Was Lewis Howes a bully? Is it possible? He set up the situation: When you’re young, you’re told to be kind, open, loving, helpful and generous. When you stand up to the bullies for treating someone badly, what happens? They shove you in a locker....
Was Lewis Howes a bully? Is it possible? He set up the situation:
When you’re young, you’re told to be kind, open, loving, helpful and generous. When you stand up to the bullies for treating someone badly, what happens? They shove you in a locker.
Your mindset changes.
And then you realize… maybe it doesn’t feel good to be open, kind and generous.
So we put on these masks.
We try to fit in. We try to protect ourselves.
Lewis walked me through the masks:
The athletic mask The material mask The sexual mask The know it all mask (and so on.)
He writes about each one in his new book, “The Mask of Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Create Strong Relationships, and Live Their Fullest Lives.”
And he gives a real-life example for each mask. I’m in the book. He put me in as the example for the “know it all mask.”
So I asked him, “Why did include me in your book?”
“Well, as I was writing it, I was trying to think of examples of men in my life who are a good representation of these masks," he said. "For example, the sexual mask was Tucker Max and Neil Strauss. For the material mask, I talk about Ty Lopez. I’m not trying to make any man wrong," he said. “They're just examples of men who have lead with these masks and got amazing results but also struggled."
But I was still curious why he included me. I push. "I think to me, you’re just a brilliant guy who always knew how to build up businesses. You had the answers, you were smart in chess. You read a ton of books. You just had a lot of information," he said.
But he also reveals my failures. And how I exposed myself through writing. I put my fear and the stories behind my fear out in the open. And that's what Lewis calls "the vulnerability hiding beneath the mask."
It's what we lost when we were shoved in the locker, humiliated and afraid. We have to return to what was once lost.
But be careful not to put a new mask on at the same time.
I made this mistake. And I think I still make it. After losing everything and writing about it, I put on a new mask. “I think that became an addiction for me,” I told Lewis. I replaced the “know it all mask” or the “Wall Street” mask with a new, “self-deprecating mask.”
I felt if I didn’t write a new self-deprecating story about myself every day, I’d disappear.
And it goes back to Lewis’s point. Masks help us protect ourselves. But they also help us lose our sense of self.
“Most of us don’t feel like people will still like us or love us if we’re not producing one of these masks…” he said.
It’s scary to remove the protected mask layer. But Lewis says that’s part of growing into your true self.
“Try to think, ‘How can I take off the masks that aren’t supporting my vision or the masks that are maybe hurting other people in the process?’”
I’ve known Lewis a long time. And I wanted to learn from his new strengths. Not just the ones he’s mastered. I wanted to learn from the lessons he’s still trying to learn.
So I asked him, “What if this book doesn’t do well? And you get the worst reviews?” Because he said winning was one of his old masks.
“Here’s the thing, I’ve come to peace with it,” Lewis said. “I’ve thought about this. ‘If I didn’t get on the bestseller list how would I feel?’ My ego would be hurt. I’d be sad and frustrated because I worked so hard. But I’m focused on the vision, the process, and the message more than the result. I’m not defining my self-worth based on the result anymore. If I don’t hit the ‘New York Times’ list, it’s okay. It’s more important for me to get the message out than to get the result.”
I believe in Lewis's message, too. It's helpful for men to understand themselves and for women to understand the men in their lives.
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You can read my show notes here:
https://jamesaltucher.com/2017/10/lewis-howes/
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