Why Anxiety Kills Attraction — And What to Do Instead

Hello! How are you all? It's so good to see you for Day 2 of the Calm Method. I've been so excited about this morning. I left our session yesterday. Shout out to everyone who was there. Shout out to everyone who watched the recording since. I have just not stopped thinking about you guys since I left yesterday and have worked all through the day yesterday and into the night last night and was up in the dark this morning reading comments and going through the community and looking for feedback, what people are struggling with, what's resonating with people. And I just, I had so many, I've been working for weeks on this for you guys. I had so many things I already wanted to bring to you, but based on the comments I'm reading, I've also added a whole bunch of sections for today that I want to talk about. I have so much to do with you. So, I'm going to move at a pace today, and have your notepads ready, have a pen, have everything you need. Go to a quiet place, eliminate the distractions, just be with me here. Presence is a gateway to calm, and you'll notice when you're not calm, you're distracted, you're multitasking, there's a very kind of frenetic energy to that. I'm going to be moving fast with a lot of energy today, but it's not because I'm not calm, it's because I'm trying to squeeze every drop out of every moment we have together while we're here. So, just to say, show up with the same level of focus, intensity, and presence as you did yesterday, and we're going to have an even better session today. We are going to smash this together today. Hello to Jerry, Jennifer, Diana, all of you here in the comments right now. Diana says, I'm on the train on my way from work. All right. Well, I'm glad you're here, wherever you're watching this from. I'm happy you're here. Judy, hello to you. I see all of you in the comments right now by my side. So, hello, welcome back. Let's make this a great day. Let's start by taking a deep breath together. Just one deep breath. Okay? Let's go in. Inhaling. And know that nothing we are anxious about right now in our lives is in any way improving through our anxiety. Our anxiety is not improving any of the things we're worried about. I also want to say, because I I really thought this as I was journaling last night. There is so much collective pain in this room. You as an individual watching this, wherever you are, and I know we have thousands of people across the world, you've been through a lot. If you're here, chances are you haven't had an easy go of it. Chances are you've had to deal with a lot. None of us picked the life that we woke up into. None of us picked the cast of characters that were there to meet us when we woke up in the world. We didn't pick our start. And there are so many things that have happened in our life that we are not responsible for, we didn't create. But wired our nervous system long before we were ever consciously making decisions about what our survival strategies should be. So many of the things that we're still paying the price for today, that are still impacting us, our happiness, our peace, are hangovers from a time when we were going through something and we developed a survival strategy. And it was the best We knew how at the time to solve whatever the challenge was we had, whether we had an inconsistent parent, whether we had someone who completely abandoned us, whether we had a partner who betrayed us in the most awful ways that we never saw coming in a more innocent state. Whatever trauma you have experienced in your life, you know, these things are not your fault. But we then take on the responsibility of, you know, having to deal with those things for the rest of our life. And it can make us, truly can make us feel like we are broken, like we are never going to be okay, that we're just somehow cursed. There was an email that I got, or is it, this was actually from one of my members, Thomas. who said, you know, at this point, I feel like I'm always the problem. I'm always the one who talks, the one who expresses what's bothering me, you know. And essentially goes on to tell a story, like, I'm— a story of constantly being overwhelmed by emotions and constantly feel like I can't stop myself from saying the thing that's gonna sabotage me. I can't stop myself from doing the thing that ends up making me worse, less attractive, makes the person I'm with turn on me. And that feeling of being out of control, that feeling that we can't do better, is a horrible feeling. And for anyone here who relates to anxiety, obsession, the untenability of dealing with the uncertainty of dating or relationships, we're gonna talk about all of that today. What I want you to get in your mind is that life can be better. I know life has been hard, and I know that horrible feeling of it's never going to get better. You know, for many of us, especially the Type A people among us, we often think we can work our way out of a problem. You know, we've learned that in our lives. If I work hard enough, or if I hustle hard enough, if I grind enough, if I suffer enough, I can solve a problem. And the challenge with the emotional side of our lives is that we can't outwork it. It's like no matter what I do, all of those emotions are still there. You know, I might have solved many of the material challenges in my life or I might have been able to, you know, create things or make things happen, but I can't— I'm still stuck with my brain. And there's no amount of being Type A that allows us to just work our way out of that. And that gets really scary. I know I had the same— I suffered with chronic physical pain for years. And one of the hardest things about it was that my Type A personality was like, I'm gonna fix this. I'm gonna, you know, visit every doctor. I'm gonna do every possible treatment. I'm gonna throw money at this. I'm gonna— like, I did so many things. To try to fix this physical chronic pain that was really ruining my life. I mean, it took me to such a dark, dark place in my life, and the people who were close to me around that time know just how dark that got and how much I couldn't see a way out of it. And I couldn't see how I was going to do that for another 50 years. Genuinely, I was like, I don't know how to do this for another 50 years. I don't— I can't sign up to that. But I didn't know how to get rid of my pain either. And it left me in this place of utter panic. And when panic doesn't work and you feel like— because you can only panic for so long. Our brain can only operate in panic for so long. Panic turns into complete hopelessness. And ultimately it can turn into a kind of numbness. Because you can't— I can't keep experiencing pain on this level. So you start to dull your experience of life. You start to numb yourself. You start to just find ways to escape. And, you know, I remember one time, the start of when I first went to therapy, I remember saying to my therapist, I have this pain and I can't get rid of it. And because I can't get rid of it, I just can't experience joy. I don't know how to experience joy anymore. And as long as this pain is here, I'm never gonna be happy. And since I've tried everything, I mean, by this point I'd been trying for years. I said, since I've tried everything and it still hasn't gone away, I don't think I'm ever gonna be happy. I don't think I'm ever gonna experience joy again in my life. So, you know, I'm someone who's always had a lot of responsibility. I don't know if you relate, but, you know, I have a lot of responsibility with family members and a team and people around me that I love, many of whom depend on me in some way. And, you know, I depend on my love or me being there. You know, I have a lot of things that I felt very responsible for throughout my life. And so You know, I said to this therapist at the time, I, you know, I'm just going to live for other people now. You know, I'll just live for my audience and helping them be happier. I'll live for my family and helping them feel safe and secure. I'm just going to live for everybody else. And he said to me, Matthew, that is hallmark depression. And it was a kind of circumstantial depression because it was a depression that was derived from a physical pain, but at a certain point, anyone with chronic pain will know that the delineation between physical and emotional pain dissolves because you— one begets the other. Chronic physical pain becomes a chronic emotional pain and they're indistinguishable, you know, and that was what it became for me. So I, you know, I was— I really felt on the verge of giving up. I genuinely felt like life is never going to get better. For me. I can't resolve this issue, and because I can't resolve this, I'm never going to be happy. But I promise you, I promise you, not just from my own experience, but from the experience of people I've worked with over and over again in the last 19 years of this career, life can be better. Everything changes. Everything changes. And we can direct that change. And You deserve to be happy. After everything you've been through, after everything you've done to get yourself here, you deserve to be happy. And I'm with you on that journey. As long as you'll have me, I'm with you on that journey. So, I have so much to give today. I don't have enough time. I want to start with a very Quick, like, let's just recap on a couple of things before I get to some tools that I want to give you today for calm. I've got some questions as well that I've been taking from the community inside our app. If you haven't, by the way, signed up to the app yet, there's a QR code on the screen where you can do that, or you can go to 3daycalm.com and sign up. Become part of the community. We have a Q&A happening after this. I don't want you to miss that. All of that happens inside the community. All of it is free. Come join us in there if you haven't already. It's a beautiful space already. So, the first thing I want to say is part of us feeling more calm is owning our— oops— vulnerabilities. I feel vulnerable having to spell vulnerabilities. Owning our vulnerable— our vulnerabilities. Okay? I want you to think about that scene in the movie 8 Mile with Eminem. What's the moment he becomes the most powerful? It's the moment he's in a rap battle and he just says all of the things that the other person could say about him. He just acknowledges all of it. He's like, this is the— yeah, you're gonna make fun of this. You're gonna make fun of this. You're gonna make fun of that. That's all me. So, what now? Like, he owned his vulnerabilities. He's— shadow work would say, he owned his shadow. And so much of our anxiety comes from not owning these parts of ourselves that we're afraid to take ownership of because we're afraid they're unlovable. We're afraid they make us not good enough. That's what people are gonna reject if they see them. We had Romy last night on the Q&A. If you haven't had a chance to watch yesterday's Q&A, it was so fun, and so great, and so deep. We had 2 people. One of them was Romy, and she was talking about having been ghosted by a guy. And she went inside, she did the exercise. I did the exercise with her that we did yesterday, the one I did with myself last week, and I got her to find the part of her that was scared. And I said, I want you to ask that part of you, what are they afraid of? You know, and she said, well, I'm afraid that, you know, this guy who's been treating me poorly, and picking me up, and putting me down, and ghosting me, and ghosting me again, who I'm still chasing, and I'm ashamed at myself that I'm still chasing him, and I'm still thinking about him, and I'm still in contact with him. So, there was a lot of shame there. But I said, what does this part of you worry about? And she said, well, that I'm not I've not been interesting enough. I've not been intriguing enough to hold on to this guy. So, what's really at the core of this is this guy who ghosted her, who should not— like, she was psyched. Like, whenever we're— and I put this on my Instagram this morning— whenever we are waiting for the verdict from somebody else, like, are they gonna reach out to me again? Are they gonna contact me again? Do they like me? What's gonna happen here? What we're doing is waiting for a verdict on our worth. We have made them the arbiter of our worth, and we're waiting for them to deliver the verdict. And if they come back and they say, oh, sorry I was missing for a couple of weeks. Something happened. I had a family member who was sick, but I'm back now, and I really like you, and I want to see you, we can go, ah, okay. They like me. I'm okay. I'm enough. I can like myself. But if they just have ghosted us, or if they have decided to fade because they don't like us, or for whatever reason, the verdict is we're not worthy, and then we're gonna reject ourselves. So, why are we uncertain? You know, look, someone said this today, right? I recently noticed that I find it very hard to stop overanalyzing everything in an attempt to get clarity on what other people think of me, and whether they like me or not. I almost feel like giving up on a navigation system and just floating in open space. How can I navigate this feeling of uncertainty? Who here is trying to navigate the feeling of uncertainty they have in their love life? Who here relates to that feeling of, I'm trying to navigate the uncertainty that is inherent? Maybe you don't even realize it's inherent. Maybe you've personalized the uncertainty. That's an interesting thing. thing. Maybe you don't even think it's inherent to dating or relationships. You've personalized it as a you thing. That's a way to get calmer immediately. Stop personalizing uncertainty. Okay. So, we have so many people relating to this. Anita. Tammy. Laura. Sienna. So, firstly, nothing is served by being anxious. Name me a value-add to being anxious. Worrying is different. You can worry for a minute, and that can drive you to take an action, or to do something, or, oh, I'm worried my, you know, my sister is, you know, maybe feeling a little unloved, because she hasn't heard from me in a while. Okay, let me send her a text. And when anxiety— when worry turns into anxiety, and it becomes rumination, and that rumination is just chronic, there's no value-add to it whatsoever. So, we start there. Right? But we also have to say, I am waiting. Part of what's intolerable here is I'm waiting for this person to deliver the verdict on my worth. So, when I found that part of Romy, who I spoke to yesterday on the Q&A, and I said, let's go speak to that part that's scared, that is feeling inadequate, that she's been ghosted and that this guy isn't reaching out. Let's go find her. Let's ask her what she feels. What is she afraid of? She said, I'm afraid I'm not interesting enough to hold onto this person. Okay, great. I'm not interesting enough, or I'm not intriguing enough. So what this represents is the part of her that's afraid that she's boring, afraid that she's not attractive, right? Now, the truth is, She's boring some of the time. There are times where she's not witty. There are times where she's not got anything interesting to say. I was in a coffee shop just a couple of days ago, and I really love books, but I— there was 2 people talking. Well, I was talking with this one person here, with Audrey and our son. He wasn't talking. He was, you know, babbling nonsense. But then there was this other woman who walked in, and she saw the book. That the guy I was talking to was reading. And she said, what are you reading? And he said, I'm reading this. And she said, oh my God. She said, I know that author. And then they had this whole conversation about this book. And then they started talking about another book. And for whatever reason, my brain couldn't think of anything interesting to say in this conversation. I don't know what happened. I just— I think I was— I think there was a little bit of like I haven't read in 10 months because of being a new parent. And I've read, but, you know, nowhere near what I normally read. And it made me feel insecure a little bit and like, oh God, I don't have anything to contribute here. And I feel like— so I kind of like, I felt myself close down a little bit. Oh, there's something there. There's some part of me that's worried right now that he's not reading enough and feels insecure about not having read enough. That's interesting, right? We touch a part of ourselves in those moments. Romy felt in that moment like, oh, what if I'm this— if someone knows this boring part of me, I'm not going to be enough. But the reality is that part of her is Fine. She's allowed to be boring, and if she owns the part of her that's not always attractive, that can be boring at times, that doesn't have anything interesting to say, you know what she's gonna do? She's gonna stop trying to hide it, and she's gonna relax. Where does charisma come from? Where does wit come from? Where does the ability to say something interesting or contribute to a conversation come from? Being relaxed. So, the problem isn't that Romy can't be interesting. The problem is when she's so busy trying to hide the part of her that doesn't— isn't always interesting, she tenses up. And now she's so scared of being seen and being rejected that that's what she's projecting. Not the powerful Romy, who, by the way, if someone ghosted her, she would have been like, Next! She's not being that Romy. She's being the Romy who's like, I hope he hasn't seen me. I hope he hasn't seen that I'm not attractive enough. So, we own our vulnerabilities. If you want a little— we're gonna come on to this in a moment, but I'll tell you what I mean by this, but if you want a little emotional button for this, 8 Mile, right? I'm gonna— if I'm in a rap battle with life, I'm gonna own The parts of me that somebody else could say. It doesn't mean I have to say them out loud, by the way. I'm not gonna feed you insecurities of mine. I'm gonna own them. You don't have to know what they are, but I'm gonna own them, and if I own it, I'm free. Okay? And the reason you can own it is because we are not One thing. We are not one thing. Our fear, our insecurity tells us, I am all just like this. This is me. It's not you. You're not one thing. Right? Last night before I went to bed, Audrey was laying in bed and, you know, I came in to like get my toothbrush and she was like, are you like, What, you know, are you okay? How are you feeling about tomorrow? Are you excited? And I went, I feel excited. She goes, but are you ready? And I went, I don't know. Like, I'm not sure. That was all I had. I was like, I just don't— I don't know. I don't know. But what I know, I don't over— when I feel that way, I don't over-identify with it because I know that I'm more than one thing. This morning, I woke up and I was walking. I went to get my coffee and I had my headphones in and I was like, "Fuck, I'm good at this." Like I really felt that. I was like, I I literally wrote like genuine. This is gonna sound conceited, but I literally I thought, "I'm the best." Like I really I'm the best at this. Like I am fucking world-class at this. Who? Who? I, I don't know who else can do this like I can. Like I really felt that. If you would have caught me last night, I would have gone. Are you ready? I don't know. I don't know. Doubt. But I also love that guy who doubts himself because he's humble. He's not an asshole. He wants to keep learning. That guy makes me prepare. That guy makes me pick up one more book and think, you know what? I want to go looking for something that's really going to like. fit tomorrow, and so you go find a book from the bookshelf, and find something, go, oh, I wanna read that. Yeah. I've got something I wanna read to you today that that guy found, right? He makes me prepared, but he can't drive all the time. That's the difference. I can love him. I can say, look, you're my guy, all right? The part of me that doubts, the part of me that's worried that they're not good enough, the part of me— I love you. I've got you. Let me put an arm around you. Like, I— and by the way, I'm grateful for you, because there's things you do for us. That that guy who's like, I'm the best, he's not picking up a book off the shelf and like, you did that. So I'm you're you're my guy, you're my homie, but but I can't let you drive all the time, right? And by the way, that guy who knew he's the best, that guy is driving this morning. That's great. So this. What we're doing is we're owning our vulnerable parts. We're recognizing that vulnerable part does not define us. It's not our only thing. And what we do is we find out, what does this part need? Right? It's a great question to ask them. What do you need? What do you need? I know I've tried to abandon you. I know I've shut you out. I know I try and hide you from the world. Screw that. You're like, you're coming with me now. I'm not abandoning you anymore. I'm not rejecting you anymore. What do you need? What do you need? And we talked about this yesterday, like that, you know, that part of you might be like, well, where's the fun? It's never fun. Like, you always put us through like this thing. You make everything so hard, or the moment someone doesn't text us or ghosts us, you immediately tell me I'm not good enough, and you side with that person. Instead of saying, Instead of actually showing me that you're not going to reject me even if somebody else does, what do you need? Yesterday, before the event, I that part of me that's like I'm not ready, I'm not not ready. That part often takes over before a big event like this, and I have a a friend who. Actually, it was someone who came on my retreat a couple of years ago and eventually ended up joining my Club 320 program. And this person had sent me an email a couple of weeks ago that I hadn't gotten back to. And I said, I asked that part of me, what do you need? Like, I was stressing a bit and I realized I'd been putting that guy who wasn't, you know, was trying to feel ready through his paces for a few weeks. I was like, what do you need? And he was like, I wanna email our friend. Like, I wanna email our friend. And by the way, the reason I hadn't emailed this person back over the last 2 weeks was 'cause I felt like I had no time. And the worst possible time was an hour before I went live here on stage. But what we do to show this part of ourselves we're showing up for them is we make sacrifices for them. Yeah. We make sacrifices on behalf of that part of ourselves. So, you know what I did? An hour before I came to meet you, I sat in front of my computer and I emailed back my friend, and it made me feel really good. I connected with my friend. And there was that part of me was scared, like, but we haven't got time, but we're not— and I was like, I'm doing this for you. I know you— I know this is important to you. I'm doing this for you. So, we make sacrifices on behalf of that part of ourselves. When we make a sacrifice, what we're doing is showing this part of us they matter. Their experience matters. And in doing so, we start to make friends with this part of ourself. All right? People wanna know, what does self-love actually look like? What does it look like to build a relationship with yourself? This is what it looks like in practice. This is how practical it can be, and we're just getting started. So, we learn to talk to ourselves, right? To talk to those parts of us, and that ability to talk to ourselves, that's the space between trigger and response. Remember, we talked about this, that idea that— I'm sorry. There is the trigger, and that alone can be painful. Then there's our typical response, and our typical response can be harmful actions. It can be getting a secondary trigger. So, secondary trigger is, I felt anxious. Well, now I get anxious about something. Now I feel anxious about being anxious. There was someone in the community who I read last night who was talking to me about a narcissist in her life. And she said, when I have to see this person, my body seizes up. I freeze. I don't know what to say. I'm like— she said, I'm literally afraid of the response that I'm going to have when I'm in this person's midst. And I feel like it gives this person so much power over me. But here's what's interesting. He is a trigger. Being around— how many people here have a person in their life who just the thought of standing in front of them makes you lose your breath, makes you start breathing differently, makes you start, like, you sweat, you get nervous, you feel like your body's getting taken over, your nervous system is getting hijacked? So, what if we said that There's a nervous system response there, and there's a part of me that has a physical reaction to being near this person. That's already painful enough as it is, but this woman was saying to me, I hate that I get like that, and I'm scared to get like that, and I'm already getting nervous about feeling that when I have to see them at that event that I'm going to see them at. So now, we are— the primary trigger hasn't even happened, and the secondary trigger has kicked in, which is, I'm judging myself for getting triggered by this person in the first place, that I'm screwing up. I'm ashamed that I am getting triggered by this person. So now, is this a version of accepting? this part of her, or is she rejecting this part of her? Which one? Rejecting. Audrey said rejecting. Yes, that's a rejection of this part of you. What if instead she said, I get it, of course you're fucking triggered by this person. Do you know who they are? Who they— what they did, how they showed up, how that person gaslit us, how that person distorted our reality, how that person constantly eroded our confidence, how that person made us question everything in our lives that we knew to be true, but they made us think it was untrue, how much this person made us feel on edge, how many times we were betrayed by this person, how many other times the other shoe had to drop, and we had our lives devastated all over again. Of course you're fucking triggered by this person! It would take a psychopath not to be triggered by this person, and you are not a psychopath, thank God. So, you'll get— you're gonna get triggered at the party when you see this person, or you're gonna get triggered at the wedding when you see this person? No shit. No shit. You're allowed to get triggered. I'm not gonna reject you. You're allowed to get triggered. Okay? So there's gonna be some involuntary bodily responses. All right. Oh, but what if they see that you kind of can't catch your breath or you can't— Who? I'm what? So they're gonna see? So it's gonna mean something to them? I don't care. I've got— I accept you. I've got you. What, we really care about impressing the fucking narcissist, the malignant narcissist in the room? No. I'm impressed by you that you even show up to that room. I've got you. I'm not abandoning you. What do you need? Hey, I'm here. What do you need? I get goosebumps as I say it because imagine, imagine not rejecting that part of you anymore. Imagine turning to them as a friend and saying, What do you need? I've got you. You want us to limit our exposure to that person there? Okay, great. We're gonna go. We're gonna do our best, whatever that is. There's gonna be some involuntary responses, okay? We're not gonna— maybe we'll fumble our words. Maybe we won't know how to handle ourselves. All good. All good. The win is showing up. We're gonna show up because we're doing it for somebody else, or whatever we're showing up for in that situation. Let's limit our exposure. I've got you. I've got you. What do you need? What else do you need? I need you to not believe the things they say when they say them, because I'm really afraid that they're gonna find a way to say some cutting comment. They're gonna say something that's designed to make us insecure. They're gonna say something to get under our skin, and I'm really afraid you're gonna believe what they say. I'm really afraid that You're gonna take— you're gonna hear them say something negative about us, and you're gonna agree with them. I won't. I promise. You have my fucking word that even if we're tempted to follow the thought and to ruminate about something they've said, I'm gonna have the discipline to cut that shit off because that's what you need. I'm not gonna let them take us. Somewhere. They can say whatever they want. Their opinion doesn't matter to me, okay? I've got you. What else do you need? I wanna leave that fucking party afterwards and go call someone who makes us laugh and go for ice cream. Done. Done. We're gonna go— let's arrange it right now. Let's arrange to see the friend. Who makes us laugh the most, and let's go get ice cream after this is done, you and me, right? And the win, the win isn't anything to do with how that person, you know, how you were in front of that person, like you've gotta do some bullshit movie-esque perfect response to anything they say. No, fuck that shit. This is you and me. We're gonna show up. We'll do the best we can, whatever that is, and then— and we'll do it hand in hand. And the very fact that we just showed up—that's our win. We won no matter what. And you know what? As long as we're together, we won. If we stay together, we won. Okay? You and me—we don't break up during this deal. Okay. And then we're gonna go and get some ice cream. That's what that is—is there's a trigger, and everyone's so like. This is— this is— guys, we spend our lives beating ourselves up for getting triggered, but the beating ourselves up, that's the worst pain of all, because that's where we abandon ourselves. This part, if we can actually accept, I'm not a perfect person, and I struggle, and these are the ways that I struggle, and some of that struggle is involuntary. If we can direct love, and compassion, and friendship to that part of us— Do you know what else is going to happen that's crazy? Not only will we not have any of this secondary reaction, even in your gut right now when you think about it, doesn't it feel good? Who here, as you're thinking about this right now, is like, almost you can breathe better? Just tell me right now. Nothing's even happened. You've just heard this, and you're like, oh my God, I'm breathing differently. Like, I feel like my shoulders came down. I feel it. I feel it for you. I feel it for me. But what's gonna happen is when you develop a different relationship with the part of you that gets triggered in the first place, that part of you is gonna feel more confident. That part of you is gonna feel— they're not gonna feel abandoned anymore, and they're not gonna feel like they're constantly failing you. And when that part of you starts to When you're a friend to that person and that part of you starts turning around and going, I want to be a— I want to do more for you too, all of a sudden you become united. You become this team. It's you and them against the world. Now different things are possible because from that place of connection, from that place of being connected to yourself, you're going to open up a space that you haven't opened up maybe ever. A space of play, a space of, like, positive aggression, healthy aggression, a place of boldness, a space for confidence, a space for, like, a dark sense of humor. You start getting more playful. Anxiety doesn't make us playful. Anxiety robs us of our sense of humor. All of a sudden, you start to have— isn't it funny how, like, the worst things in our life Once we start to heal, they live side by side with some of the darkest humor because there's a healing to that when we start to open up the space. So I want to read you this as well because there was another question here. From someone, Pamela, who said, how do I calm myself when I feel someone losing interest? She says, I go through this phase where when things get tough or someone I deeply care about seems to not be very interested, I get emotionally hijacked. I go into this numb state and almost automatically pick up my phone and start scrolling until I'm so restless that I hardly know which way is up, which is where I got into watching your videos. I have been grateful to the bottom of my heart for how much your videos have brought back a sense of purpose to my life. What are ways to stay grounded and not lose that strength and sense of calmness? I love the idea of being emotionally self-sufficient and I would be grateful to hear your point of view on this. Love and blessings from Pamela. I want to read you this. It's from a British poet called David Whyte and he wrote a passage on anxiety. that I think is perfect for what we're talking about here. I'll read a couple of different moments from this, but David Whyte says, anxiety is the disembodied state I feel when I pretend to put things right by worrying about them instead of truly conversing with them. So, imagine you're worrying about somebody and they're not texting you or it's not going well or it feels like they're disappearing. And now, Worrying might be the initial state of, well, what do I do? Do I text this person? Do I leave it be? Right? There's a little worry in there, but it can lead us to action. Anxiety is when we process this over and over and over again, and process turns into rumination. There is no processing. It's just looping, cyclical thinking. Anxiety is an extended state of denial, the refusal to put something right that needs to be put right because putting it right feels or means feeling real anguish. Putting it right means feeling real anguish. This is very interesting. I want you to hear this. Anxiety is the trembling surface identity that finds the full measure of our anguish too painful to bear. Constant anxiety is our way of turning away from and attempting to make a life free from the necessities of heartbreak. Allowing our hearts to actually break might be the first step in freeing ourselves from anxiety. I find that idea that anxiety is The disconnect that stops us from allowing our hearts to actually break in the way that they need to. Very, very powerful. See, the heartbreak that we might need to feel and allow ourselves to feel is that this person we've had a couple of great dates with might not actually be what we thought. That this might not be the answer to our love lives. That may not be the same kind of heartbreak as losing someone in a 10-year relationship or marriage, but it's a kind of heartbreak. I got my hopes up here. I was texting with someone. I went on a great date, and it felt like something was happening. And anxiety about what they're— what are they thinking? Do they like me? Do they not like me? They haven't asked me out on a date in 3 weeks. What does that mean? Let me ask them. the question 100 times. Let me reread the text 43 times. All of that is a way of avoiding the anguish of letting go of the result altogether, of a kind of allowing our hearts to break. See, in Diana's question, when she said, I overanalyze everything. How can I navigate this uncertainty? Part of Diana's issue is that she's already made the person she's uncertain about the answer to her love life. She may have even made this person the answer to her life. My life isn't going the way I want. I suddenly meet someone I like. Here we are, we're on track all of a sudden. This is it. Strap in. And now, whatever— because this person has become the answer to her life, anything they do... Is a matter of life and death. Anything, any loss of interest is existential. Now, the heartbreak, the anguish she needs to feel might be that this person might not be the answer. The power that she can feel is that, I can create many possible answers. For one, I don't have to stop dating other people before I've got any certainty of where it's going with this person. For another, even if I am gonna just date this person because we've already slept together, I don't wanna sleep with different people, fine. Then I'm gonna give it a month. I'll give it 4 weeks, and if I haven't got any more clarity about what this is, I'm gonna take some form of action. I'm gonna ask the question. I'm gonna share that, you know, I still feel like we're a little bit unsure of what this is, and I'm unsure about how much energy to invest in it. You take some action, but you, you know, diarize that action. I'm gonna take that action in a month. For now, I'm not gonna worry about this. There's nothing to do right now, but I'm gonna create answers in every other part of my life, right? The answer is, I'm gonna find ways to find my happiness, to find my connection in other areas of my life, but we have to be willing to allow our hearts to break in a certain way. Look, I've got this terrible... Like, I have the anxiety. I've noticed this even as I was reading this and thinking about it. I noticed that I have an anxiety around our son being okay. You know, I already can feel myself terrified of, you know, anything happening. Yeah. That could cause him pain. And what that does is it creates this anxiety that forms a hypervigilance that says, what are the 1,000 different ways that I can try to shield him from future pain? But the issue is, this is a distraction from the real heartbreak. The real heartbreak is that he will experience pain. That's the heartbreak I'm not allowing myself to feel. He will experience pain. And that anxiety that is trying to manage life so that he doesn't feel pain is a distraction from what I can actually do to equip him to handle that pain, or the amount of presence I bring him that is pure joy that overshadows the pain. That he will feel inevitably in life. Because as long as my attention is on obsessing over him avoiding pain, I'm not actually being present in ways that equip him to deal with pain, or bring so much joy to his life that the pain doesn't matter. The anxiety is a distraction, but the anxiety is a more comfortable place for many of us to go than the heartbreak. Because anxiety feels like we're solving a problem, even though it's solving nothing. It is the problem. Okay. There's one tool I want to give you right now, which is— who here is already enjoying today, by the way? I can't believe how fast time is going. I am. Here's the problem with all of this is when we leave the moment, we have these— Winston Churchill once said, men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing happened. Right now, if you're feeling lighter, if you're feeling better, if you're feeling a sense of calm, it's because you're connecting to a kind of deeper truth, a deeper awareness, a deeper presence, a deeper connection with yourself. Who here feels that? Like, I feel calmer just being here. And you know instinctively it's because I'm kind of plugged into a truth, to a set of truths. The danger is that life removes us from these truths. Things happen. When we do get triggered, it always threatens to To derail us, to dislodge a truth. And in that moment, we're liable to go to our lowest frequency self, our most anxious self, the self that does something we'll regret, the self— we'll lose connection with our friendship with ourselves, we'll turn on ourselves. So, I want you to write this down. The game. The game is connection. The game is connection. We have to stay connected. We have to stay connected. Connected to what matters. Connected to who you are. Connected to what you care about. Connected to what you stand for. The opposite of calm is disconnection, is being disconnected. So, you may not have thought that word would come up in the context of calm and everything we're doing here, but connection is the goal. And most of us don't have the tools to connect. So, the way I think about life is, Matthew wakes up. I can't rely on Matthew when he wakes up to be connected. In fact, I often wake up disconnected from truth, from life, from myself, from what matters, from what my soul really cares about versus what my ego cares about, disconnected from what I really want to create in life or what I really stand for. So now what creeps in is anxiety, stress, sadness, fear, depression, all of these things that come from disconnection. I have something that I use every single day called a Life Manual. And I can't, I don't have the space in the days that we're spending together right now to share all of this with you, but this is a living, breathing thing, you know. It's a, you know, I have it with me everywhere. I take it with me on my— well, I have it on my computer as like a master. I take versions of it with me on my phone. My life manual is like the thing that I can't— like, if our house was burning down, I would grab my family. I would grab my Life Manual, and nothing else would matter. It's that important, because it's what I use to connect to all of these things. And there are many different sections of my Life Manual that if we spend more time together, we'll go through it, we'll fill it out together. And if you want to do that with me, I have a way you can do that. But one of the big, most important sections in my Life Manual Are something I call emotional buttons. Emotional buttons. I want you to write that down. And by the way, my Life Manual is like— the way I see it is it's a manual for how Matthew works. Does that make sense? It wouldn't be the right one for you if you picked mine up. It wouldn't be— Right for you because it's not a manual for how you work. It's a manual for how I work. It's a very personal thing, but it's like, here's how you operate the system that is Matthew. And the reason a big part of this is what I call emotional buttons is because emotional buttons are one of the ways that you access A truth or a feeling on demand. So, we've been going through a couple of exercises in these 2 days, but what we need are quicker ways to connect to these exercises. So, imagine here that there's a connector plate, and you want to take— you want to get a feeling. Or some form of action. Like you want to feel good, peaceful, calm, or you want to actually do something, get yourself to take some form of action. Imagine that most of the time when we're trying to do this in order to get a certain result, which is, you know, a better life, a more peaceful life, a more happy life, a partner, a better job, or whatever it may be. We have to use willpower to get there. Okay. Emotional buttons don't use willpower. Emotional buttons recognize that if I can tap in to a certain feeling or emotional experience here, if I can push this button, it will connect these plates, and I won't need willpower anymore. This becomes automatic. So, you'll notice what we did when I was talking about the example of you having to go and meet up with someone who's been a very toxic presence in your life. An emotional— you've got a feeling, right? It wasn't— it's now, it's not willpower. There's a feeling to that that makes you feel like, I can do this. Maybe I'm even excited to do this. Maybe I'm even relishing the challenge now. Maybe I'm even excited about the possibility of using it as a moment to connect with myself. But there's an emotional core there that drives you. And once you get that emotional core right, you don't have to push yourself. You get pulled. Pulled towards happiness. Pulled towards peace. Pulled towards calm. Pulled towards action. An emotional button is how you connect to that feeling instantly. How you connect to that feeling instantly. So, an emotional button would be, an example would be... I'm Let's say last week when I had that social media post that I was talking about, got mixed reactions, it triggered me, and then I found a way to connect with myself over it. So, instead of siding with the people being negative against myself, I learned to turn to myself, and there's a specific line that became an emotional button for me. And that line was, okay, I get a load of criticism for something I did. I before I do anything, before I decide whether there's any— anything valid in that criticism, before I decide whether there's anything to learn from that criticism, I turn to that part of me that I— that is always generating content for me, that's always working hard for me, that's always trying to get inspired on my behalf so that we can put things out into the world, that's always taking the risk. I turn to that part of me and I say, hey, thanks for trying something. Thanks for trying something. So now, all of a sudden, the emotional button when I get triggered by negativity is to thank myself for showing up and trying something, right? Ah, I'm gonna thank myself for showing up and trying something. Right? Immediately. And by the way, I can even have an emotional button for that, which is when I get a negative comment, The emotional button can be, I'm only getting this negative comment because this part of me took a risk. I fucking love that guy. I'm only getting a negative comment right now because he took a risk. You know what? I need to go and say thank you to that guy. He's always putting himself in the firing line on our behalf to try and make things, to try and create, to try and reach people. I'm gonna go say thank you. Right? So now there's an instant— like an emotional button is something you can tap into instantly. In other words, once you know it, you don't have to go through an hour-long exercise to get there. You can tap into it straight away. Man, guys, I have a confession to make. I have so much more that I have written down here. That I want to go through with you. I'm gonna— this session's not over. We're gonna continue. But— and I even have a visualization that I want to do. I know so many people were like, I loved that moment yesterday. Some people called it a meditation. I would call it a visualization. It doesn't matter. It's an experiential moment. I have another one of those that I want to do with you today. And a lot of you were like, can you please record that? Or, could you turn that into a thing on its own that I can take away and keep? I have another one of those I want to do with you today, but I want to start by saying, this is my life. Like, this is what I do. You might be visiting for a couple of days here and have taken a passing interest, but this is my life. And the reason it's my life is because this is the most important thing to me. I could have gone into coaching lots of different things, and there are lots of different avenues my coaching has had the opportunity to go down. But the reason that this continues to be the thing that I return to is because I believe it to be the most important thing. If I was teaching people sales training somewhere, I'd make a lot more money, right? If I was just teaching businesses I, you know, that would be a far more lucrative career. I chose not to do that because in truth, the thing that drives me, the thing that I come back to over and over and over again is how much happier everyone can be. And my mom has had her life changed by this work. My mom is a hero to me because in her 60s, she has been doing this work with me and on my programs for the last 5, 10 years. And in the last few years, I've watched my mum in her 60s have the biggest growth spur of her adult life. This has changed not just the lives of people I work with all over the world; it's changed the lives of the people I love the most. And I have so much more than I can give you in this time. I I want to tell you that for those of you who are enjoying this. There is a way to continue with me. I have a retreat coming up next month in October. Loads of you have been asking about it. Loads of you have been asking, is there a way to be part of that virtually? Because I don't want my progress here to end. And I'd love to take a few minutes to tell you about it because this is something that If I miss the opportunity to tell you about it, there's not going to be another one. I don't have another retreat coming up anytime soon. So, we'll come— I'm going to continue with today. Don't go anywhere. But for those of you who— and let me ask you, how many of you are like, I do want to continue with this work. I don't want this just to be something that I came and made some notes on. This is clearly the work I need to do to unlock my potential. Let me know in the comments because I'd love to know how many of you are, you know, you don't want the journey to stop here, you'd actually like to continue with this. Okay, loads of you. So, I know a ton of you have already got a ticket to come and be with me in Miami for the retreat. The thing that I'm really excited to announce is that we now have a virtual ticket for this event that we are releasing publicly. A few people snuck in the back door in the last couple of months who know me or who know the team and got a private message about it, but we're officially announcing to the world that there is a way to livestream this event from home. And I don't know what to say other than, if you're enjoying this, You should be there. And the reason you should be there is because this is a very rare opportunity for us to do this work together in an immersive way. You probably have questions from yesterday and today. I mean, I see so many questions in here from yesterday and today. I can't possibly get to all of those questions, and I can't possibly give you everything I want to give you in the time we have. I'm not holding back. I'm giving you everything I can. You see how fast I'm going, but we're— We're just beginning a journey together, and this is where you become alive to the relationship you have with yourself. I hope, if nothing else, you go away from these 3 days with that concept of, my relationship with myself being alive and being something that is— there's nothing more important in the world to unlocking my potential. If I want a relationship, if I want more attraction, if I wanna be happier, if I wanna be more at peace, if I wanna deal with my emotional patterns, If I wanna see what my true potential is in this life, there is nothing more important than building that relationship. If this is where you become aware of the relationship, the Retreat is where we actually build that relationship practically. And I'm taking real time out to do this. My life these days, the thing that matters to me is spending time with my family. And anything that's not spending time with my family has to be really, really important or it's an immediate no. Just default no. I want, outside of being with my family, I want to do things that matter. And I believe this work matters. I believe it matters deeply. And, you know, I have my own coaches in my life that I work with because this work changes my life. I'd love to be your coach in this way. I have so much to share with you. And, you know, when we want a great coach, the right person for the job isn't always available. I'm not gonna be doing this 3 months from now. I don't have the space in my life, but I am committed to doing it with people next month at the Retreat. We're gonna be talking about some very, very important things and doing some very, very important work together. We're gonna understand firstly that the next chapter of your life requires some very important decisions. The decisions you make today about what you're gonna do next, about what you're gonna focus your time on, about the growth that you undertake, about who you invest in, who you choose, how you show up— these decisions are gonna determine your life for years to come. You can't be making those decisions from an anxious place. And the problem is, for so many of us, that the anxious part of us, the fearful part of us, has been driving for a long time. There are certain beliefs that are fundamentally holding us back. Most of us have— how many people here relate to the idea that, I don't trust my intuition? Like, I wish I did, but I don't. Yeah. I've spent my whole life doubting my own intuition. My self-trust has been eroded over a long time. Who here feels that? Tiffany, Jules, Pam. We need to understand the difference between instinct, which are just our survival mechanisms, which can take us into some very bad territory and keep causing us harm and repeating cycles. And intuition, which can unlock what's actually possible for us— happier paths, better relationships. So, we'll actually tap into that intuition. We'll use this power to actually figure out what's the right path for me going forward. And how many people, by the way, are in transition right now in your life in one way or another? Maybe you're transitioning between places where you live. Jobs, relationships, family relationships. You've got some big decisions to make about what to do next with your life. Maybe the transition is your age. Maybe the transition is that it feels like something needs to change. If you're in transition right now, there should be nothing more important than taking the space to get that right. And we tell ourselves, I don't have time to do that. I've got so much to do, and blah, blah, blah. That's the problem. Yeah. What we've done here is create a container where you actually get to step back. And isn't it true that because of that container, there might be someone in your life right now who last week you were texting from a very unproductive place, last week you were interacting with in a way that was highly unproductive and maybe gonna lead you towards more harm. In this container of space that we often tell ourselves, I don't have time for, you step back, you get present, You connect and you make different decisions. You make choices from a place, a quiet center of clarity. And so what we're gonna do is create that container in a much more immersive way on the retreat. It's gonna happen on October the 24th, October the 25th. We're gonna all be together and we're gonna create a set of foundational intentions and a vision. for the end of this year, and for 2027, and beyond. And that Life Manual I'm talking about, we're gonna build it together. I'm actually gonna show you what the different parts of it are, how to fill it in, how to build it, and that's gonna be a living document that anytime you feel disconnected from those deeper truths, anytime anxiety's taking over, anytime you're not sure what to do next, you have what I think of as a a way of plugging yourself in to what matters, to what your North Star is, to what's important. You have a framework for making key decisions in your life that you'll never lose. And then we're gonna take that relationship that we've started building here, and we're really gonna build it together. We're not just gonna talk about it. We're gonna get it in our bodies. So we'll build the deepest bond with ourselves that we've ever ever built. And I have an exercise. I have a whole section of that retreat that I do on what's called Core Confidence, where we move the source of our validation from the outside to the inside. We become the authority in our lives. Our authority is derived internally. And I'm gonna go— the way we do that is through an experiential exercise. It's not just by talking about it. There's an exercise we do on the retreat that is Irreplaceable. It's not something you can get from any book. It's something you have to live and be there for and experience. And the great news is, as I'm saying, you don't have to come and be with us in Miami for this. You can do this from home, wherever you are in the world. And by the way, even if the timeframe doesn't work for you, you'll have an opportunity to have the recordings for a couple of weeks afterwards so that you can go back and watch it if you missed anything. I promise you, my friends, There is a level of potential in you, not just for what you can achieve or the relationship you can have in your love life, but for how happy you can be, for how peaceful you can be, that is completely untapped right now. And the answer to it isn't on the outside. The answer is you. You have the key to do this already. I'm just your guide, and I'm your guide in unmarked territory. Unmarked territory. Unmarked territory, as my friend Kristen Sargent says, in a place where the streets have no name because we've never operated in that territory before. And I know, like, this is something that is my bread and butter. I've been doing this for 18 years in this program. I've had over 10,000 people come through it by now. If you want to go and look up other people's experience of it, we have literally hundreds of Trust pilot reviews online. You can go and see, but it is the next step for anyone who is serious about this work. You can see when I do something, I put my heart and soul into it. I don't think you'll find any free event in the world that is as much value as I put into a free event. It— like, I feel 100% confident about that. There's— this shouldn't be a free event, but it is. But it's free because I'm serious about you just experiencing it. I want you to feel it. I don't want you to trust me that I have a program that can help you. I want you to actually feel it. And if you feel it in your body, if you can— if you're here and you're like, this actually makes sense to me. I can already feel this working. I don't have to have faith that this is going to help me. I already feel that this is going to work. I already feel that this is going to be— This is going to give me a completely new set of tools to operate from. This is expanding me. This is taking me into new territory that's both scary and exciting for what it could do for me. Then that's then come like you're the person. So I am firstly first piece of news is there's a virtual ticket. Okay, so no excuses wherever you are in the world you can join us for this. But the second thing I wanna tell you about is something I've never done before with any retreat. I have created what I'm calling the Retreat Immersion Ticket. And this, I only decided this in the wake of, and everyone who did 5 Days to Mend with me earlier this year will know what I'm talking about. I only created this because I saw how successful that was. Basically, I did a Heartbreak Program earlier in the year where in the 30 days after I did the free event, we went on a 30-day process together, and it was like, I had a lot of elements to it that really helped people that continued their progress in an aggressive way. I wanted to do this for the Retreat this time as well. So, I've added a few components. Again, never done this before. This is what I'm about to tell you is worth so much more than the price that we're charging you for this, but I believe it's gonna be worth it. I wanna be part of journeys that work, not journeys that sound good. I'm, like I said, if I'm gonna take time out of my life these days, it has to be for things that work. So, I'm not interested in what's scalable. I'm interested in what works. This is not, you know, I'm not AI. I have Matthew AI, and I know many of you love it. And by the way, you're gonna get Matthew AI as part of this. I'll explain why. But this is more me than I've ever given at a time when I have the least time. But I'm doing it in a concentrated way because I just want you to get results. It's all I care about. So number one, we're gonna have a live community between now and the event. That'll be a private retreat community for anyone who gets the Immersion Ticket. By the way, if you wanna get a Basic Ticket and just come to the event, you'll have that option, but this is what the Immersion Ticket includes: a live community between now and the event. I'm gonna be with you every week between now and October the 24th, when the event is, so that every week you're making progress. You're not saying, I'm waiting until the retreat to make progress. Every week you're making progress, and I've created 3 specific coaching sessions that we're gonna be doing together. The first— one of them is gonna be on how to change our reaction to certain triggers. So, we've been doing this in a theoretical way. What I wanna do is workshop this with you. In this session, you're gonna bring me your triggers, and we'll workshop them together as a group, and we'll actually show how this is gonna work in practice. The other session is for anyone who has a difficult or a toxic relationship in their life right now that triggers them, that activates them, and you want to know how to handle it better. We're gonna do an entire session on toxic relationships, including if you had narcissistic relationships, narcissistic abuse. We're gonna talk about that. And the third and final session, which I'm very excited about, is I'm gonna do it— once you do this work, you're gonna unlock a kind of charisma that maybe you've never had access to before. And the ability to bring out your most charismatic self is gonna open new doors. I have spent my life understanding the nuances of impact and charisma. I've, you know, done— I've broadcasted in every possible way. I've, you know, spent a life public speaking. Doing what I'm doing now, coaching people, understanding attraction. I am going to do a special session with you all where you can literally ask me any behind-the-scenes question about the way you want to apply charisma in your life and the secrets that I know and have tapped into in my life. And I'm really just going to give you a behind-the-curtain of everything that you can do to up your charisma in your life. So, those are going to be the coaching sessions. We're also going to do— I have a downloadable Emotional Buttons Journal that you're going to get with your Immersion Ticket, so that the stuff that we're doing now with Emotional Buttons, which I'm just scratching the surface of, basically, when you're done with that journal, you're going to have 20, 30, 40 different Emotional Buttons at your disposal that allow you to feel anything you want, anytime. Like pushing a button. We're going to create those together. I'm going to show you how, but there's going to be a journal where you can fill them out. I'm going to give you my Life Manual template. So, the template that I use for my own Life Manual every single day, and I use it every day. If you open that file on my computer, you'll— it will say, last opened 3 hours ago. It will never say, last opened 7 days ago. I use it every day. I'm going to give you the specific template for my Life Manual that you can fill in yourself, and this is going to be a document that you, once you have it, you won't be able to live without it. And I'm going to do, I've organized my brother Steven, who for the last over a decade has been refining and perfecting live gratitude sessions. Because part of connection is feeling abundant, but many of us have reduced gratitude to like, I'm gonna write a couple of things in a gratitude journal. Steven's sessions are a work of art because you're actually gonna live the experience of abundance and gratitude. And as I talk about in my book, in the last section, Happy Enough, if you wanna feel calm, if you wanna feel powerful, if you wanna feel like you can say no to anything and still be fine, you need to feel abundant in your life right now. I want you to get a taste of those sessions. So, Steven is gonna run an experiential gratitude entire experience for you that you're gonna do live with him between now and the Retreat. You're also, by the way, gonna get a workbook for the Retreat so that you can fill that out as you go through the Retreat. I'm gifting you Matthew AI as a bonus until the Retreat, because I know that when you get triggered, it's nice if I'm not on a call with you and you can't ask me, you can at least ask Matthew AI. And anyone who has used it will tell you, Matthew AI makes people make better decisions. Because when you get activated, Matthew AI can do what I'm doing right now and help you break down the trigger and a better way to respond to it. So, you'll get unlimited access to Matthew AI between now and the retreat. And last thing, you are also gonna get lifetime access to The Calm Method. So, what we're doing together in these 3 days is co-authoring a program that by itself is a $1,000 program. We're creating that together in these 3 days. Many of you are going to want to come back and redo these lessons, and relearn these examples, and go through the visualizations together, like the one we did yesterday. For anyone who gets the Retreat Immersion Ticket, I'm gifting it to you as a program for free. You'll get lifetime access to the recordings of the CALM Method. That won't include the Q&A sessions, because those are private, and I don't want to— I want to respect people's Um, uh, uh, you know, anonymity. But the— these sessions that we're doing here, you're gonna get lifetime access to them. Um, I think that's worth $1,000 on its own. The ticket along with the Retreat itself, your livestream to the Retreat, all of the bonuses I talked about, the coaching sessions between now and then, Matthew AI, the gratitude session, the workbooks, the Emotional Buttons Journal, all of it, the Life Manual, is $495. $495 for everything. And by the way, to give you an idea of what incredible value that is, the Basic Livestream Ticket, just to attend the Retreat, is $295. So, for a couple of hundred dollars more, you get everything that I'm talking about here. We don't have unlimited spaces on the Immersion Ticket. We do— we have unlimited spaces on the Basic Ticket. But on the Immersion Ticket, we only have 750 spots. When we create a community like this, we want to serve it properly. We want to make sure it gets the attention that it deserves. We want to make sure we're able to create that special experience for everybody. So, we have 750 spaces. Last time we did this, when we did Healing Immersion Month for the Heartbreak group, this went in 48 hours. The places went extraordinarily quickly, and we sold out, and we had to close it. Anyone who wants to do this, jump on board now because we think this is going to sell out. These immersion tickets are going to be really hard to come by, so grab one. I haven't based the price of this on what I think it's worth. I've based it on something that I hope the majority of you can get stuck in and do. Yeah. I'm just here to get stuck in with you. I one day I won't be able to get stuck in in the way that I am today. I know that, but this month I am, and I want to create real experiences that genuinely help people. That's what we've tried to create here. So the link for this is retreataccess.com, retreataccess.com, and we're actually going to make the changes. you want to make. For those of you who are wondering, by the way, you know, the kinds of people we have on this, I'm going to read— I'm not going to read you 100 different stories, but I want to read you one story from someone because it's illustrative of the kinds of things that people experience in this program. This is from Lindsay, who says, the Retreat was truly life-changing and life-affirming. I'm so grateful I went. It really is the best thing I could have done for myself. Although I've been a member of the Love Life Coaching program since it started, the Retreat was immersive and intense and way beyond my expectations. And it worked. I made new friends, some of whom will be for life. I got rid of a toxic person in my life who was dragging me down. 2 weeks later, I met someone wonderful with whom I am at the early stages of a real relationship. Even if that does not work out, I found myself happy enough and really engaged in the life I am living. How did the retreat do all that? I have no idea, but it did. The intensity, the content, the immersion, the exercises, the experience— it changes you for good. Thank you, Matthew, and the whole retreat team. Team. I have another story I'll read you tomorrow, but for now, I want to crack on with the other things I want to get to today. I want to give everyone five minutes to go and grab their ticket while they're available. Go there now. The link is retreataccess.com. The team just told me we have three minutes actually, not five. By the way, for anyone. Who wants to know, is there an option for this? I just saw Shockadelica Black said, is there a 2-part payment option or the like? Yes, there's a way to break the payments up into 2 payments. And if you do break it up into 2 payments, we don't have that option for the Basic, but we do have it for the Immersion Ticket. If you do it for the Immersion Ticket, your first payment is only as much as the Basic down payment would be today. So, It's a great option for those of you who do need a little help on that level, but it actually works out a bit cheaper if you pay in full. So, I can't remember what the percentage is, but I think it's about $100 cheaper if you do want to pay in full. So, the link is retreataccess.com. I will see you in 3 minutes. Any questions, let us know. We are here to help. We have the team in here. And by the way, for anyone who deep down is like, are there any more live tickets left? Could I maybe actually come to Miami? I'm going to start looking at flights. There are a small handful that we have allocated just for this group. Once you have purchased either ticket, your Basic Ticket or your Immersion Ticket, on the other side of that, you'll have an opportunity to book a call with Billy Jennings. You can talk about it, have that conversation, ask any questions. There's no pressure. But you will have an opportunity if you want to grab one of the last remaining tickets to come to Miami. We only have a small allocation. There's only a handful left, and we've reserved them for this group. So, if you do want to do that, don't worry, because we've created an offer whereby if you get one of the tickets, and then you decide you want to come to the Retreat and be in person with me, and meet me, and hang out with me and my family, every dollar you spend on the Virtual Ticket counts towards your in-person ticket. So, don't worry that you'll be spending money here, and then you'll have to do it again. You won't. The team will gift you a voucher that you can then apply to the in-person Retreat for the same amount of money, so it won't cost you any more. And people who have already got their ticket get all that included? Oh, and if you already— yeah, of course. If you already have a ticket in person to Miami to be with me, you're getting all of this in the Immersion Ticket. So, don't worry that you're not getting this stuff. All of this is just included for you if you're already coming to be with me in Miami. All right. The link is there. Is there anything anyone's asking that I forgot about? If not, take 3 minutes, come back. We're going to do an exercise that I want to finish on today that's designed, much like yesterday, to get this in your body in a different way, which is really necessary. And then we're going to go to our Q&A inside the community. I will see you shortly. By the way, I just saw Ms. Ariella say, okay, I'm in. If you have your ticket, put in. If you want, as soon as you go and get it now, as soon as you purchase your ticket, let me know which ticket you got. Leave me a comment. Let me know you're joining so that I know who my people are. Just let me know as soon as you get it. I want to see, I want to celebrate the people that are coming. And yeah, I'll see you in 3 minutes right back here. Grab your ticket now, and I'll see you shortly. All right, very good. Welcome back. Let me know in the comments, uh, everyone who's got their ticket so I can see. And then we're gonna get started. Eliana says, I think I'm in. Amazing. A Peaceful Life, the dates for the retreat are the 24th and the 25th of October. Very good. A lot of people still on that page. Just got the Immersion ticket. So excited. I can't wait to see you, Aria. I can't wait to see you at the retreat. Amazing. Marion, you're going to be there in Miami. All right, guys. Very good. Let's take a moment when you're ready. If you're still grabbing your ticket, that's totally fine. But when you're ready, let's go into this exercise together. I want you to take a deep breath. When I count down from 5, I want you to close your eyes. We'll, of course, be doing our Q&A inside our Love Life Community after this. Shout out to Alex Latham, who's got their Immersion ticket. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. I'm going to count down from 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Feel free To close your eyes. Take another deep breath. I want you to think about the things that led you to want to come to this session together. What pain has been in your life for too long? What situations have caused you suffering over and over again? What situation do you feel like you keep running into over and over again? A certain A certain kind of relationship, a certain kind of painful situation, or the inability to enjoy something. Maybe how you speak to yourself, how you relate to yourself. A certain emotion that you're sick of feeling, that you keep coming back to. Nowhere is it written that life has to to stay this way. I know it feels like that when we've had the same experience over and over again in our lives. It can feel like nothing's going to change, nothing ever will change, it's always been this way. We hear this story in our head and that story feels like truth. It feels like that's just the way it is. But nowhere is it written Nowhere is it written that we continue to have to struggle in the old ways. Nowhere is it written that we can't change, that we can't surprise ourselves, do something new. And we deserve something new. Think about everything you've been through in your life, all of the pain, the heartache, Hardships. Think about all of the pain that you've experienced you didn't deserve. The kind of pain no one deserves. The ways you've been let down or betrayed. The profound ways in which certain people have failed you, some of the profound ways that life has been unfair to you. I think in so many ways the The greatest tragedy is not what happens to us in our lives. It's the story we take from that about how the rest of our lives have to be. It's the legacy we take from that pain and that suffering that tells us we now need to remain in an anxious state because God forbid anything like that happen again, that we have to spend the rest of our lives watching over our shoulder. It's the constant fear of the other shoe dropping in life, that something bad is gonna happen, and that if it does, we won't survive it. We're not gonna be okay. And so we remain in this state of vigilance, this state of anxiety, this state of trying to control everything all the time and having it It'd be so fucking exhausting, so tiring. And maybe you feel that. Maybe you just feel so tired. I'm so tired of it being this way. I'm so tired of worrying about this. I'm so tired of having to think about this. What do you need more of in your life? If you really search yourself, whether you believe you can have it or not, what do you feel like you need? I just, I need more joy. I need— life has to be more joyful than this. This, this can't be how I live out the rest of my life. Life has to be more fun than this. Well, deep down, I suspect I could be capable of so much more if I could just get these emotional patterns out of the way. What could I have? What could I experience? What would be possible in my life? I want you to imagine for a moment that you'd already built the kind of friendship that if you and I get to spend more time together, we're gonna build with you and yourself. Even if you can't experience that kind of friendship today, maybe you can at least experience a kind of sympathy for yourself. That when you experience that pain, maybe growing up as a child, maybe in early relationships, some of that pain that formed you, the habits, the patterns, the beliefs, the nervous system you have now, maybe at the very least, even if you don't know how to be a friend to yourself, you can look at that part of you with some sympathy. And think I deserve, I deserved so much better than that. No one deserved that. Because one of the gifts we get to give ourselves as an adult today, as a person who gets to become our new parent, to parent ourselves, one of the gifts we The best gift we get to give ourselves is the gift of a better life. You might have been with the nastiest person on earth. You might have had the most difficult relationship or the most difficult parents or something's happened to you that's just made life really hard. And you get to say, I know life's not been easy for you. I know you've not had an easy go of it. I know things have happened that you didn't deserve, but I'm I'm not gonna spend the rest of your life punishing you for those things. I'm gonna give you what those people couldn't. If life has been hard until now, I'm gonna make sure you have way more fun going forward. I'm gonna make sure you get way more enjoyment going forward. I'm gonna make sure you experience way more joy. There are two things we need to leave this time together with. Don't worry, we're going to be together tomorrow as well. But at the end of this, there are two things we have to leave with. The first is that feeling of enough, enough. I can't keep doing it this way. I can't keep. Living this way. I refuse to keep living this way. Whether it's feeling anxious about relationships, whether it's not feeling enough, constantly waiting for other people to tell me what I'm worth, deciding that my real life doesn't get to start until I find love instead of fully inhabiting the life I have now, workaholism and never giving myself any time, any space, Feeling that I have to suffer every single day to earn my existence in this world? Enough! I'm not doing that anymore. I won't. I refuse. And the second thing we have to get to is at least some feeling of, this person has suffered enough. They deserve better. And I don't know what better looks like yet, or I may not know how to give it to them, But my God, I'm gonna try and give them better like it's my job. I'm gonna treat getting this person a better life, a better existence of this life, like it is my job. I'm gonna work as hard at that, and invest as much in that as I invest in any other part of my life, because I give plenty to other people, and I do plenty in other parts of my life. What if I worked as hard on the relationship? I have with myself as I did on everything else in my life? What would be possible then? Make a commitment now to give yourself that gift, not of a clean start. A clean start is bullshit. There's no such thing as a clean start. There's just beginning a life where you start to give yourself what you deserve. I'm gonna count down from 5. When I get to 0, I want you to open your eyes. Take a moment just to thank yourself for even getting yourself here today. You gave yourself a gift by showing up today. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So take a moment to acknowledge yourself. Thank you. I appreciate you. Thank you for getting me here. I see you trying. Tell yourself that. I see you trying. I have so much respect for that. I have so much appreciation for that. Thank you. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. 2, 1. Open your eyes. Guys, I know this isn't easy. None of this is easy. The reason I created these 3 days, the reason I've been working on these 3 days for the last month of my life is because I know it's not easy. And I wanna be able to do this with you for as long as you'll have me. And I will continue even once we're done with our Q&A today. I'll go away and I'll spend the rest of the day thinking about how to make tomorrow better based on everything you're going through today. As I said, I'm committed to you. If you're committed to me, I'm committed to you. So, I appreciate you being here. I'm so grateful that you're here. Thank you. We will go over now to our coaching community where we'll do that, the Q&A together. Thank you for another day, day 2. Let's go do some coaching. Leave me a comment if you have your ticket so I know who's joining us. I'm really excited to I see you all. So, leave me a comment once you know you've got your ticket. Once you're all confirmed, let me know, and I will see you in just a couple of minutes inside the community. Okay? That link again, for anyone who doesn't have their ticket, is retreataccess.com. All right, I'll see you in just a couple of minutes.