4 Steps to Build Emotional Maturity & Make Relationships Last (Tom Bilyeu Interviews Jay)

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Tell me, what is the secret that you've learned from monks on how to master yourself?

I think one of the first things that I'd suggest and explain to people is that when I lived as a monk, a lot of the wisdom that we studied and the Eastern literatures that we spent time excavating, those were not aimed at monks, those were just aimed at humanity.

When they were written, when they were written, they weren't talking about the Vedas.

Correct.

What are the Vedas. Exactly.

So The Vedas are 5,000-year-old texts that literally talk about everything from Ayurveda, which is the science of health. So Veda means wisdom or science of. And so Ayurveda is the science of life, the science of health. You have their own version of Vastu Veda, which is closest to feng shui. So, like how to design your home, how to set up different things around your home for purposeful aesthetics. You have the science of warfare in the Vedas. Whoa. Yeah. So there's a whole text dedicated to that.

How do you reconcile that?

You reconcile that in the sense of there's knowledge and wisdom on how to properly do each aspect with integrity, with purpose, from a point of protection, recognizing. I think me and you can probably vibe with this, the idea that we all want a world. I think we'd all like a world that has no war. But if we live in a world pretending that there is none of that and then we're not prepared for it, that sets us up worse. And I think whether you look at that on the macro of war or you look at on the micro of anxiety or stress or pressure, if we pretend that stress doesn't exist, it doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make it better. But being prepared for it actually allows us to potentially avoid it, potentially navigate it with more integrity and authenticity. And today, I feel like when you don't have codes for difficult things in society, you see people make really bad mistakes. You see people not having a code book or a rule book on leadership, and that's what it leads to. You see people not having a code book or rulebook on how to navigate war. And therefore people do what they feel like. And so I find that what the Vedas were trying to do was give you a set of code and a set of rules and a set of limits so that you would be more controlled, more greedless, more negative, desireless in those situations, so that you wouldn't be pulled into something by your ego, but you could actually go back to something that would help you get there, to get the best result for people and humanity. And I think that's what's so special about the Vedas, that ultimately it's dedicated to uplifting humanity through each of these different things that we experience in life.

It was really interesting to hear you talk about the part in, I think it was in the Vedas about the guy who has to prepare for war. And you're talking about even good people have to learn how to fight Found that really interesting. But the book starts with Solitude.

Yes.

Why solitude? Because that was the part where I was like, okay, here's where the monk part is coming into this. And I think it's pretty important for people to be able to be alone before they try to get into a relationship.

Yeah. I think we've created this feeling in society where loneliness is the enemy. Like, being alone is seen as a weakness. So when someone goes to school and throws a birthday party and not many people show up, you're unpopular. Whereas if lots of people showed up, you were really important, you were significant.

I can think of few things that would be more devastating to a kid than no one showing up to your birthday party.

Exactly. And that's how it's framed. That's how it's talked about. And then the next thing is, like, if you.

Would you tell your kids if they went to have a birthday party and nobody showed up, Jay, would you really be like, hey, solitude is a good thing? Like, how would you.

Well, I'm not Dad, so I can't say. But what I would say is that I would change it in the invite process. So I would ask them to only invite people that they felt really connected to or they felt they've really vibed with and wanted to celebrate their birthday with. So I think the challenge is, when you're a kid, you also hand out way too many invites. So I think that's what ends up happening, is that you think a good birthday party is a packed room. And even, I mean, people still feel that till they're 50, 60, 70. Like, that doesn't work until they're dead. Until they're dead. Right. Like, you feel a good birthday party or a good event, even when people say, like, when I die, like, if there's loads of people there, that will be a thing. I think we've just programmed ourselves to believe that if we're not surrounded by people, we can't celebrate and we can't be celebrated. It has to be about scale of how many people are there. And I would say that's one measurement, but the other measurement is the depth of how well they know you. I know tons of people who threw a great birthday party. At 50, 500 people showed up and they felt, actually, I went to a birthday party this year. It was a big birthday party, and I was speaking to the person whose party it was, and they were like, so many people invited people I didn't know to my birthday party, and they felt lonely at their own birthday party. I don't Want. If I ever had kids, I wouldn't want them to feel that. And even for myself, I don't want to be in that position. I'd rather have. I saw this thing on Instagram and it was. Someone had posted like, it was like a 10. This is in British currency, it was like 10 pence and then 1 pound. And so 10 pence is larger circumference than the pound, but the pound is greater in value. And so the caption on Instagram said that my circle has shrunk in size but has increased in value. And I was thinking that that to me resembles the kind of life I would want for myself and for my children if I had them. But if I could have both, that would be amazing, obviously. But I don't know how real it is to be able to say we can have both. So I think what I'm trying to say with solitude is that if there isn't a sense that I am happy with myself, with my own company, with the thoughts that circle around in my mind, imagine how complex that is when you add another confused individual who's not happy with their thoughts, not happy with who they are, not happy with their mind. And now in a relationship, you're putting two confused people together. Why is there pain? Why is there fallout? Why is there so much disappointment in a relationship? In my opinion, and from the perspective of the Eastern studies, is that because there's an internal dissatisfaction in both people that they're now bringing to each other. And so the strength of solitude is using that time. I've still not found a better solution for self awareness than solitude. Because in solitude, it's the only place you get to hear your own voice and make sense of other people's opinions. If I'm standing in the middle of a group of 100 people and they're all yelling their opinions at me, chances are some of them are going to rub off, some of them are contagious, some of them I'm going to reject.

And.

And I don't get the space and time to make sense of what's my voice and what's noise. Whereas when I get time to myself, I get the opportunity to reflect on and introspect and go, do I want that thought to be mine? How does that fit into my life? How do I feel about this? You get to have that dialogue with yourself. And I feel we've lost the art of self talk and self dialogue.

Well, let's go into it.

Let's do it.

What is that art? If you put a human Being in solitary confinement, you will break them in a deep and fundamental and scary way that I wouldn't have predicted. That seems very weird to me. I know it to be true not because I've experienced it, but because you just hear it over and over and over and over. Like, if you really wanted to destroy the human spirit, isolate them. So how is it that we take this thing that will, on a long enough timeline, absolutely decimate you and, and make it something that becomes the most profound setup for self awareness? What do you have to do in that solitude?

Yeah, so the first thing I'd say is that it would decimate you if you go into it 24 hours a day. And that's not what we're recommending here. Right. I'm not telling someone to 24 hours be in solitude for a year. Like, that's not my recommendation. My recommendation is in your week, there has to be at least one hour that you spend by yourself. And in that hour you're not watching a show, you're not reading a book, you're not on your phone scrolling, so you're not distracting yourself with anything or stimulating yourself with anything external. And you're sitting there and just observing your thoughts. Now, one hour is going to seem like a long time in the beginning, but I'm saying one hour would be great in a week. If you're starting that at 10 minutes, that's brilliant. That's enough. But the goal, is it enough?

Like, are you being kind? Are you trying to let people off the hook? Are you worried about people flaming you in the comments? Like, you meditate two hours a day, if I'm not mistaken. So what should people do for real?

I do believe that 10 minutes is a good place to start because I do feel that.

But you shouldn't stay there.

You shouldn't stay at 10 minutes. It should grow. I think I look at it as like when you do a cold plunge. Right. For the first time. So the first time I did a cold plunge, I was doing it with a friend and they were. They'd been already doing it for a long time and I didn't want to walk out and look like I couldn't do it. And so I stayed in.

Hypothermia.

Yeah. So I stayed in there for longer than I wanted to the first time I did it. So if I did it myself the first time, I think I would have been there for 30 seconds. The first time I did for five minutes. Because I was in there with someone who was in this. We're fully Submerged five minutes. It was great. Fully submerged up to here, right? I'm not fully submerged. And so when I look at that and I look at something that I found challenging when I did it, I was like, if someone told me I had to be in there for 10 minutes the first time I did it, I potentially would never have got in. Right. And the idea that I could have started with 30 seconds and built myself up to three minutes and then built myself up to five minutes, I really do like that process. And I think you have to. And this is self awareness again. You have to know whether you're someone who likes to be thrown in the deep end or whether you're someone who. Who likes to build up incrementally. I'm generally someone who jumps into the deep end. So I was pushed in for five minutes. And that works for me because for me, I'm the kind of person who needs to be pushed off to break the mental barrier to then go back and build a habit. That's my self awareness. I became a monk in order to learn these things. I'm an extreme person. That's how I learn and build habits. But someone else goes to me, actually, Jay, I like meditating for five minutes a day and it works for me. And now I have confidence I can do 10 minutes a day, I can do 15. And I love that. So I don't think it's an either or. I genuinely don't. That's not a cop out. I think you have to know who you are. And so if I want to learn something, I'll schedule the whole weekend. If I wanted to learn archery, I would set up archery classes for eight hours a day all weekend. I wouldn't learn it by doing archery once a week because I want to figure out whether I'm deeply interested and care about this enough to actually commit to it weekly. But that's my mindset, that's who I am. So I think the first thing I'd say is 10 minutes alone every week where you sit and you just observe your thoughts and write down every thought that comes up. This is weird. I hate this. It's boring. I can't believe Jay and Tom told me to do this. Right? Like whatever else is coming up and write it down and just become comfortable becoming aware of your thoughts. And what you'll find is that the first time you do this, it is just going to be random noise like that, what shall I eat tonight? What's going on? It's just going to be that stuff. It might even be I hate this. I'm uncomfortable. This is not fun, I'm bored. Like it will just be natural dialogue like that. What you'll find is the next time you do it or the next, after a couple of times that you do it. You now might start asking interesting questions. You might now start noticing a pattern of thoughts that repeats itself. Like I've just been thinking for a week about what that person said to me about how I look or I've been thinking about what that person said to me about something I did online. Like and it's just been in my mind and it keeps repeating itself. Now you're going to start to find what you spend most your time on. So studies Show we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day and 80% of them are negative and 80% of them are repetitive. So if our life is not transforming our thoughts now, if I asked you what are you thinking about? You're a self aware person, I'm pretty sure you could tell me on any given moment what you're thinking about. You ask most people what they're thinking about. The reaction will be an emotion. Like I'm just stressed, I've got too much on at the moment. But we can't be really clear. So what this is giving you is a clarity of what are those repeating negative thoughts and how do we want to change them? So that's step one is a even becoming aware of the thoughts. So if I ask an average person, when you wake up in the morning, what's the first thought you have? Oh, I'm tired. That's the first thought for most people. You finally made it to coffee, you had your morning coffee and you're thinking, God, I hope this coffee gets through me through the day because I'm so tired. Second time you've had the thought. You get to lunchtime, you're like, God, is it only lunchtime? Like and I can't even eat lunch because I'm busy working. God, I'm so tired. You get to 6pm, maybe you've got to work an extra hour because no one finishes work at 6 anymore. 7pm you finish, you go, I'm exhausted, I can't wait to get home. You get home and somehow at 11:37pm you get the courage to watch another episode and you repeat the cycle, right? That's a 6 thoughts in the same day.

As people get that awareness of what, what do you want them to do with it? Or that's not the right, what is the effective thing to do with it? If you're Trying to better yourself in whatever, whether it's love or something else. But if you're trying to make progress and not just document like, where do you go with that?

Yeah. So we want to disrupt that algorithm, right? That pattern that's been developed.

Just stop thinking negative.

No, so we're not going to do that. What we're going to do, we're going to say I am tired. We're going to take that thought, we're going to accept it. We're okay with that. We're good with that. And I'm going to sleep early tonight. So it's. I'm accepting the thought that I'm feeling. I'm not going to wake up and never feel I'm tired. I mean, I wake up and feel I'm tired sometimes, but I'll literally go, I'm tired. I'm going to cancel my plans for the weekend. I've done that so many times where I've had the busiest week at work. I'm tired. I can feel that I'm stressed. I'm even getting a bit snappy with my wife. Like I can feel all those things. And I look at my weekend and my weekend is decked with social events and I go to Radhy, I'm like, I'm about to cancel everything this weekend because I don't think I have the resilience to get through. But if I didn't give myself that. And all I keep saying all week is I'm tired. Then it gets to the weekend, my friends are coming and I'm like, God, I wish they weren't coming today. Then they leave and I'm like, oh God, I'm so relieved that they left. I wish they would have left earlier. Right. It's like all negativity just brewing. And so what I'm saying is accept the feeling. And what are you going to do about it?

Yeah, that's the question I was asking myself is and now what? And now what this bad thing has happened and now what?

And if this, then that. Like if I get tired during the week, then I will cancel my plans on the weekend. If I have weekend plans that are really important, I'll sleep early on the weeknight so that I'm ready for it. So like this week I'm with you. I've got something. Every night this week, every night there's an event. So I know that this weekend needs to be restful. I just gave myself permission to do nothing for four days is beautiful because my other days have been so busy. But If I'm not having time to structure and think about these things, you're literally running from one thing to another. So I feel like people are chasing peace. People are chasing peace, not realizing that when they slow and still and make that space, they then learn how to find peace. So people are looking for peace in the meditation. That's not how it works. The meditation creates the space for you to figure out how to create peace in your life. That's where the peace is.

That's interesting. So my experience with meditation is that is where I get literal peace. So I started meditating because I was going through a really stressful period in my life years ago. And it was just misery at a physical level. And so I thought, I've got to find some way to de escalate my stress and anxiety. I've been told a thousand times by people to meditate, let me actually try this. So I try it, and at a physiological level, it just lowered my stress and my anxiety. And I was like, this is amazing. I've since tried to get my wife, for instance, to use it. It doesn't hit her in the same way that it hit me, but the peace came for me in breathing from my diaphragm. It was so physiological. And the older I get, the more content I create, the more I realize that I'm all tactics, like, I just know how to translate the airy stuff into and go do this. And so I'm curious, do you. If you just sat and meditated, you're saying that's not going to bring you peace. You have to solve this riddle of all these pieces bouncing around in your mind.

I'll take back the categoric way I said that. So I guess what I was leaning towards is I'm not saying that meditating itself can't be a peaceful experience, but I feel a lot of people who have stressed out, busy lives are just looking for a break from it. And it can provide that, but sometimes it can't because you're too stressed and busy. And a lot of the times a healthy way of using meditation is to make sense of stuff so that you can go back to your life and apply it. So for some people, it is peace, and that's fair. And I agree, I do find peace in meditation. But for some people, it's giving them that break and that gap between experience and reaction. It's giving them that gap between stress and struggle that allows them to reorient themselves and say, this is what I need to switch. This is what I need to Move. And I feel maybe you're someone that does that anyway and does that naturally. And then meditation can become just what it is and give you that peace. But I feel that for a lot of people, just sitting there with their thoughts is stressful. Just observing the.

Is it because they don't know what to do with it.

I think, first of all, there's a big fear around it. Right. It's just we're scared.

I don't understand that at all. What are people scared of?

Well, I mean, it's the same way saying, like, why are people scared of sitting in cold water? Right.

That I get. Because it sucks.

It does suck. So what I'm saying is people that I've talked to who struggle with their thoughts make those things easier because they.

Don'T know what to do with them. Like the cold thing. So, look, I'm going to have a massive physiological response. Not fun. I'm doing it for reasons. So I do it. I can stop doing it at any time. But a thought doesn't have to be painful in the way that cold exposure. Like, even Wim Hof says, I don't like being cold. I do it because it serves a purpose.

But even he says that the loss of love was more painful than any of the cold he's been through. Right. Like, that thought of losing someone you love is far greater than the pain of sitting in. Which do you think?

That's like the background thing that's really messing with people.

Yeah. Like, I feel like I was even talking to. I was even talking to Amar from Yes Theory. I don't know if you. Have you ever had them?

I know yes Theory, but I've never.

Yeah, so they do loads of crazy stuff too, Right? And they've gone. And so I was talking to Amar, who's one of the S3 guys. They're awesome guys. And he was saying to me that. So this is really fascinating. I love where we're going with this, by the way. And please keep going because this. I could only have this conversation with you. So I'm very happy right now. The thing about what Amar was saying is that he said the whole point of yes theory was saying yes to crazy stuff that we wouldn't say yes to. And that's how it started. And he goes, we got to a point where saying yes to crazy stuff was not difficult anymore. So now when we said yes to doing something crazy next year, we actually didn't find that uncomfortable. And yes theory was all about seeking discomfort. So he goes, we realized we were Just seeking comfort, doing something bigger every time was just more and more comfortable. And he goes, actually what's most uncomfortable for me right now is to sit alone with my thoughts every day for 15 minutes and meditate. And he said this to me and I was like, wow. Like it was so profound.

So yes, let's go down, boil that down to one. I'm going to give you my hypothesis. People are afraid that they people don't respect themselves or their self respect is fragile and being alone with their thoughts is just going to be intrusive and they're going to lose more respect, I guess, because that would be. That was the thing that I struggled with in the beginning and have spent my entire life making sure that I can be alone. Because I always tell people the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So the only thing I can think is when people are alone, they don't feel good about who they are and so they seek distraction.

That's it. I mean, it's as simple as that. It literally is like, I'll give a study and then I'll specifically speak to that point. Like, men and women were asked to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or give themselves an electric shock. That was the standard.

I know where this is going.

They did this experiment. 30% of women chose an electric shock.

Wow.

And 60% of men chose an electric shock.

Oh, wow, I had that backwards. I would have guessed the other way.

And when asked why, they said, because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts. Because we're scared of our thoughts. Now your hypothesis is accurate. I would agree with it. I think the biggest thing is that when we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that we may not be comfortable with. I don't like where my life is going. I'm not happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm still alone. All those thoughts get space to actually be heard when. Whereas when you're scrolling it's like, oh, they got proposed. Oh, cute bunny. Oh, like you just, you're not even listening. You're scrolling a thought. That's literally we're scrolling away thoughts. And that gives us a sense of comfort that we don't spend longer than three seconds on a thought. But then when you're asked to spend three minutes or more on a thought, that thought gets to like grow and build and become scarier and bigger. Almost like a monster. That unknown of it. Right. It's like, I think that what people are most scared of is they've been trained to numb themselves. We live in a society that knows how to numb emotions and numb feelings, right? I don't. I'm so upset about something, I'm going to go and drink alcohol to numb that feeling, to not experience that feeling. I messed up at something, I'm going to go and gamble away my money to numb the feeling that I felt. I'm going to go and watch something on tv because I just want to numb how I feel right now. Now, I'm not saying that I don't do any of those things to numb a feeling when it's really painful or that we shouldn't ever numb a feeling at all. But our goal is we just want to numb things away. And I don't think that that's why sitting with your thoughts for 15 minutes is really hard. Because there's nothing to numb it. There is nothing that will numb it. And even sitting in the cold, nothing numbs that apart from your own centeredness and breathing. You have to go to that. And I think that's why sitting alone with your thoughts is such a powerful practice. Because what you're saying, if you want to be happy, being happy about yourself when you're by yourself, that requires you to not numb anything about yourself, because that's the full acceptance.

So interesting. So I've been thinking a lot recently about distraction, why distraction exists, because I think it actually serves a pretty powerful purpose if we didn't have the ability. So there's a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which is known as the gear shift in the brain. And for people that have obsessive thinking, they get stuck. And the basal ganglia is not able to let them pass that thought into another thought. Now, I think one of my superpowers is my gearbox is amazing and to the point where it almost becomes problematic because I'll forget about something that I was obsessed with thinking about. Ah. Because my gearbox just, like goes into the next thing. And so that has shown me that I can very easily get myself out of a loop. If I'm on something that's super negative, I can get out of that, but for somebody who can't, you need that external distraction and doom scrolling. Like, there was one period in my life where I was so I had so much going on that even the thought of meditating was just like, well, then everything is going to come crashing down. And I was like, but I know better than to not meditate. So I Need some sort of primer to soothe me enough to get me into meditation. And it was actually doom scrolling cats. Not just cats, but like things like that where it's like cute, funny, 15 seconds to digest the idea and then you move on to the next. And I trained my YouTube algorithm on shorts to only show me like cute, fun things. And I would do that for like seven minutes. And then I would go meditate and I was like, wow, that is freakishly effective. So you have to wall things off because if you doom scroll for seven hours, you now never get anywhere. But if you don't understand how powerful distraction can be enough to get you to the point where now you can take advantage of something like meditation, which is going to leave you alone with your thoughts, it's really, really fascinating.

Yeah, I love what you just said about distraction. I've always allowed myself five minutes, an hour to be random. And I often have. I would either do a timer on my phone or at one point I was really into like hourglasses or minute glasses and I would just turn it over.

What do you do in that time?

So I would allow myself to scroll, I would allow myself to search random stuff on YouTube. I'd allow myself. So it's giving myself the capacity to be random. And what I found in randomness is that you connect really interesting dots.

Yeah, that's why I like meditating.

Yeah, exactly. And so I find like in space where I don't know what I'm going to type in, or I'd pick up a random book from my shelf, or I would find a random thing that I'm scrolling through. But allowing myself to do that for five minutes every hour allowed my mind to have that space, to have that gap to connect dots but then return back and. But that's us using distraction rather than just letting it be there. Right. And I think when distraction controls you and drives you and everyone knows what it feels like to be on a rabbit hole where you end up on some random website or some random YouTube channel, everyone's been there. That's not a good feeling. Like, I don't think I want that feeling where I end up somewhere seven hours later. Whereas seven minutes of randomness is really healthy and beautiful and can be amazing. And so why can't seven minutes of stillness, why can't seven minutes of listening to sounds or ambient noises or nature sounds? Right. I think there's also a sense of. I think it's reconnecting with our breath. There's an amazing study I talk about in the Book about how when we spend time with people that we're close to or caregivers or people that love us, our breath and even our heartbeat can synchronize.

Dude, that is so weird to me.

It's so strange, right?

Dude, humans sync up to each other. The one that freaks me out the most is that women will sync their periods and they all sync to the dominant female. That stuff gets super crazy.

Wow.

Yeah, super crazy.

It happens to my wife and her sister all the time. But Yeah. I don't know which way around it is.

Yeah, yeah. See, that's the next question. So fascinating.

Yeah.

So walk me through. Okay, so we get self awareness. So I love that you started the book with solitude. So we stop being afraid of our thoughts because we're doing the. And now what? So we have this saying. It's overwhelming. It's freaking us out. We're gonna deal with it. Which I love that. And now, in the context of becoming. In fact, here's a thing that either you're gonna be like 100% or this'll be where we debate. I think if you want to be in a relationship, you must be worthy of a relationship. Now I'm gonna push it even farther and make Jay Shetty the Monk a little uncomfortable. Maybe the ultimate way to think you are asking somebody to have sex with you. And that's crazy. It is the weirdest sort of energetic thing that we do. Like, I think about this a lot.

I love this.

With Lisa, I went from, hi, my name is Tom to exposing my genitals and doing what one does. It's like, that's a big chasm to cross. And if you're going to ask somebody to go on that journey in a way where they're as excited as you are and you don't end up in jail and you have to be somebody that's worthy of that. And that's a big ask. So one does that resonate or do you think I'm out of my mind? And if it resonates, how do people become worthy?

Well, that's very monkish of you. I mean, you've put sex on a very sacred, high value facts. Right, right.

In fact, when you said earlier about loneliness, I was like, I've actually been the loneliest I've ever been. Was in the middle of intercourse. Yeah. Which is a crazy thought. Like I couldn't be any more with the person. And because there was no emotional connection, I felt so alone. Yeah, it's crazy.

I'm so glad you brought that up, though. Right. Like that's what we understand about loneliness now, that loneliness isn't about the number of people around you. It isn't about how popular you are. It doesn't matter how many people are surrounded by you. If you don't feel understood, if you don't feel seen, if you don't feel heard, you're lonely. Right? That's what it is. And so when you're saying, I'm having sex with someone and I still feel lonely, that's real. But you, from your definition of just how you broke that down, you're placing sex as extremely sacred, as a high value. There could be lots of people listening or watching, or maybe people that we don't even. That aren't in this community that would actually disagree. And they'd just be like, well, sex is just sex. Like, what's. They don't see it that way. Right. The way you see it is probably more aligned with the vaders than the other perspective, for sure. The idea that if you're about to do anything intimate with anyone, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, the amount of like, exchange of we just talked about exchanging heartbeats and breathing. I mean, if you think about how biologically affected you are by a relationship, let alone how emotionally and then spiritually affected you are by a relationship, and how much karma you share from a spiritual level, how much energy and vibration you share on a spiritual level, you're talking about like completely syncing up or destroying your synergy with someone. And so I would say I agree with you. I don't think you're crazy at all. I think you're spot on. Hey, friends, quick question. How do your nights feel? Hatch believes the way you wind down at night shapes how you show up the next day. Self care isn't about doing more. It starts with resting better. That's why Hatch created their Hatch Restore, a smart sleep clock that helps you reclaim your evenings, think calming sounds, gentle audio, and even a surprise. Wake up to start your day right. Check it out at Hatch Co. Because better nights lead to better days. When you have to go pick up meds, it can really dig into your downtime because you have to wait in traffic, wait to find parking, and then stand there waiting in the pharmacy line. Amazon Pharmacy delivers meds right to your door fast without ever having to get up and do anything. Your patience and your feet will thank you. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy. Healthcare just got less painful when you think about your day. Whether you're running a business or managing a household, so much of what you do depends on staying connected from work calls and emails to streaming, learning and staying in touch with the people who matter most. Connectivity isn't luxury anymore, it's the foundation. That's why fast, reliable Internet makes such a difference. When your connection works seamlessly, you're not distracted by interruptions. You're able to focus on what actually matters. And when support is there, when you need it, it creates a sense of trust and stability that allows you to keep moving forward. Spectrum Business understands that no two businesses are the same. They offer Internet, advanced WI, fi, phone, TV and mobile services designed to support businesses of all sizes. With packages built to fit different needs and budgets. And with 100% US based customer support available 24,7, help is always within reach. So businesses can stay up and and running without missing a beat. Millions of business owners rely on Spectrum Business to stay connected and grow with confidence. Visit spectrum.combusiness to learn more. Restrictions apply Services not available in all areas.

So how do you become worthy?

So I think that, I mean, I don't think you have to complete solitude in order to move on. And so in the book I break down the four things that the Vedas break down. Which is preparing for love, which is solitude, practicing love, which is in a relationship, right? The third is like preserving love because. Or protecting love because there's a part of us, when we're burnt through love, that loses the belief in love or changes. So there's a protection of love that comes at phase three and phase four is what I call perfecting love. And so if those are the four phases, solitude is the one preparing for love. And you have to do a lot of that, becoming worthy in solitude. Because what, I mean, we're saying something here that I think we're on the same page. The idea that if you walk into a relationship and you don't know who you are, you don't know what you need or what you want and what you're building and what you're creating. You're basically going to hope that the other person is going to answer all those questions for you or you're going to outsource that inadequacy to them to make you feel worthy. So that's why we walk into a relationship and we accept the currency of attention as love. We accept the currency of validation as love.

Dude, that's big in a social media culture, right?

We accept the currency of attention, validation, compliments, comfort, random niceness, we accept all of that as love because we ourselves haven't defined and experienced what love looks like on our own. So how you Become worthy of another person is first becoming worthy for yourself. And what does it mean to be worthy for yourself? To me, it's doing hard things alone. When you've done hard things alone and you've grown through them. And when I say alone, I don't mean without your family or without friends. I just mean when you've broken through some of your own barriers, that gives you a healthier sense of self esteem and self worth. I think self worth doesn't come from saying affirmations in a mirror. It doesn't come from just like pretending to be happy. It doesn't come from being positive. Your greatest self worth is going to come from breaking through stuff that you didn't think you could break through.

Do people expect you to say, just look yourself in the mirror and say, I love myself?

Yeah, I think people. I think people sometimes project their own belief of like the word self love. Right. So there is a form of self love. Like I love going to spas, I love getting massages. So I'm into that form of self love. But I see that as more self care. I see that as like caring for myself and things like that. When I think of self love as just telling myself I love myself, I've tried all of those things and I've seen how they are not possible when I haven't done some other work. Yes, right. Like me looking in the mirror and just saying, I'm amazing, I'm wonderful. If I haven't done something amazing that day or done something wonderful that day, I don't believe myself. Right. And that's the problem. People have. They're like, I don't believe it. Now. There's two sides to it. I actually believe a lot of people have done hard things, but they don't give themselves credit for it.

Very possible.

So there's a big group of people, my mom included. I interviewed my mom recently. Not on the podcast I want to, but I. I did what I. I'm happy I did. I interviewed her at a dinner, just me and her, because I really wanted to get to know her story better. I realized that I didn't feel it.

Did you record it? I'm guessing not. If it was a dinner.

No, I didn't. Because I did that with my father.

In law and recorded it. It was awesome.

Have you shared that?

No.

I would love to, knowing the background of your father in law.

Dude, that's interesting. We should ask Lisa because it was dope. Like, that guy's story is crazy. It's unbelievable.

And that's What I'm saying that we don't even know the people closest to us, right? So love again. Anyway, but that's a whole nother thing. But I sat down with my mom. I asked her questions, like, I would ask on the podcast, and I was talking to her, and she was telling me that it's at, like, 15 years old, I think 15, 16 years old. She. She was born and raised in Yemen.

Oh, wow.

And so, yeah, so she's living in Yemen. Yemen are trying. And it was called Aden at the time. They're trying to. The Brits who have colonized the country are fighting against the Yemeni soldiers, and she's studying for exams while there's gunmen on her rooftop. Like, that's her story. And I'm like, mom, like, you've never told me how bad this was. You just told me you left Yemen because of the war and moved to England. Like, that's the story. I know. And all of a sudden, I'm discovering that you are actually studying for an exam while there's people with guns on your roof defending, and you're in the middle of all of this, and you're 15 years old. And she never told me that. And I was thinking, she's done hard things, like, and she doesn't. She doesn't even see it that way because to her, it's normal.

Interesting. Do you think she thinks it's normal or. Or do people confuse enduring, which is extraordinary, with, oh, but I didn't actively choose it, and therefore, I completely discount it.

Totally. Totally. Well, I mean, at least for my mom, I can say that she just sees it as her life. She doesn't see it as, like, hard or easy or that that's her kind of way she. She sees stuff. It's kind of how I feel sometimes when I talk about my monk experience. It's very normal to me. Like, there's a part. And I chose to do it. There's a part of me that's just like. Is normal. And people are like, that's crazy. Like, why would you ever become a monk after school? It's so bizarre. But to me, it's not that bizarre. And so it takes me a minute to be like, oh, wait a minute. It is pretty crazy, right? Like, not many people do that. But I don't. I don't sit in that thought that often. And so I think there's. I think what I'm saying is that this becoming worthy is breaking through some of your own barriers and limits, whatever they may be, which is what you Discover in the solitude. And the more you break through those, the more you feel worthy for anything and everything. Because you go, wow, I've done some really tough stuff on my own. I've like really pushed myself in this way. I've really tried something new. And now you're not looking for that person to fill your worthiness. You're not looking for that person to say, you're amazing and you're the best and you're incredible because you, you've experienced your strength, Right? When you've experienced your strength, no one can make you feel weak. The right person will only make you feel stronger. Right. And that's the key. When you've already done hard things, the people around you will only make you feel stronger. That's why, you know, they're great to be in your life because they're not making you feel strong, they're making you feel stronger. Whereas what we often find is that.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You went, they're not making you feel strong, they're making you feel stronger.

Correct. So I'm saying like, we're not so even, even in a positive relationship with us. Like when I'm around you, right. And we have a healthy relationship, we know each other a fair bit. It's like I'm. I consider myself to be self aware and self confident and have a high degree of self worth. Totally open about it. I have no issues. No issues.

No reasonable person will push back on that.

Yeah. No issues with it whatsoever. And I feel that the people I like to be in my life are not people who I'm looking to support that or do that, but they're able to help me discover more about myself. So there's a sign of strength. So I had a client that I was coaching with last year and he did this for me and it was really powerful. And I was like, I only like working with clients who also I learn from. So I have a selfish motive there. But it's special. He said, I've never met someone who ties up spirituality, business and practicality in one person like you do. And I'm not saying that to self promote. I'm saying that because he gave me permission to be all three. And that made me stronger.

I second that.

And it was just really powerful. I felt so like freed by that statement to be all three because it made me stronger. I know I meant those things, but that person made me stronger. That's what I'm saying. That you gravitate towards when you already have a sense of self worth, whereas when you don't have a sense of self worth, you look for the person who's saying, oh you're really good at that. Oh like maybe you should work like you're looking for someone to like make you feel better about yourself from zero, whereas you're already at a 10 and someone's like finding new ways of showing you more of yourself. That's there's something beautiful about that.

Agreed.

I don't even know if I'm articulating.

Clearly, but very clearly from my perspective. So I think that there is a biological imperative hardwired into the brain that you must do hard things in order to feel good about yourself. And when I think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, and this is why I think rich kids implode, they just never had to do hard things. From an evolutionary perspective. I think it was just so hard to stay alive. Like for millions of years it really was red in tooth and claw. Like to stay alive. You were kill or be killed. You were hunting, gathering, fighting other tribes. I mean just crazy. And the people that were going to survive were going to be the ones that got an emotional, a self applied emotional reward for doing something hard. And when you do something hard and you recognize it, it needs to feel good. And if it does, then you will keep doing hard things and you're far more likely to survive than the person who's like, that sucked. There was no redeeming qualities. And so it's just like when I think about that, because if I were to create a recipe for fulfillment, it's very simple. It's working really hard, doing hard things to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, but others. That's it, that's the whole recipe. But it really has to be that you had to do something hard. If it came easily to you, it won't give you the sense of respect that you want. Like the stuff that I've gotten more easily in my life, I don't take a lot of pride in. It's always the stuff that I grind out, like through pain and suffering and I endure. In fact, I want to read you a quote. This is one of my all time favorite quotes. To those human beings who are of any concern to me. I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities. I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self contempt, the torture of self mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished. I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether One is worth anything or not that one endures. Who said that I had the chills? That was Nietzsche.

That is so raw. I definitely. I'm not gonna so good like, and subscribe. I think I get the sentiment. I would not wish it on anyone.

That's amazing. So push back as hard as you can because I love this. So if you agree.

Yeah.

In fact, where. Where does it break down? Because this is why I don't have kids. That is what people need, in my opinion.

Yeah.

And I can't. I can't do it.

Yeah. I can't. Well, that's. Well, that's where we. Where we disagree. Right. Like, as in. Like in. I get the intention and the spirit.

Of it, but do you think a better person. If they avoid it?

I don't think you have to. I feel like for most people. For most people, life is already hard in some area. I don't think there's many people I know, at least where I grew up as well.

Does it make them better or worse?

Well, I don't think they have the tools, which is why we've dedicated what we're doing to that. Right. Like, I don't think that when I look at the people I grew up around or the areas I grew up in and it wasn't the worst of the worst. It wasn't best of the best.

I've been to Wood Green.

Yeah.

It's not lovely.

It's not lovely. Right? It's not. Yeah. You've been there. Of course. Yeah. It's not nice. And people made bad choices because they didn't have good role models. Right. Like, people made bad choices because they have good tools. They didn't make bad choices because of just where they were. It's because they didn't have access. Today we have access, and that's what we're trying to do, I feel, with our work, because I look at myself and I could clearly, if I. What's that called? Sliding doors. If I envisioned, like where my life could have been if I didn't take a few steps, I could easily have been today. Addicted to some drug, getting involved in things that were highly violent, and finding my self validation through gang culture, like, I could have so ended up there. Like, I literally could pinpoint three decisions that could have totally took my life in that direction. And no one would know who I am today. And I'd be a very different person. Not because I'm a bad person or because I'm attracted to any of those things, just because I didn't have Access. I got lucky. And I see that the access that I got to the monks at an early age just transformed the trajectory of my life. But most people don't meet someone random. We follow the same people on Instagram, we follow the same people on YouTube. We all watch the same stuff, we listen to the same stuff. How many people in their last seven days could be honest and say they heard from a random voice that was unexpected, or they saw a random person that they didn't know that sparked a new journey in their life? Like, that's how random it was for me to meet a monk. I didn't grow up religious. I wasn't around monks. I didn't go religiously to meet monks. Like, I met someone who completely sparked a different thought. When you're sitting down with trauma experts, when I'm sitting down with neuroscientists, Like, I didn't grow up with neuroscientists. Like, who was speaking to those people. So I feel. Yeah, I just feel like with that. Oh, but going back to that statement, I wouldn't wish pain on anyone because I feel that life is already hard. I would just wish that people opened up their hearts and minds to the tools that would help them deal with that hardship better and not try and rely on what they currently have in their toolkit. That would be my wish. If you ask me what my wish.

Is for people, the only way I can like and subscribe to that.

Yeah, go on. Yeah.

Is if we modify it slightly and say, I wish that people could develop a profound sense of self worth and avoid all of that. But I don't think they can.

I don't think it can.

And so this may be a cruel twist of evolution. Like, I want to be very clear. I'm not saying I'm glad it is this way. I'm just saying I think it is this way. Now, my beef with the idea of I wish that these horrible things upon people is that it breaks most of the people that it touches.

Right.

But I don't think people can become a version of themselves that they'll be proud of unless they go through that stuff.

Yeah. So I think the compassionate monk in me can't wish that on someone in that way. And you could argue that real compassion is letting the right thing happen to someone that they need to go through. I just don't think. And that is what real.

Ooh, that's interesting. So here was my catch with one of the reasons I didn't have kids. I knew I would intervene if something bad was happening now as I get older, I feel like I might be more capable of letting it happen. But at the time when I was sort of peak, like, should we, should we not? I was like, I know I will intervene. Would you intervene?

It's always hard.

Are you going to have kids?

I don't know, is the answer. Yeah, we don't know. We've talked about it. We're very like, we're probably at that stage you were years ago. And so we've been very open about it. We're like, we don't know. And partly it's these kind of things, partly it's how it affects service and impact, how it. There's so many things, right. There's so many facets to that question of.

So let's say Dhar, who has two children, your co host on your show, Dar and Jay, for those that aren't liking and subscribing yet, would you want them to intervene?

When I saw. So I saw a couple of parents that I was friends with a few years back and I remember that their two year old was like putting her hands through a candle, like on the other side of the room. So we were all hanging out here, the two year olds running around and the two year olds on the other side of the candle and they're doing that. And my natural instinct at the time, this is probably like maybe like eight years ago, my natural instinct was to go and be like, help that kid. And I'm always mindful of other people's kids too, because I just feel like something, you know. And I was about to jump up and help her and they were like, no, no, leave it, she's fine. She'll. If it hurts her, she'll know next time not to touch that and let her learn by herself. And I was like, wow, that's really impressive. Like, I'm scared your kid's gonna burn their hand. And you're really. Now I'm not recommending either or. My friends are great parents and they're very loving and that's the challenge today, right? Like a lot of people will be like, oh my God, they don't care about their kids. Like, I think they do care about their kids. I think they're really great parents. But them allowing them, their child to do this, I would then see pictures of them. They, they moved into the countryside and stuff and their kid would just be like out, like swinging on trees, like climbing stuff and falling over. And they were so comfortable with that because they had that mindset that there should be an Openness. Now, I think there's that openness, but then there's intervening when it gets really painful. Like, what if your child gets involved in drugs? Are you not going to intervene? Like, are you not going to educate? Are you not going to. And obviously in all the right ways you'd hope would be the healthy ways of intervening. I don't think ever walking in and telling a kid to stop or don't do that is ever going to work. But to me, intervening is important at certain points where you think it's like really going off the edge of the cliff versus when you feel like it's healthy experimentation and you don't. But I'm saying this obviously in theory, because I don't have to. But when I look at it with my. The closest person I can compare it to is my sister. So my sister's five years younger than me. When she was born, I held her in my hands and I felt like I've parented her in many ways. I call her kid. Like, that's my nickname for my younger sister. And if I look at my sister, I made mistakes by intervening too much sometimes. So I didn't really want her to have a job growing up because I worked a job growing up when I was 14, and I didn't really think that that was healthy for her. And now I look back and I was like, realize that was a mistake. Like, I should have let her work. And I don't think that that was a good decision. And so that's me going, okay, well, that was a bad intervention. And then there's other things where, like, we have a really open relationship. She tells me all our challenges. We're really good friends. She's not scared to tell me something like, that's the healthy part of it. And so I look at, like, how parenting is so tough because you look back and you're like, I'm wiser now. Then you look back and go, oh, I got that right. So I think whether it's kids or not, I guess my point is I wouldn't wish pain on someone because I think they're going through some sort of pain anyway. That's my point. I can't wish pain on someone.

Yeah.

That's against my beliefs.

I hear it.

Yeah.

What is the formula? Like, if you want to be in a healthy relationship? What's the number one things? The number one thing people get wrong and what is the fix?

Yeah. So I'm going to give you three. I break them each down in this book. So the three are and the first one's simple and basic and then it gets more complex and interesting. So the first one is you have to like their personality. You have to like their company. You enjoy being around them. You enjoy being around them for longer periods of time, which is an important experiment. Like I read a study that showed to make someone a casual connection, you have to spend 40 hours with them for a casual connection. If you want someone to be considered a friend, it's 100 hours of time with that person. And if you consider someone a good friend, if you consider someone a good friend, a great friend, it's 200 hours plus. If you can't like someone's company for 200 hours of undistracted time, chances are you don't really like their personality. We both know people that we would love to spend a weekend with, but we wouldn't want to see them every weekend. That's okay. Those can be great casual friendships. We both know people that we wish we could spend more time with, but we don't prioritize. They're good friends, but they're not going to be the best friends. And then we know people like our wives who we spend a considerable amount of time with, disproportionately more with them than we do with any other human on the planet. And you know, hopefully we made good decisions. We're happy about those decisions. So when I look at it, that liking, that's what I mean by liking that person's company and personality to give it some tangibility of what that means. The second thing you need, and this is where I want to be very clear about my language because this word gets thrown a lot in relationship talk. But I don't mean it in the same way. So the thing is you have to respect their values. And what I mean BY this is 99% of us in relationships are trying to make our partner respect our values. We want them to like what we like. We want them to love what we love. If I'm going to watch football on the weekend, I'd love for you to come with me. If I think that going to watch this is really important, you should be there. So we demand that our partner respects our value rather than respecting theirs. And I'll give a tangible example. So for example, Radhi's number one. And I ask a lot of couples to do this exercise. If I'm working with someone, I'll ask couples to rank their top three priorities, including themselves, in order. And most of the time one partner will say, you are you the partner so you would say, lisa, if you had the kids, you'd say the kids. And then third, they'd put themselves. That's a general order that people put. Now, sometimes you get a curveball where someone goes, me, you, the kids. And every time someone writes that, their partner goes, how could you put the kids third? How can the kids be third? How does that make any sense? And how can you be first? And it's like, well, no, because I know that I don't want to give you my leftovers. I want to give you the best of me. So when you look at respecting someone's value, when I look at Radhi's values, Radhi's number one value is is family, her family. My number one value is my purpose and my service to the world. Those are not the same values. A lot of people say you have to have the same values in a marriage. I don't subscribe to that. I don't think you have to have the same values. I think you have to. I think if you're looking for someone with exactly the same values, you're going to take a lot longer to find that person. I don't know anyone in the world that I know that's happily married. And I'd love to break it down with anyone who genuinely could say we have the same exact values. So I respect Radhi's value as family, which means when family becomes a priority in decision making, when family becomes a priority during the holiday season, when family becomes a topic of conversation, I'm zoned in. That's something she deeply values and cares about. If she's going to choose family over anything, I'm going to be okay with that because she's made it very clear that's her number one value. Same back at me. If I choose purpose over anything, she knows that's going to happen. It's not a surprise. I know so many people who are trying to get their partners to change their value, and I just don't see that happening. Or that person compromises their value and now feels less versions of themselves, like a less adequate version of themselves. And now you're dating the second best version of the person you love, and so that's respecting values. And the third thing is, and this is what differentiates it is you are committed to helping them get to their goals. You're committed. I may like your goals, Tom, but we're not in love and we're not in a relationship where I'm committed to you achieving your goals. I love you. I deeply appreciate you in the world. I think you have an amazing impact. But if someone asked me, Jay, you could feel this way about a friend. I'm not committed. I'm not actively doing something I may support, I collaborate, I help. But. But I'm not committed. Whereas with my wife, I'm committed on a daily basis going, radhu, what do you want in your life? Where are you going? What do you need? What support do you need? What can I do for you to help you get there? It's not about her helping me get to my goals. She's thinking about that, but I'm thinking about how is that? So those are my things for a happy relationship. Those are three key things. I mean, there's so many more things I could go into, but I have to give the overview formula. It's those three things.

So what trips people up? Are they, I'm assuming selection, if that's such a big part. They just select the wrong person.

Yeah.

Why?

I think people select the wrong person because they are looking for. First of all, we select the wrong person because we make so many snap judgments off of a few basic inputs. So one of the things that the Vedas talk about is something called the six opulences. And we've talked about this before, we talked about them in a different context. But the six opulences are fame, wealth, power, beauty, knowledge and renunciation. Those are the six opulences. These are six things people pursue, people value, people admire. Right. We can all agree with that.

I love that. Renunciation made the list. Yeah. That talk about self awareness.

Yeah, it's a huge one. And so those six are the six opulences. And what we do in relationships, which is really interesting, is when we find someone has one opulence, we ascribe them other qualities. So if someone is wealthy, we assume that they must be organized and that they'll be organized in the home. If someone is attractive, we assume that they'll be able to articulate themselves effectively. If someone is powerful at work, we assume that they're really good at organizing date night. Right. Like there's these qualities. We start ascribing people and so often what happens is one opulence does this halo effect into making you believe that this person has a lot more gifts and skills and qualities rather than through research and learning and experience. You're just giving them away to that person. And we do this in interviews. Right. We all know how the halo effect works in interviews. If you're interviewing a more attractive candidate, you're More likely to hire them, more attractive hostesses and waiters and waitresses get bigger tips. Like, this is just how human psychology works. But it's very risky when you choose a life partner based on how attractive someone was for 30 seconds. And so I find that selection goes wrong because of that. Because we ascribe qualities because of one opulence rather than actually seeing those qualities. It's like me saying to you, when did Lisa realize she could trust you? I'm hoping it's not day one. Because trust is something that has to be proven time and time and time again. Trust is something that she has to see time and time again. He said he was going to be there at this time. He turned up. He said he was going to show up for this moment. He showed up. That's trust. Trust is not built because someone was really nice to you. And so trust is something we throw away. And I can dive into the levels of trust too. But you know, yeah, I mean if.

Those are the top notch things, let's.

Yeah. So I talk about four levels of trust. This is actually in Think Like a Monk. It fully connects to this book. There are four levels of trust. My belief is that whenever you meet anyone, someone new, your relationship with them should start at zero trust. Now what we do in life is we believe that there's only two things in everything. We think everything's binary, right, black and white, left and right trust. Don't trust.

Now is zero trust sitting at the zero point between trust and distrust?

Zero is sitting at no trust beginning.

Yes, because you don't have an active. Like you're not looking at them suspiciously.

Correct. So I'm going to get. Yes, I'm going to give you the level. So the first point being that we see trust is too binary. I have people I trust and there's people I don't trust. To me that's too limited. And it doesn't help because what that means is if I like someone, I automatically trust them, which is massively unhealthy. And so what I'm saying is that zero trust is correct between distrust at the bottom and then trust higher. But there's three levels in between. So when I meet someone, especially if you're dating them, you have zero trust in them. The next step is transactional trust. Transactional trust is I know when this person says they're going to do something, they do it. I know there's an equal exchange in the transaction. I like if I say I'm going to do this work and you're Going to pay me this amount, I know you're going to pay me at that time. That's transactional trust. It's what you have with your employees, it's what you have with your teams, it's what you have with colleagues. We don't want this because it's not sexy. It's not. It doesn't feel like love. It feels too professional, it feels too corporate. But really, every single person has to go through these levels with you. The next stage is reciprocal trust, where you know someone loves you and appreciates you and will do good for you. But you're not counting, you're not checking. You know, it reciprocates naturally. It cycles around. This is a healthy level of trust after some time where the transaction's been proven over and over again. Now you don't need the contract right now. You don't now, you don't always need to sign it. And then the fourth stage, which I believe is practically impossible, is unconditional trust, which is that godlike trust that we all want in the person we end up with. The problem is we give unconditional trust away early and then we fall down those levels to zero trust. And why we feel so let down by people, because it just felt like we felt down four flights of stairs. That's why breaking trust feels so deep, because you gave someone level four trust when you should have started at zero and worked their way up. So let people earn your trust. When you talked about being worthy, like, let someone earn your trust. Let someone be worthy of your trust. Don't just give it because they're nice and kind and they bought you a gift, Right?

So why do you think we have that instinct? Is it just the halo effect of you are kind to me? And I'm letting that spill over into other areas.

I think we just want to be loved so desperately. We're so desperate for it because it's been put on this pedestal that this is the defining factor of success in life, is could you find someone to love you? Because then you'd be lovable, then you'd be worthy, then you'd have what it takes. If you were able to convince someone to spend their life with you, then you're worthy. And we're so desperate for that that we will happily speed through those. Instead of 200 hours, we'll tell someone we love them in two months because we'd rather have it and think we lost it than to have never found it at all. Because never having found it means we were never worthy. Whereas if we found it, lost it, even if it wasn't perfect, at least there was some part of us that was lovable. And that's why we'll stay in toxic relationships. That's why we'll settle for people who are not worthy for us, because we'd rather feel like we're in love than actually build it. And I think that's the challenge, is that we live in such a feeling world, as opposed to a building, creating world, which is a doing world, which is an action world. I start the book with this beautiful statement of this conversation between a student and a teacher, often attributed to the Buddha. And so a student goes up to the Buddha and says, what is the difference between I like you and I love you? And the Buddha replies, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it and throw it away. But when you love a flower, you water it daily. And to me, that is the difference. Because we're so desperate.

Let's go.

Yeah, we're so desperate to just smell that flower, observe its beauty for a few moments, toss it away. But that person who turns up every day and waters that flower and gives it the sun and gives it the soil, no one wants to be that person. But that's love. Then you have a beautiful garden. Then you have this beautiful view every day of all these flowers that you grew. And so to me, it's the desperation of the feeling of being loved is making us settle for less than.

It's really interesting. Now you say that nobody wants to be that person because of the effort and energy. This is something that Lisa and I say a lot. And I'll be curious to see if you agree with this. I think you will. That love. Love really isn't enough just to be super cliche for a second. That really, a relationship isn't just about love. That's one of the components. But it's gonna take a lot of work. But work of the kind that you describe. Watering it, making sure it has enough sun, wiping the leaves down, make sure there's no bugs on it. It's an attentiveness investment, maybe.

And it's unsexy. Right. I keep using that word, too, because it's not what's been portrayed. It's not what it's meant to feel like. It doesn't look like that Pinterest board. It doesn't feel like the wedding day every day. Right. Like the challenges that I think. I mean, I was looking at the studies, the amount of money that gets spent on weddings. It says the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you are to divorce earlier.

Really?

Yeah, that's the trend. Like you have a shorter wedding, the more you spend on your. You have a shorter marriage, the more you spend on your wedding is what the studies show. And, and so when I saw that, I was just like, wow, I didn't spend that much on my wedding, thankfully. Now get the studies. But I was looking at that. And again, I'm not. Again, I'm not saying don't have a big wedding, have a big wedding. I love big weddings, I love attending. I'm just saying that it's interesting how much, if you think about it, when you're planning a wedding, you organize a priest. The priest is there to remind you of your commitments. When you get married, who's your priest? Who's reminding you of your commitments every day? We never think about that. When you get married, you have a guest list. The guest list is made up of people who love you and support your marriage. When you're married, how deeply do you think about the people you're surrounded by and how much they build the community of helping you flourish in your marriage? At your wedding day, you think about what you wear, what you say to that person. From the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep. You're conscious of each and every one of your words, maybe hopefully trying to be, at least in your marriage. That goes out the window. So you think about the amount of, forget the money, the amount of effort that goes into planning one day. Imagine if you took all that effort and used it to plan a marriage. How successful would every marriage be? Right? It's a shift of energy and it's a shift of mindset and saying. We spend so much time, money, energy, resources, attentiveness, your word to plan a wedding. But there's no attentiveness to plan a marriage or a long term relationship. If you don't want to be married.

Why do you think it is that if you're spending a lot of money on the wedding, that that's inversely correlated to the length of time that you stay married? Is it just messed up priorities? What is that?

I mean, I think it's hard to. I'd have to look deeper into it. I mean, it's hard to stereotype because I guess there's so many of both. Right? I'm sure there's other things that buck the trend. I think there's a part of it that you could say that the bigger the wedding or any gesture, not even wedding, any gesture, trying to overcompensate for trying to make this feel like it's special and important. I think sometimes people can throw their partners amazing birthday parties in order to make up for the whole year.

What do you think about now? It seems like the trend, and I don't have the data, but I'm almost certain this is accurate, that people are getting married less and less and less and less. They're having less sex, less kids. Like it's a trend that freaks me out. Are you at all concerned?

That's a great question. I'm not concerned about people not getting officially married if they're in committed long term relationships that are healthy.

I think it's a catastrophic error.

Interesting. Why do you think the certificate and the commitment so important?

Abstract it from the certificate. You need to do something. There is a lack of ritual in our lives now. So I read the Power of Myth when I was, I think maybe even before I met Lisa, but certainly before we got married. And the book was talking about how, hey, the big problem with society today is there's no coming of age ritual. Part of the reason the divorce rate is so high, he speculated, was because there was no, like, real ceremony that meant something that reminded people, you're a different person on the other side of this. And so for me, I read that and was like, okay, when I get married, that's going to be it. One and done, never again, barring death. And. Or, I mean, look, you make this point in the book several times. If you're in an abusive relationship, get out. Yeah, yeah, I 100% agree with that. Assuming I'm not, that I wanted something that would really remind me that I was a different person. So I wanted it to be painful and I wanted it to be permanent. And so I, as an act of a ritualistic scarification, I got a tattoo and got married and had the priests and the waving of the smoke and all that. And even though it was all in not only Greek, which I didn't speak at the time, it was in ancient Greek. So whatever few words I did know, I really couldn't hang onto. But there was something about the sense of ritual and importance of people in fancy dress and like all of that, that it really did allow me because I was willing to say, this is a big moment. I'm never gonna be the same again. And then reinforce that by getting the tattoo. And the whole time I was getting the tattoo, I was focusing on the pain and saying, this is forever. This is a way of permanently altering my body so that I Never forget that I've made a commitment. And I think people, if you're not even willing to go through a typical marriage ceremony like, brah, your chances of going through. Dude, look, first of all, I've been married for 20 years. I know what I'm talking about. And this went from I was going to be the breadwinner, wife, stay at home, take care of the kids, to not having kids and my wife becoming an entrepreneur. If you don't think that was like some radical change. And through all of that, I just knew divorce isn't an option. So since I'm completely unwilling to be in a loveless marriage, how do we grow together? And because it was like, well, I'm not going to be in an unhappy marriage and I'm not exiting the marriage, that only leaves making the marriage awesome. And so all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, clarity of thought, I need to focus on making this awesome. And when people don't have that, there's just an attitude of disposability from sex to marriage. And look, I am not opposed to casual sex. I've had my share. It was mostly fun. There were a couple times we talked about one earlier where I was like, okay, well, even if it's a one night stand, I need to be interested in the person. That's my own personal realization. So I think people need to take that not more seriously, like terrifyingly seriously. Because that person is gonna shape you in ways you can't imagine. And if you go into that, like, meh, whatever, like you're living your life by the law of accident. And I see that echoed through society.

So I love the idea of what you said about ritual. Like, I think rituals are powerful. They're important. Important. I mean, they're totally part of Vedic culture. Like rituals, everything. Like rituals are those Indian weddings are like days. Seven days. Jesus. To make you realize how important this commitment is. Like, you get married to someone over seven days and you meet all their family and they meet all of yours. Like there's an imprint, right? And that's what the word is, samskara. Like samskara means impression or imprint. These rituals leave imprints or impressions that are powerful to help you become new or to become more. And so I agree with that. And the only thing that I think I'm open to is that people take a little bit longer to decide before they commit. And that if you are in a marriage that I think there are just so many people today that are married that aren't using your mindset. Of I don't want to be in a loveless marriage. What do we do? Like, I literally will. And by the way, I see you and Lisa as just like talking to you about this stuff is so exciting for me because I love how you and Lisa love each other. I love how you talk about your rules. I love how you talk about your principles. I love how you talk about the lessons and I agree with them. Like, I think we're very aligned and I'm very much earlier. This book isn't about my relationship. This book isn't about. About look at how successful my marriage is. I've not been married for that long. This book is about studies and the Vedas and science and the research and the tools. But the one thing I will say is that I check in with Radhi regularly and I'll often do an alternative. And I'll say, is this relationship going in the direction you want? And I'll check in with and I'll say, is this relationship actually going in the direction you want to? If it is great, what are we doing right? And if it isn't, what direction do you want to go in? And what does that require of you? And what does that require of me? And I'll be ready to commit to that. And that has been one of the healthiest questions for me to ask because I'm like you. I don't want to live longer than a couple of hours in a. In a loveless relationship when it's something within my control. Like I don't want something within my control to be painful for longer than it needs to be. I don't want to be in a relationship where I don't talk to you for a week. I don't want to be in a relationship where we argue for a month about the same thing. I didn't subscribe to that. Like, that's not what I committed to. Like I didn't set my life up in a way to live with pain for years and years and years. And I saw that in my family and I was like, no way do I want to create that in my life. So I'm going to do everything possible, possible. But what I find is that a lot of people are in relationships where there isn't a collaborative approach. A Lisa and you are collaborators in this. Me and Radhya are growing into collaborators in this is like if you're not with someone who's collaborative, it's really tough. I meet a lot of people who are like, I'm ready to do the work. I want to do the work, but then their partner doesn't reciprocate with any energy or any enthusiasm because they think, we already did it. We got married, we had the kids, we both have a job, we have a house. What are you worried about? Right. Like, that's the response people hear. And I'm speaking to that person and saying, well, if you need to slow down getting married, it's okay. And if you are married and it's not going in the right direction, that's okay. But because I don't want to put. I don't want to put pressure on people to think that marriage is the achievement. And I know you're not doing that either, but I think a lot of people see marriage as the end and the achievement as opposed to the beginning.

It's the container.

It's the container, but it's not seen that way.

Yeah, it's interesting. So Lisa and I got married. At the time, it did feel like we were young, but by today's standards, we were infants. It's really crazy, but when I think about how much, if you can construct the right container, it will improve your life vastly. The reason I'm so celebratory of marriage is that nothing, and I mean nothing, not business ambition, self improvement, nothing has given me as much as my marriage now, because I treat it like the flower that I water and keep the bugs off and make sure it gets sunlight and all that stuff. I mean, it's a massive amount of time and attention. But when I think about what the human animal is wired for, it actually isn't necessarily just a monogamous marriage, but you can go in different paths. Actually something I wasn't sure if would come up today. I think that there is a buffet of offerings that are available to work with human wiring. And depending on the circumstance into which you are born, you will either be in polyamorous. Polyandrous, where there's multiple males, which is to one female, which is very unusual, and then monogamous. And it's utterly. I'm so aware that those are real that I make sure that I take more time and attention to grow the one that I'm in in the right way, if that makes sense. But knowing that I do have the wiring to thrive within this. But I have to be very thoughtful about how we mix that cocktail. In the book, you talk about defining love and making sure that you understand each other's fighting styles, and all of that gets really wonderfully practical. You've got the fighting quiz.

Yeah, yeah.

Where people can Go figure out like, what's my fighting style. Do you put the same kind of attention on understanding whether the words you use are masculine energy or feminine energy?

I didn't spend a lot of time in the book on masculine and feminine energy only because I think that it's not in our current vocabulary and it's not really how the Vedas ultimately treat everyone as a soul. And so that's already beyond gender and beyond energy in the sense that we are all equal energies. The Vedas come at it from a standpoint of you and me are made of the same stuff, consciousness wise. There is no difference in the consciousness that you are and that I am or anyone in this room or anyone in the world. And therefore I am not superior or inferior to any other individual. Hence we can only ever be a team. So when you really go to the core of the teachings that I kind of live my life by, I can't start to see better or worse or bigger or not. So I don't just look at Radhi as a team member on the fact that she's my wife. I see her as a team member because I see her as consciousness and divine energy, which is the same as the energy that's within me because I'm not this body, right? Like, I genuinely believe that at the core of my being is that I'm not a physical body. And so it's very hard for me to get lost in conversations around physical body and gender based or masculine feminine energy because at the core of it, that's not how I'm structuring my life.

How does that influence the way that you think about it? Because I'm the exact opposite. I am of this body, nothing else. When I die, it's a light switch. I'm gone. If you take a needle and jab a part of my brain, it's going to impact how I'm able to process the world. So it's very direct how I. Which is probably a big part of the reason I'm so tactical. I just view the world through that lens. It is my temperament. So if you don't have that, would you call yourself a dualist? Like where spirit and body are completely separate?

No. So it's like. Well, so, yeah. So in our philosophy it's called simultaneous one and difference. So it's both. It's like you have the, I'm living in this body, but I am not this body.

So the idea, can you be separated from, like, do you believe in an immortal soul that will outlive your body?

Yes, yes.

And sorry to be so grounded in the physical. Does that continue to exist in a physical place or there is another realm that we don't have access to when we're in this body?

Yeah. So the philosophical understanding that I have is that this, the consciousness continues to seek physical form, to experience physical pleasure and physical experiences until the point that it is materially exhausted and is able to truly live in its full consciousness, not needing a physical form to exercise physical needs and desire.

And how does that consciousness manifest itself once it's transcended the pursuit of physical pleasure?

It's described in quality, not in. Obviously I've not experienced that.

Sure, sure.

My only experience of it is through meditation and practice. And it's.

Is it an intuitive understanding that you would be hard pressed to put into language?

No, it's a state. Well, the state is described as full of knowledge, eternal and full of bliss. That's the state in which we're living. And so what I'm explaining is that through what we call purification of consciousness, once the material body is no longer useful, you're then living in that full spiritual consciousness. Would be a spiritual form. A form that is not doesn't bleed when you cut it, it doesn't get damaged, it doesn't get hurt. It is an eternal form that doesn't have those needs or fallibilities, I guess is the right word.

So if in the Christian tradition there is this place called heaven, which at least is sort of like a physical place that the spirit goes and lives out its days and you will be reunited. Admittedly, I'm not a Christian theologist, so I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong. But there's, at least in popular culture, there's the idea of you transcend into heaven. It's a place, there are people that you know and love, you're reunited. So there's a sense of recreating still the physical world just in a non physical form. It's what at least in design circles you call skeuomorphic.

Yeah.

So you're taking what you know and even though you're trying to imagine something completely different, you tend to cram it in to the same thing. Right. So we imagine in clouds and stuff like that.

Yeah.

What's that version in the Vedic tradition?

Yeah. So the Vedic tradition is there is a eternal divine relationship with the Supreme Being and that in this space everyone has that unique experience and unique relationship with each other and divinity Persona.

So would you meet Ravi again in that space?

Hopefully, if we both make it Back. Yeah, Radhi's definitely. Good bag. I take that back. Yeah, Radhi's good, but not necessarily as my partner, not as the way I see her here, as a completely different version to what I see here. Because this is just simply one lifetime on a notch of lifetimes.

And does that at all inform your marriage?

That informs our marriage in the beautiful sense of the detachment with the love, in the sense of there's a feeling of, I love this person. So glad I found them in this lifetime to do this life with, to serve in this way, to have this impact, to choose to want a better humanity, to leave it a better, happier, healthier place, to leave it a more healed place that unites us in a. In a profound way that I couldn't have have with anyone else who didn't feel that way about it. And at the same time, it detaches me from recognizing, you know, this isn't everything either. And that's okay. Like, it's, you know, let's not make this the be all and end all of everything either. Like, this is just one experience. It's one aspect. And so I think there's this beautiful connection, but then healthy detachment that comes from both. And the ultimate understanding that she's not my property, she does not belong to me, I don't own her. And that she's on her own journey too. And that that journey is the most important journey that I'm supporting her on. And this journey is the most important journey she's supporting me on. Beyond all the other stuff that we're doing together. Like, that's the journey we've committed to. So I think it has a profound impact on how we conduct our lives.

It stops you from snipping the flower.

Absolutely. And even though me and you have very different overall, and that's why I've always found fascinating to sit down with you. Even though me and you have very different systems of overall belief or philosophy of, like, what our container is of how we view life, we approach life far more similarly than many people I know. Like, I consider myself to be highly. And as you say in the book, we have fight styles, we have the relationship roles. Like, there's so much tactical, practical stuff in the book because that's how I view life too. I view life as highly strategic, but with a spiritual lens. And I think that it's. I find that really interesting how we both try and approach life through strategy, through systems, through processes, despite having, you know, me having a much more of a philosophical and, I guess, intangible View of reality.

Do you know Donald Hoffman?

I don't. As in from the Hoffman process? No, no, I don't.

I don't know what that is. So this may be why, although you probably push back on this. So as somebody who's agnostic, meaning I literally just don't know. I have no idea what the truth is.

I don't think anyone does. And I kind of live with that. Like I. People always ask me, like, where do you see someone? I'm like, I don't know either. But I'm having read the theology and spirituality and the modern day new age, everything that I have, I'm betting on this. And so it's simply a hypothesis and I'm very open about that. I'm very cool with that because I just think life is a hypothesis. Pretty much everything I do every day is a hypothesis. There's no genuine truth that I can say that. I know for a fact that this is what happens when this happens, including doing this interview, including whatever. Writing this book, like what comes from it is so different and so diverse than you could expect. So I live my life in a hypothesis. So I've studied plenty of books and researched and spoken to people and sat with teachers and sat with masters, and I've come up with what I believe is my hypothesis based on that experience. And I think everyone's entitled to their hypothesis. And that's why I don't consider myself with you. I always end up talking about some of my own beliefs or values or philosophies that I identify with. But why I don't preach them or why I don't impart them on others is because that's not my goal. My goal is to help people navigate reality in what we can see, feel and hear. And then I have my own set of beliefs and values that guide my moral compass. But those are not the ones I'm imparting. Those are not what people are being exposed to because I see them as two separate things. My compass on a deeper level is different to the work I'm doing in the world to help people navigate this. This is all based on fact and truth and experience and, you know, reality. The book is based on that. Think Like a Monk is based on that. But the beliefs that I have are a hypothesis. Those are not the ones I'm sharing.

I love that.

Yeah.

Where can people follow you as you explore your hypothesis?

The best place right now is 8rules of love.com that is the place to find my new book, 8 Rules of Love, which will guide you through everything from finding love, keeping love, love, dealing with heartbreak, and then finding love again. That would be the best place to find me right now.

I love it.

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