Video summary
In this special episode of Impact Theory, Les Brown addresses the critical importance of self-care in a world filled with challenges and dominant cultural narratives that can erode one's sense of self. He emphasizes the necessity of escaping limiting labels and engaging in a perpetual process of discovering truth to counteract negative inner conversations. Drawing on an anecdote about anthropologist Margaret Mead, who identified Americans by their unique way of eating pie, Brown illustrates how individuals living within dominant cultures must learn to connect with their internal power. He argues that life inevitably brings setbacks and negative thoughts, but maintaining mental well-being requires constant maintenance work to interrupt the self-explanatory style that can lead to depression and loneliness if left unmanaged. Brown delves into the profound connection between physical movement and mental health, citing extensive data showing that active individuals across all demographics experience greater happiness, better relationships, and more meaning in life. He explains that humans are biologically designed to move, noting that even cognitive functions like thinking and language serve as forms of interaction with the world rather than separate activities from it. The episode highlights how modern technology has negatively impacted this natural state; social media platforms were re-engineered around IPOs to create a constant stream of approval indicators like likes and comments, transforming phones into addictive companions. Brown asserts that checking devices constantly is not an intrinsic part of human nature but a contrived behavior designed by tech companies, leading to issues such as suicide attempts and hospitalizations. To reclaim solitude and break free from these digital cycles, Brown suggests practical steps such as engaging in daily activities without a phone for short periods, like walking the dog or visiting a drugstore. He shares his personal journey of balancing intense drive with playfulness, warning that neglecting one aspect leads to chaos and an empty feeling. His philosophy on relationships stems from early experiences near death at age 19, which taught him that deep connections are essential for life's purpose. Brown attributes his ability to bond quickly to a specific intention formed during those crises: ensuring he lived a beautiful movie surrounded by loved ones rather than missing them in regret. Furthermore, he explains how he repels toxic people and attracts positivity by focusing on the goodness in others and treating everyone with recognition of their inherent value. The discussion also covers Brown's method for building resilience from despair through daily practices that address physical, emotional, social, and mental health. He describes his four-year psychoanalysis journey where an analyst acted as a mirror to help him accept pain rather than deny it or compare himself to others who had worse situations. A pivotal moment in his recovery involved stacking gratitude after friends with cancer smiled at him despite their struggles, which activated the reticular activating system in his brain to highlight positive aspects of life he previously ignored. By controlling his mornings and evenings through routines like eating well, moving better, sleeping more, and eliminating toxic influences while nurturing supportive relationships, Brown found a way to regain control over his day and rebuild confidence even after losing everything multiple times. Ultimately, the episode concludes that achieving extraordinary success requires prioritizing self-care, understanding one's biological needs for movement, cultivating deep relationships, and maintaining a mindset of gratitude and vulnerability.
Read the full video transcript
I hope you enjoyed this episode brought
to you by our sponsors at Whoop. You can
save 15% off your purchase when you go
to whoop.com and use the code IT at
checkout. Now enjoy the episode. Hey
everybody, welcome to Impact Theory.
With everything going on in the world
right now, we all need to make sure that
we're taking the time to prioritize our
own self-care. So, on this special
episode of Impact Theory, we've gathered
self-care tips from some of our
incredible guests to help you guys
incorporate these practices into your
own life. So, get ready to prioritize
you with our first guest, the one and
only Les Brown.
The easiest thing I've done was to get
out from under the labels and to live
the life that I live.
The most difficult thing I've ever done
was to believe that I can do it.
What's the difference?
Um the difference is that when you don't
know what's impacting you
and it's it's something that that's
holding you down and you're not aware of
it. The great anthropologist Margaret
Mead was in a restaurant in London and
and a guy was serving her and said,
"There's several Americans here
tonight." And she said, "Is that right?
Yes. Let me know when you serve them
dessert. I'll tell you exactly how many
are here." He said, "Oh, you couldn't
possibly."
And so he came back and said, "Okay,
I've done it." And she got up and she
walked around
and she came back and she said, "There
are around
25 here."
And he looked at the roster. How did you
know that? Say, "In America,
we eat differently from you when we eat
a dessert. You eat it from the crust
toward the tip. We eat it from the tip
toward the crust. When you eat a slice
of pie, how do you eat yours?
I definitely have from the the tip back
to the crust, for sure.
Yeah, okay. And so so there things that
when you in in my situation, when you
live in a dominant culture that is
designed to destroy your sense of self
and your belief in yourself and and you
have to learn ways in which you can
begin to connect with this power that
you have within yourself to handle where
you are.
The key is to be constantly in a
perpetual process of discovering the
truth of who you are and fighting
constantly to
look for ways in which you can escape
the inner conversation. I speak to
audiences around the world and I
and I train speakers as well and I I
tell them that
when you speak, that there's a there's
an objective that you want to achieve
when you speak to an audience because
how people live their lives as a result
of the story they believe about
themselves. So, you as a speaker, when
you speak in this program, when people
see you, what you do is distract,
dispute, and inspire. You distract
people from their current story with
your guests and the questions that you
ask through the process of the ongoing
questioning and the way in which they
respond and the things they have
learned, you dismantle their current
belief system and inspire them
to create a new chapter with their
lives. And so, but that's an ongoing
process of of constantly interrupting
that conversation, what psychologists
call your self-explanatory style because
life is going to beat up on you in so
many ways and many things they come
back, you know, negative thoughts and
and how you feel about yourself, they
don't die. They they come back once you
stop doing the maintenance work on your
mind.
So, why is movement specifically so
important to mental well-being?
I almost don't even know where to begin
with this. I mean, you can start with
the data. If you just look at the data
around the world, every country you can
imagine that it has been studied in,
every age group, every health status,
every gender, every socioeconomic
status, people who are more physically
active are happier, they have better
relationships, they have more meaning in
life, they're less at risk for things
like depression and loneliness. If you
go further than just sort of that kind
of epidemiology, and you look at how
movement affects the brain, and how
movement affects mental health,
it's as if humans were born to move, and
when we are physically active, it puts
us in a state of not just body, but of
mind to be the best version of
ourselves. You know, everything from the
neurochemistry of the runner's high,
which makes us um enjoy cooperating with
other people more, and gives us hope and
optimism, all the way to how if you are
regularly active, you have a different
brain and nervous system than people who
don't exercise. You have a a brain and a
nervous system that are more sensitive
to pleasure and more resilient to
stress. I could literally just talk for
the next hour listing the many ways, but
I think that the biggest takeaway is
that
that human beings as individuals and as
a species, we thrive when we are active.
That that our brains aren't just housed
in bodies like it's a suitcase that's
carrying our brains around. Our brains
really work best when we are in bodies
that are active.
You actually talk about in the book how
it's quite possible that the very reason
we developed large brains was to move.
Give us some of the science behind that.
One thing that I found in my own life is
once I could understand the biological
mechanisms, once I knew why things were
the way that they were, it became easier
not to be a slave to it. That then I
sort of understood my sense of agency
within the meat suit, as it were. Um so,
where does the hypothesis that our
brains were created to move us come
from?
Yeah, this is I mean, this is an idea
that I I feel like you can't even
explain it. This is an idea that if you
look at the the structure and the
function of the brain, everything that
humans do, other than think, is a form
of movement. You know, communicating,
language, emotion expressions, um labor,
finding food, celebration, procreation,
it's all a physical action. And the idea
is basically other than think and
ruminate and plan, that's, you know,
that there is no other reason to have a
brain except to interact with the world.
Even like thinking is subservient to our
ability to engage with the world. And
so, basically, we have a brain that
scaffolds every type of interaction we
have with the world, which is movement.
And uh I think it's it's not even like a
fancy idea. It's it that just is true.
So, some of the things you talk about in
the book in terms of the consequences of
of the way that we're interacting with
our digital devices,
it's um
if you're right about the cause, it's
pretty terrifying. And I don't think
anyone's going to argue the sort of
realities about mental health issues,
about attempted or hospitalizations due
to attempted suicide. I mean, it's it's
pretty crazy.
Yeah. It It really is. I mean, I think
it's getting stark that having this
thing as a constant companion
is not good for us.
And what's important about this to
understand is that it's also not
fundamental. So, this behavior of
constantly looking at the phone, it's
not intrinsic to this technology. In
fact, we had both social media and
smartphones for years before it became
normal to look at your phone all the
time.
The reason we do that, and this is the
behavior that's causing all these
issues, the reason we do that is that
around the point when the major social
media platforms were preparing for their
IPOs,
they completely re-engineered the social
media experience. So, instead of it
being about posting and reading your
friends' posts, it became about this
steady incoming stream of social
approval indicators.
Like likes and retweets and photo tags
and comments. And so, now
you had a reason to keep going back to
the phone. Because every time you hit
this, there might be another reward
there, another indication of social
approval. None of that was in the
original social media model.
But they added it because it changed it
from something you checked every once in
a while to something that you checked
all the time. And it was really hard to
resist. And in that changed our entire
relationship with these devices. And so,
now we think about it something we look
at all the time. It's sort of trained us
to to think of it like this constant
companion
that we always need to be looking at in
every downtime. But that's very recent
and it's very contrived.
And it's causing a lot of trouble.
So, how do we begin to carve out that
space for solitude? Are there things
that we can do? I know you've talked
about walking. Like, what are some
things that people can do to train
themselves? Because obviously now most
people are in a a very, like you said,
Pavlovian
uh response cycle where it's not going
to happen by accident for them to stop.
So, how do they break out of that? And
what can they do to reintroduce
solitude?
Well, just for the issue of solitude,
it's pretty easy to get it back. All you
have to do is on a regular basis do
something without your phone.
You basically go back to about 10 years
ago.
Not all the time, but just occasionally,
right? So, maybe one you walk the dog at
some point like I'm not going to bring
my phone. You're going to the drugstore.
Not going to bring my phone. Like, just
have some activity you do most days
without your phone, even if it's 20
minutes.
There you're already getting little
doses of solitude. You're breaking the
solitude, complete solitude deprivation
syndrome.
One thing that I see in your story that
I think is really powerful and I want
really want to like take a second to
drill down into it is you're way
intense. And you've said that, you know,
one thing I have to remind myself every
night, and we'll talk about feminine and
masculine energy um a little bit later,
but
you have to remind yourself to soften
back up at the end of the night. And I
thought, "Oh, that's so interesting."
So, you've got this I really like the
titles. I really want to go after it.
I'm way intense. I want to win. I'm all
in. Getting in that kind of shape is
brutally difficult. But then at the same
time you can balance it with the
playfulness and it's not all about that.
How have you learned to strike that
balance and and maybe more importantly,
how do you teach other people to do
that?
Um I've learned if I don't
learn to strike that balance that when I
go to extreme in either one,
um I'm not I I'm not happy. I feel very
uh scattered. I feel frantic. I feel
crazy. So, I think that for me, when I
start feeling a little bit chaotic, so
for me it shows up in a very um like
grasping for straws. Things aren't
happening. Like I'm running into a wall.
Like the feeling of banging your head
against a wall. That's what it feels
like for me. Um and I know a lot of
people can relate to that. And I think
especially a lot of people in fitness
might get into it to kind of like maybe
they're anxious or it calms their nerves
cuz I think I run really on the anxious
side. So, for me, if I don't learn how
to control that, I'll go to the extreme
of something.
Um so, it's a must for me. I actually
think it's a must for everyone to kind
of find
uh how to dance in the different uh
categories of your life because we're
not just one thing. And when we go all
in on one thing, we're severely
neglecting the other parts of us, which
makes for an empty human, you know?
Which makes for someone who doesn't feel
who never feels full. So, I have to
remember that there's so many parts of
me that I need to make sure that I'm
fulfilling. For me, play is so
important. And And when I was first um
when I was first building my business
and when I was really getting into the
fitness world, I neglected play and I
neglected I'm like I love being a
weirdo. I love being a goofball. I love
being funny. And I thought that I had to
suppress that side of me in order to
win, in order to be successful. You
know, school was college was frowned
upon and like really restrictive
religion. Um so, for me, I think that in
order to win and be successful, I
thought that I had to just shut down
the goofy. I had to be a certain way. I
had to just drive so hard. And what
happened is the driving got me
somewhere. It drive drive drive drive.
Do it. Do it. And you know, the voice in
my head was like um
it was very like a hardcore coach, which
would get me somewhere, but there was no
joy along the way.
So, every time I'd wind up somewhere, I
was like
well, I thought this would be way better
than when I
than when I'm actually here. And And
that wasn't even fun. Was it even worth
it? And now it's never enough. It's like
never enough. And I just felt so empty
as well because this part of me that I
love I loved that side of me. I loved
the silly goofy side. It's like that's
when I really that feeling of really
liking yourself and feeling
um alive. That's when I feel most
connected to people.
And I That was another moment of
okay, I really think that all of my
power might be in the complete
vulnerability. And when I started
sharing my story more of, you know, I
still have anxiety. Like literally when
I sat in this chair, I was like, "Oh,
dang. Like there's the wave again."
Um I still have massive anxiety. I'm
like a massive weirdo. I And when I
started sharing those things, it was the
people just came flooding in because
they can see you. Like they can finally
see who you are.
Why are you so good at relationships?
Like what are a few of the things that
make you bond with people as quickly as
you do?
Ooh.
Um
I always come back to my There must be
an intention there. So the intention
Where did the intention come from? So
the intention for me came from
you know,
when I was
on my deathbed,
and in, you know, two times in my life I
thought I was going to die.
Um and the one that gave me the greatest
gift was the did I love part of did I
live, did I love, did I matter.
I saw scenes
of my life
when I thought I was going to die, I saw
scenes of my life when I was surrounded
by the people that I loved.
And my instant feeling was
I'm going to miss them.
And they're going to miss me. And I'm
dying, and that's so sad.
And that was as important as did I live
my life or did I make a difference? It
was like, I'm so sad. And I got that as
a 19-year-old kid. Like a breakup of a
relationship sent me into
suicide.
That realization was like, oh my god, at
the end
all you're going to wonder is about your
family and your friends and people you
loved. And all they're they're going to
miss you. So I got
early that that one of the objectives of
this game has to be deep relationships.
Because you're going to see scenes of
your life surrounded by people you love
at the very end. And I'm like, so live
your life so it's this epic beautiful
movie.
And so
I think that was where the intention
came from was I just wanted to have
great relationships.
Um the second is
I'm so good
at recognizing how awesome people are.
You know?
I just I have a talent finding
capability of just goodness. Like I You
know it. You've been in my world. I
don't attract Like they're
nowhere
I'm too annoying. I'm too happy for
them. There's too much positive
psychology happening so the asshole's
like, "I don't like that guy." They
don't come to my seminars. They don't
buy my stuff. I repel
all the jerks.
And I'm super lucky about that. I don't
know if it's the way I look or the way
that I talk. I think the other aspect is
all I want to do and what I realized
early on from reading personal
development books is your life creates a
ripple.
And so I'm always trying to
realize that maybe I can make somebody
smile today and now when they go home
they're nicer to their kid.
That's a real thing.
And so I treat people with that
recognition cuz it's I don't know if you
ever Sometimes when someone treats you
bad, it really does mess up the rest of
your day. And I had people beat me when
I was a kid. I got in fights when I was
a kid. I was in martial arts most of my
life so I I've just had like super
violent things happen in my life. I've
had a lot of drama
with relationships early in my life. And
I'm I'm talking like pre-20s.
And
I just wanted to be
the positive ripple.
And I picked a path that, you know, a
lot of people pick. I drank, hooked up.
Um,
I didn't really even go that far. I just
wrote about it. The only reason people
know me about this is just cuz I wrote
about it in a funny way.
Um, and then I kind of it kind of took
off and it led me to success and then I
kind of went a little excess. But if you
asked me at 26, I'm like, "No, no, no,
no. My parents, you know, they were
fine. Everything's great. I'm perfectly
happy. Are you kidding? Everything's
wonderful."
It's not true. It wasn't true.
And I just never thought about my
emotions. I had never really connected
with them. I had never really
I just had never really had those
conversations with myself um or with
anybody else really. And so part of
therapy was understanding first
recognizing the pain was there.
Then it was accepting that it actually
existed, right?
Um which is hard like you think well if
you recognize it, you accept it. But no,
no, no, no, like I was in denial for a
long I well, I'm not you know the all
the stories like you tell yourself well,
well, but other people have it worse.
They do doesn't mean like that my stuff
doesn't deeply impact me or you know, it
wasn't that bad. It may not have been.
It doesn't mean that it's not having an
impact. I mean all this sort of that
sort of stuff. So I then
I do accept all this. Then I had to give
myself space to really investigate like
okay. Like what am I feeling? Like so
really kind of connecting my thoughts to
my emotions. Um which sounds like really
basic and
I don't know. I I
I just wasn't there. I think most people
aren't.
And what did that process look like?
This is so useful. And I don't know if
you have a sense that that this is so
unique to you it'd never be beneficial.
But like I get this question over and
over and over. Like people don't know
how to become aware
No, I'll talk about it. If you if you're
if you listen, I'll talk about it. Um
all right. So uh I mean all I can do is
tell you what I did, right? Like I'm not
going to sit up here and go well, here's
the eight
ways to do it and I don't know. I I only
know my path.
So for me like that's why I picked
psychoanalysis cuz it's it's intense.
You're going four days a week for an
hour a day, right? So for four years I
did this.
And what you're doing when you go is
it's not like it's not
a good analyst and I had a pretty good
analyst is very
um
it's kind of like the classic you know,
uh image of like you know, laying on the
sofa and the analyst is kind of behind
you. It's like that. It's mainly you're
talking and then about what you're
thinking, what you're feeling. And then
they essentially do their best to
present basically a mirror to you,
right? So, they ask questions or they
point things out. Um uh
they never like say, "Oh, well, you're
doing this wrong." Almost never give
advice. They never
um
tell you what's right or wrong. They're
definitely not judgmental. Uh it's very
accepting. It's very like they care.
It's very caring, but it's also like
very reflective.
I had a really good friend of mine. I
went to lunch and he said, "Yeah, I
don't know who this guy is here
in front of me." And he goes, "Let me
ask you a question, honestly.
Right now, what are you grateful for?"
And at the lunch I said,
"Jack Nothing, brother. There's
nothing good in my life right now."
And I'm not exaggerating this to you
when I tell you this, and this is a
factual story. As I'm mouthing these
words, two people walked in with an
older man, both of them clearly were
fighting cancer somehow. Both had lost
their hair. One of the ladies had a
bonnet on, and they were barely moving
in. Both walked by our table and gave me
the most warm greeting, the warmest
smile as a stranger. And he goes,
"That's pretty freaking pathetic. You
can't find anything in your life to be
grateful for right now?" And on the
drive home, I'm not kidding you, I
started to stack gratitude. I started to
take inventory. Because if you can find
things to be grateful for in that space,
man, is your life going to be rich when
there really are external things to be
grateful for. So, my first mechanism out
of that space was honestly to stack the
things I was grateful for, and I started
reinforcing it over and over and over
again.
And what happens is there's this
reticular activating system in our
brains, right? And all of a sudden,
because that's the messaging I was
giving myself, all of a sudden, all
these things start to come into my
awareness that I'm grateful for. I start
to magnetize to myself some people that
I needed to find into my life, and that
was the next layer. I started to see
things to be grateful for, my health, my
fitness, people who loved me. And what
it is, it changed my state. When I
stacked gratitude, I changed what I did
in the morning and I changed what I did
in the evening. And so, somehow by
grabbing control of my morning and by
grabbing control of my evening, I got
some measure of control over the middle
of my day. I was an out of control
person back in those days, meaning this,
I woke up worried, stressed, fearful,
and I immediately start thinking about a
bill I had to pay, something that was
wrong. And I'm in a state of reaction to
begin every I'm talking within 6 minutes
of waking up, 6 seconds. Most people
listening to this, that's what they do.
I said, I got to grab control of my
morning and I set up routines in my
morning.
Maybe they served me, maybe they didn't,
but they were things I could deliver on
doing for myself. And so, not only did
that give me control over the day, but I
started to stack my self-confidence,
too.
How in the depths of your despair did
you become okay with trying something
that you knew might fail? Like, how did
you build yourself back up? You know,
the the daily practice, was that the the
answer? Like, you in your book, Choose
Yourself, you do this extraordinary
walk-through of a kid reaches out to you
and he's like at that place where he's
just on the floor. There's no getting
up. There's there's Even you said even
asking him to floss a single tooth would
have been asking too much. And how do
you build back from that? How did you
build back from that?
Yeah, so I mean, it's happened more
than once to me. Sometimes I would do
things right and I'd get back up and I'd
be disciplined and and, you know, I
would find opportunities and some
success again and then lose it again,
lose everything to zero
after making millions again. And I and I
I remember one time
I had
built and sold a second company, or
maybe this was the third company, and
I was lying in a hammock and I realized
I just had lost everything again and the
hammock was in between these two houses
I had bought on this nice piece of
property overlooking the Hudson River
and it was raining and I just didn't
feel like getting up cuz it was just
where was I going to go? I had no
nothing to do, nothing
going on, nothing to hope for and I was
just like what? Why did this happen
again? And
I started to just
bit by bit pieces together like where
did I feel pleasure on the way up in
such a way that oh, if I keep doing
this, if I keep hitting the accelerator
on this activity, good things will
happen and that's what I call in the in
Choose Yourself, I call it this daily
practice that now just every day I make
sure I I factor in these four things.
I'll say the four things, but then I'll
say how from the beginning you can do
it. So, the four things that I started
doing and again, this is just me. I
mean, it might work for others, might
not.
Am I
am I getting a little better in terms of
physical health? Now, as you age, your
physical health changes, is different,
but I'm at least attempting to
understand and essentially eat, move,
sleep better every day. Um emotional
health. You know, so many times I
thought I have a business opportunity
with this guy. Not such a great person.
I could see there's some toxicity around
him, but this opportunity seems really
huge. So, I better ignore the bad sides
of this person and focus on the
opportunity. That those situations never
ever like zero of those situations
worked out and so so, you know, I every
day do I think am I eliminating toxic
people from my life and focusing on
positive people who I love and want to
support and they love and want to
support me and then every day you could
tweak that like a bonsai tree. There's
always people moving in and out of your
life and you could always tweak it And
so that's emotional health.
All right, everybody. I hope you enjoyed
learning how these amazing individuals
use self-care practices to help them
create the best versions of themselves.
And now my hope is that you guys will be
able to prioritize your own needs and
help you achieve the same kind of
extraordinary success. You need to take
care of you. Please don't forget that.
Thank you guys so much for watching. And
until next time, my friends, be
legendary. Take care.
Hey everyone. I want to tell you all
about our sponsor Whoop. Life can be
stressful. We're all impacted by stress
differently though. From what we do at
work, how we train, and our lives at
home, we're constantly exerting
ourselves. And often times, we only
think about what we do to stay fit and
how we eat, but we overlook the
importance of sleep in all of this.
Tomorrow's best work though is done by
night. And our sponsor Whoop is a
fitness tracker strap with an incredible
app that helps monitor your sleep. Whoop
provides the personalized insights to
make smarter performance habits from
your sleep. Whoop tracks all things
sleep from your sleep cycles, stages,
disturbances, and efficiency. Based on
how strenuous your day is, Whoop will
provide suggested sleep times so your
body is able to get the rest it needs to
recover. Whoop also automatically tracks
workouts so you can focus on your
training. Whoop has a built-in app
that's amazing and it has this cool
feature that allows you to track your
strain from training in real time.
Monitor your calories burned, heart
rate, and what zone your heart is in.
The Whoop Strap 3.0 has 5-day battery
life and on the go charging so you never
need to take it off and it's even
waterproof. You can also sync your heart
rate to compatible treadmills, bikes,
and rowers. And the Whoop membership
service provides a fitness tracker for
free and gives members access to their
app which provides personalized insight
into recovery, strain, and sleep. If
you're looking to be smarter about how
you sleep, recover, and train so you can
be at your best, you have to get Whoop.
Whoop is offering 15% off to our
audience when you go to whoop.com and
use the code IT at checkout. That's w h
o o p.com
and use the code IT at checkout to save
15% off your order. Unlock your best
self today with Whoop. All right, guys.
Try this one out. Take care and be
legendary.
Many people never achieve their goals
because they have too many toxic,
negative, energy-draining people in
their lives. And you have to have goals
outside of your comfort zone that will
challenge you because in order to do
something you've never done, you've got
to become someone you've never been.