Everything We’ve Learned About LOVE (Live Audience Q&A + A SURPRISE!) | Martha Higareda

My friend, 2024 is your year to become the greatest version of yourself. And I want to share with you three key ways to build, sustain, and elevate momentum toward your goals this year. Number one, surround yourself with like minded individuals who will promote your growth and make sure you choose your circle wisely. And anyone that listens to this show, you know they're a good person to keep around. Number two, invest your money in your own personal growth. This helps raise the stakes, it helps you hold yourself accountable to stick to your dreams. And remember, you you pay attention to what you pay for. And number three, plan ahead. Before the year gets ahead of you, commit to putting yourself in environments that will transform you, that will develop and grow you. And I've got one place in mind that I know will catapult you forward in 2024. And this year we're moving our annual Community event, the Summit of Greatness, to sunny Los Angeles. And I don't want you to miss out on this electrifying experience. You'll surround yourself with other conscious Achievers. You'll learn from worldclass leaders and speakers and watch the magic that unfolds around you if you're ready. to join us for the first ever Summit of Greatness in Los Angeles, then visit lewishouse.com/tickets and to save 20% off on your tickets, enter code CALIFORNIA at checkout. Again, go to lewishouse.com/tickets and use CALIFORNIA at checkout to save 20% off. I did have one final question that I want to ask and I actually have never asked this question to anyone in 10 years of my podcast. I wanted to ask I was curious. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Grateful for you guys for being here. We've got a special, special conversation I'm about to have with someone that I think you guys probably like more than me. And I'm excited to talk about everything that I've learned over the last few years with her. So with that, let's make sure to give her a lot of love after we cue this video. Okay, we're gonna sit up here.

Okay.

I think they're supposed to bring us some chairs.

Oh my god.

Well they do.

That's so beautiful.

Put the chairs right here.

I'm so emotional. I love you too.

All right. We center, hold on, let me get a center stage here. Okay. All right, this is a first of Summit of Greatness. I've never had a conversation, me personally, about relationships or love, one, because I feel like I have so much to learn still, you know. We don't have kids, we're not married, none of these things, but we've been together for a few years and we decided after a bunch of different, let's call it, interesting relationships we've had, we decided we both wanted to try something different. with each other. And I was like, this is going to be a complete experiment and it could fail or it could be an incredible, beautiful experience together. And when I met Martha, it was a little over two years ago, we met in a very unique way that I said to myself, ah, crap. Because I said to myself, I met her at a time where I didn't want to be in a relationship. Does anyone remember those times where I don't want to be in a relationship in my life right now and then you meet someone, you're like, Damn it, I didn't want to meet someone and be in a relationship. But I met her and there should be a slide in a second. I don't see it on the screen here, but I think our team has it in the background, a photo. I met her and yeah, you can put that up. If you guys want to put that up, that's fine. I met her and you're not going to be able to really, maybe you can see what this is, yeah. So I met her and my phone screen, which I showed you earlier, When I met her, I picked her up and we went to a restaurant and my phone was sitting there and that light, that photo popped on, kind of right in the middle console. We were sitting like this, right? I'm driving her to dinner and that pops up and I see that she looks down and sees it. It's during, you know, it's darker out, it's like seven o'clock, so there's no light, so she sees it, this like flash. And I go really quickly, I go, we had just met five minutes prior to this. And I go, oh, that's, I don't have a kid or anything, you know? I was like, this is not my son. And she goes, are you healing the inner child? And so she right away she kind of understood what this was because I was going through therapy, I was going through a healing of old memories so that I could remember the future and step into that future self. And she goes, oh, I know what this is because I have this on my phone right now. and so she had it on her, she didn't have her iPhone with her, but she had her laptop or her iPad, and she showed me the photo of her younger self on there. And so that entire first night we met, we were talking about, you know, healing and therapy and, you know, consciousness and vision for relationships that we both wanted to explore and step into. And so it was a really unique experience to meet someone right away who had a similar history of, I guess, relationships that weren't living up to what they, what we'd expected, I guess, right? Not to blame or make wrong of anyone for either side of us, but just, okay, it wasn't what was expected. And what was missing from us really and why they didn't work out was the things where we were reflecting on individually, not blaming, but taking responsibility. And it's been a beautiful journey because after a few months of us hanging out and I guess dating, I said, listen, would you be open to doing therapy when we get committed? If we get committed in a relationship, would you be open to doing therapy from the beginning? And I was kind of worried. I was like, maybe she's like, this guy's weird and I'm not gonna do it. But right away she was like, yes, actually I wanted to suggest that for us. And so she was already like thinking about it and I said, this might feel and sound weird, like who enters a relationship in therapy? But we're not entering for the reasons most people go to therapy. We're entering because we wanted to create conscious values together. We wanted to create ground rules together. We wanted to create agreements together. We wanted to create better communication from the beginning together, as opposed to assuming and resentfulness or whatever it might be. And so I was just like, I'm in a whole experiment phase, and I don't care if this feels weird or it takes too much time, but we ended up going, you know, for a long time, you know, and we would go for, like, five, six, seven, eight hour sessions on Saturdays while everything was amazing. It's like there was nothing wrong in the relationship in the beginning. We were just, how can we expand to set ourselves up for more success? Now, that might sound extreme or sound like a lot of work or sound like, oh man, but shouldn't it just be like this easy thing? It was easy and it feels effortless because we made conscious communication and agreements a part of our foundation. As opposed to waiting two, three, four, five years and being like, why do you do this? And why did this happen? And why did whatever it might be? So it's been a beautiful journey. And I'm so grateful for you. I love you very much. I'm glad that you're here to talk about this. And I did a first, was it this year or last year when you came on the podcast?

It was, I think it was this year.

Yeah, this year.

I never, the beginning of the year.

Had anyone that I'd been in a relationship with on my show. And so it was the first time I felt safe to have someone that I was in a relationship with on the show. so many of you and all the women on my team said, we need to have Martha talk more about the things that she's learned as a woman in relationships because all these comments, all these women that are struggling relationships love the interview. Every woman on my team was like, please, we want to hear more from Martha. And so I'm so glad you're here and I'm excited to talk about this because you have so much wisdom. I don't know anyone else besides me who does as much therapy as her. And she is like a dedicated student to understanding herself, her mind, and other people constantly. She's got coaches, she's reading books, she's doing meditations. I thought I was obsessed with this stuff, but she's a whole nother level. So it's amazing to have someone who thinks this way as well. So I'm just very grateful for you. I love you and thank you so much. I love you so much. Thank you. I wanted to ask you.

Can I share something with them?

Sure.

The way we met was very beautiful and very spiritual. And we dove right into talking about, for some reason, we've lived very similar lessons throughout the years. And it was really, really, really spiritual. And however, I was in Tulum, and for some strange reason, they closed everything that night in Tulum. And I was heading back to-- because I was thinking, well, you know, the night just started. We went to a beautiful restaurant. We were-- it was amazing, because I don't know why people, like, took out these, like, fireworks.

It was just-- They, like, celebrated us in the restaurant. It was really fascinating. Now, for those who know Martha, who don't know who she is, she's a famous celebrity in Mexico and her country. And so, anywhere we go-- anywhere we go, she's being celebrated. But it felt like they were celebrating us, which was cool. Cool, I'm like there, I'm experiencing it. There's fireworks in the restaurant, people are dancing in front of us. They brought all the food out, like.

To sample everything, and I was like.

Oh, I could get used to this.

So I'm like, let's go to Mexico more often, right?

Yeah.

And it was beautiful. And then I thought, okay, well, we just literally, they closed the restaurant 40 minutes later. I was like, where do we go? I was like, I'm not gonna have him in my apartment, because I just met him.

I don't know, you know?

No, I mean, like, I didn't-- Put.

In rolling, though, you know?

So then I thought, well, the easiest thing to do is to go to my condo where I live, and I have my neighbors. Meanwhile, I'm texting my neighbors, hey, I'm coming to my condo with some random guy. I didn't know who he was. Well, he wasn't random.

Well, first off, she knew who I was. She had been following me and stalking me for-- Stalking me? She started following me. She was obsessed with the interviews and the podcast.

She heard, she saw one interview and.

She was like, oh, she saw an interview with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Yeah. She was working on meditation stuff with him. And she saw the interview and was like, who's that guy?

You know? And I followed you on Instagram. And, but then because I didn't, like, you know, in Instagram, it just shows you the algorithm when you like a bunch of stuff. So I just followed him. So then the algorithm never showed me his content again. And like two years later or something like that, a year later, I don't know.

Six months later or something.

Something like that. Anyway, what I was gonna say is that we, you know, I'm texting, you know, my neighbors like, hey, I'm coming. So I thought I gotta be in a public place. because I'm not gonna have him in my apartment. So I decided, let's go to the pool.

And guys, if a girl asks you to come back to her pool at midnight, I mean, we're not gonna go there. It's okay. Anyways, this isn't about how the whole thing started. What I wanna talk about is, Really, why do you think women struggle a lot? I feel like this is, I mean, I'm doing a lot of relationship content on our show and it's just the comments are crazy. 'Cause I feel like a lot of women have been struggling with the idea of love, romance, happily ever after, whatever our society has told us or taught us about love. Why do you feel like a lot of women struggle in love and in relationships. How did you struggle and how did you overcome that over these last kind of few years in your own practice and studies?

Yeah, well, I, you know, in my country, I do a lot of romantic comedies and I write them and I produce them with my family that are here and my mom and dad are right here. I want to say something that My parents are just about to be 42 years together. Wow.

42 years married. Wow, that's amazing.

And although I was being very successful in all these movies that are romantic comedies, in my personal romantic life, my personal romantic life sucked. It was really bad.

I guess that sounds like a great start to a romance comedy.

Totally.

Totally.

It's almost like nobody gave me the memo, although my parents have been telling me all my life, but sometimes you don't listen to your parents. And the older I get, the more I realize mom and dad were always right. But I just felt like nobody gave me that memo, or I just didn't know how to go about it and read it really well and really apply it. So I was suffering a lot in love. And four years before we met, I'd come from, I'd broken up with a relationship that lasted seven years. And I remember being very sad, actually very depressed, and thinking, I'm just gonna give up. Like, how? Like, what is this thing about love? And I remember that, you know, after I went through the breakup, I was the kind of people that immediately I was thinking, oh, I gotta have my heart filled again. So where's my guy? And I was in the look for like, where's my guy? And I remember in LA, because I like salsa, I went out to this salsa place after this horrible breakup. I was like, okay, I think it's time now. I think I'm ready. I hadn't done at that time any therapy, any anything. And I remember being at this place and just looking around, and I remember this guy approaching me. and I thought, oh, you know, there he comes. And I saw him in slow motion, and he came towards me, and I was like, oh, my God, you know, I've been dating for seven years, so I didn't remember what it was to be out in the world. And when this guy approaches me, he passes me and hits my show, and I'm like, damn. And there was this other guy. I remember seeing this guy. this guy, he was very short, very Latino with like a mustache, and he was dancing this woman that was taller than him, the boobs of the woman were like up to his face, I remember. And dancing and laughing, and I'm like, oh my God. And then they leave together, they're kissing, I'm like, oh wow, you know? How is it that they figure it out and I haven't figured it out? You know, they're having a blast and I don't know what's going on.

And.

I went to a Dr. Joe Dispenza, and for those who have been there, there's this beautiful exercise he gives in which you can meditate about what you want and you create a symbol. And when you create that symbol, you close your eyes and you find the symbol and you meditate about it. And I created my symbol. And then you let it go and see if the universe will bring you that. And because I thought I was ready, immediately after that, I entered a relationship with a person that, sadly, was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. So that relationship was even worse. And I realized, after a horrible breakup, that two things happened. I remember being inside of this bathroom, this other person yelling, and hitting the door. And me worried that I was going to be physically in danger. And I thought, at the same time I thought, I need to leave. I thought, why is it that I can't leave? And that brought me into a journey that finally, obviously, I ended up leaving.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of women have that similar type of experience. Maybe it's not a physical screaming, but it's some type they feel like they can't leave, but they know they want to leave.

Yes.

Why is that?

I think it's a combination of three different things. One, I saw this line in a movie, actually, that it says, Everyone has the love that they think, not think. Everyone has the love that they believe they deserve. And when I was in this bathroom, really literally afraid of my physical health, I thought, what are my beliefs? Do I believe I deserve this? And if I do, therefore I have it. It's right here. And so I, after I left that relationship that took me on a journey to find out what was wrong with me, and I realized that some of the romantic comedies and these romantic movies and the princess movies, they're great, they're fantasies, they're not the real life, but in some way they program ourselves to believe that that is what love is. Meaning the beauty and the beast. It's a great story, it's a beautiful story, I love these type of stories. They're great, they're for children.

But when you stay with your abuser.

Yes, so the beauty is a woman that is helpless. Is literally entrapped, imprisoned by this beast, but she has the task that she's gonna find out what's good in him and show it to him and bringing out of him and fix them in order to find love.

No one here knows about wanting to fix any guys, do they?

I mean, we tried in a way to fix our partners in the past. That's the truth. Although we were being very inspirational to them, in reality, we were trying to fix them.

We weren't accepting.

We were not accepting who they were. And so, in a way, you're programmed to believe that that is love. And the other thing is that.

I.

Have my parents are right here and they're beautiful and they're a wonderful couple. The way they have grown together as a couple is absolutely inspirational for me. And there were moments in my childhood in which we are Latino family. So very joyful moments and at times both of them and they would say today they're explosive, not as much anymore, but they used to be. And this mix of joy and explosiveness, I kind of thought, oh, that's what love is, right? So then therefore I was attracting people.

Passion.

Yes, the passion, the chemistry, the explosion, you know? And so you start attracting people that is similar to the way you grew up, in a way. Your perception of the way you grew up, which I think it's very important. The memory. You know, because it's interesting, I sit down with all of my siblings and we can have very different memories of the same moment. So it depends on how we encapture and encapsulate that moment in our psyche. And so that took me on a journey with therapy to go and visit the five inner child wounds, which I did. And I also am very grateful for my parents because at the time I sold my house in LA, so I was coming back, I was homeless, I went back to living with my parents. I don't remember how old I was, but like up in my 30s. It was great because I got to have the opportunity to go for long walks with both of them to become an adult. And the reason why I say this is because becoming an adult is to have the perspective of not a child anymore. All of these memories we hold dear to us, my dad left, It was horrible. I felt abandoned. You know, whatever the story is, because it is true, it's your story. But when you get the chance to look at it with a different lens, with the lens of your adulthood, and if you get a chance to talk to your parents or write them a letter, even if you never give it to them, it's okay. And understand from their perspective what they were going through is when you become an adult. Yeah. And you realize, oh, they had hard times and they were doing the best they could with the tools they had at that time. And if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be the woman I am today. And for everybody in every circumstance with every parent we've had.

I know you have learned a ton. And we talk about this stuff like every night. We're always talking about these things. But you created an acronym about kind of your perspective on love and relationships. I love to hear what this acronym is for creating kind of a balanced, healthy, conscious relationship based on challenges you've been through and where we're at now.

Yes. So my acronym is the word balanced. And balanced with triple C, actually. We'll go into it.

It's not passion or chemistry.

It's not passion, it's not chemistry. No, no. That's the other thing, because I think chemistry Chemistry is extremely overrated. It should be valued because I think it's important, but it's extremely overrated because what chemistry does, and this is why they say love is blind, is because it really gets in the front of your head, creates all these chemicals and you're not able to see the person as who they really are.

That's true.

You're feeling these chemicals and you think you like the person, but you're actually, what you're liking is the chemical reaction that person is creating in you. You don't know this person. How can you really like them or love them? So that's why I'm a firm believer in the advice that my parents always told me, which is spend time getting to know the other person. And everything that comes your way is just information. You don't try to add to it, make them more amazing that they really are, and also you don't try to delete all the little things and little red flags that you're seeing. Everything is information.

And you don't, what I've heard you talk about is not choosing to be with someone based on potential.

No, no, no, no.

Why not?

Because then you're basically going to spend a lot of time to try to mold them and make them or encourage them into becoming that potential, But every person is just living their own life. Nobody wants to be changed. You know, saying to a person, you should do this, you should do that. Nobody likes that. I guess it's different if you're seeing.

That someone's taking their own actions and they're becoming something. Yes. That's different. Then you're inspired by that potential. Yeah. But if you're like, wow, they're so good, but they could be so much more, but they're not taking any actions.

To show it, then that's not the same. And that's why I think the key of what you just said is if you're already seeing they're taking action. The problem is if they're not taking action, but you are the one seeing that they could take the action, you're gonna start saying, hey, do this, do that, do this. And at the end of the day, that creates a dynamic that is like this. You telling this person that they should be different, and that creates a lot of resentment from the other person, and a lot of resentment on yourself, because you're trying really hard to change them.

Right, right. One of the things that, you know, before you get into your acronym, which I know I think is really powerful, we've read so many books together, I'll talk about some of this. We've done so many different things together, which has been really cool. But one of the things that we talked about before we got, you know, committed to one another, we spent many months together, so much time together before we got committed. I made a conscious decision, and I think you did as well, that we were going to choose to accept the person for who they were in that moment. and what we've experienced and saying, okay, if this is who you are, I choose to accept you. It doesn't mean I'm not gonna get frustrated or have some aggravations here and there, but choosing to accept and love you for this person that I'm experiencing and let stuff go, just not let other things affect me. That takes a lot of work for me to continue to grow and a lot of work for you to continue to grow to accept one another. So it's been, but having that and feeling like I can be a hundred percent who I am is the greatest peace and freedom I've ever experienced in my life.

Me too for me.

And I'm sure for you, like I told her before this day, I said, listen, if we're gonna choose to commit to one another, I said, I'm never going to get angry at you. And I don't think I have. Maybe I've gotten, you know, a little frustrated, but I haven't gotten angry at you in over two years. No. I mean, Call me out if I am. No, you haven't. I've gotten maybe frustrated or I've been tired or I've been, you know, whatever, not my best self, but I'm not getting angry at you. And hopefully I never do get angry at you. But I made that commitment. I was like, I am going to accept you. You know, as long as we're living into the agreements that we've agreed to with flexibility, with, you know, patience, then I should have no reason to be angry at you because I've gotten to know you up to this point of who you are, I've seen so much of you, probably 90% of your personality I got to witness in multiple months of tons of time and trips and traveling and all these things we went to. I was like, okay, I've seen a lot of your personality. Obviously, I don't know everything about you, but we knew a lot about each other. And I was like, okay, if this is who you are, then there's no reason for me to get angry. Unless you start not acting this way and you act like a completely different person.

Yeah.

I'm going to accept you and never get angry at you because there's no reason for me to. And hopefully that makes you feel at.

Peace because it makes me feel very at peace.

And I know, and I said, and that's my one thing, I need you to accept and love me because if I'm gonna give that to you, I don't want someone getting angry at me or reactive or frustrated. It doesn't work for me. Yeah. And so it was a mutual agreement and understanding from the beginning. And again, I was like, it doesn't mean you can't be frustrated or let down or sad or disappointed. You can have emotions and feel things, but lashing out on me doesn't make sense if we're trying to create a value system of conscious relationship. For me, it didn't make sense, because I'd had that so many times in the past, and I didn't like it. So I'd rather be alone and single and peace in my own space than be on eggshells, wondering when is someone going to be unhappy with me or react to me or Whatever. And so it's been a beautiful experience. I'm very grateful for you for that. Beautiful experience, right? But I don't know if a lot of people can have learned how to do that. And so what is this balanced acronym that you use?

Oh yeah, so okay, this, I think this is very important. I mean, at least it was for me, and it is for me. One of them, so I said it's balanced, right? So the B, which is super important, is be yourself. A lot of the times when we meet someone new, we are trying to mold ourselves to who they are, or just show the best version of yourself all the times the whole time, or things like that. Just be yourself. And in order for you to be yourself and your authentic self, get to know yourself. And getting to know yourself also takes the exercise of knowing how do you like to be loved and how you like to love.

And we got very fortunate because early on we went through so many different exercises on our love languages. Yeah. I don't know if it was like just synchronicities or timing, but we have the exact same order of love language, meaning what I like to give, I also like to receive, and she likes to give and receive. as well. So, I'm not really a gift person. If she buys me a gift, I'm like, thank you, but it's not like, oh, it makes me feel so loved and so warm and I feel so appreciated and seen. It's like, I'm cool, but I can buy this myself. You know, I'm kind of have that mentality. I'm like, okay, cool, but it doesn't make me feel loved. But touch and affirmations, you know, and words of affirmation, like, I'm doing that with you all day and you're doing that with me. And I'm like, man, I feel really loved. So I don't have to work harder to make you feel loved. And you don't have to work harder to make me feel loved or do something that you normally don't do authentically. And I think that alignment has been really helpful. And I'm not saying it's what has to happen, but it's been really helpful for me and for us.

Yeah, it's been really helpful. And even if we didn't have the same love languages, because maybe some people here say, Wait, wait a second. We don't have the same in love languages. We do. And this is great. Mom and dad, they have it too. They have words of affirmation with each other and acts of service with each other. But if you have different ones, you can have the conversation and then do the things that you know for the other person will make them feel loved.

Exactly.

And then vice versa.

Exactly. So it's the B.

So the B is be your authentic self. The A is so important, which we touched a little bit on this. acceptance is so important to accept the other person, which is why it's important to take your time to get to know them, because you're going to see if the things that you hold as your values, as your vision, and as your lifestyle matches with the values which is so important of the other person and their vision.

Yeah.

And also the lifestyle.

We did a lot of exercises early on about our values and our vision. We actually went to a location and we did a whole meditation process where I said, Listen, I want you to write your values and I'm going to write my values. We're not going to let each other see them until after we both complete it. Because I wanted to see if we were in alignment or if we're completely off on things. Not meaning it wouldn't work out, but we'd have to come to an agreement on alignment.

Yeah.

And we had so many things in alignment based on this exercise where I was like, okay, she's not just writing something down because she knows I wrote it down and vice versa. She's not doing something because she wants to impress me. She was just, you were just writing down what your values were. And that was just another helpful exercise, I think, for both of us. Yeah. Okay, maybe those three things are my values, but I'm not against those things. And same thing for you. It's like, okay, he really values this. It's not really for you, but you're not against it. It's not against your values.

It actually enriches my life and vice versa. So, and a lot of them were very similar values. Very similar. It was a beautiful exercise that I recommend to everybody, even if you are already together. Just write it down. Separate from each other.

What are your values? See how you can find alignment here. We did, I mean, we did six, seven. We did an eight-hour therapy session on a Saturday one time together. It's kind of crazy, but it's also extremely powerful on all the different exercises that we did. And we learned more and more about each other. Even though we were doing these exercises together, it was powerful to have a third party who had been seasoned in these things to support us in any disagreements we might have because we do have disagreements. But they don't become arguments because we create conscious conversations to form new agreements around a disagreement. And that allows us to have more peace and harmony as opposed to resentment. So it's beautiful what you're talking about with that.

Yeah, I think acceptance is very important because of the changing thing that we just talked about. Most people don't want to be changed by the other person. So it's just accept the person for who they are and where they are. I think that's very important. And the L from Balance is laughter. I think laughter, joy, sexiness, like anything that you guys enjoy together. That's why I said laughter and joy. I'm curating this, all of this for Harper. I think that's important. Laughter, joy, appreciation. appreciation with each other, you know, having these moments, I think, you know, I don't think anyone's gonna disagree with that. The other A, which I think is extremely important, is allowance.

What do you mean by allowance? Allowing someone to do whatever they want at any moment, at any time?

No, I think allowance has to do with flexibility, like allowing the person to make mistakes. Sometimes we get into, when you're in relationships, you get into silly arguments because somebody made just a tiny mistake and you're like, ah, how come you didn't take out the dogs? And I don't know, well, I just forgot. And that's okay. Like allowance, have the allowance.

So I don't have to be perfect all the time?

You don't have to be perfect all the time.

No.

And also because I am living my human experience and Lewis is living his human experience. experience and we're just sharing it with each other. So if in your human experience there's something that happens to you, you're just living your life and I'm here for you and next to you and you're allowed to be, you know, it's the allowance also of having freedom, freedom in the relationship within the relationship. I think it's important. Like the other day you came You came home and I saw this jiu-jitsu suit outfit. And I'm like, oh, it looks like he's getting into jiu-jitsu now. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna get into jiu-jitsu. Oh, what if your ears go into, like, if he wants to turn his ears into broccoli or whatever Brussels sprouts. I'm like, that's his life. It's good. He's living his life. I don't know, whatever they look like.

Cauliflower?

Cauliflower? I don't know how you call them.

I just think it's a vegetable, but. Vegetables.

Who wants to turn his ears into carrots and asparagus? Like a salad. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna love you. It's your life. Right, right. We're sharing it with each other. So anybody's allowed sometimes, well, you know, I want to go on this trip with the guys. Go on the trip with the guys, if that's something you need. And I'm sure he's okay with me going on a trip with the girls. Like sometimes we get stuck in these little things because they make us feel unsafe. And so the more we feel unsafe, we want to have these parameters to create safety, but in reality starts creating a cage. Start building a cage.

And I don't know if this has been helpful for you, but I think it might, I don't want to assume, but I I told you in the beginning, I was like, I have zero jealousy. Like, I have, I don't care who you talk to, who you hang out with. I trust you as a human being, as an adult, to have conscious conversations and to be at events. You're on set. You do scenes with men who are half naked. You do all these different things in movies, right? I'm like you. I've. And also, I looked at your history, right? She's done over 40 movies. Plus, she's-- I'm like Harper.

She's-- and my dad.

She's, you know, but she's done, you know, romance scenes in movies where she's with other men and kissing and all these different things. And I remember asking myself, okay, this is who this woman has been. And am I okay if she-- because I have a good buddy of mine who was married and now divorced to an actress. And I remember, We were, it was a huge issue when she had a movie come out with a kissing scene. And it like ruined him. And he had to leave the room when like the whole thing happened, when the scene was coming up, he had to leave. He couldn't, like, he could not deal with it. It wrecked him. And I remember saying, okay, would this affect me if this happens in the future, or if she's out at events, or if guys are hitting on her, she's had lots of wealthy, successful, rich, famous guys hitting on her. And I said, would I be jealous? And for whatever reason, all the work that I had done, I was like, I'm not gonna be jealous at all. And I made a decision, and I don't think I have been since I've met you. I don't think there's been any moment where I was like, where'd you go tonight? Were you with some guy? Who is that guy? What are you doing? Or questioning anything that you're doing? because we both know that if I did something out of integrity or you did something out of integrity, we would have to live with that. And we would suffer more than the other person with that. And eventually we would find out. And when we find out, eventually, whether it's that day, six months, three years later, we'll resolve it however we wanna resolve it, and life will go on. So why being jealous, like it's not gonna serve you and it's not gonna serve me. So I let that go. before I met you, and it's been an amazing thing for me. It probably makes you feel like there's an allowance, like I'm allowing of you to be yourself and trusting.

-Yeah.

-Does that help you?

-It helps me so much. And, you know, recently I was having a conversation with a friend of ours, and she was saying, Marta, he can go on tour and promoting his book. You don't know what could happen. I can go in my movies and he cannot know what could happen. And she was like, aren't you like, doesn't that make you nervous? Doesn't it make? And I said to her, it goes back to who the person is when you get to know them and what their values are. I know Lewis's values. I know his life lessons. I know the things he has learned. I know he made a pact with himself of integrity. And I know if any of us is un-integrous. It's a betrayal to our own self-esteem and our own self-love and to the relationship, but to the chorus, to, you know, the person who's doing it. And so again, he's living his life and I'm living my life and we are choosing to share it.

That's it.

And I don't know, I feel very happy and very grateful for the allowance and the freedom to continue to live my life. If he was to say, you know, yeah, I want to be with you, but I want you to change your profession.

Right.

That'd be very hard. I would feel he's not accepting me.

Right. I shouldn't be with you if I want you to change something about you. Yeah. So I had to accept, okay, this is who you are. Maybe you do something different in the future, but let me believe you're going to continue doing this. Can I be okay with that? Does that work for me? And it does.

So I think allowance is important. Allowance is flexibility also, having flexibility within the relationship. The N is nurture. And nurture is not only about nurturing each other. Obviously we do. We're very affectionate with each other. We really are very affectionate. We're very affectionate with each other.

I have like a barrier. I feel like we should have got a couch.

I know. The other thing is, I think it's not only about the nurture, it's also about having a nurturing life. So I see it with my parents. They have nurtured with each other in their love languages, and each of them have a very nurturing life. My dad has changed professions probably 10 times. We had a pet shop at one time. We had arcades at a different time. He went into being a doctor and helping people healing, and then now he's on Bitcoin trading. I think it's just very important to have a nurturing life because then I go on my adventures. and I come home and I share with Luis. He goes on his adventures like today and yesterday and the day before. All of these, the preparation for this event, is an adventure and he tells me who he met, who he talked to, what impacted him. I share with him. So we both have a nurturing life that we share with each other. So I think that's also very important. The next one is the Seas. which is commitment. And I think this is important. The commitment to the vision we've created for the relationship. I think creating a vision together of the relationship, even if you've been together already for many years, sit down, create that vision. I think this is something we've learned.

It's beautiful that we we have our values and we have a vision. A business has that. I think a relationship should have that as well to see where we're going and what we stand for.

Yes.

So it's beautiful. Yeah.

The other thing is compassion. I think having compassion is very important, especially when you're seeing one of your partners getting frustrated and it's going into a frustrating moment. If you can stop for a second and look at them and look at their inner child, When somebody is having a breakdown and when somebody is being vulnerable, the thing that happens immediately is you go back to being a child. That's the truth. Anytime I am extremely vulnerable, I know I go back to being that little girl. And when I've seen you being vulnerable, you go back to being that little kid. So it's important to have each other. At least one of you at that moment can be the person that's saying, hey, I'm right here for you. It's okay. And so compassion goes a long way all the time. I was going to share a story that happens with Latinos families, you know, in that one time I saw my dad was really angry at my brother who's sitting somewhere over there. And we have, we are from the south of Mexico, so it's tropical, it's There's bananas, there's papayas, there's flip-flops. And if there's a superpower that all grandmas and moms have, it's the superpower of the flip-flop. And Mom was chasing around my brother with this flip-flop. Australians have boomerangs, we have flip-flops. We were all watching, She was angry at the beginning, and my brother's running like afraid, and he started going into laughter, because he couldn't believe this was happening. And my mom is going into laughter too, but they're still chasing each other. And we're all watching this, and the whole thing became fun. So if we could have compassion for our partners the same way, oh, they're getting angry, maybe looks like a temper tantrum, part of you that kind of can giggle a little bit inside. Or if you have the time later to laugh at it and say, you remember when you did that thing? Oh my God! And laugh about it. I think that's very important, so having compassion with each other. The other one, which is the other C, and I'm going to finish very quickly, it's being curious. I think when you approach a conversation with curiosity, you avoid an argument. Why is it that most of the time we have the inclination to think of the worst case scenario or that that person that did something to you, and this goes for any partnership also but also anybody, Was Machiavellian planning behind your back to hurt you?

Yeah, something you do really well is you assume that I'm doing the best. Yes. You assume like, oh, I didn't mean to say that to hurt you. I didn't mean to do this thing to upset you.

Yeah.

So before I get upset or hurt, let me ask you more curious questions. Yeah. You do a great job with that, which is well.

You do too.

It doesn't make me feel like I'm on eggshells. I can still be myself. And because I'm never trying, I never say to myself, what can I say today to make her really upset, to scream at me, to go run away? I never think that. So it's not my intention. So you do a great job of asking those questions. And you're like, huh, that didn't sound like you meant to say that. Let's, you know, what does that mean? Yeah, yeah.

And also because, again, we are both living our life. So I'm gonna share this. The other day we were, I'm trying to remember what we were doing, but we were at a fair. And there was this cornhole thing. And I said to Louis, Louis, can you hold this? We finally found a cornhole available. We're gonna play with the family. Can you keep it? And so he was there and kind of like was throwing the thing. I run, get my family together. It's a whole ordeal because we're so many. We finally get there.

Well, first off, it takes 15 minutes to gather them all because there's so many of them. So I'm there, and I'm like, all right, I'm like getting tired here, bored.

So by the time I left, I arrived with my family, it was taken already by somebody else and Luis was eating an ice cream. And I thought to myself, I have two options. Either I get upset or I think this is so curious. What is this being doing eating an ice cream?

Oh, that ice cream.

And I'm like, well, yeah, for sure he wanted an ice cream. He just stopped what he was doing. But have that little playfulness inside of you. I think it's important. Right? Yes. Anyway, so then you're curious about who this person is and what are they doing. The next one is the letter E, which is for the word balanced, which is education.

Education.

Education. So it's important to educate yourself about who your partner is. What are their inner child wounds? What are the things that they lived in which ways they were hurt?

Their past.

Their past, their struggles. To also have that compassion to understand them and also to have the care to remember certain things that could affect them. Right. You know? So I know, for example, for Lewis, that if anything gets if he gets very tired or if anything gets a little bit chaotic, he needs to take space. I know that. So I don't take it personally because that has to do with his past and his life. So I am very grateful that you don't get frustrated frequently or anything, but when you do, I know he needs space.

I'm just tired.

He's tired. He needs to take space. It's true. It's true. It is true. So I think educating yourself about the past of your partner goes also a long way. And then also education means growth. So what we're doing here, we're all growing. And so we, after this weekend, we become a better version of ourselves. And by becoming a better version of yourself, even if your partners didn't come to this, when you start changing the environment around you, starts changing. So that's it. I think education. And the last one, but I think should be at the top of it, it's Dios. Dios.

Dios.

Dios.

Dios.

What is Dios? Dios means God. It comes from the Latin word Deus. And I think that God is permeating in everything. I think when you are putting two things together like this, easily to do this. But when you are doing a braid and you're braiding this thing with God, then it becomes solid and strong and beautiful. I am so grateful for you in my life. I didn't know, but I trusted that you existed somewhere, and I'm so grateful of all the life lessons I'm so grateful for your mom that is right here. You have a wonderful son.

Let me see it close. So I want to recap this for you. Balance, be you, acceptance, laughter, allowance, nurture, commitment, compassion, education, and Dios, God, right?

Yes.

It's beautiful. Martha has like before, she's a very prepared individual. Yes. She has so many different note cards with all these different puzzles and maps and all these different things from just a few of the things that she's learned. If you guys want us to do another I want a part three sometime to dive in deeper on this. We really didn't cover as much as she knows, but we just covered a little bit. If you want a part three sometime, just make some noise if you can.

I want to say something also. Being with someone like you is really a dream come true. He puts so much dedication into his self-growth and into his community and he gives and gives and gives and you are a giver. And I know all the people here agree that you are receiving a piece of your heart. But if they knew how big your heart is, and I want to to be to tell you that I'm so grateful for your uniqueness and that I know many times growing up you were you grew up with the perspective that you probably were not enough. But you are enough.

Thank you.

More than enough.

Martha is going to be around tonight so it If you have questions for her, give her a hug tonight at the closing party. Later tonight, you'll be around so you can say hi and ask questions. And for any of the women in the room that want to dive in deeper on her brain on this, make sure to ask her some questions there. But I love you. Thank you so much. Let's give it up, guys, for Martha. Give it up. Give it up. Give it up. Give it up. Oh, actually, I did have one final question that I wanted to ask, and I actually have never asked this question to anyone in 10 years of my podcast. I wanted to ask you, I was curious, goes by so slow. I love you.

I love you so much. Still more. I love you so much.

I love you so much. Diana. let's out your only Rivers flow to the sea to the sea to the open arms of the sea wait for me wait for me I'll be coming home, right for me. Oh, my love, my love.

My love, a.

Hunger, hunger for your touch.

All night and time so.

Slowly and time and so much are you so much are you.

I need your love, y'all. I wonder how me to yell at myself from the past and your self from me. Oh, my God.

It's so beautiful.

This is so beautiful. I'm sorry, I'm in shock.

But Martha asked me to-- Martha asked you? Martha said she wanted me to do something for you. You can keep the song going. I like that song. Keep it low. She asked me to ask her to do a favor for her. We were just down there with our families. And before we ask for that, you know, man, this has been surreal. You know, Ohio is my, it's got my heart, it's my home, and I couldn't have thought of any other place to create this moment for ourselves and for our families. And I'm so grateful for everyone that came here. So thank you guys for creating this moment. Martha has a practice and exercise that she taught me when we first met. And it's about reconnecting to your younger self and traveling in time back to your younger self in moments when you wanted to go somewhere greater in your life. And she has this exercise where she speaks back to her younger self and she shouts in time back to her younger self and also into her future self. So she's shouting the future of something she's wanting to create. And then she acknowledges the younger her that took that leap in time into that future self. Exactly. so what is the thing that you'd like us to do?

The thing is... So time, like we learned this weekend, is a construct of our head. Time doesn't really exist. And there's a theory that says past, present, and future are all happening at the same time. And so, you know, those times when you are having a moment in which you feel your gut, your heart tells you to do something, and you take that leap and you do that something, you don't know where that voice is coming from. We created this thing, Dad and I, in which perhaps that voice It's also coming from yourself from the future, that is telling yourself from the past, Go for it, take the leap. And so four years ago, I was in a really bad time in my life. And I just didn't know if I could trust in love again and have that confidence. But I took the leap. And I know there were times in your life that you also were, what is this thing about love? And you make the leap. So, can you scream back? Can you help us? So we can scream back at ourselves in the past.

What are we saying?

We're saying, take the leap.

Take to leave.

All right.

One, two, three, take off.

Amazing. I love you so much. I love you so much. Thank you.

Guys. Thank you so much. You guys are amazing. I'm kind of blacking out right now. I don't know if this is normal. Guys, is this what happens? You kind of black out, you forget everything that happens? What'd you say?

I don't-- what?

When I-- I'm sorry, I was-- He's blacking out, also. What did you say when I asked you?

I said, yes.

We have, I'm gonna get off the stage here in a second. We're gonna be there tonight at the closing party, so that's the time for all of us to celebrate whatever leap we're taking into in our lives. You know what we're gonna be celebrating tonight? We have, We have one final video that we're gonna show that is all of you from this weekend. So enjoy this video. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to share my heart with you, for allowing this moment to happen. Enjoy this video. We'll see you at the closing party tonight. I love you guys. Thank you so much. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and Do something great.