led with my accomplishments. You know, I was a two-sport All-American. I broke a world record in football for the most yards in a single football game. I led with the things that I had best first and openly spoke about those things. So I didn't talk about, and I said I had a college degree, it took me seven years, but I didn't talk about anything else really because I didn't have any other skills. So it's lead with the best foot forward, you know, make it look shiny, and hopefully someone will respond. And people responded? People responded. I mean, I connected with the CEO of ESPN at the time, the founder of ESPN, a lot of big executives, leaders. And what I did is I was just really good at following up with people and saying, how can I support you? What's your biggest challenge? Who do you need connected to? My secret weapon became the power of my network. I didn't have the skill set to help people personally with, let's say marketing or design or video editing or sales. I didn't have those skills, but what I did have was the ability to put myself out there, build a relationship with someone important, ask them what they needed, and then source from my network someone who could help them. And I became essentially a matchmaker of problem solving. And that became a superpower, which I had no clue was a skill, but I did it through action. So were you a people person before all this? I would say I was an outgoing, happy guy that wanted to connect with people, but I didn't know how to do this in a professional setting or how to do this in a career setting. It was just like hanging out with my buddies in the football team. So I didn't know how to translate it necessarily. So I made some mistakes early on until I realized like no one wants to respond to someone when they ask for advice, but they always want to learn. They always want to share their story of success with someone. And so when I started thinking, okay, if this person has no time, they have everyone messaging them, everyone trying to get a phone call with them. Why would they respond to me when I have nothing to give them? If all I'm asking is to pick their brain, take 10 minutes of their time when they don't have it. So when I realized that doesn't work, I stopped asking for advice. I stopped asking for a job. I said, you know what? I was really inspired to read this article about how you shifted from this part of your career to this part of your career. It's fascinating to me how you became successful in that area of your life. Can you share with me that story? Most of the time, people are like, yes, I'd love to talk about how cool I am, how successful I am. You know, it's just shifting the question in the perspective. And in doing so, they're going to give you all the advice in the world and they're going to think of you higher and they're going to want to help you in return because you gave them something most people don't give them. So, how... Okay, persons listening at home or watching at home, they go, well, yeah, but you know, you're Louis Howes, you're famous football player. Yeah, maybe you were on your sister's couch. But that's not me. I just... But this stuff comes natural to you. It's easy for you, all that stuff. Here's what I'd say. I remember at this time when I was on my sister's couch doing this, I was so afraid of many things. And I remember being crippled to speak in public in front of five people. I couldn't do this in school. I was in the special needs classes where every time... This was the worst thing that could ever happen to me when a teacher would say, okay, class, we're going to read aloud and we're going to go around the class and each person's going to open up a page and we're going to read out loud into the class. They would terrify me because I wasn't able to read the words and speak them out without stuttering and stumbling and messing it up. It's just very difficult for me. And speaking in front of an audience was my greatest fear because I was just terrified. So during this time on my sister's couch as I was reaching out to mentors and coaches and people to share their story of success but really to give me advice, one mentor was a professional speaker and I was so inspired by and admired his ability to be able to go around the country and speak and get paid. And I thought, how cool would that be? Problem is, I don't have the ability to speak without stuttering and stumbling in front of people. And so he gave me, I said, can you share your story of how you did this, how you became so successful? He took me out to coffee at a Barnes & Noble Starbucks in Columbus, Ohio. He bought me the coffee. He took his time when he was busy to teach me because of the way I framed the question. And he gave me everything I needed. He said, you need, if you want to become great at public speaking whether you want to do this full time and make money doing it or you're going to get a job and you need to present into a boardroom you need to learn how to persuade people with your ideas. Whether you do this as an entrepreneur or career, whatever it may be that's when you become a great leader being able to persuade people with your ideas he said, you need to join Toastmasters. You need to go to this group of public speaking class every week and do it until you're not afraid. And it was the last thing I wanted to do was to dive into public speaking classes and to be made fun of and to stand in front of groups and practice. It was the last thing but that's what I did. I did it every single week for a year and I got a coach at this group who helped me. We watched film of myself doing it which is horrible to watch yourself when you're bad at something and critique it and analyze and give feedback and every week I would just go back and do it over and over again until the end of the year. I remember being able to get up in front of an audience after a year of doing this with no notes, no podium, nothing and just be able to present ideas for 10 minutes. And it seemed like a long time then to speak for 10 minutes as a 24, 25 year old but I remember just feeling the sense of peace and confidence that I never had before. So what I started doing was creating a list of all my biggest fears and saying in order to, you know, overcome these challenges like you said before well you're Lewis Howes and this comes easily for you and this and this a lot of these things never came easily to me I just decided I was going to turn my fears into a superpower so they didn't have control over me. So if I were you right now I would create a list of your biggest fears what are the things that hold you back? For me it was public speaking it was salsa dancing and dancing in general in front of people because I just never felt confident dancing in front of people I always felt awkward I was this tall lanky white boy that had no moves and so I went all in on learning salsa dancing went out three times a week to clubs I took group lessons, private lessons YouTube tutorials like everything to go out and dance in public and the more I wrote down my fears and tackled them until they disappeared the more confident I became in every area of my life and that's the process for me finding great mentors and people to give me some type of model and doing the thing that I don't want to do over and over again until I actually start to enjoy it I never thought I would enjoy dancing in front of a stage in front of people and speaking I never thought because I hated it I never thought I would enjoy salsa dancing in front of people I never thought I would enjoy doing these things that I do now I never thought I would write a book I almost flunked out of English class so I never thought I would do that all these things that I took on as fears I now really enjoy and it becomes superpowers Okay school of greatness is right behind you so what are how did that get started I can see I think how it got started what are the common attributes that make your guess great how did it get started seven years ago I moved to LA I moved to LA for a girl that I was dating long distance the day I moved here she broke up with me and we ended up getting back together the next day and it was up and down for many months but it was an emotional roller coaster and I just moved from New York City where I was loving it my business was growing I felt more confident than ever and I moved to LA I don't know anyone I don't like it as much this girl and I are having challenges and I'm like what is going on with my life and things start to fall apart and as they started to fall apart I said to myself like man I thought everything was going pretty good in my life I was 28 29 years old whatever it was at the time I had built a business after being on my sister's couch I went and built a business multi-million dollar company I ended up selling the company I was getting awards and accolades I felt like myself again from sports days but that was all on the outside on the inside I was really insecure I was nervous I was scared I was projecting an image I wanted people to look at me as opposed to being vulnerable I had a big ego I would react to people all those things that I didn't like and it started to come out more and more after moving to LA and being in this relationship that was up and down and ending and I remember being stuck in LA traffic one day I know you know this feeling and feeling like I was stuck in my life like it took me an hour to go two miles or whatever it is and I was just frustrated with the relationship frustrated with this and that and I said you know what I am afraid of a lot of things still and I thought I'd conquered all these fears but there's a lot inside that I'm still afraid of and I wish they would have taught me this stuff growing up I wish the first 30 years of my life in school they taught me about failure they talked about grieving going through breakups and relationships they talked to me about how to have better health all these things they talked to me about scaling my business right now like I just feel stuck and I want to know more and that was the the moment where I was like I think I could do a podcast this is pre-podcasting and I was like I think this podcasting thing might be a way for me to do this where I can interview people that I know and learn, be selfish and also share with other people because up until then I had just been reaching out to friends for help but not sharing the wisdom with others and that's where I was like okay I'm going to call it the school of greatness because I wish this is all the stuff I wish they would have taught in school and education system that they never taught me maybe a coach would teach this stuff every now and then but in school they didn't and I was like this is the stuff I truly need and that became the moment I launched seven years ago and I just said I'm going to look for the greatest minds in science and spirituality and finance, money business, health and wellness and figure out how to optimize my life and people who want to listen and that's how I found you gosh I got to get on your show one of these days really? Yes, yeah so what are some of the most interesting things you learned from your guest any real gems? yeah I mean I usually bring people on with what I need the most at that moment in my life so like when I'm going through relationship challenges I'm like man I need to bring a relationship expert on and teach me how to improve this in my life and typically there's a lot of people that are going through relationship challenges at that time when I want to grow something in my business I'm like who can I call who's that person so the gems are always kind of like they're timeless and they're also timely to what I want at that moment but I mean the gems that you told me really about I put so much olive oil on my food now because of you and I'm just dousing my vegetables in olive oil and I used to not like olive oil before but now it's like really tasty so that's one thing that's a gem right there but I think everything that you teach about the health side of things is always really valuable and so I would say check out all your stuff there but I really like to talk to the spiritual practitioners the great athletes who learn how to channel their inner world, their inner mind their inner heart and manage pressure and create more peace in their life and get into the zone. I think when we guys like Kobe Bryant who I had on talked about getting in the zone and it's hard to come from a creative place if your inner world's in chaos and when your inner world's in chaos it's hard to perform and be in the zone because you're anxious, you're stressed, you're worried so I like his message there lots of great stuff What was the best piece of advice you've ever been given? That's a really tough one. Best piece of advice from my podcast or just in general? Hey that's going general. You know my dad the first thing he came to mind was my dad he never celebrated my birthday as a child and I remember probably 9 or 10 years old being like dad how come you don't celebrate my birthday when all these other kids have parties and gifts and presents and they're celebrating and I don't get anything and I go do you not love me and he said he looked at me and he said Lewis I love you very much I love you every day. The challenge is I don't believe in time and age and I don't want to emphasize time and age with you or anyone because I've seen too much in the world that people think they're too old to go take on this dream or to start this thing and a lot of people think they're too young to believe in themselves that they're capable of doing great things so I never want you to be limited by your age or time on what you're capable of doing and I was like yeah but dad you can still give me a cake and presents but that lesson is kind of more of a mindset philosophy and I think this is something we talked about too where it's like you even said in our interview it's not anti-aging it's what was it the word you use de-aging it doesn't matter how old time wise you are or young time wise you are you can always create more wisdom in your youth and you can always de-age in your quote-unquote older years to be useful so for me it's just not having a limiting mindset hey dad sounds like a pretty smart guy smart guy alright so this is a really difficult time for most people emotionally, financially, physically what can they do to get through this I was talking with a doctor about the science of happiness and her research Dr. Lori Santos is all about the science of happiness and the research behind what makes you happier even in the darkest times and when I asked her this question about how do you become happier when everything is against you she said it really comes down to two things I mean there's a bunch of things that you can do but there's two main things and the first one seems like so basic and so simple but she said there's so much research backing the evidence of gratitude how it automatically you'll probably talk about this how it automatically increases your immune system capabilities it increases the dopamine and serotonin it increases things when you think about gratitude something that someone did something nice for you a perspective how your life is better than where it was before or it's better than someone else a gratitude of where you live in the world I live in freedom I live in America I'm healthy just anything and all that you can hold on to gratitude being number one the second thing would be to the reason why we are lonely sad depressed anxious worried all these things in my opinion comes back to a lack of service mentality a lack of focused outward on other people we're so focused on what we lack what we don't have what we're not getting what someone did to us as opposed to saying okay this is happening but I'm going to put my energy on helping other people and when I focus on myself more and more I feel my ego swell up and my suffering continue to grow but when I focus on others how can I give my gifts to other people how can I contribute how can I smile and call a friend whatever level of contribution you can give the more service oriented you are the more happier you'll become and that's the two main things that she talked about it's like if you want to increase your happiness gratitude and service to other people yeah you're so right I'll give you an example this morning we had a huge wind storm last night in Montecito and a big tree fell down near us knock down power line no power and 67 people there were residents without power and I go to get in the shower this morning it's ice cold water and and of course the garage doesn't open and you know I'm sitting there kind of going you know this is terrible you know what a bummer I got no electricity so and then I went you know last year at this time I was in Ethiopia for charity water and they have no electricity and these poor women you know were going two miles for water on jerry cans and you know hyenas the whole bit and I go you know I am so lucky I actually have cold running water you have running water I actually have cold running water I don't have electricity but I got running water and I made me think back and I said how how thankful I should be just to have a cold shower and it just totally changed my entire perception thankful for yeah a lot of things went wrong this morning but even in our worst situation where we're so much better off than just about anywhere else and people we know and you also had was it two years ago where you had a massive flood in Montecito where tons of houses were wiped out your house was wiped out so you can say well okay I'm sitting here wiped out this time it was just a tree I'm going to remember that one too okay in the midst of all this craziness how do you stay calm and focused on your goals you don't I think you don't stay calm and focus on your goals you just manage with what you have until you can figure out how to get there and so for me it was a lot of survival mode feeling I can buy some food for myself I need to it was kind of day by day at that point for me I think it's really hard to say I'm going to stay calm and everything's going to be okay and I'm going to practice gratitude and all these things when you feel like you have nothing that's the baseline though if you can continue on this routine of gratitude if you need to write a journal if you need to call someone every day whatever it is that's what helped me having some type of coach or accountability friend at that point you may not be able to pay for a coach but you can find a friend and say listen I'm going through some really challenging times right now I'm really struggling and I know that I'm going to go into a darker place if I isolate myself and my words and my thoughts so can we check in every day maybe it's three times a day for ten minutes you need to check in with someone have someone to check in with once a day tonight and say here's what I'm going to do today to help me get closer to my goal these are the three actions today I'm going to call five people I'm going to email this person I'm going to work out I'm going to eat whatever it is you do the three actions that day that are going to get you close to the goal the end of the day you check in with your accountability friend or your coach and you say here's what I created here's what I took action on it's focusing on the bigger goal that you have that goal might be a month goal of like I need to make a hundred bucks or it might be something bigger but you keep the action small day to day and you can celebrate those wins it could be like I emailed three people today great let's celebrate you did something good you were productive as opposed to yesterday you sat on the couch all day so it's celebrating the wins having the accountability and having a simple action plan daily when we are taking action we feel like we accomplished something we're more productive we increase our levels of happiness and we can try to do more the next day and I think that process and you can also not beat yourself up because beating yourself up is the worst thing that can happen you're already going through survival mode struggle mode stress mode beating yourself up more you should have saved money six months ago I should have done this I wish I didn't make this stupid decision that's going to hurt you so don't beat yourself up own it accept it and say what am I going to do to fix this what do you say someone who just lost their job how can you possibly express gratitude over losing your job I have this technique that I call I don't know if I heard something like this I don't know if anyone else has this technique but I I went through some challenging times in the last couple of years with a relationship and I remember feeling a lot of pressure and judgment from friends, followers, whatever and it was not fun it was not a fun experience being judged by a lot of people without them knowing the truth and the facts and all these things like that people making assumptions and I said to myself you know what this is really crappy and I don't like this feeling at all feeling abandoned, feeling lied to manipulated all these different things by a lot of people but what I'm going to do like when I trace back bad things that have happened in my life usually something good comes from it like I learn a lesson I meet someone I shift in my business, my health transforms usually it takes us going through something bad to break through and so I had that awareness and I said okay I've got five, six years of great interviews I've done so I've got some tools from people that can help me so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put myself a year out from now and I'm going to have what I'm calling hindsight now so I'm going to imagine it's the end of the year it's New Year's Eve and who are the people in my life that I'm talking to and what are all the things that happened that set me up for success a year from now what are all the good things I'm going to come from this what are the benefits of this you know what am I going to be super grateful for in a year from now and every time which was multiple times a day where I felt like this pain inside this suffering, this agony, this betrayal these whatever feelings they were I kept saying I'm having hindsight now in a year from now this is all going to be better I'm going to learn something great I'm going to meet someone better I'm going to transform in a unique way like I just kept putting myself into the future and that perspective allowed me to get through that moment of pain until the next moment of pain and I just kept staying in that perspective and saying what are the actions I'm going to do today what can I control today and I'm going to keep showing up that way so that helped me like why is this happening to me it's actually why is this happening for me is my friend Bill Robbins would say exactly I think that's the only way you can possibly approach all this you know this is happening for me I have to figure out why this is happening for me because it sure feels like it's happening to me and once you figure that out I remember just and I kept saying that to myself okay why is this happening to me but you know this is going to benefit me and my business and everything in the world that I want to impact later because it's going to give me more perspective it's going to give me more humility it's going to give me more grace it's going to give me more compassion towards other people I'm going to be less judgmental so I kept saying that to myself this is going to give me so many more skills in the future so I've talked about this this would seem to be a great time to do since so many people number one a lot of people have to admit they're in a job that they really don't like and certainly do what you love and love what you do and that's still some of the best recommendations I know of but this is an opportunity and you're a guy who has looked at an opportunity multiple ones is this a good time to go off and try something or no? I think if you're in survival mode and you need money then just go get a job that you need to survive right now because some people might be in that mode but if you are in a place where you're like okay I'm not in survival mode but it's the perfect time I think to go do the thing you've always wanted to do and you might need to still be at your job and do that thing on the side and start building it on the side I'm not saying leave everything and go try something where you're not making money with but I couldn't agree more with you I think it's the perfect time because we're going to be reminded more and more that security you think you had and something that you didn't love may not be there so you might as well do the thing you do love and go for it so I think it's the perfect time to build that creative endeavor to launch that thing that you may be to go do it learn to be a public speaker what and I would say you know whatever the thing that makes and usually we don't do the thing we want to do out of fear fear of other people's opinions, fear of judgment fear of failing, fear of success and that's why for me the most important thing is to write a list of those fears and then whatever the biggest fear is go tackle that one first and when you tackle all your fear and you essentially do what Batman did which was live in darkness, be surrounded by bats and you become that thing that thing turns into your superpower So you're very active on social media what are your approaches to keeping a healthy balance between you know the news intake now the social media come on how do you balance that I don't watch any news I'll get updates from my girlfriend or a friend of mine of what I need to know but the rest of it is I'll watch positive news I'll watch to see what people are doing that are impacting people in a positive way you know I'll watch those types of videos and stories but I won't watch news or speculation about fear or what's to come potentially until it happens tell me about it but the rest of it is like commentating on what might happen or the bad things that are going to be happening because of this I want to have positive thoughts and positive feelings so I can be more in the flow like I said you can't be in chaos and creative at the same time typically and really productive you can't stay in that flow state that much so I need to have peace of mind so that I can serve people at the highest level support people and just be a good friend of people so I don't consume much of the news unless I need to unless someone said something that I'm like okay let me go read the details and social media you know for me I just follow the accounts that are inspiring so so any any advice for I know this has been an advice show where do you go what are the resources for somebody who wants to strike out on their own strike out on their own we've got school of greatness we've got lots of great resources here for free people can check out on entrepreneurship and things like that but I think I would ask yourself the question what is the biggest challenge you have right now maybe your health has been out of integrity for years and you're finally looking at yourself and you're not happy with where you're at then I would go to your your site and say okay and I would challenge myself what's the lifestyle change I'm going to create if your finances and you're trying to start a side hustle then we've got those resources if you're spiritually disconnected then for me I like a guy named Rob Bell I like someone named Liz Gilbert I like Michael Beckwith I like following those people for more spiritual tapped in connection so that's where I would go do you read any books you know it's interesting I was just doing a little review of books this morning on my page and I picked up two books one Thinking Grow Rich I think this by Napoleon Hill I haven't read it in over a decade but I want to pick it back up and it's a book about thoughts and about shifting your thoughts and I think when we shift our thoughts and stories in our mind and we start to attract those stories those movies in our minds same thing with our health if we start to imagine the health we want then hopefully we'll take better decisions and actions towards creating and manifesting the health that we want so that was one book and I actually just have another book here that I picked off my shelf this morning I grew up in a religion that I'm no longer a Christian science and health Mary Baker Eddie yeah by Mary Baker Eddie and this was written in 1875 and the Christian Science Monitor is a famous credible publication that was founded by her and this woman was sick and pretty much dying it felt like she was dying her entire life was in bed all the time and in the 1800's she created a movement with millions of people around the world of how she was able to heal herself through spiritual thought and the Bible was confusing to her so she went and did research on science and medical doctors and she started a research how to heal the body through thoughts through the mind and that philosophy and you see people like Dr. Joe Dispenza and other people like that talking about these philosophies in their own way with different types of research today but that's the type of philosophy I was growing up with was our thoughts are greater than our physical bodies and you can shift and heal with the ideas in your mind so I haven't read that in a long time but it's something I was like maybe I'll pick it up and just see what comes to mind wow we've covered a lot of territory this is good, this is very good when we need to cover this kind of territory it's all about adding value to people and I know you do this on your show as much as you can to cover and I think if people truly organize their thoughts and their life better, they will have a better life so what do I mean by that when this stuff started happening whatever, over a month ago I remember just saying okay how can I take inventory of my life and if you're listening or watching this right now you can literally get out a piece of paper and a pen I have this journal, I have tons of notes from you when I had you on in here it will take inventory on the categories of my life that I'm struggling with and so you can put my health as a top category am I happy with my health am I setting myself up to have more energy more clarity, more focus do I feel good it's not about having the perfect physique but it's the body giving you the energy you need to be passionate to be clear not react to people all the time but respond in a more peaceful way and if it's not, then okay let me take inventory on what's off let me take inventory on my finances have I looked at my banking account lately do I know where my money is going do I know when it's coming in take inventory what about my physical space I cleaned out my closet in the first week after all this happened I was like man I'm just holding onto a lot of junk I need to figure this out and organize and take inventory my relationships what I need to organize and take inventory so all these areas of your life I would write down and start to organize am I happy with these categories of my life do I have too much baggage that I need to let go of in these areas if so what are those action steps and when you start to organize and have an awareness of all the inventory that you are it makes you feel stressed out when you don't know how your body works you're going to be unclear when you don't know where your money is it's going to stress you out when you don't know all these things it's going to stress you out so focus on inventory and I think those would be great steps to start with is to just have organization of your life so then you can go take actions it's kind of like I don't know if you remember back when you were at work and you put it in your room and you say you know what my room is messy right now so let me put this homework thing on hold and I'm going to actually clean my room and then I'm going to go do the homework project that I've got to do it's like it's hard to be productive on something we need to get done when we have a messy room and so you've got to declutter your life so you can have a clear mind to take action on your homework or the project you're working on you and my mother come on did you talk to her or what and you've got to make your bed if you make your bed every morning it's something I started doing about seven years ago and I wish I would have listened to my mom earlier but I'll tell you what this one simple act of making your bed it will transform the way you feel about yourself the rest of the day and you'll come home to a clean space and it just feels better coming home and untucking the covers and getting in and you'll feel at peace that day and I've my girlfriend moved in a few months ago and she gets up later than me so the bed is not made half the time and it's like oh I want to just like get her out of bed so I can make it but I'm telling you it is a powerful thing if you can do that too I can see we're going to have relationship issues we got to have a relationship expert on the school of greatness exactly I've had two relationship experts on in the last two weeks I'll tell you all right Luis it's been great seeing you again and thank you for coming on the podcast you're going to be a great help at this time you're always a great help I'm taking my 5000 vitamin D every day I'm taking the olive oil make sure you guys get the vitamin D that stuff is a lifesaver it really is a lifesaver it really is all right school of greatness how do they find you yeah the school of greatness on Apple or Spotify for the podcast we had an amazing interview with you a few weeks back that's been going viral and people want to go listen to that I feel like every time I get you on I get you to share things you normally don't say because I ask it in a different way so I love people's perspective on that and then just at louishouse louishouse.com and at louishouse on social media all right take care of yourself thanks dr. Godry now it's time for the audience question Charles Anton on YouTube asks do vegans have a deficiency in methionine isoleucine and cysteine no you don't have a deficiency but you do have less of these amino acids in a vegan diet than you would in an omnivore diet where you eat even a vegetarian diet where you ate eggs and milk products but what I see in my vegan population is that they usually run high homocysteines which is another amino acid which is normally converted to methionine and that's generally because you don't have enough of methyl B12 and methyl folate in your diet and if you're vegan you know that getting an adequate amount of B12 in your diet is very important and I have all my vegans take a methyl B12 and a methyl folate regardless but the absence of methionine in a vegan diet may be one of the reasons that vegans done rightly have extended longevity certainly in the Loma Linda experience as you know where I was a professor Adventists in Loma Linda are some of the longest living people in the United States where they only blue zone the vegans are the longest living of the long lived Adventists and it probably is because methionine is used by what's called mTOR as the energy sensor and people on a low methionine diet like vegans in general are going to live longer animal studies support this a low methionine diet makes animals not only live longer but live healthier and that's why you see in all my books the more animal protein I can get away from you I don't have to take it all away the better you're going to do in the long run so great question no you don't have a deficiency okay and now it's time for a review of the week after watching our recent episode on immune health alexander uber amelia porter wrote this was the most impressive factual clear concise informative truthful video I have seen to date on wellness and immune health during these crazy times I have shared it with everyone I love and care about I agree with everything you stated and follow a similar health regime and have for decades bravo clapping hands Dr. Gundry very kind words and you know I'm always looking out for you and I want people to have what I consider the most update unbiased non crazy information there's so much misinformation out there on the internet and you just got to be careful and pick your sources and I'm I'm happy you picked me so we'll keep doing that before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you