Your Brain On Love: The I Love Marketing Meetup On The Science of Attraction with, Joe Polish, and Dean Jackson Featuring Amy Chan - I Love Marketing Episode #390

If you are someone that has been a slave to chemistry, consider this the foundation of a relationship or partnership. You need a combination of chemistry, timing and compatibility. And if you've been a slave to chemistry, I would actually take a look at what are the values that are important. There is an exercise in the book on doing a values checklist where you actually assess your own top 10 values. You look at the last three people you've dated. You also rate them on their values and that will give you an idea. Are you actually choosing people who are similar and scoring similar to you in your values or is it going down or is it going higher? I think that would give you a good starting point to see if you need to maybe, you know, not just give so much priority to the chemistry.

Does your heart need rewiring? Listen in as Amy Chan, founder of Renew Breakup Bootcamp and author of Breakup Bootcamp, shares the first steps to take if you're someone looking for a healthy, meaningful and loving relationship. In this episode, Amy, Joe and Dean discuss why good people choose the wrong partners. Amy shares the foundational elements to transform pain into healing, how to move towards a more secure attachment style, and how to fix your chemistry compass so you stop being drawn towards partners who aren't good for you. If you'd like to join world renowned entrepreneurs at the next Genius Network event or want to learn more about Genius network, go to geniusnetwork.

This is it. This is it. And I'm taking a one year sabbatical. I've gotten so many supportive letters and posts and things like that, so I appreciate that many of you that are here have sent me cards and letters and nice things. So thank you. And if you want to see why I'm doing this and if it maybe inspires you to take your own version of a sabbatical, you can go to joesabbatical.com so I'm going to get to the guests that me and Dean are going to have a conversation with. I'll ask her some questions and then we'll do a little bit of Q and A with you guys. All right, so here's how I recently got introduced to Amy Chan, my dear friend Neil Strauss, who I've known for a long time. We've done interviews with him on the podcast. He's an amazing writer. He's written many New York Times bestselling books and one of the first ones was the game. And then 10 years later he wrote the Truth. After he went through all the wreckage of these crazy relationships in the pickup world and stuff And I remember me and Neil, I took him down to see a talk at the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles to hear talk about sex addiction and stuff, because he was doing a whole deep dive into relationships. And I'm very public about what happened to me. I was a lot of sexual abuse as a kid, and that made it really hard for me to know how to do relationships. My mother died when I was four years old, so my father never remarried. I never had any sort of positive female influence in my early childhood. And I was a scared, shy, introverted kid. I became a drug addict, had a lot of addictive behaviors. A lot of the relationships that I got into were very much, come here. Go away. And I know a lot of people can relate to that, and hardly anyone talks about that stuff. And it took me years to really publicly just start talking about it. But the more I did, the more I realized how helpful it was, not only to me, but to other people. And so Neil had made a post from Amy, and I had, like, quickly did some research on her, and I was like, wow, she sounds like she really knows her stuff. And so then I got a copy of her book, which I've not even read the whole thing yet. It's called Breakup Boot Camp. So I'm going to recommend all of you just go buy this book. It's really, really amazing. The stuff that she writes about in the first and second chapter, just on attachment, is worth your time and money on this book. And there's so much more I haven't even gotten into. So I'm going to be asking her some questions about stuff, and we'll do things there. But I reached out to Neil and he said, yeah, Amy's amazing. And so then we connected. And I said, you know, I've got so much on my plate, but this is such an important topic with breakups and stress and angst that everyone's going through in the midst of one of the craziest years I've ever experienced in my life on this planet, as it has been, I know, for many of you. And because of the work I do with people with addiction recovery, there's a lot of people that are going through so much stress right now. And so I thought the last conversation we could have, even though it's not really about marketing, I think would be really valuable to all of you. So I'm going to introduce who Amy is, and then we'll get into it. So Amy Chan is the founder of Renew Breakup Boot Camp, a retreat that takes a scientific and spiritual approach to healing the heart. The observer calls her a relationship expert whose work is like that of the scientific Carrie Bradshaw. And her company has been featured across national media, including Good Morning America, Vogue, Glamour, Nightline, and on the front page of the New York Times. Her book, Break Boot Camp, the Science of Rewind youg Heart, just published with HarperCollins. And her book was just featured on Good Morning America. So, Amy, first off, welcome. So great to have you here. I'm so happy.

Hi.

Yeah, so, I mean, you talk about how you started this in the book, but give everyone. What did I not say about you that people need to know?

Well, 10 years ago, I found myself in a bathtub contemplating how I could commit suicide without traumatizing the person who would find my body. And this was after a pretty traumatic breakup where back then I put so much of my identity in him and us. And I was living the dream. And to me, living the dream was date, get married, have kids, be a stay at home wife, write on the side for fun. And when that relationship crashed, I completely crashed. And I went through depression, panic attacks, thoughts of suicide. And it was a really dark place. And if you had asked me back then if I would be here 10 years later in front of 396 people talking about heartbreak and healing and the patterns, I would have thought you were batshit crazy. But here I am.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, so that's interesting. Of course, like I've said, one of my reasons for wanting to do this is just as much as anyone else. Even though I'm going to play interviewer here, this subject's really important to me because over the last few years, I've had a couple of breakups that for some reason hit me really hard. I don't know if it's because of my age. I don't know if it's because of. Over the years, I think I've been more open and more connected. And I also think we meet people whose dents match our dents. So wherever we're at in our lives, we tend to find people that just sort of fit those almost like a frequency. And you explain it way more articulately in your book than I'm trying to do right now. But since the pandemic started, we're talking addictions have gone through the roof, alcohol sales through the roof, divorce rates in this country and others massively have increased. If you love your partner and you love your family, you know, it could be really great in bonding for so many people. But if you're not in that place it could be absolutely miserable. And I've had my heart broken quite a few times. And, you know, there's. I'm trying to think, who said this? You know, whatever workshop you're going through to get over your ex, they're at some sort of workshop or going through some book trying to get over you. So, you know, we're all going through our own journeys. And so how did your boyfriend cheating on you, I mean, lead to you transforming your life? Because it sounds like. Weird question, but I think many people here, when you're in the negative part of it, like Dan Sullivan says, nothing feels good in the middle. So when you're in the middle of a breakup or any painful, it's very difficult. But if you look back, there's so many lessons that come out of these difficult things. And that's what you have been able to do, and not only to transform your life, but I think you've. You know, even from what I've read in your book, and I've been listening to the audio also, it's just so darn valuable. So if you could maybe speak to that.

Yeah, I mean, I was a relationship columnist. I've been a relationship columnist for about 15 years. And the reason why I even got into the world of trying to understand and research the psychology of relationships was that was the one area I could just never figure out. I was an overachiever since a little kid, you know, the child of immigrant parents. The way I got attention and love was when I did well in school and I got money. So I learned at a very young age that love was earned. And me, myself as a human being, I am not enough. Now, of course, I never would have realized this until, you know, decades later through doing therapy and a lot of deep work, but that breakup was a band aid that ripped off. And then I had to deal with all this compound trauma. But back then, I didn't know. I just vilified my ex. I pointed out the finger of blame all towards him and how unjust everything was. And I hit a tipping point of suffering. And I think it really was that moment in the bathtub. And I actually was just really trying to logically think of, like, okay, if I did this way, no, the maid would find me. If I do it this way, no, this person will find me. And because I couldn't figure out how to pull it off without traumatizing someone, that's why I didn't do it. And I cried myself to sleep that night. And when I woke up in the morning, I was like, holy shit. I am in the darkest of darkest moments right now, and I'm at a decision point. I'm either going to continue spiraling down or I am going to fight to get back up. And I decided to fight. And it did take me quite a long time to heal. I tried everything, and I am very fortunate. I had friends who would come over, bring food, and watch me eat because I stopped eating. I had friends who lent me their homes because I didn't have a home to go to. And I thought about how many people who are in that position who might not have that support system. And I know that when you have no hope and you feel helpless, you are only a few bad decisions away from doing something completely destructive. And I thought, I need to create something for people who are going through this. And that's how the idea of creating a breakup bootcamp came about, where people come to a physical space in nature. There's 13 different experts, from psychologists to behavioral scientists to sex educators. And we help people not only process the pain from the breakup, but also understand what are the subconscious patterns and beliefs that are causing the same emotional experience to repeat or over and over again. Because it's never just about the ex. It's recycled pain.

Yes. No recycled pain. And the not eating thing was very interesting. Just what it could do to impact you, Dean. So let me kind of tie in Dean Jackson into this, other than the fact that we are doing, you know, we do our podcasts and stuff together. Dean, in your marketing creation of Inventing the Squeeze page back in 1997, which now hundreds of millions of people use and turned into an opt in page, you started selling a book called Stop youp Divorce. And you went and Homer McDonald became a good friend of yours. You taught him how to take his. His relationship stuff, package it. And not only did you sell millions of dollars worth of that book and transform many people's lives, but it also changed the way that he did his whole business. And so you have quite an interesting perspective of what people are looking for in this particular case. You know, someone wants to leave a relationship and you know what to do in that particular situation, which many lead to breakups. So what questions or framing would you have for Amy and how would you like? Because there's so much you could speak to on this, and I didn't want to try to guess what that would be.

Well, I think one of the things that Amy's got, anytime you're at the intersections of a, you know, acute onset with pain and urgency, a Breakup a. Things like that is you can go one of two ways. People can take a catalyst to go downward loop, or you can embrace it and come out of it as something amazing. And there's a. You know, one of the things we talk about Joe on I love marketing profit activator number one is select a single target audience. And people in those catalyst moments have the greatest need. You have attention then. And even though all the things that Homer would teach people would be applicable before they were to get into a situation where the, where they were going through a divorce, just like I imagine a lot of the things that we're talking about in the breakthrough or breakup boot camp would be applicable in other areas. It's that moment that brings the opportunity to get into the conversation with people. And so I look at it, we did a 90 minute book years ago with someone called your breakup breakthrough.

And.

And that's. That same kind of thing is really future pacing, that there's something great that can come from this. So I think embracing those moments is really what we've been able to see Amy doing here, you know.

Yeah, totally. Well, you know, thank you. Several people have commented on the recycle pain. You know, recycle pain is a good phrase. Curious, what's the definition of recycle pain, which I'll ask you to maybe go elaborate a little bit more on that. Brenny wrote recycle pain trigger that takes you to a dark place time and time again. I want to just speak to the part about pain because I look at many things through the lens of addiction and I believe addiction is a solution to pain. A war on drugs is like a war on addicts. It's the wrong war. Drugs are actually the solution to the pain. Not a good solution. It's a solution that could kill you. It could cause a lot of wreckage. But when I was a drug addict, when I was dealing with sexual addiction, which is really an intimacy disorder, when I use the term sex addiction, that immediately conjures up all kinds of perspective. If anyone wants, you know, I interviewed the top sex addiction doctor in the world a decade ago, Pat Carnes. You can type in my name and sex addiction in the YouTube. You can watch the hour and 45 minute video if you want a deep dive on that. But it's all about pain. And so people will eat the pain away, gamble the pain away. Look at the Internet, fuck the pain away. There's all kinds of different ways that people deal with pain. And when you go through a breakup, you can really feel some Deep wounding. And it's amazing where your mind can take you. And of course, I only can speak for where my mind has taken me. And my friend Guy Wen, she actually did a great talk on TED on breakups, and he talked about as do you, where we can. It's almost like you start experiencing very similar signs that someone that's going through withdrawals of addiction go through. So can you speak to recycled pain and maybe define what that is? Because when you're in it, and I know some people here are, they're in the middle of their own experience of pain. And sometimes it feels like it's never going to go away and you become suicidal or you become just very depressed and you can't eat. So speak to that and let's look at this. What is this pain? And then we'll go into dealing with it.

Yeah, so that's a great question. Recycled pain, in the context that I'm using it is after a breakup, you might think that it is this person or the infidelity or the rejection, and the pain is so big or the suffering is so big. But when you actually, when I look at the people who I've worked with at breakup boot camp, and we peel back the layers, we see that it's not just about the ex. Sure, there is the missing. There's a relationship that fell apart. There's that. But then there's all the pain that compounded from all the heartbreaks before. Right. Like for myself, mine was recycled pain because my first heartbreak was the one I had with my father of never feeling like I was enough, of always trying to earn his love, of trying to be like, pick me, prioritize me, you know, instead of work and me kind of developing this addiction towards the emotional experience of chasing unavailability. Right. And so it's important that we understand what is the root of the pain. What is that recycled pain that's repeating because it's only then we can actually start to shift the patterns. I talk about this in my book. And why do we choose people who can wound us in a very similar way? Right. Because it can be confusing when you're dating. When your relationships, it could look like you're dating very different people. But I really encourage people. If you're not happy with the relationship outcomes you have, just take a inventory of the last three people you had a romantic connection with and write down what are the five topics feelings that you felt in this. And they could be, you know, from joyful to anxious. And then look at what is a Pattern, because there's likely an emotional experience that's repeating, although the person looks very different on the outside. So why is this? And I talk about the chemistry compass. Because people, after a breakup or feeling rejected, they have a tendency to think that they are broken. I hear this all the time. The rug has been ripped out from underneath me. I feel like I'm broken. And when we look at it, you're not broken. Your chemistry compass might be broken. And your chemistry compass is your internal GPS that is pointing you into the direction of who you're drawn to and who you're repulsed by. And this is determined at a very young age. There's something called attractions of deprivation. It's also in the psychology world called repetition compulsion. And this is a human being's tendency to. To choose people on a subconscious level that can wound us in a very similar way to how we're wounded as children. Our psyche tries to recreate the scenario of the crime in an attempt to change its ending. And so we don't know this. And I know for myself, right? You know, in my early 20s, I only dated DJs and club owners. In my 30s, I then started dating just tech CEOs. And I was like, oh, no, no. Totally different. There's no, no pattern here. But if I looked at the emotional experience, climbing for their time, hot and cold, sometimes they give me a little breadcrumb of attention. Sometimes they didn't. The emotional experience with my dad, the dj, the tech CEO, exactly the same anxiety. Always trying to prove my worthiness, trying to be enough, trying to edit myself. And so until I was able to recognize that I didn't have a starting point to actually creating change in myself, that would actually set up a different future for myself.

Yeah, that's so good. And the way you describe it in the book about. So what were who were more fun, the tech CEOs or the DJs? If you just had to go back.

Tech CEOs probably better, because DJs. I was just always trying to buy them a shot so they would pick me.

Right? Exactly, exactly. You know, so the fact that I got Dan Sullivan, who's just a dear friend, along with Bab Smith, they run Strategic Coach together. Dan has so many great quotes. Like, if you guys just want to have your brain constantly giving you perspective, get some of Dan's quote books, which his team is compiled and they publish. You can get that stuff@strategiccoach.com But Dan, you have this line where you're like, there's two types of suffering in the world, short term and long term. You just need to decide which kind you want. I often wonder about the word decide because. Because sometimes people seem to be mired in their suffering and they don't know how to get out of that trap. And if you want to say anything to that, Dan, there's two things then I want to ask Amy. Let's talk about if you're in a place of suffering, like, what do you do? How do you get out of this? And so Dan, when you met Babs, you had gone. I mean, one thing about Dan, he declared bankruptcy and he was divorced on the same day. At what age were you, like 34 or something?

34, yeah.

And then you made a decision that you don't want to work on a relationship, you just want a relationship that works, is something I've heard you say. But that doesn't mean you don't work. You've always worked on important things. But what are your perspectives on this? Because how long have you and Babs been married now?

Since 86, 34. But we met 38 years ago. And when I got divorced, so I. This all happened in Canada, so I was in Those days, in 78, when I was. You were separated for three years. So they had a cooling off period and that, you know, there's traditional societies where they tried to stack the odds in favor that, you know, you could come back together again, but you had to stay apart from three years. There couldn't be any evidence. And I did. That wasn't a problem. And then I got divorced. And the day I got the actual divorce, I went out and I went to a cafe or a bar or something and I made a list of what the next relationship had to be like. And it was a bit of a change for me because it wasn't what the next project person had to be like, but what the relationship between us had to be like. And I think that was a big breakthrough because I was looking for a person, but actually I was looking for a relationship, a type of relationship. And I put down, I think it was like eight characteristics. But the first one is that I didn't have to work on the relationship, it wasn't competitive. And that one of the important things for me was that it was both personal and business, that I wanted someone that it was a partnership, both in business and personally. That was the 13th of August in 1981. On the 13th of August 1982, I was at a weekend conference. One chair was left. I arrived late, sat down and sitting next to me is my partner, who I've been with for 38 years. And when I. And it wasn't dramatic. The neat thing about it is that I had always thought drama was a real big part of relationship. And I think what had happened was I began to realize that a sense of harmony, a sense of connection, kind of a unspoken sense of partnership was really what I was looking for. And I think over the next year, I don't think I ever told Babs, who's on our I Love marketing call today, I never really told her much about what my list was. But over the next year or so, I said, check, check, check, check. And that was what I needed. But going back to the divorce and bankruptcy day, it was in the middle of the summer, it was August, actually. And I remember walking around the next day and going to places and people were happy and they were talking. I said, I don't see anyone who's really bothered about the fact that I got divorced and bankrupt yesterday. Nobody seemed to be bogged down by the fact that I had had a bad day. And I said, I guess it's all my responsibility. So I said, how I handle this really is going to determine the rest of my life. So I just decided to take 100% responsibility for it, which means that you don't hold anyone else responsible for what's happened to you. And that kind of led to the strategic coach, and it led to my partnership with Babs and meeting Dean Jackson and meeting Joe Polish.

Yeah, well, no, that's awesome. And, Babs, by the way, you're welcome to say something here if you'd like, if you want to unmute yourself. Now. I have a sort of a setup here, too, because. And I'll tell Amy why I like calling on them. For one, there's individuals in your life that are a first domino where there's something that happens that changed the whole trajectory of your life. Darryl Sutherland, who's on here, we've all had dominoes that are books, people, things that happen that are positive. And we also have dominoes that are extraordinarily negative. When I was raped and molested as a kid, that was a terrible domino for me that led in so many negative ways, things in my life. But there's also been very positive things. And what Dan was saying about being responsible, I think of responsibilities, responding with ability. And when I've been through breakups where I just. In that spiral, I'm not responding to anything. I'm reacting. If that means not eating, if that means being depressed, if that means Escapism, if that means self destruction, if that means going into other toxic relationships, whatever, that's not a good place to be in. And that's in a place of suffering. That's kind of where you're at. So, first off, I love when people like Dan and Babs and Amy, I can just do anything here on our podcast to get them talking to each other. Because, Dan, you have all these influencers out there, people that are influencers, and they have millions of followers, and many of them are friends of mine. I would argue that Strategic Coach and what Dan and Babs have created is one of the most positive influencers on the planet. The clients they have, I mean, Dan has coached more successful entrepreneurs than anyone in the world that I know. And I know people that have had millions of people go through their seminars, but the type of clients and what it is they do. So I wanted Dan and Babs to hear about this because one of my goals is I want everyone here to be promoting the shit out of this book if you find it valuable, and post it on social media. If this conversation helps you tell people about it. There's a lot of people in pain right now, and if you can direct them to anything that will help them do it. So at some point during this, if you hear a quote from Amy, please post it on social media. I mean, there's nothing in it for me here other than I like edifying people that have great stuff. And what's in it for me is it makes me feel good when someone has put work into the world. They've transformed something. And I like connecting with people because at the end of the day, you're either connected or you're disconnected. Everything that I do is about connection. That's what genius network is. Genius recovery is about connection. The opposite of addiction is connection, as Johann Hari says. And so anyway, so that's my rant, Babs. So, Babs, what would you say? Craziness?

Well, when we met, I wasn't looking for anyone. And I don't think Dan was really looking for anyone either. I mean, he had his list of his relationship thing and stuff like that, and.

And.

But he sat down next to me and we were. We interacted during that weekend in the workshop. And I liked him, and it was fun interacting, you know, doing stuff with him. And I got to know him and we became friends, and I just loved the way he thought about things. And the way he thought about things really helped me open up and feel, you know, make the connections in my own mind about My business and what I was doing, and it just felt so good. And there was aha. Moments and all that kind of stuff. And we would share about what we were doing. We weren't dating or anything, but we. Sure. We talked a lot on the phone and saw each other from time to time.

Right.

I love your side of this, though, Babs.

So what are you looking at?

What are you looking at?

What?

I love your side of this story, though, because didn't you say to Dan, what are you looking at?

Oh, no. Yeah, Dan was looking at me. That was the very morning when he sat down. And, you know, there's two sides to this story. So Dan. So Dan was looking at me. What are you looking at?

Looking up, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How much taller are you than Dan Bevs?

About six.

I'm six two. How tall are you, Dan?

Five, eight.

Six inches. But we were sitting down, really.

But.

And I. So I, you know. You know, we were just like, young. Well, you know, Dan was 30 something, but what are you looking at? And Dan said, I'm looking at you. And I said, this is what really happened. I said, yeah. And. Right as you do. Right. And.

So 38 years later, here we are.

There we go.

But, you know, it took about a year.

We were just friends.

And then all of a sudden, one time he was over at my house and. And we were talking, you know, and I got this funny feeling like I was just getting used to being by myself. And that was for about a year, just by myself and being okay with that. And I had just come to the thought of, you know, I'm really fine just being, you know, on my own all this time. And then we were. It was almost like, you know, coincidentally with that we were together talking in a room or something, and I just started. I got almost dizzy. I'm like, I think, you know, something happened.

Anyway, look, bottom line, I'm glad you guys connected because as Dan said, had he not met Babs, he would just be a drunk with a lot of good ideas.

Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. We connected on what he was doing. And I decided, you know, hey, if we get together on this, this could go really far. This could be really amazing.

Yeah. And the thing is, I think, having a powerful partnership and certainly, I mean, you can see it. It can either make your life incredibly enhancing or it could, you know, it could make your life miserable. So. And by the way, like, Amy, all of what you write about is not just your opinion. I mean, you take a very scientific based approach. Approach to this, and you cite so many things. So, you know, what is the science behind rewiring your heart?

Yeah, I mean, there's many different ways, right, of looking at this. There's. Why are we drawn to people who are not good for us? This is one thing that we work with a lot on rewiring, because it actually stems from what I talked about earlier, an attraction of deprivation. So human beings, we like what is familiar. So if you grew up with a household that was chaotic, if you didn't have a healthy model of love and you didn't witness that growing up, you can get familiar with an idea of what love is. And I work with a lot of people who associate intensity, that fuck, yes. Relationship that I just locked eyes and I knew they were the one for me. And they think that is love and it's not just childhood, right. Because there's many different things at play. And this doesn't mean you had a bad mom and dad and they were evil or anything like that. But you're picking up different. You're getting wired from a very young age. And then there's media and then there's the fairy tales, right? And what you see is the Romeo and Juliet. I mean, heck, they met each other for 24 hours, and they were, you know, they want to kill themselves for each other. Right? I mean, the models of love that we are seeing, even if on a cognitive level, like, yeah, that's not really realistic. Over and over again, when these stories are hammered in, you kind of absorb them through, like, it's osmosis. And so I think, you know, it depends on what you're trying to rewire. And I think when it comes to people who struggle with. They only feel chemistry with the people who. Who are the bad partner, right? The unavailable person. And then they're like, oh, you know, yeah, sure, I meet healthy, secure people, but they're so boring, I don't feel any chemistry. Right. That is a sign to me that, like, okay, let's dig a bit deeper, because that's where we might want to look at what we can rewire. And I'd love to take this opportunity to kind of talk about attachment style, because this is something you can rewire. And for those of you who are new to attachment theory, basically, the idea is, around two years old, we develop an attachment system which will pretty much determine how we relate romantically as adults. There's three main types. They're secure, avoidant, and anxious. Secure makes up about 50% of the population. They're not afraid of Intimacy. They're also not codependent. They're able to communicate their needs and their boundaries. And when there is a conflict that comes up in the relationship, they don't blow out of proportion and see it like, oh, my God, it's going to be. It's over. So they can move through the ups and downs of relationships. Now. The next kind is avoidant, avoidantly attached. People subconsciously suppress their attachment system. What does this mean? It means when someone gets a little bit too emotionally close, they will do things called deactivating strategies to squelch intimacy. This might look like, say you go on a romantic weekend with someone and say they have an avoidant attachment style, and suddenly they're gone for a week. They go into their cave. Or if you have an avoidant attachment style, you might constantly idolize an ex or you'll date someone. First three months, it's great. And then you start noticing all their imperfections and you're like, no, not the one. So there's this constant pursuit of a unicorn or someone with an impossible future. These are all ways of actually not of keeping people not emotionally close. And it doesn't mean that avoidance can't be in relationships or say that they want a relationship. They just associate intimacy with a loss of independence. And they have a tendency to feel suffocated and a lot of pressure in their relationships. This usually comes from parents who enmesh them as a child. Then there's anxiously attached. I work. 90% of the people I work with are anxiously attached people. They take breakups the absolute hardest because they put a lot of their sense of identity and into the relationship and the validation from their partner. And so people who have an anxious attachment style, they fear abandonment and rejection. And when they're triggered, say they text and it takes four hours for the person that they're dating to text them back. They actually go into fight or flight. And to them it's like, oh, my God, I'm going to die. They almost feel this anxiety, like, oh my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And they will actually do what's called protest behavior. This might look like, you know what? I used to be an anxiously attached person. I'm now what's called an earn secure, you might call like, crazy. This was me in my 20s. I would call like crazy, show up at the club, like, oh, you work on Fridays, even though it's like their night, you know? And then I realized, like, oh, shit. Like, this is like stalker behavior. And then you'll go to the other side of the extreme. And you're like, oh, it takes you four hours to text me back, fuck you. I'll take four days, see how you like it. Or you might hedge, you might date different people just because the person you really like, you don't know if they're going to dump you, if they're going to reject you and take the edge off. You date other people. Now anxiously people anxiously attached people are drawn avoidance and vice versa. They both confirm each other's worldview. So, you know, as I write out those different characteristics of attachment, you might resonate with one. There is a quiz. Feel free, you can email me. It's also, you know, in the book you can find out your attachment style and the goal is to actually become more secure. And also it's important to understand that attachment is on a spectrum. So, you know, in the middle of a pandemic when maybe you lost your job, you're not seeing your friends, you might normally be more secure, but suddenly you feel a lot more anxious. So it does depend on who you're dating and it depends on what else is going on in your life.

Yeah. That's so good. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that, Dean. What were you going to say?

No, I was listening in. And everybody, you know, you immediately see yourself in those descriptions. I think everybody on here, if you were listening, would see what your attachment style is. It's fascinating.

Yeah. When I was, you know, listening to the. The audio version of Amy's book a couple days ago with her going through all the attachment styles, like I said earlier, get the book just for the description of what she said. Yeah. I could see my dysfunction in so many of these things and also stemming where it came from because I have a friend named Dr. Don woods who used to be a former professional hockey player. And I met him at the Spartan World Championships where we were both speaking at Lake Tahoe last year. And he helps take people through trauma. And he has this great line where he says, if you understood the atmospheric conditions of somebody's life, it would make sense why they do what it is they do, why they behave the way they do. And I've always liked that terminology, atmospheric conditions and seeing these attachment styles, I mean, it really, it does make sense. And to have that insight in perspective is valuable. I want to actually, this is going to seem kind of weird, but I have so many great friends that are on today and I wish I could call on all of them. David Bach is in the house. Amy, do you know David Bach?

I don't think so.

Yeah. So David, one of the top selling authors in the world, sold millions of copies of books. Automatic millionaire, Smart women finish rich. The latte factor. I mean, he's amazing. And he's been through a divorce. Now his partner's amazing, his new wife. And David, I'd almost like to ask you a couple of things. For one, David's been on Oprah more than anyone I know. I mean, dozens of times. And he's done so much media and he's sold so many books and he's helped so many people. I met him through Strategic coach and he's the one that really inspired me to do a sabbatical because in 2013 he took a one year sabbatical because he had gotten totally burnt out. And I put the 10 minute talk that he gave in 2015 at Genius Network annual event on joesabbatical.com so people can actually watch a really great talk about sabbaticals because David really knows his stuff. But David, two things. Anything you want to say to the subject matter here with Amy? And since we're on, I love marketing and this is kind of like one of these weird topics that we. Not weird topic, but weird that we put it on. I love marketing because I know it'll be so helpful to people. What advice would you have for Amy to get such an important message out to millions of people? Because you are an expert at that.

Wow.

Okay. Before I answer that question, everything. I'm such a big believer that things happen for a reason. I literally just, I was at the top of Piazza Michelangelo in Florence, Italy. I live in Florence, Italy, everybody. And I just took my son to the top of Piazza Michelangelo to see the giant crisp history. It's not as big as the one at Rockefeller center, but it's close. So I normally would not be on email because that's kind of my policy. Dan. I actually follow Dan's rules and I don't get on email late. But I looked at my phone and I see Joe Polish is going live before he takes a sabbatical. I'm like, what? It's like a going away party. I have to get on this call and say hi to you, Joe. So, buddy, I'm so excited that you're doing the sabbatical and I know you and I've talked a lot this year, but I'm just really, really, really happy for you. And then to see Dan, Babs, Dean, it's like a reunion party. Yeah, it's just amazing. So it's so good to be here. And Amy, nice to Meet you. You know, I just, I. I have to say, just listening to you, you have so much energy and so much passion for your topic that it's gonna. You're gonna reach millions of people with it, and so many people need your help. And I am just so grateful that I'm no longer dating. Listening to you, I'm like, wow, I'm so lucky. I found. Found the right person. I found my soulmate. And I. You know what? I'm a big look, you know, Joe Polish. Now you know everybody. So the thing about your. Your. Your message is that I would say to anybody, the most important thing when you have a message to share is that you have to remember that you love your message more than anybody in the world. And if you do and you're passionate about that message and you come from a place of service, there's just nothing that can stop you. And I think so often people focus on bestseller list, which, you know, I get a lot of credit for being on best seller list. But the reality is, it's not about the best seller list. It's about how many people you touch. And it's about constantly coming from a place of service. How can I be of service for what it is you personally care about? And, you know, I'm still doing. It's crazy, but I'm still doing Smart Women Finish Rich seminars. And I started this in 1993. And so I'm still as passionate about the things that I teach as I was back in 1993 and 1994 and 1995. And by the way, your passions may change. You may change what you're passionate about in five or 10 years, and that's okay, too. But right now, you just got to go share your message with every single human being you possibly can in every possible way that is doable. And the beauty today is it's never been easier. You don't need to be on a national television show because you can go do things like this constantly.

Thank you.

No, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, there's something to be said about perseverance. There's something to be said about being aligned, because when you find what you're aligned with. Yeah. That's where so much energy comes from. That. That's the distinction I make between elf versus half. You know, you can have an elf business, easy, lucrative, and fun, or half business, which is hard, annoying, lame, and frustrating. Could be hard, annoying, lucrative, and frustrating. But there's a lot of people that are half. You know, it's not just how you spend your Time, but it's what you're aligned with. And so. And I'll tell you, if you're going through a lot of pain, it's hard to make anything work. And so in a lot of ways, you know, my. My whole thing is I sell people what they want and do our best to give them what they need. That's. That's sort of a whole thing. So they always want to talk about marketing and making money and do all. And it's. And I'm the last person to ever poo poo money. I think money. People say money can't buy happiness is kind of stupid because I buy happiness all the time. And if you're a miserable bastard with money, you just haven't given enough of it away, because you can really help a lot of people if you have financial resources. So that's a critical thing. But I'll tell you, just having money, but not having relationships, not feeling connected, is a very painful place to be in, because I can tell you, I know a lot of billionaires and a lot of very famous people that are addicts, that are. Are just broken and their hearts are broken, and they did not recover. And that's why I think Amy's topic in this subject is so darn critical, especially right now, because we are. The world is in a lot of complexity and a lot of. A lot of pain, and knowing how to navigate it is critical. Amy, I want to read something because it kind of ties into what David was saying about, you know, finding his love relationship. Now, you posted this, and I asked Eunice, my assistant, to print this out, and you titled it Stop looking for. See where it says. She didn't say fuck. She put an asterisk. But I'm just going to use. Sorry for the profanity, but it just. It's just more effective if I say it. So spoiler alert. It's not about love. I'm going to. You just posted this, I think yesterday. Yeah, and on Facebook. If you guys want to go get a copy, you can read it on her page. Fuck yes. Relationships are about intensity. The one, the soulmate that you'll know, you'll just know I can't live without you kind of love that's not love. It's fantasy fueled by lust. The cytokoded dependency, a dash of insecure attachment, and a sprinkle of love addiction. Instead of questioning, instead of questing for a fuck yes relationship, perhaps a more sustainable approach would be to cultivate one Maintenance, commitment. Making an effort even when you don't have the chemical momentum of lust to motivate you. Choosing love even when you don't feel like it that day, communicating like an adult, seeing someone as the human they are, not a projected fantasy of what you want them to be. It's not the sexy stuff motivational quotes are made of. I love that line because if you just look at Instagram and oh, these fall in love, it's so. It's such a facade in so many ways. So I'll read that again. It's not the sexy stuff motivational quotes are made of. No. The everyday, mundane choices we make show up. Sorry. As a fucking yes partner comes down to good old fashioned hard work, discipline, commitment and effort. Writer Damian Boiler Baller, hopefully I'm pronouncing that right. Articulates this beautifully. Life is completely composed of mediocre, mundane and difficult tasks and experiences. Yet it is the accumulation of the mundane, like preparing a garden bed from scratch, that leads to the flowering of something beautiful. The early stages, cutting the weeds, tilling the soil. None of that is actually very fun. Yet walking through an abundant garden, picking flowers and fruits and vegetables. It comes from the process of small, repeated, intentional tasks. Fuck. Maybe love, Perhaps that's a more realistic goal. The one that starts off with a slow simmer of curiosity that can eventually boil into something delicious. It isn't black or white and honors the shades of gray. It's the marathon approach versus the sprint. It's reality based, not fantasy fueled. I thought that was like, amazing what you wrote. So let's speak to that because a lot of people, they just like, oh, it needs to be this thing. And so, you know.

Yeah, I think that. Thanks for bringing that up and reading it so beautifully. I wrote that because I don't know if any of you guys have ever read Mark Manson's piece on, you know, if it's not a fuck yes, it's a fuck no. And I used to subscribe to that. And I would get into these romances that were so, like in the beginning, like, oh my God, like soulmate. The one. Fuck yes. And they would fizzle and they would burn pretty intensely. And, you know, through experience and through doing this work, I really realized that, you know, all those times I thought it was the one, it was more. It was fantasy fueled. It was, you know, codependency. It was projection. And I had this idea of what love was. Again, we talked about this earlier, like that it's this intense thing, but that's not love. And so I think it's really screwing up an entire generation of people. Because when you're looking at that as your, as a standard for love, you are picking people. Especially if you have a broken chemistry compass. You're feeling chemistry with people that. Fuck yes. Energy with people who can subconsciously wound you in a way that you're familiar with, with. So instead of it being a green light when you get that, oh my God, fuck yes, it's actually a sign of like, your subconscious radar is picking them up and they're picking out that they can wound you and it's actually a red stop sign. And also, what happens when you start off and you have a relationship and you go through life, right? I mean, Dan, I'm sure in your relationship there's been ups and there's been downs and like, what happens when it's not fuck yes the whole time? Do you just abandon it? And so I think we need to. If we're going to have a more fulfilled, you know, outcome in our relationships, we need to start to look at our definition of what love and relationships are. Because what a lot of us are fed and think that we think is love is not love. And I think we need to be more realistic. And this also means when I go talk about chemistry compass and rewiring, that the very first thing you want to do is you're not going to go from choosing people who are toxic and who are intense and off and on to suddenly the next person is secure and stable and reliable. Your brain is going to reject it because it's so foreign to you. You almost need to increase your tolerance to what healthy feels like. And that's why I always encourage people, and I've done this on myself too. Conduct a dating experience. Date 10 people who are completely outside of your type. Older than you, younger than you, just different. Because you will be so surprised that when you give people a chance, you. You might be, you know, pleasantly surprised that you actually don't have this one type. And Dan, you mentioned it earlier, it's not a list of like, oh, you have to be this tall. You have to. Whatever. It's, how do I want to feel? What type of relationship do I want? That's your list. Not how much money do they make? You know, are they blonde? That's bullshit. That's what's keeping you miserable in love. Sorry, I just ranted.

No, no, I like it. I like rants. I like when people have some energy behind it. So, Dean Jackson, holler at us. What's going through your head right now?

You know, I think as we're listening. All of these things that she's sharing are applicable to anybody. No matter what stage of a relationship they're in, they're seeking one, they're in one, they're in a happy one, they're in a troubled one. They're just going through a breakup. But the catalyst that she's chosen to get people into the conversation is that juncture of the. The breakup that, oh, now when people go through a breakup, they feel like, now I can seek out something.

Right?

And what we found with stop your divorce was that all of the information in there would be even more applicable to people who are in a relationship or seeking one, but nobody. It's not on the top of anybody's to do list at that point. Right. Like, then the market for stop your divorce is bigger than or more intense than the market for improve your relationship. And that's really a thing that all the people, even though if they could get it ahead of time, that it would be so much more transforming for them. It's like as soon as somebody says, that's it, I've had enough, I want a divorce, or I'm breaking up with you, it's like the ice has, like now crashed below them and they would do anything just to get back on stable ground. It's like something that immediately changes your priorities. Just like I'm pregnant or you've got cancer or health diagnosis or something that is acute onset with pain and urgency is, Is a catalyst.

It's.

It's fascinating, you know, but that I think from a marketing standpoint, these things, the people who get this, who get the book could be the, the conveyors of the information to other people. Because I imagine that once people get the. Get the information and embrace it, that they want to share it with everybody because they now they've had a transformation and they know how things are different. And people who are struggling in a relationship or choosing the wrong guys, I bet that they're quoting Amy to their friend, saying, you know what? He's an avoidant attachment guy. That's what you're. That's the problem there. Or you're an anxious attacher and they're starting to diagnose people. And this kind of knowledge, you could basically take this book and 90% of it stay the same, repackage 10% of it to frame it from another, you know, from another perspective and have something that is applicable to people not going through a breakup.

You know, Dean, it's like hurt people, hurt people, heal people. Healed people. Right?

Yeah, that's it as they're healing. It's like giving people, you know, this. This. Because what you've got is information and technologies kind of thing that can help people at any stage.

Yeah, Joe, can I just. I saw someone made a joke about how my dating experiment is like, the VC approach. I do want to make a note about the whole dating 10 people experiment, which I'd done on myself. I used to have a very broken chemistry compass. Like, I said, it would point me towards people who are unavailable. And for the longest time, I just pathologized them as narcissists or unavailable without looking at what I was doing, how I was accountable for repeating this emotional experience. And so when I realized that, you know, I was a common denominator, I did this dating experiment. And I went on dates with people who I didn't have an immediate romantic chemistry with, but they were available. These were. They looked secure, and they were intentionally wanting to date me. And I did this for seven months, and I would do two to three dates per person. And I was very open with, okay, you know, if I didn't like them, I would. You know, I would say, like, I remember this one guy named Carter. He's in the book. I said, hey, I don't feel like a romantic attraction, but if you want to hang out as, like, friends, I'm totally cool. And he's like, yeah, no pressure. Like, I think you're an awesome human, would love to get to know you. And I was doing the stage experiment, and there were, like, really lovely people. One showed up with croissants. I was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. But I don't feel chemistry. This is boring. And seven months into the experiment, I was like, oh, this experiment doesn't work. And I remember I was having dinner with Carter. This was probably our 10th time hanging out. And over dinner, we were talking, and I remember this key moment when I just looked across a table, and I was like, oh.

What are you?

Just like that. I recognized that I had a romantic attraction to him. And my dating experiment did work, because if it wasn't for all those people from before, I was slowly, gradually increasing my tolerance to healthy, and I was building my familiarity of, like, oh, this is how stable feels like, oh, this is how when someone's thoughtful, that's how it feels like. And that was helping me rewire my old script from before. And here's the thing about attraction. Your brain might not cognitively process it as attraction, and so sometimes it takes time for you to actually understand that it's attraction because the brain actually has three different mating dries, and they're actually. There's three different chemicals. There's lust, which is driven, testosterone driven. That is that immediately, oh, my gosh, I see you, I'm attracted to you. That's really Mother Nature's way of having you procreate with as many people as you possibly can or have sex with as many people as you can. Right. And the second mating drive is attraction that enables you to zone in on one person, and that's when you feel kind of obsessive, when you. It's all filled with dopamine. It feels amazing when your love is returned. It feels awful when it's not. And then there's a third, which is attachment and bonding. And this is vasopressin, and it's oxytocin, and it's a bonding hormone, the same hormones that are secreted when a mother gives birth or when she's breastfeeding. Love can be sparked by any one of the mating drives. So we're used to the storyline of love is only sparked through lust. You see someone, you immediately feel, and if you don't, then it's not. But that's why you, you know, you might know someone who. They were best friends, and then they got together, right? They had the attachment, and then the lust came later. Same thing happened with my dating experiment. I got to know this guy named Carter through time, and I got to know his character, his values. And over time, I, you know, the lust sparked afterwards. So I just want to explain how you can start to rewire your chemistry compass if you find that yours has been pointing you in the wrong direction.

Awesome. Awesome. Amy, let me ask you this, because I've had about four people that are on right now that are in relationships, and there's been stages where the relationships have been awesome. And right now, they're going through struggling, and they wanted to come on here to actually see what they can learn and how to help. What advice would you give? Because in the midst of how has Covid altered both the relationship dynamics and what you're seeing with people breaking up?

So the pandemic has been the great accelerator of relationships. So it's either helped people recognize that they could be in a great partnership with their best friend or people who are dating, it's accelerated because, wow, we're not killing each other. And we've been quarantined for 45 days. And it's kind of pushed them into commitment or if there was any cracks in the foundation the house is falling down. And so, you know, divorce rates have skyrocketed, breakups have skyrocketed. And so, yeah, I think with the pandemic, the issues that could have been swept under the rug, right, because you're traveling, because you're working so much, all these things, you have to confront them. And it's the same thing with people who are really suffering, too. Those issues that you might have been avoiding or distracting or reaching for your vice, whatever that vice is, you gotta confront it.

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. So I've written some questions down here. I'm looking at them. Which ones I think will be most valuable for everyone? So if someone is in a relationship that they know they need to end, what is the first step you would recommend?

Yeah, so I love to take one step before that is some people don't know when the relationship should end because they're caught in what's called sunk cost fallacy. So if there's anyone out there who you're in a relationship that is, you know, either unhealthy or toxic, and you're kind of feeling stuck, think about this. Sunk cost fallacy happens when we play the stock markets. It is our tendency to invest more into something we've already invested in, whether it's time, money, pain. It's the same reason why if you buy a ticket to a movie, you hate it in the first 20 minutes. You watch the whole thing because you already bought the ticket. Same thing happens in relationships. We say, well, I gave this person the best years of my life, and you're hoping for it to change. And instead of focusing on present and future value, you're focusing on what you've already invested. So I think first thing is, ask yourself, if you were to make the same decision right now, and you have to forget about what you've invested because that's gone, would you choose this person today? And I think that this can apply to other things, from jobs to even friendships. And then, you know, after you've done made the decision that a breakup is necessary, after the breakup, you need to have a full detox. And I like to say 60 days, because you have. When you're in the relationship, you have neural pathways that have been wired together. If you afterwards keep looking at text messages or even call them up to read them out, you're still getting that emotional charge and you're not allowing those neural pathways to prune away. And I look at it like this. If you're still analyzing your ex, blaming your ex, vilifying your Ex. You're still in a relationship with your ex. It doesn't matter if it's days, months, or years.

Yeah, totally. Really good. Well, so, okay, so with. Yeah. So that question. If someone's in a relationship, they need to. What's the first step you'd recommend? The other question I actually had is it's almost the same thing. If someone's looking for a relationship right now, what's the very first step you would recommend?

Well, I have been telling people to try the dating experiment. I think this pandemic is an opportune time to do so. You know, I work with a lot of people who are not happy with the relationship outcomes. And it's like you're. It's like you baking a cake, right? You're baking a cake and you're like, you know, I can't have dairy. It makes me sick. But you keep using milk and you make a cake out of dairy because, you know there's no almond milk. And you would need to make the almond milk. We don't want to do the work up front. So right now, do the work up front. Change the ingredients. Otherwise you're going to still make this cake made with milk. That's going to make you sick. So try the dating experiment. Also, if you are someone that has been a slave to chemistry, consider this the foundation of a relationship or partnership. You need a combination of chemistry, timing, and compatibility. And if you've been a slave to chemistry, I would actually take a look at what are the values that are important. There is an exercise in the book on doing a values checklist where you actually assess your own top 10 values. You look at the last three people you've dated. You also rate them on their values and that will give you an idea. Are you actually choosing people who are similar and scoring similar to you in your values, or is it going down or is it going higher? I think that would give you a good starting point to see if you need to maybe not just give so much priority to the chemistry.

I love it. And by the way, I'm just noticing that our brilliant genius network member and psychiatrist Sam Qurashi is on right now. He's in Saudi Arabia right now. Sam, I want to put you on the spot a little bit because I'm going to recommend that you have you do an Instagram live at some point with Amy. Because Sam has over seven hundred and something thousand people that follow him on Instagram. He puts really conscious, thoughtful content out there. He recently did interviews with James Nestor, who wrote the book Breath who he met at our Genius Network meeting, which is a great book. And then BJ Falk, who is the Stanford professor who's one of his students, created Instagram. And BJ wrote a book called Tiny Habits. And Sam has been doing these lives with things that would be helpful. And Sam, what are your thoughts on what you've heard from Amy so far? Because you've been through a whole slew of dealing with people over the years with relationship issues because you are a psychiatrist. But also I'd like to have you do a live with Amy because I know you have the ability to move a boatload of books and I also know how you're able to reach many people all over the world that can't get access to this in other ways or won't. They don't know about it. So what are your thoughts? First of all, it's good to see you, Joe, and thank you for that incredible intro. Amy, it's an absolute pleasure to, to connect with you and I'd be honored to interview you. I love the way you're phrasing things. The linguistics of the way you're describing things is just, to me, incredible. I was just constantly commenting on that and thinking about what you're saying. I think it's really important first to tackle it in a multiple, from different angles. But at the same time, the idea of healing. You're talking about the recycled pain. I'm thinking of the emotional wound that has never. That hasn't healed. We constantly assume that we're attracted to the people that we think will give us what we lack, when in fact we are attracted to the people that can reveal to us the wounds we haven't yet healed. And what you're actually talking about is healing that wound. If we heal that wound, suddenly our filter, our lens through which we see people will change. We're not going to choose people for the wrong reasons anymore. And because we did the inner work, we healed ourselves and then we can actually choose better. So I love what you're. I love what I'm hearing. I can't wait to buy the book. And I would love to. I'd be honored to interview you.

Thank you.

Perfect. See, I'm just doing what I normally do is I just connect people and then people think I'm cool or something for some reason. But it helps me make up for my low self esteem so I can, can at least feel like I'm useful in the world. So thank you, Sam. I really appreciate it. And yeah, watch, watch some of Sam's Stuff. He puts great stuff out there.

You know, all these things are so universal, you know, and that's where we talk about the, you know, our focus on health, wealth and elf and this whole thing of bringing outside kind of perspectives here because you're a happier person, you're a healthier person in all ways, you're going to be a better entrepreneur. And so it's not just the same. Not just, you know, we focus, we're known for focusing on the marketing stuff, but it's so much a holistic approach and I think this kind of information. And I'm always looking for the marketing lessons in everything, and that's what I've been kind of chiming in with some of the things that are actually at work here. And so I think it's been exciting.

Dave Strean, you actually were instrumental. You and Charlie have been running the I Love Marketing meetup group here in Arizona. And once the pandemic started, we ended up doing it. You were doing one live, and because of that, it ended up leading to us doing these meetup groups live via Zoom. And you had a question, and I want to give you the first opportunity to ask a question to Amy, if you could. Awesome. So, Amy, you know, this has been fantastic. I've learned so much, taken a bunch of notes. I wasn't sure it was going to resonate with me because I met my wife when I was 19 years old. I'd say we've been happily married for 10 years, going on our 25th anniversary as a joke and stuff. But when. No, she's amazing. When you first described the breakup, obviously that's lifetime ago for me going through that, but it. It triggered. It sounded almost identical to a business partnership breakup that I went through. And so I wanted to kind of see does. Do you think your book kind of skirts with that and would help people through. Through those things? Because I've gone through some bad, you know, business breakups that, you know, again, when you describe the breakup experience, I was like, oh, my God, that's the same exact thing.

Yeah. Dave, thanks for sharing. I think that rejection, like when. When there's a breakup of any sort, right, Whether it's friendship or professional romantic, there's a sense of rejection. And human beings are wired to actually really have an adverse reaction to rejection because back in the day, rejection from the tribe could mean death. And so I think that even in a business breakup, you still go through the stages of separation. So the stages of separation on, you know, on a heartbreak romantic, it starts off with Shock, then it is denial, then sadness and depression, then anger. And then it goes back to another stage of denial and possibly relapse where you're like, oh, actually, maybe it's not so bad. Maybe I can salvage this. And then you do that enough times that you're like, oh, no, no, this is terrible. And then you get to a stage of acceptance. So, Dave, I would ask you, when you went through your business breakups, was at a similar kind of stage process. And again, it's not linear. You can bounce back, but you do hit the different stages.

Yeah, I never realized how closely related those could be.

Yeah.

You know what, Dave? So much of. I think the draw for me originally to Amy and her book book was not just love, relationships and things, but it's just relationships in general. Just, you know, going through the ending of certain things or when you're dealing with betrayal and stuff like that. Like, Amy, when someone has been deeply betrayed and they lose faith in humans, they quit. They don't trust. They're just badly wounded. What. What do you say to them?

Yeah, I think that there's different stages of dealing with the pain and the trauma. And it's important to honor what stage you're at because there's different strategies depending on where you're at. Right. In the very beginning, you want to honor the feelings. Right. You don't want to label them as good or bad. I think that especially North America, we label the feelings of sadness or anger like bad, and there's extra shame. And I deal with a lot of overachievers. So overachievers have a tendency like, this is terrible. I want it over, like, get me through this. And they want to fast forward out of the pain. Thing is, the pain needs. It needs air to breathe. And if you just shove it down, you know this. You know, you've talked about this in your own work. It's going to show up in either another relationship, in another behavior. It's going to come out somewhere somehow. So I think the very beginning is just processing and not judging yourself and allowing yourself to go through all of it. Because, you know, I look at it as. Whenever I'm crying, I look at it as tears, as pain exiting my body. And I'm like, oh, I'm just expanding my emotional range. How fortunate am I able to feel all of it? Right. And so I really have reframed my approach to how I look at these emotions versus just going to a shame spiral. So I think there's that in the very first stage. And then I Think. The second stage is practicing compassion. And I don't mean this in a fluffy like, oh, just like, think positive. I mean this as compassion is a muscle that you build and the more you practice it, the stronger it gets. And compassion is very necessary because it is a copy critical ingredient for forgiveness, letting go and acceptance. And you can't just get to forgiveness of someone else or human beings and the world. If you don't have compassion for yourself first. There's tons of things you can do. Kristin Neff is an amazing thought leader on this. She has free guided meditations. Do this every day for 30 days. You will feel a difference. So I think that would be the next thing. And the third part, you know, is when you can get into more the cognitive thing, right? Because it's very easy right now for me to look back and be like, oh, the dots all connected. The worst thing was the best thing. But when you are. If you say that to someone who's just right after a trauma or a breakup or, you know, rejection, that is actually shaming. Don't ever say to someone, you know, just be stronger. It happens for a reason because they can't cognitively get it at that stage. So I think once they've kind of hit a little stage afterwards, that's when you could start thinking about, okay, where am I accountable? What are the patterns here? How can I start shifting this? How can I use this as a catalyst to transform my life? Because pain is an excellent catalyst. So that's how I would approach that. And I just want to leave. One last thing is whether you're dealing with pain from a professional breakup, a friendship, a relationship, or you've been betrayed, I think one of our coping mechanisms is too close. And so I say that our greatest lesson in this lifetime is to practice opening our hearts. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. And I remind myself that when I feel hurt and I'm like, hell, no. Am I going to allow this person or this event have me close up? And I'm like, I'm just going to open it up even bigger. And I really hope that whatever situation you're in right now in your life that you can take that and remember that. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.

Yeah. No, that's. That's so good. That's so good. Amy, do you have time for a couple more questions?

Yeah. Okay.

Awesome. Andrew, you had a quite. Andrew Windham. So if you want to go ahead and ask your question. Sure.

Amy, hey, thanks for being on. I kind of play in the in the college space, when I reworked my life, I had to figure out a place that I felt like I could make contribution. And so to this impact, I play with a lot of teenagers and college kids as they're making huge college decisions and all those things. But you know, the number one feedback we got recently was parents challenged with adulting and their ability to make to transition into mature relationships. So to that end, as a parent and somebody who works with a lot of teenagers and college kids, what's the impact of age given, you know, the testosterone, you know, all of those different chemicals, any insight on where those impact based off of age? And then number two, any just, you know, quick 1, 2, 3, how to's that is a parent or as a coach or somebody who's interacting with kids at this age that we can teach them to build the right relationship muscles and healthy processes to start with so that they don't have to come unwind all this stuff and go through, you know, all the hurt, right? It's the pound of prevention deal, so to speak.

I hear you. So, you know, I always say never trust someone who's never gone through a heartbreak. And so as much as, you know, as parents and as teachers, we don't want people to go through it. I do think that it is important because it teaches you compassion and empathy and it's character building. And so I don't have any specific data on age and heartache and the transition, but I will say that part of that journey is there's knowledge that you can learn, right? You can go to a retreat, you can read a book, but it isn't until you actually go and do the thing and then you might even relapse and then you have the knowledge so that you, you know, the next time do things differently. That's when we integrate the knowledge into wisdom. And so I would never take away that experience from someone. But I do think arming people with tools so that they don't have to suffer is important. Right? You know, I think a lot of people on this chat are agreeing pain is actually not a bad thing. Pain is a messenger. Pain is that whisper that's saying, come on, listen, something's off, listen to me, reassess. And so often we just ignore it until that gets louder and louder, until that pain, it starts screaming. And then you have this big blow up or a breakup. And so, you know, I would teach these people, these younger people, just tools for emotional regulation, labeling the emotion, right? They've done research that shows that even just by labeling, oh I'm feeling the emotion of anger. Where do you feel it in the body? Just by doing that, it actually helps minimize the stress and the intensity of the emotion. I think emotional literacy is really important and if you can learn that at a young age, that's great. Second, what are the coping mechanisms? Because behind, you know, when we look at adults, behind every defensive adult is a wounded child, right. We learn these ways of, of dealing with pain, with reaction, with rejection, anger, all these things at a young age, right. Do we withdraw and go into a hole? Right. How often do you see this in your relationships now? Like when you deal with someone and they just stonewall? Right. When you look at that, that's like a five year old who learned at a very young age, maybe they were shamed for feeling sad or for crying and they learned that the only way to be safe there was to hide in the room and not deal with it. And so I think, you know, whatever age you're at, you can look at what is your automatic go to reaction and then look at, well, where did that come from and how can you respond in a healthier way? I think that's great. And you know, another thing is a lot of younger people, especially when it comes to their first love, there's a lot of angst involved, right? And this is totally normal. And I think that for anyone who feels that anxiety, a really great hack is the minute you feel that anxiety, you want to do a state change because you can't talk your way out of it. Likely at that point it's your amygdala going off and you probably are flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. And so if you look at what gazelles do in the wild, you'll see that when they see a threat and then they see that, oh, they're actually okay, they start shaking their body and it looks like they're convulsing and then they move along. So what they're doing is they're actually shaking off all that excess stress hormones, the adrenaline and the cortisol. Human beings, we need to do the same thing. So, you know, I would suggest this, I do this as myself. I get a shitty email, a work email. And I have had to do this. I just did this last week. I set it timer for two minutes and I shake my body from head to toe. After that I do deep breathing, I do the 4, 7, 8 breath. What's important is that you just make your exhale longer than the inhale. That will calm you down. If you start learning that little emotional Hack at a young age, you will find that the more you repeat this, you're almost like a ninja through the different emotions and situations that happen in life. And then you don't kind of blow up in these, like, terrible email replies when you're pissed off. I hope that helped.

No, I actually think everything you just shared was so damn valuable. I mean, I've always loved the line, the issues are in the tissues, and it is in your body. And talk about breakup boot camp and renu. How do people actually take your training and your course if they want to do it?

Yeah, so, I mean, I used to have physical retreats, but it's on hold because of the pandemic, so. So now we offer online intensives. I bring in 10 different experts from psychologists, behavioral scientists, sex educators, even a dominatrix who teaches on the psychology of power dynamics. And we help people learn the tools for emotional regulation and really learn what are those subconscious beliefs and patterns that are causing the same emotional experience? And we help them rewire that. You know, people think that they're coming because of an ex.

It's.

Again, I'll say it again. It's never just about the exits. Recycled pain. So we really look at the underbelly, the foundational layer. Why did you feel like the rug was ripped out from underneath you in the first place? How did you get to a point where you put so much of your sense of worth onto a relationship? Those are the bigger questions. So, yeah, you can look it up@renewbreakupbootcamp.com so I do the online events, and soon the physical events, hopefully.

Yeah. Awesome. Hey, Dean, I got a. I'm gonna. I'm gonna put you on the spot here and make. I'm gonna make another introduction to you and Amy. You already know Michael, but Dr. Michael Bruce. Are you on. Can you unmute yourself if you're there and say something?

Hey, guys. How's it going?

Wonderful. Okay, so here's why. Okay, so Michael Bruce is literally one of the top sleep doctors in the world. His website is thesleepdoctor.com. he's been on Oprah multiple times. He's been on Dr. Oz a whole bunch of times. He's absolutely brilliant. He's a psychologist. Very, very, very valuable and helpful. And I think with what Amy's doing and the work you do and the sleep you do, I think you and Amy need to know each other. What's the link between sleep and fatigue and stress and all that? And what are your thoughts on everything that you heard?

Amy, your stuff is awesome. I think what you're doing is super cool. I will tell you, I've saved more marriages as a sleep doctor than I ever would have as a marital therapist just by dealing with the sleep related issues that come with relationships. I mean, in all honesty, I would say 75% to 80% of my patients show up as couples and one person is pissed off at the other person. They're either not sleeping or they're snoring.

And it's.

And both of those situations are incredibly disruptive to the couple from a stress and from a Covid standpoint. I mean, give me a fucking break. Like every, it's. It hits sleep so damn hard. It's unbelievable. And you know, people are calling me constantly now and they're saying things like, oh my God, you know, sleep, sleep is. My sleep is all messed up. Things like, actually the last time I was on, I think it was Sam Q maybe who reminded us all that the sleep deprivation, what was it, Sam? Wasn't it like sleep deprivation? Yeah, Karashi, that's what it was. So it was, it was. Sleep deprivation was like 11 days or something.

That's the record. Yeah. Right.

So I think that somebody will break that record after a breakup because every time I talk to these people after they've had these major traumatic relationship events, they're not sleeping for days or they weren't sleeping beforehand, and then they're making really bad decisions because they're so damn sleep deprived. And one of the first things that I talk about with couples is before you decide to do anything, let's get you both sleeping better because it's really, really hard to make any type of an emotional commitment or decision in any way, shape or form unless you are, well, slept. I also want to talk very quickly about what Amy talked about, about the shaking off. So that's 100% correct. It's actually I have a new book that's going to be coming out and I talk a lot about energy during the day and it's a great way to shake off negative energy and to insert positive energy. And I know, Joe, that's something that you and Dan Sullivan have spoken about on many an occasion about energy for entrepreneurship and how to maintain that. So, Amy, thank you for bringing that up. It's awesome.

And what I like so much about what Amy talks about is like getting people out of the fantasy because it's real easy to look on social media. It's real easy to look outside of your own life and actually think that people, you know, have it better than you. And that sort of comparison is a terrible place to be. You can either compare yourself to what you don't have and give yourself perspective, or compare yourself to what you know you think it should be, and then you're going to be miserable. It's very similar to Dan Sullivan's GAP conversation. So, Amy, what have I not asked you, or what have we not talked about? That would make our conversation here a little incomplete if we don't bring it up. Is there anything you can think of?

Wow. I mean, I could go on for hours. You guys are so much fun.

This might be a weekly thing with. There you go.

Yeah, I think maybe I'll just leave off with this, Right? I mean, we started off with my story of me in a bathtub contemplating suicide after my breakup. And I tried everything I could to heal. I did therapy, yoga retreats, Reiki, psychics. You name it, I tried it. And it wasn't until about two and a half years after an emotional intensity subsided. But I still kind of had this chip on my shoulder, and my heart was closed for business, even though I said I wanted a relationship. And I was having a conversation with a friend who I hadn't seen since a breakup, and I was catching him up on the story, and I was saying, telling him about the betrayal and how unjust it all was, and he just stopped me, and he goes, so, Amy, does this story serve you? And I'm like, no. He's like, can you tell me another time where there was kindness and there was love? And he says, tell me some examples. And I was like, oh, yeah. Well, there was this time. This time I started smiling. And it was in that moment I realized that for the last two and a half years, I had tunnel vision of only seeing the dark, of only vilifying him and the entire situation and really being a victim in the situation. And in that kind of tunnel vision, I couldn't see any of the positive. I couldn't feel grateful that I was moving across to another country and starting a whole new life, something I would have never dared do back when I was still in a relationship with this person. All these positive things were happening because of that breakup. Like I mentioned earlier, a breakup can be the shakeup you need to redirect your life. And, you know, it was in that moment that I realized that I may not be able to change the events of my history, but I can choose to change the story I attach to those events. And I'll repeat this to you now, because we all have stories and our Stories are the programming. It's what's dictating our lives. And it's so important that whatever you're going through, whether it's a breakup or your business is hurting because of the pandemic, is that you are the author and you're just writing your next chapter. And so I'll repeat it. You may not be able to change the events of your history, but you can choose to change the story you attach to those events. And my hope for you, my intention to you is to whatever it is, especially when you're going into the new year, look at your life and do an assessment. Where is our story that's just not serving you anymore? It's kind of outlived its purpose, and maybe it's time to rewrite it.

So, Amy, what if you could wave a magic wand? How would you want your book and your work to impact people? What's your big wish with all this?

I feel that the broken heart is like a weapon. And when you don't heal it, you just keep hurting yourself and the people that come along your path. And I look at anyone that I've had heartbreak with or who treated my heart unkindly, and they have broken hearts. And a lot of the times it stemmed from childhood and it was just never dealt with. And so I do what I do because I want people to start having healthier relationships with themselves. And the reason, you know, this entire book, it's not about your love story with someone else, it's about the love story you have with yourself. It always has been. And so I would love people to just have the takeaway of learning the tools of how to manage their emotions, of how to reframe their story. And there's actual tools of how you can do so. And I think it's just, you know, creating one small degree of change and you can actually completely shift the, you know, where you end up. So that's my hope, is that we can just have healthier relationships.

So you're holding up that book, all of those. So obviously this writing, this has done so much to help you in your own thinking and understanding about it, which is a testament to taking a topic and going deep with it. So what's all those little post it notes?

So there's quotes, there's key quotes. This one is do not let chaos be your measure of chemistry. Do not confuse a lack of tension with a lack of passion. Yeah. So they're keynotes and key, like kind of wisdom nuggets that I want to be able to flip Through.

Yeah. And I will say this, too. You know what? The batteries don't run out on something like this. And when you're dealing with an actual physical book, there are just things in terms of, you know, feel and that you cannot do with screens. And so I still. Even though I have every type of device under the sun, people even gift me every kind of device under the sun, I still like reading physical books. Gary Chapman, who wrote the Five Love Languages, I was talking to him years ago, and he had said to me, he goes, if you want to know what someone's love language is, listen to what they complain about. And when someone's complaining, it kind of gives signs. But a lot of times a complaint can be perceived as that's very toxic. You should never complain. And a lot of times it's a. It's a cry for help. And what Amy said about pain is a messenger. I mean, I apply that to physical pain in the addiction world. I mean, these.

These.

These pains that show up. And then the funny thing I was going to say is, I remember I was talking to Dean Jackson. You remember you said to me, why can't shut the fuck up? Be a love language. And it was kind of funny, but. And so he tries to apply that to me all the time. That's your love language telling me, right? So, Dean, I don't know how to wrap this thing up other than I want to kind of.

I think I can speak for everybody and say that everybody here wishes you an amazing sabbatical. I think you're going to have an amazing time. I can't wait to see how it all plays out. But I'm going to be here. We're all going to be here. We don't need to stop meeting because Joe's off on a sabbatical. I might get a word in edgewise this year. You might see what I have to say this year. So I'm looking forward to it, see what we can do here. Tim Paulson, he's a much more accommodating partner in the conversation department. So I'll get to say some things. We'll see Dean's perspective for a year here, and we'll welcome you back with open arms. I might be burned out. They might have burned out. Spoken all my words over the course of a year here.

Well, let me say this so I've known Dean for two decades. I always say this publicly. Dean is way more brilliant at marketing than I think I could hope to be right now. I'm the hustler, though. I'M the one that actually. Because he's just the laziest person on the planet. So I actually got make shit happen and that sort of stuff. And he just pontificates and just says all the smart shit. But in truth, Dean has a brilliant marketing mind. We have helped. I mean, we've had millions of people that have downloaded our podcast. Many people are going to listen to this one. I hope you guys share with anyone that's going through a breakup. We'll have an edited version. So it's not just me babbling all this stuff, but Dean. He's got a whole plan. And my whole team at Genius Network, like, going on a sabbatical has caused me to have to set up my company. I've got the strongest team I've ever had. And what I'm hoping is that my life just. I have this sign on the wall that says, be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And I have a lot of excellent things in my life. I have a lot of excellent relationships, but I have a lot that are not. And so the best way that I know how to do it is to give myself space. Because as I've said with Dan Sullivan many times, we had a. It's really. I heard it from Dan. We did a podcast on. It is entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. And even my friend Annie Lala, who's a love coach, she says with some entrepreneurs, we to need. You're single, you're not dockable. And if you want to get into a relationship, you have to be dockable. You can't just take your ocean liner or your boat and you pull up to the shore and then get out. You have to dock it. And what happens is, as entrepreneurs, we can bury ourselves in work or activity and we're not available. And I found that with myself, especially when I was betrayed, especially when I had a breakup, I closed myself off. And I'm the connection guy, right? And I'm still connected in a lot of ways, but I got disconnected in a lot of ways. And so part of my sabbatical, what I've learned is there's many ways to do a sabbatical. There's not like, here's how you do it. And it's my own life. I'm going to do whatever is expanding for me and not contracting, but by announcing it. I have gotten hundreds of messages, comments, letters since I announced it, where people are saying, this has inspired me. I'm going to do this. And it made me realize that the driven people of the world, man, they just beat themselves up a lot. And I'm hoping that I don't have any goal, like I got to write a book about this or I have to create something that comes out of it. If I feel the need to do that, I will. But I'm not going into it for that reason. I'm going into it for rejuvenation. And what David Box said in the video, which I recommend you watch, we posted it on Joes. He said I didn't. He talks about how to. He did a year sabbatical, but he talks about how to do a six week sabbatical. And he says, I didn't recharge my batteries, I replaced them. And so I'm going to literally replace my batteries. And, you know, and I'm hoping that wherever you're at in your life, there's some area that's not excellent. And it may be, I mean, literally the reason I wanted to end the year and we fit in. This meeting with Amy, I mean, my team, I've got to give my team credit. They had two fricking days to just promote this as best we could. If they would have had a week, we would have three times as many people on it. But they did a really wonderful job because my team is awesome. And when I said I'm going to go on sabbatical, it's amazing because they're like, let's get this asshole out of here so we can get some real work done. And it was so hard for me to ever let go. So this is a real process of letting go. It's going to be a bit of an identity death, but I hope that in whatever way, whatever I'm saying right now can encourage you to. How do you solve one problem that solves 100 problems? How do you solve one problem that solves 50 problems? And there's some problems in my life that I've not been able to figure out how to solve at the level of thinking that created them. Using the Einstein quote, you know, the same level of thinking that created the problem is not the same level of thinking needed to solve it. So I'm going to go off and I'm going to immerse myself in music and art and recovery work and health. Because you know one of my favorite proverbs, he or she who has their health has a thousand dreams. He or she who does not have their health has only one. So there is nothing more important than taking care of your mental and physical health. And so we've got a whole team of people that are going to continue to provide awesome stuff. Genius Network, we've got an incredible faculty. It's going to be run by the members. We've got many Genius Network members that are on here right now. And the shit that we've got lined up for you guys is so good. So I appreciate everyone that's part of Genius Network, all of you that if you're here for the first time, welcome. We've got so much good stuff on. I love marketing. Subscribe to I Love Marketing. If you have anyone that needs help with Genius recovery, with recovery, just go to geniusrecovery.com it's all free. We don't sell anything there. And then my book, Life Gives to the Giver. If you've not read it, go to Joe's freebook.com and Dean Jackson is going to teach people this year how to basically put information in front of somebody in order to help them. So today, you know, break up boot camp. You have an issue in your life. Let's put this information in front of you in the form of a conversation and interview. Let's also put more information in front of you in the form of a book. And you can go as deep with this as you want. But all of you have expertise and you all have skills. So not only do we want to bring useful content to you, content is valuable, but context is infinitely more valuable. So we want to, you know, we want to provide things that help build a better entrepreneur. And so, yeah, on behalf of myself and everyone, thank you guys for listening to me babble and for all the wonderful kind messages and kind words. And you are going to be in English, incredible hands with my team and Dean Jackson moving forward. Stay on the list. Make sure you subscribe to everything that we have and we will notify you every time we're doing a live meeting. Tim Poulson will always show up. I've worked with Tim. Anything else you want to say? We've been working together for 20 years now and you. Yeah, I want to say we're going.

To miss you, Joe.

I'm looking at the chat, man. You are a beloved fellow. So thank you. And we're just all delighted. We love you, Joe.

We love you, man.

Your team loves you. So, yeah. So that's it, everyone. I appreciate you and those of you that are still on taking the time to be on here, I hope you found it really valuable and I wish you all the very best. I know it's been one hell of a year and I know we got some craziness in front of us, but take care of yourselves because you are ultimately the million dollar racehorse and you're in good hands with an incredible team. So I will see you all 2022. Okay, Joe Polish here and me and Amy and Dean Jackson just got done having a conversation with Amy Chan who wrote this book Breakup Boot Camp. And if you're going through any struggles right now, in any grief, then please buy this book and read it and share it with anyone that you know may need it. And we're going to have this episode we did on YouTube and the I Love Marketing podcast is really incredibly valuable. Amy Chen Break Up Boot Camp.

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