Navigate Modern Dating & Create A Healthy Love Life: Relationship Coach Matthew Hussey on Breaking Destructive Cycles, Attracting Authentic Connections & More

This week, I’m joined by Matthew Hussey, the celebrated relationship expert and bestselling author, to discuss the intricacies of modern dating and to raise standards for authentic connections. With honest truths, he addresses embracing self-worth, setting boundaries, and cultivating a mindset that attracts an equal partnership based on decency, kindness, and respect. Exploring internal fears, anxieties, and the allure of chaotic relationship dynamics, Matthew discusses unreliable instincts and recognizing red, amber, and green lights. He provides a practical roadmap for breaking destructive cycles, navigating vulnerabilities, and nurturing healthy interdependence. Additionally, we examine gender differences in dating insecurities and societal pressures. Matthew emphasizes the importance of open communication, productive arguments, and empowering your partner’s growth. Please enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Bon Charge: Use code RICHROLL to save 15% OFF 👉 boncharge.com Waking Up: Get a FREE month, plus $30 OFF 👉wakingup.com/RICHROLL Roka: Unlock 20% OFF your order with code RICHROLL 👉ROKA.com/RICHROLL Go Brewing: Use code Rich Roll for 15% OFF your first purchase 👉gobrewing.com AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll SriMu: Get 22% OFF artisanally crafted plant-rich cheeses w/ code RRP 👉SriMu.com Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉richroll.com/sponsors Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Relationships are defined by how do we show up when we're at our worst? I think so much of it is paying attention to those moments.

• 1:13Rich Roll?

  My guest today is Matthew Hussey, a human behavior expert who has helped guide millions of people through the complexities of creating and maintaining enduring relationships.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  We think relationships, it's like, we find something that's extraordinary and then we just have to keep it. Usually, you have something that's kind of interesting, and then you keep sculpting it into something that's more and more like the thing that you want it to be.

• 1:39Rich Roll?

  Through his YouTube channel, his coaching, his public speaking, and his latest book, Love Life, Matthew dispenses heart truce and wisdom on the importance of cultivating self-worth to truly love another, love oneself, and love life.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  Love at first sight, and finding someone, and just feeling it, and knowing. I think those are really damaging concepts. A lot of people don't have that immediately.

• 2:02Rich Roll?

  I found Matthew to be quite authentic and delightful, his counsel grounded and pragmatic, and this conversation vital, because we all struggle with relationships in some form or another. So with that, please enjoy me and Matthew Hussey.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  All right. Matthew, so nice to meet you. Thank you for coming to do this today. I've been looking forward to meeting you for a long time.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Me too. Yeah, I've been excited about this conversation. I've been following your work for years now. And some of the interviews you've done are literally my favorite interviews I've heard.

• 2:43Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate that. And the topic that we're going to cover today, the terrain, is something I think everybody is in need of advice on and counsel because we're all in relationships of some form or another. And I think it's pretty universal that we all find our struggles and our pain in how we relate to other human beings. And that's really the core of the work that you do and the subject matter of this wonderful new book that you've just written called Love Life. So I'm excited to talk about it. So as a way of kind of beginning, what is the mission that you're on, Matthew?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 3:22Rich Roll?

  Are you able to articulate that?

• 3:24Speaker 01

  That's a good question. Honestly, one of the greatest passions I have is helping people feel less alone in life, regardless of whether that means that they find a relationship or not. I think I've, in some ways, my work has been construed to be this mission to get everybody into a relationship, which has actually never been, that's never been my thing. I'm as happy when someone comes up to me in the street and says, I'm no longer in a bad relationship because of you. And I'm actually managing pretty well by myself, as I am when someone comes to me

• 4:08Speaker 01

  and says, I found the love of my life because of you. Both situations make me happy. To me, there's always been something profoundly meaningful about.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  People communing around their pain, their suffering, the things they're going through, and realizing that they're not an alien. They aren't some strange species that suffers the way they do and other people don't. And I think the more people can share authentically about those things, the less alone they feel. And the less we kind of grip onto the first person that comes along to try to make us feel like we're not alone in the world, because we naturally feel less alone in the world.

• 4:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did this become such an important thing for you to explore and share about?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  It's been an evolution. I've been doing this for seventeen years of my life now. So in the beginning, I started as a shy and introverted teen who was kind of grabbing hold of self-development books that related to how to put yourself out there more, how to be more impactful. Literally, when I was eleven years old, I was reading my dad's like books on the shelf. Because wherever we lived, whether it was a, you know, a house or, you know, a trailer, we always had books. My dad was just really into books. And I used to grab them off the shelf. And eleven, twelve years old, I grabbed How to Win Friends and Influence People.

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  Did you? I mean, that's unusual to be that young and be drawn to self-help nonfiction.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I remember being made fun of reading in free periods in school. I can't remember if it was that book or a different one, but I remember having a book like that and being made fun of for like, sitting in school, reading this book. But I genuinely had this feeling like, I didn't realize anyone else was really reading them, if you know what I mean. I just thought I discovered something on my dad's shelf that was this obscure book. I didn't realize at the time that they were big books, that these were like seminal self-development books over decades. So I just, when I read them, I got this sense of, there's these things that I get to learn here that mean that I'm not condemned.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  To being as shy as I am right now, there are ways for me to get myself out there more. So I was my first client in that respect and I enjoyed talking about the things I was learning. That was my kind of first foray was just talking to any friend who would listen as I talked about these things that were helping me.

• 6:41Rich Roll?

  And you found them helpful, they were instructive in terms of how you modified your behavior to figure out how to be more connected to other people. Like what kind of kid were you? I mean shy introverted, yes, but like what was your friend group like? Did you sense yourself as like an outcast or you know, what was that interior experience at that time?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  I wasn't unpopular. I was like someone who was friends with everyone. I wasn't like the, you know, captain of the football team type.

• 7:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Popular, you know, effortlessly cool, had it figured out. I wasn't that person. I was kind of able to be friends with everybody, cared too much, definitely what other people thought.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  It was a big part of my DNA.

• 7:21Rich Roll?

  A people pleaser, a chameleon.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Right. Perhaps I look back now and I'm like, I would have really enjoyed pursuing like drama class or, you know, doing the play. And I just, I did an audition for it. I never put myself out there for it. And I don't know if at the time it was like, cause it wasn't the done thing. If I could go back now, I would have like really more aggressively explored those things that I think I would have enjoyed more. I learned a lot from the ability to put myself out there. And I was as a teenager, how I made my money was as a DJ.

• 7:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 7:55Speaker 01

  I was like, my dad was a DJ and he owned a nightclub when I was a kid. And so I very early on, I started like, I had this ambition of doing that on a serious level. So that was, I became like the local DJ for everyone in my year that was having parties and from other schools and things like that.

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  Well, with a dad who owned a nightclub, I would imagine there was a, there was a little bit of color flowing through your life as a young person. Right? You don't own a nightclub without a little bit of chaos and you know, kind of high highs and low lows. I don't want to project, but I can only imagine.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  Well, it was, I, I don't know about high highs. Like I feel like this was a very, it wasn't a particularly glamorous place. It might have been different had it have been this, you know, like. Amazing place compared, you know, like that everyone wanted to go to. It was more of a like slightly divey, local, like high street kind of club in in England. It wasn't like some mega club in London. It was very local, but colorful, yes. And, you know, growing up around a lot of different types and kind of in a sense, I mean, probably growing up pretty hyper vigilant because I used to, from a young age, I worked in that nightclub. I mean, I was started as a pop boy, what they were called then. I don't know what they're called now, but picking up glasses.

• 9:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Loading dishwashers, but then, you know, I I ended up being the kind of warm up DJ on Friday and Saturday nights and then graduated to the DJ. So I was doing that for a few years.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  Hyper vigilant in the sense that you learn how to read people and be very aware of your environment because there's a lot of characters that are swirling around, you know, a nightclub, even if it's a a local situation, right? So as a young person, you kind of have to develop some street smarts, some hyper awareness.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a bit of a rough club. So it was like, I was a late bloomer anyway. I wasn't like a fourteen, fifteen year old who looked like an eighteen year old. You know, I was small and hadn't grown into myself yet. And so I I was in the DJ booth, sort of witnessing everything and also being treated like a child in the club. Had I not had sort of bouncers floating around that were looking after me, I was sort of pushed around a little bit like a child as well. But I I remember, I remember observing that, you know, the sort of things that would go on in that club. For a long time, I really didn't have any interest in drinking because I just had this front row seat to what drinking did to people.

• 10:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Kind of violence that, you know, it often created in people or magnified in people and even just people getting sloppy. And it's not that I didn't drink, but it just I, whereas my friends were going out and getting hammered, I was a bit less interested because I'd seen so much.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  You'd already seen a lot of that. I mean, that usually goes one of two ways, either the way it went for you or the other direction.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was an interesting few years and it definitely.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I don't know, I always had a, hypervigilance has definitely been something in my life. I even write about it in the book, you know, it's kind of followed me around that I still have to watch out for these days.

• 11:04Rich Roll?

  So you have this affinity for self-development. How does that ultimately translate into you seeing a path in a vocational sense for yourself? Yeah, okay, you like reading these books, you like sharing about them, you're learning about people, how to connect. That's very different from saying, "I want to pursue this," you know, to a level that most people wouldn't. They would read the books, implement the tools to the best of their ability, and move on with their life in whatever traditional trajectory it was already on.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I think one of the things I always, I don't know about good at, but one of the things that was, I always naturally did was try to just put myself in the vicinity of things I was enjoying. You know, I would go to free seminars in London and just, you know, kind of gatecrash these events that I really had no business being at. It's not like I had any money to put down, or I was like hungry for that information and I wanted to understand. For me, it was like, I was reading all these books and I was like, "Well, I want to go and see these things. I want to go and like experience what people go to or what they..." It put me in the room and I, I would just observe.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  And I'm a big believer in, it's not an eloquent phrase, but like stuff leads to stuff. If you just get close to the things that you're interested in, things happen. And the more I went to like free events and got involved, the more I realized, well, I could be helpful in some places, or I can, you know, just come and help other people out and be in the room. And I think I got very, very lucky in that YouTube was just starting around that time. And, or at least in any way that people were like really starting to use it. And I started making some videos that I had no idea anyone would watch. I remember coming back like six months later and realizing thousands of people had watched these videos.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  I wasn't smart enough to, to then say, "I should do this every day, I wish I had." But I didn't. I just went, oh, that's interesting. Like, people have seen these videos.

• 13:13Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  And then it probably took me another six months to make a couple and, you know, gradually I started doing more, but it was enough. It was enough that people started coming to me and saying, well, can you actually talk to me more about this? And I started out literally running tiny, tiny events for four or five people at a time who were interested in. At the time, I was talking about like how to create more opportunities in your love life. And I was talking about the things that I'd learned about how to be a bit braver and how to get out there more. And that stuff is a far cry from what I talk about today, but it was my first foray into speaking about things that had helped me and packaging ideas, which is really my,

• 13:54Speaker 01

  that's my greatest passion is taking ideas, taking things that, you know, have meant something to me and trying to package them in such a way that they land with someone maybe better than the last a hundred times they heard it.

• 14:07Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you have a gift for clear communication and taking complex ideas and distilling them down to a core idea that's relatable. Like, I think you're very good at that. So it's no mistake that those videos connected with a lot of people. I mean, your channel, you have millions of subscribers, like millions and millions of people have watched these videos. And I've watched as your arc has slowly shifted from what originally was a primary focus on women and dating with all these women clientele to just a broader aperture and spectrum around relationships more generally. And the book speaks to that. It's not necessarily for a female audience. It's for everybody, right?

• 14:51Rich Roll?

  We're all struggling in one form or another with some kind of relationship in our life, whether it's a lack of a relationship or a relationship that's challenging us professionally, romantically, et cetera. And despite there being no shortage of books on the subject matter, it's something that continually kind of persists and plaguing the human animal. Like, I don't know anybody who is an absolute master of their relationships. You know, we all have issues and I think you're providing a space where it's okay to admit that, a safe place to like, talk about like, what's not working and to kind of help find a better way forward to make them work and be more functional.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  It's such a complicated area. It's one of those areas where life rarely goes how people thought it would go. And people don't meet someone in the timeframe they thought they'd meet someone. They maybe have dreams to have a family and they find themselves in a position they never thought they'd find themselves in, which is that my biological window is closing and I haven't got someone. How did I get here? You know, or there's people that, you know, get married at 23 and then find themselves at 35 back out there again. And they're like, I just never assumed I would be in this place. Or you have the 60 year old who has spent

• 16:18Speaker 01

  the last 20 years with a narcissist and, you know, finally leaves either because they've had enough or because their life truly blows up beyond repair. And they find themselves back out there again in their 60s and going, how did this happen? It's so complicated. And then of course, you know, there's people who find themselves getting no opportunity and feeling completely invisible. There's people who have all the opportunity in the world and they can't seem to ever find any fulfillment or satisfaction. And they feel like they're broken in a different sense. Not because no one wants me, but because I could never be happy. Why am I never happy? There's just so many different things going

• 17:01Speaker 01

  on. And I think it makes it a subject where there's just never any shortage of things to talk about.

• 17:08Rich Roll?

  With respect to your point around, I never thought this would happen, or, you know, this wasn't my plan. You talk in the book about the unreliability of our instincts around relationships, particularly romantic relationships, and why our instincts are, you know, not necessarily to be trusted as worthy guides. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that and how we can think differently?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I had a boxing trainer, Martin Snow, who

• 17:38Speaker 01

  He once said to me, "Your instincts will get you killed." And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Well," he gave me this example of a riptide. And he said, "When you get pulled out to sea by a riptide, the instinct is just to swim against it as quickly as you can back to shore. But you swim against that current, you could drown."

• 17:57Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  What training will tell you is you have to swim parallel to the ocean or to the shoreline. Take a longer way to get out of the current and then swim back. He said, "In boxing, it's the same thing. When someone throws a punch at your head, the instinct is not to slip the punch or to even block, the instinct is to blink. And you go blind right in the moment where you need your sight more than ever." And it, you know, really birthed this idea of, "Well, wow, we're taught all the time that, you know, trust your instincts." But I don't know that that's the right phraseology, or, you know, maybe trust your intuition, that that might be something deeper than instincts. But instincts are often about survival. And what we learned in order to survive is very circumstance-dependent, it's very

• 18:43Speaker 01

  context-dependent. What you had to do to survive at 15 years old is different to what I had to do to survive, and it's the same for everyone else out there. We all developed our own survival instincts that were very relevant to the situation we came up in. But now we're living with those survival instincts. And we might find ourselves in a very different context in life where the equipment is no longer relevant.

• 19:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  And yet, here we are still using it because it's what we know. The instinct for some people in dating is, someone doesn't text you back, their value goes up. That's a bad instinct. But it's a very human instinct. And it's especially worse in people who have grown to think that love is unpredictable, unreliable, or that you have to earn it, or that you have to chase for it. Now, someone doesn't text you back and it becomes a trigger for... All of those instincts to fight harder for someone at the very time that fighting harder is gonna make your life a misery.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  Right, and is at cross purposes with the with the ultimate goal. I mean, we're all on some level a function of the traumas we survived and the paradigm in which we were brought up. And there's a hard wiring there that overrides our better judgment at times and triggers that instinct to say yes or no to particular relationship opportunities, right? Particularly when they're not in our interest. So somebody who was raised in a chaotic, crazy household is gonna seek out a partner who recalls that experience for them, even if they know that's not really the way that they should go. And they'll find themselves in a recurring pattern of being with partners like that

• 20:28Rich Roll?

  and playing it out until they have to get out and then just repeating it again and again and again.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and even kind of that feeling is just something that our body just knows. That chaos, I realized at a certain point in my life that I was addicted to being late for things. If I was early, I felt peaceful. And there was no rush in the peace of being early. But if you're pushing it a little bit and you're a little bit late and now you have to rush, there's a little bit of adrenaline in that, like, and now I've got to try and make it on time. Are we gonna make it like? My body was programmed for that feeling of rushing somewhere. I wouldn't necessarily say I liked it, but there was something about it that was highly

• 21:18Speaker 01

  addictive, whereas it was a lot more boring to be early.

• 21:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:22Speaker 01

  And until you are willing to kind of give up that feeling.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  You're never gonna have more peace in your life, you know, or change your values around that. The same happens to people in relationships. It's like we, they crave rushes that ultimately are really bad for them. And our nervous system just gets wired for them. So now something else comes along, you know, the, the relationship equivalent of being early, where it's peaceful and it feels strange or even boring. And people go, well, if it's, if it feels weird or if it feels boring, this can't be it. I've watched so many people discard people that actually long-term could make them very happy because they don't come with the feeling that they're used to.

• 22:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the rush, the excitement, there's sort of a trope. I'm, I'm in recovery for a long time and there's kind of a trope in, in 12-step that, you know, you see the newcomer come in and it's a hot mess, you know, but it's sexy and it's alluring and, and you know, like, oh, I should stay away from that person. But you're like, you go right towards it. You're like, I want the chaos, I want the crazy, I know it's not gonna end well, but like, it's like a moth to the flame.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  And I don't think we should ever beat ourselves up for those triggers still being there because it's really hard to shed those. I think some of them, we kind of on some level live with forever. I mean, I, I recently was around someone that just was, every time this person is in or out of my life, I'm always reminded that this person, they're not someone that really ultimately makes me feel good. And it's not a relationship of like real reciprocity. But every time I'm with this person, I fall in love all over again.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  You know, I feel like I'm basking in the glow of this feeling that they create with me. And then I come away from it and I'm like, I think this person's awesome. And then I get further and further away and I go, wait, what happened? Like it happened again. That happens in dating all the time. It happens in friendships, it happens in families. There are certain people who, you know, partly because of our wiring, partly because of The feelings they're really good at generating when we're around them. It's really hard not to feel certain things.

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  Right. That idea of the highly charismatic person who makes you feel like the only person in the world when you're in their orbit and they're focused on you. But that archetype, that person tends to shift their focus, you know, from time to time. And when that focus shifts away from you onto somebody else, it's like falling off a cliff. Right. And you keep going back because you want, there's like an addictive relationship with that kind of person because they are so charismatic. There's an allure to that, that with the right person, with the right kind of default settings can fall into that trap very easily.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it can make you feel a little crazy because you swear you feel that thing when you're with them and you could swear that you're best friends when you're with them or that you're, you know, you have this amazing romantic connection, depending on the context. And then there is nothing afterwards and you go, what is go, am I, what is wrong with me that I keep thinking there is this thing? And yeah, at a certain point, I realized when I look back on so many of my friendships, my longstanding relationships, they're often not situations where I came away going, this is the greatest person on earth. Like there was something enjoyable about meeting them, you know, maybe there was some

• 25:13Speaker 01

  areas where I was like, oh, wow, I feel like I, me and that person speak the same language. But it, it wasn't that crazy feeling of like, you know, I have to run home and tell my wife about this unbelievable person I just, you know, it's, and often when I have had that feeling, those are usually the ones that don't last. And I'm not saying that's always true, but it's how strongly I feel in the first five minutes has not been the best barometer for me.

• 25:41Rich Roll?

  It's not a reliable indicator of the viability of a real relationship with somebody.

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what are the fundamental precepts of a healthy relationship? Like if you had to define the characteristics that recur in the relationships that you've identified as healthy, like what would that list look like?

• 26:01Speaker 01

  I think us each doing what we say we're going to do is a pretty good fundamental. We all sometimes.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Fail to keep our word on something on, you know, it can be, I said I'd send that magazine article and I never did. And I, you know, we all break those promises at times. But, you know, I think when you're around someone and they say they're going to do something and then they do it, I think that's one of the most powerful indicators. Maybe not of the viability of the relationship, but certainly the integrity in the relationship. So there's a kind of reliability that words match actions. I think the ability to apologize is huge. Relationships where someone is unable to apologize are relationships where someone

• 26:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not gonna work.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  They can't learn. One of the traits associated with narcissists is often incompetence. And incompetence is born out of not being able to learn things. Because of course, if you can't admit you've done something wrong, if you can't admit you messed up, you can't actually learn from that. You can't actually do better next time. So you keep making the same mistakes. So I think that for two people to be able to grow, there has to be this humility around, I can admit fault and that I'll do better and mean it. And in relationships that don't work very well, typically, one person is unable to do that.

• 27:20Rich Roll?

  I'd never thought of narcissism in that context. That's a very interesting lens into it. It's true. You think of it as somebody who is brash and bold and blind to their own shortcomings, or just so fearful of ever admitting that they could possibly ever be wrong. But that inability to learn piece is interesting.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  It's kind of fascinating because it is, it is how we get better, right? It's that humility that allows us to get better. Instead of whatever that thing is that we're screwing up on becoming our fatal flaw, that essentially brings us down. We're able to adapt and evolve. So I think that that is a big one. Having someone who's a genuine teammate, I mean, someone who can face the problem, whatever the argument is, if you can face it together as teammates, as opposed to people on opposite sides of the table, is a really, really big one. It sounds cliche, but it's amazing how many relationships there is a kind of

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Natural competitiveness to it. Ego shows up so often and it's it's almost like neither party truly feels safe to let their guard down and just face the problem together. It's like if I let my guard down, you're gonna steamroll me. So I can't let my guard down. And it's why safety, if two people can make each other feel really, really safe, that's gonna be the foundation of an amazing relationship. I remember at the beginning of my relationship with my wife Audrey, getting jealous about something and really not clearly from the way I responded, I did not feel safe. That wasn't her fault. It was my stuff I was bringing to the table.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  But I just shut, I got jealous and then I shut down. And then I became a bit combative and then I started making it about her and this thing she said and none of what I felt able to say was I feel hurt, I feel scared, I feel a bit emasculated. I feel like I wasn't able to say any of those things because in my mind, it's like if I say these things, there goes all of my kind of attractiveness. I'm gonna get hurt here. And so I I really just shut down and I shut her out. And I can look at that thing. I could trace that back through my whole life. Like, I remember a time as a teenager,

• 29:51Speaker 01

  friends playing in the garden at home, two of my friends with my brothers and me, and getting embarrassed about something. I don't even remember what it was. I don't know if my mom came out and yelled at me in front of everyone. Whatever, I was a young teenager. I went to my room and I shut the door. And for the rest of the day, I was like, told everyone to go away, like leave me alone. And I was upset, but I couldn't tell anyone I was upset. That was too vulnerable. So I just shut everyone out. And I remember at the end of that day, my brother's coming up to me and saying, my friend Alex was over. We're all going to Alex's house now. We're gonna go and have this like sleep over there. And take it to their house and watch movies and play games.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  I told them all to go. One by one, everyone tried to get me to come and I told them to go. They all left. The next day, I remember my brothers coming home. And telling me how great of a time they had. And I remember thinking to myself.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Even though I couldn't admit it, I felt sick with the idea that there was this amazing time that happened. No one in that amazing time was my enemy. Everyone loved me. And yet I shut myself in my room. To punish everybody else. No one, no one left out but me.

• 31:10Rich Roll?

  It's shame and embarrassment over a perception of an event that actually didn't matter to anybody except yourself. And the ways in which those negative emotions shut you off from connecting with other people. And that fear, it creates that avoidant tendency, right? That can show up later in relationships. But how is that tied to the jealousy piece? Are those things related?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Because to me, it was the exact same thing of something made me feel threatened and upset. And what I did was essentially shut myself in my room. You know, I wouldn't talk to her about it, froze her out, like just. Couldn't say I got hurt just now. Instead, just became combative and. That feeling of I don't feel safe, I can't just be vulnerable, or if I am vulnerable, it's gonna make me too weak. Or undesirable or unattractive. And I think for, for me, a huge part of the process has been. Learning to accept parts of myself, learning to not shame myself.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Cause clearly I've done a lot of shaming of myself in my life. And learning that those things didn't make me unlovable. You know, I was a whole person. These were just parts of me. And for me, early in my relationship, having a partner that modeled. Acceptance for me was a very, very powerful thing. Like her accepting me in those moments and saying to me like, hey, you saying this? Because when I eventually did say, hey, this is how it really made me feel. Her saying, you telling me this doesn't make me see you as less of a man. It doesn't make you suddenly unattractive to me. I still think all of the sexy things about you are sexy. I still think all of the confident things about you are amazing.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  It just allows me to know you better and I love knowing you better. That for me was like very healing because I was like, oh my God. Like I really, at first I didn't quite believe her. But the more I was able to bring more of myself forward and realize it didn't turn her off. It didn't suddenly make me someone that wasn't attractive anymore. I didn't have to perform as this heroic version of myself all the time. The more I realized I had something very special and that these things didn't make me inherently unlovable.

• 33:41Rich Roll?

  Communicating with vulnerability in an open and honest way is always the path to freedom ultimately. But it is contingent upon trust and having, you know, a safe space in which to do it. And I think, you know, I'm always trying to model and advocate for men in particular to, you know, be more open about their emotions and to kind of lean into vulnerability. But there's a time and a place and there's a context for it, right? I think a lot of men are terrified that if they demonstrate vulnerability, particularly in the early stages of a relationship, that it's going to be weaponized against them. And that would be a context in which that trust hasn't been adequately built

• 34:24Rich Roll?

  to such a sufficient extent that there can be a place where it will be received in the spirit in which it's granted.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, all that person is, they themselves are looking for a two dimensional heroic version of a man. And they're not capable of.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Viewing you holistically.

• 34:48Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and women like want men to be vulnerable, but there's that thing in the back of your mind, it's like, do they really like, do they really want the real vulnerable version of me? Like, if I actually shared that, then it's game over.

• 35:01Speaker 01

  I was in a relationship where I had a moment of saying something I didn't think I should say, because I was afraid that it would make me unlovable. And I decided to talk about an insecurity I had. And the, what was said back to me was, that's really unat- I just find that really unattractive. And it crushed me at the time, like, it really, really affected me. In my head, I was like, already, what, basically what was said to me was my greatest fear.

• 35:32Rich Roll?

  Your fear, right. So you're not going to be quick to do, to make that mistake again.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  I was like, what? I wasn't even mad at this person. I was mad at myself. I was like, why did you do that? You knew that was a stupid thing to do. Why did you say that out loud? You've wrecked it. Like, you've just shown yourself to be unattractive and unlovable, and this person now feels this way about you. This is now going to be the truth of who you are to this person. So I was mad at myself for even saying the, for letting the words escape my mouth, when in my mind, I was like, I knew better. And it's very easy. I think a lot of guys, when they go through something like that, they learn a, a lesson that can be a very dangerous lesson to learn. And they don't give up that lesson for a very long time, if ever. And I feel,

• 36:21Speaker 01

  you know, fortunate, I suppose, in my life to have been able to let go of the original lesson I learned when that happened. It's like a lesson that could take you to the dark side, you know, it's like, this is the beginning of me becoming this other person. And to instead go the other way, but it took me a minute, because at the time, I just, I, like many guys in that position, go, this vulnerability stuff, everyone loves talking about it.

• 36:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Brené Brown, blah, blah, blah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Exactly, but this doesn't understand the context of being a man and being, but I do think that, um...

• 36:59Speaker 01

  An experience like that can also have us stereotyping women in a way that is, unfortunately, we then end up embarking on a road where we think everyone's like that. And strangely, it's like we then start attracting more of it. I really think that, I really believe the more you we have to be very careful in life. That idea of, you know, the race car tip that Mario Andretti said, "Don't look at the wall, the car will go where your eyes go." There's something so profound about that because when we focus on, "Oh, see, this is what women are like, or this is what men are like," or this, it ends up becoming the-

• 37:40Rich Roll?

  You'll cultivate that in your life.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  It's the wall we keep crashing into because we're just looking for that everywhere. And then we go online and we seek out other people who have similar stories to tell and we, you know, indulge in all of those stories and it gets our blood up even more and we start to cultivate this reality, but it's not the only reality.

• 37:59Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. One of the things that I've had to work a lot on, and I think maybe you might be able to relate to this on some level, is contingencies around my innate lovability. Like, I have this burden to bear that I've had to do a lot of work on, which is that I'm only lovable to the extent that I am achieving things or accomplishing things because I learned early and often as a young person through reward that I felt love when I did something good or won a race or got a good grade or whatever. And that math gets hardwired into your brain. And there's that sense that

• 38:43Rich Roll?

  you're not lovable just for who you are, that your lovability is calibrated to the extent that you can go and do things that make people take notice of you. You know, that then crashes up against your ability to be honest, open and vulnerable because that would be considered, you know, a weakness that would undermine your innate ability to receive love.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  To what extent do you feel like you've been able to move past that?

• 39:15Rich Roll?

  On a scale of one to 10, I would give myself, well, I have good days and bad days. I'm still definitely a striver and I have ambitions and it's still a challenge. You know, I think, oh, if I just do this thing or I accomplish this goal or I blah, blah, blah. Then, you know, it's like in the back of my, oh, my dad will say this and my, you know, still chasing that. I'm turning 58 this year, Matthew, you know, and it doesn't control me in the way that it used to because I have self-awareness around it and I have tools, but it still comes up. You know, it still comes up and when I find myself in a workaholic state or, you know, really buckled down or kind of out of sorts about a goal that I'm chasing, you know, I

• 40:00Rich Roll?

  have to do like a whole inventory around that and it's ability to persist is quite astonishing.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  I've found the same thing. Yeah. I really related, I was listening to you in the last few months, one of your podcasts where you were talking about the kind of PTSD of how hard you work and how hard that is to truly let go of. I really relate to that. One of the things I have been coaching for many years, I talk about it in the book, is this idea of there being three levels of confidence. The surface level is how we come across to other people, how we're perceived. The second level, which is deeper, is the identity level.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And I see that as like a matrix of squares, like a tic-tac-toe box of squares, which each square represents an area that we derive confidence from. And for so many people, when I get them to draw out their matrix, even crudely in the space of five minutes, like where do you get most of your sense of identity, significance, value from?

• 41:17Speaker 01

  The squares never look uniform. What tends to happen is there's this big square that dwarfs other squares. Uh huh. And in their mind, it's their greatest asset, but it's simultaneously their greatest vulnerability. And it's the square that if something happens to that, has the potential to kind of dissolve their identity overnight. Right. And there's also a deeper level of confidence, which is the core, but on the identity level at least, diversifying our sources of confidence and where we get our sense of significance and worth, I think is really, really valuable.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I started putting stock just in my ability to just write. Like I, I thought, you know what? This is a really cool skill. It can never go away. I, I can keep using it or maybe it could go away if my brain deteriorates. But you know, long past the point of looks fading. I can just sit with a pen and paper and I can write. I can, you know, my body can break down and I can write. But it might be something else, you know? It might be my relationships with my family and my friends. To what extent do I look at those and think, this is one of the great assets, if not the great asset of my life, is these relationships? I, I think so much of our kind of myopia when it comes to where we think our value comes from,

• 42:43Speaker 01

  comes from not kind of shining a light on these other things that in many cases are already in existence in our life. That have tremendous value, but we've not focused on the value that they bring. Or even if we don't have those other squares right now, I always encourage people to say, what would diversification look like if you started today? If you said a year from now, I want there to be one or two squares more in my matrix that are a significant source of confidence outside of this thing that I've come to rely on for 90% of my worth. What would that diversification look like?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  How could I start investing in a couple of squares that maybe don't exist right now? To me, it's fascinating. Once people start to, even just the awareness that there is this square in your life that has become this mutated muscle, that you've, you are working to the point of, you know, it breaking down. And it's also become your greatest liability because if anything happens to that muscle, there's no other support system around it.

• 43:54Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  To uphold it.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  So how are you doing that in your own life? Like, what is the reflection that you've had for yourself around this?

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Getting married.

• 44:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, getting married, yeah. The relationship expert finally got married. Says the guy who's been with his wife for 23 years.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  That was a really big one for me. It was like, I think, really knowing there's this home to come back to in this human being that I love sharing life with, that we're together regardless of what I achieve or how well this book does, or how well the next YouTube video does. Or, you know, that there's someone who doesn't care. And there's a situation that really isn't, aside from our ability to eat, doesn't rely on any of those things. Even outside of that, I try to take pleasure in other things that really don't have anything to do with this. Or frankly, even if you just took it in like a business context,

• 44:54Speaker 01

  it comes down to, you know, how do I measure my success? Because it might be the old way was, you know, how big is everything? How big is that YouTube video? How many views am I accumulating? How many followers do I have? How many people are in this program? But what was driving me with this book, when I was sitting in a room and writing it on my own, was something very different. Like, for me, I was like, I am. This isn't gonna be me trying to create a YouTube video this week because the schedule says I have to create a YouTube video this week. And so I have to have to figure out an idea, something I think is gonna help people and then get it out there. And, you know, maybe it's okay, it's good enough, but I don't love it. This was my

• 45:38Speaker 01

  chance to sit and do something where I went, oh, this is, I'm just gonna make something that I'm intensely proud of. And regardless of how well it does, and of course, I wanna do well, of course, I have an ego about it. But at the heart of it was, I wanna make something that I'm truly proud of. So I think you can diversify your matrix even within your biggest square, in a way that robs that of its power in the same way.

• 46:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think for me, it's really detaching from the connection itself between what I do professionally and how I feel about myself, or how that relates in any way to my, my deservability around love. And I think what it's done, admitting that it's like, it is like a superpower, it's also this Achilles heel, to your point, it's prevented me from growing in other areas of my life. It's, it's interfered with my friendships, it makes me say no to experiences that, you know, I would have enjoyed, or would have, you know, been nourishing to my life, or, you know, it's undermined

• 46:51Rich Roll?

  the very thing that it's set up to seek, which is greater connection with other people. And I can rationalize it and justify it, because a couple of times a week, I come here and I sit across from someone like yourself, and I have something that's, you know, deeply connective. And I have my marriage and my kids, and, you know, my, those relationships are the most important thing to me. And I spend a lot of time nurturing them, etc. But I think that allows me to then persist in a level of denial around the other experiences that I'm missing because of this default setting.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I relate to that so much, because that's my autopilot, too.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  I have like a journal that I keep and it's both a kind of physical journal. It's also a note in my phone. It's also a note on my computer. It lives in all different places. But I have what I call my truths and like right now I'm having the best time. Like right now, I'm having a great time with Rich Roll, having an amazing conversation. And I don't care about anything else right now. I don't care. I'm not thinking of whether things are growing or how things are doing. I just am really enjoying this. And to me, that gives me access to a kind of truth. It's like, oh, this is what matters to me.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  It's like beyond all of the stuff that my ego gets involved in when it hijacks everything. It's like, this is, this is what really matters. This is what really brings me meaning. This is the kind of thing I really love doing. And that truth, if I can lock into it and write it down somewhere where I can access it regularly, it becomes a kind of instructional manual for living a better life. There is a Winston Churchill quote that goes, "People occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing happened."

• 48:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  It's a really good line because I think about that with all kinds of like truths in our life. I do this with all sorts of things. I went on a hike with my brother like two weeks ago and my brother just moved to LA. I haven't seen enough of him. I've been in the middle of this book craziness and we were like, let's just go for a hike. So we got up in the morning, went for a hike. At the end of it, I had this moment of, oh my God, what I just did for the last two hours ticked so many boxes. Conversation, the two of us weren't distracted by our phones. We were spending quality time. We were in the sunshine. That felt good. We were moving our bodies. That felt good. We were in nature. That felt good. It was like it ticked all of these boxes. And for me in that moment, I go, okay, I'm going to write that down as a truth.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  As specific as this, me seeing a friend while hiking is one of the most rewarding things I can do.

• 49:39Rich Roll?

  But it's insane that you have to write that down.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't trust my brain. Maybe it's too derogatory a way to say it, but I kind of like make peace with how.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Pathetic I can be where I like need these like very specific things to remind me of my operating system and how Matthew works and what makes him work really well and what doesn't because the truth is anytime Rich that I've not done that and I go on to some kind of autopilot of like where is my brain taking me well probably the discover feed on Instagram like probably some place that just makes me feel bad after an hour of doing it like I do need those things that remind me and maybe not everyone does but for me those truths that I have have become like a an operating manual for the kind of life

• 50:34Speaker 01

  that makes me feel really, really good.

• 50:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that. That's good. We were talking earlier about the fundamental precepts or the foundational elements that are important to establishing a healthy relationship and I was thinking about what happens in the early stages of a romantic relationship where it's nothing but projection. Both parties are showing up, they're shining the best version of who they are or some facsimile of who they actually are because you know they want it to work and they are trying to say the things that they think are going to make the most positive impact on the other person and there's a certain you know half-life to that experience before it all kind of

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  falls away and these two people discover who they're actually in a relationship with. So for somebody who is in that kind of halo period where everything is very heightened and there isn't necessarily the level of candor and veracity that you're going to find in a in a real relationship down the line, how can somebody look for those important things like trust, honesty, accountability that you were talking earlier about?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Firstly, by experiencing more contexts with that person. I think we have to slow down a little bit the way we make our mind up about things in dating because it is very easy to Be on a date with someone, that person has a massive effect on you, just being around them, and then you go away and the way you feel becomes the barometer of how important this thing is, which is really dangerous, because there are many people who will be really bad for your life that can make you feel the greatest feelings. It's always important to remember on a date, we're not measuring someone's character, we're measuring their impact.

• 52:32Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Character is consistent, and consistency can only be seen over time, over multiple contexts. So, at the very least, as a baseline, ask yourself, how many contexts have I seen this person in? How many different experiences have I had with them? You know, are we always at dinner together? Have we done something, have we just hung out regularly? What's it been like after a stressful day at work? How do we connect in that moment? How has it been when I've not been on my A-game or they haven't been on theirs? You know, do we have patience with that version of each other? Is that version of each other tolerable? Looking at whether we can handle each other on our worst, you know, days. I think it's

• 53:18Speaker 01

  a falsely attributed quote, but there's a quote attributed to Marilyn Monroe, which is, "If you can't handle me at my worst, you don't deserve me at my best," which I always felt like was a mandate for abuse, because there are people that at their worst are truly terrible.

• 53:34Rich Roll?

  Right. It's basically saying, like, you need to be able to manage me when I'm horrible.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:40Rich Roll?

  And if you can't do that, then goodbye.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Then you don't deserve me when I'm nice.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, it's not, that's not a great message.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  It's not a great message. But, in a way, relationships are defined by how do we show up when we're at our worst? When I'm struggling, can I still find a way to be kind or to apologize if I haven't been? Are we still good at negotiating those moments together? What's the half-life of an argument when we have one? You know, do we go cold on each other for a week? That's not sustainable. How do we resolve things together? I think so much of it is, is paying attention to those moments, and to not decide someone is the be-all, end-all, that this person is like the person you're supposed to be with. If all of these moments are showing you the wrong things...

• 54:30Speaker 01

  If you had five great dates and then they disappeared for a month, that should adjust the story of how perfect they are. But for a lot of people, that does not, there's no recalibration that happens. This person remains the right person for them. It's just that they haven't contacted me for a month. But I would look at that and go, well, this is by definition, the person who's right for us is the person who is a consistent presence in our life. Is the person who's still there in a meaningful way that makes our life better six months from now. If someone is failing that test, then what's happening with us that we are still deciding that this is the right person for us?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  If only they could realize it.

• 55:17Rich Roll?

  Conversely, that person might be signaling to you something that you need to look at within yourself. Like if that person suddenly stops calling you back, instead of projecting onto that person, they're bad, or here we go again, or what have you. Maybe look within and try to do an inventory of what might have led to that. I think a lot of people, and you're the expert, so you tell me, get involved with other people in relationship or seek out partners because they think that person is going to solve some problem that they have with who they are. They're trying to up level, they're aiming higher. And if I can just get with that person, then I will be okay.

• 56:00Rich Roll?

  Or this problem that I have will disappear. And that gets projected onto the other person as if this person is the salvation or the cure to the thing that ails that person. And a lot of people go throughout their entire lives, like repeating this pattern time and time again, and then end up alone and disillusioned and depressed because they couldn't square that equation. And they never look within and say, if I want to get that person that I aspire to be with, maybe I should become the kind of person that would want to be with that type of person.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yes. I had someone say to me just this morning, what was the question? It was, what can I do?

• 56:46Speaker 01

  With this person that keeps hiding their feelings for me. They have, apparently they have these feelings, but they keep hiding these feelings.

• 56:54Rich Roll?

  The avoidant personality type?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  I suppose that's what this, this person was getting at, is that this person is an avoidant who hides their feelings. But that introspection you're talking about would turn the lens back on us and say, what is, what is happening with you? That you see that as a green light? That someone is hiding their feelings? Not, you didn't say the person's a little bit shy. And so I need to come forward a little more. But this person is hiding their feelings from you. They have really strong feelings, but they're hiding them. Why is that in any way interesting to you? Why doesn't that signal to you, oh, this person is emotionally unavailable in some respect? This isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for someone who is very much available.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  And that's the question we often don't ask ourselves. You know, we, we talk about a relationship that we were, you know, spent two years in and we were anxious the whole time and it made us really unhappy. And, you know, usually the first thing people do when they go to therapy or a coach after that is say, why was this person like this? But at some point, the question always comes back. Why did you stay in a relationship for two years?

• 58:06Rich Roll?

  What is it about you that is attracted to this archetype?

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, why did you never check in with your feelings and go, this really feels awful to me? Why, why would I be in a situation that consistently feels awful to me? Notwithstanding what you said, that sometimes we do have to look at ourselves and say, what's, is there something in my behavior that is unproductive? And I think one of the hardest things about life in general is that it's really, really hard to get that vantage point on yourself. Unless you've got friends or people in your life brave enough.

• 58:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  To tell you like, this is how you're coming across or hey, this behavior is hurting you. You know, I had recently someone who was upset that someone.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Didn't give them attention the night before. Basically wanted to punish that person for the next three days by, you know, saying, "I'll see them in four days' time, given the way they were the other night." And my response is, that pattern right there, the kind of like, "I want to punish this person for that," that's hurting you. Because there's a complete lack of vulnerability in that. It's certainly not communicating anything you want to communicate to this person. It's not bringing you closer. The punishing them that you're doing, for a healthy person, they're going to run a mile if they feel punished because they were a bit quiet last night. Right?

• 59:38Speaker 01

  So, of course, you keep attracting unhealthy people and pushing away healthy people with that behavior. But it's hard to get that vantage point on ourselves because we feel so validated in pushing someone away like that.

• 59:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, listen, no one wants to look inward and do the heavy lifting of trying to understand why they keep doing some stupid thing time and time again. It's much easier and more fun to point the finger at the other person and say, "Look what a dirtbag that person is."

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  Right? Without thinking, "Well, why am I, once again, involved with a dirtbag?" But red flags, I think, are easy to rationalize and hard to truly understand when you're in the throes of the intoxication phase of an early romantic relationship. Red flags might be popping up here and there. "Oh, danger zone, maybe I shouldn't do this." But the intoxication, there's so many other things that are alluring about this person that you're willing to overlook those things. So, what do you say to the person who is prone to that? Like, how many red flags do they have to see? Which red flags are important? When is it worth pursuing anyway?

• 1:00:48Rich Roll?

  And when do you need to kind of pick up sticks and run?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  I'm convinced that our obsession with spotting red flags is our inability to trust ourselves.

• 1:00:59Rich Roll?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  If we trust ourselves to...

• 1:01:05Speaker 01

  Get out when we see something that truly is bad. And not to get wrapped up with someone to the extent that we now never get out. Cause that's what a lot of people are afraid of is if I get in too deep, if I get past that point where I really like someone I know myself, I will stay and I will masochistically endure all forms of torture in this relationship. So it's like, I don't even trust myself to like get too close. Cause when I do, I get steamrolled. So I am gonna try from a distance to spot any possible threat before it even occurs.

• 1:01:44Rich Roll?

  As a defense mechanism that then insulates you from any kind of real intimacy.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and stops you from getting to the level of intimacy where you no longer trust that you'll be able to get out. And so we have to be able to trust ourselves to be able to get out when we need to. I also think that we don't trust ourselves to have hard conversations with people, to like actually speak our mind about things. So if we can just spot red flags from a distance and talk to our friends and they go, yeah, that's a red flag, then we never really have to have a conversation with anybody. I like to, apart from the particularly egregious things that just are a sign of abuse or serious disrespect or bad behavior. A lot of things that show up as like possible red flags,

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  I almost like to see as amber lights. Like the only way that you really know what it is, is by treating it as an amber light, an invitation to a conversation. What happens when you bring up the fact that what they did made you feel strange? Or you got a little nervous because of this? Or it made you feel uncomfortable because of that? What happens when you do that? You're gonna learn a lot about the person, the relationship, their intentions. Even just their ability to handle you saying something like that.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  Right. How do they handle negative feedback? Are they going to gaslight you? Are they going to tell you, you're wrong? Are they going to own it? Or are they going to say, thank you, let's have that conversation. That's interesting that you felt that way. How did I make you feel? What could I do differently that would prevent you from feeling that way? Or I did that thing and I didn't realize that it had that impact on you.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  100%.

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  You know, you can always say to someone, look, maybe it's partly my stuff because I've had a lot of, you know, pain in this area. And you can bring, you can bring balance to it. But the ability to have that conversation is really going to determine, you know, if they do gaslight you, if they do shame you for even saying that thing, like, I can't believe you even said that. Or, you know, why are you making it so difficult? Or whatever it is.

• 1:03:51Rich Roll?

  Amber goes red.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Amber goes red. Or amber goes green. If you're like, oh, that was actually a productive conversation. So in general, I really believe we all need to get better at having difficult conversations. They're hard conversations for a reason. It is just excruciating.

• 1:04:21Rich Roll?

  So let's talk a little bit about how to do that. How do you have those hard conversations? What are some strategies around healthy, open communication? In essence, like, how do you have a fight? Like, how do you fight in a healthy way or disagree or argue? Like, if you're going to be in it for the long haul with someone, there will be conflict. I think there's this idea like, oh, if you have arguments, like, there's something wrong with your relationship. Like, if you're really in an honest thing with another human being, there's going to be flare ups. You guys are going to disagree and you got to have a strategy or a way or a construct for how you manage those disagreements so that you can get to the other side and move forward.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  I think the starting point is to have a different framing for difficult conversations in your own mind. One of them can be, I don't really know what I have with anybody until we have our first fight. Like, I, I don't know the strength of this relationship. I don't know how robust it is. You don't have to say fight. You could say challenging conversation, whatever it may be, area of disagreement. But that's a universal truth. I feel like even when we hire someone in our company, I feel like until we have our first moment of like, I don't like how you showed up today, or that, that thing you did wasn't okay, or until we have our first moment like that, I might know that they're great at their job, but as a relationship, people can be great at their jobs in a company,

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  but the relationship isn't robust. The relationship isn't going to stand the test of time. You have a very talented person. The first sign there's a flare up is going to be out the door. You just don't know. Until you can have that moment, you have no idea how safe either of you are in that relationship. And the same is true the other way around. You don't know how safe you are with your boss until your boss kicks your ass over something and you realize that the next day it's water under the bridge. And everyone's moved on already and you go, oh, that wasn't a sign I was about to get fired. My anxiety just flared up and told me that everything, my whole career is on the line now. But actually, no, it was just someone who's cares enough to be honest with me. So that framing of

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  my relationships are going to get better if I can do this. And understanding that there is, there are going to be short-term consequences to that. Now firstly, I think it's pointing to the, the behavior or the challenges, the issue as opposed to them and their character. And I think the, the less you can bring ego into an argument, the better. You know, look rightly or wrongly, this is how what you did made me feel. I could be wrong about that. Maybe you didn't intend it, but this thing you did upset me and let me tell you why. Think taking it out of the realm of you're a bad person, you know, this is a sign that you're selfish.

• 1:07:07Rich Roll?

  Depersonalize it. It's the behavior. It's not the person.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then recognize that anytime you have a hard conversation with someone, with anyone in your life, sometimes it's glorious. That person's just really good with feedback. They hear you, they adapt, they, everything's just great. And other times when you show up differently in a relationship, there will be a, what I think of as a teething period.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  And that's something that often someone will kind of test whatever standard or boundary you've put in place to see if it's real. And a lot of us, when we have a boundary or a standard that's tested, it makes us freak out, it makes us scared, it makes us feel vulnerable or rejected, or it's confrontation and we don't like confrontation, so we revert back to whatever we were okay with yesterday. And that's the part we have to get through is the teething period. The way we do that is whatever hard conversation we're having with someone, it can't be a tactic

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  that we're coming to try to like, get you, I'm trying to employ a tactic to get you to do something different. It has to be a standard of a kind of culture that we're trying to create for our relationship, our business, our friendship, that is really, really important to us. And the culture is the thing you're fighting for. You're not fighting this person, you're coming to them with a culture that's really important to you. I want this to be the culture of our relationship. That has to be a standard, because the standard is what keeps you strong. Otherwise, you'll never get through the teething period. Someone will resist you and you'll revert back.

• 1:08:54Rich Roll?

  I'm trying to understand what this idea of a standard is. What would be an example of that?

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  It could be that you're constantly saying yes to what someone's asking of you, you've fallen into people pleaser mode with someone, where you're constantly like giving more than they're giving. And in that moment, it's become apparent to you that this isn't making you feel good. Maybe you realize this is a pattern in your life, that you go into people pleasing mode. And this is true, I mean, people are going to resonate with this with long-term family members. The first time you say

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  Hey, I don't want to do that today. Or, no, I'm not going to do that. That is going to meet some kind of resistance, especially from someone who's known you a long time. Because you're taking away something they're used to. And when you're taking away something someone's used to, usually the first response is not, okay, let me adapt. The first response is, can I make you go back?

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  Sure, sure. But you have to take ownership of the level of at which you were complicit in creating that paradigm, right?

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  Like, you were the people pleaser.

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  So you established this pattern. So you can't be angry when you say, I don't want to do that anymore because the other person has acclimated to that, right?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  So I think when you come into a conflict zone or you need to have that kind of hard conversation, I've always found it helpful to first do an inventory of your own behavior so you can kind of own your side of the street and identify like what things that you did that created this situation that you're uncomfortable with. And I think when you lead with that in a hard conversation, it tends to deflate the intensity of it and depersonalize it to say, hey, listen, we need to talk about this. Here's what I've done to create this. Like, I'm not blaming you. I'm taking ownership for my side of the dynamic that is now problematic that I want to address and talk about.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  I love that, yeah. I think it's tremendously important what you just said.

• 1:11:00Rich Roll?

  One thing that my wife and I are very good at is not leaving the room until we've come to some kind of resolution. And we're really good with a short half-life. Like, even if tempers flare and we get into it or whatever, we're able to reset really quickly. And I think that's a huge piece in why we've been able to stay together. Like, we don't hang on to any of it. Like, we work through it. But I also know other people for whom staying in the room until you get to the other side of it becomes counterproductive. Like, they need to retreat to their corners to kind of collect themselves or get into a better frame of mind

• 1:11:42Rich Roll?

  before they can return to the conversation and address it in a more productive way. So this must come up. In your counseling?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's about knowing yourself. I think what are the things that allow me to calm down my nervous system in that situation? Cause it just gets hijacked. And then, once it gets hijacked, you

• 1:12:02Rich Roll?

  You're off to the, it's a roller coaster to disaster.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  Right. It's what do I need in these moments to take myself away from the edge? And I, I, I think we don't often do enough of communicating that to the person we're with. In general, like, hey, just so you know, one of the reasons I found it really hard to calm down yesterday is because of this. And when I get in those modes, I know then I'm not thinking straight. Hey, even if you just reach out and grab my hand. Like, just in those moments, it helps bring me out of that place. I think sometimes we don't give each other enough of an instruction manual for what we need ahead of time. So that that person knows, because there's tons about all of us that's irrational.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Like, sometimes we just need someone to come and do something that helps take us, break our state. Telling them what that is, is really, really valuable. Also recognizing what are the things our partner needs to do in that moment? Like, they may need to go for a five minute walk. And if you're an anxious type, in the beginning, someone saying to you at the peak of an argument, I need to go for a five minute walk.

• 1:13:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're not gonna wanna let them go.

• 1:13:15Speaker 01

  No, that's like, for you, that's the worst thing they could do.

• 1:13:18Rich Roll?

  The discomfort of this not being resolved is overwhelming.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I think if they come back and they help you feel safe when they come back and you start, your body starts to learn like, oh, the five minute walk doesn't mean they're gonna come back and break up with me. It actually is just they're different to me.

• 1:13:38Rich Roll?

  So much of this tracks back to being clear about what your needs are and being able to articulate those to the person you're in a relationship with. In a capsule in which it's received with respect, like it's understood, like here's, here are the things that like set me off and here are the needs that are important to me that I need you to, you know, think about and meet. And likewise, the other person doing the same. And the more you can keep those needs top of mind and understand, you know, their valence for that other person. I think that's a huge. A huge piece in establishing a dynamic that's conducive to healthy conflict resolution.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Especially if you're doing all of that in a context where you're communicating all of that in the context of safety, like, I'm not going anywhere.

• 1:14:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm not leaving, I'm not packing my bag, right.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are just things that really help me. And I think one of the most beautiful things that any of us can do in our relationships is anticipate each other's needs. The more you know about them, if you've got a partner that you know needs some alone time, it's like masterful if certain days you can be like, hey, you haven't had any alone time in a minute.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  Like, why don't I go and see my friends today? And like, you can just chill and do catch up and do some reading or do the things you want to do. Like, that ability to not only know each other's needs but anticipate them, I think is one of the most beautiful things you can ever do for a person.

• 1:15:11Rich Roll?

  What do you think men miss about women and women miss or misunderstand about men? Have you distilled any wisdom?

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  I've noticed that women underestimate how sensitive men are. There is a, I think, a perception that men don't feel, they don't get hurt the way that women do. So, a lot of women will complain about a guy that ghosts, or a guy that fades, or doesn't text them back, and how hurtful that is. But if they do the same thing to a guy, they don't realize that it's hurting him the same way that it would hurt her in that situation. And I think there's a lot behind that. But I do think women often underestimate how sensitive guys are and how much they get hurt. You know what's really an amazing cathartic moment

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  is when I get a guy at one of my events, stand up and ask a question that every woman in that event has asked at some point. And the women are sometimes blown away by the fact that, oh, my God, that question was our question. And they're like, I didn't realize guys even felt that. So I think that's a misconception sometimes. From the male side, what comes to mind immediately is just, and actually, this is something that happens on both sides, but men, once certain guys who have been hurt get an idea in their head about what women are like, suddenly it's

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  like, women are this amorphous blob that all behave and act the same way.

• 1:16:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  You know, they all just want a guy who's powerful, and they all just want a guy who has money, and they all just want a guy who's six feet tall, and it's such an uninteresting way of looking at the world. And it's such a-

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  The reductive evolutionary argument, like, they want a high net worth person who they feel safe with, that they could mate with, et cetera, like, all of those kind of tropes.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And they want all these forms of traditional masculinity and strength, and can you beat someone up? And it's like, it just so ignores huge numbers of fascinating people out there who don't fall into any of those molds on an individual level.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Right. But it drives a lot of men to pursue those goals because of that, you know, very idea, right? It's so interesting and confusing, this dating world, which I'm not part of and haven't been for a very long time. From the male perspective, I talk to a lot of, a lot of men and a lot of friends of mine who are in the dating pool, who find themselves confused around how to behave. Like, I know I need to be, I should be strong, but I should be vulnerable. And like, is it okay? Like, how much, like, how do I approach a woman without being creepy, especially in 2024, and make them feel safe and do it

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  in a way that's gentlemanly? Without, you know, it's like, all these sort of very fine lines that need to be parsed around behavior, that I think confuse and derail a lot of men. Meanwhile, I know a ton of just amazing women who are very successful and cool and beautiful and- And just to me are incredibly desirable people and they complain they can't find any decent guys out there. I mean, you must get this question all the time.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  All the time. I think often those ideas, like some of the things you said on the male side, I think that they're kind of misnomers. Like, there are people out there, you don't need to tread on eggshells around trying to be this kind of ideal of what women want in a man. In a sense, what you want to avoid is people who want that ideal of a man, because I would argue that they themselves have a lot of work to do in making space for what men are actually like and how complex they really are and how much acceptance goes into

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  learning who a man really is and how many vulnerabilities and flaws and weaknesses he has. I think it's probably true that by a decent number of men, I'm accused of being naive when it comes to the male side, because I've spent so much time working with women that I'm kind of not seeing all the bad behavior that goes on on the female side as well. And there's probably some truth to that. But, look, I'll give you an example. This wasn't bad behavior, but it was a funny example. I was on a radio show recently and the host was telling me about a guy that she met on a dating app who she said, what did she say? He invited her for coffee and then she was like, yeah, until that point, it was all

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  going well. And then she said, yeah, let's go for coffee. And he said, and pancakes? And she was like, uh, let's just go for coffee. And I guess he said it again, like, and pancakes? Maybe he thought he was being funny, like.

• 1:20:27Rich Roll?

  Right. He was making a stupid joke that didn't land.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  Right. But that was like, from her side, she was like.

• 1:20:33Rich Roll?

  This guy's a weirdo.

• 1:20:34Speaker 01

  I'm out. And I was like, but, but wait, like, until that point, it's not like he had done anything egregious. It's not like he had done anything terribly wrong. It just, in that moment, it's like he did something that just, for her, was like, and look, maybe that's female intuition and she knew and there was no point going any further. But I have to look at that and go, that kind of thing is responsible for why a lot of guys feel like, if I just send one.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  Well, everything's so loaded, right? So that was in text, not in conversation. Had they met in person, maybe the inflection on the voice or something like that, it wouldn't have landed in the same way. But it is loaded in that sense. And when you say, "Well, the men should sort of be who they are and kind of this is what they're looking for," and all of that has to be communicated in an instant on a dating app so that the person hesitates before they swipe. So that has to be represented visually and in some kind of brief text form that's gonna land with the person who's seeing it. So it's a setup, really. Like, who can actually accomplish that? And the more intentional you are about accomplishing that, the further you are from the goal

• 1:21:48Rich Roll?

  of being authentic, right? Like, I don't know how, you know, one can successfully navigate like these apps and try to, you know, find real people behind the veneer of how they present themselves. And I think it's tough all the way around. I mean, I had Scott Galloway in here the other day, and he's run these statistics where he's discovered that the bottom 80% of male Tinder users are competing for the bottom 22% of women, that males between 18 and 30 are reporting no sex in the last year. That that stat has gone from 10% up to 28%. And I know a lot of men who complained that that are not like high net worth and ballers

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  or whatever, and they they sort of complain like, "Well, the women have really no incentive to choose them." Of course, they're looking at that 1% with perhaps a level of entitlement that they shouldn't have, like, "Well, shouldn't I be able to date that person?" You know, and it's like, "Well, that person's never gonna choose me." And they have an endless rotation of men who are always ready to... So those people are not incentivized to invest in any one particular person. They're just gonna scroll forever, searching for some idealized perfection.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:02Rich Roll?

  So this is the dynamic, right?

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  If I describe that accurately, I'm sure there's a lot more to it, of course.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  No, and I've been on various kind of podcasts where people who have delved much more into that have like, you know, "I hear all these things." When you listen to enough of it, it can present what feels like a hopeless picture. There's people out there who believe that women only date across and above. And... If you look at that over time, if you were to take that as true and look at that over time, then you would have a hopeless picture if you look at the fact that women are earning more and more and more, rising up the food chain and companies,

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  or at the top of the food chain and companies. And if the guys aren't keeping pace, then all of a sudden, if I'm going across and up, there's going to be less and less people across and up.

• 1:24:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  When I look around on an empirical level at people I know, I know plenty of people who are in incredibly happy relationships where she earns more than he does, where she's got a more high-powered job. It's not that the guy doesn't have any of the, you know, what we associate with typical kind of masculine traits. He's just not looking at her going, she earns more money than me, therefore I can't be in this relationship. So I just don't think the world is that simple. I do think that entitlement thing factors into it of like-

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  How come I can't get the person who's at the very, you know, who's the most desirable on this platform of, you know, tens of millions of people?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  And then I'm mad because that person's being as hierarchical about this as I am.

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

  Right. There's, yeah, there's a duplicity in the whole thing.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, people miss the hypocrisy in that all the time.

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  I get to be hypocritical, but they can't, right?

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we have to say, if, yeah, if someone's got all these choices, then what has us breaking through? And I also can't help but think, I'd be scared if money or power was the thing that enabled me to break through. I don't want that to be the thing that would allow me to break through in any relationship. If that's what meant that you thought I was something, or that you thought I was worthy of a relationship, then we're starting on grounds that I don't like in the first place. So I sometimes think we should look at these things as like these reverse filters of, if you're dating in LA and someone excluded you because you don't have enough followers-

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  Then, as far as I'm concerned, you dodged a bullet.

• 1:25:53Rich Roll?

  It was a gift, right?

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  But we don't see it that way because we feel some sense of deficit about who we are, or what we haven't achieved, or where we're not in life. We're then projecting that onto, you know, someone else. And I'm not saying there aren't really people out there who are measuring those things. Of course there are. I wouldn't want one of those people to begin with.

• 1:26:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and anybody who is pursuing power and material wealth for the sole purpose of escalating the pyramid of the dating paradigm is not going to be somebody that you're going to want to be with either, right? Like, if that's their primary motivation.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  Like, if they're earning money so that they can be more attractive.

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  Right, so they can flash the watch on the dating profile.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  And you see that. You see how people value themselves by the things they post, by the pictures they post, by the... You can very visually see what someone's biggest square in their identity matrix is by what they talk most about, what they post most about, what they represent the most visually. Those things really stand out. When we come to things from an insecure place, we look at all of those things and we just think, "They're really desirable." Instead of when we come from a place of having really strong values, looking at those things and going, "This is maybe indicative of a person who doesn't share my values."

• 1:27:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. On that point about the endless scroll in search of perfection, like implicit in that is this idea that there is that one person who exists, and I'm not going to settle until I find that person. And it reminds me of something that this woman, Ellen Langer, said on the podcast, who's a professor of psychology at Harvard. And she talks a lot about...

• 1:27:44Rich Roll?

  Letting go of making the right decision. In other words, make a decision and stop spending a lot of time on regret. Oh, should I have done this? Should I have done that? Would have been better if I'd done this. And instead, be decisive and then make the decision right. And I think that that overlaps with something that you talk a lot about, which is there is no one perfect person. Ultimately, you know, you want to invest in somebody and make that person the person, right? Like, you need to choose wisely. Like, the person you decide to life partner with is the most important decision you might ever make. But once you're all in, then it's up to the two of you to, you know, create the best

• 1:28:27Rich Roll?

  version of what that relationship can look like.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Someone has to have, in a sense, the kind of raw materials, as do we, for making a great relationship. And those are some of the things we talked about earlier. The values that we bring to the relationship and the way we show up, our ability to have conversations that we really enjoy. And, you know, it's not like we're going and expecting them three months later to have a personality transplant. But if we have those raw materials with someone, then it has the ability to become something truly extraordinary. But it doesn't start that way necessarily. And that, I think, is the mistake.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  The language of settling is really interesting language because we often think of settling as like settling for something, like being short-changed. We think of it in a negative sense. But if you talk about settling on something, there's a very different connotation. Settling on, there's something empowering and decisive about that.

• 1:29:33Rich Roll?

  You've made a decision. There's agency in that.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  A decision, a commitment. Commitment is an interesting word. There's two definitions of commitment. One is obligation that restricts freedom of action, which can describe a lot of avoidant people have subscribed to that definition of commitment. But another definition of commitment is dedication to a cause.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  And there's something about settling on that implies the latter definition of commitment, dedication to a cause. And settling on something and really leaning into it is what gives it the potential to be something truly great. Unlike any relationship you've ever had, not necessarily because this person is a thousand times better than any person you've ever been with. They may well be, you know, for you, by the way you define it on another level. But what's going to take it to a whole different level again is what you build together. And I sometimes think it's useful to take it outside of the context of relationships where it feels very charged and we have all of that romantic notion around love at first sight and finding someone and just feeling it and knowing.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  I think those are really damaging concepts as well. Whenever we hear from people like, no, when you know, you know, you just have that, you know. A lot of people don't have that immediately for any number of reasons, but it doesn't mean they're not going to create something extraordinary with this person.

• 1:30:56Rich Roll?

  Or they measure the current state of their relationship that's been going on for a while against that intoxicating state of the early romance period.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is really, really dangerous and deeply unfair to the person you're with is to measure desire that arises out of a sense of mystery for someone that you inherently are incredibly familiar with. And that is the natural course of a relationship is that you become incredibly familiar. But if you take a career, who has a career that starts as just extraordinary? Usually you have something that's kind of interesting and then by these accretions, it grows into something, you keep sculpting it into something that's more and more like the thing that you want it to be.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  When I walked in here, I walked in and I was like, wow, this studio is amazing. But you didn't start in this studio. You know, you've over time turned this into something that's more and more like the thing that you're like, this is amazing. And you'll keep doing that and it'll keep getting better for that reason. But we think relationships, it's like we find something that's extraordinary and then we just have to keep it.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  I think that's also the reason a lot of people are really unhappy in their careers is because they think that a job is supposed to feel like that on day one, instead of something that you sculpt over time. And of course, the right job is the one that you can keep sculpting and making better over time, not one that keeps you unhappy and never gets better. That's not to say you should start an unhappy relationship.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's a really intriguing lens. I hadn't thought about that, like the analogy with a job. I think that that's quite apt. And, you know, I can't help but reflect on my own marriage and my relationship, which is, you know, we're going on, we've been together for like 23 years. And like all relationships, there's highs and lows and ebbs and flows and all that kind of stuff. But I think one of the things that has held us together is this understanding or appreciation that it's not static, like it's not something we're holding on to or a thing that exists. It's like a living, breathing entity that needs nourishment. And, you know, after a number of years, it's

• 1:33:18Rich Roll?

  like, do we still have to work on it? And it's like, I don't always want to like work on my relationship, you know, like, can I just kick back? But I'm of the age where, you know, I would say most of my friends are divorced or on their second or third marriage, and I want to stay married, you know, and I don't like the idea that people say, oh, it's work, or it's hard, or whatever. But it is a commitment, and that commitment demands that you're investing energy into it. And that means sometimes you gotta do stuff that you ordinarily, you know, rather not, or whatever. But short of that, you will be depriving it of the nutrition that it needs, and it will die and decay. But

• 1:34:00Rich Roll?

  one of the things that, that, you know, we've had to kind of navigate and experience is the fact that we're very different people, and that's part of what is interesting about our relationship. But we're not looking to the other person to like, complete us in that like Jerry Maguire sense. Like, we're both very independent and self-sufficient in our, in our own ways. And we're also on Different trajectories when it comes to like growth and change. And I think this is a piece that derails a lot of relationships, right? Somebody becomes really interested in evolution and growth. And the other partner is disinterested and suddenly, you know, they're on different trajectories all together until they can't even communicate.

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  We're both on our own evolutionary kind of arcs. And those arcs are different from each other. And it requires a kind of mutual respect for each other's process with all of that. But that's part of the sort of shared value set, right?

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  But the value of growth is there.

• 1:35:02Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  It's just taking you in different directions in a sense.

• 1:35:05Rich Roll?

  And I would say that my wife's probably more enthusiastic about it than I am. I have to be, you know, sort of cattle prodded into it more often than not. Cause you know, I don't, it's like, there's other things I'd rather do, you know?

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Like you mean the deep growth, like work? I see you as someone who's like endlessly wanting to-

• 1:35:20Rich Roll?

  I mean, I'm flipping about it, but you know, in truth, I am very committed to that. But, but I think that she, she is so devoted to her, her path and her kind of spiritual practice in an inspiring way, you know? It inspires me to, to be better and to show up better. But these things are kind of different. But to your point, yes, there is a shared like, like we're here to grow. We're here to evolve. We're here to do it together. We're here to do it as individuals. And then we're here to come together, you know, to kind of co-create as well.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  But I think that idea of you two both having your own kind of path in that respect, it gives you both something to bring to the relationship. You're able to bring different things and you're able to keep feeding new ideas in together. I always think that separation and the like, on a small level, if Audrey reads a book that I'm not reading, it's like she's bringing ideas into the relationship that I'm not. And I think over time, two people doing that, you know, the classic question is like, how do you maintain mystery in a relationship where you're together all the time or you're together over the long term and you know, everything about each other. But one of the antidotes to that is that you keep growing, is that you both keep absorbing

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  new ideas. And to that extent, you kind of end up-

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Realizing I can't just assume I know everything about this person today because they do keep growing and they do keep changing and I think that's healthy.

• 1:36:48Rich Roll?

  What do you say to the couple that have found themselves in that predicament where they've taken their foot off the gas for too long and suddenly they're looking at each other like they're strangers and they love each other, but they might not be in love with each other in that moment.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  It's tough.

• 1:37:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  It's tough.

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  Like, is there a road back?

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  Like, apathy is the ultimate enemy, right? I feel like when two people have, when they talk about that as an issue, but the truth is there is no, there's no desire to bring it back. I think that's, that in some senses, that's the biggest challenge to overcome. I think the same is true when one partner is like, I am trying to bring it back and this other person doesn't feel like anything needs to change.

• 1:37:41Rich Roll?

  There's a mismatch on the willingness front.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  I think that's really, really tough, but I think with two people who actually want to, I think they do have a shot, but it's about relearning each other to some extent. Like, if you've ignored your partner in every other way except occupying the same bit of carpet for a long time, I think it can be scary to get to know them again, to ask them who they are today and what they're into and what they're interested in exploring. And because it could be quite threatening. You have to kind of have the stomach for it because you might find they've shifted or changed or developed in ways that you don't know how to handle anymore or that

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  you're going to have to adapt to, to get comfortable with and you're going to have to grow in order to be able to provide that. And that's a, that's not for the faint of heart, but I think sometimes the price of...

• 1:38:47Speaker 01

  Maintaining attraction is living a little more dangerously, in a sense. If you take like the anxious pattern, for a lot of anxious people, there's a desire to get someone. And then the moment you've got them, put them in their pajamas and keep them in their pajamas for the rest of time.

• 1:39:08Rich Roll?

  And What do you mean by that, like infantilize them?

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  No, like, keep them where I feel safe. I know, I know you, I know the you, that's you and me sitting cozily watching a movie under a blanket. And we want that at first because we want to feel safe. It's kind of natural in dating to want to feel safe and to want to feel like, you know, we're doing this, aren't we? You're not about to run off or date someone else. There's a natural safety that we crave, but I think over time, you know, when I see people who say, you know, I know couples who struggle to let their partner go on a trip without them. But as if they're kind of afraid of what would happen on that trip.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Or, and look, excluding the situations where there's genuine trust issues because of someone's past behavior, but there are people who want to control things so much that they end up sort of neutering the relationship and taking it out of any kind of context of newness or mystery. And I think that we sometimes have to be a little more brave in encouraging our partners' growth, their independence, their separation in all of the right ways, in all of the healthy ways, and doing the same for ourself and then being able to bring all that back into the relationship. But I, I think for two people who have emotionally grown apart, that getting to know each other

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  again part, it can be quite scary.

• 1:40:39Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, because you've established a routine and a pattern that's been going on for a long time and it's easy to just go another day and kick it with Netflix or whatever the habit is.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  And pretend to yourself that they are today who they were five years ago.

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. And to your point about being a little bit more dangerous and like letting go and like allowing that person their individuality.

• 1:41:04Rich Roll?

  I think a way to reflect on that is to remember that what excited you about them in the beginning was they were living an independent life without you, right? Like, it was, that's what drew you to them, and now you've constrained that. Or the, not to point fingers, but like, the dynamic has suffocated that individuality for the sake of some perception of security or safety to treat your anxiety, or whatever it is. But, you know, I think there's great strength and empowerment in encouraging the individuality of your partner. And it's exciting to see them go in the world and be themselves, and there's something really sexy about that, right?

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  We were just coming back from our book tour to LA, and I was grabbing the bags off the belt, but they were like, kind of on the other side of the belt. And I went and grabbed them on the other side of the belt. And I came back, and Audrey looked at me kind of in a different way than she had looked at me in a few days, or maybe weeks, and she was like, "I just got to take you in as a man just now." Like, just a sexy man who was going and picking up our bags from the carousel. Like, and we had this conversation afterwards that was like, you know, how often do we get that glimpse of getting to just view our partner as a stranger, or getting to see their face the way we would interpret their face if they had just shown up at our door for the first time?

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  It's not an easy thing to engineer, but I do think that there are ways to get those moments. You know, even, even just newness in terms of, you know, when you go to a social event and you get to just watch your partner interacting in a group and you're not in it, and you just get to see them engaging with other people, you can get that moment then. You get to see how other people are listening to what they're saying, how they're being looked at, how they're being received. You know, you get to observe them from a distance. And again, I think that takes a little bravery. It also takes, frankly, just a little... Proactivity to break with routine sometimes so that we're in an environment where we can

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  observe our partner at a distance and not in the exact same contexts we always observe them in that have come to be wrote for us, even if one day that that thing was impressive. You know, the first time you ever saw your partner on a business call, the first time you ever saw that, it might have been an impressive moment where you might have heard them talking fluently about a subject that you don't know and gone, wow, it's kind of hot watching them on that call. They've now had 10,000 of those calls in front of you. It's no longer impressive, but is there a way to to kind of re-engineer some of that newness?

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  What is the biggest challenge that you confront in your own relationship? Like, what comes up? Been married, what, a year now?

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  Hmm. Two things come to mind. One is that work is crazy for both of us. She is, she heads up our entire content division. She's the creative director for the whole company. So it-

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  So your lives are completely integrated professionally and-

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Yes, although they are, but our working days are pretty much spent in different rooms in the house because she's on meetings all day with other people and I'm doing my own thing. So we're not too enmeshed in that sense, or as much as people might think. But we are both so busy and it's been so crazy for a while now that we're both looking at it going, if we don't start engineering quality time, then we're going to suffer. So like, that's a big focus right now is just engineering time. And also having rules about not talking shop, you know, so that that doesn't just bleed into everything.

• 1:44:49Rich Roll?

  It's so easy to fall into that. My wife and I now, like, we're sort of, we have some separation because she has projects that she does and I have, you know, and we come together and we do stuff together, but we used to do a lot more together. And then on top of that, four kids. So it's very easy to fall into a paradigm where every conversation is logistical or transactional around how you're running the household or how you're managing some project that you guys are working on.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  How did you solve that?

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  You have to be incredibly intentional about it. And sometimes we're better than others. Like, sometimes it's just, you know, the pressure's on, things have to get done. You know, this kid has to go here, that kid has to go, did you pay that? Like, a lot of that starts to happen. And if you don't catch it early and often and create kind of a reflex or a muscle around making sure that not every interaction that you're having is oriented around that, you can head for trouble pretty quickly. You're like, I'm with my partner all day long. Like, what are you talking about? We're totally connected, but are you, right?

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  It's always in this one context.

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it's easy to like, hide from anything else that you really need to talk about because you're managing some, you know, daily project that you're involved in. And so you feel like, well, I've done enough communicating with my partner for the day.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you just struck on something that, for me, that feeling of there's never a great time to talk, when it's something that's not to do with like solving those immediate work challenges or logistical challenges, when it's just something emotional, like making time. Cause especially-

• 1:46:34Rich Roll?

  But you don't want to be foisting it on your partner at the wrong time either. Like, you have to have an understanding or communication around what the appropriate time and context is for it also.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  But I think that goes hand in hand with creating the time because we, where we get to the end of the day, and we're often so exhausted by work, that the best we can do is like, comatose, watch a Netflix show. And then the weekend comes around and the week's been so full on and so long and so taxing that it's like the last thing that we want to do now is have a conversation about something. Like, now we're just like, we just need to put some energy back in the tank.

• 1:47:15Rich Roll?

  I get it, man, I get it. But here's the thing, that's never gonna change. Your life is never gonna arrive at some place where everything is gonna be a lot smoother and more chill. Maybe, but you can't assume that to be the case. I think we think, oh, it's crazy right now, but when this all settles down, then we'll have time and we'll do this. And in my experience, you never really get to that point.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  You didn't find like a better rhythm?

• 1:47:39Rich Roll?

  Well.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Like, do you feel like you found a better rhythm?

• 1:47:41Rich Roll?

  Things ebb and flow. There's gonna be some times that are busier than others. But I know enough about you to know that like, you're gonna create intensity, no matter what.

• 1:47:51Speaker 01

  That's the part, that's the part I'm interested in.

• 1:47:53Rich Roll?

  And you need to find a way to make sure that you're building in the intimacy and the communication in the midst of that, not when this ends and then there's an opening and I feel good because I've rested and I got enough sleep and I ate a good meal. You know, you can't wait for the universe to line up to create the perfect circumstance for you to have that conversation. You have to be able to have it in the midst of, you know, stress and chaos and anxiety and pressure and, you know, everything else that visits you when you are in those intense moments.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  It has to be lived in the middle. But when you say no matter what, like, is there no hope for that?

• 1:48:35Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, I just met you today, so I don't, you know, I'm not saying.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  I get, I get what you're saying. You know, I've read Berkman's work, 4,000 Weeks, and Cal Newport's books, and I gravitate towards books of that nature because I see in those books something I want to be more of or have more of, and something to aspire to. But do you think that that intensity, there's just something in the wiring that's always, like, for you, I know you can't speak to me, but like, do you think you can give up on that intensity? Or do you think it is just in your bones and that a quieter, more peaceful life is not available to you?

• 1:49:14Rich Roll?

  It's available to me, but it's not something that will come naturally. It will be produced through great intention only. Because I am wired to be a certain way, and part of that wiring serves me well, and other parts of it, I'm reluctant to let go of. And other parts I have let go of, and I have gotten better.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  What would you say are the parts you've let go of?

• 1:49:39Rich Roll?

  A lot of control issues. A lot of issues around perfectionism and that idea like I'm the only one who can do this and I have to have my fingerprints on everything. I've let go of a lot of things, but I still hold on too much to a lot of other things in a way that I think doesn't serve me. And I still find myself with a schedule that leaves me feeling more overwhelmed than than I would prefer, despite constantly saying like, I'm not going to say yes to these things. I still find myself with a schedule that's overbooked.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  So is there a sustainable fix for that? Is there hope? That propensity to no matter what, find space, fill it, you know, over schedule, take on too many things. I have had that my whole life. I keep telling myself like, I'm working on that. I'm working on that. I'm going to be more intentional. Now that this book's over, now it's a new phase.

• 1:50:36Rich Roll?

  The proof is now in the pudding, right? Like, you can read all the books you want, but what are you actually putting into practice in your life? And, you know, it's a struggle for for me as well. And like I said, I have made improvements. But I think the solution for me is finding some kind of middle path. Like, you know, I've read both those books also. And they both offer very practical and helpful solutions. But on some level, perhaps a bit too extreme, given, you know, how I want to live my life. But what wisdom in them can be applied? Like, I could be a lot better at saying no to things. I could be a lot more intentional about what I'm willing to, you know, tolerate and not tolerate.

• 1:51:17Rich Roll?

  I could hire more people. I could delegate better. I could delegate more. You know, there's lots of things that you can do. But I think identifying the internal pattern, like, what is the wounding that's leading you to like, do this thing? Like, untangling that, I think getting to the source of what's driving the whole thing is a more worthy investment of your time and energy than dealing with the symptomology of it, which is like, I'm gonna, I got a phone call and asked to do this thing, I'm going to say no to that. And that's a win. Yeah, it's a win. But you're going to keep having this issue. Until you kind of unravel whatever knot it is that, you know, on a psychological level that's driving that compulsion.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  What makes it so deeply uncomfortable to say no to in the first place?

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, how terrifying is it for you if you were to take your foot off the gas and disappear and like not upload anything or talk to anybody on social media for a certain period of time or to close your social media account? Like, what comes up for you? Like, what is the fear? Like, the fear of sudden irrelevance? Or the fear that like your whole thing that you've worked so hard to create is gonna collapse on top of itself and disappear and all the good things in your life will vanish? Like, what is it?

• 1:52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Rich Roll?

  And then dissecting that, like, what's behind that?

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think for me, it's more the latter. It's more that relevance doesn't bother me anywhere near to the extent of safety. Like, that feeling of things going away. And then having to, you know, fight for my life.

• 1:52:49Rich Roll?

  And so what is behind the fear of things going away? It's this sense of unworthiness that short of your constant, the constant pressure that you're applying or your foot always on the gas, that if you were to take a break or let go for a moment, that it would be withdrawn from you because they would find out that you weren't actually worthy of the role that you're playing.

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  Hmm. Don't you think so much of it is we've been brainwashed into? Well, maybe not even just brainwashed. The reality is that algorithmically, we get punished for taking our foot off the gas.

• 1:53:29Rich Roll?

  Is that true? Do you think? Or is that an illusion? Here's an interesting thing. I ran into this friend of mine, Joshua Fields Milburn. Do you know this guy from The Minimalists? You know The Minimalists, these guys?

• 1:53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:53:42Rich Roll?

  I ran into him at the grocery store the other day. And him and his co-host on their podcast decided that they were going to get off social media, like, all their accounts. And they're running a podcast and they have all kinds of stuff, just like you, like, out in the world, like, this is how they make their living. And they did it thinking, well, we're gonna take a hit, like, we're gonna get, you know, less listens or downloads and patrons and all that kind of stuff, right?

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  So the only thing they left up was their podcast?

• 1:54:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they do their podcasts, but there's no sharing of anything on any social media.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  They're not on Instagram, they're not on Facebook.

• 1:54:19Rich Roll?

  Zero. It's all off, all inactive across the board. And they did that thinking, well, we're going to take a hit, but we're doing this as an experiment and on behalf of our sanity. And they're like, I don't know, three or four months into this thing, and they've actually like, their show has grown.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  Because do you?

• 1:54:38Rich Roll?

  I don't know why. He's like, I don't know why.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  Does he think?

• 1:54:40Rich Roll?

  He's like, maybe it's because of something else. I have no idea, but we assumed it would take a big dip and it didn't.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  Are they not kind of hypothesizing that that's because they've now been able to truly focus on it and give it like more love and that the audience is feeling that and sharing it more?

• 1:54:55Rich Roll?

  Perhaps, you know, I'm sure there's a number of variables at play, but the reason I brought it up is simply to disabuse us of the assumption or presumption that if we do something a little bit differently, that it's all going to like come crashing down.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  But what do you make of, I know we're going on to a like different conversation here, but I'm just saying, I've got a rich role in front of me.

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  We gotta wind it down, but go ahead.

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  When you look at someone like Gary Vaynerchuk, who's saying, do it all, and you're crazy if you're not doing it all, how do you fit those two models together?

• 1:55:28Rich Roll?

  I don't know. I think you have to do what feels right for you to do. And I think you need to divorce yourself from the kind of vicissitudes of the immediate trends and focus more on doing quality work and a structure that you can sustain over time. Because those trends are constantly changing. And I think this pressure that you have to be everywhere, on all places, all the time, is a recipe for insanity and burnout. And some people are up for it and others aren't. And I think you have to figure out who you are, what your energy levels are, how much you want to commit to whatever it is you're trying to express, and find a way that is workable and sustainable. And I think there's

• 1:56:12Rich Roll?

  seasons to these things, too. There's growth phases and there's other times where you're just trying to sustain what you're doing and lifestyle's more important. But I think being flexible and malleable. But ultimately, it goes back always, in my opinion, to playing the long game. And when you're playing the long game, quality is always king.

• 1:56:36Rich Roll?

  Is the thing that you're doing at the level of value that you're capable of doing it at? And if there's room for improvement, that's where you should focus your improvement. And everything else is like noise.

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Hmm, it's beautifully said.

• 1:56:51Rich Roll?

  But, you know, that's at the cost of, you know, immediate, short-term, you know, kind of growth hacking. But, you know, listen, I've been doing this a long time, so have you. And like, I, there's other things that I'm more interested in than getting all caught up in whatever the algorithm wants you to do on a particular day.

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. To bring it full circle, I think, it's funny, the parallels between what you're saying here and what I see in people's love lives, which is that we over-index on the things that don't matter or don't make us happy, because we haven't really decided what our path is. Like, what's the quality relationship I want? What are the values that really matter to me? And when you say all of this in a career context, it makes me want to go away and make sure that I've really properly defined what my values are in terms of my work and what I want to create and the level of my work. The same is true in people's relationships. You know, when we're constantly chasing the wrong things or chasing what everyone else

• 1:57:54Speaker 01

  is telling us to chase, or, you know, the person we bring home, we're excited about because we know our friends are going to be impressed by them, or our family's going to be impressed by them, but they're not someone who actually is compatible with us or has the same values, that's where unhappiness comes from. So, yeah. This is, I love this conversation, man. We've gone in so many different directions.

• 1:58:14Rich Roll?

  I like how you brought it back to relationships. I wasn't sure how I was going to do that.

• 1:58:17Speaker 01

  I can always bring it back. Yeah. But there's so many parallels.

• 1:58:22Rich Roll?

  There's always an and-out, yeah, there's always a parallel to relationships.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Always.

• 1:58:25Rich Roll?

  I think why that's so difficult is, most of us don't have models for how you have those types of conversations. Like, how do you language that? Like, we didn't learn how to do that, or maybe we didn't have a parent or, you know, a mentor or somebody in our life who showed us how to have difficult conversations and how to, you know... Language these things with respect and honesty and openness.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is a language. And if if no one has ever taught you that language, it's that's where self compassion comes in. Because you, how would you know? How would you know how to have a productive conversation about your needs or about? You know what you want from the relationship or what's making you unhappy or? Without someone actually modeling it for you. It's amazing that language matters. My wife Audrey, when we were dating, I sent her a text saying I miss you after weeks of not communicating. We were like long distance at the time, we weren't in a like official relationship, we were just dating. But I had started to fade and then after a couple of weeks of not saying anything, I said, I miss you.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  And her text back to me was like extraordinary. Like she sent me a message and said, hey, I hope you're well. To be honest, I'm not really sure what to respond to that. She said, I feel like we haven't been that close for a while now. And rightly or wrongly, this message comes off as a bid for attention. That you want to talk about language, like everything about that text is pitch perfect. It still has a warmth to it, even though she's absolutely calling out.

• 2:00:01Rich Roll?

  There's a bluntness to it, too.

• 2:00:03Speaker 01

  Truly, and and the rightly or wrongly is very powerful because like, look, rightly or wrongly, this is how it comes across. But she's not pointing the finger at me and saying you're an asshole. She's just rightly or wrongly, this is how this is coming across. And honestly, I don't know what to say because this is out of sync with the dynamic that I've seen from you in the last few weeks. That is a very powerful message. And when people hear that, a lot of people who are in that very same situation will see how the message they have sent or would have sent would be very different. They might find that someone texts them, I miss you after two weeks of ignoring them. They may go, well, I'm just not going to text them back.

• 2:00:45Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  Which is far, it feels like holding on to our power, but it's also not communicating anything. It's not saying, if you want to continue to text me, this is what needs to change. It's just us going cold and making ourselves tough to read at this point. Some people will go, well, I just text back in a way that's kind of indifferent and be like, oh, thanks. Ha ha. So anyway, yeah, I'm just seeing my friends today. What are you up to? And they're like, oh, I'm holding on to my power by not saying anything, by showing that this person's not affected me. But that language matters and that authenticity, that ability to communicate our authenticity in an elegant way is one of the most powerful things we can learn to do in life.

• 2:01:31Rich Roll?

  Harder even to do in text.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  Very hard, yeah.

• 2:01:35Rich Roll?

  Be so easily mis- misread or mistaken.

• 2:01:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:40Rich Roll?

  Brutal. We got to round this down. So perhaps we can end this with just some advice, general advice from the book about how to rethink our relationships or perhaps some strategies for improving the quality of the relationships we're already in. I mean, we talked about it already, but if there's anything that was left uncovered.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Hmm. Look, I think in terms of improving the, the quality of the relationships we're already in, it helps to start from a place of, of being really connected to what's, what you're already grateful for in the relationship. Like if you woke up tomorrow morning and you just took five minutes to write down the complaints you don't have because your partner is who they are, that wouldn't be such a, a bad way to start because there's all these complaints we don't have because of the person we're with, complaints that maybe we've forgotten about, that we experienced in the three partners we had before them, that maybe it was so long ago that

• 2:02:44Rich Roll?

  That's like a weird spin on a gratitude list.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're really good at magnifying what's frustrating us about someone. Especially over time and we start to develop this kind of amnesia for the complaints we've had in the past because the past gets further and further in the rearview mirror. So now all of our reference points are the last 10 years with this person and it is very easy to take for granted the complaints we don't have as a result and to look around and go, well, if I was in this situation, look what I'd get over here and look, but what complaints don't you have? And then I think an honest assessment of what, what needs do I know my partner well enough to know they have that I'm probably not doing a great job of meeting right now?

• 2:03:30Speaker 01

  You know, how could I really show up and anticipate those needs? And if I don't know what those needs are, it's time to find out or to learn what they are today because let me not assume I know them today. What's exciting to you now? What goals do you have that I don't even know about? What are the things you'd like to learn that I don't know about? What are the things you'd like to do that you haven't told me? And then I think doing it, you know, kind of looking at ourselves and going, what's, what do I feel I like more of that I haven't communicated? You know, that I've, I've done a poor job of really being vulnerable about what would make me happy or excited or feel alive that I've been keeping to myself and making it frankly impossible for my partner to support me.

• 2:04:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they can't meet that need or, you know, show up for that, you know, interest or experience if they're not aware of it. Meanwhile, you're slowly chewing on a resentment because they're not meeting this thing because why can't they read my mind and why do I have to have the conversation? Don't they just know?

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:04:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:33Speaker 01

  And for anyone out there who's not in a relationship, you know, a, a big part of this book is, is really acknowledging what that is like for people. There's a lot of shame out there around people wanting to find love. It's like this thing that we all want, that we feel like we can't admit to really wanting because it feels desperate. It feels like, oh, I don't want to show people that I'm really on the hunt for love. You know, I have to pretend that I'm kind of indifferent to it. If it happens, it happens, you know, but I'm fine when, for a lot of people, not finding love is like a kind of chronic emotional pain that doesn't go away. Loneliness is like a chronic ache that doesn't go away for a lot of people and. A huge part of this book is about normalizing the feelings that we have when we are

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  struggling because we thought we would have met our person by now. We thought we'd be in the relationship we always wanted to be in by now. And we haven't found that person, or we thought we did and we lost them. And now we find ourselves out there again. And the terrain of my life does not map the blueprint of what I thought my life would be at this stage. It creates a lot of fear. It creates a lot of self-loathing, a lot of regret, a lot of shaming ourselves for decisions we've made and leaving it so long and not taking enough risks, or blowing it with that person, or self-sabotaging, or cheating on that person and ruining our life because now we haven't got our person anymore. You know, whatever it is we've done starts to become the kind of way that we shame ourselves

• 2:06:03Speaker 01

  for getting ourselves into this position. And this book is really about helping people to begin their lives again fresh, starting today. And to realize that whatever stories have already happened for you, they're a story in your life, but they're not the great narrative of your life. There's so many stories available to you whose beginnings can be located precisely where your feet are now. And the danger of holding on to heartbreak or loss, or the story that we've had for a long time, for too long, is that we start thinking that's the truth of our life. It's really not.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Maybe it's a sad movie in your life, but there's many movies in your life. And a new one can begin right now if you can actually lift your gaze up to see it. And the fact that you're even listening to this conversation right now means that you're still here. You know, you're still, those stories are still available to you. One of my favorite words from the point of view of possibility in life is curiosity. Because I think it's very hard for all of us when we have been a certain way all our lives, when we have felt like we've been unable to change. Our lives have always gone a certain way. We've always felt broken. We've always felt like we're unattractive, or it's never worked out.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  It's easy to start to think that that's just us, or that's just the way life is, or that we are just broken. And I think a lot of self-development is quite damaging in the sense that the insinuation is you just have to believe something new. And I have never been able to do that. I've never been able to like go to the buffet of good beliefs and just select which ones I want for myself.

• 2:07:55Rich Roll?

  Shift your mindset.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have found that any new belief I've had to, as evidenced by our conversation today about the things that I'm still working on, it is a war of attrition against my old beliefs.

• 2:08:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, change is hard.

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  It's very hard, but curiosity is a gateway to new beliefs. If you can just have the humility to say, the way that I've been living is not the only way to live. The results I've gotten so far in my life are not a reflection of what's available to me, they're just a reflection of the way I've been doing things for a very long time. There are actually these kind of modest 1% shifts I can make in my life that if I do, if I kind of treat my own life like a bit of a social experiment, what happens when, instead of when normally getting angry, I show up and get vulnerable? What if when I normally run away, I lean in? What happens when those things happen? Oh, I get a slightly different result.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  And that slightly different result to me is like inception. It's like, at the very least, you may not get a new result you really want, but at the very least, you learn that a new result is possible. And when you learn a new result is possible, it kind of shakes you out of this world you've been living in where you think that your world is the only world. And that becomes the gateway to new beliefs. So that's kind of, in some ways, the essence of this book, applied through the lens of people's love lives. It is designed to be a co-pilot for anyone who wants to find love, but it's kind of, it's more than that. It's a model for managing pain in our lives, a model for improving our confidence, a way to realize that even before we found the thing that we really want, there is actually

• 2:09:36Speaker 01

  a way to be happy enough. And I choose that language very intentionally. The final chapter of the book is called Happy Enough, Not Happiness, because I think happy enough is a superpower. If you can learn to be happy enough today. Before you've got what you want, that to me is where real invincibility comes from, but it's not happiness, which is intimidating. Happy enough is possible.

• 2:10:01Rich Roll?

  There's a compassion in the book, I think, and there's a lot of compassion in what you just shared. Like, I think compassion lives at the center of like your animating force. Like, I think there's something really beautiful about your sensitivity to those that struggle to to find love, you know? And I think this is a very worthy investment of your chi, your life energy. And this is really cool, Matt. Thank you. I appreciate it.

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  I loved it. Thank you for having me. The book is called Love Life. For anyone who would like a copy, How to Raise Your Standards, Find Your Person, and Live Happily No Matter What. And yeah, it's available wherever you get your books.

• 2:10:47Rich Roll?

  And if people want to learn more about what you're about and the other things that you're up to, all the programming, et cetera.

• 2:10:53Speaker 01

  Matthewhussy.com is where all things our organization live, from our programs to our live events. So we welcome anyone who wants to come and work with us.

• 2:11:04Rich Roll?

  All right. Fantastic, Matt. Thank you. I appreciate it. That was wonderful. I really enjoyed meeting you. Thank you.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  Me too. Thanks for having me.

• 2:11:11Rich Roll?

  Cheers. Peace.

• 2:11:26Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors,

• 2:12:09Rich Roll?

  who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel

• 2:12:51Rich Roll?

  Solis. And thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Thanks.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Namaste.