Rewrite Your Identity: From Self-Sabotage to Self-Worth

If you've ever told yourself "I'm not enough"—this one's for you. In this short but powerful episode, Lewis Howes shares how the stories we repeat in our heads shape our identity… and how he rewrote his through a signed contract with himself. It’s raw, real, and exactly what every entrepreneur needs to hear when they feel stuck.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:42] The mindset shift you need to get unstuck

[01:00] How negative self-talk shapes your identity

[01:56] Lewis’ raw story of internalized self-hatred

[03:00] The healing journey that led to inner peace

[04:07] Writing a new identity contract (yes, literally!)

[05:15] Choosing a believable identity you can actually live into

[06:13] Why integrity and authenticity matter in your transformation

🎧 Listen to the full episode with Lewis Howes, You’re Not Stuck: How to Overcome Your Fears and Rewrite Your Identity, >>HERE<<

Connect With Lewis Howes:

Podcast links:  

The School of Greatness - https://lewishowes.com/podcast/# 
The Daily Motivation - https://greatness.com/daily-motivation/

Social links: 

• Website: https://lewishowes.com/
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lewis
• X: https://x.com/lewishowes
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lewishowes
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lewishowes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lewishowes

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For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode602

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Transcript

Katie Haahr 00:00:00  In today's episode of The Jasmine Star Show, we're sharing a clip from a powerful conversation with bestselling author and high performance coach Louis House. And this, y'all, is all about something every entrepreneur wrestles with fear. This clip was pulled from Jasmine's full length podcast interview with Louis, because it gets right to the heart of why so many of us feel stuck, and what it really takes to rewrite the stories that are holding us back. This episode is for the dreamer who's tired of overthinking, the doer who still feels like they're not enough, and the leader who's ready to finally stop self-sabotaging and start showing up with confidence. Let's get right into it.

Jasmine Star 00:00:42  So you hit the ground running on page 20. You said that there's a mindset shift that a person needs to make to actually start moving towards what they want. So let's start there. Somebody right now is listening and they feel stuck. They could have a business or they're just starting a business. What's the first mindset like thing to get out of? Like I'm feeling stuck.

Lewis Howes 00:01:00  Is to reflect on your identity and you reflect on your identity through asking a set of questions, but really just paying attention to what you say to yourself consistently and what you say to others consistently. And whatever we add after I am is who we believe we are. And if we could record the narration we have inside of our head on a daily basis and play it to the world, they'd probably put us in a mental institution. Yeah, because a lot of us say nasty things about ourselves to ourselves internally and then also to others around us. And if you said these things to your best friend or your partner or your spouse or your mom or dad, they wouldn't want to be in your life if you spoke to other people the way that we spoke to ourselves. Not everyone does this, but typically a lot of us have a negative identity around how we speak about ourselves. When I was growing up, I used to say all the time, I'm such an idiot. I'm so stupid. I'm mean, I'm worthless.

Lewis Howes 00:01:56  Even when I achieved something, it still wasn't good enough, right? So I was like, but I'm still made that mistake. What a dummy. I would say these words and I used to, when I was a teenager, physically punched myself in the face and in the head and beat myself up physically. A lot of us just do it emotionally and psychologically and verbally, but I would do it also physically. So for many years, I was driven by an identity that did not serve harmony inside of me. It created external results, but left me feeling enharmonic internally, which again made me feel I'm not enough. I'm stupid. I'm not worthy of all these things. So this identity drove me, but it also hurt me at the same time. In ten years ago, I started a journey of healing and it's been an ongoing journey. In no way am I still a perfect human being, and I'm a flawed human being that makes mistakes all the time. But over the last ten years, it's been an incredible journey of awareness, reflection, responsibility and healing which has given me so much peace in my heart.

Lewis Howes 00:03:00  I've never felt this much peace and calm. That doesn't mean that there's not challenges, stress and adversity in my life, but I don't internalize it the way I used to. And ten years ago, I decided to create a different identity with myself. And before I used to be, I was a fun loving, pretty happy guy. But there was a wound inside of me, multiple wounds, and whenever those would get triggered, someone would touch it. Someone would cut me off in the street. I'd get angry. Someone would say something to me on a basketball court, I'd react, you know, someone would get mad at me or say something they didn't like. I'd shut down, so I would get angry and frustrated. I would get in stages of I wouldn't call it depression, but states of sitting in my apartment for days not knowing what to do. So I wasn't like depressed, thinking I wanted to commit suicide, but I was in depressed emotional states where I was just like, what am I doing and beating myself up? And I also would tell myself all the time, man, you're such an idiot.

Lewis Howes 00:04:07  You're so stupid. You're not smart. You're just a dummy. I would say these things internally and externally, so my identity, based on my own narrative of my own story, was causing a lot of suffering. Ten years ago, I decided to break that identity belief within myself by literally creating a contract with myself, a written contract where I wrote down a new identity and signed it. I had this framed on my wall for a long time, and the contract is still the same today. Instead of being angry, frustrated, depressed states and dumb, I became a loving, passionate, wise man. And that is my identity today. Whenever I feel off, whenever I feel frustrated, whenever I feel like I'm having an off day, I lean back into my own personal contract. I am a loving, passionate, wise man and I had to create a contract that I could actually believe, Not like, you know, something that was completely false because then I wouldn't be able to believe. And I think that's fake and it's a false identity.

Lewis Howes 00:05:15  So we have to create an authentic, integrity congruent identity with self first. And I knew I was loving, but I just had to let go of the anger. I knew I was passionate, but I had to let go of the mental stress and depression that I would cause. That would cause me to be less passionate at times. And I didn't believe I was smart, so I couldn't put the word smart in my contract. But I did believe I was wise. I believe I had a lot of wisdom and experience. I had gone through a lot of adversity, suffering. I'd done a lot of different things to overcome that created wisdom within me. And wisdom was a word that I could actually step into and embody. I couldn't step into intelligent, smart, high IQ, any of these things because I actually didn't believe that it shifted over the last ten years now. But wisdom was something I couldn't fully embrace and embody, and I create new meaning around the identity. So I created a contract with myself where again, I wrote it down, I embodied it, I the.

Jasmine Star 00:06:12  Contract was I am.

Lewis Howes 00:06:13  A loving, passionate, wise man. And you know, some people call it you can create a mantra for yourself, but this has to be a a signed contract with self, something that you agree to.

Jasmine Star 00:06:28  Agreeing to new terms.

Lewis Howes 00:06:29  New commitments, non-negotiable. This is who I am becoming and who I am.

Jasmine Star 00:06:36  Okay, can we pause here for a second? So the you ten years ago, somebody cut you off. Somebody pissed you off on the basketball court, and you had a reaction and you would get angry or you would shut down. Now, the man that you are today, somebody cuts you off, or people get really tough, or somebody says something that like, presses on a wound. What's the reaction in relation to the new contract?

Lewis Howes 00:06:55  Well, I mean, I it's rare for me to react, very rare for me to react even if someone's doing something that I don't like. I'll just say like, come on, buddy, let's go. You know, someone's like, cutting me off.

Lewis Howes 00:07:04  Like, come on, buddy, but I'm not reacting from a wound anymore. I'm not reacting from like an impatience or frustration, or like someone's abusing me or abandon me or taking advantage of me, which was my viewpoint on the world that everyone was abusing, abandoning, or taking advantage of or trying to do something to harm me based on my previous memories of all the painful memories that I've ever had. I had to curl back and heal and create new meaning from each memory that caused me to have a wound that was still open. Because when we react emotionally or mentally, whether it be from anger or frustration, anything that isn't at the highest conscious state, when we react in a different way from a suffering state, a hurt state, a fear state, it's not right or wrong, good or bad. It's just is that useful and effective to serving a meaningful mission in your season of life right now? And so I start the book with really defining in one sentence, what is the meaning of the mission that you're on for this season? That season could be three months, three years, ten years.

Lewis Howes 00:08:11  It doesn't matter to me what season you're in, but can you define in one sentence what you're up to right now in your life? Most people aren't clear in one sentence. For me, it's very clear to serve and impact 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life. It's clear on the mission the mechanisms may change, the the actions may change, but it's all serving towards a mission. So it's easier for me to make decisions, yes or no, of what energy to put out into the world every day based on will it support and serve this mission? Will it help others and will it give me energy and peace?

Jasmine Star 00:08:45  How does your mission correlate with the contract? Now the clarity in the contract is your contract still the same or over the last decade, it's changed.

Lewis Howes 00:08:52  It's still the same. My contract would never leave my contract.

Jasmine Star 00:08:55  Are the terms like the the compassionate, loving?

Lewis Howes 00:08:59  I'm a loving, passionate, wise man. Yeah, that's who I am.

Jasmine Star 00:09:01  That's the contract.

Jasmine Star 00:09:03  Stay the same. Yes. And the mission has become what it is.

Lewis Howes 00:09:06  But I've had to learn how to heal. Step one. Step one is I mean, identifying first and facing yourself in the mirror. Ten years ago, right before I created this contract, I looked at myself in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself in a bad way. After I had a pretty bad fight on a basketball court, and I was just having breakdown after breakdown after breakdown in intimate relationships, business partnerships, friendships and just life. I was just not showing up the best version of myself. And I remember after this fight I got in, I looked myself in the mirror and I was like, kind of shaking and trembling and I just didn't recognize who I was. I was creating out of fear, resentment and anger, not from love, abundance and empowerment. And I realized, okay, this way of being, this way of thinking got me certain external results. And at the same time left me feeling extremely sad, alone and suffering internally.

Lewis Howes 00:10:07  So it it was a false sense of working. It worked in terms of success, I guess externally, but it's not the way I wanted to feel internally, so I had to kind of fully look myself in the mirror and say, what are the things that are working and not working? And again, healing is a journey. It's not a one time moment. It's not like, okay, you're you're healed overnight. Once you're aware, it is a journey of facing yourself consistently until your nervous system truly is not triggered by emotional reactions. And I'm not saying don't be prepared if there's a fight or something you got to do to protect yourself. But when it's psychological and emotional triggers, that means there's a wound inside of you that something is is poking you. Whether you see something on TV or someone says something or someone forgot to do something and it triggers you, that just means it's a wound inside of you. It doesn't mean you're good or bad, right or wrong. It just means there's something inside of you that is still hurting you.

Lewis Howes 00:11:03  Where did that come from? So I had to face every memory on my phone for a long time. I don't have it anymore, but on my phone for a long time I used to have a screensaver. Now I have it of my my girlfriend Martha. But I used to have a I used to have a screensaver.

Jasmine Star 00:11:15  Was it you as a child.

Lewis Howes 00:11:17  Have a five year old? Yeah.

Jasmine Star 00:11:18  Yeah, I remember this.

Lewis Howes 00:11:19  Was a five year old. Used to have me on my screensaver. This was about two years ago. As I really started to dive in deeper. I started the healing journey ten years ago and continued to improve. But there are still things inside of me that I was repeating that I wasn't conscious of until a few years ago when I realized, okay, I'm still entering committed relationships that are not aligned with my values, vision, and lifestyle because of a wound. So I had to face myself and ask, why am I repeating and attracting certain types of people? They're not right or wrong, good or bad.

Lewis Howes 00:11:56  It's just we weren't in alignment. But why am I choosing? And then why am I staying when I know it's not the right thing? What is inside of me that is wounded, that is causing me to abandon self constantly, that is causing me to give in to pleas to to buy peace as opposed to being peace. As opposed to aligning myself as peace in every environment. And that was, you know, six months of intensive therapeutic healing modalities to support me in creating new meaning around other memories from the past that I still hadn't mended. And when we can create new meaning around these little traumas, big traumas, painful memories that we've suppressed for so long, or just tried to block or just not think about, and we heal and then we can face those things. Really, it's about the awareness of it and then integrating it as it comes to you, being able to sit with the uncomfortableness, the frustrations, the pain, the stress and calming your nervous system in the face of it. It's not running away.

Lewis Howes 00:13:01  It's not removing yourself from the situation because it's going to keep coming back. So it's learning how to how do I navigate my emotions when someone is doing something that I don't like, or when I'm in a situation that is scary or vulnerable or upsetting or hurtful to me. How can I learn to create new meaning? So that my mind and my heart are in coherence? That when this happens in the future, because it will happen again, I can navigate it with harmony and peace. It doesn't mean I have to stay in these situations, but I can navigate it without being so reactive and frustrated. And you know, in consumed by what other people are doing.

Jasmine Star 00:13:39  Okay. So we're going to go back to the original question, and I'm going to repeat back what I heard. Yeah. A distilled version. Somebody stuck. And I put it in terms of professional, but we could be stuck in familial relationship finance business. And first things first was to create a new contract. It's to decide the person you're going to become.

Jasmine Star 00:14:00  And in the process of deciding who you're going to become. If you're experiencing the same pitfalls, the same gaps, the same triggers, there are some work that is to be done. And when you realize not and maybe not everybody has to experience this, maybe some people are like, the new contract becomes a new contract, and I haven't gone through enough or different things in my life to affect it so I can move forward. But for those of us like myself who decided just like you, and maybe not in the terms of like a formal contract, but something did happen very similar, and I'm going to decide to become this type of person. And what I experience is very much what you experienced. A lot of triggers and a lot of depressive states and a lot of what if. And I too had to do the work. So if there are people who are listening and you realize you're stuck and you decide you're going to create a new contract that speaks into the mission and you realize there are similar pitfalls, it's time for us to do the work.

Jasmine Star 00:14:45  It's time for us to get outside help.

Lewis Howes 00:14:47  Yeah, but it's always time to do the work.

Katie Haahr 00:14:50  What would change in your life if you stopped making decisions based on fear and started choosing from a place of worth? That's the question Lewis left us with, and one that might take time to fully unpack. But if this episode reminded you that your identity isn't fixed, your past does not define your future, and that fear doesn't get the final say, well, then it's already done its job. We'll see you in the next episode of The Jasmine Star Show.