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Guess what, Will?
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What s up, Mango?
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I ve been trying to write a promo for our podcast, Part-Time Genius, but even though we ve done over 250 episodes, we don t really talk about murders or cults.
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I mean, we did just cover the Illuminati of cheese, so I feel like that makes us pretty edgy.
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We also solve mysteries like how Chinese is your Chinese food and how do dollar stores make money?
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And then, of course, can you game a dog show?
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So what you re saying is everyone should be listening.
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Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0
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Hey, everyone, this is Molly and Matt, and we re the hosts of Grown Up Stuff How to Adult, a podcast from Ruby Studio and iHeart Podcasts.
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It s a show dedicated to helping you figure out the trickiest parts of adulting.
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like how to start planning for retirement, creating a healthy skincare routine, understanding when and how much to tip someone, and so much more.
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Let s learn about all of it and then some.
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Listen to Grown Up Stuff How to Adult on America s number one podcast network, iHeart.
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Open your free iHeart app and search Grown Up Stuff.
0
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A new season of Bridgerton is here.
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And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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I m your host, Gabby Collins.
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And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
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Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
0
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Then fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
0
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You attract what you use to impress.
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If we are attracted to someone for their ambition, that s what we get, a person whose priority is ambition.
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There s nothing wrong with ambition, until you realize that you want someone who has lots of time to share with you.
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Sometimes we feel like none of the options before us are people we want to date, and then we have to ask ourselves, why are these my options?
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Why are we attracting these people and how can we attract the ones we want?
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Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world.
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Thanks to each and every one of you that come back every week to become happier, healthier, and more healed.
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Now, today s episode s a special, special episode because I m giving you chapter two, rule two of my new book, 8 Rules of Love.
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Absolutely free.
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You re going to hear the audio version right now for free.
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And I want you to go and grab a copy of the audiobook, if you don t already have it, from 8rulesoflove.com.
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If you enjoy today, you re going to love the rest of the book.
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It s dedicated to helping you find love, keep love, and let it go.
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And today s chapter and rule is called Don t Ignore Your Karma.
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This episode is going to help you understand why you always date the wrong people, why we make mistakes and repeat patterns in relationships, and how we seem to end up with the same person with a different face, a different name, and a different body.
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But why is it that we keep going back?
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Why are we attracted to the same types of people?
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Have you ever felt that yourself?
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I ll talk to you about the five types of people that we all fall for as well.
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Maybe you heard me speak to Alex Cooper about this briefly on Call Her Daddy.
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This is the rule and the chapter that breaks it down for you.
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This is going to help a lot of friends who ve gone through a breakup,
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who ve been struggling recently with love or keep finding themselves in the same types of relationships.
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So make sure you pass it on.
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Again, it s a special episode.
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You re getting Rule 2, Chapter 2 of my new book, absolutely free.
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And if you enjoy it, go and grab a copy of the full audio book, In My Voice, at eightrulesoflove.com.
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And I d love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour, Love Rules.
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Go to jscheddytour.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences, and more.
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I can t wait to see you this year.
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Rule two.
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Don t ignore your karma.
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Do not be led by others.
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Awaken your own mind.
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amass your own experience, and decide for yourself your own path.
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Atharva Veda.
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When Johnny and Emmett met at an industry retreat, Emmett sensed an instant connection.
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It felt like the most natural thing in the world, he said.
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After a few dates, we were spending every weekend together.
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He told me he loved me.
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But after three months together, Johnny broke up with him.
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This is the third time someone has told me he can t give me what I want.
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But all I want is a serious relationship.
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I just have bad relationship karma,  Emmett told me.
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He was right in a sense, but karma doesn t mean what Emmett or most people think.
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Karma is the law of cause and effect.
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A reaction produces a reaction.
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In other words, your current decisions, good and bad, determine your future experience.
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People think karma means that if you do something bad, bad things will happen to you.
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Like someone breaks up with you because you broke up with someone else.
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But that s not how it works.
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Karma is more about the mindset in which we make a decision.
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If we make a choice or take action with or without proper understanding, we receive a reaction based on that choice.
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If you hide that you re going to a party from your partner and then you run into their best friend at the party and that person tells your partner they saw you and your partner is upset, that s karma inaction.
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You made a choice and you have to live with the consequences of that choice.
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Punishment and reward are not karma s purpose.
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Rather, karma is trying to teach you.
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In this case, transparency and honesty.
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I don t want you to attribute every good or bad thing in your life or the world to karma.
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That s not productive.
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Karma is more useful as a tool than as an explanation.
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It enables you to use your past experiences to make the best choices now.
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The Karma Cycle Karma begins with an impression.
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From the time we are born, choices are made for us.
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We re surrounded by information and experiences that shape us, our environment, our parents, our friends, our schooling, and religious instruction.
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We don t pick these influences, but we observe and absorb their messages.
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Samskara is the Sanskrit word for impression, and when we are young, we collect samskaras.
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The impressions that we carry from these experiences influence our thinking, behaviors, and responses.
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As an impression grows stronger, it starts to shape our decisions.
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If you grew up putting milk in your cereal bowl, then adding the cereal, that becomes your norm.
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Then you move out and get a roommate who tells you you re doing it wrong, that it makes much more sense to put the cereal in before you add the milk.
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Now you have a choice.
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Will you stick with the impression that you absorbed as a child, or will you try a new way?
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As we get older, we gain the intelligence to curate our impressions by choosing what we watch and who we listen to.
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We also have the opportunity to revisit, edit and unlearn past impressions.
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In youth, choices are made for you.
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These become impressions.
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As an adult, you use these impressions to make your own choices.
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Those choices generate an effect, a consequence, or a reaction.
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If you re happy with the consequence, you probably won t change your impression.
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But if you don t like the consequence, you can revisit the impression and decide whether it steered you wrong.
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If it did, you can break the cycle by forming a new impression, which then steers you to a new choice from which you get a new reaction.
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This is the cycle of karma.
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We are meant to learn from our karma to use it to inform our decision making.
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But that isn t easy.
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Life is busy and we think that what we learned is just the way things are.
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But when it comes to love and cereal, our samskaras can lead us astray.
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Karma and Relationships
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I had a client whose ex-boyfriend left an impression on her.
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He was extremely ambitious, trying to get a foothold in a new career.
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She liked his drive but was unhappy that he was never available.
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Then, she met a man who was extremely attentive.
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At the end of their first date, he asked her out again, and from then on, he couldn t have been more available, texting her, making plans, and checking in to see how her days were going.
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This was exactly what she d been looking for.
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Within a few weeks, they started spending almost all their time together.
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But after a few months, she realized what was really going on.
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He wasn t just attentive, he was obsessive.
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The attention he was giving her was based on insecurity, not love.
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He was possessive and scared that she would leave him.
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My client had made a choice based on an impression, but her focus was too narrow.
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Her karma taught her that her impression was too reactive.
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She didn t need or want to be someone s entire focus.
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She just wanted him to be present when he was with her.
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In the course of these two relationships, my client used her karma to refine what she was looking for in a mate.
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The impressions we form in our youth tell us what love should look like and feel like.
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They suggest what s attractive and what s dorky, how we should treat others and be treated, what profession they should have, and who should pay for dinner.
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But if we don t understand how our impressions were formed and how we make choices, then we keep repeating the same karma.
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The same impressions lead to the same choices.
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We love others in response to the way we ve been loved by others.
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But if we can put our impressions in context, so we see and understand their origins, then we have the perspective and opportunity to form a new impression.
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For instance, if I understand that I guilt-tripped my partner because my mother guilt-tripped me, then that recognition inspires me to break the cycle.
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Understanding our impressions is the first step to freeing ourselves from the samskaras planted by a childhood over which we had no control.
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The choices that we make based on our new impression are conscious.
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We can see if we like the results better.
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If our parents had a volatile, passionate relationship, we might form an impression that this is what love is supposed to look like.
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But if, and sometimes we realize this when we re young, we are quite clear that we don t like the outcome of that volatility, then we create a new impression and decide that the love we seek is exactly not what our parents modeled.
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Then we might make it a priority to avoid drama.
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this new impression may create its own challenges.
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We may play it too safe, or we may be so focused on what we don t want that we forget to think about what we do want.
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But we have opened our minds and freed ourselves from our first samskara.
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And now we have the opportunity to create new impressions through trial and error.
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Karma is a mirror, showing us where our choices have led us.
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We pick the wrong people and repeat mistakes in relationships because of the samskaras we bring with us from the past.
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Instead of unconsciously allowing the past to guide us, I want us to learn from our past to make decisions.
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We need to identify these samskaras in order to manage their influence.
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We do this for two reasons.
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First, when we learn from the past, we heal it.
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And second, this process helps us stop making the same mistakes.
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Unearthing our samskaras.
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Our expectations and desires around relationships are shaped by our earliest experiences of love.
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Think about where you first absorbed ideas of what love should look and feel like.
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The strongest influences are most likely the love you witnessed between your parents or guardians, the love you did and didn t receive from them, the first romance movies you watched, and the first serious relationships you had.
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In our search for love, we subconsciously try to repeat or repair our past experiences.
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We imitate or reject.
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But we often give these early influences undue weight.
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They affect our choices for better and worse.
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They interfere with our judgment more than we realize.
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Let s begin with the visualization.
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We re trying to let go of who we are and to reconnect with the subconscious part of ourselves.
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And visualization is the best way I know to travel to another time and place.
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Try this, Younger Self Meditation.
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Try to unearth the impressions left by your past and understand how they re influencing your idea of love.
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This isn t about finding fault in others or putting them on a pedestal.
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It s simply about isolating the emotional patterns that influenced you in your early years.
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You can think of this meditation as an archaeological dig.
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There are artifacts to be found, some buried treasures, some half exposed, some worthless.
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They show the richness and damage of years past and have much to teach us about life.
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Tap into unresolved, unfulfilled desires by visiting yourself at age 13 or 14.
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Give your younger self all the words, wisdom, and hugs they need.
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Embrace your younger self.
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What did your younger self need to hear that you were never told?
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You re beautiful.
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You re courageous.
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Believe in yourself.
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You ll be okay.
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You re not stupid.
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What would your younger self say in response?
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Thank you for coming back to tell me this.
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Don t be so stressed.
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You should take up singing again.
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After you have had this conversation with your younger self,
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give that version of you an embrace and thank them for this insight.
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When I guide people through this meditation, most of them find that they had some sort of insecurity in their youth and that child is still within them, still struggling with that self-doubt.
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However, one man told me after the meditation that his younger self looked at him and said, come on man, get over it, just pick yourself up and move on.
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It felt to me like his younger self was saying, tough it out, we re strong, we can handle anything.
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His ego was protecting his vulnerability.
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Even if we feel there s nothing to heal, sometimes the wounds are so deep we can t see them anymore.
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We take a stoic approach.
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We tell ourselves we re fine, but we don t recognize that we must take stock.
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Cut to a year later, when this man messaged me out of the blue to say, I realize I need to become more compassionate with the people I love and myself.
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It s just not how I m wired.
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I don t feel like I have time to dwell on other people s thoughts and emotions.
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I answered, you don t take the time to dwell on your own emotions.
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It had taken him a year, but he was finally ready.
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The Younger Self meditation helps us identify the gifts and the gaps that have clung to us since childhood.
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But this is only the first step toward letting go of bad impressions and taking control of the choices we make in relationships.
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To go deeper, we ll examine three influences
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on our samskaras, our parents, the media, and our first experiences of love.
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Parental Gifts and Gaps In the New York Times  Modern Love column, writer Coco Mellers describes falling for a neighbor who makes it clear to her that he doesn t want to be in a relationship.
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She knows she is lying to him when she says she doesn t want anything serious either and admits that, though I didn t know it at the time, I was repeating a familiar pattern.
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I grew up chasing my father s love, a man who, like my neighbor, could be affectionate or absent depending on the day.
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Guess what, Mango?
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What s that, Will?
2
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So iHeart is giving us a whole minute to promote our podcast, Part-Time Genius.
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I know.
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That s why I spent my whole week composing a haiku for the occasion.
2
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It s about my emotional journey in podcasting over the last seven years, and it s called Earthquake House.
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Mango, I m going to cut you off right there.
2
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Why don t we just tell people about our show instead?
2
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Yeah, that s a better idea.
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So every week on Part-Time Genius, we feed our curiosity by answering the world s most important questions.
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Things like, when did America start dialing 911?
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Is William Shatner s best acting work in Esperanto?
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Also, what happened to Esperanto?
2
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Plus, we cover questions like how Chinese is your Chinese food?
2
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How do dollar stores stay in business?
2
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And of course, is there an Illuminati of cheese?
2
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There absolutely is.
2
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And we are risking our lives by talking about it.
2
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But if you love mind-blowing facts, incredible history and really bad jokes, make your brains happy and tune in to Part-Time Genius.
2
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Listen to Part-Time Genius on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
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When the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, millions were plunged into silence.
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Radios were smashed.
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Cassettes burned.
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You could be beaten or jailed or killed for breaking the rules.
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And yet, Afghans did it anyway.
2
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This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.
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The danger they endured.
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They said my head should be cut off.
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The joy they brought to the nation.
2
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You re free completely.
2
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No one is there to destroy you.
2
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I m John Legend.
2
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Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2
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Mata Pita Guru Devam is a Sanskrit phrase much repeated in Hinduism.
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It means mother, father, teacher, God.
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Your mother is your first guru.
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She teaches you about love.
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She teaches you about care, not through instruction, but through her interactions with you.
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and father is right there next to her, of course.
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It s a basic Freudian principle that the early relationships we have with our parents and caregivers establish relationship dynamics that, like Mellers, we re compelled to replicate as adults.
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When we re young, we completely rely on our parents and we figure out ways to attract their attention, to inspire their affection, and to feel their love.
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The love they give us shapes how we engage in love.
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Mata, Pita, Guru, Devam is a simple concept with far-reaching implications.
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In their book, A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannan, who were all professors of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, write,
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We play out our unconscious knowledge in every unthinking move we make in the dance of loving.
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If a child has the right parents, he learns the right principles.
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That love means protection, caretaking, loyalty, sacrifice.
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He comes to know it not because he s told, but because his brain automatically narrows crowded confusion into a few regular prototypes.
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If he has emotionally unhealthy parents, a child unwittingly memorizes the lesson of their troubled relationship.
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That love is suffocation, that anger is terrifying, that dependence is humiliating, or one of a million other crippling variations.
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But I believe that even a child with the right parents faces their own challenges when it comes to finding love.
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If a child grows up seeing love as protection, caretaking, loyalty, and sacrifice, that s what they identify as love.
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Unless our childhood experiences were traumatic, and often even if they were, we tend to view them as normal.
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Then when we are loved by someone who shows it differently, for example through joy, time and abundance, it may take us longer to notice and appreciate those qualities as genuine expressions of love.
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If your parents loved you, you might become a good and kind person, or you might hold those you meet to an impossible standard of love.
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Unless we do this work of examining our samskaras, we re often unaware of these impressions.
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We just assume the way we think and feel is the reasonable response.
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In this way, the gifts our parents give us can create as many pitfalls as the gaps.
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If there is a gap in how our parents raised us, we look to others to fill it.
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And if there is a gift in how our parents raised us, we look to others to give us the same.
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My mother s love for me was a gift.
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It enabled me to give love to others.
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But my parents never went to my rugby matches.
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Because of that gap, I first looked for validation from my peers.
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I wanted my friends at school to think I was strong and tough because I was eager for some kind of support that I didn t get at home.
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By the time I became a monk, I still hadn t found a way to satisfy my longing for validation.
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But during my studies at the ashram, I looked in the karma mirror and realized that even when I did get the validation I yearned for, I was never satisfied.
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Even when I received authentic, positive feedback from others, I was never satisfied.
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And I think this is often true, that it s hard for others to truly understand what we go through to get a good result.
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We first seek validation from those closest to us.
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Then, unsatisfied, we look for it from everyone.
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And finally, we find it in ourselves.
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It was the gap that my parents created that eventually taught me this lesson.
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I had to be happy with myself.
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Parental gifts and gaps play out in various ways in our relationships.
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My parents always gave me gifts that made me feel special on my birthday, whereas Radhi s family s gift to her was quality time.
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These are cherished aspects of each of our childhoods.
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But on my birthday, Radhi might give me quality time when I m expecting a gift.
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The more aware we are of our expectations and where they came from, the more we can communicate our needs and adapt to our partners.
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We all respond differently to the gifts and gaps we faced.
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If you saw your parents argue, you might grow up to be argumentative or defensive.
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Or you might heal yourself from it and make a conscious effort not to treat others that way.
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Or you might help others work through their conflicts.
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If your parents create a volatile household, you might try to keep the peace at all times and hide your true feelings.
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Karma lets us choose how to respond and the options can be subtle and varied.
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This isn t about being right or wrong.
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We re looking for where we have used our karma in ways that have benefited our relationships and where we re still making unconscious choices.
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If your father was a jerk, you might date a bunch of jerks until you finally wise up and settle down with a nice guy.
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learning the lesson of karma.
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Many of us feel like we didn t get the right upbringing.
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This could be anything from not having our basic needs taken care of to not having opportunities that would have helped us get a better footing in life.
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Even if our parents believe in us, encourage our strengths, assure us that our disappointments aren t the end of the world, and consistently scaffold our confidence in other ways, they can t hand us a perfectly developed psyche in a neatly wrapped package.
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And many parents themselves struggle with self-confidence, self-esteem, self-improvement, self-love, self-care.
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It s hard for them to pass these qualities on to their kids when they have their own challenges.
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It might sound like we re doomed, but I promise you we re not.
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We re just focusing too much on what our parents should have done or wishing they d behaved differently rather than figuring out what we ourselves can do.
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No matter how imperfect a situation we were born into, we can learn from our karma and use it to guide us into and through the relationship we want.
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Try this.
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Identify parental gifts and gaps.
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Memories.
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Write down three of your best memories from your childhood.
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Write down three of your worst memories from your childhood.
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Identify a challenging time in your childhood.
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Did your parents help you through it?
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How?
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How did it affect you?
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Your answers may not be black or white.
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A loving response might have soothed you or it might have fostered a dependent relationship.
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A harsh response might have damaged your self-esteem or built your resilience.
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What matters isn t whether your parents were the best parents in the world.
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It s a question of how their treatment of you played out in your development.
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Expectations.
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What expectations did your parents have of you?
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Did these expectations motivate you?
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Put pressure on you?
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How do they affect your relationships?
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If your parents expected you to achieve a certain level of success or to be in a relationship with a certain kind of person, you might either be unnecessarily attached to that outcome or you may have reacted against it.
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How are those forces still at play in your life?
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I had a friend whose parents drilled it into her that she should marry someone ambitious, but her last boyfriend broke up with her because, as he put it, I don t want to be your business partner.
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I want to be your boyfriend.
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She had to let go of what her parents wanted for her and rethink her ideas of what a true partner should be.
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Modeling
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What elements of a relationship did your parents model that you liked, disliked?
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So often in relationships, we reject or repeat what our parents did.
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If they argued, you may avoid conflict.
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If they had a certain power dynamic, you may expect the same in your relationship or avoid it at all costs.
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Emotional support.
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What kind of love and emotional support do you wish your parents had given you?
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What did you miss out on?
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Once you become aware of a gift or gap that you re bringing to relationships, you can start to address it.
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One, recognize.
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The first step is to recognize where and when that impression steers you wrong.
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Does it come up on social media?
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with a particular group of people, when you try to celebrate with your partner, when you travel.
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2.
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Remind yourself.
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The reminder is a note to yourself about how you want to be or don t want to be.
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Set a reminder that will catch you in the moment when you re at risk for acting in a way you d rather not.
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Do you have a challenge ahead where you will expect a kind of support that your partner doesn t usually give?
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Are you jealous when you see your partner interacting in groups?
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Does a certain kind of behavior always trigger your anger?
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Before the moment happens, find a way to remind yourself that you want to change in that moment, time and space.
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It might be as simple as putting a post-it note on your bathroom mirror or writing a note to yourself in your journal or asking your partner to remind you of what you re working on.
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Three, repeat.
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Make your reminder into a mantra, a phrase that you repeat to yourself over and over.
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When you do this, it s more likely to come to your mind in the moment when you need it.
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It might be, love is free of guilt.
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Or, anger is not the answer.
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Or, ask before you assume.
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Four, reduce.
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Before a reaction or expectation goes away, you ll find yourself indulging it less.
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Make your partner aware so they know that you re working on reducing it.
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Five, remove.
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Finally, over time, with attention and repetition, you ll break the habit of the expectation.
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Whether our parents neglected or fulfilled us in ways large and small, when we first leave the nest, we are hardwired to look outward to others for validation and satisfaction instead of inward toward ourselves.
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We gravitate towards partners who may fill our voids, but we may also fail to open our minds and hearts to people who might suit us better.
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Looking in the karma mirror helps us stop chasing others who might fulfill emotional needs from our childhoods and start fulfilling them ourselves.
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At the same time, the more you become aware of these influences in your own life, the more you ll be able to see how a partner s parents impact them.
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This gives you greater understanding and patience with yourself and your partner.
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Movie Magic
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Our parents aren t the only samskaras in our approach to love.
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From the time we re children, movies, TV, music and other media sell us a romanticized ideal of love.
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Snow White sings, Someday My Prince Will Come, and we are promised that the person of our dreams will show up, will quickly recognize them as our destiny, and they will sweep us off our feet and carry us into the sunset.
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In Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks, as the titular character, walks onto a bus for his first day of school.
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And when Jenny invites him to sit next to her, he narrates, I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
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She was like an angel.
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The love story takes off from there.
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Romances want us to believe in love at first sight.
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But in his book, Face Value, Professor Alexander Todorov shows that first impressions are likely to be wrong.
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We think that people who look happy are more trustworthy, and we think that people who look tired are less intelligent, though these impressions have no link to reality.
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We assign positive qualities to faces that we consider typical.
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And although there is no average human face, we like faces that are closer to our own definition of a typical face.
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In spite of the unreliability of first impressions, a group of psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania combed through data from more than 10,000 people who had tried speed dating and found that most of them decided whether they were attracted to someone within just three seconds.
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Studies show that first impressions like this are easily influenced by factors we may not even register.
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In one study, psychologists from Yale University had participants briefly hold either a cup of warm or iced coffee.
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They were then given a packet containing information.
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information about a person they didn t know and were asked to assess that person.
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The people who had held the warm coffee described the individuals they read about as substantially warmer in personality than those who had held the iced coffee.
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So the next time you arrange a first date, you might want to take them for a nice hot cocoa instead of an ice cream sundae.
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When it comes to meeting people, the context effect refers to how the atmosphere in which we encountered them can impact our impression of them.
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Think of running into someone in the lobby of a theater after you ve just watched a romantic comedy.
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You re cued to think of their potential as a love match more than if you ran into them after watching the documentary, Slugs, Nature s Little Scamps.
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Or imagine meeting someone at a wedding, which is like having just watched a hundred romantic comedies.
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You might be more likely to see that person as having marriage potential than if you met them at a bar.
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Cinematic images of love set the standard for how love should occur and often they make us feel like we re not achieving the level of romance that we should.
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In 500 Days of Summer, Tom, who writes greeting cards, shows his boss a Valentine s Day card and says, If somebody gave me this card, Mr. Vance, I would eat it.
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It s these cards, and the movies, and the pop songs, they re to blame for all the lies and the heartache.
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Everything.
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Hollywood is hardly the only culprit.
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The Bollywood movies that I watched as a child did a number on me.
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I dreamed of that romantic happily ever after that Bollywood always touted.
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You would think that I outgrew these notions when I served as a monk.
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But as I described in the introduction, when I wanted to ask Radhi to marry me, my images of engagements came from this samskara.
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Hence the riverbank, acapella, horse-drawn extravaganza.
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Radhe and I worked out, thank God, but her allergic reaction to the horse reminded me that I should think about the person in front of me instead of succumbing to the media influences surrounding me.
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Similarly, when I wanted to buy her an engagement ring, I asked a friend how to pick one.
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He told me to get the nicest ring I could, spending about two to three months salary on it, so I did.
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I didn t ask how he came up with that figure.
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If I had, he probably would have said, oh, it s what someone told me when I was getting engaged.
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Only years later did I find out that before World War II, only 10% of engagement rings were set with diamonds.
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Then the diamond industry contrived to make them the official jewel of marriage and love.
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Almost 50 years later, having achieved that, they set out to define how much a man should spend on a ring.
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In 1977, an ad for De Beers Jewelers showed the silhouettes of a couple on a beach.
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The shadow of a man slips a diamond ring on the shadow of the woman s finger, and the gold-banded ring is the only color in the ad.
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They kiss, and the voiceover says, the diamond engagement ring.
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How else could two months  salary last forever?
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It was jewelers who told the world exactly how much a man should spend on an engagement ring.
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How s that for a conflict of interest?
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That ad was released before my friend was even born and yet it influenced him, me and millions of others spreading the belief that if you love someone you should spend a big chunk of change on a diamond.
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A new season of Bridgerton is here.
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And with it, a new season of Bridgerton, the official podcast.
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I m your host, Gabrielle Collins.
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And this season, we are bringing fans even deeper into the ton.
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Colin Bridgerton has returned from his travels abroad.
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Is Betrothal written in the stars for the eligible bachelor?
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Meanwhile, the ton is reverberating with speculation of who holds Lady Whistledown s pen.
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We re discussing it all.
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I sit down with Nicola Coughlin, Luke Newton, Shonda Rhimes, and more to offer an exclusive peek behind the scenes of each episode of the new season.
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Watch season three of the Shondaland series on Netflix.
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Then,
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Fall in love all over again by listening to Bridgerton, the official podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Subscribe to catch a new episode every Thursday.
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Hey, everyone, this is Molly and Matt, and we re the hosts of Grown Up Stuff How to Adult, a podcast from Ruby Studio and iHeart Podcasts.
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It s a show dedicated to helping you figure out the trickiest parts of adulting.
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like how to start planning for retirement, creating a healthy skincare routine, understanding when and how much to tip someone, and so much more.
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We re back with season two of the podcast, which means more opportunities to glow up and become a more responsible and better adult, one life lesson at a time.
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And let me just tell you, this show is just as much for us as it is for you.
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So let s figure this stuff out together.
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This season, we re going to talk about whether or not we re financially and emotionally ready for dog ownership.
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We re going to figure out the benefits of a high yield savings account.
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And what exactly are the duties of being a member of the wedding party?
4
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All that plus so much more.
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Let s learn about all of it and then some.
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Listen to Grown Up Stuff How to Adult on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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There are fewer rom-coms being produced these days, but when we examine our ideas of love, we have to look back to the ideas that were planted when we were young, before we were watching critically, before we had any experience against which to judge them.
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When Lily James played Cinderella in the 2015 movie, the Swarovski crystal-studded glass slipper didn t actually fit on her foot.
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No maiden in the land fits the shoe, she told the Washington Post.
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So the prince is going to die alone.
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The promise of a happily ever after turns out to be an obstacle to happily ever after.
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Try this.
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Media love.
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Think of the first time you heard a love song or saw a movie that shaped or changed how you feel about love.
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What characteristics of love did it present?
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Do you believe in them?
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Have you achieved them in your past relationships?
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You had me at hello, Cherry Maguire.
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I wish I knew how to quit you, Brokeback Mountain.
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To me, you are perfect, love actually.
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As you wish, the Princess Bride.
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You want the moon?
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Just say the word and I ll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.
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It s a wonderful life.
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I m also just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her.
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Notting Hill.
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When we understand the samskaras that media have planted about love stories, then we don t require Hollywood perfection in our own relationships.
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we re willing to try a love that starts slowly or plays out differently.
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First Loves Our ideas of love are also shaped by our early romances.
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In 2015, the artist Rora Blue invited people to anonymously post messages to their first loves.
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Over a million people responded with notes like, you ruined me, but I still write you love notes on paper plates and napkins.
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And you will always be etched into my bones.
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And I loved losing myself in you, but it s been forever and I still can t find myself.
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And if I keep my eyes closed, he looks just like you.
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There s a biological reason first loves create samskaras.
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A key area of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, doesn t develop fully until we re about 25 years old.
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As brain expert Daniel Ehman describes it, the
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Prefrontal cortex helps us to think before we speak and act, and to learn from our mistakes.
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Young people think with their feelings.
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Without a fully developed prefrontal cortex filter, much of our mental life runs through our amygdala, a brain center associated with emotional processes like fear and anxiety.
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As we age, our passion is tempered by reason and self-control, and we don t feel with the same wild abandon.
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Those of us who felt the passion of young love may remember it as more intense than anything in adult life, even if it wasn t ideal or even healthy.
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The first time you enter a relationship out of pure infatuation, the person might break your heart.
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If you don t accept the lesson and enter your next relationship again out of infatuation, then the second time, you might find yourself bored and acting out of character.
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The third time, the person might steal your money.
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Karma will bring you the same lesson through a different person again and again until you change.
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And sometimes, it will bring you the same lessons with your partner over and over again.
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Vedic teachings say that there are three levels of intelligence.
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In the first level, when someone tells you the fire will burn you, you listen and learn and never touch fire.
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In the second level, you experience it for yourself.
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You touch fire, it burns you, and you learn not to touch fire again.
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In the third level, you keep burning yourself, but you never learn.
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If we don t heed our karma, we re stuck in the third level of intelligence and we bear the scars.
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We forget that what we experienced in the past holds information about how we ll feel if we do it again.
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Often, when we believe that we have bad luck in relationships, the real problem is that we keep ignoring the data and refusing the karmic lesson.
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In other words, if you don t learn anything, you repeat the same mistake.
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Karma encourages you to reflect on the choice, the reason you made it, and what you should do differently next time.
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Let s look deeply at some of the types we date and what karmic lessons they have to offer.
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The rebel.
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In the movie, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Julie says to Ray, I hate this.
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I really hate this.
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You re going to go and you re going to fall for some head-shaven, black-wearing, tattoo-covered, body-piercing philosophy student.
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Ray answers, that sounds attractive.
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This character is found over and over again in literature and movies, from Rochester in Jane Eyre and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights to Edward in Twilight.
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Being attracted to someone who bucks the system isn t necessarily a mistake, but if you keep hoping adventure and mystery will give way to loyalty and responsibility, it s time to learn from your choices.
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Why are you attracted to this person?
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Are they offering you the relationship you want?
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If you re ready to move into a deeper commitment, then you ll need to choose someone based on the qualities they have to offer instead of just their rebellious allure.
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The chase.
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Sometimes we re drawn to someone who is emotionally, even physically unavailable.
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They keep moving, but sometimes pause just long enough to keep us hoping.
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We are enchanted by them, so we convince ourselves that they will stop in their tracks and suddenly give us their time and attention.
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We re sure that once they finally focus on us, they ll fall in love with us.
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So we commit ourselves to tracking them down.
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Where are they?
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How are they spending their time when they could be with us?
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When will they call?
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How can we make ourselves visible and available without seeming desperate?
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When we re caught up in the chase, we are not getting to know a person, discovering compatibilities, learning about each other, and growing together.
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All of our romantic energy is invested, but there is no return.
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In her book, Why Him, Why Her, anthropologist Helen Fisher, the chief scientific advisor for Match.com, explains that playing hard to get creates a phenomenon she calls frustration attraction.
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She writes, barriers intensify feelings of romantic love, probably because the brain pathways associated with pleasure, energy, focus, and motivation keep working when a reward is delayed.
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However, she adds that researchers have looked at the eventual result of playing hard-to-get and found no evidence that it helps establish a long-term relationship No matter which side of hard-to-get you re on, if you re not spending time together, you re not building a relationship If you re drawn to the thrill of the chase, be aware of what you re choosing
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If you start a relationship with a musician who is constantly on the road, then you can t expect them to give up their career and spend all their time with you.
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When someone is unavailable, they will generally stay that way.
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Are you drawn to them because you re looking for someone who is as busy as you are?
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Or did you grow up with an unavailable parent so that is the only level of love you think you deserve?
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To use your karma well, you must be conscious of who you re choosing, why, and whether they fit what you want in your life, as you began to explore in rule one.
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The project.
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Sometimes a partner needs saving.
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You are compelled to take care of them, giving them attention, help, and stability.
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This may play to your nurturing side.
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In the short term, it makes you feel competent and in control.
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They need you, and you feel like you can help them live a better life.
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But in the long term, if they aren t transforming, you feel drained and resentful because you ve become that person s caregiver.
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You re not equals, and you re investing far more in the relationship than they are.
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Dominating a relationship bolsters our ego and makes us feel important.
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It doesn t require us to question ourselves or to follow our partner s suggestions.
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But ultimately, it interferes with the long-term connection we re trying to form.
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We re attracted to the dynamic rather than the person.
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If you love the role of guiding, leading, and giving advice, you can find that elsewhere in your life.
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Try this, relationship roles.
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Here are some questions to help you examine what role you played in your most recent relationship or expect to have in a new relationship.
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Is it what you want?
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You ll play all the roles I describe, but you want to move toward being supporters of each other while consciously allowing for moments of being fixes and dependent.
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Type 1.
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Fixer.
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Did you find yourself constantly trying to solve, nurture, help, or make the other person better?
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Were you trying to carry them?
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Trying to make their goals happen for them?
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Type 2.
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Dependent.
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Did you feel like you relied on your partner too much?
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Did you go to them with all your issues and expect them to find solutions?
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Type three, supporter.
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Did you like their personality, respect their values, and want to help them toward their goals?
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Did you respect how they spent their time and kept their space?
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Or did you always want them to change it?
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The fixer has a parental mentality.
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You feel that it s your responsibility to take care of the other person, nurture them.
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Their happiness is your priority.
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This mentality can be useful, but it can also go overboard.
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When you parent your partner, it makes them behave like a child.
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The dependent has a childlike mentality.
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You rely on your partner.
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You want them to figure it all out and you get upset when they can t solve everything for you.
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Sometimes we settle
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to this mentality when we have a domineering partner.
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It can feel comforting to have someone else take the lead.
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But we lose out when we don t follow our own path and shape our own lives.
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The supporter is their partner s champion.
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You are not a parent, you are not a child.
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You are side by side with your partner.
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You re trying to take responsibility.
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You re trying to develop patience.
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You re trying to help the other person grow, but you re not trying to micromanage.
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This is the Goldilocks just right mentality.
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For a quiz to help figure out the relationship role that you play, please visit www.relationshiproles.com.
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It s natural to move in and out of all three of these roles throughout our relationships.
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Sometimes we take the lead, sometimes we re more comfortable following.
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What we re trying to avoid is dating a type with whom we re stuck in the same dynamic all the time.
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Being a full-time fixer means your partner isn t taking their own journey.
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We don t have the right to take it for them.
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It s not our role to fix something that may not even be broken.
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Being fragile full-time means you lack confidence and seek validation from others.
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You feel broken and want someone to fix you.
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Being with someone who supports this side of you interferes with you taking responsibility for your own growth, joy, and success.
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The supporter is an ideal to strive for.
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Both partners communicate as equals.
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Your partner is always teaching you, but you re always teaching them.
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And when you both understand that you re both teaching and learning at the same time, that s when you create a partnership.
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More on this in rule three.
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The F-boy or F-girl.
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When we date someone who sleeps around, they are clearly communicating that they aren t interested in an exclusive commitment.
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If that s what you re looking for, consider whether it s worth staying in it for great sex.
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Sex can distract us from making good choices about who to be with and whether to stay with them.
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And one of the biggest causes of that distraction is the hormone oxytocin.
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According to neuroscientist and psychiatrist Daniel Amen, oxytocin is related to feelings of being in love, and the release of oxytocin can support and even accelerate bonding and trust.
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Generally, men have lower levels of oxytocin than women, but sex causes men s oxytocin levels to spike more than 500%.
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New York University neuroscientist Robert Fromkey says that oxytocin acts like a volume dial, turning up and amplifying brain activity related to whatever someone is already experiencing.
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During and after sex, we feel more in love, but it s not actually love.
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We feel closer chemically, even though we re not closer emotionally.
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Additionally, the hormone actually has a temporary blocking effect on negative memories, so all of those little things that were bothering you or that argument you had beforehand, which might have been a major warning sign, could fade after sex.
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When I interviewed husband and wife relationship experts, John and Julie Gottman, on my podcast, John said that oxytocin can be the hormone of bad judgment.
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He says, you keep thinking it s going to be okay, because that hormone makes you feel safe and secure, and you don t see the red flags the person is sending, saying, I m not trustworthy.
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If someone makes it clear that they aren t interested in committing, there can still be a fun connection, but know that you aren t likely to learn much from them.
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The Opulent One The Bhagavad Gita talks about six opulences, knowledge, fame, money, beauty, strength, and renunciation.
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Sometimes we re attracted to someone who has a single opulence and this is enough to prematurely convince us we re in love.
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In Beyonce s song Halo, the light surrounding someone convinces her they re everything she needs and more.
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Yet someone s halo isn t necessarily an accurate indicator of who they are.
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In psychology, the halo effect is a type of cognitive bias where we form an inaccurate impression of someone or something based on a single trait or characteristic.
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For instance, if someone is attractive, we re more likely to assign other positive attributes to them, like intelligence, wit, or kindness.
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This particular halo effect is called the attractiveness stereotype.
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One study showed that teachers graded attractive students more favorably when the class was in person, but not when the class was online and the teachers couldn t see the students.
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Other studies showed that servers deemed to be more attractive made higher tips.
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When we see a good-looking person, we might make unconscious assumptions that they re wealthier, or more ambitious, or more likable, and so on, and this can influence our attraction to them.
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The Bhagavad Gita says that the six opulences show us the fallibility of desire.
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We want attention, but a million likes won t make us feel loved.
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We want beauty, but we try to make youth, which is not the only kind of beauty, last forever.
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We want money, but it won t buy happiness.
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Try googling lottery winners if you want proof of that.
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If we look for the opulences in a partner, we are being sold a temporary bill of goods.
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The Bhagavad Gita says that divine love of God is to know their greatness but gravitate toward their sweetness.
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You may know all of your partner s accolades and achievements but that doesn t define them as an individual.
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Being attracted to our partners for what they have or what they ve achieved is not a bad place to start but it s not a good place to end.
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Abilities and achievements don t matter so much as qualities and actions.
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We make the mistake of assigning qualities to people based on their abilities.
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We assume that a good communicator will be trustworthy.
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We think a writer must be thoughtful.
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A manager must be organized.
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The only way we can know what qualities a person truly has is by spending time with them and observing them.
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Only when we know someone intimately and deeply do we find the sweetness in them.
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Try this.
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Reflect and learn from a past relationship.
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We tend to base successes in relationships on how long they last, but their actual value lies in how much we learn and grow from them.
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If we understand that, we can examine the choices we ve made, assess why we picked a person, figure out what went wrong, and develop a better sense of whom to pick and whether we need to change anything for next time.
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1.
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What energy were you in when you chose to be with your ex?
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Energy of ignorance.
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In this energy, you might have picked someone because you were bored, because there was nobody else around, or because you were lonely.
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Choices made in ignorance lead to depression, pain, and stress.
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Energy of passion.
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In this energy, you pick someone because you wanted one of the opulences.
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Decisions made in passion start well but have to deepen into understanding and respect or else they end terribly.
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Energy of Goodness
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In this energy, you chose someone with whom you felt connected and compatible.
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There was mutual respect and often these relationships end with some feelings of respect still intact.
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2.
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Why did it end?
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Be as honest with yourself as you can when you assess what went wrong in this relationship.
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3.
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Learn from it.
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What can you think of that you will try to do differently next time?
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Can you enter your next relationship from an energy of goodness?
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Can you set aside opulences and look for qualities that make good partners?
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You attract what you use to impress.
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The opulences highlight a very practical way of understanding karma.
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If we are attracted to someone for their ambition, that s what we get, a person whose priority is ambition.
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There s nothing wrong with ambition, until you realize that you want someone who has lots of time to share with you.
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Sometimes we feel like none of the options before us are people we want to date.
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And then we have to ask ourselves, why are these my options?
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Why are we attracting these people and how can we attract the ones we want?
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Again, karma has the answer.
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If you put something into the world, you get it back.
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This is karma in its most basic form.
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If I use money to present myself as valuable, I ll attract someone who believes that money is what makes me valuable.
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When we present ourselves, we are signaling the dynamic we want, how we expect to be treated, what we think we deserve.
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I had one client who is a successful entrepreneur.
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He was upset because every woman he met only wanted him for his money.
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But every picture he posted in his online profile showed him in a supercar or him in front of another home he d bought.
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He said, I m not like that in person, but he shouldn t have been surprised that he was attracting a certain type of person.
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If you use wealth to impress someone, you are committing to whatever it takes to sustain your wealth.
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But one day you may want to change how you spend your time.
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You may want to feel that your partner values you for more than your net worth.
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If you use your body to impress someone, you are putting yourself in a position where aging is hard to accept.
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One day your body will change and you may want a partner whose love will last for years.
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If you use your social status to impress someone, you may find that someone with a higher social status is more attractive to your partner.
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Or something may change your status and you ll want a partner who can support you through a hard time.
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If you use your intellect to impress someone, you may find that you don t feel an emotional connection.
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If you use sex to impress someone, you are setting a standard for physical connection that may be hard for one or both of you to sustain if attraction fades.
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When we put ourselves out in the world, whether it s on a first date, social media, or a dating profile, we are saying, this is the version of me that I want you to like.
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It s important to put out the version of yourself that you want someone to be attracted to, as opposed to the version of yourself that you think someone would be attracted to.
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These are two different things.
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If you attract someone through a persona, then you re either going to have to fake being that promotable person forever, or they re eventually going to discover the real you.
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One study showed that 53% of online daters lied in their profiles.
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Women more than men, and more often about looks.
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Doing things like posting an old photo so they looked younger.
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And men, more often about financial status.
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Considering that men tend to rank physical attractiveness as a highly valued characteristic in a potential partner, and women tend to rank financial success similarly, you can see how that might play out, at least in heterosexual relationships.
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Even if your self-positioning is more subtle and you re willing to play out the role you ve invented indefinitely, you will always know in your heart that you aren t loved for who you really are.
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You ve made them fall in love with a character that you created, not you.
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By pretending to be someone else, you will attract strife into your life.
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Save yourself that time and energy.
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It s natural to want to present the best version of yourself.
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You may be doing this through the opulences, whether by trying to slip where you went to college into conversation, or taking your date to an expensive restaurant to demonstrate wealth, or uploading your most seductive photos to a dating website.
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We can easily get caught up in judging ourselves by our net worth or the way we show it in material possessions, our friends or followers, our physical appeal.
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But we all know people who have high value using these metrics and still have low self-worth.
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There is a saying that the poor man begs outside the temple while the rich man begs inside it.
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Or, as Russell Brand puts it, the more that I ve detached myself from the things that I thought would make me happy, like money and fame and other people s opinions, the more truth is being revealed.
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We market ourselves to others using our opulences, but doing that won t benefit us in the long run.
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We want to show our real personality, values and goals.
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So we are loved for what matters most to us.
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The converse is also true.
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Be aware if opulences are what attract you to your partner and beware if they re all that attracts you.
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You don t want to end up with someone whom you re only attracted to physically or whose social life captivates you or whom you only connect with about work or whose external success compels you.
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These qualities are tied to temporary situations and characteristics.
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they won t last, and when they are gone, so is the relationship.
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When I met Radhi, I had nothing.
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No, that s not true.
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What s true is that we ve been together ever since all I had to offer her was myself, and that seemed to be enough.
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Try this.
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What you showcase.
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When there s a disparity between what attracts your partner and what you love about yourself, you may struggle to live up to their vision.
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First, make a list of what you love about yourself.
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Think about the qualities you re most proud of and try to steer clear of the opulences.
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Are you kind, caring, hardworking, honest, creative, grateful, flexible, reliable?
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Now, for each of your long-term or defining relationships, make a list of the qualities you think that person saw and appreciated in you.
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We want to build relationships where we are loved for what we love in ourselves.
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What you want from someone else, first give to yourself.
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Once we have a better sense of the Samskaras we ve gathered over the years, we can look at how they ve influenced our choices and see if we like the results.
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We don t want to make the same mistakes over and over again.
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We want to carry the gifts from our past into the present.
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But we can t assume our partner will receive them exactly as we expect.
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We don t want to bring gaps to our relationships expecting our partner to fill them.
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We want to fill our own gaps.
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As you observe your partner or potential partner, consider what draws you to them.
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Is your judgment influenced by outdated criteria from your past?
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If your parents gave you all their attention, are you expecting that from a partner?
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Do the movies you saw in your youth have you expecting to be swept off your feet?
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Was your first love remote and unavailable, so you re stuck in a pattern of repeating that dynamic?
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One of my clients was getting really angry at his wife when she didn t come home from work on time.
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I asked him why he was having such a strong reaction.
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And in the course of our work, he realized that his own
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mother never came home on time and it had bothered his father.
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He had inherited his father s anxiety.
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I asked him what his wife s lateness signified for him.
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After some thought, he said, it s like she doesn t care about me and doesn t want to spend time with me.
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I suggested that he ask his wife about it and we talked about how instead of saying, so how come you re always late in an accusatory tone, he could ask, what have you been working on?
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Is it exciting or stressful?
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It turned out that his wife was stressed about a project and that she thought in three months time, she d be able to start coming home earlier.
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she didn t realize that it would have eased his mind to know about this project and when it might end but even more important was his realization that the reason for her lateness differed from his interpretation.
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It wasn t a perfect happily ever after but he was able to come to terms with the situation instead of enduring his inherited anxiety.
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He asked for time with her over the weekend and they figured out how to address both of their needs.
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Our relationships aren t supposed to be responses to what our parents did and didn t give us, or balms for the insecurities of our youth.
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If we look to our partners to fill an emotional gap, this puts undue pressure on our partner.
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we re asking them to take responsibility for our happiness.
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That s like saying, I won t drive my car until my partner puts gas in it.
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Why wait for someone else to make you feel good?
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And that s why it s so deeply important that we heal ourselves, taking charge of that process instead of shifting blame and responsibility to a partner.
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If we re trying to fill an old void, we ll choose the wrong partner.
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A partner can t fill every gap.
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They can t unpack our emotional baggage for us.
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Once we fulfill our own needs, we re in a better place to see what a relationship can give us.
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Meanwhile, and always, you can give yourself what you want to receive.
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If you want to treat yourself, you could make plans to go someplace you ve never been before, or arrange a birthday celebration for yourself, or dress beautifully for an upcoming event.
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If you want to feel respected at work, you could decide that you re going to make a list for your own benefit of everything you contributed to a project.
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We think of feeling appreciated, respected, and loved as core needs in a relationship.
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But when we attend to these needs for ourselves in small ways every day, then we don t have to wait for our partner to deliver them through a grand gesture.
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Try this.
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Give yourself what you want to receive.
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Fill your own gaps by looking for ways to treat yourself the way you re looking for others to treat you.
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I never felt appreciated by my parents.
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If you want to be appreciated, what do you want to be appreciated for?
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What can you do every day that makes you feel appreciated?
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I never felt like my parents thought I was special.
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If you want to feel special, what do you want to feel special for?
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What can you do every day to make yourself feel special?
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My parents didn t respect my feelings or opinions.
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If you want to feel respected, what do you want to be respected for?
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What can you do every day to respect yourself?
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These are hard questions, so take your time with them.
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Answers may not come quickly.
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Ponder them for a day, a week.
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You may gradually start to identify recurring negative thoughts that you ve carried from your past.
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If you keep telling yourself, I m nobody until someone tells me I m someone, it will make you more prone to insecurity, stress, and pressure.
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If you often tell yourself that you re not good enough, you become not good enough.
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We need to disrupt those negative patterns by developing new thought patterns.
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It may feel forced or fake, but when you practice these new positive thought patterns, you start living up to them.
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Check in with yourself.
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Set aside 3 minutes before you start your day and 3 minutes at the end of your day to make sure you re filling your own gaps.
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Attaching new habits to the beginning or end of things is natural to us and the best way to bring the behaviors and beliefs we need into our lives.
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In the three minutes you ve set aside in the morning, sit by yourself and pick one thing you can do for yourself today to improve your day.
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It might be deciding to make a lunch date with your friend you haven t seen in a while.
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It might be showing up at a yoga class or taking no phone calls for the first hour of the morning.
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To wake up and hope the day will be great is outsourcing the day.
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Instead, pick just one act you can perform yourself that might change your day for the better.
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In the last three minutes of the day, assess how you felt about the one thing you picked.
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Did it help your day?
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Should you try it again tomorrow or choose something else?
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Expanding Our Love Our preparation for love began with two rules guiding us to solitude and self-examination.
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We began practices to transform loneliness to productive time in solitude.
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We unpacked our pasts and began to unlock our samskaras so that we can learn from our karma.
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Whether you re in a relationship, looking for one, or leaving one, these rules help you build and maintain the skills you need for love.
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By now, you re already better prepared for love than most people.
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And that opens the door for you to share your love with another person.
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One of the translators of the Bhagavad Gita, Eknath Eswaran said, love grows by practice, there s no other way.
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Now, as we move into the practice of love, we will build our ability to recognize love, define it, develop it, trust it, and if and when we are ready, to embrace love.
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Thank you so much for listening.
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I really hope you gained a ton of insight from this.
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I hope it provides some closure.
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I hope it provides some support and solace.
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And I really hope that you ll grab a copy of the full audio book and listen to the rest of it at arulesoflove.com.
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Thank you so much.
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I ll see you again next time.
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This is the story of how a group of people brought music back to Afghanistan by creating their own version of American Idol.
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The joy they brought to the nation.
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You re free completely.
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No one is there to destroy you.
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The danger they endured.
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They said my head should be cut off.
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I m John Legend.
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Listen to Afghan Star on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.