How Your “North Star” Can Help You Find the Right Person

Did you know your cell phone is made with recycled materials? In fact, most of the things you depend on every day are from essential infrastructure to important innovations. America is made with recycled materials. Learn how at recycledmaterials.org At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent, being there day and night and building a plan And for tomorrow, today, for the ones you'll always look out for, trust Amica Life Insurance. Amica, empathy is our best policy. what's up, everybody? Welcome back to the love life podcast with me, Matthew Hussey. And I'm just here today with my old pal Jameson Jordan and no Stephen today. Jameson, how are you feeling?

Feeling good. So is it that, did I get promoted or did Stephen get demoted? What happened?

You stayed exactly where you are, which is being one of my greatest friends in the whole world. Oh. I thought, well, we're all extremely busy this week, aren't we, Jameson? 'Cause though people may be listening to this on a different day, We have had to do this amidst preparing to go to the retreat in Florida, which I leave for tomorrow. You leave for in a couple of days time. And it's been pretty manic. I have a sty. I don't know if you noticed.

Oh, no, I didn't notice. How did I miss that?

It's luckily it's not my worst sty ever, but everyone out there, you should know that One of my common retreat rituals. Yeah, it is a retreat ritual at this stage. One of my common reactions to stress, I have two. I get ulcers in my mouth. What do you call them? Canker sores. Yeah. I get those in my mouth and I get sties in my eyes. And I hate them so much. I've got a little warm compress eye patch, Jameson, that I ordered on Amazon that I've been wearing. And it is, they're just deeply unpleasant, Styes. And especially when you've spent an utter fortune on a film crew to fly out to Florida and film the whole event, and you're now worried that you're gonna have this big puffy red eye for an entire event.

That's brutal.

Do you remember when I had one... So this is a true story. Back when we did the retreat on the West Coast in San Diego, I got a terrible stye right before the event. And when I, like, it was bad. My eye just blew up. And we had this whole film crew out there led by James and Jordan. And to this day, we've never used any of the footage.

I love that you started out with like, Do you remember? As if I could ever forget that. I was like, I can't even look at the footage from that. It haunts my dreams and my nightmares.

Yeah, I was not looking my best up there.

Well, you weren't, it wasn't just that you weren't looking your best. You were like hurting bad. I was driving you to San Diego and you remember we had to stop and we barely got like a mile from your house and you were feeling sick, like you needed to pull over and I think you needed to like vomit. But we pulled over right next to my house or to where I lived at the time and you just ended up taking a sty nap in my bed and I'm just sitting in the living room just like how is this guy gonna be on stage for five minutes? six days in a row, in 24 hours.

I had completely blocked out that part. But I remember I did. I remember going into the place you were renting at the time and sleeping in your bed on the way to the retreat.

I had roommates at the time. Everyone was like, Was that Matthew Hussey? Why is he passed out on Jameson's bed?

Oh, man, I'd forgotten that. Wow. Well, luckily it doesn't seem to be as bad this time. I'm hoping it's getting better, not worse. So we will see. I am, I feel really happy to be with you in this Love Life episode. Sad not to have Stephen, but we'll cover some really interesting ground today. I've got a couple of emails from you out there who have written in to Love Life. In fact, no, not Love Life, podcast@matthewhussy.com. .com, which is where you can send any emails you have for stories you want to tell me, Stephen and Jamieson, any questions you have, thoughts. We do have an easier time reading them out on the podcast, I will say, if they're of a reasonable length. When they are giant essays, it's just not possible to read them, though we do appreciate the effort. and I'm going to read a couple of those. And then I wanted to talk about the decisions that we make that hurt us in our love lives and how we can make better decisions about what to do in the future, especially if you find yourself continuously choosing the wrong people, people who hurt you. If you find yourself going back constantly to people that you should stay away from, maybe someone that you've broken up with for good reason, but you keep being drawn back in and then getting hurt all over again. I want to talk about how to stop ourselves doing this and how to start making some better decisions. And also, I thought, Jameson, it would be fun today to do a love section and then just a little life section, given that we're called Love Life. thought it'd be nice to have a lesson on love and a lesson on life in the same episode.

I only just now got that title. It's very clever.

Thank you. Thank you very much. well, here's a little email that came in from Helen. She said, hi guys, love your podcast and the thoughtful content, particularly the banter. I miss this in the personal development space in general. Maybe it's a British thing. Well, I don't know. Jamieson's got a good sense of humor, don't you, Jay? I am from Hertz. Hertz. Is that Hertfordshire? Oh, Hertz.

It's the car rental place.

Hertz. Oh, now I'm gonna look silly for not knowing where this is. She says, I'm from Hertz, so not far from you guys originally. And I love the humor. I'm just listening to your podcast on narcissism. and I like the fact that you note that narcissists can be perceptive and put themselves in other people's shoes, but this doesn't mean they care. I'm not sure if you've come across the terms cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy is that ability to understand the world from another's perspective and the ability to read people. Affective empathy, spelt with an A, affective empathy, is the ability to care and to feel for others. I found out about this when attending a lecture on autism. Autistic people are misunderstood as not having empathy, but actually they can be very caring and often have measurably higher affective empathy their neurotypicals, but struggle to read people. Narcissists, and this is really interesting, Jameson, are almost the opposite. They can have high levels of cognitive empathy, which is why they're so successful at manipulating, but they generally have poor affective empathy. Anyway, you may well know this as you made the distinction in the podcast, but if not, I think it's really helpful to aid understanding, not just in an intellectual way, but the definitions help me to understand better the behaviour of people I know keep up the good work. That's a really interesting distinction, Helen. Thank you for bringing that up.

I'd never heard that before. But intuitive, it's actually counter-intuitive. I think, because when you think of a narcissist, you think of someone who's like very effective around a room, at a party or whatever. And then you're like, well, no, yeah, they have that empathy. Like, you know, it usually takes empathy to be able to do something like that. But maybe that really is just cognitive empathy, whereas like an autistic person in a party might seem like the most awkward person there. But I guess suppose in a relationship, there might just be a whole lot under the hood going on just feeling wise.

Well, I think that the idea of affective empathy, which is why it's interesting that it's spelt with an A, right? It's effective empathy would be empathy that does the trick. That might be said that the narcissist is good at effective empathy. But affective empathy, that's an interesting word use because it suggests being affected. You are affected by what you know. if I understand where you're coming from and your perspective and it affects me, that's a sign of someone who is not just exercising empathy, but the empathy actually has an effect on them.

Yeah, they're living. They're living inside of the moment with it.

Right. So whereas an autistic person may, it may take more for them to latch onto the experience of another. and to understand it. But once they have that perspective, they are more affected by what they know, whereas a narcissist may be very quick to latch on to another's perspective and to use it effectively, but not be affected by it.

And we were just talking about this, how there's just, it's just such a cocktail. It's such a, it's so many spectrums here. So it's just so, I mean, it's a nice little model to just think like, oh yeah, narcissist. autistic, it's just like everyone's on these spectrums.

But I suppose where it is helpful is if we find that someone is good at articulating our perspective, but there's no real true sensitivity around it, or their actions don't suggest that they actually care about that. They understand that experience, but they don't actually seem to show any true sensitivity. towards it, then that's not whatever we label that person. It's. It's not something that's gonna have much of an effect on your connection with that person, and it's not going to make you feel better. You may initially feel understood, but that doesn't carry into real experience in how you feel with them.

Yeah.

Jessica says, hi, Matthew and Stephen. I just got out of a six month relationship that was pretty serious. Of course we fought like any other relationship, but arguments were always over his behavior on social media and how I felt disrespected by what he would do. He was amazing and always corrected his behavior until it would happen again. He told me it's too early on in the relationship to have this much drama and the boundaries I put on him. So eight days after we signed a lease for an apartment together, he broke up with me over text and is now dating someone new. The new girl has randomly liked a couple of things of mine on social media, which I found strange. And she's posted pics of them with the caption, if you know, you know. And screenshots of their text conversation saying he's never been so sure of anyone until her. Was my entire relationship all in my own head? Love your podcast, by the way. It's been helping me get through the darkest time of my life. So, look, firstly, in direct answer to your question, was my entire relationship all in my own head? The answer is, there will have been, there was an experience being had there. Okay, there in any situation, there are, we can feel something and then we can go into another relationship and we can use big words and feel something again to a lesser or a greater extent. That doesn't mean that the person didn't feel something in the relationship before that. And many people have had that experience. You, Jessica, may have had the experience of feeling something in one relationship and then going into another relationship and feeling something again. It doesn't invalidate the last relationship that you feel something now. What is painful to our egos is this idea that someone dates us, we break up, and then they say about someone else, I've never been this sure before. that can be a real blow to our ego because what we're hearing is what I feel now is superior to what I felt when I was with you. Now, firstly, there has to be a kind of radical acceptance that we have where we say, if someone feels that way, then by definition they were not my person. that if they genuinely feel like they've never been more certain, then I don't need to mourn them. This person is not my person. There will be someone who feels that about me, and this isn't my person. So that's the starting point. Even if what he feels is real, then in this situation, then what you're learning is that this person truly wasn't your person. They're not with someone else and questioning it and thinking about you. They're with someone else and they have all of that certainty, which for you means you can genuinely move on from that person. It's both painful and it offers a genuine opportunity for closure. And like I said, there will be someone out there that feels that level of certainty or will has the potential to feel that level of certainty about you. Now, that's the most optimistic interpretation for him. Because the truth is, if you had a, quote, pretty serious relationship over six months, and now straight away he's having a very serious relationship with somebody else, there's a good chance that what he's feeling right now is not sustainable. That it's just a new set of feelings of certainty, of dopamine, of giddiness, that that cannot necessarily be trusted. I don't think you can really know what he feels in this relationship. Lots of people say things early on in a relationship by text that are said in that passion of big feelings that are proved to be wrong months or years later, or they just don't, they don't have the staying power. They don't last. So, you shouldn't, just because someone is posting things, that doesn't mean that you should take that so seriously. I'm not saying that from the perspective of wanting this person back. I'm just saying from the perspective of you feeling mad. Sometimes when someone suddenly, when we break up and you said he broke up with you over text, when they break up with us after something serious, and then immediately are like, I've never been more in love before about someone new, it can make us feel mad. and I don't mean angry, I mean like mad, like what is going on? What world have I been living in? It does create that feeling that you've articulated. Was it in my own head? And the truth is, and sometimes the scary thing is that someone can be having a very different experience than we are in a relationship. We are fighting for the relationship. We are willing to invest in the relationship and they are planning their exit at the same time. And that's a real, that can affect our ego because, well, a, it can make us trust ourselves less because we go, what's wrong with me? That I didn't see that we were living two completely different realities. But it can also just be really, it can feel embarrassing. You know, it can feel painful because we go, God, what a fool am I that I was giving all of this energy to this relationship. and I was under this complete misapprehension that this person was having the same experience as me. And don't beat yourself up for that. You gave your role in a relationship, and someone wasn't willing to give you the same thing. That's not a portent of things to come. That's not a sign that in the future. you're not going to be loved. It's just an example of a situation where someone wasn't willing to give you what you were willing to give them. And what's important about a situation like this is you look back on it and you say, could I have seen that sooner? If. If I. If I look at it now, were there actually a lot of signs that this person was not willing to give me what I was willing to give them? And if so, why did I ignore those signs? Was him breaking up with me over text after six months of what you describe as a pretty serious relationship, was that out of the ordinary or was that actually an extension of what I was seeing before that? You know, you talk about these fights over how he was on social media, but he would keep reverting to type. You said he would momentarily correct his behavior, and then it would happen again. This doesn't speak of a person who is respecting your wishes, of someone who is trying to build bridges, and someone who is afraid of losing the relationship because he kept doing the same thing over and over again. So, I think it's just important to say, was I truly mad in this situation? Was I truly just completely oblivious? Or did I see things that made it clear to me that this person was not willing to give what I was willing to give? And if so, what am I going to do to build my strength, my confidence, and have a concrete standard. That means in the future, when this happens, I don't continue down the path. If I'm seeing that once I communicate something that's important to me, it's routinely ignored, or this person keeps reverting to type. But I. I think it's safe to say that some of these things that you're talking about are character flaws in this person in their life right now, and that. one of the things you should be really happy about is that you're no longer subject to those character flaws. That you have the opportunity to find someone better because someone who after six months with you can simply break up with you by text is someone you should be really, really glad you didn't give six years of your life to because who knows how much damage that person could have done. over that kind of a time period. Okay, we have one last email I want to read out. This one is from Beth. Beth says, hi Matthew and Stephen. Just wanted to say I'm really enjoying the podcasts. I've been in a rut, keep meeting terrible men and wondering why I keep coming across the same type of people. A friend of mine recommended Jay Shetty's podcasts and I listened to one of them that he did with Matthew. From there, I started listening to your podcasts and in the space of a week, I must have listened to about 15 of them. They've made me realize I've been going about everything the wrong way. I've been showing my insecurities and my vulnerabilities and not learning from my mistakes. I feel like I was on a downward spiral and since listening to your podcasts, they've given me so much faith in myself and now I believe that there are genuine people out there for me to meet too. I truly think that in a couple of months' time, I'm going to be a force to be reckoned with after following all of your tips and advice. Thank you for picking me up at a low time. I have also applied for the Confidence Challenge too. I have a phone call next week and looking forward to starting that. Thanks once again and keep up the hard work. I don't think you realize how much your podcasts can help people like me, Beth. Thank you so, so much. Beth, for that lovely email. And of course, there's nothing wrong with showing insecurities and vulnerabilities at the appropriate level and the appropriate time. The question is, are we actually doing ourselves a disservice by presenting people with all of the things we think are wrong with us before we've even given them time to have an opinion on us that is their own. In other words, sometimes we give everyone a laundry list of our insecurities and the things we think are wrong with us, and there's something disrespectful about it because instead of allowing someone to decide what they think of us, we're telling them what to think of us. Before we jump into a little life perspective for today. I wanted to make sure that everybody has checked out the new website howtgetttheguide.com for any guys out there, don't worry, there's a message for you in just a moment. But for all of the ladies out there, howtgetttheguide.com if you are focusing on your love life right now, we have a really cool tool on the homepage where you can put your current love life challenge and it will recommend the best tool I have for that challenge. So go to howtgetttheguy.com and put in your challenge on the homepage at the top to find out what it recommends. And for all of the men out there, this is a message not just to men, to men and women. But I want to let you know because a lot of you say, do you have any programs for us? Well, the virtual retreat has a universal appeal. It is something that anyone can come to. It is not gendered. It is something that everyone will benefit from. And we have one more virtual retreat coming up this year in November from the 11th to the 13th. For anybody who likes my style of coaching, speaking, my way of looking at the world, who wants to take a deeper journey with me that can truly help you maximize your happiness in life, your confidence, and the results you're getting in every area of your life. The virtual retreat is where it's at. It is the pinnacle of what me and my team do together. And it's transformative. We've had thousands of people come through it now, and it genuinely changes lives. It helps you figure out what really matters in life gives you the tools to actually walk that path, even if you've struggled in the past to stick to habits. And it shows you how to master your emotions so that you can be happy along the way because there will be challenges and your goals won't all happen today or tomorrow or next month or next year. But we have to learn how to be, how to enjoy life and how to be happy now, irrespective of when our goals happen. The retreat isn't just a recipe for results in life. It's a recipe for a completely different level of peace and happiness as you go through your life. And that's really what life is all about, right? Life is short. We want to make the most of it and we want to enjoy it. while we have it. So come join us at mhvirtualretreat.com to get your ticket to this event. And if you're listening to this podcast on the day it comes out, you're lucky because you are one of the final people that is going to have the chance to get an early bird ticket, which is a very discounted ticket, a deep discounted ticket to the event, plus some special bonuses for being one of the first cohort to make it into the event in just a few days, the price is going to go up for the virtual retreat. So now is the time to get in on this. All right, back to the episode. We'll jump right into this week's topic. I was talking to a client of mine who was actually finding it difficult recently to stop herself from going back to somebody that she knew had caused her a lot of pain. in the past, she had broken up with this person because the relationship wasn't a good one. The person she was with made her feel insecure, constantly put his needs first and just generally was quite nasty in arguments. There was a toxicity to the relationship. And even though he would say, I'm going to get better or I'm going to work on myself, there was no evidence for that. It was always the same. And so eventually she decided enough was enough. But she kept thinking about going back to this person. She had this feeling that maybe she had done something wrong, that maybe she needed to let this person back into her life. Well, I want to give a quick piece of advice here for everybody. It's really important to figure out what it is we actually want. And by that, I mean the values that are important to us, the culture in the relationship that is important to us, and what kind of energy we want to have in our life. And I said this in a video recently, and perhaps even in a podcast recently, I can't remember, that it's really important to figure out what our North star is. Our North Star is that that vision for ourselves, our life and our relationship that we are driving towards. If we don't have that, if we haven't decided what that is for us, and another way of saying it is just what matters most to us, what are the most important things in life to us, if we haven't decided that, then we are simply at the mercy of our emotions. We are always going to get dragged back to whatever feels good in the moment or fear is going to drive us away from what feels bad. And the truth is breakups feel bad even when they're the right decision. Initially they feel bad. We're going cold turkey on a relationship right now. We're trying to get by on our own when we've been used to sleeping in the same bed as someone, when we've been used to having someone to talk to, when we've been used to having some kind of intimacy or passion, or at least some kind of connection, or even just the story that somebody is there, even if there wasn't passion and intimacy and connection. And we're now going cold turkey on that. That's not going to feel good, but that doesn't make it the wrong decision. What helps us in the moments where something is painful and we need to stick to something is knowing what values are most important to us. Knowing what we are driving towards in our life, knowing the trajectory that is important to us. Once we know that, we don't simply return to someone because we miss them or because it feels bad because we have a bigger picture in mind. We've widened our lens so that it has space for more than just like a kind of wild dog just looking for either to drive towards an emotion, pleasure, or to run away from an emotion, pain, discomfort. We have to know what it is we actually want or we'll keep going back to what we know, what's comfortable. And that elastic band of our life will always snap back to the comfortable. position until we stretch it to the point where it no longer fits the same way anymore. And the hard thing about trying to get something new in life, about valuing something new, about looking for something that's better, richer, more nourishing than what we've been getting so far, is that It almost requires a leap of faith because if we haven't had that yet, if that's not been something we experience, if we've had lots of relationships that are of an unproductive dynamic, but it's what we know, it's hard to believe that something else is out there. And what we need if we want to bridge the gap between our current fears of this thing we want being out there and having that thing, the knowledge that it does exist, what we need is curiosity. I was asked recently on a podcast, what is something that I've had to work on in myself? And he said, Over time, I've had to work on trusting people. Because, and I don't just mean in an intimate context, I mean also just in life in general, in business, sometimes in friendships. I've had to work on trusting other people's intentions and that they didn't just have some ulterior motive, they didn't just have some agenda that I wasn't just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And the problem with being like that, of course, of not trusting people is that it meant I was always kind of looking for that moment when someone would betray me. I was always looking for that moment when someone would do something that would reflect an ulterior motive, that agenda. And Of course, when you're looking for that, you'll always find it. You'll either find it in something big or you'll find it in something small. And the reason you'll always find it is because people are people. People are complex. If you're looking for the bad side of people, you will always find it because there'll always be a dark side to people. There'll always be a selfish side to people. There'll always be a moment where someone's better intentions or better side gives way to a moment of selfishness or a moment of carelessness or a moment of ignorance. You'll always find it. What I realized is that firstly, if I want to have a different kind of relationship with people, if I, it starts almost with an aspiration, right? My North Star in this case, was finding or creating relationships that were built on really beautiful, deep connections with people that were the kinds of, let's call them friendships, the kinds of friendships I've always wanted. But, but in some cases, found elusive because of that lack of trust. So my North Star became the kinds of relationships I've always wanted to have. Beautiful friendships, friendships built on real love and. And wonderful intentions for each other. And so if that's my North Star, if that's my aspiration, then. I have to start changing some things about the way I am to get that. And that started for me with a level of curiosity. Like, what would happen if I assumed the best? What would happen if I gave people the benefit of the doubt? What would happen if instead of having this albeit maybe slightly subconscious assumption that people disappoint you or that everyone's got an agenda. What if I decided that, no, actually, for the most part, people want to be good. People want their best side to come out. Sometimes they slip up, and sometimes their own agenda or their selfishness gets the better of them, but ultimately, people do want to be good. And what if I behaved on that rationale and. And treated people like that? And. And what? Maybe I could get curious about what would happen if I really recognized that in people outwardly. What if I made an effort to see the best in people and to recognize the. The kind of the angels in them, the beautiful parts of them? and what would happen if I did that? And what's interesting is when you start with that aspiration of what's my North Star? And then you say, well, okay, if I got curious in my attempt to reach that North Star, what if I got curious about how my behavior changing might change my result? Even if it goes wrong, it's just curiosity is just an experiment. That's what I like about it. It's not when someone says you have to believe that people can be better. that's a big step for someone if that's not been their experience or if there's some trauma there or if there's something that they're trying to undo a belief system. It's hard to just tell someone, Just believe. I don't buy that. But what can happen is when we get curious, we don't have to believe anything. We just have to run an experiment. and see what happens. What happens if I. What happens if I actually trusted that. That someone wasn't out to get me? What happened? Or what would happen if I trusted that someone didn't actually. They weren't. They didn't have some big hidden agenda. They were just a person like me with a mixed agenda, and they. They wanted something for themselves, but they also actually do really want to do the right thing. and what if, what if it was true that people had the ability to sort of morph and transform depending on who was in front of them? And what if the person that they gave their best to was the person that saw the best in them and, and saw their potential to be good and celebrated the good in them? Wouldn't that be something that would make them want to bring that side of themselves out more? and, and so over the, the last few years, that's almost a, a game I've been playing with life is to give, to, to recognize the best in people and to encourage it and to trust in the best in people. And the worst that can happen is what? That I get taken advantage of for a minute. Okay. But that doesn't have to create a story about people. It can just. It just supports the story that people are complex. And sometimes people's selfishness gets the better of them. For some people, it gets the better of them all the time. But that's not the story for everybody. So, when that happens, it becomes a new lens. And curiosity itself is a new lens. Rather than deciding the way things are based on the story we've been telling ourselves for a long time, we become open to to a different story. We become open to a different possibility, and we start acting in accordance. What happens if I do something new? Instead of expecting people to be different, what if I did something different? How would that change the experiment? How would that change the result? How would that produce a different element? And when we do that, I'll tell you what it does. It gives. It creates a new result. Even if it's different and not great, but it's different, the new result creates new possibilities in our mind. If nothing else, it teaches us that what we've experienced so far isn't the only thing that can be experienced. And that opens the world up. So, I know this for some of you listening may sound a little abstract, but it's really not. What it's saying is you may have been making decisions in your love life or in your life constantly that have brought you pain, and that's a pattern in your life that you keep running head first into the same kind of pain. The beginning of getting out of that pattern is getting clear about what values we're gonna prioritize going forward. what we are going to decide is the culture we want in our relationships going forward, what kind of person we want to attract going forward, and then recognizing, having compassion that it's not easy just to believe that something new is possible. And so using that aspiration as a guidepost and as a kind a thing we want to move towards and saying, okay, now let me start experimenting with my actions from a curious perspective, not from a place of belief, but from a curious perspective of what might move me closer to that thing. And seeing how your new actions start to change who you attract, the kind of behavior that you receive from people, and that that then becomes a very powerful thing because even if it doesn't get you right on target, it opens up the world of what's possible. Okay, Jameson, here's what I'm thinking about right now. I'm going to make this fairly brief, but just an important life lesson. I think I have spent so much of my life in comparison mode with other people. I'd like to say I haven't. but I have. And it's always some kind of comparison. I wouldn't say it's always been bad. It's sometimes been very motivational. It's the comparison of where am I in relation to other people my age? Where am I in relation to the person who's two years older than me? Am I on track to be where they are by the time I'm their age? And, and of course, the other comparison is with myself with where I thought I should be by this point in my life or where I think I should be five years from now. And it. It's all a kind of game I'm constantly playing with myself that's based on a story, a story of what's supposed to have happened by now in life, where I'm supposed to be in life, what life is. supposed to be. And I'm frequently reminded that life doesn't care about the straight line trajectory you have planned for yourself that just is all about an ever upwards trend towards financial independence, towards Relationship bliss towards familial connection and bliss, toward more peace, toward less problems, toward a less cluttered set of cupboards in your house. It's, you know, so many of us have this line that we're drawing between now and the end of our days that's just all of these things are getting better. And life does not care about that line. It will capriciously take people from us that we didn't intend to lose at the time they were taken. It will clutter up new drawers while you clean out old ones. It will injure you at a time when you were really excited about getting yourself in shape. and then you can't. It will rob you of your finances in a bad business deal that you thought was a sure thing. It will rob you of a relationship that you thought was forever. Life is constantly disrupting these plans we have. It makes me think about how often in life, well, two things really. One, we can always feel like we're grieving the loss of some future because we've already crossed over, we've crossed the line of being able to ever do that thing. But life is long. especially when you give yourself the opportunity to. To do lots of things or enjoy lots of things. Life can be quite long, and there are always chances to reinvent ourselves. There are always chances to have a growth spurt. There's always chances to learn something new or to get better at something. It's interesting, Jameson, the I heard the average age for successful startup founders is, or the peak age for successful startup founders is 45.

Peak age.

Or it was either peak or average. Maybe it was the, no, I don't think it was average. I think it was saying, the statistic was saying that people who start at 45 are disproportionately successful at creating startups. The reason being that by that time, they have experience, they have contacts, they have wisdom from failures, they've done it wrong, they've been unprofessional, they've screwed it up, they've done all those things. And when they start later in life, they have all of that under their belt. that should be really encouraging to a lot of young people who feel like they're not on track to be where they want to be. I was always deeply inspired by Anthony Bourdain. You know, I beat myself up sometimes because I'm doing jujitsu and I'm about to cross over shortly into Blue Belt. And that's taken me a while, it's taken me years. And it's like, oh my God, like, you know, there's all these guys that started before me and they're already at Purple Belt and they're younger than me. and then you get into that game again. But then I look at Bourdain and he was 58 when he started. When he started and you just realize, oh, life is really long. It is a marathon. It is not a sprint. And not only is it a marathon, it doesn't just trend in one direction. Life is cyclical. It's cyclical. We can be having a phase where we're doing really well at taking care of ourselves at the same time as someone we used to know who used to take really good care of themselves is going through a phase where they don't feel good about their body. And that could be reversed in five years. Life is cyclical, which is why we have to take our focus off of other people and put it back on ourselves. But it's also why we have to, because life is a marathon, because it's so easy to undo progress, because progress over the long term is difficult with lots of setbacks along the way. We may as well settle in because it's going to be a long road. Whatever it is we do, whether it's with our bodies, whether it's with our finances, whether it's with our careers, whether it's with relationship, it's going to be a long road. So we may as well settle in and get comfy and just say, okay, firstly, I'm not going to be any happier once I get there, most likely. The results of us either being made much happier or much sadder by what happens. are not that exciting, that we tend to have a baseline we return to regardless of what happens to us. So as Sam Harris puts it, the good or the bad isn't gonna affect us nearly as much as we hope or we fear. And if that's the case, then really the focus is on how much can I make the process sustainable because I'm never going to achieve my goals if my process isn't sustainable. So how can I do this in a way that I'm going to do it for a long time? And B, how can I learn to enjoy the process more? Which doesn't. I'm not just talking in very direct terms about enjoying what we're doing. Like, you, you have to work. every day. So try to enjoy working. I'm not just saying that. I'm even saying build things in that make the overall picture enjoyable as you do it. There's a bit of a, you know, there's been for a while now, this cultural thing of this real, like, Indulgence over pain and this feeling of making everything as difficult as possible, because that means that. it somehow makes it more meaningful or it's somehow, you know, that's part of the sprint of getting to where you want to go is just enduring the pain. But the people that I've seen that are really successful long term are the people that can keep doing it. They're the people that can keep going. And the people that can keep going tend to be the people who make the process more enjoyable. They find time for friends. They find time to do things that they really love outside of this thing that they do every day. They find time to actually build in checkpoints or breaks or relief. And that's what allows them to keep going. And it's a very short-sighted thing that we do in the name of trying to get ahead, in the name of success, in the name of making things happen. is we sprint at a rate that we cannot possibly maintain. And then the periods of burnout and the moments where life forces us to take a giant pause because of the way we've done it, the way we've worked ourselves, we've burnt out in dating, we've burnt out in our careers, we've burnt out with our gym routine. Those setbacks, those take us out of the game altogether. so the game in life is longevity. And longevity comes from recognizing that it is a marathon and that enjoying the way we live now without ever relying on the achievement of our goals to be happy, which won't work anyway, is the name of the game. I want to leave you with a quote today that I think is really, really powerful. Before we do that, I just want to make sure that everybody gets over to 3SecretsToLove.com if you haven't been over there yet and your love life is a priority for you, that is a guide that will give you three habits that will change your love life sustainably. if you do them. So go over to 3Secrets2Love.com to download that free guide now. I also want to make everyone aware that we have a membership in the Love Life Club. Many of you aren't members, you are listeners of the podcast, but you have not joined us over there yet, and you should because it really is a graduation. It is the next step from the podcast where I coach people live, you can see me on video as I do it. You may even get the chance to have a live coaching session with me as part of a session and you can get questions answered, but we cover a lot of questions and it's immersive coaching and it's really powerful and we do it on a frequent basis each month. My brother Stephen also does sessions. We have experts, other experts that I use my old phone book, Jameson, to bring people in that we would never otherwise be able to get access to. We've had some incredible guests onto this membership and you get access to them in an exclusive way as part of being a Love Life Club member. We also have masterclasses where we go deep on certain subjects that we know are really going to help you, your love life, your confidence. It is not just a club designed for people who want to date. It is a club designed for anybody who values and cherishes their life and wants to fall more in love with life itself. So come join us for a free trial if you just want to try it out you can try it out for 14 days by going to askmh.com that's A-S-K-M-H my initials.com come over there now grab your 14 day free trial and graduate to the Love Life Club where I am working with people and coaching them every month. All right, the quote for today is from Eckhart Tolle. And it's a quote that Jameson and I were discussing earlier, that joy is vibrantly alive peace. Joy is vibrantly alive peace. And what that says to me is that while we spend so much of our lives chasing pleasure, the ultimate goal should be peace. Because when we achieve peace, it's much, much easier to feel and express joy. And peace can only come from driving towards the right things, the things that bring peace, not the wrong things, the short-term gain that leaves us feeling confused, that leaves us feeling anxious or sad or burnt out or on an emotional roller coaster. All right, everybody, I will finish up by reading the latest review on iTunes. And this is from TB. I cannot pronounce this name. TBW3Tao who says, Mindful and Empathetic Relationship Advice. Matthew and Steve, thank you so much for helping me find my compass in life. I've spent so much time sleepwalking through my relationships without intentionally choosing who I want to be with and what values matter the most to me in a partnership. I am the stereotypical case of a person trying to heal a partner's trauma in partnerships as a way to avoid true intimacy. I really appreciate how empathetic you both are to the woman's dilemma as well as the man's side of things. I often find it hard to accept advice when I feel people are condemning the man because I feel very empathetic towards the traumas my partners have faced. Your advice to focus on my own needs and value really resonated with me. Whenever I feel tempted to slip back into old patterns, I listen to one of your podcasts as accountability to remind myself of the kind of person I want to become. Well, thank you so much for that. And we always try to make sure that whatever we're saying, whoever it's directed to, it comes from a humanist perspective of just liking and caring about people, whatever gender they come from. Thank you, everybody. Just a quick reminder, if you haven't got your Early Bird ticket to the Virtual Retreat, go grab one at MHVirtualRetreat.com, wouldn't it be fun to spend three days together working on your life and everything you've ever wanted to have and feel? That's at MHVirtualRetreat.com and I will speak with you in the next episode of Love Life.