Welcome to this special masterclass. We've brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today. It's going to be powerful, so let's go ahead and dive in.

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What would you recommend or suggest them for people in order to have a healthier foundation?

Seeing that it seems so sexualized now. Everything seems so physical swiping, looking at someone's sexual identity, attraction, as opposed to, I guess, true intimacy and connection. How would you set up a relationship now?

There's so many different pieces to this. I think the first thing is, look, I write about sexuality. I'm not going to minimize it, but I do understand that it's very important. It's a beautiful thing to have a powerful erotic connection with someone. But don't confuse the metaphors. You can have a beautiful erotic connection with someone, and that does not necessarily translate into a life experience.

A life story.

A life story. That said, the next thing that changed culturally, if you want to really take on the big myths, it's the notion that we are looking for the one and only. The one and only, my soulmate.

Is my everything.

Yes, my everything. Your soulmate used to be God, not a person. The one and only was the divine. With this one and only today, I want to experience wholeness and ecstasy and meaning and transcendence. I'm going to wait 10 more years. We are waiting 10 years to settle with someone, to make a commitment to someone, for those of us who choose a someone. If I'm going to wait longer and if I'm looking around and if I'm choosing among a thousand people at my fingertips, you bet That the one who's going to capture my attention is going to make me delete my apps, better be the one and only. In a period of proliferation of choices, we at the same time have an ascension of expectations about a romantic relationship that is unprecedented. We have never expected so much of our romantic relationships as we do today in the West.

It seems like a lot of pressure.

It's an enormous amount of pressure. We crumble under the weight of these expectations because a community cannot become a tribe of two. This is a party of two. And with you and me together, we are going to create best friends, romantic partners, lovers, confidants, parents, intellectual egos, business partners, career coaches, you name it. I'm like, Seriously? One person for everything? One person instead of a whole village? So that's the first myth. And the notion of unconditional love that accompanies this is that When I have that one and only, I have what you call clarity, but translated into certainty, peace, and freedom or safety, which is the other side of the same thing. That, to me, is if you want to set yourself up, really, the idea that you're going to find one person for everything is a myth. Keep a community around you. Absolutely. Keep a set of deep friendships, really deep friendships, deep intimacies with friends, with mentors, with family members, with colleagues, that. That's the first thing for me in having good relationships is diversify. Diversify your relationships, but not sexually. No, for some people, it will include that. For the vast majority, it won't.

But the notion that there isn't a one person for everything, and that doesn't mean that there is a problem in your relationship when that happens. The second thing is stop constantly looking at people as a product, where you evaluate them and you evaluate yourself. In our market economy, everything has become a product, we include it. And so love Love seems to have become the moment that the evaluation of the product stops. You have finally been approved when you have been chosen and when you choose. This is Eva Illouz, a sociologist who writes about this very beautifully. It's like love finally becomes the moment you can experience peace. You're no longer looking, selling yourself, proving yourself, trying to capture somebody's attention. It's exhausting. Once you are in that mentality, you also are continuously looking for the best product. You never say, How can I meet a person who? People don't often talk about, How can I be a person who?

That's so true.

It's what you're looking for in the market economy of romantic love rather than, Who are you? How do you show up? What do you bring? What responsibility do you take? How generous are you? Et cetera. Absolutely. Second thing for what I think sets you up for a better relationship. The third thing is understand some the things that are really important to you and don't get involved with someone on the hope that some things will change.

Do things ever change with a partner that you want to change?

Yes, things do change a lot. Many different things can occur in a relationship, but it's different from, I'm coming in here, to turn things around. Because so much of us wants the experience of acceptance. Absolutely. With acceptance, I would say this, another thing to prepare yourself. You can love a person wholly, W-H-H. H-o-l-l-y, without having to love all of them. What do you mean by that? It means that the notion of unconditional love is a myth. Adult love lives in the realm of ambivalence, which means that relational ambivalence is part and parcel of all our relationships. We have it with our parents, our siblings, our friends, which means that we continuously have to integrate, contradictory feelings and thoughts between love and hate, between excitement and fear, between envy and contempt, between boredom and aliveness. You continuously negotiate these contradictions. That ambivalence and living with that ambivalence is actually a sign of maturity rather than continuously then evaluating. See, in the beginning, you evaluate, is this the right one? Is this the one and only? Then it becomes, shall I stay or shall I go? How do I know I have found the one is the pre-marital or the pre-commitment relationship?

Then afterwards, it becomes, is it good enough? We continuously continue with the evaluations. Is it good enough? Or how happy am I? Am I happy enough? That's the unconditional love. No, we live with ambivalence in our relationship. There are periods where we think, What would life be like elsewhere? Then we come back and then we say, I can't imagine it without it. This is what I've chosen. I'm good here. But it's a conversation. The idea that you will be accepted, unconditionally, is a dream we have for our parents when we are babies. It's not part of adult love.

Right. So it's unconditional love is not something that we can expect.

Unconditional love is a myth. So the one and only is a myth. You asked me, how do we set ourselves up for the best for relationships up front? There is no one and only. There is one person that you choose at a certain moment in time, and with that person, you try to create the most beautiful relationship you can. But you could have done it with others. It's timing is involved. Lots of things are involved. So there is no one and only.

There's no soulmate.

Soulmate is God. You can think that you have a soulmate connection with someone, that you have a deep, deep meeting of the minds, of the souls, of the heart, of the bodies. But it's a metaphor. It's not a person. It's the quality of an experience that feels like soulmate. That's number two. Number three, there is no unconditional love. We live with ambivalence in our deepest love relationships. There are things we like and things we don't, and things they like about us and things they and moments they can't be without us, and moments where they wish on occasion they could get away from us. And that's normal. Number four, the happiness mandate. Continuously evaluating how happy I am. If you continuously pursue happiness, you're miserable a lot of the time.

What should we pursue instead?

We pursue integrity, depth, joy, aliveness, connection, growth, those things that ultimately make us say, I feel good, I'm happy about this, but I don't pursue happiness. Happiness is the consequence of a lot of things you put in. You pursue caring for someone, having their back, feeling they have your back, wanting the best for them, what the poly people call compersion. Those things you can pursue.

Compersion?

What's compersion? Compersion is feeling joy for the happiness of the other person.

Is this a polyamory relationships? It's a concept that is- It's like they're with another sexual partner.

But I think the word is bigger than just contained within the poly community and culture. It is the notion that you want good for the other person, even when it doesn't have to do with you. You're proud of them. You admire them. You enjoy their growth, their successes.

What about when someone says, I'm with this person, they make me happy? What does that happen when you're looking for someone to meet make you happy in the relationship?

Well, the day they don't, you will say, They make me unhappy, or, They don't make me happy, but it's, They do to me. I'm the recipient of what they do. They have the power. They can give, they can withhold. I depend, I crave, I long, I yearn, I respond to them.

What should we be thinking of instead of this person makes me happy? How should we approach We give each other a good foundation from which we can each launch into our respective worlds. That's cool.

A home is a foundation with wings. Or I like to think a good relationship is a foundation with wings. You feel the stability that you need, the security, the safety, the predictability as much as you can, as much as our life allows us. At the same time, you have the wings to go and explore, discover, be curious, be in the world, sometimes together and sometimes apart.

What do you think happens when people are in a relationship, and let's say they're together for a year or a couple of years, and they decide, Okay, we want to get married, but maybe one or two, each of the individuals, don't accept something fully about the other person. Maybe there's three that they really don't like or don't accept or wish they'd change. It depends what. I'm just trying to think of something where you're like, I love so much. We have this great connection. We have so much fun, and we're growing and building a relationship. But behind their back, you're telling your girlfriend or your guy friends, I wish they'd change this, this, or this. I don't like this thing. I don't like this thing.

That's ambivalence. What does that mean? Meaning that you have to be able to live with the contradictory thoughts and feelings of what you like and what you don't like. What you What makes you want to be here and what makes you not want to be here?

What happens when we don't accept that, though? Hopefully, they'll change out of this or grow out of this thing that I don't like about them. What happens when we're in that space?

We're not fully accepting. That means that when you get married, you're not just making a deal with your partner, you're making a secret deal with yourself that this is going to change. Then when it doesn't, you get very upset or pissed because your deal with yourself, which you never said out loud, it's a private bargain you do it yourself. All of us, when we pick someone, make private margins with ourselves, too. It's often that bargain that is broken more than the one because the partner never promised you that this would change.

Exactly. It just creates more resentment. When we want something to change, we don't accept them.

The expectations are resentment in the make. The more expectations you have, the more things you can be disappointed of afterwards, especially when they're not articulated. I think what you need to know is what are some of the things that If you are with someone who... If you go back to the erotic connection, if you're with someone with whom you have a very difficult erotic connection, and you know that this is something that really is important to you, being seen, being touched, being held, being kissed, being stroke, being made love to, is really a language that is very important to you, and you don't want to live without it, then listen to yourself. If it's not an important part for you, Because that is not the way you express yourself most. Then you know that this is not the center piece of your relationship. You have other things that you share. If you know that you don't want children, or the reverse, that the other person doesn't want children, don't go in there hoping that they're going to change their mind, because that is not fair to you nor to them. If you are with someone who says, I do not want to marry, and you do, or if you are with someone who says, I see love, plural, I do not see myself just with one partner, and this is very clear to you that that's not okay or that you want it differently, listen to yourself.

Those are values that involve life decisions that you don't sit there waiting till they're going to catch up with you.

And what happens when two people's values are not in alignment? Can they still have a beautiful life story, or do you feel like there's always going to be some type of unnecessary story? No, I think it depends on the degree to which people can live with what we call a sense of differentiation.

Meaning, if I am okay wanting to go to church, and that's not part of what you do. We come from the same faith or we come from different religions. One of us wants to adhere to their tradition and wants to participate in the practices of their religion. It's okay doing it without the other. It doesn't feel that that needs to be shared. It doesn't experience every time they sit in church, I wish you were sitting next to me. Why do I have to come here alone all the time? That.

So it's accepting someone's choices.

It's accepting that your choice, if you practice it, you can accept to do it without your partner.

So it's you accepting it.

It's you accepting it. Of course, the other person. But the other person I often tell you, You go if you like to be there. I don't want to go there on Sunday morning. There are other things to do with my time. Sure. Religion is a major one on that. Travel is another one on that. Children, work, etc. Family, in-law, yeah. It's difficult to say to someone, I'll have a child alone. You don't have to participate. But it is easier to say, I will continue to practice my religion because it is central to me. You don't have to be a part of that. We have other things that we will share. But you need to know to do that and feel okay about If all the time... Now, that doesn't mean that on occasion you don't miss and you wish you part of it. There's a great sermon. I so wish you had been there to hear it. Great. But if it's chronic and you just feel this hole all the time, and you know from the beginning that it is a unifier for you. And your partner doesn't show curiosity because you can come from something else and say, I'm interested in this.

Let me see what this is. Sure. If you want to go back to live in your home country and your partner has zero intention of leaving where they are. Listen to them. Don't hope. If they tell you, Yes, I would like that at some point, then listen carefully. If they're saying this to pacify you, if they're saying this to make sure that you don't leave them, or if they truly intend to do this at some time.

Don't hope something's going to change. Don't hope they're going to do something later after you get married or in a community relationship. No.

Start from the place that it's not going to happen. See how it is for you. Can you accept Can you accept that? Then if things change, all the better. But don't start with the hope that it will be different.

How does jealousy play in relationships? I used to be extremely jealous and insecure. I remember that. Then something switched in me, I don't know, five years ago, six years ago, maybe, somewhere around that time where I was like, You know what? This does not support me or my relationship at all. This jealous nature or this That you knew even when you were jealous. Oh, yeah, I knew, but I couldn't let it go.

It's not what you said to yourself that changed what you experienced.

Something changed, yeah. I don't know exactly what it was, but I remember just been like, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of feeling this way.

What did you change? Not what did you say to yourself?

I think I changed fully accepting the person's decisions and lifestyle and what they were doing and trusting that everything was going to be okay and not needing to be jealous. I I was just afraid, are they talking to some guy? Is there something behind my back that they're doing? I don't know. It was a worry of an anxiousness, right? And then I was just like-Wait, wait, wait.

Yes. Part of what accompanied jealousy. Jealousy starts at one and a half year old. It's not an early emotion.

Interesting.

It needs a sense of self first. It needs the beginning of self-awareness as a baby to be able to experience it's jealousy. It's not like fear and joy and disgust and sadness.

Where does it come from?

Where it comes from and how evolutionary psychology has all kinds of explanations for jealousy. But where it comes from inter-personally is that it requires having a sense of who you are before you begin to experience how you respond to what other people are doing. I want that, too. I don't want to lose something. What What changed for you is that you became more confident. You felt less that your sense of self-worth is in the hands of the other person, and that they turned away from you. That means that you are not enough, or that you're going to lose them, or that they're going to leave you.

That's what changed. Then I'd be hurt, or empty, or sad, or in pain because of their actions. I think that's 100%. I think I didn't feel like I was good enough or something where I was just like, You know what? It's all going to be okay. If they do something But this, It's all going to be okay, followed in different sense of yourself. Absolutely.

Where you were less in a panic, less in the grip of, They're going to abandon me and I'm not good enough. And from that place, you began to say, It's okay. Absolutely. Nothing bad is going to happen to me. That's how we diminish jealousy.

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The 50% of all marriages end in divorce. The illusion is that the 50% that are left are happy. No, they're not. No, they're Maybe not.

Maybe 15% or something.

Maybe, right? We don't really know. If you went and polled everybody, you might be even shocked.

It's 5% or something. Maybe, right? Gosh, why are they so challenging to be healthy and happy long term for so many people?

Well, I think Part of the deal is the bar's very low. So the bar's something like we get along. That's it. I've got T-shirts I get along with. What's it really all about? If that's the struggle, if the struggle is to get along, like I said, that's a very low bar.

You get along with lots of people.

Right. I mean, I get along with the person who makes my coffee at Starbucks. But really what I've found to be the case, and I'm not looking at particular people for example. But I'm going to look at what keeps a human being involved in anything. Why does somebody... So I love to play guitar. Why? Why? Because I engage with that thing. I'm curious about that thing. I want to get better at that thing. I like how it feels when I accomplish something in that thing. If you take that in any aspect of your life, the same thing holds true. So my relationship with my wife is a function of who I am in it, and I need to keep bringing that to it. There's no time when this is a done deal. I have to keep showing up here, not for longevity, which is, I think, where a lot of people get messed up. People look at the relationship, well, I can't do this for the rest of your life, the rest of my life. And I'm like, well, you don't have to. Just do it today. Right. It's like being on a diet. I don't need to go on a diet for three months.

I just need to be on it right now. And it is moment to moment to moment to moment to moment because that's really all you have. But so what I do notice is that the areas of life where you are flourishing most, there is some profound relationship you have between what you say and what you do. There's a profoundity at play. So if you look at any area you're successful, you are literally doing what you said you would do, even when what? I don't feel like it. Yeah. Right? Marriage is the same. Marriage is the same. And I talk about this in the book, I say, especially in the Western world, but you look at... And I'm using marriage as a model, but it applies to all relationships. But in a marriage, there's this ceremony. It's just coming together.

Or you make an agreement, a commitment. Very good. And you use words.

And it's a vow. I talk about the bankruptcy of the vow in a marriage because nobody vows anything anymore.

Or they vow it, but they don't live up to the...

Well, because they don't have a relationship to a vow. So we're not going around in life going, I'll go to meet you at 3 o'clock. Nobody's saying that. But 200 years ago, when you vowed something, the American Declaration of Independence is just people vowing. They brought something in the existence on the strength of what they said. There was no fighting. Well, there was some fighting, but they created a nation from words. That's what that is. That's like a declaration. We're declaring we're independent. What do you mean you're independent? Well, we just declared it, so we are.

And we voul our lives in our sacred honor.

And most of those people literally gave their life for that. They literally gave their life to that promise. I bet they were scared. Absolutely. I bet they were intimidated, but their word was greater than that experience of themselves. That's the same in any area of your life. You have to start realizing that what you say is a big deal, and what you say to yourself is a big deal. A lifetime of constantly bending, shaping, and breaking your word to yourself will leave you with a diminished relationship to you. You'll never do great things because somewhere in there, you think you're full of it because you've broken your word to yourself so many times.

You're out of integrity with yourself.

Very good. There's no power to those words anymore.

What happens when we are out of integrity so consistently with ourself or even one time with our word? What happens to ourself?

Well, I mean, you got to start relating to what you say like it's important. Just like it's important. Stop there. I said I was going to, and this is important, not because the thing's important, but what I said to myself and my relationship to that thing is what's important. So any area in life, like I said earlier, where you're powerful or successful, you'll see you have a very strong relationship to what you said. Very strong one. Sometimes-you're committed to that thing. There's just no question for you. It's on like donkey Kong. You're just doing it.

Why is it easier in some areas of life than it is in others to be consistent with what you say and what you want to do?

Right. And that's eventually... It's great that you put it that way because that's the path you'll follow. But the real The real strength of you is when you can say something. For instance, when I was in my mid-forties, I said, I'm going to produce authentic wealth.

What's the difference between authentic and inauthentic?

Yeah, I'm doing it for that, not for anything about me, which was wild for me because everything up to that point about money was all about fixing something about me or my life. I was just doing it to see if I could do it, which I'd never done before. I'd never fully given it that attention, just for that. And so I put a number on it, which was a crazy number for that time in my life. Crazy number.

For your 40s of what? How much you wanted to make?

I was 45, yeah. And I said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to use my I'm going to make 50s for that, and I'm going to produce it. I produced it by the time I was 52, and I only really started when I was 48. So I did it really fast.

The amount of money that you wanted to make.

The amount of money that I said. But it was wild because I had I had no attachment to it.

What do you mean?

There was no emotion in it for me. There was no desperation. No, I got to do it. No burning. It was just like I said I was going to do it, and I'm doing it. So I ended up with this really flat relationship between my words and my actions. It was flat. There were days when I felt like doing it, and there were days when I didn't feel like doing it. But the interesting thing for me was when I declared it, when I said I was going to do it, the Declaration of Independence, I had no idea how I was I want to do something like that. You didn't know, you just took me. I don't know how you even... I'm not a money guy. I'm not. But now it's game on because I created the top of the mountain in my speaking. So I spoke the top of the mountain in the existence.

And then you figured out how along the way.

But that's not the game now. The game, people say, Well, how do you even do such a thing? Well, that's the first question. How do you even do such a thing? And you might have to engage with that question for two years or three years or four years. But you got to actively resolving some of that stuff for yourself. Well, it's the same in love. I'm committed to the most loving, passionate, and adventurous relationship that's possible. That's the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain speaks to me every day. I can tell whether I'm walking that path or not. That influences this. It's not even necessarily about that. It's more about what that does with us. Well, how does that shape me today? How does that... Am I winding up with what I said or not? And if I'm not, I might have a lot of reasons, excuses, and justifications for that. But at the same time, am I going to treat that like it matters to me? Or am I going to do? I'm going to just be like, Well, so far, so good, or it's been a tough week, or it's a lot in my mind, or you're being a jerk.

Why am I loving with you? Because I said I would. And that's what matters to me. That's what matters. That I said I would matters to me.

Someone once told me that the key to his success in relationships was 80% of it was who you choose. Yeah. 80% of the relationship success is how you match well with the person you're choosing. You only spent, I guess, a year with the person that you chose. Did you know that when you were choosing this person? Do you were like, Okay, I feel like we're going to be in a great alignment with our values and our vision and our lifestyle? Or was it more of just a feeling that you felt connected to this person and you decided?

I did what everybody does. What everybody does is they get in a relationship because they feel as if this person resolves something about themselves.

That's what I did.

So there was something I thought, this woman that I thought, wow, being with her, everything seems right. I feel good about me.

I didn't feel good in talking about her.

There's something getting fixed here. So no, I'm not that pragmatic. I think most people aren't that pragmatic. I think there's an illusion there that somehow you'll find the one. And really, I feel as if the job is to explore what's possible between you and this person, whoever that person person is and their potential and your potential. It was less about finding something that matched up with me, which I don't know if that would work for me. Might work for some people, but I don't know if that would work for me. What was really captivating for me the time was being with her had me feel a lot better about me. I think I really fundamentally believe that that's what most people go into relationships for.

Is that the right thing to look at or is it-No, that's an absolute-It's a recipe. Because then you're always relying on that person to make you happier.

Well, because whatever that thing is that they satisfy for you is something you haven't sorted out for yourself yet. Right.

So eventually you're going to have to do that. Otherwise, you're always needing that from someone else. Right.

So you go in and they're the solution, and you end it with the notion that they were the problem.

And what's consistent in all of that is you. Right.

I mean, I don't know if anybody has ever noticed this, but in every crappy relationship you've ever had, it's got one common denominator.

That's you.

It's always you.

It was a big awakening I had after my previous relationship ended. I was like, Man, it's been 10, 15 years of relationships that started and then that crumbled in some way or that fell apart. At the core of all those things was me. It was my choices, was my getting into it, attracting those relationships, was this commitment to those relationships, was the unwinding of those relationships. And so why was I choosing these types of relationships? What was unresolved within me that I get to take a look at now? Or am I going to keep repeating in this pattern until I address the thing inside of me? Right.

So what's great about your pathway, if you like, first of all, you've got to be able to look at that distinct from blind. I know a lot of people just heard what you said and thought, well, what if it is them? I know a lot of people sitting there right now going, I did say that to myself. And I say, well, if you take away who's to blame. So sometimes people say stuff like, why do I keep attracting these kinds of people? And I say, well, what if it's not attraction? What if you are literally looking for them? What if it's you're seeking something about that person that initially solves what you're dealing with, but will allow it to keep perpetuating, like it keeps showing up and showing up. I call that an identity relationship. There's something about you, and it's the same for the other person, that when you get past all the stuff, whatever is incomplete will keep getting activated there, will keep showing up. So when you start to see it like, oh, these are just two human beings doing what human beings do, then it's not personal, which is radical when you get it like that.

It's not personal. It's not personally them, personally me. These are just two beings trying to work this out. And work what out will essentially work themselves out. So that's why I insist with people The greatest work you'll ever do, you'll ever do, is to get complete with your first 20 years of life. So true. First 20 years. Because everything after that is a reflection of it. I spent 26 years in Glasgow. 26 years. I've been longer here. And I still identify with that like it's me. But I've been longer here. And it's some of the colloquialisms and the traditions. I identify with that because it I came so imprinted. In my second book, I talked about you're the little magic sponge, and you're not soaking up all of life, you're soaking up the bits. And then when you hit about 20, that little sponge just hardens, and whatever's in there, that's it. It's in there. And that's what you use, that logic. And until you awake into that and realize that all of that that's there is really only a potential yet. There's so much more. If you think about it like quantum physics, multiple universes, endless universes all happening at the same time, multiple potentials.

Well, that's every second of your life. Every second of your life, there's a myriad of potential used that could be talking right now. And what you typically do is the that you did the second before and the second before, and the second. And so it perpetuates.

Relationships are funny. I mean, I've had some really beautiful relationships, and I've had some not-so-beautiful relationships. And that's why certain people are going to bring out certain things in you, whereas others are not. But I've definitely brought codependency and low self-worth to relationships, like depending on my partner too much for my happiness. Really? Yeah.

What happens when we depend on our partner to make us happy?

Catastrophe. Here's the paradox. I think that we need to be with someone who wants to make us happier and that we want to add value to each other's lives. We want to make the path easier, but no one can walk our path but ourselves. What happens is that when... And it's unconscious, and it's part of it is also conditioning. It's like, be with someone who makes you happy, this or that. The problem is that if you don't feel, at least mostly whole, we all have our things that we're dealing with. But if you feel really fragmented and you think a relationship or another person is going to actually bring all the pieces together, then what's going to happen is that you're going to be really disappointed because then you're relying on another fallible, flawed human.Imperfect human.Imperfect human. And you're going to have all these expectations, and your shoulders are going to be crushed by the weight of failed expectations constantly. So yeah, I've done that. Not really standing on my own two feet, emotionally. I have brought stress to a relationship and not my self-awareness around stress to the point where I've closed or, Yeah, I've closed, not been receptive to love.

Guarded. Yeah, guarded or just tense and stressed and just totally expecting to be loved Anyway. Relationship is so filled with paradox. It's like, yes, they should actually contribute to your happiness, but you also have to know how to make yourself happy. No, you don't have to love You love yourself completely to be in a relationship, but yes, you have to love yourself at some level. Or you learn to love yourself in a relationship, but also you can't enter a relationship hating yourself. There's just so many paradoxes, and I would just say that people just need to find the balance for themselves. The reality is that we should be adding value to each other's lives. We should want to root for our partner, and we want to see them win, and we want to see their path be just paved with gold. We will do anything to help them, but we can't actually pave the path for them. That's the key difference. We can't expect that from someone.

I think you're speaking my language right now because over the last couple of years of doing my own healing journey, I was just like, If I enter a relationship again, it was like, if. Because I was just like, I'd rather be happy and on my own. But I love intimacy and connection. It's like, Okay, I want it, but it's not at the expense of suffering and abandoning my values and my vision and my lifestyle, my needs. But I was like, I just want to make sure that I'm always taking care of it and loving myself and taking care of myself and creating my own joy and happiness and fulfillment independent of a relationship. Never needing someone, but the way they show up can just add to that joy, add to that happiness. I want to be in a relationship with someone that is a joyful person. It's like their baseline. Yes. Because they've processed stuff, they've been on the healing journey, they're whole, not perfect, but a goal, and continuing to improve. But their baseline is joy. When someone's baseline is joy, you don't have to do something to make them joyful. They are joyful.

Yes.

It's getting your place to a state of peace and joy and fulfillment in your own life so that you don't need the person to make you happy.

Yeah, absolutely.

Then you're not going to self-abandon, I think, or diminish your self-worth in the relationship. If someone is abusive or acting out of character consistently, you're not going to stay in that. You're going to be like, Well, that doesn't work for me.

That's really the key point because honestly, with the epidemic, in terms of what I see personally is just low self-esteem. Esteem. It's like two camps. I see people either being selfish and not appreciating their partner. Not giving enough to their partner. Not giving enough. Or I see the people tolerating too much BS. To the people who tolerate too much, it's like you have to do something to raise your self-esteem, something. Because what people tolerate out there is what I've tolerated. It's unbelievable, actually. But part of that is also because people are so afraid to be alone, and they're afraid to start over.

The time invested with that last person.

Exactly. Love your life single. You can really love your life single, but also really want a relationship. I don't want to discourage. I think that life is better in a good relationship. It just is. And getting love from a partner and sharing and having that exchange is really profound.

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But you also have to give up your preferences to be in a relationship. I tell single people all the time, You want to lie in your bed diagonally? Go for it. All that secret single behavior, enjoy it, because when you're in a relationship and you're living with someone, you can't necessarily I can't really do that. But you have to really, like you said, being in the position where you'd rather be single than just in something subpar, that is an amazing position to be in. Yeah, it's huge. It's huge.

Are Are you in a relationship right now?

I'm actually not, which is wild. I guess it's not that wild. The whole reason why I do this is that I taught yoga for 20 years. And so yoga is probably the most important thing in my life other than people in my life. And I had a really difficult marriage that only lasted two years. It was like, actually-How long were you together for before? Four years. Well, we were together two years prior to that. This is an interesting story. So I would say 90% was perfect before we got married. But the 10% that wasn't was so profound. And yeah, I felt seen, safe, love, adored. I adored him. We had amazing rapport. We laughed hysterically. I really like it when I make people laugh. If you can understand, I have a really dark, nasty sense of humor. So if you can understand my sense of humor, I immediately I definitely feel very connected to you. We really connected. But there were things that I would never tolerate. This is something like, we're cool. Things not working out with him, and then my mother died. I went through a lot of tragedy to get to the place where I am now.

But I'm very cool with him. In fact, I have a joke that he should probably send me a bill because Because I have this whole career based on this relationship that I had with him. The wisdom you gained from this experience. Oh, so I'm actually very grateful. But there's an interesting story, which is that we went to... We were about eight months into our relationship, and I felt totally in love. We were both totally in love. I don't know what triggered this because this was a while ago, and I just don't think about it anymore. It's not traumatic for me. But something triggered him, and he had a proclivity towards avoidance, and I had the proclivity towards anxiety. And my father was very, very avoidant and shut down. So here we are. An ancient and avoidant. Yeah. It's not a good combination. It's a bad combination. But so he was shut down over something that I have absolutely... Something that was not warranted. We went to this show called-It was his own traumas. It was his own traumas. It was totally his own stuff. This was not something that I mean, I could take a lot of responsibility and have, but this is not something that I did.

It was something that he interpreted. We went to this show called Sleep No More, and I don't know if you heard of it, but it was like a thing in New York, and it was really, really crazy and really cool. You get there and they give you these masks from Scream, basically, these crazy masks. Even though if you go with someone, it's a very... You get separate. They separate you. They can separate you. They take you in the rooms. It's a whole... It's a very solitary experience, and everyone's behind a mask. You're having your own experience. But on our way there, he was in what would be the first of many of these moods where he would shut down, and I didn't know what was going on. Back then, I didn't have the courage to say, What is going on? Speak up. Did I do something? Let's talk about it. Now, it wouldn't even... You didn't have the tools then. I didn't have the tools, and I didn't have the self-esteem then. The courage to speak up. Yeah, all of it. And so when we went, he was totally shut down. We were separated. But there were times where you would recognize the person because you know what they're wearing, and I would be so psyched to connect with him, and he would pretend like he didn't see me.

It was like a total stonewalling. And I was so incredibly upset. And all I could think about is, I got to get this relationship back on track. I have to make this better.

From that one day?

From that one night because he was stone. I knew that. I was like, his feelings changed about me. I have to make sure that whatever it is that triggered him doesn't trigger him again. So all this stuff came up.

So you interpreted that, too?

Yes, exactly. So I got really anxious. I low self-esteem. It's not perfect. I don't want to... Or it's not that it wasn't perfect, it was really bad. In other words, if I were to encounter that today, that relationship would have ended that day.

You'd be like, Hey, this doesn't work for me.

We can have fights, we can have disagreements, but That is not allowed in my world.

It was stunning to me that it was at a 2009 UC Berkeley study, found that good relationships can add a decade to your lifespan, potentially. A decade. It was crazy. Then there was a meta-review where they look at all the studies about relationships. What they found is that good relationships are second only to genetics in terms of predicting both health and in humans. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. It's so crazy. We forget that those little stressors that build up and we don't have a release valve when we can't talk about things, we can't share things, when we can't hear that it's normal, it's okay. This is really hard stuff. What was it? The issue of loneliness, the stress hormones that happen, that basically because of loneliness, is the equivalent of a physical attack. Loneliness is like getting beat up. Wow. Yeah.

There's a difference between the loneliness and choosing to be alone, to have a alone time, to process in a healthy way, and to love on yourself and accept yourself, versus I'm sad and lonely and no one cares about me.

This was some of the most mind-blowing research that I looked at in here. Was that issue of what you're describing is the difference between loneliness and solitude. Loneliness, this sounds totally crazy. Loneliness before the 19th century basically didn't exist.

We didn't have time to be.

We were so enmeshed in societies, religions, tribes, nations. We always felt a part of something. Even if we weren't close to people, and we usually were, we felt we were a part of something. So Faye O'Burdy, who is a researcher at University of York, she looked back and you basically, before the 19th century, you can't hear it mentioned because we were always embedded in a group. When you hear the word lonely, it meant something by itself. It didn't have the negative stigma. It wasn't until literally, Frankenstein, that you heard lonely in the 19th century start to used as a negative thing because we had an explosion of individualism, which unlocked a lot of power, a lot of great things in the world, but we felt separate. Second crazy thing, John Cacioppo, leading researcher on loneliness. What he found was that people who are lonely and people who are not lonely spend the same amount of time with others. Lonely people don't spend any more time alone. What he realized was that loneliness is not We've all felt lonely in a crowd. You can be in Times Square on New Year's Eve. Feel alone. And still feel alone.

You feel alone on the subway. Loneliness isn't lack of proximity to people. Loneliness is how you feel about your relationships. When you go on a business trip, you might miss your friends and family, but you know they're there. You know they're missing you. You know they don't care about you. You don't feel lonely. You might miss them. Versus if you're surrounded by people but you think nobody cares, that's when you feel lonely. It's how you feel about How do you shift that feeling?

And what if they really don't care? Maybe it's all in your head and you're like, They don't care about me because they're not doing what I want or something. But how do you shift that to create a deeper connection and feeling about the few key relationships you have, at least. Yeah.

I mean, that's where we want to get into time and vulnerability, those two costly signals.

Spending more time.

Spending time is one of the most powerful signals in a relationship because time is... All the stuff that Dale Carnegie talks about is easy to do. That's why we like it. That's also why manipulators like it. How you show somebody that they're really special is by costly signals. If I spend a lot of time with you, I spend an hour a day with you, I can only do that for 24 people, and I've got to sleep. That shows you're special. There's no way around that. Time is costly. Vulnerability, I'm telling you things that could be used against me. That's really... Those powerful signals. When people reciprocate those signals, we know they're serious. If they're making the time, if they're saying things that maybe they shouldn't say, then these are people who are making the effort. The other thing that's really powerful, I found this fascinating. This was just a study that just came out in 2020, was that if you're not feeling supported enough in your relationships, an easy thing you can do is introduce your friends to one another. Because the issue is there's There's a synergy. I think that word's often overused, but there's a synergy in that in the sense of having one-off relationships is great.

But once you start introducing your friends, you're creating a community. Your friends can coordinate. Hey, Louis is feeling down. We should take him out. Now they can work together, and you're creating your own group. You're creating your own community. That is so much more powerful than a lot of one-off relationships where people can't share information and say, This is what he needs right now.

That's interesting. That's something I've done intuitively for the last 15 years, which is creating individual relationships and then saying, Hey, let's do a dinner together and bringing everyone together. Yeah. And trying to go beyond that by saying, Here's why you should know this person, and here's where you can connect on, and here's what they're working on, and here's how you guys could align on this thing. I think the more you put people together who can benefit each other, whether it be as friends or in business career, you're adding value to more other people in multiple ways, like you said, the synergistic ways. I think that just deepens your connection to people, too.

Absolutely. I mean, in terms of the emotions, there's no doubt of having these friends, but also in terms of life success. It's like Mark Granavetter did research on weak ties, and where usually the things our friends know, we usually know. But when you go one degree out, those are the things we're not hearing about. Those are the things we're not connected. When you're connecting people with other people that are one degree out from you, they're getting new ideas, new potential, new job offers, new opportunities. You're creating this whole network.

You're the center. You're the champion of all these relationships and opportunities.

That is so valuable for both sides. It's so valuable because it's so much easier for somebody else to just say, Sure, I'll come to dinner, than having to organize it themselves. People are really going to appreciate that. But also as you being the hub of the network, then all roads lead to you.

It usually pays dividends long term, not that you're trying to get something out of it necessarily. I think when it's only transactional, it doesn't feel as good. But I've had multiple people that have gotten married and now have kids because I've connected the dots somehow to them, whether they came to an event that I put on or I introduced them or something. It's like you're creating a legacy in the world. Whether you're close with them or not, you're still making an impact in people's lives. I think good things tend to happen when you impact people in that way long term.

Yeah. Well, you're starting with something positive. You're starting with good intent. Then you're reaching out and doing the work. It makes such a difference. There's a lot of places that say they want to have impact. It's like, No, let's have a positive impact. Let's focus that a little bit more. It's like, to do that makes all the difference in the world. I mean, not only in terms of, again, relationships and love, but also in terms of career. One of the biggest tips that's come out of research in terms of people networking is there are some people who are super connectors. There are some people, if you look at your contact list, you will see they introduced you to a disproportionate number of the people you know. Reaching out to them is a very high leverage way to network better. By creating these things, you're not only bringing people together, doing warm things, you may be helping these people get jobs and opportunities because you are the super connector.

Yeah, Keith Farazzi wrote a book called Never Eat alone, which talks about, I think, never having a meal by yourself, but always finding people to connect with and seeing how you can offer value and connecting the dots from previous connections. The power that comes beyond just personal relationships, but in career business as well with that network.

There's recent research by Nicolas Appley that basically showed we're often reluctant to even talk to strangers in a Starbucks or something like that. We often feel like, Oh, we're going annoy them. The truth is, that's not the case. When they surveyed people just saying something small, wow, the line's long, or how can you relate to them, we usually feel better. When we think about it, again, to specific... Yeah, when I did say something, that person said something, we overemphasize the negative. Most of the times when we just say something nice, we reach out, we feel better, they feel better, and sometimes it bottoms into an actual friendship. Sure.

This is powerful stuff, I'm curious. How do you know? How does someone know when they are truly in a loving partnership, and this is real love, versus chemicals and illusions of love.

Yeah. I mean, first and foremost, there's going to be the issue of time. For the first 18 months, you are going to have the chemicals. But the truth is, the chemicals usually die down. It's In longer relationships, you are going to get away from the craziness. But what's really powerful, I was surprised when I looked at the issue of love as a feeling. Love makes us nuts. Love makes us absolutely crazy. When you look at the historical documents, going back to 3,000 BC in each Egypt.

Wars and killing and this and that.

Love was described as a malady. It was described as a sickness. Really? Yes, because it was literally a diagnosable illness. To this day, if you just stay. If you just...Love? Yes. Because we get so nuts.

But again-We don't have reason. It's like you got to have some ability to not react and explode over love.

I was just like, Why would And the truth is it makes sense. We talked about earlier, we're in friendship with costly signals. What is a more costly signal than I am running around like a maniac thinking about you all the time and doing everything. I'm not behaving rationally. What does that tell you? I am invested. I am serious. I am incapable of callously taking advantage of you because I'm crazy. And they actually tested this. They looked at countries and communities where it was very easy to just ghost someone. Countries of communities where it was very difficult. They had strong network ties. It was hard to ghost. What do you see where it's easier to ghost? The signal of love, the craziness of love is greater because your brain realizes fundamentally, I need to boost the signal to show the other person I am nuts about them. Love is stronger because it has to communicate. It is a valuable sense. It's a valuable sense to the other person that you are literally crazy about them. This gets more to your point, the issue of what predicts long-term success in a relationship is you isolate part of that crazy idealization.

Idealization, seeing that person person as better than they are, it not only predicts happiness in a relationship, it predicts the duration and the success of a relationship.

If you see your partner or potential partner as better than they actually are, makes it a better relationship or worse relationship? It makes it better.

You need to see them as better than they are. That is the greatest hallmark of love. Really? Yeah. Because we can get cynical. Everybody has flaws. When you start making negative assumptions about your partner, that's not a good sign. There's a strong correlation between how people feel on their wedding day and how things work out. When people have second thoughts, divorce is much more likely, versus when people have that idealization. You've heard it. When people first start dating, They're over the moon. This person has done everything. They've won Nobel Prizes and gold medals. They are unstoppable. Having some of that and keeping some of that, a little bit of a rational positive. Because the thing is, when they dive down and do the research. These people are not diluted. You realize your partner is imperfect, but you're always willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. You always believe they have the potential. You always believe it's that issue of when they do something wrong, they must be having a bad day. You're compassionate, you give them the benefit of the doubt, versus the idiot did it again. Those are the things. So that idealization, seeing that person as better than they are, being able to sustain that is a great sign of true love.

I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus this episode with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple podcast. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me Tell me what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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