In this call‑in segment of the "Love Life" show, host Matthew Hussey (referred to as Matthew AI) speaks with a caller named Marie, who is feeling stressed about an upcoming final exam and the pressure of maintaining her social relationships. Matthew guides Marie through a values‑prioritization framework, helping her recognize the conflict between the high value she places on academic success and her equally high value on connection with friends and family. He advises her to temporarily lower the priority of social connections to focus on her finals, emphasizing that this is a short‑term contraction phase rather than a permanent shift. The conversation explores Marie’s difficulty saying no, her recent habit of saying yes to many activities to gain life experiences, and the resulting guilt when those activities interfere with study time. Matthew suggests evaluating study efficiency, setting clear short‑term goals, communicating her temporary focus to her social circle, and avoiding impossible standards that generate stress and guilt. He reassures Marie that after the exams she can return to an expansion mindset, re‑elevating social connections and new experiences. The segment ends with encouragement to give her best effort on the exam and then enjoy time with friends.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to Love Life, everybody. Matthew Hussey here. We've been getting so many good responses to the call-ins that have been happening, people saying that we're obviously answering their questions, not just the question of the caller. I'm very excited about that. So I have someone on the line right now to ask you another question. Marie, are you there?
Yeah, hi.
Hello, Marie. How are you?
I'm good. I'm a little bit stressed right now.
How are you? I'm not feeling stressed. I'm feeling really good actually. Give me some of your stress. What are you stressed about?
That's great. Well, I was wondering if you had any advice on how to cope with stress during finals and subsequently how to deal with your social life. To what extent do you ignore your boyfriend or your family or your friends?
Okay, so finals are obviously a demanding thing. Right, and when are they? How far away are they?
I have my first exam now in an hour.
First exam in an hour? Okay, so what needs to happen? You need to focus, correct?
Yes.
And friends and family are often a way that we lose focus, especially when we feel like there are demands from friends and family, or we're still trying to play a role that we were playing a month ago with those people to be close to them.
Mm-.
So, Here's the thing. In different parts of life, you have to prioritize in different ways. And people often say, well, you have to decide what your values are. In other words, the fact that you're asking me about friends and family probably means that having connection with people that you love in your life is one of your highest values. Would you agree with that?
Yes, I do actually.
So here's the thing. Right now, in order to focus on your finals, you have a conflict. Because success, let's say, in your finals is a value that's very high to you right now, but it's also still a high value for you to be connected to your friends and family. Now, in different parts of our lives, our values have to adjust in the short term to allow for certain goals to take shape. Right now, in order to be successful in your finals, you have to be willing to take that connection value and bring it down slightly in its importance just for a short window whilst you get this done. Doesn't mean that once they're done, you're not gonna say, okay, connection is of course intrinsically one of my highest values. I have to have it at the forefront of my values. You can do that afterwards. That's gonna be a value you're never gonna lose in your life. But what's gonna happen if you put success as the number one value and connection as the number one value is you're constantly gonna feel not only stressed But guilty. Because guilt comes when you don't spend enough time with friends or family. Have you felt that before?
Yes, I did. Is this how I feel right now?
That's how you feel right now. So that guilt comes from you feeling like you can't meet your own standard for the level of connection that you want with your friends and family. Now, how do you deal with that? Well, one way is to change what you're doing in this situation. In other words, you say, right, I'm going to study harder and I'm going to make more time. How realistic is that right now? Are you already studying hard?
Well, yes.
Could you be studying more efficiently in order to give yourself more time or do you feel like you're already studying very efficiently?
I think that I'm already studying a lot. But there's constantly people asking me to do stuff with them and that it gets in the way.
Yeah, absolutely. And then when you say no, how do you feel?
I feel it's really difficult to say no, especially because lately I've taken on this quest to say yes all the time, which brought me a lot of good results, but now this makes me feel a lot guiltier than I did before.
What was your goal when you said you were going to say yes to more things? What was your goal?
I just wanted to get more out of life because I realized that I was saying no to things because I was sort of being lazy and I was always regretting the things I didn't do rather than the things I did do.
So saying yes is very important to you and I would agree that saying yes is going to get you out of your comfort zone, it's going to have you experiencing more of life. That's something you need to be doing. But there are certain points in your life where it's not about expansion, it's about contraction. Right now, you need to contract in certain areas in order to keep focused. Once your finals are finished, by the way, and you have more time, all of a sudden, your life can go into expansion mode again because you can start saying yes to things and saying, okay, I want to have experiences right now. But what you have right now are what we call goals that are not synergistic. In other words, passing my finals at a certain level and saying yes to everything so that I can experience more of life. those two goals aren't necessarily synergistic right now. And that's why it's creating tension internally, because you can't meet the standard that you've set for yourself. So what has to happen right now is you've got to say to yourself, all right, I've got finals right now. My goal is to be successful in those finals. Because if I'm not successful in those finals, I'm going to beat myself up about it afterwards if I know I didn't do my best. Right. It's one thing if you know you studied and you went for it. Then you can, wherever the chips fall, you can say, okay, at least I went for it. But you won't like yourself if you know that you didn't go for it for that short burst of time. Once they're finished, you can reprioritize your values and say, right, connection is going higher up the list. New experiences are going higher up the list. I'm going to start reprioritizing based on my new set of goals. But I would suggest that this is a short-term thing you're going through right now. and for the purposes of getting through your finals, prioritize the success of those finals. Make that your highest value. Make sure that friends and family know that this is a short-term thing, that you need them to just be patient with you while you do this, and that afterwards you're gonna be so much fun. But right now, you gotta be a little boring and you've got to focus, right? And then at least you won't feel guilty 'cause you'll know you've accepted that this is what you can do. So often in life, people create stress and guilt for themselves because they set themselves an impossible standard. And I need you to stop doing that right now.
Okay. Thank you so much for your advice.
You're so welcome. Go smash those standards. Make sure with those finals, you give it everything you've got in this short window. And when you're done, go have some fun with your friends.
Okay. Thank you so much. I will.
All right, Marie, thank you for calling in. If you want to call in to Love Life, call 844-204-6288 that's 844-204-MATT I look forward to hearing your call. I'll see you soon.
