Why We Push Away The People We Love

What is the opposite of love? And it is not hate.

I think that we operate from a state of fear. I think the opposite of love is fear.

You show up, you perform, you succeed, but something in your closest relationships still feels off. There's still a void that you live with every single day because there's a part of you, in you, that's terrified of who you can be. This is Irie Cardo. She's a TEDx speaker, an Amazon leadership coach, and a bestselling author. And today she's going to help us reconnect to our work, to our homes and to our own selves. Because most of us learned love the wrong way in our childhood, and it's a programming that we're carrying forward to our adult lives.

We all have this frozen version of us that's kind of stuck in time.

We're still afraid of being too much, of being enough, of being large, because we are stuck with that previous version of ourselves.

Trust in love and let it lead.

What if love isn't something that you find, but it's something that you relearn? By being with yourself. Let's dive into this conversation and learn to love. Loneliness, it's not about absence of people. To me, loneliness is when you don't know even yourself. And today I have with me Ivi Kardos, and we're going to speak about how loneliness has a cure, and that cure lives with love, which comes so naturally to us but is still so difficult to act on an everyday every moment basis. In today's conversation, we're not fixing loneliness. We're not fixing anyone. We're just having an honest conversation to help us teach a little bit more about love and being present. How are you, Gita?

Hi, it's so good to be here. I love— the second you and I met and started talking about where do we want to go, it was like, yes, yes, this is exactly where we need to go. So I'm really thrilled to be here. And thank you for hosting this and this conversation.

Absolutely. I'm looking forward. Love is a value of mine. And so whenever we are talking about love, it's very close to heart. And then even you and I were speaking about this, you know, I was thinking how loneliness is impacting millions, if not billions across the world. And so such a timely moment for us to speak about this. Yeah. And yeah, let's see what emerges.

I love it. Let's do it.

And before we even kind of get to talk about loneliness and love, we want to deep dive into who you are. So the first question here, let's start with, if that 8-year-old, the little girl growing up wherever she was, if that 8-year-old comes and meets you right now, what kind of a conversation do you think will emerge between the two of you?

Oh man, well, I love this question for so many reasons. One of them is because she and I have conversations every day, and that's not something that I At this point in my life, thought I would be saying. And it's really beautiful. I've just— so much of my life has been dedicated to learning about love and trauma and how those two coincide. And I feel like when we truly— I'll talk about myself. As I have learned to love myself more and more, I've discovered the importance of getting to know my little girl, like the little girl inside of me. And we all have it. We all have, you know, some people call it inner child work or, you know, whatever you want to call it. We all have this frozen version of us that's kind of stuck in time, usually before, on or before the age of 7, but 8 is pretty darn close. So I'm going to just call it that right now. And it's this version of us that gets stuck and doesn't know that we grew up. Like, doesn't know that there's actually an adult version of us here right now. And they're still feeling all those feelings that we get as kids. Right? That, like, the feeling scared or overwhelmed or lonely or whatever it might be. And so the more I've learned about internal family systems and trauma and all the things, the more I've learned, like, wow, one of the best things I could do for myself is to spend time consciously talking to that little version of me, that younger version of me. And so when I was growing up, my dad called me Airy Berry. And I was born Erica, And then my dad would call me Arie Berry. And then eventually when I left Amazon.com, I cut off my— I cut off the K from Erica and I just became Arie officially. And so I get to talk to Arie Berry a lot. And what I find is she has a lot to say. Like, she has some big feelings. And until I learned the, the tool of telling her that, hey, guess what? I'm you. I'm, I'm you when you're grown up, and I'm actually an adult. And not just an adult, but like, I have a really cool job, and I have 2 kids, and I'm married. And like, I have a lot of wisdom for you, and I'm here with you, and you don't need to be turning to your parents or having these stories about what your parents did or didn't do. I've got you. I've got you right now. So let's figure out what's going on. That was one of the biggest things I learned. And being in that space of like, okay, I get to talk to her. I get to. I don't have to. I get to. And the more I talk with her and find out what she's feeling and what she's freaking out about, the more I get to kind of reparent myself and heal a lot of those things that have kept me stuck. So it's been an incredible conversation, ongoing conversation, where I'm regularly surprised. I'm like, oh, you're feeling that. Okay. And yet, I now know her so well that I know what she usually gets scared about. You know, if anybody— you're a parent, right? You get it. Like, you know some things about your kids. You know some things about their behaviors. You know some things about, like— like, I know that my 10-year-old is, in my opinion, irrationally afraid of bugs. That's a judgment. But I know that if a bug comes near him, he's going to scream. And especially if it's in the bathroom, right? So when I hear screams coming from the bathroom, I'm like, oh, I mean, we live in Bali, Indonesia. There are bugs and there are some really big bugs. So I know that as soon as I hear the screams from the bathroom, other people might freak out, but I'm like, my eldest has seen a bug.

Yes.

And that's just it. Like, you can breathe into that and I know how to handle it. I know how to help him calm down his nervous system and feel safe. I know how we can remove the bug far enough away that it's not going to have this fear coming back in the middle of the night, right? So I know how to take care of my child in that way. And now I'm learning, oh, this is how Aerie Berry is, and this is what she is afraid of. So when she and I have a conversation, usually it— I usually turn to her when I'm having some sort of big emotion, right? So if my current version of self is like struggling with a big emotion around loneliness or anger or sadness or a lot of fears, Right? She's one of the first people I talk to. So I go to her and I'm like, whoa, what are you, what are you feeling? What are you experiencing? What is this reminding you of? And there's something she's got, like she can grab it quickly. And it's almost always the same types of underlying stories. It's not always the same situation that she's remembering, but there's an underlying story. And for her, it's almost always this fear of like, I'm so afraid of not being good enough. Or I am so afraid that I'm too much. And it's usually one of those two stories, which is really funny because they feel so so opposite. They feel so polarized. And I mean, but she can feel them both at the same time. And when I can help her be with those emotions of like, oh yeah, I can totally see how this is reminding you of when Daddy did this thing, right? And I get it. And and it's okay. And I get to. It's a wild process. It's almost like, um, it's almost like I'm getting to— yeah, I'm reparenting myself, and it feels a little foreign sometimes. In the beginning it felt foreign, and now it just feels like, oh yeah, it's just what I do, and I wish everyone knew how to do this. Does that make sense?

Yeah, because, because it's, it's a, it's a deeply rewarding and healing journey to have that conversation, to know that there's this 8-year-old that's in me right now, feeling all those emotions that it felt at that moment, and how they're all coming together. And still you have the almost like the, the responsibility and the privilege of overcoming what you're stuck with. But for those who don't do this naturally, to even think that Eerie and Eerieberry can, can have a conversation would be such a stretch for them, and they would never have felt— and they would be looking at us right now and thinking like, I don't want this podcast because what is going on? What is wrong with these two, like talking to their 8-year-old self? Don't they have kids? Don't they have anything else to do? So how do— maybe how did you start that journey? Because it's a, it's a thought-provoking invitation to yourself to talk to your 8-year-old self.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I've been a relationship geek my whole life, and I, like, for me, my parents taught marriage classes in our church growing up And so I got to see this modeled, I got to see a version of love modeled very big time, like very central in my life. And then my experiences in the world took me in different places than what my parents hoped and expected for me. And I started really getting confused and questioning, like, what is this thing called love? And I thought I understood what it was, but it turned out to be very different for me. had my heart broken when I was, you know, my first real love, and I was like 19 years old. And, and I lost a lot of faith. I lost a lot of faith in my spirituality, and I lost a lot of faith in love. And I went on this journey of looking, seeking, seeking. It's the hero's journey. Like, what is the seeking process to find myself and to find something that made more sense to me? And there was a lot of loneliness in that, in that period. And a lot of experimentation to figure out like, what is this thing called life? And in that process, I discovered many things. I ended up getting my MBA from the world's number one international business school at the time. I ended up getting hired by Amazon to do leadership development. Like, I had lots of interesting relationships and life experiences and traveled. And, and eventually I quit my job at Amazon to start my own company. Because I had discovered there's so much around love that I was drawn to. Even though I was doing leadership development, I'm like, holy cow, there's such a tie. Because I noticed that my executives were coming to work and so often they would be— I could feel this sense of distraction in them. And one day I was having a one-on-one with one of my leaders and he was just really fidgety and like looking at his phone and he seemed off. And I said, hey, Can I ask? Is there something going on? And we had enough trust between us that he he's just like, hey, can I talk about something personal? I said, yeah. He said, my marriage is not doing well. And and I was already a certified coach at that time. So I said, hey, can I can I hold space and coach the whole person while we talk? And what I found is that you know he was at this point of breaking of just like I don't know what to do, and so much of my energy is going towards. My relationship at home. So I can't be very present at work. And he'd be checking his phone in the middle of messages and like messages in the middle of meetings, you know, trying to find out like, how is his wife doing after the fight they had, right? Or what's gonna come next? So I asked consent, like, how can I— can I please coach you around your relationship, your marriage? And what I found is that when things were more stable at home, when they had the communication skills, when they uncovered the pattern that was keeping them stuck, Then he came to work with more joy and focus and clarity and better tools for communicating and connecting with his team. And I watched the entire organization shift just through things shifting at home. I was like, oh, this is amazing. Great. I want to do this more often. And soon I was being referred to other leaders at Google and Apple and Microsoft and SpaceX and Relativity. And it was just amazing. Like, this is so cool. I want to do this all the time. If I can influence the boardroom through the bedroom, that's even more fun. So I left and I started my own company called ReLearn Love. And in the process of doing this, I have just learned so much through working with my clients, through ongoing trainings, that sort of thing. One of my favorite tools that I have learned more and more of is called Internal Family Systems therapy, IFS.

Mm-hmm.

And when I discovered this, it blew my mind. And in IFS, the basic idea is that we have these different parts of us that are kind of big roles in our life that we are probably not even aware of until we learn about it. One of them is our little self, our— they call it the exile. And it's like this child that's caught in time, this childlike version of ourselves that's caught in time. Another one are all of our protectors. Our protectors are these parts of us that come alive to help us, but a lot of times they're overworking to protect the child from getting hurt again, right? And so this has— this is a high-level overview, but this has the managers and the firefighters. The managers are the ones that come online regularly. Like, for me, my managers are like the procrastinator. She shows up to like wait. Or the, the— what you heard earlier, like the part of me that feels like I need to Like I'm not good enough, so I need to like do it better and do it better. The perfectionist, you could call it. She shows up. That's one of my protectors. And then there's the firefighters, and this is like your trauma responses, your fight, flight, freeze, fawn responses. Fawning is like people pleasing, fixing, right? So these will come online when there's a big trigger, when I'm overwhelmed, my system gets overwhelmed. And then finally, the, the last, the last piece is Or character is Self with a capital S. Self. This is your healthy self. And what I love about IFS is that it doesn't believe that you're broken and you need to get fixed. It's like you already have all the wisdom that you need within you. You just need the right guide to help you get to your Self, the capital S Self that knows all this. And the only way you can really access your little hurt child is when you can Recognize these controllers that are protecting the hurt child, and you can talk more to your healthy self. So when I learned this, I was like, that sounds wild. And I started working with somebody who could help me get in touch with these parts, and I was blown away. And it shifted everything. Like, it brought so much clarity. It let me be way more complex. It let me love those parts of myself instead of, instead of judging them or getting mad at them or pushing them away. It's like When my, when my, you know, protectors come online and I can see myself trying to be a perfectionist, I get to talk with those parts too and be like, hey, thank you so much for working so hard. Like, you— I can tell how much you love me. You've been here with me my whole life, and because of that perfectionist aspect, I've got— I've succeeded in many ways, and it's also given me a lot of anxiety and held me back in other ways, you know. And like Prevented me from pushing, pushing send on that email or making that video or doing or getting on that stage because I'm so afraid it needs to be perfect. You know, and so I think in the process of getting to know my little girl, my little Arie Berry, I've also gotten to know these protectors and say, "I love you too," and you don't have to work so hard. I got this. And and then tuning into myself, learning how to connect with that self part and being like. What would— what if I'm grounded and I'm not triggered? Like, what would I say to myself? What would I ground myself in? And I think a lot of the self that I have now, my sense of self here, also is in many ways my connected to my future self, right? My 80-year-old who knows the wisdom of what's coming and what's possible.

Yeah.

So yeah, so if you're starting out, for anybody who's like, wow, this is a lot, it is. It is a lot. I would just say, just being listening to this podcast, listening to the idea, and then if you ever get curious, you're like, I wonder if I could find that little version of myself and just say hi. Are you really there? Is this— this feels weird. What is it like? What, what are you feeling? What are you experiencing right now when I'm having this big emotion? What are you feeling, experiencing, and remembering? You might be surprised. And just allow yourself to be open and curious. And if nothing happens, then nothing happens. Cool. You just, you learned something that might help somebody else. Who knows? But it might just change your life.

I love that. And there's a phrase there that I'm going to come back to. You said tuning into yourself. So we're going to come back to that. But what you were speaking about, the managers, the firefighters, the protectors, the exiled self, and the Self with the S capital. I'm now thinking about loneliness and why people start to feel lonely. And I'm not an expert on loneliness, but I want to have like a conversation that whoever is listening, it moves our thinking forward. So part of me is feeling that loneliness could be of two kinds, right? That you're amidst people who you cherish, enjoy sometimes, but you still feel the sense of loneliness, or you don't have people around you. And that's also one kind of loneliness. But it could also be that you don't even— you're not tuned into yourself to allow parts of you to be visible to the world. And that also is— it feels like a very deep inner loneliness. How do you comprehend loneliness as you observed it and in the world? It's a big question, but yeah.

Yeah, I love it. That's a big question, and I'm answering in a way that I've never answered before, but I think it's appropriate for where I'm at in my journey. And I think loneliness a lot of times comes from the way we were raised, that we are supposed to be really— we're supposed, as in quotes, right? We're supposed to be a way, a specific way. And I grew up in a very conservative Christian home So it was very clear the way that I was supposed to be. My husband grew up in a very conservative Hindu home. It was very clear for him the way he was supposed to be, right? And, and it doesn't take religion to do that, but I think we all are influenced in this is the way that a man should behave, this is the way a woman should behave, this is what a marriage should look like, this is how you're supposed to be successful in life, the types of jobs that are acceptable. You know, you're supposed to have children. Being single, there's something wrong with you, right? There's all these, like, stories that are put upon us and pressures.

Yeah.

And in that, I think our emotions also get squished into a box. It's like when somebody asks you, how are you? At least in America, the common response is, I'm good, or I'm fine, right? And that's it. There's no conversation around it. Or even when things are bad, you can choose one emotion. Socially acceptable to have one emotion. I feel sad. I feel angry. And, and I think that that limiting of ourselves, that having to choose one part of ourselves and that's the only thing that can be focused on, that's the only thing that's okay, really creates a lot of loneliness because it neglects all the other parts of what's real for us and we're actually experiencing. And so I think we begin to feel more lonely internally and disconnected externally because we're not We don't have that, we don't allow ourselves to be complex, and we humans are very complex. So now when I look at like, how do I feel? If when I ask myself, how do I feel? Or when I can give somebody my full presence and it's a safe situation to ask, like, how do you feel? Like you're, you have a one-on-one with your best friend, or you and your spouse, if it feels safe to sit down and like have that conversation, or you and your partner, or you and your kids, right? It's like you said, sit down and you're like, but how are you really? How can we allow for it to be really complex? Let's tune in and be like, well, a part of me feels really grateful, grateful for this life I have and so blessed. And another part of me still feels not good enough. And another part of me is sad that my husband is going away for 7 weeks today. And another part of me is so freaking excited to go speak in Australia next week. Right? It's like all of this is happening at one time. I contain multitudes when we really tune in. And as I allow all of that to be happening at one time— and a lot of times they feel like they're contradictory emotions, right? When I allow all that to be here, I'm surprised every time by how less lonely I feel within myself, because I'm allowing myself to get to know all the different parts of me and be seen and be heard and be loved and be welcomed instead of Instead of pushing them away. So I think that is one huge piece for all of us. And then to be able to take that out and share all of that with someone that you trust, that can be with all of that and doesn't feel overwhelmed by it, is really, really such a gift. And I think that's where, that's where we begin to expand our capacity to give and receive love. Can we allow for a person to be everything, to be a mess and to be put together all at the same time?

So beautiful. We're all— there's a lot of us when we don't process those emotions, and it's a cocktail of emotions, not a single emotion that you're feeling. It's a Long Island Iced Tea with 5 scoops.

Yes, yes it is. It is.

Maybe more, maybe more. Who's gonna stop that? But I think what you shared up front, like growing up in a Christian house, and I grew up in a Hindu house, so I relate with some parts of what you've your husband would have experienced. We're supposed to do things in a certain way, and that suppose starts to put us in a box. And then we're also asked to then think out of the box. And, and so it's such a dichotomy where we're put into this paradox and we're not even allowed to listen, experience, and to fully understand and process our own emotions, which makes us lonely on the inside and disconnected on the outside. And I'm also like, what you spoke about, like to just experience your own emotions. I think the world today has created enough distraction to mask those emotions also, to mask that loneliness also, because we feel here we are watching Netflix, we feel here we are scrolling through Instagram and blah blah blah. We feel that we're feeling these things, but it's actually masking in disguise, isn't it?

Yeah, I would, I would call it— so I would call it like a Masking, yes. And also call it just a distraction. And most of us, you know, when we had big emotions as kids, uh, our parents didn't know how to react to big emotions. Most of our parents didn't, right? And so they already probably felt overwhelmed by the emotions they were feeling just seeing you have emotions. And remember, there's a social pressure globally pretty much that parents need to keep their kids neutral or happy. Like, yeah, if the kids are crying, or even if they're too happy, it's like you're being a bad parent somehow. So they had this pressure put on them to like get— keep the kids neutral, and then they're having their own emotions. And so a lot of times parents react in these ways, like, like if a kid is crying, maybe it was from running. Let's say they ran and fell down, they cut their knee. The parents are like, I told you not to run, stop running, right? Stop crying, right? And there's this blaming and shaming, which already says it's not safe for me to have big emotions or to show my emotions. It's better to hide them. Or there's a parent reaction of, it's okay, you're okay, which is not the lived experience reality the child is in right now, which is very confusing. Like, I don't feel okay. Like, this doesn't feel okay to me, right? It's very confusing. Or there's the distraction technique. Oh, you want a lollipop? You want this toy? Like, look at the toy! And then when we start to put the puzzle pieces together, it's like, okay, whenever I experience a big emotion, be it sadness, anger, loneliness, happiness, anything, I now know that either this is not okay and I'm going to shame myself for it, or it should be okay and I just need to make it okay and push my way through it, or I just need to distract myself. And so it becomes an ingrained habit to have one of these responses, including— So now we have this wonderful thing that is Our new toy, right? So we feel an emotion, pick up the toy, scroll, right? Or turn to alcohol, sex, drugs, shopping, whatever it might be to distract ourselves because the numbing is what feels most comfortable because that's our ingrained pattern.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love it. And it's scary. It's scary because, yeah, because we're not even creating that space for ourselves to process those emotions. And that's what leads to the epidemic. But here's, here's like the flipping of the script, right? Because there's a part of me— I was in India last week and I had to wait for a friend who had to come for lunch. He ended up coming 2 hours late. I thought about using that time to shop, roam around the mall, or do something like that. Instead, I went to a bar, ordered myself a Long Island iced tea, and sat in one place 45 minutes, enjoyed the drink by myself. and loved that experience of the 45 minutes. I call that solitude. Now, how does one go from loneliness to solitude? Because it's a, it's a completely different way to look at how you operate, who you are, that inner child. The inner child does not need LIIT, but the adult needs. How do you connect those dots? How do you, how do you reframe from loneliness to solitude?

Yeah, that's beautiful. I'm celebrating this for you too. I'm like, oh, how beautiful. You took yourself on a date.

I agree.

Yeah. And I think this is so much of it. So now in my work, I get to— I joke. So I work mostly with singles and people in relationship and different relationship structures. And it's like, how do we help come back into connection? And the most important relationship is your relationship with yourself. And then you blossom that out into a relationship with your significant other if you have a partner. Right. I love jokingly call myself the dating dominatrix because, yeah, I design these dates that are meant to help people reconnect them with themselves. So I love that you did this, right? And what you chose to do was take yourself to create intentional space for you to be with you and not be in the distraction, not be in the doing, right?

So much.

Being.

Being.

So when I design these dates for people, with couples, a lot of times it's using tools for connection and how are we gonna learn better communication skills and how do we learn better presence and how do we actually learn to listen to each other, right? And there's also solo dates I send my clients on where they're encouraged to learn how to be, how to tune into themselves. Okay, I'm gonna give an invitation, an invitation for anybody who's listening. I am going to double dare you to take yourself on a date, and the date is going to be a solo date. It is just for you. And if you're like, I don't know what I would do, I would love for you to tune into what would that 8-year-old version of yourself love to do, or the child version of you. What did you love as a kid that you're quote unquote not supposed to do anymore? I have seen the funniest, most amazing— please send me a photo if anybody does this of like what you did so I can celebrate you. with you and just post in the comments here. Like, let us all— if you're comfortable. There are some that have been really ridiculous. I'll tell you, one of my clients sent me a photo of— he's like, I just want to do a giant bubble bath. And so he went to the store and bought like the most ridiculous colored extra bubble-icious bottle he could find, came home and literally dumped half the bottle in the tub and just made this mountain of bubbles. And he's like— He's an executive. Right? This is a top leader in a company that you would recognize, and he went home and did this. And I am like, I am so proud of you. And then another client, she's like, my little girl just wanted to be so rebellious and do the thing I was never allowed to do. And it had just snowed at her house. So she— not everybody can do this, I fully recognize this. And she's also a top leader in her company. She went out in the snow and she built— she literally made a penis in the snow because that was so forbidden in her house. You know, like no one would allow her to do it. And she was terrified. She's like, can I really do this? And then what happened was her neighbors were all inspired and given permission. They talked to her like, what's this? And she told them. And it caused this ripple effect where neighbors came out and helped build ridiculous things in the snow and just laugh and talk about what they would want to do. And I'm like, yes, this is it. Like, we can have joy. We can have play. We can love on ourselves in ways that are gonna Change the way you experience life and the way other people experience life. It's so cool.

It's so cool. I think again it comes back to that we should all over us, right? That I should not be doing this. I should not be sitting alone in a cafe drinking coffee. But but we should. We could. We choose to. And it's it's such. It just fills my heart with joy when you're sharing these stories. And I think anyone who who has never gone on a date with themselves, they should absolutely do it. There are two people who are. spending their energy talking about this with all our passion and heart. It's not made-up energy. It's just, it gives you so much joy. It gives you so much joy.

Yeah, and it gives permission to other people around you to do the same. And who couldn't use more joy and love in their lives?

Absolutely. And I think often we're the ones who are stopping us, right? It is us who don't give ourselves the permission to feel that joy, to feel that solitude, to feel that connection with that little, little kid, 8-year-old ourselves, within ourselves.

Yeah, so much.

My heart is full of love.

Mine too.

And so love, whether that's self or others, and it starts with self. Now we get to love, so let's get all serious. Just kidding, uh, not gonna happen today. Uh, Love is a, is a, is again a complex emotion, right? And we've been— there's this propaganda of love that I've grown up seeing in Bollywood movies, that you gotta hold someone's hand and dance against the trees and be on the peaks in Switzerland and all of that, right? And, and it seemed that that's all love is. Help us expand the definition of love.

Yeah, I think love is so much bigger than we, than we comprehend, and And I think, again, we as humans really try hard to put it in a box. We try really, really hard to put it in a box. And as I— the more I move through life and the more I work with amazing humans all over the world, I'm just like, so I have to let go of all of my assumptions and expectations and preconceived notions of what is love. And I think that love is— it's everything and it can be everywhere. It can be romantic, it can be sexual, it can be just purely emotional. It can be found in things you wouldn't expect, right? You can find love in holding a puppy and this feeling that comes through you. I think love is a way of connecting with ourselves and with the world in a much bigger way than we ever expected. You know, almost every religion in the world, maybe every religion that I know of, is saying, you know, the goal is love. The goal is this bigger connection to something greater than yourself that brings people together and teaches this way of life that is so deep and that is grounded in love. I remember one of the times I got challenged by this amazing facilitator named Rick Smith, and he said, What is money? And he asked this classroom, what is money? And everybody had these different definitions and, you know, how do you explain what money is? He's like, what if money is just another form of love? What if money is love? And instead of it being good or bad or having to assign these attributes to it, what if you viewed it as another currency of love, just like giving a compliment or giving a, you know, spending time with someone or giving a hug or You know, being in this— what if money was also just love, another expression of it? And you move through the world looking for where does— how does love want to move? And I've taken this idea with me. He gave me a beautiful challenge. He said, I want you to put a $5 bill in your pocket every day for a month, and before you put it in your pocket, you say, show me who this love belongs to, who needs this love right now. And he'd just stick it in his pocket and he'd move around life and he would just trust the feeling that would arise. And it would arise at some of the strangest times. It didn't make any sense. Sometimes it went to people that made sense, right? It's like, oh, there's a homeless person. This belongs to them. I'm going to show my love through this expression. Oh, here's somebody who's working at a petrol station. I'm going to give it to them. But then other times it made no sense. Like, okay, this person who looks very well off, This is for them. And not explaining what it was, just gifting it and continuing on with life. And then it expanded from money to everything. How can I be more in tune with different ways of showing, of giving and receiving love? And when you are more in tune with that, I find that it just doesn't stop. It doesn't get smaller, it gets bigger, and it seems to open up some sort of weird Ability to flow. It's like it's like a dam, right? We're like a dam. The water's held back. We hold love back. We define it. We say it's only acceptable in this way, at this time, in this situation. And what if we open that up and say, okay, how does love want to move today? How does this person? I feel like I need to tell them something. Tell them that and see what happens. And the more I've just trusted that and acted on it, it was really scary at first. It feels weird. But the more I've done it, the more I found that no, there's so much more possible when you just move at the speed of love and trust it, and things strangely or synchronous synchronistically open up. And I've seen beautiful things happen out of that. Like the right per— I connect with the right person randomly at a coffee shop because I felt pulled to say something to them that I wouldn't normally think to say. I watched, I watched an entire— I watched a woman and a child get supported in an orphanage. Just through one person inviting them into a— inviting someone else into a conversation and then having the courage to speak. Oh, I know this organization that's looking for some support right now, and I heard that you're looking for a way to donate. Like, it just was that synchronous. Like, within a 5-minute conversation, already a woman and her child are supported for a year. Wow. Just because we trusted it and let it move.

Hmm. I'm still Processing it. So, so love is a sense of that we're connected with something that's bigger than than just us. I love what you say about how love is like a universal currency, and if you start to think of in that way and start to give it to others, it just opens up a new frontier. Just it just the dams open, and and it it can take us to that state of flow. It it's also love is that state of being, right? Where you where you're in that state of flow, where you're trusting the other person, where you're inviting. Let's, let's again, for, for the devil's advocate in me wants to go to the right opposite side because I'm, I'm sensing, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sensing that we are not right now operating with this currency of love. We're operating with something else that's making us, making us poor, that's making us go bankrupt.

Huh? What is it? Do you have a word?

Thinking. Pain. I don't know. I don't know. Blame. I don't know why pain and blame are popping up for me, but But yeah, I'm all ears.

I'm going to go with fear. I think that we operate from a state of fear. I think the opposite of love is fear. That's my opinion. And the more I work with people, the more I find that that's what's going on. The pain and the blame are symptoms of the fear. We are so afraid of— you know, I spend the majority of my day working with couples, and I I love that I not only a relationship geek that but also that I really love conflict.

I really love conflict. I love conflict.

I know, I know. It feels like I'm like, but I I love that that my my hmm. I feel like growing up I didn't understand what conflict was, and I don't think that. most people understand what conflict is. And so if you don't understand what it is, you don't know how to be with it, and then you avoid it, or you have all these complex ways of dealing with conflict. And those are mostly trauma responses— the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, right? So we go into these things, and when we pause and I make space to hear about what the situation was— and I'll say the situation's up here— any situation that happens between 2 people, there's a situation. And most people are trying to solve or fight about the situation. And what's actually happening is there's something underneath that's driving that, some sort of core value, and usually it's a core fear. And they're so afraid of this thing happening, they're so afraid of getting hurt that they reacted a certain way which caused this. And when we can pause and say, okay, this is a situation, I get it, but let's go deeper. Let's go deeper into what is the story you're making up about this situation? What does it mean to you? What does this remind you of from your childhood, from that 8-year-old self, right? And how do you feel? Like, really get into, like, all the feelings, not just one, but really getting all the feelings. And then, and then from that place, what do you need right now for repair? And learning the art of repair and learning how to allow someone to have their own experience. You might be in the same room at the same time while something's happening, but you may have vastly different experiences based on your life experiences, your trauma, your childhood, right? And so allowing them to be 2 different situations almost, and healing that, doing the repair on that, is, is going to actually resolve things and, and help them go away, and not just putting a band-aid on something that it's gonna crack again, you know? So, so anyways, going back to like love and fear, I'm like, keep us on track, Ari. Here we go. So going back to love and fear, most of the time we're making these decisions that are leading to conflict and getting small in our life or holding back or not shining because we're so afraid. We're so afraid to get hurt, we're so afraid to do it wrong, we're so afraid to hurt someone else, we're so afraid, you know, like we're so afraid deep inside. It doesn't matter what we do for a living, it doesn't matter how successful we are, it doesn't matter. Like we We all hold on to these fears and I think that's what really prevents us from loving ourselves and loving others and allowing love to flow so greatly in the world.

So how do we relearn love?

Yeah, I think relearning love is all about first just having the curiosity and awareness that you already did learn love. You learned it when you were a kid and that's what's playing in your subconscious. That's what's playing out now. And we all have these patterns and we can recognize that, shoot, I've got some patterns I've been practicing probably for decades that are not serving me anymore. They protected me as a kid when I didn't have agency, but I'm not a kid anymore. So now how do I get curious about this? Because you probably didn't learn it in school. You probably didn't have the perfect model from your parents, right? It's like, it's okay. You didn't— you learned it, but you didn't learn the best version of it. And now, now understanding that love is not a fluffy subject. Love is— we have so much data. We have so much science around love now. We know what works and what doesn't work. So then we're gonna get— we're gonna go and cultivate the right knowledge. We get curious, now we're gonna cultivate knowledge. We're gonna say, okay, how do we learn the things we really learn? But you don't just consume. I watch a lot of people— like, I am a developmental junkie, I will admit that. I love personal development. And they— it's a trap, right? We can be like, oh my gosh, I listened to the podcast and I read the book and I did the retreat and I did— and we worked with the I'm working with a therapist. And it's like, yeah, but if you're not having someone help you spot the right pattern, the pattern that's keeping you stuck, then you're just putting lots of Band-Aids on things. And it feels nice, and it feels like you're checking the I did something box, but it's not actually changing from the ground up. So we need to find the right pattern spotter. You need to find the right pattern to focus on and then learn the right tools for breaking that pattern. And then we move into, I say, the change phase. And the change phase is where we actually get to do the hard work of learning the new tool and stop using the old tool. I call it a system upgrade. It's like upgrading your iOS, right? It's like we just got to get the new version. You're running the version from whatever year you were born. Time to upgrade. It's way more sexy and fun. And then when we actually see that playing out, when the system upgrade is working, and we are handling conflict differently, when we're moving differently, when we're communicating better, when we're, you know, being with our emotions and not letting them be pushed aside or override us, then the last part is to celebrate. We get to celebrate the fact that we made a huge shift, and we don't forget that celebration because the celebration is really what lets it land in our nervous system of, oh, this is our new way of being. And this is safe, and this is awesome, and it is way more effective, and it got us where we wanted to go. Yeah, and that's the whole way of relearning love.

It's it's it's it's so simple, right? That it seems that everyone should practice it. Everyone can choose to practice it instead of shoulding. I want to choose. So everyone can choose to practice, and it starts with I think once someone experiences it or can remind themselves of when they. Felt this powerful force of love and they can put that into practice every single day, it's just bliss, right? It's just, it just opens new frontiers where you feel like there's some freaking magic— for not using the F word— there's some freaking magic that's, that's pushing you forward, that's making the universe operate in your favor, that makes you feel that, what's wrong? Is, is the universe like pushing me somewhere? Like, what's happening here? And it's such an Easy place to exist.

It's such an easy place. And it makes— I just want to like speak to those who are listening and thinking like, this sounds cool, but it also sounds really scary and, or hard. I don't know where to start. And it's— I just want to talk about the mindset really quickly because I also want to recognize that there's a lot of cultural shame about what I'm at or asking me to do, right? You know, if I said, hey, I'm gonna start a business, I hired a business coach, you'd probably be like, yeah, Ari, that's great. You're gonna make money faster, you'll have systems in place, you'll learn from their mistakes. Great. If I said, hey, I'm gonna start playing tennis, I hired a tennis coach, like, yeah, of course you did. You're gonna learn the right form, you're not gonna screw up your shoulder and have to get surgery later, you're not gonna have to go back later on, and you'll play faster and have more fun and play at a higher level with higher-level Competitors, right? This is great. And if I said, "Hey, I order." I ordered. Hey, I started working with a therapist or relationship coach. Most people are gonna say like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Something must be really screwed up," right? There's this shame of like you should know and you should be good at love. But you know, I've I've asked this question to literally thousands of people across six continents now, and I I ask. How many happy, healthy, long-term couples do you personally know? And however you want to define that. You believe they're happy, you believe they're healthy, you believe that this is long-term. And I wait, and I let people think for about 30 seconds, counting them all. And in 98% of all rooms that I have ever taught in, the answer lies some— 95% of the room will lie somewhere between 0 And 4. That's it. 0 to 4 couples they know total who are happy, healthy, long-term. And yet we all think everybody else is doing it. And we think that we should just be good at it. We don't have those models.

We don't.

So when we invite people to relearn love, it's a courageous request. It's a courageous request.

It is. It is going against everything that society taught you for being right. Such a full conversation. As we move forward, we can start with that 8-year-old self. We're getting— I don't want this conversation to end, but the podcast is limited.

The podcast.

The podcast. We can— I'll come to Bali and then we'll have a longer conversation.

I love this, let's do it.

If we now go to that 80-year-old, the one from the future, a few decades from now, if that 80-year-old now comes to you And has one piece of advice on how to lead the rest of your years, what would that 80-year-old Aingeal say?

Yeah, yeah, that's so beautiful. You know, when I started discovering this kind of work of getting to invite the different parts of me in, I added to my prayers an invitation that my future self come and be with me and give me guidance. And the consistent— I'm getting teary-eyed— the consistent guidance that I get is a simple phrase: trust in love. Trust in love and let it lead. And I think that's it. If I'm— and if the opposite of love is fear, then it's like whenever I'm noticing the fear come up in me and preventing me from doing something, I get to be with that part of myself, but then I get to remember that I get to trust in love. It's a choice. And I get to move with it. And it only expands my capacity to give and receive love, which, wow, talk about— you want to shift your dynamic with your partner, with your family, with your community, with your colleagues, you want to become a better leader, this is it. You learn how to trust and love and move with that, it will forever shift how your life looks.

Amazing. I love it. To everyone who's still with us at about 50 minutes, I'm glad you're here. Let's listen to the 80-year-old Edie's advice and trust in love and let it lead. If you're still skeptical about the idea of relearning love, just start with being open and curious. Just identify those patterns and cultivate the knowledge, and then go to that system upgrade that Edie spoke about. The opposite of love is fear, and we're all operating with that state of fear. It is time to shift our state of being into love. And love is like money, it's the universal currency, and, and it puts you in that state of flow. For anyone who's not experienced a solo date, I absolutely recommend go on a solo date. Just have a cup of coffee, whatever works for you. Build a penis in, in the snow that just fell in your, in your country outside of your house. whatever that looks like. A big idea is don't be in the doing, be in the being. It's really hard to be in the being, but once you get there, you will love it. We all experience this cocktail of emotions. It is absolutely important for us to not shame it, make it okay, or get distracted. This will help us move from that state of loneliness to that state of solitude. The loneliness stems from these shoulds that we've been told. Remember, society, your parents, your elders, whoever told you to do something in a certain way, they did not have all the information. And so question it, be curious, try to run some experiments with love and life so that you can go through and reminding yourself that there's a better path. There is a path called love. And to everyone who's thinking of that 8-year-old self, Talk to that 8-year-old self. That 8-year-old is frozen somewhere inside you. Talk to her, him, they, and remember that that 8-year-old self could sometimes say that I was too much or could say that I'm not enough. These are all polar opposites. Maybe there are new patterns that you can teach yourself. Let's relearn love.

I love this.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone who's listening to us on a podcast platform. Share with someone if you feel that they'll listen to this and things will change for them. If you're on YouTube, Edie told you a few times to put something on the comments. We'd love to listen from you what is resonating with you. And yes, this conversation is not for the faint-hearted. This is for someone who's courageous. So share only with those who you feel will find value. This is Utkarsh Narang signing off. Thank you.