Erwin McManus
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I don't know how to let go of this past hurt. Negative emotions stay with us. Positive emotions flow through us. And what we have to realize, and to me, it makes perfect sense because There is nothing worth achieving in life that doesn't take hard work. So why should we think the best version of us would not take hard work? And so you can only become the best version of you.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I can only become the best version of me if I'm willing to put the work in to become that person. If I don't want to put the work in, I become the worst version of me.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah. And when you say this may not affect everyone, what's interesting to me, Chris, is the people who experience this the most are the people who experience the most success. You would think it'd be the other way around.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, and it's not, it's the other way around. Because success tends to have something that pushes you and something that pulls you. And I find this dynamic over and over again. People who are highly successful have something that's pushing them, a fear of poverty, a fear of insignificance, a fear of not being loved, a fear of not having value or having worth.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think that for me is the key is that I've lived a pretty adventurous life, traveled to nearly a hundred countries, gone to some of the most dangerous places in the world, walked the streets of Damascus, dropped into Pakistan and throughout the Middle East, different parts of the world that very few people ever go to and very few people ever survive.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And it's like a darkness that eats away at them and it pushes them to accomplishment. And then hopefully there's something that also pulls them, a desire to make a difference in the world, a vision of a better humanity, an opportunity to alleviate human suffering or to make life better for other people.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And what I look for when I'm coaching a lot of young entrepreneurs is, has the pull become more powerful than the push? Because when the push is more powerful than the pull, they're they're positioned for self-destruction and for things to fall apart in their life. And so the irony is almost the less determined you are
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
to become the best version of you, the highest expression of yourself, the less aware you're going to be of the tension in your soul.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think that's something we haven't really talked about enough in the world because we keep admiring and idealizing people's outcomes rather than their essence. And what ends up happening is that we want their outcomes. And so without even being aware of it, we also embrace their essence. And then we come to a place where we succeed and we hate ourselves.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And in fact, it's really interesting. I was there. There's a minor league football league called the USFL. And I was working with that league. And the number one question I got from the quarterbacks and the different players were completely on overthinking. And that same week I was meeting with Sean McVay, the head coach of the Rams, and I had the privilege to work with him.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I was telling him the story. I said, hey, Sean, you know, on Monday I was working with USFL and they were asking about overthinking. And I'm wondering, is the difference between a player at your level and a player at their level that your players don't overthink? He goes, no. The number one thing I have to deal with is overthinking.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And one of the most interesting things for me is that in those moments, I didn't feel captured by fear at all. And a huge part of that was because I'd learned how to take this emotion, this experience called fear, turned it into a positive fuel and use it as a way to motivate me to move forward in life.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I moved on to start talking about his life and where he was at. And he goes, no, no, go back. What did you tell them about overthinking? And I realized there is no level of achievement where you break through that dilemma of overthinking. And what's interesting about overthinking is we never overthink positive scenarios. Yeah, I'm really not overthinking.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Oh, I wonder if my wife's going to love my gift too much or, you know, and, you know, I'm not overthinking. I hope this podcast goes better than, you know, I'm so worried this can be better than I thought. Right. And we're always overthinking negative scenarios.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so that's one of the things that I think is really important to realize is that almost the best way to counter overthinking is to begin to overthink positive scenarios. And realize, oh no, this is not my brain trying to solve a problem. This is my brain trying to control an outcome. And I do not have control of the outcomes.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, overthinking can also be a superpower. Again, it's about taking negative material and turning it to positive energy or positive force. And so if you find yourself overthinking, go, all right, I'm going to give myself, you know, 20 minutes to overthink. And I'm going to write down every potential scenario.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I'm going to create a solution for every one of them because all I need is one more solution that I have a problem. I mean, success is really just about having one more solution than you have a problem. You can't outthink your problems, but you can wonderfully have a creative process of finding solutions.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I think most of the solutions that I find in my life, I've already found way before the problem because I've thought about the problem before I ever faced it. And so a lot of people think, oh, you're so good at making decisions in the last minute. And I go, no, I had this minute five years ago in the shower when I was overthinking the possibility of the scenario.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
So the best way to overcome overthinking is immediate action. And what you find, I would say 90% of the time, when you're working through a scenario, your first solution is is the solution you come to after overthinking and thinking through another hundred solutions. And then you come back to that first solution. That first solution is usually so clear and then it's the consequences.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so what you have to ask yourself is, am I trying to mitigate the consequence or am I trying to find a solution? And if you go, I have, it's just like when you're playing quarterback, it's amazing to me how, when you're watching like a Joe Burrow or a Josh Allen, you know, or Patrick Mahomes, what you're finding is someone who can make decisions really quickly.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, I don't think it's that difficult to teach. I think most of us know just intrinsically that when we're afraid. But it's usually related to when we have a dream, an ambition, desire, or goal, and we're more afraid of the consequences than we are the benefit. And so when we're paralyzed, moving into our best view of ourselves or our future, that's when we know we're controlled by fear.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I mean, that's the thing to me about like watching Tom Brady. It's how fast he makes his reads and he makes a pass and he may throw to the, his second option and his fourth option ends up being wide open. He doesn't worry about that. He finds the first option that's open.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
What you find with quarterbacks who have incredible athletic ability, but they don't seem to have that decisiveness, is that they end up rolling out of pocket to create more time for themselves because they missed an earlier opportunity that was actually there. It's kind of amazing when you're watching something like pro football, and some quarterbacks seem to never have a receiver open.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And other quarterbacks seem to be able to throw their receivers open. To me, this is the thing with overthinking. Action is what destroys overthinking. Move forward, make a choice, make it fast, because your brain only listens to one language, and that's action. And it's even true when it comes to personal life change.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
You know, we've moved into 2025 and, you know, you can have all these different resolutions and all these different goals. And I can tell myself this is the year at 66 that I'm going to get in the best shape of my life, you know, and this is the year I'm going to make these decisions, these choices. But the people in my life, if I've made those resolutions before, they know I'm lying.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Even if I don't know I'm lying, they know I'm lying because they've heard it before. But you know who really knows I'm lying? My brain. My brain knows I'm lying because it's heard me say this over and over and over again. The only way my brain is ever convinced I'm not lying is action. The moment I act differently, my brain is now hearing a language that has integrity.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And it's the same way with overthinking. I say, look, trust your instincts. If you've achieved a level of excellence or of greatness or competency, your first instinct is probably the right one. And then if it doesn't work out, you have a better chance of succeeding the next time. than you do with overthinking.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah. That's why I love describing it this way, that your freedom is on the other side of your fear. Because if you're afraid of heights, you stay low. If you're afraid of people, you stay alone. If you're afraid of the dark, you stay in the light. Your fear establishes the boundaries of your freedom. And so when you're defining your fears, you're actually defining your personal boundaries.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I'm absolutely convinced that the freedom we all long for is on the other side of our fears. And our fears becomes a psychological boundary that holds us captive and tells us that it's too dangerous to go there. But the moment we go there, we realize, oh my goodness, this is what I've been dreaming for of all my life. I grew up incredibly shy and reclusive and introverted.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I was in a psychiatric chair by the time I was 10 years old, Chris. And being tested for mental disabilities. And I was a straight D student, first to 12th grade. My English teacher, last day of high school, asked me if I thought about going to college. I said, maybe. She said, you will never make it. I didn't go to school right away. I worked construction. I was a carpenter.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I worked as a lumberjack. I made pizzas, flipped burgers. I had no direction, no future in my life. And a huge part of that was this fear that I could never accomplish anything meaningful. And so what I ended up doing is I did nothing so that there was no proof that I was not good at anything. Hmm. And what I had to really begin to realize is that fear was the debilitating element in my soul.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I had this very odd kind of experience years later as an adult. My son was around 15 years old. He wanted to meet my stepdad that he'd never met. That's where I had my name, McManus. And we flew across the country. I tracked him down. I hadn't seen him in almost 20 years. And And he said to my son, I don't know why he said this.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
He goes, I don't know what your dad told you, but he was just average. He goes, I don't know if he, you know, he's talking about athleticism and sports and different things. He goes, you know, I don't know what he told you. Now his brother was exceptional, but he was just average. And I remember saying to him, dad, I don't know what you think I would tell him. I was just average.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And as I was leaving, what really hit me was he was absolutely right. I hid in the average. The one way to remain invisible in life is to be average. And I was trying to to cover all my insecurities and all my self-doubt by just being average. Because if you become extraordinary, you now become the target of other people's critique or criticism or evaluation.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And one of the choices I had to make in my own life is realizing I want to make a difference in the world. I want to do something that matters. And I remember I had an uncle who drove me to college about 15 hour drive. And he saw me years later, goes, hey, do you talk now? And he didn't mean for a living. He meant, do I actually talk? He goes, I drove you 15 hours. You never said a word.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I was so introverted. No one would have ever guessed I would end up speaking to millions of people around the world. And what I can tell you, Chris, is that what shifted for me wasn't that I wasn't afraid to walk up on a platform. What shifted for me was I didn't walk in that platform for my ego. And I didn't walk in that platform for my need or search for self-worth.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
But I wanted to actually help people find freedom from the fears that had held me back. And I looked at myself and I thought, if I've been trapped in fear at such a profound level and have found my way out, I'm convinced most of humanity is trapped in fear.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And if I can just help people find just enough self-belief to break out of that prison that they've created themselves by believing these things about themselves, then for me, my life has been well spent.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
For me, it came really deeply rooted in what later I found as a faith. I grew up irreligious. I didn't have any spiritual contacts. I didn't know there was a God or believe in God. And when I was 20 years old and I was in college, I was studying philosophy and was just trying to find meaning in life. And I was on a desperate search to figure out whether my life had any significance.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I was drowning in a personal nihilism that life had no meaning, that existence was just arbitrary, that human action was empty and hollow. And then to consider this narrative that we're created by God and that we're created in his image and that God what gives God pleasure is for us to express goodness and to live a life of love and to elevate the value of other human beings.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, and one of the things we have to realize is that one of the things that's unique about human beings as a species is that we're interconnected to the future. Every other species, from the best that we can tell, is completely existential. They live in this moment. They're surviving the Serengeti. They're surviving the hunt and the fight for survival.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And for me, I found that in the person of Jesus. And what helped my self-belief was this possibility. And I know you can have a lot of scientists and philosophers, and for me, it's just very, very personal. The possibility that my life actually mattered was overwhelming to me. And I wish I could say I made this incredibly scientific, academic, mathematical decision. It wasn't.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
It was, for me, more of a... God, if you're out there and my life matters, I'm in. I just want to make a difference in the world. I want to serve humanity. I want to help people live a life that's fully alive. And my self-belief came in this conviction that my life wasn't about me, that my life had to be bigger than me, and that I could actually shift the course of human history.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
by living a life that expands love and hope and faith.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, it was really kind of interesting because I was driving through a city that was, at that time, the highest murder rate, highest crime rate in the United States. And I was considering going down there and working on a project, but I was scared. I mean, out of my mind. And I'm borrowing my girlfriend, who is now my wife, Kim's yellow Pinto. So I'm in the hood in a yellow Pinto.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I'm begging to be killed. And my heart is pounding against my chest. I'm 24 years old and I'm terrified. And I stopped the car in the middle of the street. And I'm kind of new in this whole faith thing. And I just started reading the Bible and I kind of stopped and prayed and said, God, I can't come down here if I'm scared to death to get out of the car.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And all these people of faith were giving me these great verses that were so encouraging, you know, but none of those came to my mind. There's a particular statement in the scriptures where it says, to live is Christ and to die is gain. And I had this deep sense in this moment that said, Erwin, if you'll just die right now, I'll take you on a life journey that only dead men can walk.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And in that moment, I had a personal funeral. And I told myself, I am dead to all my fear, to my existence, and to my doubts. And I spent the next 10 years working in the middle of drug cartels, walking into houses or projects owned by cartels, Uzi, machine guns everywhere, cocaine stacked to ceilings. And I can tell you, Chris, I never felt fear.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
But human beings are inseparable from a relationship to the past and the future. And when we live in the past, we tend to live a life of regret. But when we live in the future, we have two options. We have an option to either live a life that would be described as a life of faith or a life of fear because the future is unknown. And from my perspective, it's uncreated. I'm not a fatalist.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Because I sat across from a guy who sent me a letter in prison telling me he would kill me the moment he got out of prison. And when he got out of prison, I went and found him and walked into the room he was in. And it changed the way I could approach life because you couldn't take anything from me.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And then 40 years later, I had stage four cancer and had prostate, bladder, and lymph node cancer that had been undetected and had metastasized and had six and a half hours surgery, not knowing if I would live. And the craziest thing in that season, Chris, I never felt fear one time. And my family will tell you this. And the reason is because fear became my ally. It could take nothing from me.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I had given it everything. And I'm 66 now. And every time I move into a new decade, I find myself strangely more fearless. And in fact, my family, they asked me if I would just slow down or be a little more cautious. And I'm like, why? The older I get, the less life you can steal from me. And I've been in the most dangerous, violent, fragile environments in the world. And I walked out of those.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
There used to be students who would put money on every day what day I would be assassinated.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I did. And, you know, I look at it now, I go, what kept me safe was my lack of fear of death. This conviction that you couldn't take anything from me. And even this killer... who told me he was going to kill me when he came out of prison, looked at me and he was so confused by me. And he said, you and me are the same, which we're nothing alike.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
But he said, I'm radical for evil and you're radical for God. And I found, ironically, safety on the streets because this guy sent the word out that if somebody touched me, he would kill them. And just for respect for the lack of fear. And I think every human being is desperately trying to figure out how to be alive.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
We're all trying to figure out how to break out of the malaise of existence and to be able to just drink deeply of this experience called life. And I want my life to be proof that that's possible. And I think that's what all of us long for.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, his name was William Westfall. So he's a real human being. And he had gone to prison for slitting his girlfriend's brother's throat. But the guy did not die, but it cut off his vocal cords. And when he was in prison, his family had had come to faith and he felt that I had infringed on his territory.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
So he sent me a few notes while he was in prison, letting me know that when he got out of prison, he was going to end my life. And it's always nice to know someone's thinking of you, right?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, you know, back then people did write. And when he got out of prison, I decided I didn't want to be walking down the street and fear that this guy's going to come out of a corner. So I just decided to go find him. And I knocked on the project door where he was staying. And there was probably 20 people in there. And the moment I walked in, everyone ran out and it was just me and him.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And he pulled out the switchblade because he was known for, he was a white guy who was really good with a knife, which made him very unique. And he sat across from me, he goes, this is the same knife I slit his throat with. And he goes, police never got it. He just laughed. And, you know, I just began to have a conversation with him. I said, you know, you're out of prison, but you're not free.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I'm not a scientific determinist that thinks everything is mathematically already predetermined. I think we have choice, that we have creative agency as human beings. And so then we're connected to this obscure, mysterious space called the future.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Behind every corner is somebody waiting to kill you. You're living a life of fear. And I talked to him about how his life could change. He wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in God. He wasn't interested in faith. But he was fascinated by someone who wasn't afraid of him. And I actually think he was fascinated by someone who was fully alive while he was living a life of fear and violence.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And then not much... After that, he was trying to choke his girlfriend to death, and she took a pair of scissors and killed him. And not every story ends up with a good ending. So that's the story of my friend Bill. Wow. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, I'm not recommending my life to anyone in that regard. And I'm not saying that even my choices were always the wisest. But what I would say is that whenever you look back on your life and you know your life has been informed and fueled by fear, you never feel that you've lived your life to the fullest. So what I would say to someone is adrenaline is natural.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Fear, when people say you shouldn't fear, I'm like, you know, if a lion is hungry and it's running at you, fear is the most reasonable emotion in life. And so I don't think you should be, quote, fearless in terms of the experience of that emotion. You just have to have mastery over your inner world and you have to have intention in your life that's bigger than consequences.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And how we engage that, whether we have a sense of optimism and hope or whether we're filled with fear and trepidation, that will shape the way we experience life in the present.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And that for me has been the big question is because it's also in business, right? You know, and, you know, I've started a lot of businesses in my life. I've been an entrepreneur for 40 years and I've lost millions and millions of dollars, which puts me in a very small group of people. You know, anyone can make millions, but, you know, losing them, that takes a real art.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And, you know, and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had let fear paralyze me. And so what I have always asked myself is, would I do this even if it fails? And when I can say this is worth doing, even if it fails, I can move forward with so much intention and fear doesn't have mastery over my life.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think the problem sometimes is we want to do things that succeed rather than things that are actually significant and meaningful for our lives. I don't really have goals the way other people have. I don't have financial goals. I'm not trying to make millions and millions of dollars. I'm not trying to buy mansions or airplanes. My life is really measured by, is this worth my life?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And if I fail, will I still find a deep sense of satisfaction that I tried this?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, there's definitely a difference between loving yourself and being in love with yourself. Right. And one is very healthy and one is narcissistic. And I think when you're in love with yourself, you refuse to look at yourself honestly, and you lack self-awareness. But when you love yourself, you see your flaws, you see your faults, you see your shortcomings, you see where you're deficient.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I do. And if faith is a hard word for someone, I'd say optimism. is I think every highly spiritualized word has a very non-highly spiritualized word, but we all have them. And some people go, I don't believe in faith. And I go, well, you psychologically live by faith. I'm getting on a plane today to go to Salt Lake City. I'm putting my faith in that pilot. I'm hoping he had a great day.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
But you do not let that be the basis of your worth. And I do think one of the significant shifts that has to happen in our lives is a lot of people are fighting for their worth. And they're trying to succeed to prove their worth. It's so much better to accept your worth and to move from your worth rather than trying to move towards your worth.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And what I would say to most people about when it comes to self-love is really loving yourself is about understanding your worth and value without having to accomplish anything else in life. This has been, for me, an incredibly liberating thing. And again, my faith is deeply rooted to that.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
You know, the idea, Chris, that, you know, there is a God and that he sees me, values me, and loves me without condition. Then I go, okay. If I'm love without condition, nothing I do expands that love, elevates that love, or makes it more real. It's just there. And so now I can live my life from that worth, from that value. And it's incredibly liberating.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think I understand in the small sense as a parent, you know, I have a son, Aaron, and a daughter, Mariah, and 36 and 33. And nothing they do changes or elevates or increases how much I love them. Now, I've been proud of them at different times, at different levels, for different things. But love is a different thing. I love Aaron and Mariah, and that's the baseline.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And if I'm capable of that as a really flawed, broken human being, I'm actually convinced that that is the driving principle of the universe and that that is really the essence of who God is. And so that's how I begin.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I think it's harder to love ourselves when we're really honest about who we are. But if you cannot love yourself, you cannot really fully love another human being because that human being is flawed too. That human being is imperfect too. And if you're always trying to, in a sense, earn your own love, you're going to treat other people the same way.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think one of the most liberating things in the world is to realize that love is not conditional. That if love exists at all, love is unconditional. And for me, that is a basis of everything I do in my life. I don't wake up in the morning going, I need to find a way to be loved. I don't wake up in the morning going, I got to go earn my value.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I do not wake up in the morning going, I got to go prove my worth. I wake up in the morning going, I'm free and I'm alive and I get to choose and create. And this is going to be fun.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I had a seatbelt break on a roller coaster and almost flew off the roller coaster. And so I was afraid of roller coasters or anything fast. And I began realizing that I began accumulating fear. And the problem with fear is that it doesn't stay in a category. It permeates throughout your whole soul, your psychological well-being.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, and I think that maybe there's a slight third option between loving you for who you are and for what you do. They love you for who you are to them. And that's why we end up putting on so many different personas and have so many different masks. And life can be so exhausting when you think that person loves you for who you are to them.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And if that changes in any way, then that love changes as well. And yeah, I actually think one of the greatest achievements in life, Chris, is to come to a place where you accept your own imperfection and you love yourself, not based on your own evaluation of yourself, but on the fact that you have been created with value. I mean, what is value anyway?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I'm hoping if he's married, his wife really loved him or her husband really loved him and that he's not depressed. I every day I'm putting my faith in something that's outside of my control and I'm working from a framework that everything is going to move in my favor.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I remember working with all these Wall Street investors and we're talking about economics. One guy said, I only believe in economics. And I said, well, I would agree as long as you believe that economics are just simply an assessment of value, that we human beings decide what something is worth. And he goes, yeah, no, I agree with that. And I mean, it's so random. We decide gold has value.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
We decide diamonds have value, right? We decide avocados have value, whatever it is, right? And those things change based on our own preferences or our own opinions or perspectives. But it's the same with human beings. When a human being has value to us because they contribute something to us, then we consider them to have value.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And if our personal value is based on what other people project our value is, we're slaves. We become absolutely captured by the opinion of other people. And that's why you can't let someone else decide whether you're gold or diamonds or avocado. You have to decide your own value in life and go, I... I have value because I exist. And I have value because I am a unique human being.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I can work from that value and I can work from that love. And I don't actually know how you find that. And I'll admit my limitation. I don't know how you find that without a relationship with God. And I think it's a very difficult thing because it's ethereal. Like, what is the outside value?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
determiner that tells you your value and uh and i and and that for me is like been so life transforming to go i know i have intrinsic value i believe i've been created in god's image and likeness but i also believe every human being is created in god's image and likeness and that every human being has intrinsic value and so it's my responsibility and my privilege to treat every human being
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
with that kind of value and that unconditional love.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yesterday, we have this space we call the arena where we do some coaching. It's a mastermind that connects around the world. And we talked about the tensions between gratitude and ambition. And so each one of these core like virtues, like a humility and the tension with confidence. And then faithfulness with the tension of proactivity. Because there's some basic virtues that we want to have.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
We want to be people who are humble and want to be individuals who are grateful. But we also have these attributes we must have, which are ambition and confidence. And sometimes we confuse those. humility and confidence as in opposition with each other when actually they work in a very harmonic way.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
That when you're truly humble, you have great confidence because you have a clear picture of yourself. And humility is not the same thing as a lack of self-confidence. It's not a sense of insignificance. You can only truly be humble if you know your power. Only a truly powerful person can express real humility. Otherwise, it's just weakness. It's just timidity. It's mildness.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And when you know your strength, that's when you can actually be truly humble. And so I tell people, no, there's not a tension here. This is actually synergy. Truly humble people are powerful people. Truly grateful people are ambitious people. They're not in conflict with each other. Ambition is not an anti-virtue. You know, people will say to me, well, be ambitious, but don't be too ambitious.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Wait a minute. Would you say to me, have integrity, but don't have too much integrity? Or would you say, be loving, but don't be too loving? Whenever we think something's a virtue, you cannot have too much of it. But we actually don't think ambition is a virtue. But ambition is actually a virtue. It's just that selfish ambition is corruptive.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so when we look at ambition, it is not in opposition with gratitude. Grateful people are more ambitious because they become more generative. By the way, I don't think it's incidental that the word generosity comes from the same etymology as the word generative. You cannot be truly generous if you are not fully generative.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so a grateful person takes full responsibility for all of their talents, all of their intelligence, all their potential, all their capacity, and optimizes that for the good of others. I think people who live only for themselves are the greediest people in the world. because they have so much more capacity to do good for other people.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Ironically, if you want someone to be paralyzed by fear, you don't get them to do the thing they fear. Because it's the fear of the reality that's more powerful than the reality itself. And so my fear of roller coasters was far more powerful than the roller coaster when I finally got on it. My fear of dogs was far more powerful. than the reality of dogs once I started spending time with them.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
No, absolutely. I had this student who graduated from UCLA and he was from El Salvador, which is the same place I'm from. I'm from El Salvador and as an immigrant, but his parents were immigrants. So he's now the son of an immigrant and his parents became incredibly successful in the US. And now he gets to go to UCLA. They pay the tuition.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
So they've paid an immense amount of money for him to go to school. He graduates near the top of his class. And after he graduates, he says to me, I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. And I said, well, what do you want to do with your life? He goes, you mean to pay the bills?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I'm like, your parents just put hundreds of thousands of dollars to send you to one of the prestigious universities in the world, not so you could just pay the bills. But so you could start a company that that employs a thousand people and provides food for five thousand families. And and how could you ever graduate from UCLA and think your your optimal goal is to pay the bills?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I do think it does put responsibility on us. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay saying that when you have more opportunity, you have more responsibility. I'm okay putting that pressure on people saying, if you have been given a higher IQ, you have more responsibility to make the world better.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
If you've been given extraordinary talent or capacity, some unique skill or ability, you have a high responsibility to make a difference in the world. And I do take that stewardship seriously. Really, really important.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And seriously, in my own life going, if I have any ability, if I have any intelligence, if I have any talent or any capacity, that hasn't been given to me so that I could revel in it and just, you know, enjoy myself because I'm so awesome.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
If I've been given any unique capacity, it's because I have a higher responsibility to do good in the world and to help other people live lives that they could not live without my help.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And your life will feel meaningless if you don't pay it forward. I think that's sort of like the interesting catch 22 in this is that how many people you met who have accomplished so much and accumulated so many things and they're just hollow and empty inside. I remember years ago I was working a bit more in the film industry. And I was trying to get some scripts produced and things.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I got a phone call that this billionaire up in Beverly Hills wanted to meet with me. And by the way, he didn't know much about me. So that was great because I could just come in as a writer and And so I drive up to his house and I get to a gate and I have to send him my name and they open the gate and I drive up another road to go up into the hills.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I didn't even know someone could have that much land in Beverly Hills. And I'm sitting in his house and he shows up late and he sits down and he goes, you get 45 minutes. I mean, there was no warrant. There was no, hey, it's great to meet you. So glad to have you here. It was very cut and dry. And about... 30 or 45 minutes in, he asked me a question and he said, can we meet tomorrow?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I said, yeah, yeah, we can meet tomorrow. He goes, how about two o'clock or something? And I said, yeah, I'll be here at two o'clock. And I left so excited going, this guy's gonna fund my movies. This is gonna be awesome. And the next day I show up and we're walking on his property. He's like, this is where I think like Ben Affleck and all the boys come play volleyball.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And he's just talking it up and everything like that. And I said, so why did you ask me to come back up? And he goes, when you walked in the room, you have this inner peace. And I've been searching for inner peace all my life. And I have all this wealth. I have all this stuff. And I have no peace. And so I was just hoping maybe you could help me figure out how to find peace in my life.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I know I'm always supposed to be a person who has higher ideals, and I'm always trying to help people at the deepest spiritual level. But I was slightly disappointed that he did not want to fund one of my films, but he was actually looking for the inner peace that I brought into the room.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think this is the reality, Chris, is that when we spend our lives consuming, we become emotional, psychological, and spiritual black holes. We just consume and consume and consume, and it brings no joy. It brings no meaning. It brings no lasting happiness. But when we live our lives to serve other people, I don't think you can—you cannot get too rich. You can become too greedy.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so the irony is if you want to be trapped and paralyzed in your fear, stay away from the thing you fear.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
You cannot have too much wealth. You can have—but you can be possessed by your wealth. And so it really isn't about how much you have. It's about how much has you. And when you live a life of generosity and live a life where you're determined to do good in the world, I don't think it ruins you. I think what ruins you is when it owns you rather than when you own it.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Oh man, thank you. One, Chris, I have to tell you, I've become such a huge fan. I love your work. I love your interviews. You have an incredibly brilliant mind and your ability to cut through all the chaos and lack of clarity is a real gift to the world. And so I just want to let you know that I consider it a privilege to come on because I'm a fan and I just love your work. Thank you.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
You can go to erwinmcmanus.com and access the different spaces we have, like the Arena Mastermind. And we do a conference or two here in LA. I have a few books that I've written. My newest book is The Seven Frequencies of Communication. The book that you're actually speaking to me about today is called Mind Shift and about internal mental structures.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
But if you just want to know more, go to erwinmcmanus.com. But mostly, I'm just really glad to get to be here with you, Chris.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Absolutely. I don't know if the studies still hold true, but so many of the studies show that the number one fear people have is public speaking, which I think is amazing because when you speak in public, even if you're terrible, usually no one shoots you. You know, there are no physical or violent ramifications. You just... Have a bad moment.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I mean, I've been speaking for 45 years and early on, which is so ironic, I actually began speaking in the middle of government projects, in the middle of drug cartels, in the middle of gangbangers and assassins and criminals. And so I actually had a... genuinely dangerous environment. So the fear of speaking was way down the list.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
It was the fear of surviving those 20, 30 minutes that was actually more real for me. And I've had the opportunity to speak in front of maybe 80, 100,000 people in a moment. And what's interesting to me is when I'm thinking about myself, I become consumed by fear. When I'm thinking about others, the fear is completely gone.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I began realizing that I was more defined by fear than I was by almost any other emotion. And I didn't really have a strategy. We didn't have what we have today, so many ways of accessing insight and ways of understanding mental structures and mind shifts. But so I had to make my own decision. I had to decide how would I affect this? How would I change this?
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so there's an interesting relationship to fear is about self-preservation. And early on in my life, I made a decision that I would not make my life goal to exist, but to live. When you live a life of fear, you're moving towards safety and security. You're moving toward preservation. You're moving toward survival. but you make every decision that will extract from you life.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
You will not be filled with hope or joy or excitement or adventure. And I do think that we have to make a decision to either exist or live. And that's the difference between, in a sense, fear and faith.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, it comes to my mind right away. And this is sort of an ironic moment because I was invited years ago to go to the Academy of Arts and Sciences. And I watched the premiere of Braveheart. I had no idea what this movie was. This was way before there was any publicity or trailers.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I'm watching this movie about William Wallace, and I end up writing about William Wallace in one of my books and going to Scotland and digging up some of the history there and Robert the Bruce and all that era of history. But what struck me is that moment when Mel Gibson shouts out freedom and gives up his life. I had this exhilarating moment and this incredible moment of awareness.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
It felt like the most exciting moments of my life. And I had this thought, I cannot let the most exciting moment of my life be when I'm sitting in a chair watching someone else's life. And so when you ask me who are the people I admire the most, I think, ironically, most of the people who have motivated me were in stories, were in film, were in novels, were in science fiction.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I think that was what really began to instigate inside of me a desire to not simply read about other people's story, but to live one.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so I developed a strategy to use fear as my life compass. Whenever I felt fear, I just moved toward it. Whenever I felt afraid of something, I actually moved more aggressively in that direction. And what I discovered by the time I'd finished my 20s is that there were actually international magazines and documentaries that were flying in to see what I was doing because they felt I was fearless.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
It is, but one of the things I think is important to come to grips with is that human beings experience depression because we're the species that can imagine a better version of ourselves. You cannot be depressed if you cannot imagine a better version of yourself or a better life or a better world. And so the dissonance is the ideal we long for and the life we have.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I find the gravitational pull of that. So even with depression, I mean, I've struggled with depression. I struggled with it from a very young age. And I realized that I moved toward depression when I accepted this fallacy that I had no power to change my life. And so depression wasn't really about my state of being. Depression was about my belief that I could not move toward my ideal.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And the moment I actually took any step in the direction of the person I wanted to become or the life I wanted to live, that depression was gone. Now it was replaced with exhilaration and excitement. And I hadn't even achieved anything yet. I was just moving in a direction and it changed my inner dynamic.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Well, you know, I think when I was young, I had the view that some people were just naturally heroic and some people were just naturally born cowards. And I fell into that category. You know, if I look back when I was young, I was afraid of everything. And some of it was experiential. You know, we got attacked by a dog. So I was terrified by dogs all my life.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
Yeah, you know, when I look at us as a complex human system, it is fascinating to me that all my positive emotions dissipate so quickly and all my negative emotions stick with me. I mean, they stay with me long-term and you have to fight for those. And if you look at the gravitational pull of, let's say, character, it's astonishing to me that if I do nothing, I become the worst version of me.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
It would seem like I would just naturally, if I do nothing, I should just naturally become the best version of me, right? If I choose nothing, I should move toward hope, right? If I choose nothing, I should move toward love. If I choose nothing, I should move toward compassion and generosity and integrity. But when I choose nothing, I become the worst version of me.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And so when you look at it, I think we actually are factory defects because when we choose nothing, we move toward depression. We move toward anxiety and stress. We move toward suicidal imaginations. When we choose nothing, we lose our integrity. We lose our generative nature. And the longer you choose nothing, you're choosing the worst version of you. And even when it comes to emotions,
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
I've had incredibly exhilarating moments. Yesterday, I celebrated 41 years of marriage. Congratulations. And it's amazing to the same woman. And I say that somewhat hesitantly because she's not the same woman. She's changed at least 30 to 40 times. And so I always say, if you want to be with someone else, just stay with her. She's going to change on you.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And 41 years of marriage, and in those, we've had some incredibly exhilarating moments, some beautiful moments. And those moments become memories, but the experience of those emotions, they pass very quickly. But if you have a fight, those emotions stay with you a long time. And so we have this incredible, beautiful memory of our honeymoon. But two days ago, she threw away my...
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
And I thought this was so ironic that I was being defined as someone who was fearless. And in fact, my favorite superhero is Daredevil, the man without fear. And it was because I iconically longed to become that person because I knew how my whole life was captured by fear. And so I learned how to take negative material and turn it into a positive asset.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
apple turnover and oh my god do not touch a man's apple turnover you know and and it was on our anniversary And I'm like, hey, I bought this Apple turnover at this really great place. And I bought you something too. And she goes, I threw it away. And I realized all these negative emotions. It was like the world was just absolutely being destroyed by Thanos because she threw away my turnover.
Modern Wisdom
#906 - Erwin McManus - What It Takes To Live A Courageous Life
There's something about negative emotions. They cause an instantaneous reaction. They go expansively and they go deep and they stay with us. which is why when you're in therapy, you're not working through, I don't know how to stop forgiving. I don't know how to stop having optimism about the future. You're struggling with, I don't know how to forgive. I'm holding onto this bitterness.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
It's so... Unutilitarian. Wow. For me to have to waste that language again.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Well, I show you. Yeah. I show you by paying the bills. I show you by cooking for you. I show you that I love you. Why do I have to find the frequency that resonates at a deep level to let you know I mean it? It's not about simply saying the words. The words are empty without the frequency.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Well, in the book, I talk about the way to elevate your frequency is by increasing two things, empathy and authenticity. Yeah. And so I would say do two things. Learn how to see life from another person's perspective. Step into someone else's, not their shoes, step into their soul.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
experience how they are experiencing the world for me that's really the power of empathy yes empathy is sharing someone's soul with them and seeing the world through their experience their emotions their perspectives and and it's a beautiful thing and so empathy is about seeing the other person but authenticity is about allowing other people to see you
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so part of the journey is not just empathy, it's authenticity. It's helping people see you for who you really are, helping them understand your deep emotional texture and context for life. And when you grow in authenticity and go in empathy, your frequency moves toward its highest level. Say that one more time.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
When you grow in empathy and authenticity, your frequency grows to its highest level. And so a part of when you ask how do you learn how to use what frequency is you pay attention. You listen to the room. You listen to people.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
It's so important to see the opportunity to express unconditional love to someone as a gift. Not that you're the gift to them, but you getting to express that is, in a sense, a gift to them and a gift to you. Just a small thing. I don't know why. Maybe it's because my wife is a farm girl from North Carolina, but food is central to our life. And when she cooks...
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
she literally waits for me to comment on everything she's cooked. And sometimes I just don't want to comment. I just want to eat it. And there have been times over the years where I will say to her, can you at least give me a chance to taste it? she goes, how is it? I don't know. I tasted it. It looks great.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And even if she doesn't cook it, if she buys it at the store and she picked that pie, she wants to know that that pie was incredible.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah. And even recently, having been married 40 years, I don't know how many meals we've eaten together over the years. I told myself it gives her indescribable joy to hear, I love this. It costs me nothing.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
That's a really nuanced question. Because what happens when you're going through pain is you're in great danger of moving toward your shadows.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Every frequency has a shadow frequency. And just like every human being is on the spectrum of their best self and their lesser self. And so the shadow of the motivator is the performer. The shadow of the challenger is the manipulator. The shadow of the commander is the dictator. The shadow of the professor is the diminisher. The shadow of the healer is the cipher.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
The shadow of the seer is the perfectionist. And then the shadow of the maven is the nihilist. And so you have to realize that whatever your core frequencies are, you have a natural tendency when you're in pain, when you're struggling with, let's say, forgiveness or bitterness or anger or despair, to move into your shadow.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so you begin to communicate from that shadow, even though you're unaware of it. Because when people ask me, how do I get rid of my shadow? I go, no, your shadow is not out there. Your shadow is in here. And the only way you can get rid of your shadow is choosing forgiveness rather than bitterness, choosing love rather than hate, choosing hope rather than despair.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
So it's the material of your soul that actually changes your frequency and moves you from shadow to light.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
We tend to match ourselves with a person that matches our own self-worth. Wow, man. So if you have a low self-worth, you're going to keep dating someone that validates that low self-worth. And you're going to end up in a toxic relationship, and you end up with a terrible breakup, and it's going to reinforce your sense of lack of self-worth. Your lack of worthiness. That's right. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so that relationship is not there actually to elevate you to a higher level of self-worth. It's there to validate your low belief in yourself. Gosh. So the only way you can move into a healthy relationship, and I've known you for a few years now, I feel like you've changed. I thought you were incredible when I met you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I mean, you were already to me one of the most extraordinary human beings ever known. But I do think that you are not the same person
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And who you are with Marta is not just a reflection of what an extraordinary human being she is. I think it's actually an expression of how you've grown as a human being.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
To recognize you're worth and worthy of more.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And at the same time, you're able to have that relationship because she's a pretty self-actualized person. And she's looking for someone that matches her own sense of self-worth.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so I think if you keep going back to toxic relationships, you have to realize... They're just a symptom of what's actually working inside of you, what's going on inside of you. And if you can deal with the toxicity in your own soul, your self-loathing, your lack of self-worth, those inner voices that told you that you're not worthy of love, whatever it may be.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And if you can deal with that inner turmoil, you can actually be ready for a better relationship.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Wow.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
It's more safe.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah, but that's why it ends up moving toward a toxic relationship. Because you ever realize the person that you love so much at the end sees you in such a negative view? They see the worst of you. And they let you know everything that's wrong with you. I've heard that many times, yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And everything they're saying to you are the very things you believed about yourself before you started dating them.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And now they're validating what you were already telling yourself about yourself. And that's why you have to have the conversation with you before you can have a different conversation with someone else.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yes.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
To begin with, you need to pay attention to the frequency with which you speak to yourself. Pay attention to what you're saying to you. Because if you're not kind to yourself, you will not be kind to others. You don't express empathy toward yourself. You will not express empathy toward others.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. They don't know the world, so they can't be angry with the world. They're angry with themselves.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Or maybe they did something they can't get past and they can't forgive themselves for. Or maybe something happened to them when they were young that wasn't their fault, but they took the blame for it. And so they don't realize that... instead of choosing to be a victim. You see, there's some people who choose to become victims, but some people just choose to become violent. Right.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And their way of avoiding being a victim is to become violent. And they become violent in their words, their emotions. It doesn't always have to be physical. And so I think it has to begin by paying attention to what you're saying to yourself and that you cannot connect to other people if you don't deal with the health of your soul. Right.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
You have to find a way to get rid of the toxic emotions that destroy you, like bitterness and anger and jealousy, whatever they may be in your life. You're not going to live your life connecting to people at a deeply human level if you can't even connect to yourself. And it's one of the things I think for me is really freeing
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
is that I'm not free because I found perfection, and I'm not free because I even live up to all my ideals. I'm free because I don't expect myself to be perfect. And I've just learned to forgive myself for my inadequacy.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Wow. I mean, I was in a psychiatric chair by the time I was 10 years old in and out of a hospital for months. And I had not learned that then. And I think in high school, I was still trying to figure out how to create value so that I could be loved. And you'd try through sports and all these other different mechanisms. I think I was in college and I was a philosophy student.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And I was really struggling with, is there any meaning to life? And does my existence have any value? Do I matter? And for me, it was a part of a faith journey. And everyone has to find their way to find meaning in life. But for me, it was unexpected. I was not on a faith journey, not consciously or even unconsciously, I don't think.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I was just trying to make sense of my life and to find a reason to get up in the morning. And I struggled with depression. I struggled with self-loathing. And the idea that God existed and that he saw me and that I had infinite value was something that was really meaningful for me. I say to people, look, if God didn't exist, I would have to have created him just to survive.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Just to find a reason to wake up in the morning to go, my life actually matters. And in that was this whole concept of grace that I'd never understood. And it was, you're just absolutely accepted. And so you don't have to,
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
earn your worth you just start from your worth and then you just live yes and it transformed me where you know i just i just believed it i just accepted the fact that i had value that i mattered that i was completely loved and then life was like a bonus game wow i don't have to live my life to prove my worth i don't have to live my life to earn being loved i don't have to live my life to to prove i i have value and that i have a right to exist
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I just accept it.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And then life just becomes this beautiful adventure. Fun. It just becomes fun. Fun. I sometimes I feel guilty. In fact, I posted a story today and and someone was upset. Well, you know, because I was too happy. And they said, you're not being sensitive to all the unhappiness in the world. Yeah, the suffering.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And I'm like, I just don't want to apologize that I wake up in the morning and I'm so excited about being alive.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah, I think it's it's an interesting tension. Everyone wants to have a common experience, but the only common experience we can have is misery. Why is that? Because we all experience pain. So that's the one thing we all have in common. But We need to elevate and go, yes, we all experience pain, but we can all experience joy. We can all experience fulfillment. It just takes more intention.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Every negative emotion comes easily. Every positive emotion takes work.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Because we think that God's intention is to make everything easy. And I don't think that that's even on God's agenda. Goodness should not be easy. Why? There's nothing in life that's worth anything that's easy. You're the face and voice of the school of greatness. Is there any aspect of greatness that comes easy?
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
You're getting married to the most amazing human being in the world, but the relationship isn't easy. No.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
There's nothing worth anything in life. Thank you. Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you. Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
What does that mean? I first started thinking about the anthropology of humans when you're really young. You think, oh, we humans are flesh and bone, right? We're flesh and blood. And then as you progress and begin thinking about what makes humans and you understand science, you go, okay, this is kind of cool. Humans are our earth. We're physical. We're fire. We have an energetic heart.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you. Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
We're wind. We breathe, inhale, and exhale. We're literally the elements, earth, wind, fire, and water. We're 80% or more water. So human beings are literally the four basic elements. But if you keep progressing and looking at the human essence, we are particles and waves. And one of the incredible things about particles is this whole dynamic of quantum entanglement, right?
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so I think what people need more than anything else is to realize that fear is the emotion that lets you know you're designed for the future. So I turn every negative emotion into a positive fuel.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
That two particles that come together are forever affected by each other, no matter how far they're separated. Which explains why someone who came into your life when you were 10 still impacts you to this day. Yeah. How they got into you because their particles merged and formed into your particles and you were forever affected by that.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
In fact, that's one of the things that I worked on so much in my shift is how to take negative emotions, negative material, and turn it into positive material, positive fuel. And so I look at fear whenever I'm afraid, I go, oh, this is my brain telling me the future has a possibility. That's too big for me right now. So I need to just step into it courageously. We grow to size.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And our future isn't designed to be as small as we are right now. We grow to size. When you step into a bigger future, you grow to it. Yes. And so I just tell people, look, don't let fear paralyze you. Let fear inform you that this is the direction you should go.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
That's right.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
If you can't see it, you don't need faith. So you only need faith for a future you can't see. That's the very definition of faith. But here's the difference. When you see the future static, something that exists, that you have to step into, that's how you can get paralyzed. The future is dynamic. Do you know where the future comes from? Past? Your mind? The future comes from within you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
You're not stepping into the future, you're creating the future. Humans have this interesting capacity. Silkworms create silk, bees create honey, beavers create dams, but humans create futures. Every moment of our lives, we're creating futures. Every choice we make is creating a future. And if you realized the question isn't, can you create the future?
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
So choose who you bring into your solar system because those particles are going to be part of your particles forever. Whether you like it or not, Lewis, you and I are connected for all of eternity. I like it. And we're part of this universe together. It's beautiful. But we're not only particles, we're also waves.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
The question is, what kind of future will you create? When you're informed by fear, you create a cocoon that tries to protect you from the future and traps you in the past. And which is interesting because Solomon says, there's nothing new under the sun, which is completely wrong. It's completely right when you're trapped in your fear. There's nothing new under the sun.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
But when you're free, now you get to create the new. So it's interesting, in the same book, the Bible, where Solomon says there's nothing new under the sun, is the quote in Isaiah where God says, behold, I'm doing a new thing, but will you even see it? And so I go, all of us have a choice to make.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
We can either live like Solomon where life is meaningless and there's nothing new under the sun, or we can live in a relationship to the creator of the universe where we get to create with him because all things are becoming new, which for me, easy choice.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
They can actually take an assessment that we spent two years developing. and they can go to our website and get a code and take the assessment and they will give you your top three communication frequencies. Yes, because I want people to see in the sense that triad so they don't see themselves as a singular frequency.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Now, they may not have developed and really access those other frequencies well, but that's what this process is for, to help them grow.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And when we think of our words, it's almost as if we think of something that is disassociated from us. We're saying it and it's releasing. And it's gone. It's like spit. You're swallowing your spit all the time, but the moment you spit it out into a glass, you would never drink it. Because now it's not a part of you. Interesting, yeah. But your words never leave you. Really?
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Is it like... No, no, it's a little different. A little different, okay, cool. Now I think you're a maverick. Yeah, right, exactly.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I think they just go to our Mosaic app and they can get a live stream anywhere in the world.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah, and we're going to be in New York in November. We're going there once a month and we also have a campus in London and Mexico City and then in Quito, Ecuador.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Oh, wow, what a great question. Lewis, you are a genuinely wonderful human being and a great friend. I appreciate it. And I'm just so grateful to get to have this conversation. I really believe we can have a revolution of human connection and communication.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
When we look at all the division and vitriol language during the election and the campaigns, we realize that most of the models we have for communication are so negative. And that I just think the greatest thing we can do right now is help people learn how to hear each other and connect at a deep human level. So that's what you're doing here, getting the word out of the book and
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
and helping people connect here, that's the greatest thing you can do for me right now.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
It's when I first was designing it.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is this interesting phrase. We were in Malawi. We were about to go meet the presidents of the country. I had this young Malawian named Blessings, and he was panicking. He was really nervous. And we were going into that room with the president because my wife had been working there for almost 10 years, building schools and helping the country.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And I looked at this guy and I said, you belong in the room. And he looked at me and I said, when you walk in the room, you need to remember you belong in the room. And it's a phrase I had to learn for myself because every time your life gets bigger, you feel like you're a complete poser. You're an imposter. And the little voice in your head says, you don't belong in this room. Interesting.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so I think my 76-year-old friend would say to me, Erwin, new rooms are opening. And every time you walk in, just remember you belong in the room.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
They are a part of who you are. They're an extension of your essence. So right now, while we're having this conversation, we're doing a soul share. Way before there was Airbnb, we're sharing each other's souls. And I'm speaking, and I'm going into your soul, and you're speaking, and you're going into my soul. And our waves are dynamically affecting each other. which is an extraordinary thing.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Thank you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so there are all these mechanisms of measuring wavelengths. And you can actually see how wavelengths shape different materials. They can move sand on a particular kind of metal or, you know, we can study how sounds shape the universe, but we never think about how our sounds are shaping the universe outside of people.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
There's just something profound when a friend looks at you and says, I love you. And by the way, I do. And I can say without any restraint, I love you. And those words, they don't simply stop between you and me. Those words are transferred from me to you and they connect us forever. And there's something really powerful in that. And I actually think it's because we're divinely created.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And being a person who is really shaped by the scriptures and how Genesis talks about everything being created by God speaking. And God speaks and the ways of God's voice creates the universe. Wow. And that we're created in that image and likeness. And we speak and we create universes as we speak.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
That's right, because humans understand frequencies before they understand language. Because when you have an infant, they cannot speak English. They do not speak Korean. They do not speak Spanish. They speak frequencies. So when you look at that little baby and you say, I love you, that baby is absorbing the frequency of your words and then attributes the meaning to the words.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Words are just sounds. Because the moment we change the language, but we still have the sounds, they're just sounds that we give meaning to. And those sounds are transmitted to the waves of our voice. We have a power that's emitted when our breath passes through our lips.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
They're both important. I think that language is both art and science. It's both poetry and prose, right? And if you want to be a master communicator, Be careful about how you say it, but be more careful about the texture of what you said.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Funny thing, years ago, I was in Germany speaking to about 5,000 people, and I had this translator, and I know I'm saying, I'm gonna say something very controversial. And Germans are very stoic, you know, and very orthodox in their approach toward things. And halfway through my talk, I make the statement, and my translator translates for me, and I stop him.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And I said, wait a minute, you did not say what I just said. And he said, what? And I said, you did not say what I just said. You translated what I said, but you changed it. He goes, you don't speak German. I said, that's not the point. Did you say what I said or did you change what I said? This is in front of 5,000 people. And he said, I changed what you said. I didn't agree with it. No way.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And he goes, but what I want to know is how could you know? Frequency. It was frequencies. Wow. I could tell he changed his frequency instantly.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I'm looking at the audience. Just his tone. Literally, a tone changed. Oh, wow. And he thought it was impossible for me to translate it. But when you translate frequencies, not just words, it changes everything.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And even if you take this to a really basic level, I don't know if you have a dog. Two cats. You have two cats. All right. This doesn't work with cats. Cats don't have a human frequency. But dogs can feel it because they're like happy or they're like sad, right? Well, dogs don't speak English. No. Right? They just speak frequencies.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so you can look at your dog, and if you keep the same frequency and change the words, they'll do exactly what that frequency tells them.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
You're the ugliest dog I've ever seen.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
That's right. And so we recognize there's a connection even with other animals that's frequency-driven, but we think it's actually language-driven, and it's not.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I love that question. The subtitle of the book is The Hidden Language of Human Connection. Yes. And for me, the ultimate goal is connection. Communication is the process to connection. And so if I only help people communicate better, I don't think I would find the level of fulfillment that this book is bringing to me.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Because what I really wanna see is people connect at a deep level, at a deep human level, at a level of intimacy and understanding and a place where people are seen and see others. And it's really, really true when you talk about intimate, interpersonal relationships with a wife or a partner or someone that you love deeply.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And the longer you're together, the more you really need to learn the nuances of human communication and connection. I've been married 40 years, and believe me, if all I heard was what Kim said, we would not have made it. Wow. And if all she hears is what I say, it's not going to get us where we need to go. Because we are all saying so much more than our words.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
But that phrase when I talk about that words are as close to alchemy as we'll ever get, is that I really do pay attention to the language in our culture on manifestation, on manifesting things. And I think where sometimes, for me, it feels a little bit off and where it could really move into a zone of transformation is that we tend to try to manifest things that are external.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
You know, I want this job or I want this career or I want this success. But the real power of words are the magic of transforming our inner worlds. that when you speak into someone's life, you're transforming the universe inside of them. And I think sometimes we underestimate the power of our words in the way they shape the human experience.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
When you're five or six years old and someone tells you that you're worthless, those words shape the universe inside of you. Or when someone looks at you and tells you that you're special, that you're loved, that you're valued, explodes inside of the universe inside of you.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And when I began to realize that my words have so much power that it can actually reshape the universe inside of another human being, I realized that is alchemy. I can create a space for hope, for joy, for meaning, for intention, for even as superficial as it sounds, happiness. Because so much of what people are searching for in the external world is actually only found in our internal world.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Absolutely.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Well, we have a frequency. And language is the mechanism through which we pass or transmit those frequencies. Wow. And so when one person says, I love you, it can create a very different frequency than when someone else says, I love you. Right. Or love you. And even when you're looking at the different frequencies that we've identified in the book,
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
when a person has one particular frequency, when they say the same thing, it doesn't create the same resonance when someone says it with a different frequency.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
I think it's because we haven't developed the full toolbox of human connection and human communication that we end up with a primary frequency and it becomes our dominant frequency. And so we end up using a frequency all the time in every situation. And let's say if you're a commander and that's your dominant frequency and you're also a CEO of a company.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
And so your commander frequency is absolutely bringing you incredible success. you know exactly what to do, you know how to be directive, you are very utilitarian with your language, and then you go home. And you try to use that commander frequency in your marriage. Or even worse than that, you use that commander frequency with your eight-year-old daughter. And it's completely utilitarian.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
It doesn't connect at a deeply visceral level where that person feels valued and loved and accepted. And one of the things I really try to do when someone has a commander frequency, by the way, my wife's primary frequency is commander. And my son, Aaron, his primary frequency is commander. So I'm surrounded by two commanders. I never lack for clarity about what I should do with my life. Do this.
The School of Greatness
How To Manifest Love & Deep Connection With Your Words & Frequency | Erwin McManus
Do this. Yeah, yeah. But you have to begin to be able to hear the nuances behind the command. What happens so many times is that a person is a commander and they love someone deeply, but they're with you day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And in their mind, I told you I loved you in 2016. Right. Why do I need to say it again? Why do I need to say it again?