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Today, we re excited to chat with Matthew Hussey, a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, and renowned relationship coach.
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With over half a billion views on his YouTube channel and a top rated podcast, Matthew s practical advice on love and confidence has impacted millions worldwide.
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In this conversation, we ll dive deep into the secrets of all successful relationships.
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Now let s dive in.
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At a certain point, it becomes about deciding what we really want.
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What s the thing I m trying to get?
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Am I trying to serve my ego in love, or am I trying to serve my soul?
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One of the most sought-after dating and relationship experts in the world, and New York Times best-selling author, creator of the number one relationship advice YouTube channel, and over 382 million channel views, the heart doctor himself, Matthew Hussey.
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What is a woman truly saying if they say, I don t like nice guys?
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They re saying that my nervous system does not produce the effect that I call love around people who do not send it into some kind of fight or flight response.
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This is not just a female pattern.
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This is a people pattern.
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Why is it that we respond to people who treat us poorly?
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By changing these patterns and healing these wounds, you will find yourself in a place where better and better relationships are available to you because people will start to see you.
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You ll start to attract a different quality of person.
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If you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love that you wish you would have known then that you know now, what would those three things be?
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I think the first thing I would say is it makes me emotional as I say it because I think it does.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.
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Very excited about our guest.
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We have the inspiring Matthew Hussey in the house.
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My man.
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Good to see you, brother.
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It s good to see you.
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I m excited, man.
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This is our first ever interview in the... I don t know what I m going to call this yet.
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The Greatness...
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Basement, I don t know what this is the the uh, I like it.
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It s very cozy.
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Yeah, it s nice, right?
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Yeah Yeah, so welcome to my home and to my home studio very excited about this It s so nice to be I always think it s funny speaking to you like this because we have for every one conversation we have
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on the air, so to speak.
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We have like 200.
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I know, I know.
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So many.
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We travel the world together at different things.
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We ve been all over the place together.
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We ve known each other for what?
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I don t know, eight or nine years, maybe?
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You think?
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Yeah, long time.
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It must be 10, closer to 10.
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10 years.
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It s crazy.
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Closer to 10.
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And it s fun because for me I get to see you like, I get to step back into your world where you re a master and just watch you experience you doing your thing.
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You see me doing this with you every time we hang out.
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We re just asking each other questions and trying to understand the meaning of life.
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how we ve ruined ourselves in previous relationships and why we put ourselves in these situations, which is what I m excited to talk about because you ve got a new book you ve been working on for really 10 years since your last book.
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This is called Love Life, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what.
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not happily ever after, which is pretty cool.
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And you and I are now finally in healthy, cautious, loving, abundant relationships that bring us a lot of joy and peace.
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But we, you know, we went through different challenges of trying to discover who we are,
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how we can build ourselves up to really attract and learn how to choose the right person for us.
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It took us both a long time, but we did it, so congratulations.
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Congratulations, yeah, you were, of course, at my wedding to Audrey, or with Audrey back at the end of last year, which is amazing.
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It s amazing, man.
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So what I wanna ask you about today is how do we become the person
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that we need to be to attract the right person in a relationship to become happily happy, no matter what.
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And I think a lot of the things I want to talk about today is one, becoming the person you need to be to attract the right person.
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what do we need to do to become that person?
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However, when you become that person, you create a lot of opportunities, you start to attract a lot of interesting people in your life when you become more of a high value human being, right?
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When you build your confidence, when you develop
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clearer boundaries and values for yourself when you re taking care of your health when you re clear on your mission or the career you want to go after when you re full of love and energy and passion, you start to become very attractive.
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You attract a lot of opportunities.
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It s almost like people just reach out to you and say they want to go out with you.
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They ll message you online like this will just start to unfold.
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when you really take care of self first.
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So that d be step one, how do you build yourself up to attract the ultimate person for you and your future self?
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And then step two, how do you
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in a sea of opportunities of individuals that are now in front of you because you have developed yourself as a high value human for a relationship, how do you know when to choose and who to choose when there could be so many great people in front of you that you might be dating or meeting?
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How can you actually make the choice that you know is gonna be great for you for the next 10, 20, 50 years potentially in an intimate relationship?
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That s part two.
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And also, I want to ask you, you ve coached, I don t know, hundreds of thousands of women online through your for your coaching program, your live events, millions in your social media in your YouTube.
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And I m also curious, have you ever met women?
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who have been in multiple relationships at the same time who are actually happy and fulfilled with their life.
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I m gonna ask you that as well later.
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So have you ever met women who are like, I m in an open relationship, I ve got four boyfriends and one main boyfriend and my life is amazing.
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Over a span of 510 20 years, I don t even know if that s possible.
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So curious, I m gonna wait for you to answer that one.
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But first off, how do we become the person we need to be to attract the right person for us in love?
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I want to challenge first the idea that when we become the person that we want to need to become in order to attract the lover that we want that we attract many more people because
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My experience has been that often in order to attract what you really need, you have to give something up.
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And often the thing that you have to give up is the kind of attention that you have been used to.
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We all have our favorite way of getting attention in life.
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Our thing, our trick.
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It s like our magic trick.
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What s our magic trick?
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I got a six pack, let me be shirtless and post that.
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I make a lot of money, let me show the money that I have in certain ways or I m funny.
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let me be funny or whatever it is right that s exactly right and and that becomes our kind of known way of guaranteeing a certain level of attention and different people can do it to different degrees you know some people have a very easy time getting attention other people have a hard time getting attention but the principle
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Holds across people we have our favorite way of getting attention and like you said for some people it s physical For some people it s their sense of humor for other people.
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It s their Achievements in life to lack to whatever.
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Yeah, and we tend to display the thing that we know guarantees us a certain level of attention and that often becomes the thing that we end up complaining about because while it works to get us attention we often resent
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in the end, the kind of attention we re getting.
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I don t want people who just think that I am funny and don t really see me for who I am.
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You know, that robs me of a real connection.
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I don t want someone who just wants me for my looks or
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Just wants me for sex or just wants me because I earn a lot of money So we we end up resenting the situation that in some way we construct for ourselves and and a certain point it becomes about deciding what we really want and
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What s the thing I m trying to get?
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Am I trying to serve my ego in love or am I trying to serve my soul?
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Am I trying to, you know, have quantity or am I trying to have quality of connection, of love, of teamwork?
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You know, what is it I m really looking for?
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And I think because a lot of us haven t
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truly decided that we are still doing the thing that gets us the easiest or most obvious result, the one we know how to get.
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So we re still going broad of trying to get like a lot of attention from as many people as possible as opposed to focusing on being intentional about the type of person we want to attract.
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Yeah exactly and by the way the person some people listening to this might not relate to using their you know magic trick to and of course it s not a trick it s that that thing you re showing may be a very attractive quality that you have but it s not all of you and you don t necessarily want to bring someone in just on that thing because now you re engineering your love life to get just people who value that thing and that thing might not really be you or it might be something that
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is quite superficial or it might attract very superficial people.
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So it s, you know, some people won t relate to going broad in the sense of like, I love how much attention this thing gets me.
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It might be more fundamental than that, which is that I m afraid that if I stop using this thing, I ll be invisible.
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They might feel like the only attention they get is for this thing.
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And if I were to sacrifice that, I don t know if I ll ever attract anyone again.
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And so that speaks to a much braver approach that at some point we might have to take in our love life, which is laying down the weapons that we know how to use so that we can start to attract someone who sees us for who we really are,
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who loves us or likes us initially without all of that, who is open to a relationship.
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It s like a, you know, a guy who complains about always attracting people who want him for his money.
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And why on a first date do you keep going to five-star restaurants?
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Why don t you go to the family-run ramen joint down the street?
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The food s amazing.
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Why do you, you know, what do you, why do, you know, I ve had- What are you trying to impress with that magic trick that you have?
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Yeah, and some people will say, well, that s because that s what I like to do.
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I like to go to nice restaurants.
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And that s fine, but you don t have to do that.
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You could do that every other night of the week.
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You don t have to do it on a first date.
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And if you feel like you have to do it on a first date, then you have to suspect yourself.
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Why do I feel the need to lead with this?
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The same is true if you find yourself within five to ten minutes of a date, you ve already slipped in some humble brag about your career.
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Why did you feel the need to do that?
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It s worth exploring.
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We all do it.
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There s no judgment.
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We all do it.
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But why did I feel the need to do that?
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Why didn t I just connect with this person?
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There s a big difference between impressing and connecting.
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Yes.
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What is the difference between impressing and connecting?
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Well, I think impressing is this, it s often about ego.
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Sometimes it comes from an insecure place.
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I think it comes from a place of thinking that this thing that makes me impressive is
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what makes me valuable, it s what makes me worthy.
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And so I want to make sure that you know that I am this thing or I have this thing or I ve achieved this thing or I m capable of this thing.
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And, and so we lead with that.
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But impressing is really about us, isn t it?
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It s not about them.
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It s about us.
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I want you to see me in a certain way.
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Whereas connecting is really about them.
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Connecting is, is when we genuinely
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We don t just relate to someone else, but we make ourselves relatable to them.
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There s a book called On Writing Well by William Zinsser, a very famous book on writing.
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And it s actually a book about tips for writing non-fiction.
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And he says that whenever he reads a writer, he often finds that in the first paragraph, it s just them trying to impress.
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It s just them wanting to like be clever, have this very wordy, flowery, you know, show their vocab, show this amazing sentence structure.
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And he says, but buried like three paragraphs in, he ll often find a detail or something that writer says that makes him go, aha, a human.
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And he said, it lands as good writing the moment he gets that feeling of, aha, a human.
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And if you think about the way we connect with people,
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if you think all the way back to the beginning of your relationship or any date you go on it really a connection is born the moment that someone else feels has that moment it s like you re speaking is uh what did Christopher Hitchens say he said like speaking is publishing in real time you re always publishing while you re speaking and so when you re with someone and they say something and you just almost breathe like that
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So I have relief of going, oh, I get you.
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Oh, I ve felt that before.
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Oh, I know what that s like.
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Oh, that s like how I think or feel or relate to life or the world.
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Then we go, aha, a human.
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And when we feel that, we connect.
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And connecting takes us away from impressing.
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Impressing sounds like trying to be perfect, whereas connecting sounds like trying to be real and authentic.
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Yes, exactly.
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I think connecting comes from being real and authentic and Impressing is is what we do when we go in like we have something to prove and if you go if you approach anyone less from a place of I ve got something to prove and more from a place of
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I want to find the human in you and I want to show the human in me and if we do that then we re just going to enjoy each other s company and that s that s like the highest goal is that we enjoy being around each other not that I have some kind of power over you by impressing you so now I could you ve put me on a pedestal and now from that pedestal I feel like I m in control and I can control the dynamic here because that s what so much of that is isn t it it s like if I m impressive
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then it gives me a sense of control.
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But if instead I come to connect, it s like we re really relating to each other and the power isn t my power over you.
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The power of the situation is that we really enjoy spending time together.
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You and I are friends and the reason we love spending time together is not because, you know, we come over to each other s houses and impress each other.
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It s we re friends because we when we hang out it we re we re enjoying each other s company and that comes from connecting and I think actually Our our love lives would be served more by bringing the connection part forward and The impressing part can that will happen sure all the things that are wonderful about you.
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Don t worry They re gonna figure it out.
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And by the way, how much more powerful or impressive?
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When someone figures out something that s awesome about you, and you didn t scream about it, it s even more impressive.
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It s really powerful, because you go, if they didn t feel the need to make that the headline, what else do I not know about this person?
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It s interesting you say that, because I can t remember what it was in the last month, but Martha was like, oh, I didn t know you did this like 10 years ago.
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She just found out something that I did in the past, but she was like, I never knew you interviewed this person, or you did this thing, or that s really cool you did that.
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And just allowing someone to discover things about you, I think, is impressive.
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That you didn t shout it at the rooftops in the beginning, the first date or something.
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And that doesn t mean that you have to artificially hide things either from a place of humility.
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If organically certain things about your life come up, that s fine.
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But I think it s questioning our intention going into a situation.
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I think, look, I m out there talking about a book right now,
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And talking to lots of amazing people and people who on the surface are very intimidating, big shows, whether it s podcasts like yourself, whether it s TV, whatever, it s like you re in some high stakes environments.
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And if I go into those things thinking I need to impress everybody here,
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then I m already in danger of losing the thing that actually makes people connect with me.
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Because I m trying to now be something, I m trying to wear something and wear this badge of look how great I am.
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When someone is, I guess when someone is connecting with another person at the first meeting, first date or first interaction,
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What is the biggest mistake they can make, you think, in pushing that person away from actually wanting to be curious about them and wanting to learn more about them?
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What is the biggest mistake that a guy could do and a woman can do in their first interaction of a date?
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I mean, something that I think there s a real deficit of these days is actual vulnerability.
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not like there s sort of fake, there s a lot of fake vulnerability.
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There s a lot of people telling like their hero s journey.
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You know what I mean?
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And we all have one of those stories, right?
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We all have the story of when we weren t doing so well and when our back was against the wall and the odds were against us and we were in a really bad spot in life and then we came through.
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But those aren t necessarily vulnerable stories because you re the hero of that story.
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It s like look how hard it was and look how awesome I am that I was able to get out of that.
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There s no shame on doing that.
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It s just I don t think that that s the same thing as
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as connecting with who you really are and what you think about.
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And that s like a very, you know, we have these very well scripted hero s journey stories of our life that make us sound really impressive.
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But I don t think that s the same thing as really connecting and I think and being vulnerable.
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And so I think one of the way that one of the mistakes I suppose that people make early on is
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Never really being vulnerable and vulnerability isn t.
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I always remember I did a TV show in Australia and before anyone who doesn t know me watching this thinks that that must mean I m Australian, I m not, I m English.
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I feel like everyone in America always still thinks I m Australian.
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But I was doing, confusingly, I was doing a TV show in Australia.
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And... Did they know you were British in Australia?
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Yeah, they know.
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They know.
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But I remember this
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woman that I was coaching on this show, she kept going on to every date.
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She went on this date and I was supposed to give feedback, watching them on the dates and seeing how they did and what they could do to kind of improve next time around.
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And one of the things I kept noticing was like throughout the date, she was just really laughing hard at everything this guy said.
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And at the end of the date, I said to her, he wasn t that funny.
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You were laughing constantly, but he wasn t very funny.
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It doesn t mean you couldn t have politely laughed now and again at his attempts to be funny, but the way that you were laughing all the way through the day was sort of inauthentic.
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That wasn t really you, because I know you didn t find all of those things funny.
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And by the way, you were laughing
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Hysterically even when he wasn t trying to be funny, you know like it sure so I said that in itself was an absence of vulnerability because instead of just connecting as you were and sitting into the day and maybe occasionally allowing there to be a breath without filling every silence and and
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Even that would have been a more authentic experience.
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So I said to her, the next date you go on with the guy, I want you to just share a little more.
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Because you also asked him a lot of questions.
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That s another version of not being vulnerable, is when we just ask someone else lots and lots of questions and keep them talking.
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And we don t ever share anything.
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And I coach a lot of people who are like, especially a lot of women I work with, are like, men don t ask questions.
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And I know that if you were to watch a lot of them, by the way, that s true.
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A lot of guys aren t asking questions.
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They re all too happy to just take the floor and talk about themselves.
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But we play in, if we re...
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in a insecure place of not wanting to be vulnerable ourselves, we play into that dynamic because we keep setting them up.
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We ask another question and when they ve finished talking, instead of vulnerably allowing there to be a silence for that person to have to now come in and ask you a question, you fill it again.
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And you ask another question and then that person says, okay, me again.
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And then they start talking and telling you another story.
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So we actually precipitate that dynamic by never taking the floor for ourselves and telling a story or sharing.
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So anyway, for me, her version of just asking questions and laughing was a form of lacking vulnerability, not really sharing.
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So I said, the next date I want you to go on, I want you to be a more authentic version of yourself and I want you to share.
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And this is darkly funny, but do you are you understand the context in which this is funny?
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She went on the date And she told a story of a horrible car accident.
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Her father had had oh my gosh That changed his life forever and
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you know I just remember being tickled by it because it was obviously a very this was a big story in her life this is like one of the most tragic moments in hers and her dad s life this was not like a second date right like this is how to like when I said be vulnerable I didn t mean go and tell the most tragic story of your life yes
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there s other ways to be vulnerable.
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Because not everyone deserves to know at the beginning of our connection with them all of our flaws, everything we re insecure about, everything we worry about on our worst days, all of the things we re struggling with.
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Yeah, like you don t necessarily trust someone enough with, you don t feel safe with them enough to share all of those things.
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But there s other ways to be vulnerable.
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If you share with someone something that you re passionate about, that s vulnerable.
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Like if you because often what we re passionate about isn t popular or it s not cool.
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It s weird.
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It s nerdy.
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It s some unique hobby.
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It s weird.
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It s like our thing and it s and it s a little bit like it s very us whatever that thing is very often or why we like it is very us and and so sharing something whether it s a
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TV show or a song that you listen to a lot that you like if it came on your like Spotify shuffle It would like it would embarrass you that it came on in a room and that was on your shoe the shuffle gods really screwed you by playing that while everyone else was around that
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sharing those things and the things you re into, that itself is an act of vulnerability because you re sort of allowing yourself to be seen a little bit.
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So, you know, I think these are all ways that people can be on a date with us or be in a room with us and go, aha, a person.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s worth asking ourselves, did I create any of those moments on this date?
2
SPEAKER_00
Or was I constantly tight and tense and censoring myself and anything that was really me and asking them lots of questions?
2
SPEAKER_00
it feels like connecting when you re only ever asking someone else questions because you re like i m doing it all right i m told to be a great listener and i m told to be curious and i was doing that i was being really really curious but that there s a point where that goes past too much yeah because now there s not a connection here no one knows anything about you yeah exactly now here s something i m curious about
2
SPEAKER_01
What is it that women actually want today in a relationship?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I ll give you context.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was watching this video online recently of some guy on the street asking a woman, like, what s your biggest turnoff in a man?
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And the woman said, she was probably in her late 20s, the woman said, when a man is nice to me.
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SPEAKER_01
She goes, I know I probably shouldn t be saying this, but when he s too nice to me, it s a turnoff.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then turns into another video of a guy holding flowers at a restaurant, who s taking a selfie video saying, I just got stood up by my date.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, we were having a good conversation online when we were connecting.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, I was taking the lead by choosing a restaurant that I thought she might be interested in by doing research on her profile and making suggestions.
2
SPEAKER_01
We were having great interactions.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was being very kind and generous with my attention.
2
SPEAKER_01
I brought flowers.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was on time and she stood me up.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I m trying to be a thoughtful, generous, kind man.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I got stood up for it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So what is it that women actually want today, do you think?
2
SPEAKER_01
And maybe this is just this one woman that was interviewed saying, when a guy s too nice to me, it s a turn off.
2
SPEAKER_01
But why is it sometimes, it seems like, when men are actually trying to be good leaders, trying to be providers, trying to show up and do a nice gesture, here s some flowers, pick the restaurant, show up well-dressed and groomed, why is that a turnoff for some women?
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there s a lot to say about this.
2
SPEAKER_00
Firstly, can we talk about the spent a lot of time looking at her profile, figuring out what she might like, picking a restaurant for the day, bringing flowers, like that raises a lot of questions for me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, let s say it was all good intentions though.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, no, but those might be good intentions.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s just take it that they were good intentions.
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SPEAKER_00
still like, I don t know if that s nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if that s nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that that s like a, there s that.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like trying too hard or.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, you know, if you ve just been talking to someone and you haven t even been on a date with them yet.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s different if you were long distance talking with someone for a month and you were having an amazing time with them and you were like having great phone conversations and FaceTimes and then you show up.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
the finally you get to meet in person and you ve picked a restaurant you know they ll like because they ve told you what food they re into and you ve brought flowers because you know what flowers they like at this stage and you know you re you re bringing them as because it represents a connection that you already have then all of that feels more appropriate to me sure but that feels like a kind of
3
SPEAKER_00
a bit of a victimized, a guy victimizing himself by saying, look at everything I did for a person who s sort of going to show up to that date and go, why did you do all of this?
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t even, we haven t even been on like a date before.
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t even really know we like each other.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why, why are you buying me flowers on a first date?
3
SPEAKER_00
It feels a bit
3
SPEAKER_00
like I don t know a lot of people that would show up to a first date having put in all of that effort and I would worry that anyone who puts in all of that effort for someone that they re just meeting up with to see if they like each other, I would worry about that person coming across a little bit creepy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Interesting, okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think that that s a
3
SPEAKER_00
And look, we re talking about a YouTube video, so it s quite possible that someone did all of those things, and then said, look, women say they want a nice guy, and then I brought flowers on a date.
3
SPEAKER_00
But let s rewind for a second, because you said the woman saying, yeah, now look, I think that s very honest.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she was like, I shouldn t be saying this, but when he s too nice to me, it s kind of a turnoff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, there s versions... Now, okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s the version of it I just said, which I think does indicate to a person, like, there s something a bit off here about how hard you re trying at this stage.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
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SPEAKER_00
I get that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It could be too creepy.
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SPEAKER_00
I shouldn t be getting this amount of effort at this stage.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, if I am getting this amount of effort at this stage, here s what I know about you.
3
SPEAKER_00
This isn t really about me.
3
SPEAKER_00
because you don t know me.
3
SPEAKER_00
So if you suddenly, it s like a guy- It s like love bombing almost.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and love bombing is often, there can be a more manipulative or sinister aspect of love bombing that I kind of know what I m doing.
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SPEAKER_00
I think there s a very dark end of the spectrum with love bombing and there s a much more naive end of the spectrum with love bombing.
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SPEAKER_00
The sort of dark end of the spectrum is someone who s really trying to
3
SPEAKER_00
get you to move faster than you would organically move so that they can extract a lot of attention and value and love from you very, very quickly.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the more naive end of the love bombing spectrum I think happens with people who, you know, fall for someone very quickly and then because they ve fallen for this person that they don t even know,
3
SPEAKER_00
they are now trying on a level that is completely unjustified because they re responding to the story they ve created in their head not the person they actually have in front of them and when someone feels that they are
3
SPEAKER_00
they can sense that there s something off about this, that you don t really know me.
3
SPEAKER_00
We ve exchanged texts, you don t know who I am, you don t know what I m into on a deeper level, you don t know what I m like, you shouldn t really know that you like me this much yet.
3
SPEAKER_00
So given this kind of
3
SPEAKER_00
flowers and poetry and whatever and this doesn t, this is actually a sign that you re projecting right now and I don t like that you re projecting.
3
SPEAKER_00
It makes me feel strange because you re not really seeing me and so and if by the way if you could be feeling this about me right now based on how little you know me what it says to me is you could be feeling this about anybody next week.
3
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is about you, it s not about me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I do want to go back to the women, you know, saying they want a nice guy thing, or that they might get turned off by someone who s too nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think that s one version of being turned off because someone s too nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
We sense that their niceness is false.
3
SPEAKER_00
Gotcha.
3
SPEAKER_01
But what if someone is genuinely nice?
3
SPEAKER_01
They re just maybe not mean to them.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re not showing them poetry and flowers, but they re just attentive.
3
SPEAKER_01
Kind.
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SPEAKER_00
That s a sign of an unhealthy person.
3
SPEAKER_00
If it s a woman saying it, it s a sign of an unhealthy woman.
3
SPEAKER_00
If it s a man saying it, it s a sign of an unhealthy man.
3
SPEAKER_00
What is a woman truly saying if they say, I don t like nice guys?
3
SPEAKER_00
They re saying that my nervous system does not produce the effect that I call love around people who do not send it into some kind of fight or flight response.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s there, there are, when I am met with someone who does not make me chase, when I am met with someone who doesn t make me feel, I have to earn their love.
3
SPEAKER_00
When I am met with someone who doesn t play games, doesn t give me anxiety by being consistent for three days and then dropping off the radar for five or a week.
3
SPEAKER_00
But when I am with someone who doesn t do those things, it doesn t feel like love to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It does not feel like passion.
3
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t feel like fireworks.
3
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t feel like the thing that I think I m supposed to feel.
3
SPEAKER_00
obviously so much knowledge now on where those things come from and that there are old patterns and how we related to our caregivers or our parents or how they related to us that
3
SPEAKER_00
that gets us used to a certain pattern.
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We get this nervous system imprint that is created at a very early point in life and we spend the rest of our lives replicating that if we re not careful.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the great kind of challenge I think for all of us and this is true by the way of men too.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
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How many men relentlessly chase after women who don t seem to want them?
3
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Who reject them, who treat them like they re disposable?
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SPEAKER_00
How many guys are playing the friend to a woman for years on end, who picks them up and puts them down whenever it suits her, and they re doing it for years on end?
3
SPEAKER_00
This is not just a female pattern.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a people pattern.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why is it
3
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that we respond to people who treat us poorly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why do we think we do?
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SPEAKER_00
Because there is something about it that is known to us.
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SPEAKER_01
It is familiar.
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SPEAKER_00
It s familiar.
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SPEAKER_00
And we don t realize it.
3
SPEAKER_00
We think we hate it.
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SPEAKER_00
I hate it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I hate that this person doesn t want me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if I could just get this person to want me, I d feel good again.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what people often find is if that person truly turned around to meet you,
3
SPEAKER_00
and gave you everything that you wanted from the beginning, it would have felt strange.
3
SPEAKER_00
That there s something in this dynamic that is in a weird way safe to you.
3
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t make you feel safe.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s some kind of safety in the familiar and that s not our fault.
3
SPEAKER_00
We should exercise compassion towards ourselves for that because it s not our fault that these really damaging and destructive patterns are things that we chase because this was created at a time when we weren t deciding our response systems to things.
3
SPEAKER_00
We were in survival mode.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know that there s a I spoke to a woman recently.
3
SPEAKER_00
I did a show recently where the host of the show said I really struggle to have hard conversations with people like if I have to have a heart and a big part of this book is like I have a whole section on how to have hard conversations.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because by the way, every relationship is shaped, is made in the crucible of hard conversations, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you have the difficult conversation?
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you say the thing you re afraid to say?
3
SPEAKER_00
And can you express your need without fearing that if you do, something bad will happen?
3
SPEAKER_00
and so many of the times people end up in painful relationships or not even relationships they end up in painful dynamics or they end up in limbo with someone where it never ends up as a relationship it s always casual is because they re afraid to have the hard conversations there was this woman that was part one of the hosts of the show and it was and she said to me I really struggled to have hard conversations and I don t know why I just you know every time
4
SPEAKER_00
I go to have a hard conversation it s like I break out in sweats and I panic and I m you know she said it s just it wasn t that in my family like no one s really ever had hard conversation she said and she didn t realize what she was saying as she said it but she said you know and I mean it s like my dad for example if I try to have a hard conversation with him he just leaves the room
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
And I, and she kept going, but she didn t realize what she had said, which is your entire life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Cause that wasn t a pattern.
4
SPEAKER_00
Your dad started yesterday, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Your dad s most likely been like that since the day you were born.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what you learned is that if you tried to have a hard conversation with your father, he would leave the room.
4
SPEAKER_00
He would abandon you.
4
SPEAKER_00
So now you have what therapists call a core abandonment wound, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
This is something that s now with you, and you wonder why with this person that you re on date three with, who shouldn t even be that important to you,
4
SPEAKER_00
Why it feels hard to articulate that, you know, you are disappointed that they showed up half hour late to the day or that they didn t text you for a week.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then all of a sudden like reached out out of nowhere to say, do you want to do something in one hour?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you went without expressing that, like, hey, we had two great dates and then you would, like, I didn t hear from you for a week and now you re like, are you ready in an hour?
4
SPEAKER_00
The reason she didn t express that is, and the reason it made her so terrified to express it, irrationally terrified, is because in her world, it s been perfectly rational.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is where compassion comes in, because we re very good at calling ourselves crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, I feel crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Why am I so scared of having this conversation?
4
SPEAKER_00
Or we get called crazy by other people.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s a favorite thing to call people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Ah, she was crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Ah, they re crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like, you can t believe what they tried to do or what they said to me.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re not crazy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Something happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
They experienced something in their world at a time when it was their reality.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was her reality growing up that, and I m extrapolating here, but like I said, if she s saying that about her dad, almost certainly her dad didn t start doing that last week.
4
SPEAKER_00
He s been doing it her whole life.
4
SPEAKER_00
it was real for her that there was a time in her life where if she tried to express a need with her father or tell him something that she wasn t happy with or something that she d like him to do more of or less of or a way that he d hurt her he would not be able to have the conversation and he would leave that when you re a child that s that poses a real threat to you yes so
4
SPEAKER_00
what she s feeling now is rational for her in her world based on where she came from.
4
SPEAKER_00
We look at it from the outside and go, I can t believe that she would be so afraid to say this thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And she s gonna end up in a two-year relationship with someone who never meets any of her needs, who doesn t even know what her needs are, who she resents deep down because it s like, he never thinks of me.
4
SPEAKER_00
But she s terrified to have that conversation because for her,
4
SPEAKER_00
If she has a hard conversation, it means abandonment, and abandonment means on an emotional level, not a logical level, she might not survive.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so when someone says, I struggle, I find it a turn off when someone is nice.
4
SPEAKER_00
they are articulating a deep, deep pattern that has been there for a long time in their life that they didn t choose and that they may not even be aware of.
4
SPEAKER_01
And most likely it sounds like their father probably was either rude to their mother or rude to the
4
SPEAKER_00
them as a child or maybe had some you know behavioral patterns that caused them to feel rude at different times yeah or they you know were neglected and they felt like they in order to get attention they had to do a lot or they had to be you know the golden child or they had to
4
SPEAKER_00
you know, meet everyone s needs.
4
SPEAKER_00
They had to go out of their way all the time to make someone happy.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so, you know, and then they d get like, you know, whether it s from the father or the mother, they get like a hit of love.
4
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden it s like, I feel calm, I feel safe.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, this feels so good.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then of course it s right back to, you know, the next day they re cold again and you have to fight for that next hit.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so if you ve experienced that,
4
SPEAKER_00
And now you re out there looking for love.
4
SPEAKER_00
You may very well have developed the association that love is something you have to earn.
4
SPEAKER_00
Love is something that comes in fits and starts.
4
SPEAKER_00
Love is something that
4
SPEAKER_00
you re grateful when you get a hit of it and then you have to endure these periods of someone being cold in order to get the next hit and of course that s you know what s known as the trauma bond but it s that s really what someone is saying when someone says i m i get turned off by people who are nice and i get turned on by people who
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, give me, and we have all sorts of euphemistic terms for it, like the bad boy or the person who like, you know, is, is super bold or the person who is, has an edge or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of the time, what we re talking about is.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m trauma bonded to people who are hot and cold, inconsistent, make me have to earn their love, their attention, take it away from me and then give me it back again.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that, by the way, makes that woman who said that.
4
SPEAKER_00
a perfect target for abusive people.
4
SPEAKER_00
It makes them a perfect target for people who forget whether they re abusive because they re narcissists or because they re sociopathic.
4
SPEAKER_00
It makes you a perfect target for someone who s in even just a selfish phase of their life.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because someone who s in a selfish phase of their life takes what they can get.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s intermittent, it s up and down, it s hot and cold.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re glad to be around someone who doesn t ask a lot of them.
4
SPEAKER_00
So even if you don t get someone who s truly toxic and abusive, you re still going to attract people who are selfish.
4
SPEAKER_00
And those people are going to waste your time and your energy because they re not where you re at.
4
SPEAKER_00
But you never test the relationship because this is, on some level, what you re looking for.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is what s familiar to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can relate to this because in previous seasons of life, I really struggled of having the hard conversations.
4
SPEAKER_01
I dreaded it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Looking back, I can say, man, that s crazy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just have the conversation and whatever, just deal with it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But in the moment, when I didn t have the tools or the nervous system to feel safe myself, and I needed the approval of someone else to feel safe, or I needed someone else to be okay with the hard conversation that I was having,
4
SPEAKER_01
And when they weren t okay with it, or they would explode, or they would cry, or they would scream, or they would, you know, not speak to me for two days or something, because they were upset of what I wanted to talk about, or they avoided it, it would make me feel like, oh, I m really insecure.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I always had the fear of like,
4
SPEAKER_01
I guess it was being alone or it was the person not loving me in return or me not being good enough or something like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
There was probably a combination of insecurities or fears that caused me to be afraid of having difficult conversations and just saying what I really wanted to say.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I remember having throat clenching and heart palpitations over years of being in these different relationships where I never felt like I was able to speak up
4
SPEAKER_01
And I can t blame the other person.
4
SPEAKER_01
We can never blame the other person for our decision to not communicate, not set standards, not say the things we need to say.
4
SPEAKER_01
We can t blame the other person.
4
SPEAKER_01
But it always felt like, oh, this person isn t willing to accept me for who I am if I say the full truth, or if I talk about the things that I m uncomfortable with.
4
SPEAKER_01
If I don t like this situation, they will not accept me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And they didn t, they didn t accept me for my authentic conversations or my truth.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I was afraid of losing them for them not accepting me for who I was.
4
SPEAKER_01
And therefore it was never going to work out.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t until I started to really understand that and become aware of it and start to heal that process.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of things changed with Martha because I was like, wow, this is an incredible human being in front of me that I m starting to date and connect with and meet.
4
SPEAKER_01
Man, she s pretty special.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I got to the point where I was like, right, but I can t be willing to lose myself in order to try to have someone want to stay with me.
4
SPEAKER_01
I cannot go down this path again, which I ve done five or six times in 20 years, and different relationships where I, I lost myself to try to please someone else so that they d want to like and love me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And
5
SPEAKER_01
for hating myself in return, resenting myself, resenting the person, resenting the relationship, feeling guilty of why I wasted all this time and energy being in this relationship, fighting for it, while all the while I was losing myself and losing my self-respect in that process.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t until Martha, I was like, oh man, I m gonna have the uncomfortable conversations pretty early on, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
In the first few months, I m gonna talk about
5
SPEAKER_01
These are my standards.
5
SPEAKER_01
These are my values.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is what I want, and this is what I m not willing to deal with in a relationship.
5
SPEAKER_01
And be willing to say, maybe this isn t the right fit.
5
SPEAKER_01
If you don t have the same or similar standards, and if you aren t willing to fully accept all of me, my past, my shames, my insecurities, et cetera, then maybe we re not the right fit.
5
SPEAKER_01
But that means I might not be with a great person in front of me.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s a scary thing.
5
SPEAKER_01
But it was scary, but it also set me free when I made the decision, like, okay, I d rather be free and be fully myself, authentic to myself, than trying to please and change who I am to be with someone to have them like and love me.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that set me free to say all the conversations I wanted to.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it was like the more honest and hard conversations I had, it was like the more she fell in love with me.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, this is the interesting thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is the tragedy of giving in to those patterns.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because I think this is a really important thing for everyone to hear is that the past does not have to equal the future when it comes to these patterns.
5
SPEAKER_00
Our nervous system may have gotten wired in this way at a time when we didn t choose for it to be wired that way.
5
SPEAKER_00
It just happened to us because that s what we needed to do to survive.
5
SPEAKER_00
But
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean that it s not a it s not a life sentence.
5
SPEAKER_00
Once you become more aware of those patterns, you do have the power to have an enormous impact on changing them or even just how you relate to those patterns.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, I relate to what you re saying because I know that one of the things that I have come to enjoy in my life is just moments of being able to sit and read a book
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, just just to sit and read and to do it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, it doesn t matter if if my wife Audrey is there, but just to feel like it s the same as if I was only on my own.
5
SPEAKER_00
In other words, I just feel like I m in my own company and able to fully relax doing that without feeling the need to entertain somebody else.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that even what I just said is my stuff that used to scare you in the past.
5
SPEAKER_00
It it s a feeling of being responsible for somebody else s emotions and their happiness or their joy Yeah, and so it would make me I real I had to come to terms with the fact that I was afraid to speak up about What I needed
5
SPEAKER_00
about really silly little things.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was afraid to say, I really could use just a night to myself or I could really use just a few hours to just read.
5
SPEAKER_00
Just something simple.
5
SPEAKER_00
On a Sunday, I love just reading or
5
SPEAKER_00
spending a few hours just catching up on like the news and because it s not something I do on the weekdays I like once a week I like to sit down and just look at like everything that s going on and just feel like I m doing it at a leisurely pace and and and not responsible for someone else s like are they having are they having a good Sunday now and it used to be like in the past
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I wouldn t I just wouldn t say anything and then I would become less of myself in the relationship and You know, there would be resentment from my side, but I d also be a worse version of myself because they would feel me kind of Frustrated frustrated on some level and was there something you d like did you try to communicate this in previous relationships?
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And that was all my fault.
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Oh, really?
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It s all my fault never tried to even say it and someone was mad at you No, I for wanting like two hours by yourself
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No, because even if that was true, it predated anyone I dated.
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It s like this deep feeling from childhood of feeling like I m responsible for... Right, because you re the oldest, right?
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Probably.
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And, you know, I think in my family dynamic, I felt responsible a lot for people s emotions.
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And so it carried over into my relationships.
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And with Audrey, I would notice that
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something that she d be more than happy to give me I was afraid to say and and even when I did say it
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I would then feel anxious having said it.
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Really?
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Yeah.
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Because I would feel like I ve upset you.
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I I ve now like, no, I feel like, you know, are you mad at me?
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Is there like, is everything okay?
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Are you happy?
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Is it, is this, and it almost like in my head, there was this subconscious feeling that there was going to be this weird comeuppance for it.
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Like, you know, you took your two hours of alone time.
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Now I m going to.
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something or like yeah or like i m gonna go and do something really fun that you would have wanted to do i m not gonna invite you yeah like it was just my brain my brain was doing all of these weird things and i had to pay attention to that and go it s look what you said is what you said is absolutely true that
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If you play, if you keep doing that, it s a very similar pattern to yours.
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It might have different origins, but there s a similarity in being unwilling to speak up about your needs and what you want.
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And what you said is true, that if you didn t learn to speak up about those things, then you could be really unhappy in a relationship.
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And we tend to focus on that side of it, that I never want to be that unhappy again, like I was in the past when I was in a relationship and none of my needs were met.
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But we also often don t give enough focus to the inverse of that, which is that imagine
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how great your relationship could become.
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when you re with someone who truly knows you.
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Like when someone gets to see all of those little idiosyncrasies about you and who you are.
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Like Audrey, my wife makes fun of me all the time.
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Yeah, she s constantly making fun of me.
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Cause she s like, you re so particular and you need, like when you wake up in the morning, she makes fun of me.
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Cause she s like, when you wake up in the morning, you really like those like couple of hours before I wake up.
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where you get to just do all your little rituals and the things you want to do.
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She makes fun of me for it, but she loves me for it because it s like, that s you.
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I know you.
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I know who you are.
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And the more she knows who I am, the more she can actually be a teammate in supporting that.
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And so now she s such an incredible partner that she ll say to me, hey, do you want, like she might say to me proactively, do you want some time this weekend to yourself?
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And so because I m honest about the things that I would like, which requires bravery and courage, because again, it s like old wounds and old things, like I feel like it s going to go, something s going to go wrong if I do this.
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I ve given her the gift of showing who I really am.
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I ve given myself the gift of truly feeling seen and accepted for who I am.
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And I ve also given myself the gift and her the gift of her knowing how to support me better.
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which is a beautiful thing because she wants to support me she wants to be the best partner she can be for me and vice versa and we can only do that if we know each other and so that that we we ve both worked on that together and it s bit it s
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And that s another form of vulnerability, by the way, is sharing those things.
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And it s, this is like beyond any relationship I ve ever had in my life because of those moments, not just, you know, me and Audrey have the most extraordinary connection and, and, you know, chemistry and all of those things, like these amazing things, but
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We also just, I ve never, I ve never felt so seen and accepted and loved.
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And that s because, and she would say the same, and it s because both of us have been more brave than we were in previous relationships.
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But how do we learn the skill of expressing our needs and having a hard conversation without the fear of some blow up or backlash happening?
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How do we, if we ve never done that before, had hard conversations, how do we learn to have them without the fear of something bad happening?
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A couple of things I think that there s I think first just noticing I m a huge fan of Nicola Pera s work because you know so much of her focus is on understanding that there is a there is a
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nervous system response and therefore bodily sensations that we feel, that
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That you have to detach from the story that goes with them, right?
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So if you start thinking about having a conversation with someone, your body starts to react as if there s danger, if that s your version of danger from your past.
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Yes.
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And when your body starts to react, we try to kind of logic ourselves out of it by, it s very common, self-development is, it s very common in self-development to come up with reframes, right?
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Like, oh, but you know, if you have this hard conversation, it could actually improve the relationship or it could, and reframes are really important.
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I love, reframing is something I use all the time in my life.
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But one of the things Nicole said to me recently that I really loved was that until you can regulate your nervous system and the sensations that are going on, you might not have access to a better story.
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Because that s what a reframe is, right?
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It s a more powerful story.
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You know, for example, someone came to me some time ago about a hard conversation they needed to have with their boss.
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And a reframe that I gave them was that you re treating this hard conversation like it s the be all end all hard conversation that you have to have.
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And actually, this is like the first of the next 10,000 hard conversations you re going to have in your life.
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This is, this is like one of so many hard conversations you re going to have in your lifetime.
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So instead of seeing this, like.
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this big epic moment where you have to have a hard conversation, actually see it as practice for the next hard conversation you have to have.
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Because you re going to have to have many in your life and your ability to have hard conversations is going to determine the quality of your life.
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So instead of seeing this as really high stakes, see this hard conversation as practice for the next hard conversation you re going to have to have with him or with somebody, with anybody.
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That s a reframe.
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But
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When our body goes into a true like nervous system response, when we go into fight or flight, or when we go into freeze, for example, it can be extremely difficult to even have access to a better story.
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Someone can tell you, it s like a heartbreak.
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Someone can come along and say to you, you know, some story like, what is, there s plenty more fish in the sea is a story.
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It s like, it s a reframe.
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Oh, there s more people out there.
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That s a reframe.
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And you re trying to give someone a more empowering story, but in their state of heartbreak, which has physiologically overcome their body, they don t have access to the truth of the story you re telling them, even if it s true.
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So regulating your nervous system first, whether it s through, and you and I have done so much of this together, right?
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When we went to Poland with Wim Hof, what did we do every single morning?
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We regulated our nervous system.
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like 45 minutes of breathing, but you don t need to do 45 minutes of breathing, you could do five minutes of breathing.
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You can find a way to slow yourself down, whether it s through meditation, whether it s through losing yourself in a different task.
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We could even be calling a friend and having a nice conversation before revisiting this hard conversation you need to have.
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It s taking your body out of that state by regulating, and then when you ve regulated, like I feel it, I do Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
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At the end of an, whatever problem is making me anxious at the beginning of a session of rolling, at the end of an hour of rolling on the mats, I have access to a better story.
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And you can communicate it better.
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Yeah, because my I ve burnt for I ve burnt off a lot of anxious energy.
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I ve been forced, you know, any kind of like sport like that forces presence.
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So you re not thinking about the problem.
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It s like being it s like when Wim says, like being in the ice, being in the in the in the ice and being in a frozen lake or whatever for him was the thing that, you know, took his it was the first time he wasn t thinking about the greatest tragedy of his life was when he was in the ice.
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It s true because his all his focus was just on
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the feeling the shock the pain of being in the ice and for me I get that from Brazilian jiu-jitsu where I m It s forced presence for me.
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And then at the end of it and when I m laying on the mat, I m like That thing doesn t feel as scary to me or I feel like I ve access to a deeper truth or something better and
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So the start is regulating your nervous system first.
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And then to start to look at what are some better stories that I could tell myself here.
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For example, I have this story in my head that if I am honest with someone about what my needs are, they re going to leave me.
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But what if
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Firstly, let me remind myself that in the beginning when I haven t done this It s been a special kind of hell Like I ve that the relationship where I didn t get my needs met what miserable it was Hell it made me so and I I ve been in those relationships and I know that people around me at the time who loved me were like
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Oh my God, he s in a dark place.
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I d much rather be single than in a relationship with intermittent love where my needs are not met.
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And knowing that is a power, because if you ve never experienced that pain before, then you re liable to go back to it.
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But if you have had it, and if you connect to that pain,
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Then all of a sudden you go, well, nothing is worse than that.
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So I can t go back there.
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And then there might be also a very positive story that if I think of my dream relationship, if I think of the kind of, and I don t mean dream relationship in that you find the perfect partner.
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I mean, if I think of the kind of connection, the kind of team that I want to be a part of,
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what that that s a place where I really feel seen and if I want that then I have to allow myself to be seen and that means me sharing you might also tell yourself that hey
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This me sharing this stuff also gives them permission to do the same.
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And my end of the bargain, by the way, I think this is really important.
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We talk a lot, you know, there s a lot of like Instagrammable content out there now of like getting your needs met.
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but you re also in a relationship with a person who has needs on the other side.
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It s popular to talk about when our needs aren t being met, but what about when their needs aren t being met?
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What about the things that would make them really happy?
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There s not nearly as much content around that stuff.
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How to serve your partner at the highest level.
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Yeah.
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Now, the reason there s not, I believe, is because
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Those posts are usually created by people who have experienced the pain of over giving and never being vulnerable enough or brave enough or confident enough to receive and to ask for what they want to receive.
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But the other end of the bargain is when someone, when in finding, you re looking for someone who sees you and your needs and wants to show up as a teammate in meeting those needs.
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But the thing that often gives someone the sense of safety that they can do that is when you re also taking care of their needs.
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People don t feel safe to meet our needs when they re worried that they ve got to watch their own and vice versa.
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It s like when I said, when Audrey anticipates my need, it actually frees up my energy.
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Because now I don t need to be worried about my needs.
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I m like, oh, she s got me.
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She s got me.
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It frees up energy to go, what does she need?
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Like, what s the thing?
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She just asked me the most beautiful question in the world.
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She said, what do you need?
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How can I be better for you this week?
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How can I support you this week?
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That frees me up, frees up mental bandwidth to go,
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Hang on, have I done anything that awesome for her this week?
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This is someone who really has my back.
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Who else in my life is asking me that question?
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That s unbelievable.
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She s the greatest teammate in the world.
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I m so lucky.
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I m so grateful.
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And from that place, you re like, I better be showing up for this person in the same way.
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What does she need?
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How can I be there for you?
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What are you missing?
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What am I not doing enough of that would mean a lot to you?
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So it s a two-way street.
7
100%.
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And if you re giving and giving, and you don t feel like your needs are being met, then you probably need to communicate, hey, I need some time for my needs as well, or here s what I need, and make a request.
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Is this something you can provide?
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And notice if you are giving and giving and feeling resentful, because that has nothing to do with them.
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It may come from the fact that they re giving less than you are.
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But you have an expectation then too.
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The fact that you re resenting it and you haven t said anything.
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That s on you.
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That s your pattern, that s your work to do.
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Because there s something, I bet you, that pattern doesn t just show up with this person, I bet it shows up with other people in your life too.
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I bet it s shown up with people in the past.
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So we have to suspect ourselves.
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When we have the same resentments all the time,
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it s suggestive of the fact that there is a there is a pattern that requires healing within us that healing that could hold the key to the relationship you ve always wanted because by the way you ll never like i said by
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changing these patterns and healing these wounds, you will find yourself in a place where better and better relationships are available to you because people will start to see you.
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You ll start to attract a different quality of person.
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You ll start to attract someone who sees that you respect yourself.
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You ll start to sculpt the kind of relationship that you want.
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But, but,
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We deny ourselves these relationships and we wonder why it is I keep running into people who take me for granted This is something I used to do in relationships I used to think that everyone in the world
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thought the same way as me, essentially.
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That if I m attracting this person, they must think similar to me.
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They must want to give like me.
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They may want to be thinking about me the way I think about them.
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They may want to be generous the way I m trying to be generous, and therefore thinking they re going to be similar with their generosity like me.
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But when it wouldn t happen,
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I would get frustrated and be like, huh, why aren t they giving the way that I m giving?
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So I had an expectation, right?
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And this expectation left me feeling frustrated, resentful, confused, whatever it may be.
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And because I lacked the ability to communicate my standards through hard conversations, the relationships never worked.
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I m sure there s many other flaws that I had, why those relationships didn t work.
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But that was one thing that left me feeling frustrated, not only in intimacy, but also in friendships or business relationships, where I was like, I m going to show up a certain way.
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And I have an expectation that other people show up a certain way.
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Or if I m going to be generous in one way, I have an expectation that if I do something for someone else, that they would be just thoughtful in similar ways and be as generous.
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And when some people did that, but not everyone.
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And so it left me feeling frustrated more times than not, because I had an expectation, as opposed to just communicating, okay, here s what I m all about.
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And here s what I value.
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Here s my values, here s my standards, or not having any expectations at all.
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and being the generous person and not being resentful if there s not a standard met in return and being okay with that.
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And so I ve had to learn the hard way of making sure that I either don t have expectations in certain friendships, business relationships, intimacy, or communicate with hard conversations and see if someone can meet that standard.
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And that s the interesting thing.
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That s where romantic relationships hold this strange sort of space of their own.
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Because there s things you can do with other relationships that take all of that pressure out of it.
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With business relationships or certain friendships, maybe you re not your very closest friends, but with people who are kind of on the outskirts of your core circle, you can have few expectations.
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Because you say, when I m with this person, I have a great time.
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They don t really show up for me in meaningful ways in my life, but they re fun company when we get to have it.
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And that s okay, because I got other people.
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I ve got a handful of core people in my life that really do show up when it matters.
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I don t need that from this person, so I don t have to have any expectations.
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And if I give to this person, I m just going to know the deal, that I m going to give to this person, but I m going to expect nothing back, because I know that probably I won t get it back from this person.
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Our intimate relationships hold a special place of power in our lives because they tend to be the person we have the most proximity to on a daily basis.
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It s the person that we expect the most from.
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And it s the person that, you know, we can t meet certain needs elsewhere, right?
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It s not like sexually you go, well, if this person doesn t meet all of my needs, I ll go elsewhere and, you know, I ll mix it up and spread it around.
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Like, it s not like that.
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So we have certain rules in place for most, you know, monogamous relationships that say that there are certain things that it s inappropriate for me to get elsewhere.
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And even if that s not the case, because that s not the case with many of our needs, it s still the case that this is the person I m going to invest the most time and energy into, and the most love into, and the most of myself into.
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If that s the case, by definition, it s the relationship that has to come with the most reciprocity.
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It can t be a one-sided thing because of how much I am required to give to this relationship, how much I m prepared to give to this relationship.
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So that s why you got to communicate the hard the hard things express them.
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You you have to and and look you re right There s people are different.
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We re not all the same in relationships and you might really like this and she really likes that and they re different but it s why I think
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Compromise is important.
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Where might we be able to give each other a bit more of what we want, but it s also The thing that I think people fail to do a lot is view their romantic relationships holistically, so I might not get this thing as much as I want but You know, it s like if you really like
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If you really like phone calls, right, and your partner, when they go on a trip, you don t really hear from them because it s just not like, for them sitting on the phone, it just doesn t lend itself to their communication style.
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So they ll text you, but like being away and then sitting on the phone for an hour just isn t, it s just not their natural thing.
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So you could try and force it, but
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Most times it just feels a bit forced.
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Yes.
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Well, if that person in every other way, it s an incredible partner.
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And when they re with you, they are so present and they text you.
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They, you know, it s not like they leave you, they, they don t ghost you on texts.
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There s a back and forth through texts.
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They ll send you pictures of where they are and what they re up to.
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You know, they might leave you a loving voice.
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No.
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And the big and.
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you re in a relationship that s not long distance.
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In other words, the majority of the time you re together, it just so happens that sometimes they have to take trips without you for work or whatever.
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Then it s like, this is all right, I m loved.
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I feel loved in this relationship.
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I don t need them to try to be good at this thing that they re not good at or they don t feel natural at.
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Because I get my needs met.
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On the whole, I do get my needs met.
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Would it be nice if they enjoyed sitting on the phone as long as I did?
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Maybe, but it s okay.
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Now, start adding in variables and you can quickly see how justifying that can become a problem.
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Let s say that this person also isn t good at texting.
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Let s say that this person s work takes them away for half the time.
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Now you might have a real problem.
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Because you re not together 50% of the time.
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You re someone who values closeness.
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Phone calls were a way that you felt close, but fine, you would have settled for messages and pictures and just feeling a little bit involved in their day, but you don t even feel that, and now they re away half the time.
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You re gonna be miserable.
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So it s viewing these things holistically.
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No one is ever gonna be 100% of everything you needed a person to be, and there are always gonna be differences.
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so when we when we ignore the fact that our needs are getting met less of the time than uh you know they re not being met more of the time than they are and you re ignoring that then then you re unhappy yeah in your book love life uh
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how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what.
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You talk about, there s a quote from your book that said, I made a big miscalculation.
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I underestimated people s ability to make poor choices in their love life, even when they had an abundance of choice.
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How, when we have an abundance of choice of opportunities, maybe great men in front of us, or great women in front of us, and we re going on lots of dates, and we re like, wow, there s so many inspiring people, where most people are struggling to find one person that they re interested in, but now you have an opportunity with lots of people.
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How do we choose properly when you have an abundance of choices with the potential partners?
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How do you know the person you re gonna choose for the next 20, 30, 50 years potentially is the one for you?
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Look, I think a very simple place to start is who do I feel most at home with?
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Who, when I spend time with them, makes me feel most like myself?
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And I think when we listen to that, we are listening to
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Do I want to say my heart?
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We re listening to our heart, we re not listening to our ego.
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Because I think ego drives us a lot in our love lives.
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We chase after people who seem impressive on the surface, people who look a certain way, people who have a certain life.
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People that we think are going to look good to our friends and family, and they re going to be celebrated by the people around us.
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Everyone s going to go, they re amazing.
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They re, you know, and, and by the way, the person that all of your friends and family initially say is the most amazing is not necessarily.
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The best person for you that, you know, that so true.
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How many people have gotten married by saying, oh, but my family loves this person.
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yeah and and by the way your family aren t all the greatest judge of character yeah and they re not spending 24 7 with this person they re not what they re getting is an advertisement yeah two hours on a weekend or something you know how many how many of us have ever spent a few hours with someone a day with someone and thought they were the greatest person ever and then
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Weeks or months later.
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We look back and we realize oh This was a very charismatic person Who really knew how to be endearing?
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Yes, and was very charming and I just when I met them, I just felt so good around them and I felt like oh my god, they re like
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They re so you know, you just felt this amazing thing, but later on you realize like this person s like actually kind of like They there was no friendship there at all.
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This is just a person who s really good at making people like them And some people were like that with your family and friends.
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It s like it it s a
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Now, by the way, that s not me saying if all of your family and friends think someone is bad news, you should not listen to that.
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Because if the people you trust the most are like, I don t, this doesn t, something doesn t feel right.
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You should hear that.
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And if, and again, if the people that trust you trust the most, it s almost like on that level, it s more important that the people you trust the most.
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feel like, oh, this person s a really good fit for you.
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Like, I can see that this person is like, you two go really well together.
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Like, they get you, as opposed to, this person s really amazing.
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Like, that s a bit different.
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You should be thinking of, like,
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does this person bring the best out of you?
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And if their family sees that the person you re with, maybe he doesn t make as much money or have the job that I think I would want him to have or whatever, he s not there yet in life.
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But if you are a happier human being in general, if you shine more consistently, if you bring out the best aspects of yourself,
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because of this relationship, then that s something that people should approve of.
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That s exactly right.
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Do they bring out the best in you?
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Or are you sad constantly?
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Exactly.
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And are you constantly having the conversation of problems with this relationship, right?
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And everyone s experienced a friend or a family member who is terribly anxious and unhappy in a relationship that they are desperately clinging onto, thinking it s the most important thing in the world.
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And the rest of us from the outside are going,
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This shouldn t be the most important thing in the world.
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You re unhappy.
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So I think someone we feel at home with, someone who makes us feel like the most like ourselves, look for the areas where ego seems to be driving.
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You know, and ego is often driving when you have a poor answer to why you like someone.
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Oh yeah, when you re asked the question, why do you love this person, and you don t have a good response, that s a red flag.
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No, it s for sure, for sure.
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I know, you know, Dr. Ramani, our mutual friend who s the leading expert on narcissism, says one of the surest signs that something is up
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is when she asks why someone loves someone and they do not have a good answer.
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The answer approximates to there s just something about them.
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That s not a good answer.
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And saying there s great sex isn t a great answer either.
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We just have great explosive sex.
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And there s some prerequisites for a great relationship, right?
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Chemistry is important.
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It s not that you can say, I ll just, you know, be with someone who s nice to you, even if you have no chemistry, that also isn t gonna work.
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So you have to have chemistry, but chemistry is a prerequisite.
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It s not like the thing you have to go like, I m trying to get the greatest chemistry anyone could ever have.
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It s just that you need chemistry.
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There s a moment in the book where I say, don t comparison shop for chemistry.
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Instead, see it as a beautiful thing.
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If you found someone who s an incredible teammate, who s all of these things you really want, values that are important to you, and there s chemistry, that s an amazing thing.
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So am I coming from ego or am I coming from a place of what actually makes me happy is a huge, huge, huge decision.
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And sometimes we don t learn that until we have
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spent time with people that are less familiar to us but make us feel really good.
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You know, your ego might flare up in some way or another, or you might be like, oh but do I still want, do I want to like,
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do this, maybe I could have someone with this or that or whatever, like there s a lot of that in the world and it creates massive confusion instead of just going this feels unfamiliar but there s something about this that feels really good.
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I love your definition of like
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when you know that you re choosing the right person is someone who makes you feel most at home.
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I love that idea.
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And Martha, my fiance, she s always like, man, I wish I would ve met you like 10 years ago.
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We would ve had so much fun like over these last 10, 15 years being together.
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And I keep saying to her, you know, I wouldn t have been ready for you.
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Because if I would ve met you 10 years ago, I would ve looked at you and I would ve not have had the same level of
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I don t know if you would call it attraction or just like curiosity to be in a relationship.
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Because my nervous system wasn t built for you.
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It wasn t built to feel safe and accepted for who I was.
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It wasn t.
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I still needed to learn how to regulate my nervous system, heal, reflect, and really go through a growth period emotionally,
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and physically, really, to feel familiar with safety.
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And feel familiar with peace, because I didn t have the familiar, I didn t understand that that was safe.
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No, and when you re in that, I think for a lot of people, especially those who are playing the field and experiencing different people and whatever, there is a kind of, being single is this dopaminergenic cycle.
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Yes.
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and it s hard to get off that cycle because you re kind of wired for it now.
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You re wired for instant gratification, you re wired for variety and excitement and what next and the dramas of the first few weeks of knowing someone and the romance of like just figuring each other out and all of that is like and texts and phone buzzing and you know this and that and this person s now called and it s like a
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frantic sort of dopamine engine that you get stuck in and at a certain point you have to come to value something else more because otherwise, and this happens of course,
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routinely is people get locked into that cycle.
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And it was clear to me at a certain point, oh, this happiness doesn t lie here for me.
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Anxiety lies here for me.
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Uncertainty.
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Uncertainty is having an effect on the way I see the world or myself or this is not, this is not gonna serve me long term.
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But that doesn t, just because you realize that,
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It doesn t mean that you immediately have an appreciation of what the other thing is, or that you even know what it looks like, or what package it comes in, or you don t know any of those things.
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And so, you know, there s a whole chapter I wrote in this book that I m really insanely proud of because I think it s so on the money of what s happening for so many people.
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It s called Never Satisfied.
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And that I think is the feeling.
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I explain the steps of why it is we struggle to be satisfied.
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And the next chapter is how to rewire your brain so that you can actually rewire yourself for happiness.
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Because I know for a long time I was that never satisfied.
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In relationships or just?
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Yeah, my love life.
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I think in life too, right?
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But in my love life, I was just chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing.
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Dopamine, dopamine.
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I m not happy.
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I need to get out of this relationship.
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I m single dopamine dopamine.
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I m not happy here.
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I knew you know, like There must be some perfect person who s gonna make me feel differently about this whole thing and I m gonna feel different when I meet that person and That person didn t come because it wasn t really about that.
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Something was going on with me.
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I was I was in that cycle and
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It, and it, the other thing that is available to you is so I don t want to, this isn t a, this isn t a lecture on whether someone should be single or in a relationship.
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So I don t want to become that person, but I, what is so amazing about a healthy relationship is not available to you.
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until you come to value something different.
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It s like someone who s been used to doing drugs every day.
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And then the day that you get them to quit drugs, you sit them outside their house in front of a beautiful field, and you say, appreciate the sunset.
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Yeah, there s no dopamine rush anymore.
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A sunset is a mate, like a sunset is an awe-inspiring moment.
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unbelievable thing.
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It s something that is mind-blowing.
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Why do we all go on holiday and everyone at the same time goes out onto the beach and watches the sunset?
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Because there s something stunning and magical about a sunset.
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But for the person who s been doing drugs every day,
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That s not the day you can appreciate a sunset.
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You are coming out of all of those feelings that you ve been addicted to and all of that instant gratification, dopamine.
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So it s about, again, it s nervous system stuff, right?
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It s retraining my nervous system.
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And this is some of the stuff we talk about in how to rewire your brain.
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You have to orient yourself towards a different goal.
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And in the beginning, you can t expect the new thing to feel like the old thing.
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Because it s not going to feel like the old thing.
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But the more you lean into the new thing, you develop an appreciation for how much better it actually feels.
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And that s like a kind of stunning and eye-opening realization
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And I feel really passionate about this because I see a lot of really unhappy people.
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I was one of them, by the way, who are stuck in those cycles.
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And I think there s a lot of people who get stuck in optimization cycles in their love life, where it s like, especially Taipei people,
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Not everyone does but a lot of people do where it s like I m trying to find the perfect thing and I m trying to and if someone s missing this thing I m going to optimize and go for another person who s like got all the good things about this person but and also that thing and it s like people don t work like that.
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You exchange one basket of ingredients for another basket of ingredients and you ll get new good stuff and new bad stuff and challenging stuff and
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It you I m a huge believer.
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I think the settling is a word that has has a really unfairly negative connotation and it shouldn t is something amazing about that word.
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You can change the meaning of of that depending on the word that goes after it.
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So if you say if you tell someone you have to settle for something that feels immediately negative.
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It s like settling down.
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Yeah, because I feel like I m being shortchanged.
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But if you say settling on something, that changes it because you, Lewis, settled on a particular business and brand.
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You re such a capable person.
9
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You could have done a hundred different things in this lifetime and you would have been a success at them.
9
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So how the hell do you decide which one you should do?
9
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You found one that scratched the itch in a bunch of different ways.
9
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It allowed you to be creative.
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It allowed you to broadcast, which is something you re really good at.
9
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It allowed you to connect, which is something you re really good at.
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It allowed you to harness all of these relationships, which is something you re really great at, is relationships.
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It allowed you to put to work your strategy mind.
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It allowed you to be competitive, which is something that s in your bones.
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And so this business, it ticked a lot of boxes for you.
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But it s not the only business that would have ticked boxes for you.
9
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There are other things you could have done that would have ticked boxes.
9
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But you settled on greatness.
9
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And you said, I m going to go all in on this, and I m going to keep going on this.
9
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And the thing that has made what you do so great, and what you have done is extraordinary.
9
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What you ve built, the audience you ve built, the platforms you ve built, the body of work you ve built, it s extraordinary.
9
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But it s not extraordinary because you found an extraordinary thing.
9
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you didn t find the word greatness and and like you know you just went i ve got the if you d have said to me like 15 years ago we didn t know each other then but when you started if you d have said to me matt i ve got the greatest idea i am gonna take the word greatness
9
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and I am gonna just own that word and build a brand out of it and do all of the, I would have been like, that s not an idea.
9
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You ve taken a common word in the English language.
9
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You know what I mean?
9
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But that s not what s made this extraordinary.
9
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What s made this extraordinary is that you have settled on it and you take this thing to another level every year.
9
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And people who are looking at you going there s you ve got a lot of I ve walked with you in the street in Vegas on holiday in places on when we ve traveled you have people coming up to you everywhere you go.
9
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And you re a hero to so many people and so many people want to create what you ve created or want to be where you are.
9
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But you didn t start with this really special thing.
9
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You spent year after year after year making a really special thing.
9
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And every year I see you take the same core thing and stick with it again.
9
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Not go, you know what, now what I really wanna do is, now I really wanna do real estate.
9
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Yeah, I m over this, I m gonna move on to something greater.
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Yeah, it s not, that s not it for you.
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You re like, I m gonna make this thing even better.
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And deeper.
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I think that s how people should approach relationships.
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And that s my point, is that you settle, when the thing that makes a relationship the greatest relationship of your life is that you take someone who ticks the boxes for you.
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And that s the starting point.
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But then, based on the values you each bring, and I think there are some very powerful values for a relationship, like being growth-oriented, like teamwork, like loyalty, like prioritizing the vision of the relationship.
9
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I think when you take those things and you put those two people like that together, what they start with is not nearly as interesting as what they will create together.
9
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And you can only create that if you settle on a person.
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But you will never settle on a person as long as you are looking for the perfect person as a starting point.
9
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Because the perfect relationship doesn t exist at the beginning.
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But the perfect relationship for you can exist
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over time if you settle on someone and you resolve to make that relationship as good as it can possibly be.
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That s why I get so excited about my relationship because I m like, it s amazing right now.
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It s going to be even better in six months because we re building something together.
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Martha says that to me all the time.
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She s like, how do I love you even more today than I did last week?
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And I think it s because we re both focused on growing ourselves individually and growing the relationship together.
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And I m sure there s going to be adversities and challenges we face, but us facing it together makes us even more connected and appreciate each other even more.
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And there s something even fun about that.
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When you know you re an amazing team, there s even something fun about knowing that there s going to be challenges and how you re going to solve those as a team because you re a killer team.
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Absolutely.
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Even that, there s something exciting about it.
10
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Absolutely.
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We almost have to pay attention to some of these ideas we have about love and relationships.
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You know, the way we use words like settling.
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Are you settling for someone or are you settling on someone?
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That will change.
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If you settle for someone, you ll become passive and resentful in that relationship.
10
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If you see it like you settled on someone, of any choice you could have made,
10
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You chose this person and because you chose it, you re going to lean into it and you re going to make it as great as it can possibly be.
10
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That relationship that will change the way you approach relationships.
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The same is true of the word commitment.
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This is amazing.
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This is such a fantastic example of the point I m making.
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If you look up, I think is an Apple dictionary.
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I don t know how it s reflected in the Oxford dictionary, but if you go on your Mac and you type in the word commitment, there are two different definitions that come up.
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One is a I think it reads and people can go and look for themselves and get the exact wording right but one of them says roughly a Obligation that restricts freedom of action Wow right now if you
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You give me someone that has that as their definition of commitment, and I ll show you someone who has a hard time ever being in a relationship.
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But there s another definition of commitment under that one.
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And it says commitment, dedication to a cause.
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Now, when you think of dedication to a cause, it creates a completely different energy in your body.
10
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I m dedicated to this cause.
10
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I ll fight for this cause.
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I ll do anything for this cause.
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There s something heroic about that.
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I m dedicated to the cause of our relationship, of our future, of our vision, of where we re going.
10
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There s something stunningly beautiful about that.
10
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Dedication to a cause, an obligation that restricts freedom.
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One is about shrinking your world, and the other one enlarges it.
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There are so many people out there struggling with the idea of committing, whether it s to a business, an idea, a path, a country, a person, a new sport.
10
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And your definitions around these words, the way you choose to see them is going to determine your ability to stay with something, to invest in something.
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And I think that s so fascinating.
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I really do.
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Yeah.
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This is big, man.
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There s so many more questions I wanna ask you, but I want people to get the book, because I know you re gonna answer a lot of these questions in here as well.
10
SPEAKER_00
Love life, how to raise your standards, find your person, and live happily no matter what.
10
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So make sure you guys get a few copies.
10
SPEAKER_00
If you have a friend who s been struggling in relationships, get them a copy as well.
10
SPEAKER_00
If you know someone that just went through a breakup, get them a copy.
10
SPEAKER_00
If you know someone who s in a healthy relationship, get them a copy so they can still use these tools to improve their relationship as well.
10
SPEAKER_00
Love Life.
10
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Where can they go and get this copy?
10
SPEAKER_00
Is there a way we can get some extra goodies or bonuses or should we just go on Amazon?
10
SPEAKER_00
Where should we go?
10
SPEAKER_01
You can definitely get it from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever you get your books, but we actually have a website lovelifebook.com and the advantage of getting a copy through that website is
10
SPEAKER_01
We have something really, really special going on right now.
10
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On the 4th of May, I m doing a worldwide live event and it s going to be a very, very special event.
10
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It s the sort of event that if we just ran this as a normal event, it would cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
10
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This is my first book in 10 years.
10
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It s a huge celebration for me and for my team.
10
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It s a big moment.
10
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It s a big milestone.
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I ve poured my heart and soul into this.
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I think people who read it are going to see there s a lot more vulnerability for me in this book.
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You re a completely different person.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and I tell those stories in the book in a way that I ve never told them on YouTube or anywhere else.
10
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So this is a big celebration for us and as a result we wanted to do something very special for everyone who gets a copy of this book and supports us and supports themselves or someone they love in the process.
10
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So every single person who gets a copy of the book,
10
SPEAKER_01
When you go through lovelifebook.com, you ll see, you can order a copy of the book and then you can literally take your confirmation number on your receipt, wherever you got it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Even if it s from a regular bookstore and not Amazon, you can take your confirmation number, put it in on the website and that confirmation number becomes your free ticket to the worldwide event that I m doing online on May the 4th.
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SPEAKER_00
There you go.
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SPEAKER_00
so yeah that s going to be a great accompaniment to the book is to actually spend this day with us lovelifebook.com so they ll get they ll get that event for free by getting a copy of the book exactly there s so many great uh concepts in here again how to rewire your brain um
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I love the chapter in here about if you know you want to leave but you don t know how to leave, it teaches people how to get out of a relationship the right way.
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Yeah, there s a lot of talk in there.
10
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That s a big chapter on anyone who s in a toxic, abusive, or narcissistic relationship.
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SPEAKER_01
And you can apply that, by the way, across the board, not just to your love life, but if there s family relationships that you re struggling with and you don t know what to do about them, that s a very hard-hitting
10
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chapter, there s chapters on confidence in there, which is why this has mass appeal.
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I want to say this just to, just to, because I think it s important for people to hear.
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I have come to believe that there are three relationships we are all in in life.
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One is our relationship with other people.
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The second is our relationship with ourselves.
10
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And the third is our relationship with life itself.
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And these are three relationships that you can t get out of.
10
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For as long as you re here on this planet, you are in these three relationships.
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And these relationships, the quality of them, will determine your happiness in this world.
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So we better focus on those relationships.
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And that s, in many ways, this book is designed not just to be a book for people who are looking to find love, but a book for people who are looking to improve those relationships.
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And I talk about my own journey.
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Even I talk about some times where I fell out of love with life because I was, you know, handed some difficult cards along the way.
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Struggled and you know, maybe we could talk about it on another episode but you know was in a very dark place and a very depressed place and I talk in the book about how I improved the tools that I used to improve my relationship with life in the hardest times of my life and that you know that That s why the double meaning in the title of this book is so important to me.
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This isn t just about your love life It s about your love for life
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And it s why that last line, you know, how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what was really, really important to me.
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So don t think this is just a book about finding love.
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This is a, I believe that this is a book that will get passed around for people who are struggling with all sorts of things in their lives.
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That s cool, man.
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And again, if you don t have a good relationship with life, you re probably not going to have a good relationship with yourself.
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And if you don t have a good relationship with yourself, how are you going to find someone that you can actually love and appreciate without being jaded on them trying to hurt you in some way?
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So you need to have a healthy relationship on all three areas, or those first two at least, if you want to have a healthy relationship with someone else and trusting them in your life and opening your heart to them.
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I want everyone to get the book, lovelifebook.com to get that special event with Matthew Hussey.
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We re going to do another episode here in a moment, so I want people to check out part two, a separate episode.
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Make sure to subscribe so you can watch this and listen to this as well for part two coming up here soon.
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I m going to ask you some of those questions you just talked about there.
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But to wrap up this interview, I wanted to ask you about, I ve asked you a bunch of questions at the end before, you ve been on this show many times, but I want to ask you a question about
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If you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love.
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Let s get out my pen.
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If you could give your 18-year-old self three pieces of advice about love, knowing everything you know now from being in multiple different relationships, going through breakups, being in challenging situations in love, being single and dating a bunch of people over the years,
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You know now being married if you could give your 18 year old self three pieces of advice about love That you wish you would have known then that you know now, what would those three things be?
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Okay, I think I got it Three on the spot is hard by the way if you imagine I got it that 18 year old Matthew sitting in front of you and
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I just want to find love and I just want to, I just want to feel loved and I want to find a great, I want to have a family and be married one day.
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And you get to sit in front of him with all the wisdom that you have now and all the heartache and all the pain and all the love that you ve experienced.
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What are you going to say to your younger self?
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Um, I think the first thing I would say is that it s,
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It s not, this is going to sound cheesy, but I, I, I mean, I really mean it.
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I would start by saying it s not your fault that you are the way you are, that these things that you think, uh, are a sign that you re broken, whether it s your shyness or your anxiety or feeling like you re, uh,
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you know, terrified of rejection or that you re not good enough.
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You know, these things are either, they ve either been part of you from the beginning or they are a response to things that have happened in your life.
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You know, I m not saying everything is nurture.
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Some of it is just our DNA, right?
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Our brain.
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But either way,
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you know these things that you keep judging yourself for and telling yourself that you re broken for they they deserve compassion because they re not you didn t choose them you know
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And the reason I think that s important from a love life context is because what I lacked for so much of my life was self-compassion.
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I thought I wasn t good enough.
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I thought that, you know, deep down I was shameful.
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I was ugly.
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Unlovable yeah, I was bad Like not good person.
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Mm-hmm.
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You know, I was just yeah, like just not you know, like if people really knew who I was I they would think I was disgusting and pathetic and weak and Unlovable
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And I m not saying all of this was always conscious, but it was on some level this must have been how I was feeling because I was really deeply afraid to be seen.
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Yes.
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And so I would have said it s okay, that you re okay.
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The way you are, it s not because you re broken or that you made choices to be there, it s that you re responding to something.
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And that would give me self-compassion.
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And the second thing I would say to myself is share those things.
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Now, I don t know how well it would have gone for me at 18 to share those things with, with girls my age.
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But in general, I would have said as a lesson for life, share those things because that everyone else is also in all the ways you fear you re broken.
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Everyone else is too.
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And if you can share that with other people, you, that is going to be your ultimate power.
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I spent my twenties, Lewis.
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I was coaching people and I was lucky enough like you to be quite known, relatively speaking.
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As a 25-year-old, I made a bit of a name for myself and a lot of people knew who I was.
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And I never really allowed myself to truly just be myself because I was trying to be something else.
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I was trying to like be impressive.
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And these days, I m much more focused on connecting with people.
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You and I would never have had this interview 10 years ago.
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I m sure the first interview we did together was strong because it s fun sometimes when someone is being impressive, right?
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We get to watch someone
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you know, do their thing.
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But this now, this wouldn t happen 10 years ago because I wasn t sharing myself in that way.
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So I would say share yourself because that s the route to real connection, real friendships, real love.
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And then the third thing I would say to myself is,
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have compassion for these flaws in other people because, you know, I spent way too much of my life writing people off or judging people for things that they were struggling with, you know, and things I didn t like about the way they did this or that or the way that insecurity showed up or the way
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And, and, oh, like, honestly, man, I look back on it now and I m like, they were me.
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They were me.
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Like, I, I, they only didn t know.
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that that was me because I wasn t being vulnerable with them.
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I didn t even offer them the ability to have compassion with my deeper flaws or my insecurities or my vulnerabilities because I never shared them.
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You didn t reveal them.
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No, because I judged those things in myself.
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And when you judge them in yourself, you judge them in other people.
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And the more in my life I ve developed space for myself and who I am, the more compassionate I ve become with myself.
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The more compassionate I ve become with other people that greater my capacity to love other people for who they really are is and I I think that s such a There s such a big point to me
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You know, one of the comments that I read a lot in self-development circles is like, it s really hard to meet someone when you ve upped your game in life and you now are someone who, you know, is growth oriented and you re doing this and you re doing that and whatever.
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And it s like your pull shrinks because you re just so awesome and everyone else sucks.
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You re so cautious and everyone else is unconscious.
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That s basically sort of the subtext is that why is it so hard now that everyone sucks and I m great?
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And I have to say I have found a slightly different experience to be true.
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I have found it easier to love other people the more that I have learned to love myself and the more compassion I ve developed for my own.
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complexities and the things that make me a difficult and complicated and somewhat damaged and whatever person.
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It s made me able to love other people more because now that I m making more space for myself, I also make space for the way that other people are and the things that
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Those things on the surface that are easy to judge that the things that the deeper wounds that those things represent that they re struggling with it makes me emotional as I say it because I think that that s
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I have found it easier to love, and I think that having that compassion for yourself breeds compassion for other people.
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So I would say stop judging other people so much, and have compassion for who they are, because they re you.
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This is beautiful, man.
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Make sure you guys get a copy of the book, lovelifebook.com.
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Check it out.
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Matthew Ozzie.
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Thanks, brother.
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Appreciate you, man.
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on apple podcast.
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If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend, leave us a review over on Apple podcast, and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis house.
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I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.
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And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it
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delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.