Speaker 1: Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
Speaker 1: is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you
Speaker 1: that it's a primary focus of on Purpose, but on
Speaker 1: a day to day basis, many people don't know where
Speaker 1: to turn or which tools can help. Over the past
Speaker 1: couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make
Speaker 1: mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say,
Speaker 1: fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to
Speaker 1: help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep,
Speaker 1: and generally feel better in your daily life. So many
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Speaker 1: Calm dot com Forward slash j that's Calm dot com
Speaker 1: Forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your Mind,
Speaker 1: Change your life now. I'm not saying this to make
Speaker 1: you feel down about the fact that there isn't someone
Speaker 1: there for you. I'm saying it because I want us
Speaker 1: to live in reality more than I want us to
Speaker 1: live in imagination. We believe that this fake person is
Speaker 1: out there because it's comforting, and what that stops us
Speaker 1: from doing is dealing with the real person in front
Speaker 1: of us, who presents real opportunities and real challenges.
Speaker 2: The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Setti.
Speaker 1: Jay Shetty, Sez Jet. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
Speaker 1: It's your host, Jay Chetty, and I am so grateful
Speaker 1: and so thankful that you're here right now. It is
Speaker 1: incredible that you've chosen to invest in your health, your happiness,
Speaker 1: and your healing by tuning in to On Purpose. And
Speaker 1: thank you so much to each of you that have
Speaker 1: left a review, shared it with a friend, or are
Speaker 1: listening every single day now. I'm sure you've heard people
Speaker 1: in your life or a friend of family member, someone
Speaker 1: you know say something like, ah, it was right person,
Speaker 1: wrong time. Right, he was the right guy, it was
Speaker 1: just bad timing, or she was perfect, it just didn't
Speaker 1: make sense right now. And this idea of there being
Speaker 1: a right person at the wrong time has kind of
Speaker 1: become culturally quite a big thing. We saw it in
Speaker 1: movies like La La Land, where you look at Emma
Speaker 1: Stone's character and Ryan Gosling's character who you know you
Speaker 1: want them to be together. You're yearning for them to
Speaker 1: be together, You're dreaming for them to be together. They
Speaker 1: seem destined to be together, and yet it was right person,
Speaker 1: wrong time. And today I want to break that down
Speaker 1: because I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've
Speaker 1: been talking to a lot of my friends. I've been
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of you. I've been talking to
Speaker 1: a lot of experts on the show, and it's pretty
Speaker 1: clear that most of them agree that there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as the right person at the wrong time.
Speaker 2: I know it's painful to hear it.
Speaker 1: I know it's uncomfortable to hear it, and I know
Speaker 1: some of you right now are saying, no, Jay, what
Speaker 1: are you saying? But I promise you that it's not
Speaker 1: a hopeless thing for me to say. It's actually going
Speaker 1: to redirect your mind in a healthy way. So when
Speaker 1: you say there's right person, wrong time, it's often something
Speaker 1: we say to make ourselves feel better about the one
Speaker 1: that got away. Oh yeah, they were the one that
Speaker 1: got away. They were amazing, Oh they were so special,
Speaker 1: that could have been amazing, Or we say it to
Speaker 1: make ourselves feel better about an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 2: We don't want to accept.
Speaker 1: We don't want to accept that we were in a
Speaker 1: bad place, that they were in a bad place. We
Speaker 1: don't want to accept that there wasn't this perfect relationship
Speaker 1: out there, and so we can't accept that inconvenient truth,
Speaker 1: and we keep saying it to us. Oh, they were
Speaker 1: just the right person at the wrong time. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you've all said people in your life maybe say hey,
Speaker 1: I miss my ex. You know, they were amazing or like,
Speaker 1: or like even though they were bad, like they weren't
Speaker 1: that bad, Like they were actually great. Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: the one that treated you badly. Wait a minute, the
Speaker 1: one that you always used to complain, that made you
Speaker 1: feel insecure. Wait, you're talking about the one that never
Speaker 1: showed up on time and canceled on you. Wait you're
Speaker 1: talking about the one that cheated on you. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's literally that bad sometimes and we convince ourselves that
Speaker 1: there was a right person at the wrong time. Nostalgia
Speaker 1: is really really interesting, and it does one of two things.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it makes the past seem worse, but
Speaker 1: in most cases it makes the past seem better. It
Speaker 1: amplifies the good stuff and it overshadows the negativity, the stress,
Speaker 1: the overwhelm, and the challenges we felt back then. So
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a bit of understanding about this
Speaker 1: because I think we have a pretty weak understanding of nostalgia.
Speaker 1: And if you talk to most people, they'll say their
Speaker 1: favorite experiences are from college. Their past experiences were better,
Speaker 1: their relationships were amazing, like we often look at our
Speaker 1: past through rose tinted glasses. Now I'm reading this from
Speaker 1: a couple of references. The first is from the memory
Speaker 1: and reward systems co produced nostalgic experiences in the brain.
Speaker 1: This is twenty sixteen July from no Riuchi. And then
Speaker 1: I'm also reading from Barrett's. These are two journals that
Speaker 1: I found through neurology live so nostalgic experiences stimulate metabolic
Speaker 1: activity and blood flow in several regions of the brain. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: people who rated higher on the Effective Neuroscience Personality Scale,
Speaker 1: which measures a person's tendency to sadness, were more prone
Speaker 1: to experience nostalgia. This correlation does make sense, as people
Speaker 1: who generally experience stronger emotions should experience a range of
Speaker 1: powerful feelings, whether those emotions are happy or sad, But
Speaker 1: nostalgia itself is not linked with depression or any other
Speaker 1: effective disorder. In fact, one study linked nostalgia to an
Speaker 1: overall trait of resilience. So nostalgia is something that we
Speaker 1: used positively, but it can be positive emotionally, but it
Speaker 1: can set us on the wrong path mentally as we
Speaker 1: make decisions.
Speaker 2: So let me explain to you why.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia feels good from that neuroscience perspective, The reward centers
Speaker 1: of the brain are activated during nostalgia activity. This reward
Speaker 1: center involvement explains the very common phenomena of feeling pleasant
Speaker 1: emotions upon hearing a song from the past, even if
Speaker 1: the song was not necessarily a favorite song at the
Speaker 1: time it was prevalent in popular culture or in a
Speaker 1: person's life. Now, listen to this. This is the most
Speaker 1: interesting part to me. The positive responses evoked by nostalgia
Speaker 1: can help protect people from emotional burden of a situational
Speaker 1: disappointment and even from anxiety. That's exactly what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here, that there has been a situational disappointment and
Speaker 1: the feeling that we look on it positively. Oh right person,
Speaker 1: wrong time. It actually emotionally protects us, but that doesn't
Speaker 1: make us make good decisions. We can often live in
Speaker 1: the past. We can linger on and make a relationship
Speaker 1: last too long. We can feel that we missed out
Speaker 1: on something and that it got away. We can feel
Speaker 1: that anything we experienced today isn't good enough, it's not
Speaker 1: the same. When used as a coping strategy, a person
Speaker 1: can deliberately trigger feelings of nostalgia by listening to familiar music,
Speaker 1: looking at old photos, or visiting comforting environments of the past.
Speaker 1: And this is one of the reasons why I think
Speaker 1: it's so if effective when people use a burn box
Speaker 1: to burn old memories. I remember Nessa Barrett talking about
Speaker 1: that on the podcast. She has a song called burn Box,
Speaker 1: and this idea of like, you don't want to hold
Speaker 1: on to those memories, You don't want to keep them
Speaker 1: present for you to keep creating or recreating nostalgia for you.
Speaker 1: And this is where the study gets really, really interesting.
Speaker 1: Nostalgia can be so easily provoked that it is possible
Speaker 1: to become addicted to the pleasure of nostalgia, just as
Speaker 1: a person can become addicted to any activity that stimulates
Speaker 1: the reward centers of the brain. Nostalgia can be used
Speaker 1: excessively as a crutch, and the positive feelings of nostalgia
Speaker 1: may serve as a substitute for living in the present
Speaker 1: day if current real life troubles take more effort than
Speaker 1: a person can tolerate. Oh my gosh, Like I'm reading
Speaker 1: this and I'm hoping you are having the same reaction
Speaker 1: as me, going wow, I get it. I get what
Speaker 1: I'm doing to myself using the right person, wrong time
Speaker 1: as a way of making up for the fact that
Speaker 1: dating is hard right now, as a way of making
Speaker 1: up for the fact that things aren't going great right now.
Speaker 1: And hey, in the short term, it's a great way
Speaker 1: of staying positive and keeping up beat. The long term,
Speaker 1: it's letting me down. It's making me turn away great
Speaker 1: relationship prospects. It's making me judge people differently. It's making
Speaker 1: me close the door on other people that actually deserve
Speaker 1: a chance. Like, where is nostalgia tripping you up? Now?
Speaker 1: I want to give you a kind of light example
Speaker 1: to do with this. If you look at where we
Speaker 1: are in society today, there are so many reboots, right
Speaker 1: so we had a reboot or ip based on the past.
Speaker 2: You have the Barbie movie. Amazing movie, great movie.
Speaker 1: But again we're using IP from the past because it
Speaker 1: sparks nostalgia. How many of you watched that and had
Speaker 1: a nostalgic feeling if you happen to own a Barbie
Speaker 1: or again, now Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2: Same thing.
Speaker 1: I remember back in the day having to go to
Speaker 1: my friend's house to play on their Nintendo and the
Speaker 1: Super Mario's Brothers movie comes out, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it's past IP being rebooted. You've got the Pinocchio remake,
Speaker 1: You've got all the live action movies coming out, You've
Speaker 1: got the Sex and the City reboots. So there's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing in society where we have all these reboots
Speaker 1: that are often based on or not often based always
Speaker 1: based on playing on nostalgia and triggering positive nostalgic feelings.
Speaker 1: But guess what is the reboot ever that good? Is
Speaker 1: the use of an old ip ever a satisfying Will
Speaker 1: the new Jurassic Park ever be as good as the
Speaker 1: original one? Like? It won't, And there's something in that,
Speaker 1: like there's this false excitement that we have, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually follow through. And a lot of us this
Speaker 1: other study from Yang and Bacho says that we aren't
Speaker 1: just longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version
Speaker 1: of our past. This line in the study completely sums
Speaker 1: up what I'm trying to say, that we're not just
Speaker 1: longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version of
Speaker 1: our past. According to Bacho, there's a reason our memories
Speaker 1: become fonder over time, why the negative bits tend to
Speaker 1: fade away faster. The study says, take parenthood for example,
Speaker 1: remembering things is better than they were serves an evolutionary purpose.
Speaker 1: If people were to remember things faithfully to the original,
Speaker 1: most women would never want to have more than one child,
Speaker 1: Bacho says, laughing. It's a function of species survival that
Speaker 1: we can gloss over the bad portions of the past.
Speaker 1: So nostalgia's great as a temporary escape during difficult times,
Speaker 1: but if it becomes the of our decision making, we
Speaker 1: can actually be let down the wrong path. And I
Speaker 1: want to focus on this statement right person, wrong time.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the wrong time. There was something else that
Speaker 1: was wrong. One of the first things I want to
Speaker 1: talk about is what about your relationship status? What about
Speaker 1: their relationship status? Maybe they just got out of a relationship.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'd been single for too long. Now we look
Speaker 1: at that as wrong time, but that's far more defining
Speaker 1: of that person than we give it credit to be.
Speaker 1: If someone's been single for a long time, that's a
Speaker 1: part of who they are. It's a part of who
Speaker 1: they've become. If someone's newly single, that's a part of
Speaker 1: who they are and where they are in their emotional
Speaker 1: maturity to be able to spot an amazing opportunity for
Speaker 1: it to be the right thing. Now, I'm not saying
Speaker 1: this to make you feel down about the fact that
Speaker 1: there isn't someone there for you. I'm saying it because
Speaker 1: I want us to live in reality more than I
Speaker 1: want us to live in imagination. We believe that this
Speaker 1: fake person is out there because it's comforting, and what
Speaker 1: that stops us from doing is dealing with the real
Speaker 1: person in front of us, who presents real opportunities and
Speaker 1: real challenges.
Speaker 2: That's really what life is. That's what a partner is.
Speaker 1: It's a set of pros and a set of cons
Speaker 1: It's a set of things to look forward to in
Speaker 1: a list of things that will set us back. So
Speaker 1: I want you to think about the relationship status part
Speaker 1: if someone is just newly single and you're scared of
Speaker 1: rushing them along instead of saying right person, wrong time,
Speaker 1: and moving on, can you be more patient? Maybe you
Speaker 1: do want to get married, but maybe they need time.
Speaker 1: Maybe you don't rush it. If they're worth investing in,
Speaker 1: maybe they could be the right person. If you didn't
Speaker 1: have this idea of right person, wrong time because you
Speaker 1: wanted everything to perfectly align. What else about their relationship
Speaker 1: status that you're in. You don't want to rush yourself,
Speaker 1: You don't want to move along now. Of course, if
Speaker 1: the conclusion you both come to is we're both not
Speaker 1: ready right now to wait longer for the other person,
Speaker 1: then that's not the right person, and that's okay. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that you don't deserve love. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you won't find love. It doesn't mean that you won't
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to be in love. But what it
Speaker 1: does mean says the wrong person and the timing is
Speaker 1: somewhat not relevant. Recently, I became a relationship advisor at
Speaker 1: Match because I really want people to connect based on
Speaker 1: their values. So what we did together was we collaborated
Speaker 1: and built a set of questions that will help you
Speaker 1: understand your values and pair you up with people with
Speaker 1: similar values and in a way that you can be
Speaker 1: aware of what their priorities are. I think so often
Speaker 1: we start dating and then we find out down the
Speaker 1: line that we're going in different directions, we have different focuses.
Speaker 1: I want to help you build a life where you're
Speaker 1: aware of what people care about and they're aware about
Speaker 1: what you care about. Head over out to match dot Com,
Speaker 1: forward slash j to find out how you can date
Speaker 1: based on your values and your vision. I want to
Speaker 1: talk about goals. I think we saw that in La
Speaker 1: La Land, where they had different goals. And goals is
Speaker 1: a really interesting thing because in a healthy relationship, it's
Speaker 1: not that you're going to find someone with the same goals.
Speaker 1: It's actually that you're going to find someone who respects
Speaker 1: your goals and values them and helps you get to
Speaker 1: them and the other person does the same. I have
Speaker 1: a lot of friends who are performers, speakers, musicians, and
Speaker 1: they're all saying, well, why is my partner not in
Speaker 1: the front row right?
Speaker 2: Why is my partner not in the front row?
Speaker 1: And maybe their partner has their own dreams that keep
Speaker 1: them active. At the same time, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: talking about pop culture. I think you see it right
Speaker 1: now with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Like both of
Speaker 1: them are high performers, both of them are achieving. I'm
Speaker 1: sure they can't be at every single game. She can't
Speaker 1: be at every game and he can't be at every concert,
Speaker 1: but they're making it work by saying, I see that
Speaker 1: that's what makes you happy. I see that that's what
Speaker 1: makes you you. I see that that's what makes you attractive.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to show up for you when I can.
Speaker 1: It will even perform together when we can, like we'll
Speaker 1: make it happen. But I'm not going to make you
Speaker 1: give up the thing you love in order for us
Speaker 1: to have the same goals, in order for us to
Speaker 1: have the same priorities. And so it's interesting we've kind
Speaker 1: of been presented this either or where it's like you
Speaker 1: either both sacrifice your goals for each other or one
Speaker 1: of you sacrifices their goals for the other while one
Speaker 1: of them lives them through. And in reality, a healthy
Speaker 1: relationship is saying, well, I'm not going to let you
Speaker 1: sacrifice your goals and I'm not going to sacrifice mine.
Speaker 1: And yes we may spend a little less time with
Speaker 1: each other, but I know you support me deeply. I
Speaker 1: don't need you to be in the front row to
Speaker 1: know I'm front of.
Speaker 2: Mind for you.
Speaker 1: I don't need you to be cheering me on right now,
Speaker 1: because I know you're going to be there to cheer
Speaker 1: me on in and around that area, in and around
Speaker 1: that activity. And I think so many of us can
Speaker 1: lose a great relationship because we think, oh well, our
Speaker 1: goals have to perfectly match, Our goals have to perfectly align.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Another area is trauma. A lot of people today say
Speaker 1: I want to be with someone who's gone to therapy.
Speaker 1: They have to be focused on healing. The truth is,
Speaker 1: we don't know when someone's healing journey is going to start,
Speaker 1: and we don't know when ours is going to end.
Speaker 1: Let me say that again. You don't know when someone's
Speaker 1: healing journey is going to start, and you don't know
Speaker 1: when your healing journey is going to end. Feel that
Speaker 1: you've done a lot of healing and something next to
Speaker 1: you could trigger a new reason to heal. And someone
Speaker 1: else may have gone to therapy for years and they
Speaker 1: may actually be in a peaceful place right now. The
Speaker 1: right person will heal themselves as they watch you heal.
Speaker 1: The right person will be patient with you as you
Speaker 1: are patient with them. The right person will make time
Speaker 1: and space for what you need as you make time
Speaker 1: and space for them. The right person will not be
Speaker 1: the person who's perfectly healed, because neither are we. The
Speaker 1: right person will not be the person who's already done
Speaker 1: all the self work before they met us, because we've
Speaker 1: also got so much self work left. If anything, the
Speaker 1: right person becomes our partner in the journey of healing
Speaker 1: and self work. In the journey of inner work, we
Speaker 1: become companions and partners who understand each other, see each other,
Speaker 1: hear each other. And that's not perfect. This is an ideal.
Speaker 1: This is conflict. This is hard, this is heavy, it's challenging,
Speaker 1: but it's what builds greatness in a partnership. There's this
Speaker 1: old story about rocks that are put into a bag,
Speaker 1: and when the bag is moved, the rocks rub against
Speaker 1: each other slowly to become softer edged. The rocks didn't
Speaker 1: become softer because they were made softer independently. They became
Speaker 1: softer because there was conflict and tension between the rocks.
Speaker 1: But they eventually softened each other out. That's what the
Speaker 1: right relationship will do. In the right relationship, your fights
Speaker 1: will make you closer, your arguments will make you more thoughtful,
Speaker 1: your disagreements will make you more considerate, and words you
Speaker 1: wish you never said will make you more mindful. That's
Speaker 1: what happens now a lot of us. The next one
Speaker 1: is we live in a state of they were the
Speaker 1: right person at the wrong time because we saw their potential,
Speaker 1: we saw what they could be, we saw what we
Speaker 1: wanted them to be. And really what it was is
Speaker 1: they were who they were, but we had this imagined
Speaker 1: version of who they could be, should be, would be. Again,
Speaker 1: they weren't the right person because the right person was
Speaker 1: what you dreamed up in your potential person, the real person.
Speaker 1: And that's why I almost want to get away from
Speaker 1: this language of the right person.
Speaker 2: It's the real person.
Speaker 1: We're dealing with real people, and the right person will
Speaker 1: be the person you want to make it right with.
Speaker 1: The right person will be the person who you choose
Speaker 1: to do the right thing for and they choose to
Speaker 1: do the right thing for you. That's the right person,
Speaker 1: which is a real person. I think we've kind of
Speaker 1: made it so that, oh, the right person will be
Speaker 1: all these things. And I'm like, the real person will
Speaker 1: be all those things in a whole set of other things. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the real person. The right person in your head
Speaker 1: only is your perfect checklist. And I promise you you
Speaker 1: meet people who have that checklist and they have everything
Speaker 1: else as well, and because they have all these other
Speaker 1: things that you didn't have on your checklist that you
Speaker 1: don't recognize, you write them off as the wrong person.
Speaker 1: It's funny how we write people off as the wrong
Speaker 1: person because they have everything we want, but they come
Speaker 1: with a lot more baggage as well. And that's the
Speaker 1: real situation that we're in a couple more things that
Speaker 1: I want us to focus on because it's not time.
Speaker 1: So it's right person but real goals, right person but
Speaker 1: real trauma, right person but real relationship status, right person
Speaker 1: but real all no potential or potential, right person and
Speaker 1: real standards. Sometimes our expectations get the better of us.
Speaker 1: Sometimes someone wants us to lower our standards beneath what
Speaker 1: we deserve. Neither make someone the right person. And it's
Speaker 1: amazing how in the rear view mirror everything looks more beautiful.
Speaker 1: Everything looks more amazing. Everything looks like it was more exciting.
Speaker 1: And I think a big part of this is because
Speaker 1: there's a part of us that loves that feeling, and
Speaker 1: a peaceful, healthy relationship doesn't provide that spark. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are in happy, healthy, right person,
Speaker 1: right time relationships, real person relationships, find peace more than pleasure.
Speaker 1: And I think the problem is people think a peaceful
Speaker 1: relationship is a relationship, and that's not true. A peaceful
Speaker 1: relationship is a relationship where you're not creating drama and
Speaker 1: neither are they, where you're both not triggered over petty things,
Speaker 1: where you both don't make something out of nothing to
Speaker 1: fight for each other's attention, where you're not playing games
Speaker 1: or manipulating in order to get someone's validation, where you
Speaker 1: actually communicate honestly about what you want. And the funny
Speaker 1: thing is we will say we want this, but we
Speaker 1: won't behave that way with the person. So I want
Speaker 1: you to really take this episode in because it's a
Speaker 1: reality check, and the reality check is to encourage you
Speaker 1: to say, let's stop thinking about the right person and
Speaker 1: let's look at real people. What does a real person have?
Speaker 1: What does a real person come with, and a real
Speaker 1: person comes with all these things. But love is saying,
Speaker 1: can we take all of that into account and make
Speaker 1: it make sense? And if we can't, let's not glorify
Speaker 1: or put that person on a pedestal for the rest
Speaker 1: of time because it makes us feel better. Let's actually
Speaker 1: say it didn't wasn't the right person, And I'm going
Speaker 1: to keep looking for that real person that I can
Speaker 1: connect with. I really hope that you'll share this episode
Speaker 1: with a friend. I hope it will help clarify so
Speaker 1: much of our mind and brain works and makes decisions,
Speaker 1: and I hope it's going to make you more open, curious,
Speaker 1: and positive about dating. I'm so excited for you and
Speaker 1: forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. If you love this episode, you're going to
Speaker 1: love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get
Speaker 1: over your ex and find true love in your relationships.
Speaker 1: People should be compassionate to themselves that extend that compassion
Speaker 1: to your future self, because truly extending your compassion to
Speaker 1: your future self is doing something that gives him or
Speaker 1: her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.