Speaker 1: When we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that
Speaker 1: we may not be comfortable with. I don't like where
Speaker 1: my life is going. I'm not happy with how I look.
Speaker 1: Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh they just
Speaker 1: got proposed to, and I'm still alone. All those thoughts
Speaker 1: get space to actually be heard is when you're scrolling.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, they got proposed. Oh cute bunny. Oh
Speaker 2: like you, You're not even listening, you're scrolling away thoughts.
Speaker 3: Tell me, what is the secret that you've learned from
Speaker 3: monks on how to master yourself?
Speaker 1: I think one of the first things that I'd suggest
Speaker 1: and explain to people is that when I lived as
Speaker 1: a monk, a lot of the wisdom that we studied
Speaker 1: and the Eastern literatures that we spent time excavating, those
Speaker 1: were not aimed at monks. Those were just aimed at
Speaker 1: humanity when they were written. When they were written, they
Speaker 1: weren't talking about the Vaders. Correct, are the vaders?
Speaker 3: Exactly?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 1: The Vaders are five thousand year old texts that literally
Speaker 1: talk about everything from aira vada, which is the science
Speaker 1: of health. So Veda means wisdom or science of and
Speaker 1: so ara vada is the science of life, the science
Speaker 1: of health. You have their own version of Vastu Vader,
Speaker 1: which is closest to FUNCTIONU. So like how to design
Speaker 1: your home, how to set up different things around your
Speaker 1: home for purposeful esthetics. You have the science of warfare
Speaker 1: in the Vaders. Oh yeah, so there's a whole text
Speaker 1: dedicated how do you reconcile that? You reconcile that in
Speaker 1: the sense of there's knowledge and wisdom on how to
Speaker 1: properly do each aspect with integrity, with purpose from a
Speaker 1: point of protection. Recognizing I think me and you can
Speaker 1: probably vibe with this the idea that we all want
Speaker 1: a world. I think we'd all like a world that
Speaker 1: has no war. But if we live in a world
Speaker 1: pretending that there is none of that and then we're
Speaker 1: not prepared for it, that sets us up worse. And
Speaker 1: I think, whether you look at that on the macro
Speaker 1: of war, or you look at on the micro of
Speaker 1: anxiety or stress or pressure, if we pretend that stress
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, it doesn't make it go away, it doesn't
Speaker 1: make it better.
Speaker 2: But being prepared for it.
Speaker 1: Actually allows us to potentially avoid it, potentially navigate it
Speaker 1: with more integrity and authenticity. And today, I feel like
Speaker 1: when you don't have codes for difficult things in society,
Speaker 1: you see people make really bad mistakes. You see people
Speaker 1: not having a codebook or a rule book on leadership,
Speaker 1: and that's what it leads to. You see people not
Speaker 1: having a codebook or rule book on how to navigate war,
Speaker 1: and therefore people do what they feel like. And so
Speaker 1: I find that what the Vedas we're trying to do
Speaker 1: was give you a set of code and a set
Speaker 1: of rules and a set of limits so that you
Speaker 1: would be more controlled, more more, more greedless, more negative
Speaker 1: desire less in those situations, so that you wouldn't be
Speaker 1: pulled into something by your ego, but you could actually
Speaker 1: go back to something that would help you get there
Speaker 1: to get the best result for people in humanity. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what's so special about the Vedas, that
Speaker 1: ultimately it's dedicated to uplifting humanity through each of these
Speaker 1: different things that we experience in life.
Speaker 3: It was really interesting to hear you talk about the
Speaker 3: part in I think it was in the Vedas about
Speaker 3: the guy who's to prepare for war and you're talking
Speaker 3: about even good people have to learn how to fight.
Speaker 3: Found that really interesting. But the book starts with solitude. Yes,
Speaker 3: why solitude, because that was a part where I was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: here's where the monk part is coming into this. And
Speaker 3: I think it's pretty important for people to be able
Speaker 3: to be alone before they try to get into a relationship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we've created this feeling in society where
Speaker 1: loneliness is the enemy, Like being alone is seen as
Speaker 1: a weakness. So when someone goes to school and throws
Speaker 1: a birthday party and not many people show up, you're unpopular,
Speaker 1: Whereas if lots of people showed up, you were really important,
Speaker 1: you were.
Speaker 3: Significant, brutal. I can think of a few things that
Speaker 3: would be more devastating to a kid than no one
Speaker 3: showing up to your birthday exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's how it's flamed, that's how it's talked about.
Speaker 1: And then the next thing is.
Speaker 3: Like, would you tell your kids if they if they
Speaker 3: went to have a birthday party and nobody showed up
Speaker 3: to day? Would you really be like, hey, solitude is
Speaker 3: a good thing, Like how would you?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not that so.
Speaker 1: I can't say, But what I would say is that
Speaker 1: I would change it in the invite process, So I
Speaker 1: would ask them to only invite people that they felt
Speaker 1: really connected to or they felt they've really vibed with them,
Speaker 1: wanted to celebrate their birthday with. So I think the
Speaker 1: challenges when you're a kid, you also hand out way
Speaker 1: too many invites. So I think that's what ends up
Speaker 1: happening is that you think a good birthday party is
Speaker 1: a packed room and even I mean people still feel
Speaker 1: that till they're fifty sixty seventy, like that is until
Speaker 1: the way dead, until they're dead, right, Like you feel
Speaker 1: a good birthday party or a good event, even when
Speaker 1: people say, like when I die, like, if there's loads
Speaker 1: of people there, that will be a thing. I think
Speaker 1: we've just programmed ourselves to believe that if we're not
Speaker 1: surrounded by people, we can't celebrate, and we can't be celebrated.
Speaker 1: It has to be about scale of how many people
Speaker 1: are there. And I would say that's one measurement, but
Speaker 1: the other men's measurement is the depth of how well
Speaker 1: they know you. I know tons of people who threw
Speaker 1: a great birthday party at fifty five hundred people showed
Speaker 1: up and they felt actually I went, actually I went
Speaker 1: to a birthday party this year. It was a big
Speaker 1: birthday party, and I was speaking to the person whose
Speaker 1: party it was and they were, like, so many people
Speaker 1: invited people I didn't know to my birthday party and
Speaker 1: they felt lonely at their own birthday party. I don't
Speaker 1: want If I have had kids, I won't want them
Speaker 1: to feel that, And even for myself, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be in that position.
Speaker 2: I'd rather have.
Speaker 1: I saw this thing on Instagram and it was someone
Speaker 1: that posted like it was like a ten this is
Speaker 1: a British currency. It was like tenpence and then one pound,
Speaker 1: and so tenpence is larger circumference than the pound, but
Speaker 1: the pound is greater in value. And so the caption
Speaker 1: on Instagram said that my circle is shrunk in size,
Speaker 1: but is increased in value. And I was thinking that that,
Speaker 1: to me, resembles the kind of life I would want
Speaker 1: for myself and for my children if I had them.
Speaker 1: But if I could have both, that would be amazing, obviously,
Speaker 1: But I don't know how real it is to be
Speaker 1: able to say we can have both. So I think
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say with solitude is that if
Speaker 1: there isn't a sense that I am happy with myself,
Speaker 1: with my own company with the thoughts that circle around
Speaker 1: in my mind. Imagine how complex that is when you
Speaker 1: add another confused individual who's not happy with their thoughts,
Speaker 1: not happy with who they are, not happy with their mind,
Speaker 1: and now in a relationship, you're putting two confused people together.
Speaker 1: Why is their pain, why is their fallout? Why is
Speaker 1: there so much disappointment in a relationship? In my opinion
Speaker 1: and from the perspective of the Eastern studies, is that
Speaker 1: because there's an internal dissatisfaction in both people that they're
Speaker 1: now bringing to each other, and so the strength of
Speaker 1: solitude is using that time. I've still not found a
Speaker 1: better solution for self awareness than solitude, because in solitude,
Speaker 1: it's the only place you get to hear your own
Speaker 1: voice and make sense of other people's opinions. If I'm
Speaker 1: standing in the middle of a group of one hundred
Speaker 1: people and they're all yelling their opinions at me, chances
Speaker 1: are some of them are going to rub off, some
Speaker 1: of them are contagious, some of them are going to
Speaker 1: reject And I don't get the space and time to
Speaker 1: make sense of what's my voice and what's noise, Whereas
Speaker 1: when I get time to myself I get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to reflect on and introspect and go do I want
Speaker 1: that thought to be mine? How does that fit in
Speaker 1: to my life? How do I feel about this?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You get to have that dialogue with yourself, and I
Speaker 1: feel we've lost the art of self talk and self dialogue.
Speaker 3: Well, let's go into it. So what is that art?
Speaker 3: Like the if you put a human being in solitary confinement,
Speaker 3: you will break them in a deep and fundamental and
Speaker 3: scary way that I wouldn't have predicted. That seems very
Speaker 3: weird to me. I know it to be true, not
Speaker 3: because I've experienced it, but because you just hear it
Speaker 3: over and over and over and over, like, if you
Speaker 3: really want to destroy the human spirit, isolate them. So
Speaker 3: how is it that we take this thing that will,
Speaker 3: on a long enough timeline, absolutely decimate you and make
Speaker 3: it something that becomes the most profound setup for self awareness?
Speaker 3: What do you have to do in that solitude?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So the first thing I'd say is that it would
Speaker 1: decimate you if you go into it twenty four hours
Speaker 1: a day.
Speaker 2: And that's not what we're recommending here, right, I'm.
Speaker 1: Not telling someone to twenty four hours be in solitude
Speaker 1: for a year, Like, that's not my recommendation. My recommendation
Speaker 1: is in your week, there has to be at least
Speaker 1: one hour that you spend by yourself. And in that hour,
Speaker 1: you're not watching a show, you're not reading a book,
Speaker 1: you're not on your phone scrolling, so you're not distracting
Speaker 1: yourself with anything or stimulating yourself with anything external, and
Speaker 1: you're sitting there and just observing your thoughts. Now, one
Speaker 1: hour is going to seem like a long time in
Speaker 1: the beginning, but I'm saying one hour would be great
Speaker 1: in a week. If you're starting that at ten minutes,
Speaker 1: that's brilliant, that's enough.
Speaker 2: But the goal is it enough?
Speaker 3: Like? Are you being kind? Are you trying to let
Speaker 3: people off the hook? Are you worried about people flaming
Speaker 3: you in the comments? Like you meditate two hours a day?
Speaker 3: I'm not mistaken, Yes, So what should people do for real?
Speaker 1: I do believe that ten minutes is a good place
Speaker 1: to start, because I do feel that.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't stay there.
Speaker 2: You shouldn't stay at ten minutes. I should grow.
Speaker 1: I think I look at it as like when you
Speaker 1: do a colpelndze right for the first time. So The
Speaker 1: first time I did a Colpelanze, I was doing it
Speaker 1: with a friend and they were they'd been already doing
Speaker 1: it for a long time, and I didn't want to
Speaker 1: walk out and I couldn't do it, and so I
Speaker 1: stayed in there. Yeah, literally, so I stayed in there
Speaker 1: for longer than I wanted to the first time I
Speaker 1: did it. So if I did it myself the first time,
Speaker 1: I think I would have been there for thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: The first time I did it for five.
Speaker 1: Minutes, because I was in there with someone who is
Speaker 1: in this we're fully simmid five minutes. It was great
Speaker 1: fully simmized up to here right, not fully summized. And
Speaker 1: so when I look at that, and I look at
Speaker 1: something that I found challenging when I did it, I
Speaker 1: was like, if someone told me I had to be
Speaker 1: in there for ten minutes the first time I did it,
Speaker 1: I potentially would never have got in right. And the
Speaker 1: idea that I could have started with thirty seconds and
Speaker 1: built myself up to three minutes and then built myself
Speaker 1: up to five minutes, I really do like that process.
Speaker 1: And I think you have to and this is self
Speaker 1: awareness again. You have to know whether you're someone who
Speaker 1: likes to be thrown in the deep end, or whether
Speaker 1: you're someone who likes to build up incrementally. I'm generally
Speaker 1: someone who jumps into the deepend So I was pushed
Speaker 1: in for five minutes and that works for me, because
Speaker 1: for me, I'm the kind of person needs to be
Speaker 1: pushed off to break the mental barrier to then go
Speaker 1: back and build a habit. That's my self awareness. I
Speaker 1: became a monk in order to learn these things. I'm
Speaker 1: an extreme person. That's how I learn and build habits.
Speaker 1: But someone else goes to me. Actually, Jay, I like
Speaker 1: meditating for five minutes a day, and it works for me,
Speaker 1: and now I have confidence I can do ten minutes
Speaker 1: a day, I can do fifteen and I love that.
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's an either or I genuinely don't.
Speaker 1: That's not a cop out. I think you have to
Speaker 1: know who you are, and so if I want to
Speaker 1: learn something, I'll schedule the whole weekend. If I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn archery, I would set up archery classes for
Speaker 1: eight hours a day all weekend. I wouldn't learn it
Speaker 1: by doing archery once a week because I want to
Speaker 1: figure out whether I'm deeply interested and care about this
Speaker 1: enough to actually commit to it weekly.
Speaker 2: But that's my mindset, that's who I am.
Speaker 1: So I think the first thing I say is ten
Speaker 1: minutes alone every week where you sit and you just
Speaker 1: observe your thoughts and write down every thought that comes up.
Speaker 2: This is weird. I hate this. It's boring.
Speaker 1: I can't believe Jay and Tom told me to do
Speaker 1: this right, like whatever else is coming up, and write
Speaker 1: it down and just become comfortable becoming aware of your thoughts.
Speaker 1: And what you find is that the first time you
Speaker 1: do this, it is just going to be random noise
Speaker 1: like that, what shall I eat tonight? What's going on?
Speaker 1: It's just going to be that stuff. It might be
Speaker 1: I hate this, I'm uncomfortable, this is not fun on
Speaker 1: board like it will just be natural dialogue like that.
Speaker 1: What you find is the next time you do it,
Speaker 1: or the next after a couple of times that you
Speaker 1: do it, you now might start asking interesting questions. You
Speaker 1: might now start noticing a pattern of thoughts that repeats itself,
Speaker 1: like I've just been thinking for a week about what
Speaker 1: that person said to me about how I look, or
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about what that person said to me
Speaker 1: about something I did online, like, and it's just been
Speaker 1: in my mind and it keeps repeating itself. Now you're
Speaker 1: going to start to find what you spend most of
Speaker 1: your time on. So studies show we have sixty to
Speaker 1: eighty thousand thoughts per day and eighty percent of them
Speaker 1: are negative and eighty percent of them are repetitive. So
Speaker 1: if our life is not transforming our thoughts, Now, if
Speaker 1: I asked you what are you thinking about?
Speaker 2: You're a self aware person.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure you could tell me on any given
Speaker 1: moment what you're thinking about. You ask most people what
Speaker 1: they're thinking about, the reaction will be in an emotion
Speaker 1: like I'm just stressed. I've got too much on at
Speaker 1: the moment. But we can't be really clear. So what
Speaker 1: this is giving you is a clarity of what are
Speaker 1: those repeating negative thoughts and how do we want to
Speaker 1: change them? So that's step one is a even becoming
Speaker 1: aware of the thoughts. So if I ask an average
Speaker 1: person when you wake up in the morning, what's the first.
Speaker 2: Thought you had?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm tired, that's the first thought for most people.
Speaker 1: You finally made it to coffee, You add your morning coffee,
Speaker 1: and you're thinking God, I hope this coffee gets through
Speaker 1: me through the day because I'm so tired. Second time
Speaker 1: you've had the thought. You get to lunchtime, you're like, God,
Speaker 1: is it only lunchtime? Like, and I can't even eat
Speaker 1: lunch because I'm busy working. God, I'm so tired. You
Speaker 1: get to six pm, maybe you've got to work an
Speaker 1: extra hour because no one finishes work at six anymore.
Speaker 1: Seven pm you finish, You've got I'm exhausted, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to get home. You get home, and somehow at
Speaker 1: eleven thirty seven pm you get the courage to watch
Speaker 1: another episode and you.
Speaker 2: Repeat the cycle. Right, that's a six thoughts in the
Speaker 2: same day.
Speaker 3: As people get that awareness of what do you want
Speaker 3: them to do with it? Or that's not the right
Speaker 3: what is the effective thing to do with it? If
Speaker 3: you're trying to better yourself in whatever, whether it's love
Speaker 3: or something else, but if you're trying to make progress
Speaker 3: and not just document, like, where do you go with that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we want to disrupt that algorithm, right, that
Speaker 1: pattern that's been developed.
Speaker 3: To just stop thinking negative.
Speaker 1: No, so we're not going to do that. What we're
Speaker 1: going to do is we're going to say I am tired.
Speaker 1: We're going to take that thought. We're going to accept it.
Speaker 1: We're okay with that, We're good with that. And I'm
Speaker 1: going to sleep early tonight. So I'm accepting the thought
Speaker 1: that I'm feeling. I'm not going to wake up and
Speaker 1: never feel I'm tired. I mean, I wake up and
Speaker 1: feel i'm tired sometimes, but our literally go, I'm tired.
Speaker 1: I'm going to cancel my plans for the weekend. I've
Speaker 1: done that so many times where I've had the busiest
Speaker 1: week at work.
Speaker 2: I'm tired. I can feel that, I'm stressed.
Speaker 1: I'm even getting a bit snappy with my wife, Like
Speaker 1: I can feel all those things. And I look my
Speaker 1: weekend and my weekend is decked with social events, and
Speaker 1: I go to RADI I'm like, I'm about to cancel
Speaker 1: everything this weekend because I don't think I have the
Speaker 1: resilience to get through. But if I didn't give myself that,
Speaker 1: and all I keep saying all week is I'm tired.
Speaker 1: Then it gets to the weekend. My friends are coming
Speaker 1: and I'm like, God, I wish they wouldn't come in today.
Speaker 1: Then they leave and I'm like, oh God, I'm so
Speaker 1: relieved that they left. I wish they would have left earlier. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like all negativity just brewing. And so what I'm
Speaker 1: saying is accept the feeling, and what are you going
Speaker 1: to do about it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the question I was asking myself. And now
Speaker 3: what and now what this bad thing has happened.
Speaker 1: If now what, and if this, then that, like if
Speaker 1: I get tired during the week, then I will cancel
Speaker 1: my plans on the weekend. If I have weekend plans
Speaker 1: that are really important, I'll sleep early on the weeknight
Speaker 1: so that I'm ready for it. So like this week,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I've got something every night this week.
Speaker 1: Every night there's an event, So I know that this
Speaker 1: weekend needs to be RESTful. I just gave myself permission
Speaker 1: to do nothing for four days. It was beautiful because
Speaker 1: my other days have been so busy. But if I'm
Speaker 1: not having time to structure and think about these things,
Speaker 1: you're literally running from one thing to another. So I
Speaker 1: feel like people are chasing peace. People are chasing peace,
Speaker 1: not realizing that when they slow and still and make
Speaker 1: that space, they then learn how to find peace. So
Speaker 1: people are looking for peace in the meditation. That's not
Speaker 1: how it works. The meditation creates the space for you
Speaker 1: to figure out how to create peace in your life.
Speaker 2: That's where the piece is.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. So my experience of meditation is that is
Speaker 3: where I get literal peace. So I started meditating because
Speaker 3: I was going through really stressful period in my life
Speaker 3: is years ago, and it was just misery at a
Speaker 3: physical level, and so I thought, I've got to find
Speaker 3: some way to de escalate my stress and anxiety. I've
Speaker 3: been told a thousand times why people to meditate. Let
Speaker 3: me actually try this. So I try it, and at
Speaker 3: a physiological level, it just lowered my stress and my anxiety,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is amazing. I've since tried
Speaker 3: to get like my wife, for instance, to use it.
Speaker 3: It doesn't hit her in the same way that it
Speaker 3: hit me. But the piece came for me in breathing
Speaker 3: from my diaphragm. It was so physiological. And it's the
Speaker 3: older I get, the more content I create, the more
Speaker 3: I realize that I'm all tactics, like I just know
Speaker 3: how to translate the airy stuff into end. Go do this, yes,
Speaker 3: And so I'm curious, do if you just sat and meditated,
Speaker 3: You're saying that's not going to bring you peace. You
Speaker 3: have to solve this riddle of all these pieces bouncing
Speaker 3: around in your mind.
Speaker 1: I'll take back the categoric way I said that, So
Speaker 1: I guess what I was leaning towards is I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that meditating itself can't be a peaceful experience, but
Speaker 1: I feel a lot of people who have stressed out,
Speaker 1: busy lives are just looking for a break from it.
Speaker 2: And it can provide that, but sometimes.
Speaker 1: It can't because you're too stressed and busy, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the times a healthy way of using meditation
Speaker 1: is to make sense of stuff so you can go
Speaker 1: back to your life and apply it. So for some
Speaker 1: people it is peace and that's fair, and I agree,
Speaker 1: I do find piece and meditation, But for some people
Speaker 1: it's giving them that break and that gap between experience
Speaker 1: and reaction. It's giving them that gap between stress and
Speaker 1: struggle that allows them to reorient themselves and say.
Speaker 2: This is what I need to switch, this is what
Speaker 2: I need to move.
Speaker 1: And I feel maybe you're someone that does that anyway
Speaker 1: and does that naturally, and then meditation can become just
Speaker 1: what it is and give you that piece. But I
Speaker 1: feel that for a lot of people, just sitting there
Speaker 1: with their thoughts is stressful just.
Speaker 3: Observing it because they don't know what to do with it.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: I think, first of all, there's a big fear around it, right,
Speaker 1: It's just we're scared.
Speaker 3: I don't understand that at all. What are people scared of?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's the same way as saying, like,
Speaker 1: why people scared of sitting in cold water?
Speaker 2: Rights?
Speaker 3: How I get because it sucks.
Speaker 2: It does suck.
Speaker 1: So what I'm saying is people that I've talked to
Speaker 1: you who struggle with their thoughts make those things.
Speaker 3: Easy because they don't know what to do with them.
Speaker 3: Like the cold thing. It's e So look, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: have a massive physiological response. YEA, not fun. I'm doing
Speaker 3: it for reasons, so I do it. I can stop
Speaker 3: doing it at any time. But a thought doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be painful in the way that cold exposure. Like
Speaker 3: even wim Hoff says, I don't like being cold. I
Speaker 3: do it because it serves a purpose.
Speaker 1: But even he says that the loss of love was
Speaker 1: more painful than any of the cold he's been through, right,
Speaker 1: Like that thought of losing someone you love is far
Speaker 1: greater than the pain of sitting in cold.
Speaker 3: I think that's like the background thing that's really messing
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I feel like I was even talking to
Speaker 1: I was even talking to Amar from Yestery and if
Speaker 1: you've have.
Speaker 2: You ever had them?
Speaker 3: I know, yes, Siria, but I've never. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they do loads of crazy stuff too, right, and
Speaker 1: they've they've gone. And so I was talking to Amar,
Speaker 1: who's one of the Yes three guys. They're awesome guys,
Speaker 1: and he was saying to me that, so this is
Speaker 1: really fascinating, and I love where we're going with this,
Speaker 1: by the way, and please keep going there because this
Speaker 1: I can only have this common session with you.
Speaker 2: So I'm very happy right now.
Speaker 1: The thing about what Amma was saying is that he
Speaker 1: said the whole point of yes theory was saying yes
Speaker 1: to crazy stuff that we wouldn't say yes to, and
Speaker 1: that's how it started. And he goes, we got to
Speaker 1: a point we're saying yes to crazy stuff was not
Speaker 1: difficult anymore. So now when we said yes to doing
Speaker 1: something crazy next year, we actually didn't find that uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And yes theory was all about seeking discomfort. So he goes,
Speaker 1: we realized we were just seeking comfort. Doing something bigger
Speaker 1: every time was just more and more comfortable, and he goes, actually,
Speaker 1: what's most uncomfortable for me right now is to sit
Speaker 1: alone with my thoughts every day for fifteen minutes and meditate.
Speaker 2: And he said this, man, I was like wow, like
Speaker 2: it was so profound.
Speaker 3: So yes, let's go down and all that down to one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you my hypothesis. Yes, people are
Speaker 3: afraid that they people don't respect themselves or their self
Speaker 3: respect is fragile, and being alone with their thoughts is
Speaker 3: just going to be intrusive and they're going to lose
Speaker 3: more respect, I guess, because that would be. That was
Speaker 3: the thing that I struggled with in the beginning, and
Speaker 3: I've spent my entire life making sure that I can
Speaker 3: be alone because I always tell people the only thing
Speaker 3: that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're
Speaker 3: by yourself. So the only thing I can think is
Speaker 3: when people are alone, they don't feel good about who
Speaker 3: they are, and so they seek distraction.
Speaker 2: That's it. I mean, it's as simple as that.
Speaker 1: It literally is like I'll give a study and then
Speaker 1: I'll specifically speak to that point like. Men and women
Speaker 1: were asked to be alone with their thoughts for fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes or give themselves an electric shop.
Speaker 3: I know where this is going.
Speaker 1: They did this experiment, thirty percent of women chose an
Speaker 1: electric shot. Wow, and sixty percent of men chose an
Speaker 1: electric shop.
Speaker 3: Oh wow. I had that back. I guess the other way,
Speaker 3: And when asked.
Speaker 1: Why, they said, because they didn't want to be alone
Speaker 1: with their thoughts. Because we're skinning our thoughts. Now, your
Speaker 1: hypothesis is accurate, I would agree with it. I think
Speaker 1: the biggest thing is that when we're left alone to ourselves,
Speaker 1: we hear things that we may not be comfortable with.
Speaker 1: I don't like where my life is going. I'm not
Speaker 1: happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better
Speaker 1: than me. Oh they just got proposed to, and I'm
Speaker 1: still alone. All those thoughts get space to actually be heard,
Speaker 1: whereas when you're scrolling, it's like, oh they got proposed
Speaker 1: Oh cute bunny, Oh like you, you're not even listening.
Speaker 1: You're scrolling a thought. That's literally you're scrolling away thoughts.
Speaker 1: And that gives us a sense of comfort that we
Speaker 1: don't spend longer than three seconds on a thought. But
Speaker 1: then when you're asked to spend three minutes or more
Speaker 1: on a thought, that thought gets to like grow and
Speaker 1: build and become scarier and bigger, almost like a monster
Speaker 1: that unknown of it. Right, It's like, I think that
Speaker 1: what people are most scared of is they've been trained
Speaker 1: to numb themselves. We live in a society that knows
Speaker 1: how to numb emotions and numb feelings, right, I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm so upset about something, I'm going to go and
Speaker 1: drink alcohol to numb that feeling, to not experience and
Speaker 1: start feeling I messed up at something. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go and gamble away my money to numb the feeling
Speaker 1: that I felt. I'm going to go and watch something
Speaker 1: on TV because I just want to numb how I
Speaker 1: feel right now.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that I don't do any of those
Speaker 1: things to number feeling when it's really painful, or that
Speaker 1: we shouldn't ever number feeling at all, But our goal
Speaker 1: is we just want to numb things away.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that That's.
Speaker 1: Why sitting with your thoughts for fifteen minutes is really hard,
Speaker 1: because there's.
Speaker 2: Nothing to numb it.
Speaker 1: There is nothing that will numb it, and even sitting
Speaker 1: in the cold, nothing numbs that apart from your own
Speaker 1: senteredness and breathing.
Speaker 2: You have to go to that.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why sitting alone with your thoughts
Speaker 1: is such a powerful practice, because what you're saying, if
Speaker 1: you want to be happy, being happy about yourself when
Speaker 1: you're by yourself, that requires you to not numb anything
Speaker 1: about yourself, because that's the full acceptance.
Speaker 3: So interesting. So I've been thinking a lot recently about distraction.
Speaker 3: Why distraction exists, because I think it actually serves a
Speaker 3: pretty powerful person if we didn't have the ability. So
Speaker 3: there's a part of the brain called the basil ganglia,
Speaker 3: which is known as the gear shift in the brain,
Speaker 3: and for people that have obsessive thinking, they get stuck
Speaker 3: and the basil ganglia is not able to let them
Speaker 3: pass that thought into another thought. Now, I think one
Speaker 3: of my superpowers is my gearbox is amazing and to
Speaker 3: the point where it almost becomes problematic because I can
Speaker 3: I'll forget about something that I was obsessed with thinking about, ah,
Speaker 3: because my gearbox just like goes into the next thing.
Speaker 3: And so that has shown me that I can very
Speaker 3: easily get myself out of a loop. If I'm on
Speaker 3: something that's super negative, I can get out of that.
Speaker 3: But for somebody who can't, you need that external distraction
Speaker 3: and doom scrolling. Like there was one period in my
Speaker 3: life where I was so I had so much going
Speaker 3: on that even the thought of meditating was just like,
Speaker 3: well then everything is going to come crashing down. And
Speaker 3: I was like, but I know better than to not meditate,
Speaker 3: so I need some sort of primer to soothe me
Speaker 3: enough to get me into meditation. And it was actually
Speaker 3: doom scrolling cats, not just cats, but like things like
Speaker 3: that where it's like cute, funny fifteen seconds to digest
Speaker 3: the idea and then you move on to the next
Speaker 3: And I trained my YouTube algorithm on shorts to only
Speaker 3: show me like cute fun things, and I would do
Speaker 3: that for like seven minutes, and then I would go meditating.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, that is freakishly effective. So you
Speaker 3: have to wall things off because if you doom scroll
Speaker 3: for seven hours, you now never get anywhere. But if
Speaker 3: you don't understand how powerful distraction can be enough to
Speaker 3: get you to the point where now you can take
Speaker 3: advantage of something like meditation, which is going to leave
Speaker 3: you alone with your thoughts. It's really really fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love what you just said about distraction.
Speaker 1: I've always allowed myself five minutes an hour to be random,
Speaker 1: and I often have. I've either do a time or
Speaker 1: on my phone, or at one point I was really
Speaker 1: into like hour glasses or minute glasses, and I would
Speaker 1: just turn it over.
Speaker 3: What do you do in that time?
Speaker 1: So I would allow my to scroll, I would allow
Speaker 1: myself to search random stuff on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I'd allow myself.
Speaker 1: So it's giving myself the capacity to be random. And
Speaker 1: what I found in randomness is that you connect really
Speaker 1: interesting dots.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I like meditating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And so I find like in space where I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm going to type in, or I'd pick
Speaker 1: up a random book for my shelf, or I would
Speaker 1: find a random thing that I'm scrolling through. But allowing
Speaker 1: myself to do that for five minutes every hour allowed
Speaker 1: my mind to have that space, to have that gaps
Speaker 1: to connect dots but then return back. But that's us
Speaker 1: using distraction rather than just letting it be there, right,
Speaker 1: And I think when distraction controls you and drives you,
Speaker 1: and everyone knows what it feels like to be on
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole where you end up on some random
Speaker 1: website or some random YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: Everyone's been there. That's not a good feeling.
Speaker 1: Like, I don't think I want that feeling where I
Speaker 1: end up somewhere seven hours later, where seven minutes of
Speaker 1: randomness is really healthy and beautiful and can be amazing.
Speaker 1: And so why can't seven minutes of stillness? I can't
Speaker 1: seven minutes of listening to sounds or ambient noises or
Speaker 1: nature sounds, right. I think there's also a sense of
Speaker 1: I think it's reconnecting with our breath. There's an amazing
Speaker 1: study I talk about in the book about how when
Speaker 1: we spend time with people that were close to or caregivers,
Speaker 1: with people that love us, our breath and even our
Speaker 1: heartbeat can synchronize you.
Speaker 3: That is so weird to me. It's so strange, right, dude.
Speaker 3: Humans sink up to each other. The one that freaks
Speaker 3: me out the most is that women will sink their
Speaker 3: periods and they all sink to the dominant female. That
Speaker 3: stuff gets sad, super crazy. Wow, yeah, super crazy.
Speaker 2: It happens to my wife and her sister all the time.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I don't know which. Yeah, nice question.
Speaker 3: That's so fascinating. Yeah, so walk me through. Okay, so
Speaker 3: we get self awareness, so we're I love that you
Speaker 3: started the book with solitude. So we stop being afraid
Speaker 3: of our thoughts because we're doing the and now what
Speaker 3: So we have the saying it's overwhelming, it's freaking us out.
Speaker 3: We're going to deal with it, which I love that.
Speaker 3: And now in the context of becoming in fact, here
Speaker 3: is a thing that either you're going to be like
Speaker 3: one hundred percent or this will be where we debate.
Speaker 3: I think if you want to be in a relationship,
Speaker 3: you must be worthy of a relationship. Now I'm going
Speaker 3: to push it even farther and make Jay Shuddy the
Speaker 3: Monk a little uncomfortable. Maybe the ultimate way to think
Speaker 3: about it is you are asking somebody to have sex
Speaker 3: with you. And that's crazy. It is the weirdest sort
Speaker 3: of energetic thing that we do. Like I think about
Speaker 3: this a lot. I love this with Lisa. I went
Speaker 3: from how my name is Tom to exposing my genitals
Speaker 3: and doing what one does. It's like, that's a big
Speaker 3: chasm to cross. And if you're going to ask somebody
Speaker 3: to go on that journey in a way where they're
Speaker 3: as excited as you are and you don't end up
Speaker 3: in jail. You have to be somebody that's worthy of that,
Speaker 3: and that's a big ask. So one, does that resonate
Speaker 3: or do you think I'm out of my mind? And
Speaker 3: if it resonates, how do people become worthy?
Speaker 2: Well that's very monkish of you.
Speaker 1: I mean that you've put sex on a very sacred,
Speaker 1: high value facts, right, right.
Speaker 3: So when you said earlier about loneliness, I was like,
Speaker 3: I've actually been the loneliest I've ever been. Was in
Speaker 3: the middle of intercourse, Yeah, which is a crazy thought,
Speaker 3: like I be anymore with the person, and because there
Speaker 3: was no emotional connection, I felt so alone.
Speaker 1: Yes, crazy, I'm so glad you brought that up though, right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's what we understand about loneliness now that loneliness isn't
Speaker 1: about the number of people around you. It isn't about
Speaker 1: how popular you are. It doesn't matter how many people
Speaker 1: are surrounded by you. If you don't feel understood, if
Speaker 1: you don't feel seen, if you don't feel heard, you're lonely,
Speaker 1: right Like, That's what it is. And so when you're
Speaker 1: saying I'm having sex with someone and I still feel lonely.
Speaker 2: That's real.
Speaker 1: But you, from your definition of just how you broke
Speaker 1: that down, you're placing sex is extremely sacred as a
Speaker 1: high value.
Speaker 2: There could be lots of.
Speaker 1: People listening or watching, and or maybe people that we
Speaker 1: don't even that aren't in this community that would actually
Speaker 1: disagree and they'd just be like, well, sex is your sex?
Speaker 2: Like what? They don't see it that way? Right, the
Speaker 2: way you see it.
Speaker 1: Is probably more aligned with the vaders than the other perspective,
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 2: The idea that if you're about to do.
Speaker 1: Anything intimate with anyone, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, the amount
Speaker 1: of like exchange of we just talked about exchanging heartbeats
Speaker 1: and breathing. I mean, if you think about how biologically
Speaker 1: affected you are by a relationship, let alone how emotionally
Speaker 1: and then spiritually affected you are by a relationship, and
Speaker 1: how much karma you share from a spiritual level, how
Speaker 1: much energy and vibration you share on a spiritual level.
Speaker 1: You're talking about like completely syncing up or destroying your
Speaker 1: synergy with someone. And so I would say I agree
Speaker 1: with you. I don't think you're crazy at all. I
Speaker 1: think you're spot on.
Speaker 3: So how do you become worthy.
Speaker 1: So I think that I mean, I don't think you
Speaker 1: have to complete solitude in order to move on. And
Speaker 1: so in the book, I break down the four things
Speaker 1: that the Vaders breakdown, which is preparing for love, which
Speaker 1: is solitude, practicing love, which is in a relationship right.
Speaker 1: The third is like preserving love because or protecting love
Speaker 1: because there's a part of us when we're burnt through
Speaker 1: love that loses the belief in love or changes. So
Speaker 1: there's a protection of love that comes at phase three.
Speaker 1: And phase four is what I call perfecting love. And
Speaker 1: so if those are the four phases, solitude is the
Speaker 1: one preparing for love, and you have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of that becoming worthy in solitude because what I mean,
Speaker 1: we're saying something here that we're I think we're on
Speaker 1: the same page. The idea that if you walk into
Speaker 1: a relationship and you don't know who you are, you
Speaker 1: don't know what you need or what you want and
Speaker 1: what you're building and what you're creating, you're basically going
Speaker 1: to hope that the other person is going to answer
Speaker 1: all those questions for you, or you're going to outsource
Speaker 1: that inadequacy to them to make you feel worthy. So
Speaker 1: that's why we walk into a relationship and we accept
Speaker 1: the currency of attention as love. We accept the currency
Speaker 1: of validation as love.
Speaker 3: That's big in a social media culture, right.
Speaker 1: We accept the currency of attention, validation, compliments, comfort, random niceness.
Speaker 1: We accept all of that as love because we ourselves
Speaker 1: haven't defined and experienced what love looks like on our own. So,
Speaker 1: how you become worthy of another person is first becoming
Speaker 1: worthy for yourself. And what does it mean to be
Speaker 1: worthy for yourself? To me, it's doing hard things alone,
Speaker 1: when you've done hard things alone and you've grown through them.
Speaker 1: And when I say alone, I don't.
Speaker 2: Mean without your family or without friends.
Speaker 1: I just mean when you've broken through some of your
Speaker 1: own barriers that gives you a healthier sense of self
Speaker 1: esteem and self worth. I think self worth doesn't come
Speaker 1: from saying affirmations in a mirror. It doesn't come from
Speaker 1: just like pretending to be happy. It doesn't come from
Speaker 1: being positive. Your greatest self worth is going to come
Speaker 1: from breaking through stuff that you didn't think you could
Speaker 1: break through.
Speaker 3: Do people expect you to say just look yourself in
Speaker 3: the mirror and say I love myself? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think people.
Speaker 1: I think people sometimes project their own belief of like
Speaker 1: the word self love, right, So there is a form
Speaker 1: of self love, like I love going to spas, I
Speaker 1: love getting massages, So I'm into that form of self love.
Speaker 1: But I see that as more self care. I see
Speaker 1: that like caring for myself and things like that. When
Speaker 1: I think of self love is just telling myself I
Speaker 1: love myself. I've tried all of those things, and I've
Speaker 1: seen how they are not possible when I haven't done
Speaker 1: some other work. Yes, right, like me looking in the
Speaker 1: mirror and just saying I'm amazing, I'm wonderful. If I
Speaker 1: haven't done something amazing that day or done something wonderful
Speaker 1: that day, I don't believe myself, right, And that's the
Speaker 1: problem people have. They're like, I don't believe it. Now,
Speaker 1: there's two sides to it. I actually believe a lot
Speaker 1: of people have done hard things, but they don't give
Speaker 1: themselves credit for it.
Speaker 3: Very possible.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a big group of people, my mom included.
Speaker 1: I interviewed my mom recently, not on the podcast I
Speaker 1: want to, but I did what I'm happy I did.
Speaker 1: I interviewed her at a dinner just me and her
Speaker 1: because I really wanted to get to know her story.
Speaker 2: But I realized it I didn't feel.
Speaker 3: You record it. I'm guessing it didn't because that with
Speaker 3: my father in law recorded it. It was we shared
Speaker 3: that No.
Speaker 2: No, I would love knowing the background of your father
Speaker 2: in law.
Speaker 3: Dude, that's interesting. We should ask Lisa because it was dope,
Speaker 3: like that guy's story is crazy. Yeah, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: And that's what I'm saying that we don't even know
Speaker 1: the people closest to us, right, so love again anyway,
Speaker 1: But that's that's a whole other thing. But I said
Speaker 1: it with my mom. I asked her questions like I
Speaker 1: would ask on the podcast. And I was talking to
Speaker 1: her and she was telling me that it's at like
Speaker 1: fifteen years old. I think fifteen sixteen years old.
Speaker 2: She was born and.
Speaker 1: Raised in Yemen. Oh wow, And so yeah, so she's
Speaker 1: living in Yemen. Yemen are trying and it was called
Speaker 1: Aiden at the time. They're trying to the Brits who
Speaker 1: have colonized the country are fighting against the Yemeny soldiers
Speaker 1: and she's studying for her exams while there's gunment on
Speaker 1: her rooftop. Like that's her story, and I'm like, Mom, like,
Speaker 1: you've never told me how bad this was.
Speaker 2: You just told me you left Yemen because of the
Speaker 2: war and moved to England, Like that's the story I know.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, I'm discovering that you were
Speaker 1: actually studying for an exam while there's people with guns
Speaker 1: on your roof defending tube and you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of all of that, and you're fifteen years old. And
Speaker 1: she never told me that. I was thinking, she's done
Speaker 1: how things and she doesn't even see it that way
Speaker 1: because to her it's normal.
Speaker 3: Interesting do you think she thinks it's normal or do
Speaker 3: people confuse enduring which is extraordinary with Oh, but I
Speaker 3: didn't actively choose it, and therefore I completely discount.
Speaker 2: It totally totally.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, at least from my mom, I can
Speaker 1: say that she just sees it as her life. She
Speaker 1: doesn't see it as like hard or easy or that
Speaker 1: that's her kind of way she sees stuff. It's kind
Speaker 1: of how I feel something the world. When I talk
Speaker 1: about my monk experience, it's very normal to me, Like
Speaker 1: there's a part and I chose to do it. There's
Speaker 1: a part of me, and there's just like it's normal.
Speaker 1: And people are like, that's crazy, like why would you
Speaker 1: ever become a monk after school? It's so bizarre, But
Speaker 1: to me, it's not that bizarre. And so it takes
Speaker 1: me a minute to be like, oh, wait, a minute,
Speaker 1: is pretty crazy, right, Like not many people do that,
Speaker 1: but I don't sit in that thought that often, and
Speaker 1: so I think there's I think what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: that this becoming worthy is breaking through some of your
Speaker 1: own barriers and limits, whatever they need may be, which
Speaker 1: is what you discover in the solitude. And the more
Speaker 1: you break through those, the more you feel worthy for
Speaker 1: anything and everything, because you go, wow, I've done some
Speaker 1: really tough stuff on my own. I've like really pushed
Speaker 1: myself in this way, I've really tried something new. And
Speaker 1: now you're not looking for that person to fill your worthiness.
Speaker 1: You're not looking for that person to say you're amazing
Speaker 1: and you're the best and you're incredible, because you've experienced
Speaker 1: your strength.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: When you've experienced your strength, no one can make you
Speaker 1: feel weak. The right person will only make you feel stronger, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the key. When you've already done hard things,
Speaker 1: the people around you will only make you feel stronger.
Speaker 1: That's why you know they're great to be in your
Speaker 1: life because they're not making you feel strong, They're making
Speaker 1: feel stronger, whereas what we often find is that whoa whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa.
Speaker 3: They're not making you feel strong, they're making you feel stronger.
Speaker 2: Correct.
Speaker 1: So I'm saying like, we're not so even even in
Speaker 1: a positive relationship with us, Like when I'm around you,
Speaker 1: right and we have a healthy relationship, we know each
Speaker 1: other a fair bit. It's like, I'm I consider myself
Speaker 1: to be self aware and self confident and have a
Speaker 1: high degree of self worth, totally open about it.
Speaker 3: I have no issues, no issues, No reasonable person will
Speaker 3: push back on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no issues with it whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And I feel that the people I like to be
Speaker 1: in my life are not people who I'm looking to
Speaker 1: support that or or do that, but they're able to
Speaker 1: help me discover more about myself.
Speaker 2: So there's a sign of strength.
Speaker 1: So I had a client I was working that was
Speaker 1: coaching with last yeah, and he did this for me
Speaker 1: and it was really powerful, And I was like, I
Speaker 1: only like working with clients who also I learned from.
Speaker 1: So I have a selfish motive there, but it's it's special.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: I've never met someone who ties up spirituality, business, and
Speaker 1: practicality in one person like you do it. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that to self promote. I'm saying that because
Speaker 1: he gave me permission to be all three and that
Speaker 1: made me strong.
Speaker 2: Second, and it was just really powerful.
Speaker 1: I felt so like freed by that statement to be
Speaker 1: all three because it made me stronger. I know I
Speaker 1: adn't those things, but that person made me stronger. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. That you gravitate towards when you already
Speaker 1: have a sense of self worth, whereas when you don't
Speaker 1: have a sense of self worth, you look for the
Speaker 1: person who's saying, oh, you're really good at that, Oh,
Speaker 1: like maybe you should work like you're looking for someone
Speaker 1: to make you feel better about yourself from zero, whereas
Speaker 1: you're already out a ten and someone's like finding new
Speaker 1: ways of showing you more of yourself.
Speaker 2: That's there's something beautiful about that, agreed. I don't even
Speaker 2: know if I'm articulating clearly, but.
Speaker 3: Very clearly from my perspective. So I think that there
Speaker 3: is a biological imperative hardwired into the brain that you
Speaker 3: must do hard things in order to feel good about yourself.
Speaker 3: And when I think about it from an evolutionary standpoint,
Speaker 3: and this is why I think rich kids implode. You
Speaker 3: just never had to do hard things. From an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 3: I think it was just so hard to stay alive,
Speaker 3: Like for millions of years, it really was red in
Speaker 3: tooth and claw like to stay alive. You were kill
Speaker 3: or be killed. You were hunting, gathering, fighting other tribes.
Speaker 3: I'm just crazy. And the people that were going to
Speaker 3: survive were going to be the ones that got an
Speaker 3: emotional a self applied emotional reward for doing something hard.
Speaker 3: And when you do something hard, you recognize it. It
Speaker 3: needs to feel good, and if it does, then you
Speaker 3: will keep doing hard things and you're the far more
Speaker 3: likely to survive than the person who's like that sucked.
Speaker 3: There was no redeeming qualities. And so it's just like
Speaker 3: when I think about that, because if I were to
Speaker 3: create a recipe for fulfillment, it's very simple. It's working
Speaker 3: really hard, doing hard things to gain a set of
Speaker 3: skills that allow you to serve not only yourself but others.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: That's the whole recipe. But it really has to be
Speaker 3: that you had to do something hard. If it came
Speaker 3: easily to you, it won't give you the sense of
Speaker 3: respect that you want. Like the stuff that I've gotten
Speaker 3: more easily in my life, I don't take a lot
Speaker 3: of pride in it. It's always the stuff that I
Speaker 3: grind out, like through pain and suffering, and I endure.
Speaker 3: In fact, I want to read you a quote, this
Speaker 3: is one of my all time favorite quotes. To those
Speaker 3: human beings who are of any concern to me, I
Speaker 3: wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities. I wish that
Speaker 3: they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self contempt, the
Speaker 3: torture of self mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished. I
Speaker 3: have no pity for them, because I wish them The
Speaker 3: only thing that can prove today whether one is worth
Speaker 3: anything or not, that one endures.
Speaker 2: That is so rual. I definitely can't. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: so good like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: I think I get the sentiment I would not wish
Speaker 1: on anyone's amazing.
Speaker 3: So pushback as hard as you can, because I love this.
Speaker 3: So if you agree, in fact, where where does it
Speaker 3: break down? Because this is why I don't have kids.
Speaker 3: That is what people need, in my opinion, and you can't.
Speaker 3: I can't do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah I can't.
Speaker 1: Well that's well, that's where we where we disagree, right because,
Speaker 1: like I get the intention and the spirit of it, But.
Speaker 3: Do you think if they avoid it?
Speaker 2: I don't think you have to. I feel like for.
Speaker 1: Most people, for most people, life is already hard in
Speaker 1: some areas. I don't think there's many people I know
Speaker 1: at least where I grow up.
Speaker 3: Does it make them better or worse?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think they have the tools, which is
Speaker 1: why we have TAD Again, we're doing to that, right, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that when I look at the people
Speaker 1: I grew up around or the areas I grew up in, and.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the worst of the worst. It wasn't best
Speaker 2: the best. Yeah, it's it's not loved, right, it's not.
Speaker 2: Yeah you've been of course, Yeah, it's not nice.
Speaker 1: And people made bad choices because they didn't have good
Speaker 1: role models, right, Like people made bad choices because they
Speaker 1: didn't have good tools. They didn't make bad choices because
Speaker 1: of just where they were. It's because they didn't have access.
Speaker 1: Today we have access, and that's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: I feel with our work because I look at myself
Speaker 1: and I could clearly if I what's that called sliding doors,
Speaker 1: if I m visioned like where my life could have
Speaker 1: been if I didn't take a few steps, I could
Speaker 1: easily have been today addicted to some drug, getting involved
Speaker 1: in things that were highly violent, and finding myself validation
Speaker 1: through gang culture.
Speaker 2: Like I could have so ended up there.
Speaker 1: Like I literally could pinpoint three decisions that could have
Speaker 1: totally took my life in that direction, and none wan
Speaker 1: know who I am today, and I'd be a very
Speaker 1: different person, not because I'm a bad person or because
Speaker 1: I'm attracted to any of those things, just because I
Speaker 1: didn't have access. I got lucky, and I see that
Speaker 1: the access that I got to the monks at an
Speaker 1: early age just transformed the trajectory of my life. But
Speaker 1: most people don't meet someone random. We followed the same
Speaker 1: people on Instagram, we followed the same people on YouTube.
Speaker 1: We all watched the same stuff, We listened to the
Speaker 1: same stuff. How many people in there last seven days
Speaker 1: could be honest and say they heard from a random
Speaker 1: voice that was unexpected, or they saw a random person
Speaker 1: that they didn't know that sparked a new journey in
Speaker 1: their life. Like, that's how random it was for me
Speaker 1: to meet a monk. I didn't grow up religious, I
Speaker 1: wasn't around monks, I didn't go religiously to meet monks,
Speaker 1: like I met someone who completely sparked a different thought
Speaker 1: when you're sitting down with trauma experts, when I'm sitting
Speaker 1: down with neuroscientists, like I didn't grow up with neuroscientists,
Speaker 1: Like who.
Speaker 2: Are speaking to those people? So I feel, yeah, I
Speaker 2: just feel like that.
Speaker 1: Going back to that statement, I wouldn't wish pain on
Speaker 1: anyone because I feel that life is already hard. I
Speaker 1: would just wish that people opened up their hearts and
Speaker 1: minds to the tools that would help them deal with
Speaker 1: that hardship better and not try and rely on what
Speaker 1: they currently have in their toolkit.
Speaker 2: That would be my wish. It asks me what my
Speaker 2: wish is?
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The only way I can like and subscribe to that
Speaker 3: state is if we modify slightly and say, I wish
Speaker 3: that people could develop a profound sense of self worth
Speaker 3: and avoid all of that. But I don't think they can,
Speaker 3: and so this may be a cruel twist of evolution. Like,
Speaker 3: I want to be very clear, I'm not saying I'm
Speaker 3: glad it is this way. I'm just saying I think
Speaker 3: it is this way. Now. My beef with the idea
Speaker 3: of I wish that, you know, these horrible things upon
Speaker 3: people is that it breaks most of the people that
Speaker 3: it touches. But I don't think people can become a
Speaker 3: version of themselves so they'll be proud of unless they
Speaker 3: go through that stuff.
Speaker 1: So I think the compassionate monk and me can't wish
Speaker 1: that on someone in that way. And you could argue
Speaker 1: that real compassion is letting the right thing happen to
Speaker 1: someone that they need to go through.
Speaker 2: I just don't think and that is what we're.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that's interesting. So here here was my catch with
Speaker 3: one of the reasons I didn't have kids. I knew
Speaker 3: I would intervene if something bad was happening. Now, as
Speaker 3: I get older, I feel like I might be more
Speaker 3: capable of letting it happen. But at the time when
Speaker 3: I was sort of peak like should we should we not?
Speaker 3: I was like, I know, I will intervene. Would you intervene?
Speaker 2: It's always do you want to have kids? I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's the answer.
Speaker 3: We don't know.
Speaker 1: We've been we've talked about it. We're very like we're
Speaker 1: probably at that stage, and so we've been very open
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: We're like, we don't know. And partly it's these kind
Speaker 2: of things.
Speaker 1: Partly it's how it affects service and impact how there's
Speaker 1: so many there's so many things, right, there's so many
Speaker 1: facets to that question of.
Speaker 3: So, let's say darr who has two children, your co
Speaker 3: host on your show, Yea Darren Jay. For those that
Speaker 3: aren't liking and subscribing yet, would you want them to intervene?
Speaker 1: When I saw so, I saw a couple of parents
Speaker 1: that I was friends with a few years back, and
Speaker 1: I remember that their two year old was like putting
Speaker 1: her hands through a candle, like on the other side
Speaker 1: of the room. So we were all hanging out here,
Speaker 1: there two yearlds running around, and there two year olds
Speaker 1: on the other side of the candle and they're doing that,
Speaker 1: and my natural instinct at the time, this is probably
Speaker 1: like maybe like eight years ago, my natural instinct was
Speaker 1: to go and be like, help that kid. And I'm
Speaker 1: always mindful of other people's kids too, because I just
Speaker 1: feel like something, you know.
Speaker 2: And I was about to jump up and help her,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, no, I leave it.
Speaker 1: She's fine, she'll if it hurts us, she'll know next
Speaker 1: time not to touch that and let her learn by herself.
Speaker 1: And I was like, wow, that's really impressive, Like I'm
Speaker 1: scared your kid's gonna burn their hand and you're really
Speaker 1: Now I'm not recommending either or My friends are great
Speaker 1: parents and they're very loving, and that's the challenge today,
Speaker 1: right Like a lot of peop would be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, they don't care about their kids. I think
Speaker 1: they do care about their kids. I think they're really
Speaker 1: great parents, but them allowing them their child to do this.
Speaker 1: I would then see pictures of them they moved into
Speaker 1: the countryside and stuff, and their kid would just be
Speaker 1: like out like swinging on trees, like climbing stuff and
Speaker 1: falling over. And they were so comfortable with that because
Speaker 1: they had that mindset that there should be an openness.
Speaker 1: Now I think there's that openness, but then there's intervening
Speaker 1: when it gets really painful, Like what if your child
Speaker 1: gets involved in drugs? Are you not going to intervene?
Speaker 1: Like are you not going to educate are you not
Speaker 1: going to And obviously in all the right ways you'd
Speaker 1: hope would be the healthy ways of intervening. I don't
Speaker 1: think ever walking in and telling a kid to stop
Speaker 1: or don't do that, is it ever going to work.
Speaker 1: But to me, intervening is important at certain points where
Speaker 1: you think it's like really going off the edge of
Speaker 1: the cliff, versus when you feel like it's healthy experimentation
Speaker 1: and you don't. But I'm saying this obviously in theory because.
Speaker 2: I don't have to. But when I look at it
Speaker 2: with my the closest person I can compare it to
Speaker 2: is my sister. So my sister's five years younger than me.
Speaker 1: When she was born, I held her in my hands
Speaker 1: and I felt like I've parented her in many ways.
Speaker 1: She's I call a kid like that's my nickname for
Speaker 1: my younger sister. And if I look at my sister,
Speaker 1: I made mistakes by intervening too much sometimes. So I
Speaker 1: didn't really want her to have a job growing up
Speaker 1: because I worked a job growing up when I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: and I didn't really think that that was healthy for her.
Speaker 1: And now I look back and I was like, realized
Speaker 1: that was a mistake like I should have let her work,
Speaker 1: and I don't think that that was a good decision.
Speaker 1: And so that's me going Okay, well that was a
Speaker 1: bad intervention. And then there's other things where like we
Speaker 1: have a really open relationship. She tells me all their
Speaker 1: challenges with really good friends. She's not scared to tell
Speaker 1: me something like that's the healthy part of it. And
Speaker 1: so I look at like how parenting is so tough
Speaker 1: because you look back and you're like, ah, I'm wiser now,
Speaker 1: and then you look back and go, oh, I got
Speaker 1: that right. So I think, whether it's kids or not,
Speaker 1: I guess my point is I wouldn't wish pain on
Speaker 1: someone because I think they're going through some sort of pain. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's my point. I can't wish pain on someone. That's
Speaker 1: I'm really I hear it.
Speaker 3: What is the formula, like if you want to be
Speaker 3: in a healthy relationship, what what's the number one things?
Speaker 3: The number one thing people get wrong? And what is
Speaker 3: the fix?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm going to give you three I break
Speaker 1: them each down in this book. So the three are
Speaker 1: and the first one simple and basic, then and then
Speaker 1: it gets more complex and interesting. So the first one
Speaker 1: is you have to like their personality, you have to
Speaker 1: like their company, you enjoy being around them, You enjoy
Speaker 1: being around them for longer periods of time, which is
Speaker 1: an important experiment. Like I read a study that showed
Speaker 1: to make someone a casual connection, you have to spend
Speaker 1: forty hours with them.
Speaker 2: For a casual connection. WHOA.
Speaker 1: If you want someone to be considered a friend, it's
Speaker 1: one hundred hours of time with that person. And if
Speaker 1: you can consider someone a good friend, if you consider
Speaker 1: someone a good friend a great friend, it's two hundred
Speaker 1: hours plus. If you can't like someone's company for two
Speaker 1: hundred hours of undistracted time, chances are you don't really
Speaker 1: like their personality. We both know people that we would
Speaker 1: love to spend a weekend with, but we wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to see them every weekend. That's okay, Those can be
Speaker 1: great casual friendships. We both know people that we wish
Speaker 1: we could spend more time with, but we don't prioritize.
Speaker 1: They're good friends, but they're not going to be the
Speaker 1: best friends. And then we know people like our wives,
Speaker 1: who we spend a considerable amount of time with, disproportionately
Speaker 1: more with them than we do with any other human
Speaker 1: on the planet, and you know, hopefully we make good decisions.
Speaker 1: We're happy about those decisions. So when I look at
Speaker 1: it that liking, that's what I mean. I liking that
Speaker 1: person's company and personality. To give it some tangibility of
Speaker 1: what that means. The second thing you need and this
Speaker 1: is where I want to be very clear about my language,
Speaker 1: because this word gets thrown a lot in relationship talk,
Speaker 1: but I don't mean it in the same way. So
Speaker 1: the thing is, you have to respect their values. And
Speaker 1: what I mean by this is nineteen nine percent of
Speaker 1: us in relationships are trying to make our partner respect
Speaker 1: our values.
Speaker 2: We want them to like what we like. We want
Speaker 2: them to love what we love.
Speaker 1: If I'm going to watch football on the weekend, I'd
Speaker 1: love for you to come with me. If I think
Speaker 1: that going towards this is really important, you should be there.
Speaker 1: So we demand that our partner respects our value rather
Speaker 1: than respecting theirs. And I'll give a tangible example. So,
Speaker 1: for example, Radi's number one, and I ask a lot
Speaker 1: of couples to do this exercise. If I'm working with someone,
Speaker 1: I'll ask couples to rank their top three priorities, including
Speaker 1: themselves in order.
Speaker 2: And most of the time one partner will say.
Speaker 1: You are you the partner, So you would say, Lisa,
Speaker 1: if you're the kids, you'd say the kids and then themselves.
Speaker 1: That's a general order that people will put. Now, sometimes
Speaker 1: you get a curveball where someone goes, me, you the kids,
Speaker 1: and every time someone writes that, their partner goes, how
Speaker 1: could you put the kids third?
Speaker 2: How can the kids be third? Like how does that
Speaker 2: make any sense?
Speaker 1: And how can you be first? And it's like, well no,
Speaker 1: because I know that I don't want to give you
Speaker 1: my leftovers. I want to give you the best of me.
Speaker 1: So when you look at respecting someone's value, when I
Speaker 1: look at rather these values, rather they's number one value
Speaker 1: is family, her family. My number one value is my
Speaker 1: purpose and my service to the world. Those are not
Speaker 1: the same values. A lot of people say you have
Speaker 1: to have the same values in a marriage. I don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to that. I don't think you have to have
Speaker 1: the same values.
Speaker 2: I think you have to.
Speaker 1: I think if you're looking for someone with exactly the
Speaker 1: same values, you're going to take a lot longer to
Speaker 1: find that person. I don't know anyone in the world
Speaker 1: that I know that's happily married, and I'd love to
Speaker 1: break it down with anyone who genuinely could say we
Speaker 1: have the same exact values. So I respect rather the's
Speaker 1: values family, which means when family a priority in decision making,
Speaker 1: when family becomes a priority during the holiday season, when
Speaker 1: family becomes a topic of conversation, I'm zoned in.
Speaker 2: That's something she deeply values and cares about.
Speaker 1: If she's going to choose family over anything, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be okay with that because she's made it very clear
Speaker 1: that's her number one value. Same back at me if
Speaker 1: I choose purpose over anything. She knows that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: It's not a surprise. I know so many people who
Speaker 1: are trying to get their partners to change their value,
Speaker 1: and I just don't see that happening. Or that person
Speaker 1: compromises their value and now feels less versions of themselves,
Speaker 1: like a less adequate version of themselves. And now you're
Speaker 1: dating the second best version of the person you love.
Speaker 1: And so that's respecting values. And the third thing is
Speaker 1: and this is what differentiates it is you are committed
Speaker 1: to helping them get to their goals. You're committed. I
Speaker 1: may like your goals, Tom, But we're not in love
Speaker 1: and we're not in a relationship where I'm committed to
Speaker 1: your achieving your goals.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I deeply appreciate you in the world. I think you
Speaker 1: have an amazing impact. But if someone asked me, Jay,
Speaker 1: you could feel this way about a friend. I'm not committed.
Speaker 1: I'm not actively doing something. I may support, a collaborate,
Speaker 1: a help, but I'm not committed. Whereas with my wife,
Speaker 1: I'm committed on a daily basis, going rather, what do
Speaker 1: you want in your life?
Speaker 2: Where are you going? What do you need?
Speaker 1: What support do you need? What can I do for
Speaker 1: you to help you get there? It's not about her
Speaker 1: helping me get to my goals. She's thinking about that,
Speaker 1: but I'm thinking about how is that? So those are
Speaker 1: my things for a happy relationship. Those are three key things.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many more things I could go into,
Speaker 1: but they have to give the overview formulas those three things.
Speaker 3: So what trips people up? Are they? I'm assuming selection,
Speaker 3: if that's such a big part, they just select the
Speaker 3: wrong person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why I think people select the wrong person because
Speaker 1: they are looking for First of all, we select the
Speaker 1: wrong person because we make so many snap judgments off
Speaker 1: of a few basic inputs. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that the wady Is talk about is something called the
Speaker 1: six opulences. And we've talked about this before, we talked
Speaker 1: about them in a different context. But the six opulences
Speaker 1: are fame, wealth, power, beauty, knowledge, and renunciation. Those are
Speaker 1: the six opulences. These are six things people pursue, people value,
Speaker 1: people admire.
Speaker 2: Right, we can all agree with that.
Speaker 3: I love that renunciation made the list. Yeah, that talk
Speaker 3: about self awareness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a huge one. And so those six are
Speaker 2: the six opulences.
Speaker 1: And what we do in relationships, which is really interesting,
Speaker 1: is when we find someone has one opulence, we ascribe
Speaker 1: them other qualities. So someone is wealthy, we assume that
Speaker 1: they must be organized and that they'll be organized in
Speaker 1: the home. If someone is attractive, we assume that they'll
Speaker 1: be able to articulate themselves effectively. If someone is powerful
Speaker 1: at work, we assume that they're really good at organizing
Speaker 1: date night. Right, there's these qualities we start ascribing people,
Speaker 1: and so often what happens is one opulence does this
Speaker 1: halo effect into making you believe that this person has
Speaker 1: a lot more gifts and skills and qualities rather than
Speaker 1: through research and learning and experience. You're just giving them
Speaker 1: away to that person. And we do this in interviews, right,
Speaker 1: we all know how the halo effect works in interviews.
Speaker 1: If you're interviewing a more attractive candidate, you're more likely
Speaker 1: to hire them. More attractive hostesses and waiters and waitresses
Speaker 1: get bigger tips. Like this is just how human psychology works.
Speaker 1: But it's very risky when you choose a life partner
Speaker 1: based on how attractive someone was for thirty seconds. And
Speaker 1: so I find that selection goes wrong because of that,
Speaker 1: because we ascribe qualities because of one opulence rather than
Speaker 1: actually seeing those qualities. It's like me saying to you,
Speaker 1: when did Lisa realize she could trust you. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: it's not day one, because trust is something that has
Speaker 1: to be proven time and time and time again. Trust
Speaker 1: is something that she has to see time and time again.
Speaker 1: He said he was going to be there at this time.
Speaker 1: He turned up.
Speaker 2: He said he was going to show up for this moment.
Speaker 2: He showed up.
Speaker 1: That's trust. Trust is not built because someone was really
Speaker 1: nice to you. And so trust is something we throw
Speaker 1: away and I can dive into the levels of trust too,
Speaker 1: But you.
Speaker 3: Know, yeah, I mean if those are the top notch sayings,
Speaker 3: let's yeah.
Speaker 1: So I talk about four levels of trust. This is
Speaker 1: actually in Think Like a Monk, but it fully connects
Speaker 1: to this book. There are four levels of trust. My
Speaker 1: belief is that whenever you meet anyone someone knew, your
Speaker 1: relationship with them should start at zero trust. Now, what
Speaker 1: we do in life is we believe that there's only
Speaker 1: two things in everything. We think everything's binary right, black
Speaker 1: and white, left and right.
Speaker 2: Trust. Don't trust? Now?
Speaker 3: Is zero trust sitting at the zero point between trust
Speaker 3: and distrust.
Speaker 2: Zero is sitting at no trust beginning yes, because you.
Speaker 3: Don't have an active like you're not looking at them suspiciously.
Speaker 1: Correct, So I'm gonna get yes. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the level. So the idea, So the first point
Speaker 1: being that we see trust as too binary. I have
Speaker 1: people I trust and there's people I don't trust. To me,
Speaker 1: that's too limited, and it doesn't help because what that
Speaker 1: means is if I like someone, I automatically trust them,
Speaker 1: which is massively unhealthy. And so what I'm saying is
Speaker 1: that zero trust is correct between distrust at the bottom
Speaker 1: and then trust higher, but there's three levels in between.
Speaker 1: So when I meet someone, especially if you're dating them.
Speaker 2: You have zero trust in them. The next step is
Speaker 2: transactional trust.
Speaker 1: Transactional trust is I know when this person says they're
Speaker 1: gonna do something, they do it. I know there's an
Speaker 1: equal exchange in the transaction. I like, if I say
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this work and you're gonna pay me
Speaker 1: this amount, I know you're gonna pay me at that time,
Speaker 1: that's transaction trust.
Speaker 2: It's what you have to do.
Speaker 1: Employees, it's what you have to do. Teams, it's what
Speaker 1: you have with colleagues. We don't want this because it's
Speaker 1: not sexy. It's not it doesn't feel like love. It
Speaker 1: feels too professional, it feels too corporate. But really, every
Speaker 1: single person has to go through these levels with you.
Speaker 1: The next stage is reciprocal trust, where you know someone
Speaker 1: loves you and appreciates you and will do good for you,
Speaker 1: but you're not counting, you're not checking.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It reciprocates naturally, it cycles around. This is a healthy
Speaker 1: level of trust after some time where the transaction has
Speaker 1: been proven over and over again. Now you don't need
Speaker 1: the contract right now, you don't always need to sign it.
Speaker 1: And then the fourth stage, which I believe is practically impossible,
Speaker 1: is unconditional trust, which is that god like trust that
Speaker 1: we all want in the person we end up with.
Speaker 1: The problem is we give unconditional trust away early and
Speaker 1: then we fall down those levels to zero trust. And
Speaker 1: why we feel so let down by people because it
Speaker 1: just felt like we felt down four flights of stairs.
Speaker 1: That's why breaking trust feels so deep, because you gave
Speaker 1: someone level for trust when you should have started at
Speaker 1: zero and work their way up. So let people earn
Speaker 1: your trust when you talk about being worthy, like, let
Speaker 1: someone earn your trust. Let someone be worthy of your trust.
Speaker 1: Don't just give it because they're nice and kind and
Speaker 1: they brought you a gift, right, So.
Speaker 3: Why do you think we have that instinct? Is it
Speaker 3: just the halo effect of you are kind to me
Speaker 3: and I'm letting not spill over into other areas.
Speaker 1: I think we just want to be loved so desperately.
Speaker 1: We're so desperate for it because it's been put on
Speaker 1: this pedestal that this is the defining factor of success
Speaker 1: in life is could you find someone to love you,
Speaker 1: because then you'd be lovable then you'd be worthy.
Speaker 2: Then you'd have what it takes.
Speaker 1: If you were able to convince someone to spend their
Speaker 1: life with you, then you're worthy. And we're so desperate
Speaker 1: for that that we will happily speed through those Instead
Speaker 1: of two hundred hours, we'll tell someone we love them
Speaker 1: in two months, because we'd rather have it and think
Speaker 1: we lost it than to have never found it at all,
Speaker 1: because never having found it means we were never worthy,
Speaker 1: whereas if we found it and lost it, and even
Speaker 1: if it wasn't perfect, at least there was some part
Speaker 1: of us that was lovable. And that's why we'll stay
Speaker 1: in toxic relationships. That's why we'll settle for people who
Speaker 1: are not worthy for us, because we'd rather feel like
Speaker 1: we're in love than actually build it.
Speaker 2: And I think that's the challenge, is.
Speaker 1: That we live in such a feeling world as opposed
Speaker 1: to a building, creating world, which is a doing world,
Speaker 1: which is an action world. I start the book with
Speaker 1: this beautiful statement of this conversation between a student and
Speaker 1: a teacher, often attributed to the Buddhen. So a student
Speaker 1: goes up to the Buddhen and says, what is the
Speaker 1: difference between I like you and I love you. And
Speaker 1: the Buddha replies, when you like a flower, you simply
Speaker 1: pluck it and throw it away, or when you love
Speaker 1: a flower, you water it daily. And to me, that
Speaker 1: is the difference, because we're so scared. Yeah, we're so
Speaker 1: desperate to just smell that flower, observe its beauty for
Speaker 1: a few moments, toss it away. But that person who
Speaker 1: turns up every day and waters that flower and gives
Speaker 1: it the sun and gives it the soil, no one
Speaker 1: wants to be that person. But that's love. Then you
Speaker 1: have a beautiful garden. Then you have this beautiful view
Speaker 1: every day of all these flowers that you grew. And
Speaker 1: so to me, it's the desperation of the feeling of
Speaker 1: being loved. Is is making a settle for Lester.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting now you say that nobody wants to
Speaker 3: be that person because of the effort and energy, Like
Speaker 3: this is something that Lisa and I say a lot,
Speaker 3: and I'll be curious to see if you agree with this.
Speaker 3: I think you will. That love love really isn't enough
Speaker 3: just to be super cliche for a second, that really
Speaker 3: a relationship isn't just about love. That's one of the components,
Speaker 3: but it's going to take a lot of work, but
Speaker 3: work of the kind that you describe, watering it, making
Speaker 3: sure it has enough sun, you know, wiping the leaves down,
Speaker 3: make sure there's no bugs on it. It's an attentiveness, yeah,
Speaker 3: an investment maybe.
Speaker 1: And it's un sexy, right. I keep using that word too,
Speaker 1: because it's not what's been portrayed. It's not what it's
Speaker 1: meant to feel like. It doesn't look like that Pinterest board.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like the wedding day every day, right,
Speaker 1: like the challenges that I think. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: looking at the studies the amount of money that gets
Speaker 1: spent on weddings. It says the more you spend on
Speaker 1: your wedding, the more likely aor to divorce earlier. Like really, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the trend, Like you have a shorter wedding, the
Speaker 1: more you spend on your you have a shorter marriage.
Speaker 1: The more you spend on your wedding is what the
Speaker 1: studies show. And so when I saw that, I was
Speaker 1: just like, Wow, I didn't spend that much on my wedding. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: now I'll get the studies. But I was looking at
Speaker 1: that and again I'm not again I'm not saying don't
Speaker 1: have a big wedding. I have a big wedding, and
Speaker 1: I love big weddings. I love attending. I'm just saying
Speaker 1: that it's interesting how much if you think about it.
Speaker 1: When you're planning a wedding, you organize a priest. The
Speaker 1: priest is there to remind you of your commitments. When
Speaker 1: you get married, who's your priest? Who's reminding you of
Speaker 1: yourments every day? We never think about that. When you
Speaker 1: get married, you have a guest list. The guest list
Speaker 1: is made up of people who love you and support
Speaker 1: your marriage. When you're married, how deeply do you think
Speaker 1: about the people you're surrounded by and how much they
Speaker 1: build the community of helping you flourish in your marriage.
Speaker 1: At your wedding day, you think about what you wear,
Speaker 1: what you say to that person. From the moment you
Speaker 1: wake up to the moment you go to sleep. You're
Speaker 1: conscious of eating every one of your words, maybe hopefully
Speaker 1: trying to be at least in your marriage.
Speaker 2: That goes out of the window.
Speaker 1: So you think about the amount of forget the money,
Speaker 1: the amount of effort that goes into planning one day.
Speaker 1: Imagine if you took all that effort and used it
Speaker 1: to plan a marriage. How successful would every marriage be?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's a shift of energy, and it's a shift of
Speaker 1: mindset and saying we spend so much time, money, energy, resources, attentiveness,
Speaker 1: your word to plan a wedding, but there's no attentiveness
Speaker 1: to plan a marriage or a long term relationship if
Speaker 1: you don't want to be married.
Speaker 3: Why do you think it is that if you're spending
Speaker 3: a lot of money on the wedding, that that's inversely
Speaker 3: correlated to the length of time that you stay married.
Speaker 3: Is it just messed up priorities? What is that?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's hard to I'd have to
Speaker 1: look deeper into it. I mean, it's hard to stereotype
Speaker 1: because I guess there's so many of both, right, I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's other things that buck the trend. I think
Speaker 1: there's a part of it that you could say that
Speaker 1: the bigger the wedding or any gesture, not even wedding,
Speaker 1: any gesture you're trying to overcompensate for, trying to make
Speaker 1: this feel like it's special and important. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: people can throw their partners amazing birthday parties in order
Speaker 1: to make up for the whole year.
Speaker 3: What do you think about now? It seems like the
Speaker 3: trend and I don't have the data, but I'm almost
Speaker 3: certain this is accurate, that people are getting married less
Speaker 3: and less and less and less. Yeah, I've seen having
Speaker 3: less sex less kids. Like it's a trend that freaks
Speaker 3: me out. Are you at all concerned?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I'm not concerned about people not getting officially married if
Speaker 1: they're in committed, long term relationships that are healthy.
Speaker 3: I think it's a catastrophic error.
Speaker 2: Interesting. Why do you think the certificate and the commitments are.
Speaker 3: Imporant abstracted from the certificate? You need to do something.
Speaker 3: There is a lack of ritual in our lives now.
Speaker 3: So I read The Power of Myth when I was
Speaker 3: I think maybe even before I met Lisa, but certainly
Speaker 3: before we got married, and the book was talking about how, hey,
Speaker 3: the big problem with society today is there's no coming
Speaker 3: of age ritual. Part of the reason the divorce rate
Speaker 3: is so high, he speculated, was because there was no
Speaker 3: like real ceremony that meant something, that reminded people you're
Speaker 3: a different person on the other side of this. And
Speaker 3: so for me, I read that and was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: when I get married, that's going to be it one
Speaker 3: and done, never again, barring death, and or I mean, look,
Speaker 3: you make this point in the book several times. If
Speaker 3: you're an abusive relationship, get out. I one hundred percent
Speaker 3: agree with that, assuming I'm not.
Speaker 2: That.
Speaker 3: I wanted something that would really remind me that I
Speaker 3: was a different person. So I wanted it to be painful,
Speaker 3: and I wanted it to be permanent, and so I,
Speaker 3: as an act of a ritualistic scarification, I got a
Speaker 3: tattoo and got married and had the priests and the
Speaker 3: waving of the smoke and all that. And even though
Speaker 3: it was all in not only Greek, which I didn't
Speaker 3: speak at the time, it was an ancient Greek, so
Speaker 3: whatever few words I did know, I really couldn't hang
Speaker 3: on to. But there was something about the sense of
Speaker 3: ritual and importance of people in fancy dress and like
Speaker 3: all of that that it really did allow me because
Speaker 3: I was willing to say, this is a big moment,
Speaker 3: I'm never going to be the same again, and then
Speaker 3: reinforce that by getting the tattoo, and the whole time
Speaker 3: I was getting the tattoo, I was focusing on the
Speaker 3: pain and say saying this is forever. This is a
Speaker 3: way of permanently altering my body so that I never
Speaker 3: forget that I've made a commitment. And I think people,
Speaker 3: if you're not even willing to go through a typical
Speaker 3: marriage ceremony, like brah, your chances of going through dude. Look,
Speaker 3: first of all, I've been married for twenty years. I
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about. And this went from I
Speaker 3: was going to be the breadwinner wife, stay at home,
Speaker 3: take care of the kids, to not having kids and
Speaker 3: my wife becoming an entrepreneur. If you don't think that
Speaker 3: was like some radical change. And through all of that,
Speaker 3: I just knew divorce isn't an option. So since I'm
Speaker 3: completely unwilling to be in a loveless marriage, how do
Speaker 3: we grow together? And because it was like, well, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to be in an unhappy marriage and I'm
Speaker 3: not exiting the marriage, that only leaves making the marriage awesome,
Speaker 3: And so all of a sudden, it's like, okay, well,
Speaker 3: clarity of thought, I need to focus on making this awesome.
Speaker 3: And when people don't have that, there's just an attitude
Speaker 3: of like disposability from sex to marriage. And look, I
Speaker 3: am not opposed to casual sex. I've had my share.
Speaker 3: It was mostly fun. There were a couple of times
Speaker 3: we talked about earlier where I was like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: even if it's a one night stand, I need to
Speaker 3: be interested in the person. That's my own personal realization.
Speaker 3: So I think people need to take that not more seriously,
Speaker 3: like terrifyingly seriously, because that person is going to shape
Speaker 3: you in ways you can't imagine. And if you go
Speaker 3: into that like whatever, like you're living your life by
Speaker 3: the law of accident. And I see that echoed through.
Speaker 1: So I love the idea of what you said about ritual,
Speaker 1: Like I think richual is a powerful They're important.
Speaker 2: I mean they're totally part vaded culture. Like ritual's everything.
Speaker 2: Like rituals are those you know.
Speaker 3: Me and weddings are like days, seven days Jesus.
Speaker 1: To make you realize having put on this commitment is
Speaker 1: like you get married with someone over seven days and
Speaker 1: you meet all their family and they meet all of yours.
Speaker 1: Like there's an imprint, right, And that's the word is
Speaker 1: some scara, Like some scara means impression or imprint. These
Speaker 1: rituals leave imprints or impressions that are powerful to help
Speaker 1: you become new or to become more.
Speaker 2: And so I agree with that.
Speaker 1: And the only thing that I think I'm open to
Speaker 1: is that people take a little bit longer to decide
Speaker 1: before they commit, and that if you are in a
Speaker 1: marriage that I think there are just so many people
Speaker 1: today that are married that aren't using your mindset of
Speaker 1: I don't want to be in a loveless marriage.
Speaker 2: What do we do?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: I literally will And by.
Speaker 1: The way, I see you and Lisa as just like
Speaker 1: I Talking to you about this stuff is so exciting
Speaker 1: for me because I love how you and Lisa love
Speaker 1: each other. I love how you talk about your rules.
Speaker 1: I love how you talk about your principles. I love
Speaker 1: how you talk about the lessons and I agree with them.
Speaker 1: Like I think we're very aligned and I'm very much earlier.
Speaker 1: This book isn't about my relationship. This book isn't about
Speaker 1: look at how successful my marriages. I've not been married
Speaker 1: for that long. This book is about studies and the
Speaker 1: vaders and science and the research.
Speaker 2: And the tools.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I will say is that I
Speaker 1: check in with RADI regularly and I'll often do an
Speaker 1: alternative and I'll say, is this relationship going in the
Speaker 1: direction you want, and I'll check in with it. I'll say,
Speaker 1: is this relationship actually going in the direction you want?
Speaker 1: If it is great, what are we doing right? And
Speaker 1: if it isn't, what direction do you want to go in?
Speaker 1: And what is that require of you? And what is
Speaker 1: that require of me? And I'll be ready to commit
Speaker 1: to that. And that has been one of the healthiest
Speaker 1: questions for me to ask, because I'm like you, I
Speaker 1: don't want to live longer than a couple of hours
Speaker 1: in a loveless relationships and it's something within my control.
Speaker 1: Like I don't want something within my control to be
Speaker 1: painful for longer than it needs to be. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be in a relationship where I don't talk
Speaker 1: to you for a week. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: in a relationship where we argue for a month about
Speaker 1: the same thing. I didn't subscribe to that, Like, that's
Speaker 1: not what I committed to, Like I didn't set my
Speaker 1: life up in a way to live with pain for
Speaker 1: years and years and years. And I saw that in
Speaker 1: my family, and I was like, no way do I
Speaker 1: want to create that in my life. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to do everything possible, But what I find is that
Speaker 1: a lot of people are in relationships where there isn't
Speaker 1: a collaborative approach. I at least kN you are collaborators
Speaker 1: in this. Me and RADI are growing into collaborates. And
Speaker 1: this is like, if you're not with someone who's collaborative,
Speaker 1: it's really tough. I meet a lot of people who
Speaker 1: are like, I'm ready to do the work. I want
Speaker 1: to do the work, but then their partner doesn't reciprocate
Speaker 1: with any energy or any enthusiasm because they think we
Speaker 1: already did it. We got married, we had the kids,
Speaker 1: we both have a job, we have a house you
Speaker 1: worried about, right, Like, that's the response people here. And
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to that person and saying, well, if you
Speaker 1: need to slow down getting married, it's okay. And if
Speaker 1: you are married and it's not going in the right direction,
Speaker 1: that's okay. But because I don't want to put I
Speaker 1: don't want to put pressure on people to think that
Speaker 1: marriage is the achievement. And I know you're not doing
Speaker 1: that either, but I think a lot of people see
Speaker 1: marriages the end and the achievement as opposed to the beginning.
Speaker 3: It's the container, it's the container, but it's not seen
Speaker 3: that way. Yeah, it's interesting. So Lisa and I got married.
Speaker 3: At the time, it's it did feel like we were young,
Speaker 3: but by today's standards, we were infants.
Speaker 2: Aha.
Speaker 3: It's really crazy. But when I think about how much
Speaker 3: if you can construct the right container, it will improve
Speaker 3: your life vastly. The reason I'm so celebratory of marriage
Speaker 3: is that nothing, and I mean nothing, not business, ambition
Speaker 3: and self improvement. Nothing has given me as much as
Speaker 3: my marriage now because I treat it like the flower
Speaker 3: that I water and keep the bugs off and make
Speaker 3: sure it gets sunlight and all that stuff. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a massive amount of time and attention. But when
Speaker 3: I think about what the human animal is wired for,
Speaker 3: it actually isn't necessarily just a monogamous marriage, but you
Speaker 3: can go in different paths. It's actually something I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure if it would come up today. I think that
Speaker 3: there is a buffet of offerings that are available to
Speaker 3: work with human wiring. And depending on the circumstance into
Speaker 3: which you are born, you will either be in polyamorous
Speaker 3: polyandros where there's multiple males which is to one female,
Speaker 3: which is very unusual, and then monogamous and it's utterly
Speaker 3: I'm so aware that those are real that I make
Speaker 3: sure that I take more time and attention to grow
Speaker 3: the one that I'm in in the right way, if
Speaker 3: that makes sense. So, but knowing that I do have
Speaker 3: the wiring to thrive within this, have to be very
Speaker 3: thoughtful about how we mix that cocktail. In the book,
Speaker 3: you talk about like defining love and making sure that
Speaker 3: you understand each other's fighting styles, and all of that
Speaker 3: gets really wonderfully practical. You've got the fighting quiz where
Speaker 3: people can go figure out, like what's my fighting style?
Speaker 3: Do you put the same kind of attention on understanding
Speaker 3: whether the words you use or masculine energy or feminine.
Speaker 1: I didn't spend a lot of time in the book
Speaker 1: on masculine and feminine energy only because I think that
Speaker 1: it's not in our current vocabulary, and it's not really
Speaker 1: how the Vedas ultimately treat everyone as a soul. And
Speaker 1: so that's already beyond gender and beyond energy in the
Speaker 1: sense that we are all equal energy. So the ved
Speaker 1: has come at it from a standpoint of you and
Speaker 1: me are made of the same stuff consciousness wise, there
Speaker 1: is no difference in the consciousness that you onn that
Speaker 1: I am, or anyone in this room or anyone in
Speaker 1: the world, and therefore I am not superior inferior to
Speaker 1: any other individual. Hence we can only ever be a team.
Speaker 1: So when you really going to the core of the
Speaker 1: teachings that I kind of live my life by, I
Speaker 1: can't start to see better or worse, or bigger or not.
Speaker 1: So I don't just look at Radi as a team
Speaker 1: member on the fact that she's my wife. I see
Speaker 1: as a team member because I see her as consciousness
Speaker 1: and divine energy, which is the same as the energy
Speaker 1: that's within me.
Speaker 2: Because I'm not this body, right Like.
Speaker 1: I genuinely believe that the core of my being is
Speaker 1: that I'm not a physical body, and so it's very
Speaker 1: hard for me to get lost in conversations around physical
Speaker 1: body and gender based or masculine feminine energy because at
Speaker 1: the core of it, that's not how I'm structuring my life.
Speaker 3: How does that influence the way that you think about it?
Speaker 3: Because I'm the exact opposite. I am. I am of
Speaker 3: this body nothing else. When I die, it's a light switch,
Speaker 3: I'm gone. If you take a needle in jab a
Speaker 3: part of my brain, it's going to impact how I'm
Speaker 3: able to process the world. So it's very direct how
Speaker 3: I which is probably a big part of the reason
Speaker 3: I'm so tactical. I just view the world through that lens.
Speaker 3: It is my temperament. So if you don't have that,
Speaker 3: would you call yourself a duellist? Like where spirit and
Speaker 3: body are completely separate?
Speaker 1: No, So it's like, well so yeah, So in off
Speaker 1: Phloso it's called simultaneous one indifference, so it's both.
Speaker 2: It's like you have the I'm I'm living in this body,
Speaker 2: but I am not this body.
Speaker 3: So the idea you be separated from, Like, do you
Speaker 3: believe in an immortal soul that will outlive everybody? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 3: and sorry to be so grounded in the physical. Does
Speaker 3: that continue to exist in a physical place or there
Speaker 3: is another realm that we don't have access to when
Speaker 3: we're in this body.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the philosophical understanding that I have is that.
Speaker 1: The consciousness continues to seek physical form to experience physical
Speaker 1: pleasure and physically experiences until the point that it is
Speaker 1: materially exhausted and is able to truly live in its
Speaker 1: full consciousness, not needing a physical form to exercise physical
Speaker 1: needs and.
Speaker 3: Design, and how does that consciousness manifest itself once it's
Speaker 3: transcended the pursuit of physical pleasure.
Speaker 1: It's described in quality, not in Obviously I have no
Speaker 1: experienced that, so sure my only experience of it is
Speaker 1: through meditation and practice.
Speaker 3: And is it an intuitive understanding that you would be
Speaker 3: hard pressed to put into language.
Speaker 2: No, it's a state.
Speaker 1: Well, the state is described as full of knowledge, eternal,
Speaker 1: and full of bliss. That's the state in which we're living.
Speaker 1: And so what I'm explaining is that through what we
Speaker 1: call purification of consciousness, once the material body is no
Speaker 1: longer useful, you're then living in that full spiritual consciousness.
Speaker 2: Would be a spiritual form, a.
Speaker 1: Form that is not doesn't bleed when you cut it,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get damaged, it doesn't get hut. It is
Speaker 1: an eternal form that doesn't have those needs or fallibilities,
Speaker 1: I guess is the right word.
Speaker 3: So if in the Christian tradition there is this place
Speaker 3: called heaven, which at least is sort of like a
Speaker 3: physical place that the spirit goes and lives out, it stays,
Speaker 3: and you will be reunited. Admittedly I'm not a Christian theologist,
Speaker 3: so I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong. But there's,
Speaker 3: at least in popular culture, there's the idea to transcend
Speaker 3: into heaven. It's a place there are people that you know,
Speaker 3: in love, you're reunited. So there's a sense of recreating
Speaker 3: still the physical world, just in a non physical form.
Speaker 3: It's what, at least in design circles you call skewmorphic.
Speaker 3: So you're taking what you know, and even though you're
Speaker 3: trying to imagine something completely different, you tend to cram
Speaker 3: it in to the same thing. Right, So we imagine
Speaker 3: in clouds and stuff like that. What's that version in
Speaker 3: the Vedic tradition?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the Vedic tradition is there is an eternal
Speaker 1: divine relationship with the Supreme Being that in this space
Speaker 1: everyone has that unique experience and unique relationship with each
Speaker 1: other and Divinity personally.
Speaker 3: So would you meet Radley again in that space.
Speaker 1: Hopefully if we're both making back. Yeah, and Radley's definitely
Speaker 1: a vagage I take that back. Yeah, Rady's good, but
Speaker 1: not necessarily as my partner, not as the way I
Speaker 1: see her here, as a completely different version to what
Speaker 1: I see here, because this is just simply one lifetime
Speaker 1: on a notch of lifetimes.
Speaker 3: And does that at all inform your marriage.
Speaker 1: That informs our marriage in the beautiful sense of the
Speaker 1: detachment with the love, in the sense of there's a
Speaker 1: feeling of I love this person, I'm so glad I
Speaker 1: found them in this lifetime to do this life with,
Speaker 1: to serve in this way, to have this impact, to
Speaker 1: choose to want a better humanity, to leave it a better,
Speaker 1: a happier, healthier place, to leave it a more healed
Speaker 1: place that unites us in a profound way that I
Speaker 1: couldn't have have with anyone else who didn't feel that
Speaker 1: way about it. And at the same time it detaches
Speaker 1: me from recognizing, you know, this isn't everything either, and
Speaker 1: that's okay, Like it's you know, let's not make this
Speaker 1: the be all and end all of everything either, Like
Speaker 1: this is just one experience, it's one aspect. And so
Speaker 1: I think there's this beautiful connection, but then healthy detachment
Speaker 1: that comes from both and the ultimate understanding that she's
Speaker 1: not my property, she does not belong to me, I
Speaker 1: don't own her, and that she's on her own journey too,
Speaker 1: and that that journey is the most important journey that
Speaker 1: I'm supporting her on. And this journey is the most
Speaker 1: important journey she's supporting me on, beyond all the other
Speaker 1: stuff that we're doing together. Like, that's the journey we've
Speaker 1: committed to. So I think it has a profound impact
Speaker 1: on how we conduct our lives.
Speaker 3: It stops you from snipping the flower.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And even though me and you have very different
Speaker 1: overall and that's why I've always found fascinating to sit
Speaker 1: down with you. Even though me and you have very
Speaker 1: different systems of overall belief or philosophy of like what
Speaker 1: our container is, of how we view life, we approach
Speaker 1: life far more similarly than many people I know, Like
Speaker 1: I consider myself to be highly and as you say
Speaker 1: in the book, we have fight stars, we have the
Speaker 1: relationship problems, Like there's so much tactical, practical stuff in
Speaker 1: the book because that's how I view life too. I
Speaker 1: view life as highly strategic, but with a spiritual lens.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's I find that really interesting
Speaker 1: how we're both trying to approach life through strategy, through systems,
Speaker 1: through processes, despite having you know, me having much more
Speaker 1: of a philosophical and I guess intangible view of reality.
Speaker 3: Do you know, Donald Hoffman, I don't as.
Speaker 2: In from the Hoffmann process. No, So.
Speaker 3: This may be why, although you probably push back on this,
Speaker 3: so as somebody who's agnostic, meaning I literally just don't know.
Speaker 3: I have no idea what the truth is.
Speaker 2: But I don't think anyone does. And I kind of
Speaker 2: live with that.
Speaker 1: Like people always ask me, like, where do you see
Speaker 1: or someone, I'm like, I don't know either. But I'm
Speaker 1: having read the theology and spirituality and the modern day
Speaker 1: New Age everything that I have, I'm betting on this
Speaker 1: and so it's simply a hypothesis. And I'm very open
Speaker 1: about that. I'm very cool with that because I just
Speaker 1: think life is a hypothesis. Pretty much everything I do
Speaker 1: every day is a hypothesis. There's no genuine truth that
Speaker 1: I can say that I know for a fact that
Speaker 1: this is what happens when this happens, including doing this interview,
Speaker 1: including whatever, writing this book, like what comes from it
Speaker 1: is so different and so diverse than you could expect.
Speaker 1: So I lived my life in an hypothesis. So I've
Speaker 1: studied plenty of books and researched and spoken to people
Speaker 1: and sat with teachers and sat with masters, and I've
Speaker 1: come up with what I've is my hypothesis based on
Speaker 1: that experience, and I think everyone's entitled to the hypothesis.
Speaker 1: And that's why I don't consider myself with you. I
Speaker 1: always end up talking about some of my own beliefs
Speaker 1: or values or philosophies that I identify with. But why
Speaker 1: I don't preach them or why I don't impart them
Speaker 1: on others, is because that's not my goal, right Like,
Speaker 1: my goal is to help people navigate reality in what
Speaker 1: we can see, feel, and hear. And then I have
Speaker 1: my own set of beliefs and values that guide my
Speaker 1: moral compass, But those are not the ones I'm imparting.
Speaker 1: Those are not what people are being exposed to because
Speaker 1: I see them as two separate things. My compass on
Speaker 1: a deeper level is different to the work I'm doing
Speaker 1: in the world to help people navigate this. This is
Speaker 1: all based on fact and truth and experience and you
Speaker 1: know reality. The book is based on that. Think like
Speaker 1: a monk is based on that. But the beliefs that
Speaker 1: I have are a hypothesis. Those are not the ones
Speaker 1: I'm sharing.
Speaker 3: I love that. Yeah, where can people follow you as
Speaker 3: you explore your hypothesis?
Speaker 1: The best place right now is eight Rules of Love Dog.
Speaker 1: That is the place to find my new book, A
Speaker 1: Rules of Love, which will guide you through everything from
Speaker 1: finding love, keeping love, dealing with heartbreak and then finding
Speaker 1: love again.
Speaker 2: That would be the best place to find me right now.
Speaker 1: M