Hi, guys.

It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to habits and hustle. Crush it. Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therasage. Their trilight panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where, honestly, I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach, cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go to. Plus, it also has amazing anti aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use therassage trilight everywhere at all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to therassage.com right now and use code bebold for 15% off this code will work site wide again. Head over to therisage the comm and use code bebold for 15% off any of their products. This is now your second time being on this podcast, and I will tell you, it's Matthew Hussey, who is a world renowned relationship coach, who, by the way, I know why people like you so much.

You're so relatable. You write and talk like that really connects with people. Like, it doesn't matter if you're married, not married, single, boy, girl, whatever. It's like you can find a nugget that is so. That resonates, and it happens, and it happened again. His new book is called Love Life, and I loved it. I really did.

I'm honored. I'm really. Yeah, I feel really proud of it. And I've tried to do something here that. To really put myself into it in a way that I don't think I ever have with my work before, really. I mean, I always. Naturally, you do indirectly. You're always putting yourself into the things you create on some level. But I think much more openly and vulnerably in this book. I think people who have, even people who have been following me for a while will get the sense that they know me much better through this book.

You know what? Cause it's true. You open the book by saying that you would be, like the. If people would, like, they think that you would be this great guy who would be great to date because you're so emotionally, like, you know, connected and your EQ level so high. But you say yourself, like, you are like a nightmare.

Yeah. For a while, yeah. I wanted to take myself off of any kind of pedestal that anyone had put me on. Right away. At the beginning of this book, I had read comments for years of people on my videos saying, you know, he would be such a great guy to date, or he'd be the perfect person to be with. And I knew that wasn't true because I was still figuring my own stuff out, and I was not. You know, I dated in a way that wasn't always healthy. And I was confused, and confused people hurt people because they don't know what they want. I didn't know how to make myself happy in this area, let alone someone else. So it. Yeah, it took me. It took me a while to figure that out. I knew how to create opportunity, and when I first started out, that was really what I was doing for people. You know, I was helping them create more opportunity in their love life. And that was kind of what I got known for. You know, we're going back 17 years now, but that was, like, what I first got known for was helping people be proactive in their love life.

But being proactive and creating more options for yourself isn't the same as knowing how to find the, like, real love and the relationship that you want to have and to find peace and happiness in your love life. They're very different things. And while I knew for myself how to create opportunity, I had not yet figured out how to find happiness in my love life. That took me a lot longer.

You know, it's interesting you say that, because you said the word options, and I think that is, like, the crux of everything, right? Like, sometimes when you have too many options, you end up with nothing because you have so much to choose from. You don't know to go this way, that way, and it can be exceptionally confusing. And you are probably, like you said, you are confused because you had so many options. Because the truth is, like, you're cute, you got a good accent, you're smart.

You'Re charming despite looking tired. I came in today, and you went, you look awful.

No, I did not say you look awful. You could never look awful. You could never look awful. Let's just say that right off the bat. I said, you look tired. It looks like you. It looks like you came from one interview after another, and that was, like, the 15th of the day. That's all. That's all.

But, no, it's.

And I always say that because I, again, like you, have such a nice way about you. I know, I can, like, I can tease you. I can say something. You're not going to take yourself too seriously. Did you go upstairs and cry in the bathroom after?

I cried a little bit.

That's why your eyes are like, you're tearing. Okay. But, yeah, so don't you, like, what do you believe? Like, do you think that options can be a killer for people who sometimes end up with nothing because they don't know, they're overwhelmed with opportunity? Like, you have two different sides of the spectrum, right? You have people who can't get arrested, can't find people, and then you have other people who have all the opportunity in the world. And both of those sides can be very, very challenging.

Yeah. And, you know, both of extremely challenging for different reasons. And to feel. I work with so many people who feel that they've become invisible in their love lives and they feel that, you know, talking about refining your options is irrelevant because I can't even seem to find anybody. So, like, what's the point of me having these high standards? These high standards are just keeping me alone forever.

Right.

You know, and that's a valid point. And we have to be honest about. We have to talk about that because it's all very well telling people not to go for these casual situationships if they want to find real love and so on. But I put an example in the book of someone who said, you know, if I didn't date casually, I'd never be with anyone because I never, you know, I can't find anyone. I can't find the real relationship you're talking about. At the other end of the spectrum are people who associate with having options. But having options can also be its own form of unhappiness, because you just, you know, you don't know how to make yourself happy, and you don't know how to be happy with what you've got you constantly in a state of endless optimization in your love life that never seems to land you in a place where you finally feel like, okay, this is it. You feel chronically dissatisfied. And that's a special kind of pain as well for people, especially if it goes on for so long that you start to think there's something wrong with you.

Right.

Why can I not seem to be happy in this area? What. What's going on with me? I keep finding people I don't feel quite how I want to feel. Or, you know, it's a, it's a scary place. It's a scary place for anybody to feel like they just can't seem to find happiness in this area of their life that is so crucial. You know, it's so, it's such a big area of our lives. We all want to find love. We all want that in our lives. And, and it feels like such a complicated area and it feels like we have such little control in this area. You know, if we want to lose weight, we can eat better, we can go to the gym and our body shape will change. You could go on a date every night of the week for the next year and still not find love. Or you could find love and that person betrays you and you're back to square one again. So it's, it is maddening for many people to find themselves, like, just wanting to give up in an area that they also feel like they can't give up on because it doesn't matter if you say I've given up on love, you still feel lonely and you still want to find someone.

Well, first of all, loneliness has become one of the biggest epidemics of our time, right? Like people are literally dying of loneliness more than heart disease to some point, right? Do you see, because you've been doing this now for, like you said, 18 1718. Like, have you seen the evolution through? Because now people are dating like they never did before, right? Relationships have now turned into situationships, right? People are mainly dating from dating apps where there's a constant slew of people to choose from. So no one's really investing the time they have. They think, well, if it doesn't work out, I can just go back and swipe left. I can swipe right. And so our brain chemistry has changed now to, like, how we're dating people. So have you noticed that, like, what have you seen over the evolution of 18 years of what's happened and that and kind of sadly, like, the demise of, like, true connection and relationships.

I think we gravitate towards comfort in whatever form, right? We tend to take the path of least resistance on most things in life and that's human nature. And what dating apps have done is created the ultimate path of least resistance for creating at least this idea of activity in your love life, right? And it, it's kind of scary because what the biggest evolution I think I've seen is, okay, pre, pre dating apps, like, when I started out, dating sites was still a bit of a, you didn't really want to say that you were on one. You kept it to yourself. You know, a lot of people felt a bit desperate for being on a site and then dating apps came along and they kind of normalized things. And as you say, then the tide kind of shifted, and it became less and less taboo for someone to be on a dating app. They weren't so closeted about it. And I think now we've come to a point where there's a kind of full circle thing for a lot of people where they're burnt out on those things, and there's a lot of people swearing off apps because they're just like, I just hate this process.

I hate how it makes me feel. I hate the treadmill of it. But I think a big problem is that we've become much in the same way we have in other areas of our life. We've become dopamine addicts in our love lives. Totally true. And the same slot machine that Instagram or TikTok represents is the slot machine that now love represents. And it's easy to go on and get a hit from a quick connection on an app to swipe and treat your love life like a video game. Yeah, but it doesn't fulfill us, and it doesn't feel like real connection. It just is this sort of mind numbing, like, you know, hit after hit after hit that I can keep going back to. And I think our, not to get too kind of abstract or philosophical about it, but I think our attention spans in general, our ability to just focus, our ability to sit with anything. With anything, you know, I mean, the hardest part about writing a book these days is that we're trained to move at a pace that is the complete antithesis of what it takes to sit in front of a laptop and write for hours on end.

You know, there's no novelty to sitting and writing. It doesn't engage you every 3 seconds with a new story. You have to sit and have a relationship with that page.

Yeah, so true.

And. And it is really, really uncomfortable. And it's really uncomfortable even in good times, but it's especially uncomfortable now because we've been trained to have constant hits of dopamine. And so I worry that the same thing has happened in our love lives, where it's kind of hard to sit with anything or anyone for long enough to truly connect with another person. You know, we get home from a date, and we start swiping again. You know, it's. You're looking for that next hit, and it interrupts any kind of more slow burn process that could happen for us to start to think about someone or get to know someone or be invested in the next phone call with them, because we're just. We're so on to the next thing that we're interrupting that narrative all the time.

How do we, or people, how do they stop themselves? Because it's a trained behavior, right? And so you would literally have to do a different behavior for long enough to change that neuroplasticity, you know, and that's the hardest thing in the world to do.

It's really hard. And more than ever we have to guard the gates to our mind and our own chemicals, right, because they're being activated all the time by these things around us. I. Look, here's an interesting example from my life right now. I, the happiest month that I had in the last year, I was, I went back to England. Apart from the month I got married. Let me just put that out there.

Yes, of course. Congratulations.

I went on my honeymoon. But the, like, time of my life in the last year where I felt the most connected was I was back home, I was in my mum's house for a month and with my wife, who was then my fiance. And I woke up every morning early. The nice thing about a UK time zone is that no one bothers you in the morning.

That's right.

On an LA Times zone you wake up to a barrage of messages and people needing you for things and so on. But in England, you get like a five to eight hour head start on everyone, especially if you're doing business with America. So I would wake up and my phone would not have a bunch of messages waiting for me. And if it did, it didn't matter because I made a policy. I was like, I need to write this book, so I'm not going to check my phone. So I put my phone in the drawer. When I woke up, I'd go straight downstairs, make a coffee, and then for the next three to 4 hours I would sit at a desk in a room with nothing else to do. And I would just write. And by the time 1011 midday rolled around, my brain would be kind of shot. And then I would go and do a workout and by 02:00 I came back and I then allowed myself like an hour on my phone to check my messages and, and then, and I was truly doing like a dopamine detox at this time. So even when I was sat with my family, when we watched a tv show or a movie, I didn't allow my phone to be in the room.

That's great.

I was like doing, trying to do as many analog activities as possible. Like even I remember I was building a Lego set at the time. Like a mandalorian Lego set.

Okay.

So I was, like, doing that, like, when I needed to, like, feel like I wanted to do an activity, I just would sit and do that and talk to my mom in the kitchen while I was doing it. And I. After a month, I felt amazing. Like, I truly felt like this is a level of peace that I haven't experienced in a long time. And I will tell you that right now, I am in the opposite place, because with this book coming out and all the people I am talking to and all of the running around and shows and the. It's. But it's more than tired. It is a overstimulation. It is constant. Like, highs, you know, like, waking up every morning, and there's a new exciting thing. And now you're doing this show, and, you know, we're now gonna. When we're gonna go on Drew Barrymore, and this is happening, and that's happening. It's like all these, like. It's like I'm doing drugs every day.

It's like dopamine after dopamine after dopamine every day. And do you have to crash, though, too?

Yes. Hundred percent. I. And I feel more anxious, and I feel like it's not a state that I would want for. I'm doing it for, like, three months right now for this book.

Right.

But when this is over. Yeah.

You go back to your mom's.

I'm gonna go back to my legos. Exactly.

Mandalorian language.

Yeah, I. You know, I'm going back to that because it's. You have to make a conscious choice to opt out.

Yeah.

And, you know, Mitch album said, if you don't like the culture, you have to be brave enough to create your own.

Yeah.

And it takes guts, because you will feel, on some level, like you are missing out or that life is moving at a pace that you're not keeping up with or that. But you. You have to. If what you're looking for in your life is depth. And I. As much as the point I'm making might sound like a kind of very general point about life and work, it's just as relevant to our love life. I actually believe in this idea, in our love life of go slow, to go fast, that when we're panicked and we want it to happen, we're like dating apps, this. That activity, like, you know, keep texting people. But there's an anxious energy that's produced by all of that activity that stops us from creating a rhythm that is actually right for the kind of connection that we're looking for. And our rhythm is something that we, instead of adhering to the rhythm of everyone else, we have to get better at getting other people to adhere to our rhythm.

That's such a good point.

And in dating, if you have a much more intentional, mindful approach to dating, you will still come across everyone else who's, like, on drugs, who's, like, like, running, running, running, running, running. You'll come across that. But a people who aren't like that will see you. You'll be in a different. It's like you'll be in a different lane in the pool.

Yeah.

And. And the people in that lane will start to notice you because they'll go, oh, this is a person who's being much more intentional. And there'll be other people who recognize, even though they're in this, like, cycle, they may see the way you're doing it or feel your energy and think there's something. There's something different about this. Like, I. They can sense that there's a difference in the way that you're approaching it, and that that alone can be very, very attractive because.

Yeah, I think so. I feel so. What you're really saying is you have to make a concerted effort to not behave that way. And you have to be cognizant of what you're putting out there really, in that way, because it doesn't happen just because you want it to happen. Because I think a lot of times people say, oh, I want a relationship. I want someone like this. But what people say and how they act and what they do are very different things. Right. And usually there's a major disconnect, like, typically. And you talk about this in your book a lot, which I can relate to. It's like, actually, someone once said to me very recently, what are you attracted to that doesn't serve you? Right. I thought that was a very great question. Isn't that a great question? And it made me, like, really think about things and, like, in a different way. And I realized also what you said was, you know, why are we attracted to people that are not nice to us or who are, like, who don't serve us? Because that's typically what the question was. Like, what are you attracted to that doesn't serve you?

Is basically like that in a nutshell. Right. Why is it that we are drawn to and we gravitate to people who most of the time are not the nice ones, who are not the caring, considerate ones? Like, what is wrong with what's wrong with us?

There's a few things going on there. I mean, there's.

I'm asking for a friend, by the way.

Well, I think on one level it's the scarcity mindset. You know, we're worried that the, you know, is something better is not going to come along. So then we just grab at whatever is available. Then there's the fact that we tend to gravitate towards what we know, not what will make us happy. So if something activates our nervous system in a familiar way, then we're drawn to that. It's something that feels comfortable to us. You know, it's a simple but profound principle that everyone should know about people is that we are not. We tend not to be drawn to what makes us happy. We're drawn to what is familiar. And what is familiar can be hell.

Right?

But it's known territory for us.

Is that trauma bonding kind of.

Well, it's. I always think of it as like we have grown up with a certain model of the way the world is or the way relationships are, of what our expectation of life is. And it's very easy to keep repeating that because it's hard to step outside of a reality that we don't know. It's actually very firstly, we may not even know that what we keep reproducing is just our private bubble of reality. It's not the world itself. We don't necessarily know that because we've never stepped outside of it, you know? So it's when, you know, I always, I use the example in the book of the dolphin that's raised in captivity that, you know, grows up being taught that the way to get fish is from humans, and the way to get those fish is to jump through literal hoops and do backflips and do tricks and.

Right.

That's all, you know, that's what the dolphin knows. If the dolphin's released into the ocean and it starts doing backflips for food, right, it's not going to be very valuable. Or swimming up to humans on boats might be fatal in the ocean, but it's not the dolphins fault that it's doing that. It's just, that's what it was taught in the tank. And by the way, when we were in the tank growing up, we didn't know it was a tank. We just thought it was life.

That's right, exactly.

You know, we go out into the ocean and we keep repeating the same thing, and it's not as simple as, oh, we have a self worth problem. When a. If a dolphin starts, you know, doing the same tricks it learned in the tank, in the ocean. We wouldn't say the dolphin had a self worth problem, right, exactly. We'd say it had a pattern that it was repeating. And that's true for a lot of us, is we have a pattern that we're repeating because that is what's familiar to us. And so it's. We have to start getting curious about other ways of being that fall outside of our reality. You know, I had a woman who had. She'd been abandoned a lot in her life, and it became her core wound was abandonment. She found herself in a situation with a guy where he'd been treating her well, and it was going great. And then one afternoon, he had a little get together with his friends, and he didn't invite her. And it triggered everything for her. He doesn't like me as much as I like him. He's not proud of me. He doesn't want to introduce me to his friends.

This, that, the other. It was a big story in her mind. And so in the middle of him getting together with his friends, she said, why didn't you invite me? She texted him, and he said, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I just haven't seen these friends in a while. I was getting everyone together for a little bit. He said, can I call you tonight? And she said, don't bother. And three days later, she's speaking to me, saying, I don't know what to do. He hasn't called. Now, this is a really prime example of we don't know why he didn't invite her. Right? But she went straight to a place that got her activated. And based on that, there was a familiar pattern she went to, which is, I'm going to reject you before you can reject me. So instead of being. Having a moment of vulnerability or connecting with you or sharing a little bit about who I am and the fact that, you know, or even calling him and being like, you know, hey, I probably don't have a right to feel this because, you know, you were just hanging with your friends, and that's fine, but it just made me sad that, you know, you didn't invite me.

And, you know, I got in my head about it. You know, she could say that it could be an opportunity for him to ask where that comes from or for them to have a conversation about it, but instead, she just put up the walls, became avoidant, and pushed him away. And the sad part about that is that we're often really good at just recreating the very thing we don't want. The thing we want. Least in the world, we're really good at recreating because we just get into these grooves is what we know. And it becomes this kind of almost this thing we can't take our eyes off of is what we know.

Although I feel like what I just said to you about being attracted, like, there's certain qualities that people are typically drawn to, right? Charm. Right? Like being funny, charming, like all those things. But those are like, usually very surface, topical things that don't really serve us right. Like as a girl, right. I'm attracted to guys or who are like that, right? Confident, funny, charismatic. A lot of times those guys don't make the greatest partners, though. They've learned how to be a great sales representatives. That's what happens a lot of times. And now I am speaking for, like, because me, like, women talk about this all the time. And I bet you similar to how you probably were, right when you were saying you were a bad, like, you probably weren't like an asshole, you know, you were probably very nice intentionally anyway.

Intentionally.

You probably were like, I think even your, in your paragraph when you first opened the book, you were charismatic, you were nice, you were chivalrous. You know, you did all the nice things to make someone want to like you, even though you knew that you're probably not the greatest partner. I think that's what people get drawn to, right? Is this like superficial level. And it's very hard for people to separate that from something more. And then you also write about the facts. This is a couple two prong question, which I love when you said this, that connection isn't what you should be striving for, it's compatibility. Because I think we always say to each, oh, you know, well, we have such a great connection. Or the connection. The connection, like, you always hear the word connection. It's like the big hashtag in relationships. But like the truth of the matter, just because you do have a connection and you, like, this is the part of the book I was like reading, like, ferociously. It really doesn't matter. It's like, it's about, are you guys compatible? And people, again, mis mistake those two. Can you talk about why and just expand upon those things?

Because I think that a lot of people like that would resonate with on both sides.

Well, firstly to your point about all those attractive qualities. We have to go a little deeper in terms of what it is we're looking for. It's fine to like someone who's charming. It's fine, to, like someone who's funny or sexy or any of those things. But that can't be all you need, right?

And we mistake it for lust and love or lust and, like, compatibility.

Well, you can desire someone, but we have to start separating what makes someone desirable from what makes them a great partner. And it has to be as much a criteria for who we invest in, that they are a great partner as they are desirable. It can't be. You know, I always say to people, it's fine to want chemistry, but why don't you want kindness as much as you want chemistry? Why is it that chemistry keeps winning over someone who's decent or someone who's kind or someone who's thoughtful or someone who's loyal or empathetic or consistent? You have to suspect yourself if you have really, really high standards for chemistry and really low standards for how someone treats you.

Right?

That's the problem. Fine. Want those things, but never at the expense of someone's character or the way they show up, the way they invest in you. That has to be the price of entry, has to be the deep, the deeper things that you really need. And by the way, how do you make. You know, how do you get the bravery or the courage or the resolve to make those things your price of entry? You look at relationships you've had in the past where you really wanted to hold on to someone, where you thought they were so amazing. We thought, I can't lose this person. And you remember that whatever it was you were missing in that relationship made you dreadfully unhappy. It made you miserable. Even when you were telling yourself, I'll never be able to, I can't lose this person. It actually made it intolerable to stay.

Absolutely.

And when you know what that was, maybe you didn't feel seen by that person. Maybe you felt like you never got their time. Maybe you felt like they. You never really trusted them or that they were never really in the relationship. You know, whatever it was you were missing made it hell to be there. We may not have admitted that at the time. Cause when we're in those relationships, we have to sell ourselves on staying.

Right? We justify behavior, and we've kid ourselves.

About how happy we are.

Right.

But when we leave and we look back, you go, oh, my God, I was a wreck. I was an anxious, sad wreck in that relationship for so long. And when you realize, when you remember and connect to how painful that was, you don't need self worth to decide that you'll never again be in a relationship without those core things. You just need to know how much it hurt last time and how you could never do it again, regardless of how charismatic or sexy someone is. So that's what I want to say about that. In terms of the connection piece, we consistently overvalue connection. It is such a seductive thing to find someone who we like, who likes us back. That is like. It feels like the holy grail when we find it. It feels like lightning in a bottle. How often do I like someone, let alone they like me? Oh, my God. It feels like the most important thing on earth. Yeah, but when someone. When the person we have this with is telling us they don't want a relationship or they're not sure about us, right, then it counts for nothing. It's not important.

In the book, I talk about there being four levels of importance in I love that part, relationship. And it's so important because once people have this model, they never look at their love life the same way again. The first level of importance for any situation in your life, and everyone listening to this can imagine as you think of someone in your life, maybe you're struggling with or you're hung up on, or you can. You can have in your head which one of these levels you think you're at. Level one is admiration. That's just where you have someone that you think is great. They may not even know you exist. You just. You think this person's heart, whatever. There's something about them. Level two is mutual attraction. That's the level we're talking about. When you feel a connection, whether it's a deeper connection, whether it's physical connection, you feel that mutual attraction with them. That's the level that's really dangerous. Level three is commitment. The reason level two is really dangerous is because it feels really important. But without level three, without someone actually saying, yes, I want you, I want to be with you, it's worthless.

It's utterly worthless. It's like two people discovering a plot of land together. And it's a beautiful plot of land. You could build the most amazing house there, but it's still just a plot of land. A relationship is the thing you build on that land, right? You can't kid yourself that the plot of land is the thing. It's not. So commitment is the commitment to actually build something on that plot of land. And then even commitment on its own isn't enough. You need compatibility, and compatibility is level four. Do we work together? Okay, we have mutual attraction. We've both said yes to a relationship, but does this work? Do we share a vision for our lives. Do we have lifestyles that are compatible? Do we have a shared moral compass? Do we think the same way about life?

Right.

You know, do you feel it's okay to lie all the time? And I really value honesty. Do you like to go out till 05:00 a.m. Every night? And I really enjoy the morning. And okay, if that's true, can we still find enough quality time together outside of the night time in the morning that we can sustain a relationship? Like compatibility matters. And my whole thing is this. If you have mutual attraction, commitment, they're saying yes, and you are too, and you have compatibility, it works, right? And then the love of your life gets taken from you in a horrible accident. That's tragic. That is a real tragedy. But if you're in level two and the person that you say is your person is walking this earth, they're still here ordering things on Amazon. And they choosing not to be with you, that's not tragedy.

No.

They could be with you and they're not. They're choosing not to. So we have to lose the story that this person is my person. They're not your person. Someone can't exist and they're somewhere right now and not choosing you and they're your person. It's a story we have in our mind. It's not reality. And I think that that is a tremendous help in getting over people because you may still need to grieve. But my friend, I don't know if you know David Kessler, the grief expert, one of the leading grief experts, he said to me, grief is a result you didn't want.

Right. That's a grip. Yeah.

And when someone you thought would become more says they don't want more, that is a result you didn't want. So it may still require grief, but it's not the grief of I've lost my soulmate.

Right.

It's the grief of disappointment that this person never became my soulmate, even though I thought they were, and it turns out they weren't. And I'm grieving the loss of that future and the idea that I had about this person and this relationship. What I'm not doing is living in the chronic grief of thinking that person is the love of my life and they're still out there. That's the kind of grieving that doesn't go away. And I have watched the extremes of this where people 20 years, 30 years on, are still talking about a person who was in their life 30 years ago, that they've never gotten over, and I want to say you are locked in a story right now that is the great tragedy of your life. If you're not careful, is going to be giving over your life to this.

Fake story because they're stuck in level two, which is the connection part. Right.

Because you're valuing this idea.

Right. The story in your head, not.

Not the reality. If it was the reality, it would be the reality. You would be with this person. We have this great story. I mean, I love the movie Titanic. I will cry every time in that movie.

Yeah, I love it, too.

But if you really stand back, there's something a little odd about the idea that a woman in her, I don't know if she's nineties or over 100. I can't remember, but she's pretty.

She's pretty old.

Pretty old.

She's almost a hundred. I think she is 100.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Still telling this story about a guy that she knew for about five days on a boat.

I guess you're right. But I think what I totally like.

She didn't even know him.

She didn't know him.

She didn't know him.

But I think that's why that part of the book, I think, is so, so good, because I really believe that that number two, that connection part is where most people do get stuck.

Yes.

I mean, I really do believe it. Like, you know, going through it, like, I'm married now, whatever. But there's always these people that you had this thing with that things never turned out for one reason. Who cares? Circumstance that I don't know if it's because. And I. Almost everybody I know gets stuck in this area at some point.

All of us.

And it depends on, like, either, like the. Like, it depends on the length of time. Maybe some are still stuck in it. But what. That's why it's so resonated, so strong. And I think it depends on. It's a potential, like, kind of opportunity or potential that was never turned or, like, seen out. So that's what the book is.

The unhatched eggs of our life.

Right.

You know, I think. Have you seen this new show one day?

Oh, no. What is it?

The big new show on Netflix. It's like a very popular show at the moment. I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but it.

Should I watch it? Is it worth it?

Oh, it's a lovely show. And it's extremely engaging and entertaining. Yeah. And me and my wife loved it. But it's a story about these two friends who. Or these two people who meet in college and this kind of constant, you know, will they, won't they type?

Oh, yes. Okay.

And it's a very dangerous story because you see, you know how someone can give up so much of their life?

Yes.

Like giving someone so much real estate in their mind and in tv shows and movies, that can pan out nicely. Yeah, but in real life, bad bets are just bad bets. They're not. Totally. You wouldn't take your life savings and put it on a, you know, one in a thousand bet. But it's like we do that in our love life all the time.

But do you think people are doing it as a distraction?

That's an interesting point. I think it can be a form of avoidance.

Yeah.

I think it's a way to not be an active participant in our own life. It's a way to not be involved because it fulfills something.

Yeah. It feels fantasy. It's like a fantasy is what it is.

It's a fantasy and it's safe. I can talk about it from the comfort of my bedroom. And it requires me to risk nothing. It lives on as this endlessly fascinating, mysterious thing. It never has to disappoint me, even though ultimately it's the great disappointment of our lives that we've given up on the real thing.

But so many. And also, like you said, hours. And literally, if you kind of add up all the hours that people spend on this area in their life, it'd probably be like years of spent.

Yeah, well, people give up decades to these ideas and these stories and it's. It's really tragic. It's easier to, like, kind of nurture that egg totally. That never hatches then to go out and live. Because, by the way, living is often. It's messier and it's, you know, this. With people in business, it's easier to talk about an idea of a great concept. You have to go out and actually put time and energy into it. Yeah, it's harder. Look, writing is the same way, actually, my writing coach said to me, never expect what you put on the page to be as good as how it is in your mind. It's a kind of poor version of this perfect idea you have in your head. And you're just doing your best to try to get as close to that as possible. But you have to accept the fact that this thing that you end up on the page with is often a very disappointing version of this thing you have in your head. But at a certain point in life, you have to decide, am I a real writer? Or am I someone who talks about this great book idea they've got?

And in our love life, we can either be in the game and active and involved, or we can hold on to this perfect, unhatched egg and talk about how great it would have been or could be if only. And it comes down to, do you want to live a real life?

That is seriously such a great point. And that's a great analogy, too, right? Because 99% is perspiration. Right? Like, 1% is the idea in business. Right? Like, anyone can talk. You know, it's fun to fantasize and think and dream. Right? But, like, the sweat. Like, the sweat comes in the actual hard work, and it's.

As it does in a marriage.

Yeah.

You know, you look at. Whenever I hear of love at first sight, I kind of think, what an insult to marriage.

Right.

You know, the marriage is this path that people take that is, it takes guts and it takes effort, and it takes two people being, you know, in this marathon together and figuring it out as they go and constant, you know, doubling down on their commitment to the relationship and to making it as good as it can be and going through hard times together and the days where it's just rough or the periods of life where there's financial instability and you find a way to stick together or illness, and you're taking someone to the hospital, and you, like, that's the guts of a relationship. When someone says, they were my person and they've known them for three months, I'm like, stop wasting my time. Most of what a relationship is, you've never seen from that person. How could you have seen it from that person?

It's impossible. Then how do you get over a relationship you never had? Because this is what it really is. People have to. How do you. Is it. What's a tactical way to get over a relationship that you never had? Is it just to, again, be cognizant of it and act differently? Do, like, start dating people.

You put intention behind moving forward in your life. Like, real intention. It's like a breakup. There's a grieving period, and everyone knows who's gone through a terrible breakup. There's a zombie like period where you're just good for nothing. But a certain point, you have to put intention behind moving on. You can't be passive about it. It is a war of attrition against those feelings. It is waking up one day and deciding, let me get everything out of this fucking apartment that has a connection to them, because it is not helping me to see that picture over there or to see that memento we got from that time in cabo or to get, I don't need that stuff around me. Let me get them off of my social media. Why am I still following them? Why haven't I muted them already so that I don't see their posts? Why am I still talking about them with friends? Come to think of it, when my friend comes to me for lunch and says, oh, you know, they've started dating so and so or whatever, why am I not telling my friend, hey, I love you, but I need you to just stop talking about them because I don't want to have them as a conversation anymore.

They are not a topic of conversation that's relevant to my life anymore. So it would really help me if we stopped talking about them all together. We can talk about anything else in the world. It doesn't help me to know this information. You have to be intentional about moving on, and a lot of people are not willing to be intentional about moving on because it's harder to go and live a real life. It takes effort to go and live a real life, and real life is often underwhelming.

Totally true, right? Like, 100% true.

But it. But it. But the only way to really. I believe this to my core. You can decide to create magic in your own. How do I say this? I remember going to Disney world as a kid and, like, being mesmerized, and I developed a mild obsession about, like, this place, and I just wanted to go back there. And I was just. The feeling it created in me, which, of course, they are absolute pros at and have had decades and decades of practice.

Yes.

It stuck with me. This was a magical place, and I wanted to be back there. I wanted my whole life to feel like that. And. And. And I can look back at it now, and I. Firstly, let me tell you this. I never really grew out of it. Like, I'm still the person that if you say, let's go to Disney this Saturday, I'm like, yes, you love it that much. I just. It can never live up to the thing in my head. Firstly, the crowds are obnoxiously infuriating. The, you know, lines, the this, that, like, it's an. It's a better idea in my head than it is in reality, but the feeling is something that I'm always, like, wanting to get back to somehow. Right?

That's so true. It's like heroin, though, right? Like, I don't know. I've never taken it. But they say, like, you're always trying to get back to that first high.

Right. You know, and that for me, it, like, created this idea of how life could feel.

Yeah.

And. And I was a kid at the time, but I remember a certain point in my life thinking to myself, the obviously real life is not that, but you, at a certain point, have to decide, okay, there's a magic that I felt there. Like, it's. There's something maybe silly about it. There's something like. But it's just the truth. Like, there's a magic that I felt that is a feeling I want to recreate in my life. And I have to. If I want to live a real life, I have to make myself responsible in whatever modest way for creating that magic in my life. Like, I have to be the author of the magic in my life. And. And the great kind of experiment of life, the great challenge of life is that there are a thousand ways you can do that. What does it look like if you come to my retreat that I've been doing for 17 years of my life?

It is the virtual retreat or.

No, the live, like, we do it in Florida. So it's a six day event.

A six day, like, relationship retreat?

No, like everything. Our relationship with ourselves, our emotions, our healing, our patterns in life. For six days? Yeah.

Where? Where is it?

Fort Lauderdale. Yeah. I've been doing it for. Yeah, most of my entire adult life.

First of all, you said six days. How many people show up to this thing?

300. Yeah.

Is it just you, or do you bring other people?

We. We have, like, occasionally.

Sorry not to digress.

No, no, no. We'll have, like, someone come on for an hour or so. But, no, I. Ostensibly, I am on stage for six days. Yeah, I speak probably for 40 hours over that week.

I would imagine so. Because the one thing everybody has in common is relationships. You know, date, like, people in relationships of some kind. Like, I would imagine you get all walks of life there.

Oh, everyone. Everyone. And some people, you know, a lot of people there want to find love, and they're working on the deeper patterns and the healing that they need to do. But a lot of people are there, and they're married, and they're just there because they're like, there is something getting in the way of my peace, or there are patterns in my life that are affecting me, and I. I really want to heal. You know, some people are just left a 20 year narcissistic marriage, and they're like, I want to rebuild my life again. I want to reclaim my identity, and I want to enjoy this new season of my life and finally get over these patterns from the past, you know? So it's. It's a huge range, but anyone who's come to that retreat knows that I. My soul is all over that thing. It is.

Wow.

It is like, you know, people show up and there's events in the evening that are really unique. Like, we have a drive through movie theater night that we do after day two. Cause day two is this very intense day for people, and there's a lot of, like, deep work that people do that leaves them emotionally tired at the end of the day. So we have this. We turn everyone into just children at the end of the day, and we do this. It's like a dry. We turn this inside space into something that feels like an outdoor movie theater where everyone sits in these makeshift cars that we create. They come through a 1950s concession stand with actors and people playing all of the roles. And it is a. They step into a world. And in the days, during the sessions. I used to be a dj for ten years when I was.

Oh, really? Yeah.

My dad owned a nightclub when I was growing up, so I started djing at eleven years old.

Oh, that's so cute.

And from the age of 15, I was a nightclub dj. So music was always a very big part of my life growing up. My dad djed in that. So when I was like, four or five years old, you know, my memories are of him playing records at home, practicing, getting ready for the night when he was going to dj. So music was a huge part of my life. And if anyone comes to my retreat, you'll see, like, music is a huge part of that experience and that event. My love for music comes through every pore of that retreat. So between, like, all of my influences in life show up in this event. It's not like you come to an event and you're just sitting in a chair and you're like, okay, I have this speaker that's speaking to me, right? It is the same way that when I went to Disney World and it created a world for me. I create a world for people on those six days that truly for them is like I stepped into a different world. And there is a magic in every part of it that is unique to me and the experience that I bring, and I obsess over it.

It's like, this has been my baby for over a decade, and I obsess over this program and the details of it to the extent that is absurd, like the final night, we have a 1920s experience where people come into, like, this private party that's like, you know, prohibition era. They have to come through a barber shop and have, like, knock and use a password and, like, it's all like, we construct a barber shop for the purposes of this evening along with this whole set backstage. And it's like a. It's a whole thing, but it's my point.

It's an experience.

It sounds like it's an experience, but it's got. It's my DNA because of everything that. All the things that have touched me in my life.

Yeah.

That I then go, how do I. I felt something. How do I bring. Instead of being a seeker of magic, like, says, how can I go out and get this magic from somewhere else? How can I be an author of this magic? How can I bring it to my life in a way that is modest? It's not like I don't have that budget. I don't have a Disney budget, but I can do it my way in a way that's really special to me. I know this may sound to people like this weird, abstract point, but I promise you, it's not. Think of all of life this way. It's. You can create that magic. When you come out of a relationship and you are hung up on someone and what you've lost and you, like, just, do you do anything to go back there, but that person doesn't want to be with you? Well, if we're not careful, we are now the magic chasers. We're the magic seekers. We're saying that that person was our magic and that we need to get that person back because they were the magic in our lives and the magic left.

But what if you said to yourself, well, look, 50% of the magic in that relationship was me. I was 50% of that relationship. So 50% of what I miss is myself, and I left that I take me with me. And when a lot of people add up why a relationship was great that they had, they start to realize they were more than 50% of the magic. The depth of the communication or the vulnerability was because of the way they got. They opened up and the way they made someone feel safe and create an environment for that. All the little details of the trips they planned and the things they did, so much of that was them. You know, it's like you were the magic. So why are you acting like the magic in your life left? You have the magic. Now you can decide what you want to do with it. You took you with you in that deal. You didn't lose you. So that great reframe, by the way, it's huge. It's huge. 50% of what, the minimum 50% of what you miss is yourself, and you still have that.

Do you need, though, like, a sense, like, where does confidence come into this place? Because do you need a really good self esteem, a strong self esteem and a strong sense of self to be able to do those reframes, to be able to see things that way and have that perspective? Because a lot of times what people end up doing is they acquiesce to the other person because of fear. They're afraid they're going to lose that relationship. So they'll settle for less. They'll acquiesce for good enough, because, you know, they don't want to have a hard conversation, a bad conversation. That would. May take them down the different path than what they're on. Right. Because sometimes what, you know, feels better than having nothing or people rather be with someone who's like, okay, you know, versus being alone, because it goes back to that whole loneliness loop that we talked about. Right. So where does confidence and self esteem play into having a really healthy relationship?

Well, we have to start, I think, by defining what we mean by confidence, because I think, what a lot of people, when they refer to confidence, they're referring to some kind of, you know, outward energy of boldness, or boldness is.

My line, but no. Cause I think there's a difference. Sorry, I mean to interrupt you, but there is a difference between, like, true self confidence and, like you said, like, just being, like, arrogant or, like, outwardly confident.

Yeah, and. But I think my book was called.

It'S all about being bold.

I didn't know that.

Oh, yeah. That's why I'm laughing.

But if you look up the definition of confidence, it. One of the key definitions is a state or feeling of certainty about something. So there's something to that where you go, oh, confidence is just a feeling of certainty. So then you go, was certainty about what, you know, what can we be certain about? And I think a lot of us are trying to be. We're failing to feel confident because we're trying to have a feeling of certainty about something that you can't have. Certainty about. Certainty that someone's not going to cheat on you.

Right.

Certainty that you're going to be attractive to this person. So certainty that, you know, even in a sense, certainty in your abilities, which may or may not hold over time.

Right.

We're trying to find. And by the way, if you ever want to know why you were so anxious and insecure in a relationship, often you were blaming it on yourself. But the problem was, I can think of a relationship where I was trying to feel confident and blaming myself for not feeling confident. But I look back now and I go, of course you didn't feel confident. You sensed that you couldn't feel certain about this person because they weren't in it the way you were. So you were trying to feel certain about a situation that was inherently uncertain. That is a recipe for not only not feeling confident, but for blaming ourselves for not feeling confident.

So true. That's a total loop that so many people play, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And so confidence is, am I trying to find certainty in the right things and what would be a safe place for me to put my certainty? It's a. It's a good question.

Yeah.

I have become, like, the area that solved it for me when it came to confidence was understanding that I don't need to feel like I match up to anybody. I don't need to feel like I'm special. I think we get preoccupied with trying to feel like we're special.

That's so true.

It's a losing battle. It's a losing battle. There's so many interesting, talented people in this world. I don't. You know, firstly, I make a point not to over respect anybody, but I also.

I gotta take a note. That's a very good point. I love that.

But I also, with myself, make a point not to need myself to be too special. I don't. I'm one of 8 billion people. You know what? I'm not special. I truly don't go through life thinking like I'm special. I don't.

You really don't.

I'm one of 8 billion people.

Okay, but, okay, what does that even mean?

I'm special?

Because I think there's something to be said for everybody wants to feel special. I'm jewish, right? And there was a rabbi, I think it says rabbi Shmuley. Okay? He was like a famous rabbi, and his whole. He had this whole message about that everybody wants to feel chosen. Every girl wants to feel chosen, and that they feel chosen. That's like. That's the pinnacle. That's the feeling that everybody wants to have. And if you don't make them feel chosen, the relationship will suffer in some way. And you're saying the opposite. You're saying we're not that special. Not. No one's that. And I get what you're saying.

I'm saying you have to choose yourself. You just have to choose yourself, because it's not. There's nothing special like, I totally understand. Here's the thing. As soon as you try to convince yourself you're special, special good. You are on a losing track a hundred percent. So that someone, more, someone, whatever you're thinking you're special for. So sooner or later, someone's gonna walk into the room with more of that, be more special.

I know in that way I could not. And that's also why a lot of times, people are lonely. They end up alone because they think they're better than everybody else. So that no one will stack up to who they are. They think they can always do better, find better, be better.

They always think everyone's better than them. Both are. Ego. But ego can be I'm better than everyone else. Ego can also be everyone's better than me. They're both product of ego.

Yeah. So you're saying we often think of.

Ego just in the sense of someone being egotistical, arrogant. But ego, the same thing that says I'm amazing is the thing that tomorrow can make you say, I hate myself. I'm not good enough. There are two sides of the same coin. So I. My point is, the whole game is wrong.

That's such a good point.

What we have to do is say, okay, let me get out of this thing of trying to think that I'm special. What if I played a different game altogether? What if I said I'm one of 8 billion people? Why am I special? Well, maybe I'm not special, but that's also true. Kind of. Of everyone's kids, right? We all know other people's kids aren't that special, but their parent feels like they are. Now, why is that? If you ask a parent, why do you love your kid? They'll look at you like you're a crazy person. They'll be like, what are you talking about? Because they're my kid. Because they're my son. She's my daughter.

Yeah.

They don't. If you say to a parent, why do you love your child? They don't say, because they get a's in math and because they did. Oh, you can't imagine what she was wearing this morning. She looked so cute. They don't say that.

No.

They say, but what do you. Because they're my child. It doesn't register in the normal way that we try to make someone special. What's special is the relationship I have to my child. They are mine. So now apply that to self love and self confidence and you actually have a formula that doesn't require you to feel uniquely special in any way whatsoever, other than one, which is to say that of 8 billion people on this earth, the only person that is responsible for the human that is us is ourselves. It's almost like we were given a human at birth, and our only job for the rest of our lives was to take care of this human. And someone had to usher us into adulthood. They may or may not have done a good job of that, but for a while, someone's job was to keep us alive before we could do it for ourselves. And then at a certain point, what maybe no one ever told us was, hey, just so you know, from this point forward, by the way, you've always had this human. It's always been your human. But from now on, it's your job to take care of this human.

You have full custody of this human. Your job is to take care of them, to nurture them, to try to give them the best life possible, to encourage them to be all that they can be, to stand up for them, to love them. So now what we imagine is if someone said to us, why do you love yourself? You don't go, because I'm so special. You say, because I'm mine. I'm my human. What do you mean? Why do I love myself? I'm mine. That changes everything. Because now we don't see self love as a feeling we have to have towards ourselves, which most of us find really difficult to have towards us.

I hate that word, self love. I find it to be very repugnant. I think it's.

Well, I don't like it until it turns into a verb instead of a feeling instead of a noun.

I think that's because rebrand.

And that's the point. Self love needs a rebrand. It does. It needs to move from the world of feeling to the world of doing. Self love is an approach, because when you realize that you're your human, you know, firstly, comparison through that lens with other people makes no sense. You can't exchange your human for another human.

Right?

So what's the point in comparison? It's like comparing your kid to another kid. It's irrelevant. This is your kid.

Yeah.

So your job is just. You just want your kid to be as happy as possible. You're not going, oh, I wish you were better looking like this kid over here. You're going, I just. My job is to make you as happy as possible. Well, that's our job with ourselves. So when you look at it through that lens, it changes everything.

That's a great reframe also. Yeah, these are great reframes. I'm super excited to share my latest health obsession with you guys. It's called metabolic daily by pendulum. Metabolic daily is a powerful multi strain probiotic that really improves your metabolism, reduces your sugar cravings, breaks down carbs more efficiently and sustains your energy. I've been taking metabolic daily for a few months and it's unbelievable the results I've seen. Not only do I never struggle with my cravings, but I'm seeing a huge improvement in my body composition from breaking down carbs more effectively. I love Pendolin because they are really disrupting the probiotic market with clinically studied strains that aren't available anywhere else. They were founded by PhD scientists and are backed by the Mayo Clinic and Halle Berry, who recently became their chief communications officer because of the results that she's seen. They're the only company with. I think I'm pronouncing this correctly. It's called acromancia, a next generation strain that's called the Keystone strain for gut health. You can get it as a single strain or in metabolic daily. Plus you guys can take 20% off your first month of any pendulum product membership with this code, Jencoan.

So go now to pendulumlife.com and use my code at checkout. Trust me, you will feel incredible. You know, what's interesting about you is, like, you've been doing this, like, you kept. How old are you? 39, 40 years old?

36.

Okay. You're 36 years old. You've been doing this since you were, like, 18. Like, literally, like 19 years old with no life experience in terms of relationships that much? Right. Like, do you feel like because of now that you've, like, had, like, lived life and have had all this, like, life experience, you just got better of being what you do? Like, are you shocked this is what you're doing? Were you always inherently, like, good at, like, picking up these nuances and understanding human nature and. And relationships? Because honestly, like, being 36 and been doing this for 18 years is a long. You were a kid when you started.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, literally no business doing this.

You know what I mean? You had no business at like, 19, right? Like, how did that even, like, happen with you? Like, that's crazy.

Well, I knew I was passionate about it. I didn't even as a kid. Yeah. I mean, I picked up, you know, self development books off my dad's bookshelf at eleven years old. I was like. But someone asked me recently if you could go back and tell yourself at 19, you know, some advice. What would you say as you embarked on this whole journey and this career? And I said, I think I would have. I would say to him, you don't need to pretend to know everything because there's an empathy that you have and an awareness that you have and an energy and a heart that you have that is enough on its own and that the knowledge will come. But, and you can educate yourself and you'll have more life experience, but you can take your time and just keep putting out the, that energy because that energy is going to help people no matter what. Yeah, there's something healing about just that energy, but don't feel like you need to know it all because that's also going to stunt your growth because you're going to then feel like you can't admit to areas where you haven't figured it out yet.

And, you know, I think what I was lucky with, I was blessed with at 19, more life experience than I should have had at 19. And that was intensely valuable for my ability to relate to people because I'd had a lot go on and so I never spoke about any of that. But it was, but it was there and it was valuable.

What was it like? What did you.

A lot. I mean, stuff, you know, I talk about it a little bit in the book, but it's just the dynamics of, you know, a world that was colorful.

With a dad being a dj or.

It was, it was, it was a lot of things coming from different directions in my life, but it's a lot of life experience and a lot of ability to see different sides of life and different sides of people and, you know, to see the rougher sides of life and to, you know, I, in a way, I count myself very lucky that I grew up with a bit of everything. I grew up with lots of love in my life. I also grew up with just, you know, a lot of sides of life that people don't often get to see. And that was, you know, that that was valuable for me because I've always been able to go through life relating to very different kinds of, of people, and I could be comfortable in every room, and that was really, that was, that's been very valuable to me.

So your Eq is exceptionally high.

I think that I'm lucky. My mom is one of the most empathetic people I've ever met. And, you know, that gave me a real gift because I got that from her. You know, I just, that's been in me for a long, since the beginning. You know what? Over time, you know, you live more of a life, and you get humbled in all sorts of different ways. And that one of the most useful things for me was, you know, the real ways in my, especially in my late twenties and early thirties, that I was deeply, deeply humbled by things going wrong in life and by, you know, making mistakes I never thought I would make and, you know, just, just really hitting different various rock bottoms for myself that were very useful at the time. I would have wished for anything else. But I look back now, and I really feel lucky to have had those times. That's given me a humility, and it's given me an ability to connect with even more people.

What would be one of those times that really changed the trajectory of how you occur in the world?

Chronic pain, physical, chronic pain was one of the big ones. That was, like, a very, very humbling thing for me because I developed when I was in my late twenties, I got. First I got tinnitus, which was, like, ringing in my ears that didn't go away. And, oh, for how long I was still there.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Can you hear it right now?

Mm hmm.

You're ringing in your ear right now. Wow.

And by the way, I didn't notice it until you asked, but there was a time in my life where I had not figured it out. And I think through my panic and my resistance of that, which was a very, very, very dark period of my life, I then, I think, brought on all sorts of other symptoms. Like, I got. I started to, like, in addition to the ringing, I got a throbbing in my ear and my head and this constant pressure and dizziness that just never went away. So I. Then it got to a point where the combination of the ringing and the physical sensations that I would have in my head were so bad that I didn't, I just couldn't enjoy life anymore. I really. I'm a life lover at heart, and I felt like I completely fell out of love with life. I had. I was so mad, and I was so on the edge all the time. I was constantly on the edge of breaking down, of snapping. You know, I never talked about it in publicly because I couldn't at the time. I felt like if I talked about it publicly, I'd break.

And I went to every kind of doctor, every kind of treatment, every, everything that anyone ever recommended me. At some point, I tried, spent an ungodly amount of money and time and energy trying to figure this thing out. And I. And I went to a therapist at one point and said, I'm just gonna. That was when I started therapy. It was because of that.

Wow.

Like, I. Because I'd never done therapy before. And I got to a point in my life where I didn't know what I was going to do. I had been a taipei person with a lot of grit my whole life, and I knew how to outwork everything that had ever come up. And now a situation came up that I tried everything to shift and nothing changed it. And it sent me into a complete tailspin because I thought, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I went to. It gives. To this day, it's a weird thing for me to connect with how dark I felt during those times. And I went to a therapist when I was, like, really, truly in a place that scared me. And I said, like, I am gonna live. I've made a decision that I'm gonna live for everyone else, like my family, who I was, you know, able to provide for my mom and my father, my team and the people that my work helps. I'm just gonna live for them to make their lives better because my life is over. And I was, bear in mind, I was like 29, 30 saying this, and I didn't have any experience of, like, feeling joy anymore.

I just thought, I'm. I'm just a walking zombie who's going through the motions, trying not to break down. And that sort of began a whole process for me over years. I mean, I wish I could say that it was like my year of chronic pain, but it was like a seven or eight year journey of me figuring out how to. How I was going to relate to this thing that I couldn't change and that, you know, I'm not. I'm not. You and I have had a conversation before. You know, my. I'm not like a very spiritual. I don't go to spiritual language, but like, that was, if anything in my life has ever been a spiritual experience, is trying to figure that out. And. And so that I don't think you can go in through anything that humbles you personally that much without then having something to give at the end of it.

Is this still happening? Did it end? I mean, it sounds like it was.

The ringing in my ears is still there, but it doesn't bother me at all.

It doesn't?

Nope. I figured it out and it, like, doesn't affect me now. And there was a time when, if you'd have asked me, like, there was a time in my life where I would have said to you, there's no way I'll ever be able to be happy with that. And I figured that out and the pain that accompanied it. I made some changes in my life, and there were certain elements of my life that were not serving me and certain things that I started to look. One of the things I realized is all this pain that's there all the time anyway, seems to get worse when I'm in a bad emotional place. And I kept noticing that over and over again, if I. If I'm feeling really bad emotionally or if something activates me, the pain gets worse. So I, at that point in my life, I was excited to just. If I could shift the pain from an eight to a seven, that was life changing for me, because the seven might be the difference. Going from an eight to a seven might be the difference of me being able to function or me being able to, like, do some work or me being able to be pleasant in a room with my family or so.

And at the time, I felt like I was losing myself. I felt like I didn't know, you know, like that, Matthew, that I knew that it wasn't there anymore. And because I realized when things made me really unhappy or stressed, it made my pain worse. I started to look for areas of my life that were chronic sources of emotional pain, right? Because if I could take away some chronic sources of emotional pain, I might actually be able to get a handle on my physical pain. And I won't go into detail, but there were a couple of sources of chronic emotional pain that I removed from my life, and it radically changed my symptoms. Like I said, I still have the ringing, although it doesn't bother me. But the physical pain that I thought I'd never be able to cope with long term started to subside when I did that. And so for me, when I. I've spoken to our mutual friend, Doctor Ramani, about this, she will tell you that one of the things that happens to a lot of people, let's say, in narcissistic relationships, which are a source of chronic emotional pain for people, is that often they will start to manifest physical, chronic pain, that there will be very real bodily symptoms to the emotional pain they're going through, that then they find really hard to shift, because at a certain point, you don't know where one begins and the other one ends.

It just becomes knotted together in a way that's hard to untangle. So now you're trying to treat physical symptoms that often have an emotional origin. And it gets really, really confusing and complicated. But I know, for me, changing certain things about my life had a massive impact on my symptoms. And so it's become very real to me when I work with people in their relationships and I see them on my retreat. I'm not just dealing with people who are trying to get out of difficult romantic relationships that make them unhappy. I'm seeing people have a relationship with a mother who invalidates them at every turn that is a source of endless pain in their life or a situation with a sister who they are, you know, that occupies so much of their bandwidth and is weighing them down constantly. And these kinds of relationships in our lives, they can be poisoned for us. They truly, it's. It's wild what it can do to our health. So I bet, you know, beyond, beyond romantic relationships. I'm fascinated by relationships in general and how much they determine the quality of life.

I think they. That is, like, the single most important indicator of the quality of your life. I mean, wow, that's. That's. That's unbelievable, Matthew, I didn't know that. And so now, like, you know, now I feel bad that I said, you look tired, because, you know, you probably. I mean, you're having a bad day.

Not at all. No, no, no.

Oh, my gosh.

Not at all. I'm happier than I've ever been. I I really am. I feel at peace in ways that I never have before in my life, and. And I know what it is to not be at peace. And I know how. I really understand how dark it gets for people. And I have tremendous empathy, it seems like, and compassion for how. For when people are in pain, they can't be themselves. You can't see who that person is, that it's, you know, and it's really.

Interesting because, you know, you're a great example because, you know, you never really know what people are going through, right? No, you don't. You would never look at you, right? Because, like, from the outside, you know, you're this cute guy who's, like, super successful in the relationship world. Like, you know, all the social media accolades and stuff, like, you would look like you essentially had, like, a perfect, you know, life. No one would ever think unless you, like, told them that you were in chronic pain like that and that you were, like, suffering, right? Because, I mean, that's. And the reason why I'm saying that is because, like, a lot of times, like, we are very judgmental on people of how they are, but we don't know their story. We don't know anything about them.

No. And I think it, it's one of the, in some ways, it's actually one of the best parts about life is that you can, you know, you can get to know people well enough to have context for who they are, to be able to view them holistically. And that's, that's what allows for deep relationships. And I think that we've, we've lost that a little bit, you know, in that dopamine cycle that I'm talking about.

Yeah. But you know what? With you, it's interesting because you had this thing happen to you, right? Is that kind of why you changed the course of, like, maybe not being the greatest guy to date because you've had life experience that you saw the. What's important, what's not important, what things are, you know, like.

Well, I think it made me. It certainly made me a more compassionate person. I think I was already. Already highly empathetic, but it made me, like, intensely. I felt like I related to a whole new type of person. Person. Exactly. And that was a real gift. But I. I think, I mean, there were a couple of things contributing to the way I started to look at my love life differently. I think one of them was getting a terrible heartbreak. And, you know, me being the one on the receiving end as opposed to the one who was responsible for the heartbreak. And that was really, that was a big, very humbling moment, was to have my heart broken as badly as I did. You know, that I think that also kind of, I came it back into my love life in a more compassionate and humble way. But I also realized the way that I was approaching my love life wasn't working for me. It worked for me at a different time in my life. I mean, it never worked, worked. It's not like it ever left me feeling happy at the end of it, but it, but it, like, worked the same way.

You know, partying can work when you're in your early twenties, and by the time you get to a certain age that the hangovers are worse than the actual. The night was fun, and so you start to go, I don't know if this is worth it anymore. And I think that started to happen for me. I just started to have this recognition that I'm not. This is not. This is not going to make me happy. This is not going to bring me peace. This is not where it's at. This is leaving me feeling anxious and disconnected and that I need something more than this. And so that was, I think, a big shift for me. And then it's kind of detoxing from those behaviors that take you time to, like, adjust your nervous system. Because everything's a drug. Everything's a drug. And at a certain point, we have to, like, find a way to detox from whatever drug is our drug for, you know, whether it's gen literal substances, whether it's alcohol, whether it's food, whether it's people and the kinds of relationships we have, whether it's our phone. It's a certain point we have to start valuing a different feeling because it's not the new way of being.

We.

I think that sometimes the trap is that we want the new feeling to be like the old feeling.

Right.

But they're not the same. It's like taking a drug addict and being, like, on the day they get sober, trying to get them to appreciate a sunset.

Yeah, it's not.

It's not the same thing. A sunset is amazing, but it's not the high that someone got last night from doing drugs. It is a very different feeling, and it might take you time to appreciate the new feeling. And I think there is a kind of. There's a. There's a difficult period. There's like a teething period.

Yeah.

Between the old feeling that we're addicted to and the new feeling that's ultimately going to leave us happier and more peaceful. But our body needs to sort of adjust to, and we need to start feeling what are, in some ways, the more subtle effects initially.

Yeah.

Of the new feeling that don't announce themselves as loudly or as glamorously or as excitingly as pizza.

Exactly.

You know, sex and the novelty and, you know, it's this other kind of piece that we value. And I think what happened for me is I started to value the new feeling of contentment and peace more than I valued the, like, highs and the roller coaster and.

But only because you had to go through something to notice that, right?

I think. Well, yes. And I had to bang my head against the wall enough times, getting the old feeling to realize, like, this is. This isn't working for me anymore, and it's becoming more and more apparent that it's not work like with any addiction. You know, it's. It's. It gets to a point for people where the consequences are getting greater and greater, and the fun part is becoming more and more is no longer the fun part, is no longer the foreground and the consequences, the background. It's the consequences of the foreground. And the fun part is that the sort of distant background that you're scratching around to still try and experience, but is more and more elusive.

I get that. Exactly. I have one more question. I may have got a bunch of questions, but, I mean, I know. Well, wait, actually, I'm looking at this, and I wanted to ask you something, because I saw this. Why is happy enough a superpower?

Yeah, happy enough is like a. I feel like when people first hear happy enough, they feel like it's a sort of. The last chapter of the book is called happy enough. And I think it's quite countercultural to the optimized, be your happiest type rhetoric that we hear these days.

But, yeah, welcome to Instagram, baby.

Welcome to Instagram. Happy enough for me arose first out of that time of chronic physical pain, where I had to make sense. I realized I need to get to a point with this. If this chronic pain is never going to go away, because I had made. I had surrendered to that at a certain point, I gave up on the idea that it's gonna go away, because the hope was. The worst part about it was the feeling that it was gonna get better, and then it didn't. So I gave up on that hope, and I said, I need to find a way to manage my relationship with this to the point where I can be happy enough to still live a good life with this. And that became my superpower, was knowing that I could be happy enough, even in difficult circumstances. And I took great pride in that. I, you know, almost became a part of my, like, fight, was to be happy enough. And I think that everyone can benefit from thinking about happy enough as an achievable thing for themselves that actually has tremendous power, because the opposite of happy enough is never enough.

And we live in a world, you know, especially in certain parts of the world, and including the one we're sitting in right now.

Yeah.

Where we are overflowing with people who are the never enough types. And. And I kind of realized that so many of the people that I'd started to admire or come to admire were people who were good at happy enough. You know, I tell a story of my cousin Billy, who had his bachelor party last year, and we all, him and a group of friends all went to Barcelona. And it just. You know, when I go home to England, I'm around very different people than I am around when I am here in Los Angeles.

Totally.

And they have very different lives, and there's. Despite the fact that they have very different lives and they have a lot less. There's no, firstly, they are absolutely not less happy. So. And actually, I've more happy the certain people in my life are way, way more happy. And Billy, my cousin Billy is one of them. And I love him so much, because when I'm around him, I see this happy enough idea constantly. You know, we were at this little hotel in the middle of Barcelona. It was like a three star, you know, people just coming in and out type hotel. They had this little pool that was like the size of a hot tub. It was ice cold. Ice cold. And.

Don't you like cold plunges? I thought you did.

I do, but I only like cold plunges when I'm telling myself it's a cold plunge, not when I'm telling myself it's a pool. But there was this tiny little ice cold pool and a little, like, concrete deck in this hotel. All the guys were sitting on, on these, like, you know, sort of plastic chairs.

Yeah.

Sat around. It felt like, you know, like a college. Yeah, I can see it, you know, and we're all sat around and everyone's having a beer and, and, you know, Billy, this is how he is. Like, he's, he walked around this deck and he came over to us and he's, he's just like, isn't this amazing? He said, we've got this view over Barcelona. We've got pool to cool off when we want to cool off. Got this beautiful, like, roof deck. All sat around chatting. He was just like, oh, I just love it. This is so great. It turned out perfect. And I just thought, that's like Billy. He just, he turns. It's not just that he's happy enough. It was. When you're around Billy enough feels like more, and you can't help but be infected. You just, everything feels better around him because he's an author of magic. And that, for me, those are my heroes in life, is people who live like that. And that's why, for me, happy. And, like, when I got to happy enough with my pain, I started to, I felt like I could make an impact again. Like, I, I can only talk about my pain now because I'm happy enough.

When I, when I was just pain, I couldn't even talk about it. Now. I know I can help people by talking about it, but I can only make that impact because I'm happy enough. Happy enough when you're dating is a superpower, because happy enough, you can even be, you can even admit that if you found the love of your life, you'd be happier. You don't have to pretend. You don't have to say, I'm just as happy. I don't care. I don't need anyone. I'm happy, single. You can be happy enough and still say that. If I met the love of my life, yeah, that probably would make me happier. But I'm happy enough. And when you're happy enough, it's a superpower, because if someone comes through that doesn't treat you well or doesn't meet your needs, no matter how great they appear on paper or how eligible you think they are, you're happy enough to say, no. You're happy enough to hold.

Yeah.

And that's what changes the game. You don't have to be blissfully happy right now, single. You just have to be happy enough to know that you can always hold. And also happy enough that if the right person comes along, you don't suddenly become a different person around them because you're so freaked out at the idea of ever losing them because you'll never be happy again.

Well, I think when I heard the word, when you say that, so it doesn't really mean when you're in a relationship and you can. You're happy enough, like, there's all that. That was a reframe. Right. Because you can be like, well, I'm happy enough. Even though when you're unhappy, you can just justify it by saying, I'm happy enough. When you're not really that happy, you're not saying, like, your point is, stop looking for perfection. Right. And be happy with what the perspective is. Perspective. Right. Is what you're saying. Like, Billy was happy because he had his friends, he had a pool. He had Barcelona to look at. That was great for him. It didn't have to be the $10 million mansion with the beautiful pool.

No. And by the way, I guarantee you there's someone that week who is staying in the four seasons in Barcelona going, it's not as nice as the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona.

Exactly.

That person. Right?

100%. He's happy because he's happy with what he has.

He's happy with what he has. And he knows how to appreciate things, and appreciating things does turn them into more. And I think it is relevant to relationships as well because, you know, there are people that will never be happy as long as a better looking person than their partner can walk into the room.

Right. Exactly.

They. It bothers them. It, you know, they can't. They can't seem to get over that or that there's a pert thing that their partner doesn't have that maybe someone else out there has and they can't.

They're looking for perfection.

Yeah. And they can't be happy enough.

They'll never be happy, though.

Yeah. But it's when you're happy enough, you can build on that.

Yeah.

Like, I'm like, that's a pretty great place to be. And then when you're appreciating things on that level, that's when you actually start to have an exceptional quality of life. Because, like, I. I don't need. I sat with my wife this week and we're, we're like, in a lovely position in life. We love our house. We are financially free to the extent that, you know, it's. It's not that I could not. I could never work again, but it's, you know, we're in a position of financial safety.

Yeah.

And I also have friends who have a hundred times more than we do.

Yeah. And they're miserable.

And we looked at each other one day this week and we were like, we don't need anything. Like, we're honestly all. This is everything we ever need. We don't need anything else. Let's never forget that we already have everything we need. It's not. There's. And I. And I'm not. I don't drive around in a fancy car. I'm still driving an Audi that I bought ten years ago. I'm not. It's not like. But honestly, I know buying another car will not change anything about my happiness. It's not going to make any difference to me. It doesn't matter to me. And I just. I get very sober about the fact that this really is all I need. I don't need more than this. And it's not. This isn't the point of leverage for my happiness. That to me is like, happy enough. It's. Yes, we could have more. Of course we could have more. You can always have more.

Right.

But actually, the more isn't. The more isn't going to define us totally. It's not going to make us. That's not going to be the differentiator. And again, this doesn't just apply to when you feel like you have a lot or anything like that. You can be single and deeply want to find love, but also say, I'm also happy enough. And that happy enough is a superpower because it changes the way you go through life. It just means no one's got a gun to your head. Nothing has that much leverage over you. You're not going through life needing this thing to work so that you can be okay. You're already okay. And that to me, like I said, I mean, those are. Those are my heroes these days. It's not the people who have done the most or achieved the most.

Yeah, I agree.

People who have achieved that state, I.

Could not agree with you more. I'm totally on board with that. And I don't even know how long I've had you sitting here, God knows, but I haven't even asked you half my questions. But I'll let you go home. But I will say that this book, it's called Love Life. It's so good. Really. Even though I have, like, I think, 28 pages more, 38 pages more to read so far. I loved it. You did a really nice job with it. You're great. I actually really, like, I have to say, like, I like you even more now after this interview because, you know, again, like, I can see why you've, like, people really like you. You're so likable because you're so real and, like, you're so good. Like, I know you hate the word connection, but, like, you're really good at, like, meeting someone where they are and connecting to someone where they are. And I really. I really appreciate you being on this podcast. You were such a great guest. Seriously. Thank you.

I feel that. I feel that, like, I feel the sincerity of that from you, and it means a lot. Yeah, it really means a lot.

Would you mind coming back on so I can ask you my questions?

We can get to some of the stuff you wanted to talk about.

Exactly.

Like, no, we'll do this again. But this. But it was a lovely, lovely conversation, and it's. There's a comfort I have with you from the moment I walked in the second time. You know, there's a comfort I have with you, and I really enjoy our conversations. So thanks for having me. And for anyone who wants the book, it's at lovelifebook.com. I mean, you could get it straight from Amazon or wherever you get your books. But I'm actually doing an event on May 4 for. That's when you buy a book right now. You get a ticket to the event, and it's a virtual event that I'm doing, but it's going to have, you know, everyone who gets a copy of the book right now is going to be automatically enrolled in that event. The event is called find your person, and it's designed to be, like, a great partner to the book because the book's going to give you all of the ideas, the self awareness, the deeper understanding, and the event is going to put you on the path if finding your person is what you want right now. So once you get the book, go to either buy it from lovelifebook.com or go straight to Amazon or Barnes and noble or wherever you want to get your books.

But come back to lovelifebook.com. Because if you just put the code in your receipt into that page, I'll email you with a ticket to the event and you can come to the event. So it's going to be really special and the events only happening once. So I just want to encourage everyone to come and join us for that.

When are you doing or when do you do that event that you said you do once a year?

That, oh, the retreat in Florida. Yeah, that's in, that's this year. It's in September from the 9th to the 15th in Fort Lauderdale. If anyone wants to apply for that, it's a Mh retreat.com. That's my initials, Matthew Hussey Mh retreat.com. And yeah, I've been doing that for 17 years and I only, it used to happen twice a year. It now only happens once a year because it's, it's just a very big week for me and I pour my heart and soul into it and yeah, it's very, very taxing. So I do it once a year now, but it's a truly, truly life changing event for the people that come. Yeah.

Do you have mostly single people in general who watch you or get like, who kind of gravitate or do you have all sorts like couples?

Increasingly, it's, it's both. I mean, I disproportionately get people who want to find love who come to me. Men are, imagine now women, but now, you know, I have more people who are in relationships who follow me for relationship based content. I do. And we have more men than ever that really enjoy the content and they see the universality in it. You know, I don't think there's any, literally not a single thing we've talked about in this podcast that doesn't have relevance to every human being.

So that's, that's why I was asking you, because like, and you're like a, you see, like, you're like, you like, are a guy and you're talking from a both, but you know, both perspectives. Right? Like what? One question I want to ask you really quickly. You can, I know it's going to be tough, but I had, I promised somebody I was going to ask this question, like men versus women, what's the one thing that men usually ask you? And what's the thing that women usually ask you the most?

Oh, man, I don't know what men ask me the most. Women. It's so varied. But I think probably I get a disproportionate amount of questions from people about wanting commitment or wanting for something to progress and feeling like it's not progressing.

I can see that you talk about that in the book a lot, though.

That's a key thing. Yeah, but for guys. For guys, I don't know, I definitely. I get a lot of questions for guys about. From guys who are heartbroken, who have really been through it and are struggling to get over someone or are struggling with their confidence after a relationship has ended. So. Yeah.

Thank you. All right, how do we find. I mean, if you don't know, how do we find you?

So I'm on all the platforms. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube. YouTube is probably my number one platform. I also have a podcast called Love Life with Matthew Hussey where it's not just me, I have my wife joining me for lots of episodes, and we do it together a lot, so that's really fun. Come listen to us there. And like I said, I think the book is, if you come and join me on a retreat, that would be amazing because it's a six day experience and we'll really get to know each other. But I think the no brainer is the book just because with a book, someone's. Someone's put hundreds of hours into something totally. That costs $30.

No, it's amazing.

It's like a, you know, it just makes so much sense to get something that's had so much work put into it.

And you should also tell people that this book. I'm going to tell people quickly, this book also is a clan, the book that you can put it down and come back to it, and there's, like, sections where it can. You don't have to read it all in one sitting, which I think is really good. Like a novel. Like, you have areas.

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, how to, like, the one area we didn't get to it, but, like, how to have a difficult conversation or like, this one. Attention is not intentional.

Yeah. There's a chapter on overcoming heartbreak in there. There's a chapter that's especially relevant to so many women on the question of having a child. And what do you do when you're trying to find love, but you also feel like you're up against your own biology and that's panicking you. You know, there's a whole chapter on that.

That's a great. That's exactly. That is so true. And that's such a great part of the book. It's huge.

You know, there's chapters on confidence. There's chapters on how to leave a toxic or a narcissistic relationship. There's just so much in there that I think will hit people at all different stages of love and relationships.

Great job, Matthew.

Thanks. I really appreciate you.

No, seriously. Okay, bye, guys.

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