Your BIGGEST Fears In Life (And How To Overcome Them)

There's no point beating myself up. There's a lot that's happened in my life that has helped to create that wiring, but I do not have to be beholden to it. And it does not have to be my future. Welcome, everybody, to the Love Life Podcast. We've got the whole jams crew here today. We've got Jameson, we've got Audrey, we've got Stephen.

Hello, friends.

We've got Jeremy in the background.

Got J Jams today.

It's good to speak to you all. We put a question on Instagram recently, and it got so many responses. We thought, you know what, let's do an episode. on this. The question that we put up there was, what is your biggest fear for your future? The one that worries you the most? And Audrey has been pulling responses from what has been over 2, 000 responses to this post and some really interesting ones that didn't just resonate with us, but resonated with thousands of people who read the post, who liked those comments. So Audrey is going to take us through these, and I thought it'd be a good chance for us to just talk them through, because when something is worrying us and we're living in that future or the future where that happens or we don't get that thing, it can really destroy our experience in the present. And we can waste an enormous amount of our lives and our energy just living in this ending that hasn't necessarily even happened, but it's ruining our experience of life today. So it might be nice to let the air out of some of these things a little bit so that we can get back to the present. Yeah. Audrey, what's the first one? There's only one of these where I already know what you're gonna say. And I think that's gonna be perhaps the last one we do. And we're saving it for last because we know that this particular worry is gonna relate to so many people, or I should say so many people who are listening to this will relate to that worry. But we'll start on some that I don't know you're gonna say.

Yeah. So one of the ones that came through, which I thought was really, really interesting, is my biggest worry for the future is that I will continue to hold myself back because of my paralyzing fear of judgment.

Oh, wow.

And just a warning, obviously a lot of these, we got some very emotionally, very emotional responses to this. And so I was actually quite sad reading through some of them. And also they're so relatable to me personally, so many of them. But yeah, this is probably going to be a little bit of a sad episode in some parts because it is difficult to to feel those things. But yeah, that's the first one.

So can you read it to us again?

First one is, My biggest worry for the future is that I will continue to hold myself back because of my paralysing fear of judgment.

So what is that fear? I suppose it's really a fear of latent potential. It's a weird fear, really, when you think about it, because it suggests that we do think we have a lot of potential. If you truly think that you have no potential, that's not really a fear you have. It's just your reality. That fear is a fear that I will not become all that I can become. I will not do in my life all the things that I am capable of doing. So it's kind of interesting because embedded in that there is actually some belief.

There's letting yourself down and there's also letting people that care about you down. I can just imagine like, you know, this person could have gotten, could have been a student, you know, and the parents were like so confident. My parents were so confident that I was gonna like get a really high score on the SATs and like go to a really good college. Turns out I was just good at doing homework and like doing all that stuff. Wasn't that smart. But that fear, that latent potential, and you nailed it. I mean, that's exactly what it is. And there's letting other people down and that's just terrible. But letting yourself down, that can keep you up at night.

I also think it's a fear of rejection, right? when you think about it, because if what's holding her back is a fear of judgment from other people, she feels that if she expresses her true self and her true potential, she will be rejected for it or somebody will say, you,'re ridiculous. You're not good enough. Why do you think you can do that? And so that is the sort of criticism and rejection from other people is probably the emotion It feels like judgment, but it's actually a fear of not being accepted.

Well, you can... It's this idea of the unhatched egg. If you keep telling yourself there is something special in this egg that can hatch, but you never hatch the egg, you can keep telling yourself there is something special. When this hatches, there's something special there. But if you break the egg open and there's nothing there, Then you don't just lose the ending that you thought you could have, you also lose the hope. And a lot of people, there's this terrifying fear of the rejection because at least if I'm not trying, I can live with this idea that if I did try, I could be really successful. If I did try, I could make the team, I could build that business, I could find love. But, and it's the same is true when you go out and you see someone you're attracted to, if you never speak to them, you can go home with this fantasy in your mind that remains intact. That had you spoken to them, something could have come from that. But the closure of going over to that person and saying something, and then that person's not interested, that's a kind of closure that most people don't want, because now they have to relinquish the fantasy. They can't go home and say, if I spoke to that person, I. You never know what could have happened. No, no, no. You found out. The sad part about it is in preserving the fantasy, we kind of missed the point about what actually gives us potential. The thing that gives us potential is experience and competence, which comes from actually doing something enough times and getting in the reps. It's like going to the gym. The thing that gives you the body is the reps. And you can't, if you stay at home and dream about the body you could have, you're not getting in the reps that are actually going to create that body in business, if you keep wondering whether your idea is a good one instead of going out there and actually exposing it to the light of day and people's opinions, you're not actually getting the feedback you need to turn what is probably an average idea into a good and maybe even a great idea. My jiu-jitsu trainer said last week, he said something really cool. He said, the difference between the good and the great is that people who are great are willing to stay good for longer. I love that. And it's such a mindset shift from the greatness being something inspired and something that you keep in your head as this kind of like latent potential fantasy of one day being great. No, greatness is much more boring than that. Greatness is just you're willing to remain good for long enough that eventually you're the last one in the room. And you end up being great because you stayed in the room long enough. And for that person, my biggest non-insight would be that that fear of rejection is making you miss the point entirely of where your potential actually comes from. Your potential comes from going and iterating over and over and over again. And if you can be the kind of person that can ignore to a large extent the short to medium term results of that iterating, and those reps and instead just see the trajectory that you're on as a result of doing those reps. That allows you to kind of, kind of almost circumvent all of those short-term fears of being rejected and instead just focus on creating a trajectory in your life that makes Interesting results. Inevitable.

There was a wonderful line I was reading Haruki Murakami, the novelist's book about writing the other day, and he talked about how he's always been inspired by this quote from another writer who said, I approached a desk every day without hope and without despair. And both of those, he says, are dangerous. He says, your hope is damaging in itself in that it leads you to grandiosity and despair. that you think you're terrible, you're useless, but he says more like a craftsman, I'm coming to chop wood every day without hope and without despair. And I think that it's the expectations, it's the dreaming, it's the idealizing that makes you feel so paralyzed. What if it doesn't live up to that? What if everyone sees it and judges me as this? But a woodcutter doesn't need to think like that if you're chopping wood.

That's so good. and you can almost see it through the lens of arrogance. Like, what special right do you have to show up and do great work just by being you? Like, it's not. It doesn't. That it doesn't work like that. It's much more boring than that. And. And I think we've learned that lesson from doing videos over the years. You know, we've just. Jameson, you and I met, what, 10 years ago? And pretty much since that point, we've made a video every week since. And there are for sure videos we've liked more than others. And there's ones that we look back on and we go, that stands the test of time. And there's others we look back on and it's like, I wouldn't put that out again. But those are reps. Every week was a rep. And if you get too precious about the reps, you just, you're really actually missing the thing that's going to lead to your potential. So, very, it's a very relatable fear. Hopefully we can, we've made it much more pedestrian for people to just go and do things instead of being so analytical about the results of what they do.

The last thing I want to add to this, as somebody who absolutely suffers with a fear of rejection and judgment and not being liked, working on it, but definitely suffer with it. I think remembering that, what's that quote? Which is like, you would worry less about how much people thought about you if you realize how seldom they do. And your fear of judgment only comes from a place of you focusing on yourself to a degree that nobody else ever will. And if you surround yourself with loving people who accept you, There's actually a lot of room for you to just be yourself and explore and play and make mistakes. And people will not care about your mistakes and they will not feel your embarrassment 5% as much as you do. And sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that it's just as big in our heads as it is in other people's and it stops us from doing things.

And even the person that says, that, you know, even the person that points out, I don't like that thing you did this week wasn't that good. That piece of writing, that speech, that whatever, that piece of work, anything. If someone says, I don't like that video you just did, okay, fine. It's not my, it's not gonna be my best. Like, my best is coming. My best is always coming. you're not. You're commenting on something that's already history to me. I'm already better than yesterday. So it's. We get so hung up on what someone thinks of our practice run. I don't like. At a certain point, I don't give a what you think about my practice. Like, every. Even you make. Every time you make something, it's practice for the next thing you make. So, when you're judging it, that's fine. You're judging a piece of practice. My best is always coming. So, even the critics, you have to look at your critics as judging a practice, not judging the best of what you'll ever do.

Yeah, very, very well put. The next one, next comment that was left, which Made me a bit sad to read, I have to say, but I thought was probably something that a lot of people feel and relate to. This is from a lovely woman called Karina and she said, I am worried that life remains a battle for me and I will never figure out how to make it lighter. I'm tired of my health issues. I lack a positive outlook and on most days I also lack hope. You know, something that keeps me going. makes me want to keep going. I lack connection and I am deeply afraid all of this is my fault. I guess in a way I'm afraid I will never change and I will remain miserable.

I felt that. I've been exactly there before. I don't take that lightly, Karina, because I know exactly what you're talking about and I know exactly the kind of darkness that you're experiencing when you're in that place. It's all consuming. You lose hope because you wake up, you've woken up enough days in a row where nothing has changed and it feels as though nothing ever does change. You don't feel capable of changing the things that would need to change in order for life to feel joyful and happy and nor and even normal. You know, when you. When you feel like that, you would give anything just to feel normal, not even great. You know, you don't even. You don't even really relate to the tone of self-development that focuses on living an extraordinary life and being great and being your best self. You're not. You're not able to connect with the idea of being your best self when you can't even. You don't even know anymore what it would feel like just to feel normal. It's a bit like being sick all the time. And you said you've got some health issues, so you may really be here, but when you're sick all the time, you. You. pray just to feel well, just to feel okay, not to feel happy, just to not be in pain would be a miracle. And when we live long enough not in that place, life seems untenable. And when life seems untenable, we become somewhat nihilistic. And It can be hard to be around people. Not, you know, I know when I've been in that place, it was very, very isolating because I didn't, I felt almost like I couldn't trust myself to be around people and not be found out that I was so unhappy or bring them down or find their experience completely unrelatable. And if I were actually honest about my experience, I felt that they would find it completely unrelatable and they would kind of almost just not know how to handle it, you know? God, I didn't. I just met up with you for coffee, Matt. I didn't realize that you were in this dark, dark abyss that you don't know how to crawl out of. You know, I I thought, I don't know how to be around people anymore, and I just. I would want to just be. by myself because it felt like that was in a way the only place I could really trust. I could be in pain on my own without company and not have to worry about anyone needing anything from me or worry about entertaining anyone or pretending I was better than I was. I could just exist in the state I was in and I would shrink my life and that's one of the, that's one of the Cycles that we can get into, is when we, when we feel like that, we start saying no to things and we start rejecting life and, and we don't want to meet up with that friend. We don't want to go and do that gym session. We don't want to leave the house. It tends to just narrow our life more and more and more until we've cornered ourself into one. one room. I've. I've found that there are some simple ideas that can be life-saving in a place like this. One of them is to understand that there are other people like you who are really great. I mean, really great, terrific people who are going through the same thing and that you're not. It really does feel like you're alone. You really do feel like in your. Because when you. When you feel like that, you sort of oscillate between a kind of resigned nihilism and sheer panic. The sheer panic being that I can't live like this. I don't know what to do. I don't. I'm so alone. No one can understand what I'm going through. It's all going through inside. It's all happening inside my mind in a way that. other people can't relate to or don't know, and you feel trapped. You feel trapped inside yourself. When you experience that panic, when it takes over, it then feeds on itself. And the panic or the anxiety or the depression that you feel about feeling bad starts to exacerbate it. and it can take feeling bad from a 9 out of 10 to a 15. Because now all of a sudden you're feeling anxious and scared about feeling awful in life and you develop a really bad relationship with feeling bad. And then you're into a cycle. So, Number one, recognize that other great people, great, great people, people we love and admire and think the world of, many of them are going through something like what you're going through right now. And when I, the more I talk to people, the more I realize that there are people who experienced what I experienced back then in that moment. of my life. So you're not alone. And shared pain is makes pain lighter without even the pain going away. It just makes it lighter. It just makes you feel like you're in company. Two, understand that you don't know what you'll feel about this in five years. You really don't. You know how you feel now. You know how you felt for a long time. Although I will say that pain is a very is very centralizing. So you do kind of, your experience of pain is that you don't remember, you don't necessarily, we don't have a good memory around pain. It's almost just this kind of atmosphere of it's been really bad for all this time. But there are moments in your day where you don't feel so much pain. There are moments where you do feel a little lighter or where you're distracted from it. And those moments are really, really important. They're kind of a key. Because if you feel okay for five minutes, that's a real, that's not just hope. That's a data point. You then know that you might be able to move the needle enough to feel good for 10 minutes. And if you understand that formula of what made me feel okay for five minutes, I might be able to replicate that many times a week or even a day. Eventually you might be able to get a pain-free hour. and that's really powerful. And it gives you a new reference point that you can actually have some impact on this. And, and over time, that impact can get bigger and bigger because you really learn your way around it and you start to learn your formula. The one of the things I'll, I'll say to you, Karina, is on the virtual Retreat, we, one of the key things that I teach people is that we all have a formula that if we follow it, it makes us feel good. It makes us feel better. It resets our pain. It connects us with what is good in our life. It connects us with what's important to us. It connects us with our why, with what's driving us. And if you learn that formula for yourself, and if you join us on the virtual retreat, I'll teach you this myself because I used it I use it every day. I've used it to get over the worst moments of my life. And not just the worst moments, the worst periods of my life. And I've had some bad periods that have lasted years. And I did start to lose hope. But I've been able to use that formula to genuinely change my life to a point where now I'm not actually as afraid of pain because I know my way out of it. I know that it's not forever when it happens. I know that my relationship with it can massively decrease my pain. So even if something is very painful, either physically or psychologically, I know that my relationship with that thing can massively increase or decrease that pain. And so I've learned how to manage my relationship with those things. Anyone close to me will tell you that I still have my moments. But, you know, I mean, Audrey will tell you this. My recovery time is pretty, pretty damn good. I think it's one of the, that's one of the things I'm most proud of.

That's what you always say, which I think is a really valid point for this is when I, when I get upset, which also happens, you know, it's all about the recovery time, right? It's about how quickly you can feel better. It's okay to feel sad, it's okay to feel despair, it's okay to feel depressed, it's okay to feel all of these things. But how quickly do you, are you able to kind of pull yourself out of it and move on and dust yourself off versus how much do you wallow and kind of ruminate, I suppose, on the negativity, which I definitely think I'm guilty of doing and I suspect With, you know, what Karina is saying, the way that she has her outlook on life is as such as she feels all those things, she probably does the same thing where she's focusing on all of the ways in which she's not happy. Right.

But those, the things you're unhappy about can be legitimate. They may be very real. But if we connect with an idea or a a driving force behind, you know, you can believe we're all screwed. Like you can believe that something's gonna happen in the world and we're all screwed. And if you really believe that, and by the way, who knows, you might be right. Like maybe the apocalypse is around the corner. I don't know. But if you're right, that's a real reason to be unhappy. It's like, that's not, that's not like, you know, I understand what you're saying about wallowing, but that's not like, in a sense, wallowing. It's just like you're just very connected to this really bad thing. But you can also be connected to even that. You can say, well, you know what my reason for living is going to be then? It's going to be this. You know, I. I am gonna show up for the people in my life right now, because. My God, this time is precious. Or, you know, I really believe in... You can believe, for a while, when I was at my lowest, I believed that my reason for being was just helping alleviate other people's suffering. I was like, you, know what? If I suffer this bad, other people can suffer this bad. And if that's true, then I wanna help. I wanna be able to be of service in some way. Even if it's just me talking about this, then maybe I can serve somebody. If I can hurt this badly, other people can hurt this badly. And if they can hurt this badly, I might actually be able to be a gift in someone's life by showing up for them and giving them what they need because I know what I need and I can give that. So it's. And that doesn't have to be a reason, but I'm saying connect. Even when your pain is real, you can connect to something that's equally real that makes life so meaningful for you. And the more you connect to that purpose and that meaning, the more your life starts to gain a kind of momentum. And one day, Karina, the thing I'll just finish by saying is one day you may look back on this and be able to smile about how difficult you found it then and how much easier you find it today. And I really believe that, not as positive talk, I really believe that there are there are things that you can learn and things that you can do that don't even involve taking away your health issues that can radically change how enjoyable your life is. So. And by the way, if you want to come and do that with us in June, the virtual Retreat is happening from the second to the fourth. I didn't plan on talking about this right now in this moment, but. My God, if you're experiencing any of what I'm talking about here, I've got a wealth of things that have helped me that I will share with you over three days on the virtual retreat. The link for that is mhvirtualretreat.com and at the end, when I was planning on mentioning the virtual retreat, at the end of this podcast, I'll tell you why it's a great time to go and check that out right now. What was our next comment?

That was beautiful. So the next comment we had was, I'm afraid that I will be alone, struggling for life and have no power. The reason I picked this one out is because it was written by a woman, and I think that this idea of being left and having no power and struggling and not having any value and kind of being somehow left behind. I'm not saying that men don't feel this. I'm sure they do, but I definitely think there's something about it that really resonated with me and I think will resonate with a lot of our female listeners. So I just wanted to address it.

Look, I've, I, I believe that so many women have been conditioned to have a kind of helplessness about them. There's a learned helplessness that happens, but there's also a kind of forced helplessness that happens where women have been brought up by people who teach them that they can't do things or they can't do things as well as men or that they're less important than their brother because they're a woman and their brother goes to the good school and they don't. and their brother gets all the opportunity and they don't because your job is not to be able to be competent and do all of these things. Your job is to, you know, go and marry someone. Then there's, you know, women who are with men as adults who teach them a kind of helplessness, who don't let them do things or control them or tell them that they're not good enough. And even if it's not overt in subtle ways, they kind of seed this idea that they're not as capable or that they're silly or that they're, oh my God, you didn't know that, oh, Oh my God, you don't know how to do that. Okay, I'll do it for you. It's a kind of this idea that's planted in someone's head that they can't do it by themselves and they can't trust themselves and their own decisions and they need to go to someone to get them validated. And you see it everywhere. You see it from people in relationships where they're always asking their partner, do you think this is okay? Do you like this? Are you, they do it in businesses. where they're always, it's like they're not comfortable without a boss of some kind. People are like that in life. Amy Porterfield, who we interviewed recently on the podcast and for the love life club, she talked about this concept of unbossing yourself, of coming to realize that you don't need a boss to be telling you what's good and what's not good or what's right and not what's not right. And that You know, that comes from a learned distrust of our own intuition, of our own decisions. And it, like I said on the first answer in this podcast, the only way you strengthen that muscle is by actually going and exercising it. You have to actually go and realize, okay, you know what's happened? I've learned a kind of indecisiveness. I've learned a kind of helplessness. I've learned a kind of distrust of my own decisions and. And ideas and thoughts about what to do next. And so I'm gonna. I'm right now, what I have to do is go through a process of rewiring myself. I'm not going to sit here and blame myself for feeling this kind of powerless ness. I'm gonna train my way out of that wiring. There's no point beating myself up. There's a lot that's happened in my life that has helped to create that wiring, but. but I do not have to be beholden to it. And it does not have to be my future. It doesn't have to be my reality. But I have to earn my way out of that reality. It sucks that some people get given this bad wiring and other people don't. Right? That's how life's not fair, is that there are people that. There's certain people who are successful, and they're like, I did it all myself. And you're like, no, you didn't do it all yourself. There's wiring that helped you. you had some wiring that was really useful to you and other people got shitty wiring and that's not their fault that they did, but you can change it. And that person who works that muscle and says, you know what, I'm gonna start making decisions. And if they turn out to be not the best decisions in the world, then I'll make another decision. But that's what's gonna make me make a better decision the third time, is because I made a bad decision the second time. that's what's gonna give me that insight. So I'm gonna make, I'm gonna be prepared to make bad decisions in the short term. I'm gonna be prepared to suck at things in the short term, but I'm gonna have a mindset of resourcefulness where I say, let me go and learn, let me go and decide, let me, and start on small things. I, you know, deciding what you're gonna have for dinner tonight or deciding what you're gonna do with the next hour. Start with small things and build up that muscle to the point where you actually start trusting yourself again. And even before that, it's like if you want to get into that mindset of, well, how do I even get myself to a place where I can make a decision? Go to the gym, go train for an hour, get it in your body, go do something that moves you because you move differently, you think differently. And then you come home from the gym and anyone ever come home from the gym and been like, oh, I'm going to tidy the house now. That's because you have a momentum when you come home from training your body in some way or going for a run. So now you tidy the house and that allows you to go and do the next thing. So momentum is the key. What you're describing to me is a kind of learned helplessness and it feeds on lack of momentum. Bring momentum back into your life in small ways that build and make decisions and call the shots in your life in small ways that start to give you the confidence to do it in bigger ways. And you will eventually learn that everyone else does not have a superpower that you do not have. Men do not have a superpower that you do not have. They do not just have a confidence that you don't have access to. No one's better than you. you just learned a story over time that there is, there's something about you that's deficient. It's not true. But you need to learn that it's not true by building that muscle. That's all I have to say about that for now.

Oh, that's all. That's an amazing, amazing response. I love that. Absolutely love that.

Right.

Well, we're on to our final. comment that I've selected for this episode. And this one was actually the most upvoted comment on Instagram. When I last checked, I think it had, as an individual comment, it had 1,500 likes. So it's obviously spoken to a lot of people. And it really spoke to me when I read it. So here it goes. It's from Danny. Danny says, I'm afraid that I'll stay single for the rest of my life. I know that might sound so superficial or some people might think that there are worse things. I know they'll say, I need to love myself first. And I do. I do love myself. But I also have a lot of love to give. And I love, love. I have a fulfilling life with a great job, wonderful friends, and every day I live life for me. So my life isn't on pause waiting for the one. But my biggest fear is that I will never find my person. People can say what they want, but romantic love fills spaces in our hearts that other love just doesn't.

So I'm gonna throw to you first on this, Stephen. What are your thoughts on this?

I think you'd be surprised how many people fear that But I would say it's not even a fear that's only limited to single people right now. There can be people with the love of their life who could lose the love of their life either through accident or sabotage or things happen, things change. So I think we don't need to demarcate even, oh, I'm single, so that means I'm going to be like forever alone or relationship people have it. I think we really have to lose that distinction as though those people have found it and I'm not going to. Life is very long and a lot of things change. And, you know, it's easy to say, but I think with these things, you have to believe that it's possible to find love because it's almost like if you, if you go into anything thinking you're gonna lose, you kind of probably are. Like, you have to go in being open and. Accepting, like, love is available for me. It is out there in the world. And you can't get into every love going, Is this the one? Is this gonna last for the rest of my life? Is it till I die? You kind of have to go and give your heart and go for it when you find it in this world. You know, when opportunities come, you have to just grab them and take them. But the kind of the onus is also on us. The onus is on us to be active, to be seeking. to show up. What is that Charlie Munger phrase as well? The, the best way to attract a great partner into your life is to deserve them, you know, to be the kind of person who, who can attract a great person in your life. And, and I think in a way, in a way, people, I, this is, this is not flippant. I think in a way, people overrate how difficult that is to find love. Like if you are a loving, caring, warm, genuine person and you are out there living your life and you are passionate, it is very likely you will meet someone special, you will meet someone who excites you. So and you know, but life has vicissitudes, stuff happens, people don't always turn out to be who we thought, things get messy, but that kind of is also part of it as well. That is part of what you're signing up for. No one is signing up for. I will grab this person.

They.

I will be complete. That will be it. Tick. That. That isn't anyone's experience. Everyone's experience is now I found love. There's a whole host of new things that. That come up and are challenging.

So.

So, yeah, I. I think we have to not see it as, you know, this is so rare, it's so impossible, it's so difficult. But we also have to treat it with respect that we have to show up and keep trying, even when it's hard, even when we get setbacks, even when we get rejected. or hurt. We do have to still come out again ready to find it.

Have you had moments of doubt, Steve, along the way? Have you had moments where you were like, you kind of doubted, am I ever going to find this?

Yeah, I've had those kind of issues where I've wondered to myself, you know, I think everyone does where you, if you break up with someone, you wonder, like, am I ever going to find that person who I feel that way about? Like, It's very normal to feel that and you think, will it ever be the perfect way I envision it in my head? Will it ever be like that? But again, I do, I know, I have a capacity to love. I already know that. So when I've gone through those periods, I'm like, I am lovable and I have a capacity to love. So I know that if I'm out there enough, if I'm, Proactive enough, love is going to come into my life. It might be in many different forms than you think, or the unicorn form in your head might not be that, but it will be something special and meaningful, and you kind of have to be where your feet are, that phrase you say. You have to be where you are right now, not in your head imagining maybe this perfect love, it will be, it's like, no, what's in front of you right now, what opportunities are in front of you, and how can you love, like how can you find that love now? And I think you can't then worry about 50 years from now, you know, all that sort of thing.

And I want to say be where your feet are as Jesse Izzler's phrase. I just want to make sure I'm not taking credit for that.

What she has written, I have felt viscerally in my life before. And I think although what you're saying, Stephen, is absolutely right, and that attitude is integral to finding love. I think when you're in that place where you. It's not happening and you really, really want it and you know that you have a lot of love to give and there's no home for all of that love, and it becomes. It's actually like you. You want that more than anything. You don't. You want it more than your career. You want it more than your friendships. You want it more than travel. You just want to find the person to spend the rest of your life with. I have been in that place and you feel it's a scary place to be. So I totally agree with you, Steve. I really do. I do want to say though that I think maybe there are just different kinds of people in terms of what they want more than anything. And I definitely relate to what she has said. And I think when you're like us in that way, you, yeah, it's just, it's scary because you don't feel like you have control. You have control over most things in your life, you know, you work hard, you'll get a promotion, you save up, you can buy a house, you, you know, invest time in your friendships, you can get great friends, you, you can do all those things, but love is not a guarantee. It's alchemy and it's complicated and it's, that's why it's so scary.

And I'm happy that you said that, Audrey, and I think, I'm happy that she wrote this comment and that it got 1500 people agreeing with it because it's just very honest.

Mm-.

Right?

And it's like we're in a culture that just sells us that we kind of oversells us on freedom because freedom's great, right? So the freedom to be independent with your job, be buy the house, buy whatever. But when you check back in honestly with what you really want, that is a big thing. And I do think it's a pressure valve to just know that like, yeah, 1500 people agreed with her. And everything Steve says, I think is still valid, too. You know, it's like you. It's really easy to build that up so much in your head that it's going to be impossible to live up to it. Because if you're going out and you're trying to find the one that's going to fill in all of that potential that you know is there to be had, that's going to be a pretty impossible thing. So just my one quick piece of advice before I throw it to Matt is just like, remember that you're just looking for the person to build with. You're not looking for the person that's the one. You're just looking for the one that can build with you.

Yeah.

Which is, I think, is so, so, so important and hard to connect to when we're looking for the feelings we've always been sold on that we're supposed to feel. And those feelings can be very. they can feel almost impossible to live up to. I think they do become actually impossible for anything to really live up to. Even the things that do live up to it don't live up to it forever. The honeymoons that we can feel with someone don't sustain themselves. They change. So there's a danger in looking for a feeling and never evolving the idea of what it is we're actually looking for. But you're right. Jameson. It's. It's. There's this moment in the crown where Margaret is talking to the queen, and she's so upset with the queen and she has so much resentment towards her because the queen earlier in their life forbade him, her from being with someone she deemed to be the love of her life. and she missed out on that love as a result of the queen telling her, no, you can't be with that person. And she calls out Queen Victor, Queen Elizabeth, I should say. She calls out Queen Elizabeth on the fact that she takes for granted how many things in her life have been made easier by having Philip in her life, all of the ways that when she needed someone at the end of the day, Philip was there, when she needed to be lifted, Philip was there, when she needed an opinion, Philip was there. And Margaret didn't get to have that, didn't get to experience that. And it is so wounding for Margaret that she never had that. And she sees how much harder her life was for not having had that companionship in her life. And that is what so many people on an instinctive level feel, is that there is something they are, that is absent in their life that other people have, or at least it looks like a lot of other people have. and the pain from that is a chronic, it's a chronic pain. It's a pain that comes about any time you're not actively busy doing something. At the end of the evening, when your friends go home, there it is. And it's not just a pain that's there when we're inactive, it's a pain that's there when we're with our friends. we are finding it hard to be present, or if our friend is getting married and oh my God, I'm so happy for her, but at the same time it just reminds me of what I don't have. That pain is there even in those comparisons that we make, even if we're a good person and we're a loving person and we're supportive of our friends. It's a pain that is there when we can be in our Best moments. I can recall a particular trip I was on where I arrived at this hotel on my own and it was amazing. The hotel was incredible. And we were by the, I was by the beach. I wasn't there with anyone, but it was by the beach. And I remember seeing this gorgeous place and hearing the waves and seeing the lobby and I had this instant rush of excitement. And And then this instinct to turn to my left and say, Isn't this amazing? Only there was no one to say, Isn't this amazing too? And so even the peaks, the peak moments can be terribly difficult when we think about how they would be magnified by sharing them with somebody else. I had a breakup years ago that I was in my mid-20s and I remember having to leave this person because I knew this person wasn't right. But also the kind of grieving you do when you leave a relationship and you know that you're walking away from all of the comfort of that relationship and all of the companionship that it brought you, even with the wrong person. And I remember sitting with someone that I worked with at the time, an older guy had been married for some time. And I remember him saying to me, I'm sorry, Matthew, I just, I don't think it gets, you came to LA, you met someone and you got into a relationship and fine, it lasted 18 months, but he said, I don't think it gets to be that easy for you. and I was mad at him at the time in a way because I was like, but why doesn't it get to be that easy for me? You know? And he said, there's just, there's things that I know are going to be important to you that you're just, it's not going to be that easy to just find them. And in a way, he was right. It wasn't just that easy for me to find those things. And, and I think that the great challenge in life is to try to figure out what's actually important to us and what's less important than perhaps we once realized. What are the things we genuinely can't live without? You know, I know I can't live without someone who's kind. I know I can't, I could never have been with a person who wasn't kind at their core. It would have been a problem. And of course, that's not my only requirement. of a relationship, but it was a big one. And I think the more of those things that you can look at and go, what are those things that really, really matter to me? And let me spend my life worrying about whether someone has those and perhaps along the way, what things might I let go of that aren't as important to me? And then over time, practicing leaning into those things. and, and seeing how it feels and, and practicing even, even, I think the practice of sometimes letting go of a couple of things that we thought were important to us can be a really valuable practice. It, it's because it's not easy because there's a child in us, there's a teenager in us, there's a 21 year old in us that says, no, no, no. I, I'm supposed to have all of these things. These are the qualities. These are the things I've been sold on. These are the things that are important. and I think that the practice, it is a practice. The practice of letting go of some of those things is like strengthening a muscle, I think. And that muscle gets stronger the more you use it and the more you lean into, well, if someone is the right stuff and I really lean into investing in the right stuff, then I'm going to start caring about the right stuff more because that's where my energy and that's where my focus is going. And as a, I suppose, a way to temper all of this, remember so many of the people that you are comparing yourself to actually haven't found that either. They themselves have not. found a relationship where they lent into the right qualities and the things that make for a peaceful, happy, long-term relationship. They haven't done that and they're fighting in ways you don't even know behind the scenes. And there's tension and there's misery and there's frustration and there's fear that you don't see. on the stage when they're out there in life. It's happening behind the curtain. And, and you have to be very careful not to just look at people in a relationship and take up face value that they have done the thing that I am talking about. And I know that, I know that what brings me a sense of peace and brought me a sense of peace when I was single is this idea that you know, it's like if you're, if you're, if you're 40 and you're thinking, is it ever going to happen for me? I want you to know that if someone came to me at 60 and they just been through a divorce, I wouldn't be worried about them. I'd, I'd be like, oh, we're gonna you're gonna find love again. Like, it's if you're, if you actually want it. I'm not saying that if you're 60 and you come out and you're bitter and you hate the opposite sex and you're like, never again, I'm never gonna ever be in a relationship again because I hate them. And, and because there, that happens to a lot of people. They come out and they just, they put up a, a road, a barrier to everyone now because they've decided, I just, I hate, you know, I hate men. you know, I just never, I never want to open myself up to a man again. I'm done with men. That's okay. And, and that's fine. But as long as you have that mindset, of course, it's going to be terrifically difficult to ever find love. But for the, for the person at 60 who comes to me and they're like, I just went through a divorce, and they're a, they're an open person and they're open to possibilities in life, and they're willing to put themselves out there in life and to live and to be open to people and warm. I know. I'm like, oh, I'm not worried about you. There is love out there. And you can have it. Can you have your love in exactly the way that you always told yourself you would have it? Probably not. but that's a childish version of love anyway. That's not like a love of a real person. Because to me, real love is someone comes into your life and then not everything that the 21 year old or 25 year old or maybe even the 30 year old version of you said they wanted. But it's irrelevant because there's something about this person and the way that they or the way that they love you or the connection you have with them, that makes that stuff seem silly. That makes that stuff not feel important anymore. And now what you've done is you've fallen in love with a person, not a blueprint that you had made up at some point in your life. Because people aren't blueprints. They're people. You're gonna come along and you're not gonna be everything that someone wanted. like, you're just not. You're gonna be some, you're gonna be some of what they wanted, some of what they didn't want. But the core of you is gonna be, is gonna make you their person. And, and so that's, that's what, that's the mandate. That's what we should be going for, is I'm going through life and, and I'm gonna find my person, and my person is not gonna be necessarily someone that I today can dream up because they're much more complex than that. And if I understand that that can happen for me at any age, at any time in my life, and at that point, I'm going to be ready to meet it with presence, with curiosity, with a generous lens for who that person is and what they have to offer. And I'm going to be brave enough to let go of some things that don't matter. Then that's when I loop back, Stephen, to what you're saying. Because at that point, I end up in a place where I go, oh, it's there for you. It's there for you. It's gonna, it's gonna happen. It is there for you if you take that approach to it. I have lots more I could say on this subject, but I think that that brings us to a nice close for this episode. And I think that, you know, I'd love now to hear from our listeners to tell us what you thought of this episode and what it brings up for you. We look forward to reading those letters. Remember, you can email podcast@matthewhussie.com and let us know what you thought.

You made me cry. I don't know if you saw, but you made me cry halfway through your speech.

I did.

Yeah. Well, well up, I didn't cry. Got a bit teary.

Were you kicking her under the table?

Cry.

No, I just think it's Yeah, it's real. It's a chronic fear. And just feeling like there is a way around avoiding it is such a pressure valve. I hope it's such a pressure valve for people, but it was so beautifully put.

Agreed.

Thank you. Well, thank you to all of you for your contribution, as always. And thank you for listening. If you want to join us in June for the virtual retreat, We would so love to have you. It's real stuff we're doing together over those days. It's three days of immersive coaching. It's live, it's virtual, so you can do it from anywhere in the world. And if you've got to the end of this episode, whether you're brand new to us or you've followed us for a while, you know that what we do is about far more than finding a person. It's about finding a deep, deep love for life because the marriage that we're all in is a marriage with life itself. And of course with ourselves and getting those marriages right, getting the marriage with ourself right, and getting the marriage with life right. I believe if we do that, the rest actually does fall into place. And that's what we do on the virtual retreat together. So right now we have a self-care special ticket that ends very, very soon. And that's a hundred dollars off the main ticket, plus a couple of other special bonuses that are only available as long as that self-care special ticket is available. So now is a fantastic time to go and get your ticket. If you know you're going to come, now is the best time to do it. And you can find it over at mhvirtualretreat.com Other than that, we will see you, or speak to you at the very least, in the next episode of Love Life. Thank you all for listening to this podcast that we cannot believe how many people listen now. It's growing every month and that must be because of the word of mouth and how many of you are spreading it to people that you love that you think it can help. So it really does mean a lot to us when you share these episodes. If there's something in this episode you think can help someone that you care about, please share it with them. It means the world to us. and we love doing this with you. We'll see you next time.