The Most Important Love Advice You'd Give Yourself in Your 20s

It's almost worth asking ourselves, there's plenty of good advice around me and only a fraction of it is getting in, if any. And why is that? Welcome to the Love Life podcast with me, Matthew Hussey. We've got Steven, we've got Jameson and Audrey all in the same place in LA right now, which is fun.

Pickles all in the jar together. Am I the only one who thinks so?

I think you're the only one who would have phrased it as such.

Right. You're the only one that thinks that way.

I'm snuggin' this little jar we're in.

Did you know it was National Pickle Day the other day?

I did, because you told me. I forgot I told you that.

And I ate a pickle when we.

Went to Disney, because Disney apparently think a great frozen treat in the middle of the day and a theme park is a pickle.

It wasn't frozen.

It was nice.

It's sitting in a bag of ice.

Frozen pickles not luring anyone.

You just walk along eating a pickle? I like the fact that that's sort of a trademark snack at Disneyland, is.

Just to walk along eating a pickle. And that's what me and Billy, our.

Cousin Billy, we walked along eating a pickle. I had noticed. I also noticed no one offered me one.

I also had a pretzel.

It's just glossing over that.

Corn dog, pretzel, pizza, twice. McDonald's breakfast. So it wasn't the most healthy day.

No, but you did a lot of walking.

Did a lot of walking.

Well, we today are gonna have a healthy day for the mind. Is that a good segue?

Yeah, why not?

I mean, tenuous. really tenuous. But we are going to be talking about a post that we put up in the last couple of weeks asking people what advice they would give to themselves in their 20s when it came to dating. And it was, it was one of the posts we've put up on Instagram. If you want to go follow me at the Matthew Hussey is the name. It's one of the ones that's got the most comments out of any post we've we've done for just a simple question. I think we had over 3,000.

Yeah, 3,192 today.

So apparently a lot of people felt very quickly that they had something they would say to themselves in their 20s. So we're going to read out some of those. What did our audience say? We'll also talk about some of ours. What advice would we give ourselves in our 20s? And hopefully in all of that, there'll be you know, something useful that we all need to hear now in whatever decade we happen to be in. Because of course, I find the most ironic about all of this advice we would give to ourselves in our 20s is when we start looking at how much of it we're actually following today. Before we get started, if you haven't already, we wrote a guide that was all about how to get out of limbo and into a real relationship. If you are with someone right now where, you know, maybe you're seeing them, you're having a great time, you know you like them enough to go to the next step of being in a relationship with them, but you don't really know where you stand and you don't really know how to move it forward. You're worried you might scare them off if you try and move it forward. So you're not making waves right now, but you're also not getting what you want. out of the situation. Well, we created this guide. Stephen, you were heavily involved in this guide. And might I say, it's a fantastic piece of work.

Thank you so much.

I know Audrey felt the same way. So it's completely free. And you can get it at leavelimbo.com. so if you want to get out of limbo with someone and into a real relationship, or you've found that that's just been a pattern for you. that you keep finding yourself in that place with different people you date, go to leave limbo.com and download that guide for free. Very practical guide and really high value. Just like you. All right.

That's nice.

You like it?

That's really nice.

It was better than my segue. Okay, so, Audrey, what were people saying on our Instagram?

Well, I selected a few comments which I thought were particularly insightful. The first one I'm going to read out is from a gentleman called Fabio, and he said, Focus on building a great life and creating amazing friendships. I think this is really nice. I think the sentiment behind it being We maybe in our 20s spend a lot of time focusing on trying to get a relationship or trying to get someone to like us. And actually we can forget that the foundation of happiness comes from really amazing connections and having a life that we feel really nourishes us and really supports us. And I think that if we spend our 20s building that really strong foundation, then, you know, the rest of life is just a bit easier, right?

What do you say, though? I agree with that. And I think it's great advice, Fabio. I, we have a lot of people who come to us in their 30s and are like, I have a great life. I have great friends. But this area is one that I feel really behind in. That would seem to suggest that they did all of that, but. It somehow has not worked out for them to do that.

Maybe they just notice because all of their... Because they're out there in the world with all of their friends and having in these social situations, they just see what their friends have and humans just can't help but just compare themselves constantly.

Right, we're always looking to the area that we haven't... We don't feel accomplished in.

So it's just such a salient feeling to them that that's why they bring you that piece of...

I suppose as well, no matter what you have focused on, there's always gonna be an area that you focused on less by definition. There are people who are married and have kids and they're like, I just really feel like I need a sense of purpose outside of all of this. And I feel like I never really got my career off the ground. There are other people who are like, I just really need to, I realized that in all of this work that I've done, I've been building a company for years, I've been making lots of sacrifices late nights. My body is really out of shape in my 30s or my 40s, and it's just time now to focus on my health. So there is this sort of natural feeling of wherever the deficit is, that's the part that you're going to hear about from me that I need to start working on. And there will always be some area that has perhaps on the serious side been truly neglected to the point of pain and in other ways just not had the same amount of love.

For sure. I also think, you know, the more seasoned you are in an area.

The.

Better that area becomes, obviously. So, you know, if you do focus, I suppose with Fabio, he's probably saying to himself, well, if I had spent my 20s really doubling down on my connection, on my friendships, on making sure that I was happy in my job and I was happy in myself and I was creating a really beautiful life around me, then I could really live that kind of, you know, rhetoric you hear everywhere of your 30s are the best years. Because I think when people maybe neglected certain parts of their lives in their 20s, they hit their 30s and they say, well, these are supposed to be the best years, but actually I feel lonely, unaccomplished and unhappy. And so to me, what I take from it anyway is, You know, it's kind of those years, those formative years, getting 10 years of an amazing friendship under your belt is invaluable to your life. As is 10 years of an amazing career, as is 10 years of travel and adventure. It means that you then enter the next decade of your life with just this really beautiful foundation.

But do you think, is Fabio saying that he spent too much time sort of chasing relationships and... You're gonna say chasing Scott? I was not gonna say chasing Scott. That's what you thought I was gonna say. I don't know why.

You've never said it.

I've never used that phrase. Exactly.

I guess.

No, but it's just... Why was it in your head? I don't know. It's because you paused and I thought, I do.

Sorry. I mean, what Fabio is trying to say is he spent his old 20s chasing skirt, and it's time for a change. so, so. But do you know what I mean? Is that, do you, do you read that as the subtext that he's, he feels like he spent too much time sort of, you know, chasing romance and not enough time building some of these things that would have given him a strong base in his 30s. Yeah.

Or maybe he spent a lot of time.

Did we phrase the question in terms of dating? I do want to say love life. So we did say love life. So maybe, so maybe he is saying Had I focused time on that, I would be in a better position in my love life now when I'm actually looking for someone.

Yeah, I think it's just, yeah. I think it's the idea of.

Where.

Was your focus in your 20s and actually reshifting it to creating, like I say, that kind of solid foundation.

I think the important thing about what Fabio said is that if you build that foundation, you're building something that is giving you, it gives you strength. you can fall back on that if when you're dating someone and it doesn't go the way that you want, it allows you to avoid the trap of making your love life the only focus. And if you do that, then you suffocate the very thing that you're trying to get.

Yeah.

With your need for validation. Very good. Okay. What else have we got?

We have another one, which is, I think, actually very insightful. It's from Vinistarr and she said, I would tell myself you are not your thoughts.

Yeah.

I think this is so common when you're younger, you are filled with anxiety and arguably when you're older too, but certainly when you're in your 20s, you're filled with anxiety, insecurity, uncertainty, a sense of unworthiness. And it takes a level of consciousness, shift in consciousness to realize that you're not a slave or you don't have to identify to those parts of yourself. You know, it's the difference between saying, I'm an anxious person and I have anxiety today.

Yeah, it's hard. That's a hard lesson to learn early. I don't know how many people are ready to be able to attach to that concept in their 20s.

I definitely think thinking is overrated.

And that's interesting coming from you.

I just, people spend too much time thinking. And I think most of the time it leads to some anxiety or worry that's unnecessary. That's something you need in this moment about something you're missing. And the longer you just ponder, I think it just leads to that.

Well, I think it's a great piece of advice because I could have used it too, just from a metaphysical standpoint of just realizing that thoughts weren't that important. Just because you go to university and stuff and you read these great writers and you're just kind of like getting all educated, you're growing up and you're like, wow, all the magic of consciousness, of thinking, humans are so interesting, but I probably spent way too much time Just thinking about like what are thoughts? What are they really important? Like are they coming to us through some magical stream? And then you start meditating you're like oh yeah thoughts are just pretty stupid random Random things that just pop into your head. So I think if I could have like grabbed my 20 year old self and just shook him a little bit like no, no, don't focus on that. It's not it's kind of a dead end there youe don't have to you don't you're you don't have to indulge.

Your neurosis quite so much yeah, I you don't, yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it, is that we indulge these thoughts, we give them so much air time and so much space to breathe. And actually, you know, I've thought this, my God, I've thought this about all sorts of thoughts I've had in the past. The moment I just decide to keep going with my day instead of following that thought to its conclusion. I I'm on to something else. It's crazy to me how even my overwhelm, you know, like right now, I I've had moments of. Of feeling today. We've come out of a couple of weeks of doing a lot of events, and as a result, I have so much on my plate that I haven't got to. And the. There's this kind of overwhelm that can set in that I've learned to manage, but. you know, today I started to notice that sense in me that I'm feeling overwhelmed. And until my just mentioning that right now, I haven't thought about that during this podcast at all because we're doing a podcast and it is just such a good example of before the podcast I was thinking, oh my God, I have so much to do. Like, you can feel that tension building in my body as I think about it. And then when we're doing a podcast and we're talking about something else, that thought is no longer there. And yet it felt like the most important thought in the world when I was having it. So, and once you start applying that to dating, to how we feel about not having had a text back, how we feel about having said something to someone that we really like that we regret, or causing an argument that we feel really silly for causing and we're beating ourselves up for causing that argument. and you just realize like this is not gonna matter.

The stakes feel so high when you're in your 20s though, even though they're actually the lowest they're ever gonna be in your life again, but they feel so high. If somebody doesn't like you, doesn't wanna be your friend, doesn't wanna date you, or you fall out with someone or whatever, you feel like it's the end of the world in a way that I think as you get older, you sort of gain a level of perspective which is so healthy. the reason I think this is such a beautiful post from Vinistar is, you know, you're not your thoughts. And I think I would go one step further and say, you know, your thoughts are over dramatizing and awfulizing every single situation in your life because you're in a developmental stage where you don't have the grounding you will acquire over time, which will make you realize that these things are not actually as important as they seem to be right now. But when you're in your 20s, as you rightly said, if somebody said to me in my 20s, you're not your thoughts, I'd be like, that makes no sense to me. I don't have time to listen to it because I'm actually very overwhelmed by my thoughts.

All of that is absolutely true. I think the one thing I would say is that it says in our 20s, we're probably maybe there's a heightened experience of it. I just think that it just carries on. It just keeps being the case. You know, like that. That, to me, is something that I certainly have done all the way up until today in my 30s, and I'm still working on just constantly because it's just so easy to identify with our thoughts again. I think that anyone who's developed any kind of meditation practice, even if it's a very, very beginner one, which I would class mine as, It's just the realization itself that you're not your thoughts is that is the powerful thing. Whether you're any good at it yet, actually practicing that and realizing it on a daily basis, I think just the knowledge that that's true is what gives you the space to act on it.

Couldn't agree more. I love that.

Okay, what else? What was the dating advice people said they would give to themselves in their 20s?

This one might be my favorite. It's from a woman called Angelie. She said, Don't change a thing. You are kind, you love with your whole heart, you are supportive and nurturing, and that is your biggest gift. It will be appreciated in the future. The reason I love it, let me tell you, is because I think we spend so much time, myself included, in our 20s, trying to hide the best parts of ourselves in order to be cool and desirable and important. And we end up muting what are really just the most beautiful sides of our personality, like our kindness and our ability to love and just those kind of raw, unfiltered sides of us. And we do it all in the name of social acceptance and trying to be, like I say, just the coolest version of us. And it's a real shame. And what she's saying is so beautiful, which is as you get older, people gravitate more and more and more towards those traits. And I know that for me, I know that those sides of myself have now become my biggest assets, but there were many, many years where I was almost embarrassed about them. And I wanted nothing but to be less like that because I felt like it made me weak. And yeah, I just think it's such an important lesson that if I had had someone to help me, I would have probably found that very comforting.

It's also in the wrong context, that's a very dangerous lesson. Don't change a thing. God help you if I hadn't changed a thing. 'Cause you would have had a rough life. I wouldn't have even been able to get you if I hadn't changed a thing.

No, she means don't change a thing because her nature is like this. And she says, don't feel like you have to mute those parts of you.

Yeah, she means there's that song that Charice sings on our virtual retreat that the lines go accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. And I think that that's a, that's closer to what she's saying in a way. She's saying that I had these beautiful qualities that I felt the need to mute and tried to be something else because I thought that's what people wanted, when actually those positive parts of me were the best parts of me. And I think that all of us can relate to that, these things that we think, and, and many of us learned those things in as early as high school. We learned that some of the most beautiful things about us and our nature were the least valuable in that context. because no one cared about them. And, you know, it didn't matter how chivalrous I was in high school. That was never gonna help. It was never gonna get me the girl over the guy that was more cocky or, you know, teased people more or knew how to be those bold alpha qualities. That's, there are certain qualities that earlier on are not valued. by the people that are of our own age. And so we learn to kind of hide them or we learn to develop this alter ego that we think other people want in order to become attractive. And by the way, some part of us is also, there is a kind of survival mechanism at a certain point in our life that makes us, unless we really have an incredibly strong character, It does make us kind of mute those parts of ourselves or just not value them in ourselves because we go, well, this just isn't working. And I think it's a very real thing when we get older that those things start to work more. It's not just that we start to bring out more of ourselves and lo and behold, you know, it works. It's that the, I feel like on some level these things actually do work better later.

Oh yeah, they're like long game qualities, whether it's like being able to just be emotionally stable, not fly off the handle when there's disagreements. You would be a good parent, you can take care of people, you're reliable. All these things are like these long game qualities where if you want someone really great in a relationship as you get older, they're the qualities that you're gonna need. But when you're young, a lot of the emphasis is status games, who's whatever, skill, skill, looking cool, cool. It's just all like, all these different.

Being cool.

Yeah. Always cool is valuable. And later on, people start to recognize that that's not the stuff that's helping them get through their life. What they need is a teammate. What they need is someone they can trust. At a certain age, the friendships we, we value, you know, we, it might be that earlier on in our lives, we valued cool people as friends. We valued people who are high status or people that we thought to, could invite us to cool parties and things. And then later on, we realize how little that means in a friendship. hopefully, not everyone does, but hopefully. And we start to realize that loyalty in a friendship is actually incredibly rare. And so then when someone comes through who's loyal, who may not be as dazzling up front and may not, like, be bursting with cool or Charisma or whatever, you go, and none of that matters to me. I love having loyal people in my life. I love having people that show up or people who are curious or people that are humble because I don't value cockiness as much as I used to, so. It's interesting, the don't change a thing. It's almost like good preparation for later on, that if you can just lean into these qualities, trust me, they're gonna become more and more valuable the older you get. But the don't change a thing part, I wouldn't want anyone to hear that and go, I don't wanna improve myself in these other areas because we can be limited by that advice too, if we're not careful.

Also, what a waste of time travel. if you could go back and tell yourself anything in that moment, my younger self would have just been so disappointed with me.

That's it?

That's all?

What? That's what you got for me?

Be more specific. Tell me to not be cool.

By the way, I actually don't disagree with her advice. I just think it needs a name that's more nuanced. Like, lean into the best parts of you instead of trying to be the things that you naturally are not. All right, what else do we got?

We have, one which I found quite interesting, probably because I found it fairly relatable. But I just found it interesting and I thought there was definitely some wisdom in that. I'm really interesting to know what you guys think. It's from somebody called Becktown and she said drinking will influence bad decisions and dramatic, painful situations. Chill on the drinking and start seeing a therapist for attachment disorders. I don't relate to all of it, but I do think that for me, anyway, I spent a lot of my 20s going out and drinking, and I would feel these peaks and troughs in my mood. I would just feel so down from hangovers. And I never really quite realized the correlation between my mood and my stability and alcohol. And I think that it did mean that I would have arguments with friends because We'd go on a night out and something would happen and it would cause a fight and then I would feel bad about it for three days afterwards because it's the kind of person I am. And I think that when you're in a throes of going out every weekend and drinking, you can feel like your life is a lot worse than it actually is. 'Cause the moment you cut out alcohol, your life just gets exponentially better. So, yeah, I just thought it was an interesting one and I think a lot of people in their 20s go out drinking, there's college, there's just generally not having the same kinds of hangovers so you don't you feel invincible and I just thought that was actually a really good piece of advice not that I would necessarily have listened to it but it's a it's a good one.

In theory I definitely think in relationships it causes more problems there's no doubt I mean just even getting drunk together or going out and getting drunk can cause whatever someone gets more jealous more emotional any any argument is going to be made much much worse if there's alcohol involved. So I agree with that. I think like when you're young, alcohol is a kind of social lubricant so it can obviously be a result of a lot of your fun memories as well. But I would tell anyone if you can like cut, like if you can cut half of your drinking out even in your 20s, like the way people get super drunk, like mostly nothing good comes of getting like that drunk, and like not doing it regularly. I mean, yeah, I would tell people, if you can cut down on it, your life's gonna be better. It's gonna be easier.

Most of those best nights would have been still pretty great with just like two less tequila shots.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You don't need those extra like three shots. They don't really add much.

And I think they're so responsible for your mood.

And they lead to bad decisions as well, if you're single as well. Getting drunk.

What are you on?

Being drunk can lead to people to make all kinds of bad decisions, whether it's who they sleep with or what they do when they sleep with someone or how careless they are. All kinds of decisions are not our best when we're drunk.

Yeah, it's like, I think that this, it's easy, I think people make very blanket statements about things like this because it's kind of, especially when they've been on a path themselves and it's easy to just kind of say drinking is bad. I think we have to have a self-awareness about us that you, you have to know thyself, know what it does to you, know the ways that it takes you down a path that you consistently don't like. And some people are better at drinking than others. You know, some people can drink, and it doesn't affect them in the same way in terms of their moods, in terms of the bad decision making, in terms of other substances that drinking can lead to for people that they can't uncouple those two things. You know, there's people in life that have other substances or even smoking that they are fine not doing it when they're not drinking, but the moment they start drinking, they can't decouple those two things. Drinking means doing the other one. And so you kind of have to, you do have to know yourself and get honest with yourself about what things happen in your life when you're doing those things. And do you like those? The result of it. Do you like what you have to then deal with the next day? Yeah. Very good.

We have Lulu who says, Do not let others dictate your worth. Yeah.

That's a huge one. That's a huge one. Look, the moment we put our value in whether someone else likes us or dates us or rejects us or dumps us, Then we are in a really precarious place and we will make bad decisions because of that. We will start trying to please that person. We will start compromising on our own values to keep them in our lives. We will start saying yes to things that really we ought to say no to. So that ability to recognize that no one, no one determines my value. I am as valuable as I decide I am. And I don't need an excuse to take care of myself. I don't need an excuse to wake up and be kind to myself today. And I didn't become any more valuable the day that I got into a relationship. That's a really, really important one because the moment you think you're more valuable because you're now in a relationship, that relationship has made you, has you hostage. And you can never allow that to be the case. You're as valuable the day before someone says yes as the day after, and you're as valuable the day after they decide they don't want to be with you anymore than you were the day before when you still had the label of I'm in a relationship.

Men as well get so much validation when they're in their 20s, so much of their self-esteem, is wrapped up in, are they sleeping with as many people as they'd like to? Are they as prolific as they'd like to be? There can be a real trap there where that also just leads to lots of time wasting or insecure behavior or going down dead ends because, like, yeah, people just want validation, right? I want to feel like I'm somebody, and this is what a young man is supposed to be doing.

Yeah. It's who are your role models for worth? Who are your role models for, you know, who are you looking up to? And by the way, other people you're looking up to even happy, like, that's, that's the trick, is that, that we spend our lives looking up, like, how many guys grew up in Entourage thinking that they needed to be Vinnie Chase in order to be worth anything and. like those, those characters, literally, they depict people who have, like, have not at all got it figured out. They are so deeply misguided. And the joke, you know, the funny thing is you have, like, you know, what's his name? Who plays Vinnie Adrian Graner? You have, like, Adrian Graner now, who talks about the fact that his own kind of living the life of Vinnie Chase that was just did not work for him. And like, all the growth work has been to kind of exercise that demon and evolve past it. So we're like literally spending our lives emulating people who can at the time that we're trying to emulate it be talking about how they had got that all wrong and yet we're still trying to emulate that existence that they had.

Would have blown my mind to go back in time and tell myself like, You know that show Entourage you love? Don't love it. It was just like, you're gonna end up realizing that show sucks.

Yeah, this depicts morons.

I would have been like, Whoa, I must really change. There's gonna be an Entourage movie that comes out, and that's gonna teach you just how bad the show was.

Very good. Well, we have another one, which I think is so beautiful and I just loved it. It was from Miss Giggles and she said, you, are allowed to ask questions and get answers when something seems off or not right. Having feelings does not make you an emotional mess. It makes you a human. And knowing the truth, as painful as it can be, is always better than finding it out years later.

I don't have anything to add to that. I think that's just very well lettered.

I have one thing to add, which is as a woman, it hit different for me because this idea of you're allowed to ask questions and having feelings does not make you an emotional mess. I think especially in your 20s, I mean, certainly when I was growing up, men are so quick to sort of label you crazy or overly emotional or too much or or whatever it might be. And I think that it ends up forcing women to almost quieten down again those sides themselves and not ask questions at the fear of being too intense. And I'm not going to express my needs and question behavior that I feel seems a little bit off because I don't want to come across in a certain way. And essentially, I will let what the guy wants be dictated back to me. And I think that's a really Insidious kind of way of thinking that women are taught from a very, very young age, and it definitely shows up in your teenage years, in your 20s, where you want to be as agreeable as you possibly can be, because otherwise you're labeled as too much. And I think that's a really beautiful thing, she said, because it does. I definitely feel like getting older, a big part of it is kind of accepting that you're not going to be everyone's cup of tea if you stand up for yourself and you're not, and that's okay. And that's actually a really good thing. It's a good thing to filter out people who are more than willing to kind of take advantage of your good nature and the fact that you're too scared to ask questions. And you see people who don't grow out of it. And it's sad because I think it is such an important thing for women to kind of realize that they can do. So yeah, I just really love that one.

I love everything you said, nothing to add.

Amazing. Well, I'm interested to know what yours are, guys. What would be the lessons that you'd like to go back and tell your 20 year old self?

Well, I have one lesson that I teach myself and it's kind of a sandwich of two points, but it's quitting is good, don't stick out bad relationships, I think I spent way too long suffering, questioning, rationalizing in certain situations where I would have been, maybe because I was people pleasing, maybe I didn't want to upset people, things like that. And I should have just been much more, see the writing on the wall quickly. And the second point related to that is taking your daily happiness really seriously. As in, if you are feeling something regularly, a frustration or there's a conflict regularly, don't sit and stick it out waiting for like, oh, but it's good sometimes or it's good in these moments. Like consistency really matters. And so if you are consistently having the same issue again and again in a relationship, it's fine to just quit and say, this isn't really working for me. And then you don't end up like spending another six months kind of just sitting and waiting and hoping. the situation will get better. And I just think I could have ended certain things much earlier than I did.

I think that's good. I mean, I think I'd probably say something similar, which is like, well, I mean, you know, listen to your resentments. I think that's, that's good. But also, there's something that you said early on was like my favorite bit of advice you gave Matt, I think was being respected is far more attractive than being liked. And, you know, when you're a kid in elementary school or even high school and it goes on to university, you just feel like people pleasing and if I just do everything for this person, they'll just like me so much. And it's like, actually, you should probably just try to see if your value is going up in their eyes or not. And being respected is far more attractive than being liked. And so, what are you doing that's helping raise your value and earning respect? from this person.

I love that.

I have one which is kind of love life, but more just general. I think it applies to every part of life. And it is place your value in things that really matter and not in things that you can't take with you. And I think that identifying who you are and why you're valuable early on can only be a good thing. And I think, again, women can sometimes place their value in what men find them valuable for, whether it be looks or whatever. And I think that it ends up being sort of, you know, that you get validation from those things, from being sweet, from being good looking, from being all these different things. And if you're not careful, you can carry that into a phase of your life where these things start to go and taper off. And then before you know it, you don't really know what your value is anymore because it's all kind of disappeared. And I think that as early as you can really start to value yourself for the right things, the happier of a life you will have kind of moving forward. and I think it's a really, really big one.

Very good. I. Most of mine, I think, revolve around. Well, I. There's. There's lessons that revolve around how I treat other people. I think I would have told myself to be more honest with people about what I can give instead of leading people on because it was kind of just convenient for me to do that. I would have tried to. encourage myself to be more careful with other people's hearts, knowing how delicate of a thing someone's heart can be. And it's very easy to actually think a lot of the time we don't even know the damage that we do. I don't think it's just ignorance. I think that we actually don't, at a certain point in our lives, we don't actually realize, especially if we're being kind of carefree and casual and flippant, when it comes to people, we don't necessarily know how much they might like us or how much our ending of things kind of very abruptly or, or just deciding not to pursue them anymore. We don't actually realize how much harm that's done because we're not even in that mode ourselves, you know, and it's, it's easy to kind of go, well, we weren't that serious. But actually, the other person was in a very different place. You can't make that your responsibility in everything. I mean, it's. You can't account for other people's perception of things, but. But you can. You can look at your own behavior and say, am I. Am I doing anything that would hurt this person unnecessarily? There's no way of, by the way, I think this is an important point to make. There's no way of dating without hurting people's feelings. There is no way of doing it. the moment someone likes you more than you like them, you've hurt their feelings. And that is inevitable in dating. You will go on a date with someone or several dates and then decide it's not for you and hurt someone in the process. So you can't avoid that. But I know there were times where I hurt people beyond the point of being able to just shrug it off as, well, that's part of dating. I know that there were times where I led people on because it was convenient for me to do that, knowing that they were invested in a completely different way than I was. I would have told myself to stop bringing people into my world so quickly. I think that I. I was, you know, I allowed people to come into my world too close, too fast, and that meant that. If I suddenly changed my mind about what I wanted, they felt very much like we were on a more serious footing than we were because I was very kind of open armed about bringing people into my life. And I think that at the time, it would have felt like a strange concept to keep people more at arm's length because that almost would have felt like the more mean thing to do. But actually, in some ways, at times it may have been the kinder thing. to do because they may not have had such a great time with me, but they also wouldn't be as close to me and to my world. So I think I would have kept people on the outside a little more at times. And I also would have told myself to heal my relationships with family sooner. and to deal with any dynamics there or any resentments there or any misunderstandings there or, you know, that we all go through things in our family where we sort of, we don't heal things, we don't deal with things that, you know, we don't have the conversations we should have or we don't go through our own process, whether it's therapy or just our own journey of healing to kind of figure out, to put family in their proper place. And to go, you know, to stop seeing our parents as gods and to start seeing them, but to also stop seeing them as demons. To start just assigning them their proper place.

Seeing them as people.

Yeah, and to realize, oh, I don't need to chase after this thing that emulates my parents, or I don't need to run as hard away from this thing that emulates my parents. Whatever is your thing. I think just healing those relationships sooner and just if, even if it's not to do with what you say to them, contextualizing the relationships you've had in the past in a more healthy way so that what you go for next is not an overcorrection or is not, you know, the pendulum swinging too far in in one direction because you continue to sabotage yourself if you don't do that. But you also will hurt other people because they'll, they'll be on the receiving end of the baggage you haven't sorted out yet. They'll be the ones who actually pay the price for the work that you haven't done on yourself. And so, and I think there was a lot of that going on for me, too.

So that's actually, that's love life advice. It's like, heal these family relationships.

Yeah.

Interesting.

I know. I've dated people in the past where I know I'm like, I'm suffering because of some dynamic they have with their parents. Like, I I can see it visibly. I'm like, oh, this person has a. Their relationship with their mother is a disaster. Like, this is a. This is a really. There's something deeply unhealthy about this, and neither one of them are admitting it. or have figured this out. And I'm actually the one who's suffering as a result. I'm getting the, like, I'm actually dealing with this as a third person now in that relationship. And so, and that how everyone's got their version of that. I bet you everyone listening to this has their version of a dynamic they saw within their partner's family, between their family and their partner, that they can look at and go, that was really, really painful for me to deal with the effects of. So that would be a piece of advice. I certainly would have told myself to go through some kind of growth or healing sooner in my own life. I did, you know, I was all about peak performance and I was pretty good at that. You know, the results of my life are a direct reflection of my focus on kind of peak performance coaching from a very early age in my life. And, and, and by the way, it worked, but it, what it didn't do is heal the kind of the, the emotional wounds that I had. It didn't heal the trauma that I had. And that process, I wish I had started sooner. I would tell myself to start that process sooner because it absolutely caused more pain in my life and more suffering, especially in my relationships, that I hadn't figured that stuff out earlier.

And.

And I suppose that's, you know, while I say all of these things about, I would have gone and told myself to be more careful, careful with people's hearts and to not throw myself in too fast and to not do this and not do that. The truth is all of that would be solved by the final thing I said, because the reason I was doing all of that, the reason if I went back to myself now in my 20s and said all of that, I wouldn't in any way be able to hear it. is because I hadn't done that work. So I was trying to fix something. I was trying to make myself feel good enough. I was trying to make myself feel. Feel powerful or. Or important or sexy or desired or, you know, that was my number one priority. It wasn't. It wasn't having conscious relationships with people, and it wasn't. making sure to be. To be kind to them in the process. If you'd have asked me at the time, I never would have said I was selfish. I never would have said that I wasn't kind in the process. I would have said I. I am good to people. I take care of people. I look after people. I'm there for people. And all of those things were true. And it was also true that I was a disaster for anyone who got in my path because I wasn't able to truly consider them in the process. I was too busy trying to. fix something in me. So the, the awareness that more work on myself would have brought and more emotional work, not more learning how to be a peak performance guy, not learning how to work harder, not learning how to achieve more that I'm talking about a different kind of work and a work that's become much more relevant to me at the age I am today, because I did all of that and I achieved lots and, you know, had lots of status symbols in my life, and none of that gave me what I'd hoped it would give me. The truth is, had I done more of that work, I don't think I would have needed all those things in the first place. And by the way, I think that the, I'll wrap this episode up by saying that it doesn't really, it's kind of a funny exercise to say, what would I have told myself? Because of course, the obvious question is, would I have been able to hear it? would it have made any difference? And the answer is sometimes someone comes along and they kind of, they, they can, they can say something that nudges the train onto a different, a different trajectory, a different track. And even a slight nudge sometimes can over time make a big difference or it can plant a seed that doesn't grow for three years or five years, but nevertheless, the seed has been planted and it's ready to make a difference when you're ready to acknowledge that. But I think that the biggest thing that I would say to any of us out there, 'cause it's relevant to us today, make no mistake, 10 years from now we can be having the same conversation. What does the you from 10 years from now say to the you today? And just someone just giving you a thought doesn't necessarily make any difference in our lives because we're not in an emotional or psychological context to be able to receive it. But if you can change the emotional and psychological context in which we hear these thoughts, if you can, in other words, if I could have at 25 been on a journey where I was becoming more aware of myself and more aware of what I was like and more aware of what was driving that behavior, then I might have actually been more open and I might have therefore been able to hear different things than I was able to hear. But taking the same kind of operating system that we had back then and then trying to feed it, trying to give it new software, that's a really hard thing to do. Maybe impossible. The changes we want to make today, it's almost worth asking ourselves, there's plenty of good advice around me and only a fraction of it is getting in, if any, at certain times. And why is that? Well, there's plenty of amazing software out there, but my operating system right now is not built for certain software. And so, is there anything I could do today to upgrade the actual operating system so that it's able to hear more? And whether you do that through coaching, whether you do it through your own learning, whether you do it through therapy, that's why I'm a fan of coaching, or rather, that's why I'm a fan of things that can help you on your growth, is not because they can give you a new thought, But so that, but because these things can actually upgrade your operating system and that can change everything. It's, I think for me, it's the biggest argument that exists for our retreats is not like the thoughts can be life changing, but they're certainly not life changing to anyone who's not ready to hear them. But if a program like that can actually upgrade your operating system, that changes everything. The other point that Audrey prompted me to say, because she knows my nature, is that I would have to go back and tell myself somehow to start being more compassionate towards myself.

And also, not just that, but you, I think you and a lot of other people, struggle to be compassionate to that 20-something year old self, you know?

Oh, I see.

So it's not just being compassionate in the moment, but it's also looking back with a compassionate lens towards our younger selves for the mistakes they've made.

Yeah, I just think if you look at yourself from a year ago and you go, oh, I don't like what I did there, but now I don't do it anymore. It's about going, well, a year ago, me was doing their best with everything they had in front of them. They were trying to make themselves feel happy. and it's not up to my standard of today, but it's okay. And I love that person. I love that 20-something-year-old girl or boy who was doing all these things that I now would never do because I know better. But back then I didn't know better. And I was just doing what everyone is doing day to day, which is just trying to survive and trying to make life bearable.

I think that's a wonderful note to end on. If you want to come and upgrade your operating system with us, one of the ways you can do that on an ongoing basis is by being a part of the Love Life Club. This is the Love Life podcast, but the Love Life Club is a place where we coach you every month. I get on a session every month and answer questions for our exclusive group of members. Stephen does the same. We have masterclasses, we do interviews. It's just an amazing, it's like a gym. for your emotions, for your psychology, and of course for your love life. But I always say it's not just about your love life. It's about your love for life, independent of your love life, because I think that's the greatest way to have a love life is to be someone who loves life and who loves yourself. So if you want to come and be a part of this, go to askmh.com. it's the next step up from our podcast. You get a 14 day free trial. So you can come and just test it all out, join one of the webinars, see how you feel about it, and you won't pay a thing if you decide to jump off. But we think you'll love it and we think you'll stay because it's really, really powerful for people and they feel that their life gets better with it. So come to askmh.com to become a member for 14 days for free, and we will speak to you in the next episode of Love Life.