It Took Me 38 Years to Realize What I’ll Tell You in 10 Minutes...

I am 38 today. It's my birthday. And it took me most of the years that I have been on this earth to learn what I hope to convey to you in just a few short minutes today. And that truth is that great relationships are not found, they are built. There is a common idea about relationships that when you find the right person, you just. No. And I think this is a pretty dangerous idea, firstly because it creates this unrealistic, sometimes impossible to achieve expectation of the level of certainty that you are supposed to experience when you encounter the right person. But that idea also ignores another truth, which is that most of us have had a time in our lives, or maybe multiple experiences of feeling like we just knew about the complete wrong person. One of the difficult things about our culture today is that the perception of how many options there are and how easily and readily those options are presented to us, especially on social media and dating apps, has us thinking that there might be someone with a little bit more of what we need. There might be someone who's a bit more attractive, there might be someone who has a bit more of this or a bit less of that, and that that might make them even more optimal to create that feeling of certainty in us. And I think that part of that lack of certainty we feel is about personal distrust. We don't trust our own decisions. We're worried we're going to make the wrong decision, especially on something as high stakes as who we're going to spend the rest of our lives with. And so in not trusting our own gut, our own intuition, our inner voice, whatever you want to call it, on who to choose in our life, what we look for is an external source of certainty that's so powerful, a feeling that is so unwavering that it overwhelms our internal uncertainty. I don't think that we're entitled to that in the beginning. And in fact, when we do feel that in the beginning, I think it's something that's more likely we should distrust than trust. This idea that great relationships are built, not found, is predicated not on the notion that you should go on a date with someone and feel nothing and then pursue it aggressively because it will be great if you just give it enough energy. But what it does do is get us out of this idea that if we don't instantly feel completely compelled to be with this person and no one else in the world, we shouldn't just dismiss this person out of hand. I remember in my 20s having relationships that for a time felt really great. They felt exciting and in some cases, I had that overwhelming feeling of certainty in the beginning. But as time went on and as their flaws appeared and as the relationship required genuine compromise and teamwork to problem solve, instead of seeing that as part of actually making the relationship great and sculpting the relationship into something truly beautiful, I saw those things as reasons the relationship was wrong. I saw them as ways to judge the relationship, or in some cases, judge the person and to start looking for a way out. I did not go into these relationships looking to truly win the game of relationships and make them last. I went into them hoping that the feeling of certainty would never waver, that doubt would never arise, and that I could just sort of glide through in that way. And the moment I couldn't, all of a sudden the relationship was wrong. So I never really got to see the potential of any of these relationships I had, because I didn't go into it with the mindset that great relationships are built, not found. I want to propose an alternative to looking for that overwhelming feeling of certainty about someone, and that is to simply look for someone who feels like they have the core of what you may be looking for in a human being. The person that maybe in some subtle ways you feel at home with, you feel seen by or understood by someone whose values reflect your own. And that may not be the most shiny person in the room, or it might be, who knows? But the point is, you don't know what form that person could come in. And it could come in a form you never expected, might even come in a form that your ego isn't satisfied with initially, because they don't represent every single thing you told yourself you wanted. But they do have the things that are really important. And so when you find someone like that, the alternative approach is to say, let me invest in this. Let me focus on what is right about this, not on what is lacking. If we want to end up with a truly great relationship, an amazing love in our lives, we can't sit around hoping to find ultimate certainty on day one. The truth is, real certainty can only be found on the other side of investing in somebody. Now, that requires a leap of faith. It requires some bravery, because we don't know for sure that investing in somebody is going to pay off. But if we recognize that we are strong enough and robust enough to handle it, if we make a bet and we're wrong, and we realize that everything good in life comes as a result of us pouring our love into something, that there is no other way, then we'll do it anyway. And for anyone out there who has that type, a mindset of thinking that, you know, I should keep searching for something optimal and that I could do a bit better. Let's remember that that may be true in the area you're talking about, but the moment you select a new partner who has a bit more or a bit less of this thing that you desire, they're also going to shift in all of the other ways too. So you don't get to keep all of this 95% the same and just optimizing the next person. In this one area, what you get is not a new metric. In one area you get a whole new package of ingredients. This is why the idea of settling on someone is so important. When you find someone who has the right raw materials, regardless of whether they represent everything you had in your mind that you said you wanted at some point in your life, you're not settling for someone, you're settling on someone. And there is a big difference. Settling for is a framing that says we've been shortchanged, we've shortchanged ourselves, we could have had more. Settling on says, you are a wonderful home to build, you are an incredible place to land well, how lucky am I that I have the possibility of building a life with someone like you? But the only way that life is going to become truly beautiful is if we go all in in investing in making it beautiful. Great relationships are not found, they are built. By the way, a huge part of this video is learning to trust ourselves, learning to become more confident in our decision making and also recognizing that a huge part of confidence is leadership. Not waiting, not copying, leading. And I'm going to be holding an event on the 15th of July where I'm going to do something a bit different. I'm going to be there live digitally so you can join from all over the world. I'm calling it the Confidence Challenge and I'm actually going to be giving you alongside some really practical and solid advice on how to improve your internal confidence. Some missions that we're all going to do together over 30 days to practically enhance our confidence, to develop more self training trust and to actually start to move forward as a leader in our own lives. It's going to be really fun, it's going to be very practical and there's something powerful about doing this as a group together all across the world over the same 30 day period. You can sign up below@mhchallenge.com it's completely free to be a part of this and it's only happening once on the 15th of July. So I really hope you join us and thank you for watching this video. Don't forget to leave me a comment and let me know what you thought. I'll see you next time.