The School of Greatness

Your grief is not the thing keeping you stuck. Running from it is.

David Kessler spent years working alongside Elisabeth Kubler-Ross before everything he taught got tested against his own life, when his son died unexpectedly and the grief expert became the one who needed help.

He talks about sitting in a grief group with his own books on the table and still not being able to say the words out loud. About discovering there is a stage past acceptance, one built on meaning instead of just getting through it.

You will hear why anger is often just pain wearing a disguise, why your triggers are actually a map back to what needs healing, and why the people who seem to have it all together are usually the ones running the hardest.

This conversation will change how you think about every hard thing you have survived and every hard thing still ahead.

David’s books:

Finding Meaning: the Sixth Stage of Grief Workbook: Tools for Releasing Pain and Remembering with Love

Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief

You Can Heal Your Heart: Finding Peace After a Breakup, Divorce, or Death

Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die

Grief.com

David's Instagram

David's Facebook

Online Grief Group and Grief Education

In this episode you will:

Learn the sixth stage of grief that goes beyond acceptance and into real meaning

Discover why your triggers are actually a map to your deepest healing

Overcome the fear of speaking your pain out loud to the people who love you

Recognize the difference between grief and clinical depression

Build the courage to feel your feelings instead of outrunning them

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1965

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Some feelings get labeled good. Others get labeled bad. That single belief might be running your entire life.

You'll hear why chasing happiness on command wears you down instead of building you up, and why the fastest path to resilience runs straight through the emotions you've been avoiding. Susan David, the psychologist and researcher behind the book Emotional Agility, has spent over two decades studying why some people bend under pressure and others don't.

She breaks down the difference between having an emotion and being owned by it, using a simple image you'll carry into your next hard day. You'll hear about the notebook she started writing in as a teenager that nobody else could read, and how her father answered the one question she couldn't stop asking him.

Susan and Lewis get into why negativity isn't always the enemy, how self bias quietly convinces you that other people were right about your limits, and what it actually takes to stop reacting and start responding.

You are not the feeling that showed up today. You are the whole sky it's passing through.

Get a copy of Susan's book: Emotional Agility

Susan on Instagram

Ted Talk: The gift and power of emotional courage

In this episode you will:

Learn why forced positivity and "good vibes only" culture quietly increases anxiety, depression, and burnout

Discover emotion granularity, the practice of naming what you actually feel instead of defaulting to broad labels like stressed or overwhelmed

Recognize the difference between being hooked by an emotion and simply having one

Overcome self-limiting beliefs rooted in self bias by reconnecting with your own values

Build real emotional agility by treating your emotions as data, not directives

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1964

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He slept in his socks on a garage floor because it was too filthy to touch. That was Jesse Cole eight years ago, broke, sleeping on an air mattress, betting everything on a wooden bat baseball team nobody wanted.

Jesse is the founder of Fans First Entertainment and the man behind the Savannah Bananas, the "Find Your Yellow Tux" author who turned a dying college summer league into a movement that now plays in front of millions.

He explains the moment he realized baseball itself was broken and why he studies Walt Disney more than any business book. He also opens up about the night his wife got a text from a birth mother on Mother's Day that changed their family forever.

You'll hear how a bat trickster became a starting first baseman and how a Broadway A-lister ended up pitching in front of 80,000 fans. Jesse still signs autographs until the very last fan leaves, every single night.

This conversation will change how you think about customers versus fans, and about what it actually costs to build something the world has never seen before.

Find Your Yellow Tux

Jesse's Instagram

Jesse's books:

Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience

Find Your Yellow Tux: How to Be Successful by Standing Out

In this episode you will:

Discover why "whatever's normal, do the exact opposite" became the founding rule behind Banana Ball

Learn how studying Walt Disney's obsession with "plussing the show" turned a dying league into a movement

Hear the Mother's Day text that changed Jesse and Emily's family forever

Understand why Jesse believes fans are different from customers, and why that distinction changes everything

Explore the mindset shift required to go from 4,000 fans a night to 100,000

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1963

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A calm, healthy relationship can feel more dangerous to you than the chaos you grew up in.

That's hypervigilance. It hates the absence of a threat, so it manufactures one, even when you're finally safe. Patrick Teahan, a clinical social worker and childhood trauma educator, breaks down why your body still reacts like it's protecting a nine year old.

You're not overreacting. You're replaying. Teahan explains how most people experience the present entirely through the lens of childhood, filtering every text and every silence through wounds that happened decades ago.

This episode gets into inner child work, re-parenting, and the murky question of when going no contact with a parent is healing versus when it's avoidance. You'll hear what real boundaries look like when love and abuse get tangled together.

By the end, you'll understand why healing isn't about proving your parents wrong. It's about finally believing you were a good kid the whole time.

Patrick's Website

Patrick's Instagram

Patrick's YouTube

Patrick's TikTok

In this episode you will:

Discover why your nervous system treats calm, safe relationships as a threat

Learn Patrick's three-part healing framework of finishing business with your family of origin, re-parenting your inner child, and doing the deeper work of intimacy

Understand the ACE study and why quiet, everyday trauma often does more damage than one big event

Explore when going no contact with a parent is genuine healing and when it becomes avoidance

Uncover the link between childhood trauma, imposter syndrome, and your ability to manifest the life you want

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1962

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A clinical hypnotist told him the problem in one sentence. You don't believe, at a subconscious level, that you were meant to be successful.

That was Rob Dyrdek in his twenties, long before the professional skateboarder turned MTV star turned venture studio founder built a portfolio of brands and walked away from a run of exits. He tracks every minute of his day. He rates his life, his work, and his health on a scale of zero to ten, every single night.

What the data told him is not what you would expect. The discipline is not the reward. It is the entry fee.

He calls what he built the Machine Method, and he applies it to everything. Companies, relationships, health, a hundred-year plan for a family that does not exist yet.

The part that will stay with you is what he says about luck. He refuses to pretend he earned all of it, and he is unnervingly clear about what makes it show up more often. You are already designing your life. The only real question is whether you are doing it on purpose.

Rob on Instagram

In this episode you will:

Learn the Machine Method, the discovery to diligence to launch to scale process Rob uses to build and sell companies

Discover why he rates his life, work, and health on a zero to ten scale every single day and what the correlation reveals

Overcome the stuck stress that quietly drains your capacity long before you sit down to work

Recognize the difference between failing with clarity and getting blindsided, and why one is survivable

Build a life design where automation comes first, optimization never stops, and the process finally starts giving energy back

For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1961

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