Being High Value: Does It Make It Harder To Be Attracted To Someone?

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Love Life podcast. I am Stephen Hussey, and we are filled with a brilliant joy to be with you.

Today.

Matt, I've got an interesting little question to ask you today because I don't know what your take is going to be on it. And I am intrigued, sir. And having worked with you for 10 years, usually I have some idea what your take will be. So this question is from someone who goes by anti-drastic element and she says, do you ever feel like the more work on yourself you do and the more you grow, the less easy it is for you to be attracted to someone.

Interesting question.

Like if you're high value in that parlance, if you feel like, man, I'm doing great. I'm rocking and rolling. Is there a smaller pool for you to choose from of people who are eligible?

In one sense, as your relationship with yourself improves, your standards improve for how you would like or even expect to be treated by someone, what you would choose to put up with. So to that extent, as you grow and evolve, so do your standards and the energy that you want for the people that you spend time with. So you could say that you will inevitably distance yourself from the kinds of people that don't bring you that energy or cannot relate to your standard for the way that you would like to live your life. But here's the part I think a lot of people miss. To me, one of the truest signs of growth is an increased sense of empathy and compassion. First, towards yourself, because as we grow, we hopefully develop a stronger, more beautiful relationship with ourselves that is founded on a greater degree of forgiveness, and self-love, self-compassion, the ability to understand our mistakes and to give ourselves a shot at improving them without writing ourselves off. And a forgiveness with our past. And it's pretty much impossible to do that without also taking a different view on other human beings. Our harshness and our judgment towards other human beings is often a direct reflection of the ways that we are not letting ourselves off the hook in life. If we're mean to other people about things that they get wrong or do wrong, you know, the moment on YouTube someone starts condemning someone for a mistake. You know, they, you see, you see something on YouTube or anywhere in the news, wherever, when everyone starts attacking someone for a mistake they've made, I always think, I don't just think where's your compassion? I also worry about their self-compassion. Because if you are that judgmental of other people, what are you gonna do when it's you? What are you going to do when you're the one who makes the mistake? And you've been so venomous towards everybody else. Now you're on the chopping block and that standard is going to come back to bite you. That righteousness is going to come back to bite you. So when we grow and improve ourselves, we improve our relationship with ourselves and that improves our relationship with with people. Because we realize that we're people. And the same forgiveness that we want for ourselves is a forgiveness we then have to give to other people.

And that isn't going to mean you're going to tolerate. You're not going to tolerate less than you would have before.

It means that when you meet someone and they have flaws, and I'm not talking about signs of abuse or disrespect, but even in those cases, you can say, I don't want this person anywhere near me because they're not good for me. But even then, and I'm not suggesting we you focus your time and energy on trying to have compassion for abusive people, but you can say that person is in a wildly different state of mind and a wildly different chapter of their development or their life or their pain than I am. And I don't want to be anywhere near them. But there are other people who come into our lives with flaws that a less evolved version of us would write off immediately because of those flaws, because they're not perfect in those ways that we've become less judgmental about today, because we've become less judgmental of ourselves. And that means when someone on a date or in the dating process isn't perfect, doesn't do certain things has flaws, has weaknesses, has mistakes, has a past, has something that they're still struggling with. It might actually mean our Paul opens up in some ways because we're suddenly more willing to actually engage with a part of someone that we would have used to write them off immediately before.

Yeah, and so in some ways that growth is a really, there's a different growth than just, oh, I'm rocking and rolling because my career is on point, I look great, I feel confident. There's like the outer things, but there's also you developed maturity wise, which might mean you think about richer qualities in the person you choose rather than just, I've got the person who looks like great arm candy and makes me look really great next to them because superficially they look like the great package. In some ways, the evolution you're saying beyond that is you choosing based on richer, more important attributes.

Yes.

And in that sense, in some ways as well, less people do become available to you, but in a good way because you are thinking about deeper qualities that matter to you rather than just superficial signs of success.

I think that I thought about this the other day, right? There's people early in my life, let's hope I'm still early in my life, Steve, but there were people far earlier in my life who I always told the story. If someone said, why did we break up? I don't mean publicly because I don't talk about my relationships. publicly, but there are people that to myself, I always told the story that, oh, we broke up because they were really difficult in this way. Like they had this trait, this habit, this thing that I couldn't deal with. And the story was that they were difficult. And it's, It's a very righteous and arrogant story to tell. Because the truth is, I do think to myself, I don't think in terms of, oh wait, they really were the right person, I just didn't give enough love. But I do think that if those same things were to show up today, with somebody. I wouldn't be so judgmental of them. I would have a different way of handling them. I would have more conversations about them. You know, I know that there were people that I ended things with where I didn't even have the conversations. Not. Not well. You know what I mean? Like, I had. I had arguments. I had, like. You know, we had things where I pointed out that this thing really annoyed me, but we never talked about it. I never actually brought it up in a constructive way or said why it bothered me or how I might like it to shift or change or showed compassion for helping them to change that thing or even tried to meet them in the middle more. It was very much a, this isn't the way I want things to be and I'm out. Yeah.

And that's sort of a way when you're in your early 20s, there's a lot of just, this isn't working for all my needs right now. So I'm out. It's a very selfish way you think, right?

You've spent a life dismissing people who you don't think are perfect in the ways that you want them to be, or you don't think that they score in all of the categories you want them to score in. That's why you keep dismissing people. Then you may wait an entire lifetime for someone to show up who scores a 10 in every category. Which by the way is fine if you feel like, no, I've never met someone who scores highly enough in enough of the categories I want. I don't need them to be perfect, but I haven't had enough of what I want in the categories that are important to me, fine. But at some point, we are gonna come across someone that it's worth making it work with who does not do well one of the things that we would like them to. And at the very least, when that happens, it would be nice to have had some practice with having great communication around a thing like that to try to come to meet each other. to try to resolve it. And so the reason I, when you ask this question, like if you, as your standards, you know, as you grow and as you change and evolve, does your pool of people that are available to you get smaller? In some ways, yes, because you have higher standards. But in some ways it gets bigger because you're more capable of navigating differences and compromises and compassionately loving someone into being able to grow with you or compassionately understanding why they are that way so you don't judge it so quickly and you start to see that some of it actually may even come from a more beautiful place than you realized. You know that this, by the way, this is not a mandate for people who are people pleasers to go and keep trying with someone who is treating them badly. I'm not talking about that, but I am saying that for me, growth doesn't come with an increased sense of arrogance at all the people that newly are not good enough for you. Like that's not me becoming growing as a human being doesn't make me say more people in the world are pieces of shit.

No, and the people who I've seen do that, it never helps them in dating. They often end up very bitter and constantly angry and no one's good enough that no one's good enough thing, it never works well.

No, and it's actually a, it's an ego position, not a genuine position of standards. That's an ego. I need to show how great I am in relation to other people. And I show how great I am by talking about how many people are not good enough for me. That's just another egoic way of propping yourself up. And it's a weak place to come from. I like to think that the more I grow, the more I see the beauty in people. And that's why I say the more people become available, because we teach people how to love by the way that we love them. And if we love in better ways, in more beautiful ways, more people rise up around us. People will have a chance at rising up around us. That's what great leadership is, right? It creates more leaders. You create more people who are able, who are capable, who are loving, because you set the tone. You set an example. And some people might not come up to meet you quick enough, and that's a relationship that won't work, because you can't take a five-year bet on every relationship that comes your way. You just can't. There aren't enough. We're not gonna live for a thousand years. There aren't enough years. to do that. So we still have to be calculated. You know, if we take on a new employee in the company, I can't take a five-year bet on that employee. It's. We haven't got long enough. Right. So there's still people that are not going to be right for the company, not because they never could be, but because they can't get to be right on the time frame that I need them to be. So. But that doesn't mean I think they're a piece of. It just means I think. You're just, it's gonna take you a little longer and you're in a different chapter than the one I need you to be in right now. I can still be compassionate towards that person. And other people, by the way, will come into the company with flaws and I might think, oh, God, I wish they didn't have that thing. I wish they didn't have that kink. But I can still, if I come at it from a compassionate place and I communicate, what I would like them to change. I'll see quicker if they can. The problem is we often don't even see if someone can change because we never communicate enough in the beginning for them to even know what's wrong, know what's expected, and have a chance to change it. And then we get a fair chance at seeing whether they're even capable of the change. But a lot of people get into long-term relationships still complaining about something they want someone to change. But a year in, two years in, they're still none the wiser as to whether this person is capable of changing that thing because they've never truly communicated it in a compassionate but strong way. So, yes, growing means your standards for what you want for yourself will improve and you will undoubtedly distance yourself with more confidence and sometimes when you get confirmation that nothing's changing more quickly from people who don't give you that standard that you deserve. But you'll also bring a more compassionate, more empathetic and more loving eye and energy to imperfect people who could actually have a beautiful relationship with you if we didn't judge them so quickly. Yeah.

Growth equals self-knowledge and self-knowledge means being clear about what you want. And that's a good thing. That's not. That's not a disadvantage. That's only going to help you. All right, everyone, thank you so much for joining today. I have had a ball here with old Matthew Hussey, who's not so old. He's fresh and young and full of vigor. Thanks so much everyone. We will see you on the next episode. Go to the MH Virtual Retreat, mHVirtuaLretreat.com if you want to join us before our early bird sale ends where there's 25% off the retreat right now. So go to mHVirtuaLretreat.com, get the lower price and all the wonderful bonuses. We will see you there.

Can I just say Steve before we go that There are people who do not realize the depth of what we're actually doing, who need the virtual retreats so badly that are not giving themselves the opportunity to come and do it. This is not a normal program. No. Not something, I promise you, whatever you expect it's going to be, you cannot understand what that program is going to do for you until you do it. And there's, we're all, all of us here listening to this, we all want the same things, right? We might have different superficial goals, we all want the same things. We want more peace internally. We want to be happier. We want to have the ability to manage our emotions better because we know that it doesn't matter what happens in life, if we can't manage our emotions, we'll be unhappy no matter what happens. we would like to be more confident versions of ourselves to bring to our lives. We would like to be able to bring a more loving version of ourselves to the people that we care about, friends, family, strangers. But it's hard to do that when we're suffering inside or we're not happy. We use up all of our energy on being unhappy and then we don't have it to give to other people. If we can learn to manage our own energy, our confidence and our emotions, better. A different us appears in our world. We have an ability to love more, to be more compassionate, to not sabotage situations in the way that we normally do when we're feeling insecure or neurotic or scared. We have an ability to achieve more because from that state we take more risks. So all of a sudden our life, our career starts opening up. We have the ability to stick to habits more because we know how to control those internal triggers that make us do the right thing instead of the wrong thing. So when we say, I'm gonna, this habit is gonna change my life if I can stick to it, we actually know how to stick to it. Whatever you think the virtual retreat is, I promise you it's gonna be so much more. I cannot think of a greater gift you could give yourself. than coming to do this with us and spending three days of immersion. And unlike our in-person retreat, which many people could not come to because of travel reasons, they couldn't get on a flight, they couldn't get their kids looked after, they couldn't get their dog looked after, they couldn't leave, get a week off work because they were a teacher, those excuses are removed. The virtual event you can do from anywhere in the world, from the comfort of your home. So if it sounds like I'm going, I'm banging on about it and always do, it's because it's the best thing we do. And I don't, people come to that program and the biggest regret they have is that they didn't do it sooner. That's the regret. Oh my God, this was available. I could have done this earlier. There is another one coming up in September, as Stephen said, from the 24th to the 26th. this is your chance to be a part of it and at the cheapest price you're going to get it with the early bird ticket. Thank you so much guys and of course if you get a chance, well to go get those tickets go to mHVirtuAlretreat.com and if you get a chance to leave a review on iTunes for this podcast Love Life with Matthew Hussey we always really appreciate it and we do read every single one of them. We love you guys, we appreciate you, thank you Stephen for always being a.

Great host and we'll see you next time see everyone.

I see the vlog sites. Ooky whoop got a new wife. Shorty got a new boo. Yeah, love you. I'm looking for love.