The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes

Most of us were taught that if you want something badly enough, you have to chase it. After 2,000 episodes and 13 years without missing a week, Lewis Howes has learned the opposite, and it comes down to consistency. The life you want starts coming toward you when you keep showing up, serve other people and do the work on the inside.In this solo milestone episode, Lewis looks back on the road from an iPhone in his living room to a show heard in more than 100 countries. He shares the four lessons 2,000 conversations taught him about building a life that pulls your dreams toward you. They cover consistency, service, knowing who you’re building for and the inner work that lets good things stay. It’s a journey that started with a first grader who wrote a poem about hating school and grew up to build a school of his own.The dreams worth having don’t come from chasing harder. They come from who you become by showing up week after week.Make Money EasyThe School of GreatnessThe Greatness MindsetThe Mask of Masculinity

You can't buy inner peace, no matter how much money or success you pile up.Yung Pueblo, an author who has meditated two hours every day for more than a decade and has finished a 60 day silent retreat, sat down with Lewis to talk about what inner peace feels like day to day. For him, it means having enough space in your mind to feel tension without letting it run your actions.Meditation got tested first in his relationship. He and his wife Sarah spent six years in what he calls a hurricane of blame. They were on a break when he sat his first 10 day retreat, and two weeks later he proposed with the tiny ring his dad had once given his mom.You'll hear why the lightning fast reaction you think is the real you is your past self defending itself, and why slowing down gives you a pause button. His book Journey: The Year That Changes Everything keeps coming back to that practice, along with lining up your values with your intuition.The next time you're about to snap at someone you love, you might catch it a beat soon

The thing you want most might be closer than you think, and the expectations you keep gripping could be what keeps pushing it away.Lewis goes solo in this episode to walk through five expectations that block money, love and your peace. He starts with the silent contract so many hard workers carry: I did this, so I’m owed that.He tells you about making zero dollars from his podcast for the first year, and about sleeping on his sister’s couch when a mentor told him, “Money comes to you when you’re ready for it.” He also explains why he asked his wife Martha to start therapy at the very beginning of their relationship, and how she answered, “That sounds exciting.”You’ll hear why comparing your year one to someone else’s year ten will wreck your peace, and why a simple “Would you be willing to...” can fix relationships that silent hints keep breaking. There’s also the goal he has chased for eight years without hitting it, and what changed once he stopped demanding a timeline for it.Afterward you may find yourself

The trauma you never healed is running your relationships and your work.Robin Sharma, author of The Everyday Hero Manifesto, tells Lewis about the day ten years of his private journals vanished from a cupboard, along with every fear and heartbreak he had written in them. What he took from losing them was the ability to let go.He walks through a tool he calls AFRA: the moment you get triggered, you find the feeling in your body and ask what old wound just woke up. "If it's hysterical, it's historical," he says. The bigger the overreaction, the bigger the thing that was already there.Robin admits he used to be drawn to partners who created a crisis whenever things got peaceful, and he owns his part in that. He also passes on a divorce lawyer's test for a relationship: can you enjoy 10,000 dinners with this person?You'll hear his eight forms of wealth, of which money is only one, and his five great hours rule for productivity.The Wealth Money Can't Buy: The 8 Hidden Habits to Live Your Richest LifeThe Everyday H

What if the dark stretch you're in right now is proof your faith is about to pay off?Katt Williams, a comedian with 14 stand-up specials, sat down with Lewis to talk about leaving home at 13 and the moment around age 20 when drug dealing could turn $100 into $700. He asked God for another way to make a living, and comedy showed up.Door-to-door sales taught him that 300 no's buy 30 yeses, and he still tells a joke to himself 35 times in the mirror before any audience hears it. To him the crowd is never wrong, so every silence is feedback he can use.His years as a teenage missionary in Haiti come up too, where he watched starving families choose joy and pride. His memoir, “Nine Lives, No Wives, and 69 Concubines,” lays out his whole life so you can decide for yourself whether any of it was luck. His new podcast, According 2 Katt, is on the way to Netflix.You'll come away treating rejection as information and seeing every hurdle as a chance to jump higher.Nine Lives, No Wives, and 69 ConcubinesKatt's InstagramKa

People with psychopathy still feel, just differently from everyone around them.Dr. Patric Gagne, a diagnosed sociopath who went on to earn a doctorate and work as a therapist, sat down with Lewis and told the story she tells in Sociopath: A Memoir. As a kid she learned that saying “I don't care” out loud got her in trouble, so she lied, and lying made her feel safe.She talks about the pressure she called a vice, which she relieved by breaking into homes just to sit in the quiet, and the first grade day she stabbed a classmate with a pencil. Then she explains why secondary psychopathy, which may touch 5% of people, is treatable when kids get caught early.You will hear why a therapist who doesn't absorb your pain can be the best container for it, and why stopping someone from crying can stop the brain from healing. She also gets into the shame under people pleasing and narcissism, and the question she asks her own kids: how does it feel when you feel?You may come away a little gentler with the people you never

What if your anxiety is a smoke alarm, and your body is working perfectly?Dr. John Delony, a mental health expert with two PhDs, sat down with Lewis and said the thing most of us dodge: if you are awake at 2:30 in the morning, something in your life is on fire. Numbing it with a drink or a screen is like duct taping a pillow over the alarm while the house burns around you.Then he got personal. While he was writing Building a Non-Anxious Life, his wife walked into his basement gym and told him, “I'm watching my husband die,” and then, “John, we have enough.” His little girl would not hug him, and in counseling he could not put a fist to his chest and say “I love this guy.”Back then he would have rated himself a zero out of ten on being enough. Now he says nine, and his daughter uses him as a jungle gym. He and Lewis also talk about why “me over us” hurts so many relationships and how paying off debt let him grieve a cousin without a single worry about money.You'll finish this one wanting to put your phone down

You keep making the same mistake because you haven't failed enough yet. That sounds harsh until you hear the reasoning, and then it feels like relief.Shi Heng Yi, a 35th generation Shaolin master who has practiced kung fu since age four, sat down with Lewis and explained why manifestation stalls for most people. You can touch the hot plate five times and it still hurts, he says, and one day you simply stop. Lewis admits he touched it about 100 times across 15 to 20 years of relationships before he changed.Then he gets practical. He walks through RAIN, his four step method for a restless or doubting mind: recognize it, accept it, investigate it, and stop identifying with it. He also teaches you to build a skill in focused cycles, 7 days for skin and 30 days for muscle, with more time the deeper the change goes.The cup is the part that stays with you: you arrive empty, and then your parents and your teachers pour their ideas in until you are chasing a life that never came from you. His mindset advice is simple:

Stress can give you a real heart attack even when your arteries are perfectly healthy. Doctors call it broken heart syndrome, and it can follow losing someone you love or even winning the lottery.Dr. Tara Narula, a board certified cardiologist and chief medical correspondent for ABC News, sat down with Lewis and shared what her patients say when she asks how they are. Almost nobody mentions blood pressure. They tell her they are overwhelmed, and many of them cry.She knows that fear from the inside. At 22, in medical school, she lost vision in part of her right eye and spent the first weeks reading every stumble as proof of something worse. A note card from her mom with the Serenity Prayer pulled her out of the spiral.In The Healing Power of Resilience she lays out eight tools, and she walks Lewis through acceptance and flexible thinking, then makes the case for purpose and real social connection. She also explains why burnout is the final phase of chronic stress, and why a study across 52 countries found chro

A marriage can end over a bag of granola, a full year before anyone says the word divorce.James Sexton, a divorce lawyer for over two decades, sat down with Lewis and told the story of a client whose husband always quietly restocked her favorite granola. One day the bag ran out and he never noticed. She knew right then that it was over.He calls marriage a technology that fails about 53% of the time, and says most couples put more thought into the wedding cake than into what they are signing. In his book If You're in My Office, It's Already Too Late: A Divorce Lawyer's Guide to Staying Together, he shares what works: send the hard email while the hurt is still small, and get a prenup even when you feel certain. He also explains why infidelity usually starts with lost connection long before anyone cheats.The line I keep repeating to people: the opposite of love is indifference. And he still believes in marriage. He compares it to the lottery, where the prize is so good that it is worth buying a ticket.You will

People tell you the truth when they feel safe, and one raised eyebrow can shut them down.Brad Beeler, who spent 25 years as a US Secret Service agent and polygraph examiner, sat down with Lewis and explained how he got a couple thousand people to open up about the worst things they had ever done. His rule is simple: never punish the disclosure. He once watched a suspect go silent the second a flash of contempt crossed his face.You will hear why a neutral face reads as a threat in first impressions and why lie detection is close to a coin flip, with people getting it right only 54% of the time. Brad watches your feet to see how comfortable you are, and he treats every cue as a check engine light to follow up on later. He also shares the cases he got wrong, including the day he fixated on a 6 foot 4 biker while the quiet man in front of him kept saying “that's not it.”His book, Tell Me Everything, grew out of those mistakes, and the lessons carry straight into your relationships and your parenting. Swap “why di

You can win four Super Bowls and still spend every game afraid of losing.Terry Bradshaw, a Pro Football Hall of Famer and longtime host of Fox NFL Sunday, sat down with Lewis and admitted he was never confident as an NFL quarterback. Fear cost him his throwing motion, and he completed just 51.9% of his passes. Underneath it all were his mother’s words when he was eight: you’ll never amount to anything.He talks openly about depression and ADHD, which he didn’t learn about until after football. He also talks about three divorces, and the moment it hit him that the common factor was him. Three years of counseling and a hard look in the mirror later, he married his best friend, a woman who makes him talk about what he’d rather bury.In his memoir Looking for Terry, and in this conversation, he explains why he sobbed over his dog but not his mother, and how his wife taught him to say no. He also shares how his faith held through cancer twice in one year, and why he cares more about kindness than greatness.You’ll co

Four out of ten people can't put their hands on $400 in an emergency, and almost none of them know why.David Bach, who spent nine years at Morgan Stanley and co-founded an advisory firm with more than $7 billion on its platform, sat down with Lewis and made the case that budgets fail everyone while automation quietly works. His book The Latte Factor tells the story through a broke travel editor in Brooklyn who works 70 hours a week and never goes anywhere. He also explains the Rule of 72, why a new car payment eats three months of your year, and how selling a home you live in can hand you a quarter million dollars the government never touches.The part that will stay with you has nothing to do with money. His grandmother was broke at 30, saved 50 cents a week in a coffee can, and helped him buy his first share of McDonald's stock when he was seven. On her deathbed at 86, he asked her about regrets. Every single one was a fork in the road where she chose the safe path.Then Lewis puts his own finances on the tab

The questions you ask on autopilot might be the reason you feel lonely in a room full of people.Vanessa Van Edwards, a behavioral researcher who has studied master conversationalists for two decades, sat down with Lewis to talk about why so much of our talking leaves us empty. One in six people worldwide are affected by loneliness, and she believes the way we talk to AI is quietly changing the way we talk to each other.In her book Conversation, she lays out three levels of connection, from basic facts all the way up to the private story you tell yourself about yourself. She explains why “Been busy?” is the single worst question in small talk, and why asking for stories beats asking for facts every time.The most honest moment comes when Lewis asks what she still struggles with. Her answer is charging for her own work, a belief she traces back to her early twenties, and you get to hear a level three conversation happen live.You will walk into your next dinner or team call ready to say “tell me more” and actuall

Every stage you never took is the only real failure. The rest is just data.Jo Koy, the comedian who has sold out SoFi Stadium and won Showtime at the Apollo, sat down with Lewis and told the story of driving Vegas to LA with a broken taillight for a $40 set, getting a ticket both ways. He rode a Greyhound nine hours home from an unpaid audition. He walked to the front of a line wrapped around a building with a fake resume and a headshot his dad took, and asked a promoter for five minutes she did not have to give him.She gave it to him anyway. Three weeks after crawling through a curtain as an unannounced warm-up act at Def Comedy Jam, he won the Apollo. Years later, when Netflix passed on him, he paid for the special himself, shot it, and brought it back to them. They bought it, and then he broke Mariah Carey's attendance record in Hawaii with 22,000 tickets.He still prints flyers. Ten thousand of them, for sold-out shows, put on windshields by hand. He talks about his mom rolling lumpia to sell at work durin

You already know where to start. What scares you is finding out you might not be good enough once you do.Lewis goes solo here on the fear that hides inside preparation. He read every page of a 500-page book before his first Tony Robbins interview and still walked in nervous, and that nervousness never actually went away.Then there was Kobe Bryant. A 5pm phone call the night before, an interview the next morning, 20 minutes, a publicist handing over a list of banned topics, other crews waiting in the hallway. With almost no prep time, it became one of the best conversations Lewis has ever recorded, because he stopped performing his homework and just stayed present and curious.He gets honest about launching The School of Greatness with an iPhone and no idea what he was doing, asking questions he thought were basic and dumb. Confidence came after the action, never before it. Perfectionism and procrastination wear the same costume, and self-trust only gets built by surviving the attempt.Ask yourself the uncomfort

What if your body is already telling you the work you do every day is wrong for you?Jonathan Fields, founder of Good Life Project and a former securities lawyer, sat down with Lewis to answer the question so many of us carry around: what should I do with my life? He shares how 100 hour weeks at a big law firm ended with an infection eating a hole through his intestine and a trip to emergency surgery.From there you hear why burnout keeps climbing, why an existential crisis is really a crisis of meaning, and how collapsed boundaries between home and work make it worse. Lewis opens up about eczema that cleared within days once he stopped abandoning himself in his relationships and career.Jonathan walks through the ideas in his book Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work That Makes You Come Alive, and Lewis learns he is a Maven who hates Essentialist work. You also get Jonathan’s blunt question for finding purpose: what should I just stop doing entirely?You will finish this one ready to take the free Spar

There are seven quiet signals that show up in your life long before the money does, and most of them feel like losing.In this solo episode, Lewis walks you through the money mindset shifts he lived from his sister's couch to a life where his investing runs on autopilot. He tells you about the networking event where he stuffed cheese and crackers into his pockets with a full arm cast on, because he had no idea where his next meal was coming from.Then comes the number that stops you cold: 48% of people earning over $250,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck. A raise was never the answer. Lewis walks through why rich is a number and free is a length of time, and why saying no to a $20,000 sponsorship or a $10,000 coaching call felt like losing his mind right up until it felt like peace.You will hear how one conversation at a salsa club sent him to Toastmasters and rewired what he could charge, and how he bought a life insurance policy in his twenties for a wife and kids who did not exist yet.By the en

What if the grind you think makes you successful is the very thing keeping you broke and exhausted?Codie Sanchez, a former Goldman Sachs employee who has run 1,621 businesses through her company’s systems, sat down with Lewis to talk about money, freedom, and why most entrepreneurs across the US earn less than California’s $78,000 minimum wage. Her book Own or Be Owned is built on one uncomfortable question: do you own a business, or does it own you?She tells the story of walking into a bank for a loan and finding the account she thought held a million dollars almost empty. That night she sat in the dark and called her dad, who told her you are not really in the game until you have had a night like that. She never ran a business without systems again.The fixes she shares are simpler than you expect. Most businesses are underpriced by 30 to 300 percent, fewer than a third have recurring revenue, and hard work has almost nothing to do with how much money you make. She also explains why more than 80 percent of k

You have been trained to reach for your phone the second you get bored, and it is quietly costing you the ability to think.Cal Newport, a computer science professor and the author of Deep Work, sat down with Lewis and explained why he has never once had a social media account. He also wrote Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, and to test the idea he ran a 30-day declutter with about 1,600 readers who sent back reports on what happened when they stepped away.The results are hard to shake. Roughly half found no real value in social media and dropped it for good. Of the half who did find value, like visual artists who needed Instagram to see other people's work, about 95% moved it off their phones entirely and onto a scheduled desktop session, sometimes twenty minutes on a Sunday night. Cal also points to college mental health centers that saw anxiety cases jump around fivefold the same year students started arriving on campus with smartphones.Lewis tells his own story here too. Fifteen