How To Use The LAW OF ATTRACTION To Find Love! | Lewis Howes

Stop going back to people that hurt you and find, there are people all over the world that will love you and fill you up. But we keep going back to the hurt as expecting them to make it better. But if you can look for what makes you the same.

What happens when we don't show our 100% authentic selves to someone in the beginning and we reveal that six, 12 months later?

Yeah.

What happens?

They're really shocked. I didn't know you were like that. I had no idea because they've fallen in love with a version that you showed them. that isn't even you. And we forget the truth, vulnerability is the basis of friendships and indeed relationships. When you're vulnerable, you know, people love you for you. When you're sick, when you have a bad day, they will say, Then you know who your friends are. But if you pretend you're okay, I see that a lot with people who run a business, always pretend everything's fine. They never tell anyone they're lonely. And then we realize, like that, great DJ who killed himself. Was it Avicii?

Avicii, yeah.

Who never told anyone, I'm falling apart here. Was it not Bon Jovi? Who was it? Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen. There's so many people in the media who think, I've got to pretend I'm grey. I can't say I'm lonely, I'm sad, I'm lost. They often let you know through their songs. Look at Prince. I mean, that's so sad that he was so lonely. But they feel that if they tell us, we'll see them as weak and needy, when in fact the basis of friendship is if you're vulnerable and I am, I like you because you're showing me who you really are. And I can love your very soul because I know you. But if I'm in love with an illusion, then it can't work because I don't even know who you are.

Wow. How old were you when you started to realize that, that you were lovable?

I think in my 20s, a long time, maybe. I remember when I was 18, I had this really lovely boyfriend. We'd always say, you know, I love the way you look. And I was saying to my mom, I haven't got a personality. I really believed I had no personality. I could say, I love your hair. I love your body. But I heard that I didn't have any character whatsoever, and that really bothered me. So I think, you know, it's so weird because when you change so much you can hardly recognize the person. I'd looking back I'd say really my 20s, maybe even later than my mid 20s. It was only working with my clients over and over again and seeing what was wrong with them that I began to realize, oh, that's what's wrong with everyone.

Interesting.

Yeah. And I began to see all of my clients, they could only ever have one of three things wrong with them.

What's that?

Well, the first one was, I'm not enough. That was the biggie. Every client I saw, whether they were a nursery school teacher or they worked in a store or they were a billionaire CEO or a movie star, they all had the same thing. I'm not enough. And so I've got to earn love or buy love or keep being a bigger, better deal to get love. And that's so easy to fix. You just go, you just take the I'm not out, I am enough. I always have been, I always will be, and you have, you see, the lie is every day you tell yourself, I'm not enough. You don't know you're doing it. You get up and go, look at me, I don't look right. I messed that up. I didn't leave enough time to get here. My kids aren't perfect. That client is annoyed. So every day over and over again, you're telling yourself, you're not enough.

Yeah.

And you just have to take out the knot and go, I'm enough. If I'm prepared to lie to myself every single day over and over again, why not have a better lie? I'm enough. It doesn't have to be true. People say, you know, my legs are the size of tree trunks. Well, clearly that can't be true. This is killing me. This is making me crazy. This is driving me and saying, none of these things are true. But if you're prepared to lie, At least have a better life. I have great coping skills. This is a challenge, but I've got it. I can rest at the weekend. I've got this. I've got great, I have great coping skills is a great lie, because if you say it enough, it actually becomes true. Really? It's something I say a lot. You're never given anything that you can't cope with. Or if I've got a lot on, well, I'll rest at the weekend. I can deal with this. I've got this. This is fine. This is okay. So the first thing wrong with people is always I'm not enough. And if you feel like that, remember you weren't born with it. You're in great company and just let it go because it's not true. The second thing wrong is this belief that I'm different so I can't connect. And that's kind of a modern day illness. You know, if you're in a tribe, you would connect because you'd know that you're all interrelated, you look the same. But this belief I'm different so I can't connect is... Is it I can't.

Connect or people don't understand me?

No, you connect by being the same. You know, we're primitive people, we connect by being the same. So if you're different, it's very hard to connect because you feel different. And when you feel different, you can't connect. But then you have to remember the truth, if that's your greatest fear, it's most people's greatest fear. So if you look at E.T. he connected to Elliot, but he couldn't connect and he had to go home because he had to be with his people.

Why is that such a big fear for people?

Of connecting.

Yeah, I'm different, so I can't connect. Isn't different good in a lot of ways? Like being unique and being different.

Unique? Well, the answer is yes and no. When you're a little kid, you go, I like SpongeBob SquarePants, I like green pasta, I like Dr. Seuss and we connect by being, I got a friend and they like what I like. So when we're little we connect by being the same and our DNA understands or we are hardwired to find connection and avoid rejection because that's how you make it as a child, you find connection whether it's your little kitten clinging onto your leg, your dog wanting you not to leave the house, a baby holding on so tightly to mum, you understand the truth. If I'm connected, I will survive. And if I'm disconnected, I will die. Because imagine 100 years ago you couldn't produce milk for your baby or 500 years ago. We understood that connection was what made us live and disconnection killed us. Why every culture practiced banishment or isolation or marooning or casting out. So connection, makes us survive.

Especially as adults.

Yeah.

Okay. So we need to feel connected.

Yeah.

And if you listen to all those songs, I'll die if you leave me. My world is empty without you. I can't live with. I can't breathe without you.

Okay.

And to this day, you know, schools understand that someone trolls you, someone ostracizes you, kids, you know, cut you out of the group. They don't speak to you, so. Our greatest fear is if I'm different, I can't connect. But if you go back to that, everyone's fear is being different. So if you have that fear, it actually means you're the same. And connection is a choice. You can connect to anyone all over the world, whatever their race, religion, creed is. The problem is that we don't see that. We still disconnect people. You know, we saw that a lot with the Boston bombers. They were so disconnected from society that that turned into hatred. And it's really important at schools to look at these disconnected kids and to bring them back. You know, if you look at the whole jail system in Finland, it's all about reconnect. We don't put them in isolation and then send them back out into the world crazy and full of anger. We reconnect. And so our greatest fear as humans is to be disconnected.

So how do we reconnect if we feel like our friend group has pushed us away, our family has sent us away? feel connected.

Well, sometimes you've got to find a new group. I mean, you know, your family are just what I call your original family. You can have an, you know, first of all, you have your nuclear family, mom, dad, brother, sister, auntie, uncle, grandma. But then when you get married, they become your extended family. And so you can always create a family. So don't go back to the old tribe that hurt you and expect them to get better. I think a lot of our problems is I expect my mom suddenly become wonderful. She was always mean and hostile, but I expect her to be kind and lovely. She's got old now. Aren't old ladies sweet?

No.

Sometimes they're still cranky. A bitter cranky person doesn't become sweet when they're 80. And often the belief is I've got to go back to my family and make them love me when there's a whole world out there to love you. And if people hurt you, not always intending to, and you keep going back to them except they can't always make it better. It's like, you know, if your family had that capacity to love you a cup, but my capacity is an Olympic swimming pool, I can't expect that to fill me up. I can fill them up, they can't fill up me. If I'm a little, if my parents have a shot glass capacity to give me love and I've got the ocean capacity, how can a shot glass fill up the ocean? Stop going back to people that hurt you and find, there are people all over the world that will love you and fill you up. We keep going back to the hurt is expecting them to make it better. They're often so hurt they can't. And they often do things like, well, you know, people like us, we don't have that. And look at those people, we're not like that. So it's, I feel different. You know, if your dad was the town drunk, if you didn't have a dad and everyone else did, if you had money and everyone else didn't, or vice versa, we buy in very early to this I'm different. I'm different and you're not different, you're the same. So you have to stop looking for what makes you different because that's the confirmation bias. Whatever you look for, you're going to find it. I mean, I was a principal's daughter. I felt different the day I went to school and my whole childhood because my dad was the headmaster. And that was actually horrible, I realize now, that was not a good thing. But I was always looking for what made me different and then it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I kept looking for it. Plus, you know, I could, hypnotize people and that made me feel even more different. And I had this kind of ability to work out what's wrong with someone really quickly. And that's both good and bad. It's actually good. But whatever you look for, you will find whatever you are moving towards, you'll get more of. If you look for why your head is killing you or say, I'm a bit dehydrated, I'm going to drink some water, rub some lavender on my head, I'll be fine in 20 minutes. You've got to decide where you're going. and if you look for what makes you different, you will find it over and over again. But if you say, well, why don't I look for what makes me the same? We're all the same somewhere. Then you'll find that too. And it can be very hard if you're dealing with someone who's violent or aggressive or acting out. But if you can look for what makes you the same and not different, it really changes your life. Because then you can't be disconnected. And you can go all over the world. You can hang out with tribes. You know, my friend was in Rwanda with the gorillas, actually, if you think you're like them, I did this thing of walking with wolves and the first thing you must do is you have to crouch down, you mustn't bare your teeth, you can't wear wool, and the wolf comes up and decides that you're a wolf and then you go for a walk and it keeps rounding you back up. If you walk away, it takes you back into the wolf pack because it thinks you're one of them. And if you can make a wolf think you're one of them, or a gorilla, then of course you can do it with people, but you have to start from I'm like you, you're like me, I'm the same as you and I can connect with you somewhere, somehow. Stop looking for what makes you different and look for what makes you the same, because it really is life-changing. The third thing that's wrong is such a sad belief, it's what I want isn't available. I want love, but I was abandoned when I was a baby. I want wealth, but I come from a family that never had wealth, so I can't have that. I want health, my whole family are overweight, diabetic, so that's not going to happen. And if you want it while believing it's not available, that will block you.

What's your definition of chemistry, connection, and compatibility?

All right, so chemistry to me is the art of getting along, flowing with each other, all right? Chemistry can be created it can be destroyed. Think about it from a team sports perspective you can put players together and they have to build team chemistry. So, through repetition, through practice they can get to a point of having chemistry. Yes, some people have instant chemistry, all right. But just as it was instant it can also be broken.

Instantly.

Exactly, you know we can start to not get along and not flow with each other very easily things can get in the way. And again, this happens even in team sports or even in the corporate arena where you have team building exercises but then things happen that destroy the structure of the business.

That's chemistry.

That's chemistry.

How important is chemistry?

It is still very important. It is not the most important and I say that to mean chemistry has to be in every relationship for it to work and flourish. But it does not set the stage for everything else. All right, connection sets the stage for everything else. So basically, if you have connection, you will be able to have chemistry and compatibility. But now let's talk about compatibility. I believe compatibility is a very logic-based structure of putting two people together. It's also about we're compatible in the sense that we share values, all right? So again, you can meet someone that you are quote unquote compatible with. You guys share similar values, you guys come from even maybe the same kind of cultures, there could be a lot of things that make you guys compatible on paper.

But then... What is real compatibility?

Well, to me that is real compatibility so to speak is that yes, you guys on paper are a good fit, all right. And you guys should work. But again, without connection it won't matter. So, I would argue that a lot of marriages let's even talk about arranged marriages Some of them were built on compatibility. Well, this person came from the right family so we like this, they have a good job, they have a good education, they would be a good fit here, they share the same values. But when those two people are really alone with each other, it doesn't always hit. Which is why if you go on an online dating site, it can match two people together that are compatible on paper.

Interesting.

But in person, it doesn't always play out the same.

Because what is missing?

The chemistry or more importantly, the connection.

And sometimes we might be tricked. Oh, we feel the spark of chemistry, but you may not have connection, is that true?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

So you might say, oh, we're compatible on paper, everything. We have the same values. We want the same things for our life and marriage and kids and where our family's gonna be. We have compatibility. We have chemistry. There's some type of spark here. I feel like, ooh, this little something down here. Yeah, we feel it.

And we get along and we know the flow of each other.

It's amazing. But you're saying if we can't find true connection or if there isn't connection can connection be created?

No, and so, that's the huge distinction to me with connection. Connection cannot be created nor can it be destroyed. It's either there or it's not. There's nothing you can do to build connection. You can build a stronger bond, you can create a stronger attachment to each other but that still doesn't mean connection is there. And You see this play out in situations where you have people who could meet each other right now, have this amazing connection. Something happens where they fall apart, they come back together years later, 10, 20 years later and it's like they never stopped talking. It just falls right back into place. It's connection, it's a deeper thing that's occurring there. To me, connection is your spirit recognizing its match. It is something that is happening beneath the surface, all right. Which is why many people who have felt connection, you can't always explain it. Connection does not always line up with the logic of compatibility. It's not always oh, well, it makes sense because of this. No, no, no, it's just there. You just feel something with this person, you feel drawn to them, it's so much deeper than anything you've ever felt. And consider this, you can be compatible with tons of people. You can have chemistry with tons of people. You do not feel connection with a bunch of people. Period, if we were to survey people who have felt a connection in their life, you'd be lucky to find many who can say two times.

Wow.

The majority will say it's a one-time occurrence that has happened to them, all right. And being able to have that again, it's very difficult. Now, I don't want anyone listening to be discouraged if they did not end up with the person they had a connection with. I'm not saying it's impossible for it to happen a second time, but I will say that if you surveyed people you would have a hard time finding that many people that said it happened twice.

When does someone know it's connection and not chemistry? Because I feel like you might be tricked. We have this incredible connection, we understand each other, we get each other, I can't explain it, but I feel something. That feeling might be also chemistry at the same time, right? It might be masking if it's really connection or chemistry. How do you know if it's true connection over Man, there's this desire, connection, attraction, all these things happening at once.

One, can you truly be yourself with this person? Ooh, that's big, all right. Because again, a lot of people they go on these dates, they're bringing their representative and the chemistry happens on a surface level with the representatives that both sides are bringing. But when you actually show your true self now what happens and a lot of people have not done that with their partner or the person that they're getting to know. So, again, you're falling into the hype of the chemistry or the compatibility, but you're not discovering true connection being there. So, you've got to be able to be yourself because real connection loves you at the core, all right. You can show me all the parts of you, I still want you, all right. Number two is can we enjoy each other with no distractions? All right, again, what people fail to understand and this can happen with chemistry is that we're bonding based off of the activity or the things in our environment. Meaning, all right, we love going out together and we do all these fun stuff and we're doing all these things and that's great, all right. We know how to have fun together, but can we be alone in a room, no TV, no distraction, no phone, just us and still love being with each other. A lot of people people can't say that. A lot of people are only able to be in their relationship and tolerate their partner and I use that word strongly tolerate their partner because they have enough distractions in their life. They have kids, they have work, they have all these other things going on.

TV, video games, man caves, whatever it is.

Exactly, all these things that pull them away from their partner that doesn't allow them to face the fact that no, you really don't like each other at the core.

Man.

And so, that is a huge sign of connection. That's why like one thing I suggested in one of my books was go on a road trip. And it's just a random suggestion but go on a road trip for at least six hours, no phone, no distraction, just you and them talking. Will you still be happy after those six hours? A lot of people can't make it that far in a car ride with their partner, all right. A lot of people cannot be in a room alone with their partner and nothing else to take their attention. So, you've got to really push those boundaries to see what do we really have here if this is really going to be called a connection.

Right, and your fear is are you able to grow together after 10, 15 years? Is that one of the main things?

So.

It'S hard to you never can look that far ahead and we don't know what's in store.

May not be here tomorrow.

Exactly. It's a concern of can we still give that same energy? And it's both sides because again, I'm not saying I'm not perfect. So, even though I'm confident that I could do it what if there's something that throws me off, you know? It's just that yes, as time goes on there's that test of really putting your best foot and bringing that same energy that you brought in the beginning. Now, again, I think I'm holding myself to a higher standard that I think most people do because I think that a lot of people's mentality is well, things change, things are going to be different. It's okay. So, what? You don't go out as much anymore. People think like this but they don't realize that's why your relationship is deteriorating. Right. I don't want a deteriorated relationship. So, when I think about yes, can I be with someone past 10-15 years if I accept a level of mediocrity?

Of course.

But we don't want that. Exactly, I'm saying can we maintain excellence after these 10-15 years? Exactly. Fulfillment, peace, happiness, all these things because to me, what is the point of being here if we don't have it, if we're not operating at our highest level?

What about the saying that I hear, whether this is a meme or this is women saying this online, Maybe you know the line better than me. If he can't accept me at my worst, he doesn't deserve me at my best.

I hate that line. I absolutely hate it. And I hate it because it has turned into validation for not addressing your flaws and issues, all right. I agree with it from the standpoint of You've got to be able to handle your partner's worst moments, all right. Because we're going to all have moments, we're going to all fall, we're all going to make a mistake, it's going to happen. Over time, that's just the way it is. But when you are essentially trying to say I have a horrible flaw and you should accept it even when I want to consistently make you deal with it. No, that's not going to work for me. That's, I can't accept that. that's not okay. And so, a lot of people that's.

What they're turning it into. That's you not taking accountability and responsibility for growth. Exactly. Going back to okay, this is where I'm at I don't want to address it you just have to accept it.

And or don't be with me. Exactly, you know it reminds me of like once upon a... I don't know if they still say it but I know at one time people would say arguing is healthy for a relationship, all right.

I disagree. I don't know if I agree. I understand that Yeah, I just don't like that.

No, at all.

Can you communicate with... We don't agree on this, but do you have to argue?

Exactly, that's my thing. Disagreement is acceptable disrespect is not, all right.

Say it one more time.

Disagreement is acceptable disrespect is not.

That's good.

All right. So, my thing is yes, it's okay and even healthy to have disagreements because we have different perspectives we can bounce ideas off each other, we simply have to know how to navigate that and come to an official decision on things when we have those moments. But arguing, arguing says we are being disrespectful, whether our tone is negative, the words that we're using you know, we're getting loud, we're getting angry, we're basically throwing negative energy at our partner. That's not healthy, there's nothing healthy about that. But A lot of people will say that because they want to validate the unhealthiness in their relationship. They don't want to face the issue up I need to learn how to talk to my partner better. I don't want to have to fix my tone. Why do I have to watch what I say? Because that's what an adult does. Wow, all right grow up, you know. I'm sorry to anyone listening to this but that's just real. We can't just think it's okay especially with our partners to speak however we want to throw all kinds of insults, to be disrespectful and think this is okay. Because what people are not realizing is all it takes is that one really bad argument to plant a seed of negativity that now grows into something worse in the relationship. A lot of people's issues are not the issue that they're facing in that current moment. It's the culmination of all kinds of things before then. It's the buildup from that last time you disrespected me or made me feel some kind of way and ever since then I've resented you. And now in this resentment I've given you an attitude. You didn't know what the attitude was about because I didn't communicate clearly. Now, you're giving me attitude and now you see how it turns into other things. Now, that attitude turns into not having sex with each other. That attitude turns into okay, the way that we talk to each other in general. Maybe becoming secretive because now we don't feel like dealing with each other anymore. and what you don't realize is it started from disrespectful arguing.

Wow, all right.

It can also start from some other stuff, all right. But arguing is a huge problem for a lot of people and we can't just keep sweeping under the rug. So, going back to your point about the whole take me as my worst. Yes, worst moment.

I'm always like this and once in a while a good attitude.

Exactly, consistent negative behavior has to be addressed and corrected.

So arguments are disrespect, but disagreements is okay, is that what you said?

Yes, the disagreement is acceptable, disrespect is not.

Yes, so you can always disagree and you can agree to disagree.

Yeah.

Or you can, is that right? Agree to disagree.

Yeah, agree to disagree.

But what I'm hearing you say is that arguing, saying what's on your mind in an angry, Exactly. Aggressive way, tearing down a partner is never going to do anything good for someone.

Exactly, people have to understand whenever someone feels attacked they will defend themselves. Even if they know they're wrong, even if the point you're making is actually solid, the way you're coming at them negates their ability to receive it. That's why even me as a speaker, my focus has been do I want to be heard or do I want people to receive my message? All right, if I want to be heard I can speak however I want, I can be blatant with the insults, I can cut people down, I can just make jokes of everybody's situation because it's entertainment. I just want to be heard. But no, I want people to receive it and if I want people to receive it I have to be more considerate, more compassionate, I have to check my tone, I have to be careful with my words and that's why if people watch my videos they'll see I try to be very careful with my words because I want you to receive see what I'm saying. So, if we're in a relationship we have to take that approach. If you want them to hear you be mindful of how you're talking to them.

Why is this so hard for people?

Because again, they don't want to face the or they don't want to do the work of correction, all right. And the work of correction can entail the healing and again, facing those issues. It's also conditioning if people have been brought up in households and environments where this is how they talk to each other It's very hard to change that. Yeah, it's foreign to now speak in a more loving and positive way. It's foreign to sit and be quiet and listen, all right. So, now they have to reprogram themselves and that's a lot of work. And I think also the acceptance of the way you're communicating is wrong. People don't like to face that they were wrong. They don't want to have to accept that. So, it's no, I have to dig an even deeper hole and stick with this whole negative approach of how I do things because no, there's nothing wrong with this or I see other people do it but you know, they're fine. No, they're not fine. They're not okay, you know. So, I think those reasons that just overall they don't want to have to do the work and so they rather make excuses for it.

So, it sounds like again, we go back to step one healing. If you can learn to heal you can start to improve the quality of your choices Dating someone in a relationship or getting out quicker. You can be a more effective communicator in relationships, whether you're dating or in a long-term committed relationship. You can have a better relationship overall with yourself when you heal and with someone else. So can you give me a breakdown, a bootcamp 101 on how to recognize what you need to heal and then how to start healing that? What does that look like for someone? Okay, I need to heal, Sifon. What do you mean by that? how do I do it? How do I get started? How long does it take to get healed? Okay. Is this a lifelong journey?

Is this overnight? What does it look like? All right, so first thing how long does it take to heal? It's going to take as long as you're willing to put into work. Healing is not a time thing it's a work thing. So, when you hear people say time heals all wounds no, it doesn't. Time alone doesn't heal a damn thing, all right. It can help it does aid in the process but by itself it is no good. you have to take certain steps. So, when people think well, I'm going to take a year off from relationships to heal, why a year? And if you're not doing the work in that year that year means nothing and that's what happens to a lot of people. They took a year off but what they did was they hid from the world, they hid from relationships. They went in their corner, all right, and distracted themselves but they never healed. Now, they come back out of that year and they're still the same person.

Or maybe they're not the same... Maybe the first few months of dating they're a little different but then they fall all back in.

Exactly, because they never resolve things at its core. Now, in terms of recognizing what to heal, my first step is called the who Hurt Me list, all right. So, you get a piece of paper you write down a piece of paper who hurt me. And now, every person who comes to mind you write them down on the piece of paper. It doesn't matter how long ago it happened, doesn't matter if you think you've moved past it, if you think it's not relevant, if they come to mind then there's some level of relevance there. Put them on the paper and about a sentence or two of what they did to hurt you, all right. This is how we're going to start to locate what you've been holding on to. But you really got to go into this exercise very genuine. You can't be trying to control the narrative. You just got to let yourself feel just ask yourself the question, close your eyes, let it come out. What's the question they should ask?

Who hurt me?

Who hurt me, that's it. Who hurt me?

That's it. And what if they're like, I can only think of like three people that really hurt me should they be thinking of like every instant they can think of from childhood of that one comment or should this be this person punched me in the face?

Anybody who comes to mind. So, I don't want them to force it but I don't want them to undermind it in any kind of way either. Just whoever comes to mind put them on the paper because even if there's a situation where you forgot somebody if we tackle the big one, you're not going to be able to escape the big ones. The big ones are going to come out, they're going to come to mind. If we can tackle those then that might set the stage where everything else gets taken care of naturally. Sure, sure. All right, because now your awareness is.

Going to be there and your level of healing will allow you to see things differently. Because really the big ones might be the ones that cause the most pain and if you heal that the other.

Ones are just a pattern of the pain. Exactly and you will also start to perceive those situations differently once you feel from the bigger ones.

Okay, so that's step one. Take a piece of paper, write it out. How long should this take?

A few minutes, a few hours, depending. Depending on the person, because for some people it's going to get heavy. It's going to get heavy and that might cause them to want to pause and take a step back. But I would encourage them, do not walk away from it completely. Stick to it, but it can be as quick as a few minutes. Maybe it takes an hour because they may get emotional in the process. but just don't run from it. But just do it don't even worry about the time just do it. Okay, step one, step two, step two. So, step two I'm going to lay this out. I usually don't lay it out but you know what I feel like I got to do it today.

Bring it.

I got to do it today. So, step two is we got to get things off our chest, all right.

Okay.

And this is where we do the letter writing process. So, there's two parts to letter or two drafts. The first draft is the most important This is where we're going to have essentially an emotional detox. We got to get everything out. So, let's say on the list is your mother. I always bring up mothers because so many people have mommy issues but the world only wants to talk about daddy issues, all right. And the society has made it to where it's almost wrong for you to tell a woman she was a bad mother or to criticize your mother. So, we suppress that a lot more than we do our fathers.

That's interesting.

You know. So, let's say it's your mother and you're going to do the first draft. And in that first draft you're just going to let all your raw emotion out. I don't care if you curse her out, I don't care if you wish death on her, I don't care what nasty evil thing you say. However you feel let it come out. You've got to let the anger, the hurt all pour out of you into this letter. If you don't know how to start the letter, start it with the most damning thing you could say, all right. I hate you because boom and then just go from there. It's going to start coming out. Once you uncork that screw, that's it. Exactly, and this is where it gets heavier. A lot of people may take a lot more pauses in this process, all right. Because again, so many people have been suppressing this for so long. And again, it's like any other detox when you start to detox the bad stuff has to come out first, all right. And you can't get to a healed place unless you flush out all the negatives of energy. So, this is why it's important. This is not the draft to be politically correct, to try to frame things in the right way. I don't want you to be considerate, I don't want you to think about well, I did some wrong things too. Forget all that. This first draft is let it rip, let it rip, let it out. And I guarantee you by just doing that first draft you're going to feel better. You're going to feel a weight come off your shoulders, you're going to feel more peace to you.

Right, that's the draft one.

Draft two, draft two. So, draft two is essentially now I always tell people all right, you finish draft one, pray, meditate, whatever you got to do just get to a kind of level place mentally, calm, and now read the letter to yourself as if you were them. Oh, okay. And now, so put yourself in their shoes and anything that now comes off as attacking condescending, blatantly insulting, you're going to change it. You're not changing the message, you're just changing your delivery of the message, all right. And the importance behind this is twofold. One, we talked about it earlier. People don't know how to communicate without being negative. Their tone, their delivery is horrible. So, this letter is going to help you learn how to take your negative emotions and thoughts and now turn it and reword it into a much more loving positive message. Now, loving positive does not mean you won't say some things that aren't hurtful to them or a hard pill for them to swallow. There's just a difference between lashing out and expressing how you feel. Saying this is how you impacted my life, this is how I perceive things rather than you're this, you're that, you're this. That's the first draft. But the second draft is just you're just changing your delivery of the message. So, by the end of it, you have fully express yourself but in a more calm loving manner. This is going to allow one, it's going to teach you how to be better in your communication.

Interesting.

But also, and this is the part people aren't going to like and I won't go too deep into this part. For those who may have to send it and I would just suggest getting the book to see if they got to send it or not, all right. Because it breaks all of this down. But for those who do have to send it, it's going to give you a much greater chance of great things to come from that letter. Not that that's the focus of the letter. The focus of the letter is for your healing. So, I don't care if you did send it and they never responded. I don't care if you sent it and they rejected everything you said in it. Because the purpose is your release of all those emotions, all right. And you've got to embrace forgiveness and forgiveness is another piece of this healing puzzle. Forgiving them and forgiving yourself as well. That's the real focus but I have seen amazing things happen because of these letters.

Really? Yes.

And people receiving them.

Yes.

I've seen-- so these are not letters.

That you send out that say, you,'re horrible, you ruined my life. That's not draft one. You're sending out draft two, which is more of a place of, this is how this scenario impacted me. Yeah, this is how you're taking me. You're taking me to feel.

It's more of a responsibility as well, how it made me feel, is that I'm hearing you say. Absolutely, yeah. Because it's very different to accuse someone and attack someone versus saying, but this is how I received it.

Right.

Whether you're right or wrong. Exactly. Because also understand this. Hurt people hurt people. And some people might reject that because they say well, I'm hurt and I never hurt nobody that's a lie. What do you realize or not you have hurt people. One example I'll give that comes to mind let's say you're a woman or a man and you were hurt in your last relationship. And now you've become guarded. Now, to you you're still operating as a loving human being but what you don't realize is your guardedness is still hurting either the potential partner or someone that you do get with? Because you're unwilling to give them your whole heart.

Wow.

All right, so you still have... You're.

Not attacking them, maybe you're not punching them or cheating on them, but you're holding back.

Exactly, and you're still undermining the relationship. So, you're still hurting them and you're hurting yourself because you're not allowing yourself to experience the full greatness of it because you won't fully dive in. because you're scared and you're guarded and that has to be fixed. But going back to the original point I want to make is in that same mold, the hurt person does not always realize how much they're hurting you. We have to understand that damaged individuals are operating from a very selfish mindset. It's I'm protecting myself. Think about the person who is overly critical of everyone else. They're always criticizing, criticizing, criticizing. They're not doing it because their intention is to hurt others, they're doing it because they want to keep the spotlight off of them and to protect themselves from criticism. So, I'm going to hit you before you hit me, all right. So, again, a lot of our parents the things that they did they did not understand. And even if they had some semblance of an idea, they're so caught up in their own feelings they're blinded by it. So, a lot of times this letter basically takes the blinders off. When you do it in that loving manner because like I said earlier, do you want to be heard or do you want them to receive the message? The yelling, the screaming, the lashing out, they heard that because you may have done that with them in the past. But they never received you in that moment.

The establishment hotel in Sydney and I was sitting with a CNN reporter and attractive woman and she said, how come I can't create the relationship that I want. And I just was so over it. I just looked at her and I said, Let me ask you a question. Would you go out with you? Which is really the fundamental question. So I have a couple theories about relationships that I think are really important and I use the same exact principles with my life. First of all, I will never work in a relationship. And I don't think anybody should work in a relationship. I think if you're working in a relationship, Something is not clicking, something is not right. But if you bring your best and the person that you're with brings their best and you celebrate your life together, then there's constructive interference, there's growth, there's energy. If you're not at your best and you show up, more than likely you're going to pick someone or something apart. heart and it's better that you remove yourself for a period of time and get back into your heart and present yourself at your best. And so if you're not there and you need a mirror or reflection, then it's good to ask, am I missing something? Am I not seeing myself in some way? And then there's a healthy conversation when you invite it. But if you're not invited to contribute your opinion, then it's better off that you don't. People always say, I want a loving relationship, but what they really want is happiness, really. We do these meditations to create love in our lives. It could be love in family relationships with your siblings, it could be with your parents, it could be with your friends, or it could be with a significant other. And so if thoughts are the electrical charge in the quantum field and feelings are the magnetic charge in the quantum field, and how you think and how you feel broadcasts an electromagnetic signature that influences every single atom in your life. The thought sends a signal out and the feeling is the magnetic field that draws the event back to you. So if you're not in a place where you're in love with life or in love with yourself or practicing diminishing your emotional reactions to certain people or conditions in your life and you're living in anger or hostility or judgment or fear and you want a loving relationship, there is no magnetic field for you to draw that to you. And in fact, if you say to me, well, it's that person or that circumstance that's caused me to feel this way, then I would say, I mean that person or that circumstance is controlling the way you feel and the way you think. And anything that controls the way we feel and the way we think, we are victims to, right? So most people are unconsciously responding to the conditions in their environment experiencing emotions that are derived from the hormones of stress, those emotions cause us to feel separate from our dreams. They heighten our senses so if we can't see them, it doesn't exist. The threat or the danger puts us in emergency mode and we can think positively about the relationship we want. We could send the signal out into the field. We could have pictures. We could remind ourselves of what it is but if you're not drawing the experience back to you because your response to the environment is actually weakening your organism. It's weakening your response, it's actually weakening the body. Then you will be as a victim more vulnerable to the conditions in your environment, whether large or small. And I'm talking about microorganisms as well. So if you wanted a true relationship where it was fundamentally based on this concept called love. Now let's talk about that because we practice this a lot in the work that we do. If you could truly begin to practice trading those survival emotions every day for elevated emotions and you practiced opening your heart, it's a skill that has to take place where you move out of survival. So people say, well, I can't open my heart. I can't feel love. And I say, well, what do you practice feeling? Because whatever you practice feeling, you're feeling most of the time. And that feeling could be guilt, but you're so used to it, you wouldn't even know it's guilt. It just feels like you.

Are most people practicing a feeling, or are they just reacting to how they feel?

Well, they're reacting to their external environment. What's happening? Or they're reacting to some stray thought in their mind and every thought produces a chemical. So if they have an unhappy thought, they feel unhappy. If they have a judgmental thought, it produces chemicals that makes you feel polarized, right?

So... How much does one thought change your chemical body?

That's an interesting question. So let's just... I'm going to put this on hold here.

Yes, yes.

So the stronger the emotions that we feel from the problems and conditions in our life, the more altered we feel inside of us, the more we pay attention to what's causing it outside of us. So if you have an event in your life, an experience in your life that has a strong emotional charge to it, and you don't feel like your normal self, you feel this alarm system switch on, you're going to narrow your focus on the cause and the brain's going to take a snapshot, and that's called a long-term memory, right? So then what people don't know is that every time they think about that event. They're producing the same chemistry in their brain and body as if the event was occurring.

In that moment.

In that moment. So the highly charged event is actually producing the emotion and the body is so objective that it doesn't know the difference between the real experience that's creating the emotion and the emotion that the person is fabricating by thought alone. The body's believing. It's so objective, it's believing it's in the same environmental experience. So the highly charged emotional events, some people think of their ex, and the thought of that person... Makes them sick. Makes them feel out of balance.

So... And one image, one thought in their mind makes them feel out of balance.

So all you need is an image and an emotion. A thought and a feeling, a stimulus and a response. and you're conditioning your body emotionally into the past. So now the memories, and this is just not in the brain now, it's in the body. Okay, so now that thought of that person is actually creating a response in the body that's consuming the body's energy for growth and repair, consuming the body's energy to create because in survival, it's not a time to create. In survival, it's time to run, fight, and hide. The problem is that it becomes a subconscious program. It's no longer a conscious process. It now is a subconscious process. Now the body has been conditioned into resentment, into unhappiness, into fear, anxiety, whatever it is. Back to our concept of bringing love into your life. You say to that person, okay, open your heart and they're going to say, Are you kidding me? I was injured. I was hurt. I'm not gonna do that. Let me see your cards first, right? And once I see your cards, then I'll open up a little bit. So we protect this, right? So now in that state of survival, the research shows that the long-term effects of those stress hormones are pushing the genetic buttons that are creating disease. The body can't live in emergency mode for that period of time. So in a sense, the person is making themselves sick by thought alone. The thoughts are making them sick, literally. So the problem is now the body is conditioned into the past and it's the mind. Now once the body is the mind? The body becomes the mind emotionally. So now all of this energy stored in the body and now the person person now has to leave their unhappiness and step out into the unknown. They have to get out of the familiar feelings that has defined them. So they'll say, I can't really feel joy, I can't really feel love. And what they're really saying is, I've been conditioning my body emotionally so much into the past that I can't feel anything else other than what I know.

Anger, resentment, pain, suffering.

Psychology calls those Normal human states of consciousness. Those are altered states of consciousness.

So normal states of consciousness are these kind of negative feelings?

No, I'm saying that those states of survival, people say anger, fear, those are normal things. Gotcha. No, those are in survival, those are altered states. The survival chemicals are actually knocking your brain and body out of balance. You're out of balance in that moment. And if you keep doing that, the imbalance is now the new balance and now you're altered emotionally. So back to the concept of love. So the person can theoretically, intellectually, philosophically say, I want this type of person. She's got to be this way. He's got to look this way. He's got to be like this. And they're basically saying, I want something that represents all the things that I no longer want.

Right?

And so they're creating with their brain and mind, which is perfect. The problem is that if you can't feel the emotion of your future, your manifestation of love before it's made manifest, like people say, well, when my relationship happened, I find Mr. Right, then I'm gonna feel love. Waiting for the outer environment to change. to take away this feeling of anger, resentment, emptiness, but they forgot that they create reality. In other words, when it finally appears that I'm going to feel love, that's cause and effect. We're waiting for something to happen. If you're feeling the lack and the emptiness, then you're keeping your relationship at arm's length because you don't have the magnetic field to draw to you. So the emotions that come from these energy centers, the lower energy centers in our body, do have frequencies, there's chemistry involved, but they have a different agenda. So now we ask the person, can you teach your body emotionally what the future will feel like before it's made manifest? That means you can't wait for your relationship to feel love. You have to reverse that battleship and understand feeling love is going to be the magnet, and if you can hold the vision of your future, a clear intention with a coherent brain, organized signals into the field. And you could actually crack this thing open and practice getting so present in the moment that you're not anticipating the next moment or trying to predict the future, and you're no longer romancing the emotions of your past. You can find that sweet spot of the generous present moment. The familiar past is the known emotionally. The predictable future is the habituation of autopilot being unconscious and programs. Those are both knowns. There's only one place where the unknown exists. That's the present moment. So if you could work with your body to the point that it trusts you enough to feel so safe that you have conquered it in a certain way that it could actually relax into the present moment, begin to work with your heart and start to breathe and start to practice feeling love. In the beginning it would feel foolish or gratitude. Why would I feel love if it hasn't happened? Well, that's because you've been hypnotized into waiting for your world to change to feel the emotion from the experience. But according to the quantum model, your emotion ahead of the experience, when you combine that clear intention with the elevated emotion and you feel love, your body's so objective that it's actually believing it's living in that future in the present moment and your body now is beginning to change. You are beginning to change your biology to reflect what you're about to experience in your future. So the stronger the love you feel, the more altered you feel inside of you, the more you're gonna pay attention to that picture in your mind. Stimulus, response, memory, emotion, thought and feeling. But now, you're remembering your future instead of remembering your past. And biologically, it's actually the same.

How do we, remembering your future as opposed to remembering your past?

Right, it's the same thing biologically.

The body experiences the same way by thinking and imagining something that hasn't happened yet, but it will happen. Okay, well, and imagining something vividly from the past that happened Sometimes our brains trick ourselves in thinking it happened a.

Different way, doesn't it? Yeah, but that's incidental. It's none of your business how it happened. In fact, it doesn't interpret it. Exactly. It's your perception, right? So then the stronger the emotion you feel from some outer experience in your life, the more altered you feel, the more the brain freezes the frame and takes a snapshot. Well, now you're freezing a frame in the outer environment. But if you're truly in the present moment and you know exactly what you want and you begin to teach your body emotions, start practicing opening that heart. It's amazing what happens. The moment that heart begins to open, we've measured this so many times, Louis, on a scan, on a real time brain scan, when the heart moves into this kind of rhythm, when you're feeling frustration, when you're feeling impatient, when you're feeling resentment, you are stepping on the gas pedal and you're stepping on the brake at the same time and the heart is pumping against the closed system and it causes an erratic beat. It becomes incoherent and energy literally leaves the heart. Now you no longer believe in your future. You can't put your heart into your future. You can't trust the outcome because there's no energy there. It's being used and consumed somewhere else so energy is leaving the brain as well. But once energy starts to move into the heart. We've seen this so many times and it starts to beat in this rhythm, like banging a drum or dropping a pebble in water, pebble after pebble. The heart begins to create a wave of energy right to the brain, like taking a big sheet and going like that. And then all of a sudden you see this wave and the brain gets this rush of energy and that change in brain wave patterns, that change, that wave is carrying information and the person starts to get a very clear idea. They see their future very clearly. Now that energy is causing them to move into very coherent alpha brain wave patterns which is the state of creation. This is when you no longer hear the voice in your head that's talking to you that you listen to and believe is the truth.

I'm not good enough.

Yeah, whatever that is. It's called the default mode. It suppresses the default mode network and and the next thing you know, you start seeing in pictures and images. You start dreaming, and that's the imagination, that's the creative state. So now you start naturally imagining the heart is the creative center. We've got to put our heart into our future. It better be open and activated. So now when you start falling in love with your future, oxytocin is released in the brain and in the heart. Oxytocin signals nitric oxide. Nitric oxide signals another chemical called endothelial derived relaxing factor. And just like when your sexual organs get filled with blood because you're aroused, the same thing happens here as it would happen somewhere else. And literally the arteries in the heart and lungs engorge and now your heart feels full and it's thumping in order and you're in the present moment. Now once that happens and it's beating in rhythm, the heart produces an external magnetic field up to three meters wide. In survival, you're drawing from the field and turning into chemistry. When you get energy in the heart, it's causing a change in the brain and all of a sudden it's resetting the baseline for trauma and now here you have a magnetic field. Now the heart is your magnet. It is the center of creation and now that energy is frequency and frequency carries information and you can lay the thought of your new relationship on that energy because it's consistent with it. You cannot lay the thought of your new relationship in need. That's a different energy. What do you mean in need? Well, if you're feeling needy, well, if you're feeling needy, that's a different frequency. That's a different energy.

What happens when you're in a need state as opposed to an attraction state?

Well, you're in lack. So now you're trying, you're grasping, you're controlling, you're forcing, you're trying to predict, you're overthinking, overanalyzing. and that's how people live their relationships. So then if you are going to prepare your brain and body for a new relationship, then you would have to become love completely every day. And that signal then that you're sending out into the field can carry the thought of your health, your wealth, your relationship or whatever. But here's the cool part. When the heart is activated like that, and you feel so whole, so in love with life, so satisfied in the moment, so exuberant that it's impossible to want. Now you're no longer in lack. Now you're so whole that you will magnetize wholeness in your life. The person who's the person that fits the mold energetically, that would be the same as you and yet compliment you so that the two can become one, right? And then instead of in contrast, in union, you exchange information equal to that emotional state. In other words, people use each other to reaffirm their dependence on certain emotions. You have certain people you complain with about politics or whatever. They complain back about their lives, and you use each other to reaffirm some type of Belief or something? Belief about life emotionally. You have emotional agreements on things. Well, that emotion is energy and energy is frequency and frequency carries information. So you share the same energy, you share the same information, but that's what people do in their lives. But now in a true loving relationship, when you're truly in your heart, then the question is what would love do in the relationship? and when your heart is open, it's no longer about you. It's about how I feel so amazing with you, I feel even more amazing, but without you, I'm still whole. And so now I'm no longer in need or lack. And so now when we get together and our fields interfere, when they start interfering, now the amplitude gets way higher. There's way more energy. And now, I mean, I'm all about all seven centers of the body lining up, all of them. And we're here in a body, let's enjoy it all, but come from love. And so now your heart is so open that you can't do anything else but give. You feel so amazing, you're so happy with yourself, so happy with your life, so happy with what you have, you want other people to feel the same way. And you say, Here, take that. And when you give now, guess what happens? you release more oxytocin, more nitric oxide and more of those chemicals that cause the heart to swell even more. Then all of a sudden your immune system gets stronger and all of a sudden your body starts feeling better, you start having more energy and now the constructive interference between two people that are coming together in wholeness and no longer dependence or lack or separation or need is a different game. So then What they do to protect, to nurture, to grow, to evolve that love is one of the most important things that they have. Not because they're doing it out of obligation or because they're married or whatever.

What is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves, whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship? Is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves to be better for other relationships?

If their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them, something is missing in the story. That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them. But add to it, who were you in this relationship?

Absolutely.

What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? What pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently? Where did you wish you would have said less and where did you wish you would have said more? What do you learn from this relationship? And if when you say what you learn, it's just that I want to make sure that the next person is.

Gives me what I need, or is.

Less of this or more of that, who do you want to be in the next relationship?

How are you going to add value?

A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? So there's a cast of characters in a relationship. And it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition.

What.

I think that's it. I mean, you can, but they are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive, receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story.

Yeah.

And you're probably more of the problem than of the relationship than them, if you're just focusing on them probably.

A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship is what happens in between. This is my view on relationships. It's not an essentialist view, this is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic. You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. and of course it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. And so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of let's put your jealousy. But you may meet another person who acts differently and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you, but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you and when you say where were you, they don't say why do you always have to ask me that question? They just say, I just want to do this. It's all good, darling. I'm right here. I've got you back. And then you don't go into your chest pain, you know, pain. So this is very important to understand. We are not the same person with. With different Partners. We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. So the relationship is a figure eight. It's what I do that makes you do something, that then makes you react to me a certain way, that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you, and each one actually creates the other. And when you get that view of relationships, when you come out and you're in transition, you say to yourself, let's say I was with someone who completely Disconnected. Okay, they're disconnected. Did I push them away? Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection? And that is not self-blame. That is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself. And you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance. but it is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me, then made me... That's the relationship.

Yeah.

And if someone's like, you, know what? They listen to you, Esther, they really want to have an amazing relationship. They want to have a rich life, knowing it's not going to be perfect, but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life. And they're thinking to themselves, how much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person, into their life that I'm creating a partnership with? And how much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that?

But you asked me, it's different questions, right? What keeps a relationship alive is one question. How much do you invest in a relationship is a different question. So I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive. Because it's part of, and I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking, it is what I'm mostly interested in. Because I work on eroticism. What keeps us alive? What keeps us hopeful? What keeps us engaged with possibility?

Not physically alive, but connected alive.

Connected to life, life force, life energy. Why? Because I think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive. Teams that are not dead, companies versus companies that are alive. What is flourishing versus surviving. And because it is part of my personal history, and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps, and I wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp. So that's why I've got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing. Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it. Yes.

Right?

It's the story that's attached. So eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship. Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. So in the research of Eli Finkel it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, it's love, but it's not exciting, it's not erotic, it's not necessarily desire. It's calibrating your expectations. So that you have, and that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections. For me intimacy doesn't mean sexual either, it just means people that are important to you, that accompany you through the life stages and to the big events in life. These three things, expectations, calibrating expectations, diversifying your social connections and taking risks and doing new things, is the research of Ela Finkel for thriving relationships. But then in that piece, I think play is essential.

It's huge.

It's huge. And it is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about.

How often are you playing in your relationship?

All the time.

All the time. We have... Humor is essential. It's an essential salve and balm in my relationship. I can be in the middle of an argument and then I start to laugh and then I just get perspective and we just kind of ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun.

Of.

It'S that whole realm of we're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious.

And what happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing.

Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, if a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left, it is diagnostic.

Really?

Now, is it true? You know, nobody has proven that scientifically. But what you know is that humor. And if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on where should we begin or on how is work? you'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fight, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if they have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it. And even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that, I know that we know and it creates that complicity and it invites a new possibility.

Some people may be resisting the humor, they may be like, they want to hold on to the seriousness. Yes, yes.

If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters and only my perception and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing.

Yes. I want to ask you a few more questions, then I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally in your own inner world that you noticed, oh, there's something like we talked about, it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that came out. Was there anything for you that you were like, huh, there's something I still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple of years with being at home and, you know, not doing things the way they used to be?

I will answer this in two ways. The way that I experienced the pandemic. So in the first, in the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown. And basically it was in the, you know, suddenly kind of, I got gripped with a bit of a panic and primarily because I thought I can't catch this thing. Right. Because if I catch it, I am now suddenly considered elderly. I'm past 60.

But you're 35.

Yeah, yeah.

For the pandemic it changed. It suddenly shifted overnight. I became elderly. And that meant I wasn't sure if we entered the hospital, me or Jack, that we will pass the triage.

Interesting.

And he's older than me. And I got really, really scared. I had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the Holocaust and to my family experience. That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. And it was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die to the point you wanted to know about your marriage, my relationship. So we are in the middle of construction at the time and the workers and at day point he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to dig a hole in the garden. I said, oh yeah, why? He said, so that when I die, you can just roll me right in.

Oh my God. Wow, talk about humor.

But I cracked up because he showed me, Girl, you gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh and I just realized, no, no, no, he's not dead. Because I was ready to stop construction. I said, We're not making this.

No one can come here within a thousand yards of our house.

No, no, it's more like we you will not survive.

No way.

I was, I really, when it's post-traumatic it's trauma, it's the worst. Interesting. So I really was very, very, very scared and his humor diffused it for me and just brought me back and said, we're continuing to build, we're gonna live, we're gonna survive, don't worry girl. It's like, so this was one and it slowly, you know, I entered into the, into the, the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved. And that's when I understood this came out of that. I missed my friends, I missed my dinner parties, I missed intimacy. And I created a host of different group experiences pods. I had a movie club on Zoom on three continents. I had a book club. I had a yoga group. that met four times a week still till now, that is over two continents.

Wow, that's cool.

And I had a hiking group, I had a swimming group in the summer, and then one day I said, I need to play. And I need to continue to have conversations where I learned something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic. And I said, I'm gonna create a game, not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented. I just thought, I want to do something creative and I'm gonna, I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like, you know, when you live six months like this in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversation.

Of course, yeah, of course.

So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun, get energized, you know, be curious about each other, talk about something else. And I thought, we need to play because play is a container. Play gives you the possibility to take risks, to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about because it's under the guise of play. Play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask, certainly not to your partner, because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers.

Really?

Interesting.

You know, you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers.

You're never gonna see again.

Or people you've just met.

Right.

The person you live with for decades on end. That's interesting. So play became very, very central. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground, and it means you can enter the world of imagination and where the rules are different. And every child at this moment, you know, around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play, It is the moments when they are not in hyper vigilance. It is an essential survival skill.

Yes, yes.

Underrated. And from that place came... That's correct. Where should we begin?

It's one of the key things in relationship and in life, is what I'm hearing.

It's essential. It's essential.

Why is it so hard for people to feel that type of love, that unity love, the conscious love, in a relationship, an intimate relationship.

See, this is because they are interested in the fruit, not in the root.

The fruit, not the root. What's the root?

Say right now, you want to experience love. So what will we do? Like people are going about chanting this mantra, I love you, you love me, you love me, I love you throughout the day. Because you know if you don't say it for two days, it may go away. Love does not happen because you say it. Love does not happen because you are attracted to somebody. Yes, you may feel it at certain moments. When you like something, you may also begin to love it, all right? Essentially love means sweetness of your emotions.

Sweetness of your emotions.

Yes.

When you have very sweet emotions, that's called love, isn't it? If I have nasty emotions, that's called hate, that's called whatever. So sweetness of your emotion, why is it that you have tied it to something that you like to eat? I love ice cream, I love this man or woman, I love this, I love that, I love car, I love food, I love heavy, you know people are talking this everywhere, all right? So, or I love God, that's the safest thing to do.

To do.

Because you can always claim God loves you. But if you claim this person loves me, tomorrow the guy when it goes away, you can't say anything. But this is a safe thing to do, all right? People have found various ways. I am not saying there's anything wrong with that. It's okay. You use whatever means you want to feel the sweetness of your emotion. But you must understand it's sweetness of your emotion. I am asking you, what happens within you? Why is it determined by somebody else? What happens within you if it's determined by somebody else? This is the worst form of slavery, isn't it?

When love is determined by someone else.

Not only love, your happiness, your joy, your peacefulness, your love, anything that happens within you, when your inner experience is determined by something or somebody that is the worst form of slavery. Yeah, but we are a free country.

So when people are in a relationship and there seems to be a wave of joy and love and acceptance and then other days maybe it's anger or resentment or frustration, how do we move out more into acceptance and conscious love as opposed to control or manipulation or well, you need to do this to make me happy. How do we expand beyond that?

See, first of all, you must decide, is your life in pursuit of happiness or is it an expression of joy?

Is it in the pursuit of happiness or expression of joy?

Tell me in your life, when you're expressing your joy, was that the best moment? Or when you're pursuing happiness, was that the best moment?

The joy.

Yes. So why is it that you have not done that? Because you still believe there is joy in this tree and you can squeeze it out. There is joy in this man or woman that you can squeeze it out, you wring them and then you expect relationship to be great. It will not be. You're wringing them out so that juice of joy will come to you or love will come to you. No, love is not something that you do. Love is something that you can become. It's your quality. If your mind is in a certain way, it's joyful. If your emotions are in a certain way, it's loving. This is the quality of sweetness of body. If your body becomes sweet and pleasant, it's called health and pleasure. If your mind becomes very pleasant, it's called peacefulness and joyfulness. If your emotions become pleasant, it's called love and compassion. If your very life energy becomes pleasant, it is called blissfulness and ecstasy. Only if your surroundings become pleasant, it's called success. Only to achieve success, you need competence, you need cooperation, you need help from other people, all right? Because without all of them cooperating, there will be no success. Right now, these guys must cooperate, otherwise this shoot is not going to go well.

Okay, we can cooperate.

All right.

But even if these guys don't shoot well, we can still be joyful. They cannot stop us?

No, we can be joyful, yeah.

Yes, they cannot stop us. But for the shoot to go well, you, they need to cooperate. If they don't cooperate, the situation will not go well. For the success of this situation, you need the cooperation of all these people. But for my body, for my mind, for my emotion and my energies to feel pleasant, I don't need anybody's cooperation. This is one hundred percent my business. So right now to experience love within you, you are asking somebody to be in a certain way. Oh, all the best. You're going to have a trip.

Is that why you think most marriages go through divorce? Because it's more of needing the other person to support you in feeling a certain way?

See. Suppose you cannot walk without a crutch. Without a crutch you cannot Right? Then next moment you go and say to somebody, some pretty woman, I cannot live without you. Between the crutch and her, what is the difference, I am asking. One is a physical crutch, another is an emotional and psychological crutch, isn't it?

Yeah.

So essentially you have crippled yourself. This this life is a complete life by itself.

Oh.

If this is a complete life, it's joyful, loving, wonderful by its own nature. Now, when it's feeling so wonderful, it may want to share this wonderfulness with people around. You can share this with thousands of people, but you also want a more intimate sharing to happen. For that you need one person. So, if it's about you expressing your joy and love to somebody and you find that person, you think that person is going to run away from you?

No.

No, you want to squeeze them for love and joy.

People come in because they're in pain and they want the pain to go away.

Yeah.

And they've tried. Maybe they've tried something else that didn't work. And you're like, talk medicine, right? Without having to take a pill. How can I relieve this pain, this suffering, this problem? But the problem, what I'm hearing you say is never about another person. It's always with them.

Well, not always. I think that relationally a lot of people don't realize that even if the other person is problematic, so right when I was training, one of my clinical supervisors once said, before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes.

Right.

Right?

So, you know, it's not like there aren't problematic people out there. Their environment. Right, but then what is your response to that? And I think that people don't realize how much agency they have. They don't realize that they can choose their response. to their circumstances. They can choose their response to the people around them. And I'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world, for example. But then how do you respond? What are you going to do about it? And I think that's where people get stuck.

And you talk—I love your TED Talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past. And I believe that we hold onto our stories and we probably continue to write them in a more powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized. Is that fair to say that something happens in our past, we hold on to the story daily or whenever we're triggered and it amplifies the story in our mind?

Well, it does. And the problem is that often whatever that version of the story is, we carry with us and we never revise it. And so you create a story when you're younger, for example, about something that happened in your life. And then as an adult, you've never looked at that story through the adult lens. You're still looking at it through the childhood lens. And so that's why I say that when people come in that we're all unreliable narrators.

Yes.

That we all tell a story through, you know, this lens. And the thing is these are usually faulty narratives. So there's a broader version of the story that people haven't looked at. And so I feel like in a lot of ways what I do as as a therapist is I act as an editor and have of course a writing background. And so I help people to revise their stories because the reason they can't move forward in the story, the reason they can't get to the next chapter is because of something is wrong with the story. They are stuck. And so it's almost like I'm helping them with writer's block.

I mean for me, life is an interpretation.

Yes.

Right? There's an instance that happens and we can interpret it as good or bad. or we can interpret it as this is a neutral event and I'm going to make the most of this.

Is that fair to say? Yeah, absolutely. And also how we attribute other people's parts of the story, right? So who are the villains and the heroes in the story? You know, I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. And idiot compassion is what our friends do. They back up our story no matter what. We say, this happened. This happened with my boss. this happened with my partner, this happened with my parent, right? This happened with my best friend. And we say, yeah, that was terrible. Screw them, they're a jerk. You know, that's awful. You're right, they're wrong. Don't let anyone treat you that way. That's what we do. And if you listen to your friend's stories, you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be different, the kind of story they're telling is similar. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe It's you.

Yeah, exactly.

We don't say that. That's idiot compassion.

Idiot compassion is where we as friends say, yeah, you're the best person in the world. This person's horrible. Leave them or let them go. Forget about them. They're so bad at what they did. There's always two sides to every story.

Well, right. And so the value of therapy is that we offer wise compassion. We hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do. And that's where the other version of the story comes in.

So how do we have wise compassion for our friends when they're like, she cheated on me, he left me, they had an affair, whatever. How do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for our friend, not making, when they're in a vulnerable place, not making the other person right or wrong, but being there for and also kind of giving them some tough love, I guess?

I wouldn't call it tough love. I would just call it-- Reality. Love.

Love.

It's love. It's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way. So I sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs because we need to hear them. But how do we do it? It has to do with timing and dosage. So the timing is when they're really raw, when something just happened. You know, now's not the time. time to say, you know, this has happened with your last three boyfriends. Right.

Maybe you're the problem here.

Have you noticed that going through people's phones is not working well for you? We are not gonna say that maybe in that moment. So that's timing. And then the dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation? It doesn't all have to happen in one conversation. So I think that that has to do with being a good listener. and a lot of us don't know how to listen. And I think it's really helpful. I see a lot of couples in my practice too. And if you can say to the person when they come to you with something, how can I be helpful in this conversation right now? I know you're really hurting. Do you want to just vent? Do you want to hug? Do you want me to help problem solve with you? Do you want my honest opinion or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time? Let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them in that moment and then in another conversation, you might be able to offer them something more.

When they're not completely raw or broken.

Yes.

Hurt.

Yes.

So what is that specific question when anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt, what's the question you should ask them?

How can I be helpful to you right now? I know you're really hurting.

What does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that?

It helps them to reflect on, oh wait, What do I need? Am I just gonna download all of this stuff and then I'm not gonna feel any different at the end? Or is there something else that I want right now? And maybe downloading it will make them feel different. Just make them feel seen and understood and heard, which is important. Or maybe they want something else, but let them tell you. And I think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are tell me more. So instead of saying, when they say, oh, here's what's going on, and we say, oh, well, we try to cheer them up. Here's what you can do. We try to fix it. We try to cheer them up. We try to make it seem like it's not so bad. Whatever we do, instead just say, Tell me more. We do this with our kids. I can say as a parent, we do this all the time. So your kid comes to you and says, I'm really sad about this, or I'm really worried about this. We say, oh, don't worry. Don't worry, no, it's not a problem. We say, oh, don't be sad, right? Go have ice cream. Right, exactly. But the thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like, oh wait, I'm not supposed to feel this. And really what it is is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids' feelings.

Why is that?

Because we are uncomfortable with feelings. We grew up in a way where feelings were messy, feelings were uncomfortable. Feelings were something that, you know, was, they were gonna be trouble.

Yeah.

As opposed to feelings.

Stop crying.

Stop crying. Yes. As opposed to just, you know, let's, feelings are actually a great thing. People say, oh, there are these negative feelings like sadness, anxiety, anger, whatever. Even envy. I always say feelings are like a compass. They tell us what direction to go in. So with envy, for example, I say follow your envy. It tells you what if you are feeling envy, that's great because it says, what do I desire? It puts you in touch with your desire. What is it that I desire? And what steps can I take to get something like that in my own life? If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling anxious, what is not working right now that you can look at? If you stuff down that feeling, if you pretend it's not there, it just gets bigger and here's what happens. It doesn't go away. It comes out in Too much food, alcohol, drugs, insomnia, a short-temperedness, inability to function, distractibility, that mindless scrolling we all do through the internet. A colleague of mine said that the internet was like the most effective short-term non-prescription pain killer out there.

Wow.

And so what happens is your feelings are still there, but you're not dealing with them.

What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

Well, you first of all get sick. Physically sick, emotionally sick, mentally sick. Everything, everything, right? So we have, just like we have a physical immune system, we have a psychological immune system. And we have to take care of our psychological immune system. So it's just like, you know, what do you do to keep healthy with your body? Like you're gonna eat right, you're gonna exercise, you know, you're gonna do all the things that you want to do to take take care of yourself, you're going to get enough sleep. Those things also help your psychological immune system. They're not totally separate. The mind-body connection is profound. But at the same time, are you going to be around people who don't nourish you? That's going to hurt your psychological immune system. That's going to make you sick. Are you going to stuff down your feelings? That's going to make you sick. And so how do we take care of ourselves? And part of it is, instead of trying to numb out your feelings because numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings. And then, not only do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience, but you don't experience the other feelings. You mute one feeling, you mute the others. You mute the pain, you mute the joy. So, you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human.

What is that called?

I was gonna say dead. I mean, I feel like you can be alive but not living. And that's what happens to people, is that they're alive. They're going through the motions. They wake up every day, but they're not really living their lives.

What's an assessment we could take for ourselves if someone's listening or watching to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are, and if the people in their life closest are actually good for them, or hurting their psychological states. Is there a questionnaire we could take just off the cuff? Is there an assessment? Is there a few things we could ask ourselves?

Yeah, I think that it has to do with a sense of vitality, right? Which of course, like vitality, the word life is right in there. When you wake up in the morning, are you excited about what you're doing? Is there meaning in what you're doing? Do you feel connected to how you're spending your days. Because at the end of your life, are you going to look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, in maybe you should talk to someone in my book, there's a woman that I treat, she's this young woman who goes on her honeymoon, she's newly married, she comes back, and she has cancer. And she says to me at one point, she says, why do we need a terminal diagnosis?

To have a wake-up call.

Why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention? Why do we need that to really pay attention? And I think that if we can keep the awareness of death sitting on one shoulder, and I don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way, it's not depressing. It's actually, again, going back to vitality, it helps us feel alive because life has 100% mortality rate and that's not for other people. We like to believe that, right? And so the thing is that if we know that we we have a limited time here, I think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day.

Why is it so hard for people to pay attention?

Fear.

But they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years. It's like I stay stuck in a relationship that I know is not right for me for years. I stay in a depressed state for years. I stay in a job that I hate for years. It's all based on fear?

Well, I think it is fear. You know, I think it's fear of uncertainty. This is going to sound strange, but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us. So even though we may know, oh, this would help me. This would be a good change for me. We don't do it because it's unfamiliar. And so if you grew up with a lot of chaos, if you grew up feeling sad all the time or anxious all the time, that feels like home to you. Even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

She'll keep finding chaotic environments.

Right.

And recreating it.

Yeah. And so, you know, it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy. He said to me, he said, you remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open, right? No bars. So basically, the prisoner is not in jail, and that's what so many of us are like. We feel trapped. We're not in jail. We can change. We can just walk around the bars. But why don't we? Because with freedom, the freedom to walk around the bars, comes responsibility. And if we're responsible for our own lives, that scares us. We feel like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I'm competent enough to do that. Or now I'm to blame if things don't go right.

I can't blame it on everything else. Is this one of the reasons why Inmates after a long time being in prison who get out go back into prison because they feel like they need to be back in that environment? Or are there other reasons?

I think there are other reasons. I think we don't give people the support when they come out. You know, the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for were never, you know, they never got that support. Then they come out and they're back in the same situation where they don't have that community support.

Why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness?

I think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen and heard and understood, those are the people who do take responsibility for their own happiness. I think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods, there's a part of them that's still in a fight. There's a part of them that still wants that redo. And so it's kind of like they're not aware of this. But what they're saying is basically, I will not change mom and dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood.

So they'll go find a partner that emulates their environment from mom and dad and try to change them so they well, right.

This is the irony of relationship, right? For those people who have not sort of worked through it. This is so common. And I think all of us have this peace in us, right? Because nobody we had a perfect childhood. So what happens is people say, okay, when I'm an adult, I'm gonna pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished, who really gives me all those things that I did not get growing up. But what they don't realize is unconsciously they have this radar for the people who look very different from their parents on the surface. But then once they get into that relationship, it's kind of like, -oh, this feels familiar. Right? And so what they did was their unconscious said when they were picking their partner, hey, you look familiar. Come closer. Even though consciously they thought, oh, you're totally different from my parents. This is gonna work out great. But no, they have radar for that if they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort of their unfinished business. There's this saying, we marry our unfinished business. We actually do marry our unfinished business. So that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say, you know what, I'm going to have to grieve this loss of what I didn't get, and I'm going to have to work through this and assess where I am as an adult so that I pick people and surround myself with people who are healthy for me.

What if you've chosen someone that you love deeply, but it's unconsciously your unfinished business? Is that the wrong person for you once you realize, oh, they're never gonna change, or is that a point for us to reflect back and say, actually, I need to heal the past, accept this person for who they are, and be willing to flow within this relationship?

Well, what happens is, so you married your unfinished business, but so did they. And so if you can both recognize that, if you realize, hey, wait, we have a lot of conflict in our relationship, or we're really avoidant in our relationship, or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel connected, That's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business.

To heal together.

To heal together, right.

And so that relationship could thrive.

If you both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work, yes, that could be a really beautiful relationship. And it could be very healing for both of you, in fact.

It could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that. But if you're unwilling to go through that, Then what?

You're gonna be in couples therapy. Both people have to be willing. Right, well both people have to be willing. I mean that's the thing. So it's like you may wake up one day and say, oh wait a minute, I have all this unfinished business and then your partner says, yeah, it's all you, you're the problem in the relationship. You know, it's kind of like in couples therapy so often I'll see something like, someone will say, you never listen to me.

And I will say, how well do you listen to them?

Right. Right, it's always like, if you're just yelling at someone all day, are they gonna wanna listen to you? Right. Right, so you know, there's this dance that we do in relationship and what happens is people are doing these dance steps and people become very, they become very ingrained. It's like, oh, here we go. You can script out people's arguments.

You know exactly what they're gonna look like. It starts with one thing and then.

It goes back into many different things where you're like, oh, and you know exactly how it's gonna go and who's gonna feel what and who's gonna accuse the other person of what and that's the dance. And so if one person changes their dance steps, the other The other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor or they're going to have to change their steps too if.

They want to keep dancing. Most people lose their free will to a program because they do the same thing today as they did yesterday. Their body's on autopilot and it's dragging them into the same future habitually based on what they did in the past. So now you're sitting there and it's just a little uncomfortable and you want to quit and you're body, eh, eh.

Eh, and you go, no. You get over here and you bring it back.