How to Let Go of Someone You Thought Was “The One” (Day 2)

Welcome back to Day 2 of 5 Days to Mend. It's good to see you all in here. So many comments coming through already. It's lovely to, to see you all. Uh, Michael, good to see you here in Toronto. Let me know where you're coming from. We've got Manisha in England. Good to see you here, Manisha. Nice regular. It's nice to see you. Christina, hello to you. Ashley, uh, lovely to be with you all. Who joined us yesterday? Let me know if you joined us for yesterday. Let me know if you're coming in today fresh and you didn't see yesterday yet. I highly recommend that you go back and watch yesterday if you haven't already. Um, it was a really, really special session on coping with the feelings that we have during heartbreak of all different kinds. And of course, we don't just have one kind of heartbreak that we're working with here this week on 5 Days to Mend. We have many different kinds of heartbreak. Um, I see many people saying, I loved yesterday. We actually had some wonderful comments inside the Love Life community. Uh, if you haven't, by the way, joined that community, go to mendweek.com and register for the app. All of this is free this week, so there's no charge for anything. But Inside the app, we have an amazing community of people. Of course, many of you joined us for the coaching session that happened after hours. As soon as we finished here on YouTube, we went straight into a coaching session inside the Love Life free community for 5 Days to Mend. Who here was there for that session? I actually— many people wrote to me saying that was their favorite part of the entire session, which was amazing because we had live callers. Um, so stick around to the end, we'll be doing that again today. Don't go anywhere for that. I actually think that's one of the most important parts of each of these sessions. Um, I see Sylvia saying, I was there yesterday, I'll be back tomorrow from Hungary. Um, lovely. Um, very good. And a huge shout out to Max and Rebecca who I coached live yesterday on video inside the Love Life app. That was amazing, and you guys were so vulnerable, and it was beautiful. A couple of quick comments from people, from those of you in the community. Kate said, for the first time, I don't feel so alone in my grief. Sandy says, so happy to be part of this group in this experience. Thank you for offering this. I pray that it is my next step in my healing journey. Uh, Anise says, thank you, Matthew. I slept for the first time in the last 4 days after my heartbreak. "It gave me some peace that I could sleep at last. Huge work with myself and pain is ahead, I know it, but at least I could sleep. Then I wonder if one day, if one session could do this, what's coming in the next 4 days? I so look forward to that." And then lastly, Elizabeth says, "Dear Matthew, the first session was so powerful. I can't tell you how much it helped me, is giving me strength." holding me in grief. Uh, I have been following you for some time now, and I'm grateful for your wisdom and what you and your team are doing for the community. I can't thank you enough. Um, I'm so happy that you are getting so much out of this. Um, I want to remind everyone that for everyone here, Matthew AI is on unlimited supply for the duration of 5 Days to Mend. I have made what is normally a paid-for tool free free to everyone who is part of this while they're going through this, because I want you to have as much support as possible. Um, for anyone— some of you were saying that, you know, you only got 3 questions with Matthew AI. That was a bug. I don't know what happened. Our tech team is figuring that out. But, um, it's unlimited for this time, so please go and make use of it. I will even give you some really great prompts, um, for Matthew AI during this session. And for anyone asking where I'm reading these comments from, they were left inside our Love Life app, which all of you get free access to during 5 days to mend for our heartbreak section that we created. Um, very good. I have some questions that I'm going to be answering from the community today, but I want to get started on the content of today because it's really, really important. Um, first I want to say, one great conversation can change your life. One great conversation. You can be in the depths of despair but one great conversation can help begin a path towards a better place. A hundred great conversations, as I said yesterday, can actually get you over someone. And we need to be in the continued company of the kinds of people, whether they're peers or mentors, who can have those conversations with us. And yesterday we elevated the conversation, um, we elevated the conversation you're having with yourself, because often the quality of the conversation that we are having internally with ourselves when we are heartbroken is very poor. It is not a great conversation. Today we together are going to get you out of the conversation that's happening in your head about an ex, about, uh, ex-husband, an ex-wife, an ex-partner, someone you dated who you can't get over, someone you never dated who you can't get over. Um, we're gonna have a great conversation, you and I, that elevates your thinking beyond the kind of the quality of the thoughts that are happening in your mind and raises your game as a result. And I might finish slightly earlier today than I did yesterday because I want to get to the coaching portion as well that we do inside the Love Life app. And for those of you wondering why we do that inside the Love Life app, I actually don't have the technical capability to bring people on live with me and do live coaching here on YouTube. We don't have a way to do that. We do have a way to do that inside our Love Life app, which is where we do it every month with our members. And of course, that's free to you this week, um, inside the 5 Days to Mend section of the app. So, uh, I'll be finishing a little bit earlier so that we can do that. I know a lot of people missed out yesterday on the coaching portion. Those are actually essential to what we're doing here on 5 Days to Mend, is that you see other people's stories and you watch me coach people through those. So show up for that today. I'll finish as early as I can here so that we can all go there together. And like I said, if you're not registered, mendweek.com is where you can register and download the app. For anyone who already has the app, you'll just meet me there. Um, so the, the theme for today is rumination, uh, the obsession that we go through about somebody else, um, how we can't stop thinking about somebody. Um, I did actually ask our team if it was okay for me to read a comment from the community and whether we'd got permission from, uh, that individual. Could the team just let me know if I did? If not, I will make do without it, but I would just love to know if I did have permission to read that comment because it really summed up what I wanted to talk about today. Um, Rumination. Uh, okay, okay, so I'll, I'll read some of it, but I'll leave out some of the identifying details. I'll change some of the identifying details. Um, let me read you this, because who here feels like they are stuck in rumination at this point? Who here feels like they cannot get out of the ruminating thoughts? About somebody else? I would love to know. Kakuuka, Shay. Okay, so you're in the right place today. Everyone who's saying me, you are in the right place today. Um, there was a comment I read just this morning as I was playing catch-up on all of the messages inside our lovely community, and I'd love to read one of those comments. Um, so I won't read the name of this person, um, because in case they want to protect their anonymity, but this gentleman says, hello everyone and thank you, Matthew. Thank you for creating this community. Uh, I recently went through a breakup The person I love most in the world ended our relationship, explaining that she could no longer be with me because she didn't want to lose herself. I believe there is still love between us, but this period of having no contact with her has been one of the hardest experiences of my life. Um, a few months ago— oh my, I lost it, bear with me. A few months ago, my mother passed away, and after that I had another parent whose health illness worsened. At the same time, I lost the person I considered my safe haven. All of this has left me in a state where it's incredibly difficult just to get through a normal day. Emotionally. On top of that, I'm struggling at work, uh, and I can't see much hope for the future. My mind constantly replays the same thoughts of not being enough, sadness, and fear. When anxiety hits, I'm overwhelmed by emotions to the point where I completely break down. Unfortunately, this happens almost every day. Logically, I understand what's happening. I know where my need for love and reassurance comes from. I understand my attachment style. I also know that I need to learn how to love myself more. But what I don't know is how to survive these overwhelming waves of grief when they come. I promised myself that I wouldn't contact her because I genuinely want her to be okay. But not knowing how she is or whether she's doing well is tearing me apart. If anyone has been through something similar and found a way to get through this stage, I would be deeply grateful if you could share your experience. Right now it feels like I'm simply trying to survive one day at a time. Um, thank you to that individual for such a, um, vulnerable comment, um, and for reaching out for support. I want to talk a little bit, and Marlon, do we have, uh, the ability to go to the flip chart? Are we going to see my legs? Because I just realized I'm wearing pajamas. Oh boy, guys, you don't understand. Months ago I said to my team I was like, I have this idea. I want to help people who are going through the worst time in their life, and I want to be there for them. And I don't want to do one event. I want to like be there for them for like a week of their life, because I know that'll actually— when we're heartbroken, we need conversation every single day. We need massive amounts of repetition. And so I, uh, I said, let's do something we've never done before. I want to go live every day with people. And, and my team were like, that sounds like a lot. And I was like, no, it's going to be easy. It's fine. Like, I'm just gonna go live, I'm just gonna sit with people. I won't be with people in their pain. It's not going to involve a lot of preparation. I just want to sit with people and show up. And Audrey is laughing at me because, like, in the last few days I have been pulling late nights, early mornings. I have bags under my eyes. Audrey ran in and put makeup under my eyes this morning right as I came in because I looked so tired. I don't know how to do something by halves. I don't know how to phone it in. I've been doing so much preparation for this. I have reading materials for you. I've Passages I want to read. I wrote a poem. Oh man, but all of that meant I didn't shower this morning, and I am— I'm still wearing my pajamas. You weren't supposed to see that, but, um, but I am. So look, here we are. Um, I— let's talk about this, because this person is describing two things, right? They're describing this overwhelming grief that they don't know how to deal with, but they're also dealing with the thoughts that come up constantly, and those thoughts contribute to the grief. So they become linked, right? There's a feeling— we talked about this yesterday— there's a feeling I'm having, but there's also the thoughts that I am having around that amplify the feeling, that make it worse. And after a while, it becomes hard to know which comes first, the feeling or the thought. Is the feeling generating the thought, or is the thought creating all of this feeling? So I want to talk about this. Grief and heartbreak, it comes in waves, and those waves can feel intolerable. And what we just heard this person tell was a, was a really sad story. If we heard that, if we read that in a book, we'd say, man, that's a really sad story. Everything that's happening to this person is a really sad story. Um, and I have different advice that if we had more time— I mean, even more time than we do this week— there's other things I would be saying about this. Um, you know, there's a whole model for changing our state that I teach on my retreat. I'll be doing that in Miami in October. It's called PFA, Physiology Focus Action, that we use to change our state. And that's going to be very helpful to a lot of people. But what I want to do before we even get there is talk about how to separate feeling from story, because feeling and story are two different things. And our story lives in the world of thought. The thoughts that this person— let's call him Mark— the thoughts that Mark is having around this breakup, around the history of the last couple of years of losing a parent, having another parent who's not well, um, struggling at work, and then on top of it losing the— this, this great love that he didn't want to lose. Now there's the feeling he's having, which is grief, loss, pain, sadness, heartbreak, and then there's the story around it, which is the— there's a story that we were told there. Um, how do we separate feeling from story? Because this is actually part— this is at the heart of rumination. And the problems with rumination. So let's, uh, let's look at this, okay? What are some of the stories that we tell ourselves during a breakup? What are some of the thoughts we have? If you were to open a book now and that book contained all of your worst thoughts What are they? It could be, I'm worthless. And if you feel brave enough, you can write one down, um, in the comments. I'm worthless. Maybe, and, and there, maybe it's framed as, you're worthless. You should just give up on finding anyone. No one's ever gonna love you. Or maybe no one's ever going to love you the way that person did. Or maybe you're never ever going to meet anyone as great as that person again. You messed this whole thing up. You're not capable of holding on to a relationship. You'll always be the person before the person they marry. They're the one who got away. 'You're never going to feel that again. The rest of your life is going to be a disappointment in comparison.' What's the story that you tell yourself? What's the thought? 'If I show my full self and heart again, I won't be accepted,' says EWP. Keikatron says, I know I will never find a person like him again. Elena says, you're unlovable. Laredes says, my life means nothing. I'm always abandoned. I'm not important or loved. 'Why weren't the kids and I enough?' 'I never know how to pick,' says Christina. So I want you to notice all of these thoughts and what these thoughts do. All right, that's the moment of truth. Okay, how do we look on camera? Cool. Pretty cool. All right, they're a bit like Japanese zen. Vibes. So we have the feeling and then we have the thought or the story. Now the feeling creates pain, doesn't it? And tell me if you can still hear me okay, uh, Marlon. I can always bring the microphone a little closer if I have to. The feeling creates pain. The story turns pain into suffering. The story turns pain into suffering. Okay, feeling creates pain. So if you're heartbroken, you're heartbroken, it hurts. People are asking to bring the mic closer. Bring the mic a little closer? That's probably in shot, is it? Yeah, quite a bit. That's okay. Here, I'll just talk a little louder from here. So if I'm heartbroken, I'm in pain, I'm hurting. But if I tell myself, I'm heartbroken, this hurts, I'm sad, and I'll never meet anyone again. That pain becomes suffering because what was a painful emotion turns into a catastrophic thought, also known as cognitive distortions. A cognitive distortion is someone decided they didn't want to be with me and therefore I am not worthy. If someone decided not to be with us, that's painful. I lose that person, I'm disappointed, I'm sad. But when I say they left me and therefore I am not worthy, that turns into suffering. That becomes a cognitive distortion. Now, the way to think about this is, in the case of Mark, He's grieving the fact that he lost someone. He's grieving someone he lost. That's painful no matter what. There's no escaping that pain. But that pain takes place in the present. If we sit with that pain, we're sitting with pain we feel in the present. The story of I'm not worthy I'll never meet anyone again. I don't feel good enough. These things don't live in the present as much as they live in the past and the future. They live in the past and the future. Let's talk about this for a moment. So Feeling is pain in the present. That's okay, we can survive that. Thought story is— creates suffering, and it comes from the past or the future. So If we go to the past, when we go to the past to create thought, what are we typically doing? We're saying some version of, if I had acted differently, if I had done something different in the relationship, they wouldn't have left. How many people relate to that thought? That's part of the rumination that you have. Because rumination, by the way, can either be about them or it can be about ourselves. When it's about them, it's usually about how great they are and why they— why they left, and will they ever come back, and I'm, you know, I'll never meet anyone like them again. When it's about us, it's about self-criticism. I did something wrong. So when, when we think about, like, what's the story you're telling yourself now? We've got so many people saying yes to— I'm living in the past of what I did wrong. What's the story you're telling yourself about that? What are you telling yourself? You don't have to say it if it's too vulnerable, but if you feel brave enough, say it. Like, what's the thought? If I had not been so jealous with this person, I wouldn't have lost them. If I had not tried to control them. If I had not been so insecure. If I had not shut down. If I had not asked too much. What's the story that you've been telling yourself? If I hadn't started that argument when we were on that vacation together. That led to the breakup. If I hadn't sent that text— what's the self-criticism? And it might be that you're criticizing an action you took. It might also be you're criticizing a quality you have. If I wasn't so anxious, if I wasn't so afraid, if I wasn't so insecure. So I was too angry, or I didn't show enough love. Says Big Propane. I was too strong. My cancer made me unlovable. If I didn't take so long to fully trust. If I were prettier, someone says. Thank you, Jess, for the honesty and the vulnerability. So there's self-criticism— that lives in the past. Self-criticism that lives in the past. Now, the problem with this self-criticism is it doesn't allow us to just experience our pain in the present. 'Cause if we were just experiencing our pain in the present, can I tell you what we would do differently? We would sit with the person who is at the center of that pain, and we would be there for them, we would have sympathy for them, we would show up compassionately for them, we would say, "There is a human being here at the heart of this who is hurting to no end. How do I show up for that human being right now?" Ruminating about what we did wrong stops us from being present with the human who is at the center of this pain. This stops us being compassionate towards ourselves, and what we need right now more than anything is self-compassion. And let's be clear about something. In the past, if we hadn't made the mistake we did, we probably would have made a different one. We have to be really careful of some of these assumptions that we make, that, well, if I just hadn't made that mistake, if I just hadn't had that conversation, if we hadn't made that one, we would have made a different one. We might have made the exact same mistake a week or a month later because that mistake maybe came from a wound. It came from something that we're working on in ourselves. And guess what? Change is hard. When we're working on something in ourselves, it's not possible to just change it overnight. Change is extremely difficult. So we like to live in this binary world where if I'd just done something different, they wouldn't have left. But How hard is it to actually do something different consistently? The reality is we— whatever, however we were able to show up was a reflection of where we're at at that time in our lives. It's a reflection of what's possible for us at that time. We were doing the best we could with the tools and the resources we had. So we have to be really careful not to live in this science fiction world where we say I— if I could have only gone back and done this thing differently. I'm a little bit of a believer in determinism, the idea that we did exactly what we were always going to do in that moment based on our level of progress at the time, you know. I, I— and listen, I get it because I've beat myself up for things I've done in the past and ways I've shown up in relationships. I've beat myself up for ways I've shown up in my relationship with my wife, Audrey. The reality was I was showing up at the level of my progress at the time. If I could have done better, I would have done better, and there have been times in my life where my best has been awful, but I'm someone who always tries to be better. I'm someone who wants to be better. If you're here, you're someone who wants to be better. You want to do better. What you were doing at the time was the best you could do at the time. Beating ourselves up for that and saying, "Oh, if I could only go back and do something different," is science fiction. If you could have done better, you would have done better. If you could have avoided having that argument, you would have avoided having that argument. The reality is we did the best we could at that moment. And let's be clear about something. They may have fucked up at some point too. We have no idea whether that was the only thing that caused the end of the relationship, or whether it would have been something else if it wasn't that. We have, uh, in our haste to condemn ourselves and turn ourselves into the devil in the situation, into the bad one, We have a tendency to oversimplify everything. Our insecurity creates oversimplification. So this is the past. Let's talk about the future. The future. Now, the few— the past tends to relate to us and what we wish we'd done differently. The future tends to relate to them. And the life that we assume we would have had with them. I assume there's a certain life I would have had with them. I assume I would have been this happy had we stayed together. This, by the way, if the past often involves us making ourselves into a devil, the future often involves making them into an angel. That had I just been able to keep them, we would have been so happy. They're so amazing. They would have made me so happy in the future. We would have been so happy in the future. It's a different kind of science fiction, right? This science fiction is believing we could have gone back and done something different when we couldn't have. This science fiction is writing a story with an ending we can't possibly know. We don't know how this would have panned out. It might not have ended in the month if you hadn't done this or that or whatever. Maybe it would have extended by another 6 months. Who's to say it would have extended another 6 years? Who's to say that relationship would have actually lasted? Again, there is an oversimplification here, and one of the things we do when we are, uh, ruminating over someone is we put that person on this immense pedestal. We put them on this incredible pedestal. You don't understand, they're amazing. I'll never find anyone like that again. We didn't win the lottery to find a great person. There are great people out there. That's why we found one, because there are great human beings around. So the rumination comes from two things. One is our own insecurity, our own lack of self-worth, whether it predated that person or whether the relationship ending knocked our self-worth. But our rumination can come from self-criticism. It can also come from the fantasy about what we would have had with them if it were to continue. It can also come from the projection of how perfect that person is and how lucky we were and how amazing the future would have been had we been able to keep them. We have to stop writing a story we cannot know. It may have ended in a completely different way. We have no idea what would have happened in the future. So we have to stop creating this binary idea of the past that if I just hadn't done this, it all would have worked out perfectly. Not true. Huge assumption, huge oversimplification. And we have to stop looking at this binary future where without them we'll be miserable and with them it would have been bliss. Not true. Gross oversimplification. Science fiction. So, and forgive us for my voice being a bit lower and higher at different times. We are working with what we have here, and Marlon is doing a wonderful job of adjusting this microphone in real time as we go. Um, we may want to lower that. Uh, I'll try and stay seated now. That way will make life easier. Um, we have to become aware of many of the distortions that happen in heartbreak. Grief creates distortions. Um, as I said, we put people on pedestals, we make ourselves into unlovable, um, wretches. The reality is far more complex. And we see extreme examples of this. I don't know how many of you know the story of Oscar Wilde and his lover Bosie. Lord Alfred Douglas, I think, was his real name. Oscar Wilde, um, was madly in love with this man Bosie. So much so that he lost himself in this relationship with Bosie. We're talking in the 1890s, um, and it's fascinating, the story of what happened. For anyone, by the way, who beat— who's beating themselves up for losing themselves in a relationship, for anyone who Uh, it feels like their confidence got knocked. For anyone who feels like they made bad decisions because they loved someone too much, take comfort in knowing that a man as bright as Oscar Wilde made all of the same mistakes, and they were almost certainly more consequential than they have been for you. Um, he was with a man named Bosie, and, uh, or he called Bosie. And Bosie encouraged Oscar Wilde to sue Bosie's father, who Bosie hated, and so did Oscar. And he encouraged him to sue his dad. And Bosie was manipulative, and he was childish, and he used Oscar Wilde to his own ends. And he convinced Oscar Wilde to go after his father. And because he went after his father, Oscar Wilde's sexuality in the court case actually ended up getting revealed at a time where it was illegal to be gay, and he ended up going to jail for it. And it's so fascinating to, you know, I, uh, there's a If you ever want a good read and a cathartic read, something that where you'll see yourself in a breakup, in a heartbreak, read this book, De Profundis, which essentially means "from the depths." And this is Oscar Wilde writing to his lover Bosie when he was in prison, and something that later on he he ultimately blamed Bosie for landing him in for his manipulation. So he landed in jail for 2 years of hard labor because of this relationship. We may feel in our own way we've done 2 years of hard labor by being broken up with someone, but he literally did 2 years of hard labor. Um, But before he had sort of turned on Bosie and realized who he really was, these are the kinds of romantic things he would write to him. Even during his court case, he said, um, you know, he said this to a friend speaking of Bosie: I don't know what to do. My life seems to have gone from me. I feel caught in a terrible net. I don't know where to turn. I care less when I think that he is thinking of me. I think of nothing else. And then he goes on to write to Lord Alfred Douglas, Bosie, in a letter. He says, my dearest boy, this is to assure you of my immortal, my eternal love for you. Tomorrow all will be over. If prison and dishonor be my destiny, think that my love for you and this idea This still more divine belief that you love me in return will sustain me in my unhappiness and will make me capable, I hope, of bearing my grief most patiently. This is a man who's faced with jail, who is writing about his love for the person who, whose stupidity put him there and whose selfishness put him there. Since the hope, nay, rather the certainty of meeting you again in some world is the goal and the encouragement of my present life. I must continue to live in this world because of that. What is fascinating is that he then goes on to write De Profundis from jail, and he suddenly starts to develop a real awareness of who Bosie was in that relationship, of the ways that Bosie tied him in knots, of the ways that Bosie manipulated him. Um, he goes on to write essentially about how Bosie would use him, how Bosie would, uh, use him for money, how he would be entirely selfish, how Oscar Wilde couldn't complete any of the important work that he had because Bosie would never let him be, because Bosie would always come over and childishly try and distract him and take him away from it. He had no respect for what Oscar Wilde was trying to create. He loved the success of Oscar Wilde but had no interest in actually letting him go about his creative process. Um, he talks about the, the essentially the, the narcissism that he saw in Bosie. And there's this wonderful line, um, where Oscar Wilde says about Bosie, my problem is not that I had too little Imagination. My problem is that I had too much. In other words, I imagined too much. I imagined too much about our— the grandiosity of our romance together. I imagined too much about what our future would be. I imagined too much about the ways you were capable of loving me. I imagined too much about your nature. My problem was not that I imagined too little. My problem was that I imagined too much. One of the things that I encourage people to do in their rumination is to make a list of the ways that you are unhappy. Um, very important thing to do. And by the way, there will be those of you who listening to this say, yes, but I wasn't with someone like this. I wasn't with someone who was toxic, selfish, narcissistic. I was with someone who was wonderful. Um, even in those relationships, it's possible with some perspective to break this perfect picture that we have created of them and the relationship and to be a little more honest with ourselves about some of the incompatibilities that we saw. You know, I, I often will say to people, when we say, yeah, but they were perfect, if only I had been more secure, I wasn't 100% secure when I met Audrey. I had my own stuff. I'd done a lot of work on my confidence over the years, but relationships trigger us. Relationships, they poke at those raw places that haven't been touched, especially when we're in our nice single encased bubble where we protect ourselves from all of the, the elements of relationships. When we get back into a relationship, in spite of all of the work we've done on ourselves, we will inevitably find some raw places poked. And when we do, we won't be perfect, we won't have perfect reactions. So this idea that I— if I had only behaved better, perfectly, they— we would have been perfect together is a misunderstanding of what it is for two people to be perfect for one another. One of the things that that made it possible for Audrey and I to have a relationship was the space that she was able to create for those moments in me. Not excuses and not taking away my accountability, but creating a space for me to actually heal, for me to learn these things about myself. And I, and I have, and I did as a result of that. I can tell you right now, there were relationships in my past where I beat myself up for a long time for ways I behaved insecurely or jealously or didn't show up in a way that I, you know, knew was productive. And I was— in some way, I was right to take accountability for that. But what I didn't understand at the time was that a partner that was more suited to me would have been a healing force for me, not an antagonistic one. Does that make sense? The right partner is one that soothes some of these things, that is able to hold space for them. The right partner is someone who we find ourselves in the, in the conversation between us and them, between our ways and their ways, where we arrive at is a bigger version of us, not a smaller one. And I've had relationships, and I'm sure you have too, with people who are not bad people, but something about that relationship made you smaller. Something about that relationship made you less than your best. And you may beat yourself up for ways you didn't show up to the best of your ability, but sometimes we have to understand that we're not in the right environment to be at the best of our ability. So when you get a chance, and if you and I get a chance, if we all get a chance to spend more time together, we can do this together. I want you to make a list of the ways that you are not quite as happy as you convinced yourself. And one of the things that's beautiful that can go along with this exercise is, um, making a note of the things you really need. Maybe you need someone with more empathy than the last person showed, a lot more patience. Maybe you need someone who is a little more willing to spend time with the people you love, because maybe your last partner wasn't. They, you know, you spent a lot of time with their friends and family, they didn't spend a lot of time with yours. Maybe you need someone who understands a little more about your passions or your need to spend time on those passions. Maybe you need someone with more calm What are the things you actually need? I had a very strange moment recently as I was preparing for this where I was going through, uh, some notes I'd made to myself in a really bad time when I was really heartbroken. And among these notes, I had written a list of things that I truly needed. And by the way, this was at a time when I was thinking I really wanted wanted that person back. But I was able to simultaneously recognize that there was a part of me that in my rumination wanted this person back, and yet another part of me that already recognized that had I remained with this person, I would have continued to be deeply unhappy in certain ways, even though when I was in it I was telling myself I was happy. And I was able to recognize that there was almost this duality there. Of the me that wanted to be back with this person and the me that also knew that what I needed was something else. Um, it's something David Whyte would call— the British poet David Whyte would call the leading edge of our maturation. The leading edge of my maturation, uh, the voice in me that already knew better than I did consciously what it was I needed. Was able to articulate certain qualities that I really needed in a long-term partner, qualities that I didn't have in the last one. I didn't choose to leave it, but being forced to leave it offered me an opportunity to say, what do I really need? And what was stunning was, as I was preparing for this— and I hadn't read these notes in a long time— but what was stunning was I read list of things I said I needed that I realized the person who represented those deeper qualities was, uh, downstairs. That I wrote those things in a time where I was very much alone and grieving and heartbroken and never thought it would be okay again. And here I was reading this list of things that I, in my soul, I felt I deeply needed. And the person who represented those things was, uh, re-watching Game of Thrones, um, in the living room. If, um, for those of you that choose to continue with me on a, a journey, there is a process that with a little more time I would love to take you through called the Rashomon process, which is a name I coined from a Japanese film called Rashomon. Where, uh, basically something happens in the film and the entire film is about looking at this event that's happened from a different lens, a different perspective. And you think that you know exactly what this event means and how it unfolded and what the lesson is, and then you see it from a different point of view and it completely changes the way you feel about it. And it keeps happening. There's something fascinating about this. To me. And this is something we have to do in a breakup. Our insecurity will tell us something is true that isn't necessarily true, or it gives us one lens of the breakup. The me that was broken up in— and my going through my own rumination during that time had convinced themselves, I'll never meet anyone like that again, I'll never feel that way about anyone again, I'll never recover from this. That was a very specific lens through which I was viewing this. I had to go through my own Rashomon process to be able to truly connect with other ways of perceiving these events, this person, this relationship, my future. So I hope— I've had people write to me who have been through the Rashomon process with me to say that was the thing that got me through my breakup, was going through that process. So with a little more time, I'm going to get through as much as I can this week with you, but with a little more time, if we do other, other journeys together I'll take you through that process because it is an incredibly powerful one. Um, in my book Love Life, um, I wrote down an example of some of the ways that we can look at some of these ruminating thoughts and how we can find a deeper truth that represents the inverse of them. Here are some that I wrote down. Um, so examples: I feel worthless. This is a ruminating thought. I feel worthless. If I was good enough, they wouldn't— they would not have messaged that other person. Truth: people do damaging things all the time that have nothing to do with their partner's true value. If I am worthless, then so is every other human being who is incredible, who has ever been cheated on. Their lack of integrity is not a reflection of my worth. It is a reflection of their standards. Ruminating thought: I've lost more than I can bear to lose. Truth: My world has gotten bigger as a result of this breakup, not smaller. I have connected with friends and family in a way that I had never before. I have experienced exquisite love and kindness from those who have stayed close in this painful time. I have learned who is really there for me, which has been a valuable reminder of the important people I was neglecting while in that relationship, and a signal for who to invest more of my time, energy, and love into. I have developed a new appreciation for nature, for stillness, for the fundamentals of life. Truth: I did not see the gifts that were all around me until I was forced to by this loss. It has turned me on to the abundance I have in my life that is priceless. This breakup is allowing me to build my world up in ways that no one can take away. Ruminating thought: They made me so happy, and now that's gone. Truth: They didn't make me as happy as I keep telling myself. Think of all the times I didn't feel seen or like I was a priority. How often I felt anxious. Never forget that a huge part of why that relationship worked for as long as it did was my ability to overlook all of the ways that this person didn't meet my needs. Ruminating thought: I have lost the person who is right for me. Truth: No one, no one can be right for me who doesn't choose me. Period. The love of my life is the person who chooses me for their life. Ruminating thought: I'll never feel this way about someone again. Truth: I have had this exact same thought about other things or people in the past, and yet I have gotten over them and moved on to something better. 'Just like with those things, one day I will look back on this and feel warmth for myself at how silly it was that once upon a time I thought that this was the end of the world.' Now, I'm not suggesting all of those are the right truth for you, but the right truth for you is in there. And if we have enough of these great conversations, we will find the right truth for you, the one that intercepts that ruminating thought, because that ruminating thought is its own addiction, and you replay it enough times, it feels like truth. We have to label it. This is a ruminating thought. What's the truth? And the truth becomes the intercept for that thought. And we have to write down our truths. I kept my truths on a file on my phone where I could come back to them every single day, because Repeat after me: Heartbreak needs massive amounts of repetition. Getting over heartbreak is not an epiphany, it's repeated epiphanies over and over and over and over again. The importance of maintaining and staying connected to these truths is everything. So my hope, by the way, is that you're here with me, you feel better while you're here with me right now, and as a result of feeling better, you're like, I want to continue this. And if you need reminding of your truths, by the way, Matthew AI— go try it, go use it. You've got it for free this week, so go use it. Matthew AI even has a memory, so it gets better the more you use it. And actually, it would be great. Do we have any great prompts? I think we should come up with a great prompt for Matthew AI. Let's see. Do we have one here? No. Let's see. See if you can give me one. We'll get— before the end of the session, I'm going to give you a prompt for Matthew AI that you can use today to get you started. So, Let me give you another— this is another cool thing. When you're ruminating today, I want you to relabel the rumination, because the rumination unfortunately gets connected with someone's value, with their importance. But I want you to change that. Instead, I want you to label the rumination an anxious pattern of thinking. This is not rumination about how important this person is. Right? I have to decorrelate how much I think about them from how important they actually are. Don't give them that much power, no matter how wonderful they are. In reality, what you can tell yourself is, this is not— I'm not thinking of them 1,000 times a day because of how perfect they are or how important they are. I'm thinking about them 1,000 times a day because I have an anxious pattern of thinking around this person. So the, the thought, the way of thinking, the style of thinking, the cyclical thoughts are a representation of our anxiety, not a representation of their importance. This is a good— for those of you who want a good journal prompt around this. Oh, for those of you who want a good journal prompt around this, ask yourself this: when I'm ruminating about this person, what am I really holding on to here? What is it I'm really holding on to? Because it's bigger than this person. A feeling that something mattered. If we were in a 20-year marriage with someone We can be ruminating about someone not because they deserve it anymore, but because we want to feel like our life mattered. We want to feel like our life wasn't in vain, it wasn't for nothing. So ruminating about that person is a way of trying to make us feel like my life mattered. Maybe my rumination is a comfort zone. Maybe my rumination is a buffer. That stops me from having to engage with real life again? Because real life is scary. Being with other people is scary. Newness, strangers, getting rejected is all scary. Here's an interesting question: what is my rumination enabling me to avoid? What is it protecting me from? In what way does this rumination represent an addiction, not a romantic thought. And this is really, really important: what is it costing me? What is this rumination costing me? How am I doing me and my life a disservice by holding on to this? What beauty is this making me miss? You see, we have to start valuing time over the story we have with this person. Do you want to know a really simple belief I have that you can adopt? And I think it happens to be true. Anyone who doesn't love you and/or isn't choosing to be with you doesn't deserve to be thought about this much. Okay, number one: anyone who doesn't love you and isn't choosing you doesn't deserve to be thought about this much. And secondly, anyone who does love you would want you to be happy, and the last thing they would ever want is for you to waste your life thinking about them and not living. What we have to do is we have to start recognizing when honoring a relationship and what it meant becomes dishonoring ourselves. We have to remember ourselves in all of this. Where are you in all of this thinking about another person? Where are you? Where do you feature? I want to read you something, um, that I tuned up from a time that I was, uh, thinking about this. Let me see if I can find it here. So I wrote this at a time when I was very connected to the ways that we can abandon ourselves and I wrote it not as an autobiographical thing. I wrote it as a kind of composite of what I and people like me were going through, because I was not only— I'd not only felt that I had abandoned myself in a relationship, I was also coaching many people who had abandoned themselves. So I, I want to read you this, and I want you to see if you see a part of yourself in this. I called this 'The Day I Forgot About Me,' and it was written in a time where I had really felt like I lost myself. I wake wondering, what would make you happy today? A gift? Some flowers, a handwritten note just to tell you how wonderful you are. Do you think about me? Your "I love you" texts littered with exclamation marks delight me and make me uneasy. I answer, "I love you so much." Never has the word 'so' meant more. I was, uh, at the time referencing that idea that there are certain people that, you know, when they say words, we somehow know deep in us, even though they may be saying the words we're dying to hear, we can sense that there's something hollow about the words. The, you know, the, the exclamation marks that aren't needed when you really mean the words, when there's a genuine potency to them. And something that actually was something I wanted to hear but fueled anxiety: What is best for you is best for us. My expectations are the author of my unhappiness. I leave them behind. I have you instead. That idea that we, we have these expectations of a relationship, that when we find someone we think is better than us or someone we're lucky to have, all of a sudden our expectations become our enemy, especially if our needs aren't getting met. So we, we kill our expectations. And we tell ourselves that if I could just have this person, that will be enough. What do you want to do today? What do you want to do today? I follow friends' plans, family dinners. I wait my turn. It arrives with guilt in tow for keeping you from the rest of your life. My future waits patiently while you decide. I wait my turn. It arrives with guilt in tow for keeping you from the rest of your life. My future waits patiently while you decide. The anxious smile of a weary passenger holding on while someone else drives. One day you tell me you're not sure. One day you tell me you're not sure. The exclamation mark disappears. A question mark sentences the relationship. Lead enters my bloodstream. Who will ever do more for you? It doesn't matter. I know how to give you everything except the thing that makes you want me. I know how to give you everything except the thing that makes you want me. You have broken me. I hate you. For making me believe, for bringing out the best in me and telling me it wasn't enough, for bringing out the worst in me and telling me it was too much. I remember how many times we said we'd be together forever. Then one day I said it and you hesitated. It's not something anyone can know for sure. You'd never said that before. I wait for your regret, for you to make me believe again in us, in me. You're more okay than I can bear. I return home to a worn envelope, an invitation marked return to sender. I open it, pieces of me begin to return. I return home to a worn envelope, an invitation marked return to sender. I open it, pieces of me begin to return. You drift away. I don't forget you, I just remember me. I don't forget you, I just remember me. Thinking about you isn't important anymore. I blamed you for forgetting me. I forgot me first. I blamed you for forgetting me. I forgot me first. In bed, I pull the sheets around me like comforting arms. Home again, together, I sleep. That last line, the home again together, really that idea that for the first time when we find ourselves remembering ourselves, having forgotten ourselves, that line, I forgot myself first, something most of us have experienced at some point. You know, I, I, we hate someone for forgetting us, but then we realize we forgot ourselves and our own needs long before they started treating us poorly. We were ready to drop our needs in service of somebody else. Um, at that moment where we remember ourselves, where we rediscover ourselves, and then we lay in bed, and we lay in bed together, together with ourselves. That last line, I sleep because for once, when you're feeling like you're together with yourself again, you now have no need for this other person in the way that you did. You can actually let them go, um, and sleep. I'd love to speak with you all. I'd love to do some coaching. Um, we're going to go over to the app now to do this. Um, I We'll see all of you in just a moment. If you go to mendweek.com, if you haven't registered for the app, I— please, if you were there for yesterday for the coaching, let people know how powerful that was. I know for many people it was their favorite part of the whole session. Um, if you've enjoyed this part of the session, I promise you, you will enjoy the next part equally because it's real, it's raw. There are real people asking me questions on video, uh, and it's a really powerful, necessary part of this is— it's where we are able to apply it in motion. So, um, please come with us. mendweek.com is where you go to register for the app. It will only take you a couple of seconds. If you've already registered, which most of you have, you can go straight to your Love Life app now where the stream is going to be waiting for you. And I will see you there. Um, thank you so much. This isn't over, by the way. Day 2, we're just uh, at the final part of day 2, but it isn't over. This is a necessary part of the session, so I will see you there, um, and I'm really, really looking forward to it. Before we go over to the app, I just want to say let's stay connected to this even after this week. The goal is to stay connected. How many people feel like by being here there's a release that's happening? There's— you can feel something in your body that's happening. You can feel, uh, emotion giving way to emotions that you hadn't been able to give way to. You feel yourself connecting in ways you hadn't connected. You feel yourself making connections and more truthful thoughts that are actually helping you. Um, our job is to sustain that. Heartbreak is not about an epiphany, it's about epiphanies repeated. So our job is to be aggressive over the next month. Not just this week, over the next month, to be aggressive about feeling better. You have to treat feeling better like it's your job. Okay, very good. Okay, come over to the app now. Um, I'll see you in there. Open the Love Life app on your phone if you already have it, or if you haven't registered yet, go to mendweek.com, and I will see you there right now. Uh, and, uh, of course we'll be doing this all again tomorrow for Day 3, but Day 2 isn't over. Come with us now. Um, and let's begin our coaching.