Jay Shetty: 8 Rules For Perfect Love & Amazing Sex! | E217

most of us only do one thing with our partners and it's watching TV to me it comes back down there's a former monk whose wisdom has truly gone viral on purpose the number one Health and Wellness podcast sold like a million and a half books Jay you know how much I love you I think we live in a world where we think sacrificing our purpose makes us a better partner when actually it makes us more resentful guilty more upset so I believe that there are four important decisions that we all get to make in life if you can do that everything else is going to work the first one is Let's Talk About Sex the truth is most people are not getting any we've lost Intimacy in relationships great sex is a byproduct of great connection and intimacy it's not a replacement for or a sore song I promise you that relationship is not growing it's actually falling apart slowly and you have no idea the only thing that makes you feel close to someone is venue what have you struggled with this year big question a lot of the time when I come up against any resistance it's like no Jay you used to be a monk if you do anything else your faults and you're lying and you're not allowed to be anything else every time I do an interview I'd feel like people wanted me to fail I was just waking up feeling sick and I just had to be alone I don't think I've shared this with anyone I'm at a point where I just want to start this episode with a message of thanks a thank you to everybody that Tunes in to listen to this podcast by doing so you've enabled me to live out my dream but also for many members of our team to live out their dreams too it's one of the greatest privileges I could never have dreamed of or imagined in my life to get to do this to get to learn from these people to get to have these conversations to get to interrogate them from a very selfish perspective trying to solve problems I have in my life so I feel like I owe you a huge thank you for being here and for listening to these episodes and for making this platform what it is can I ask you a favor I can't tell you how much you can change the course of this podcast the the course of the guests were able to invite to the show and to the course of everything that we do here just by doing one simple thing and that simple thing is hitting that subscribe button helps this channel more than I could ever explain the guests on this platform are incredible because so many of you have hit that button and I know when we think about what we want to do together over the next year on this show a lot of it is going to be fueled by the amount of you that are subscribed in that tune into this show every week so thank you let's keep doing this and I can't wait to see what this year brings for this show for us as a community and for this platform [Music] what's up Stephen it's good to see you this is a this is a question that people are so flippantly right because that's just the way Society is and the way we all are but I mean this question in the most deep possible way um which is how are you big question I'd say that I'm at a point and I'd only give this answer to you I don't think I've shared this with anyone publicly at least right now I'm at a point where I'm really reflecting reviewing and reassessing where I want to be what I want to do how I want to give my energy and so I'm in this really evolutionary stage in my journey which I probably haven't felt like this for six years which is when this all kind of started externally and so it's been a really interesting six-year cycle and I feel like I'm back to where I started I definitely feel like this year I pushed myself to limits that I never thought I could when it came to work productivity efficiency Effectiveness impact like the quality of the impact this year was higher because everything else was booming higher and at the same time there's this natural sense of wanting to renew wanting to reinvest in myself and grow again it's almost like I feel like I did a lot of growing and I poured it all out and now I'm ready to grow again and pour that out again but I've got to go and refill that cup got to go and ReDiscover what that is and what that next thing is that excites me that drives me that moves me to that level that brought us here today so when you ask me how I am really or how I am deeply I'm in that regeneration stage but what's beautiful about it is that when you've been there before it's a familiar feeling whereas when you were there for the first time it was scary now I'm like I've been here before I know what this feels like I know how to find the tools and skills that I need so what are the symptoms of that how do you know you're there I know I'm there because what have you been feeling yeah I've been feeling like I want to know where I want to be in five years or which direction I want to move in five years and I've been looking at that question and I've been trying to answer and I was speaking at a conference recently in Mexico and one of the answers was Jay what's your goal for what you want to do in the next five years and I was like my goal right now is to figure out what I want to do and what I want to put my mind to for the next five years and so I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment I'm feeling a sense of arrival I'm feeling a sense of satisfaction and then I'm feeling a sense of hunger and I'm feeling a sense of a search for clarity and almost like I can see the next few steps but then there's a bit of fog and Haze and that excites me so there's a feeling of excitement that comes with that search for clarity of that if that helps so in the short term you can kind of see what how things look but then as you look at the maybe the north star that you're aiming at that's a little bit less clear yes yes that's exactly it and and but it's coming at it from a point of that's what I need to do right now not what I have to I think if I felt clear about it all I don't think I would actually achieve what I want to achieve I think I'd waste time waste effort I think we'd spend time being doing stuff that didn't really excite me or move me I think that I think you get to a point where you know you can do something well and you don't just want to keep repeating that because that doesn't fuel your soul or that doesn't make you into the person who you want to become and so while I know that I can do that that's just not who I would set out to be and that's not how we got here and so I don't want to repeat a cycle that I know I know how to repeat just because I can when that isn't why I set out to do this what is that cycle let's get really specific on what is that cycle that you've mastered that you think you know that will no longer give me that same ah you know I'm probably different to a lot of people who set out and say I believed I would achieve this or I had a certain set of goals and I did that I I didn't come from that I came from this raw passion to want to serve and hopefully uplift the World by sharing ideas that people would listen to that and go oh I have that conversation with my friend but I never thought it was okay to say it out loud or I was just thinking about that last night but Jay just put that into words and now I feel comfortable sharing that with my partner and so I came at this whole thing from the approach of how do I help the individual and the micro and then all of a sudden it took off and and became this thing that was Far bigger than I ever imagined and far greater than I could have ever dreamed of or Bill and so what I mean by the specifics is you've now learned how to create value for people in a certain way whether that's with an algorithm whether it's a pattern whether it's the ability to communicate an idea and then you go yeah I can either get lost in that cycle and keep delivering because it delivers but no that actually came from a raw desire to serve that actually came from a place of abundant creativity that actually came from a place of genuinely listening and genuinely compassionately giving it didn't come from a place of patterns algorithms studying and research like that's not why the impact happened if that makes sense do you ever feel like you've lost yourself in the algorithms I don't people know you as a master of social media of delivering ideas via social media value thoughts thinking um you became you know people see this across their lives they become exceptionally good at something whether it's being a lawyer or whatever and they end up climbing and climbing and then they kind of reinforce to continue to do that thing Publishers give them money and say do that thing you did yeah and then they can get so far down that path that they go wait a minute like how did I get here it's a great place yeah effectively but I think I want to give myself credit and I don't do that often but I will for this I think I'm going to give myself credit and it was something you actually raised to me last time we sat down which by the way I got so much phenomenal feedback from that conversation so thank you for letting me go there but you said something to me last time and you said Jay you're really good at knowing when to quit and you said that I Was a Serial quitter and I'd never thought about it that way and so you actually planted that seed in my head and so I think what I've been good at doing every time that that's happened is I've chosen to break the cycle so when I first started out I was the number one page and number one Creator on Facebook and we literally left Facebook and when I say left Facebook what I mean is I stopped creating the content that Facebook was encouraging me to create so we used to create these sketch-like videos where we had actors and we would cast them and there would be this scenario and when I first came up with that idea it actually came from me watching comedians who were creating sketch comedy and I was like oh wait a minute if we applied that to inspiration and motivation that would be phenomenal so when I came up with that idea it fueled me I was excited I remember we made this video where this couple was arguing and I gave them advice and it was it went super viral and I was so excited by it and then after doing that for a couple of years and seeing this incredible growth on Facebook that format didn't fuel me anymore and so we left it and I said I don't want to be known for that format anymore why because the format was owning me right I was being owned by having to be a specific Creator giving specific four minute pieces of advice and thought and I didn't want to be that I wanted to dive into building a podcast and writing a book because I wanted long form I wanted quality I just felt like I felt like there was only so much I could say so there's two angles to this there's two sides to this one is can I just yeah yeah of course the reason I'm asking one yeah I love this I'm thinking of Jenny who is in a similar role in her job who's listening to this and it's got like she's just lost the love of the thing which she once loved so I'm trying to answer this for her yeah yeah I love the question I I think that so anytime you discover something anytime something's new it's attractive you fall in love with it and as it gets old we only keep doing it because there's some part of it that becomes performative so what was raw passion becomes performance and I think performance is what drains us because performance Now isn't a natural injection of the Soul into whatever you're creating it's this false acting version of that same thing and so I find that when I feel like I'm performing I worry and get scared and then I scale back and so I think at that point I got to a point where I was like if I keep feeding the algorithm and feeding this it's performance and the quality of what I want to give people has changed the four minutes videos were a great window into all of the wisdom that I'd learned and all the studying I did as a monk and all the ideas that I'd gained but I was like if I can't give that to people in a way that they can practice it like a four minute video can give you motivation and inspiration but a four minute video can't help you build a habit a four minute video doesn't practically change your life a four minute video is the injection the spark the the buzz but it doesn't transform someone's being whereas a program can do that a book can do that a podcast that people listen to religiously and build a habit can rewire parts of themselves and so to me I was like I'm more interested in habit change and transformation than I am in ideas and information I was I was just thinking about why I quit Facebook as well you I mean you you quit Facebook I think later but I understand why your success on Facebook was you're getting billions and billions of views a month right um I was making some money but it would do the point the thing that I've realized from what you just said there is when I was making those Facebook videos I actually think they they might have been doing something for someone else it's not the same as a podcast which has the depth but I think it might have been doing something for someone else but I tell you why I quit because it was doing nothing for me yes and you think about what you were doing so at the start maybe it was doing something for you but then as you do it a thousand times it feels like work and I was just thinking about that then because I was reflecting on a study I read that when they pay people to do something they loved they lose the love of it the minute the motivations become extrinsic cash or punishment or reward they people lose the love of the thing they once considered a hobby um and do you know why I was thinking that because I've not been able to get bored of doing the podcast and I thought well why because it does something for me I get to meet you we get you know so if it was just this podcast was going out to the masses and it required three hours or six hours of my time every week but I didn't get to have the conversation I didn't get to be privy to it maybe I'd lose the love for it yeah and I think it comes back to a part of the definition of success which for me is doing something that gives me joy and makes me happy that as a byproduct gives other people joy and makes them happy exactly like if I can do that every day then then that's phenomenal but I don't want to keep doing something as you said that has the diminishing returns for me only to live off the validation and attention that comes from the other and I think too many people have got caught in that cycle for too many decades and I would like to say we've redefined find what we do every two years part of why I dived into love as a Fascination and a subject matter a lot of people said to me they were like Jay why are you going from meditation and mindfulness and think like a monk to talk about love like why why would you even do that and I was like because that's where I'm at like that's something that I'm I mean there's lots more reasons to it that I can share more philosophically but on a very raw emotional level this is what I'm fascinated about right now and I trust that my audience my community the people that are following and listening and sharing and observing can trust that the journey I'm going on is one of true Fascination uh one of the reasons why I fought to have the cover I wanted the fonts that I wanted to not have my face on the cover of the book was all of these reasons I know if I put my face on the cover of the book that my publisher is going to be happier they believe it's going to sell more they believe that the less artistic it is the more on the nose it is the more people are going to buy the book my take is I want everything I do to be r i want everything I do to be an extension of my heart and this is that and so I think I'm just at a place now where I've learned that I can trust my intuition every single time and I want to keep doing that I don't want to now become more scared of trusting my intuition someone said to me they said Jay like don't haven't you got to a point now where you can't take any risks and I was like no that's completely the opposite of how I see it I've worked this hard by taking tons of risks this is not the point to stop taking risks this is the point to continue to take risk because that's what creates joy happiness abundance success and everything else I'm looking for what have you struggled with this year what have I struggled with this here this year like over and over again like [ __ ] why can't I change that so it's a bit of an oxymoron and and I kind of lit I kind of love paradoxes and kind of feel like it's always this way it's kind of like at one point you know that reinvention and rediscovery is constantly needed and then there's the other side that I've probably bang my head against the wall a few times on is accepting that I can't always be Scrappy as I was in the beginning all the time and I'm and I'm intrigued at how you feel about this especially having built something so huge and now I know you're building something again I can't that you know a few years ago when I was starting out and we're building lots of things we built things in a really Scrappy quick fast way we made really quick decisions some of them were great some of them were terrible things went wrong things went awesome obviously you know you know the rest of it is is history and all all of that but there's a part of me as much as I need to be reconnecting with that scrappiness there's a part of me that needs to accept that we're not that small anymore and that things do have impact and influence and I think that that's that Paradox is something that I find myself constantly going back and forth on because I want to be able to be Scrappy I want to be able to start things at the drop of a hat because I feel like I can and at the same time I realize well no now I need to think about a lot more people and a lot more things are affected and this can negatively impact this and someone here could do this and all of that kind of stuff and so I think that's something that I struggle with is the balance between saying I want to be the J that I was six years ago when it comes to starting new things but I have to accept that we're not there as well how many people are in your team total globally full-time 50 people so it's not huge um but when you look at the people that work with us and the number of people it impacts and then the the scale of all the content we create and everything there's billions of people every month still in in some capacity and so there's a sense of and and also there's a sense of you know you become a Target like you're not you weren't a Target six years ago like no one cared I mean people took shots day one like that wasn't the hard part it's just you become more and more vulnerable in some areas in some capacities because now people are not looking at it as if you're starting out they see what you have and what they can pick apart so you're you're a you're observant and aware of that vulnerability in a way you never were before that doesn't make me more scared or more uh fearful it just means I can't ignore it and I think that's the balance that I'm always going on it's like how much do you want to operate from a place of ignorance versus awareness and proactivity what's your biggest um fear is an interesting word but I'm going to use it what's your biggest fear as it relates to being a Target like what if you because I mean I've seen this similar thing in my life obviously the big change in my life was when I became a dragon on Dragons yeah yeah because then you're then you're like a press Target before the newspapers wouldn't write about Stephen in his podcast or Steve on social media but now it's Dragon stand star sneezes yeah on someone you know what I mean it's like because there's a show there which everybody knows and recognizes there's a way to write the headline yeah so that I became much more of a Target you know and that that's kept me up at night I've got emails from reporters and I [ __ ] [ __ ] myself about things that you know they said they're gonna say about me or whatever but just being honest yeah yeah you know I think my life has just changed so much in the sense of literally I was thinking about this 10 years ago I left the monastery and when I look at my life over the last 10 years and then if I look at it 13 years including the three years I spent in the monastery I live like a completely polar opposite life today I went from having no money no idea of a business no relationship two sets of clothes uh robes and living and sleeping on the floor and having nothing and thinking that was the rest of my life to now being in the complete opposite point of view where we have multiple businesses I'm married uh I I enjoy fashion in my wardrobe I uh I really enjoy building teams I love the world I'm in and I've grown and embraced all of that transform transformation because I realized that I could only give myself or I I had to be the only person in the world who could give myself the permission to be all of these things all at the same time so I see myself as much as a monk as I do as a manager as I do as a marketer as I do as a mindfulness coach like I'm all of those things and I'm very happy being all of those things but I think that a lot of the time when I come come up against any resistance it's like no Jay you used to be a monk you should be a monk for the rest of your life and you can never be anything else and if you do anything else outside of that Circle you're false and you're lying and you don't you're not the same person anymore and I'm like well no I I get where you're and by the way I actually don't disagree with that I get where that's coming from and I can appreciate where that sentiment comes from because we've all been forced to be like I'm an accountant I'm a lawyer I'm a dad I'm a mum we've been forced to be one thing and I think for me I've been on the Journey of accepting all of my complexity and all of my interests and passions and I think that that takes a long time for a lot of people to get their head around I'm not saying that my community or my audience feels that way and I don't want to alienate them I think there's a lot of people who don't even care about that but I think when I when I think about the idea of being a Target or being it's a lot of that where it's like well you used to be this just be this like you're not allowed to be anything else oh a white and it's like well no but my life's changed like that was a part of my journey I'm telling you a part of my story uh why can't I tell you the story that I'm at why do I have to be the story that I was 10 years ago does that and this uh you know there's several ways to answer this question but I just want the most honest answer which is does that has that ever bothered you have you ever have you ever received received that kind of critical feedback and it's bothered you yeah there was definitely a couple of weeks where I woke up every day in the morning feeling sick and I've never experienced deep bouts of anxiety or I've definitely experienced depression when I left the monastery and that whole period was a depressive moment in my life for sure but post that I was just waking up feeling sick and for a week I just had to be alone and I just had to be alone and not see my friends and not see anyone my wife was in London at the time so I wasn't with her and I literally just sat alone for seven days making sense of how I felt about myself what happened it wasn't anything specific it was just feeling that there was a lot of because I wrote a book called think like a monk which I still stand by the title I still stand by the whole book The reason I wrote the book called think like a monk is because I didn't want everyone to have to live like a monk and my whole point was that when you learn to think like a monk you don't have to live like a monk and that you can adopt the same mindsets and practices that monks have in your daily life which is what I believe I took with me but I found that when I would do an interview you know the interview would be oh Jay Shetty you know tells you to think like a monk but he's selling millions of books or whatever it is right or like you know um oh yeah Jay Shetty made x amount of money through ad revenue on Facebook and YouTube but he's talking about being a monk and so there was this constant like comparison that those two things weren't allowed and you were getting that straight away every day correct and I was just like why is it that I feel like when someone's sitting down with me I constantly feel like they want me to fail they want me to not be who I truly am and they want to find that angle on me constantly because they don't want to accept that someone who is trying to be good at heart is doing good in the work and winning is okay and that's not a story though isn't that's not a story exactly and I think that was hard for me because I'd always believed that people would feel your genuineness and and and they'd respect that um you know I think me and you have Notch we've we've had deep time together even though we haven't had a lot like yeah yeah we wouldn't say we've had the amount of time together but I felt very early on that I could just be myself around you hence why I've never talked about any of what I've just said to you anywhere else anywhere ever even on my own podcast um because I don't like meeting people thinking they want me to fail and I and I and if anything I close off to that because it's defense it's defense from day one and I realize I don't defend myself very well because I don't I don't want to I I just want to be who I am and I'm comfortable with that but that seven days was me doing all that work to process it bring me into this bring me in good man Stephen only Stephen only with you man only with you literally bring me into those seven days um and what it was like if I was a flower on the wall in your world what would I have seen the seven days for me weren't mapped out in being seven days like it wasn't like I'm gonna take seven days and this is the program I'm gonna go on it just happened to be seven days and for me I'd say the first day I spent reading everything that was making me feel that way so you're reading all the comments you're reading the tweets you're reading the Articles you're seeing articles come in that you've just interviewed for and you're like wait a minute that's been completely misconstrued like you're feeling this way and and I'd say a lot of this was you know UK based not really International to be honest at all um and and you're feeling that way and I was just reading all of it I was completely immersed in it for a day and I gave myself a day I said I'm gonna let myself do it today because I want to be informed I want to be aware and you know you just said this to me you were like you know Jay I didn't see any of this I don't even know about this and we've talked about this before and that's what's really fascinating right like for me that day felt like the worst day because it felt like that's all there is that's all I'm seeing even though there's everything else going on so I I'd say the first day I spent just reading everything and you feel terrible and horrific and there's a part of you that feels defensive and you're like but I'm not like that oh I wish they could just understand this and oh well they just read that differently and I I wish I could talk to this person who feels this way and like hold their hands and look into their eyes and for them to feel my real energy I wish they could give me a chance I wish I could actually talk to each one of these people maybe I should maybe I should actually like book a room and just line up everyone who feels this way about me and actually sit down with each of them and talk to them about what my passion is and who I really am as a human being maybe maybe that's what I need to do and you're kind of doing this whole defensive and explaining and that all of that was day one uh maybe even day two and I think day three and four were really the hardest because you start to believe some of the criticism so there's a part of you and I think this is a good part of me I'm I'm happy that this part of me exists where I have the ability to be really critical and harsh of myself to the point that I kind of embodied some of those ideas and I was like maybe maybe I am maybe I am not fully genuine maybe maybe I do have that part inside of me like God maybe I am wrong like you know maybe maybe I do need to take a look at myself maybe I haven't maybe I'm maybe I'm not doing that enough and so I'd say that was day three and four and that was the hardest because you're now taking someone else's words to be your worth and you're taking someone's writing to be who you are and so I think day three and four were just kind of processing like do I really agree with that am I that what part of that is me I can't just sh I never I've never wanted to be someone who doesn't take something as feedback like or doesn't look at something or try and understand it more deeply and anxiety how do you feel on these days you talked about I feel like throwing up in the morning really like waking up and feeling like physically sick uh and and wanting to throw up but trying not to and how and that feeling lost all day or was it just when you woke up I think it was mainly when I woke up like it was it was a strong feeling when I woke up and I'd have to work through that over the next couple of hours and then get over that and then try and progress the day and I think day five and six were making sense of what was feedback what was shots fired and what I believed about myself run me through those three so the way I and and and even deeper than all three of those and I'll talk about those three but even deeper than those three three of those was this idea of compassion of why do people feel the need to do this like what role does it play in their life in our world and why does someone feel the need to without never having spent genuine equality time with me to feel any way about me also not knowing anyone in my universe either so you know and so so trying to have compassion and developing a sense of perspective of what role does this play in our society that's the most difficult Point um to understand which is I remember someone tweeted something at me the other day and they just like they just you know because it's funny because we get you know so much wonderful feedback and then some guy at 3am he's just like he just took a shot and he was like I wish Steve was more authentic his PR team write all of his posts and script his podcast and he's and the the challenge of trying to make sense of this this like statement where it's coming from why they felt they need to tweet it at 3am what I've done to them is an impossible challenge to try and solve it's a riddle that doesn't make sense but the only way that I've come to understand it is by looking at my own imperfection yes looking at my own jealousy yeah looking at my own envy and my exactly inadequacies and how sometimes I'm ugly and then I go I understand we all have it in US probably somewhere in the right context yeah especially if you've got a bad day and the wife or the husband has given us a hug you know and then I understand I'm ugly too yeah you know um but going to those three those three stages what feedback did you I I think the feedback that I've taken on is that I definitely have changed externally like in the sense of it is true that uh my life is very different externally very quickly that that's true to me it's not quick because it's 10 years since I left and 13 years since I was a monk and everything but it is it is quick and it is a lot to you know it's been a crazy Journey For Me internally let alone everyone else who's just just watching um and the feedback that maybe I should explain and probably why I feel so open today doing this with you and comfortable going there is maybe I do need to explain my intentions more and not just do the work and maybe I do need to spend more time giving context do you think though because there's so many people that do the content the helping people the you know the genius stuff you do there's so many people that do that and they don't get the same criticism it's the monk piece isn't it it's it feels like it's contradiction it's the monk piece and it's also the um the scale there's people I'm thinking like the biggest in the world in in the in that game you're the biggest in the world I guess in what you in the specific thing that you do I guess but is it the apparent contradiction of two labels that the society have given you where they go successful rich nice stuff but then because it's the same with me no one's ever going to do it for me because they think of me as businessman yeah yeah so if I was balling around in private jets and helicopters people are going to go yeah yeah and I'm not being private yet by the way but yeah no I think yeah I think that's I think that is a big part of it and and I recognize that that's a massive Paradox and by the way I'm living that Paradox which is even crazier because it there's all that there's so much of that self guilt and transformation that I've had to go through I've had to rewire my deeper relationships with every aspect like and I've realized that the monk teachings actually hold true they're just misunderstood or misconstrued it's kind of like when we you know when we keep having everyone who keeps saying oh money doesn't buy happiness money doesn't buy happiness money you know so you've that that statement's just lasted for so long and you and I know that that's not you know when it comes to the Monk's philosophy the Monk's philosophy was very much that everything in the world was simply energy and it could be used for something higher or could be abused pretty much anything in the world could could be put into that way of thinking but the perception is monks don't have money therefore it's bad but that's a simplistic version of a far deeper idea uh there's a beautiful story that I love that we would often be shared in the monastery where the teacher asks a student if you could give one person a hundred pounds or give a hundred people one pound each which would you do and the student says I'd give 100 pounds to one person because it would be really impactful and the teacher says yeah that's that there's nothing wrong with that answer and that's totally fair another way of looking at it is I'd give one pound each to a hundred people because it helps me learn how to become better at giving and it gives 100 people an opportunity to grow and so the idea is that the answer isn't whether money is good or bad like the answer some people say is well they shouldn't give any money out at all like I think the idea that something is bad or evil or something is wrong is a fall more simplistic idea than the depth of the idea that anything can be used for good or For Worse I remember that you know we've been able to do so many beautiful things whether it's things privately or even publicly when you know my wife and I did this fundraiser for covid for India um and I remember like it took a lot of money to just organize the fundraiser and it wouldn't we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have what we had and I was thinking to myself I was like this is a perfect example of like how you you can't sometimes you need the resource to pull off something that's even more powerful and big but if I didn't have the resource and I didn't have the community and I didn't have my audience and my fans and the people that helped us do that it just wouldn't have been possible and so it's kind of like this all comes in and of itself it comes together I remember when we met in New York and you took me to meet the uh rather than time yeah I could not say that yeah that's my paused yeah yeah you met you met my monk teacher yeah Swami is the like the pope title like the equivalent of that do you remember the question I asked him I don't actually tell me it was exactly what you've just said so I said to him um there's a part of me that has always had this sort of internal conflict where whether if what I'm doing what I consider to be selfishly like building businesses enriching myself is um is good or bad and I I've always since I was 18 I remember being sat in my room and thinking you know if instead of building this business if I just went to Africa and saved one life would that be more of a worthy cause than building a business that would enrich myself and your your teacher said to me he said um I'll never forget it I talk about it all the time on stage probably every month on stage he said to me you can't pour out for others that which you don't have in your own bottle I always remembered that because it's entirely true the the impact that I would be able to have now in many areas whether it's the donations we've done for children's cancer Societies or all of the things that we've done this year the money we've donated from we gave away all of the money from our live tour um none of those things even like this podcast wouldn't have been possible if I didn't fill my bottle and my bottle isn't just Financial it's skills resources knowledge it's Network it's reputation um and that full bottle allows you to do so much for so many others but I do want to zoom in on something you said yeah you said that you had to confront your ugliest side yeah now this is an uncomfortable thing to do because it really it's for all of us it's a quite an uncomfortable place to go to actually consider faults in ourselves what is your ugly side in your view oh hmm I think whenever anyone does this activity you have to be it's it's again that balance of being highly self-reflective and open to feedback but not getting into the harsh like killing yourself basically because it's and it's a really it's a really like interesting balance I find because you can easily do either like you can easily defend yourself and be like no no I'm good I'm a good person I'm great or you can do the opposite but you're just like I'm the worst that is yeah and it kind of and that's why I'm you know as you ask that question I'm like let me really look at it um my ugliest side is that any and I believe this is true of most people is that you're truly capable of anything anything and I think my practice and my daily habit is and has always been to try and feed the good dog inside me and so I don't think I associate that deeply with my ugly side because I've just not fed it for a long time and so I don't feel very close to it in the sense of that doesn't mean it can't take effect on me so so my teachers would always say that if you feel like you're unaffected by Maya Maya's the Sanskrit word for illusion an illusion is considered ignorance and that which leads to the dark side or the ugly side if you feel that you're unaffected by Maya you're in Maya right if you feel unaffected by illusion or the dark side you're in the dark side right yeah that makes sense and it's the idea as well of like if someone says they're humble or practicing humility it's like they're in ego right now it's yeah it's not possible to think to yourself oh I'm I'm I'm humble at the same time as feeling ego less and so the idea that I feel like I just don't associate with my dark side often but I think my dark side exists within this capacity of like you know the the comparison the Envy the jealousy the the ego that that's the kind of stuff that I would say that mainly I would grapple with and I grew up with on a daily basis and I choose to Grapple with it on a daily basis we in the monastery often talked about uh relishing the battle Yeah that that there was always going to be a battle the battle was never won or lost it was a constant relishing the battle you just had to re-pick up the sword and have the fight every day and so I've learned to relish the battle and the battle is accepting that there is both inside of me and it's a battle I have to have every day and the avoidance or ignorance that I don't have one of the sides isn't healthy right and in my case it's just not healthy I can't accept that I I have only pure intentions do you believe you'll get to a point where you've won the battle I don't think so I don't think that's the goal I I I think I think the moment you think you've won the battle is when you lose I mean there's that brilliant clip on uh social that's always going viral and it's literally like I forget what the line is but I think the caption is something like it's never over until it's over and it's all the Moments in Sports where someone's felt that the ball's gone across the line or hasn't or the person's running thinking they're about to cross the finish line they look over and they lose every single time and I think that that's a great image and metaphor for the idea that as soon as you think you've won that's when you're most likely to lose because that's when you put your guard down and I think putting your guard down to your own Envy into your own comparison to your own ego is unhealthy and I think sometimes when we see the crazy things that happen in the world it's not because someone was made that way or built that way it's that they let their guard down to those things and so when I'm saying that I sat for seven days with my demons and my dark side and my unhealthiness and checked myself I'm I'm glad I did that and I shouldn't avoid that I shouldn't sit here and say no no I know I'm an amazing human being and I'm a good intention I know all this thing I am good intentioned I am someone who cares about people I I am deeply compassionate I have only ever tried my best to serve in love those are all true I'm very confident in that but at the same time I have a propensity to be egotistic to be envious to be jealous to be comparative to be competitive and unhealthy sense and if I'm more Vigilant of that that won't ruin it and that's the Perfect Analogy that was given to us in the monastery was we all had to plant a seed and tend to it every day because you'd see weeds grow around it every day and this was the exact concept that was taught to us that when you plant a seed weeds are going to grow around it and the weeds often look like the plant they often look perfect and you can keep watering the weeds or water the seed and pluck the weeds and that's the daily practice that each and every one of us does so I think every day I sit with myself in my meditation and I try and pluck out the weeds and sometimes it's not plucking sometimes it's ripping gripping destroying uprooting like the weeds have gone deep some of these weeds are not no longer little seedlings and little plants some of them have been around for years and so there's that work that has to happen are you thinking about a particular weed um but you've really had to like work on and unplug I mean I've got loads in my life that I know that you see the it continue to rear continues to show up in the the moments where you're maybe complacent yeah about you know you think you've got it all figured out and then [ __ ] over here yeah I think the biggest one that I probably monitor I mean I monitor all of them regularly but I think it's the weed that we all have that the way we live life is the right way to live it like the belief that my perspective my opinion my priorities my values should be everyone's and that somehow because of that we should all align and I think you see that as your partner the most like for example my wife really values her my value my wife really values her mentor and physical health and so her number one priority today in the day is making sure she's meditated and making sure she's gone to the gym like those are like massive priorities for her and sometimes there'll be two workouts and more meditation and I'm coming back off of a slog day of like working podcasts meeting schedules all this other stuff and I've meditated but I haven't worked out today and I'm running around and I think at the end of the day that I've achieved more like that is a weed because I'm saying that what I prioritize is more important than what she prioritizes when it isn't it's just different she her self-worth is based on very different things than my self-worth is based on do you ever find you know when you're saying all of this you're describing exactly me and my partner I love that man that's good she wakes up at seven or eight in the morning yeah she's built like a temple and she goes to the temple people and if I woke up past two hours later she's just stretching in the temple yeah you know what I mean I'm like zooming past with like you know late for some [ __ ] and she I just she's just stretching in a temple she flows that's the way she just flows nice and slowly through life um at her own pace a pace that I know nothing about yeah a place I could not relate to yeah same same so I was going to ask you about this have you ever found yourself making the mistake of exerting your your ambition flows that you know that pace because I have yeah yeah I think I think and I write about this in the book but by the time I was by the time I was with my wife and we moved in and got married and like started really investing in our relationship I think I'd seen a lot of people do it to other people so my wife would always get people around her she's a phenomenal chef and cook and you know really really talented when it comes to food and health and nutrition so the one thing she'd hear from everyone was you should start a restaurant like that's all she'd ever hear is you should start a restaurant you should start a restaurant and whenever I'd I'd see the like sometimes fear confusion uncertainty on her face when people would say that this is like you know I'm talking about like seven years ago maybe eight years ago and I would always sit with Edward there and be like how do you feel when people say that like what is does that excite you does that you know if someone told me that and I had her skills I'd be like oh that's amazing people believe in me right which is something I never really had and she was like no I just I don't know if I want a restaurant like I don't know if that's what I want to do with my skills like I she always wanted to be in Pediatrics and she wanted to help people with their nutrition and diet and she wanted to work with individuals and work with and now she's working with people online and she does making love making recipes but does she want to build a restaurant and so we'd always go through that cycle and I started to realize and we'd have this conversation often that just because someone says something that's a good idea it doesn't need to be your idea and you don't need to chase it and so I'd say that I don't think I've ever pushed my pace on her because I think part of being a coach and this is why I value coaching so deeply is because a coach is never meant to dictate the pace of the person they work with and so there's a chapter in the book called your partner is your Guru and that's a really tough statement to handle but actually a guru likened to a coach never dictates the pace of the student so my monk teacher who you met wouldn't that day in New York would never ever say to me Jay you've been meditating for 17 years now why are you not a pure perfect meditator they would never say that to me because they don't think that that's the pace at which it works they know that I'm on my journey on my timeline now at the same time I think opening up conversations like I will have the conversation with my wife and be like uh are you thinking about setting goals or intentions for 2023 and do you want to talk about it because I'm going to be doing that myself yeah and I've seen that she's done that like where my wife has opened up to some of my ideas and my ways of working because I open up it as a conversation not as a oh by the way these are my goals for 2023 what are yours which where it's like a pressure and that's like an insecure amateur version of trying to be a coach where it's like well look what I've achieved what did you achieve this year or by the way let's look at our 2022 goals and what we achieved like it becomes an ego thing again so I think for me I've really tried my best to embody being a coach in my partnership because I see it just being healthier when we've allowed each other's good qualities to rub off and by the way she's done the same back to me so if I've coached her in like finding her drive and her passion and her purpose and and coached her in the sense of not like meticulously but but as a friend uh she's done the same for me like when I met my wife I was someone who's really focused on mental Mastery but I hadn't really figured out what I did for my body I'd done a lot for my mind and my heart but and my emotions but but not for my body and when I met my wife like she inculcated the belly for me working out more regularly and eating more healthily and when I met my wife I was addicted to Sugar I I still love fried food I I still love sodas and my wife was just like this ain't happening but again she didn't call it out it wasn't like a oh you're so unhealthy you just sit around and drink it wasn't like that it was educating me and it was enlightening me and it was helping me change my habits and so yeah inspiring me and and it's setting the example right I think setting the example is far more a beautiful there's a quote I use of Saint Francis in the book which says um you should always preach wherever you are in everything you do and if you need to use words right the idea that your example your your practice is what inspires people if you're working really hard and you're a wonderful human being that far more makes someone want to work hard then you working hard and being a miserable human being quick one intelligent of our podcast sponsors and I want to talk to you for a second about that built for business vpro platform in today's Working World the office is pretty much anywhere and Intel V Pro means you can remotely manage repair and protect devices across your entire organization no matter how large or small giving me and my team peace of mind to work wherever we choose to for my it team whether on premise or via Cloud behind the corporate firewall or not Intel's vpro comprehensive manageability has us covered this is something that is so important to me I you know I'm a huge believer in employee flexibility and Trust so having features like this are super helpful so to find out more search intel.co.ukvpro and let me know how you get on it is that time of year again when my life becomes incredibly client on Hill I'm busier than ever I'm trying to be nutritionally complete in all that I do I'm trying to make sure I get all of the vitamins and minerals that I need in my diet and heal has been for the last three and a half years the primary reason as it relates to my diet that I've been able to be nutritionally complete while also being incredibly productive they've also been a sponsor of this podcast since we launched the podcast and so I owe them a huge debt of gratitude for enabling this show and in fact when we hit the million Milestone on YouTube with this podcast I sent it to the founder because I've never shared this before but he actually said to me when I started the podcast he was like you're gonna absolutely kill it you'll have millions of subscribers you'll be this big you'll be that big so many people will listen and I don't know if I believed it if I'm being completely honest but he believed in Us in this show before we'd released one episode which is a remarkable thing and he gave me a huge amount of self-belief in myself so thank you Julian Hearn for that but also thank you hewell for creating a product that has helped me and helped my health stay intact in my busiest days over the last couple of years to the episode I've always wondered this I'm going to ask you a really tough question here if your partner got to a state where you no longer found them attractive at all you know I'm gonna let the viewer decide what that might look like right if your partner got to that state what would you do I think because they weren't taking care of themselves yeah yeah I I think my honest answer would be I would like to approach that and I believe I would because I think I've shown it in different areas of my relationship not in the physical sense have been The Compassion of are you happy with where you are right now with that person are you happy in the direction that you're moving in is this the life you want is has this been created out of pain or stress or pressure or has this been created out of choice and out of action right and I think getting to understand that person's journey to that point sets you up to understand where this is going if that person then turns around and goes this is exactly who I want to be and this is the person I want to be and this is how I choose to live my life I'm your partner yeah what do you say to me yeah so I'm going down the angle of trying to get to understand right like that that's what I'm trying to do in this area they are completely cool with everything correct because it's you're you're the one that's Coast attraction yeah all I'm trying to do in that scenario genuinely is to understand where the person's at why they're in that position and how long they think that's going to last and so my next question would be like that sounds awesome that sounds like a lot of fun how long do you feel like that's where you want to be now your answer maybe I feel like that's how I want to live forever right like that's that's the direction it's going in I have very little control over that so what do you do I would then if if I'd explored that conversation try to understand first yes and seeing that pattern for long enough because by the way that pattern could last a week and it could be over next week yeah and that person's now guilty and shameful of and they're dealing with something far deeper so I don't think this can ever be oh wow that person for a month has gone in this direct it's never that quick right yeah if you're seeing over months and years that someone's just going on a downward spiral they're not opening up to you they're not opening up to a therapist they're not opening up to their mum their parents their sister they're not opening up to a coach they're not opening up to their friends like if you're seeing no sign of this person doesn't feel they're going in they're doing anything wrong by their account now you're out of options of of controlling that so I think there's many more layers before I don't think this person's right for me anymore but I think those layers and levels are time how long has this lasted I think it's who are they honest and open with because sometimes they may not be honest and open with you because they're embarrassed but they're being open and honest with someone else their family their friends whoever else it may be do you are you aware of that are you do you even know the conversations they're having and then if you're not attracted to someone I mean you're well within your rights to to move on and and get on with your life I mean how are you gonna force yourself to if that's an important value for you someone would say but physical attraction isn't my number one value that's totally fine too so you would stay with that person right like if that's not your number one value is there a point where you express how you feel absolutely absolutely I think I think after understand I think the biggest mistake that happens so I talk about this in the book where I talk about things that you find intolerable about your partner right this comes under that category that you find it intolerable that they don't take care of themselves and now you're not attracted to them I talk about going on this journey if you love someone enough if you care about someone enough you will want to go on the journey from intolerable to understanding to acceptance to potentially even admiring them for who they are and where they've gone that's the journey if you want this relationship to last so if I find something intolerable The Next Step isn't telling them how I feel the next step is understanding why they're there how they got there what their reasoning is and that takes time that person isn't going to on day one they're going to give you answers like you just gave me on day 73 chances are someone's going to say I'm feeling really bad about how I am right or maybe not when you tell them huh I'm interested in is how you communicate how you're feeling I so I would say and I want to use a real life scenario with my wife because I think it's easier to talk about a real conversation we've had if I felt emotionally disconnected from my wife because we've both been traveling separately we've both had a lot of work on we haven't really found time to connect or be with them be without the Deep be with each other deeply I often say to her and I've said this throughout our whole relationship I'll say to her is this relationship going in the direction you wanted to go in and that's a really open and Broad question she could say yes she could say no and then my second question is if it is going in the direction you wanted to go in what's going well and then I'd say if it isn't going in the direction you're going in what do you need and what are you willing to do and then I'd follow that up with do you mind if I share mine do you mind if I if I share with you if I feel this relationship's going in the right direction or how I feel and so once I've heard her out and seen where she's at I'm now going to tell her exactly how I feel my way of saying would be I've got to a place where I'm feeling emotionally disconnected I'm feeling like I don't feel like you're present with me I don't feel like you're connected I don't feel like you want to is that true and I'm checking if my emotional instinct is real now in this case it's me saying I honestly feel that over the last three years I haven't been able to understand I haven't really been able to gain context of why you've made the choices you've made and I really want to understand and deeply and there for you to understand if these choices are aligned with your values if they are those are not the values that attract me those are not the values that make me feel good about being in a relationship because what I'm saying is if you found someone physically attractive and now you find them physically unattractive I promise you it's also based on their values and choices it's not simply based on how they look yeah that's too simplistic for a modern day extreme powerful relationship so to me I'm communicating my disconnect with that person's choices and values I'm not simplifying it to just how they look in the mirror that because that's me isn't the truth because the truth is that because they can change how they look in the mirror but they don't want to is my issue with it they don't want to they don't want to build they don't want to be better in all the ways I think they can be better right that they don't see I don't feel like they want to improve I was I was coaching someone who's uh partner was addicted to porn right and they're addicted to porn their partner found pictures and videos and all that kind of stuff on their laptop and phone and all the rest of it and we were working with them and it was if that person didn't see a problem with their addiction that's where you were at but the the person's problem wasn't that they were just addictive porn it was the lack of transparency it was the lack of honesty it was the lack of emotional connection the issue wasn't that they were watching porn their issue was don't you trust me enough to tell me that there's a disconnect here that we don't have enough of a relationship where you can share this with me that was the issue that they were having so to me I'm always trying to communicate empathy is communicating at the root of the issue not with the symptom of what you're experiencing and if someone empathetically said to you Stephen I I feel and this is my projection on you and you're allowed to edit this I just feel that you're worth so much more and I feel like you can make so many better choices for yourself and I think you have the ability to get there but I don't know if you want that and if you don't want that that's totally fine but that's the kind of partner I want to be with would you never mention in that process that you're not not attracted to them anymore I wouldn't never not mention their direct thing I just think that I'm more interested in Excavating you're going around it's not going around it's going under it's going deeper and deeper than it's going deeper it's not going around going around is saying like oh you know I'm just it's not working out anymore like oh you know I'm just seeing other people now like going around it is like you know going around it is just saying yeah I mean even one sense of going around it is just like yeah I'm finding other people attract whatever like you're going to the roots as opposed to the leaves correct because I think that not only helps the other person but it helps me understand how to actually be there for the person I love because I think that if you go to the root that person has the opportunity to say thank you that's how I feel but I just don't know how to say it so I want to give the person the opportunity to feel so heard when they can't even hear their own voice but they can hear it through my reflection on them where they can say you know what you're right that is exactly how I feel I know I can be so much better but and if I can't find that in them then we're not meant to be but I want to be that voice for someone because they can't find that voice within themselves it's so interesting because I imagine almost everybody listening to this has those gripes with their partner 100 whether you've been together for five minutes or five years where you you go I just she would be more like me or I just wish she would do it like me I wish you would love what I love and I've been there with my partner as well where um I I suspect she wants me to be a bit more interested in the things she's interested in yeah and maybe vice versa um but then also we have a different style of communication and all of these things and going back a couple of years we had a problem with sex which we had to confront where one day she turned around to me and and said that she was wasn't interested in sex we've talked about this publicly before yeah um and the journey I went on to understand all of that the question I'm trying to ask is like Dave or Rebecca who's listening to this right now who wants to wants to change something about [ __ ] Rebecca wants to change something about Dave he's all he's always he doesn't care about me he doesn't give me the quality time all of those things what's the path that Rebecca should take to deliver that to Dave yeah at what point should she go [ __ ] Dave you know what I mean because because it's a success is a team sport in this record right first thing I'm going to say is stop trying to change anyone because people don't change for people they change for themselves like stop trying to change anyone people do not change for you they don't change for me they change for themselves and if they don't want to change they're not changing and if you want to change your partner chances are they're not the right person for you and by the way anyone you date you'll always want to change because somehow deep inside of you you believe that the values you were brought up with and what you think is right is what everyone in the world should do and so the core issue again going to the route is us and our projection like is my wife any less of an amazing human being because she lives differently to me no and I think that relationships are so much more about learning to respect other people's values than they are to make them value what we value I think the biggest issue we're having in relationships right now is we're saying well I like this why don't you like it relationships are saying I love that you love that and I love this you go do your thing I'll go do mine why do I want to force my partner to come watch a football game with me if they hate football I'd rather go watch it with someone that loves football and why is she gonna force me to go do something that I don't want to do I don't think that that's compromise or connection I think that's ruining relationships quite frankly so I think going to the core of the answer now I'll coach through Dave and Rebecca but I think going to the root of it it's just the issue of stop trying to change people if you're trying to change them then you don't love them you love their potential you love a version of them that you think they can become that's not them and stop trying to make them that version because if you're in love with who someone could be then you're not in love with them and accept that and I don't think we want to accept that we want to think that we're better greater human beings because we see something better for someone and there are projects and they're a project and I talk about that in the book the idea that you know the project or there are three roles we play in relationships one is the fixer we want to find someone to fix and the other is we play the role of the project so we want to be fixed by someone else so we're looking for that person and really the right thing we want to be is the supporter the partner the true equal the true person who adds value to the other person sometimes takes on the role of the fixer sometimes is the project but overall is coming at it from a point of working on this together as you said a team sport and so when it comes to Rebecca and Dave ultimately the deepest most beautiful question your partner can ask you is where do you want to be and do you want my help getting there and if the answer to that question is something you don't like then it comes to the end of it because you're not going to change them by manipulating them by controlling them by forcing them by coming up with a magic trick it's just not going to happen like I think so many people say to me Jay just you know my my partner just won't read your book I really want them to read your book and I'm like please don't do that to them you're about to push that person over the edge and guess what not only are they not going to read my book They're not going to be interested in personal development or growth because now you've given it a bad taste half the atheists in the world exists because religion failed them it wasn't that they became an atheist out of choice because they were like oh I'm just going to be an atheist it's because they saw someone as part of a religion that failed them and so when it whether it's personal growth whether it's Health whether it's mindfulness whether it's yoga whatever your latest trend is that you're into forcing your partner to get into it is going to push them away far more then it's going to excite them and entice them and there's a message underlying there which I which I felt in my life where someone's pushing you to do something or to check something out and they're doing it very aggressively yeah I'm I'm trying to read between the lines yes I'm saying you know Steve please read this book I go oh this is where I'll read that as here is she's presenting me with a flaw that I have totally because the book is about I don't know how to be great in bed yeah and she's like babe please read this book I'm thinking well what you're actually saying to me is I'm not good in bed yeah yeah totally totally so there's always that's the problem when you're dealing with love again isn't it totally and you're not love means to understand why someone makes the choices they make and most of us don't even know why they make those choices and we want them to make our choices that's as simple as it is you said something so amazing which I thought was um that question that Rebecca should be asking Dave which I've never really thought about before which is the first question you should ask them is like where do they want their life to go and where do they see this relationship going and then instead of trying to interfere with that and design it yourself and muddle with it just see if it matches up to your vision of the relationship I imagine most people listening to this now haven't done that exercise with their partner where they they haven't asked their partner by the way like what is your vision for this relationship in US yeah and even your own life yeah it'd be interesting you know yeah I think also just trying to I think the reason why we haven't had that conversation is most of us don't even know our vision so the reason why we haven't done that with a partner is because we don't know the answer to our own question and so before you ask that question you should have your own idea I know what I want my vision of a relationship is we wake up excited to see each other every day we go to bed uh feeling accomplished and fulfilled throughout the day we make time to connect on understanding where each other's lives are going where they intertwine and where they separate and we support each other in the goals I break it down into three things in the book I talk about uh liking each other's personality and the way I Define that's the first one of the three what I mean by that is there's an amazing study that was done that said that in order for someone to be considered a casual friend you have to spend 40 hours with them in order for someone to be considered a friend you have to spend 100 hours with them and for someone to be considered a good friend a great friend you have to spend 200 hours with them what are we so we're we're nothing right now Stephen we we're we're not doing very well on that list now having said that we've also had very deep time to like we're always opening our entire souls and hearts to each other so it's it's a different type of relationship but the point is liking someone's personality is do I want to spend 200 hours with them that's how I like to break it down is do I see myself spending 200 hours with this person trying to understand them the second is do I respect their values you will only know their values if you ask them if you're aware if you can see how they spend their time and money most people don't like the way their partner spends their time and money which means you don't like their values but you're still with them because you like something else about them but the values are the core of who that person is as a human being and then the third is do you want to help them achieve their goals that's love love means that you want to help them get to where they want to get to but most of us don't even know where our partners want to go or where we want to go so we're struggling with like three fundamental things that define love and we'll never know because we're trying to patch it up with all the other stickers that come up uh in making us feel good yeah you said Point number one there which was waking up to them every day now when you when you said that I thought [ __ ] every day like well not every day but I'm saying whenever you're in the same yeah but that's what my brain did well every day like yeah and then that brought my mind to this point about the role of distance yes in your relationship yes I've tested this love big time both ways okay tell me what you've done so my wife and I have been together for 10 years so it's not long and it's not short it's like you know it's a good amount of time uh and we've spent up to six months apart a year sometimes and we've spent as little as two months apart a year so we've varied in those 10 years anywhere from two months to six months a year I've not seen each other based on work schedules priorities Etc and I was always someone who believed that distance was really good for relationships I think it's healthy to miss each other I think it's healthier if you have a plan of how you're going to be apart and I think it's even healthier if you have a plan of how to reconnect after the time apart and I think that's where relationships and distance go wrong most relationships in distance are either by default or with no consciousness so we just ended up not seeing each other for x amount of time whether that's one week one month or whatever it may be that unconscious time of not being with each other is not healthy for a relationship you don't know why you're disconnected you don't know for how long you don't know how you're reconnecting and you don't know how you're staying in touch that's not good quality time away so that's how to make time work for you six months is too long six months doesn't work I've tried and tested it it's really bad uh it took six months after six months to reconnect and I'm not I literally felt like it was like a rule that for every day I was apart I had to spend a day of quality time with that person to refine and ReDiscover and to sustain and to evolve and grow a relationship and I literally felt that six months apart took me six months with my wife to get back to where we were before those six months especially because some of those six months happened unconsciously and so unconscious time apart isn't healthy and unconscious reconnection isn't healthy and that was six months of conscious reconnection after six months of unconscious disconnectedness that helped us connect again and I'd never want to do that again it was it was too painful to look at someone and someone you love and someone you feel you've really achieved something with to kind of feel like you had to rebuild it all again it was it was too much and and I don't want to do that again and so I'm changing the way I feel about distance I'm always going to make it conscious it's always communicated and some of the habits I've set up that have been really helpful is I also set up not even just disconnection physically but time poverty and emotional so I'm going on tour this year and when I go on tour this year I'm going to be on the road in the US for three weeks in total which is quite normal for me and my wife to be apart for three weeks so but it's communicated it's in the calendar and then I come back to LA for a month and I've kept that whole schedule free because I want to plan a few trips with my wife we may even go on a vacation whatever it may be and then after that I go on my world tour which is another four weeks or five weeks of cities all across Europe India Asia and Australia and my wife will pop into a couple of cities but she's not going to come on the whole tour with me and so again I'm like okay which cities are you going to be in which weekends am I going to take off which nights am I going to be with you and then what are we going to do when I reconnect after the world tour it's now coming from a completely conscious organized space just as I would organize work just as I would deal with a business partner you just can't take a relationship for granted it just will break it will Wilt Away Paul Brunson taught me something um he he was on the podcast and he he said that him and his wife had to make a rule he's from America he's had to fly all over the world to do these TV shows Etc he said we have a rule where if we're if an opportunity invites us to be a part for more than two weeks we either go together or I don't go I know he's obviously got you know kids and things like that and I really thought that was really amazing yeah difficult that's difficult it's very difficult yeah I don't disagree with it I just think that so he posted on his Instagram the amazing I've just been given an opportunity of a lifetime but for practical reasons me and my partner can't go together yes I've turned it down and I think everyone needs to come up with their own version of that rule yeah because that's such a it's a great Rule and if him and his partner have committed to that and that's my hope with the book with the rules it's like come up with your own relationship rules like one of ours is every 30 days we spend three days together without our phones and we drive somewhere three hours away from our home in La and spend that time together and that's been a healthy habit for us every month because I don't think I want to wait for our annual vacation to spend quality time together and so whether you're spending one hour together every week undisturbed without your phones I also think that one of the things I talk about is the levels of connection so I had a friend who just got back from vacation with her partner and straight after that she was like but I didn't feel like we spent any time together and when she told him that he said well we just spent three days together what do you mean and when I asked her well if you spent three days together what do you mean she said well he was on his iPad or he was on his phone or he was on his laptop we weren't actually together and I said well you're not asking for time you're asking for presents and you're asking for energy so often our vocabulary is wrong you know we're saying I want you to come home from work on time that's not what you're saying what you're saying is I want to spend time where we share energy and interact together but we're using the wrong language and so a we're not communicating what we want but more interestingly I found that and everyone can do this and I and I really want people to take this in and really let it sit most of us only do one thing with our partners and it's watching TV and that is the lowest form of intimacy that you could possibly ask for with any human being if you and I watch TV together for 200 hours a year we would potentially be no closer than we were before yet with our partners all we do is stay glued to a box for hours every day waste minutes searching for what to watch and then maybe having a quick little chat about it and switching it off so I have this pyramid of intimacy and entertainment's on the lowest rung of the ladder but that's what the majority of couples are doing so if we're only watching TV together I promise you that relationship is not growing it's actually falling apart slowly and you have no idea and I know that's a painful truth to accept but it is it is An Inconvenient Truth so higher than that and that's why it's a ladder there's there's other steps instead of entertainment I'm really interested in people doing experiences together something new something fresh and experiment together what I mean by that is how can you both do something that you both are not experts at often what we do in relationships is we say oh well I love football come watch football with me or I love this come watch this with me I love this band comment experience this band with me what we're doing is we're creating an expert and student mentality I'm going to teach you what the offside rule is I'm going to teach you about uh this this this music and this whatever else it may be right we're we're kind of creating that idea that I know something you don't and what that does in a relationship is it doesn't create a shared experience a shared experience is when we both go somewhere where we both don't have a lot of experience and now we get to discover new things about our partner now we get to see them in a new scenario now we get to make ourselves both feel vulnerable TV is not vulnerable so when we're talking about creating vulnerability it's not just in conversation it's in us both doing an escape room that we've never done before now we're vulnerable without even trying right we're both going to go and be part of an experiment experience that we've never done before because it helps us be vulnerable maybe we're going to try a new sport that we never play together me and my wife tried surfing last year never done it before this year we tried wakeboarding never done it before we both look like fools both can't do it to save our lives actually she's much better than me so I'll give her the credit but the point is that the more you put yourself in uncomfortable new experiences and experiments and by the way I've given a range of examples it could literally be you know going to an art class together or going to Pottery together or whatever it may be it can be the most basic thing do something where neither of you know anything about it your vulnerability skyrockets without having to have a heart-to-heart conversation higher than that level is education go and learn together maybe there is a book that you can both read together maybe there is a podcast you can listen together maybe there is a retreat that you both want to go on maybe there is a course that you both really want to do or alternatively you both commit to doing separate things but you report back and talk about it one of you is learning an art one of you is learning self-development now you're sharing your exclusive learning Journeys with each other you're both growing together and then the highest thing is serving together go to a soup kitchen go to a homeless shelter go somewhere that inspires you both that affects you both and go and help go and serve go and improve the world together when you think about any of those three out of the four yes they take a bit more planning yes they take a bit more time than watching TV actually maybe you know I had argue that takes the same amount of time the quality of your relationship will Skyrocket immensely by doing any of those three out of the four then just switching on the Telly and I think too many of us are you know losing our partners losing ourselves and losing our relationships because we're expecting a TV show made by people who don't really care about your relationship uh to entertain us it brings me to chapter five of your book where you say purpose comes first yeah and there's a quote I wrote down which is for any of us to bring the best version of ourselves to our relationship we have to pursue our own purpose in Hinduism it's called our Dharma yeah what is our Dharma what are the four you know you talk about these four fundamental Pursuits that drive us forward in life yeah so The Vedas talk about these four Pursuits in life who's Vedas The Vedas v-e-d-a-s are the uh kind of umbrella scriptures the umbrella spiritual texts that have all of this life advice and wisdom that I share from from that context so The Vedas are the particular texts and they have these four Pursuits of life and they are Dharma artha Karma and Moksha and I'll describe each word because those old Sanskrit words so Dharma is purpose uh we'll dive into that one more deeply Arthur uh and and all of my work is pretty much dedicated to this and I'll break it down to my own language to make it to make it simpler for everyone I believe that there are four important decisions that we all get to make in life the first one is how I feel about myself the second one is what do I do to make money we all need money what do we do for it the third is who do I decide to love and receive love from and the fourth is how do I choose to serve the world how do I choose to impact the world and so these are the four main Pursuits that The Vedas espouse Dharma is your purpose and who you are Arthur is economic development karma is relationships and connection and milkshake's Liberation or service or like ultimate giving uh and so those are the four Pursuits and it's really interesting to me that Dharma is placed as the first Pursuit not love and it's really interesting because you look at people they did a study on uh people graduated from graduating from college and they asked them that if you were to get married in the next five years or stay single what would be your happiness prediction the majority of people predicted that if they got married their happiness would be at eight but if they remain single their happiness would be at a three that perception is mind-blowing to me they believe that if they're in a relationship their happiness would go to an eight if they were single would be a three the reality is if they stayed single and they did the happiness stayed at a seven and so their perception of loneliness their perception of being alone was far greater and so a lot of us skip purpose because we find connection is an easier solve to our internal unhealing so we feel that if I'm with someone I'm gonna feel better about myself than if I have to do that work myself and is this in order yes okay so karma is essentially pleasuring connection correct this is your relationship with others people prioritize that as being number one number one exactly and that's what I'm saying is the mistake that you're hoping that someone is going to come and heal your wounds without doing it yourself which is why we're living in a world where you know the right person could come into your life and reduce drama and the wrong person comes into your life and increases trauma and that's the experience that we're having that we're coming from these unhealed places where we don't know our purpose we don't know our values we don't know our goals we mesh with someone else who doesn't know their purpose doesn't know their values and doesn't know their goals and it leads to confusion it leads to broken hearts it leads to abuse it leads to manipulation and control and so I do this very simply and I ask couples that I work with and I've worked with I've been coaching a lot of couples over the last few years especially while writing this book and I ask couples that I'm working with to rate their top three priorities in order including themselves and I remember doing this with a lot of couples and one particular couple and the man said you the kids me and the woman said me the kids you and when we had this discussion he was heartbroken he said how could you put yourself above the kids he goes I'm not mad that I'm number three I'll take that all day but how did you put yourself above the kids how could you even do that sounds like he's mad at being number three he's just using the kids in this game what about me yeah and it was really interesting because she she gave the answer that I think me and you would you know validate and agree with that she was like but if I don't fill my own bottle if I don't film my own cup if I'm not my best self what am I giving to you guys I'm giving you leftovers and she's saying that it's not that the kids are second on my list because I don't care about them and if they needed me they're going to be second it's more that I know that I have to invest in myself and so I think we live in a world where we think sacrificing our purpose makes us a better partner we think the self-sacrifice and the self-sabotage of our own goals and our own Pursuits makes us a better person when actually it doesn't it makes us more resentful more guilty more upset and I'm saying that because I've seen people who gave up their dreams for decades only in their 50s and 60s to look back and go when the kids left to go I wish I never gave up on my dreams so I'm not saying this as Theory I'm saying this is sitting down with people working with people and seeing people throw away their own purpose in the pursuit of I think that sacrificing it makes me a better human being it really reminded me then of my best performing quote ever okay I want to hear it this is the best performing quote I've ever had so much so that actually when I Googled it it's attributed to someone else which is really oh it's crazy I just Googled it right and this person is too exact same thing which I actually wrote about my ex-girlfriend and it's got 150 000 likes on Twitter and 75 000 retweets it did better than what I posted that that's crazy isn't it that's amazing but um the quote is I'm actually just going to read those yeah because um I'll read mine yeah it's the exact same thing word for word is if we're dating I want to be your second priority I want your first priority to be you your Ambitions your life and your future because my priority right now is me and mine and finding happiness and security alone is crucial to us finding it together and I wrote that actually in response to my my ex-girlfriend who made me really realize that that um we're gonna have no relationship we're gonna have no security We're not gonna have any happiness if we haven't first found that to some extent together and I've always almost criticized that perspective of my of mine I thought Steve is that because you're selfish and you're into you know and you're ambitious you just want to be or is there truth in that and I and there's this in during question I have which is what role is your partner meant to play and we've kind of talked about a little bit but in fixing you do you have to be completely happy before you meet them or do you do you have can you rely on them to make you happy yeah and by the way it's only not unselfish so yes what you just said in self-reflection it is a completely selfish idea if you don't afford your partner the same flexibility and openness to live that way right so it is selfish if you say I'm gonna go achieve this I want to go build this life and by the way you've got to come with me you've got to be if I was saying this hypothetically to my wife you've got to be on every flight I take next year I I my work's really important I'm saving the world I'm doing a world tour you come with me if you have that belief that is completely selfish and ego based but if my belief is yes this is my calling this is what I'm meant to do on this planet and I'm really moved by that but my wife's got an amazing calling herself and I get so much more attracted to her watching her live her calling my wife becomes more attractive to me amen the more she lives her purpose not your wife I'm talking about mine yeah yeah yeah yeah like my wife doesn't become attractive to me because she's helping me in my purpose by just following and tagging along do you know how she'll become even more attractive if she opens that restaurant yeah I know that would like you know put it right up there but yeah the idea that you know I and so I think there is a selfishness right and I wanted to caveat that um so I'm not saying you need to be perfectly happy I'm saying you need to know who you are yeah you need to know your values currently and you need to know your goals currently all those things will change and evolve as you grow and evolve but if you've done the practice of understanding that at this point you're going to be better at communicating articulating and evolving and sharing it again when it changes what if I'm really hurt I was cheated on I was in a seven year relationship and thinking about one of my friends I was in a seven year relationship I was cheated on now I'm insecure I you know I've low self-esteem is it relationship time no not at all not one bit because that's the point that we're talking about where you skip step one you've skipped Dharma and you've leaned into Karma because you don't want to sort Dharma Dharma is making sense of who you are and who you want to be and and what your role in this world is and I feel that when you walk into a relationship with that insecurity it now ruins potentially the safest secure person that you could have been with and so I'm going I was just going to say you know this is this is who am I to judge I had all of my own BS to deal with and overcome and understand about myself um much of which I've talked about many times before but if I if I was to take a cross-section of the people in my life that are struggling relationships almost every single one of them has skipped the first stage which has the hard stage you know the thing about that first stage is a lot of people just don't feel like they have the time yes especially we're all getting a little bit older you know things have changed in society which means people are getting in less relationships and they're getting in them later in life so some people feel that they have a clock and that means that when they think look Jay I'm X years old today and you're telling me to do this Dharma and this Arthur I need to get to Karma I need to find this guy and what we don't realize is that the work that you skip in step one and two you're gonna have to do with another person yeah and that work doing it with them is going to slow the quality of that relationship down potentially ruin a great thing and push someone away amen and and actually make a mess of the situation and so it's kind of like a game where it's like you could have the cheat code that skips you to 10 but the skills of levels one to nine help you win at ten yeah but if you skip the game because you had the cheat code or you tried to rush it or you got a pirated version or whatever it is you now can't win at level number 10 and I think we don't realize that what the Game of Life does is it pushes you back to learn the lessons you haven't learned yet so you get into a relationship out of insecurity that person breaks up with you you're back to being insecure again then you get into another relationship to solve your insecurity that person breaks up with you and then you get insecure again you're constantly pushed into saying deal with this insecurity alone fix it figure it out learn about it get curious about it and by the way when you do that next time you walk into a relationship a you'll know or have more chance of knowing whether that person's going to be right or wrong but if it's right you're going to be able to make it work and you're not going to push away something that's powerful and to summarize these steps so Dharma is um as written here in the book purpose clarifies your values and priorities um to yourself and your partner that's really working on yourself step two Arthur is working towards stability in terms of your finances health self-development and personal growth and once you're there you're ready for some comma which is pleasure and connection um which is basically relationships with others it's so interesting one of the questions I did want to ask you today before we um before you even got here was exactly this I actually had a conversation an hour before you arrived with a friend of mine who is um in her mid-30s and is really struggling with relationships and um I was having a conversation with her about it and it's all the things we just talked about which is like she feels like she's running out of time yeah she feels like there's the world has changed and it's now all digital and like she's not meeting enough people she thinks maybe if I go get my hair done and this done and I get that done or if I get a membership to Soho house maybe then I'll [ __ ] meet a guy and like what you must encounter these people in your DMs over and over again that are saying that I'm nearly 40 years old I'm single it's not working for me what's your advice to those people well I think the first thing I'd say is it is hard it is a really tough time to be single right now compared to what it was like a few years ago like it is much harder with the landscape and how it's changed like 25 50 years ago you'd meet someone who lived in a one to five mile radius from your home you wouldn't even be thinking about having a long distance relationship in the same way whereas today you're meeting anyone and everyone all across the world you have an app that connects you to anyone in that location an area wherever you just got off a plane so there is complexity there's more choice now there's the Paradox of choice of well there's plenty of fish in the sea and if this doesn't work out there's so many more people and other people that are thinking about you and you're worried about that so it is much harder and so I don't want to get away from that like I don't want to negate the fact that dating today and finding love is hard it's why I wrote the book uh I think that what I'm encouraging for people to understand is that a having all those insecurities around relationships doesn't put you in the best decision-making profile to make the right decision so all of that stress and all of that insecurity and all of that anxiety is more likely to push you into a relationship that is unhealthy and toxic than it is to help you move in the right direction so first of all I just want you to accept that making a decision from your current mindset is not going to help you make a good one it's just not going to work you're more likely to settle for someone you're more likely to give in for something less than you deserve because right now you're just happy with anything you're just happy with someone who texts you back and that's not the relationship you want to be in so first I would accept that this mindset is not going to help you the mindset that is going to help you is okay let if I figure out three simple things just what I like and what I don't like about myself and in life not about a person I'm not asking to even think about a person what do I like and not like as me what are my values personally right now like what's valuable to me not about this person what's valuable to me and what are my goals if you figure out those three things you're more likely to meet people how if you know what you like and dislike you're gonna spend time in places that you like and dislike where you're more likely to meet people that have similar likes and dislikes or that at least you can connect with second if you know your values you're more likely to know who to ask for an introduction to someone because you know who knows who you know that that friend of yours is more likely to know someone who has a similar value because they're of that value and then goals make it easier to figure out whether it's going to go somewhere so you actually speed up and simplify a really tough selection process because our whole society has set us up to say right list of what you want in a person write a list of what you want in yourself like just write a list of like who are you what my values and what are my goals and you figured that out it becomes so much more easier to weed it out and so I would encourage you to say this isn't uh you don't have to become a monk for three years you don't have to go and like live in a Mountaintop you don't have to go on a yoga retreat like I'm not telling you to do this for like decades you could do this in three months if you wanted to like this isn't like a decade-long process there's something really interesting here about like delaying gratification just generally I was actually reading yesterday um about the people that delay gratification in their lives and those that don't and why from a physiological standpoint some people don't delay gratification I was reading about the marshmallow test yeah yeah which I'm sure you've heard about um and some of the factors that are at play there is when people are stressed you know um in the case of a marshmallow it creates a dopamine hit which is a feel-good you know chemical for the reward center in your brain so one can understand why you would reach for the marshmallow if you were feeling stressed and you needed that dopamine hair one of them is also self-esteem yeah which is if your self-esteem is low and you're looking for the same kind of dopamine hit you get from having a [ __ ] bad one-night stand with the wrong person it's much harder to delay your gratification and make good long-term decisions in line with your values if your self-esteem is low so all of these things point to this like fundamental which I think people Miss in our society because we live in a society where I'd rather have it now I'd rather go to a surgeon and get it fixed I'd rather you know do it on Photoshop than actually do the work it's like doing the work a you don't see but who the [ __ ] wants to do the work totally is like doing that the foundational stuff is the answer to all of the stuff you see on the outside like and and you know what you're saying with that example is that you also you also attract what you use to impress so if you use something specific to impress someone that's the quality and vibration of energy you're attracting so if I use money money like I did yeah to attract someone which works perfectly well you're attracting someone who values that about you yes if you use your only your physical appearance obviously we're all attracted to each other and that's fine like but if you only use your physical appearance and you believe that's your only asset and you're playing the game of just showing off that guess what you're gonna try that's a really important question because that solves something for one of the people I'm thinking about in my head this person she's obviously she's a friend but somebody that I know and um she's using her outstanding Beauty to attract people yeah and it's failed to over and over again because she's attracting the wrong type of person with the wrong type of values in her own words and in my to bring this back to myself there was this phase between 18 and 23 I'm gonna say where all I used to attract girls was bottles of Dom Perignon in a club I would buy five bottles of Dom Perignon at night you know bring the sparklers and it was like a mousetrap yeah but I was I was attracting the wrong type of values yeah because I was the wrong type of values correct and you and you don't think that and and the worst part about that for your friend is that it's not just an issue that the guy she attracts value only that about her the biggest issue is she's setting herself to only value that about her amen which means when someone leaves her for that reason it just plays into the belief of I'm not good enough there's this beautiful uh Fable story that I love to share and it's about a kid who finds like a gem in his house like a stone and he goes up to his dad and he says how much is this Stone worth Dad what's the value of this Stone and the dad says I want you to go out to the baker and when you go out to the baker say that you're selling the stone and when they ask you how much it is hold up two fingers and so the kid said okay I'll do that the kid ran out went to the baker the baker said oh that looks nice how much are you selling it for kid held up two fingers the baker said oh two dollars I'll take it so the kid ran back and the kids said Dad their Baker off for two dollars the dad said okay now I want you to go to an antique shop and I want you to show them the jewel uh the the stone and when you show them the stone I want you to hold up two fingers again so the boy runs off and the antique person says oh that's a nice Stone how much is it and the boy holds up two fingers and he says oh 200 200 okay yeah I'll take it and the boy runs back and then and then Dad says okay now I want you to go to this jeweler in this rare store of gems and stones and jewels and go up and do the same thing the boy runs back goes to this shows the stone holds up two fingers and the Jeweler says oh two thousand dollars I'll take it and you know that story to me is really the story that we're all going through where we're letting someone else Define our worth by what we showed them and how all those people are going to rate you based on their own knowledge and their own experience so if you're a person of low vibration and insecurity and anxiety and you're letting someone Define you at two dollars worth that's what you're getting whereas if you've already priced yourself and this is my worth this is who I am this is my value you'll never let someone undervalue you and that's the challenge today is that because we don't value ourselves and we're letting someone else value us we are being undervalued by every person we date and meet and that's how everyone feels everyone feels like that stone that is undervalued because you're not being perceived by the right people for the right things it's so true and um it you know I wasn't going to ask this question but it tees up because I always think about you know Sophia who's listening to this and it's just heard you say that and she's going I completely agree Jay the next question is how do I genuinely not [ __ ] how do I genuinely value myself more I'm not just saying it in the mirror and writing it down how do I genuinely value myself more so that I can get better from the world so so this is and I love what you just said I don't believe that value comes from a journal or a conversation with yourself in a mirror please buy the diary and I love Journal journalists what's really interesting is self value real self-worth comes from doing hard things we keep talking about self-love we keep talking about loving yourself believing in yourself that happens naturally when you go through something difficult everyone who's listening right now I guarantee you has been through something difficult maybe they lost a friend maybe they've been through cancer maybe they lost their job and had to rebuild maybe they completely got destroyed during the pandemic and had to figure everything out with their health the point is we've all done hard things and self-worth and self-value comes from recognizing the hardship you've been through and the growth that you made during that time now if you're someone who's listening and saying Jay well I'm not sure I've been through anything that challenging well that's your challenge go and figure out what it is that you want to do that's hard is it developing a new skill is it getting a qualification is it starting that business or dream that you've always wanted to do what's that difficult thing you're gonna do on your own with your friends with the support of whoever's around you but not with the crutch or the handicap of a partner what are you gonna build as a skill as a tool as a value yourself that's going to make you say I've done something and that's the beginning of it the beginning is I've done something and I did that and I can do that and when you do that yes there's going to be you're going to validate the wrong things you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna give yourself praise for the wrong things you're gonna go through ego you're going to do all of that but there's still a belief if I can do hard things I can do hard things by myself and I know what value I bring to a relationship you were just talking about doing hard things so let's talk about sex sex is a huge part of relationships yeah and one of the one of the really interesting things I want to talk to you about is if again if I look at my friendship group my small friendship group of maybe six guys right my best friends I'd say three of them are currently having a really really hard time as it relates to sex with their partner um for a variety of reasons reason number one that I've heard my partner doesn't like having sex we have sex once every three months reason number two I've heard my partner doesn't like the way that I have sex on those first two points I'm horrified surprised that so many people I speak to are struggling in that department yeah with sex and there's not the conversation around sex is either non-existent or porn influenced yeah what's your take on sex and what's going on I'm so glad you brought it up because I I think that because of social media there's this image that everyone else is having sex and I'm not like I feel like that's like a very big feeling that a lot of people have and all the stats show the people having less and less sex there are more and more sexless relationships and marriages every single year and it's so much more common yet in our groups and online everyone feels like oh they're getting some and they're getting some and they're getting some but I'm not and the truth is most people are not getting any and and that's just I don't have the stats offhand right now but whenever I've looked at the trends that's what the trends show to me it comes back down to everything we've just been talking about sexual chemistry and attraction and connection is all based on a how someone feels about themself if someone themselves is not feeling taken care of by themselves attractive investing in themselves growing feeling like they're becoming more and better it's very unlikely that they're going to want to share their body mind emotions and heart with anyone else in the most physically intimate way which is sex it's just unlikely and chances are if you don't think you're having those conversations you want to have with your partner where you are being open where they are working on their values where we do see each other striving chances are that you're not going to want to have sex with them either and so what we're seeing is that the challenge we're having in sex is actually coming from everything else that's going on that there isn't a sense of growth Joy purpose like great sex is a byproduct of great connection and intimacy it's not a replacement for or a source of if I asked everyone who's listening right now put your hand up if you've had amazing sex but no connection in a relationship right like that's that's been real we've all used sex as a crutch we've had relationships where every time we argued we had sex it solved the problem every time something was going wrong we had sex it was figured out somehow and the study showed that the chemicals released during sex make you feel like you're getting closer even though you're not actually emotionally closer so when you look at all of the stats when you look at all the research when you look at everything we've just described sex is a byproduct of a healthy individual and a healthy individual and a growing individual and a growing individual coming together sorting out their differences having the fights they need to have having the conversations they do that naturally creates vulnerability which leads to being able to expose ourselves at the deepest most um physical way that we possibly can how can you expose yourself that vulnerably if if you can't even have a vulnerable conversation with your partner because you just switch on the TV every night and avoid that difficult conversation becomes like a transaction it becomes a transaction and then sex becomes in the best case a crutch and uh and a hopeful aspiration on a special night or whatever it may be or something we wait for and plan for and it never works out as opposed in the worst case it just becomes something we're both not talking about comfortable about or even doing and so for an obligation exactly yes yes yeah like an obligation someone's just sitting there like you know come on three minutes literally yeah all right let's get it over and done with like that mindset and I'm like well like there isn't because we've lost Intimacy in relationships there is no intimacy and so you can't force it physically there's no Intimacy in porn there's no Intimacy in porn for sure I don't like do the small talk I don't no pay for that exactly there's no Intimacy in porn there's no in and the problem is and this is you know the book starts with this quote but it solves this problem very very neatly and carefully and it's this idea that the Buddha was once approached and asked what's the difference between I like you and I love you which is a brilliant question and the Buddha replied when you like a flower you simply pluck it but when you love a flower you water it every day and to me the one night stand the porn the dopamine hit the release of chemical is the plucking right that's what we're all plucking all day long because that's all we can do but the watering the intimacy developing intimacy growing from entertainment to experiments to experiences to education to engaging in service together all of this creates so much intimacy that physical intimacy is a natural byproduct it's not something you have to manage or engineer or manufacture like it's not this separate thing it's it's based on how close I feel to you and the point is when don't feel close to our partners because we don't do anything that makes us closer every day sleeping in the same bed as someone does not make you close to someone living in the same house as someone does not make you close to someone the only thing that makes you feel close to someone is when you feel you can be open and when you feel seen heard and understood in your most vulnerable darkest and open times if you can do that everything else is going to work but if you can't do that you can't just make it happen in a moment because you're meant to be together you're meant to be in love what about masturbation do you think it do you think masturbation to porn helps or hurts relationships I think in the long term it hurts I think it's unhealthy because it's an avoidance and an Escape right that's the point it's like what is it being used as it's not being used as self-connection or self-understanding it's been used as escape and avoidance of the actual topic and all that's doing is rewiring your brain for false expectations diminishing returns as well all the studies that I did look at showed that porn is making you work harder you're gonna have to find something more extreme all the stats that I saw showed that you had to watch more extreme porn to get the same feeling so the most searched porn and the most watched porn was abusive uh sometimes violent sometimes rough hardcore all the Search terms were more extreme to get the same feeling because of the diminishing returns of the chemicals that are being released and so now you're rewiring your brain to not feel as much pleasure from normal sex or more traditional conventional sex you're now saying that I'm only going to feel pleasure from sex when it's potentially abusive violent somewhat rough hardcore whatever else it may be so I think that's massively unhealthy there's something it does to expectations as well and expectations of the key of that's what we're saying yeah your expectations of sex become completely unrealistic your expectations of intimacy are just thrown out the window there must be so many people listening to this both men and women because both sexes do watch porn it's quite naive everyone to assume it's just men that are jacking off in there of course in their bedrooms whatever but um I bet there's people listening to this who have a partner that's constantly watching it and they know they watch it potentially maybe they've caught them a few times and they really want them to stop they think it's maybe killing the desire in a relationship it's a difficult conversation too oh good you know yeah it's really tough and like I said when I was you know I I think it'd be interesting to look at this and I would be fascinated to see whether the people that are watching porn and and I need to talk to more people than I have about it the people that I know that watch porn and that's why I'm only speaking from my experience don't feel good about it they they internally deeply at the root when we're in a coaching session we get to the core of it they feel guilty they feel shameful they feel embarrassed about it it doesn't make them feel good and they wouldn't openly admit it in a community of people now I'm speaking about a very specific group of people that I've that have come to me for help or support in their relationships they don't feel good about it that doesn't mean they don't feel good when they're watching it I'm saying they don't feel good afterwards when they think about it when they reflect on it they're like that's not what I imagined would be my sex life that's not where I thought I'd turn to for for satisfaction and enjoyment so to me that's again comes back to down the same approach and that's why the approach is always the same we're always approaching the problem from or The Challenge from empathy and compassion we're not approaching it from judgment and accusation of like oh you're such a waste you're such a late you know like that mindset doesn't ever make someone want to open up like if you run up to your partner and said God you just watch porn all the time that you you know you're one of the worst guys like haven't seen all my mates they're doing this and they get this from their partners and what are you doing that person's never gonna tell you when they watch porn or what they're challenged with it is or how embarrassed they feel or whatever it may be was if you went up to them and said hey you know I know I know that you watch porn and I wanted to know when it started like when did you get into it like what like allow yourself to be an interviewer about it not an interrogator and I feel like one of the biggest mistakes we make in our relationships is we interrogate our partners not interview them let's be curious let's let's actually try and understand it let's look at it because it's human it's natural like like we said like 99 of people are doing it anyway so why are we pretending like it's only in our relationship why are we pretending that oh no one else does this but only my partner does this that's not true so if it's that widespread and it's that common and there's this huge industry that's been built off of it why are we judging our partner and why are we making them feel less than do you watch porn I don't I I've I mean when you you know I mean three years of being a celibate monk with no access to the internet or phone gives you some good training uh I yeah I feel like so I grew up and I'll explain why too I feel like I started having sex early and so early in the sense for me for me so I felt that when were the years where most of my friends were watching porn I was having sex and so I didn't get into it as a habit early on in life which is where I found it Formed for most of my friends and then by the time they would get having real sex I became a monk and so it was it was a really weird order of stuff does that make sense yes for me it was that idea of like yeah it was just I think I had I had the real thing when my friends were watching porn and then by the time they were having the real thing I was on such a different path three years of celibacy three years of celibacy would do it to you it was one of the hardest no thanks it was one of the hardest and best things though because one of the things we don't realize and I want to address this and celibacy is really interesting thing to address I would love to see more people and this may be not a popular concept and I'm good with that I would love to see more people date people without having sex for a committed number of months so committing with the new person that you're dating to not make sex a connection point so one of my good friends did this recently as well and he found that it gave him the ability to make better decisions as to whether there was real intimacy whether there was real connection and whether there was something real here that could be built upon with sex as opposed to God I'm just so attracted to her and she's so attracted to me and we just have the best sex ever or we don't and then that's what it's all hanging on and so I actually would go down that route and say that celibacy doesn't have to be practiced how I practice there's three years as a monk celibacy can be practiced in small doses not because you're trying to be celibate and you're trying to repress yourself that's that's not what I'm encouraging what I'm encouraging is why not use it as a way of making healthier decisions because studies show we make don't make good decisions after we have sex and studies show that we don't make good decisions when we've had sex with someone for a long time because that's completely rewiring how we feel about them so that's one way of looking at it and the other way I'd say even going even more extreme is being celibate as a monk allowed me to redirect all that energy and the word for monk in the tradition I stayed in is brahmacharya or brahmacari and what that means technically is proper use of that energy so celibacy is not a repression or a suppression or a closing off it's re-utilizing that vital energy in a different direction if you think about how much money time and energy you've spent chasing someone that you liked the amount of time in your head the amount of time on your phone text messages uh dating apps the amount of money you spent I I would have been so rich if I never took anyone out on a date before 21 like think about all the money I wasted on showing off to women before I was 21. yeah exactly take all of that energy think about what you could achieve creatively if you used all that energy used to pursue another person if you use that energy to create because it's Creative Energy so to me celibacy was far more about I got to use three years of Creative Energy in doing a lot of self work that I otherwise could have taken years to do because of so many distractions and Pursuits that kind of spread that energy across we have a closing tradition on this podcast I know I like it I like it it's interesting I've never done this before I don't usually tell people who the person's been left the question's been left by but I know you're a Manchester United fan huge that's all I'm gonna say huge get a question left for you yeah is is there a time in your childhood when you could look back and think this is the reason why I'm sitting here today plus why it's beautiful I'd have to say it's um I'd have to say it's getting to me the monks because when I was 18 when I first met a monk which I talk about in things like a month and um I just don't think I've ever visibly experienced or emotionally experienced humility and compassion like I say these words and we use them as a society but I think there's very few people in the world that you could actually say display boundless compassion and extreme humility and sincere empathy and I'm really lucky because I saw that all in real life like I've seen it why does that make you emotional I can see it in your face because it's I I feel I feel that that's the biggest lack in the world today that the reason why we struggle with living these ideas is because we don't have enough role models that live these we don't have people that we could point to in our immediate accessible life that we would say are boundlessly compassionate or that we as we would say are extremely empathetic or that we would say are genuinely humble to the core like that's so rare and I think if I hadn't experienced it I wouldn't believe it was possible to achieve it and to access it and for us to see the benefits of it but because I got to do that at 18 and and continue to do so now when I spend time with those individuals I really believe in the greatness and the genuineness of humanity like I believe it's there like I believe that that spark exists within each and every single person who's listening and I believe that it fully is who we truly are deepest in our spirit that's who we are and I just want to be able to help people uncover that part of themselves and I'm here because I've seen it and I'm here because I've experienced it I'm here because I've lived with it and so even if I don't have it to that capacity I know it exists and I would like other people to have access to it and so that's why I'm here today that's a brilliant question well done Ria or whoever it is all Cristiano Ronaldo if you did that one that I would I would flip out former Manchester United yeah yeah Christian was dead to me yeah Jay thank you thank you once again every time we spend time together it's such an honor and a privilege um this time it's funny because I never think we can it's always there's always a risk that we might not be able to top it per se do you want to have that but it's not really about that is it it's about like it's exactly what this is which is the variety it's the depth it's the honesty it's the openness which I feel like I can only do with someone like you who is willing to reciprocate but also has done a lot of work to kind of find those answers so yeah thank you for always for doing this thank you for breaking your your little month-long um sort of time out your holiday to come and do this as well means a lot to me um thank you for writing a great Book on a topic your book is so good that I've decided not to write one on this topic I think we talked about this in La when we went for lunch like it's such a great book and it's so hard to write interesting unique things on a topic like love which has been written a lot about um but you've managed to do that with this book I read things in this book that I've never heard before that allowed me to understand something that I'm that I'd been struggling with or struggled to articulate from a Brand New Perspective and also I have to say I'm exceptionally excited to come and see your world tour which is on sale now I'm gonna come me and my partner are going to come and watch it in London yeah um extremely excited I I'm just generally more more excited to see what you do live um because I think there's huge huge potential in your message delivered in that Medium on stage I know you've done lots of live things before but I'm particularly excited by this and I implore everybody to come and join me on the tour because it's um I know if you do it then it's going to be it's going to be significant important and valuable so I'm super excited to come watch you on the tour um everyone can go buy tickets now and the book is necessary so if anyone's looking if anyone's had any struggles with some of the topics you've discussed today all of them are explained in more detail in this wonderful book which really is another pioneering book of our time and say that on the back of it I'm actually so happy I'm on the back of it that's amazing um so everybody go check out the book Jay thank you Stephen thank you so much man and I do want to say this and I do mean it and I message you I can't remember maybe it was a week ago or whatever and I said to you like look we let's just have the conversation that we can have like I don't need you to you know I don't want to have a conversation that ever with you or with anyone but especially with someone that I know and I feel comfortable with and I had no idea where today was going to go and I honestly like these are probably things we would have talked about if there weren't microphones and so I think that and and I do feel I definitely feel like I was because of our relationship and as and as our relation is weird too but you know in the sense of how open I do feel with you sometimes but I would say that in my eyes I feel we did something different to last time in an evolved version where there was even more vulnerability from me because of our relationship yeah and and I think that that's you know I hope I hope everyone who's listening like receives that in that I I was that open because I was with you and that was someone that I feel trusted by it's also for someone that I feel uh understands me even though we haven't spent the time together understands me in a different way and sees me and hears me differently and so I can allow myself to be that vulnerable huge compliment thank you thank you appreciate you bro thank you so much see you again soon absolutely man [Music] thank you