The 9 RED FLAGS When Dating You Should NEVER IGNORE!

too often we spend so much energy trying to get someone to behave and live in the way that we want yeah instead of indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the foremost people know like there's potential here or there's not or this one could be the one or they're not but we [Music] when you're frustrated in the relationship when you're fighting you're arguing you're not sitting on that eye oh great you're waiting so you think they're the problem oh they're not understanding you what should we ask well first of all what am i actually frustrated about right let's start there what am i frustrated about what are the problems that i am having because so often we don't even communicate with our like we're not even clear right what the problems are what are the areas of frustration what are the problems and then before you go and try to solve it you then have to ask what is my contribution [Music] because everyone is making a contribution to the very problems that they can't stand in their relationships what is my contribution to this problem correct what is my contribution to the problem because once we because it's so easy it's easy to point the finger yeah but it's really hard to point the finger back at ourselves it's really hard and so before you start doing hey before you start doing this and you're not doing right and you're wrong and you're pointing the finger whoever you're in the relationship with you start to do this assessment and say okay what's really the problem what's really what what have i not been communicative enough have i not set my expectations you know have i been too harsh like you gotta really start doing the assessment of yourself and then bring that conversation i think also to go even deeper is like why is this triggering me exactly why is this a problem for me yes like yes maybe it's not the other person is doing something to me but the trigger of it is something i haven't healed or addressed from the past yes and that's when i'm triggered yes but they're just being them and you know depending on the situation but it's like what's the root of this frustration for me dude this is so true and this is why i talk about this in the book i talk about how expectations are the secret software that run our life yeah and and what i mean by that is that we don't actually sometimes react to life events we react to our expectations of events right so if situations or people exceed our expectation we're happy if situations or people don't we're devastated so what should we do have no expectations no you can't do that because expectations are like blood pressure you know too high it's not good too low it's not good because expectation we need motivation expectations are our hope right so we do have to have hope but we've got to set it properly right because so often when our expectation is not set to your point that you made we end up reacting based upon an unset expectation and so it's not that what the person's doing is wrong it's that we have not set expectations for ourselves we haven't identified what those triggers are we haven't identified oh wait a minute wait a second they're not the problem it's how i'm looking at it is the problem so in order to set expectations i i i have every person that reads the book ask these two questions one is it realistic or unrealistic how do you know it comes down to one word if you this is how you determine if your expectation is realistic or unrealistic control what do you mean are you trying to be in control or if it's within your control to do it you can expect it it's a realistic expectation if it's out of your control you cannot expect it so i'll give two examples um you know your podcast is amazing it's incredible one of the most dynamic podcasts in the world thank you no matter how hard you try you cannot force somebody to go listen to it no i can't i can hope hope i can have a range of what i think people right yes i can have a target i can have a goal but if i put if you put a a an expectation of like hey it's got to be a million by next month right i would argue that's unrealistic because it's out of your control right what's in your control i want to produce the best podcast yeah with the best conversations and the best guests with the best marketing and the best publicity all in your control realistic to expect now let's apply that to people you're in a relationship [Laughter] you know i want this person to love me in a certain way i want this person to you know have have this amount of sex i want this person to to go work out i want this person to go eat i want this person can't control that you can't control it you can communicate it you just set up the structure for it but you can't control it yeah and so often our expectations with others are unset why because we're trying to control what we don't you and i only control ourselves and the remote wherever the remote that's it i can't control anybody else ever and and too often we spend so much energy trying to get someone to behave and live in the way that we want yeah instead of behaving in the way that we want right living the way that we want and if we live the way that we want then whoever we're in the relationship with either that is going to compel them to say hey hey you know what i like what you're doing and then you say hey i like what you're doing so let's do that together right or it won't but when we try to get somebody to be what we want them to be and do what we want them to do that's called manipulation what happens when we are in a relationship when we are trying to control or manipulate someone else in an intimate relationship or they're doing that to us what happens um what happens is uh love goes down fear rises here's what i mean by that you you you the fear of if i don't do this they're going to leave so that person you know everyone has different degrees of self-determination and so in a relationship when you fall in love and you really care about somebody and they're asking you to do something or be something that could be a very compelling thing to do even when it's not who you are and so the fear of if i don't will they leave okay so then it becomes a performance-based relationship that's not good it's not good i'm doing this because i don't want them to go but i know it doesn't bring me joy so it's no longer is love leading the way it's fear it's fear and and okay you know what i'm gonna do this because this is what they want and i'm gonna become this but every moment that i do it and it's not in my heart is a moment that my soul gets crushed every single moment this is my life this is my life up until now where you know not all the time but yeah i could see a pattern in my past relationships where i would just do things to make the other person happy even though i didn't want to do them because they were angry or upset or frustrated or whatever they had some expectation and i would sense like man the love is going down a little bit a little bit but i when i took responsibility and accountability it's like it's not their fault i'm the one choosing to do these things because i'm afraid that they're going to be angry at me or they're going to leave or they're not going to love me so it's my responsibility to stand in my truth yeah in those tough challenging moments when someone's like you don't support me you're not doing whatever they're saying yeah it's tough to do that oh we're triggered it's challenging but i think if someone's going to leave you by you standing in your truth and being frustrated by you constantly then that's maybe not the right fit for you well not only is it potentially not the right fit you got to think about something you got to put yourself into your life and you got to say you posted a quote on instagram recently about this yes i saw it that's a good quote one of the regrets one of the regrets of the dying yeah yeah yeah yeah oh yeah that quote yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i really i use that as a prompt yes to get people to think about in your life but if you do that so i so let's say in that in that dynamic you become what they want you to be even though it's not who you really are you get to the end of your life and can you live with doing what was expected but never what was destined can you live man with doing what was expected but never what was destined and if the answer to that question is no then you've got to make some changes that's so tough it is why does love trap us because i'm speaking for myself yeah because i don't want to say the world does this but i i sense a lot of other people do this when we feel the sense of chemistry and connection and intimacy yeah and vulnerability and love whether it's real or not we sense that feeling of intimacy yes why does that trap us and we stay in these things in general i'm not speaking for everyone but we tend to stay in these things much longer than we should like you'll hear people say i knew i should have got a divorce seven years ago yeah it's like they get they break up with a divorce i always ask them when did you know that you weren't supposed to be with this person um five years ago 10 years ago the day i got married right you hear these things and you're like why do we stay right why is it so hard for us this trap of love right why don't we get out of it sooner right i mean there's so many there's so many reasons the reason that comes to mind uh is worth self-worth we don't believe we're worth we or we're afraid what i mean is that it can take a while for you to come into a revelation of what you're worth and that you are worthy to be happy and pursue happiness on your terms and come to the revelation that you know this dynamic is no longer you know making that contribution to my life not that they're bad and wrong there you go right right not that it's all their fault there you go just wasn't the right fit and for me you know when you're in that situation it can take a long time for you to get to the place where you feel enough worth where you're ready to say you know what i'm going to endure the fear i'm going to endure the challenges to make that kind of move so when you talk about love love cuts to the core of our worth because we all need it and when i say love we all need love i don't mean just romantic love i'm just saying we all need to love and be loved i think it's just part of our humanity it's just part of how we were created it's part of our divinity right god is love we are god is in us we love right uh and we serve and so part of that love is oh man i want so much of it is focused on giving because think about it again think about how we're socialized right oh you do the right thing oh mommy daddy loves you oh you're like you know oh i wanna but it's not like you know do you love you do you know you're worthy do you know that you are worth it do you love who looks back at you in the mirror do you love who looks back at you when you take the selfie because at the end of the day love becomes complicated because we never actually get there with our worth in who we really are and so we go into the relationship and we haven't really done the work we kind of feel worthy we don't quite feel loved and we bring all of that that's a recipe for this you know and here's the thing it's okay right we're on love is is is is like a rocky sea right right you know what i mean hey we're on the boat man it's gonna be right that's okay because we all have our stuff so it's not about finding somebody who don't have stuff you want to find somebody who can help you with your stuff who's willing to help you with your stuff so that as you bring things that are difficult they're like hey it's cool let's work work this through but you both find a healthy way to do it yes but one of the reasons why i think people stay in things is because of worth and you need time to get to a place and some people never get there where you realize what you're worth because at the end of the day i go back to happiness it's like in peace and joy you know this we only live this life once you know i'm a christian i believe in heaven i believe in that but i've also believed that this is this this earth this life this particular existence we only get it once so when you really put that in the broad scheme of things you think okay am i living right now according to my choice yes am i doing the things that bring me joy bring me peace or am i allowing things in my life that are working against it no matter what they are it could be a relationship it could be a job it could be a living environment whatever it is i have to take control and do this assessment and to make the decision okay from a relationship standpoint if my relationship isn't everything i wanted okay what do i need to do to fix it but first i gotta fix me yeah and i gotta work on me and i gotta love me and as i love me it will then help me learn how to love others and make the assessment okay you know what maybe this person is going to be able to walk with me and i walk with them great maybe not but let me not just point the finger and do the do the work the other thing i want to hit is um we talk about setting expectations that second part of studying expectation is communication right it is spoken or unspoken we talked about this earlier you've got to actually ask the question so even in this situation when you talk about difficult relationship this scenario instead of making the assumption whatever your area of frustration is sit down and frame it as a question you know what i was expecting that you know in this relationship that you know we would sit down and eat every night at seven o'clock right because this is what we did with my family right so i just assumed so i just assumed you would do the same thing is that your expectation is that is that something i can expect from you is and let them say yes or no oh okay so for you like you don't ever expect to be home at seven you're going out to dinner you know what i did right oh okay got it okay okay all right okay great wow now we're actually having a real adult conversation right we're having a dope conversation because we're taking accountability and we're communicating and so when it comes to setting expectations in in any area of life you got to know is it realistic or unrealistic vis-a-vis control and you got to ask if it's spoken or unspoken vis-a-vis communication and when we start to do these tools you know it does free us up because the reason why i wanted to write live free is because so often we're not and when i say live free what i mean is that when you and i live free when anyone lives free it means they are not under the mental physical or emotional control of anyone or anything hmm that's what living free is living free means so and so when we get into a situation and we start to feel like oh this this person is starting to feel like this person is making me mad or contributing to my discontent then i would say to that person okay pause for a minute pause for a second it's super easy just to turn all your attention to what they're not doing right no no no how do you want to feel in the situation what would give you more power in the situation what would give you more peace okay you know what i'm identifying that there are some things in my relationship that are incompatible yes i am going to spend some time observing what those things are and identifying if there are certain things i can live with yeah and what i can't right and communicating and communicating those areas that i can't to see if it's possible we can set our expectations together the the biggest challenge you'll find is when you communicate those things out of expectation or anger or frustration the other person is probably not going to be able to receive it if you're already making someone wrong for what they're doing or not doing it's very challenging to have an adult conversation bro and this is i've been there before i i've done that and i've and i've received it yes and uh it's it's challenging to do but when you come from a place of 100 percent responsibility accountability and figuring why is this triggering me why is this really affecting me dude then you can come from a calmer place of like okay i didn't like this but i don't need to make you wrong for this in this moment because we can talk about it come up with an agreement that then moving forward we can either live up to or not and then we can make a decision if this frustrates me correct i mean i i have it's challenging uh but it's good work and for me you know i that's you talk about flaws like that's an area that i have been you know outside of identifying what my needs are and being okay to admit those needs one of the flaws man is that you know i have a really strong sense of right and wrong mm-hmm and if someone's not doing that like according to me that's wrong right right so so if some may have right dude i'm i'm like that's wrong you know so when megan and i have had moments of disagreement you know i have at times mishandled it completely because i have in my mind made the decision that on that particular thing that she may have done that i didn't like she's wrong yeah for you for me right but no no i didn't for me came as i evolved and as i grew initially it was like no that's wrong yeah wrong in the world not just wrong wrong in the world so here's the problem with that the problem is when i make the decision and judge her action as wrong the moment i bring it up i bring it up in a way of attack and anyone when they feel attacked it's gonna they're gonna get defensive you can't do that in relation you can't do it you can't do it but but it happens all the time guys and dude what would happen is i would you know get on my self-righteous you know uh uh uh soapbox i can't believe we did this there you go were you thinking there you go judgment you know what you're gonna say oh you're right devon i'm a bad person everything you say is true right no dude listen i learned the hard way what that did was it pushed her further away right it doesn't mean that the point of what i was bringing up whatever we were dealing with didn't have merit didn't mean that it just meant that the way i went about it was wrong right and my intent was not being realized because i came at it from judgment and i'm right and you're wrong so as i bump my head i realize oh god it the way i see the world is the way i see the world yeah it's not exactly how the world may be so when i use how i see the world as the way that she has to see the world i am the one with the problem yeah because i've got to understand and take into account the two different perspectives right so what i had to learn to do is express it from here um my love yeah when this happened here's how it made me feel mm-hmm here's here's here's was my takeaway is that the way was that the right way to think about it so instead of doing like this i had to do like this oh yeah when that when when you said that i felt this way about that you know i man and it's how can we you know and that approach bro that approach is what then brings the communication right then she wants to be contributing in a more supportive way and also just talk it through right because it's not pointing the finger i'm not pointing the finger at her you know she's not pointing the finger at me we're actually talking about so she'll say hey you know there are certain things that you do that make me feel this way i was like oh okay now here's another hard truth there's some situations i'm like i'm not responsible for those feelings right it doesn't mean you have to change who you are no i i i love you i i understand what you're saying and you know i love you period i understand you feel a certain way about certain things that's not my responsibility right so the same way that i feel about certain things you're like hey that's not my responsibility right yeah i still got to go do my work i still have to go on my journey and i still have to continue to get to that place of peace and healing and contentment inside the journey if that makes sense on a scale of one to ten yeah of jealousy ten being extremely jealous human being one being not jealous at all where would you say you lie in in life or like relationship in a relationship oh man i'm not jealous i'm lie it's like a one for me did you ever used to be jealous in relationships never and i'll tell you why because i love me okay so i'm like yo listen i ain't jealous and no other dude i ain't i'm not and and the reality is if any woman that i was with found you know for whatever more comfort or or you know i was like hey i want to go over there and experience that person god bless you mm-hmm god bless you we're not the right fit though not the right fit yeah you know and and if i was a jealous person i couldn't be married to my wife you know my wife is one of the most successful i mean first of all she's beautiful but she's also one of the most successful you know women uh you know actors in hollywood you know she's an icon she's known around the world you know i mean she's got man she's got men you know i mean literally you know and men all around the world uh you know desire her and would probably do anything for her and that's who she was before we got married so if i was the jealous type i'll work i couldn't i'd be miserable miserable this because right now she's in you know new york on a tv show i'm here in l.a you gotta have trust and gotta have trust right so if i'm a jealous man oh man i've what is jealous he's saying about us insecurity massive insecurity i don't feel safe with me so i don't feel safe with you i mean what do you mean i don't feel safe with me meaning if i am secure with who i am and i feel good being alone right i feel safe in my isolation i feel safe in my loneliness or periods of time when i'm by myself then i trust that you're going to feel safe and you're going to honor whatever needs to happen but if i don't feel safe like i don't really like being alone much and i don't really like being by myself then then you don't feel no what are you doing what's the problem what's happening so that insecurity and not feeling safe with self you transfer onto the other person because if you're content with your personal time you tend to be more content when others have personal time independence you're not worried you're not worried you know and then also one of the things that could happen is that you got burned in the past you know someone did you wrong they violated your trust and so fear has crept in and so that fear is driving your jealousy yes you know i'm afraid that what happened before is going to happen again and so as a result i'm transferring that previous pain onto my present situation and that's always a recipe for disaster right because the person you're dating is not the person you dated you can't expect them to repeat the same thing exactly now but here's the other thing because life is a mirror right and whatever we put out we get back if you keep putting that out if you put it out on the last situation this person you're dating may not be a cheater at all but if you don't trust them and you keep getting mad you're going to push them away they're going to want to cheat it's like you know again everyone still has to be the king i'm saying it's okay yeah right but that energy that you're putting out is sometimes the energy you get back even from somebody who may not be predisposed to do those sort of things not saying it's your fault that someone corrects their integrity correct but you might have influenced them correct in a way correct and so the person that's jealous has to one get control of that security and two uh get control that fear and also also say you know what listen if that person i'm dating is foolish enough to step out on me that's all now that is on them that's all that because they don't even realize what they just did they realize what the who they're missing out on right period [Music] what are the core uh reasons or the core things you see over and over that uh either end or make a relationship challenging to be in the longer you're in what are the what are the ones that what are the challenges that come up over and over that you see there's always three questions right what's a driving relationship a thriving one yeah what can go wrong and how do you fix it okay so you started with the middle question what goes wrong i think there's a number of things in a relationship that that that become just the kind of uh cornerstones of the demise okay and i'm not going to lease them in order but they all are part of each other um indifference and contempt and neglect and violence are probably the four most important okay i'm not talking about big violence microaggressions are plenty indifference when you start to feel like the other person fundamentally is not really caring about you anymore or you don't care about them what they feel what they think who they are what they're about don't care you've lost interest but it's more than losing of interest it's also when you are doing different you degrade the other person they're less important to you they don't matter and ultimately what we feel in relationships is that we matter that is the essential reason for connecting to people is that we are creatures of meaning i matter to you i'm someone you care about me you want my male you want my well-being you're proud of me you you want good for me you're benevolent all of that when you are indifferent the whole thing goes and then you start to there's that coldness that creeps in that sense of estrangement that complete disconnect that the second one is neglect neglect when people just basically take each other for granted you know they take more care of their car than of their partner their dog or their dog anybody anything their yard anything anything gets attendants their business for sure their business for sure you know everything gets priority everything gets reviewed evaluated attended to 360s you name it you know new input my god it's like people have this idea that they put it all in when they were dating and then once they sealed the knot it's like as if they tied the knot it's like now they don't have to do squat anymore and they go into this kind of complete sense of complacency and laziness it's an amazing thing they think this thing is just going to live on its own right like a cactus right violence violence the abuse the level of of disrespect i mean most people talk nicer to anybody else than their partner when a relationship because you can't get away with it because you can't get away with it because if you talk like this at work you're gone because if you talk like this with the police you're gone because if you talk like this on the street you're being punched but with your partner you have that sense that they're gonna be there anyway they're just gonna take it because it's family and family is this kind of this thing that doesn't dissolve so easily so you can just lash out at them and talk to them with a tone and a dismissal that is phenomenal so that kind of violence i'm not talking physical violence and all the other big big things you're talking about aggression or resentment or all of that yeah all of that you know passive aggressiveness all those things yeah all of that and then and then um contempt i think is the top one contempt is the killer of them all because in in the contempt there is a real there's the degradation of there is is that that complete this you're nothing you're nothing i can kill you with that one gaze that one eyebrow that goes up you know stuff do you who do you think you are what are and that's it you you're done you're done so how do we even get to this place of these these places after having been so in love and so romantic right is desire uh reflect that or if we're not desiring the person anymore then we start to feel one of those categories or does that not play into uh look the truth is this there's only two relationships that resemble each other the one you have with your parents or the people who raise you and the one you have with the people you fall in love with people can sit in my office all the time and say i have this with no one else i don't have this with anybody at work nobody among my friends ever thinks like that you're the only one who speaks like this or thinks this about me or with whom i do this no you're the only one and now we go back in history and i'm sorry to be the psychologist but that's really it is the place where we often learned about closeness trust loyalty commitment sharing taking receiving asking all these essential verbs of relationships we learned that at home we also learned jealousy and possessiveness vengeance you name them the beauty and not beauty yeah we saw it all as children right we saw the fights we saw the love we saw the you know we saw the coldness the lack of intimacy the intimacy yes and we bring that with us and we often promise ourselves i'll never be this one i'll never be this way i'll never talk like this i'll you know and we find ourselves often much closer to the apple and then presenting ourselves we resent ourselves we're like how do we do that well why don't we get to this place and then we feel ashamed about it and since we don't like to feel ashamed about it we hide it and one of the way we hide it is we blame the partner that's just one of the ways there's a lot we are very resourceful in not owning our [ __ ] right exactly exactly wow okay um and where does sex play in all this and desire so i mean the one of the fascinating things for me in looking at sexuality is that it's probably one of the dimensions of relationship that has changed the most in a very very short amount of time for most of history and it's still the majority of the world sex is for procreation sex is a marital duty on the part of the woman nobody cares particularly if she likes it and how she feels and if she wants it and um and men have the privilege to go and find sex elsewhere in a very short amount of time we're talking 60 years we have contraception which is the liberation of women for the first time to free sex from reproduction from mortality from death in pregnancy and in childbirth sorry all of that and for the first time sexuality moves from just biology and a condition to a part of our identity and a lifestyle in 60 years in 60 years the women's movement which goes after the abuses of power the gay movement which introduces the concept of identity to sexuality the fact that sex is for connection and pleasure the fact that for the first time we have sex before marriage and many times a lot we used to marry and have sex for the first time now we marry and we stop having sex with others okay monogamy used to be one person for life now monogamy is one person at a time and people go around telling you i'm monogamous in all my relationships and it makes perfect sense to me okay for sure all of that in a very short amount of time the fact that i choose you to marry or to live together doesn't matter commitment because i'm attracted to you because you give me butterflies in my stomach and the fact that i think that if i don't have these butterflies anymore maybe i don't love you anymore and the fact that sexuality in long-term relationships is rooted in wanting only desire i feel like it i want to not i have to not we want many kids after two kids the only reason to continue doing it with you is because we feel like it right it's pleasurable we connect it feels good it runs our relationship the whole thing that's it and hopefully it's at the same time and for each other because plenty of desire continues but it's not always at home right exactly so this is an amazing revolution sex that's confusing all of us and how do we sustain it so that's why i became fascinated in the nature of erotic desire and how do we sustain desire because it is the first time ever that we have a grand experiment of the human kind where we want sex with one person in the long haul that is fun and connected and intimate and playful and we live twice as long go figure right exactly for 60 years you're going to be with it or whatever it is yeah it's an amazing idea so how do we navigate this if we're going to choose one partner and be with them until you know we're both gone how do we navigate the challenge of keeping the desire continuously i think both men and women because the woman probably sees other men who are attracted to her and you know vice versa so it's like how do both parties do this look we know that women get bored with monogamy much sooner than men wow that's a factor that's research okay that's not just fact that's uh that is men's desire in long-term relationship goes down gradually he actually is much more able to remain interested and maybe just because he's interested in the experience itself and he has a partner there women's desire post-marriage really wow and it's always been translated as well that's because women care less about sex rather than it's because women care less about the sex that they can have in their committed relationships which is often not interesting enough for them and it often has to do with the fact that the story the character the plot is not in it's not seductive the romance which is an essential ingredient of turn on for the woman often disappears in the long-term relationship it's like people look at each other at the end of the day and you want to fool around you want to do it you're up for it tonight now this is really not this is not very much of a turn on for most women and the idea that foreplay often starts at the end of the previous orgasm you know and not five minutes before the real thing which for her is not the real thing the whole the real thing is everything else so it's essentially the game yes it's it's creating a game seduction it's a plot it's a coming close it's a team history it's what animals call pacing it's that i come to you but i don't overwhelm you i come just a little bit so that you can come a little bit toward me and then i don't immediately answer i actually go back a little bit too have you ever seen animals they do this kind of pacing and it is an essential playful ingredient of seduction and excitement so women's desire plummets but we interpret it as women are less interested in sex rather than women are interested in probably just about the same kind of things that many men are but women have always known what to choose above what turns them on which was what gives them stability and security security family right someone to protect be there right so what people do look this is we want one partner today to give us everything that involves stability and security and everything that involves playfulness and mystery okay that's the grand ideal okay i want to be cozy with you and i want to have an edge and i want you to surprise me and i want you to be familiar and i want you to give me continuity and i want you to give me novelty that's it as if it's uh right and no victoria's secret is going to solve that yeah right so then it becomes what is desire desire is to own the wanting if you ask people a question that goes like this i turn myself off when i turn myself off by not you turn me off when and what turns me off is you're gonna hear i turn myself off when i do emails when i spend too many time on the phone when i overeat when i don't exercise when i have bad bad days at work when i don't feel confident when i numb myself when i feel dead when i don't feel contriving when i'm not alive you will really hear that it has very little to do with sex and when you ask people i turn myself on when or by i awaken my desires not you turn me on when and what turns me on is which is i you're responsible for my wanting right what people will talk to you about is when i'm in nature when i'm connected with my friends when i get to do my sports when i play music when i listen to music it's through stuff that gives me pleasure that is alive that is vibrant that is vital that is erotic in the full sense of the word as life force and from that place people remain interested in having sex with somebody else for the long haul it's not because they've scratched their arms for two seconds right it's i feel good about myself the biggest turn on is confidence right confidence you ask people when do you find yourself most drawn to your partner every description has to do with when they're in their element when they're on stage when they're with when when when they're doing their sport when they when they are radiant when they are in their studio on the piano on the horse you name it it's when they are in their element i.e they don't need me to take care of them they're not depressed and down and lonely and sad they're not needy they don't need me because desire is about wanting you love is also about needing you caretaking is a very powerful experience in love and it is a very powerful anti-aphrodisiac so how do you experience love and desire at the same time you calibrate it so sometimes you're it's the same as when you walk you have to move from one foot to the other a balance is not about staying on one side a balance is the ability to see right now we don't need caretaking we can be mischievous we can be naughty we can be playful we can break our own rules we can stay home and not go to work at eight o'clock right and now we are in a playful zone now we are feeling that we are bringing our own little transgressions home we are alive we're not just being dutiful responsible good citizens right it's that it's very small you know when i always think when i go and i see people at lunch and you see them talking and they're well dressed and they're awake and all i seen who is here with their partner because you can see them they're engaged they're giving the best of themselves that's erotic no the majority are not there with their partner they're there with their friends with their colleagues their partner is going to get the leftover when they come home at night sorry you know what forget the night date meet at lunch when you actually have energy you know when you and and in the middle of the day like that when you're awake when you have something to offer it's a very small thing but they don't do it they don't do it and you say why not why not why don't you stay an hour extra at home in the morning and not just because when you have a headache and just say this matters to me all in all you know committed sex is premeditated sex it's not just gonna happen because whatever is gonna just happen already has so you're gonna make it happen because you say we matter we're important let's do this let's spend doesn't mean if you're going to make love or have so it just means we're going to take this hour and there's nothing else that matters in this moment but just you and i to be together to check in and then we'll see what unfolds that's the erotic space in which sex may happen probably will doesn't have to but it is the place from which it is much more likely to emerge but people don't do that they do the responsibility that's the love right the citizen the commitment the caretaking the burdens the safe and then they say i'm bored i would be too oh exactly there's no mystery there's no risk taking right exactly there's no risk-taking that's the word if you want desire it's risk and the risk is an emotional risk it's not about sexy risks it's really a risk on the emotional front is that i bring something else to you differently from um differently from from the way i typically present myself sure you know how can i do this something what can i do today that will be different from the ways that i've done it until now how can i do something that i think would actually improve our relationship me right not something that i want or that you want but that i think would be actually good for us that third entity the us right and you check every time you know how often do you just go on the tried and trodden as in you know it works sex that just works for most people is really not interesting enough right so because what does it mean it works generally right what what about the people listening or saying man that sounds like a lot of work that every day you have to change do something different and unique and be not every day not every day not every day but what you can do every day is just a quick check with yourself you know is there something that i should notice is there something that i can be thankful for is there a little note that i could write is there you know just a way that i can show up at time it's small it's really small um here's the thing there is work and then there is the creative work you know i'm talking about a level that is creative and that elevates you and that actually gives you you feel you feel taller you just feel like you're engaged you feel awake rather than this this is the other seated position it's comfortable it's great but nothing happens here sure this this is alert here's the essential word is curiosity when you're curious you lean forward and you watch you're open to the mysteries of life this is please don't bother me with anything because i don't want any stimulation i've had my share i've been you know and this is the position that most people have at home so when people say it's too much work um i basically say look you you if i was to say this in your business would you say this is too much work right or you would say that's very good advice this is high rate consulting fees it's like excuse me but you don't think for a minute that your business would thrive if you let it languish like that never you have a reward system you have incentives bonuses bonuses but there is no incentivized system as in in the private domain so people just think why bother right and that's the difference is that the ones who have good relationships are the ones who created their own internal incentive incentivized system what are some of those incentive systems that you've seen over time that really work or effective for long-term relationships i would say the first thing is almost one of the first things that our parents teach you please and thank do you know how many people stop thanking their partners thank you thank you for doing this for me to thank you for picking up the shirts thank you for you know you feel appreciated yes appreciation appreciation is huge uh gratitude acknowledgement of the presence of the other in your life not did you do this did you call did you pick up do this you know half the time expectations expectations of course you know expectations is often a resentment in the make it's like with the expectation comes the fear of it's not good thank person first of all and because it also makes it feel like this is not a given nobody owes you squat you're not owed anything you're not that important you're actually quite replaceable right and with the divorce rate that we have um what's the rate at right now 50 on first and 65 on second 65 on second wow it's not good right it's really you know it cost a lot of money it's not good for the health i mean it's just like you know it's not good for the jobs it's it's just it's like okay now you could say maybe people should marry but it doesn't matter if it's marriage legally or the idea is that we can do better we can do better in general i really think that the quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships i mean nobody's gonna write you know uh you worked some 60 70 80 90 hours a week and you know no they're going to say he was there for people when they needed to he was there at every game he was there at the party he's the guy who when you were in his presence he had charisma not because he could stand in front of a huge crowd but he had charisma because when i was in his presence he made me feel special a different charisma so appreciation gratitude thank you um little things to go out of your way rather than just to do the minimum a lot of people start to do the bare minimum just so that they can't be scalded right go an extra thing um on occasion just do something for the other person just because it matters to them even if you couldn't care less right rather than i don't it's not important to me i don't i don't need this or i don't care about this give each other a lot of individual space not everything needs to be shared people have different passions different interests different friends and they need those separate spaces to exist um admiration i think is huge um because admiration is also that you kind of really see the otherness of the other person um don't try to make your partner into one person for everything there is no such a person find multiple sources of connection of intimacy of friendship so that you can have a group of people support you and don't have one person who has to be there for you for everything especially when you're in the dumpster we used to have a village of people to do that now we just expect one person to be the villager yes yes yes one person for the whole village that that is that is a unique it is and and then we're upset when they don't fulfill the mandate and that's the more import like i can't talk to you you're not supportive of me you're not excited for me excuse me find other people right you know i can't be everything for you no exactly [Music] we've all been through stuff we've all been damaged we've all been disappointed and hurt but we have not properly processed those things and then we take those negative experiences and we project them on to people we project them to our future we project them all to our self-esteem and self-worth and we throw everything out of whack and now we can't even embrace or set ourselves up for that great relationship because we're still holding on to the bad one that we experienced before so it it completely gets in the way of people seeing progress in their life so to me it's like okay we can give you all these tools and tips on how to date and how to navigate through this relationship online dating stuff exactly and it's all useful but if you don't heal you're going to end up in a bad spot there's no way around that it's inevitable and people who think they can ignore a lack of healing and still have a great relationship of being naive yeah it sounds like if you don't heal you're going to keep hurting yourself and and hurting the person you're in a relationship with yes and and or hurting people that you could have been in a relationship with because so many people have run away or pushed away that real love because it was scary it made them feel too vulnerable and again that stems from you've been hurt and so you don't want to go back to that hurt again so when somebody you feel deeply for pulls out all this love and this vulnerability out of you it's like whoa whoa whoa this is too much that's interesting you know i many years ago i was dating someone um and it was like you know we were very connected very quickly i felt like wow there's something different about this person and after months she started sabotaging things like we were having like the most incredible nights like everything was going great and then all of a sudden she would just get mad at me over nothing right which seemed like nothing i was like what what did i say or didn't say like i thought we were having fun here and then the whole night in the next 24 hours would be ruined because she would be upset about something but want to tell me and i was like what is going on many she was not the right fit for me in the long run and we broke up eventually but at one point she said to me she goes i didn't think i'd find you like i didn't think i'd find you now at this age of my life i thought i'd find you like in my thirties she was like in her young 20s right she's like i thought i'd like have my phone in my 20s and then the version of you the idea of you would come at like 30 or something when she was ready and she was holding on to so much baggage and like hurt from previous relationships but she wasn't healing from it at the time exactly she was just kind of like sabotaging and like pushing away like the vulnerability that we were creating like we were having so much connection and vulnerability but she was just like i'm scared you know exactly because she's she lost emotional control with you and that's a scary place to be in and so the only thing she can do at that point is look for something to be wrong to validate walking away because if she can't find something wrong how can she say i can't do this i don't want to be here anymore so now it starts to nitpick create issues but it all stems from yes she has not healed it i would argue that the vast majority of people are married to someone they don't even have the deepest feelings for really yes how what's the percentage you think in your mind if i had to throw out a number i'm going to say yeah 60 60 percent was going to throw out there and it could be a lot higher i feel like 60 percent of people don't love what do you say they're not married to the person they have the deepest feelings for all right the person they have the deepest feelings for that situation somehow went left people run like in your situation in her mind you were too good to be true yeah this was not real yeah and she she could not believe that she was experiencing this at this time of her life and to be honest with you she wouldn't have been ready at 30 either right because at 30 she still wouldn't have healed you'd have came along and she'd been like what is going on here and so it's a it's a very common thing it happens a lot more than people think like i i'm willing to bet there are men who are going to hear this and they're going to say oh my gosh that happened to me wow all right and and people don't hear about it as much because now when that woman tells her story to someone else she doesn't say oh he was too good i was scared i ran away he did this and he had his fault and i had this red flag yes all these challenges came up and he looked at me i don't know something exactly because again she has to validate her decision and she has to make herself feel more comfortable about the fact that she ran away from you wow but i'm gonna tell you right now it's gonna hit her it's gonna hit her hard monday and don't be surprised if one day i mean i'll know she's oh it's already happening anytime she's gonna happen many times don't worry no that's we weren't the right fit it was you know it's all good okay um and i wish her the best but uh yeah she's tried to come back many times and they always always it's all good um who do you think runs away more from vulnerability in in a a relationship that has the potential to be great men or women people going to be shocked by women hands down why is that okay one i i think that because women are more emotionally in tune and they they give more emotionally so become a lot more emotionally invested in situations it's quicker for themselves to feel like they're losing themselves when they feel this amazing connection with somebody because again it pulls you into an area that you're not used to being in they lose control yes because it's like if you're with a guy that you really like all right and you're really into him but he doesn't call you today it'll bother you but it's not going to drive you crazy like the guy who you're madly into all right when he doesn't call you might be thinking oh my gosh what is he doing what's happening am i good enough women will start to question and analyze everything that will drive them insane also the reality is that women are hearing so much from other women or from what they've only experienced good men don't exist there are no good men here this this f this is a fairy tale to believe you can meet this guy who's so great and so amazing so when they meet that guy it's something has to be wrong to be true exactly i cannot believe this is what it is let me check his like background record he went to jail people must have secret kids somewhere something is going on on the flip side when men come across that situation they think oh my gosh i've hit the jackpot like i found the woman who separates herself from everyone else they latch onto it the problem though with men is we don't typically handle those situations well in regards to one how that woman is reacting so when she's feeling insecure or she's feeling uneasy we get frustrated because it's almost like well we have this amazing connection i'm doing my best to love you why are you acting like this so now we may react in a way that fuels her fear that fear yeah it creates more problems so we do contribute to the issue but we're not quicker to run away we're quicker to latch on and say oh my gosh i want this this is an opportunity i can't let pass me by where she's thinking this is not a real this this can't be true i'm fooling myself let me run now before i get hurt even worse later before i get too deep in and then it's hard for me to get out exactly wow man yeah who messes up relationships more if women tend to run away more if a man knows how to like manage the running-ness away like who ends up messing up relationships more men or women and your experience that one's hard to say i'm i'm gonna lean towards men and only because i feel like men aren't as in tune into what we're doing wrong in the moment so for example the other day i had a client came to me his fiance broke up with him all right and he has said that back in earlier this year they had this argument and it was over the fact that there weren't towels prepared for her when they were staying at some family's house now she's saying to him in this argument you don't appreciate me you don't make me a priority essentially and he's saying why are we arguing about a towel right and i had to explain to him like listen it's not about the towel listen to her words she said you never appreciate me let's explore that so i think that there's a disconnect a lot of times with guys not understanding what they're overlooking what they're missing not truly hearing what the woman is saying because she's not always very clear and transparent about what's going on which yes is an issue which does contribute to the problems but i do think that men knowingly and unknowingly sometimes make a lot of mistakes that cause damage to relationships i don't want to say they put more blame on them but i do in general saying yeah it happens more than that and when did you start to learn about relationships so well because right now you're not married you're not in a relationship so what gives you this uh experience of relationship expertise and understanding so it's a combination of things one it was ever since i was a kid people came to me and told me their life story really yes i remember being 13 i would meet i met a woman for the first time at a party at the party she's telling me how she's been raped how all these horrific things have happened to her that she's never told anyone else and i can see this was a one-time thing but this is a reoccurring theme people i could be i remember at the bus stop one time someone sitting next to me and then opening up and i never understood why but what that did was it allowed me to see into people's lives more than the average person does therefore gain a better more clear understanding of what's really going on right but what really i think bust the doors wide open was when i went abstinent because i feel like as men when we still have sex on the brain and sex as the focus we don't see straight all right and we don't process things properly but you're in a relationship at the time you mean or no i was single and uh you know i thought god was telling me i need to step away from women and just be abstinent and this also coincidentally was when the business really uh took another step and went to a higher level and so it allowed me to refocus but not just refocusing purpose and business-wise i was able to really see things for what they were i was able to step away from situations and really evaluate understand because so much is happening and so much it's not that we don't know but sometimes we don't know how to articulate it we don't know how to process and break it down now that i do believe is a natural gift that i've been given i just know how to express things in the way that people can understand it and i know how to process things and see beyond what you're showing me because a lot of people will act like i'm happy i'm good nothing wrong with me and i can see right through that yeah all right so that combination of natural gift uh letting god lead me as far as my purpose is concerned but i do think that being abstinent and really taking my selfish desires out of it wow when did this happen how old were you this was i was what 27 you've been abstinent since 27 there's been some honor i haven't been perfect with it sure sure but i did go uh a stretch of five years wow and i really think that helped open my eyes to another level and really allow me to see things more clearly and not just see things more clearly but also fine tune how i express things because i was the person when i was younger who was very blunt very bold just said how i felt didn't care how you felt about it and i learned you know it's not what you say is how you say it and learning how to convey the message in the way that people can actually receive it was something i had to work on as well especially as i found myself in this position i never knew i was gonna be doing this i never saw this as my future but once i kind of got to that place of accepting it i realized i had things i had to improve upon and make better so that i can truly help people the way they need to be helped what's the greatest lesson you learned in a partnership or intimate relationship of yours that you've had don't internalize things personally and what i mean is a lot of times we react to what they're doing or how they're talking to us or their behavior towards us in that moment not realizing it's deeper than us in that moment it's not about us exactly and if we internalize it and we react to that we will not make things worse and we will pile on more negative energy into the situation and it starts to make things harder to overcome or it can just break apart the whole relationship so learning to kind of take a step back and really again hearing them not not just listening to what they're saying or not just hearing them more so listening as far as listen to the key words listen to what's really going on with them take your only emotions out of it don't react emotionally to things i think that's a lesson for not just romantic relationships that's for any relationship business family whatever don't be so quick to react emotionally allow yourself to process i always tell you you know how to say they say think before you speak pray before you speak pray before you react allow yourself to just calm your spirit listen process then speak because too many times that emotional reaction it just it's just adding more fire to the flame what should be the key things people are looking for in any partner to thrive and maintain a relationship long-term in today's society the first that came to mind is connection all right i am a firm believer that you can't have an amazing relationship at least long term without connection a lot of people get by on that initial hype all right that initial excitement oh they're so wonderful their resume is so great blah blah blah okay that's cool but that's not going to sustain you is there something deeper there can you two truly be each other be yourselves with each other um open up share your inner thoughts you know be emotionally naked with this person if you can and you still enjoy their presence enjoy speaking to them you feel good when they're around you okay we got something we can work with here even if everything's not in perfect alignment we have the foundation to now grow the relationship but without that it's just fluff is connection something that's um created or is it just uh does it only happen between certain people it only happens between certain people really it's either there or it's not you can you should know it in the first few minutes or maybe it takes i won't say you you'll note in the first few minutes i think it can vary i think it depends on how how spiritually in tuned you are or how how emotionally grounded you are if you're in a very emotionally healthy place i do think you're going to recognize it very quickly all right but a lot of times you you pick up on it but you're scared to embrace it you're still rationalizing what's going on here and we've been programmed to believe it all takes time so when we see this experience where two people are it's like this they click and they're feeling these intense feelings right away everyone else is saying slow down this can't be real or you know you're jumping the gun in reality no because in most situations let's just say if not in a few minutes the first date people know people know like there's potential here or there's not or this one could be the one or they're not but we rationalize why we should entertain this and move further give it a chance waste our time and then we find ourselves stuck in situations we don't belong in and now we try to make it work because we've invested so much and we don't want to now admit that we were wrong or we wasted our time we're lonely various reasons cause us to hang on to situations we don't belong in but we knew from the beginning like when i speak to people who are divorced and i ask them when did you know when did you know yeah a lot of people like my wedding day or like exactly when i was walking down the aisle you're like why did you get married exactly i hate when people answer that way i'm like why would you get married and even way before them forget the marriage they might have been when reality truly hit but they allowed themselves to see it but then at that point what are you going to do yeah you got to fall through your family's there and you don't want to be bigger exactly but again the reality is that person saw it way before but again they rationalize past it then and now they found themselves in this more difficult position and they can't do anything about it and then they get a divorce a year or two later 25 years later i know listen um i know one couple who were married for 25 years after they got divorced everyone was against it because on the outside looking in they looked at this great couple all right but they were miserable all right behind closed doors well the wife let me read a letter that the husband wrote her before they got married no way i read this letter and the first thing i say is why did you ever get married it was clear as day in this letter that you guys should not have taken that step what did it say generally it was just in general calling out all these different issues and problems it was a clear disconnect between the two and once i started to learn the real story you saw that they did not have that deep connection they were two people who did not fit together and what they lacked is was the other thing i was going to bring up as far as what people need is balance all right i think too many times we're fixated on equality and not enough on balance what's the difference the difference is this equality is almost like all right lebron and and dwyane wade joined together they both are alpha males of their team they're both superstars they both can shoot there's there's some level of equality there but you know what they could not win a championship until one decided who's going to be the main person here it wasn't about equality it was about balance it was about complementing each other learning how to work together d-wade or the rest of the team being able to do the things that lebron can't do everything on his team he needs the right players around him so it's the same thing in relationships it's not about they have to be able to do everything we do we got to do everything they do it's about can we complement each other can we balance each other can i fit in or can i have the strengths where you have the weaknesses all right and in a way that doesn't conflict and i believe the conflict part is when you don't have a connection they will conflict when there is a connection that's when you're going to find balance because now when there's a connection we embrace our differences communicate better you can say this is what you're really good at why don't you do more of these things and let me do these things exactly and we can find a way to make it a whole unit wow that's how we create amazing relationships balance to me is the greatest balance and connection you have those two things you win wow you know and and if you look at most failed relationships they lack those two things two things connection and balance there might be some forced connection or they've lost the connection because it wasn't really they never had the connection it's never true it was like the hype of the connection exactly the sexual connection or the resume of this person or the idea of this person well it was more so chemistry like chemistry is not connection all right chemistry chemistry can be created all right and again so using the whole uh basketball analogy a team comes together you can build chemistry we can learn how to work together we can learn how to coexist so to speak but that doesn't mean we really like each other at its core all right yeah there's the difference so you can have a team where the players learn to play together but they still hate each other all right so they had chemistry but no connection but not connection exactly when you have a connection in relationship that that is way more important than chemistry because the connection will bring the chemistry we don't have to worry about the chemistry part when two people have a connection they like journalists exactly and it's a rare thing again we don't experience that with everybody it's something that happens you it's rare to find someone who can say they've had that deep genuine connection more than two times in their life um if even twice all right it's usually once if you're honest with you wow but i'm gonna give it two times and yes there gonna be some people out there that say well there's billions of people in this world why could it's not about yes is it technically possible maybe so but you're not going to come across billions of people in the world you're only going to come across a certain amount of individuals and in that group of people yes you're only going to find that connection maybe once or twice and once you get there like once somebody sets the bar that high in your life it is very hard to go yeah you have to refine that exactly you're not going to feel comfortable anymore going beneath that if you do you're going to find yourself not at peace and very miserable in your relationship wow connection balance is there anything else or is those really the main two things and then everything else is figured out i would the last thing i'm going to throw in is attraction and the reason i throw it in is because i feel like in this world we we try to shame people for putting a focus on attraction and to me it's not about looks looks is about specifically saying you have to look like this you have to be this tall you have to have this body shape i'm not saying look i'm saying attraction we have to be physically drawn to each other that's the last ingredient that takes a relationship from platonic to romantic and that's the ingredient that if you remove it will make a romantic relationship exactly your friends roommates you got people living together no sexual chemistry exactly because why the attraction is gone but if you bring it back into that relationship see how quickly things change that is the ingredient so we have to be willing to embrace the fact of yes attraction is necessary one when we first meet each other and we need that to be more drawn to each other but then to maintain and sustain that great relationship we can't make excuses for letting ourselves go and understand there's a difference between aging and letting yourself go a lot of people are letting themselves go making excuses for it i understand life hits us it's tougher as we get older yes but you gotta work to maintain attraction your relationship you let that go to the wayside friends why do you think that is and how can we decrease the number of failed relationships or is that the wrong question to ask no i think it's a good question i think one we have to understand marriage is not the issue it's marrying the wrong person and marrying for the wrong reasons all right and then underlying to those things is the lack of healing because it's the lack of healing that leads us into these uh wrong relationships and allows us to entertain situations we should not entertain because again for example if if you're a guy or a woman if you've been through some things and now you think you don't deserve that great person that great relationship because your perception of yourself is low now you're gonna just latch on to whoever comes around who says i want to be with you and willing to give you what you want at that moment yeah and you're thinking okay this is safe this will work let me go ahead and go with it but you're never truly into them like that it's never going to be the relationship it needs to be all right but that all stemmed from your lack of self-worth because you didn't heal from whatever traumatized you emotionally before so how do we heal first what's that process look like so it's a long process and i do plan on i have a book i'm working on right now called finding love after heartbreak and it's going to lay out the entire process but so i'll give a little bit right now and i'll save the rest for later right so one thing is first we got to get the hurt out and so i have this exercise i do at all my events called the who hurt me list and so you get a piece of paper like 100 people like oh my god ask yourself the question who hurt me and now every person who comes to mind write them on that paper doesn't matter if you think you move past it doesn't matter if you think it's small and insignificant if they came to mind when you asked yourself that question put them on anyone in your life any from a child a friend to your parents to a lover anyone anyone anything if they come to mind put them on that list because that's how we start to recognize the pain points in your life now we see okay this is where it's coming from a lot of people have suppressed what has happened to them and so you can't you can't address and resolve something that you're not willing to accept exist in your life and the reality is that just because it was 10 years ago 20 years ago it's still lingering within you and it's causing a lot of problems and it causes a lot of emotional stress which then turns into physical ailments and it just snowballs tension and anxiety yeah and it's all a year yes depression yeah all right a lot of these things that we go through in mental health stems from things that we have not resolved from our past all right and it's just all contributing to the the issues that we're experiencing in the now and some of us we may not be experiencing the issues right now but we will it's coming it's just festering in you and it's going to come out at some point yeah so write a list and and think about those moments and reflect on them or what no so at that point once you get the list now we can uh see the first person and i won't go too much further but let's just say you're gonna have to go through a process of getting things off your chest we have not released these things from our spirit from our system and we need to essentially emotionally detox and to do that you've got to get it out [Music] when you're in a relationship yeah and you say you know what i'm going to be disciplined i'm going to work hard at this even when you know it's not the right fit you've put in time you know six months a year two years and you're like you know what i'm just gonna keep going and make it better i'm gonna try my best to to cultivate the love but for some reason that relationship you know deep down isn't the one and you say goodbye to that relationship is that you just saying well on to the next there's another option out there how do you know when it is the right one well that's a good question i think a couple things one when you're in a situation uh the one a premise of the book as it relates to love is really we got to start telling the truth and a lot of times especially in a relationship sense it becomes a place where we tell the least truth you hide the truth you hide the truth because you don't want to hurt someone you want to hurt someone you may have feelings or thoughts and you have things and also you sometimes in a relationship you can be afraid if i tell this person the truth it doesn't even mean the truth that i'm not into them it could be like i'm really into you or it could be like here's some things i'm thinking about the question sometimes is where the fear comes in is judgment if i tell this person my truth will they judge me will they still like me will they still love me will they still you know be there for me and so a lot of times whether you're a man or a woman in a relationship you bring that fear into it and so as a result sometimes that fear works against being truthful so a lot of times uh in a relationship you're more truthful with people outside the relationship than you are with the person in the relationships you know and you're not telling your partner and this is why as men and women we've got to start communicating with one another instead of at one another and so i really want to write this book to help foster more truth so the point you're bringing up if you're in a situation where you're with somebody and you're not sure it's the right fit here is the number one way to begin to identify if it is operating in lust or if you're operating in love is peace you know you're our peace you feel peace that's right our peace is the strongest barometer it's our compass so it tells us we're going in the right direction we're going with the right person in the right direction or you know what i'm going in the right direction but something about doesn't feel like this is the person that's supposed to go with me right it's really about peace that's where i i can and everyone has the opportunity to define what that means for them but to me that's a great way to identify is this the right person i'm dealing with so then let's say let's say you don't have peace the truth is i need to tell that person as soon as possible here's what's here's what i'm really going through here's why especially as a man soon no don't wait don't wait six months why because here's what happens as a man the moment you start to know this ain't it i don't i don't this ain't it here's what happens the more you do not tell her the truth about how you're feeling either she's gonna cry now she's gonna cry later and when she cries later she's you've inflicted more pain i believe as a man we we're gonna be one of two men men that heal pain or inflict pain wow and that truth as hard as it may be and as much as she may not want to hear it it's better for her to hear it early on before she can have more emotional investment than to hear it later and you knew six months ago you were out of there yeah part of telling the truth is to say listen i love you i ca when i operate in love i put someone else's needs over my needs i'm thinking about someone else's thoughts even some time before my thoughts someone else's well-being so in a dating sense as a man you're like hey i need you to know what i'm really feeling here um so that we can just have an honest conversation like i don't want to feel this way i don't know why i'm feeling this way but you know some i don't know if this is just the right fit and i don't you know and and do your best to articulate that it's better to put it all out on the table then there you go six months later seven months later something happens and then we and then sometimes i've been there when i was single you wait for something to happen then to use that as an excuse of course oh well it's because this happened well no that's not because that because if there was really love and there was a long-term plan there you could work through that right but too often i feel like as men we hold on to what we think and i think women do that too because they're afraid so i think when you go into this idea of like okay well how do you date in love how do you date mastery it doesn't mean you can't explore doesn't mean you can't find the right fit this is all about a journey so love when you're trying to find the compatibility you're searching right we're all we all find that journey however it's dating with more intent it's dating with more intent so what does that look like it looks like you know and again this is just what i believe will help us as men especially in a dating sense um think beyond sex think beyond sex how do you teach men to do that when that's all they've been conditioned to think well here's how because again instead of looking at that woman as an object for your pleasure look at her as an individual look at her as someone's sister someone's mother someone's daughter someone's friend humanize her in your mind it doesn't mean listen if you you know choose not to wait until marriage have sex with that person that's that's your business but so often men look at women first as a sexual object not as an individual and as a result when a woman most of the time says hey you know what i don't want to have sex you know or i want to wait whatever a lot of men say all right well i'm moving on to the next if a woman does not want to have sex or share her body with you because she does not trust you she does not know you she does not love you that's a sign of a great woman not a woman that should be discarded wow and so as a man when you're single and you're discarding women because they don't want to share their body that's a warning sign to me hey about you that's right what's going on with you bro why are you on such a path for personal selfish lustful fulfillment that you are discarding potential women that could help make the difference in a positive way in your life wow so for any man it's about hey let me look in the mirror for a minute and just stop why because look at what's going on in the world there's so much news about you know the challenges that men are facing and why are so many men facing all these challenges because i believe most men have given themselves over to lust they've given themselves over to this selfish fulfillment where they want what they want whenever they want it however they want it and as a result they become the sum total of what that lust makes them so as a man no man can turn a blind eye towards what's going on with men in the world so if anything allow what we're seeing in the world to then be a motivator for every individual yeah who do i want to be am i inadvertently living in a way where i may meet the same fate of some of the some of some of the same men that i'm seeing in the world right because it's not like oh point the finger oh look at them oh i would never become that wait a minute the moment any of us as men say oh i would never you might except that that's awesome right because all of us have the same struggle all of us struggle between love and lust and the issue is getting control getting discipline getting mastery to the degree where i don't believe we can ever eradicate lust i don't believe that and that's the truth most women don't want to hear right but i believe that is the truth lust is in every man no matter who that man is no matter what faithful no matter how faith it's there it's not even a reflection of the woman in his life at all however as men when we learn to get control of it when we learn to put love in control of lust that's when we position ourselves to not allow that lust to destroy us a couple of things i want to ask from this yeah um you are a successful man in hollywood you've been married for how long now seven years old seven years two-part question the first part is do you know any successful men in hollywood who are um not married and who have multiple partners do you see any of them that are successful in their career but also have that inner peace that you talked about a few minutes ago i don't see many successful men that that would live are living according to what you how you just outline that are uh that have the peace they might have the funds they have they have the fun they have the money the position all of that but i would not say that the men that uh fit the description that i've been privy have that peace where there's just a sense of of like okay you know what i'm cool i'm i'm competent i'm here this is what it is a lot of times and i believe that if any man is really honest with themselves i don't believe the more women you have the more peace you get i think it actually more chaos more chaos think about it you know it's like it's a man at the end of our life when you think about how much time you spend you know with with women chasing women spending money on all those things you got to ask yourself what what do we have to show for it yeah you know and so for me prior to getting married i had asked the same question what would i have to show for all this and i wasn't like when i uh megan and i started dating then i was like all of a sudden ready to get married i wasn't but what i did was a friend of mine encouraged me don't be afraid don't allow your fear to mess this up afraid of what commitment marriage marriage all of it committed the unknown you know you were dating other girls before then you were having fun you were you know yeah but i was dating with intention you know i was dating saying hey yo here's where i am in life here's what i'm i'm looking to do so that there was no uh lack of clarity with anyone that was dating me where i was you know when i talk about this in the book it's so important i'll talk about for the the male side the female side for men it's important because what happens is lust makes us a part-time manipulator in a single sense what does that mean what does that mean it means that you're dating multiple women those women don't really know that there's as many other women as there are and they don't even know that you're not as serious as you seem to be when you're with them because your intention is for sexual desire sexual desires companionship in that moment whatever you're playing for long term there's no long term and at the same time there's no regard for their real feelings it's like this is a woman that i may date on tuesday here's someone i may date on thursday here's there's one a woman i may date on saturday night and none of them really know the other one exists so that's what i mean about not dating with intention so when you're dating with intention you're letting everybody know listen here's where i am here's what i'm doing very very important as a man i encourage any single man to if you really want to get become successful in life and success to me is nothing to do what happens in the world success is to me peace the inner world it's the inner world successes who is the person that looks back into the mirror and and there is where success starts and where it stops we see a lot of men who have uh public success but no personal success yeah and there used to be a time where that was okay but now real success starts you know with who's looking back in the mirror so i would ask any man if you are finding yourself dating multiple women from both women's sake why ask just stop this quest why are you doing it and what is the real value that you're getting out of it do you find yourself with this unsatiable appetite that no one person can ever quench and as a result there's no peace within your spirit super important the second part of that is that if you find yourself saying hey you know what i am going to get more discipline here but i still want to explore okay explore with intention let the woman know what your intentions are so then they as an adult can make the decision if they want to engage with you that to me is what real uh honesty and transparency looks like right now for a woman if you're dating a man you've got to get out of the gray area you've got to get out of the gray area and what does this mean right that's right but that gray area is the area where you are most liable because in a relationship sense the one who has the knowledge the most knowledge has the most power and a lot of times men have more power because they know what they're really serious about what they're not and the woman that they're dealing with does not know that's a gray area he may text you all the time he may talk to you all the time you may go out on a date you may have met his parents but never has he told you we're together right well he's thinking about the commitment that's right yeah yeah and so for a woman in that situation she's in a gray area and i encourage her in the book you got to get out of the gray you got to ask clear direct questions wait for clear direct answers so that the man that you're dealing with you get a sense of are you are you dating anyone else are we committed are we exclusive what are your plans where are you going don't be afraid to ask the questions because so often when women come to me for advice they're afraid what if i ask him these questions and he leaves well he was going to leave anyway it's good that's great right that's great i mean here's the thing i've i've dated women in the past who they're almost so honest in the beginning it's like oh my gosh you're like pushing me away because i'm like this is not where i'm at in my life like you're talking about kids in the first five minutes i'm like i just want to have fun right yeah yeah but then there's other women who are that honest where you're like wow i'm actually really interested in you i'm this is kind of scary that you're so honest yeah but i'm gonna like keep exploring because i like you and i'm that interested in you and i want to learn more yeah no i think i think the more honest you are in the beginning maybe you don't have to stay in five minutes five minutes i want to have five kids but i think almost the more truthful you can be earlier on the better because you can start to eliminate those people or know exactly where they're going to be at well yeah you get a better sense of what's what and i also encourage women i i you know i say listen um [Music] have an observation period in dating what's that mean meaning don't just rush in to when you're dating somebody telling this particular man all the stuff you want all that like you don't even know if you're going to like this person right and sometimes it's like just on that like you said on that first date they're like telling oh here's what i want to do no no no chill observe yeah see if this man is even worthy of knowing what you think see if this man is even worthy of knowing your plans and what you how you see your future how will you know if he's worthy of knowing because you're going to spend time you're going to evaluate you're going to see who he is and this is why listen i know in this modern world what i'm getting ready to say is just uncommon but i don't care i'm going to say it this is why this is why it's so important as long i'd say in this book like i believe it's important to wait until marriage for sex but most people aren't gonna do that i say in this book at least wait until you're in a trusted committing loving relationship before you have sex why because when you have sex with someone and you do not know them and you do not trust them it becomes hard to really get clear on who they are and what they're about so important so as a woman i'm like listen if i was a woman and i was dating oh you ain't getting none for me why because i don't know you i was i was at a facebook um uh on the book tour and this woman asked me a question and during our q a and so i said this to her man and she said she was asking me a question about sex and whatnot and i said okay i said so let me just give you an analogy let me okay how many women in the audience after a month of dating a guy would you give them the code to your phone the code your passcode yeah and most of them said oh no there's no way um are you kidding me i said okay now listen i'm not trying to get in your business i'm not going to judge you i said but in that same period of time in previous relationships how many of you in that same period of time have already given him your body hmm 90 i mean so if you don't trust them enough to give them the code to your phone why would you give them your body wow so this is when you know when you don't give a man your body right it gives you a better opportunity to observe and evaluate what does he really want is he even really interested potentially in who i am what i think or is he just interested in what my body can give him that's what i say about an observation period so that you can really see who this man is what he's about and really where he's going and i believe that women have a lot more power in dating uh than they realize but a lot of times they give it away but they give it away they give it away to men you know like oh yo it's like no no hold on to that power evaluate make decisions even don't even if you want to be in a relationship super bad don't allow your flesh and your desire to then make you so desperate that you lower your standard to the degree where you're allowing men entry into your life that really are not qualified what if uh the woman just wants to have fun and they're not looking for a committed relationship either then you know what listen listen i'm not going to judge what consenting adults want to do if that's her point of view that's her point of view yeah you know and that just is what it is um and it's at a certain point you know when she's doing the same thing and want and wants a different result it'll require looking at what she's doing to get the result same pretty man you know when any man gets to a place where he's like you know i keep doing the same thing i get a different result may have to change what i'm doing yeah i might be having fun but i feel soulless inside i feel like i'm not having trouble intimacy or exactly lacking the partnership that i really want totally told by having this fun exactly now are there any men in hollywood again i don't want you to say names or anything but are there any men in hollywood that you know who've been married for a long period of time that are just so happy they've been married for 10 15 20 years and they're just like so happy that they and they feel zero desire for other women do you know any of that well now hold on i don't i see again i'm gonna say something that's probably crazy that most women don't want to hear i don't believe there's any man on this planet in a marriage that has zero desire for it for another woman yeah i don't believe that it just becomes a question of managing that desire the discipline yeah totally and saying yeah there's a desire here but whatever you know it is what it is it'll pass i love my wife i'm not gonna do that boom but in terms of hollywood i think that there's no exception there but i do know men yes that are that are married that are happy happily yes happily married love their wives love being married even with all the challenges that there are and the temptations that is not uh there are a lot of men that i know that are fit that description where that temptation they have not fallen into temptation no matter what desires they may have because they love their wife and they love their life so much and you and from your point of view you think that these men who've been married for 10 plus years who've been faithful and committed or maybe they've had some slip-ups or whatever but they're in the marriage they're happy they're committed um you believe that those men are more are going to be more successful in life than men who are not married or not committed in relationship because the people that are not committed are lacking the inner peace as much here's what i feel i feel like um you know that going back to that battle between love and lust right and love being selfless and i believe as men uh one of our biggest challenges is we don't know how to love right um we don't know how to love ourselves we don't really know how to love the women in our lives we don't know because we don't know how to give love we don't have to receive love and this is an area where most men struggle and it's actually the area no matter how successful in the world or publicly a man may be without love i do feel that man is deficient because love is the name of the game love is what this is all about it really is it's what life's about it's not about the money it's not about the power it's not about the fame it's not about the success it's about love period because at the end of the day you can pass on to your children or pass on to the next generation money you can pass on influence but if you don't pass on love those children will be deficient wow right those children will become dysfunctional it's love and so as a man when i decide i'm not gonna open myself up to love i don't believe i can ever reach my fullest potential as a human being so it's not so much that the institution of marriage makes men better in and of itself it's that institution which fosters that love and vulnerability because i believe our vulnerability leads to our victory not the opposite way and so as men we have to really work against the training that we get which is like oh growing up love makes us weak you know oh you're soft right you know the whole box that we're taught as men to live in and we don't live in that box you know we're either met with violence or put-downs and whatnot so most men growing up if we don't fit the box if every man is strong and every man has the answers that every man has women every man has power if we don't fit that box most of the time growing up we're told stop crying stop being a wimp you know so the box breaks us so what do we as men do anything that does not contribute to our survival we suppress so we may want to say yo what's up bro man love you man you're good but we don't do that because we're taught growing up yo if you don't you don't say i love you you're crazy so we hold it in right and then we just try to do everything we can to survive so we try to subscribe to everything in the box but secretly we know there's something off so to me when you have a man that is choosing not to open himself up to love i would argue because that's happening because that man has had a deep hurt in his life that he is not yet willing to process and face and get healing over right it's like okay if there is something with a parent or or previous relationship you know i think that's also one of the truths about men is we're more sensitive than most people realize yeah you know and there's a lot of times men have gotten their heart broken so bad at one point in time it was so painful they have no desire to ever go do that again but i believe we are naturally disposed predisposed to love but as men we have to work against the cultural and societal conditioning in order to do that and i believe when we do it we are happier we live longer we are more peaceful so i do think a man certainly can adjust to life without a woman without love but do i think the fullest life is when we find the right person that we can walk life walk through life with i do yeah because i think love is what it's all about that's true i do too it's interesting you said that you know men can go through extreme heartbreak and i think i'm gonna generalize this but i feel like men in general have not learned how to deal with their emotions yeah and so on an extreme emotional attack is against us yep it's like a bomb explodes totally where it can be horrible for women too i mean it can be heartbreaking it could take a year or two to like recover in a breakup it could hurt really bad but i feel like in general women are able to express their emotions with other girlfriends more their family members and at least talk about their feelings whereas men get heartbroken it could break you physically because we don't talk about it that's it we hold it in we suppress it that's it oh man i talk about this in the book you know anything we suppress uh we empower we empower it to destroy us really seriously we that and that's one of the reasons why i wrote this book we got to start talking we got to start being off we gotta start communicating we got to start i have a whole chapter in this book called create a safe space where we have at least one other person that we can talk to that we can tell what's really going on and we can and we can do it without fear of judgment because as men you know i remember my early 20s you know i got my heart broke man oh my god oh it's like life was over it was over forget about it it's i'm done okay yeah and a lot of it but but then you don't want to go to anybody and tell them that you know you're as messed up because people are going to judge you and suck it up suck it up and all that get back out there that's right oh it's fine playing the fish in the scene well no i wanted that bit if i didn't get her right and so i talk about in the book it's important for us to no longer suppress because that that suppression it builds that pressure within us and why do we feed lust because then lust becomes an outlet lust becomes a relief to the pressure that we're not acknowledging and the stress that we're really feeling internally we find a vice there's a whole chapter in the book called the one you feed you know so either you're feeding love or you're feeding lust and vices feed the lust uh virtue feeds the love and so as men think about how much of this world is is designed to feed vice to to feed men vice everything everything i mean every time you turn your face oh my goodness driving on the street oh my goodness it's everywhere it's everywhere and so as men we then have to practice mastery which is the practice of love where we become smarter we become to realize oh got it this world is actually not predisposed for me to become as successful as i can be so i have to look at things for a different lens so i have to say oh god there are traps set up every day for me to fall in device every day every man i'm not pointing the finger i'm saying every man just open up you yeah you know what i mean it's like yo okay man listen if i don't manage instagram instagram's gonna manage me all right so i gotta get control all right because there's vice everywhere and we have to make the decision about okay i have to consistently seek out virtue so things like this podcast you know self-help books uh reading the reading the word you know going to church if you're spiritual listening to what to the right music putting things in our spirit that remind us of who we are that remind us of whose we are to remind us of where we're going because if we don't consistently nurture and feed ourselves virtue that vice i mean seriously it's like junk food man it's an attack it's going to ignite it's going to attack our bodies to attack our spirits and take us to a place we don't want to be [Music] when does someone know it's connection and not chemistry because i feel like you might be tricked we have this incredible connection we understand each other we get each other i can't explain it but i feel something that feeling might be also chemistry at the same time right it might be masking yes if it's really connection or chemistry how do you know if it's true connection over man this is desire connection attraction all these things happening at once one can you truly be yourself with that's big all right because again a lot of people they go on these dates they're bringing their representative and the chemistry happens on a surface level with the representatives that both sides are bringing but when you actually show your true self now what happens and a lot of people have not done that with their partner the person that they're getting to know so again you're falling into the hype of the chemistry or the compatibility but you're not discovering true connection being there so you've got to be able to be yourself because real connection loves you at the core all right you can show me all the parts of you i still want you all right number two is can we enjoy each other with no distractions all right again what people fail to understand and this can happen with chemistry is that we're we're bonding based off of the activity or the the things in our environment meaning all right we love going out together and we do all these fun stuff and we're doing all these things and that's great all right we know how to have fun together but can we be alone in the room no tv no distraction no phone just us and still love being with each other a lot of people can't say that a lot of people are only able to be in their relationship and tolerate their partner and i use that word strongly tolerate their partner because they have enough distractions in life they have kids they have work they have all these other things tv video games man caves exactly all these things that pull them away from their partner that does not allow them to face the fact that no you really don't like each other at the court man and and so that is a huge sign of connection that's why like one thing i suggested in one of my books was go on a road trip and it's just a random suggestion but go on a road trip for at least six hours no phone no distraction just you and them talking will you still be happy after those six hours a lot of people can't make it that far on a car ride with their partner all right a lot of people cannot be in a room with along with their partner and nothing else to take their attention so you've gotta you gotta really push those boundaries to see what do we really have here if this is really gonna be called a connection right and your fear is are you able to grow together after 10 15 years is that one of the main things is so it's it's you know it's hard to you know you never you never can look that far ahead you know and we don't know what's in store we may not be here tomorrow exactly it's it's a concern of can we still give that same energy and it's both sides because again i'm not saying i'm not perfect so even though i'm confident that i could do it what if there's something that throws me off you know it's just that yes it as time goes on there's that test of really putting your best foot and bringing that that same energy that you brought in the beginning now again i think i'm holding myself to a higher standard that i think most people do because i think that a lot of people's mentality is well things change things are gonna be different it's okay so what you don't go out as much anymore people think like this but they don't realize that's why your relationship is deteriorating right i don't want a deteriorated relationship so when i think about yes can i be with someone past 10 15 years if i accept a level of mediocrity of course but you don't want that exactly i'm saying can we maintain excellence after these 10 15 years all these things because to me what is the point of being here if we don't have it if we're not operating at our highest level what about what about the saying that i hear whether this is a meme or this is women saying this online maybe you know the line better than me uh if he can't accept me at my worst he doesn't deserve me at my best i hate that i absolutely hate it and i hate it because it it has turned into validation for not addressing your flaws and issues all right i agree with it from the standpoint of you've got to be able to handle your partner's worst moments all right because we're going to all have moments we're going to all fall we're all going to do make a mistake it's going to happen over time that's just the way it is but when you are essentially trying to say i have a horrible flaw and you should accept it even when i want to consistently make you deal with it no that's not going to work for me i can't accept that that's not that's not okay and so a lot of people that's what they're turning it into that's you not taking accountability and responsibility is that growth going back to uh okay this is where i'm at i don't want to address it you just have to accept it and or don't be with me exactly you know it reminds me of like once i don't know they still say it but i know at one time people would say arguing is healthy for a relationship all right i decided i don't know if i agree i understand that yeah i just don't like that no at all can you can you communicate with with we don't agree on this but do you have to argue exactly that's my thing disagreement is acceptable disrespect is not all right so say one more time disagreement is acceptable disrespect is not that's good all right so my thing is yes it's okay and even healthy to have disagreements because we have different perspectives we can bounce ideas off each other we simply have to know how to navigate that and come to an official decision on things when we have those moments but arguing arguing says we are being disrespectful whether our tone is negative the words that we're using you know we're getting loud we're getting angry we're we're basically throwing negative energy at our partner that's not healthy there's nothing healthy about that but a lot of people will say that because they want to validate the unhealthiness in their relationship they don't want to face the issue of i need to learn how to talk to my partner better i don't want to have to fix my tone why do i have to watch what i say because that's what an adult does wow all right grow up you know i'm sorry to anyone listening to this but that's just real we we can't just think it's okay especially with our partners to speak however we want to to throw all kinds of insults to be disrespectful and think this is okay because what people are not realizing is all it takes is that one really bad argument to plan a seat of negativity that now grows into something worse in the relationship a lot of people's issues are not the issue that they're facing in that current moment it's the culmination of all kinds of things before then it's the build up from that last time you disrespected me or made me feel some kind of way and ever since then i've resented you and now in this resentment i've given you an attitude you didn't know what the attitude was about because i didn't communicate clearly now you're giving me attitude and now you see how it turns into other things now that attitude turns into not having sex with each other that attitude turns into okay uh the way that we talk to each other in general maybe becoming secretive because now we don't like dealing with each other anymore and what you don't realize is it started from disrespectful arguing wow all right it can also start from some other stuff all right but the arguing is a huge problem for a lot of people and we can't just keep swimming under the rug so going back to your point about the whole uh take me as my at my worst yes worst moment now you have a once in a while a good attitude exactly consistent negative behavior has to be addressed and corrected so arguments are disrespect but disagreements is okay is that yes the disagreement is acceptable disrespect is not yes so you can always disagree and you can agree to not agree yeah or you can is it right agree to disagree yeah agree disagree but you but what i'm hearing you say is that arguing uh saying what's on your mind in an angry exact aggressive way tearing down a partner is never going to do anything good for someone exactly people have to understand whenever someone feels attacked they will defend themselves even if they know they're wrong even if the point you're making is actually solid the way you're coming at them negates their ability to receive it that's why even me as a speaker my focus has been do i want to be heard or do i want people to receive my message all right if i want to be heard i can speak however i want i can be blatant with the insults i can cut people down i can just make jokes of everybody's situation because it's just entertainment i just want to be heard but no i want people to receive it and if i want people to receive it i have to be more considerate more compassionate i have to check my tone i have to be careful with my words and that's why people watch my videos to see i try to be very careful with my words because i want you to receive what i'm saying so if we're in a relationship we have to take that approach if you want them to hear you be mindful of how you're talking to them why is it so hard for people because again they don't they don't want to face the the or they don't want to do the work of correction all right and the work of correction can entail the healing and again facing those issues um it's also conditioning if people have been brought up in households and environments where this is how they talk to each other it's it's very hard to change yeah yeah it's foreign to now speak in a more loving and positive way it's foreign to sit and be quiet and listen all right so now they have to reprogram themselves and that's a lot of work um and and i think also the acceptance of the way you're communicating is wrong people don't like to face that they were wrong they don't want to have to accept that so it's no i have to dig even deeper hole and and and stick with this whole negative approach of how i do things because know that there's nothing wrong with this or i see other people do it you know they're fine no they're not fine they're not okay you know so i think those reasons just overall they don't want to have to do the work and so they rather make excuses for it so it sounds like again we go back to step one healing okay if you can learn to heal you can start to improve the quality of your choices dating someone in a relationship or getting out quicker you can be a better more effective communicator in relationships whether you're dating or in a long-term community relationship you can have uh a better relationship overall with yourself when you heal and with someone else so can you give me a a breakdown a boot camp 101 on how to recognize what you need to heal and then how to start healing that what does that look like for someone okay i need to heal stefan what do you mean by that how do i do it how do i get started how long does it take to get healed okay is this a lifelong journey is this overnight what does it look like all right so first thing how long does it take to heal it's going to take as long as you're willing to put into work healing is not a time thing it's a work thing so when you hear people say time heals all no it doesn't time alone doesn't heal a damn thing all right it can help it does aid in the process but by itself it is no good you have to take certain steps um so when people think well i'm going to take a year off from relationships to heal why a year and if you're not doing the work in that year that year means nothing and that's what happens to a lot of people they took a year off but what they did was they hid from the world they hid from relationships they went in their corner all right and distracted themselves but they never healed now they come back out of that year and they're still the same person or maybe they're not the same maybe the first few months of dating they're a little different but then they fall back exactly because they never resolved things at its core now in terms of recognizing what to heal my first step is it's called the who hurt me list all right so you get a piece of paper you write down a piece of paper who hurt me and now every person who comes to mind you write them down on the piece of paper it doesn't matter how long ago it happened doesn't matter if you think you've moved past it if you think it's not relevant if they come to mind then there's some level of relevance there put them on the paper in about a sentence or two of what they did to hurt you all right this is how we're going to start to locate what you've been holding on to but you really got to go into this exercise very genuine you can't be trying to control the narrative you just got to let yourself feel just ask yourself the question close your eyes let it come out what's the question i should ask who heard me that's it that's it and what it's like i can only think of like three people that really hurt me should it be thinking of like every instant they can think of from childhood of that one comment or should this be this person punch me in the face anybody who comes to mind so i don't want them to force it but i don't want to under undermine it in any kind of way either just whoever comes to mind put them on the paper because even if there's a situation where you forgot somebody if we tackle the big ones you're not gonna be able to escape the big ones the big ones are gonna come out they're gonna come to mind right if we can tackle those then that might set the stage where everything else gets taken care of naturally sure sure all right because now your awareness is gonna be there and your level of healing will allow you to see things differently because really the big ones might be the ones that cause the most pain and if you heal that the other ones are just a pattern of the pain exactly and you will also start to perceive those situations differently once you heal from the bigger ones okay so that's step one take take a piece of paper write it out how long should this take a few minutes a few hours depending depending on the person because you know for some people it's going to get heavy it's going to get heavy and that might cause them to want to pause and take a step back but i would encourage them do not like walk away from it completely stick to it but it can be as quick as a few minutes maybe it takes an hour because they may get emotional in the process but just don't run from it um but just just do it don't even worry about the time just do it okay step one step two step two so step two i'm gonna lay this out i usually lay it out but you know what i feel like i gotta do it today bring it i gotta do it today so step two we gotta get things off our chest all right okay and this is where we do the letter writing process so there the there's two parts of the letter two drafts the first draft is the most important this is where we're gonna have essentially an emotional detox we gotta get everything out so let's say on the list is your mother i always bring up mothers because so many people have mommy issues but the world only wants to talk about daddy issues all right and the society has made it to where it's almost wrong for you to tell a woman she was a bad mother or to criticize your mother so we suppress that a lot more than we do our father it's interesting you know so let's say it's your mother and um you're gonna do the first draft and in that first drive you're just gonna let all your raw emotion out i don't care if you curse her out i don't care if you wish death on her i don't care what nasty evil thing you say however you feel let it come out you've got to let the anger the hurt all pour out of you into this letter if you don't know how to start the letter start it with the most damning thing you could say all right i hate you because boom and then just go from there it's going to start coming out once you uncork that screw that's it exactly and this is where it gets heavier a lot of people may take a lot more pauses in this process all right because again so many people have been suppressing this for so long and again it's like any other detox when you start to detox the bad stuff has to come out first yeah all right and you can't get to a heal place unless you flush out all the negative energy so this is why it's important this is not the draft to be politically correct to to try to frame things in the right way i don't want you to be considerate i don't want you to think about what i did some wrong things to forget all that this first draft is let it rip let it rip let it out and i guarantee you by just doing that first draft you're going to feel better you're going to feel a weight come off your shoulders you're going to feel more peace to you right that's the draft one draft draft draft so drive 2 is essentially now i always tell people all right you finish draft one pray meditate whatever you gotta do just get to a kind of level place mentally calm and now read the letter to yourself as if you were them oh okay and now so put yourself in their shoes and anything that now comes off as attacking condescending blatantly insulting you're going to change it you're not changing the message you're just changing your delivery of the message all right and the importance behind this is twofold one we talked about it earlier people don't know how to communicate without being negative their tone their delivery is horrible so this letter is gonna help you learn how to take your negative emotions and thoughts and now turn it and reword it into a much more loving positive message now loving positive does not mean you won't say some things that aren't hurtful to them or a hard pill for them to swallow there's just a difference between lashing out and expressing how you feel saying this is how you impacted my life this is how i perceive things right then you're this you're that you're this that's the first draft but the second draft is just you're just changing your delivery of the message so by the end of it you have fully expressed yourself but in a more calm loving manner this is going to allow one is going to teach you how to be better in your communication interesting but also and this is the part people aren't gonna like and and i won't go too deep into this part for those who may have to send it and i would just suggest getting the book to see they got to send them that all right because it breaks all of this down but for those who do have to send it it's going to give you a much greater chance of great things to come from that letter not that that's the focus of the letter the focus of the letter is for your healing so i don't care if you did send it and they never responded i don't care if they say if you sent it and they rejected everything you said in it because the purpose is your release of all those emotions all right and you've got to embrace forgiveness and forgive this is another piece of this healing puzzle forgiving them and forgiving yourself as well that's the real focus but i have seen amazing things happen because of these letters really yeah people receiving them yes i've seen so these are not these are not letters that you send out that say you're horrible you ruined my life that's not draft one you're sending out draft two which is more of a place of this is how this scenario impacted me yeah this is how you're taking me more of a responsibility as well how it made me feel is that i'm hearing you absolutely yeah because it's very different to accuse someone and attack someone versus saying but this is how i received it right whether you're right or wrong exactly because also understand this hurt people hurt people and and some people might reject that because they say well i'm hurt and i never hurt nobody that's a lie whether you realize it or not you have hurt people one example i'll give that comes to mind let's say you're a woman or a man and you were hurt in your last relationship and now you've become guarded now to you you're still operating as a loving human being but what you don't realize is your gardenness is still hurting either the potential partner or someone that you do get with because you're unwilling to give them your whole heart wow all right so you still you're not you're not attacking them maybe you're not punching them or cheating on them but you're holding back exactly and you're still undermining the relationship so you're still hurting them and you're hurting yourself because you're not allowing yourself to experience the full greatness of it because you won't fully dive in because you're scared and you're guarded and that has to be fixed but going back to the original problem i want to make is in that same mode the hurt person does not always realize how much they're hurting you we have to understand that damaged individuals are operating from a very selfish mindset it's i'm protecting myself think about the person who is overly critical of everyone else they're always criticizing criticizing criticizing they're not doing it because their intention is to hurt others they're doing it because they want to keep the spotlight off of them and to protect themselves from criticism so i'm going to hit you before you hit me dang all right so again a lot of our parents the things that they did they did not understand and even if they had some semblance of an idea they're so caught up in their own feelings they're blinded by it so a lot of times this letter basically takes the blinders off when you do it in that loving manner because like i said earlier do you want to be heard or do you want them to receive the message the yelling the screaming the lashing out they heard that because you may have done that with them in the past but they never received you in that moment now expressing yourself in a calm loving manner they can't help but receive you and even those who reject what you're saying trust me it has hit them in a way nothing else has right and i've seen situations where the offender has broken down in tears after realizing how bad they were being but they never connected with that previously because their emotions their feelings blinded them from that it's a lot man first two steps sound like a pretty deep work it is it is absolutely deep work but it's necessary work i mean listen no one says healing is easy but it's necessary and it's absolutely worth it and it it's a game changer like i just don't think people understand how much better your life will be and you know what let's take a moment to say this isn't even about your emotional relationship life it's about your overall quality of life a lot of people's illnesses are from a lack of emotional health all right that's true and what we have to understand is a suppression of feelings a lack of healing creates emotional stress stress is now the number it's not now it's always been the number one inducer of disease it is the number one trigger that sets everything else wrong in your body all right if you cure stress you cure the body a lot of things it changes after that so your overall health your overall quality of life is dependent on you healing and releasing that negative energy so it's it's so much bigger than just a relationship [Music] how many values in common do you need to have with your partner life partner because the important ones it's not how many but there are a few of them that are really that are really important which ones would you say that make or break based on your experience i think i'm not going to say them in order of importance but one of them that really matters is your relationship to others if you are a person that values relationships that sees the presence of others in your life as central and you are with somebody who does not want community or does not know how i mean i'm talking not about what they would like to learn through you but their value is you do things alone you live alone you rely on yourself you know you don't bring people over to the house i have a couple i just spoke with yesterday you know and he loves to have people over and she just nobody should come over to the house her space the whole thing and i'm thinking wow this is a tough one it's not just about the how it's his whole life is about being with people and her whole life is about not being with people necessarily that's not how she experiences it now the question is is she drawn to more of what he has to offer and is he drawn to more of what she if these are totally more yeah then then okay different values come together and they they mix and match but if you have these two separations like that so that's one one of the beautiful questions i ask in how is work is were you raised for autonomy or were you raised for loyalty were you raised for self-reliance or were you raised for interdependence which one would you say for me was that self-reliance meaning what you have nobody will ever help you as well as you can help yourself you only have yourself to count on don't trust people you're on your own buddy or raised for interdependence loyalty you're never alone there's people around you you owe others others are there for you relationships is what makes you i think i was both based on like circumstances correct the circumstances made you reliable because you were alone with mom but the messaging was you have me yeah yeah of course okay so i think both i think that question is a fundamentally interesting question okay that people can ask themselves when they partner in business and in love raise for self-reliance or loyalty yeah okay interdependence are you part do you see yourself as connected to others and it's your connections that give you a sense of anchoring meaning relevance importance it all of that or do you see yourself as fundamentally on your own i think travel curiosity you often will have a complementarity between one person who is curious and eager to discover and goes on you know and then another person your question about to be alone or doesn't want to travel once doesn't want but it's also likes comfort likes repetition likes the familiar um i think the religious values if you have a person who you know those those matter a great deal um children do you want family or do you not want family if you you know if you want a family then make sure that you find someone who wants a family what do you what are you doing what are you going to do try to convince some you know now i don't think you have to have the same values on everything i think you have to have a similar outlook on life which is a vision like exactly the same as when you a vision do you you know do you want to own a home do you think that economic achievement is important do you want to live in an extended family you think that living intergenerationally really is important and you have somebody else who says you know i don't want your parents over you know do you do you want to live in more than one place you know i think these are essential you know money feelings or emotions religious beliefs attitude toward life it's not a specific value about something it's a value is a cluster of things it's a cluster of importance of systems of meanings that's a value it's and you may not find someone with everything that's the same but someone with a similar mindset what you're saying i met a husband of mine with whom i am for more than three decades who had never left the us when i met him really i never knew such a person existed coming from europe that was unheard of for us no he lived in the states he was american i came from europe in europe you travel everywhere all the time even if you have nothing you work one month you get the money and then you go to the next country which is two hours away yeah and so i traveled outside he had never been outside of the us yeah he will always tell me been to the virgin islands but you know for the rest and i thought oh my god how does one you know who is such a person but i knew it was because of the circumstances of his life and that if he could he would and he was intensely curious if you just said oh he's never traveled then you misinterpret you don't want to just look at the manifest thing of you know you want to say and behind this is there someone who would actually like that who just hasn't had the opportunity and he's curious and just says let's go so don't get fooled just by what you see find out what is the belief behind it the aspiration the longing the interest and then you get a sense of what is the value do you think it's uh let me go back to expectation do you feel like we should lower or should diversify expectations or what did you say the word was calibrated calibrate expectations or should we be finding someone that can reach that expectation that we want no i think it's you think it's just impossible i think you need to calibrate calibrate always calibrate you calibrate you constantly will be disappointed do you know a single relationship where you haven't been disappointed yeah okay i mean disappointment is which can lead to suffering is part of a relationship the minute you have a relationship you have an expectation that expectation means that you want something love closeness intimacy partnership you know business affiliation you name it it creates dependence the moment you have an attachment you have dependence that dependence means that you have power or i have power if i expect something from you i confer power on you you have power over me i have power over you by definition there will be moments when that power doesn't go in the direction that i want and i'll be disappointed i'll be disappointed is there a single child that didn't have a disappointment from their parents it doesn't exist this this idyllic thing you're talking about it doesn't exist the next thing is what do you do with that disappointment hey can i come tell you i'm really disappointed you let me down i thought we were in this together i trusted you and you say i see your point or do you say what the hell are you talking about you're just inventing this you're delusional none of the you know and everything in between that's how you do a relationship it's really based on the repair it's not based on the it's how we heal the disappointment yes so you repair all these breaches moment by moment you come back you know and the repair is not i am so sorry you prepare me sometimes be hey do you want a glass of water or hey did you see this article in the newspaper john gottman is this very interesting thing about that he says the repair is not that you come and you do a culpa is that you do what he calls bids for connection you show the other that they still matter i brought a newspaper in at the time when we still had newspapers that was one of these examples you know i brought the paper in like i think of you i'm pissed at you you just annoyed me we just had a spat but but you still care about you i still care you're still in my life yeah i respect you so it's how we repair disappointment on a daily or weekly or monthly basis minutes sometimes the is the success of the relationship and that means also how you come and you say you take responsibility yes i think i actually think that taking responsibility is the ultimate freedom i've i messed up i shouldn't have done this you know can i do that you know it really is being accountable what if you're instead of blaming the other whatever what if it actually in that moment was there it doesn't matter it wasn't you don't have to agree with anything i didn't mean to it wasn't my intention yeah so you know we are going to sleep a lot but it's about just saying it and for that you have to it's about saying it and for that you have to be able to see that you're a flawed person who can be accountable without that becoming a major source of shame and i'm terrible it's a different thing between saying i messed up and i'm messed up how i like this distinction how do we in our mind because i think in the past relationships when i messed up in a small term right like a disappointment a small disappointment feeling saying like i'm sorry or taking responsibility or saying you know it does my fault was like a humiliation what was more like look at what i'm like why shall i no it's more like here's all the actions i'm doing right right today i've done this which was an expectation and i've done that and i took the trash out or whatever i'm just and i you know did something kind of and i wrote a note and i did this and i took us to dinner and i did all these things well today but i messed up on this one so for me i used to say to myself like gosh but can't you see the whole picture of like all the good things i'm doing why don't i need to be an hour conversation about like one small thing that's what i used to feel like and do you feel like we should just be saying you know what take responsibility anyways for those moments even if you're doing lots of good things yeah i mean yes but not a perfect human being you know it's like i might slip the story is told by you yes the other person is the one that needs to take to tell you about all the good things that you've done you felt i do all of this i do one thing wrong and now i have to go into the dark pits you know but that's because you had a partner who did not enough tell you about all the good things you did me if you are in a relationship you need that other person to acknowledge all of the positive stuff so that when you have to say something about the moment what you messed up you don't feel like you know this is an endless chore well i think yeah exactly or i think it's more like okay if we're going to acknowledge one thing that i didn't do at least acknowledge something that's what i didn't do right it's not at least it's a must it's a must it's a must it's not bad if i i shouldn't be needing that or i shouldn't be you should need it i shouldn't you should need it you totally should need it don't only acknowledge the bad also acknowledge the gift not also it's it's it's a must it's a mandate you know what happens sometimes in distressed relationships because you were in a distressed relationship at that moment and this is true you can directly take this into the workplace in a distressed relationship the tendency is to highlight the negative and disregard the positive the positive is just a given the negative will make a big deal out of it so the one thing you didn't do becomes the whole conversation and then what does that person do of course that person says but you disregard all the other stuff and rightly so because it has been disregarded in a distressed relationship the positive you know if we get there on time it's because there was no traffic and if we get there late it's because of you the good is chance the bad is attributed to you or in a different version of that is what we call negative attribution error if i am in a bad mood is because i had a bad day but if you're in a bad mood it's because you're a nasty person who is always so contuncturous mind is circumstantial yours is characterological so when you'd say i was in a relationship in which when i did one thing bad it was so overblown and i felt like everything else was being disregarded that's a sign of a distressed relationship in and of itself interesting the fact that you because in a normal relationship somebody else says thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you then you finally don't do something he says i really messed up there i forgot sorry right it's not such a big deal because you are seen for the whole person if you have to make a speech about you should see the whole person you're not in a good relationship oh there you go okay or you're not in the dynamic in your relationship is not a good one no that's it that's that in itself is a sign of a bad dynamic you shouldn't have to say this so i wasn't crazy okay guys no okay gotcha no and the interesting thing about this is how much it applies at home and the same thing happens at work can it work so is it a mandate to acknowledge uh team members at work as well in the good and not just the negative i absolutely think so yeah but i am not the best at it myself we see a lot of the things that are slipping through right yeah yeah it's like my tendency is to it's different because in a relationship you're not it's not a paycheck right it's like maybe there is but it's different in terms of like an intimate relationship versus a working order how much has your team taught you because look you are probably like me we wouldn't be sitting here on some level if we were not actually more self-critical people of course and very demanding of ourselves and hence we surround ourselves by people who we think we can be demanding from as well and that is true but it is also important that we learn to be sometimes a little kinder with ourselves and not just highlight the negative while at the same time asking the girlfriend to not be like that even though you are doing it with yourself and to also do it with our team yeah um i i don't think you can go wrong you know if it's not just kind of fluff i think that acknowledging the efforts of people is a good thing to learn and my team teaches me [Music] how do we step out of that emotional feeling where we're feeling overwhelmed or disrespected or hurt or sad or like their relationship didn't meet an expectation or communication was off and we're in it and we're communicating and we're both frustrated how do you step out and look at it from a different point of view so that you just don't keep repeating that conversation over and over i mean don't hurt it further yeah i i think there's a we have to have a really healthy combination of always questioning ourselves and and saying where is this coming from for me and would it really hurt me to compromise on this standard is is would it be the more loving thing to do to understand this about my partner but in order to that that needs to be combined with a simultaneous respect for ourselves and what we need and to i think go to a situation and say okay i want to be the most understanding compassionate loving partner i can be who doesn't inhibit or limit my partner who supports them wants them to do great but i also need to recognize that um it's not what was i saying i lost my train of thought i need to be the person that can um be understanding what was i saying the understanding of my partner want to be the most understanding of someone else but you also have to know your own needs the understanding of someone else but oh that's right i need to be the person that is understanding of the needs of my partner and what they want but at the same time love what was it loves my i need to be understanding of my partner's needs ah that's it i need to be understanding of my partner's needs but the context of me being super compassionate and understanding needs to be that i am um that this is happening in a loving environment where my partner wants to be my teammate if we're in a situation where our partner isn't showing empathy for us and isn't true like if you feel they're not trying to that we're always coming to that side that's a problem that's tough that's a problem there should be seeing i see where you're coming from as well type of energy and communication exactly not just i'm not getting what i want you did this wrong you need to feel you have a teammate yeah and a lot of people feel like they're constantly being understanding but they don't have a teammate on the other side i'm constantly trying to grow and understand your position but i don't feel the same from your side that then becomes a problem how do you have a conversation so that it switches or it becomes more of a equal partnership and teammate if you feel like you're the only one being on the team how do you get the other person i think we need to communicate a lot about what about the spirit of the relationship you know i mean like not keeping score yeah like pride is a very hard thing to give up in a relationship because we become competitive often very quickly when we feel threatened when we feel vulnerable when we thought our partner's done something to hurt us now i'm so now how do i score a point well how do i know and that's that's a just once you get into that cycle it's like you're just it it spirals it has to one person has to be prepared to break that cycle i'm not gonna do that game and i do believe that we have to love the way we want to be loved and we have to constantly educate our partner on what it is to love not from an arrogant place but we're all in a sense both partners are always educating each other by you do something i don't like and if i have a loving compassionate response to that i'm also showing you what i want this to be in reverse when i do something you don't like right here's the response i want i'm not attacking you not a game-playing response not a you know like if you see a partner you're in the early stages of relationship and you feel your partner was really flirting with someone over there having a conversation about something that made you feel uncomfortable but from a loving place and from a kind place and from a place of that made me feel you know it hurt me to see that and not i'm going to blame you and i'm going to do this i'm going to get angry but that you know that made me feel uncomfortable bringing an energy like that most people aren't used to that in a relationship we're not used to that standard of communication we're used to doing something and then someone attacks us reacting yeah exactly so i think it's educated we're constantly educating what's it gonna take for us to not react to a situation where we feel hurt or like we our expectation wasn't met from our partner and come from that place god it's so difficult because why why do we react so much sometimes it's just space like how i need to take a moment to to process something so that i can say i can have a more evolved response and not react it's funny i've been you know the relationship i've been in uh which is newer in the last five months i want to talk about something right away and address it she doesn't want to talk she wants to have space so she doesn't react yeah so she's and she'll say like i don't want to get angry at you i don't want to yell at you that's not the type of person i want to be so i'd rather just not talk and then i'm in limbo and i'm like i just want i just want to like get resolve this thing let's at least communicate and then we can move on as opposed to holding on to something yeah for a half a day or a few hours yeah i that here's the thing space is easy when you get a text you don't like you know or when you see something you don't like from afar and and you're not going to see that person for a few hours or till tomorrow now you have space to go through you know i'm angry you know i'm really really angry i'm upset i'm sad i'm hurt i feel rejected i don't feel enough i you know you can kind of cycle through those and then have a couple of sensible conversations with people whose opinions you respect you and i have yeah we're going to be like it's not that big of a deal take a break okay this thing i'm feeling this and i'm hurt and i'm this and i'm that and you have a couple of smart voices either that come from in here which is hard to do which is very hard to get that objectivity and all that come you know from just one or two people whose opinions you really respect who aren't going to tell you what you want to hear yeah who aren't going to tell you you're so right to be to feel that way getting angry yeah someone who is brave enough and close enough to you and smart enough sometimes to recognize you i'm concerned that you're overreacting to this and that this this reaction is not going to serve you yeah and that i think you need to bring this energy to the conversation that is extremely valuable what's hard is when you get information in real time and you're with the person and you're in the same room and now you're dealing with trying to process and create that you know okay i need to i'm trying to get to a more positive place here yeah while being asked to communicate in real time well real time elicits reflex responses and reflex responses are often very harmful to a relationship it's the um reflex responses are often based on instinct and instinct is very very dangerous false instinct is so often told you know trust your instincts and that's just not often great advice if you're not emotionally intelligent and you haven't if you're jealous all the time then having a jealous instinct isn't necessarily the best thing but some of these instincts are kind of hardwired right what we're doing with a lot of our better nature is overcoming certain programming that we have you know in a riptide you get pulled out to see your instinct tells you in that moment to swim back to shore against the current ignore the riptide i just need to get back to shore which is stronger you or the current the current and it will drown you you will exhaust and drown before you get back true so until it washes you to shore just like right so in that moment fighting harder won't save you thinking clearer will and thinking more clearly means i need to swim sideways i need to swim parallel let it take me out swim further on parallel because i've actually i'm giving myself a fur a longer journey but then when i'm out of the current then i can swim back to shore that's true now that's not instinct won't get you to do that because that requires thinking clearly instinct will drown you in that moment and in a relationship in dating your instincts will get you killed that's true you know your instinct says a woman goes on a date with a guy and has a great time and says your instinct says clear the calendar for the next three months we found him right we did it guys we had an amazing night clear the schedule we were connected on every level he's awesome we have a great connection clear the calendar this is what we're doing now wow even if i'm not even saying someone who hates the rest of their life you can like your job and still be so caught up in the chemical rush of this was amazing that this is all you want to do now right well this isn't good for what you want to happen here what do you want to happen well you want to get to know this person better spend more time with them invest at an organic pace based on the level of investment that's going on right the thing i've said for years don't invest in someone based on how much you like them invest on based on how much they invest in you people don't do that people invest on instinct i really like them and my investment is proportionate to how much i like them not how much i'm seeing there's a mutual investment can i tell you about the castle more castle all right this is you're gonna like this so i was thinking about this whole idea of investing [Music] like buying a castle well that's the thing you can't buy a castle for a relationship i see to me the relationship is the castle right when you meet someone and you have a connection because i'm always i'm you know me i do seminars all over the world we have thousands of women come and join us and the thing that there's always someone who puts their hand up and says it starts the story with matt i have this incredible connection with this guy so they're already interested i know no no dating when someone's justifying whatever they're about to say next with what an incredible connection they have with someone an incredible connection is like you meet someone you connect and you have a great plot of land this plot of land could be great because it's in the middle of a forest could be great because it's on the cliffs overlooking the ocean it's a beautiful place to build that's the connection that's the connection but it's still just a plot of land all right let's see it for what it is it's potential still just a plot of now what you need is two builders two people who are going to build something here and that requires two people who show up each day and lay brick after brick of the brick of the brick and slowly but surely create a castle most people have the experience of someone who joins them on that plot of land and they both look at it and they're like isn't this great it's good the ocean this is great look at the view we have here look at the trees look at that this is amazing and they get real excited now one of them might be willing to build one of them might be a builder the other one might just really like the potential of this plot of land and then you have someone who's there building every day they're doing the investment i have the woman come to me who's building and a guy who's left the construction site i don't know where he is he's at home he's binge watching his favorite show he's out on another he's looking at another plot of land you know and then three weeks later he calls in and says he you know he sends a text to her after three weeks of ghosting her or just disappearing or just patchy communication and says thinking of you that's a builder who started building then left the building site for three weeks and called him from home and went how's the castle going wow meanwhile she's over there building the castle on her own you can't build on your own and the problem we have right now is there are too many people who value the connection instead of the castle castle is where it's at and if you don't have a true builder who over time is going to build that's that's what's a relationship is a castle this is why love at first sight is [ __ ] to me it doesn't work [Music] she's hot he's hot you know there's some connection there that's based on the fact you like this and i like this oh my god we're supposed to be together this is only part of the equation you a castle becomes a castle because two people work on it and it becomes unique and ornate and there are secret passageways only the two of you know about and there's an argument that knocks down a wall and then you build it up and fortify that wall and it makes it even stronger and you know the the weather over time weathers the stone on the castle in a unique way that makes it your castle there's other castles in the world but this one is uniquely yours it's been built by the two of you it's been hard one you know that's a relationship that's why you know a 20-year relationship or marriage or a 30-year relationship of marriages is special it's because two people have had to go through [ __ ] together yeah they've done things together they this isn't fantasy this isn't building a castle in the sky the idea of love the idea of what we could be the one day wager i call it the one day wager the one day i'm making a wager that one day you'll be what i want you to be one day you'll you'll invest in me the way i want you to one day you'll change the one day wager is the most dangerous wager you can possibly make in your love life the real [ __ ] is what's going on now is someone trying do they want to be here are they focused on the little [ __ ] not just the big [ __ ] because anyone can go and have a like people say but when we're when it's great it's crazy yeah when we go like we go we've been on some amazing dates or we did that vacation we had the best time it was amazing of course you're on [ __ ] vacation anyone can go to disney world and have a great time it's disney world right that's the the job of the place is to make sure you have a great time no matter who you're with right right but you know what when i was 13 i had a like when i was thinking i was 12 or 13 my parents took me to america for the first time and we came to florida and where do you think we went we went to disneyland and i was massively excited you know i was i was so excited it was exciting to be in america i was excited to see the things i'd seen on tv excited to see the references to movies i'd seen excited for the rides we go into disney world and i learned something very interesting about myself there this is going to sound profound for a trip to disney world yeah i but i realized something about myself because of course i go in there it's magical it's oh my god this is crazy it's huge there's a photo with mickey space mountain yeah there's mickey there there's all these dazzling attractions but it was something that stood out to me even more than space mountain even more than the big ride and it was the trash cans oh yeah on some level that maybe i couldn't fully articulate at that age i saw the trash cans and i was moved by it i said someone cared enough about this place to theme the trash cans the trash can in tomorrowland is a futuristic trash can the trash can in you know indiana jones land or whatever it's called is a tiki bamboo trash can the trash cans were different depending on where you were it's amazing someone cared so much about the detail of that world that they styled and themed the trash cans it moved me yeah i've never forgotten that wow the trash cans in life and i've thought about that endlessly in my business when i do retreat i just got back from my retreat and you know someone okay i told this story on the retreat someone came to me at the end of the retreat because of all the little details we put on the retreat you know the law it's not just a it's not just a seminar an event it's we hold parties and inside experience and it's an immersive world it's like it it's it's we like to think we've created the immersive theater of the self-development world [Music] and someone came up to me at the end of this retreat and said you achieved trash can status and it that's big the 13 year old in me wanted to cry that was amazing right and it it moved me again and i and i thought that's what i want and i'm i thought about this even today as i was coming here and i was like you know what this absolutely applies to relationships too often in a you know in a breakup often when people are going through difficult times with their partner or whatever the thing they go back to is but we had that amazing trip but we had those amazing times they go to these highlights they go to the space mountain of their relationship they go i remember when we met mickey it's that right the the meeting mickey moment of their relationship but relationships are about the trash cans man it's the trash cans yeah because guess what in a day at disney you ride space mountain once maybe twice how many times do you use the trash cans every day all the time every 20 minutes every 30 minutes it's the trash cans and what will define your relationship is the trash cans not space mountain the lower moments the messy moments that are barely noticeable the moments the the micro attractions the moment where we do something sweet where we think of our partner when we didn't need to and we worry about the the day they had or support them or even just support them silently or in private you know or support them by what we don't bring to them it's that it's the detail it's the detail and that's what's going to determine how great your life is and my concern is and we've all been there my concern is the number of people out there who are staying in the wrong thing because of the space mountain of the relationship a few moments that were magical or they're spending too much time grieving the loss of the wrong thing because all they remember is space mountain interesting but they don't they don't think of how shitty the trash cans were and the trash cans that's the stuff that's the day to day yeah how good was it day today this is the difference between being in love and being happy what is the difference between love and happiness you can be in love and be really unhappy be suffering inside and be in love constantly be in love and be having a relationship that's causing you constant anxiety constant heartache constant pain feeling overlooked not feeling important you can be in love and all of those things still be true how crazy is that we think that love is this thing where it's like it's rational like i'm gonna love i'm gonna be in love with this person who brings me joy not true and we need to start worrying more about happiness because if someone isn't building with you if someone isn't committing to actually building the castle with you that's the quality of your life yeah not how in love you are you might love certain things about them you might have loved the date you went on you might have loved the space mountain or certain characteristics they had the sex was incredible charming they were how charismatic that how whatever it didn't but maybe it doesn't mean that you're happy day-to-day it's a big difference right when do you know i love this analogy and it made me want to ask you about when do you know you're ready for a committed intimate relationship when you know you're ready for it as opposed to you just feel alone and you want to have someone in your life i guess when you're when you're ready to build when you're ready to build when it's not you're going there because the fantasy of it all is exciting to you but when you're actually ready to build and and that doesn't mean that you're not looking see the castle analogy is cool because when we were talking earlier about this idea of giving without expectation well you you do expect something in a relationship right it's overly simplistic we do expect things we expect respect as loyalty defined on whatever terms loyalty means to us love appreciation all of that to be seen we have a lot of expectations in a relationship so it's not a relationship where we just we give without expectation but that to me is where the building thing is really interesting to me because you want to work damn hard as a builder in your relationship but you want someone else who's building two right that's where the expectation comes in i'm gonna i'm gonna work hard to build this thing and i'm gonna build it at a really high standard i'm not gonna look at your work and go well if you've missed out some of the grouting there then i'm gonna you know like skip it on my end no this is my standard yeah i'm gonna build to a really high standard what if the person you've been with for a year isn't building to your standard that's that's a conversation that's a real conversation like here's what i need here's the kind of relationship i want to have when do you start to just say well it's okay if they do half the job that i do is the job is the job they're doing half-assed one you really need them to do well or is it one that can be done half-assed you know sometimes i think there are certain things we let go in a relationship that's where the compromise comes in that's where the sacrifice comes in there are certain things i'm okay with you not doing as well as i once thought i needed someone to do them no i thought this thing was really important it's not it's not that important yeah i love you what are we doing i'm not worried it's not that big of a deal and we've all done that we've all seen those things that once were important to us and we let them we said you know what this i was at an age where i thought that was really important and it's no longer as important or significant as i made it and then there are things that never stop being important or they become more important you know the ability to communicate well i think as you get older those things become more important the ability for someone to have genuine empathy to the the ability for someone in let's say an argument to to not jump to saying a spiteful thing that's hard to then forget someone who doesn't try and do damage in an argument but tries to build tries to figure out let's figure this out together we may both be hurt but let's come to this in a loving way when you're younger you say [ __ ] that's just me because you're hurt yeah right and then you realize oh god three months later they still remember that comment even though they said they forgot it and they hold on to it they still they they still have that in their head i'm not doing that again there's certain things i think as you get older hopefully if we mature we start to see these are the this is the important stuff before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day [Music] when someone meets someone new whether it be a moment five minute conversation a couple hours or whatever it may be when is the appropriate amount of time to know that this person could be one of the people that you spend the rest of your life with a long time with could be your your love partner when when should we actually know in our gut in our mind and bring it together that okay this is the person is it a moment instance yes or is it once you learn after months what do you think it's very instant and immediate so society has brainwashed us to believe that love and identifying it takes time that's a lie in most situations when it takes months you have not fallen in love you've learned to tolerate them you've grown up wow all right you you you've enjoyed a part of the process it's giving you connection you're not lonely exactly and and when you've invested months you are more likely to not want to walk away from it because all the time and energy you put in so now you mistake my attachment to the investment as love and it's not really love when you sit down with people who can say they felt a real or they have a real connection with their partner i think every story i don't know if any one story that's opposite of this they will all say it was pretty much instant first date you may not know a 100 fact i'm gonna marry this person but you knew the potential was there you knew like this could be the one that at least came to mind and so again when we don't have that in that first conversation that first day it's unlikely i'm not gonna sit there and say it's impossible that it can happen days later or a week later or whatever um but typically and even if you can't articulate it as you knew they were they could be the one when people look back they can tell you that they felt something very strong in that initial engagement with their partner that said they knew something was different they may not even know what it was but they knew okay this isn't normal this isn't like the rest something's going on here and then there's a full realization of this is it what is that something that we can't understand that feeling what is that called is that just like your your magnets connected to each other is that your energy is so attractive because there's so much opposites or it's so much similarities what is that force that gets people to say there was something different about this person when i met them i personally believe it's your spirit recognizing its match because there are there if you speak to a lot of people um of different religious beliefs there is a belief that things happen in the spirit before they happen in the physical all right so it's almost like the spirit is ahead of us which is why the spirit knows the truth which is why intuition gut instinct third eye whatever you want to call it it always seems to be accurate because your spirit knows before you know so we're feeling it within our spirit the problem is it's getting our mind in tune with the spirit it's allowing our heart to accept what the spirit is saying to us but we feel it we just don't know how to always explain it those who are very in tune with the spirit can recognize it much quicker and accept accepted for what it is much quicker because they're very in tune already why is it so hard for our mind and our heart to get caught up to our gut or intuition of that initial explosion of chemistry and also can that explosion of connection and chemistry be harmful in a different way okay so one fear fear is the number one reason why we we struggle to accept so one of the things i explain to a lot of women you know and i have my membership group for them so i've had this discussion where i say listen you know the difference between intuition and fear is logical deduction so when you're trying to analyze and break things down that's your mind all right and fear is coming into that because you're saying well i shouldn't do this because of that or this can't be this because of that intuition requires no logic your spirit requires no logic it simply feels it senses it knows that's it you don't have to explain it again gut instinct doesn't require things to logically add up it just tells you this is it or something's wrong or this is right or whatever the case may be so fear is the number one thing and that fear stems from lack of healing from past relationships we we've been down this road of emotional investment we've gotten hurt before we've been wrong in our lives about wanting to believe someone could be it even though we know this feels different we still have the fear of disappointment that creeps back in how do we let go of that fear and not sabotage an amazing opportunity in a relationship you gotta heal from your past there's no way around it and this is why i say people who have not healed they can meet their connection right now the most amazing partner and it will scare them to death and they will either run self-sabotage something it's gonna be a problem because they have not healed and when you have not healed the vulnerability that's required in connection is so unlike anything else or with anyone else that if you don't have a a level of confidence and again a foundation of healing in your life it seems way too overwhelming and scary so you've got to heal in order to not find yourself sabotaging runaway and not being able to embrace that real love what if both parties come to something and there's this explosion of chemistry or just instant like wow there's something different feeling and both have not healed their past but they stay together they figure it out and they're together is there gonna be a lot of problems and trauma and stress that comes up over the years if they both haven't healed before they get into a relationship or can they heal in the relationship together it is possible let me backtrack a little bit first let me say that people have to understand there is a such thing as right person wrong time all right people don't want to believe that there are a lot of people who reject that idea they say oh if it's the wrong time it's not the right person that's not true you can meet that individual that you have an amazing connection with but both parties still need growth before they can come together all right and so now what happens if they come together and they haven't healed so here's the thing it is possible to get through that and survive and have a healthy relationship it is unlikely for most people to survive being with someone you have a connection with and you have not healed again most people won't even allow themselves to be with that person they'll sabotage it so much they'll they'll dive in but then they'll cheat or they'll they won't respond to the person they'll do something right yes and and speaking of cheating they they tend to have a history of going back to an x because the x feels safer because it's not as vulnerable over there all right i can maintain more emotional control it's familiar so it's easier so i've seen plenty of situations where again the connection was so overwhelming so they ran back to their ex no one did not did not afford the x is not for them and they're not for their ex but again it just feels safer there so yes a lot can go wrong if you try to be together when you have not healed and you have this connection it would be best to acknowledge okay you know what we got some work we need to do we realize we have a connection here let's work on ourselves in the meantime before we take that next step can you heal while having sex with one or multiple partners for fun i'm not gonna say it's impossible but again highly unlikely um sex is such a distracting thing and we we have to understand that so much can come from our sexual interactions there can be new drama there can be hell an unwanted pregnancy there can be a host of things and all of that will derail you in the healing process you also have to be honest with yourself you may be having the sex because you're trying to distract yourself from the healing like the sex is just a coping mechanism for you same as drugs same as alcohol people turn to these things because they don't want to deal with their reality in life so you've got to be honest are you trying to just bury your head in sexual interactions or is it just if it's having a natural flow of life okay then there's a greater chance that you can survive this but you got to be really careful i would suggest cutting that off yeah if you're trying to heal you know again i don't want to say it's impossible but you're going to make it extremely difficult and highly unlikely for sure i want to ask you about the best ways to meet someone these days 2020 moving forward the do's and don'ts for online dating but what i'm hearing you say is that you shouldn't be trying to meet someone you shouldn't be doing the online dating game until you've fully healed or at least started the process of healing because healing is a journey sometimes things take a lot longer to heal fully but at least acknowledging and starting that process what would be a process to start healing your past relationships or pains before we get into the conversation of do's and don'ts of online dating okay so of course going to a therapist or coach is the the ideal thing to do um you you typically need that outside party that can help you process some things help you see new perspectives and go through a process of healing now i will be honest not every culture therapist is gonna help someone heal sometimes it just turns into a venting session so you've got to be real careful about okay if i've been going to this therapist or coach for many weeks or months now what progress have i really made have i have i been resolving or have i been coping because many are teaching you how to cope and manage and how to function within your brokenness but they're not resolving it and helping you heal now of course you know i'm big on healing so i have my book love after heartbreak which gives people these exact steps to healing so one of the steps i'll give you the first step is um getting the hurt out in front of you so it's this who hurt me list and so you get a piece of paper you write down who hurt me and you ask yourself the question who hurt me and now everyone who comes to mind you put them on the paper doesn't matter if it happened very long ago doesn't matter if you think you move past it if they come to mind when you ask the question then that means there's some kind of relevance there and so now you put them on the paper in like two senses of what they did to hurt you this will now at least help us identify what you've been holding on to and where the herd is and what needs to be properly addressed and then from there we can do the other steps of getting things off your chest and forgiveness and all these different things that's involved in healing i love that i'm all i'm a big proponent of writing letters to people that you never send them telling them how you how it made you feel what you're what you're frustrated and angry about with them for giving them letting it go and then i like to burn the letter and bury it as well in the ground to hopefully create a sense of like okay this was alive in me and now i'm killing this and this this feeling this energy and i'm putting it to bed and i'm putting it back in the world to hopefully create something new to grow something new and more loving and powerful and create that intention uh but i think that's really important when should we know that we have are healed enough how do we know when our healing has gone far enough of down its journey before we should get into meeting someone new putting ourselves out there on social media online dating apps and things like that all right well first thing i want to say is now they're going to be times where sending the letter to the person is actually the best thing to do really yes a lot of people are scared about that and it's a very difficult hurdle to jump but i literally got a dm today from a woman who read the book she wrote her letter last year was to her mother she didn't want to send it she held on to it she said she just finally built up the courage because i i tell them in the book 99 of the time i'm going to tell you to send the letter and so she finally did it and she said they end up having the best conversation they've ever had in their life now they're like the best of friends like it's taking their relationship to a whole new level and it's not that's not the purpose of sending it but there's so much good that can come from taking the extra step of actually sending the letter and making sure that person is aware of how you felt and and what you were going through now in regards to knowing when you've properly healed number one thing is when you can embrace being fully vulnerable with somebody all right if vulnerability still scares you you have not healed enough all right you've got to be willing to open your heart we can't say we want love and then put walls up around our heart and be afraid to give it to someone you're contradicting yourself you're working against yourself so you've got to be willing to be vulnerable you also have to make sure any negative perceptions that you've held onto due to past experiences you're you've done away with them so for example if you have been saying all men are dogs because you've been hurt by so many men well you can't be out there dating and still screaming all men are dogs that's gonna work in your favor you've got to accept that good men exist that you can receive a great man that you deserve a great man so when you have a more positive outlook and way of thinking and listen we're gonna all have our negative thought moments that happens but your dominant or more consistent thought pattern is positive hopeful and things of that nature now we you we can say you're ready to get back out there how important is the language or the inner thoughts the actual physical words we use in the inner language the inner dialogue in terms of attracting or finding the right partner it's extremely important you know we hear all the time words are power and the reality is that the words you speak to yourself the thoughts you have they will whether knowing your unknowingly to you they will dictate your energy the energy that you give off to people or the the way that your spirit comes across to individuals and so you can put on a happy face but if your thought is negative pessimistic all right and dwelling in this then your energy will still be negative all right what you do on the surface isn't going to be able to hide that which is why you have some people who swear well i'm not a bad person yeah but you're not a positive person all right you can be good people but no you are miserable and and it's not even just you're miserable like you're you're dwelling in it in your life but you give off miserable energy and so who's going to want to be around that who's going to want to commit to that at the most they might want to have sex with you but they're not going to want to tie themselves to you in a committed long-term relationship or marriage and people can feel that energy what i don't care if you're a man woman or between some you can feel the energy of someone and if you haven't healed properly yourself you may be attracted to a wounded individual to then try to find some validation or try to find some connection there and that's why it's important for you to heal so that you can fully see the energy around you and see who is a potential great match for you because if you haven't healed you're gonna keep attracting negativity and repeating certain patterns is that correct that is absolutely correct and if you talk to any person who has healed they can tell you how they feel energy even more now when they become more aware it's so much easier to see past the facades that so many people are putting up because now healing allows us to get more in tune with our spirit and by getting more into with our spirit we get more in tune with everyone's spirit because technically we are all connected through the spirit all right and so it's easier to be in touch with that when you get away get rid of the blockage of trauma past disappointments and hurts disappointments things of that nature [Music] when you experience true heartbreak it is one of the most devastating feelings in there there is daily you're a zombie you're dead you're dead inside it's and and it's worse than you're dead inside it you act dead to everybody else inside you you feel like you're dying on the loop all day you can't get out of it yeah yeah um in a breakup and this is as true now now's no different people need to people need to recognize that now is just a difficult breakup on steroids right if you're going through heartbreak right now you're just doing it on steroids but it's just the same emotions so don't fret that oh my god why did it have to happen now when this was going on that's you're giving it a big story it's still just the same emotions of heartbreak you're just experiencing them in a very in a heightened way and you don't have the ability to rebound physically with that person or a new person which we could see as a gift right why is that a gift because there are plenty of things as my brother stephen harsey a wonderful writer for for our website um as he says in a breakup there are two methods of recovery there's the athlete recovery method and there's the hangover recovery method you're going to like this louis vuitton i love it you haven't heard it before but you're going to love it because it's the analogy is perfect for you i love it um the hangover recovery method you think about how do people deal with a hangover they wake up they eat greasy foods because they're like oh i just need something to make me feel better they watch crap tv they lay on the sofa they wake up at 2 pm yeah all the blinds don't let any light in eat ice cream essentially they do all of these things that are temporary kind of pleasure and comfort but ultimately are not nutritional and are not the things that are needed to get you know what's needed massive amounts of hydration water go take a walk sunshine yeah right exercise um yeah get the metabolism moving again get that likes crap out of your system like that's all the stuff that's needed in that moment uh but it's it can feel harder to do the things that are actually going to get you out of it now look at the way an athlete recovers in an injury right you know better than anybody you you don't firstly you still train whatever you can train you don't ignore everything simply because your shoulders injured you do what you can yeah you do some abs you do some legs you do something else right let me keep swimming yeah exactly you eat well you get tons of rest as much rest as you possibly can you do rehab where necessary but you don't do so much that it injures what you're doing yeah you reset your vision you you visualize what you want and start mentally rehearsing the reps the the repetition the action steps you mental rehearse you you know all those things right so now if you apply that to a breakup the hangover recovery method is let's go and sleep with other people quickly just to get my fix just to feel connected just to feel like i'm worth something just to feel like i'm still sexy let me uh go out and drink party let me eat ice cream bad food keep going to the get on tinder and all the apps right or not or just hide away under the covers don't engage life don't it could be either raw but they're all hangover recovery methods because they don't make you feel better long-term they're just short-term pleasure the athlete recovery method in a breakup is you do the same as an athlete you say okay my heart might be injured right now right my heart's offline so to speak but i still have everything else so let me make sure the rest of my life is firing on all cylinders right now let me do everything let me be kind to myself let's maybe like put dating aside for the moment i'll put that but let me go and make platonic connections let me go and build my relationships with my friends and family let me eat well let me sleep well let me train let me go and do all of these things that that train every other muscle in my life so that when my heart comes back online every other part of me is ready to go so you've got one problem right now you're you're in pain right but if that pain causes you to let every other part of your life go down spiral now you've got six problems so that that's the part we want to avoid and only have one problem that's six and and you know look it's all of this is easy to say and when you're heartbroken you just feel like you feel so bad and so sick in your stomach and so nauseated all the time that you even hearing this sounds like a lot of work and what i would say to people is a really manageable step is i you know there's that quote where emotions are weather let them let them come and go right and that's true emotions are weather i used to think that emotions were really important a friend of mine jamison jordan who you know who shoots my videos he would always tell me whenever i would be in a real funk a bad place whatever he i would talk to him about he was one of the closest people to me and i always remember he used to say to me like i just think you like think your emotions are more important than i feel like mine are wow you put more emphasis on yeah you you like think they're really important you you think your emotions are you yeah it would be like you you just seem to like give more weight to your feelings than i do um and i at the time i didn't quite hear that and over time i've come to understand what that means and of course a lot of this is taught in mindfulness training meditation and so on but that idea that just because you have a thought just because you have an emotion it doesn't make it important and in a heartbreak just because you miss your partner that doesn't actually make that feeling that important just because you feel hurt and you feel like oh my god i'll never find anyone like that again that's just a thought and an emotion that's attached to that thought and it doesn't make it that important and so when i was going through terrible times when i've gone through heartbreak one of the key lessons i learned was okay there's really cloudy skies right now that's the weather right and it feels like that weather will never pass but what i would begin to pay attention to is i would realize that i would realize oh for the last 20 minutes i didn't think about my breakup um huh small wins i'd be like yeah and often you only notice it after the fact because when you're in it you're just it could be that you're in a flow state with your work and that's taken you out of it it could be that you're having a funny moment with a friend it could be that you lost yourself in a movie uh it could be you just had a conversation with your brother your mother whoever a workout yeah for a few minutes could even if it's just five for five minutes you noticed i felt better i felt and maybe i didn't feel amazing i just for five minutes i didn't feel like i was dying i didn't feel suffering and and when that happens here's what i would say to myself i'd be like well that's interesting notice those things as interesting and this this applies not just a heartbreak but to depression to anxiety to all sorts of different emotions that are undesirable when you notice that for five minutes of your day you didn't feel that thing because what happened here's what happens we have our like whatever is our home whether it's depression heartbreak anxiety sadness we have our home that we we go to yeah 90 of our day and when we feel that we focus on it so intensely that it becomes very difficult to get out of it because we are focused on that 90 the whole time and what we don't acknowledge is this interesting window in the day where we didn't feel that and that window has some clues has some there's some truth often in that window that five percent of the day where you felt all right there's some truth there that's waiting to be discovered enlarged held under a microscope and what i would do is when i would feel better for five minutes i'd go well okay so what did that if nothing else what did that prove it proved that like it's possible for me to feel better i had a reference point for the fact that i could feel better and then you go well if i felt better for five minutes if i even felt better for a minute let's make more of those what how did what was happening how did i do it i might not be able to get my day to the point where i even feel good for a quarter of the day right now right that might be an unrealistic goal but if i had one good minute or one good hour let me make the new goal not to be great or to be happy or to get over this just make more of those yeah and multiply those moments multiply those minutes into 5 and 10 and 20 minutes it's a manageable task suddenly getting over your heartbreak you need to get over it dude you know blah blah it's not this isn't that's not practical advice for someone who's going through hell but for someone who realizes that just for five minutes the clouds parted and they go oh my god it's like uh it's like it's like one of my favorite movies swingers where mikey is always thinking about his ex and who who he left and then now she won't come back to him six months ago or whatever and he's constantly talking about obsessing about it suffering in pain and then he finally learns to just put his attention somewhere else that's right for a few minutes and then put it for an hour and then he goes on a date with someone and then if not he thought about her for a day and he was like wow can you i didn't talk about it all today you know and what's so important about that because there's a that what's really interesting about that movie is he begins to do these things that slowly start to create more moments of good weather in his day he goes salsa dancing he does this he does activities yeah right but what we have to be aware of you have to respect whatever is the drug whether it's your ex whether it's genuinely a drug or booze or whether it's uh a situation that makes you feel bad or whatever often when we start to create more good weather we start to take for granted that the bad weather can't appear now it's like no i'm ah i've passed it yeah it could come back a storm could come raging through again someone your your ex could text you and if you text back and start engaging knowing knowing what happens that you're when you start in a conversation with that person again you're going to spiral you're not respecting the drug you've got you might have been clean for months or years but you gotta respect the drug because you don't is when you when you get cocky and you don't remember that there are rituals and routines and practices daily that got you to this good state you are liable to fall back into that trap because you're because you're blind don't be blind don't be afraid it's not about fit you're not fearful you're not worried because you know if i got if i didn't die at the height of my breakups pain if i didn't die on day two i'm not gonna die on day 22 right or day 52 or day 1002 if i could deal with this at the height of its pain i'm not gonna die now so i'm not gonna be afraid of this but i'm also gonna respect it and know that there are certain things that make me feel better in my day and i have to consciously put them into my day because the moment i take for granted that i just feel better that's when that thing starts creeping exactly i'm laughing so hard because we we have a mutual friend that we've been helping i won't say his name but we've been helping navigate certain things in their you know their relationship and uh you know it just reminded me of that of replying to people when they text you when you think you're good hey don't go back into that make sure you stay true to what you want what you're committed to by in the athlete mindset of envisioning something that you want for your future envisioning the right relationship or the better match or you know how you want to be feeling and all those things and by the way and just remember and this is true not just for people going through heartbreak right now but people going through solitude right now because there's a lot of people who right now are just in solitude they're not necessarily heartbroken but they are experiencing a deep kind of existential loneliness and when we're on our own for long periods of time many people not everyone but many people and perhaps even most have more of a tendency to go to dark places with their thoughts yeah and there's a lot of people that are there that are listening to us right now that certainly can't that you know the id you know some people might be in a hell with someone in the house but these people in solitude are looking at that guy and i'll take that right now over the hell i'm in of being constantly on my own and going out of my mind um i would say to people that you know the same weather rule applies that you know you might feel really kind of dark and lonely at points in your day but there are other points in your day where you don't notice the good weather and pay attention to the good weather and what made you feel good did you just have a conversation with one of your siblings did you have a little group chat with a bunch of friends did you watch a life affirming movie did you read a book that made you feel connected to an author from some period in time maybe who was also alone and writing about it and by reading that author you go oh my god i feel you know someone else is having the same experience as me i think that's really important is if you're in solitude right now on your own you connect to other people who have experienced that because some of the greatest figures of all time have spent inordinate amounts of time alone have experienced the darkness that you're experiencing and you're in good company you you may feel you're alone and oh man if we have this solid system attitude only one who's alone we know it's not rationally true we know it's not logically true but we feel it on an emotional level those are moments where you have to remind yourself i'm in good company not just today but throughout time key figures brilliant people people that are far more brilliant than you will ever be have experienced the deepest darkest existential loneliness and in a way there's a there is something slightly romantic about that i always love when i read an author and i i hear that author who's brilliant and who i love and i you know i was just reading bertrand russell and you and then you hear about something that someone suffers with or something that they've gone through and you go thank god this person that i love also you know you know there's there's that element of it that's really really powerful and so i i think that you you can adopt yes except that it's difficult it is difficult don't look at don't look at other people and think they're handling it so well it is difficult i i'd call my dad at times when business is hard and business was messy and like chaotic and i screwed up i had lost money or i'd done something i'd call my dad and i'd be like you know my dad's one of my big mentors and i'd call him and say dad like i'm just so stressed i'm so overwhelmed this is happening this is going wrong i got 10 people asking me for this and he'd say matt you part of the problem is you don't think that other people's businesses are just as messy you you're it's almost like you think that you're struggling with all these things and other people aren't he said matt i've been in business for you know 40 years business is messy that is the nature of it it is messy it is chaotic there are always things going wrong as well as things going right right that's the nature that's how it is supposed to be and when i when he would say that to me i would it it didn't take my problems away but what it made me realize is oh it's all right it's not this is normal i'm on top of my problems i'm beating myself up and taking it personally that i'm doing a horrible job yeah it's it's kind of like your dad and jameson are saying the same thing your your feelings are more important your mess is more important it's yeah i don't give it so much power and being and don't give your feelings and emotions so much power not every emotion is a queue to do something yeah yeah at the same time accept that this is your your view that you know in the road less traveled m scott peck talks about i think one of the first line of his book is life is hard and one of the things that makes life more difficult for us is that we expect it to be easy um well that's true of relationships it's true of business it's true of everything and when we have someone close to us who says you're all right you oh you're at home on your own right now and it and you feel like it's dark and lonely and you're having these kind of existential thoughts and you're welcome that's normal that's of course you do you're living at home on your own in isolation right now of course you're feeling these things you're not a screw-up you're not weak you're not handling it terribly because you're having these thoughts that is absolutely normal and that's what makes it heroic isn't that you're having all these thoughts and you're having all these stealing feelings but you're in the company of wonderful people throughout history who have experienced this who have had just a bad just as bad a time who were dealing with it no better than you but in that company you can kind of then assume your hero's journey and go yeah my personal hell right now um i'm i'm gonna keep going anyway we need these adversities to teach us things too you know we don't learn about how to be the best version of ourselves and grow through everything being easy and all the success coming to us we learn through challenge through adversity and i'm not saying you need to suffer in the adversity and challenge it's already going to be hard a breakup is already hard but you don't need to add to the suffering like you said and multiply the amount of pain i want to ask you a a personal question that you probably only talk about at your retreats so i want to give people a taste of matthew hussey that you probably share to only a select few women who invest and show up to your retreats where they really get to dive in and ask you the juicy questions i'm curious i'm curious [Laughter] and i'm not you you can't no one can come to your retreats right now but if later in the year i think you'll have more retreats and they can go to matthewhusky.com and learn about your retreats because i hear they're mind-blowing for women so if you want to learn how to master relationships as a woman go to these retreats go to matthewhusky.com and sign up for them uh actually people go to matthewhusseyretreat.com that's the best place for people to do how to get the guy.com for everything else and i'll also let people know something they can do right now as well because i know people are stuck at home and they'll want something that they can do perfect perfect okay here's the the personal question is the biggest challenge that matthew hussey faces single and the biggest challenge you face being in a relationship that you still that you still need to you know you need to overcome and improve or maybe you're not as i wish i wasn't that way i'm not proud of myself in these times when i do this what is the personal thing that matt hussey has to do or needs to do to improve when single and when in relationship i think look i'm i'm someone who has always i've always craved real connection for as long as you know i've liked girls you know you're 12 years old yeah i've i've always i've always liked it and it's not that i don't go through the same things other people do where you wonder when you're with someone am i with the right person is this the right thing do i need you know all of that but um but i've always really liked connection and sometimes that connection you know i know in my past that desire for connection has led me to relationships that weren't right for me you know weren't relationships i should have been in but they were wonderful people they they were lovely and they were they were great moments and great connection yeah and we and and they treated me wonderfully and you know and that led me to kind of go well maybe this is the thing you know but without necessarily seeing if it was what i needed whether it was really the relationship that i was going to continue to grow in um and develop myself and whether it was truly kind of i guess meeting all my needs and whether i was meeting all of their needs so i think that over time i i settled for some relationships i shouldn't have where i was just valuing the connection over what my long-term needs were going to be and that and i knew that it worked today or this year but if i really thought about it in 10 years or 20 years it wasn't going to be the relationship that was right for me long term so there was that um and that has so within a relationship some of the struggles i've had in the past have been too much question too much time questioning whether it's the worst feeling man so exhausting the worst when you think i've had this in my past relationships where every day i would think and question myself for 30 minutes am i supposed to be in this is this the right thing should i end it how am i going to end it uh but this is good but this is that just debate internal debate is exhausting like you said that's right and so that that sapped a lot of energy from me a lot of times when i would have liked to have actually had more energy to pour into you know either the right relationship or my business or friends or whatever but it was being sapped by me constantly waking up every day and going is this the right thing should i be here should i not um and that's you're just fighting yourself constantly so i i think there were things that i allowed to go on too long that i i should have i should have seen things sooner or rather perhaps more accurately paid attention to what i had said because you saw them yeah they were there you were aware you just weren't right actively paying attention and taking action on the attention that's right and and so much of what i've been able to teach people and share with people has not been coming from a righteous place but i've been experiencing things intensely i'm a very sensitive person and i'm someone who emotionally feels a lot you know i uh so i the reason i can relate to a lot of people is because i feel things very intensely uh for better or worse sometimes i wish i didn't sometimes i see it as a as a gift it depends on the day you ask me but um but that but that i think has been a big a big thing for me in the past um and actually i think i'm much better at now at saying i won't allow myself to slip into something that's the wrong thing i i am much more conscious about the decisions that i make um you won't make a long-term commitment on short-term feelings if you know it's not at least setting you up for the best chance careful i'm try i try to be more careful with what i say i try to be more careful to be to have integrity in in the promises that i make or to not make a promise simply because it's what someone wants to hear you know but to but to say what's true even if that's difficult and that's hard that's not i'm not so hard to say something painful yeah i don't want anyone to think that i'm on my high horse about that because i fail that test a lot and i and i'm doing my best always to try to be more of that man that i want to be in that respect emotions are something that are powerful and they impact not just the individual and not just the people in your family but society and culture at large our emotional lives matter for our society then something that was considered you know a women's issue now becomes a human issue

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 470,439

Rating: 4.7159901 out of 5

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: EecyILYQBzc

Length: 206min 14sec (12374 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021