It's endless because there is an endless number of people companies very, very eager to sell us their solution to the not-enoughness.

So we are just mired internally from our childhoods and they only hence...

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howe's former pro athlete, Turn Lifestyle Entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Why do you think that so many people don't know how to love themselves or believe that they are whole? And they need outside validation or they need to harm themselves or they need to do something externally to fill themselves up with this lack of wholeness?

Beautiful and interesting that it goes right into my story in terms of for me to give you something that isn't just theoretical in terms of what I know and how I know this.

We are tragically in this culture. It's universal and yet it's much more in the western culture than it is in the east.

I've lived in Indian owls 26 years and while they have a lot of other issues, the inability to see themselves as worthy as full as complete is not nearly as epidemic as it is here.

And I think one of the reasons is that culturally here we are really raised from early childhood to believe that who we are is based on what we do.

And it's very innocuously seeming in the beginning. So for example, how many parents say to their kids, oh, you're such a good boy, you cleaned up your room.

You did your homework, you cleaned your room. You did your homework, you got an A on an exam, you did something that has made you a good boy.

You didn't do it. Your room is a mess. You are a bad boy. Or even if it's not quite so verbal, you come home with an A on the exam.

What do you get? Oh, come here, give mama a big hug and kiss. You get hugged, you sit on the lap, you're given milk and cookies or whatever, you know, food as love might, however that might manifest in your house.

But you're given all of this love, all of this embrace, all of this sense of you are worthy as a being.

And then you come home with an F on an exam or an F on a report card. And even if you're fortunate enough not to live in a home where you get beaten or punished severely, you certainly don't get told, oh, come here, sit on mama's lap, you are wonderful.

And so what we learn at a very, very young age and then it just continues is my value, my worthiness, my deservingness of love is based on what I do.

And when I do it right, I do it well, I succeed by whatever the standards are, I am worthy of love, worthy of occupying my place on mom's lap becomes planet earth.

What?

I don't, I'm not worthy. So this ends up becoming this real dilemma that we face throughout our entire lives. And of course, then you bring in media and you bring in marketing and you bring in consumerism where it's entirely rooted in convincing you that who you are in the present moment is not enough.

And if you just owned the handbags that I produce, you too could feel and be whole and complete and worthy and see the way that this man or woman in my advertisement so fully embodies the fullness and completeness.

And I just had that handbag, that car, you too could have that experience, but I first have to make you feel like you're not whole.

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