How to Love Better: Emotional Healing, Attachment, and Real Relationship Skills with Yung Pueblo

We all know emotional maturity is essential for a healthy relationship—but how do you actually get there? In this episode of The Dr. Hyman Show, I talk with Diego Perez, the #1 New York Times bestselling author known as Yung Pueblo, about the small mindset shifts that can make a huge difference in how you show up for yourself and your partner. Drawing from his new book, How to Love Better, Diego shares how to stop repeating the same old patterns and start building relationships grounded in awareness, honesty, and real emotional growth. In this conversation, we explore: Why emotional maturity is the #1 skill for resolving conflict How letting go of control can lead to more trust, connection, and ease in your relationship How your old emotional patterns might be causing tension you don’t even realize Why owning your emotions can help you avoid blame and grow together Simple mindset shifts that can make love feel more secure, stable, and honest Check out the episode for a practical, compassionate guide to loving better. View Show Notes From This Episode Get Free Weekly Health Tips from Dr. Hyman https://drhyman.com/pages/picks?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast Sign Up for Dr. Hyman’s Weekly Longevity Journal https://drhyman.com/pages/longevity?utm_campaign=shownotes&utm_medium=banner&utm_source=podcast This episode is brought to you by Sunlighten, Timeline Nutrition, Paleovalley, and LMNT. Visit sunlighten.com and save up to $1400 on your purchase with code HYMAN. Support essential mitochondrial health and save 10% on Mitopure. Visit timeline.com/drhyman to get 10% off today. Get nutrient-dense, whole foods. Head to paleovalley.com/hyman for 15% off your first purchase. Get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any order—just head to drinklmnt.com/hyman.

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

• 0:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Coming up on this episode of the Dr. Hyman Show. Someone once said to me, you can either be right or in a relationship. And I think a lot of us are very attached to being right.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  And when two people who are in an argument take the time to not win, but instead understand, the tension evaporates.

• 0:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Now, before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to note that while I wish I could help everyone by my personal practice, there's simply not enough time for me to do this at scale. And that's why I've been busy building several passion projects to help you better understand, well, you. If you're looking for data about your biology, check out Function Health for real-time lab insights. And if you're in need of deepening your knowledge around your health journey, check out my membership community, The Hyman Hive. And if you're looking for curated and trusted supplements and health products for your health journey, visit my website at drhyman.com for my website store for a summary of my favorite and thoroughly tested products. Welcome to Dr. Hyman Show. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and this is a place for conversations that matter. And if you've ever struggled with love or want to learn how to love better,

• 0:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  this is going to be a great podcast because it's with an incredible man, Yung Pueblo, as he's known on social media. His real name is Diego Perez. He's a meditator. That's a great way to describe yourself. Number one, New York Times bestselling author, who's widely known by his pen name, Yung Pueblo. He's sold over a million and a half books and had been translated 25 languages. He's got a huge audience online, a billion views per year of his content. And he focuses on self-healing, creating healthy relationships, the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves. And his new book, How to Love Better, is out now, and so check it out. He and I get into a deep conversation about love, relationships, where we go wrong, how we can straighten things out, and what

• 1:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  we need to do to actually start to listen and communicate in ways that work. We talk about emotional freedom, about self-love, boundaries, impermanence, Buddhism, pretty much the gamut. And we end up in a place where I think you'll find very helpful around maybe applying some of these principles to your own relationships and to the challenges you find in love and war and all that comes after that. So let's dive right into the podcast with Yung Pueblo or Diego Perez. Should I call you Yung Pueblo, or should I call you Diego?

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Diego's just fine.

• 2:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Okay, Diego. Well, you're known as Yung Pueblo online. You know, I followed you for years and found during difficult moments in my life that your work was so inspirational and helped me to see through dark periods. And I really appreciate, I know millions out there has felt the same thing. And I didn't really know you at the time. I didn't have a relationship with you, but what you posted online and what you wrote was so simple, so clear and so elegant and rang so true at so many levels.

• 2:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And now you created this great new book, How to Love Better. And I'm just excited you've done that because I know you've used your own practices as the way in which to sort of metabolize your life. You create nuggets of wisdom for humanity and for others to learn from. And that's such a beautiful skill. It's such an incredibly rare talent. It takes a lot to distill things in that way. And that's what's one of your superpowers. So I think many of us have different superpowers. That's your superpower.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much. That means a lot coming from you. I'm, I don't know if you know, but I'm a huge fan of yours. I think you've, similarly, you've had a massive impact on my life and my wife's life. You've helped us get healthier, like fundamentally, you know, when I first started writing, I was still breaking a lot of old patterns with like how I'm eating, how I'm treating my body, how I'm, you know, exercising and just balancing all that out. I mean, from your podcasts, your books, it's all been so helpful. The Ultra Wellness Center, I could just go on and on. But you've helped us profoundly and I still have a ways to go with my own health journey, but do it way better than before.

• 3:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We're all on a journey. We're on a journey of our health, of love, of pretty much life. This is a crash course in life. It's, my hope is that I hope I figure it out by the time I die, just in time, you know? And I think kind of a lot of, in a way, it's kind of like what meditative practice is. It's like preparation for death. And it's preparation for life. Obviously, it's how to live better. But in some ways, it's a way to navigate your own mind. And, and a lot of the meditative traditions, you know, and I had the really incredible privilege of knowing some incredible meditation teachers like

• 4:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the 33rd Abbot of Menre, who was the Bon teacher of Zongchen, which is a Buddhist meditation tradition. It's actually predates Buddhism. He was the, he was the Dalai Lama's meditation teacher and he came from the Bon tradition. And a lot of their work is, is how do we, how do we navigate? Life, but also how do we navigate this transition that happens as we come closer to the end and do it in a way that that we become free. The whole purpose of life is to get free, right, is to get free in your soul and your emotional life and your relationships and your work and to be unencumbered. And, and you know, that's what sort of I think is so striking about your work is that that's, that's what it aims to do is help us get free.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And in this book, How to Love Better, the implication there is how do you, how do you have a better way to love that lets you be free and happy and unencumbered by a lot of the challenges we find in relationships? So maybe you can kind of start off by sort of telling us about how, because we talked about a lot about your past history in the previous podcast, I encourage people to go back and listen to that because it was, it was a very good one. And we talked about your, how you got into this work and your meditative practice and where you came from. But I want to sort of explore more around love because a lot of us struggle with love. I certainly have. I was married three times, divorced three times, married fourth time. This was a keeper. I learned a lot and I had to go through this really dark night of the soul, which I actually talked about in the Diary of a CEO, Hitman wants to listen to that, where I had to kind of come in to confront

• 5:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  the ways in which I was not free and that I had wounds and things that I hadn't dealt with from my childhood that kept me from actually loving better.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  You know, it's interesting that you, we started the conversation with the point of freedom because the last chapter in this book is love is freedom. It really ties together the sort of the full idea, the full point of evolution of a human being that we see a lot of the sort of like saints and seers of the past, the people that we look up to who are really highly cultivated, who take their mind to the zenith of unconditional love, you know, where they can fully like love themselves and all beings completely, right? They see no one as an enemy. All they can do is have compassion. They don't even live within frameworks of ego. They live within a framework of compassion.

• 6:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Kind of like the Dalai Lama.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then what I try to do is try to point that When we are in relationships, especially intimate relationships, this is almost like a microcosm where we get to taste and practice small amounts of unconditional love. Because even though we want to love someone as well as possible, we still come in with our own attachments. We still come in with with our previous heartbreak, with our old pain. And as long as we're cognizant of that, we can overcome that heaviness of the mind that stops us from taking care of ourselves and the person in front of us better. We get to practice love. We get to practice unconditional love in our relationships. And a lot of that is just, we have to be aware, aware of like, where am I building tension in the relationship? Where are my two attached? Because a lot of times, we don't realize that

• 7:27Speaker 01

  the attachments that we have in our minds, literally, you know, the craving for things to exist in a particular way. These attachments will manifest as control. And that just sucks the life out of a relationship.

• 7:39Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So when you, when you mean attachment, you mean attachment from the Buddhist perspective?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Totally, we're talking, we're talking old school.

• 7:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not attachment theory, attachment disorders, like anxious attachment or?

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. I appreciate that, but we're talking old school attachment. Two thousand six hundred years ago.

• 7:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  What does that mean? Like, what does that Buddha mean? When he said, yeah, attachment is the root of all suffering.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  So suffering is an interesting and big word. I think a lot of times people say, you know, that the Buddhist teaching is life is suffering or life is misery. These are big words. Sometimes we don't necessarily relate to them. A different way to translate dukkha, that Pali word dukkha, is not just suffering, but dissatisfaction or stress. And now that's something we can relate to. Life is quite dissatisfying, you know? And I know that I know this firsthand because I grew up extremely poor. That was very dissatisfying. I now am not poor, I'm not wealthy either, but I'm not poor anymore. It's also very dissatisfying, right? So being able to be cognizant of that doesn't help. Like, it takes that tension away so that I'm not relying and putting my happiness on what's happening externally.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  That it's something that's I'm building from within. But that suffering, that attachment that we have, it creates a lot of dissatisfaction and it. Sort of just shows up in our life as us trying to force things to be in a very particular way where we want the person that we love to do X, Y, and Z.

• 8:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why don't you X, Y, Z?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or we want the good things that we really like to always happen continuously, infinitely, and forever. We never want our parents to die. These situations are basically attachments that try to fight the truth of impermanence. Embracing impermanence is a direct opposite of attachment because attachment wants things to be static, but impermanence is the deep embrace of life being dynamic, which is undeniable.

• 9:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, that's the third noble truth, right? So first one is life can be stressful or difficult slash suffering. Two, suffering comes from our beliefs and our conditioning and our conditioned mind that wants things to be a certain way, which is attachment. And the third is

• 9:40Speaker 01

  The end of suffering.

• 9:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, the third is there's a possibility of suffering, but the impermanence is really what is causing so much stress because things change all the time.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm 65 and I know that because I can tell you that life is constantly changing and I have perspective, which is actually a nicer thing happens as you get older. You realize, oh, if I'm having a shitty moment right now, it's not going to be forever. Or if I'm having a fabulous moment, I'm on the top of Mount right now.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:06Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's also not going to be forever. And not having your well-being, your happiness, your joy, your ability to be present in life and engaged, be conditioned by what and where and who you're with, right? That's kind of getting free.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's just when you deeply embrace that impermanence, it gives you an understanding that there is a dissatisfactory nature to life. And there's also the deeper understanding that who I am is not fundamentally real, right? The sense of self.

• 10:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a construct.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It's a construct. It's something that's coming together quite rapidly because of mental and physical phenomenon that are just moving so fast that it creates the illusion of I. And when you're able to let go of that and let go of your, the attachment to your opinions, the attachments to your views, it helps you relax those attachments so that you can allow yourself to evolve, allow your preferences to evolve, and it helps support the fact that your partner or those who are you're really close to. They're gonna evolve too. They're gonna change. You have no control over their preferences. Even though the two of you may be highly committed to each other, maybe together for decades, you don't have any say over what your partner's hobbies are. You don't really have a say over what shows they're gonna like. You don't have a say over the way they want to design their life.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I think it's scary to think of freedom as a part of relationships. Because immediately people think, oh, that means my partner's gonna cheat on me and do all these things. That's not what we're talking about. It's the freedom to evolve. It's the freedom to grow, whatever way best supports your happiness.

• 11:38Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You mean your partner's not supposed to just act and do things in the way that you want them to do?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  No, I think a lot of times, a lot of times when we think about relationships, it's like we want our partners.

• 11:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Why don't you blah, blah, blah?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I don't want my partner to be my twin. I love the fact that she's different from me.

• 11:53Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Right? Tell me your views. Tell me what you think about the world. I'm glad in the moments that we actually get to disagree, I wanna hear why, because I do trust her wisdom, so I wanna hear more about your view.

• 12:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So getting free is sort of the goal here. That's like the last chapter.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  It's deeply tied to the end of craving, right? Because craving, that is taking a desire, right? Some initial motivation, a goal, or whatever. But when you're forcing it into craving, it's you're taking that desire and connecting it with stress, with tension, and you're very, very attached to it. And the moment that you're able to undo craving, let go of craving, approach life with a much more balanced mind, equanimity, having a balanced mind, that helps you stop replicating all those attachments.

• 12:35Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That sounds great. How do you do that?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  To do that, you have to, I mean, the mind is, you know this for a fact, right? The mind is built from repetition. The body's built from repetition, right? You eat tons of unhealthy food, eventually you get unhealthy. You eat a bunch of healthy food, you're gonna be a little healthier. The same thing with the mind. When I go away to meditation courses and I'm meditating for 30, 45 days, I'm literally just taking myself to the mental gym. And I'm cultivating three qualities: awareness, non-reaction, and compassion. So it takes time to be able to like, literally design and shape your mind, same here like the body.

• 13:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In a way, what you're saying is, is the meditation helps you sort of be a witness and slow down the way in which we normally operate, which is a thought.

• 13:20Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Emotion, action, but they're collapsed into one.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what you're saying is you can separate those out so that you can be aware of the thought. You can even be aware of the trigger that might happen in you.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And no, and you can then slow that down. You don't have to actually act from that. You can then be non reactive.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  In a way that allows for a greater freedom in love, but it, but it's also in your own life. It's not just for, I mean, you get better at life, you get better at love, right? You get better yourself, you get better at love. So how, how do you do that? Cause I mean, most people listen, oh, that sounds good. But you know, I don't, I don't really have 50 days to go away to a meditation retreat. So I mean, I, I don't, I don't, that's a lot of time in the gym.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a lot of time in the gym, but either way, you still have to rely on repetition. I think that's the difficulty with our society nowadays is that all these apps that we have access to in our phones, all of them are trying to just make life easier, make everything faster, easier. And they're very sort of connected towards increasing pleasure in the body. We have to realize that our personal transformation and resolving the issues in our relationships, these are very gradual, slow thing. Like the best parts of life, they're quite slow and they're related to the present moment. And so it's almost working against the culture that we're given, that we're being fed. And embracing the fact that even if you don't meditate, even if you don't even see a therapist, you can be aware of what you're good at and what you're not good at.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  I think one thing that became clear even before I started meditating was when I started being with my wife, like I realized I'm not good at listening. I need to bring my attention back every time my mind goes off somewhere. And I'm thinking about how to respond instead. Let me calmly bring my attention back to whatever it is that she's saying. And through that you can train yourself. And I think when we realize, you know, what are you not good at? You like patience, then the next time you have an opportunity to be patient, put a little more effort into it.

• 15:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  The way you said there was really important. I wanted to sort of double click on it because when most of us are in a conversation, we're already rehearsing our response.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Already, already.

• 15:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Before that person.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  What is my retort?

• 15:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Before that person has actually finished their sentence.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And what you're saying is you have to pause that if you want to be in relationship.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 15:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Otherwise you're just in relationship to yourself. You're not in relationship with the other person, whether it's a friend or colleague, or your partner, or your spouse, your lover, whatever it is.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Whomever you're in proximity to. Especially if there's someone that you really care about, there are going to be moments of disagreement. The key way to solve arguments is totally related on a specific type of compassion. The compassion to pull yourself out of your perspective and see the perspective of another person. That requires deep listening, selfless listening. That requires me making sure that even though I feel heated in this moment, I am going to take the time to listen to how the series of events moved for you, for you to end up feeling this way. Because ultimately, what Thich Nhat Hanh said is fundamentally true. He said, "Love is understanding." So only through listening, clear communication, can I come to a point where I fully understand you.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And when two people who are in our argument take the time to not win, but instead understand, the tension evaporates.

• 16:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's right. That's so powerful. And I think most of us don't even know how to do that. We know how to do math. We know how to work. We know how to read. We know how to do all the stupid stuff we learn in school, which can be helpful. I don't really use math that much anymore. I do use reading and writing. But other than that, it's like the fundamentalized skills, we don't learn about how to be in relationship. And that creates a lot of unhappy people and bad relationships. And understanding requires you to pause your own narrative. It requires you to sort of stop. And that's not easy to do for most people. Like when you're triggered or you're in a conflict or something's come up and you're like, you know, we just got a new dog.

• 17:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I'm very much like, you gotta stick to the rules and the dog has to be trained. And then you get free. Because when you train like your mind, just like you train your dog, then you can take your dog everywhere. But if it's a brat and you can't take it anywhere, then it's like, no fun.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just met your dog.

• 17:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  My wife is like, well.

• 17:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  She's like, oh, he's so cute. And I'm like, yes, but you still have to correct him and train him. And so I found myself getting very agitated. I think that's a, I mean, it's a silly example, but it's fundamental to sort of any.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  It's a real.

• 17:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Any communication. And I'm curious, how do you think people can actually get that skill? Because it's not. We're so like in a hair trigger, like we literally, we have a thought, we have an emotion, we have a reaction, we have a reaction.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  It feels lightning quick and it feels like your impulsiveness is the real you, but that's an absolute illusion. Usually whatever you immediately react with, the initial sort of impulse, normally that will be something survivalist, something defensive. It's something that gives you a sign into what your past looked like. Usually that impulsiveness won't create new outcomes for you. It'll just amplify whatever difficult outcome has happened from before. So I think the key way, no matter what, whether you're training yourself through therapy, whether you're training yourself through meditation, whether you're just building self-awareness at home on your own, it's by intentionally slowing down and telling yourself,

• 18:41Speaker 01

  okay, I feel the impulsiveness, but I'm not going to make a major decision right now. I can feel how full my perspective is that I can't even see clearly. I need to be able to just take a moment to breathe so that I can see more options than just the red.

• 18:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  To breathe is the key thing.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think for a meditator, right, for me, like I normally use my breath. I'll like anchor myself back in my breath to bring me back to my body. I'll be able to feel myself again and then that will help me not just get caught up in the narratives that are just building tension in the mind. But other people have other ways, you know, there's so many different methods out there. But I think something that helps you just slow down in that moment so that you can see more options than just this one initial reaction, I think will help you just make different decisions than what you've done before.

• 19:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's this incredible book called The Body Keeps Score. And it's really about how childhood traumas and wounds and stresses and beliefs we create out of those, the meaning we make out of what happens to us. Like as Gabor says, it's not what happens to us, it's the meaning we make. And we're meaning-making machines and when we're kids, we create all these. Sort of narratives about what how life is based on our little tiny universe and the people around us and our parents and a small where we live in and that then shapes our whole life. And unless you kind of understand that you have to go back.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And excavate.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I call it soul archaeology, you know, you have to excavate the traumas, the wounds, the beliefs, the ways of being, the automatic kind of triggers and kind of you're going to stay in it. And whether you're, you know, 25 or 65, it doesn't matter. You know, just because you're older doesn't mean you're wiser.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And that's really true and absolutely, you know, we're very largely shaped by what happened in our childhood, but I think the Buddhist teaching shows us that it even goes a step further where it's not just what happened when you were young, but any hard moment, any moment of big reaction, when moments when you felt big heartbreak, moments when you felt big loss, moments of intense anger where you were defending yourself when you were like 21 or something, you know, whatever it could be, all of that makes an imprint on the subconscious of your mind. All of that literally shapes your mind, which shapes your perception, shapes the way you're reacting. So all of it is really sort of being imprinted very heavily. And I think there are always these moments when we can decide, okay, I'm actually going to take ownership over my evolution and I'm going to actively redesign

• 21:05Speaker 01

  the way that I perceive and react to to reality because the same way that, you know, you can't just run for a marathon, you have to train yourself. You don't just learn a language overnight, you have to train yourself. So if you want to have peace, that requires training.

• 21:19Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And how do how do we train ourselves? Meditation you mentioned is a way that you've found successful, but is that the only way? Are there other ways that people?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  No, I've seen people have, I've seen people be really successful in a lot of different manners. I've seen people who like take their health seriously and start learning different ways to be able to like nourish their body. I've seen that relax their mind. I've also seen people who've had, you know, really serious therapy practices, also just transform the way they show up in daily life. I've also seen people who, you know, get a good psychiatrist, like help totally balance them out so that they can breathe, so they can live. So I've seen people take steps forward through a variety of manners. And I think it's good because like we don't have the same conditioning. You know, I really enjoy going to these like long 10 day, you know, 30, 45 day meditation courses. That's not for everybody, you know, it's really, it's hard. If it's for you, fantastic.

• 22:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Makes your knees sore.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  You should see the, the, uh, the 70 year olds in there have been meditating for like 50,000 hours in their life. They start when one of my teachers, he's 76 now, he started meditating when he was 24. He's probably like, I did a rough calculation for my own, right? I've probably meditated like 12,000, 13,000 hours. This guy's definitely meditated over 50,000 hours. His mind, he's a weapon. Knees are still good, but like you should see how peaceful he is and how sharp his, his mind is incredibly sharp at 76. And he's just such a peaceful leader. So I have a lot to learn.

• 22:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So if people are wondering and listening, this sounds good. And in this beautiful book, how to love better, sort of a roadmap to kind of thinking about these things. What are some of the ways in which people can actually sort of stop to kind of this, this sort of powerful, impulsive narrative that comes up when you're under a stress or in a relationship where things are in conflict? You have to kind of pause, you have to break it down, you have to take it in steps, you know? And, and it's not, it's not easy for people.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  No, it's very challenging. And I think whether you're starting a relationship or whether you're in a really, a long-term relationship, there are still these three qualities that are always really ever important. So that's the first quality is kindness. Usually when you're in proximity to somebody, whether it's a roommate, you know, your family or your partner, whoever's closest to you, they're going to see the best of you and they're going to see the worst of you. I think a lot of times we sometimes because of the vulnerability, it's amazing that people get to see all sides of us. But we forget the sweetness after a while, we forget to bring in that gentleness and that kindness. So that element is really critical whenever there's good moments or tough moments. The other side of it is what I would talk about.

• 23:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you've been in a relationship for a day or a year or 10 or 50 years, kindness.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  It always matters. Gentleness, kindness always matters. The same thing with compassion, like what I mentioned before, the specific type of compassion where you're seeing outside of your own perspective. The way to solve any argument. Is to not just dwell in your own perspective because if you create a situation where arguments arise and you just want to win, you want to dominate, that means the other person has to yield. And if someone's yielding, there's going to be the buildup of resentment. So it's much better to switch the framework from trying to win to trying to understand. And the last element is really growth. When you come into a relationship, you have to understand that you're coming in with some past pain. Nobody has, you know, walked through life without trauma like we all have. And whether you call it trauma or not, you felt some type of pain, some type of hurt.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  That shapes your mind. So being aware that that will affect your patterns and how you show up in a relationship. That calls you in to be able to embrace your growth so that you can undo those heavy patterns. And you can build new ones that are actually much more supportive of your own happiness than your partner's.

• 24:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I mean, there's a lot in there. I mean, I think that the part about understanding is really important. And I think I, again, I want to double click on that because it's about curiosity.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And remembering that your partner is not your enemy.

• 25:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Like you gotta remind yourself.

• 25:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Sometimes it feels like.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  Sometimes it feels like it's like I'm in danger like, but you're not, you're okay. Like even if you lose the argument, even if you have to apologize, you're all good. Remind yourself that this person is one of the dopest people in your life. They're amazing.

• 25:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think you're right. It's curiosity, which is about really understanding. And also vulnerability on the other side, being able to really share. I'm not a place of, and then point your finger, but from like what you're really feeling, I'm scared.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  And we didn't, we didn't know this, right? When, when we got into the relationship. So my wife and I got together super young, you know, she was 18 and I was 19. I would say the first six years of our relationship were a giant blame game. Like it was whenever I would feel tension in my mind, my mind would try to figure out why it's her fault. And she would do the same to me and we would just go back and forth, back and forth, constantly trying to win. Both of us losing all the time until we started meditating and building like, and we went into meditating because we wanted to work on ourselves as individuals. So I went to meditating because I wanted to save myself. Like I had so much sadness, so much anxiety that my mind just felt like it was like a thousand times, right? It just felt so heavy all the time. I was shocked that I went into meditating to save myself.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  I started building these qualities, patience, understanding, listening to myself better, accepting myself. And then I come out of the meditation retreat and I turn to my wife and I'm realizing. Oh, these are the same qualities I need to bring into my relationship. They're not just for me. There is a total bridge there where I'm building them. They're helping me these qualities, but they're absolutely useful in the moments where we're having trouble.

• 26:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It reminds me that almost the two schools of Buddhism, one is, you know, they call it Theravada Buddhism or Khenyana, which is kind of a pejorative term, is lesser vehicle.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Or Mahayana, which is greater vehicle. But the first one is, you know, a lot of the Southeast Asia is all about self-realization. Whereas the Buddhist tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and some Chinese Buddhism is tradition of compassion.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's the Dalai Lama, right?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Right. May all others be free before I am.

• 27:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  I can help them.

• 27:09Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And then if you even get to the gates of enlightenment, you got to turn back.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Because you got to help everybody else.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:14Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's the Bodhisattva path. And so it's like, you actually realize that salvation comes in that practice of being willing to be curious and compassionate and kind and loving for another, right? That's

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 27:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  There's an element where that's what Buddhism is, just loving kindness.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  They're deeply, deeply interrelated, like even in both, in both, you know, the Theravada and the Mahayana tradition, like service is incredibly important. Like, we have to be able to help others because if you're doing the opposite and you're just being selfish, then you're just pushing your freedom further and further away. And it's really interesting. I was, um, I was on a pilgrimage in India and I went to go see all the major sites of the Buddhist life. And the person who was leading the group, he was telling us he's friends with all these different monks from all different traditions. And he was telling us about, um, a Vajrayana monk and was talking about how, you know, people will take the Bodhisattva path and they'll take those vows where they want to help others be free.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  And then at some point, they make enough development that they, you know, they themselves become free. And then they realize, oh, there's no me and there's no them. So like, it's an initial inspiration, a point of inspiration to help you, you know, put the energy into cultivating yourself to that point where you can literally see beyond the universe.

• 28:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When you just mentioned Vajrayana, that's like the diamond path. That's another level. That's like more Tibetan Buddhism.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:49Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a, it's a, we won't get into all that. If you want to know about how do I have a better relationship? In summary, what you said was that, you know, you have to know yourself. You have to slow down. You have to be aware of your mind. You have to be aware of your own emotional patterns, where they came from. And that's what I call like the soul archology. I had to go back and excavate, why was I continually being in these relationships and choosing people or being in relationships that just didn't work? Some of them were great people. It was just like, I just, it wasn't, it wasn't them, it was me. When I realized that, I was like, I'm not doing this ever again. I don't care if I'm ever in a relationship again or not, but I gotta figure this out. And that really got me to a place where I really had to go deep.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:28Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And find out what those emotional wounds were, that those patterns, those beliefs were. And you talk a lot about this concept of emotional release and freedom, how you're holding on to suppress emotions, like prevents you from being free in yourself. And you think you're being right and you're righteous in your relationship and you're telling you the truth with a capital T, but most of the time it's not.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  No, you're just, you're actually just cranking stress.

• 29:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so the question is, how do you kind of get to that place of emotional release and actually get free from those destructive patterns that you talk about?

• 29:59Speaker 01

  I don't know if you're gonna like the answer, because it's devastatingly simple. The answer is acceptance. You have to accept. And there are layers and it's, it's really hard to.

• 30:10Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Accept what?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Accept the difficulty. Accept what hurt you. Accept what happened before.

• 30:15Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Stop blaming your parents.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Oftentimes, we're fighting ourselves. We're fighting the past. The past that's long gone, that's not happening anymore, but we're the ones digging it back up because it's imprinted itself in the mind and we're revving it up. We're sort of feeling it over and over again. But I think in the act, like, you know, the whole, the Buddhist path, just because we keep talking about it, the whole Buddhist path is sort of centered around just observe. It's, you know, it's just a simple act of observing. And through the act of observing, there's unbinding. And I think that same quality that you find in. Meditating, people also find a lot of relief through different forms of therapy where it's like when you can finally accept what happened, when you can finally talk about it, when you can finally feel it without running away, there is a lot of relief.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  But I think it's hard. It's really hard, but it's important, especially in the relationship context, because the things that you're running away from are going to show up as walls and blocks in your relationship. So to be able to deeply just deal with what's happening inside you, be able to accept it so that you can actually take a step forward. That'll show up as you being able to support your partner's happiness better.

• 31:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's not an easy task. Like it's, it's like.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  But love is not easy, right?

• 31:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  To be in.

• 31:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's the hardest practice, right? It's like, I think Rilke said, you know, love is difficult, but it's sort of the all other tasks. I'm butchering his quote, but it's something like all our tasks are just preparation for love, you know, it's like, and ultimately it's, it's, it's a place where we can either suffer or we can get free. And then when you get a free relationship, it doesn't mean you're, you know, off gallivanting around. It means you're, you're emotionally free. And you're spiritually free and you're able to actually engage in life in a way that doesn't come with all this friction and pain and struggle and conflict and arguments and bickering. And I think that's a really powerful thing. And when you do end up in a situation, then, then there's tools, right? So let's say you and your wife are, are in a conflict, like there's something that's come up, like what do you guys do?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  I think one of the main, the most useful things is actually what happens before the conflict. It's the, what, what we've been calling preventative communication, where when we wake up in the morning, no matter what, we tell each other how we feel, like where we are in our emotional range. You know, we.

• 32:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Emotional weather report.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Temperature check. And we're just like, you know, I'm feeling a lot of heaviness moving through. I'm feeling down. I'm still upset about what happened yesterday at work, you know? I'm feeling great. I slept really well. I feel amazing, you know, whatever it is, however you feel, we're just honest about it so that the person who feels the heaviness, they admit it to themselves. They're not walking around with that unconsciously and, you know, the other person also hears. So whenever my partner tells me that she's not feeling great, I'm like. Great, amazing. Thank you for giving me that information because now I know either to give you your space, to support you, whatever it is that you need, but I'm, I'm walking around with that information through the day so that I don't make it harder for you and so that I know like if you need your time to yourself, it's all good because it's natural to have

• 33:17Speaker 01

  ups and downs. But I think having those moments where we, so we'll do it once in the morning and then once sometime in the middle of the afternoon. And it's just so valuable because you, you understand and you feel within yourself, emotions change, the storm doesn't last and you're cognizant that you're walking around with something heavy because there are times where if you're not aware of where you are in your own emotional range, the mind will just take that heaviness and just try to throw more cannon fodder at it.

• 33:43Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And projected at your partner.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Fuel at it, it'll make it bigger, you'll try to get into an argument, you'll like, you know, try to project it in some manner. And when we started practicing just that clear communication in a very sort of laid back manner, it's not like us sitting down formally and having a check in, it's just super passive in life.

• 34:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Like a few minutes, really.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  It's literally, and but that alone probably has decreased our arguments by nearly like sixty, seventy percent because now we took away that ammunition. You know, the mind isn't just like trying to just make whatever tension is there bigger. We already know that tension's moving through and we know if, if we get snippy at each other or something like that, it's like, oh, I already know that this person doesn't feel good. Give them their space and I'll give them a little extra leeway and let go of the little thing.

• 34:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Well, let's say there's something bigger than what?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  That's when we have to sit down and we talk, you know, we talk and we.

• 34:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  We take turns, you both go back and forth.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  We take turns, we both listen selflessly. I do my best in the moments where when she's sharing her perspective, reminding myself that like, I don't need to hang on to my view, I can just fully listen, I'm safe, I don't need to see her as my enemy. And in the act of that, going back and forth, both people giving each other that ability to listen selflessly over time, even if it's like, you know, twenty minutes, an hour. We figure out, oh, there is a bridge here between us. Like, I'm seeing what happened to you. And when we could both see each other, it does ultimately melt away. And still, there are times where like, you know, one of us has to apologize and all that. But what we found pretty consistently, even if I said something to her,

• 35:16Speaker 01

  usually the person who feels aggrieved also throws some fire onto it as well. It makes the argument even bigger. So oftentimes, like, both of us end up apologizing in some way because both of us, you know, owned up to some mistake.

• 35:29Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, I find like curiosity, one of the most powerful tools. Like, if your partner's upset, or they're angry about something, or they're mad at whatever's going on. And you're like, you know, what the, you know,

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I don't deserve that.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And they're wrong, and whatever, you can have whatever narrative. But if you stop and you go, gee, what's going on for you? Like, I'm really curious. Like, what, like, this is, seems like a big thing. Like, you tell me what you're really feeling, and then listen. And then not actually respond by giving your point of view, or your perspective, or your solution. But actually just kind of helping them to begotten.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  And yeah.

• 36:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's like, all you have to do is then reflect back what they're saying. And it's a really powerful technique. And I don't know why people don't use it. But it's like, you get to both go. You both get to have turns. You don't have to actually agree on anything. You could both have totally different worldviews on whatever. But at the end of the day, you've actually come to us. Start with your premise of understanding, of curiosity, of seeking to understand rather than being understood. And in that process, you actually free the other person to kind of relax.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And not feel, you know, because often we're in our amygdala, right? Which is our primitive reptile brain. When we get in these situations with our partners, it's like, how do you get out of that? Well, you get out of that by feeling safe, by feeling you're in a safe environment, a safe space, with someone who cares about you, loves you, is curious about you, wants to know how you're feeling, doesn't want to challenge you, make you wrong. Because even if, even if you think they're wrong, I got with my wife, she's like, she really doesn't like rules. And so I get why she's struggling with the dog.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But for me, I'm like, this is important. So how do I kind of understand what's really underneath that for her? Why didn't she, why does she like that? Why, why does this come for her? How does her reality in shapes that she feels that way? And why does she have these beliefs and just getting curious together? And then it allows your partner to go, wow, I don't know. I believe that. Or what? That's not actually how I, my values, but it's actually my beliefs. And our beliefs and our values are often at war with each other, right? We have certain values, but then we have these beliefs that often are interrupting our, our values.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  You know, and I think I like how you explain that beautifully. And I feel like the, the thing that has been newly added, I think even in the past, like two years for my wife and I is trying to make sure that the both of us are living in our individual energy. If I'm irritable and I'm trying to figure out some way for have, for my wife to join me in that irritability. She just says no, and she just stays in her own energy and vice versa. And I think it's been really valuable in difficult moments because like a lot of life is just problem solving. You know, like, I feel like once my wife and I spent a lot of time cultivating a better relationship between the two of us. After that, you know, there's still like, you know, family members getting sick, like this problem happens over here. This problem happens over there and we're just solving problems together.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  That's what like the last two decades, you know, the last like decade and a half has been for us. It's hard, but I think the key thing is when I feel that either her or anyone else is trying to get me to join them in their tension. I just remember like, actually, I don't want to feel like that. I want to live in my own energy and it's been really useful because there are times where, you know, we want to pick a fight with each other. But whoever is more grounded, if they just remain in their groundedness, it actually helps the whole process be a lot more efficient because you have no one to fight. You're just like, you're just there sitting in your own stress and then the other person helps you, you know? See yourself a little more clearly.

• 39:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and then it goes away. It's like the other, the other trick is like, you know, if both triggered, one of you is probably a little bit less triggered.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:08Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's sort of like, you know, check in and be aware and go, okay, well, there's only one crazy person allowed in the room at a time.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:13Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So it's like not both be crazy because that's not going to go well. And it's not easy, but it, uh, it's, uh, how do you hit the pause button?

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:22Dr. Mark Hyman?

  On your reactivity.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. And it's really helpful. I think like, I think recognizing the moments where like, I can have a little more balance for the two of us and, you know, she can do the same. I think it's a, it's a gift that we give to each other, you know, where it's like, I'd rather lean in my own peace and then eventually, instead of inviting you into my anger, I'm inviting you into my peace.

• 39:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, that's beautifully said. When you guys are in this, in like a place of conflict and you both feel activated, how, how do you navigate that moment? You, you take space until you both can come back to.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  You know, I've noticed that the arguments, they just flow like, just a little more slowly. Like we'll talk, we're both heated. And then in the middle of talking, there's little bits of pausing where we're still both sitting in our chairs, still both, you know, riddling with tension in the body, but we're, we're being a little more measured about, am I trying to resolve the argument or am I trying to make it bigger? And that's something that, you know, when we were in our twenties, it was just like, make the argument bigger and bigger. And now we just let the argument take the time that it needs. And if we need to talk about it another day or, you know, hours later, fine, let's cool off. But now it's usually just, it doesn't all need to be resolved in this immediate moment.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Especially if we both can't see clearly, then we're not going to do that well.

• 40:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Take a break. Yeah. Someone once said to me, you can either be right or in a relationship.

• 40:46Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think a lot of us are very attached to being right. How do we give up this incredible desire to be right? Which is connected to the illusion of I that you referred to earlier. This kind of false illusion. I want you to kind of dive a little bit more into this whole idea, this illusion of I, and how we give up this sort of identity where we have to be in our ego and be right.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  I think one of the key things is that you have to work with the universe instead of against. Our universe is one of emotion. Our universe is one of impermanence. That means that the whole universe is this giant river that's just flowing and rushing forward and.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  If we try to stay static, if we try to stay attached, then that river is just gonna knock us down. It's gonna be, life is gonna be very difficult. But when we embrace change, that means that we're also embracing the own fluctuation of our identity. You know, who I was 10 years ago is long gone. Who I am right now is also in, you know, it's in transition. And ultimately, who you think you are, like, it's gonna be gone. It's gonna disappear, you know, either through evolution or through your own death. But when you're embracing your growth, you're just not going to stay the same. And I think that's the same thing for relationships. Yeah. You know, who we are, like, who my wife was even two years ago. I mean, we had this, we had this beautiful argument that highlighted it the other day, right?

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Where my, my wife, two years ago, she was exhausted from all the travel. You know, we had had, she also works as my manager and she like has been, you know, critical part of the business and with, with everything. But we were traveling so much for work that she was exhausted. She felt like it was affecting her health. And I was like, I was like, cool. I was like, I don't want you to get hurt. I was like, definitely, I can do more trips on my own, you know, do speaking events on my own and all that stuff. And so I ended up changing a little bit of the way that I would talk about things. So I'd be like, oh, I have to go to Boston. And then I said that the other day and she was like, oh, what about, what about me? Like, I can't come? And I was like, oh, I was like, you know, I changed the language for you because two years ago you were like, I'm, we're traveling way too much.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  And I, I started changing the way, you know, I have to go to Austin. Well, because I don't want, I don't want you to feel obligated to come because I know that that makes you unhealthy. And I was actually, I changed my language because of what you asked me to do. It was a nice moment because two things, it showed us that it's valuable to ask, like, how do you like your happiness to be supported? It's not gonna be the same thing it was two years ago. And also, you know, in that moment, like, I felt her tension because she was felt like legitimately left out. And I was like, oh, no, I actually did this because of you. And, and then it just like helped the realization that like, oh, I totally want her around me. It was a nice moment where, you know, it reminds me like what she wanted as support two years ago isn't necessarily valid.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Like, I need to check in and make sure that in terms of like our actions, our language and whatnot, that I'm actually being supportive.

• 43:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, and what you said else is important because you have to allow your partner to evolve and change just as you evolve.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you were living in the past reality of what she said two years ago.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 43:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And she had moved on, or maybe.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  She was ready to travel.

• 43:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  She's been stuck in the middle of nowhere in the Massachusetts for too long and she's like, let me get to a city.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:02Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Some good Chinese food.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  Concrete, yeah.

• 44:05Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, one of the things that I think people have a hard time with is we often have broken pickers. I mean, we pick people based on our conditioning, our past, our beliefs, our traumas. And so I certainly had one. That was the biggest thing I had to fix, was fix my broken picker. And meaning, you know, how did I know how to be in a relationship without choosing someone who wasn't the right person for me? And that wasn't, it wasn't actually just in relation with me because it was sort of dealing with some wound I had and trying to fix that.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:41Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you talk about sort of red flags that people should look out for, and you also talk about green flags, which is kind of interesting. So can you kind of break that down? What are the red flag flags and the biggest red flags people have? And what are the, what are the green flags?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I think one of the biggest red flags is a lack of humility. When someone has a lack of humility in terms of like, they think they know everything, they think all their opinions are right. That means that they also carry a very static sense of identity. If that static sense of, static sense of identity is there, that means that they're a highly attached person. So they're not going to have the flexibility it takes to be able to grow together. I think that's, that's something definitely to watch out for. A green flag is, is the inverse. Someone who appreciates learning, someone who understands that when you go into a relationship, I may love you and I may feel strongly for you, but I'm not necessarily going to know how to care for you.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  I have to learn that over time. I have to learn that by literally asking you like, how can I support your happiness? And I think the other thing in terms of.

• 45:40Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you want to be loved? Not how I think you should be loved.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly.

• 45:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is how I want to be loved, so I'm going to do that to you.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:47Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That doesn't often go well.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I feel like my, my wife, like the, the way that she feels loved is when. I'm taking care of the compost, but like the way I feel

• 45:54Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Action service.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  is by being hugged.

• 45:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  You know, so like.

• 45:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Touching. Yeah. Love languages.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, totally. Love languages. And I tell my wife, like the, the flip side, it's like my, my corny dad joke. It's like, I'm touch sensitive. Like when you don't touch me, I get sensitive.

• 46:07Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  And, um, and she's just, you know, that just doesn't matter to her. It's like not as important. But I think we have to learn that we have to ask and not think that the person is just going to read our minds.

• 46:16Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's powerful. One of the things that I think is challenging for people in relationships is, is honesty. And I don't mean like lying, truly lying about like, oh, I'm having an affair. I'm not telling you. That's kind of betrayal. That's, that's clearly bad. The small lies, like the lack, not telling someone how you actually are feeling. Or kind of omitting things that may be bothering you or not being transparent about who you are and what's happening for you in the moment. Can you talk about, about how important sort of honesty is and what, what your framework is around honesty in relationship?

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, it helps to understand that dishonesty creates distance. Right? Dishonesty within yourself, it creates distance between you and yourself. That means you're not appreciating your emotional history. You're not appreciating, you know, your wounds and your patterns. You're just sort of trying to distance yourself away from the things that you feel. In relationship, when you're dishonest, it creates distance between you and your partner. And that could be about the small things or the big things. I think understanding that connection is fed by honesty. Like this is what allows this connection to continue because you have to feed the connection and you feed it by just being honest. Even if it's something small or something large, like whether you like this TV show or not, or like how you really feel about ex,

• 47:36Speaker 01

  you know, family member, you know, whatever it could be, like serious things to small things. I think when you're approaching honesty without judgment and without fear, because a lot of times honesty scares us. We're always like afraid that the home is going to break.

• 47:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  But when we. So people pleasing is the kind of inverse of honesty, right?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but having a good understanding that, especially when you're approaching a relationship, not from a place of expectations and attachment, but a place of commitment where you know that you two are highly committed to each other willingly so. And you support each other's happiness because there's clear information about it and you're choosing to act on it to support your partner. Then it's a lot safer to be honest.

• 48:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think that's such a subtle thing. We don't really think about it. And I. I remember one of my, you know, childhood wounds was I had a rageaholic father and I had to learn how to ease him or please him or people please him in order to not get the wrath and the rage coming at me, which was scary because he was very loud, very deep voice, big chest and kind of scary guy. And so I learned that people pleasing was how you navigate the world. What it led me to do was to not actually say what was true for me in the moment in relationships. And that was very destructive. Some people pleasing sounds like a nice, a

• 48:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  nice thing, but it's actually a lie. It's a flat out lie. And for me, that was, that was a big thing that I had to kind of realize was that honesty, I was going to be 100% transparent, honest about everything in my relationship, whatever relationship I got into. And it's been, it's been pretty remarkable to see how powerful that is as a force for understanding, as a force for connection, as a force for intimacy, as a force for love. And that most of us wouldn't even realize we're doing. Yeah. We don't realize we're, we're, we're not being fully transparent and honest. And I think it's important. And I think we don't learn how to do this. How do you, how do you help people kind of think about that? I

• 49:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  mean, and How to Love Better, which is a great book. Everybody should get a copy of it. It's out now. What, what, um, what, what is the way to get through that? Please?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that part of your story. I didn't know that I can feel like how, how much you've overcome and how much that shaped you. Honesty, like it's an invitation to get closer together. And, and it's, and I think, you know, we have to be really careful because we often, human beings are inclined towards black and white thinking, where it's like, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it a hundred percent and there's no other way. But, you know, honesty is especially important in those intimate relationships that you're very, you know, your best friend, your parents, or, you know, your partner, whoever it is. But then that doesn't necessarily mean that like every time someone says something that you don't like, you don't have to like get into a fight with them about it or anything like that. You, you know, you don't have to fight every

• 50:28Speaker 01

  battle. In our most important relationships, you know, honesty is the thing that keeps feeding energy into that relationship. And without it, we just grow apart. Yeah. We just grow apart over time or walls develop where we can't even see each other clearly.

• 50:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  I think the other golden rule, you didn't, you didn't really talk about it so much yet, but it's, it's I idea of like, don't think things personally, right?

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Your partner needs to go off and do something. Or if you say, look, maybe if I just want to have some time myself, I want to go to Boston.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:57Dr. Mark Hyman?

  By myself and just have my alone time. It's not a reflection on her. And I think, you know, when you take things personally, it kind of, it kind of blows up a relationship.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  I'm really grateful that my, like my wife and I, we, we both really enjoy meditating separately as individuals. Right? When we go away to these long meditation courses for like thirty, forty five days, we're totally silent. We don't have our phones. We don't have our laptops. We're not in the same room. You know, we're like-

• 51:23Dr. Mark Hyman?

  No wonder you don't answer my texts.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll disappear for like forty five days. I'll, I'll turn my phone back on. It's like tons of texts. So we'll be totally apart. And what's, what's awesome is like, not only we're experiencing that in our own solitude, in ourselves, we're cultivating ourselves during that time at the mental gym, like we talked about. When we come out, what ends up happening is that so much old conditioning is erased. Like you'll come out, you know, after forty five days of meditating, your mind just becomes so much lighter and all these old patterns that were hardened become soft over time because they haven't been replicated. So you have much more choices and you come out and you feel like you're a new version of yourself and a lot of your old preferences down to like simple things like the type of food that you like, the TV shows you like to watch,

• 52:09Speaker 01

  the books you like to read. You're like, oh, I don't know if I even like this stuff anymore. Sometimes I'll finish those long courses and I'll listen to the playlist that I was listening to before. And I'm like, no, this is not working at all. You know, it's not, I don't even want to hear this type of music right now. But that means that we push ourselves forward in our evolution as individuals. But that means that I get a chance to re-meet who my wife is. And because we're not exactly the same, we're discovering ourselves as individuals and we're discovering each other again because so much old conditioning gets deleted. And part of that is me not being attached to who she was before. What she likes now is way different from what she liked when she was twenty five. And, and I think it's honestly, it's pretty cool. Like we still, we love being next to each other and we love doing life together.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  But she keeps changing and that's part of the fun.

• 52:56Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, control, alt, delete is kind of a key part of relationships, huh?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, let it go.

• 53:01Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's amazing. In terms of self-love, which is a sort of talking about love, loving your partner, but self-love is a core part of having-

• 53:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Love together with somebody else, right?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  Totally. You need a, you need a degree of balance because the, the self-love is what helps you stay energized, rejuvenate yourself. It helps you cultivate yourself and you don't want to like get lost in a relationship. You don't want to like become your partner's twin. I think having a degree of that self-love is what ultimately helps you not burn out and have the energy to also support your partner and yourself. Because like if you just make your whole life about this one person, giving, giving, giving, you're eventually gonna either burn out or get really, really resentful. So I think having a balance of the two is, is really important. I mean, watching, literally like, you know, watching my wife over time, take the health issues that she had and overcome them.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Figure out solutions, you know, by reading your books, by like doing other things, like trying to figure out how she can make herself healthier. I watched this whole journey go down, you know, the same time when I was like writing inward and writing clarity and connection. And as I saw her get more and more serious about her health, I was like, dang, I should do something too. You know, like I should really put some more energy into it, but that was her own journey. And I think it was, you know, I ended up being inspired by it too. I was a little, I was a little slower, but.

• 54:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So how do we elevate each other?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right?

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:27Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Rather than take each other down, right?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's what we're here to do. We're, we're here to inspire each other. I think it's, relationships are a long road. It's difficult to be in front of that mirror all the time because you get to see in your relationship, like what you're good at and what you're not good at. It's very evident. And then you have an opportunity, like, do you choose to accept the challenge? Do you choose to accept the fact that, you know, relationships aren't easy? Like literally befriending the challenge of relationships is what helps you have a long-term relationship. Especially if your, your partner is not like abusive and they're a good person. They, you know, they want to be their best as well. You still have to accept the challenge of relationships because.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  It's just not going to be easy all the time.

• 55:11Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Oh, yeah, it isn't. And I think one of the things that tricks that the tricks quote tricks has helped me is to help. And I said this right up in the beginning of our relationship with my wife, I said, there's you, there's me, and there's us.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 55:24Dr. Mark Hyman?

  It's a third entity.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  A friend of mine, you know, Annie Lala, she's a health love coach, and she talks about, you know, giving it a name. We haven't done that, but but each of you have to care for yourselves individually. We all have to do that. We have to care for each other. And we have to care for the relationship.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Which has its own needs, right? And I think we often lose focus of that. It's like me, I, you, instead of this other place where we can kind of anchor ourselves as a sort of a north star to serve.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:55Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And I think that that's a that's a powerful framing for a relationship. It's really helped me a lot.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's and it's helpful, too, because like sometimes we get bogged down in the mundaneness of life where it's like, well, you know, we're just focusing on like doing our taxes together, paying the bills, getting the kids to school, like, you know, solving one problem after another. And we forget to talk about, what do you think about this universe? Like, tell me more of your views, like, what, like,

• 56:18Dr. Mark Hyman?

  This is the meaning of life.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  What have you been thinking about? You know, like, sort of bringing that earlier energy and that curiosity and keeping that, like, flame alit so because your partner is like a whole universe in and of themselves. And you two get to like move together, like willingly choose to be two rivers that flow alongside each other. And, you know, you got to keep getting to know each other over and over again, because you're always changing, whether you talk about it or not.

• 56:44Dr. Mark Hyman?

  That's the curiosity piece. One of the things I think is foundational, you talk about in the book is emotional maturity. It's not an easy thing to get because most of us are basically like 25, 35, 55, 65 year old people walking around with an eight year old on the side of us that's running the show.

• 57:00Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And so. Developing that maturity is not something we learn or trade in that we have any cultural or educational frameworks for. And yet, it's like the most fundamental thing to actually being happy is actually becoming an adult. A lot of us stay anchored in our past because of wounds or childhood, or just because like we want to be that twenty year old who did whatever they wanted. And it's not, it's really a challenging thing. And for to actually have a relationship with someone that is going to work, you have to have two emotionally mature people.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:33Dr. Mark Hyman?

  How do you, how do you help people under that? And how does, so what are the clues that there's emotional maturity that hurts relationships?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  Emotional maturity, it's such a big word, and it can be defined in a lot of ways. I think it's ultimately, you know, the peace that you can have when you're feeling your own emotions and having the ability to resolve difficulties between you and another person where you actually want to resolve difficulty as opposed to making it bigger. And I think emotional maturity is actually like a large set of skills. It's not like one thing, but it's a word that shows that you can listen, that you can let go, that you have self-awareness, that you, you know, can see other perspectives outside of your own, that you have, you know, a compassionate framework as opposed to an egoic one. And

• 58:22Speaker 01

  it's a lot of these things coming together so that you can handle down moments without just leaving. Because I think that's one thing that's, that our culture has, almost like insidiously, like the way media has affected our, you know, our minds where we see like a lot of romantic comedies and what you see in a romantic comedies normally, two people meet, they resolve one problem together, one issue, and then they're happily ever after. You never see the part that happens after. And, but what happens after is constant ups and downs, constant ups and downs. And you know, you're in a situation that isn't quite as healthy if you're just moving from one down moment to another down moment to another down moment. Then you have to really reassess, like, is this the right place for

• 59:04Speaker 01

  me? Should I be in this relationship? But having ups and downs, very normal. That, you know, you can still very much so be in a healthy relationship.

• 59:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it's key. It's so key. And I think it's a constant, it's a constant work. I wonder if some people thinking in listening to this are thinking that, well, this sounds great, but this is a lot of navel gazing. And how does this help the world and all the problems we're having in the world? And you know, it's, and I think this is, this is fundamental because you know, in order to actually, and we saw-

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Society is built in the home.

• 59:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, we, we see, we saw this in the sixties, you know, everybody's out to like change the world and fix it, but no one had dealt with their shit, you know? And, and there was a lot of really dysfunctional communes and dysfunctional things that, that were just-

• 59:48Speaker 01

  When you don't deal with your shit, you end up recreating the thing that you were fighting again.

• 59:52Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Like fundamental, you look, look at history over and over and over again, that's what happened. Like groups of people, they've come together around particular values that are very good values. They sometimes win and they get power and then power is like a magnet. It pulls out the roughest parts of the ego, all the stuff that you haven't healed, all those deepest wounds. And then all of a sudden you're, you know, doing the evil stuff that you were once fighting against. So that to me, I, I'm really honestly grateful to have been born in this time period because this is one of the few time periods where you can still work to make the world a better place, but simultaneously change yourself, simultaneously fundamentally at the root, help deal with the potential evils that are lying dormant in your mind and helping undo that conditioning.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And I think it's beautiful, like we live in a time where there are millions of people who are seeing therapists, millions of people meditating, millions of people actively cultivating themselves in all these different modalities.

• 1:00:48Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You've been doing psychedelic assisted therapy, right?

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and it's no wonder to me that, you know, we had this like self-love and wellness movement that I think really started getting big and like, it's been going on for a long time, but when it started exploding on social media in like 2014, 2015, it's no surprise that, you know, so many people were talking about self-love and developing themselves and overcoming, you know, old wounds. And now we're taking a look at our relationship and how we can have relationships that are growth oriented, where two people can keep evolving together. And I think this is something that's critical because this will help us honestly rear children that are not as traumatized. You can't create a perfect life for a person, but you can create a place that's just less harmful.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  This is really important.

• 1:01:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And you have kids?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:01:37Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Not yet. Well, that's the incubator.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's when the real test will come.

• 1:01:42Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Wow. I mean, I think, I think you're right. I think people have to understand that the world is made of individuals and the individuals have beliefs and individuals have points of view. And what we're seeing today is this total disconnection from each other. It's total lack of ability to talk to each other, total lack of understanding, this lack of ability to connect. And so what you're talking about in a sense, how to love better is not just about how to be in a relationship better, but it's how to be in relationship to everyone in the world better and everything that's going on.

• 1:02:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:12Dr. Mark Hyman?

  So, you know, I had a certain sort of very sort of set of beliefs as I was younger, very progressive. And, and I, you know, didn't want to talk to anybody who thought, you know, otherwise, it wasn't really like a conscious thought that I didn't, but I, I realized I gravitated towards people who thought like me, who felt like me, who were like me, who had the same beliefs and the same world views.

• 1:02:34Speaker 01

  Legal love similarity.

• 1:02:36Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. And, and what I found was like by actually developing a culture in relationships with people who had very different views and beliefs that I've grown, that I've learned, that I've actually been able to actually humanize the other, right? Because we always like to otherize everything. And this, this was happening in the world today. We're otherizing everybody. You're Republican, you're Democrat, you're, you know, pro-life, you're pro-choice, you're whatever, whatever it is, you're like Jewish, you're Muslim. It's like, it's endless.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And curiosity sort of gets lost in any kind of relational way of navigating through this gets lost. And it's really about this massive conflict we're seeing today. And I mean, and we saw in the Oval Office the other day, which was astounding to me that we have world leaders who are literally bickering and fighting with each other and nobody's stopping for a minute to listen, to slow down, to understand. There were valid perspectives on both sides, but nobody was even listening. They were talking over each other. And I'm, I'm referring to the, the President Zelensky from Ukraine, who was in the Oval Office with President Trump and J D Vance. And, you know, I'm not, I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat, just like that in of itself.

• 1:03:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  You know, wasn't how we want to demonstrate to the world our leaders behaving. And in sense, you're sort of these leaders who are under stress, who are dealing with difficult things, who have a lot to deal with. They weren't able to actually listen to each other.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:04:03Dr. Mark Hyman?

  And the first step is really to listen and to understand. And you might not agree. You might have different perspectives. You might want to solve a problem a different way. But at least if you you start to build on a foundation of understanding, you don't end up in a situation like that. And I think in a way, your book is sort of the antidote to that, right? How to love better, how to communicate better, how to be in a relationship better. Right?

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  It's funny, because the past, I think the past year, my favorite sentence has been, tell me more.

• 1:04:32Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  And that's just something so simple where I've been honestly retraining my mind, because I used to love to debate, right? Like, I used to really love my opinion. And now I'm realizing that, oh, my opinions are very ephemeral. Like, they're very subject to change. They're also like, I don't know everything. So why do I think I know everything? And now, whenever I feel the reaction of hearing someone say something that I don't agree with, I feel the impulsiveness of, oh, that's wrong. But I've been retraining myself to say, tell me more. You know, if it feels important, sure, let's talk. I don't want to debate. I'd rather discuss. Like, I don't, I don't like this, like, whole, like, you know, there has to be a winner type thing. But if I don't feel like I need to debate or prove anything or anything like that, I just say, tell me more.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Like, I'm genuinely curious, like, how did you get to this belief?

• 1:05:21Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Come to this belief, right?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Like, how did this evolve? Like, you know, without judgment, without condescension? Because that's the other thing you get, is like, people looking down on each other. But honestly, tell me more is dope, man.

• 1:05:31Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  It's been so helpful to just, and it's honestly opened up a lot of learning, because I don't know everything, and especially in the field of politics, like, left and right. I'm always telling people, like, left and right. It's not, it's not really taking us that far. We need to go up.

• 1:05:50Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. My friend Rick Warren said, I'm not left winger, right wing. I'm for the whole bird. Otherwise you fly around in circles.

• 1:05:59Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Right. Well, Diego Yung Pueblo, it's been amazing to have you on the podcast again. Everybody definitely check out your book, How to Love Better. They can find you on social media. Where, where is the best place to find you online?

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  Definitely on Instagram, YoungPueblo, Y U N G underscore P U E B L O. And I'm also on Substack. I've been really enjoying writing longer articles there. And you can find my book in bookstores and on Amazon.

• 1:06:26Dr. Mark Hyman?

  Yeah. Yeah, I would highly recommend them. I, they've, they've really impacted me and they were, they were kind of like medicine or a savant, a tough moment in my life. So I really appreciate you and all you've done to, to bring a little bit of understanding, a little bit of compassion, a little bit of love to the world, the world that is in desperate need of that. So thanks for being on the podcast.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it.

• 1:06:51Dr. Mark Hyman?

  When it comes to supplements, you only want the best for your body, the kind with the highest quality, cleanest, and most potent ingredients you can get. That's exactly what you'll find at my supplement store, where I've hand selected each and every product to meet the most rigorous standards for safety, purity, and effectiveness. These are the only supplements I recommend to my patients, and they're also what I use myself. Whether you want to optimize longevity or reduce your disease risk, or you're looking to improve your sleep, blood sugar, metabolism, gut health, you name it, DrHyman.com has the world's best selection of top quality, premium supplements, all backed by science and expertly vetted by me, Dr. Mark Hyman. So check out DrHyman.com because when it comes to your health, nothing less than the very best will do. That's DrHyman.com, D R H Y M A N dot com.

• 1:07:34Dr. Mark Hyman?

  If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Dr. Mark Hyman. Please reach out. I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the Dr. Hyman Show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Dr. Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more. Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on the Dr. Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health, where I am Chief Medical Officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor

• 1:08:17Dr. Mark Hyman?

  or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided with the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, please seek out a qualified medical practitioner. And if you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, visit my clinic, the Ultra Wellness Center at ultrawellnesscenter.com, and request to become a patient. It's important to have someone in your corner who is a trained, licensed healthcare practitioner and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health. This podcast is free as part of my mission to bring practical ways of improving health to the public. So I'd like to express gratitude to sponsors that made today's podcast possible. Thanks so much again for listening.