Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Louis Howes, former pro-athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. Each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now, let the class begin. Welcome Welcome to this special masterclass. We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

The way we are approaching love and finding love or looking for love, and the people we attract has a lot to do with this five inner child wounds. That if we don't assess them before getting into a relationship, you will continue to attract the same guy. What are the wounds? So one of them is the rejection wound. So the rejection wound is a wound we all have, literally. Since you're a little kid, at one point, your mom or dad is going to say no to you, and you're going to feel rejected. But there's people that have it even bigger. We all have that one. But there's people that have it even bigger. So You, you have a story of rejection in school. You've told me many, many times that you felt rejected, you felt like you were not. What that creates is a person that in the future, when there's trouble and when that person feels rejected, that person is going to try to go away or walk away, run away.

Or react or triggered or whatever.

React, triggered. I'm feeling rejected, I'm going to run away. Or it can also create a person that wants to be... It's so malleable, so adaptable that if you like whatever thing-Do whatever to fit in and belong. Exactly. You're looking for love, but you're adapting to whatever the other person wants and needs. You become that type of adult. Then there's the abandonment wound. That's a tough one because a lot of people experience that, and a lot of experience that from their mom or their dad. There's a lot of very sad stories of, My dad left for another woman, and I never saw him again. And so what does that mean? And you're a little kid with your little tiny mind of nine years old, you don't think it's because of other things. You cannot put yourself in your parents' shoes. You think it's about you. Yes. And so then what happens with people that have abandonment wounds is that they become dependent, and they become a person that needs somebody. It's the person that if you're having a misunderstanding and the partner wants to take a beat and walk away for a second to just relax or calm down, the abandonment wound will go after that person and say, No, don't leave me.

I'm here in the middle. I'm talking. What are you doing? And then it's a never-ending argument all night because that person is not leaving the good amount of space in between the two. Because if you leave, I feel you're abandoning me or that they get too attached. They are dating somebody and they feel, I don't know why I feel I'm going to mess this up at one point and that person is going to end up leaving me. So it has to do with a story of something that happened to you in your childhood. Yes. Even if your dad didn't leave, even if your mom didn't leave, sometimes it could be that you felt abandoned because they dropped you off in when you were too little and you had this anxiety about you. And maybe they didn't pick you up many, many times. And you were waiting outside the school and your parents didn't show up. So maybe it comes from that because some people say, I have amazing parents, but I still have some of these wounds. Where are they coming from?

Okay, so that's the second wound.

That's the second one. Then there's the humiliation wound, the shame. You feel ashamed. You are humiliated. So somebody, I mean, in many different ways, you have a story about that. The other day, we were talking about this, and you went, Man, I think I have most of them. Yeah. Right. And then I said to you, I love you so much because you become who you become, if you become the man who you are, which I know who you are, having had all of these wounds is admirable. The type of resilience that you have, the type of commitment with yourself that you have. It's massive because you do. But you were humiliated in school. People that were bullied or people that your parents, your parents can humiliate you. Yeah, they can. Many, many times you're like, Oh, you're a little kid. You're excited because you wrote this little song at that one moment. And your dad is with a bunch of friends. It's like, no, what? No, you sing horrible. No, out of the way. You continue. You feel that humiliation. So what That creates having had a parent who has a crazy temper and you never know what you're going to expect, right?

That parent that maybe... How do you say reprimand? Reprimand.

Yeah, reprimand. Reprimand you. You know English better than I do.

But reprimanded you in front of other kids with a big temper, that big voice. You feel like this human Humiliation. What that creates is in the future, if you have not worked in your inner child once, it's a man or a woman that is willing to take any abuse. You're replicating the abuse that you had at home.

Because you even learned how to stand up for yourself.

Exactly. Then you have a screaming girlfriend saying, Why are you? I'm going to break up with you if you don't pick up my phone call. You continue in the relationship because you're like, Yeah, of course, because you lived that. That reminds you of something that you experience. It's familiar. Exactly. You know that feeling that when you meet somebody, people say, Oh, it felt like family to me.

Why did it feel like family?

Some family could be great. Another family might make you...

Yeah. Exactly. That's why the question is really important. What part of that make you feel like family?

Okay, humiliation. What's number four?

The other one is treason, somebody, like, betrayal. So for example, my sister, when I was born first, then my sister was born second, and then there was a gap in which my parents didn't have children for six years, and then they had my brother. She was the little baby of the family, and she's so funny. You know my sister. She's really fun. She's outgoing and really amazing. Then when When my brother was born, for her, and she says this today, it felt like a betrayal. It felt like, What is this new person in the family? I'm not the little baby anymore. Mom, dad, and everyone around, including herself, they say that her personality changed a little bit. She felt, and to this day, she feels when she's more able to have more control is when she can feel safe. Because she felt betrayed by my parents. Then therefore, later in life, she grows up as a woman, and she's looking for love, and she's looking for a man that she can, in a way, give direction to. And this is why her relationship and my brother-in-law relationship works really well, because in his case, he had an abandonment wound, and so then he was looking for somebody to give him direction.

So this is for them, in a way, it's a good match. So for me, being the oldest of the family, my mom was always so amazing into praising and saying, Oh, Martita She's the helper of the family. She helps me with the house. She helps me with the siblings. She helps me. So in a way, I built my identity feeling as if I was of help to somebody, then I was worth it. I was I had some value to bring if I was being of help to somebody. Then what happened is then later, as an adult, before having healed my inner child wounds, I was looking for somebody I could help. I didn't know this. This is subconscious, right? Then all of a sudden, I used to fall in love with men that needed a lot of support and a lot of help. Because in a way, if they didn't need me, I didn't know if I was My family. That was a big one for me. Then the other one was shame. For me, it was my family, too. We're jokers. We joke all the time. Especially my dad's side of the family, he was so young.

He was 20 years old, and he used to poke me or do these little things. I was one years old, two, three, four, five. And he would say, Oh, my God, look at that. He would say that to my mom, Look at her. She's crying just by me doing this. And he would laugh. But me as a little kid, I didn't know what was happening. So then I would feel, My dad is laughing at me. I felt shame. I had other moments in my life. I stole something from school, which My mom was really upset, which was good, by the way, that I learned a lesson. But in front of my entire classroom, she said that I had stolen a pencil, a sharpen.Sharpener.Sharpener, yes. I I was crying in front of the classroom, and I felt embarrassed. Then later, people who experience a lot of shame are the ones that turn into people that can withstand a lot of abuse later in life, because that's what it feels familiar to you. I got to say something that I think it's very important. It's not our parents' fault. We should stop blaming our parents for the way we are.

They did what they could with what they could. They did their best with the tools they had, the things they had. And it's up to us to heal ourselves. And then there's another one that's called the injustice one. So something that happened to you at one point in life that you felt things were unjust, whether it's the way your perspective, they treated your sister or your brother way better than they treated you. That felt unjust. So then you didn't fix that inside of you. So then later in life, it makes you a very rigid person. Rigid You want things to be a certain way, and that's it.

Or you're just triggered if you see injustices constantly and everything is unjust. It takes a lot of your energy to manage those emotions.

Yeah. If things were unjust for you when you were a little kid, you replicated as an adult in ways of you become competitive with your partner because you're trying to find justice. You know what? I work so much. Of course, you take care of the kids and don't tell me anything about anything because this is what's fair. Wait, let's talk about it. This is that type of personality. For me, you know this, I needed to dive down inside of what was my life story, what was my wounds, why was I attracting these type of personalities? Why was it that whenever I attracted a nice guy, it felt boring? That happens to a lot of people.

Why do women not like the nice guy? Why do they not-Well, I do. Why do some women- You're so nice. Why do some women not fall for a healthy, nice, conscious man, and they fall for a man that likes an interest but doesn't have a healthy relationship with themselves and doesn't treat others well?

Why do they fall for that? Well, one is this because they haven't addressed that they're looking for love as a wounded child as opposed to being open to love as an adult, which is, I think this is the way you and I met. We were not anymore looking for love. And Although healing is a never-ending journey, we were very aware of what was the inner child wounds that was having you attracting certain type of women and me, certain type of men. And so then, therefore, the first step is to be aware of it. And then you start noticing, oh. And then something happens. Did it happen to you, Luis? Because for me, it was this integration of my inner child. This moment, these exercises that I would do in which I would say, Oh, my God, I got myself. Nilda is my therapist. I talked to you about Nilda. She's just incredible. She said to me back in the day when I was in a relationship, this person yelling at me all these things. She would say, Don't say he's yelling at me. He just gels. It just doesn't go with you.

You can either choose to accept it or not. Or get out of there. But changing it is actually something that you got to look at within yourself. If I don't step through who this person is, it doesn't mean they're right or wrong, good or bad. It just means it's not a good match for me. And so they may not want to change. And you have to be okay with it if the other person doesn't want to change. And you have to evaluate, Okay, am I happy removing myself from this relationship? Even though there might be some other benefits, but can I deal with the parts that cause the most stress and pain? I think, again, not everyone is bad all the time or something, but are the things that I don't like or don't match or align with, knowing this may never change. If it never changes, am I accepting it and okay with it? I think if you're not willing to accept who they are now, you can't expect them to change later. It's learning to say, Am I okay? Can I give into this or accept this? Or is this a non-negotiable for One of the things that we got into our relationship in the dating process, I was just like, it's non-negotiable for me and us to not yell.

We can disagree, we can argue, but screaming and yelling does not work for me. No. Had I experienced that with you in the first six months or a year, I might have been like, Okay, this is something that you do maybe from time to time. You haven't done that. But I would witness it and be like, Okay, this It doesn't work for me. Having a conscious conversation saying, Hey, if this is the way you're going to be at times, just let me know because it doesn't work for me. Or, Am I able to accept you if once in a while you do yell, if there's a lot of other good that happens? I think those little nuances are hard for sometimes for people to decide.

Yeah, because everybody wants to be loved. Then now, finally, you're in a relationship. Finally, you have the chemistry, the kiss, the... You know how it feels?

Then you're thinking, Well, if I'm single again, will I find someone as good? I don't want to be alone and all these things.

But wait a second. There are all these things that are great. Okay, all these things are about... Okay, but maybe with time. Then you hand them the book. Then you hand them the podcast, and then you become the coach.

People don't want to change, though. People don't want to change where they are when they're in a relationship. No. Before you, I've chosen many relationships where I felt resistance. I felt like I didn't want to change, but the only way to make this person happy was if I changed so many different things. That was on me for deciding to adjust and change and adapt to make someone happy, as opposed to just being full, authentic yourself and being in a relationship where you commit to personal growth individually. I think that's something we've done really well is committing to being in a process of personal growth individually, both having emotional coaching and saying, Hey, I'm going to grow whether we're together or not. It's true. And you're going to grow whether we're together or not. So let's make that commitment impact from the beginning, which I think creates a lot of safety in the relationship for both of us, knowing this person is not going to stop improving. They're not going to stop learning. They're going to keep having a beginner's mind about their emotions, their relationship to themselves, how they navigate stress, knowing we're never perfect human beings, but we're in a process of growth.

I think that commitment to growth gives us a lot of peace.

There's so many things that I feel so grateful for the way we started our relationship and how it happened. I I feel so grateful for your past and my past. I feel very, very grateful for that because if you didn't live the things you lived and I didn't live the things I lived, we wouldn't have met when we needed to meet to continue the growth process in this way. But the same for me. I was nodding when you said, Well, if I would have seen you yelling after six months, I probably would have been like, Hey, wait a second. I think with the experience that I had, if you would have started yelling in month three, I'd be like, Thank you very much. It was so great to be with you for those three months. And that's it. Because there's things that wouldn't have worked for me either. It's interesting because what I tell most of my girlfriends is after you do this and you find the way, the inner child ones and you address them, and let's say now you're ready because you're open to meet guys, meet them where they are. Don't meet the potential.

Don't try to see, Oh, my God, this guy seems like he could be this. No, no, no. Look at who that person is and look at everything that they're doing, and don't judge them. Spirit foward, your Our only authorized Ford dealer for Southwest Dublin, and soon to be Wicklow, is your number one location for all your Ford passenger and commercial needs. Join us this March for our exclusive 0% PCP offers on the Ford Couga titanium Plug-in Hybrid. All trade-ins are accepted, any make, any model, and any condition. Visit spiritford to view our full range of vehicles or pop into our showrooms for a chat with our Ford experts. Everything is just information. If that was for me, like when I was meeting you, the thing that I wanted the most when I was meeting you is for you to be authentically you. So when you would say to me, Oh, my God, I'm going to tell you something. I think this is going to make you run away. I would think, Oh, my God. Maybe he's into threesomes or crazy stuff or drugs or something. That's definitely going to make me run away and put you in the friend category.

But you would say something that for me was like, Oh, that's amazing. It's information. It's just what happens is we very quickly, and especially women, we very quickly jump into the place in which we see them as our future husbands.Right away.Right away.

They have the potential. Yeah. What happens to a woman who starts seeing a man as their future husband in the first month of getting to know them? What do they tend to do more of that actually will hurt the relationship long term?

It's interesting because at the beginning, everything is great, right? So they see all the good parts. So then for about three, four months, everything was amazing. Everything was fantastic. And then the entire person starts coming out. I don't like to say the real person starts coming out because also all the other things that you saw at the beginning is still the real person. But the rest of them. The rest All of them starts to come out. So then what happens? Now, you want to start changing them because they don't- To go back to this perfect thing.to.

Match you.

To match you. If you're a regularly joyful You're a beautiful person, and you don't necessarily raise your voice or yell when you're having an argument or whatever, and while you're dating that person, you saw that that person yelled at the valet parking guy, right? But he's not yelling at you because you're living in this beautiful pink bubble. You continue the relationship. You're not paying attention. Everything is information. If a guy tells you, I don't want to have kids, believe him. He doesn't want to have kids.

Don't keep dating him if you want to have kids. Yeah.

Don't think you're going to be like Bella in the Beauty and the Beast, and you're going to say, I'm going to tame this beast, and he's going to be the one that's going to have kids with me.

You could have all the tutors and nannies and cooks or whatever it may be, but still it consumes so much energy of your time, your thoughts, and your attention. How do you guys manage energy?

You have to really think, prioritize, delegate what you can and let it go and not be too mentally hard on yourself. And as your bubble grows, you invest the time in hiring your weaknesses. So where are your weaknesses? And find the best talent, invest in the talent. And if you put the right people in place in certain areas, then it will free you up to be able to prioritize your time. And then you have to take the time to do that. Even though I have this leader in place, what is the most important thing for me to be focusing on for Spanks? Even though I may or may not have a nanny, what is the most important thing for me to be doing with my children? What's important to me? And I sat down with Jessie and we wrote out what's important for us to be? What is the quality time that we want to have with our children? And just being intentional about those buckets will really help you figure out energy and how to use it and how to make it go farther.

I would add, I I think three things. I think we've spoken about this in the past, Louis, many times. I think the most important thing is to really be present and be where your feet are. So if we're with our kids, we're with our kids. If Sarah is at work, and I don't want Sarah to be guilty or resent me for when she's at work. When she's at work, she's at work, and it's fine. When she's with the kids, she's with the kids. You got to be where your feet are. So we communicate about that. Today, I was on, I had to do something for two hours. I said, I let her know I need two hours alone. She was like, no problem, because I didn't want to feel guilty, and I don't want her to resent me. So we communicate that. But you got to be mega present. Two, you go in and out of waves. So we went on a trip to Poland with 10 friends, brothers, best friends, overnight best friends. If I don't speak to the guys for six months, I'm not going to beat myself up. The relationship is still there.

So you have to trust the seeds and know that when you plant it and know when it's time for me to jump back into that group of 10. I'm going to be present and everything's going to be... But you can't beat yourself up that your energy is pulling you somewhere else. That time will come back. And three is you got to plan. We're not good enough to just wake up and wing it. We plan stuff, man. No, we plan stuff. I plan that I'm going to see my parents a certain amount of times a year. Then I'm going to go on a certain amount of trips, one on one trips with my kids. We go away once a quarter. We plan a trip alone time. We have date night every Wednesday. I might not see Sarah every single day, every minute of the day during work, but we know Wednesday nights, we're having date night. We know we have our family dinners. We know the weekends is our time. So you have to plan in. Otherwise, you start to spiral. And when you spiral, it's hard to get out of it.

It's really hard, especially if you're in quarantine. I heard an interview that Oprah did years ago about I'm going to butcher this, but she essentially said at one point she made a decision in her life to throw a big dinner and bring all of her friends and family who've been asking her for money and stuff for years. And she threw this big party huge dinner, threw the best food and gave away cash and cars and gifts and said, I'm bringing you all here. I'm giving you the last thing I want to give you. Because I assume for years, people just kept asking for more and more, and they were never happy, and they're never satisfied. This is the general concept. I might be butchering it. How do you guys manage the expectations of friends, family, people that are just on social media that ask you for things? How do you manage the energy of people getting angry or upset or getting hurt if you don't do something for them when they think you should or could? Do you guys face that at all?

All the time. It's a great question. I mean, first of all, I don't get angry at anyone's reaction. Every time when people ask for something, you're put in a lose-lose situation. I remember my mother told me when I was growing up to never lend people money for a lot of different different reasons. It creates- It'll be let down. You'll be let down. And why do I have to pay them back? They don't need the money. Or if you do, there's all kinds of guilt and resentment. So one way to handle this is you can give people money and just say this is a gift, not a loan. But it's really case by case. It's really case by case and situational. But I'm not going to lie, man, it is challenging. It is challenging.

And how do you know when someone is truly a friend or versus someone who's always reaches out every year for something monetarily, let's say?

I don't feel like we have that much issue with that.

Oh, that's good.

Yeah. I mean, I personally don't know how you feel about it, but I think it feels very obvious to us who's a friend and who's maybe someone who's more of an opportunist. But we live our life in such a way that we're not in the situations very often that we're put in these positions. And I stay very true to my core mission, again, with my foundation, which is elevating women and supporting women. So it gives me an opportunity to explain or have my team explain why the funds don't make sense to go there and that we love to support everyone and everything. But you have to pick a lane. And in order to be effective or possibly make an impact in that lane, you have to give yourself permission again to say no to everything else that isn't in that lane. So that's been very helpful.

Having that structure and organization And that explanation makes sense. Has this time-shifted your guys vision for the future? This quarantine, Corona stuff. Has this shifted your ideas of how to be an entrepreneur for the future about your businesses your brands, learning how to use Zoom now? And is this shifting anything? Or are you saying, you know what, we're staying the course as our initial vision for where we had before?

I mean, I'm going to speak for myself. I'm in survival mode right now. Really? Yes.

Because it's a retail.

Well, no. I mean, at home.

I have- She's not talking about business. She's talking about your house.

My home, I'm sorry. My home, I'm in survival mode.

I mean, we've had no nanny, no We have been for five weeks now with four children, 10 and under, and three of them are five and under, which anybody with small kids knows your game on. From the minute they wake up, you're making sure they don't get hurt. We're just tag teaming it. We're doing around the clock cooking and cleaning and all of this. So I have not had the luxury of time to think about anything much else. So it has been all consuming for me. By the time When we get the kids finally to bed, it's later. And the minute our heads hit the pillow, we're pretty much asleep. We haven't watched any television in five and a half weeks other than maybe a few minutes of news here and there. I haven't read a book. I have not had a minute to do anything But I will say that I do think that there's a... For me, I'm hoping that there will be this shift in gratitude because I think gratitude is the basis for happiness and the basis for joy. And we The whole all of us got a reset button on gratitude because it's very easy when you're on autopilot, you're going to and from work, you're doing this.

We take certain things for granted. And now, I mean, the simplest things when we come out of this, we're going to have such extreme gratitude. I mean, I had to make a target run the other day. I put on tons of fear, but I've never been more grateful to be able to go to target. And so I think there's going to be all these nuggets It's where we come out of this and going to a park is going to be such a gift. Going and seeing friends is going to be a gift. And we were just doing it before.

Yeah. It's the difference between guys and girls. The survival mode Sarah means is survival around time. We have to homeschool four kids that have different schedules. And Sarah is running a business. I'm running a business. And there's no one around. So we have a swimming pool. There's stuff that It can go wrong. So you have to be alert and survival mode meaning alert. I'm a different animal in this thing. For one, Louis, I'm taking earmuffs, Sarah. I'm taking inventory. This is a time where humans can shine and become great humans. I want to be known at the end of the quarantine as someone that called my friends, called my family, called my customers. I want to be remembered as someone that didn't disappear. I I want to be remembered as someone in the community. So I'm making it a point every day. I call it the three minute miracle. I just take three minutes. I send three text every day. So over the month, I'll send 100 text and emails to friends, family, and customers. If you invest 10 minutes, you'll send 300 emails in the next 30 days. And that's what I'm doing. I'm making sure when I have free time that I'm staying connected.

We organized a Zoom call with our friends from Poland. I've done the same with my college friends, high school I want to make sure during these times, a lot of emotions come to the surface, man. You start to realize what you want to do, what's important to you. And when we come out of this, I want to put way more on my plate of the things I love to do with the people I love to do them with. And that's what I miss. I don't miss going to a sporting event or watching a rerun. Or what I miss is the camaraderie of my friends. Yeah.

Getting you guys together with the friends. Yeah.

I'm going to OD Me on experiences, sorry, when this is over.

You've already OD for the last 10 years. I've already OD.

But that's what I'm craving. I'm craving. So I'm using this time. And if you're a business owner, this is a great time to do two things. One is for a lot of businesses, the narrative has changed. So if I'm in the financial world and I sell insurance, let's just say, and I've been struggling to sell, the insurance The narrative has now changed because really what you're really selling and what people want is peace of mind. People want security. And those that can re-imagine their talk track in their business and talk to the emotions that people are going through, taking the biggest risk off the table, giving people comfort, are going to win. And this is a time to invest in that storyline and those relationships.

Has success, your success tested the relationship? Yes. In the last few years since you've been blowing up now.

So it's interesting. The reason why I said yes is I didn't actually think, realized that you were going to say so, as in popularity. When I was behind the camera and I stepped in front of the camera the first or second time, Tom, literally in front of the entire company, he's like, My wife's going to be bigger than me and I have zero problem with it. He's like, Mark my words. He wants it. He's He doesn't love being in front of the camera. He's very good at it, but he loves the impact. The camera is just the tool for him. I freaking love this, just hanging with you and the idea of creating an impact and staring at the camera. Who knows where this can go? That is such excitement and beauty to me. So the size and popularity, no. But when I went from being a housewife who supported him to being an entrepreneur, that was a big struggle for us. Because what happened was when Quest was growing, our first facility was in Compton. And Tom, being very passionate and big brothering for a kid who lived in the inner cities, he said it was very important for us to help the inner city people.

So when we started Quest, we put out a call and we said, We don't care about your background. We don't care if you're an ex-convict. We don't care. All we care about is who are you today and who are you willing to become, and are you willing to work hard? And that's it. So now we put a call out. And so literally, we had lines and lines of people that were looking for a job. So flash forward, Quest grows 57,000%. I've now got a facility, about 10,000 square feet, 40, four zero employees underneath me within two years. I went from shipping on my living room floor, not knowing how to be a boss, to then 40 employees. Now, a lot of them, ex-convicts, a lot of them are much bigger than me. They're like your stature. I'm 5'1. You can Don't pick me up with your pinkie. So what I thought, bad advice, but what I thought I should do is go in there and be aggressive because show them you can't be pushed around, Lisa. That's the only way I know how. And a lot of the female entrepreneurship back then as well, this is like 2010-ish, 11, were all about basically don't show emotion and you have to be like a dude.

And so I went in there going thinking, Okay, I'm not going to get pushed around. And so I'm going to go there and I'm going to go there and I'm going to tell them, I'm going to tell them that I'm a stern. You can't push me around. Now, you can imagine, that didn't motivate any of my team. That was a total disaster. And what that ended up doing, it started to harden me. And once One day, Tom pulled me aside in our personal when we got home and he said, Babe, I love you, but you're hardening. And you're hardening to a point where now you're bringing this into our relationship. And he said, And look, let's talk about it. I understand And why you need to harden? Because business is tough. So let's actually talk about it. But I want to talk about the lovely, sweet wife that I miss. And he's like, If you bring too much hardness to our relationship, it doesn't compute with me. He's like, I love your softness. I love that you care. I love that you have this big heart. And because you're starting to soften in business, you're starting to lose the softness in our relationship.

And so let's talk about that. And I was like, Yeah, that's very I love it when he wraps me around his arms or he carries me because my feet are sore. I love the fact that he's 6 foot. I love that about him. And so I was like, Oh, you know what? As a relationship, A, you need to have space where your partner can say the truth, even if you don't agree. Like, maybe I want to be hard. But I have to give him space to be heard. So I heard him out. And initially, I was defending. I was like, But you don't understand why I have to be heard? You don't understand why I have to be heard? It's okay for you. You're a guy. People respect you and blah, blah, blah. And I gave every reason why. And he's like, Babe, I'm not saying this isn't a skill set. You need to grow. Of course you do. You have to. Dominance is going to be very important in business. But how do we navigate what you're doing in business and our relationship? And so we just started. I was like, Okay, that's very fair.

When I come home, how do I soften? Because I like to be soft. So I had to figure out what that strategy was. And so to the strategy that I how on Earth I suit up to get on stage, I now do the opposite to soften. So literally, if I want to be a big ball of mush, which I really do enjoy being around my husband, you've seen me around him. I'll sit on his lap and whatever. I do the opposite. I take my jewelry off, I put my hair up. I wear Wonder Woman fluffy pajama bottoms. In fact, I wear onesies. We have matching onesies that we wear every Saturday. And we match onesies because I want to feel that That emotional connection with him on a personal level. And so to be able to transition with your partner being your business partner for like 15 years to how do you keep that spark alive and the romance alive, it's because you need to know how to navigate the two, where your strengths and weaknesses are, what those tactics are that you're going to use when you need to turn to them. Because sometimes I've gone balls to the freaking wall all day in business, and I'm like, I've got It's hard because all day, all I'm doing is making decisions.

And now I come home and I got my husband wanting to give me a big Squishy hug. How do I transition from one to the other? Knowing how to, having those tacts, testing yourself. What I can say will be different for you or your listeners at home, but you need to try things. Like I said, for me, it really was undoing the hair, the makeup, the jewellery,taking deep breaths.Changing.

The uniform.

Changing the uniform. All these things are allowing me to navigate when I need to be a beast in business and when I want to be a big ball in money.

I think that's really important for people to understand. I felt like in the sports world, you see a lot of this in the news sometimes where there's domestic violence from men with their wives or girlfriends, especially football players, right? And there's no excuse for this. The challenge is learning how to turn off the destruction from sports. Let's call it football. When you're trained to hit and destroy for hours a day and then trying to switch it off. Either way, when your business or sports or whatever it might be, we've got to learn those tools to transition from one area of life to the next area of life so we don't bring that. Otherwise, it will be destructive. Yes. I think it's really cool you've learned that skill. What's been the... Besides taking off the uniform, the makeup, and all these different things, is there something else you do psychologically to shift when you're... Because you also got to work from You're home and you live at home. How do you shift psychologically?

Yeah, so I have a lot of tools. One thing is smelling my husband's neck. I don't get to do that in business because it's business, right? He's on the other side and we're working We're talking about strategies. That's cool. But getting that intimacy, where literally, it's so funny, we have this thing now where if I lean in, he'll just expose his neck, or vice versa, he'll come out and I just expose my neck. There's something very vulnerable about exposing your neck to someone. Absolutely. So you would never do that in business, right? So number one, that's that intimacy. I do find music very helpful. So if I need to make a bit of a transition, I'll use music. But embracing that we're different people and that Tom's barometer of how much he can handle work to personal is going to be different than mine, how he handles the shift. So Tom works, the other day he calculated, it's not good, but he works 120 hours in a week. And so he can be on all the time. And he can transition to, okay, I'm on, oh, five minutes, I'm off, and now I'm back on again.

I can't. And so embracing that we're different people. We have different ways of doing things. And so what he would do is I would switch off at the end of the night, and he would come in and be like, I just have a business question. I'm like, I'm off-duty. But to your point, when you're working from home, your partner is your business partner as well. And so when he has a different habit, I was like, Baby, you can't do this. And he's like, But what if How do I need something answered? How do I know when you're off-duty? I was like, Okay, it's my responsibility to signal to you when and where because I'm... Boundaries are very important, but you can't expect someone else to set the boundaries for you, and you can't expect someone else to maintain those boundaries.

That's on me. You've got to do that. Yeah.

I was like, Okay, what boundaries do I have to set and how do I make sure that he sticks to them? I was like, All right, number one, the boundary is when I'm off-duty, I can't have him come to me with a work issue. That's What's my boundary that I'm setting. All right, what are the things I'm going to do in order to signal that? Have you ever been to a Brazilian restaurant where it's like, yes to the meat, no to the meat? Yes. We had just gone to a restaurant very recently when this big collision happened because I was like, Babe, you have to stop interrupting my personal self-care time. And we just gone to this restaurant, so I was like, Let's do it like the Brazilian restaurant.Right, you flipped it.Yeah. So I was like, What can I put in my room that he can see as a signal? So it's like, My lamp. I said, All right, babe, But from now on, I'm going to put this lamp on when I'm off-duty. So when you come in, if you see the lamps on, that means you can't talk to me about work because now it's a signal where I don't have to say anything because even me having to tell himis a bit of a strength.It's tiring a little bit, yeah.

It's a bit tiring.

So it could be after a certain time, after 6:00, no more conversations when the light's on, but there's a sign that says close for business. Yeah.

But if you want to know how you have a long-lasting relationship, it may not be a work thing, It may be other things. Be so clear in your communication. Own that communication. Own your boundaries, own that. Reflecting, okay, if you do this, then this happens. If I say this, please, then this. And then making sure that you're the person that's going to keep repeating it. So I kept saying, okay, the light on. You know, babe, the light on means I'm off, right? Yes, you know. So cut to a week later or whatever. He walks in my room. He's like, Babe, sees the light on. Love you. And then he turns around and walks out again. And that That is how you take a potential situation that those little things, Lewis, can literally fracture our relationship.

Yeah, because if you didn't give him a sign or a signal or a boundary that he knew was actually there, he could just keep repeating the situation or asking the question and not be aware, and you could be frustrated that he's not respecting the boundary. So it's got to be some type of mutually agreed upon signal, sign, time, something. Otherwise, is he's just going to be basking you and think it's okay.

And the reassurance. So here's the thing. You said it earlier. None of us are perfect. So of course, he's going to overstep the boundary, and he's not going to mean to. Do I believe he doesn't mean to? The intention, of course not. But he's going to do it. So now, how do you encourage people? Or in those moments where someone's overstepped the boundary, let's say it's even a bigger boundary than that. How do you react to, Hey, I told you. Or do you go, Look, I so appreciate that you're And last week, you were amazing. You missed the step today. But don't worry, I really see that you're really trying. That really means a lot to me.

There you go. It's great. Yeah. And now-It's not as big a deal.

Yeah. And you're reminding them, Hey, Please keep trying. So it's like that subliminal thing. And you want to feel good about it. When someone's asking you to do something for them, don't you want to feel good about doing it? Absolutely. You don't want it to feel like an expectation. So love language. We talk so much about love language. Mine is acts of service with Tom. One of the things I said, You know what would be really meaningful? You boil the kettle for me every morning. That's just a little symbol that you were thinking of me today. I don't even need to spend time with him, Lewis. We go days and days where we don't spend any time together at all. But the fact that he's boiled the kettle for me is meaningful. Now, some days I get up and he forget. What am I going to do? Have a go at him?

That's so horrible.

So what I do is every time he boils I thank him. Every time he doesn't, I'm like, Babe, thank you so much yesterday for boiling the kettle.

He's like, I forgot to avoid the thing. I was like, It's okay. But you're not blaming him.Not at all. You're acknowledging him for the work that he's putting into it and doesn't need to be perfect. Yeah. That's powerful. I remember Tom talking about kids. You said earlier in the interview that when you were getting married, that that was your mission. Was that four kids, I think it was? It wasn't necessarily...

I wouldn't say mission, just a...

Or part of your vision or your dream.

Yeah.

What you thought you should be doing.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah, four kids. Why four kids?

I was brought up with three of us, and then my dad remarried and had two, and I freaking love my siblings so much. Being Greek, massive families, You're around a table of 20 people all shouting as loud as they possibly can. I love family. So I was always like, This is a bit of an odd one out. There's always someone that gets left behind.

There's pairs and two.

Yeah. So I don't know. It just always seemed like a big thing.

When did the moment you realized you didn't want kids anymore? When was that moment? Because there had to be a moment where you thought, Okay, we're building for this. This is going to happen. And he was in alignment with that, I'm assuming. Or was It was a moment where he changed, and then you decided to change as well.

Being Greek, I saw everyone get married a year later, they fall pregnant. Like clockwork. I didn't even think about asking myself, Do I want to have kids after a year of marriage?I just assumed.It.

Was going to happen.

Tom was the one who was like, What are you talking about? You're 23, babe. He's like, I married you because I want to spend time with you. That was the first time I was like, Oh.

Did you guys talk about it before marriage, about when you wanted to have kids?

Maybe, I think around then where I was like, Oh, so a year, a year. He's like, Well, no. Let's move to America. Let's really find our footing. He's like, We're still young. He's like, I was thinking more 26. He was like, We We kept pushing it off, pushing it off. It was always going back to that when. When this happens, then we'll have kids. When we're not risking our house, then we'll have kids. It's always the when.

When we get our business going, then we'll have kids.

Then as time progressed, I realized, Oh, well, I'm not getting any younger being a female. And so that's okay. I just need to actually really look at the reality of the situation. So my biological clock is ticking, which means that I can look through so many different other ideas. So many women do fertilization, like an insemination. There's so many. We can do surrogacy, I can do adoption. But if I want to have my own child naturally, then there's a ticking time. So I just started to talk to Tom about that. And then each step of the way, we just kept assessing the situation we were in. And then it got to the point where I was like, Can I actually say it out loud that I don't know if I want children?

Really?

I I didn't know. I felt so judged, now, judged by me and judged by the outside world. I'd heard so many people say that, Oh, if you're not going to have children, you're not really maternal, then are you? So all these challenges of how I felt with like, no, I feel like I am nurturing. I feel like I am. I love taking care of my husband on the weekends. And so I started to have to assess my belief system, assess why I had that belief belief system in the first place, and then give myself permission to challenge it. And so in the challenging of it, Tom and I sat down. We said, okay, why did we want children in the first place? Take all the judgment away of all the things of why you think you should, everyone else. Take that away and just say, let's make a list of why we thought we were going to. Number one, legacy. What the hell does legacy mean? I kept saying legacy, but what does it actually mean? And it's like, okay, When I'm gone, I want to be remembered. And this is just my interpretation. And the same with Tom, Okay, well, does that mean we have to have our own blood relatives?

Or can that mean be remembered for the mark that we've left on the world? Some people, that means children. Some people, it doesn't. So it's like, Okay, actually, no, I don't need it to be my own children. It really is just to really feel like I've made a difference of me being alive on this Earth. Great. Now I've got that. Number two, another reason why I wanted to have children is because I really wanted to see a mini Tom running around. I don't want to deny that. Even now, to see a little kid with his ears and calling me mommy and him daddy, you can just see how excited I get. So that's another reason why I wanted children. I just, with no judgment, started to make a list. Since I was eight years old, I remember thinking, Oh, my God, the day when I feel the baby growing inside me. Put that down on the list of why you want to. Now, with no judgment, on the other side, write all the reasons why it doesn't... Why you may not want to. I love my business. I love my relationship with my husband. I like going all in.

I love my sleep. I don't want to give up. And I don't want to give up any of these. And now, what are my choices? I can hire nanny. So then I literally just start peeling away the onion with no excuses, with no... Just ask yourself, but what if this? And now paint the pictures. An example I give in the book, very specifically What would an average Wednesday look like? Because I can get convinced, and I'm sure you know, so many people where it's like, I want to start a business because we see the wealth, the end goal. And you're like, That's going to be amazing. So I know I can convince myself to have children. I know I can say, Oh, my God, having a little Tom, feeling it growing inside me, not dying alone. All these things I can convince myself for all the amazing reasons why I want to have children. But what does an average Wednesday look like on a non-so special day where nothing exciting is going on, and I love my business. How on Earth am I going to be a mother and run a business? What does that look like?

That's behind door number one. Behind door number two, what does life look like if I'm a stay at home wife, and I have children. Write that out. And now what does door number three look like if I chose not to have children, and all I did was work? And now I've got these three doors. And with a zero judgment, I've done the process. I've I worked out all the pros and all the cons. And now with no one else's involvement, what's the thing that lights Lisa up? And what I realized is it was exactly what I was doing, going freaking hard for my goals, seeing how it was impacting strangers I'd never met. And it all started with Quest. We were helping the anorexic community, the oboe community. And now with impact theory, helping people who have depression, anxiety. Some people, someone was going to commit suicide, but they watched the piece of our content. And I'm I'll never know their names, but I impacted them. That's what lights me on fire. And when I realized that, it was, I don't want to say an easy decision, but it was an easy decision for me and Tom to say, We're not going to have children.

And then the hardship of telling everyone else and all that came with that. When was that? How old were you? This was probably 2015, '14-ish.

Interesting. Before then, roughly, you were still thinking, Okay, I want to have kids. It was in It was in your thoughts, it was in your heart, We're going to do this someday, but I don't know when.

Because it was never in my mind that I could question it. So I just kept putting it off thinking, Will it will happen then. Sure. And that was like, one of the biggest things is that I ride in the back is asking ourselves the hard questions. And that takes radical confidence because a lot of the time we fear asking the hard question.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.