#765 - Matthew Hussey - Why Is Love So Hard To Find In The Modern World?
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Hello, everybody, welcome back to the show. My god is Matthew hui is the world's number one dating coach, a youtube, a public speaker and an author. Navigating modern love can feel like solving an impossible puzzle, but in truth, there are specific skills and tips that can elevate your romantic life.

Matthew has spent fifteen years coaching millions of men and women through their relationship struggles, and today we get these best insights. Expect to learn if dating coaches are actually any easier to date, whether love should happen naturally, or if we need to work at IT, how you can realize the behaviors that are making you miserable, why being single is so hard for many people. The biggest problem with avoiders, how to get Better at having hard conversations and much more.

In other news, I have been talking about some exciting stuff that we did a couple of weeks ago here in Austin, the most expensive, biggest, most technically complex cinema ot that we ve ever done with for huge guests. And the first clip from that goes live tomorrow. We filmed a huge behind the scenes vlog.

We'll tell you everything that you need to know. I'm really, really excited. I haven't been this fired up to announce anything ever before and I really hope that IT comes across and is as cool and um ground breaking as I wanted to be.

And if not, I will be a good story. So check out the youtube on tuesday or just look at instagram. I'm sure that you won. Be able to cape sleep isn't just about how long you rest, but how well your body stays in its optimal temperature range throughout the night, which is where eight seat comes in.

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So give me a go. Right now, you can download the cfs guide to A I and machine learning at net sweet dot com flash modern. That's net sweet dot com flash modern. If you wanting to read more, you probably want some good box to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not boy you and make you feel despondent at the fact you can only get through half a page without bowing out.

And that is why I made the modern wisdom reading list, a list of one hundred of the best books, the most interesting impact, ful and entertaining that i've ever found, fiction and non fiction, real life stories. There's a description about why I like IT, and there's links to go by IT, and it's completely free. You can get IT right now by going to Chris will x dot com slash books that Chris will x 点 com sush books。 But now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome mcc.

Do you think that dating coaches .

are any easier to date? God, I is funny. I used to. I've been called a date in coach so many times in my life. I now opt for other titles because the title alone is something I tried steer away from. But I, no, I do A, I, I know that for me, the first chapter of this book is really dispelling the idea and you myth .

that you were a competent data.

Yeah, I wanted to take myself voluntary off that pedestal anyone had ever put me on that I must have been a great guy to date as any kind of a, whether there was a date in coach people called me, or a relationship coach or love coach. I am, I think is one of the great chAllenges when you when you talk about an area is, you know, you're probably gone to trip up in that area at some point, and it's gonna a real existential kind of test of, you know, what you do and whether you you you know the impostor syndrome you may feel in what you do and whether you feel like you really are the complete package in everything you talk about.

And I know you know was a very weird thing for me because I I would have people come up to me and I am married because of you or I mean amazing relationship because of this and and for a long time, I hadn't I hadn't found that for myself. And not only had I not found IT for myself, but I think I didn't I didn't always date in particularly healthy ways. So you know, that's that's tough.

I was on stage in new york in a live event, and there was a woman who stood up to ask a question, I mean, bear man, I would like, this is over a thousand people in this room, a big theatre. And a woman stood up and asked a question, I can't remember what he asked, but I in my answer, I eluded to the fact that I was single. I said, you know, I I get you saying i'm single to, in this part, being single hard. And someone in the audience to shout IT out, why you single?

How long have you got?

And then another person in the audience, I was like, haha, that's okay. Like i'm going to keep going. And then another person in the audience show about why you single. And then like, I just started to creep around the audience in, like, almost in unison. And the audience, like, we're chanting, like why you single I couldn't get forward.

I couldn't get passed IT, as I had to like, is a very weird moment for me, is a very meta moment, standing on stage in new york, helping people who wanted to find love, who are questioning why I hadn't found love. So, you know, it's a tRicky, it's a tRicky thing. But I also on the other side of IT, some of the smart is wise as people I know and the people who have the most to coach about love, the people that just got divorced know. And theyve been they're been in a tultul relationship for the last ten years or they've been, you know just left the relationship with someone incredibly abusive and arctic stic and those of some of the people that you need to hear from when you're venturing out into the world of love. I have a friend .

who's a power lifter in the U. K. Holds a bunch of different records.

And he said, I always want to learn how to bench from a guy who's got long arms. The point being, the lonely arms are the harder IT is to bend. Oh, that's good.

So another friend Williams talks about, he says, research is research. He happens to be the number one researcher of in cells on the planet. He has to make the distinction between an inner ell researcher and a researcher of in cells is like I, I research inside that.

But you know, all of the evolutionary psychology guys, i'm friends with everyone that's into human nature, dating, meeting, alist stuff, everyone's trying to find their path through. And yeah, you know, if you've gone through the fire, and the flames would IT make your insights any more legitimate if you'd breathe through some. From nineteen, I found a love of my life when I was a blab light like I.

I didn't think so. Now I, I think we have to, you, you have, you have to make a lot of mistakes other people are making. You, I ve made so many the mistakes that I advise against making, and you know, and looked at the peril of being anyone who who is obnoxious enough to stand up and give advice.

or will be criminalized by this standard, they are telling other people to avoid yeah.

you probably deserve IT you know like it's like you probably if you're onna be any kind of advice giver and put yourself in that position, then it's natural you're gonna be held to a really high standard. And I you know, I think what what I always tried to do, because I was on youtube from nineteen on thirty six. Now I keeps saying on thirty seven.

I don't know why I and thirty six as well, we need to hold onto the years of our thirty as much as possible.

Day six, still for a few months. But I am, you know, when I started out, I always felt like the one thing I wanted is if someone came up to me on the street and met me, they wouldn't be surprised. There would be nothing about the me that they met that would feel odds with the me that the'd seen on youtube ball or on T, V, or anywhere else.

But, and and I think I achieved that, but I still didn't. When I look back now, my utter lack of vulnerability in my twenties, yeah, it's shocking to me. In a way, it's not shocking because so almost expected, but life is so much Better. Now, I like, I can sit here with you, and I feel like, and this book is a reflection of that. M, P, just much more myself.

Did the box awesome? I told you this before we started. You have put so much to be yourself into there.

IT is hanging around the it's so good. It's so good. It's it's open and vulnerable. And IT is it's like personal development through the lens of relationships.

So much of IT is about patterns and and how we hide away from emotions and framed through making up and breaking up in love. But it's actually just about human nature. It's really, really good.

I highly advise everyone to go to listen to this. One of the things that you say rado early on as well is that are dating patterns are often in a way to save us from sitting and feeling our emotions. You know, we we do something uncomfortable, rises inside of us.

And then we climb a after a partner that isn't good for us. So we rush into a relationship that's going to be bad for us. So we pull away from somebody that makes us feel like, or maybe I am with something you know, so much of what we do with other people is the tip of the sphere of what's happening internally. And what we use that is to tize ourselves away from that.

So much I I relate to that so much. I you know we when we do that IT, we're liability to ourselves because we end up hurting ourselves a lot because we go through a lot of you know, you end up going through a lot of heart break yourself and you end up whether and you couldn't go through heart break by being left, and you can also go through create hot break for yourself by leaving.

And it's so I I did a lot of that and and then you hurt other people. I hurt other people and and i'm not proud of those moments. And is man confused? People are really dangerous.

They heard a lot of people, people who don't know what they want. People have figured out their own stuff. You know, they can be really, they can be very damaging people. And you, I I know there were so much of what I was dealing with, I oed to being incapable of just sitting with my feelings, being incapable of even really being able to a truly access my savings. Like guy, I didn't you know IT took IT took therapy.

I think really for me to get to a point where I could name what I was even feeling half the time, because I couldn't even know that, you know, I would, sometimes I would go through tremendous skill for having broken up with somebody that that would kill me. I would, I would IT would just stay off the day. I would be way at me. I know it's so much so that would be like, I never wanted do this again.

Like, I never wanna get involved with someone again because I can't take hurting someone and and I remember a therapy once saying to me your the guilt that you feel it's not that you don't feel guilty but gill is an is an easier emotion than the real emotion you feel and I was like, what's the real emotion I feel and he was like, well, a big part of what you feel. The disappointment that you know, you is something you wanna find and you're struggling to find IT. And it's did you feel disappointed? You know you feel like an an an disappoints of really hard emotion, right?

When you feel like there's something you deeply want and you don't necessarily know how to find IT, or do you don't know why you don't seem to be satisfied or why you don't seem to be happy, it's easier to focus on like the guilt I feel for hurting someone else in your own personal disappointment at why am I struggling, why am I not happy, and is why I I wrote a chapter in the book. Could never satisfied because I I could relate to that feeling of being like what's was going on with me that I don't I have people around me that seem really content in this area of their lives, and they seem to kinder glide through. Yep, and I can't seem to find peace here.

I, you know, am neither being her or doing the hering, but i'm not I don't feel in a place of contentment. And that's a scary place to be because you like then you start to think you're broken. Like I can I learn a how relationships .

of for other people, happy, stable relationships of for other people. Yeah for some reason i'm a sort of whatever the opposite of one of those wheedle web things that we push in IT doesn't fall down unlike the thing that doesn't get pushed. But IT always falls down. Yes, why why do you think so many people fly flap between comfortable luke warm relationships and inspiring unrequited ones?

I I don't know that we've necessarily defined what the right kind of thing is. So we keep chasing the wrong thing. And you know so much of that I I truly believe is in our nervous system.

And IT seems what is familiar. And for a law of us. Peaceful, doesn't feel very familiar IT feels strange. You can even feel boring.

You know, you just got this season IT, but then you meet someone and it's like like that feeling that crazed in attraction and crazy chemistry. You think this is IT like this is important. And when measuring the importance of IT by the intensity .

of we're feeling .

right now is absolutely confused about what that signal is. And you know we IT often ends up getting us into really unhealthy situations and chasing people that aren't right for us or don't treat us very well. Um you know, I again, I say this as someone who has done those things.

I say this is someone who you know to remember a relationship, but I completely lost myself. China, please, someone else trying to hold on. China, you know, be enough and and and and really as a result, just losing myself.

And and I I can also relate to the other situation of being feeling like where I was very much in the driver's seat, but in a way that I felt like this can't be the thing. And IT IT really took until Audrey know I wrote this book. This was not a book written by a married person.

This was a book written by first a single person. So there are many pages in this book. They were written by me, single. Uh, then having met this person, then navigating my way through the early dating of all of that and and i've the final edit of this I did on my honeymoon, just like a really crazy art.

almost other biographical .

so crazy and it's why i'm so passionate about this because this is not just stuff that you know this has help me find piece the things in this book have helped me find peace in my love life, not just find my person, but find peace in my love life, which I think is is really, really important and um you know IT took me meeting orderly, my my now wife, to start to truly understand what healthy looked like.

And would you, with this relationship with her worked five years ago? Like what you ready for this relationship five years ago?

No, no.

I'm even talking about such a narrow window .

with talking five years ago. This is the funny thing, man. Like I almost did get in my own way in this relationship.

Like SHE helped me get out of my own way, but I almost did. Like I almost blew IT because IT just for me. I couldn't I couldn't see how valuable IT was in the first place because I was even open to that.

In that way, I was like, there was just a part of me that did not let her in. I was not very vulnerable. And when I did get vulnerable, I look out.

I remember moment very early when we were dying, and there was something that happened that may be jealous, and I did not approach this situation in a very productive way. And I came at IT from a place of, of course, I was insecure. That was really where I came from as I wasn't feeling secure in that moment and I felt like like I didn't trust either.

So was a combination of like, insecurity and I don't trust people, which is something i've had to work on in my life, because I trust did not come naturally to me. And that blend made me suddenly bring a version of myself that was not the best version of myself. And I was, you know, here's what was interesting.

First, he came at IT like someone would when you come at them like this, you like. But then SHE was like, he took a different approach somewhere in the argument, which probably, in my head, I was like, a five minute thing, probably have lasted about three hours. But somewhere in there SHE step back a bit. And I was like, look, I something about this is affected, you and I can see that, and I don't this lasting I wanna do like I don't wanna hurt you and I would never, you know do anything that that would be you know, something that would make you feel like this in a warranted why, I promise you um but the way you're bringing this to me, you can't do that like is this .

is so he is very capable of self regulation .

way in that moment I wasn't and SHE SHE regulated me and he showed this beautiful combination of, like it's not OK SHE had a standard. It's like it's not okay that you do this but are also I I I won't understand where that's coming from for you. So I understand you Better.

And I I wanted say this because I think it's going to be valuable to a lot of guys out there because I when I when I then got more vulnerable and I told her what I was feeling behind that, I then instantly got cold after i'd said IT like I was vulnerable with her about like, well, this is what I really made me feel like. Now I was an anger motor. I wasn't in like passive aggression mode.

Now I was in like, here's why I really got scared in that moment. And after i'd revealed why I really got scared in that moment, or what IT brought up for me, then there was a second wave of fear. Because I was, I had the association that now that you know that you're not gonna see me the same way anymore, like I could deal with, I could live with you sing me passive aggressive or distant or like the uni us forgetful whatever.

Like, yeah, I can't be bothered with this so I could live with that. But but now that you see this side of me, you're not gonna be attracted to me. And I had a reference point for that, because in a previous relationship I had actually sheed something that made me insecure with someone.

And I was met with my worst nightmare response. I had literally said to someone, you know about something that made me insecure. And this person said to me, that's really unattractive.

And IT crushed me. IT crushed me. And I remember thinking to myself like, I was living with my friend at the time.

And I remember like going over to his in the house and being like my worst nightman just happened. I was so afraid that if I said this thing, I would looked at differently. I took the chance and and the words left this person's mouth.

I just find that really unattractive and I like from brief moment I was like, i'm never doing that again. That is the last time I show that kind of vulnerability and and what I perceived to be weakness and what I obviously clearly felt shame around myself. And I was ready judging myself for IT, so I was terrify.

I didn't love myself for that, so I was afraid. If I say IT to you, you're, you're definitely not going to think this is attractive. And not only you not gonna think is attractive, is gonna change how you look at me forever? And that's .

all my .

right. I, like all of that, came up when I was with ordering that moment. And SHE SHE did the same thing.

He has done our entire relationship, which is I said to her he was like, why being cold? Like, she's like, what now? Why have you gone cold? Like, what's going on now? You know, like, you know, like, and I had SHE had to drag out of me that the reason I now cold is because I now scared that now that i've said that, you're going to look at me differently.

And now i'm being distant as a result and putting my god up and he was like you, I promise you like this just for me, getting to know you Better is always so enjoyable for me. I love getting to know you Better, and I feel like I know you more now. And IT doesn't change me seeing you in all of the ways I already see you. That just means I understand you Better and i've context for you and has been the story of our relationship and has been a very healing experience for me because I and IT made me, you know, I can really see how there are people that get the wrong message at a certain point in their life. And if they never learn a Better message, IT can be the thing that closes .

them down the way the world, right? That's the like, the laws of physics of their system. And it's so interesting. I once heard this idea about meditation.

So anyone who has ever trying to meditate will know this if the sufficiently introspective, whichever on this, listening to this is way too introspective. And they were talking about the, and the thought arises. Then he noticed the thought. The thought goes away. And then you have the thought, i'm the sort of person that noticed is my thoughts and and then you have the thought, oh my god, i'm the sort of person that thinks i'm the sort of person that notices the thought. Then the thought goes away.

Is this infinite regress of like self lagus tion as you sort of warbled between wanting to become Better and then long basting yourself for being so self about being Better, and the long basting yourself about making yourself feel ashamed and guilty about being a sort of person. All in all and all, one of my favor passages in the book, you have this line about self compassion. You say, I trigger to believe i'm worthy of moments of joy, peace, without first putting myself through a brutal schedule, monitoring my productivity levels down to the minute.

Perhaps some people apply this on your cookie mindset in ways that lead to healthier achievements, not me. Mine is a mutation, whether joy and self compassion are regularly outlaid by an internal type who decide when i've been flogged in nerve one, just on on where to collapse. A voice inside says, okay, give him half an hour of peace before bed, but make sure he knows will start again, brighten early in the morning. So interesting. Our past conditioning makes us who we are, but IT also sets the bar for what we believe that we deserve .

moving forward. Yeah, man, it's all i've really ever know. Was being feeling guilty that you weren't doing enough or feeling guilty that you we're working hard enough or you know that you were sitting around doing not if you were sitting around doing not a growing up if you SAT around doing nothing like there was like .

a one know .

one of the phrases was like, they are going to get the baby a new bond. I don't know. They did.

That was north, most london fucking almy this, you can never get the baby new bond.

Now, that was literally like, that was a phrase from my child. I remember that that phrase, the idea that like this isn't useful. This isn't productive. This isn't like, I think that that stuck with me in a lot of ways. And i'm still, i'm still learning how to we will get .

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Insight isn't ready to do with love at all. It's an insight about our inability to not permanently be improving and sit with growth as supposed to just allowing ourselves to enjoy things. And i've got this idea I thought about this a good bit over the last few years.

If you're not particularly happy with the person that you are, self improvement and personal growth offer a very unique kind of solution to IT. But I like it's a phantom solution because what IT says is, yeah, you might not be happy with yourself now, but look at how quickly you're improving tomorrow. You might be worthy of love.

You don't feel like the world is gna give you love our acceptance or praise or like you're enough for you're guilty and ashamed about the things that you want like who dares want what you want, like you just put your nose on the fucking ground stone and keep going. And it's it's a way of not having to sit with emotion. It's a way of not having to sit with the things that are feeling because you think, well, if i'm moving so quickly, if i'm improving so fast, IT doesn't matter that I don't like me right now because tomorrow me might be sufficiently acceptable. And been reading a lot a land about on recently and he's got this line where he says you're suffering not because you deserve to suffer but because you've become far too familiar with the the feeling of suffering.

Um that's .

good and it's it's true it's true. I think a lot of people that that you know anxiety comes easily, self criticism comes easily. A lack of self belief comes easily um fear comes easily. All of those things are just home base. So it's not that you don't feel emotion, it's just that you have a very narrow band of emotions you are prepared to .

and what comes easiest for you.

Guilt guilt really, really good. Like guilt probably the probably the number one I think um and just you should be doing more. This isn't enough.

You should be Better. You should have done things in a different way. And even if you have had a Victory, that Victory itself isn't enough. There is there is more to be done. There is always more to be done.

Yeah, ah, I relate to that. I got to. I think I got to twenty seven when like IT started just hitting a wall and I was like some I I won't I didn't fix IT that year. Don't get me wrong as like many years of slow car crash. But like that was the moment where I realized i'm in a bit of trouble here because it's not none of IT seems to unite.

I've been running, running, running for so long and I and I told myself like because I you know, I came out of a kind of very financially unstable situation, family was, and I told myself, if I get if I get us out of that, then you know, will be in a good place and will be in peace time, and then we will feel good and will be a different, different time. And the piece time just never came for me. I never got to a point where i'd, like, done enough for, made everyone safe enough that I felt like peace time is like having a wartime president that doesn't know what to do now that there's no war to fight is like and and that for me was a really scary, a really scary place to be.

Because I like something. I I remember thinking something is really wrong with me. I can. I had a very, a real kind of sense of internal panic, which is a very chAllenging thing to have when you working so many people.

when you know together and giving other people advice, who the fuck is this guy giving everyone advice? When is in a detective of his mind is just a wsa.

and is I kind of them. Yeah, I feel sorry sometimes for people who oh, and I say this knowing for well that I fit into this category. But I feel sorry for people who step into wanting to know IT all too fast because you don't leave yourself room too to be a student and to just be someone who's growing and figuring out. And I and I I don't think I left myself that room .

and like the grouse curse in a way IT is.

And I I had to so much of what I det with, I, I, I dealt with so shamefully and in private, because I felt that IT was an OK for me to have those kinds of chAllenges. And I I Carry .

their minds, the person that .

you a hundred percent, I I Carried a lot of shame around that. And you know, I I think those moments are actually very beautiful because you get you get the chance to like, sort of you, you know, you get humbled. And from that humility, you get to say, okay, something about what i'm doing is broken.

I am not. I am gonna have to find new tools here, because this taipei, i'm gna out, run a problem. I'm gonna solve this.

I'm gonna make money. I'm going to do this. And, you know, those toes down, they're not working.

And so IT forces you into a different place. And I and I see a lot of I see a lot of men. Feeling like that, that's gonna be the thing. Like if they can do that, if they can achieve that, that's gonna be the thing. And and I have compassion for that because i've done the same thing. So it's not I don't look at IT with any sense of life this you know that so silly like it's it's but you know at a certain point, I don't know. I realised for myself that internally something had to, something had to shift and I needed to be capable of having a different amount of self compassion then I was giving to myself, will think.

What is more likely that your internal pathology person who wants to be successful is going to be fixed by an amount of success? Like is that really the thing? Because is IT about the lack of success? This is IT about the world not recognizing your brilliance.

Is that really what IT is? Or is IT, if you would, when you sit in, sort of wait with IT? Is that something else? Will smith, in his memoirs, he said, um when I was broken, miserable, I had hope, but when I was riches and miserable, there was nothing left and it's like, yeah, yeah and and unfortunate this is there a few lessons I think you literally cannot learn unless you learn them yourself.

You know, you can hear the story a million times yeah but not for me, not for me once once i've got the house and once i've got the car, and once i've got the financial security, and once i've respected by the world, all of these things, one of those things are lined up. Yeah, these guys, you know, they said he didn't work for them. But really, I mean, how doesn't IT work? Because your the chAllenges that you was a person who doesn't feel like they've achieved what they want to yet in the world, a soul from center.

So you think, well, how couldn't IT be like this so evident that this, I want to be the adoration of the crowd and in front of a thousand people and, you know, looking up to me, like i'm some sort of massa of love. And how couldn't be that, of course, is that it's just IT just didn't work for him. He had, you know, unit in the time. I've been around some of the most wealthy, high status, well accomplished individuals on the planet. And IT is idiot all the way up, like no one.

no one knows .

what they are doing. No one knows what they doing. All the way up is a very verified strata of people, a very, very small number of people that have done the achievement thing and done the internal work thing, and actually comfortable with both.

But the achievement on its own does nothing. And there are tons and tons of people I know who haven't done the achievement thing but haven't done the internal work thing. And then just totally fine.

Well, that's IT that, you know, those have become some of my greatest role models is, you know, sometimes people say to me like, you know, I want someone who's playing at my level when they are looking for love, right? And I like, what do you mean playing your level? Like what does that even mean? And it's usually some version of someone who's ambitions and success in the korea is on par with where I A or someone who similarly and it's like, I think that is such a boring way of looking at life because some of the people I know that are the best people to be around other people that never needed to do that in the first place. For a sense of significance, how many of us that have achieved a lot were driven by some disease.

fever, sufficiency, crippling self, and decide to by the world? yeah. And I know .

where we get there. We have the audacity to say, I want someone with the same disease. I not like I might start to realize that some of the people that didn't feel the need to do this that might be the healthiest thing about .

them yeah I mean that I think especially for the current world of internet dating, if we spoke about this last time, that uh, rising through economic status of women can make diff ult for them today in in, in summer gods. Women intend to want to that I would imagine you are here playing on my level much more from women than you do from guys ah and yeah, if you look at that, especially as a woman who's got that level of drive like you're even you are even more of a pathology among your sex, then the main equivalent right, that you're even more of an outlier. And to think I .

think that I I think it's it's a it's a dangerous thing to a one like one of my favorite things about my wife, Audrey, is that we lived very different lives leading up to meeting each other. And IT meant that we had very different things that we were bringing to the table for each other. Like he had done way more like internal finding peace type work than I had.

I had just been running, and she'd been finding a deeper level peace. And so the peace that he had found was, for me, a huge part of the energy that when I was around her, I was like, I was inspired by IT. I was like, she's figured something out that I haven't yeah and I wanted understand that that's like that for me that was like a SHE was a warrior in a different way, on a different level.

I was like, I could understand this. What what has SHE learned and and she's learned things from me, but that that idea that, like, you know, it's it's this kind of fetish ization of success and ambition and all of these things that we do that puts these people on a pedestal. Some of the people that inspire me the most, the people in my own family, I just very happy.

They just like they're just happy people and they I see them being happy at a level that some of my other friends, if they had that, they would be like it's on a given. And I I just think that that's so fascinating to me because it's you know the final chapter of the book. I could happy enough and I love that concept.

But the the unhappiest people I I know are they never enough people and is so many of them and I I like have to condition myself to stay out of that category because i'm capable being in that category. It's not that i'm above that. I just have the condition myself to get out of that because it's just .

never in isn't interesting. That is a lot of content on the internet at the moment about dating, mating dynamics and stuff. Almost no one ever talks about love like it's very rare if you look at the most popular channels on on youtube, even mind to to some extent IT IT is quite sort of stereo transactional commercial value for value exchange.

That's what people are talking about. They're talking about IT in this sort of like performative, vely, autistic, like you give me the thing and I give you the thing in our values. Meat, like it's like it's A A currency of some kind.

And so really, do you actually talk about R N? Like how does this make you feel and what's the love between you two people? Like and I think I think that that is a conversation that's wildly missing from a lot of A A lot of this talk.

It's why I i've started talking in terms of finding love because I just you know for me, most people who genuinely, deeply want to find love, they don't really want a date, you know, they don't. They anna, find love wanted, you know, like when I was being more intentional in my love life is not like dating was the most appealing thing in the world to me. I don't i'm an introvert, don't want to leave the house most of the time.

So the idea that I have to go talk to a person in order to end up in a relationship with them is like, feels like an annoying step. But finding love is something we, I, I truly believe, pretty much all of us, one like we on the deep, deep human level, we want to find love. And and when you frame IT most, when you talk about dating, people like dating, I don't anna date, but when you talk about finding love is hard for people to say that's not something this important to me.

And the whole point of this book was to show people, even if you struggled for years and years in this area, even if IT feels like nothing's working, or if IT feels like what you are trying to find is eluding you, what is a Better path to finding love? How do you do love Better? And that that's what really excites me now.

And I think that that goes much much that goes much deeper than strategies that gets into like what's really going on with us. What's going on with me that I keep getting attracted to this kind of person that is chaotic was going on with me that I keep chasing these people that aren't really investing in me or that make me feel really unsure of myself. Why do I find someone more attractive when they don't text me back than when they do what's what's going on there and that those have become the fascinate and questions for me and and it's not our reality.

The one we've experienced our whole life is really just, it's just our reality. It's not, it's not reality itself. And I I realized this more and more in my life, where I would just look at people who experienced life differently than me and go, what what are they doing or thinking that is different from the way i'm doing IT or thinking about IT that means they have a different solve.

Like I have a whole chapter in this book called um these two chapters that live together. There are two of my favorite chapters in the book. One is called never satisfied, and the other one is called how to reward your brain.

And there's a there's a part of the chats are never satisfied, where I talk about the reasons why we keep getting drawn to things that hurts. what. For one, it's what we know.

So if something is if I talk about like A A dolphin in captivity, right? Because we're very good. We have a culture right now, self development. Why is that? Anytime someones going towards something bad, we say you have a self worth problem.

But it's a bit that's a bit reductive because if a dolphin in captivity learns that in order to get fed, IT has to do back flips, jump through hopes and swim up to humans, and then IT gets released into the ocean and IT starts doing backflips for food in the ocean, or its start swimming up to fishing boats, we wouldn't say that that dolphin has a self worth problem. We would say the dolphin is just repeating what IT learned the tank. It's just familiar.

So big part of what we're doing is just familiar to us. And IT becomes, you know, that classic kind of self development idea that the race car drivers is, you know, mario and judge said, if the key to raise call driving is don't look at the wall, your your car goes away, your eyes go. And when we realize that whatever is whatever we've come to, expectation of life becomes our war.

IT becomes the thing we keep driving into because IT is what we know. I, you know, I tell a story in the book about, I grew up with A. Shoud hood that wasn't, you know, like I worked in a nightclub from the age of thirteen. So like IT was my dad under a nightly b when I was a kid.

So that was like, not okay that for me to be doing that, but I was doing that and nice to experience a lot of like, you know, IT wasn't a IT like I don't anyone picturing like a nice nike club that wasn't like a this wasn't like a glamorous vegas style. This was just a roti rough club back in a local part of england. And IT was rough.

And you know, people would get in fights and they get throw now in nasty ways. And and I put me on edge, a law, especially a Young age, and and even, you know, my own family. I was of a interesting family, and, you know, around some things, and IT IT created a kind of hypervigiLance in me that really stayed with me.

I didn't really, I didn't really lose that. I never really felt safe. So for me going into a room, I was always scanning for threats.

I was always scanning for where's the trouble gonna come from and I remember being out with my two brothers. We were in a little tiny bar in japan and ah and my brothers are having a great time. They're chill.

One of them singing like hi yo on the carrio key machine and just like building out and carefree and I am like looking, you know, i'm like hypervigilant, i'm having fun but i'm also like constantly kind of a little bit on god I knows a personal, a guy, western guy who just kept staring at my brother nonstop and IT got to the point where I just, I create a whole story in my head and went up and confront with the guy. A guy had even done anything yet, but confront at the guy and IT instantly was, you know, like the bottle that came around and no, no, no, no. Like, fine.

But I remember my brother saying to me, what are you doing and make going? What would you mean? So what are you telling us? Like, you don't understand.

This is the whole face. My head was like, the sea Doris happened right now. You he was about him. Then this was gonna.

And you and I I remember thinking to myself, how do my brother survive when i'm not around be? Meanwhile, by the way, my brothers are about bigger than me. One of them six, three, the other ones, the ones six, two, the other six, four, both capable of taking care of themselves.

But I in my mind, I was like, how are they not constantly getting in trouble when i'm not around? But is because that for me, that trouble is my wall. And everywhere I go I would like, look for where's the where's the potential problem? Where's the trouble coming from? And they weren't looking for that.

You and it's not the troubles is not around. It's not the bad characters on around, but they're not focused on them. So those things don't find them.

They even looking eyes with those things, but i'm the one looking eyes because i'm the one looking for where is the throw yeah and and at the sad part about that, this is a really tragic part, is that the I am truly, I have zero interest in trouble. I all I want is a peaceful, lovely time with people I love is all I never want. But there's something so tragic about precipitating the exact thing that you want less than anything, which is a fight, contain aggravation.

And when you look at people's love lives, it's the same thing that everyone has their wall and keeps crashing into that same war. I keep dating people that cheat on me. I keep dating people who end up ghosting me. I keep dying people who end up being uh nci stic in their tendencies or or um who don't invest in me or take advantage of my good nature or you just you keep driving into that war and learn helping people to reprogram themselves away from that, I think is one of the most important .

things we can do still looking for partners that feel familiar, not nearly partners that feel loving yeah.

not once that will make you happy. How long as I feel comfortable and comfortable is confused with happiness, is not comfort, can be misery. But when you know your way around IT, there's something a you at least know that the territory and I think this is why I never, when I was coming up, I never used to understand fear of success.

I understood fear of failure, but I didn't intuitively understand what was meant by fear success. And these days i'm like, it's all just fear of the unknown. It's all just fear of being somewhere you're not comfortable.

It's it's actually the same thing. I've always had fear of success. I told myself I didn't like I I you know, fear of success is something I understand the truth. I always been afraid of success. Any time I step into a domain that's new to me, where things get a little bigger than i've experiences before or a little more likes or god, I immediately get uncomfortable because it's just unexplored terrain the same way that if you if you sink to the far down that's unexplored tern as well, you're like, this isn't me. I've never sunk this low before and you get afraid of that, but it's all just the main, you don't know.

And I think so much of life is, how can I make what is deeply unfamiliar to me, something that becomes home to me and and sit with IT for long enough that IT, that IT eases up. And so much of finding the right kind of love is that you will, you will find that there are certain aspects of healthy love. If you've been constantly gravitating towards unhealthy love, they'll be, or unhealthy attraction. They'll be aspects of IT that feel alien to you.

How do you become more comfortable with the aliens?

Well, first, connect with the pain that the other has brought you. I think it's really important is you don't have to believe something Better or more exists for you. You just have to know, I can never do that again.

And I always encourage people to to say to themselves, what was missing the last time you were with someone in an unhealthy dynamic? What was missing that made you miserable? And you might have been White knockings IT trying to clean on for dear life, trying to make IT work.

But i'm telling yourself, he is the most important thing in the world. And you die if you lost IT. But when you were in IT, what are you missing? That also made a hell to be in. And for a lot of people is, you know, let's say, I never felt safe with this person like I I constantly was made to feel like I wasn't good enough that I didn't match up that this person might be out the door any minute or I just constantly felt insecure because they just never, they never showed up the way I was showing up.

When you connect with hell, bad, that made you feel, hold on to that and take that with you, because you don't need self belief if you have necessity, if IT hurt that, if you don't need like IT. If I put a flame to your hand right now, you would not need self belief to take your hand away. You just do this.

I can keep my hand. There is gonna burn is the same in love, if in relationships, what has caused you so much pain that you can never be in a situation like that again? That's the starting point.

Make change necessary. He enough to get more confident, just might get necessary. And the next thing is decide the path that you actually want to be on. And one of the quick kest ways to decide the path you want to be on and figure out what was missing last time.

Okay, that's gonna have to be up there with the most important things I look for next time, no matter how sexy or fun or seductive or impressive or charismatic, whatever is someone is, if I don't find this quality of this value or this way of they interact with me, none of that matters. It's all irrelevant. It's worthless without that thing.

And you stay with that truth, even when IT feels uncomfortable. And and also, I believe you have to give you a nervous system time to adjust, because it's not, if you take a drug addict and on the day they quit, you ask them to sit and appreciate a sunset. It's gonna mean nothing to them.

It's gonna feel like them as boring thing in the world, because IT can't compare. How can the gorgeous beauty, the understate IT like, transcend an existential, connected or inspiring have a sunset compared to just this crazy high that someone was on yesterday? It's not the same thing. So a huge part of IT is telling ourselves it's not I I can't chase that thing in this thing because it's not the same feeling, is a different kind of feeling, is ultimately gonna much Better.

It's going to bring much more peace, much more happiness to be with a healthy person, to be in a place where you feel safe, to be in a place where you feel truly seen, to feel, in a place where you feel at home, to be with someone who accepts you. But IT for a while, your nervous system might not respond to that because it's so used to the the drug of the other thing. And that takes time for your body to adjust.

You've got to another quote, which I love, uh, my problem is not that my needs aren't getting met. My problem is that I have needs. All I need to do is get back to being grateful that I have this person, instead of having any expectations of them.

Forget feeling safe, secure, loved. You're just Lucy to be here. That's that familiar with suffering thing. Again, I get just it's just home base and the guilt that so many people have around having needs, having need.

Hum, I to have what you mean to have needs, you just, you do the thing right? You again, the working class british mentality may be the american one as well. Like you just show up, you do the crack on.

And I think that in a you that in in a way for so many people being being afraid to express our needs, IT can make us anxious. IT can also make us avoidance, right? Because if you don't trust yourself to communicate your needs, then like I A given example, I always struggled in relationships.

Communicate that like I might really like to have a few hours of reading time right now. And there was something that if I was on my own, I would do. But when I felt like I was responsible for somebody else's needs or their happiness, or I was supposed to be entertaining, I would feel like I wasn't OK for me to do that.

And the sad part about IT is I never even got, I never even gave someone a chance to support me in that way, because they may have been like. Absolutely yeah like let me you know, one of the things that beautiful about my relationship now is that my wife will say you'll anticipate those things because he knows me so she's like, hey, I felt you need some time this weekend to just do this so that and i'm like, I didn't even like this so nice. She's she's literally thinking about these things.

But in previous situations, I didn't even give someone the benefit of being able to support me because I was too afraid to really voice my needs because I thought deep down I was like, i'm not gonna enough if i'm not constantly this entertaining doing something showing up in some way. And I made myself very responsible for somebody else's feelings. And I also felt like this is getting even deeper.

But I felt like if I said I needed to do this, there would be some kind of consequence like there would be like, if you're going to do that for the next five hours, then i'm going to do this for the next three, yes. And like that would be abandoned for having asked for that. And so I and invoice IT. But what that meant was that you can very quickly see the trajectory between that and what looks like avoidance because you end up saying you I don't want a relationship because when you have a relationship, you just don't get to do anything you enjoy doing anymore.

So you made your own destiny. Yeah.

this the wall again, right? You you crash into the wall. You, because is what you knows. You end up, I had of a woman coached, and he was dating a guy that, by all accounts, had been great so far.

And then on a saturday, he got together with his friends during the daytime, little get together, his house, and he got really upset that he didn't invite her. And this was someone who had suffered with a lot of abandonment. So in that, brought up everything for her like he doesn't like me as much as I like him, you know, he's just playing around with me.

He doesn't want me as he doesn't. He's not proud of me, doesn't want me to be around his friends, all of that. So in the middle of the day, on the saturday, SHE texted him and he said, why didn't you invite me? But there was no intro to that text. Nothing is.

Why didn't you invite me? And he said, i'm so sorry out. You know, I hadn't seen these friends in a while. I was just really looking ford to hanging.

Can I call you later and he said, don't bother and the three days later, he still haven't cold and he was like, see, this is what happens. Like, I get like, you know, I just get hurt if I did, I just get hurt. Now, of course, you see, again, like he had SHE had looked for the wall, because if we can't find a world will create one.

And SHE create the war in her situation. I look SHE had a right to feel her, that SHE dot wasn't invited, and to express that to him, for them to have a conversation about that. But the way that he went about IT literally precipitated the thing that he was afraid of and confirmed IT.

And that's the that's the scary part. And that's why, like what is going on with people on the surface in their love lives often is so different, and in some cases, the complete opposite of what's really going on inside. And these are like these days.

I spent years helping people with, you know, strategy in their love lives these days. This is some of the stuff that like, interest me the most because it's so is so life changing when you start to realize these things about yourself. And I think people will read this book and they'll get a level of understanding about themselves and a level of compassion for themselves in that that they may be have never had before.

No, I I like he's he's a funny example. Like when I was a kid, I remember playing in the garden would like my brothers and a couple of friends of mine and I can't remember up in quest, but something upset me like some I think my mom came out, yelled at me, embarrass me in front of my friends. Something happened.

And I like storm of to my bedroom. And I stayed that in my mind, thinking that I was like some, like I, I was embarrassed and felt shame. And so I just was like, I wanna be in my cave and screw everybody.

I also felt like in someone else, puni shing, everybody for having, like, you know, hurt me in some way. Not that I ever wanted them to know that theyd hurt me, but and I shut myself in my room. And one by one, everyone came up and knocked on the door, was like that come down, like, come hang on.

My mom, my brothers, my friends, like everyone was sent up to, like, get me to come back down and have fun. Because everyone was having fun. I was just like punishing myself.

And then I I always remember my brothers came up and they said was with my friend alex. We're all gonna to alex is now we've just had to to sleep over our house the night before. We're now we gonna go to alex, his house.

We're going to continue to sleep over and we ongoing to watch movies, and we going to get food and and I was like, just go like, god, I don't. I am good. And one by one, everyone came up and tried to persuade me, and I didn't want to know.

I was like, just go. My mom finally comes up. She's like, mac, come on, please.

Like, come on. Don't do this. Like, and I like, no, like, just leave me alone.

And I stayed home that night while my brothers and my friends, when I had this awesome night, and they came back the next day, and my brothers came home and he turned out they had the best night and is so much fun IT. Like, haunted me. That was like, who did I heard there? Like, they had a great time.

No one had to in for me. No was trying to hurt me, but my inability to express that something had hurt me. And the I was, I felt shame for being her, shame for being, you know, embarrassed that something i'd got to me. But my anger was felt more righteous and more stronger than my br the t so I just robbed myself of this really lovely experience. And when I look at my life, I think, oh my god, like that.

You can, you can draw line through so many experiences in my life where I just robbed myself of moments of joy, fun and love because I like it's what I did with the ordinary in that moment of jealous Y I just the walls went up and I went, is easier for me to be mad of to say you're wrong. Then you just express that something about this has made me feel her and and god, if that if I took that to its like extreme, if I do not even that many steps further, if I have just done that three more times with her, SHE would have been out the door and then I would have like this is i've never been more supported than by this woman. I've never been more love or accepted than by this woman, and I could have lost her because I shut the door in my room and I told everyone to go away all because I couldn't express something that that is profound to me, is mind blowing to me. And that's that those kinds of things have become kind of my obsession. Now.

how can people become Better having hard conversations? How can we get Better having hard conversations?

I think, firstly, by not putting so much pressure on the way that we have them, like guy, I think sometimes we go when we have a hard conversation with anyone, IT very quickly turns into an ego battle. And if we can come to someone like if let's in one's love life, love lives are shaped, but any part life is shaped by the ability to have hard conversations, whether its friendships, romantic love, familiar relationships.

If we can't have chAllenging conversations with each other, the relationship cannot improve, that they are forged by difficult conversations. And so many of us are so deeply afraid of confrontation, the rejection of the abandonment that might ensue after a confrontation, or just saying IT wrong, that nothing ever gets Better, and resentments get buried and boil over into contempt and people explode. And that's when things go really, really bad.

So the starting point of any hard conversation is knowing that your everything gets Better when you can have them. So even if you have them badly right now, having them badly is Better than not having them at all. Make up for lack of eloquence, with humility and sometimes you can say to someone and made me feel strange when that happened like that made me feel strange.

And I guess that made me feel strange because, you know, it's you're really important to me and you know, what we have is important to me and that made me feel, you know, when you did that, I felt like I wasn't representative of the energy I want us to have with each other. And maybe to mean IT like that, always think rightly or wrongly as a good phrase. Like rightly or wrongly, I felt like that was that was not a great way to come out offering .

the other person opportunity to help you uncover why you feel that way. I might be in the wrong. I'm open to this not being a new thing. This could be a me thing. Yeah, together.

lets work out .

because this is going to continue happening yeah and if we don't want this continue happening, then either we need to investigate what's going on with me or what's going on with you or what's .

going on with the dynamic yeah, and the target is the, you know the target is not the person, is what we're going to improve the relationship. And this is getting in the way of our relationship right now. Or this is making IT difficult. And that can be is like an early dating.

Someone might say you, you might be in a situation where someone's barely responding to you and then all of a sudden they tell you like, hey, you wanna do something today and for you, it's like you almost want to enable that behaviour because if you say, if you're just grateful to see them and you're like, yeah, I want to see you today like i'm just grateful that you're now asking me out even though you've been completely inconsistent for the last three weeks and I can baily get a text out of you. That's where we go when we don't want to have a hot conversation and is also where we go when we're coming from a place of scarcity. As I had just glad that you're now give me out.

But if you wanted to actually say now this is a great moment for a quote, hard conversation, which might just take the form of a message that says, you know, I haven't really heard from you of us three weeks. I was excited to see you, but I don't you know, I feel like we may not be on the same page. I was excited to see you two weeks ago like it's that's a moment when you're being willing to say the thing that maybe they're hoping you won't say, maybe there hoping you won't point out the in congress conference between what they are saying and what they're doing. But when you're the one willing to point that out, if you give the thing a chance to become what is truly capable becoming.

you give me a chance to bounce off and realized that it's not is supposed to wife like fantastical vacuum that you can fill with all of the speculation about why and how and what this means. And that is the reason that they said this thing is because of van. It's it's a selection criteria.

You're right. IT very much comes from A A scarcity mindset. If you believe that nothing Better can come from this, that you can't get anything that would ever be Better than this, there is no firm footing from you to make your needs known.

yes. And the trap is that you think, by not having the hard conversation, by not chAllenging a dynamic that .

is somehow safer, if I just do what they want, if I just mold myself around that needs and wants and pathologies and uncertainties and fears and stuff, everything will be fine. He, that is the nice children problem but i'm in therapy at the moment, which is why i'm starting to see everything with therapy.

Language um you know another island bottom on insight where he says that the people who behave like that in relationship, so the ones who didn't feel like they had license to be able to make their needs known as children because you maybe had an nobody, ancient parents, you had an angry parent, you had a busy, you had an leaf parent or whatever. So what are you going to do? What i'm just going to do, whatever I need you to make mama dad happy. I, I, I just want them to be happy. But what you're permanently doing is subjecting your needs in place of making this other .

person feel OK yeah yeah and and that's wolf. When you've been trained to be that way, whether it's conscious or unconscious on the part the people who raised you, it's a very hard thing to break out of because when you then make your needs known, you feel incredibly unsafe and you don't know why selfish. You feel selfish.

You feel, yeah, you feel bad, and you feel unsafe because you like something bad's gna happen as a result of this. And this person is not gonna love me anymore. They're gonna.

All this friend isn't gonna like me anymore. And and so by the way, you end up attracting friends who do only love you because of what you do for them. That's again is the war.

You you attract people who just want you because you're doing things for them, for a relationship to survive. You to find relationships that aren't based on how much someone doing for you, but are just a based on someone who likes you an except here for who you are, not what you do. You have to be capable of saying no. And seeing which relationships survive.

you also have to be capable of just being who you are and not always doing things. Yes, if the dynamic of any relationship, friendship, parents, romantic, whatever, if that dynamic is always you being a duer, that you don't ever get to stress test whether or not people are there for you to be. James, my business point with meta ic to drink.

He did a mushroom trip in in australia and this question came to him to people love you for who you are of what you do uh any is like a successful guy and lots people follow him and stuff like that ah and I think he was, you know, asking himself, well, if the things that I do stopped, would the love that people have for me also stop is, is the world's acceptance of me contingent on me being able to offer IT something in return? And the weird thing is that if you don't ever stop doing things, if you don't stop showing up as the the fixer, the person whose needs opponents tly subjugated by whatever anybody else rounds, you needs to have happened. Perfect example of this article with my mom couple of weeks ago.

This who is day before my birthday, day before my birthday, right? And he told her back, like, not badly, but he told her back a little bit and as soon as I heard that, I was like, right, i'm upstairs. I'm showing hope.

So i've had a bad back as well. Fifteen minutes of a conversation was me giving a fully customize demonstration of, well, these are the three movements, and this is the rep progression scheme. And this is how long you need to hold these positions for.

You need to make sure that you feet are not stacked on top of each other. It's actually it's this, which is a subber difference between the two. And this is the book. If you need to get more references, it's blah bar.

And if you need to roll up up to put in a little and I actually want to do to get a small kitchen, I M next I was like IT thoughts myself after is like quite the fuck are doing like why? Why have I ah i've just immediately taken control of this situation to try like, no, let me fix, let me get in there. Let me do something to make this go away.

And it's really like poorly holding space as well for the other person because IT delegitimize is a bad back might not be a great example, but IT delegitimizing the way that that person feels because the some text of what you're saying is your discomfort is making me uncomfortable. You must have IT. You must take IT away. And i'm going to help help you make IT go away.

Yeah, i'm responsible for making IT go away. You know, is ultimately what we do with ourselves is like I if we take on responsibility for somebody else's happiness, and it's OK to to want the people in our family to be happy and and to do and and to to do things to help them be happy. But IT crosses over.

And I know this because I have the exact same thing I crosses over into. I've made myself responsible for this person's happiness and that's that's when we abandon ourselves. If we are 两家 with no longer focused on， you know, making ourselves happy, it's just i'm responsible for the feelings of everyone around me, which, of course, in another classic kind of hypervigiLance thing as well.

What are the bread flags that people should look out foreign worships.

Um I I think people who can't take responsibility ie is a pretty difficult one to live with. If someone can say sorry, if they don't have that kind of humility that there's up. One of the most damming ones, I think, because it's hard for if you can't take accountability, if you don't have the humility to look at yourself and apologize, you also can't really grow. It's why in a one of the classic kind of hallMarks of NASA, sist is incompetence because if you can't if you can't take responsibility for something.

you can't get Better.

So you just keep making the same mistakes over and over again and if everyone else is falt, it's the world's fault and so you you essentially maintain that incompetence and um and so someone who can say sorry or someone who can take responsibility in a relationship, that's a really difficult thing to work with.

That goes hand in hand with like someone who talks badly about multiple kind of excess and is just always everyone else is fault. Like it's if if you've got a string of people that you've dated that you just keep saying how will they all were. It's like there's something .

going on that you on in between the different .

relationships. yes. So I that one I struggle with two um not keeping not keeping promises I think is a pretty big one. It's you know I think that's a big red flag is like a big red flag for staff and for a and for people that you die because IT when you no longer trust that someone's gonna what they say they're onna do IT IT really break something in a relationship.

Because now that you don't trust that they are gonna do something, you turn, you turn into a version of yourself you don't like with that person. The historically, the people that have ever worked for me that I micro manage the most are the ones that I don't think you're gonna actually get IT done. Violence type vigils.

exactly. If I if someone proves that they just if they say they're going to do IT next by next wednesday, they delivered IT by next wednesday. I actually don't bother them a toll. I don't I like I have fully hands off the wheel. I'll see you next wednesday.

But when someone doesn't do IT by next wednesday and then they don't even bring IT up and i'm like, wait, you said you are going to do this thing today and i'm the one you want to bring up and then like, oh yeah well, is this thing it's like now I don't trust that you're gona do IT and I don't even trust that you are going to acknowledge IT if you don't do IT. So in in for me, in dating and relationships, if someone consistently were capable breaking promises, don't get me wrong, like we all over promise sometimes, or we'd try and take too many things on and anyone's capable of that. But if someone consistently doesn't honor their word with you in bigger, small ways, that to me would be a big red flag because I just I can't those those things, to me there's like just fundamentals of a relationship。

Can someone take accountability? Do they deliver what they say they're gonna do? Like these things are the like without those, you don't really have anything if you, if someone does, if you don't trust someone to do what they say they gonna do.

And if when they don't do what they say they are gonna do, or they full beneath the standard, they can apologize. Then you you have a fundamentally broken dynamic that no amount of love it's really gonna make IT won't overcome IT to be able to make you happy. You're not playing by the same roles in life.

I am when in any relationship, you're not playing by the same roles. If you and I have a friendship and I wrong you and I apologize, it's not the end of the world that I wrong you, you might go. I can live with IT and you've apologized.

We're playing by the same roles. 嗯， you did something wrong. You get IT. You apologized with both living in the same universe.

But if I do something wrong, you call me out on IT and I say I didn't do anything wrong. In fact, what happened was you IT was like, I we're not even playing the same sport. We're not playing by the same roles.

This is CoOperating in different realities. The the danger of any relationship is that you think we are quite proximity and closely to A A shared experience and a shared moral and emotional world. And they're not the same things. You can share the same bit of carpet with someone for years and think that you're on the same page about things. And then when something goes wrong, that person is like you realize you you're with an alien.

That person you you know that I I get stories of people who get sick and their partners not like, can't be asked to take into the hospital and you go all these are two people that like SHE or he thought they occupied the same emotional space, but they're on, they're on different planets. IT just felt like they were close because they live together, because they have been together for so long, because you like the, you know, and even IT in any bad relationship, you'll always going to be able to point to great moments like IT. And those great moments really confuse us. But IT is the equivalent of a broken watch being right twice a day. You don't you wouldn't say a great that's a great device for telling the time just because twice a die IT was like, oh, it's right but that's what people do with love so like twice a day IT feels good and IT feels right and then they go IT must be important, broken.

How can people get Better at apologizing as the the person that maybe they feel unsafe?

Well.

yeah, i'm in the wrong and you know that the face gets flush. They they hear IT and the shoulders come up. It's tight like.

you know.

you're wrong. You and IT IT just activates. And you can do IT in a sort of resentful way you can do in the passive aggressive way. How can people learn to be a bit safer when IT when IT comes to being in the wrong and and .

communicating that I think slowing down and. Even communicate in with someone what you're feeling like. I know like i'm struggling right now because I I i'm not proud of what I just did or said, but I feel like my brain has been hijacked and and I feel really defensive right now.

But I also a not proud of that thing that I did. And even if you voice IT in an angry way, yeah, like I feel so defensive right now, I feel this and I feel that and I know what I said was out of line just now. But like he is just crack in the door, creating the crack in the door for for A A different dynamic to start to kinds snowball because right now it's snowboarding in one direction.

But sometimes all IT takes for you to start going in another direction is just one person to, like, be angry, but still grab the other person's hand anyway, and just be like, like, say, be a step more vulnerable than you feel comfortable within that moment. And of course, so much of this is about regulating your nervous system. Sometimes it's breathing, going for a walk, just taking a moment to let go.

Okay, some things happened. I ve gotten activated here. This, whatever is going on for me right now.

I know i'm in the wrong about this, but I have become activated in a way that is like, why outsides from what's going on right now? What is going on there? And you could, again, you could say that to someone. Something about this has like, has really like, got me triggered and I don't know what IT is. I don't something about IT has like, missed with me and I, you know, I don't wanna type that out on you.

This is why I think the overly sterile approach of looking at a dating in relationships is so insufficient, because IT leads no room for this messiness. And this is something, again, hesitate to bring this up because it's like guy goes to therapy, only wants to talk about therapy. But the therapy relationship is one of the very few where you can be as messy as you want.

You start five sentences and stop all of them. Just bail out. I know I actually I don't even know what I am talking about.

We repeat the same thing ten times, ten sessions in a row, or ten times within the same section, and learning to be like, right? Okay, I I don't I don't need to present to anybody a perfectly well formed thought, especially if I don't have IT does a guy. I went to a retreat in L.

A. A couple of months ago, and there was a do that when I asked him wide, stopped creating content online. And he said, because I felt like I had to live up to improve.

But the things I was saying in public, and I think that we almost is like a shadow of that occurring in these situations where if you don't have the skill or the understanding or the capacity or the safety or the room to slow down and to be able to say like I I don't know what's going on here, i'm a competent person, maybe you super high fly, do all of these things. The panel looks up to you to drive whatever relationship forward, or his parents, or whatever you like. I don't know what's going on, but like, let me massy chaotically, just try and communicate to you.

I don't know what's going on, but trying to bring something into land with this perfectly well rounded box with a bow on IT and IT pushes IT across the table like that. It's a lie. Like what you're trying to do is you are sacrificing honesty for smoothness.

Ss, and you're trying to make IT seem, you're trying to make a sub seem like the less of an insane person you like. What functioning adult would say that? Would what functioning adult doesn't know what they're thinking of feeling?

This makes me sound like a crazy person. I can't I can't access this level of truthful ness, honesty because what does that say about me? Flow defective, completely unhinged and crazy.

And and you know when it's really interesting what you just said, because that what functioning adult says something like this or feels this way, that's a that's a huge realization that has been for me for self compassion is it's not a functioning adult is having this feeling right now. There's a some child in me that is like feels really unsafe right now.

And you know maybe this connects to another time in my life, know, maybe it's something about this situation right now is making me feel really stupid. And maybe this connects to a time in my life where I was, you know, I felt really bullied, or I felt like I was really stupid. I was made to feel really small by people, whether it's family, or whether IT was in the classroom, or whether IT whatever IT was I was, you know, this made me feel really, really small and IT made me feel really stupid.

And that's why I am so defensive right now. Like that's why i've gone on the attack, because suddenly I felt really small again, or I felt really stupid. And the weight, the tone, someone may might just be as simple as the tone someone used with you.

And IT might be a tone from a much more loving person than whoever that was back then. But something about the tone took you right back there. And now you're not speaking to this person. You're speaking to that person. But but they are the target. And understanding that like I I think as a beautiful thing is like there is there's a sand, her child here somewhere and if I can understand that, then I don't have to feel like me saying this is me like giving up my identity as a person who's doing well in adult life or you know strong the rest of the time or I just I can allow myself this moment with something bigger is happening than in in me. Then whatever is happening out here and have compassion .

for IT look old. Like that's what you're feeling. That is what you're feeling at that moment. So you can box up and tie the bow on IT and shower across the table if you want. But that thing is going to continue to happen.

You're going to continue to be at the mercy of that mental pathology, that weakness, that shattered splinted vector within which things are gone, to continue to to insert themselves into your psyche. And it's gonna show in relationships because. When you're on your own, you're perfectly capable of creating the limits of where you push yourself to mentally.

You bring somebody else into that equation and everything gets blown out of the water OK there's another party here. They expect things from me. Ah you know I can't take three days of ruminating about this because I have to say something now. So what do you do? You don't ruminate about IT and you just come up with the like the nearest but this looks like a reason you just to throat that all this one that really familiar that you pick you pick up and you and .

you toss them or whatever yeah .

ah yeah so much it's just self understanding. So much of this is the self showing up. It's not to do with the relationship with you, with your patterns. Ah your insufficient encies is your fears .

yeah and and it's why I think we we're a lot worse to everyone else when we don't have compassion for ourselves, because when we when we punish that part of ourselves that is hot or scared or confused or freaking out, when we judge ourselves for that which is something men are really good at like the remember there was a comment on a men's podcast.

I did I don't know what I where I was, but someone wrote up, I switch off the moment I hear the world trauma and I thought, fine, that's okay. But he tells me a lot about how you deal with yourself, right? Like that.

I I know everything about that state. I know everything about how much of a tired you are to yourself when I hear that statement. Because you call IT whatever the hell you want, I IT doesn't matter to me. What you call IT will use formal or a different word, some things going on with you when you feel awful.

I was playing a pick ball near my house a couple of months ago. I I was with my friend Aaron, who does the airline podcast and he's a very sort of embodied really, really trying hard to feel his feelings at the moment. Ah and this lady, we were playing music out of you like a little blue speaker to many dollars is a little bluetooth er this lady of the far side shouted and SHE shouted that this is a park.

It's supposed to be a peaceful place. And like, you know how loud someone having a pickle ball is is like eighty disciples. There's a problem around pickle bowl noise because it's way louder than tennis is one of the reasons they don't want pick a ball to grow too quickly.

The year that trying to correct a special sound boarding to go around IT is really, really loud. So much the whistle board makes much loud. Miss lady shouted over.

And such an interesting little loop of things happened. So my first instinct, the orderly british cook in me, was like, go to turn the music down. He went over.

turn them. I would like.

yes, I was like, not upset. What like this one lady in her dog, he was out of what I shoes one hundred yards away and IT wasn't even not loud anyway, Aaron went turned IT up instead shouting, sorry, I can't hear um but then once we finished, once we finished up, he said I was like, no was stupid woman, like, you know, what do you think about that? His first point of call was, I feel really sad for her.

I imagine that walking through the park and seeing two guys with the tops of in the sun, having a great time and playing a little bit of music activates you like that. That's the same as the guide that says, I here, what draw ma? And I just wish, wish you nonsense.

I not. I switch off. I feel some for you. I feel sad because there are things, again, call IT what you want, past experiences, things that weakness IT pick your word lexicons that you want. But you are going to continue to be at the mercy of them for as long as you are the woman shouting about the music being turned on.

And guys, guys, they I mean, the extent to which they bottle this stuff up and don't do anything bad IT is is profound and really this concern. You know, I it's one of the most anyone has been on any kind of men's retreat. Typically, it's one of the most beautiful.

Like guys need an excuse to get together and talk. So like they'll come up with something else like for me or I would not remember twenty, twenty IT was like going on the wind of a tree in poland. You know, we've got twelve guys who are just doing these ridiculous crazy fees. But the best part of the five days was when we SAT around on the software and we talked, and I was like, we needed all of these other things we needed to be doing, like ten minute I spots and climbing .

mountains and justice.

so we could actually get together.

as, do you know what the men's shed initiative is in australia, the .

prototypical .

example of this. So theyve realized that guys talk shoulder to shoulder, women talk face to face. You can even see this in parties.

So if you go to a party and you look at the angle of the feet of men, and you look at the angle of the feet of women, women talk at one hundred eighty degrees and man talk IT about one twenty go blading. And once you see, you can't and see IT look, look around south southwest this week and you'll see guys stood like this. Um so what they did was they creating literal shed for guys to go in.

And in these shed there would be one of them feel like, uh, we've got a broken lawn mower. So they put the lawn mower in middle and john got a good hammer and fills got a good spanner and you know whatever whatever and then they talk, but the like, like men will. Men would rather fix a loan more than got a therapy type.

The male proclivity to deny physical and mental pathologies. This is why, you know, I remember, even I had this on those Younger. I go to the N. H, S, in the U. K, uh, for the people that don't know, that's a ten minute meeting with your general practitioner during that time, they need to meet you, greet you, diagnose you, treat you and get you out of the door. Is fucking in the sane. And I would go, I would have like, accumulated three things because I was like, well, you know, like that me, it's probably nothing and you know, like my tidings, it's probably nothing. And I be like, okay.

so here's this.

like this grow, come in way of different, different melodies because, you know, man, resilient in that way. But they they need a place. I truly believe, believe that, like deep, emotionally mature men need a place to be able to be emotionally open. And I also don't doubt that there is either a generation of men or a type of guy and go who that doesn't speak to, talking about their feelings and stuff. They just don't feel things quite so deeply, or they don't think about feeling things quite so deeply.

I'm not sure which one of them, I think, is there are types, there do seem to be types of people in life for whom life isn't as chAllenging in those ways. Yes, yes, they're not as sensitive or and I don't mean sensitive in any kind of derogatory way. They just don't then not as tuned to things going on that can really wound other people you know, can get in for the rest of us. I don't relate to those people at for a long time. I kind of .

wanted to be that, you know, like I really wanted to be this. I think a lot of IT comes from childhood. I wanted to be this strong, capable, competent person, like if I, if I in control, must be in control, always must be in control.

I just being control. I'll fix IT. I thought.

I don't worry.

It's on me. Yes, i'm like i'm fucking fighting against the flood like i'm swiming up stream here. No, I do feel things deeply, and that's fine. I know a comment on my weakness as a human any more than, you know, having fucked in size ten feet or size nine feet is is a part of your history. But not realizing that， not recognizing that, not dealing with IT, that's that's an issue.

And you recognize that that good. And I am I relate to this because I have very similar to that you is an identity that you to create for yourself that you then think is this is me and this is where my worth comes from, is.

you know and and .

even the public can see the people around your work IT can be your family and can be, you know, you, we all have our public and how you know, we think that this is the identity that makes us somebody is a whole. I think this is one of the most valuable exercises in the book. I used to teach IT just on my retreat.

And I think it's like a amazing that that so much of what I used to do just on my retreat has made IT into this book. And one of the big exercises is a detail in the book, a huge section on the three layers of confidence. In the middle layer is the identity layer.

And this is where we derive our confidence from. So the surface layer is so layer one is the surface. That's how we walk, connect, what we pour tray at our level of confidence to other people. The identity layer is where do we get our confidence from what we think of as some of the sources in our life of our our of our confidence.

So for some of this is our career, could be our relationship, could be body IT, could be the the identity we have as someone who is always got IT together or is always able to take control whenever the time comes. And we we those identities can become our prison. Because whatever we get the most validation for, and whatever makes us feel the most rewarded becomes our mutation.

And then whatever becomes our mutation becomes our great is vulnerability. So there's a whole exercise I take people through and people can do IT from. The book is called the the identity matrix, which dw box with squares inside IT.

For all of the areas that give you confidence on the identity level, there's the core level, which is the deepest level, and that's a whole different that goes much, much deeper than any of these things i'm talking about. But when people draw their matrix, they quickly see that there are one or two squares that they have become wildly over invested in that make them appear confident when they're Operating within their circle of competence. But but the moment they step out of those, a very different person is revealed, a very different level of confidence is revealed, or go forbid, anything happened to one of those squares.

Now, IT becomes essentially an existential identity crisis, because this thing that is the primary source of my validation is no longer there. And that. That's there's a really dangerous place for people to be.

Well, that ultimate scarcity mindset, right? Its fragility.

Yeah you think if I if this goes wrong, i'll be nothing. yeah. And then and you see that happen when people's businesses go under or and they you know, they suddenly feel like they are worthless or when they get an injury, if there, you know, constantly in the gym and then they get injured and they can't work .

out and they feel like that to all the end of my twin. You know, through all of my twenties, I was the the big, lean model guy that was IT. And then I had a series of really serious injuries.

And I are, I need to find who I am when I cannot take my primary sense of self worth from being the strongest, leaner guy in the room. Yes, a of fuck. What does this mean? IT was really good for me, to be honest at the time. I think IT was the beginning of the trajectory of of pushing me toward thinking more intellection i'm not necessity emotionally that was only reason um but starting to take pride in other things.

And when you do that, that's a that becomes its own game changer because you though you start to expand your identity and no longer does who you are rely on this one thing .

of no it's a very .

powerful place to be and so I always in favor of people in certain crucial ways, diversifying their identity matrix so that they're not over index in an area that they have counted on for their in ninety percent of their worth. Of course, everything at the identity lever is a problem. So like that the reason the core exists at the level is because at that identity level you're always vulnerable.

And anyone in mindful in circles they would say that that whole middle level is the problem is that any identification makes you vulnerable. Um because it's A W H sort right when you when it's going well, you feel great. When it's all when it's going well, you just now worried about losing IT because you worried that you won't be something when you lose IT or when it's not going great, you feel worthless.

So this that doesn't to me that doesn't mean that should be ignored. It's like, why not you know, we're still living a life where we get up in the morning and we choose what to do. So you might well live a life that govan izis you against.

You know some of life is biggest reversals in any area, but it's also about recognizing there's a whole other depth to confidence that goes way beneath that. And this is, I think, the part that a lot of people end up tripping up on. And this is probably for me, I think, one of the most powerful things in the entire book is this idea of what core confidence really is, because I think we have wildly misunderstood what IT is.

You know, when you ask people, what is what is confidence, that the deepest st level theyll talk about self love in some form. And that gets really messy very fast because everyone's ve got a different idea of what self love means. And some people hate the term self love. Other people live by IT.

Um and I I could never when I was thinking, where does my confidence come from if IT doesn't come from many of these, if if IT shouldn't merely come from these things, like if I if I lost everything, where would my confidence come from? Could IT still exist? And when people hear that is a yeah because you have to love yourself but I I never resonated massively with that idea, not because I didn't think that was important, but because I could never figure out what the practical application.

What did you look like to love yourself? You know, I can be a bubble bathin candles like I don't relate to that. So what do you mean when you say love yourself? And I would step in front of audiences for years because I was, like, constantly on a journey to refining what my version of self love look like, that I could coach people in. That actually meant something to me. I wasn't just words and was a model that could be used.

And I would say to people in events like, why should you love yourself and will always be fascinating to listen to the answers in the way that people got themselves tangled up in IT, the same way that I had got myself tangled up in IT because they say what you should love yourself because um you're special or you deserve IT and I be like when you say you deserve IT. why? Well because you can know where i'm kind and i'm loving and i'm a good person and i'm good to my family and whatever I like.

But that's a problem because what you're describing to me is you should get love when you get strake eyes. What about the days where you're not loving or you're selfish or you do something shameful, you hurt someone? Or does that mean you're not deserving of love on those days? And even when you are on on your good days, there's always gonna someone who does those things Better than you.

So when you come up again, someone like that, do they deserve more love than you and people be like? That's a problem because then now IT feels like love is highly, highly conditional on me having these great choice. So say, well, I I guess you know was special like, and I go.

But why you special is an everyone special? There's eight billion people on this earth. Is everyone special? And theyd be like, yeah, everyone special? I'd be like, I don't know about you.

I don't feel very special anymore. Like, where does how does that make me someone who should love themselves? I don't I don't really connect with that.

And I would go round around the houses with people on this. And what began to realize was people try to love themselves using the romantic model of love. And that's why IT doesn't work. Because when we fall in love with someone romantically, we see quality is in them that we really like or admire, that we find attractive and we wanna get closer to them.

But the thing that makes all of that really attractive in the first place is that we're reviewing them from some distance, and we get all these chemical rushes from getting close to them, dope, mean and oxy tos, and feel so good. And so we don't need to try to fall in love with someone is easy, right? When we're falling in love with just is like it's happening.

We've never been able to do that with ourselves. why? Well, if you look at why a lot of long term relationships fail, the phrase familiarity breeds contempt.

The closer you get to someone, the more contempt you can have for them if you're not careful, because you take, you take for ground at all, they are good stuff, and you magnify all the bad stuff. And so now IT starts to become this relationship where you just wanna push off. That's a familiar breeds contempt.

Who would we have more contempt for than the person we spend every second with since the day we were born like that? That is IT almost leaves no room for any other emotion at the end of the day. So being this puts a yma.

When we add up all of our mistakes in all of our shame and all of the things we think we've done wrong, wrong, we don't match up that contempt can reach your question. Do so. Now you've got someone who says, well, yeah, looked like that.

How am I supposed to like? How am I ppos to love myself? I don't even like myself. I come. I'm gonna to love. And what I came to realize was that romantic model has to be dispensed with when IT comes to loving ourselves, we have to adopt a different model wall together.

And so I start looking for what's the different model? And one of the relationships that started to interest me with the parent child relationship, because if you ask a parent, most parents, healthy parents, why do you love your child? They want to say, well, because they got an I in english yesterday and because they did something so cute this morning and and they just say what they mean, because they are my child, because they are mine.

They don't need another reason. They just go, this, my child, you can even see this effect with people in their dogs. You see really ugly dogs walking down the street and think, if you woke up to a dog owner and you say, why do you love your dog? Because that what are you talking about? My dog, if you tried, if you often them up a more beautiful, steadily dog and said you one exchange IT, that would be like, you're out of your mind.

What are you talking about? This is my dog. That, for me, left the massive clues to what how we can actually love ourselves, which is to say, of the eight billion, this is the mistake we make.

We look at eight billion people on the earth and we say, how do I match job? But instead, we have to look at IT from a completely different place. And o of the eight billion people on this earth, i'm the only person who is responsible for taking care of this human.

It's like at birth we were given a human and someone else is job like a parent figure. Someone was their job was to help us get through the first few years and survive those first few years. They may not have done good job.

They may have done good job either way. Someone else had the job of keeping us alive. But at a certain point, we got given custody of this human.

And our one job from that point on is just give this human the best life you can give them, whatever that means, whether that means helping them actualized, whether that means helping them be happy, helping them feel peaceful, helping them, uh, a experience joy, give this human the best life possible. So now, if you imagine someone asking you, why should you love yourself? The answer is very simple, you don't need to find reason.

You go, I, I love myself because i'm mine, i'm my human. And that me, when I started looking at IT like that, IT changed everything because it's, this is no longer mattered. Whether I matched up to somebody else is like, completely irrelevant, because I can exchange my human for another human.

So what's the point? What's the point in worrying what they're doing and what they are doing? They are also the me.

They are looking at the, that doesn't matter. I'm the only human. I get to forget the comparison. Just what would I do today if I was taking care of my human? And that turns loving yourself from a feeling you have to have into an approach.

That changes everything because what you realized is I don't actually have to like myself in order to love myself. Loving myself comes first, liking myself can come later. But the more I love myself, the more I actually approach the like of, the more I take care of this human, nurture of this human, stand up for this human, trying give them the best life possible.

I might just also accomplish liking myself at some point and having a developing an affection for myself, because it's hard not to develop an affection for someone who does all of that for you. But in the beginning, you don't have to worry about the feeling. You just have to worry about taking care of your human. And that, for me, changed everything.

Did you have a problem? Operation alizon that like turning that into practice .

when you first started IT required constant repetition. Because the instinct is to go back to comparison. The instinct is to go back to looking at where I don't match up.

All the instinct, because of my wiring, was to go back to guilt telling myself and not doing enough telling myself. But IT required me constantly going back to a frame of reference of going, I, I have one job. My one job is to take care of this human.

How my doing in that job today, I give, like I, I dealt. One of the things I talked about in the book is in my chronic pain, and I dealt that for years, and I was, for me, IT would become crippling. And this was physical pain. And and if I know what to do, I mean, I literally, I had, I still have IT.

But is my relationship that is completely different now? But had to us like tonight, us where I I just had ringing in my is non stop for years, in years combined with crippling headaches and ear and pain, my head and dizen ss and all sorts of symptoms that really I couldn't I can be present in my life with all of IT. But the thing that made IT so much worse was how I treat myself every day that I had IT.

My guy hate IT myself for IT. And I I had all this story around IT about what I meant and how week I felt and how I wasn't being productive and how I couldn't get IT together and IT just all that story was like the worst thing about IT. The pain was already bad, the story, and turned IT into something completely unmanageable.

And my, my, I had to get to a point where I went, I have one job like i'm supposed to be taking care of this human. And right now, when this human is in pain, i'm acting. So in inhumanly, if this was my brother or, you know, my partner, my mom, more like I would have such compassion for how in pain they are all the time.

And with me, I am just turning IT into this artery of shame and self clothing, which is just an imaginably cruel to do to a person. And that would be an imaginary cruel to do any to any human being. So even if you just decide i'm a human being in this world, and therefore I deserve as much decency and love as I would give anyone else that would already be caused to treat myself Better than I was in those moments.

But when I reminded myself, it's not just that i'm a human is that i'm my human. I have a special responsibility to give myself encouragement and compassion and love that that changed things for me for me or Opera rationalizing IT meant consistently like I I have in my life what I call um emotional buttons. And they are for me triggers for thoughts or truths that I have access to at my fingertips all the time.

And I have notes on my phone that have emotional buttons in. I have notes on my computer every morning. I wake up and I do ten minutes of just reviewing my emotional buttons and the things that trigger them and IT. For me, emotional button can come from all different, but I would have emotional buttons around self compassion that I would have at my fingertips, so that I wake up in the morning. And I know my instinct is to wake up in deficit to immediately.

no matter sleep, you soft fuck actually working exactly.

Yeah, you you will. No, like yesterday you did an amazing job, but that was yesterday. And now today we were in deficit and we have to kill ourselves to get to a place we are even again.

And that that was like waking up with no compassion, no self compassion whatsoever. So I had to have emotional buttons that in the morning I would read, and they would connect me back to how I wanted to treat myself to wise. You know, what energy I wanted to bring to this person today.

And that, for me, those emotional button are game changes. Those, by the way, are a great strategy for anything like you have. I have emotional button before I go to the gym.

I have emotional button for you know, when i'm I have emotional button for for work. I have emotional button for writing. I have them for everything because they I can't rely on having the right feelings naturally.

But what I can rely on is that i've felt something before, like if I if I notice i'm feeling particularly affectionate towards myself right now, or I am feeling more loving towards myself right now. I'm or i'm just I there's a way of looking at myself that's creating self compassion. I will write that down and turn IT into an emotional button so that the next time I need to access that, I don't have to try to locate the same thought.

It's just, I have a way of getting back there very, very quickly. Winton churchill said, man occasionally stumble over the truth, but most picked themselves up and Carry on as if nothing happened. And it's a great I for me.

I always tied in with everything I do, and I teach people on emotional buttons because everything I wanna feel, i've probably felt before at some point. And it's been connected with a certain way of thinking, a certain thought pattern, sometimes an object, a piece of music or something. I just need an instruction manual for getting back to the places I need to get back to.

And I I have, through my emotional buttons, is like having an instruction manual for everything I want to feel at any given moment. And I have IT for all different emotions. So I have emotional button for excitement, emotional button for, you know, wanting to train, emotional button for feeling peaceful. I have them for everything. And that some of the most valuable daily things that I used in my life, that's my Operation menu.

Yeah, Matthew hussy, ladies and gentleman, Matthew, I really appreciate you. man. I love this arc, this trajectory.

You've gone on from the strategy to the emotion to the feeling and where we're at now. The books awesome. Everyone should go check IT out where I should they go. And I wanted to see the rest .

of the things you do on line. Man, honestly, the thing are most excited about is the book I have. You know, you can find me anywhere online on any platform.

And i've been put in content out for years and years, but this this book I put hundreds and hundreds of hours into so you know if if people go to love life book don't come um the book is called love life. How to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. And when you go to love life book 点 com， you can order a book from amazon or band, nobody aware you want.

But there's also a cool thing where if you take the receipt from the book, the the order confirmation wherever you get IT from and come back to love life book dot com, you can into that for a ticket to an event on doing on may the fourth. This is going to be a really exciting, it's going to be a virtual event, but this is gonna be thousands of people there um who all who've got the book and wana then get coached in the application of the book into their year. So there's gonna fun.

And I I think I the last thing I would say is just I know that so many guys listens to your show and you know watch what you do and love what you do. I you know I encourage them to grab a copy of this because it's it's a book that, like you said, IT earlier, it's a book that transcends the genre in many wise. It's in the same way that I think of like, you know, an laos bird by bird is a book about writing that's kind of about life. I think of this is a book about love.

that kind of about living, personal development book master rating as a data.

And and so it's but for anyone who does want to find, love is really going to help you with that too. So I think is for everybody and man has helped me so I D be shocked if I didn't help other guys out there to um and I appreciate Chris the you know the work that you're doing right now with yourself is I think it's feeding into the work.

I don't think you should ever feel like you're boring anybody by you know talking about the stuff that you are experiencing and the work you're doing in therapy. And I think that I think in so many ways that's the good stuff. People are gonna keep loving coming to you for all the other stuff as well.

But you know that stuff, we we need to hear that and to hear someone like you, even when I don't know if you were talking about yourself when you said this, but even when you said, you know I um what do you do when you want you know you're wrong but it's hard to say sorry in my head at least I was pitching that maybe that was you sometimes and I instantly made you more likable and more reliable. And you know, I think we can all relate to that. So I just I i'm grateful for that work that you're doing and for the way you're putting that out. And I really hope that you keep doing IT because I think the the guys out there will be, whether quietly or vocally, really, really in need of IT. I appreciate them.

Thank you.